The Rise Of The West: A History Of The Human Co... VERIFIED
A cooling in temperatures after about 1150 saw leaner harvests across Europe and consequent shortages of food and flax material for clothing. Famines increased and in 1316 serious famine gripped Ypres. In 1410, the last of the Greenland Norseman abandoned their colony to the ice. From Central Asia, Mongol invasions progressed towards Europe throughout the 13th century, resulting in the vast Mongol Empire which became the largest empire of history and ruled over almost half of the human population and expanded through the world by 1300.[14]
The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Co...
Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing press, which allowed works of literature to spread more quickly. Secular thinkers like Machiavelli re-examined the history of Rome to draw lessons for civic governance. Theologians revisited the works of St Augustine. Important thinkers of the Renaissance in Northern Europe included the Catholic humanists Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch theologian, and the English statesman and philosopher Thomas More, who wrote the seminal work Utopia in 1516. Humanism was an important development to emerge from the Renaissance. It placed importance on the study of human nature and worldly topics rather than religious ones. Important humanists of the time included the writers Petrarch and Boccaccio, who wrote in both Latin as had been done in the Middle Ages, as well as the vernacular, in their case Tuscan Italian.
The West in the early modern era went through great changes as the traditional balance between monarchy, nobility and clergy shifted. With the feudal system all but gone, nobles lost their traditional source of power. Meanwhile, in Protestant countries, the church was now often headed by a monarch, while in Catholic countries, conflicts between monarchs and the Church rarely occurred and monarchs were able to wield greater power than they ever had in Western history.[citation needed] Under the doctrine of the Divine right of kings, monarchs believed they were only answerable to God: thus giving rise to absolutism.
Industrial technology was imported from Britain. The first lands affected by this were France, the Low Countries, and western Germany. Eventually the Industrial Revolution spread to other parts of Europe. Many people in the countryside migrated to major cities like Paris, Berlin, and Amsterdam, which were connected like never before by railroads. Europe soon had its own class of wealthy industrialists, and large numbers of industrial workers. New ideologies emerged as a reaction against perceived abuses of industrial society. Among these ideologies were socialism and the more radical communism, created by the German Karl Marx. According to communism, history was a series of class struggles, and at the time industrial workers were pitted against their employers. Inevitably the workers would rise up in a worldwide revolution and abolish private property, according to Marx. Communism was also atheistic, since, according to Marx, religion was simply a tool used by the dominant class to keep the oppressed class docile.
1916 saw some of the most ferocious fighting in human history with the Somme Offensive on the Western Front alone resulting in 500,000 German casualties, 420,000 British and Dominion casualties, and 200,000 French casualties.[57]
Western culture is characterized by a host of artistic, philosophic, literary and legal themes and traditions. Christianity, primarily the Roman Catholic Church,[7][8][9] and later Protestantism[10][11][12][13] has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization since at least the 4th century,[14][15][16][17][18] as did Judaism.[19][20][21][22] A cornerstone of Western thought, beginning in ancient Greece and continuing through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, is the idea of rationalism in various spheres of life developed by Hellenistic philosophy, scholasticism and humanism. Empiricism later gave rise to the scientific method, the scientific revolution, and the Age of Enlightenment.
The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some economists say that the major impact of the Industrial Revolution was that the standard of living for the general population began to increase consistently for the first time in history, although others have said that it did not begin to meaningfully improve until the late 19th and 20th centuries.[86][87][88] The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes.[89][90][91][92] GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy,[93] while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies.[94] Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals, plants[95] and fire.
The transatlantic slave trade led to the greatest forced migration of a human population in history. Millions of Africans were transported to the Caribbean, North and South America, as well as Europe and elsewhere. An 'African Diaspora' or dispersal of Africans outside Africa was created in the modern world.
An environmental ethic arises as a force in contemporary life through a somewhat different historical process than, say, water marketing and to some extent Indian water rights. Espousing an environmental ethic involves a shift in thinking, a reorientation of values, away from the human-centered and toward acknowledging an obligation to the natural world.
Reviewing the compact and its effect on the environment broadens the study of history. Along with showing a connection between past, present, and future, a study of the Colorado River Compact also demonstrates how human and natural history interact. This awareness deepens and enriches the meaning of history.
Responding to natural forces, rivers have a history apart from humans. In seeking to use and control rivers, whether with a primitive, hand-dug irrigation ditch or the very complex Law of the River, humans impose their history on the river. Human history then affects and, in turn, is affected by the river's natural history. The workings of this process is very evident when examining environmental concerns along the Colorado River.
While the origin of "human rights" lies in the nature of the human being itself, as articulated in all the world's major religions and moral philosophy, "human rights law" is a more recent phenomenon that is closely associated with the rise of the liberal democratic State. In such States, majoritarianism legitimizes legislation and the increasingly bureaucratized functioning of the executive. However, majorities sometimes may have little regard for "numerical" minorities, such as sentenced criminals, linguistic or religious groups, non-nationals, indigenous peoples and the socially stigmatized. It therefore becomes necessary to guarantee the existence and rights of numerical minorities, the vulnerable and the powerless. This is done by agreeing on the rules governing society in the form of a constitutionally entrenched and justiciable bill of rights containing basic human rights for all. Through this bill of rights, "human rights law" is created, becoming integral to the legal system and superior to ordinary law and executive action.
In this article, some aspects of the history of human rights law at the global, regional and subregional levels are traced. The focus falls on the recent, rather than the more remote, past. To start with, some observations are made about the "three generations" of human rights law.
The history of billion-dollar disasters in the United States each year from 1980 to 2021, showing event type (colors), frequency (left-hand vertical axis), and cost (right-hand vertical axis.) The number and cost of weather and climate disasters is rising due to a combination of population growth and development along with the influence of human-caused climate change on some type of extreme events that lead to billion-dollar disasters. NOAA NCEI.
Our response efforts are focused around the following: addressing climate crises, food insecurity, and building resilience; protecting poor people; strengthening human capital; and creating jobs.
ISHIKANE KIMIHIRO (Japan) underscored that the threat posed by sea-level rise is as imminent and critical as that posed by invasion by a foreign nation. At the core of both crises is human life and dignity, and both are serious security issues. While the Council should get involved when such issues arise, the organ alone cannot offer a comprehensive solution; however, it can fulfil its responsibility to maintain international peace and security by calling together other United Nations bodies. Underlining the need for preventive diplomacy, he called for more robust conversation between the Council and other entities, such as the Peacebuilding Commission. For its part, he said that Japan is working to support small island developing States in areas such as disaster risk training under the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. He went on to support the preservation of existing baselines and maritime zones, as established under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, regardless of regressing coastline due to climate change. This interpretation is legitimate, he stressed, and will ensure legal stability and predictability for small island developing States. He added that, as an island country, Japan understands the seriousness of this issue and will work proactively in the United Nations to address it, along with the link between climate change and security more generally.
The growth in size and activities of UN Human Rights has paralleled the increase in the human rights machinery since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Drafted as "a common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations," the Declaration for the first time in human history set out basic civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that all human beings, without distinction, should enjoy. Non-discrimination and equality have been increasingly reaffirmed as fundamental principles of international human rights law and essential elements of human dignity. 041b061a72