The West Encounters And Transformations

First, Mr. Stark is a Social Science Professor at Baylor University, who is well versed to tell the story of Western Civilization. Mr. Rodney Stark the Author of How The West Won, is committed to truth, with a willingness to go out on a limb for truthful historical data that may be “barbaric” to today’s society, but in fact, he wrote about a part of the true history. His story telling from a historical point of view is fantastically told. Some of the many things he writes about: the western civilization did shape the rest of the world, uniquely, through the early times of Mesopotamia, through Greek culture, Roman Empire and on to modern eras. Additionally, how the ancient Greek culture survived

The rise of the west was a time in which European nations became more advanced and had an increase of power and dominance. Europe became a dominant nation in the 16th Century while two large Gunpowder empires began to decline. These European nations dominated because they had technological advancements. Some of which were gunpowder, cannons, and much more. Both the Ottoman and the Ming Empires rose to the top and then declined after the European nations began to advance. The European Miracle was when the European nations began to advance in technology, they expanded, and dominated the world.

The American West is one of the most famous and important part of the American history. The American West or another name the American Frontier started off in the late-1700 and ended in mid-1940. Although that part of history ended, but the influence and the old west culture is still around today. So let get into the history of the American West, of what made the West what it is and how all the forces molded the West.

In his book, Carnage and Culture, Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian and professor at California State University, reasons that the west and its armies have been the most lethal and effective force in the world because of the inseparability between armies and their cultures. He illustrates the cultural superiority of the west by explaining the tenets of western society (freedom, citizenship, right to property, capitalism, and individualism) and applies them to nine landmark battles in which the west take part. Hanson uses “the term ‘Western’ to refer to the culture of classical antiquity that arose in Greece and Rome; survived the collapse of the Roman Empire; spread to western and northern Europe; then during the great periods of exploration and colonization of the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries expanded to the

First, I agree that the Western civilization has a clear lineage that focuses on the majority of the following attributes: competition/innovation, science, property rights, personal freedoms, and a free-market economy. Ferguson (2014) points out that competition, property oriented government and science are some of the unique attributes that enabled the West rise to power. As a result of competition, the western people became more innovative and business-oriented, thus, making them aggressive in areas

In Samuel P. Huntington’s article “The West: Unique, Not Universal,” he addresses his audience with a very controversial question: Is Western Culture universal or unique? Huntington elaborately opens up this question with research and examples to explain and persuade readers that the West will never be a universal culture for all, but rather a unique culture that will be accepted by those who appreciate it. For decades now, historians and scholars have debated with one another to determine who is right and wrong. However, from a handful of articles from different scholars, Samuel Huntington’s statement that the West is unique rather than universal is supported and even further elaborated on by these particular sources. A common understanding between all the sources, that must be noted, is that a civilization’s culture is not comprised of material goods but rather their culmination of their religion(s), values, language(s) and traditions. While although there are scholars out their that negate the West is unique, a large amount of scholars still argue and strengthen Huntington’s argument that the West has unique and exclusive characteristics that make them distinctive and rare.

William Cronon another new historian talked about western history and how western history lead us to today’s environmental history. He also brought up that frontier is an environment and means a free land, its a place, culture. If the West be limited to process it is impossible to talk about western history and as Cronon mentioned,” If the frontier represented only one kind of plenty, then it ought to be possible to rewrite history which in one rather Turnerian sense is actually the environmental history of North America in term of transition not from free to occupied land”( Cronon, p. 11). Donal Worster another new westerner describes the West more than just a process. The West “ begins with Dajotas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas” ( Worster , p.13). So the West it can only be defined as the West when only be along with South and North. The West is a geographical location and its a region. Its not just only a process. New historians agree on that the West is the place rather than process. Place means location which bring culture, assimilation, knowledge and civilization. The old West was a place like other regions that had rich, poor, powerful, slave, educated and uneducated

The west is a vast of lands west of the Mississippi river. Before white people came to the land, it was inhabited for centuries by tanned skinned Native Americans whose ways of living are far different from the foreign people. For centuries big colonial empires tried various ways to claim the west until it became a part of United States of America. However, many Natives sacrificed their lives to protect their land, yet in the end their arrows cannot match the power of the foreigner 's guns and cannons. The west is not only abundant in terms of resources, but also in folklore, history, and became the birth of the modern American culture. Furthermore, PBS provided a helpful links in order to understand and appreciate the stories about the stories about how the west became the frontier of United States. These links are "The People" and "Empire upon the Trails" which gave some interesting facts about the beginning of the West.

The West is another word for the Western world which is involved with different nations determined by the conditions. Most of the west is included with the European origins. The West had so much potential to those traveling that to those individuals it seemed like a new world. The West was a place where many could live great lives. These individuals wanted to move west to secure land and to be prosperous. People would read newspaper stories about the new land and wanted to move their immediately for a better life. African American slaves for examples heard about the west and traveled, risking their lives to get the freedom they deserved. These slaves could start a new life as give something better than they would a slave. Slaves could become

The rise of the West refers to a period of time when Western Europe rose to power due to many environmental, political, and social factors. Many historians attribute the Rise of the West to the time period of 1450 to 1850. This power surge of Western Europe has been attributed to the global dominance of Western Europe and America in the 21 century. The interesting aspect regarding the Rise of the West is how Western Europe developed so differently from other parts of the world, leading it to be the superpower of the world. Over the past 50 years, the idea of the rise of the West has been closely re-examined. Prior to the 1950s, historians believed that the rise of the West occurred because it was destined to; because Europe is the best and

Wide open spaces, uninhabited for miles; breathtaking scenery, unchanged for centuries. Explorers charting this great unknown; exploring this frontier known simply as the West. This common narrative of the West can be seen in movies, television, and artwork from around the globe. However, many parts of this narrative can be far from reality. West’s A Narrative History of the West, Miller’s Agents of Empire, The Lewis and Clark expedition, and Aron’s The Afterlives of Lewis and Clark all provide a counter-narrative to the traditional narrative of the “untouched” West and highlight the importance media has on the public’s interpretation of the West.

Brian Levack, Edward Muir, Micheal Maas, Meredith Veldman. The West: Encounters and Transformations, Consise Edition. Pearson: Upper Saddle River, 2009. Print

Western Expansion became a thought due to Manifest Destiny. There were at least four things that occurred because of the Western Expansion, the Native American populations were decimated even more, the Market Revolution was continued into the west, the democratic promise of poor but free men being allowed to make it their own instead of having to be overseen by

Examining the latter half of the 1800s with the assistance from the works of Elliot West, Joy Kasson, and Frederick Jackson Turner, the United States transformed into a settled and dominant nation which signaled the end of the frontier in 1890. From land disputes to reenactments of infamous battles for nostalgia purposes, the West had become a more modern civilization that emanated power. Although these three works provide a precise timeline from the Indian wars all the way to the closing of the frontier, they do not argue the same thing. The unique interpretations of the history of the American West is perceived by the authors in what they believed to be the beginning of the West as it is known today.

The west had different meanings for people. For the Native people for example, it meant "Hell, destruction or fullness", while for the Cowboys, miners, Exodusters, it meant "a place of adventure, romance where one could escape from Society and its pressures". These two meaning of the West drove me to talk about what the West meant to Women. Just like any other things, the West not just brought some positive things but it also brought negative ones. When talking about the positive things, we can say the West clearly meant emancipation for women. In fact it was a kind of place where they had freedom and the opportunity of chance to live their lives according to themselves. They were not forced to do anything against their will. For example, they