ESSAY CEMETERY

Video 1: The Diffusion of Authority Diffusion of authority = the factors that affect authority. Knowledge, (military) force, and money are factors that create authority. Power used to be in the hands of kings and armies, knowledge was the domain of the Church (I guess we're talking about Europe and the West) and money was divided up between the two. Knowledge : The printing presses enabled knowledge to be more widely disseminated. The first encyclopedia containing practical knowledge was compiled and disseminated. Spiritual knowledge was disseminated as well (although Islam preceded Christianity as a religion that saw spiritual knowledge as a common right). Universities were also being created and growing, and they contributed to the formation and distribution of knowledge. Military force and war : to have bigger battles, armies grew and non-nobles became soldiers. Money : There was a need for many banks and companies because of the trade boom. Trade allowed for the creation of the

The following are my lecture notes for Week 1 of the Coursera course  The Modern World, Part One: Global History from 1760 to 1910 . Video 1: The Study of History Figuring out the facts of history is challenging and not straightforward. Answering the questions about what happened isn't easy. In this course, we'll explore why things happened, and not just what happened. The facts are the circumstances, but the interesting things are the choices people made, as well as examining what didn't happen. Video 2: The Great Divide The traditional life = rate of change is slow. Modern life = rate of change is high. The rate of population growth dramatically changes in the late 1700s. Before and after = the great divide. The world was very populated first in Europe, and then the Americas and Africa became more populated. The Malthusian trap = more people but less stuff to go around. The amount of stuff is constant (really?), so overall poverty increases. This was the case until around