Robert Marks quotes the eminent historian Fernand Braudel, who once said that the explaining the Gap between the Western industrialized nations and the rest of the world, “is to tackle the essential problem of the history of the modern world.” (Marks, 128). Your second paper assignment is to tackle this most essential problem in world history and explain in your own words, using evidence from The Origins of the Modern World and Late Victorian Holocausts, how “the Gap” emerged between the West and between India and China. Your paper is due via Canvas by noon on Monday, March 23rd, 2020. It will be checked for plagiarism by Turnitin. This paper will be worth 15% of your final grade, and you will receive a score out of 100. Your sources for this paper are restricted to the readings we have completed for class so far, as well as anything discussed in lecture or recitation. No additional research is required! Please write a typed, double-spaced essay between 1,200 and 1,500 words, with 12-point font and 1” margins that answers ONE of the following prompts:
In the conclusion to Chapter Five, “The Gap,” Marks notes that the so-called rise of the West was “a historical conjuncture” (160). Using evidence from both Origins of the Modern World and Late Victorian Holocausts, make an argument for how several independent social and environmental factors came together as a conjuncture to explain the disparity in wealth and power between India and China on one hand, and the industrialized West on the other.
Donald Hughes defines the second theme of environmental history as “the environmental changes caused by human actions and the many ways in which human-caused changes in the environment rebound and affect the course of change in human societies.” (Hughes, 3) Using evidence from both Origins of the Modern World and Late Victorian Holocausts, make an argument for how human-caused changes to the environment created “rebound” effects in India and China and how those “rebound” effects contributed to the creation of “the Gap.”
Mike Davis makes a provocative argument that the imperial policies that helped lead to “the Gap” between India and China on the one hand and the industrialized West on the other, “were often the exact moral equivalents of bombs” (Davis, 22/25) Using evidence from both Origins of the Modern World and Late Victorian Holocausts, make an argument for which imperial policies you think were most important in the creation of “The Gap” and whether you think these policies were the moral equivalents of bombs.