Geography Notes

Lec 3 (Intro to Geography Slides):

 Demography - Written description of a population based on statistics or numbers (age,

gender, literacy, economy per capita, etc)
 Per capita (per head is the literal description)
 Per capita income (Income per person annually)
 Gross National Product (GNP)
 If the GNP is high but the per capita is low, the reason is usually corruption (ex.
Somalia)
 Nauru, 1970s, made some bad investments
 Long term decisions are what leads to prosperity for countries 
 Geo (Earth)
 -ology (Study of)
 Paleo- (Old)
 Five Themes of Geography (Imp for Quiz !!!)
 Jared Diamond’s Five Point Framework vv imp, tells us why a society or country
collapses
 In most cases, point 1 and 5 of Jared Diamond’s Five Point Framework are the most
important as they are the most impactful

Lec 5:

 Ethnocentrism
 Cultural relative

Lec 6:

 GPS co-ordinates are used to find your position on the Earth. The Earth is divided into
a grid with longitude (vertical) and latitude (horizontal) lines and where these lines
intersect is where you are.
 Latitude is read first and longitude second
 The equator line is the zero-latitude line 
 Prime Meridian is the zero-longitude line and it runs through Greenwich in London 
 Countries on the equator tend to be tropical, below the equator it gets warmer and
above it, it gets colder
 Northern Hemisphere is above the equator and Southern Hemisphere is below the
equator
 High High and Low High are types of High island
 An Atoll island is NOT a high island as the volcano is no longer on the surface 

Lec 8:

 (Watch first 50 mins of lecture cuz I missed it)

Lec 10:
 (Continue watching Easter Island video from 30:55)
 Easter Island is too far south where the water is cold because of which it has no
fringing reefs therefore it will never become an atoll island
 Coral grows on the side of the Makatea Island and there is a lagoon on it.
 Almost atoll = low high island 
 Makatea is the rarest type of island as something has to push an atoll island back up
 A bigger island next to an atoll island is sinking which raises the water around the
bigger island causing the atoll island to be pushed back up causing it to become a
Makatea island 
 Mangaia, Makatea and Henderson are examples of a Makatea Island 
 Tikopia and Easter Island are examples of a low high Island
 They grew Taro in the lagoon area (most popular)
 Rarotonga and Mangareva are examples of a high island
 Coral gets packed down and becomes limestone 
 Winds, currents, wave patterns, stars, islands are marked on the maps 
 Indigenous means original 
 People were coming from Asia to the islands
 Mostly men came and intermarried woman from New Guinea
 Mitochondrial DNA is a type of DNA that you only get from your mother
 First people who colonized Polynesia are Polynesians 
 All the islands speak the same language as they have the same ancestors 
 Young men set out to find new islands for status as the founder of an island instantly
became a chief
 They would make circular voyages to avoid getting lost at sea and not finding
anything 
 5 to 6 men friends would set out together to find new islands 
 They would then go back after finding an island to get supplies such as medicinal
plants, food plants, their wives, pigs, dogs (they ate dogs) and chickens to take to their
new-found island
 They also ended up taking rats along with them by mistake as the rats snuck onto the
boats 
 They would divide the island out in terms of pizza slices with the mountains being at
the center so that each had access to shelter and fresh water from the mountains
(inland resources) as well as shore line resources
 Not everyone got an equal piece of the island. The ones who supplied more stuff for
the initial voyage get a bigger slice, this usually tended to be men from better blood
lines as they had more resources to provide for the initial voyage
 A high island could have 6 chiefs whereas an atoll island would only have 1 chief 
 The founders of the island would have the highest status on the new island settlement 
 The Hakka is a war dance, done in rugby nowadays  
 Lighter soil means that the soil was dragged in by a tsunami, darker soil are signs of
human and plant remains 
 Strata = Layers of the Eartha
 Burn layer (dark layer) in the soil occurs as vegetation is burnt down to make space
for agriculture and living. Occurs as the lowest layer first and can tell us when a
settlement started
  This is what happened at Easter Island, except they cut down trees to build tools to
help push their statues. They ate Moa birds to extinction within the first generation
itself as well
 Even at Mangaia they initially cut down trees and fed of the land birds on the island
excessively when they first arrived
 After they arrived at Easter Island, they started to hunt the Moa birds first for food as
they didn’t not want to eat their own supplies of animals that they brought along first
 The people at Easter Island were not able to fish for food either because they cut
down all their trees so after a while had no wood to build boats/rafts to go out and fish
 When the Europeans arrived at Easter Island there were no trees at all on the Island
 The Moa birds were driven to extinction by the people of Easter Island
 The next layer in the soil contains a lot of bones of Moas which was where the above
conclusion was drawn from
 Bats are the only land mammals that made it to the pacific islands by themselves 
 The pacific island had flightless birds (Moas, kiwis) as the birds didn’t end up using
their wings on the island which caused them to evolve into flightless birds 
 Thorhadol thought he could take his raft from South America to the islands but the
currents were too strong and something about dragging his raft 100 miles from the
coast

Lec 11:

 We know people in Polynesia are from Asia due to genetics (Y

chromosome/mitochondrial maybe?), culture, archeology and language. As all of
these factors are similar to that of the ancestral Asian counties
 The only animal they managed to get out to Easter Island were chickens. Don’t know
if they were bringing others as well or not, if they did bring other animals, those
prolly died on the journey to Easter Island itself
 Demography of Mangaia is teenage and 60+ with nothing in between because the
ones in between leave and voyage to New Zealand to work there.
 Erosion happens when you burn down trees and vegetation on the land, this leads to
the land becoming less fertile as the upper fertile layer of soil is now more easily
washed away by rain and wind causing the carrying capacity of the land to go down
 Also overusing the soil can cause it to become less fertile as continuously using and
watering the same soil back to back for agriculture causes minerals to rise to the
surface making the soil less fertile
 Technology and trading can cause the carrying capacity of a land to increase 
 The cliffs on Mangaia are made of limestone which is porous causing water to seep
thru it and make caves when it rains 
 Tribes on that Island started taking shelter in these caves once fights for resources
broke out between tribes as it became too dangerous to take shelter at the center in the
open as you could easily be killed in the night while you’re sleeping 
 The mineral pillars in caves formed by water droplets carrying small amounts of
minerals in them as they went thru the limestone then would solidify over years as
they drip. Forming a pillar takes very long and due to this reason, it is illegal to break
these pillars in caves nowadays
 Some mineral pillars can get crystalized also
  The caves were found to have housing platforms and something similar to bowling
alleys which were made in the caves as the wife and kids needed some sort of
entertainment while the men were away during the day farming or fighting 
 Burial was also done inside the caves during the period of fighting between tribes
because if they buried their ancestors in the open, they could be defamed by other
tribes and then the soul (mana) of their ancestors would not be able to rise or if the
bodies were fresh they might even be eaten by other tribes that had resorted to
cannibalism
 (The stuff above is about Mangaia Island)
 On Easter Island, after they had given up on the statues of their ancestors and stopped
worshiping them, the Bird Man Cult was then formed
 At some point, Easter Island had stabilized itself even through the lack of food and
resources but then some people from Peru came and took some people from Easter
Island away as slaves. The slaves got small pox at the place they were taken after
which they were sent back to Easter Island which caused the small pox to spread to
everyone on the island and pretty much wiped out the population of Easter Island
 Tikopia had 4 tribes on it 
 Tikopia had some initial warfare but instead of continuing to fight between tribes for
resources until only one tribe came out successful, the chiefs of all 4 tribes sat down
to negotiate and came up with a set of strict laws
 The laws were only the oldest child of the family may have children and the rest of
the family just has to take care of that member’s child (population control), no
feasting (food conservation) and something about fishing for oyster where tribes
would take turns fishing for different types of fishes each year 
 The Anthropologist Raymond Firth was working on the Island of Tikopia during the
period 1920-1970. He collected data on Tikopian culture over the period of 50 years
mostly through oral history.

Lec 12:

 (Jared Diamond’s 5-point framework points foar Easter, Mangaia & Makatea
mentioned at start of lecture)
 Mangareva is a high Island and is the main Island between the three Islands
 The Island had a lagoon where the islanders could fish much easier 
 The Island didn’t have the appropriate volcanic rocks so didn’t have basalt or obsidian
 Basalt was used to make axes for cutting down trees
 Obsidian (volcanic glass) was used to make arrow heads, spears and knifes for
hunting (They used obsidian on Easter Island)
 Pitcairn Island has steep sides due to which the island has no fringing reef
 Mangareva colonized Pitcairn (there were no people on the Island when they
colonized) and set up a trade relationship
 Mangareva would send food to Pitcairn and Pitcairn would send stone to Mangareva
 The small atoll islands surrounding the main three Islands were too small to live on so
people just went there to fish and came back
 Henderson Island had the advantage that once a year at different times it had sea
turtles nesting and sea birds nesting. They took red feathers from the birds and turtle
eggs from the turtles which were considered as luxury goods of the time
  Everything was going great until the Island of Mangareva got over-populated and
exceeded the carrying capacity of the land which caused a civil war to break out for
resources
 Due to this civil war, there was a breakdown of trade between Mangareva and
Henderson first as luxury goods were no longer wanted during the civil war
 Next trade broke down between Mangareva and Pitcairn as the war got so bad that
people started hitting each other with clubs so stone was also no longer required
 Henderson’s population was the first to die off, while Pitcairn managed to hang on for
longer but in the end perished as well 
 After the war, Henderson and Pitcairn were not colonized again by Mangareva as
Mangareva was just not as rich anymore to do so
 (Jared Diamond’s 5-point framework points for Mangareva, Pitcairn and Henderson
mentioned around 1 hour 3 minutes until 1 hour 22 minutes into the lecture)

Lec 13:

Where did the Vikings come from?

Where did they go?
Where did they set up colonies?
Where did they raid?
Where did they trade?
Which colonies succeeded?
Which failed?

 The viking plant their crops in the spring then go raiding while the crops grow then
come back and harvest the crops
 Viking means Raiders
 The Vikings were pagans 
 Paganism as a religion is extinct now
 The vikings come from present day Scandinavia (Scandinavian/Norse people) which
is Denmark, Sweden, Norway
 Denmark was the richest of the Scandinavian countries back then due to their fertile
land and Norway was the poorest as they had the most infertile land of
the Scandinavian countries 
 Denmark is the smallest but had good soil 
 Each of the Scandinavian countries were raiding each other continuously stealing
grain, animals and occasionally slaves (mostly woman slaves because men slaves may
fight back sometimes)
 Saga mean stories about viking that have been passed down orally
 In 793 AD Europe started paying attention to the vikings because the vikings attacked
a holy Island called Lindisfarn
 The vikings were active (raiding) from 793-1066 AD and after this they became more
sophisticated and stop raiding as they became rulers of other lands
 Norse people earned the title of viking after they started raiding 
 Ragnar (from Denmark) was the first one who reached a monk Island in England
which is a complete male Island because it is a monastery where they pray. These
were not warrior men but they were rich as they received money and food through
donations 
 The monks had no weapons 
 The vikings left some of the monks alive when they raided the Island so that the
monks could tell others the story of the raid
 The vikings filled their ships up with silver and gold they took from the monks and
went back home
 After the neighboring Scandinavian countries saw them come back with so much gold
and silver, they also decided to build their own boats and started raiding all over
Europe
 Traditionally the Norse people are farmers and fishermen so they weren’t just looking
to raid but were now also looking for land
 The vikings set up cities (colonies) to trade with - Dublin (in Ireland), York (in
England), Kiev (town, in Ukraine)
 The vikings raided England, Ireland, Scotland, France and the coastline of Spain
 The vikings boats are called long ships 
 It’s easy to go up and down Europe by boat because of the all the rivers in Europe
 The viking long boats could be disassembled and carried across land which the
vikings did if the river they were following was not going in the direction they needed
to go then would reach the next river and rebuild the long boat 
 Ancient Islamic currency (currency of the Islamic Empire) was called dirhams which
were made of silver
 All the vikings wanted to raid the Islamic Empire (which was in the East) in the end
as they were richer than Europe at the time 
 The Swedes went East, the Danes went South, South West and eventually East 
 The Norwegians went to Scotland after which they go to two groups of islands right
above Scotland called the Orkneys and the Shetland Islands. They did this instead of
going to the Islamic Empire because they were much poorer compared to Denmark
and Sweden and would not be able to compete with them
 The Orkneys and the Shetland Islands are considered successful viking colonies.
These Islands are part a part of Scotland
 Viking colonies that succeeded - Iceland, Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands, Faroe
Islands, Kiev and Dublin
 Viking colonies that failed - Greenland (lasted 450 years before it collapsed) and
Vinland (lasted 10 years before it collapsed)
 The Norwegians travelled the farthest out of the three countries and are the first one to
discover Iceland which was uninhabited when they discovered it
 Iceland then became a colony of Norway
 Old people of Ireland are called Celtic 
 After Orkney and Shetland Islands the Norwegians go to Ireland where they found
Dublin (hence Dublin was originally a viking settlement)
 Eric the Red (remember this name! just Eric is fine), was the one who discovered
Greenland
 (Write the story of Eric the Red)
 They set up two colonies there, the western colony and the eastern colony
 Leif Ericson is the son of Eric; this method of naming still happens in Iceland. Every
generation your surname would change
 Leif Ericson is also known as Leif the Lucky. He is known by this name because Eric
gives all his children enough money to build one boat and out of the lot Leif manages
to make the biggest turnover from that money thru trading.
  Leif is trading with Norway and Iceland, he traded walrus ivy and fur that he brought
from Greenland and traded it for wood, clothing, silver and food. But mainly wood 
 Newfoundland in Vinland was discovered by Leif Ericson
 People didn’t believe that Vinland was actually discovered by vikings until the 1960s.
In 1960 a Canadian farmer thinks that Newfoundland in Vinland is Native American
land and brings some archaeologists there and what they find there are viking
remains. They knew those remains were vikings because they dated it and it was from
around 1000 AD, they also found iron tools which they knew were viking and not
Native American because Native American were building stone tools at that time and
they also found viking longhouses
 The archeological site in Newfoundland of Vinland is called L’anse aux Meadows
(Cave of Meadows)
 Vikings used soil turf to cover the sides and ceilings of their longhouses as a means of
insulation 
 Entomology = Study of Insects 
 The vikings loved silver and amber

Lec 14:

 Emic and Eric are two approaches to the study of culture 

 When people study their own culture (to study a culture from the inside), it’s called Emic
 When people study someone else’s culture (to study a culture from the outside), it is
called Eric
 Which is a better approach, Emic or Eric? (This is a trick question)
 Ans: Some say that Emic is better as you can study your own culture much better than an
outsider as you have grown up in that culture and know it inside out. However, there
might be important things about your culture that are so normal to you that you might just
not realize and ignore them. But as an outsider performing an Eric study, you would
notice the disparities between your own culture and the one you are studying, making the
features of the culture being studied stand out more. Therefore, neither approach to
studying culture may be considered superior over the other
 Scientific Method - there are 5 stages to this method, observation, hypothesis (ex. Apollo,
Ancient Greek), testing (by conducting experiments), theory, law. The testing stage is
probably the most important out of the 5 stages
 Charles the Bald, King of Paris, him and the royals were scared of the vikings sacking
(completely destroying) the city and offered the vikings tons of silver and gold. The
vikings set an amount to be sent to them in 2 days’ time which the king and royals put
together quickly out of fear. But this backfired as it made the vikings think that if they
could put together such a large amount in just two days, they probably have a lot more
just hidden in the city. So, the vikings just continued to sack the city even after being
paid.
 Ragnar was the one who raided Paris
 The king of France offered Rollo the Province of Normandy which Rollo accepted and
became Duke of Normandy as he had fallen in love with the princess
 In 1066 AD the Normans attack England and win, making William the Conqueror (a
descendant of Rollo) the King of England
 Iceland was a successful colony but never rich, people living there were just farmers and
fishermen
 In Greenland, they started trading. Started farming walrus tusks (used to make Lewis
Chessmen which was inlay into furniture) and fox fur.
 Vinland is in modern day Canada
 (Jared Diamonds 5-point framework points for Greenland mentioned from 33 minutes to
57 minutes)
 Vikings called natives of other places that they looked down upon Skraeling (savages).
The vikings were very ethnocentric 
 The vikings considered the Inuit (Eskimos’) savages 
 The vikings wore wool and linen even though it wasn’t enough to keep them warm
because the vikings considered themselves Europeans and were following the European
fashion as they were afraid of turning into savages
 (Watch the vids mentioned in the lecture slides)

Lec 17:

 Genocide in Rwanda in 1993

 Rwanda is a small country in Central Africa, and it is a French speaking country 
 Rwanda is landlocked, which means the it is surrounded by land on all sides which makes
trading by land hard if your surrounding countries are not friendly
 Capital of Rwanda is _____ and its right in the middle of Rwanda
 Rwanda was colonized by Germans then Belgium and influenced by France through
Rwanda’s independence 
 The French and the British are the main colonizers in the 1700s & 1800s
 The Germans' were the ones who had first colonized Rwanda and after Germany lost
WW1, their colonies were divided up between the winning side and Belgium was the one
given Rwanda
 Belgium was given Rwanda because it already controlled Belgium Congo and some other
colonies in Africa at the time
 Belgium allowed King Leopold run Belgium Congo but then they got pictures in Belgium
about the abuse being conducted in Congo by the King and Belgium ended up taking
control away from him and giving it to the Belgium government
 3 main tribal groups in Rwanda - Hutu, Tutsi and Twa
 Tutsi = 15%, Hutu = 85%, Twa = less than 1%
 The tribes are basically like class level
 Tutsi were the upper class because they owned land and cows (a special type)
 Hutu were the labor class, working for the Tutsi land and cow owners
 The Hutu were farmers, agriculturists 
 Twa was a small group of hunter gatherers living in the forest 
 The Tutsi were a porous identity, which means that you were able to come and lose status
as a Tutsi
 You were able to move between tribes depending on how much land and cattle you
owned, for example if you earned enough money as a Hutu from farming and bought
enough land and cattle, you could become a Tutsi
 You were also able to become a Tutsi through marriage, so that’s what a lot of pretty
Hutu girls did. They married guys from Tutsi and then the kids they had were born as
Tutsi as well
 Moving down from Tutsi to Hutu was also possible if you lost too much of your farmland
or cattle and became poor
 Once the Belgium colonized they were like they will only speak to the leaders of the Tutsi
as the Tutsi were richer (and prolly more educated?)
 But then Belgium found out that people can move between being Tutsi and Hutu which
they did not understand, so they started creating Ethnic ID cards in 1930’s 
 Because of these cards you could not move between being Hutu and Tutsi and if they
intermarried, the child would get the tribe of the father and they would be stuck with that
for life
 So now no matter how rich you got you could not become a Tutsi from a Hutu and no
matter how poor you got, you could not become a Hutu from a Tutsi
 Rwanda gained its independence from Belgium in 1962
 After independence the Hutu became the ones in power as it became a democracy and the
Hutu were greater in numbers
 From 1962 to 1973 there were massacres in Rwanda with the Hutu killing the Tutsi out of
resentment 
 This wasn’t classified as a genocide because the Hutu weren’t trying to completely
eradicate the Tutsi population from Rwanda yet
 Tutsi refugees went north to Uganda (mostly went here) and east to Tanzania
 The Tutsi refugees in Uganda spoke French already and learnt to speak English as well as
that was what was spoken in Uganda
 These refugees were given Ugandan citizenship initially but then the citizenship was
revoked 4 years later due to complaints from the Uganda population. This was because
Uganda was already running short on resources and its population did not want the
remaining resources to be taken by the Rwandan refugees coming in
 President Habyarimana is a Hutu leader who takes over from 1973 to 6th April, 1994
 This President tried being fair to everyone and keep everyone happy however you had
many Hutu extremists at the time who were saying to just kick the Tutsi out of Rwanda
 A big problem was that the President’s wife was one of these extremists who kept filling
his ears, however he still tried to stay fair and not listen to her much
 On 6th April, Habyarimana was taking a flight and his flight was shot down just after
taking off (over his house), killing him
 From the 7th April, the radio towers were taken control of by Hutu extremists and they
kept broadcasting on the radio that the Tutsi had killed their President and that they would
be handing out machetes to anyone who wanted to go kill them 
 So, a civil war started that lasted 100 days with the Hutu killing the Tutsi, which was
basically a genocide
 This was classified as a genocide because the Hutu were trying to completely eradicate
the Tutsi population from Rwanda
 The Twa were also murdered during this period and in the years before
 Around 800,000 to 1,100,000 people were killed during this time period 
 Belgium setting up Ethnic ID cards was the reason behind the Hutu people hating the
Tutsi and eventually led up to the genocide

Lec 18:

 RPF = Rwandan Patriotic Front 

 The RPF is a military front based in Uganda
 Paul Kagame had gone from Rwanda to Uganda when he was a child then joined the RPF
in Uganda and climbed up in rank until he became the leader
 Paul Kagame was the leader (general) of the RPF and the RPF were the ones who stopped
the massacre happening in Rwanda
 Paul Kagame is the current President of Rwanda
 France sent forces to Rwanda to help the Hutu indirectly fight the RPF
 The French forces defended the Hutu people and did not directly go up to the frontlines to
fight the RPF
 This is controversial because the genocide of the Tutsi and Twa was still going on by the
Hutu and the French forces were defending the Hutu from the RPF while this is going on
 While the fight between the RPF and Rwanda was happening, the Hutu refugees went to
Congo to seek asylum
 Interahamwe are the extremist Hutu that are massacring the Tutsi, they were young
people who couldn’t get jobs and were just sitting free. These people had been trained by
the French in warfare, it is unknown if that was for the genocide or for something else
 Hutu refugees get cholera while on the border of Congo and Rwanda
 Moderate Hutu are Hutu people who wanted nothing to do with the massacre and stayed
away from it. These people were also massacred by the extremist Hutu
 Kagame changed the official language of Rwanda from French to English 
 This was a smart move for Rwanda as the country earns a lot from their call centers now
 Kagame resents France for the role they played in helping the Hutu and also resents the
UN for not helping his people (the Tutsi) even through his continuous begging but
helping the Hutu refugees with medicine and food when they got cholera at the border 

Lec 19:

 Malthus’ Basic Theory - Resources grow linearly while the population can grow
exponentially. The point where the resources line and population line intersect is called
the point of crisis as past this point the resources available cannot sustain the population
growth
 KANAMA IS VERY IMPORTANT!! Kanama needs to be mentioned in any question
regarding Rwanda (Read pg 321 of the TB, need to be able to mention the stats on this
page in my answers. Also read the Kanama part of the chapter from the TB)
 Kanama was almost completely Hutu, there was only one Tutsi in town and she was a
widow and was the first person to be killed in town when the genocide started
 (Something about coffee trade….)

Lec 20:

 Old world - Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa

 New world - North, South, Middle America
 In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail and was the year the old and new world met 
 Renaissance was the rebirth of Europe after the Romans
 Italy was trading with the islamic empire and Spain was the islamic empire 
 So most of the wealth in Europe was in Italy and Spain 
 Hispaniola in the olden days is now part Haiti and part Dominican Republic
 The locals there are called Taino or Taino Indians and in today’s time called Native
Americans 
 Christopher Columbus thought he had reached India when he had actually reached
Hispaniola (and refused to believe otherwise) so he called the people over there Indians.
This is where the confusion between Indians and Native Americans arises from
 Spain was the first one who reached Hispaniola and was the one who initially colonized it
 Christopher Columbus was Italian but it was the Spanish queen who provided him with
the funds to make his journey to the new world 
 Part of the Colombian exchange was the unintentional transfer of diseases as well
 The Taino Indians were dying due to the diseases that were brought in from the old
world 
 The Spanish were initially interested in the gold which was coming from Inca Empire of
Peru (South America)
 They were also interested in silver which was coming from Bolivia (South America)
 French set up a colony on the west side of Hispaniola 
 So now the Spanish and French control Hispaniola with the French controlling a smaller
part compared to Spain
 The French part of Hispaniola is called Haiti and the Spanish part of Hispaniola is called
Dominican Republic
 Manila galleons are ships that go to Manila
 The Spanish take over middle America (Mexico) and all of South America except for
Brazil which is later taken over by Portugal
 The French and British colonize North America 
 The islamic empire introduces Europe to sugar and coffee
 Sugar was also called white gold 
 The French grew sugar in Haiti 
 Growing sugar is a very labour intensive process, so they bring slaves in from Africa to
do their work 
 Ideas and things transfer faster East to West compared to North to South because when
you move East to West you stay in the same climate zone whereas when you move North
to South you move through different climate zones which make it much harder

Lec 21:

 Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere

 People from Haiti are actually illegally immigrating to Dominic Republic in order to find
work there
 The Haitians have a big slave revolution which was successful and they kicked out the
French
 The French tried taking the slaves back but they were not able to win a war on land
against the Haitians so instead the French blockade the Haitian waters using their navy to
deny them trade with other nations 
 The Haitians decided to continue growing sugar after they got their independence in order
to try and make the country rich again, but the French demanded retribution from the
Haitians if they wanted the French to remove the blockade and allow them to trade 
 The American and British refused to help the Haitians with the French blockade as they
both had their own agendas. The British had their own sugar plantations and didn’t want
the competition, the Americans had their own slaves and didn’t want their slaves to get
any ideas from the Haitians and start a revolution 
 DEFORESTATION is a major issue in Haiti, less than 1% of original forest left
 Haiti was a French colony
 They use charcoal for any sort of heating or lighting as they have no electricity 

5 Point Haiti -
a) Destroyed the environment completely due to large sugar plantations, destroyed it to the
point of deforestation and soil erosion
b) Will affect in the future but no effect right now
c) The French could be considered as hostile neighbors
d) UK and US not helping Haiti can be considered for disappearance of friendly neighbors
and lack of trade and aid
e) [This is the most imp point] Corrupt leaders (Papa Doc & Baby Doc), were taking money
from the country for themselves illegally instead of reinvesting it into the economy

Lec 22:

 28% of original forest left

 Dominican Republic was a Spanish colony
 DR leaders - Rafael Trujillo & Joaquin Balaguer (Joaquin is very imp)
 Rafael acted like a dictator but he didn’t just take the money for himself as what
happened in Haiti. Instead he reinvested the money into the country, starting industries
and boosting the economy
 Joaquin sets policies to stop deforestation and out sources the wood from neighboring
countries (He sets a lot more policies that prove beneficial, check slides for them)
 Mining companies would have to hire security companies and take out expensive
insurance when working in countries like Haiti. So even though they can pay off just one
two people in Haiti and get easy access to the country’s resources, it seems beneficial in
the short run but it’s expensive in the long run
 Due to this long run expense, mining companies came back to the DR and agreed to pay
their mining taxes (that they’d have to pay even before start mining). DR is a lot more
stable and hence much safer so didn’t need much security or expensive insurances 

5 Point Dominic Republic-

a) Destroyed the environment at first then preserved it 
b) Will affect in the future but no effect right now
c) 
d)
e)

Guns, Germs & Steel:

Farming gave some cultures an enormous head starts and those who were lucky to have the
most productive crops and animals became the most productive farmers. Agriculture first
developed in a part of the Middle East known as the fertile crescent, over time crops and
animals from the fertile crescent spread into North Africa and Europe where they triggered an
explosion of civilization. By the 16th century, European farms were dominated by livestock
animals that had come from the fertile crescent. None were native to Europe. They provided
more than just meat, they were a source of wool, leather, manure and crucially, they provided
muscle power. Harnessed to a plow, an ox or a horse could transform the productivity of
farmland. European farmers were able to grow more food to feed more people who could
then build bigger and more complex societies. In the New World, there were no horses or
cattle for farming, all the work had to be done by hand. The only domestic animals were
Llamas but these docile creatures have never been harnessed to a plow. The Incas were very
skilled at growing potatoes and corn but because of their geography they could never be as
productive as European farmers. Furthermore, horses gave Europeans another massive
advantage, they could be ridden which allowed people to be mobile and control the land. The
Spanish had been at war for 700 years prior to their attack and there was an arms race in
Europe, which in order to survive the Spanish needed to keep up with the latest in weapons
technology. Gun powder had originally come from China but its use as a weapon was
pioneered by the Arabs. In Europeans hands, guns became lighter and more portable and
were used for the first time by foot soldiers on the battlefield. The guns used by the Spanish
at the time were very slow to reload and the aim was terrible and swordsmen would’ve easily
been able to attack them while they reloaded. However, for someone who had never seen
such a weapon before, the sheer power and noise of the gun was enough to freeze them in
place. Moreover, the main power of the Spanish lied in their deadly steel sword which was
possible to make as they had some of the best sword smiths in the world while the Incas were
still making simple bronze weapons. Swords were a process of war and trial and error which
started originally in the fertile crescent and because Europe is geographically close to the
fertile crescent, they inherited this technology. Although, Europeans did take this technology
further as their soldiers demanded longer, stronger and sharper swords. Furthermore, the
Spanish had written accounts of their history and wars which allowed them to transfer their
knowledge through the generations whereas the Incas did not have any written accounts due
to which they only had local knowledge transmitted through oral memory, giving the Spanish
the upper hand in terms of war strategy. The Incas were unsophisticated and naive compared
to the Spanish because of writing. The Mayan civilization that was just North of the Inca had
developed writing in terms of symbols but this did not spread to the Incas due to climate
zones and geography. It is easier for people and hence knowledge, technology, crops and
animals to move between East and West (lateral) as the climate zone and vegetation remains
similar whereas when moving between North and South (longitude) the climate zones differ
and the vegetation changes drastically. Eurasia is spread more laterally making it easier for
knowledge to be transmitted whereas the Americas where the Inca and Mayan civilizations
were located are stretched longitudinally, making it much harder for knowledge to be
transmitted within the continent. The Europeans also unintentionally brought along with them
germs of the Old World into the New World. When a Spanish shipped arrived at Mexico, on
board the ship was a slave who had contracted small pox. This was the first disease that
spread uncontrollably through the New World as people living there had not encountered
diseases as deadly as this before. Also, vaccines did not exist in the 16th century and hence
there was no way to protection from the rampant spread of infectious diseases. Deadly
diseases such as small pox originated in Europe from the livestock they kept and spread to
humans through consumption of meat and milk of the livestock. Small pox is highly
contagious and had previously already spread through Europe causing a large death toll and
wiping out a significant amount of the population. However, each time there would be people
who were more resilient to the disease than others, allowing them to survive the pandemics.
Over generations, these genes were passed down till the point where most of the population
had a higher resistance against these infections. On the contrary, the New World did
encounter any such diseases before as they only had llamas as their domesticated animal, did
not have much contact with them, neither did they milk them nor did they keep them in large
herds. Due to this they did not encounter any infections in the New World because of which
they did not have high tolerance to diseases as the Europeans did. Furthermore, when
diseases began to spread in the New World the Europeans coincidentally decided to attack
which denied the people of the New World time to build immunity to the disease over the
generations. Such infections wiped out most of the population of the New World and weaken
the ones who survived, making them easy pickings for the Europeans. In conclusion, the
Europeans were accidental conquerors by virtue of their geographic location and history, they
were the first to acquire guns, germs and steel because of which they were able to colonize
the Americas instead of the other way around.

 Inca leader: Atahualpa

 Spanish troop leader: Francisco Pizzaro
 The Spaniard troops first attacked a tribe of the Incas and the Inca leader got message of
this attack, he decided not to have them killed but instead sent them gifts and invited them
to where he was and asked them to join his tribe. He did this because he underestimated
the Spaniards as he had gotten news that they walk around with pots on their heads and
they only had 168 soldiers (including horsemen) while the Inca had a powerful army of
80,000 men. However, he did not know that the Spaniards were armed with some of the
best weapons in the world
 After an initial meeting with the leader of the Incas, the Spaniards asked for a second
meeting with the Incan leader which he agreed to do in the town on Kahamarka
 The Incas showed up to the town with a small army of men without any weapons as they
did not expect the Spaniards to attack them due to the vast difference in their numbers
 Taking advantage of this, the Spaniards launched a surprise attack on the leader of the
Inca and his troops present. The Incas present stood no chance as they did not have any
weapons to defend themselves nor did they know how to fight against horsemen or
counter guns as this was their first time witnessing these weapons
 7000 of the Inca troops had been slaughtered while the remaining retreated to the hills, no
Spaniard troops were killed in the fight and the Inca leader was captured
 (There is more after this in the video but didn’t bother to write it down)