1 Post, 2 Essays, and a Multitude of Boredom

I've finished my two short papers, and now I've got a few months to work on the major ones for the semester. I don't think either of these is stunning works, but then again they are great percentages of my grade either, not that I didn't try, just that if you choose to read them, and I invite you to do so, don't worry about being carried away on fluffy clouds of prose that will instantly imbue you with all knowledge. I'll tease you with the intro and then link to the rest so you can investigate at your leisure.
New South Wales: The Undiscovered Country? Sailing the eastern coast of what they would name New South Wales, the men of the Endeavour used their spyglasses to scan the shore. The captain of the vessel, James Cook, had been charged with exploring and settling the land via a set of secret instructions that tasked him with taking possession of the land “with the Consent of the Natives” unless he found “the Country uninhabited”[1]. But what exactly did “uninhabited” mean to Cook and his fellow members of the First Fleet? Did the mere presence of a people on the land render it inhabited, or was New South Wales a “terra nullius”- a land belonging to no one? To answer these questions requires an understanding of what those terms meant to the men of Endeavour, indeed the European powers as a whole, and the difference between civilized and uncivilized worlds. The western world, of which Great Britain was a central power in the late eighteenth century, viewed its traditions and cultures as true civilization. This civilization was based on a rule of law. Codified statutes that recognized, among other things, property as a key pillar of society. Property was something that was owned, not merely in legal terms, but in physical terms as well. Cultivating land was a means of subjugating nature. To prove one’s mastery over the soil was proof of the superiority of man. Furthermore, mastery of the land and its cultivation led to trade and economic prosperity, which further led to improving “the self”; thus perpetuating the progress of civilization. This is how Captain Cook and men such as Watkins Tench defined “civilization”. read more...

The Russian Road: Occident or Orient, and Critiques of the Aristocracy Russia in the eighteenth century existed in an ideological bubble. Its past was written and re-written to conform to the needs of the autocracy. As the autocracy strained to retain its grip on the people, an idealized Russian history clashed with the reality of daily existence. Peter Chaadaev and Vissarion Belinskii were members of the intelligentsia and critics of the autocracy. They sought to open the eyes of their fellow Russians to the reality of eighteenth century Russian life. They saw a corrupt State that had twisted the past, and killed the legacy of reform, using nationalism to quell the peasantry.
The turn of the eighteenth century brought sweeping change to Russia under the rule of Peter the Great. Pre-Petrine Russia was a violent era filled with a harsh autocracy that Peter hoped to eradicate. Inspired by Western Europe countries, Peter founded the city of St. Petersburg as a window to the West in the hope that Europe’s influence and intellectual power would transform Russia into an even greater world power. Yet the reforms he desired amounted to little meaningful change. The autocracy continued, indeed grew more powerful during and after Peter’s reign. read more... So there ya go...tomorrow I can get back to taking photos, and writing something silly