... seized from their homes and villages, brought onto ships, and shipped away to be used as a form of currency. It was said that 20% died on the boat on the way due to the terrible conditions of living on the boat. Despite the fact that slavery did spark the creation and was the basis of capitalism, it was still a terribly inhumane practice. Slavery was also a key factor in ... it was made, and what it meant to society is explained in great detail in the book Sweetness and Power by Sidney W. Mintz. The book made the connection that sugar helped spark the creation of capitalism, which led t...

• Word Count: 1288
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

... commencing, and that any nation left behind in the pursuit of world power would sink into insignificance. This insight must surely have fostered a growing sense of anxiety among Germans, and one of paranoia among Britons, about trends in global politics. A second point, subtler still, is that imperialism, while it did not directly spark off World War I, did occasion a transformation ... of alliances that proved precarious beyond reckoning once the Great Powers turned their attention back to Europe. Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, and within a decade popularizers h...

• Word Count: 1485
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... of some ten million people. It could be said that Gavrilo Princip, the young Bosnian student who assassinated Franz Ferdinand was responsible for the mayhem and despair that occupied the four years to follow in Europe, for had he not assassinated Ferdinand and provided the initial spark for conflict, the events from 1914 to 1918 may have been vastly different. Otto von Bismarck, leader of ... Germany during the unification period of the 1870's, some forty years before the outbreak of World War One, summed ... up the future of Europe when he said, "The Balkans will be the cause of the n...

• Word Count: 1859
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... meant he was dedicated to re-storing the authority of the emperor in the Empire and of re-establishing Catholicism in central Europe. The spark that set off the Thirty Years War came in 1618, when the Archbishop of Prague ordered a Protestant church destroyed. The Protestants in the city rose up and revolted, but within two years the rebellion was stamped out by the Habsburg general, Count of Tilly. Thus began ... the first period of the thirty years war, which is known as the Bavarian period. The Bavarian Period of the war began with the battle ... ...

• Word Count: 2101
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: Undergraduate