Friday, October 19, 2007

Nationalism and the Creation of Italy

Nationalism is when people feel pride in their country and the way they live their lives for their country. When you see people cheering their country's team at the Olympics, its competition between their country and the other team because they are loyal to their country. Nationalism creates a bond between all the people in that country. We all have a history of gaining our independence on the 4th of July and we all celebrate that day by seeing the fire works because that was the day our country gained freedom. We have the same culture, money, government, language, and much more that shapes our country and connects us all in a way that can only be called nationalism. My family celebrates the 4th of July every year, pay taxes to our government, and live by and support our American way of life.

In the 1800's, nationalism was starting to take a large roll. Empires were falling and nations were rising. One of the countries to rise from the fall of the empires was Italy. Before nationalism, Italy was very different from today, many people did not realize they belonged to a country and not just the town they lived in. Italy was also being ruled by foreigners. The people of Italy no longer wanted to be ruled under a foreigner who was not even from their own country, this was because many people were undertaking the idea of nationalism. A man named Giuseppe Mazzini created a nationalist group called young Italy and rebelled against these foreigners. He failed but with many more people also demanding nationalism, the people of Italy soon took their country for their own and ruled it in a nationalism society.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Simon Bolivar and Latin American Revolutions


Simon Bolivar accomplished great things for South America that would forever change the way the government was treating people and bring independence to many countries. Simon started his legacy when he started to look at the ideas that came from all the great philosophers such as Rousseau and Locke but at the same time looked at Napoleon's tactics in military. He soon became amazing at controlling and organizing a military similar to Napoleon and the mind of a revolutionary thinker. He created military forces and slowly started his revolt against the Spanish rule with surprise attacks. Simon was influenced greatly by all the countries around the world that won their independence already and sometimes even gained followers while traveling through these countries.
Simon quickly became very famous after many tries of invading the northern portion of South America and was being crowned the leader of the independence movement. Finally June 24, 1821, Venezuela was freed from Spanish rule and Simon became president. After this day, he started independence movement on the rest of South America. As time went on, Simon gained much more power and had seven times the army size he had before. Simon soon had independence over Columbia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia (named after himself). A country was named after Simon for the amazing work and accomplished he done for Spain and his amazing influences.