Week 7

Posted by in Week 7

Modernity is the vital part of discussion in this weeks material. Modernity in its entirety if quite interesting to me and I feel the topic as whole doesn’t get discussed very often. I’ts intriguing to hear from Alexander Dawson that majority of Mexico, not just Mexico City, under Diaz, was quite modern for the time. In my opinion the American education system can be very much bias in that America is projected as this all mighty country who has always and will always be more advanced that all other countries. This bias has really tainted my vision of the rest of the world, especially in eras before my time. According to Dawson, Mexicos impressive feats included thousands of miles of railroads across the country, they built modern armies that utilized machine guns and modern artillery, and they integrated their economies such that of European economies. I also find it interesting and agree with what Dawson says about modernizing colonies. He says that order and progress go hand in hand and that with out order, major progress can’t be made. So basically they needed to be ruled by the elites for a time and when the people got on their feet and modernized a bit, democracy or other forms of government could ensue.