THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY. Steve Zolno

the end of the fifteenth century China was an advanced and powerful nation, but did not expand its influence beyond its own borders. The Ming Dynasty, which was in power from 1368 until 1644, was the first to establish legitimate examinations for civil service positions, putting aside favoritism toward family and associates.¹⁵⁹

      After successfully dominating and decimating the populations of the Americas and Africa, the European powers set their sights on Japan. The Portuguese arrived in the mid-sixteenth century. The rumored riches of Japan tempted the Europeans, but though embroiled in disputes between competing warlords, the Japanese were fierce warriors, well-organized and hard to conquer. Thus missionaries were sent to conquer their souls, but they were expelled in 1587 due to competition with the established Buddhist and Shinto worship. Rather than being subjugated, the Japanese adopted foreign technology. They imported gunpowder from China, eventually became manufacturers and exporters of muskets, and became adept at manufacturing lenses for scientific exploration. They adapted the potato for their own use, and exported silver for profit.¹⁶⁰

      In 1853, Commodore Perry of the US arrived in Tokyo, and the feudal lords, who still clung to their traditional sword and archery warfare, realized that they needed to give it up if they were not to end up a Western colony like China. The American influence caused the Japanese to adopt American ways, such as a more centralized government and a modern educational system.¹⁶¹ In 1858, the country was opened to outside trade by a treaty with the US. In the 1880s Japan began producing textiles, particularly cotton, which became its main export.¹⁶²

      While Europe was beginning the second millennium, the Western Hemisphere was populated by numerous civilizations in both the North and South. Anthropologists vary in their views of the earliest societies in America before the arrival of Columbus, but evidence keeps pushing the dates further back. Thanks to recent archeological research, a view that currently is gaining ground is that there may have been a series of migrations going back as long as 40,000 years or longer. Some researchers also believe that many of the areas that were found thinly populated upon the arrival of Europeans had hosted highly complex civilizations that had been decimated by the advance of smallpox before Europeans even set eye on them.¹⁶³

      The native tribes of what became the Northeastern United States were successful at agriculture and engaged in long-distance trade. They were admired by the Europeans who first saw them in the sixteenth century as exceedingly healthy, strong and clean, probably due to an excellent diet, especially in comparison with the arriving Europeans who lived on rations and rarely bathed. Observers reported seeing large settlements. In the late 1600s, after a series of Indian wars in Massachusetts, the victorious Europeans sold thousands of natives into slavery which was a common practice throughout the colonies.¹⁶⁴

      In 1370 the Aztecs founded Teotihuacán in Mexico and operated a succession of federations into the sixteenth century.¹⁶⁵ The native populations of Mexico developed advanced agricultural techniques, which included the cultivation of maize, tomatoes, squash, beans and avocadoes. When Columbus introduced maize to Europe, it became a staple in many countries, including its use for polenta in Italy. Research shows that these New World societies – with populations in the hundreds of thousands – also engaged in long distance trade with each other. Their culture included the use of mathematics and astronomy to mark the seasons. They also engaged in devastating wars with each other much like the Europeans.¹⁶⁶

      By the late 1400s the Incas of Peru ruled an area larger than any large European state of the day. As they conquered other populations, they moved them from their lands and forced them into work camps to build roads and other projects. They built palaces and temples made of stones that fit together without mortar. This impressed the Europeans who were not capable of a similar feat. They also eliminated hunger in their dominions.¹⁶⁷

      1500-2000

      During this period most of the world began to throw off old prejudices and beliefs that had slowed much of the progress of human knowledge, beginning with the West. This led to continual new insights based on observation and exploration. The theories of Copernicus, around 1514, and the examination of the cosmos by Galileo by telescope 100 years later, although suppressed by the Inquisition, broke the news that the earth – and thus humanity – no longer was the center of the universe.

      Human dignity became a greater consideration in philosophy, religion, and the creation of governments. There was a trend toward more democratic principles that recognized the potential of people to self-govern, and treated them less as perpetual children incapable of governing themselves.

      As Aristotle had speculated in his Politics (c 335 BCE): “The soul has naturally two elements, a ruling and a ruled; and each of these has a different virtue, one belonging to the rational and ruling element, the other to the irrational and subject element.”¹⁶⁸ As our rational minds slowly opened to gaining new insights about the world we still managed to keep our minds closed – for the most part – to people we decided were different from us in belief or background. This led to the greatest amount of persecutions and deaths by war and genocide in history, despite our increasing belief in ourselves as rational beings. During the last century of the Second Millennium, our rational self went to the moon and back, while our irrational self remained in the Dark Ages.

      Advancing technologies pointed the way to a better life for the average person, yet technology also was used to create a new level of destructiveness that superseded the greatest cataclysms of the past. It provided a means for us to impose an unprecedented wave of inhumanity upon ourselves.

      After the early 1500s there was a considerable increase in agricultural production in Europe due to clearing more land for production and the introduction of buckwheat and maize from Mexico, which created more reliable crops and lessened incidents of poor harvests that would cause mass starvation.¹⁶⁹

      The Protestant Reformation began in Germany in 1517 with an attack on the corruptions of the Church by Martin Luther, whose pamphlets were aided by wide distribution resulting from the printing press. Afterwards there would be devastating wars between Catholics and Protestants throughout Europe for five hundred years. The gap between royalty and commoners also grew during this period exemplified by, for example, the Chateau of Chambord built on the Loire by Henri II and Catherine de Medici with 440 rooms. At the peak of the struggle between the Catholic monarchs and Protestants (called Huguenots in France), Catherine ordered the Saint Bartholomew’s Eve Massacre in 1572 in which 25,000 Protestants were killed throughout the country.

      Catherine’s son Henri IV ruled France with a firm hand from 1589, but with an eye and ear for what would benefit all economic levels of the country’s population. He promoted religious tolerance, art, crafts, agriculture and manufacturing, constructed roads and bridges, and remodeled Paris for the enjoyment of his subjects by building public squares, such as the Place de Vosges.¹⁷⁰ He issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598 providing greater freedoms for Protestants.¹⁷¹

      The Reformation that began under Luther spread throughout Northern Europe as more people could read what the Bible said for themselves. This contributed to a growing concept that people had a right to come to their own beliefs and no longer needed to depend on the Church for their religious ideas. Luther’s writings backed the doctrine of “justification by faith,” as opposed to “justification by works.”¹⁷²

      In England, King Henry VIII, who desired a male heir, sought a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, which was denied by the Pope. Henry then attacked the Church and confiscated its property. The Act of Supremacy, passed in 1534, ended papal authority in England, making the King the head of the English Church. He executed any churchmen standing in his way, including Thomas More, author of Utopia, who eventually became a Catholic saint. Henry’s second wife, Ann Boleyn, had already given birth to Elizabeth, the future Queen, in 1533, but Henry divorced and executed her as he continued to seek a male heir, working his way through six wives, including Jane Seymour, who died soon after bearing the son he so greatly wanted.¹⁷³ Edward VI assumed the throne at age seven but died at fifteen.

      What many consider the