Introduction
People and communities encountered one another during the early modernity through various ways. These included exploration and discoveries, religion, ethnicity and violence in the early modern Atlantic world and slave trade, social and political platforms.
Social and Political Encounters
In his Second Treatise of Government, John Locke begins by describing the “state of nature” as a situation in which people find themselves in before an administration comes into being.
He says that in this circumstance people are liberated to do anything they desire as long as their deeds do not defy the law of nature which does not allow harming others or captivating their property. It also demands that everyone should care for his or her life and that of others and that they are supposed to remain in this state until they become members of various politic communities.
He adds that political societies spring from social contracts in the course of which individuals transmit to the community their authority to reprimand those who disobey the law of nature. The aim of establishing a political society is to ensure a fairer and dependable way of preserving their possessions (Locke, p. 33).
Exploration and Discoveries
This is also another way in which persons encountered and discovered one another or communities. For example, in the Europe’s Encounter of Asia in the Early Modernity, Christopher Columbus’s dream of arriving at Marco Polo’s Cathay led him to by coincidence find out a completely new continent- Asia- even after others apparently thought that he had not been near Asia.
Also, at the same time the Portuguese under the leadership of Vasco da Gama tried to look out for a possible route to find their way into the Far East in an attempt to deliver letters from their King Manuel to Prester John who was the legendary leader of the Christians in the Orient (Cumo, p. 23).
Unlike Columbus, Vasco da Gama managed to reach Asia and for the first time opened the eastern sea gates to “marvels of the East” for the Europeans in 1498. This resulted in the Portuguese almost monopolizing the spice trade in the South and Southeast Asia in the following decade (Cumo, p. 24).
Religion, Ethnicity, and Violence in the Early Modern
After assessing the Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage in 1992, it was concluded that one could carefully foretell that the most long-lasting legacy of the Quincentenary would not be the mediated events of 1992. In 1995, it was deduced that the concept of “encounters” clearly represented the major way of making out the historical processes the contact initiated (Sandberg, p. 2).
The making out of the early modern Atlantic world started shifting a decade later after the quicentennial. It was prepared by the Columbian encounters. At this time, the enriching history and approaches after modernity had come of age. This was pertinent in shaping up the 1992 encounter in acknowledging the cultural frameworks for example intercultural violence.
The debate about the violence that various people including teachers, scholars and activists had staged against Columbus and Europeans for “genocide” and “ecocide” was dismissed later. It was contrasted with those who had already decided to complicate both the moral and historical issues by contextualizing the proceedings so as to avoid the holdover (Sandberg, p. 3).
Works Cited
Cumo, Christopher. “The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies.” Canadian Journal of History (2009). Print.
Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. 1690. Print.
Sandberg, Brian. “Beyond Encounters: Religion, Ethnicity, and Violence in the Early Modern Atlantic World, 1492-1700.” Journal of World History, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2006): 1-3. Print.