In this class, we recapped on what we learned last class. We learned about the renaissance period (14th – 17th century) characterised by an era of rebirth. Where people began exploring different art forms and branching out from what was considered the “normative” way of creating art. We then learned about the Papal Bull which is a written document issued by the person in authority, in this case, the pope. This place saw an awakening in Europe (Venice, Florence, Milan, etc) that became trading centres, which gave rise to the arts, and sciences, (For example, Leonardo da Vinci studied anatomy, created inventions like bicycles, helicopters, etc and painted, too). The priests in the churches began selling fetishes which were relics that were important to christian practices.

Piri Reis was an Ottoman cartographer and navigator who created a map of Europe, Asia, Africa, Russia, Chinese and the wasteland. This was referred to as the old world, and everything else was referred to as the new world.

Vasco da Gama was the first man to reach India by sea. Fort William was the first place the english established their foot hold on India. This was in Calcutta.

We then went on to discussing about pirates and how they were the first people to establish elected democracy, probably because of their easygoing lifestyle and they did not have any racial biases or judgements in their crew at all. An interesting fact I learned was about the reason why pirates wear a patch around one eye was so that they could adjust to darkness inside the deck after being exposed to the open ship light.

This class educated me about several viewpoints from History, from fun facts to authoritarian documents written in history, giving me a holistic understanding of how much depth there is to history.