MY HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

Hello my friends, I am Martin Smith, I am 45 years old. I am a scientist, a theoretical

physicist, I live in a small apartment alone, I work for a local university near my house,

I studied for 10 years to finish my career, I love my profession. I try to understand the

universe, what I like the most is the idea of knowing about the origin of existence, but

some people do not understand what I do, that makes me angry sometimes, because they

think I built rockets or something, nonetheless, the real thing is that I want to unmask

the mysteries of the world. So in my opinion my job gives me a lot of happiness. Before

becoming a scientist, I lived in big house with my family, it was my grandpa’s house,

everybody was happy in that house. I went to school every day, at the weekends we had

to help my mum with the house chores and I had to supervise our family store. In the

store, I had to sell products, I had to deal with the clients, I had to answer the phone. I

did not have to pay the suppliers, that was my mum’s responsibility, I did not have to be

in the store on week days. During those days, I was always very curious about world

history, my present is the year 2050, and 20 years ago my family, the television and the

movies talked about different moments in history that were very relevant and

interesting.

Since that moment, I wanted to know everything about those moments in history, so I

decided to study history and find out a way to experience those historical moments.

During some years, I focused all my scientific knowledge on the creation of a device

that allowed me to travel in time. After some trial and error, I created a machine in the

shape of a fridge that connected me to moments in past. The machine had a very simple

mechanism, you enter the fridge, inside it you found some number and a screen, so you

typed in the information about the time and place you wanted to visit, the machine also
had a GPS, because it was necessary to travel to a specific place in time. After building

this machine, I selected some past moments to go and experience them.

The first moment I visited was the Discovery of America, I travelled to 1492 and I saw

everything I could to understand that event. I discovered, that Cristopher Columbus was

looking for India, when he found this land, he felt disappointed, he was expecting to

find a new trading route. However, they were celebrating this discovery, because the

new was full of gold and silver and they needed those products in their country. After

the discovery, I stayed a bit longer to see what happened exactly during this period; that

period was incredibly violent, I saw some massacres, the conquerors were killing and

torturing the indigenous people, and the indigenous did not have the resources to defend

the attack. The indigenous were fighting inside the groups, because all of them wanted

to be leaders, so the Spanish people were trying to divide them and they succeeded. The

indigenous were thinking about getting the power and they ended up divided and that

division was the cause of their defeat. After a long period of war and fighting, the

indigenous group were running away from their lands to save their lives, while the

conquerors celebrated their victory and conquest.

The second moment I selected was the Industrial Revolution. I went to that historical

moment, because I consider this is a very quintessential point to understand the

evolution of humanity. I arrived in the year 1760, because a lot of people told me that

was the year the revolution started. I was there for some days and I could see many

things that caused the start of this revolution, one of those factors was the lack of jobs

for people, another one was the idea of abandoning the agro economy and starting to

encourage the industrial economy. I saw that many people suffered diseases, and

hunger; they did not have a good home and they were asking for help on the streets, the

leaders were not working to help those people, because they were thinking about the
way to industrialized the production to make more money. However, every time, a

company started using machines for production, more people were fighting to get a job

to provide food for their families; another problem were the peasant, because they were

not investing money on field production, those farmers had to go to the cities to find

new opportunities and they were living in the streets. Of course, there were some good

things, such as the advancements in production, the commercial trade was growing and

the jobs were more technical, because the machines were helping in that process.

The third moment I experienced was the French Revolution. The French Revolution

was a period of fundamental political and societal change in France that began with the

Estates General of 1789 and ended in November 1799 with the formation of the French

Consulate. Many of its ideas are considered fundamental principles of Western liberal

democracy. I saw hunger, desperation, many people were fighting for their rights and

some others were trying to stop the protest. However, the ideas of equality and social

rights were a big impulse for people to believe in a better world, so they continue on the

streets trying to change their reality at the moment. One of the most important

achievements of this Revolution was the end of the feudalist system and the abolition of

the monarchy, which suffered a great attack after the queen’s decapitation, this event

marked the end of that era. After all that revolt, the bourgeoisie was stablished and

became the dominant system with the support of the working classes. This Revolution

became the starting point of the modern era and it is remembered as the birth time of the

human perspective of history.

The last moment I wanted to see with my time machine was WWII, because I had

always wondered about that even and it importance for human history. I arrived in 1939

and Hitler had just started his attack on Poland, the new weapons the German had

invented, totally destroyed the Polish defenses, and in a matter of weeks Germany had
taken control of the Polish territory, that was the beginning of a period of 6 years of

terror, dead and human decadence. During that time, Germany became the world enemy

and alongside Italy and Japan created an alliance that had threated the whole world, they

were determined to conquer everything, only England was facing Germany at the first

moment, but they had not been able to stop them, so in 1941 when The USA entered the

War, they formed a new alliance with England and Russia. This new partnership had the

opportunity to face their enemies and win. In that moment, Germany had separated their

army into several fights, so they had weakened themselves and the other group had

become stronger, that is why they created a plan to invade Berlin and overthrown

Germany’s reign of terror. After this war, the Socialist Russia was born and the

Capitalist USA were stronger, it was a period of violence, however, the world evolution

was accelerated during this period.

After all my trips in time, I could experience many feelings, I was able to see the human

horror and the human kindness at the same time; I had to be strong in order to endure

what I was watching. Once I returned to my time, I could analyze our human history in

a different way, now I had to be more aware of our origin, so every time I look at a

history book I would have a new perspective, I now understand our human nature in a

more authentic manner. The thing is that after my last trip, my machine broke and I

could not visit a moment in time I wanted to see, it was Independence Day in Colombia.

Can you tell me about it?