Chapter 22 Documents (pp. 1120-1135)

In documents I read about how visuals sources are important in representing independence. A great achievement of political independence from foreign domination marked a singular moment for millions of people in Africa and Asia for their personal and collective histories. This moment marked a new start of the people since they could build new lives and new societies. The struggle and and after the independence of these countries was expressed through poster art. These images expressed in poster art helped in inspiring and mobilizing large numbers of people for the tasks to move forward and look forward to a better future and to celebrate success at times. The African National Congress would lead a long march to freedom in South Africa that would finally be achieved in 1994. Even after Vietnam went through decades of opposition to French colonial rule and Japanese aggression, they still had a long struggle with American military intervention from the 1960s till the 1970s. This struggle was created from an effort of North Vietnam and the communist supports in the south that a worked together to reunify their country and also to drive out American military forces. This was going to be a difficult task to achieve since there were over a half million American military forces in Vietnam around the mid-1960s. North Vietnamese would succeed in driving out the American military forces by 1975. This was a surprising event not just the small Southeast Asian country that had accomplished a great feat but a surprising reversal for the American superpower who had lost control. The reasons for the America losing control over North Vietnam are still discussed but this occurring of events would be very significant for Vietnamese understandings of their national independence. From the drawing we learn that it is celebrating aspects of the unlikely achievement. Another major event during this time was the establishment of a independent state of Israel in 1948. This event would be seen as an enormous victory for Jewish people because of the return of Jewish people who had scattered and could now come back to the ancient biblical homeland from which many Jews had led or been expelled by various foreign rulers. The many foreign rulers that had expelled the Jewish from Israel were the Babylonian, Assyrian, Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader European. These change of events would lead to history being written for a new beginning and more change of events would occur in the future.