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by Myrtle Schneider MacDonald (Author)
Read about the continuous evolving of culture, languages, artistic and architectural skills, life styles, science and music over a span of 4000 years. Tribes and nations claimed land and constantly changed their borders, codes of justice and creeds. All this is carefully documented. Dates are kept at the left as a visual aid to enable readers to compare simultaneous migrations from mid Asia and middle east, into north Africa, Italy, Spain, southeast and NE Europe, Scandinavia, Britain and up the rivers into Europe and Russia.
Broad world view came through ship building Norsemen, Vikings, Muslims and Portuguese. Naval power grew through trading of spices, metals, gold and furs by Spanish, Dutch and British seamen. Explorers mapped the world, settled colonists and created botanical gardens. Diseases that explorers were immune to, devastated indigenous people. Education and growing self-government evolved.
The author discovered and documented much valuable cultural history, ignored by previous historians, such as the contribution of Muslims to the Renaissance. Another example of neglected history is that a grand daughter of "good king" Wenceslas of Bohemia/Moravia married Richard II of England. Her courtiers studied under John Wycliffe at Oxford and brought the Bible to Jon Hus, Chancellor of Charles University, Bohemia-Moravia. Throughout the 600 years since 1415 when Hus was martyred, the significance of the Unitas Fratrum (Moravian Brethren) has been great. Few Lutherans realize how much their churches were revived by thousands of Brüder Gemine (small mid-week fellowships) developed by Moravians in Europe, the Baltic States and Volhynia (now north half of the Ukraine) while refraining from "sheep-stealing". Some East Europeans are aware of their continuing influence.
Their missions began 1732 to 1736 in the West Indies, Greenland, England, Georgia and Pennsylvania. They influenced John and Charles Wesley who began the Methodist movement.
Being pacifists they did not take up arms, but provided food and much animal fodder and care for the wounded of huge armies, of both sides in the Napoleonic and other wars in Europe, and in the American War of Independence and Civil War.
Educators can benefit from the scholarly, practical books of Bishop Comenius (1592-1670) [p 77]. He reformed education of boys and girls in Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Romania, Holland and England.
Few people know that educated Huguenots (French Protestants) were scattered during the Inquisition to England, Prussia, the West Indies, Acadia (New England) and South Africa, and that they established silk production, vineyards and ship-building. Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain and other early explorers were Huguenots, who brought good government to North America and other continents.
Massacres of various nonconformists were under-reported, perhaps because of embarrassment to either church or state. People concerned about ethnic cleansing could benefit from reading this book.
While national boundaries kept changing, this history of Europe and America is kept interrelated, comprehensive and yet concise. Human interest bits featuring ethnic, social, political and religious movements, are interwoven to correct insularity, and to awaken the interest of students bored with history. Content is arranged to appeal to a broad spectrum of interest and academic discipline and for people researching family history and genealogy. Although the author is Canadian, academics and students throughout the Americas and Europe can gain fresh appreciation of their own history and that of other nations and cultures.
Of great value are the Table of Contents, the 172 item Bibliography and 85 page Appendix A: Index and Catalogue of Events, all in one volume.
Author Biography
An uncle of the author's mother arranged immigration in 1894 from Russia (now Ukraine) of 100 persecuted families. Her father in 1896 at 13 years of age migrated from Russia. She was born in 1921, and grew up in Vegreville, Alberta. Before the railway came in 1905 settlers were land hungry Catholic and Baptist Americans, Ontario youth (previously from Pennsylvania), and French from Quebec who had tried living in the USA. Next came various British, Slavic and German settlers and enough Jews to have a Synagogue. Orphaned English youths were adopted into her family. Neighbors came to her father for advice in fluent English, German or Russian. Music and Drama Festivals, Agricultural and School Fairs and different churches, stimulated learning. Her mother was an avid reader of periodicals such as the Western Producer, Country Guide and local Vegreville Observer. Myrtle's teacher grades 2 to 8 who had a British Empire Loyalist mother and Scottish father, made history live. High school world history was fascinating, As a University of Alberta nursing student, in a history course Myrtle liked Phoebe's hospice work in Rome, per St. Paul; two women co-translators of St. Jerome's Vulgate Bible; knights, monks and deaconess service to refugees; differing histories of nurses and doctors. At McGill University, Montreal, she gained skill in Participant Observation and Systems Analysis Research, graduating in 1971 M.Sc.A in Nursing and Social Sciences. She authored professional articles and a Remotivation Therapy textbook. She taught in university and other schools of nursing in Canada and overseas, worked in six Canadian provinces and four eastern countries among various indigenous cultures and Muslims, and traveled world wide. The author gathered data for family biographies from government archives in Poland and Zhytomir, Ukraine, and several east European historians. Her family biographies have been on hold to be finished next year. Dr. Samuel Marx, born in Ladakh, Kashmir to Moravian missionaries, married a nursing classmate, herself born in a Moravian pioneer family in Bruderfeld, now Millwoods a suburb of Edmonton. They informed her of the genius and wide influence of Educator Comenius, and recommended the book by J. Taylor Hamilton, found by local librarians. A Presbyterian theologian provided Calvinist and Reformed history. Irish and Scottish history was enriched through relatives of her late husband Dr. A.R.S. Macdonald.
