What is Power?

Power is one of the ways you could motivate people and to get what you wanted. Power is what everybody wants to have. Before and during the industrialization period, riches had the power. How the power is used and its affect to people or to the world depends on who, or what is in charge of power. There are mainly three types of powers; economic, political, and personal. Different powers have caused and made lots of important historic events around the world such as, industrial revolution, imperialism, World War I, World War II, Russian Revolution, etc. and power still plays important role in many peoples lives.

As I mentioned earlier, before and during industrial revolution power stayed with wealth. If you had money, you had power. So there were few rich people. Due to the increasing number of population in England and people needing for more food, people tried to find a way to mass production of goods in the lowest price. That’s how industrial revolution began. During the industrial revolution, wealthier people had more power. The wealthier people had the economic power, because they could buy and get things they wanted, and start businesses to earn even more money. It expanded the gap between the rich and the poor. Capitalism has become an advantage for the riches, which means ones with power have more power, and poor people get poorer. In order for the countries to get more economic power, they needed more resources which made them go to Africa and colonize countries, and gain resources cheaply. That was imperialism of Europe influencing Africa.

Speaking of political power, the two world wars, Russian Revolution, communism and the Cold War are good examples. In World War 1, when Austrian prince got assassinated, Germany joined Austria with war against Serbia. Germany had the largest army which made them think they could win. In those days, if you had an army, you had power as well. In the Russian revolution, Russian revolution started when the Russians thought they were being treated unequally to the royalties and wealthy people. So Lenin brought up an idea of communism where everybody works the same amount and paid the same amount. Cold War is the perfect example of two political powers which are Communism vs. Capitalism. The main countries supporting that idea didn’t go to war head to head, but in small countries mostly in Asia were greatly affected by the ideological influence whether they should be a communism country or capitalist country. Korea was divided into two, where north was supported by communist China and Russia, while South is supported by capitalist US and many other countries. Last example of political power is Genocides. Genocides is when there is a deliberate and systematic destruction of an entire people who belong to one racial, political, cultural, or religious group. And this is related to power because when one group of people is in charge, they tend to agree with other group of people and doesn’t want them. So they try to get rid of them.

World war two is the best example of personal power, because the start of WW2 started with extreme nationalism of the Nazis, mainly Hitler. Hitler started to build armies breaking the rules made in the Treaty of the Versailles. But the other countries didn’t have enough power to say anything to Germany. Hitler wanted to prove his power and started to attack small European countries and eventually the other big countries opposed and tried to stop them from becoming bigger. And other fascist dictators around the world such as Mussolini of Italy, Stalin of Russia, etc. have caused problems like Russian Revolution and WW1.

So any type of powers, especially political and personal can lead to a conflict. So the effect around the power depends on whom or what has power. Power could be used in various good ways to help people, and in the other hand, it could be used and result deadly effects.