World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability is a 2002 book published by Yale Law School professor Amy Chua. It is an academic study into ethnic and sociological divisions in regard to economic and governmental systems in various societies. Summary In the Philippines, Chua explains, the Chinese Filipino is 1% of the population but controls 60% of the economy, with the result being envy and bitterness on the part of the majority against the Chinese minority—in other words, an ethnic conflict. Similarly, in Indonesia the Chinese Indonesia...

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 transdisciplinary nonfiction book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1998, it won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book. A documentary based on the book, and produced by the National Geographic Society, was broadcast on PBS in July 2005. The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegem...

Colonization (or colonisation) occurs whenever any one or more species populate an area. The term, which is derived from the Latin colere, "to inhabit, cultivate, frequent practice, tend, guard, respect", originally referred to humans. During the 19th century, biogeographers appropriated the term to also describe the activities of birds, bacteria, or plant species. Human colonization is a narrower category than the related concept of colonialism. Colonization refers strictly to migration, for example, to settler colonies, trading posts, and plantations, while colonialism deals with this...

Colonialism is the establishment, exploitation, maintenance, acquisition, and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a set of unequal relationships between the colonial power and the colony and often between the colonists and the indigenous population. The European colonial period was the era from the 16th century to the mid-20th century when several European powers (particularly, but not exclusively, Portugal, Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, Italy and France) established colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. At first the countries follow...

Language is the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics. Estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 6,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on a partly arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli, for example, in graphic writing, braille, or whistling. This is becau...