Modern history

“Modern Age” redirects here. For other uses, seeModern Age (disambiguation).

Modern history, also referred to as the modern periodor the modern era, is the historiographical approach tothe timeframe after the post-classical era (known as theMiddle Ages).[1][2] Modern history can be further bro-ken down into the early modern period and the late mod-ern period after the French Revolution and the IndustrialRevolution. Contemporary history is the span of historicevents that are immediately relevant to the present time.The modern era began approximately in the 16th cen-tury.[3][4]

1 The study of modern history

Some events, while not without precedent, show a newway of perceiving the world. The concept of modernityinterprets the general meaning of these events and seeksexplanations for major developments.

1.1 Source text

Main articles: Historical method and Source text

The fundamental difficulty of studying modern history isthe fact that a plethora of it has been documented up tothe present day. It is imperative to consider the reliabilityof the information obtained from these records.Further information: Historiography and Philosophy ofhistory

1.2 Terminology and usage

1.2.1 Pre-Modern

In the Pre-Modern era, many people’s sense of self andpurpose was often expressed via a faith in some formof deity, be that in a single God or in many gods.[5]Pre-modern cultures have not been thought of creating asense of distinct individuality,[6][7][8] though. Religiousofficials, who often held positions of power, were thespiritual intermediaries to the common person. It wasonly through these intermediaries that the general masses

had access to the divine. Tradition was sacred to an-cient cultures and was unchanging and the social orderof ceremony and morals in a culture could be strictlyenforced.[9][10][11][12]

See also: Ancient history and Medieval history

1.2.2 Modern

In contrast to the pre-modern era, Western civiliza-tion made a gradual transition from premodernity tomodernity when scientificmethods were developed whichled many to believe that the use of science would lead toall knowledge, thus throwing back the shroud of mythunder which pre-modern peoples lived. New informa-tion about the world was discovered via empirical ob-servation,[13] versus the historic use of reason and innateknowledge.The term “modern” was coined shortly before 1585 todescribe the beginning of a new era.[4] The EuropeanRenaissance (about 1420–1630) is an important transi-tion period beginning between the Late Middle Ages andEarly Modern Times, which started in Italy.The term “Early Modern” was introduced in the Englishlanguage in the 1930s.[14] to distinguish the time betweenwhat we call Middle Ages and time of the late Enlighten-ment (1800) (when themeaning of the termModernAgeswas developing its contemporary form). It is important tonote that these terms stem from European History. In us-age in other parts of the world, such as in Asia, and inMuslim countries, the terms are applied in a very differ-ent way, but often in the context with their contact withEuropean culture in the Age of Discoveries.[15]

2 Modern era

2.1 Significant developments

The modern period has been a period of significant de-velopment in the fields of science, politics, warfare, andtechnology. It has also been an age of discovery andglobalization. During this time, the European powers andlater their colonies, began a political, economic, and cul-tural colonization of the rest of the world.By the late 19th and 20th centuries, modernist art, poli-tics, science and culture has come to dominate not only

1

2 2 MODERN ERA

Western Europe and North America, but almost everycivilized area on the globe, including movements thoughtof as opposed to the west and globalization. The mod-ern era is closely associated with the development ofindividualism,[16] capitalism,[17] urbanization[16] and abelief in the possibilities of technological and politicalprogress.[18][19]

The brutal wars and other problems of this era, manyof which come from the effects of rapid change, andthe connected loss of strength of traditional religiousand ethical norms, have led to many reactions againstmodern development.[20][21] Optimism and belief in con-stant progress has been most recently criticized bypostmodernism while the dominance of Western Europeand Anglo-America over other continents has been criti-cized by postcolonial theory.

2.2 Modern as post-medieval

One common conception of modernity is the condition ofWestern history since the mid-15th century, or roughlythe European development of movable type[22] and theprinting press.[23] In this context the “modern” societyis said to develop over many periods, and to be influ-enced by important events that represent breaks in thecontinuity.[24][25][26]

2.2.1 Early modern period

Main article: Early modern period

The modern era includes the early period, called the earlymodern period, which lasted from c. 1500 to around c.1800 (most often 1815). Particular facets of early moder-nity include:

• The Renaissance

• The Reformation and Counter Reformation.

• The Age of Discovery

• Rise of capitalism

Important events in the early modern period include:

• The invention of the printing press

• The English Civil War

• The American Revolution

• The French Revolution

This combination of epoch events totally changed think-ing and thought in the early modern period, and so theirdates serve as well as any to separate the old from the newmodes.[27] Particular ways to categorize early modernityinclude:

• The Age of Reason

• The Enlightenment

• the Romantic era

• the Victorian era

As an Age of Revolutions dawned, beginning with thoserevolts in America and France, political changes werethen pushed forward in other countries partly as a resultof upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars and their impact onthought and thinking, from concepts from nationalism toorganizing armies.[29][30][31]

The early period ended in a time of political and eco-nomic change as a result of mechanization in society, theAmerican Revolution, the first French Revolution; otherfactors included the redrawing of the map of Europe bythe Final Act of the Congress of Vienna[32] and the peaceestablished by Second Treaty of Paris which ended theNapoleonic Wars.[33]

2.2.2 Late modern period

As a result of the Industrial Revolution and the ear-lier political revolutions, the worldviews of Modernismemerged. The industrialization of many nations was initi-ated with the industrialization of Britain. Particular facetsof the late modernity period include:

• Increasing role of science and technology

• Mass literacy and proliferation of mass media

• Spread of social movements

• Institution of representative democracy

• Individualism

• Industrialization

• Urbanization

Other important events in the development of the Latemodern period include:

• The Revolutions of 1848

• The Russian Revolution

• The First World War and the Second World War

Our most recent era—Modern Times—begins with theend of these revolutions in the 19th century,[34] and in-cludes the World Wars era[35] (encompassing World WarI and World War II) and the emergence of socialist coun-tries that led to the Cold War. The contemporary erafollows shortly afterward with the explosion of researchand increase of knowledge known as the Information Agein the latter 20th and the early 21st century. Today’sPostmodern era is seen in widespread digitality.[36]

3.1 Asia 3

3 Early modern period

Main article: Early modern periodHistorians consider the early modern period to be ap-

Waldseemüller map with joint sheets, 1507

proximately between 1500 and 1800. It follows the LateMiddle Ages period and is marked by the first Europeancolonies, the rise of strong centralized governments, andthe beginnings of recognizable nation-states that are thedirect antecedents of today’s states.In Africa and the Ottoman Empire, theMuslim expansiontook place in North and East Africa. In West Africa, var-ious native nations existed. The Indian Empires and civ-ilizations of Southeast Asia were a vital link in the spicetrade. On the Indian subcontinent, the Great Mughal Em-pire existed. The archipelagic empires, the Sultanate ofMalacca and later the Sultanate of Johor, controlled thesouthern areas.In Asia, various Chinese dynasties and Japanese shogu-nates controlled the Asian sphere. In Japan, the Edo pe-riod from 1600 to 1868 is also referred to as the earlymodern period. And in Korea, from the rising of JoseonDynasty to the enthronement of King Gojong is referredto as the early modern period. In the Americas, Na-tive Americans had built a large and varied civilization,including the Aztec Empire and alliance, the Inca civi-lization, the Mayan Empire and cities, and the ChibchaConfederation. In the west, the European kingdoms andmovements were in a movement of reformation and ex-pansion. Russia reached the Pacific coast in 1647 andconsolidated its control over the Russian Far East in the19th century.Later religious trends of the period saw the end of theexpansion of Muslims and the Muslim world. Christiansand Christendom saw the end of the Crusades and endof religious unity under the Roman Catholic Church. Itwas during this time that the Inquisitions and Protestantreformations took place.During the early modern period, an age of discovery andtrade was undertaken by the Western European nations.Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdomand France went on a colonial expansion and took pos-session of lands and set up colonies in Africa, southernAsia, and North and South America.[37] Turkey colonized

Ottoman Empire

Russian Empire

United States

Netherlands

Spain

Portugal

France

United Kingdom

1800

Colonial empires in 1800

Southeastern Europe, and parts of the Middle East andNorth Africa.[38] Russia took possession in Eastern Eu-rope, Asia, and North America.

3.1 Asia

Main articles: Qing Dynasty, Mughal Empire, MarathaEmpire and Tokugawa shogunate

3.1.1 China

In China, urbanization increased as the population grewand as the division of labor grew more complex. Largeurban centers, such as Nanjing and Beijing, also con-tributed to the growth of private industry. In particu-lar, small-scale industries grew up, often specializing inpaper, silk, cotton, and porcelain goods. For the mostpart, however, relatively small urban centers with marketsproliferated around the country. Town markets mainlytraded food, with some necessary manufactures such aspins or oil. Despite the xenophobia and intellectual in-trospection characteristic of the increasingly popular newschool of neo-Confucianism, China under the early MingDynasty was not isolated. Foreign trade and other con-tacts with the outside world, particularly Japan, increasedconsiderably. Chinese merchants explored all of theIndian Ocean, reaching East Africa with the voyages ofZheng He.The Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) was founded after thedefeat of the Ming, the last Han Chinese dynasty, bythe Manchus. The Manchus were formerly knownas the Jurchen. When Beijing was captured by LiZicheng's peasant rebels in 1644, the last Ming EmperorChongzhen committed suicide. The Manchu then alliedwith Ming Dynasty general Wu Sangui and seized con-trol of Beijing, which became the new capital of the Qingdynasty. The Manchus adopted the Confucian normsof traditional Chinese government in their rule of Chinaproper. Schoppa, the editor of The Columbia Guide toModern Chinese History argues, “A date around 1780 asthe beginning of modern China is thus closer to whatwe know today as historical 'reality'. It also allows us tohave a better baseline to understand the precipitous de-cline of the Chinese polity in the nineteenth and twentieth

4 3 EARLY MODERN PERIOD

centuries.”[39]

3.1.2 Japan

In pre-modern[40] Japan following the Sengoku Periodof “warring states”, central government had been largelyreestablished by Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshiduring the Azuchi-Momoyama period. After the Battleof Sekigahara in 1600, central authority fell to TokugawaIeyasu who completed this process and received the ti-tle of shogun in 1603. In order to become shogun, onetraditionally was a descendant of the ancient Minamotoclan.Society in the Japanese "Tokugawa period" (Edo soci-ety), unlike the shogunates before it, was based on thestrict class hierarchy originally established by ToyotomiHideyoshi. The daimyo, or lords, were at the top, fol-lowed by the warrior-caste of samurai, with the farmers,artisans, and traders ranking below. In some parts of thecountry, particularly smaller regions, daimyo and samu-rai were more or less identical, since daimyo might betrained as samurai, and samurai might act as local lords.Otherwise, the largely inflexible nature of this social strat-ification system unleashed disruptive forces over time.Taxes on the peasantry were set at fixed amounts whichdid not account for inflation or other changes in monetaryvalue. As a result, the tax revenues collected by the samu-rai landowners were worth less and less over time. Thisoften led to numerous confrontations between noble butimpoverished samurai and well-to-do peasants, rangingfrom simple local disturbances to much bigger rebellions.None, however, proved compelling enough to seriouslychallenge the established order until the arrival of foreignpowers.

3.1.3 India

On the Indian subcontinent, the Mughal Empire ruledmost of India in the early 18th century.[41] The “clas-sic period” ended with the death and defeat of Em-peror Aurangzeb in 1707 by the rising Hindu MarathaEmpire,[42] although the dynasty continued for another150 years. During this period, the Empire was markedby a highly centralized administration connecting the dif-ferent regions. All the significant monuments of theMughals, their most visible legacy, date to this periodwhich was characterised by the expansion of Persian cul-tural influence in the Indian subcontinent, with brilliantliterary, artistic, and architectural results. The MarathaEmpire was located in the south west of present-day In-dia and expanded greatly under the rule of the Peshwas,the prime ministers of the Maratha empire. In 1761,the Maratha army lost the Third Battle of Panipat whichhalted imperial expansion and the empire was then di-vided into a confederacy of Maratha states.

British and Dutch colonization The development ofNew Imperialism saw the conquest of nearly all east-ern hemisphere territories by colonial powers. Thecommercial colonization of India commenced in 1757,after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Ben-gal surrendered his dominions to the British East IndiaCompany,[43] in 1765, when the Company was grantedthe diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengaland Bihar,[44] or in 1772, when the Company estab-lished a capital in Calcutta, appointed its first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and became directly involvedin governance.[45]

The Maratha states, following the Anglo-Maratha wars,eventually lost to the British East India Company in 1818with the Third Anglo-Maratha War. The rule lasted un-til 1858, when, after the Indian rebellion of 1857 andconsequent of the Government of India Act 1858, theBritish government assumed the task of directly adminis-tering India in the new British Raj.[46] In 1819 StamfordRaffles established Singapore as a key trading post forBritain in their rivalry with the Dutch. However, their ri-valry cooled in 1824 when an Anglo-Dutch treaty demar-cated their respective interests in Southeast Asia. Fromthe 1850s onwards, the pace of colonization shifted to asignificantly higher gear.The Dutch East India Company (1800) and British EastIndia Company (1858) were dissolved by their respectivegovernments, who took over the direct administration ofthe colonies. Only Thailand was spared the experience offoreign rule, although, Thailand itself was also greatly af-fected by the power politics of theWestern powers. Colo-nial rule had a profound effect on Southeast Asia. Whilethe colonial powers profited much from the region’s vastresources and large market, colonial rule did develop theregion to a varying extent.[47]

3.2 Europe

Many major events caused Europe to change around thestart of the 16th century, starting with the Fall of Con-stantinople in 1453, the fall of Muslim Spain and thediscovery of the Americas in 1492, and Martin Luther'sProtestant Reformation in 1517. In England the modernperiod is often dated to the start of the Tudor period withthe victory of Henry VII over Richard III at the Battle ofBosworth in 1485.[48][49] Early modern European historyis usually seen to span from the start of the 15th century,through the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenmentin the 17th and 18th centuries, until the beginning of theIndustrial Revolution in the late 18th century.

3.2.1 Tsardom of Russia

Main article: Tsardom of Russia

Russia experienced territorial growth through the 17th

3.2 Europe 5

century, which was the age of Cossacks. Cossacks werewarriors organized into military communities, resem-bling pirates and pioneers of the New World. In 1648,the peasants of Ukraine joined the Zaporozhian Cos-sacks in rebellion against Poland-Lithuania during theKhmelnytsky Uprising, because of the social and reli-gious oppression they suffered under Polish rule. In 1654the Ukrainian leader, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, offered toplace Ukraine under the protection of the Russian Tsar,Aleksey I. Aleksey’s acceptance of this offer led to an-other Russo-Polish War (1654–1667). Finally, Ukrainewas split along the river Dnieper, leaving the western part(or Right-bank Ukraine) under Polish rule and easternpart (Left-bank Ukraine and Kiev) under Russian. Later,in 1670–71 the Don Cossacks led by Stenka Razin initi-ated a major uprising in the Volga region, but the Tsar’stroops were successful in defeating the rebels. In the east,the rapid Russian exploration and colonisation of the hugeterritories of Siberia was led mostly by Cossacks hunt-ing for valuable furs and ivory. Russian explorers pushedeastward primarily along the Siberian river routes, and bythe mid-17th century there were Russian settlements inthe Eastern Siberia, on the Chukchi Peninsula, along theAmur River, and on the Pacific coast. In 1648 the BeringStrait between Asia and North America was passed forthe first time by Fedot Popov and Semyon Dezhnyov.

3.2.2 Reason and Enlightenment

Further information: Great Divergence

Traditionally, the European intellectual transformation ofand after the Renaissance bridged the Middle Ages andtheModern era. The Age of Reason in theWestern worldis generally regarded as being the start of modern philos-ophy,[50] and a departure from the medieval approach, es-pecially Scholasticism. Early 17th-century philosophy isoften called the Age of Rationalism and is considered tosucceed Renaissance philosophy and precede the Age ofEnlightenment, but some consider it as the earliest part ofthe Enlightenment era in philosophy, extending that erato two centuries. The 18th century saw the beginning ofsecularization in Europe, rising to notability in the wakeof the French Revolution.The Age of Enlightenment is a time in Western philos-ophy and cultural life centered upon the 18th century inwhich reason was advocated as the primary source andlegitimacy for authority. Enlightenment gained momen-tum more or less simultaneously in many parts of Eu-rope and America. Developing during the Enlightenmentera, Renaissance humanism as an intellectual movementspread across Europe. The basic training of the humanistwas to speak well and write (typically, in the form of a let-ter). The term umanista comes from the latter part of the15th century. The people were associated with the studiahumanitatis, a novel curriculum that was competing withthe quadrivium and scholastic logic.[51]

Renaissance humanism took a close study of the Latinand Greek classical texts, and was antagonistic to the val-ues of scholasticism with its emphasis on the accumu-lated commentaries; and humanists were involved in thesciences, philosophies, arts and poetry of classical antiq-uity. They self-consciously imitated classical Latin anddeprecated the use of medieval Latin. By analogy withthe perceived decline of Latin, they applied the principleof ad fontes, or back to the sources, across broad areas oflearning.The quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns was aliterary and artistic quarrel that heated up in the early1690s and shook the Académie française. The oppos-ing two sides were, the Ancients (Anciens) who constrainchoice of subjects to those drawn from the literature ofAntiquity and the Moderns (Modernes), who supportedthe merits of the authors of the century of Louis XIV.Fontenelle quickly followed with hisDigression sur les an-ciens et les modernes (1688), in which he took theModernside, pressing the argument that modern scholarship al-lowed modern man to surpass the ancients in knowledge.

3.2.3 Scientific Revolution

Main article: Scientific Revolution

The Scientific Revolution was a period when Europeanideas in classical physics, astronomy, biology, humananatomy, chemistry, and other classical sciences were re-jected and led to doctrines supplanting those that had pre-vailed from Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages whichwould lead to a transition to modern science. This pe-riod saw a fundamental transformation in scientific ideasacross physics, astronomy, and biology, in institutionssupporting scientific investigation, and in the more widelyheld picture of the universe. Individuals started to ques-tion all manners of things and it was this questioning thatled to the Scientific Revolution, which in turn formed thefoundations of contemporary sciences and the establish-ment of several modern scientific fields.See also: History of electromagnetism and Science inthe Age of Enlightenment

3.2.4 The French Revolutions

Main article: French Revolution

Toward the middle and latter stages of the Age of Rev-olution, the French political and social revolutions andradical change saw the French governmental structure,previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privilegesfor the aristocracy and Catholic clergy transform, chang-ing to forms based on Enlightenment principles of citi-zenship and inalienable rights. The first revolution led to

6 3 EARLY MODERN PERIOD

government by the National Assembly, the second by theLegislative Assembly, and the third by the Directory.The changes were accompanied by violent turmoil whichincluded the trial and execution of the king, vast blood-shed and repression during the Reign of Terror, and war-fare involving every other major European power. Sub-sequent events that can be traced to the Revolution in-clude the Napoleonic Wars, two separate restorations ofthe monarchy, and two additional revolutions as mod-ern France took shape. In the following century, Francewould be governed at one point or another as a republic,constitutional monarchy, and two different empires.

National and Legislative Assembly Main articles:National Assembly (French Revolution) and LegislativeAssembly (France)

During the French Revolution, the National Assembly,which existed from June 17 to July 9 of 1789, was a tran-sitional body between the Estates-General and the Na-tional Constituent Assembly.The Legislative Assembly was the legislature of FrancefromOctober 1, 1791 to September 1792. It provided thefocus of political debate and revolutionary law-makingbetween the periods of the National Constituent Assem-bly and of the National Convention.

The Directory and Napoleonic Era Main articles:French Directory and Napoleonic Era

The Executive Directory was a body of five Directors thatheld executive power in France following the Conventionand preceding the Consulate. The period of this regime(2 November 1795 until 10 November 1799), commonlyknown as the Directory (or Directoire) era, constitutes thesecond to last stage of the French Revolution. Napoleon,before seizing the title of Emperor, was elected as FirstConsul of the Consulate of France.The Napoleonic Era was centered around the campaignsof the French Emperor and General Napoleon Bonaparte.Born on Corsica as the French invaded, and dying sus-piciously on the tiny British Island of St. Helena, thisbrilliant commander, controlled a French Empire that, atits height, ruled a large portion of Europe directly fromParis, while many of his friends and family ruled coun-tries such as Spain, Poland, several parts of Italy andmany other Kingdoms Republics and dependencies. TheNapoleonic Era changed the face of Europe forever, andold Empires and Kingdoms fell apart as a result of themighty and “Glorious” surge of Republicanism.

3.2.5 Italian unification

Italian unification was the political and social movement

that annexed different states of the Italian peninsula intothe single state of Italy in the 19th century. There is alack of consensus on the exact dates for the beginning andthe end of this period, but many scholars agree that theprocess began with the end of Napoleonic rule and theCongress of Vienna in 1815, and approximately endedwith the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, though the lastcittà irredente did not join the Kingdom of Italy until afterWorld War I.

3.2.6 End of the early modern period

Toward the end of the early modern period, Europe wasdominated by the evolving system of mercantile capital-ism in its trade and the New Economy. European statesand politics had the characteristic of Absolutism. TheFrench power and English revolutions dominated the po-litical scene. There eventually evolved an internationalbalance of power that held at bay a great conflagrationuntil years later.The end date of the early modern period is usually as-sociated with the Industrial Revolution, which began inBritain in about 1750. Another significant date is 1789,the beginning of the French Revolution, which drasticallytransformed the state of European politics and ushered inthe Prince Edward Era and modern Europe.

3.3 North America

The French and Indian Wars were a series of conflictsin North America that represented the actions there thataccompanied the European dynastic wars. In Quebec, thewars are generally referred to as the Intercolonial Wars.While some conflicts involved Spanish and Dutch forces,all pitted Great Britain, its colonies and American Indianallies on one side and France, its colonies and Indian allieson the other.The expanding French and British colonies were con-tending for control of the western, or interior, territories.Whenever the European countries went to war, there wereactions within and by these colonies although the dates ofthe conflict did not necessarily exactly coincide with thoseof the larger conflicts.Beginning the Age of Revolution, the American Revo-lution and the ensuing political upheaval during the lasthalf of the 18th century saw the Thirteen Colonies ofNorth America overthrow the governance of the Parlia-ment of Great Britain, and then reject the British monar-chy itself to become the sovereign United States of Amer-ica. In this period the colonies first rejected the authorityof the Parliament to govern them without representation,and formed self-governing independent states. The Sec-ond Continental Congress then joined together againstthe British to defend that self-governance in the armedconflict from 1775 to 1783 known as the American Rev-

7

John Trumbull'sDeclaration of Independence, showing the five-man committee in charge of drafting the Declaration in 1776as it presents its work to the Second Continental Congress inPhiladelphia

olutionary War (also called American War of Indepen-dence).The American Revolution begun with fighting at Lex-ington and Concord. On July 4, 1776, they issued theDeclaration of Independence, which proclaimed their in-dependence from Great Britain and their formation ofa cooperative union. In June 1776, Benjamin Franklinwas appointed a member of the Committee of Five thatdrafted the Declaration of Independence. Although hewas temporarily disabled by gout and unable to attendmost meetings of the Committee, Franklin made severalsmall changes to the draft sent to him by Thomas Jeffer-son.The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the Amer-ican Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial warof independence. While the states had already rejectedthe governance of Parliament, through the Declarationthe new United States now rejected the legitimacy ofthe monarchy to demand allegiance. The war raged forseven years, with effective American victory, followed byformal British abandonment of any claim to the UnitedStates with the Treaty of Paris.The Philadelphia Convention set up the current UnitedStates; the United States Constitution ratification the fol-lowing year made the states part of a single republicwith a limited central government. The Bill of Rights,comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeingmany fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratifiedin 1791.

3.3.1 Decolonization of North and South Americas

Main articles: Decolonization of the Americas andSpanish American wars of independence

The decolonization of the Americas was the process bywhich the countries in the Americas gained their inde-pendence from European rule. Decolonization began

North America 1797

with a series of revolutions in the late 18th and early-to-mid-19th centuries. The Spanish American wars ofindependence were the numerous wars against Spanishrule in Spanish America that took place during the early19th century, from 1808 until 1829, directly related tothe Napoleonic French invasion of Spain. The conflictstarted with short-lived governing juntas established inChuquisaca and Quito opposing the composition of theSupreme Central Junta of Seville.When the Central Junta fell to the French, numerous newJuntas appeared all across the Americas, eventually re-sulting in a chain of newly independent countries stretch-ing from Argentina and Chile in the south, to Mexico inthe north. After the death of the king Ferdinand VII, in1833, only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Span-ish rule, until the Spanish–American War in 1898. Un-like the Spanish, the Portuguese did not divide their colo-nial territory in America. The captaincies they createdwere subdued to a centralized administration in Salvador(later relocated to Rio de Janeiro) which reported directlyto the Portuguese Crown until its independence in 1822,becoming the Empire of Brazil.See also: Latin American wars of independence andTimeline of the Spanish American wars of independence

4 Late modern period

4.1 Modern Age Timeline

Main article: Timeline of modern historySee also: Early modern timeline

Dates are approximaterange (based upon influ-ence), consult particulararticle for details

8 4 LATE MODERN PERIOD

Modern Age Other

4.2 Industrial revolutions

Main articles: Industrial Revolution and Second Indus-trial RevolutionThe date of the Industrial Revolution is not exact. Eric

A Watt steam engine. The development of the steam enginestarted the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.[52] The steamengine was created to pump water from coal mines, enablingthem to be deepened beyond groundwater levels.

Hobsbawm held that it 'broke out' in the 1780s and wasnot fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s,[53] while T.S. Ash-ton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830(in effect the reigns of George III, The Regency, andGeorge IV).[54] The great changes of centuries before the19th were more connected with ideas, religion or militaryconquest, and technological advance had only made smallchanges in the material wealth of ordinary people.The first Industrial Revolutionmerged into the Second In-dustrial Revolution around 1850, when technological andeconomic progress gained momentum with the develop-ment of steam-powered ships and railways, and later inthe 19th century with the internal combustion engine andelectric power generation. The Second Industrial Revo-lution was a phase of the Industrial Revolution; labeled asthe separate Technical Revolution. From a technologicaland a social point of view there is no clean break betweenthe two. Major innovations during the period occurredin the chemical, electrical, petroleum, and steel indus-tries. Specific advancements included the introductionof oil fired steam turbine and internal combustion drivensteel ships, the development of the airplane, the practicalcommercialization of the automobile, mass production ofconsumer goods, the perfection of canning, mechanicalrefrigeration and other food preservation techniques, andthe invention of the telephone.

4.2.1 Industrialization

Industrialization is the process of social and economic

change whereby a human group is transformed from apre-industrial society into an industrial one. It is a sub-division of a more general modernization process, wheresocial change and economic development are closely re-lated with technological innovation, particularly with thedevelopment of large-scale energy and metallurgy pro-duction. It is the extensive organization of an economyfor the purpose of manufacturing. Industrialization alsointroduces a form of philosophical change, where peo-ple obtain a different attitude towards their perception ofnature.

4.2.2 Revolution in manufacture and power

An economy based onmanual labour was replaced by onedominated by industry and the manufacture of machin-ery. It began with the mechanization of the textile in-dustries and the development of iron-making techniques,and trade expansion was enabled by the introduction ofcanals, improved roads, and then railways.The introduction of steam power (fuelled primarily bycoal) and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufac-turing) underpinned the dramatic increases in productioncapacity.[55] The development of all-metal machine toolsin the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated themanufacture of more production machines for manufac-turing in other industries.The modern petroleum industry started in 1846 withthe discovery of the process of refining kerosene fromcoal by Nova Scotian Abraham Pineo Gesner. IgnacyŁukasiewicz improved Gesner’s method to develop ameans of refining kerosene from the more readily avail-able “rock oil” (“petr-oleum”) seeps in 1852 and the firstrock oil mine was built in Bóbrka, near Krosno in Galiciain the following year. In 1854, Benjamin Silliman, a sci-ence professor at Yale University in New Haven, was thefirst to fractionate petroleum by distillation. These dis-coveries rapidly spread around the world.

4.2.3 Notable engineers

Engineering achievements of the revolution ranged fromelectrification to developments in materials science. Theadvancements made a great contribution to the quality oflife. In the first revolution, Lewis Paul was the originalinventor of roller spinning, the basis of the water framefor spinning cotton in a cotton mill. Matthew Boulton andJamesWatt's improvements to the steam engine were fun-damental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolu-tion in both the Kingdom of Great Britain and the world.In the latter part of the second revolution, Thomas AlvaEdison developed many devices that greatly influencedlife around the world and is often credited with the cre-ation of the first industrial research laboratory. In 1882,Edison switched on the world’s first large-scale electricalsupply network that provided 110 volts direct current to

4.2 Industrial revolutions 9

Nikola Tesla sits in front of the spiral coil of his high-frequencytransformer at East Houston Street, New York.

fifty-nine customers in lower Manhattan. Also towardthe end of the second industrial revolution, Nikola Teslamade many contributions in the field of electricity andmagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

4.2.4 Social effects and classes

The Industrial Revolutions were major technological,socioeconomic, and cultural changes in late 18th andearly 19th centuries that began in Britain and spreadthroughout the world. The effects spread throughoutWestern Europe and North America during the 19thcentury, eventually affecting the majority of the world.The impact of this change on society was enormousand is often compared to the Neolithic revolution, whenmankind developed agriculture and gave up its nomadiclifestyle.[56]

It has been argued that GDP per capita was much morestable and progressed at a much slower rate until theindustrial revolution and the emergence of the moderncapitalist economy, and that it has since increased rapidlyin capitalist countries.[57]

Mid-19th-century European revolts The EuropeanRevolutions of 1848, known in some countries as theSpring of Nations or the Year of Revolution, were a se-ries of political upheavals throughout the European con-tinent. Described as a revolutionary wave, the period ofunrest began in France and then, further propelled by

the French Revolution of 1848, soon spread to the restof Europe.[58][59] Although most of the revolutions werequickly put down, there was a significant amount of vi-olence in many areas, with tens of thousands of peopletortured and killed. While the immediate political effectsof the revolutions were reversed, the long-term reverber-ations of the events were far-reaching.

Industrial age reformism Industrial age reformmovements began the gradual change of society ratherthan with episodes of rapid fundamental changes. Thereformists’ ideas were often grounded in liberalism, al-though they also possessed aspects of utopian, socialist orreligious concepts. The Radical movement campaignedfor electoral reform, a reform of the Poor Laws, freetrade, educational reform, postal reform, prison reform,and public sanitation.Following the Enlightenment’s ideas, the reformerslooked to the Scientific Revolution and industrial progressto solve the social problems which arose with the Indus-trial Revolution. Newton’s natural philosophy combineda mathematics of axiomatic proof with the mechanics ofphysical observation, yielding a coherent system of verifi-able predictions and replacing a previous reliance on rev-elation and inspired truth. Applied to public life, this ap-proach yielded several successful campaigns for changesin social policy.

4.2.5 Imperial Russia

Main article: Russian Empire

Under Peter I (the Great), Russia was proclaimed an Em-pire in 1721 and became recognized as a world power.Ruling from 1682 to 1725, Peter defeated Sweden in theGreat Northern War, forcing it to cede West Karelia andIngria (two regions lost by Russia in the Time of Trou-bles),[60] as well as Estland and Livland, securing Rus-sia’s access to the sea and sea trade.[61] On the BalticSea Peter founded a new capital called Saint Petersburg,later known as Russia’s Window to Europe. Peter theGreat’s reforms brought considerable Western Europeancultural influences to Russia. Catherine II (the Great),who ruled in 1762–96, extended Russian political con-trol over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and in-corporated most of its territories into Russia during thePartitions of Poland, pushing the Russian frontier west-ward into Central Europe. In the south, after success-ful Russo-Turkish Wars against the Ottoman Empire,Catherine advanced Russia’s boundary to the Black Sea,defeating the Crimean khanate.

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4.3 European dominance and the 19th cen-tury

Main articles: 19th century and International relations(1814–1919)Historians define the 19th century historical era as

“The World’s Sovereigns”, 1889.

stretching from 1815 (the Congress of Vienna) to 1914(the outbreak of the First World War); alternatively, EricHobsbawm defined the “Long Nineteenth Century” asspanning the years 1789 to 1914.

4.3.1 Imperialism and empires

Main article: Imperialism

In the 1800s and early 1900s, once great and powerfulEmpires such as Spain, Ottoman Turkey, theMughal Em-pire, and the Kingdom of Portugal began to break apart.Spain, which was at one time unrivaled in Europe, hadbeen declining for a long time when it was crippled byNapoleon Bonaparte’s invasion. Sensing the time wasright, Spain’s vast colonies in South America began a se-ries of rebellions that ended with almost all of the Spanishterritories gaining their independence.The once mighty Ottoman Empire was wracked with aseries of revolutions, resulting with the Ottoman’s onlyholding a small region that surrounded the capital, Istan-bul.TheMughal empire, which was descended from theMon-gol Khanate, was bested by the upcoming Maratha Con-federacy. All was going well for the Marathas until theBritish took an interest in the riches of India and theBritish ended up ruling not just the boundaries ofModernIndia, but also Pakistan, Burma, Nepal, Bangladesh andsome Southern Regions of Afghanistan.The King of Portugal’s vast territory of Brazil reformedinto the independent Empire of Brazil.With the defeat of Napoleonic France, Britain becameundoubtedly the most powerful country in the world, andby the end of the First WorldWar controlled a Quarter ofthe world’s population and a third of its surface. However,the power of the British Empire did not end on land, sinceit had the greatest navy on the planet.

Electricity, steel, and petroleum enabled Germany to be-come a great international power that raced to create em-pires of its own.The Meiji Restoration was a chain of events that led toenormous changes in Japan’s political and social structurethat was taking a firm hold at the beginning of the MeijiEra which coincided the opening of Japan by the arrivalof the Black Ships of Commodore Matthew Perry andmade Imperial Japan a great power.Russia and Qing Dynasty China failed to keep pace withthe other world powers which led to massive social un-rest in both empires. The Qing Dynasty’s military powerweakened during the 19th century, and faced with inter-national pressure, massive rebellions and defeats in wars,the dynasty declined after the mid-19th century.European powers controlled parts of Oceania, withFrench New Caledonia from 1853 and French Polyne-sia from 1889; the Germans established colonies in NewGuinea in 1884, and Samoa in 1900.The United States expanded into the Pacific with Hawaiibecoming a U.S. territory from 1898.Disagreements between the US, Germany and UK overSamoa led to the Tripartite Convention of 1899.See also: Chronology of colonialism

4.3.2 British Victorian era

Main articles: British Empire and Victorian eraThe Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the pe-

National flag of the United Kingdom.

riod of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 to January1901. This was a long period of prosperity for the Britishpeople, as profits gained from the overseas British Em-pire, as well as from industrial improvements at home,allowed a large, educated middle class to develop. Somescholars would extend the beginning of the period—asdefined by a variety of sensibilities and political gamesthat have come to be associated with the Victorians—back five years to the passage of the Reform Act 1832.In Britain’s “imperial century”,[62] victory over Napoleonleft Britain without any serious international rival, otherthan Russia in central Asia. Unchallenged at sea, Britain

4.3 European dominance and the 19th century 11

The British Empire in 1897, marked in the traditional colour forimperial British dominions on maps

adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairslater known as the Pax Britannica, and a foreign policyof "splendid isolation". Alongside the formal control itexerted over its own colonies, Britain’s dominant posi-tion in world trade meant that it effectively controlledthe economies of many nominally independent countries,such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been gen-erally characterized as "informal empire".[63] Of noteduring this time was the Anglo-Zulu War, which wasfought in 1879 between the British Empire and the ZuluEmpire.British imperial strength was underpinned by thesteamship and the telegraph, new technologies inventedin the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to con-trol and defend the Empire. By 1902, the British Em-pire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables,the so-called All Red Line. Growing until 1922, around13,000,000 square miles (34,000,000 km2) of territoryand roughly 458 million people were added to the BritishEmpire.[64][65] The British established colonies in Aus-tralia in 1788, New Zealand in 1840 and Fiji in 1872,with much of Oceania becoming part of the British Em-pire.

4.3.3 French governments and conflicts

The Bourbon Restoration followed the ousting ofNapoleon I of France in 1814. The Allies restored theBourbon Dynasty to the French throne. The ensuing pe-riod is called the Restoration, following French usage,and is characterized by a sharp conservative reaction andthe re-establishment of the Roman Catholic Church as apower in French politics. The July Monarchy was a pe-riod of liberal constitutional monarchy in France underKing Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution (orThree Glorious Days) of 1830 and ending with the Rev-olution of 1848. The Second Empire was the ImperialBonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870,between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in

France.

Napoleon III and Bismarck after the Battle of Sedan

The Franco-Prussian War was a conflict between Franceand Prussia, while Prussia was backed up by the NorthGerman Confederation, of which it was a member, andthe South German states of Baden, Württemberg andBavaria. The complete Prussian and German victorybrought about the final unification of Germany underKingWilhelm I of Prussia. It also marked the downfall ofNapoleon III and the end of the Second French Empire,which was replaced by the Third Republic. As part of thesettlement, almost all of the territory of Alsace-Lorrainewas taken by Prussia to become a part of Germany, whichit would retain until the end of World War I.The French Third Republic was the republican govern-ment of France between the end of the Second FrenchEmpire following the defeat of Louis-Napoléon in theFranco-Prussian war in 1870 and the Vichy Regime af-ter the invasion of France by the German Third Reich in1940. The Third Republic endured seventy years, mak-ing it the most long-lasting regime in France since thecollapse of the Ancien Régime in the French Revolutionof 1789.

4.3.4 Slavery and abolition

Main article: Abolitionism

Slavery was greatly reduced around the world in the 19thcentury. Following a successful slave revolt in Haiti,Britain forced the Barbary pirates to halt their practiceof kidnapping and enslaving Europeans, banned slaverythroughout its domain, and charged its navy with end-ing the global slave trade. Slavery was then abolished inRussia, America, and Brazil.

4.3.5 African colonization

Following the abolition of the slave trade, and propelledby economic exploitation, the Scramble for Africa wasinitiated formally at the BerlinWest Africa Conference in1884–1885. All the major European powers laid claim

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to the areas of Africa where they could exhibit a sphereof influence over the area. These claims did not have tohave any substantial land holdings or treaties to be legit-imate. The French gained major ground in West Africa,the British in East Africa, and the Portuguese and Span-ish at various points throughout the continent, while KingLeopold was able to retain his personal fiefdom, Congo.

4.3.6 Meiji Japan

Around the end of the 19th century and into the 20thcentury, the Meiji era was marked by the reign of theMeiji Emperor. During this time, Japan started its mod-ernization and rose to world power status. This era namemeans “Enlightened Rule”. In Japan, the Meiji Restora-tion started in the 1860s, marking the rapid moderniza-tion by the Japanese themselves along European lines.Much research has focused on the issues of discontinuityversus continuity with the previous Tokugawa Period.[66]In the 1960s younger Japanese scholars led by IrokawaDaikichi, reacted against the bureaucratic superstate, andbegan searching for the historic role of the common peo-ple . They avoided the elite, and focused not on politicalevents but on social forces and attitudes. They rejectedbothMarxism andmodernization theory as alien and con-fining. They stressed the importance of popular energiesin the development of modern Japan. They enlarged his-tory by using the methods of social history.[67] It was notuntil the beginning of theMeiji Era that the Japanese gov-ernment began taking modernization seriously. Japan ex-panded its military production base by opening arsenalsin various locations. The hyobusho (war office) was re-placed with a War Department and a Naval Department.The samurai class suffered great disappointment the fol-lowing years.Laws were instituted that required every able-bodiedmale Japanese citizen, regardless of class, to serve amandatory term of three years with the first reserves andtwo additional years with the second reserves. This ac-tion, the deathblow for the samurai warriors and theirdaimyo feudal lords, initially met resistance from both thepeasant and warrior alike. The peasant class interpretedthe term for military service, ketsu-eki (blood tax) liter-ally, and attempted to avoid service by any means nec-essary. The Japanese government began modelling theirground forces after the French military. The French gov-ernment contributed greatly to the training of Japaneseofficers. Many were employed at the military academyin Kyoto, and many more still were feverishly translatingFrench field manuals for use in the Japanese ranks.After the death of the Meiji Emperor, the Taishō Em-peror took the throne, thus beginning the Taishō pe-riod. A key foreign observer of the remarkable and rapidchanges in Japanese society in this period was Ernest Ma-son Satow.Representative Western scholars include George

Akita,[68] William Beasley, James B. Crowley, JohnW. Dower, Peter Duus, Carol Gluck, Norman Herbert,John W. Hall, Mikiso Hane, Akira Iriye, Marius Jansen,Edwin O. Reischauer, George B. Sansom, BernardSilberman, Richard Storry, Karel van Wolfram, and EzraVogel.[69][70]

4.4 United States

Main article: History of the United States (1865–1918)Further information: Territorial evolution of NorthAmerica since 1763See also: Colonial history of the United States andAmerican Indian Wars

See also: 19th-century North American Natives

4.4.1 Antebellum expansion

The Antebellum Age was a period of increasing divi-sion in the country based on the growth of slavery in theAmerican South and in the western territories of Kansasand Nebraska that eventually lead to the Civil War in1861. The Antebellum Period is often considered to havebegun with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, althoughit may have begun as early as 1812. This period is alsosignificant because it marked the transition of Americanmanufacturing to the industrial revolution.

American westward expansion is idealized in Emanuel Leutze'sfamous paintingWestward the Course of Empire Takes its Way(1861).

"Manifest Destiny" was the territorial expansion of theUnited States from to 1848. Manifest Destiny incorpo-rated the belief that the United States was destined, toexpand across the North American continent, from theAtlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. During this time,the United States expanded to the Pacific Ocean—"fromsea to shining sea”—largely defining the borders of thecontiguous United States as they are today.

4.5 Science and Philosophy 13

See also: American frontier and Territorial changes ofthe United States

4.4.2 Civil War and Reconstruction

Main articles: American Civil War and Reconstructionera of the United States

The American Civil War came when seven (later eleven)Southern slave states declared their secession from theU.S. and formed the Confederate States of America(the Confederacy). Led by Jefferson Davis, they foughtagainst the U.S. federal government (the Union) underPresident Abraham Lincoln, which was supported by allthe free states and the five border slave states in the north.Northern leaders agreed that victory would require morethan the end of fighting. Secession and Confederate na-tionalism had to be totally repudiated and all forms ofslavery or quasi-slavery had to be eliminated. Lincolnproved effective in mobilizing support for the war goals,raising large armies and supplying them, avoiding for-eign interference, and making the end of slavery a wargoal. The Confederacy had a larger area than it coulddefend, and it failed to keep its ports open and its riversclear. The North kept up the pressure as the South couldbarely feed and clothe its soldiers. Its soldiers, especiallythose in the East under the command of General RobertE. Lee proved highly resourceful until they finally wereoverwhelmed by Generals Ulysses S. Grant and WilliamT. Sherman in 1864-65, The Reconstruction Era (1863–77) began with the Emancipation proclamation in 1863,and included freedom, full citizenship and the vote forthe Southern blacks. It was followed by a reaction thatleft the blacks in a second class status legally, politically,socially and economically until the 1960s.

4.4.3 The Gilded Age and legacy

Main article: Gilded Age

During the Gilded Age, there was substantial growth inpopulation in the United States and extravagant displaysof wealth and excess of America’s upper-class during thepost-Civil War and post-Reconstruction era, in the late19th century. The wealth polarization derived primarilyfrom industrial and population expansion. The business-men of the Second Industrial Revolution created indus-trial towns and cities in the Northeast with new factories,and contributed to the creation of an ethnically diverse in-dustrial working class which produced the wealth ownedby rising super-rich industrialists and financiers called the“robber barons”. An example is the company of JohnD. Rockefeller, who was an important figure in shapingthe new oil industry. Using highly effective tactics andaggressive practices, later widely criticized, Standard Oil

absorbed or destroyed most of its competition.The creation of a modern industrial economy took place.With the creation of a transportation and communica-tion infrastructure, the corporation became the dominantform of business organization and a managerial revolu-tion transformed business operations. In 1890, Congresspassed the Sherman Antitrust Act—the source of allAmerican anti-monopoly laws. The law forbade everycontract, scheme, deal, or conspiracy to restrain trade,though the phrase “restraint of trade” remained subjec-tive. By the beginning of the 20th century, per capitaincome and industrial production in the United States ex-ceeded that of any other country except Britain. Longhours and hazardous working conditions led many work-ers to attempt to form labor unions despite strong oppo-sition from industrialists and the courts. But the courtsdid protect the marketplace, declaring the Standard Oilgroup to be an “unreasonable” monopoly under the Sher-man Antitrust Act in 1911. It ordered Standard to breakup into 34 independent companies with different boardsof directors.[71]

4.5 Science and Philosophy

Replacing the classical physics in use since the end of thescientific revolution, modern physics arose in the early20th century with the advent of quantum physics,[72]substituting mathematical studies for experimental stud-ies and examining equations to build a theoretical struc-ture.[73] The old quantum theory was a collection ofresults which predate modern quantum mechanics, butwere never complete or self-consistent.[74] The collectionof heuristic prescriptions for quantum mechanics werethe first corrections to classical mechanics.[74][75] Out-side the realm of quantum physics, the various aethertheories in classical physics, which supposed a "fifth ele-ment" such as the Luminiferous aether,[76] were nullifiedby the Michelson-Morley experiment—an attempt to de-tect the motion of earth through the aether. In biology,Darwinism gained acceptance, promoting the concept ofadaptation in the theory of natural selection. The fields ofgeology, astronomy and psychology also made strides andgained new insights. In medicine, there were advances inmedical theory and treatments.The assertions of Chinese philosophy[77] began to inte-grate concepts of Western philosophy, as steps towardmodernization. By the time of the Xinhai Revolutionin 1911, there were many calls, such as the May FourthMovement, to completely abolish the old imperial insti-tutions and practices of China. There were attempts toincorporate democracy, republicanism, and industrialisminto Chinese philosophy, notably by Sun Yat-Sen (Sūn yìxiān, in oneMandarin form of the name) at the beginningof the 20th century. Mao Zedong (Máo zé dōng) addedMarxist-Leninist thought. When the Communist Party ofChina took over power, previous schools of thought, ex-cepting notably Legalism, were denounced as backward,

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Xinhai Revolution in Shanghai; Chen Qimei organized Shang-hainese civilians to start the uprising and was successful. Thepicture above is Nanjing Road after the uprising, hung with theFive Races Under One Union Flags then used by the revolution-aries.

and later even purged during the Cultural Revolution.Starting one-hundred years before the 20th century, theenlightenment spiritual philosophy was challenged in var-ious quarters around the 1900s.[78][79][80][81][82][83] Devel-oped from earlier secular traditions,[84]modern Humanistethical philosophies affirmed the dignity and worth ofall people, based on the ability to determine right andwrong by appealing to universal human qualities, partic-ularly rationality, without resorting to the supernatural oralleged divine authority from religious texts.[85][86] Forliberal humanists such as Rousseau and Kant, the univer-sal law of reason guided the way toward total emancipa-tion from any kind of tyranny. These ideas were chal-lenged, for example by the young Karl Marx, who crit-icized the project of political emancipation (embodiedin the form of human rights), asserting it to be symp-tomatic of the very dehumanization it was supposed tooppose. For Friedrich Nietzsche, humanism was nothingmore than a secular version of theism. In his Genealogyof Morals, he argues that human rights exist as a meansfor the weak to collectively constrain the strong. On thisview, such rights do not facilitate emancipation of life,but rather deny it. In the 20th century, the notion thathuman beings are rationally autonomous was challengedby the concept that humans were driven by unconsciousirrational desires.

4.5.1 Notable persons

Sigmund Freud is renowned for his redefinition of sexualdesire as the primary motivational energy of human life,as well as his therapeutic techniques, including the use offree association, his theory of transference in the thera-peutic relationship, and the interpretation of dreams assources of insight into unconscious desires.Albert Einstein is known for his theories of special rel-ativity and general relativity. He also made impor-tant contributions to statistical mechanics, especially hismathematical treatment of Brownian motion, his reso-

lution of the paradox of specific heats, and his connec-tion of fluctuations and dissipation. Despite his reserva-tions about its interpretation, Einstein also made contri-butions to quantum mechanics and, indirectly, quantumfield theory, primarily through his theoretical studies ofthe photon.

4.5.2 Social Darwinism

At the end of the 19th century, Social Darwinism waspromoted and included the various ideologies based on aconcept that competition among all individuals, groups,nations, or ideas was a “natural” framework for social evo-lution in human societies. In this view, society’s advance-ment is dependent on the "survival of the fittest", the termwas in fact coined by Herbert Spencer and referred to in"The Gospel of Wealth" written by Andrew Carnegie.

4.5.3 Marxist society

The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx summarized his approach to history and poli-tics in the opening line of the first chapter of The Com-munist Manifesto (1848). He wrote:

4.6 European decline and the 20th century 15

The history of all hitherto existing society is thehistory of class struggles.[87]

The Manifesto went through a number of editions from1872 to 1890; notable new prefaces were written byMarxand Engels for the 1872 German edition, the 1882 Rus-sian edition, the 1883 German edition, and the 1888 En-glish edition. In general, Marxism identified five (and onetransitional) successive stages of development in WesternEurope.[88]

1. Primitive Communism: as seen in cooperative tribalsocieties.

2. Slave Society: which develops when the tribe be-comes a city-state. Aristocracy is born.

3. Feudalism: aristocracy is the ruling class. Mer-chants develop into capitalists.

4. Capitalism: capitalists are the ruling class, who cre-ate and employ the true working class.

5. Dictatorship of the proletariat: workers gain classconsciousness, overthrow the capitalists and takecontrol over the state.

6. Communism: a classless and stateless society.

4.6 European decline and the 20th century

Main article: 20th century

Major political developments saw the former British Em-pire lose most of its remaining political power overcommonwealth countries.[89] The Trans-Siberian Rail-way, crossing Asia by train, was complete by 1916. Otherevents include the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, two worldwars, and the Cold War.

4.6.1 Australian Constitution

In 1901, the Federation of Australia was the processby which the six separate British self-governing coloniesof New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia,Tasmania, Victoria andWesternAustralia formed one na-tion. They kept the systems of government that they haddeveloped as separate colonies but also would have a fed-eral government that was responsible for matters concern-ing the whole nation. When the Constitution of Australiacame into force, the colonies collectively became statesof the Commonwealth of Australia.

4.6.2 Eastern warlords

The last days of the Qing Dynasty were marked by civilunrest and foreign invasions. Responding to these civil

failures and discontent, the Qing Imperial Court did at-tempt to reform the government in various ways, such asthe decision to draft a constitution in 1906, the establish-ment of provincial legislatures in 1909, and the prepara-tion for a national parliament in 1910. However, many ofthese measures were opposed by the conservatives of theQing Court, and many reformers were either imprisonedor executed outright. The failures of the Imperial Courtto enact such reforming measures of political liberaliza-tion and modernization caused the reformists to steer to-ward the road of revolution.In 1912, the Republic of China was established andSun Yat-sen was inaugurated in Nanjing as the firstProvisional President. But power in Beijing already hadpassed to Yuan Shikai, who had effective control of theBeiyang Army, the most powerful military force in Chinaat the time. To prevent civil war and possible foreign in-tervention from undermining the infant republic, leadersagreed to Army’s demand that China be united under aBeijing government. On March 10, in Beijing, Shikaiwas sworn in as the second Provisional President of theRepublic of China.After the early 20th century revolutions, shifting alliancesof China’s regional warlords waged war for control of theBeijing government. Despite the fact that various war-lords gained control of the government in Beijing duringthe warlord era, this did not constitute a new era of controlor governance, because other warlords did not acknowl-edge the transitory governments in this period and werea law unto themselves. These military-dominated gov-ernments were collectively known as the Beiyang govern-ment. The warlord era ended around 1927.[90]

4.6.3 World Wars era

See also: Timeline of modern history, Timeline of WorldWar I and Timeline of World War II

Start of the 20th century Four years into the 20thcentury saw the Russo-Japanese War with the Battle ofPort Arthur establishing the Empire of Japan as a worldpower. The Russians were in constant pursuit of a warmwater port on the Pacific Ocean, for their navy as wellas for maritime trade. The Manchurian Campaign ofthe Russian Empire was fought against the Japanese overManchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operationswere Southern Manchuria, specifically the area aroundthe Liaodong Peninsula andMukden, and the seas aroundKorea, Japan, and the Yellow Sea. The resulting cam-paigns, in which the fledgling Japanese military consis-tently attained victory over the Russian forces arrayedagainst them, were unexpected by world observers. Thesevictories, as time transpired, would dramatically trans-form the distribution of power in East Asia, resultingin a reassessment of Japan’s recent entry onto the world

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stage. The embarrassing string of defeats increased Rus-sian popular dissatisfaction with the inefficient and cor-rupt Tsarist government.The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a wave of masspolitical unrest through vast areas of the Russian Em-pire. Some of it was directed against the govern-ment, while some was undirected. It included terrorism,worker strikes, peasant unrests, and military mutinies.It led to the establishment of the limited constitutionalmonarchy,[91] the establishment of State Duma of theRussian Empire, and the multi-party system.In China, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown following theXinhai Revolution. The Xinhai Revolution began withthe Wuchang Uprising on October 10, 1911 and endedwith the abdication of Emperor Puyi on February 12,1912. The primary parties to the conflict were the Impe-rial forces of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), and the rev-olutionary forces of the Chinese Revolutionary Alliance(Tongmenghui).

Edwardian Britain The Edwardian era in the UnitedKingdom is the period spanning the reign of King Ed-ward VII up to the end of the First World War, includ-ing the years surrounding the sinking of the RMS Ti-tanic. In the early years of the period, the Second BoerWar in South Africa split the country into anti- and pro-war factions. The imperial policies of the Conservativeseventually proved unpopular and in the general electionof 1906 the Liberals won a huge landslide. The Liberalgovernment was unable to proceed with all of its radicalprogramme without the support of the House of Lords,which was largely Conservative. Conflict between the twoHouses of Parliament over the People’s Budget led to a re-duction in the power of the peers in 1910. The generalelection in January that year returned a hung parliamentwith the balance of power held by Labour and Irish Na-tionalist members.

World War I Main article: World War I

The causes of World War I included many factors, in-cluding the conflicts and antagonisms of the four decadesleading up to the war. The Triple Entente was the namegiven to the loose alignment between the United King-dom, France, and Russia after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907. The alignment of the threepowers, supplemented by various agreements with Japan,theUnited States, and Spain, constituted a powerful coun-terweight to the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, the third having concluded an addi-tional secret agreement with France effectively nullifyingher Alliance commitments. Militarism, alliances, impe-rialism, and nationalism played major roles in the con-flict. The immediate origins of the war lay in the decisionstaken by statesmen and generals during the July Crisis of1914, the spark (or casus belli) for which was the assas-

sination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.However, the crisis did not exist in a void; it came after along series of diplomatic clashes between the Great Pow-ers over European and colonial issues in the decade priorto 1914 which had left tensions high. The diplomaticclashes can be traced to changes in the balance of powerin Europe since 1870. An example is the Baghdad Rail-way which was planned to connect the Ottoman Empirecities of Konya and Baghdad with a line through modern-day Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The railway became a sourceof international disputes during the years immediatelypreceding World War I. Although it has been argued thatthey were resolved in 1914 before the war began, it hasalso been argued that the railroad was a cause of the FirstWorld War.[92] Fundamentally the war was sparked bytensions over territory in the Balkans. Austria-Hungarycompeted with Serbia and Russia for territory and influ-ence in the region and they pulled the rest of the greatpowers into the conflict through their various alliancesand treaties. The Balkan Wars were two wars in South-eastern Europe in 1912–1913 in the course of which theBalkan League (Bulgaria, Montenegro, Greece, and Ser-bia) first captured Ottoman-held remaining part of Thes-saly, Macedonia, Epirus, Albania and most of Thrace andthen fell out over the division of the spoils, with incorpo-ration of Romania this time.

Various periods ofWorldWar I; 1914.07.28 (Tsar Nicholas II ofRussia orders a partial mobilization against Austria-Hungary),1914.08.01 (Germany declares war on Russia), 1914.08.03(Germany declares war on Russia’s ally France), 1914.08.04(Britain declares war on Germany), 1914.12 (British and Ger-man Christmas truce), 1915.12 (French and German Christmastruce), 1916.12 (Battle of Magdhaba), 1917.12 (British troopstake Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire), and 1918.11.11(World War I ends: Germany signs an armistice agreement withthe Allies). ---- Allies and Central Powers in the First World WarAllied powers and areasCentral powers and colonies or occupied territoryNeutral countries

The First World War began in 1914 and lasted to the fi-nal Armistice in 1918. The Allied Powers, led by theBritish Empire, France, Russia until March 1918, Japanand the United States after 1917, defeated the CentralPowers, led by the German Empire, Austro-HungarianEmpire and the Ottoman Empire. The war caused thedisintegration of four empires—the Austro-Hungarian,German, Ottoman, and Russian ones—as well as radicalchange in the European and Middle Eastern maps. The

4.6 European decline and the 20th century 17

Allied powers before 1917 are referred to as the TripleEntente, and the Central Powers are referred to as theTriple Alliance.Much of the fighting in World War I took place alongthe Western Front, within a system of opposing mannedtrenches and fortifications (separated by a "No man’sland") running from the North Sea to the border ofSwitzerland. On the Eastern Front, the vast eastern plainsand limited rail network prevented a trench warfare stale-mate from developing, although the scale of the conflictwas just as large. Hostilities also occurred on and un-der the sea and—for the first time—from the air. Morethan 9 million soldiers died on the various battlefields,and nearly that many more in the participating countries’home fronts on account of food shortages and genocidecommitted under the cover of various civil wars and inter-nal conflicts. Notably, more people died of the worldwideinfluenza outbreak at the end of the war and shortly af-ter than died in the hostilities. The unsanitary conditionsengendered by the war, severe overcrowding in barracks,wartime propaganda interfering with public health warn-ings, and migration of so many soldiers around the worldhelped the outbreak become a pandemic.[93]

Ultimately, WorldWar I created a decisive break with theold world order that had emerged after the NapoleonicWars, which was modified by the mid-19th century’snationalistic revolutions. The results of World War Iwould be important factors in the development of WorldWar II approximately 20 years later. More immedi-ate to the time, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empirewas a political event that redrew the political bound-aries of the Middle East. The huge conglomerationof territories and peoples formerly ruled by the Sultanof the Ottoman Empire was divided into several newnations.[94] The partitioning brought the creation of themodern Arab world and the Republic of Turkey. TheLeague of Nations granted France mandates over Syriaand Lebanon and granted the United Kingdom mandatesover Mesopotamia and Palestine (which was later dividedinto two regions: Palestine and Transjordan). Parts of theOttoman Empire on the Arabian Peninsula became partsof what are today Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Revolutions and war Main articles: Russian Revolu-tion (1917) and Russian Civil WarThe Russian Revolution is the series of revolutions inRussia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracyand led to the creation of the Soviet Union. Followingthe abdication of Nicholas II of Russia, the Russian Pro-visional Government was established. In October 1917, ared faction revolution occurred in which the Red Guard,armed groups of workers and deserting soldiers directedby the Bolshevik Party, seized control of Saint Peters-burg (then known as Petrograd) and began an immediatearmed takeover of cities and villages throughout the for-mer Russian Empire.

National flag of the Soviet Union.

Another action in 1917 that is of note was the armisticesigned between Russia and the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk.[95] As a condition for peace, the treaty by theCentral Powers conceded huge portions of the formerRussian Empire to Imperial Germany and the OttomanEmpire, greatly upsetting nationalists and conservatives.The Bolsheviks made peace with the German Empire andthe Central Powers, as they had promised the Russianpeople prior to the Revolution. Vladimir Lenin’s decisionhas been attributed to his sponsorship by the foreign of-fice ofWilhelm II, German Emperor, offered by the latterin hopes that with a revolution, Russia would withdrawfrom World War I. This suspicion was bolstered by theGerman Foreign Ministry’s sponsorship of Lenin’s returnto Petrograd. The Western Allies expressed their dismayat the Bolsheviks, upset at:

1. the withdrawal of Russia from the war effort,

2. worried about a possible Russo-German alliance,and

3. galvanized by the prospect of the Bolsheviks makinggood their threats to assume no responsibility for,and so default on, Imperial Russia’s massive foreignloans.[96]

In addition, there was a concern, shared by many CentralPowers as well, that the socialist revolutionary ideaswould spread to theWest. Hence, many of these countriesexpressed their support for the Whites, including the pro-vision of troops and supplies. Winston Churchill declaredthat Bolshevism must be “strangled in its cradle”.[97]

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war thatoccurred within the former Russian Empire after theRussian provisional government collapsed and the Sovietsunder the domination of the Bolshevik party assumedpower, first in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and then inother places. In the wake of the October Revolution,the old Russian Imperial Army had been demobilized;the volunteer-based Red Guard was the Bolsheviks’ mainmilitary force, augmented by an armed military com-ponent of the Cheka, the Bolshevik state security ap-paratus. There was an instituted mandatory conscrip-tion of the rural peasantry into the Red Army.[98] Op-position of rural Russians to Red Army conscription

18 4 LATE MODERN PERIOD

units was overcome by taking hostages and shooting themwhen necessary in order to force compliance.[99] For-mer Tsarist officers were utilized as “military special-ists” (voenspetsy),[100] taking their families hostage in or-der to ensure loyalty.[101] At the start of the war, three-fourths of the Red Army officer corps was composed offormer Tsarist officers.[101] By its end, 83% of all RedArmy divisional and corps commanders were ex-Tsaristsoldiers.[102]

The principal fighting occurred between the BolshevikRed Army and the forces of the White Army. Many for-eign armies warred against the Red Army, notably theAllied Forces, yet many volunteer foreigners fought inboth sides of the Russian Civil War. Other national-ist and regional political groups also participated in thewar, including the Ukrainian nationalist Green Army,the Ukrainian anarchist Black Army and Black Guards,and warlords such as Ungern von Sternberg. The mostintense fighting took place from 1918 to 1920. Majormilitary operations ended on 25 October 1922 when theRed Army occupied Vladivostok, previously held by theProvisional Priamur Government. The last enclave of theWhite Forces was the Ayano-Maysky District on the Pa-cific coast. The majority of the fighting ended in 1920with the defeat of General Pyotr Wrangel in the Crimea,but a notable resistance in certain areas continued un-til 1923 (e.g., Kronstadt Uprising, Tambov Rebellion,Basmachi Revolt, and the final resistance of the Whitemovement in the Far East).In 1917, China declared war on Germany in the hope ofrecovering its lost province, then under Japanese control.The New Culture Movement occupied the period from1917 to 1923. Chinese representatives refused to signthe Treaty of Versailles, due to intense pressure from thestudent protesters and public opinion alike.The May Fourth Movement helped to rekindle the then-fading cause of republican revolution. In 1917 Sun Yat-sen had become commander-in-chief of a rival militarygovernment in Guangzhou in collaboration with south-ern warlords. Sun’s efforts to obtain aid from the West-ern democracies were ignored, however, and in 1920 heturned to the Soviet Union, which had recently achievedits own revolution. The Soviets sought to befriend theChinese revolutionists by offering scathing attacks onWestern imperialism. But for political expediency, theSoviet leadership initiated a dual policy of support forboth Sun and the newly established Chinese CommunistParty (CCP).The policy of working with the Kuomintang and ChiangKai-shek had been recommended by the Dutch Commu-nist Henk Sneevliet, chosen in 1923 to be the Cominternrepresentative in China due to his revolutionary experi-ence in the Dutch Indies, where he had a major role infounding the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) - and whofelt that the Chinese party was too small and weak to un-dertake a major effort on its own (see Henk Sneevliet’s

The flag of the Kuomintang, one canton of the flag of the Repub-lic of China.

work for the Comintern).In early 1927, the Kuomintang-CCP rivalry led to a splitin the revolutionary ranks. The CCP and the left wingof the Kuomintang had decided to move the seat of theNationalist government from Guangzhou to Wuhan. ButChiang Kai-shek, whose Northern Expedition was prov-ing successful, set his forces to destroying the ShanghaiCCP apparatus and established an anti-Communist gov-ernment at Nanjing in April 1927.

The 1920s and the Depression Main articles:Interwar period, Roaring Twenties and Great Depression

The interwar period was the period between the end ofthe First World War and the beginning of the SecondWorld War. This period was marked by turmoil in muchof the world, as Europe struggled to recover from the dev-astation of the First World War.In North America, especially the first half of this period,people experienced considerable prosperity in the Roar-ing Twenties. The social and societal upheaval known asthe Roaring Twenties began in North America and spreadto Europe in the aftermath of World War I. The RoaringTwenties, often called "The Jazz Age", saw an expositionof social, artistic, and cultural dynamism. 'Normalcy' re-turned to politics, jazz music blossomed, the flapper rede-fined modern womanhood, Art Deco peaked. The spiritof the Roaring Twenties was marked by a general feel-ing of discontinuity associated with modernity, a breakwith traditions. Everything seemed to be feasible throughmodern technology. New technologies, especially auto-mobiles, movies and radio proliferated 'modernity' to alarge part of the population. The 1920s saw the generalfavor of practicality, in architecture as well as in dailylife. The 1920s was further distinguished by several in-ventions and discoveries, extensive industrial growth andthe rise in consumer demand and aspirations, and signif-icant changes in lifestyle.Europe spent these years rebuilding and coming to termswith the vast human cost of the conflict. The econ-

4.6 European decline and the 20th century 19

17

21

SPAIN

PO

RTU

GA

L

French M

andate

1516

18

19

14

13

Union of Socialist Soviet Republics

(USSR)Poland Germany

Austria

Hungary

Yugoslavia

Romania

Bulgaria

I t a l y

France

T U R K E Y

EstoniaLatvia

Finland

Swed

en

Norw

ay

of Syria

UnitedKingdom

Ireland

Tunisia, Algeria and French Marocco

2324

20

12

11

1026

5 4 3

25

227

1

22

Denmark

6

9

8

Czechoslovakia

7

Legend: Europe 1929-1938

Europe between 1920 and 1938.

omy of the United States became increasingly intertwinedwith that of Europe. In Germany, the Weimar Repub-lic gave way to episodes of political and economic tur-moil, which culminated with the German hyperinflationof 1923 and the failed Beer Hall Putsch of that same year.When Germany could no longer afford war payments,Wall Street invested heavily in European debts to keepthe European economy afloat as a large consumer marketfor American mass-produced goods. By the middle ofthe decade, economic development soared in Europe, andthe Roaring Twenties broke out in Germany, Britain andFrance, the second half of the decade becoming knownas the "Golden Twenties". In France and francophoneCanada, they were also called the "années folles" (“CrazyYears”).[103]

Worldwide prosperity changed dramatically with the on-set of the Great Depression in 1929. The Wall StreetCrash of 1929 served to punctuate the end of the pre-vious era, as The Great Depression set in. The Great De-pression was a worldwide economic downturn starting inmost places in 1929 and ending at different times in the1930s or early 1940s for different countries.[104] It wasthe largest and most important economic depression inthe 20th century, and is used in the 21st century as anexample of how far the world’s economy can fall.[105]

The depression had devastating effects in virtually ev-ery country, rich or poor. International trade plunged byhalf to two-thirds, as did personal income, tax revenue,prices and profits. Cities all around the world were hithard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Con-struction was virtually halted in many countries. Farm-ing and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by roughly60 percent.[106][107][108] Facing plummeting demand withfew alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primarysector industries suffered the most.The Great Depression ended at different times in differ-ent countries with the effect lasting into the next era.[109]

America’s Great Depression ended in 1941 with Amer-ica’s entry into World War II.[110] The majority of coun-tries set up relief programs, and most underwent somesort of political upheaval, pushing them to the left or right.In some world states, the desperate citizens turned towardnationalist demagogues—the most infamous being AdolfHitler—setting the stage for the next era of war. The con-vulsion brought on by the worldwide depression resultedin the rise of Nazism. In Asia, Japan became an evermore assertive power, especially with regards to China.

Nanjing period Main article: Nanjing decadeThe “Nanjing Decade” of 1928-37 was one of con-

With Sino-German cooperation until 1941, Chinese industry andmilitary was improved just prior to the war against Japan.

solidation and accomplishment under the leadership ofthe Nationalists, with a mixed but generally positiverecord in the economy, social progress, development ofdemocracy, and cultural creativity. Some of the harsh as-pects of foreign concessions and privileges in China weremoderated through diplomacy.See also: Sino-German cooperation until 1941, NationalResources Commission and Chinese Civil War

The League and crises The interwar period was alsomarked by a radical change in the international order,away from the balance of power that had dominated pre–World War I Europe. One main institution that wasmeant to bring stability was the League of Nations, whichwas created after the First World War with the intentionof maintaining world security and peace and encourag-ing economic growth between member countries. TheLeague was undermined by the bellicosity of Nazi Ger-many, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and Mussolini’sItaly, and by the non-participation of the United States,leading many to question its effectiveness and legitimacy.

20 4 LATE MODERN PERIOD

A series of international crises strained the League to itslimits, the earliest being the invasion of Manchuria byJapan and the Abyssinian crisis of 1935/36 in which Italyinvaded Abyssinia, one of the only free African nationsat that time. The League tried to enforce economic sanc-tions upon Italy, but to no avail. The incident highlightedFrench and British weakness, exemplified by their reluc-tance to alienate Italy and lose her as their ally. The lim-ited actions taken by the Western powers pushed Mus-solini’s Italy towards alliance with Hitler’s Germany any-way. The Abyssinian war showed Hitler how weak theLeague was and encouraged the remilitarization of theRhineland in flagrant disregard of the Treaty of Ver-sailles. This was the first in a series of provocative actsculminating in the invasion of Poland in September 1939and the beginning of the Second World War.Few Chinese had any illusions about Japanese designs onChina. Hungry for raw materials and pressed by a grow-ing population, Japan initiated the seizure of Manchuriain September 1931 and established ex-Qing emperorPuyi as head of the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932.During the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), the loss ofManchuria, and its vast potential for industrial devel-opment and war industries, was a blow to the Kuom-intang economy. The League of Nations, established atthe end of World War I, was unable to act in the faceof the Japanese defiance. After 1940, conflicts betweenthe Kuomintang and Communists became more frequentin the areas not under Japanese control. The Com-munists expanded their influence wherever opportunitiespresented themselves throughmass organizations, admin-istrative reforms, and the land- and tax-reform measuresfavoring the peasants—while the Kuomintang attemptedto neutralize the spread of Communist influence.

Tripartite Pact The Second Sino-Japanese War hadseen tensions rise between Imperial Japan and the UnitedStates; events such as the Panay incident and the NankingMassacre turned American public opinion against Japan.With the occupation of French Indochina in the yearsof 1940–41, and with the continuing war in China, theUnited States placed embargoes on Japan of strategic ma-terials such as scrap metal and oil, which were vitallyneeded for the war effort. The Japanese were faced withthe option of either withdrawing from China and losingface or seizing and securing new sources of raw mate-rials in the resource-rich, European-controlled coloniesof South East Asia—specifically British Malaya and theDutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia). In 1940, Im-perial Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Ger-many and Fascist Italy.

World War II Main article: World War II

The SecondWorld War was a global military conflict thattook place in 1939–1945. It was the largest and deadliest

National flag of the Third Reich (Nazi Germany).

war in history, culminating in the Holocaust and endingwith the dropping of the atom bomb.Even though Japan had been fighting in China since 1937,the conventional view is that the war began on Septem-ber 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, theDrang nach Osten. Within two days the United Kingdomand France declared war on Germany, even though thefighting was confined to Poland. Pursuant to a then-secretprovision of its non-aggressionMolotov-Ribbentrop Pact,the Soviet Union joined with Germany on September 17,1939, to conquer Poland and to divide Eastern Europe.The Allies were initially made up of Poland, the UnitedKingdom, France, Australia, Canada, New Zealand,South Africa, as well as British Commonwealth coun-tries which were controlled directly by the UK, such asthe Indian Empire. All of these countries declared waron Germany in September 1939.Following the lull in fighting, known as the "PhoneyWar",Germany invaded western Europe in May 1940. Sixweeks later, France, in the mean time attacked by Italyas well, surrendered to Germany, which then tried un-successfully to conquer Britain. On September 27, Ger-many, Italy, and Japan signed a mutual defense agree-ment, the Tripartite Pact, and were known as the AxisPowers.

Ensign of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Nine months later, on June 22, 1941, Germany launcheda massive invasion of the Soviet Union, which promptly

4.6 European decline and the 20th century 21

joined the Allies. Germany was now engaged in fight-ing a war on two fronts. This proved to be a mistake byGermany - Germany had not successfully carried out theinvasion of Britain and the war turned against the Axis.On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the United Statesat Pearl Harbor, bringing it too into the war on the Alliedside. China also joined the Allies, as eventually did mostof the rest of the world. China was in turmoil at the time,and attacked Japanese armies through guerilla-type war-fare. By the beginning of 1942, the major combatantswere aligned as follows: the British Commonwealth, theUnited States, and the Soviet Union were fighting Ger-many and Italy; and the British Commonwealth, China,and the United States were fighting Japan. The UnitedKingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union and Chinawere referred as a “trusteeship of the powerful” duringthe World War II [111] and were recognized as the Allied“Big Four” in Declaration by United Nations[112] Thesefour countries were considered as the "Four Policemen"or “Four Sheriffs” of the Allies power and primary victorsof World War II.[113] From then through August 1945,battles raged across all of Europe, in the North AtlanticOcean, across North Africa, throughout Southeast Asia,throughout China, across the Pacific Ocean and in the airover Japan.Italy surrendered in September 1943 and was split into anorthern Germany-occupied puppet state and an Allies-friendly state in the South; Germany surrendered in May1945. Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima andNagasaki, Japan surrendered, marking the end of the waron September 2, 1945.It is possible that around 62 million people died in thewar; estimates vary greatly. About 60% of all casualtieswere civilians, who died as a result of disease, starva-tion, genocide (in particular, the Holocaust), and aerialbombing. The former Soviet Union and China sufferedthe most casualties. Estimates place deaths in the SovietUnion at around 23 million, while China suffered about10 million. No country lost a greater portion of its pop-ulation than Poland: approximately 5.6 million, or 16%,of its pre-war population of 34.8 million died.

Flag of the Italian Empire.

The Holocaust (which roughly means “burnt whole”) was

the deliberate and systematic murder of millions of Jewsand other “unwanted” during World War II by the Naziregime in Germany. Several differing views exist regard-ing whether it was intended to occur from the war’s be-ginning, or if the plans for it came about later. Regard-less, persecution of Jews extended well before the wareven started, such as in the Kristallnacht (Night of Bro-ken Glass). The Nazis used propaganda to great effect tostir up anti-Semitic feelings within ordinary Germans.After World War II, Europe was informally split intoWestern and Soviet spheres of influence. Western Europelater aligned as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO) and Eastern Europe as the Warsaw Pact. Therewas a shift in power fromWestern Europe and the BritishEmpire to the two new superpowers, the United Statesand the Soviet Union. These two rivals would later faceoff in the Cold War. In Asia, the defeat of Japan led to itsdemocratization. China’s civil war continued through andafter the war, resulting eventually in the establishment ofthe People’s Republic of China. The former colonies ofthe European powers began their road to independence.

4.6.4 Post-1945 world

The Earth seen from Apollo 17. The second half of the 20thcentury saw an increase of interest in both space exploration andthe environmental movement.

The mid-20th century is distinguished from most of hu-man history in that its most significant changes were di-rectly or indirectly economic and technological in na-ture. Economic development was the force behind vastchanges in everyday life, to a degree which was unprece-dented in human history.Over the course of the 20th century, the world’s per-capita gross domestic product grew by a factor of five,[114]much more than all earlier centuries combined (includ-ing the 19th with its Industrial Revolution). Many

22 4 LATE MODERN PERIOD

economists make the case that this understates the mag-nitude of growth, as many of the goods and services con-sumed at the end of the 20th century, such as improvedmedicine (causing world life expectancy to increase bymore than two decades) and communications technolo-gies, were not available at any price at its beginning. How-ever, the gulf between the world’s rich and poor grewwider,[115] and the majority of the global population re-mained in the poor side of the divide.[116]

Still, advancing technology and medicine has had a greatimpact even in the Global South. Large-scale indus-try and more centralized media made brutal dictator-ships possible on an unprecedented scale in the middleof the century, leading to wars that were also unprece-dented. However, the increased communications con-tributed to democratization. Technological developmentsincluded the development of airplanes and space explo-ration, nuclear technology, advancement in genetics, andthe dawning of the Information Age.

American Peace Main article: Pax AmericanaPax Americana is an appellation applied to the historical

National flag of the United States.

concept of relative liberal peace in the Western world,resulting from the preponderance of power enjoyed by theUnited States of America starting around the start of the20th century. Although the term finds its primary utilityin the latter half of the 20th century, it has been used invarious places and eras. Its modern connotations concernthe peace established after the end of World War II in1945.For more details on this topic, see American Century.

Cold War era Main article: Cold War

The Cold War began in the mid-1940s and lasted intothe early 1990s. Throughout this period, the conflictwas expressed through military coalitions, espionage,weapons development, invasions, propaganda, and com-petitive technological development. The conflict in-cluded costly defense spending, a massive conventionaland nuclear arms race, and numerous proxy wars; the twosuperpowers never fought one another directly.

Borders of NATO (blue) and Warsaw Pact (red) states during theCold war era.

The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc of coun-tries that it occupied, annexing some as Soviet SocialistRepublics and maintaining others as satellite states thatwould later form the Warsaw Pact. The United Statesand various western European countries began a policyof "containment" of communism and forged myriad al-liances to this end, including NATO. Several of thesewestern countries also coordinated efforts regarding therebuilding of western Europe, including western Ger-many, which the Soviets opposed. In other regions of theworld, such as Latin America and Southeast Asia, the So-viet Union fostered communist revolutionarymovements,which the United States and many of its allies opposedand, in some cases, attempted to "roll back". Many coun-tries were prompted to align themselves with the nationsthat would later form either NATO or the Warsaw Pact,though other movements would also emerge.The Cold War saw periods of both heightened tensionand relative calm. International crises arose, such as theBerlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War(1959–1975), the CubanMissile Crisis (1962), the Sovietwar in Afghanistan (1979–1989) and NATO exercises inNovember 1983. There were also periods of reduced ten-sion as both sides sought détente. Direct military attackson adversaries were deterred by the potential for mutualassured destruction using deliverable nuclear weapons. Inthe Cold War era, the Generation of Love and the riseof computers changed society in very different, complexways, including higher social and local mobility.The Cold War drew to a close in the late 1980s and theearly 1990s. The United States under President RonaldReagan increased diplomatic, military, and economicpressure on the Soviet Union, which was already sufferingfrom severe economic stagnation. In the second half ofthe 1980s, newly appointed Soviet leader Mikhail Gor-bachev introduced the perestroika and glasnost reforms.The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving the UnitedStates as the dominant military power, though Russia re-tained much of the massive Soviet nuclear arsenal.

Latin America polarization In Latin America in the1970s, leftists acquired a significant political influencewhich prompted the right-wing, ecclesiastical authoritiesand a large portion of the individual country’s upper classto support coup d'états to avoid what they perceived asa communist threat. This was further fueled by Cubanand United States intervention which led to a political

4.7 Contemporary era 23

polarization. Most South American countries were insome periods ruled by military dictatorships that weresupported by the United States of America. Around the1970s, the regimes of the Southern Cone collaboratedin Operation Condor killing many leftist dissidents, in-cluding some urban guerrillas.[117] However, by the early1990s all countries had restored their democracies.

This high-resolution image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field in-cludes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colors. Thesmallest, reddest galaxies, are some of the most distant galaxiesto have been imaged by an optical telescope

Space Age The Space Age is a period encompassingthe activities related to the Space Race, space exploration,space technology, and the cultural developments influ-enced by these events. The Space Age began with the de-velopment of several technologies that culminated withthe launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union. This wasthe world’s first artificial satellite, orbiting the Earth in98.1 minutes and weighing in at 83 kg. The launch ofSputnik 1 ushered a new era of political, scientific andtechnological achievements that became known as theSpace Age. The Space Age was characterized by rapiddevelopment of new technology in a close race mostlybetween the United States and the Soviet Union. TheSpace Age brought the first human spaceflight during theVostok programme and reached its peak with the Apolloprogram which captured the imagination of much of theworld’s population. The landing of Apollo 11 was anevent watched by over 500 million people around theworld and is widely recognized as one of the defining mo-ments of the 20th century. Since then and with the end ofthe space race due to the dissolution of the Soviet Union,public attention has largely moved to other areas.

4.7 Contemporary era

Main article: Contemporary history

In the Contemporary era, there were various socio-technological trends. Regarding the 21st century and thelate modern world, the Information age and computerswere forefront in use, not completely ubiquitous but oftenpresent in daily life. The development of Eastern powerswas of note, with China and India becoming more pow-erful. In the Eurasian theater, the European Union andRussian Federation were two forces recently developed.A concern for Western world, if not the whole world, wasthe latemodern form of terrorism and the warfare that hasresulted from the contemporary terrorist acts.

5 Modern history education andschools

The humanities are academic disciplines which studythe human condition, using methods that are primarilyanalytic, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from themainly empirical approaches of the natural and social sci-ences. Although many of the subjects of modern his-tory coincide with that of standard history, the subjectis taught independently by various systems of educationin the world.

5.1 British education

Students can choose the subject at university. The mate-rial covered includes from the mid-18th century, to anal-ysis of the present day. Virtually all colleges and sixthforms that do teach modern history do it alongside stan-dard history; very few teach the subject exclusively.

5.2 Universities

At the University of Oxford 'Modern History' has a some-what different meaning. The contrast is not with the Mid-dle Ages but with Antiquity. The earliest period that canbe studied in the Final Honour School of Modern Historybegins in 285.[118]

6 See also

• List of World Map changes

• History of modern literature

• Modernism Framework: Premodernity,Modernism, Postmodernism

24 8 REFERENCES

7 Further reading21st-century sources

• Boyd, Andrew, Joshua Comenetz. An atlas of worldaffairs. Routledge, 2007. ISBN 0-415-39169-5

• Black, Edwin. Internal Combustion: How Corpora-tions and Governments Addicted theWorld to Oil andDerailed the Alternatives. New York: St. Martin’sPress, 2006.

• Briggs, Asa, and Peter Burke. A Social History of theMedia: From Gutenberg to the Internet. Cambridge:Polity, 2002.

• Barzun, Jacques. From Dawn to Decadence: 500Years of Western Cultural Life : 1500 to the Present.New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

20th-century sources

• Burke, Peter. A Social History of Knowledge: FromGutenberg to Diderot. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2000.

• CBSNews. People of the century. Simon and Schus-ter, 1999. ISBN 0-684-87093-2

• Wang, Ke-wen. Modern China: an encyclopedia ofhistory, culture, and nationalism. Taylor & Francis,1998. ISBN 0-8153-0720-9

• Huffman, James L.Modern Japan: an encyclopediaof history, culture, and nationalism. Taylor & Fran-cis, 1998. ISBN 0-8153-2525-8

• Schlesinger, ArthurM.NewViewpoints in AmericanHistory. New York: Macmillan, 1922.

• Nock, Albert Jay. The Myth of a Guilty Nation.B.W. Huebsch, Incorporated, 1922.

• Bakeless, John Edwin. The Economic Causes ofModern War; A Study of the Period: 1878-1918.New York: Printed for the Department of politicalscience of Williams college, by Moffat, Yard andCo, 1921

• Day, Clive. A History of Commerce. New York[etc.]: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1921.

• Moore, Edward Caldwell. The Spread of Christian-ity in the Modern World. Chicago, Ill: University ofChicago Press, 1919.

• Muir, Ramsay. The Expansion of Europe; The Cul-mination of Modern History. Boston: HoughtonMifflin Company, 1917.

• Palat, Madhavan K., Social Identities in Revolution-ary Russia, ed. (Macmillan, Palgrave, UK, and StMartin’s Press, New York, 2001).

• Palat, Madhavan K., History of Civilizations ofCentral Asia, ed. , vol. 6, Towards the Contem-porary Period: From The Mid-Nineteenth CenturyTo The End Of The Twentieth Century, UNESCO,Paris 2005.

• Robinson, James Harvey, and Charles Austin Beard.Readings in Modern European History; A Collectionof Extracts from the Sources Chosen with the Purposeof Illustrating Some of the Chief Phases of Develop-ment of Europe During the Last Two Hundred Years.Boston: Ginn & Co, 1908.

8 References

General information

Books

• Earle, EdwardMead. An Outline ofModern History;A Syllabus with Map Studies. New York: MacmillanCo, 1921.

• Grosvenor, Edwin A. Contemporary History of theWorld. New York and Boston: T.Y. Crowell & Co,1899.

• Taylor, William Cooke, Charles Duke Yonge, andG. W. Cox. The Student’s Manual of Modern His-tory; Containing the Rise and Progress of the Prin-cipal European Nations, Their Political History, andthe Changes in Their Social Condition; with a Historyof the Colonies Founded by Europeans. 1880.

• Bryant, Arthur (1950). The age of elegance 2. NewYork and Boston. p. 54. Retrieved 2010-04-29.ISSN 1476-3324

Websites

• Internet Modern History Sourcebook, fordham.edu

Footnotes

[1] Intrinsic to the English language, “modern” denotes (inreference to history) a period that is opposed to either an-cient or medieval—modern history comprising the historyof the world since the close of the Middle Ages.

[2] The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, Page 3814

[3] Dunan, Marcel. Larousse Encyclopedia of Modern His-tory, From 1500 to the Present Day. New York: Harper &Row, 1964.

[4] modern. The American Heritage Dictionary of the En-glish Language: Fourth Edition. 2000

25

[5] Tirosh-Samuelson, H. (2003). Happiness in premodernJudaism: Virtue, knowledge, and well-being. Monographsof the Hebrew Union College, no. 29. Cincinnati, Ohio:Hebrew Union College Press.

[6] Nation, civil society and social movements: essays in polit-ical sociology by T. K. Oommen. Page 236.

[7] Premodern Japan: a historical survey by Mikiso Hane

[8] Griffin, D. R. (1990). Sacred interconnections: Postmod-ern spirituality, political economy, and art. SUNY seriesin constructive postmodern thought. Albany: State Uni-versity of New York Press.

[9] Maine, H. S., & Dwight, T. W. (1888). Ancient law: Itsconnection with the early history of society and its relationto modern ideas. New York: H. Holt and Co.

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[21] William Schweiker, The Blackwell companion to religiousethics. 2005. Page 454. (cf., “In modernity, however,much of economic activity and theory seemed to be en-tirely cut off from religious and ethical norms, at least intraditional terms. Many see modern economic develop-ments as entirely secular.”)

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[36] Martín Lister, New media: a critical introduction. Psy-chology Press, 2003. Page 14

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[39] R. Keith Schoppa (2000). The Columbia Guide to ModernChinese History. Columbia University Press. p. 15.

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[41] “The Mughal Empire”

[42] “Mughal Empire (1500s, 1600s)". bbc.co.uk. London:BBC. Section 5: Aurangzeb. Retrieved 18 October 2010.

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[45] Metcalf Metcalf, p. 56

[46] “Official, India”. World Digital Library. 1890–1923. Re-trieved 2013-05-30.

[47] Commercial agriculture, mining and an export basedeconomy developed rapidly during this period.

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[49] EarlyModern Period (1485-1800), Sites Organized by Pe-riod, Rutgers University Libraries

26 8 REFERENCES

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[51] Paul Oskar Kristeller, Humanism, pp. 113-4, in CharlesB. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner (editors), The CambridgeHistory of Renaissance Philosophy (1990).

[52] Watt steam engine image: located in the lobby of into theSuperior Technical School of Industrial Engineers of theUPM (Madrid)

[53] Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd. ISBN 0-349-10484-0

[54] Joseph E Inikori. Africans and the Industrial Revolutionin England, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-01079-9.

[55] Business and Economics. Leading Issues in EconomicDevelopment, Oxford University Press US. ISBN 0-19-511589-9.

[56] Russell Brown, Lester. Eco-Economy, James & James,Earthscan. ISBN 1-85383-904-3.

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[58] Cayley, E. S. (1856). The European revolutions of 1848.London: Smith, Elder & Co. Vol. I and II.

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[61] Solovyov, S. (2001). History of Russia from the EarliestTimes. 15, ch.1. AST.

[62] For more, see Pax Britannica.

[63] Edwards, B. T. (2004). Informal empire: Mexico andCentral America in Victorian culture. Minneapolis, Minn:Univ. of Minnesota Press

[64] Maddison, Angus (2001). TheWorld Economy: AMillen-nial Perspective. Organisation for Economic Co-operationand Development. ISBN 92-64-18654-9. pp. 98, 242.

[65] Ferguson, Niall (2004). Colossus: The Price of America’sEmpire. Penguin. ISBN 1-59420-013-0. p. 15

[66] Kenneth B. Pyle, “Profound Forces in the Making ofModern Japan,” Journal of Japanese Studies (2006) 32#2pp 393-418 in Project MUSE

[67] Carol Gluck, “The People in History: Recent Trendsin Japanese Historiography,” Journal of Asian Studies.(1978) 38#1 pp 25-50. in JSTOR

[68] George Akita, “Trends in Modern Japanese Political His-tory: The 'Positivist'",Monumenta Nipponica (1992) 37#4pp 497-522

[69] John Whitney Hall, “Japanese History: New Dimensionsof Approach and Understanding” (2nd ed. 1966

[70] Jean-Pierre Lehmann and Sue Henny, eds. Themes andTheories in Modern Japanese History (2013)

[71] See generally Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. UnitedStates, 221 U.S. 1 (1911).

[72] F.K Richtmyer, E.H Kennard, T. Lauristen (1955). “In-troduction”. Introduction to Modern Physics (5th editioned.). New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. p. 1.LCCN 55-6862.

[73] The concepts derived are at times abstractions from naturefor baselines or reference states. These can be unattain-able in practice, such as free space (electromagnetism) andpractical absolute zero temperature (ed. Special negativetemperatures values are “colder” than the zero points ofthose scales but still warmer than absolute zero).

[74] ter Haar, D. (1967). The Old Quantum Theory. PergamonPress. p. 206.

[75] Matrix mechanics and wave mechanics supplanted otherstudies to end the era of the old-quantum theory.

[76] a substance in early physics considered to be the mediumthrough which light propagates.

[77] The Chinese Enlightenment. By Vera Schwarcz. p4.

[78] Ralph Adams Cram. "The Second Coming of Art". TheAtlantic Monthly, Volume 119. Philip Gengembre Hu-bert. p193

[79] Enlightenment Contested. By Jonathan I. Israel. p765

[80] Modern Christian Thought: The twentieth century, Vol-ume 2. By James C. Livingston, Francis SchüsslerFiorenza. p2.

[81] "Herman Dooyeweerd". Routledge Encyclopedia of Phi-losophy. By Routledge (COR), Luciano Floridi, EdwardCraig. p113.See also: D. H. Th. Vollenhoven.

[82] Counter-Enlightenments: From the Eighteenth Century tothe Present. By Graeme Garrard. Routledge, 2004. p13..

[83] See also: Counter-Enlightenment, MaxWeber, and ÉmileDurkheim.

[84] Known as continental philosophy.

[85] Compact Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford UniversityPress. 2007. humanism n. 1 a rationalistic system ofthought attaching prime importance to human rather thandivine or supernatural matters. 2 a Renaissance culturalmovement that turned away from medieval scholastic-ismand revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought.Typically, abridgments of this definition omit all sensesexcept #1, such as in the Cambridge Advanced Learner’sDictionary, Collins Essential English Dictionary, andWeb-ster’s Concise Dictionary. New York: RHR Press. 2001.p. 177.

27

[86] Collins Concise Dictionary. HarperCollins (published1990). 1999. The rejection of religion in favour of a be-lief in the advancement of humanity by its own efforts.

[87] In the 1888 English edition of the Communist Manifest,Friedrich Engels added a footnote with the commentary:“That is, all written history. In 1847, the prehistory of so-ciety, the social organization existing previous to recordedhistory, was all but unknown. Since then Haxthausen dis-covered common ownership of land In Russia, Maurerconcluded it to be the social foundation from which allTeutonic races started in history, and by and by villagecommunities were found to be, or to have been, the primi-tive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. TheInner organization of this primitive Communistic societywas laid bare, In its typical form, byMorgan’s work on thetrue nature of the gens and Its relation to the tribe. Withthe dissolution of these primaeval communities societybegins to be differentiated into separate and finally antag-onistic classes. I have attempte to retrace this process ofdissolution in "Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigen-thums und des Staats"", from Marx, Karl, Friedrich En-gels, Leon Trotsky, and Karl Marx. The Communist Man-ifesto and Its Relevance for Today. Chippendale, N.S.W.:Resistance Books, 1998. p. 46, see also Cornelius Cas-toriadis, Political and Social Writings. Minneapolis: Uni-versity of Minnesota Press, 1993. p. 204

[88] Marx makes no claim to have produced a master keyto history. Historical materialism is not “an historico-philosophic theory of themarche generale imposed by fateupon every people, whatever the historic circumstances inwhich it finds itself”. (Marx, Karl, Letter to editor of theRussian paperOtetchestvennye Zapiskym, 1877) His ideas,he explains, are based on a concrete study of the actualconditions that pertained in Europe.

[89] Most notably by dividing the British crown into severalsovereignties by the Statute of Westminster, the patriationof constitutions by the Canada Act 1982 and the AustraliaAct 1986, and by the independence of countries such asIndia, Pakistan, South Africa, and Ireland, along with the1997 return of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic ofChina.

[90] Joseph, W. A. (2010). Politics in China: An introduction.Oxford: Oxford University Press. Page 423.

[91] Russian Constitution of 1906

[92] (Jastrow 1917)

[93] Barry, John M. (2004). The Great Influenza: The EpicStory of the Greatest Plague in History. Viking Penguin.ISBN 0-670-89473-7.

[94] Roderic H. Davison; Review “From Paris to Sèvres: ThePartition of the Ottoman Empire at the Peace Conferenceof 1919-1920. by Paul C. Helmreich” in Slavic Review,Vol. 34, No. 1 (March , 1975), pp. 186-187

[95] Evan Mawdsley (2008) The Russian Civil War: 42

[96] the legal notion of Odious debt had not yet been formu-lated

[97] Cover Story: Churchill’s Greatness. Interviewwith JeffreyWallin. (The Churchill Centre)

[98] Read, Christopher, From Tsar to Soviets, Oxford Univer-sity Press (1996), p. 237: By 1920, 77% of the RedArmy’s enlisted ranks were composed of peasant con-scripts.

[99] Williams, Beryl, The Russian Revolution 1917-1921,Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (1987), ISBN 978-0-631-15083-1: Typically, men of conscriptible age (17-40) ina village would vanish when Red Army draft units ap-proached. The taking of hostages and a few exemplaryexecutions usually brought the men back.

[100] Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’sRussia, W.W. Norton & Company (2004), ISBN 978-0-393-02030-4, p. 446: By the end of the civil war, one-third of all Red Army officers were ex-Tsarist voenspetsy.

[101] Williams, Beryl, The Russian Revolution 1917-1921,Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (1987), ISBN 978-0-631-15083-1

[102] Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’sRussia, W.W. Norton & Company (2004), ISBN 978-0-393-02030-4, p. 446:

[103] Hakim, Joy (1995). War, Peace, and All That Jazz. NewYork: Oxford University Press. pp. 41–46. ISBN 0-19-509514-6.

[104] “Great Depression”, Encyclopædia Britannica

[105] Charles Duhigg, “Depression, You Say? Check ThoseSafety Nets”, New York Times, March 23, 2008

[106] “Commodity Data”. US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Re-trieved 2008-11-30.

[107] Cochrane, Willard W. (1958). “Farm Prices, Myth andReality”. p. 15.

[108] “World Economic Survey 1932–33”. League of Nations:43.

[109] Great Depression and World War II. The Library ofCongress.

[110] What Ended the Great Depression of 1929?. Source: TheFederal Reserve Board web site, “Remarks by GovernorBen Bernanke at the H. Parket Willis Lecture in EconomicPolicy”, March 2, 2004, FDR Library Web Site.

[111] Doenecke, Justus D.; Stoler, Mark A. (2005). DebatingFranklin D. Roosevelt’s foreign policies, 1933–1945. Row-man & Littlefield.

[112] Hoopes, Townsend, and Douglas Brinkley. FDR and theCreation of the U.N. (Yale University Press, 1997)

[113] Gaddis, John Lewis (1972). The United States and theOrigins of the ColdWar, 1941-1947. Columbia UniversityPress. pp. 24–25. ISBN 978-0-231-12239-9.

[114] J. Bradford DeLong, Cornucopia: IncreasingWealth in theTwentieth Century. 2000.

28 9 EXTERNAL LINKS

[115] Morrison, Wayne. Theoretical criminology: from moder-nity to post-modernism. Page 53.

[116] Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Program). Ecosys-tems and Human Well-Being. The Millennium EcosystemAssessment series. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2005.Page 12

[117] Victor Flores Olea. “Editoriales - El Universal - 10 deabril 2006 : Operacion Condor”. El Universal (in Span-ish). Mexico. Retrieved 2009-03-24.

[118] history.ox.ac.uk

9 External linksGeneral

• Vistorica - Timelines of European modern history

• Journal of Contemporary History. SAGE Publica-tions. ISSN 1461-7250 (Print ISSN 0022-0094)

• Contemporary History Institute (CHI). ohiou.edu(ed., Analyzes the contemporary period in worldaffairs—the period from World War II to thepresent—from an interdisciplinary historical per-spective.)

• China and Europe, 1500–2000 and Beyond: Whatis Modern?. Columbia University

Videos

• The French Revolution: Crash Course World His-tory #29 - YouTube

• Haitian Revolutions: Crash Course World History#30 - YouTube

• Latin American Revolutions: Crash Course WorldHistory #31 - YouTube

• Coal, Steam, and The Industrial Revolution: CrashCourse World History #32 - YouTube

• Capitalism and Socialism: Crash CourseWorld His-tory #33 - YouTube

• Samurai, Daimyo, Matthew Perry, and Nationalism:Crash Course World History #34 - YouTube

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• Archdukes, Cynicism, and World War I: CrashCourse World History #36 - YouTube

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• Decolonization and Nationalism Triumphant: CrashCourse World History #40 - YouTube

29

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