Modern history, or the
modern
era, describes the historical
timeframe after the
Middle
Ages. Modern history can be further broken down into the
early modern period and
the
late modern period.
Contemporary history
describes the span of historic events that are immediately relevant
to the present time.
The beginning of the modern era started approximately in the
1500s.
In England the modern period is often dated
to the start of the Tudor period with
the victory of Henry VII over
Richard III at the Battle of
Bosworth
in 1485. Many major events caused the Western world to
change around turn of the 16th century,
starting with the Fall of
Constantinople in 1453, the fall of Muslim Spain
and discovery of the Americas in 1492, and Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation in
1517. The span of
early
modern European history generally begins from the turn of the
15th century, through the
Age of
Reason and
Age of
Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, until the
beginning of the
Industrial
Revolution in the late 18th century.
The study of modern history
Source text
The fundamental difficulty of studying modern history is the fact
that a plethora of it has been documented up to the present day. It
is imperative to consider the reliability of the information
obtained from these records.
Terminology and usage
Pre-Modern
In a historical context,
Pre-Modern is the period in
Western civilization that came after
Ancient history and before
Modernity. It is usually recognized to have begun
in the mid-1400s, marked by the invention of the
printing press and the introduction of
movable type in Europe. Pre-Modern
ideas are thought to have begun in the
Dark
Ages around
500 AD.
In the Pre-Modern era, a person's sense of self and purpose was
expressed via a
faith in some form of
deity, be that in a single
god or
in many
gods.
Religious officials, who often held
positions of power, were the spiritual intermediaries to the common
person. It was only through these intermediaries that the general
masses had access to the
divine.
Tradition was seen as
sacred
and unchanging and the
social order was
strictly enforced.
Modern
In contrast to the pre-modern era, Western civilization made a
gradual transition from
premodernity to
modernity when
scientific methods were developed
which led many to believe that the use of science would lead to all
knowledge, thus throwing back the shroud of
myth under which pre-moderns lived.
Truth was available to be discovered by
empirical observation, and that the
world's problems could be solved by applying the appropriate
methods and apparatus to the issues.
The term "modern" was coined shortly before 1585 to describe the
beginning of a new era. The
European Renaissance (about 1420–1630) is an important
transition period beginning between the
Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times,
which started in Italy.
The term "Early Modern" was introduced in the English language in
the 1930s. to distinguish the time between what we call Middle Ages
and time of the late Enlightenment (1800) (when the meaning of the
term Modern Ages was developing its contemporary form). It is
important to note that these terms stem from European History; in
usage in other parts of the world, such as in China, India, and
Islam, the terms are applied in a very different way, but often in
the context with their contact with European culture in the
Age of Discoveries.
Postmodern and contemporary
"
Postmodernism", coined 1949, on the
other hand, would describe rather a movement in
art than a period of history, and is usually applied to
arts, but not to any events of the very recent history. This
changed, when
postmodernity was coined
to describe the major changes in the 1950s and 1960s in economy,
society, culture, and philosophy. Sometimes distinct from the
modern periods themselves, the terms "
modernity" and "
modernism" refer to a new way of thinking,
distinct from medieval thinking. "
Contemporary" is applied to more recent
event because it means "belonging to the same period" and
"current".
Modern era
Significant developments
The modern period has been a period of significant development in
the fields of
science,
politics,
warfare, and
technology. It has also been an
age of discovery and
globalization. During this time that the
European powers and later
their colonies, began a political, economic, and cultural
colonization of the rest of the world.
By the late 19th and early 20th century,
modernist art,
politics,
science and
culture has come to dominate not only
Western Europe and
North America, but almost every civilized area
on the globe, including movements thought of as opposed to the west
and globalization. The modern era is closely associated with the
development of
individualism,
capitalism,
urbanization and a belief in the positive
possibilities of technological and political
progress.
The brutal wars and other problems of this era, many of which come
from the effects of rapid change, and the connected loss of
strength of traditional religious and ethical norms, have led to
many reactions against modern development. Optimism and belief in
constant progress has been most recently criticized by
postmodernism while the dominance of Western
Europe and North America over other continents has been criticized
by
postcolonial theory.
Modern as post-medieval
One common use of the term is to describe the condition of Western
history since the mid-1400s, or roughly the European development of
moveable type and the
printing press. In this context the "modern"
society is said to develop over many periods, and to be influenced
by important events which represent breaks in the continuity.
The "Early modern period"
The modern era includes the early period, sometimes called the
early modern period, which
lasted from c. AD 1500 to around c. AD 1800 (most often
1815). Particular facets of early modernity include:
Important events in the development of early modernity period
include:
The "Late modern period"
Modern Age
characteristics
The concept of the modern world as distinct from an ancient or
medieval world rests on a sense that the modern world is not just
another era in history,
but rather the result of a new type of change. This is usually
conceived of as progress driven by deliberate human efforts to
better their situation.
Advances in all areas of human activity—politics, industry,
society, economics,
commerce, transport, communication, mechanization, automation, science,
medicine, technology, and culture—appear to have transformed an Old
World into the Modern or New World. In each
case, the identification of the old Revolutionary change can be
used to demarcate the old and old-fashioned from the modern.
Portions of the Modern world altered its relationship with the
Biblical value
system, revalued the monarchical
government system, and abolished the feudal economic system, with new democratic and liberal
ideas in the areas of politics, science, psychology,
sociology, and economics. |
This combination of epoch events totally changed thinking and
thought in the late modern period, and so their dates serve as well
as any to separate the old from the new modes. Particular ways to
categorize late modernity include:
As an
Age of Revolutions dawned,
beginning with those revolts in
America and
France, political changes were then pushed
forward in other countries partly as a result of upheavals of the
Napoleonic Wars and their impact on
thought and thinking, from concepts from nationalism to organizing
armies. The early period ended in a time of political and economic
change as a result of the
Industrial Revolution, the
American Revolution, the first
French Revolution; other factors included
the redrawing of the map of Europe by the
Final Act of
the
Congress of Vienna and the
peace established by
Second
Treaty of Paris which ended the
Napoleonic Wars. The
Modernism worldview's emergence and the
industrialization of many nations was initiated with the
industrialization of Britain. Particular facets of the late
modernity period include:
Other important events in the development of the late modern period
include:
Our most recent era Modern Times begins with the end of these
revolutions in the 19th century, and includes the World Wars era
(encompassing
World War I and
World War II) and the emergence of
socialist countries that lead to the
Cold War. The
contemporary era follows
shortly afterward with the explosion of research and increase of
knowledge known as the
Information
Age in the latter
20th century and
21st century. Today's
Postmodern era is seen in widespread
Digitality.
Modern events
Some events, though born out of context not entirely new, show a
new way of perceiving the world. The concept of modernity
interprets the general meaning of these events and seeks
explanations for major developments. Historians analyze the events
taking place in Modern Times, since the
Middle Ages between the
present and
ancient
times.
Early modern period
The early modern period is a term used by historians to refer to
the period from approximately 1500 AD to 1800 AD. follows the Late
Middle Ages period, and is marked by the first European colonies,
the rise of strong centralized governments, and the beginnings of
recognizable nation states that are the direct antecedents of
today's states.
In Africa and the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim expansion took place
in North and East Africa. In West Africa, various native nations
existed. The Indian Empires and civilizations of Southeast Asia
were a vital link in the spice trade. On the Indian subcontinent,
the Great Mughal Empire existed. The archipelagic empires, the
Sultanate of Malacca and later the Sultanate of Johor, controlled
the southern areas.
Concerning the Asian dynasties and politics, various Chinese
dynasties and Japanese shogunates controlled the Asian sphere. In
Japan, the Edo period from 1600 to 1868 is also sometimes referred
to as the early modern period. And in Korea, from the rising of
Joseon Dynasty to the enthronement of King Gojong is referred to as
the early modern period. In the Americas, Native Americans had
built a large and varied civilization, including the Aztec Empire
and alliance, the Inca civilization, the Mayan Empire and cities,
and the Chibcha Confederation. In the west, the European kingdoms
and movements were in a movement of reformation and
expansion.
Later religious trends of the period saw the end of the expansion
of Muslims and the Muslim world. Christians and Christendom saw the
end of the Crusades and end of religious unity under the Roman
Catholic Church. It was during this time that the Inquisitions and
Protestant reformations took place.
During the early modern period, an age of discovery and trade was
undertaken by the European nations. European powers went on a
colonial expansion and took possession throughout the world. There
was a conquest of the Americas and exploitation of its resources.
Various European powers set up colonies in North America and Latin
America.
Toward the end of the early period, Europe was dominated by the
evolving system of mercantile capitalism in its trade and the New
Economy. European states and politics had the characteristic of
Absolutism. The French power and English revolutions dominated the
political scene. There eventually evolved an international balance
of power that held sway a great conflagration till years
later.
The end date of the early modern period is usually associated with
the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in about 1750.
Another significant date is 1789, the beginning of the French
Revolution, which drastically transformed the state of European
politics and ushered in the Prince Edward Era and modern
Europe.
Western transformations
Reason and Enlightenment
Traditionally, the European intellectual transformation of and
after the Renaissance bridged the Middle Ages and the Modern era.
The
Age of Reason in the Western world
is generally regarded as being the start of
modern philosophy, and a departure from
the medieval approach, especially Scholasticism. Early 17th century
philosophy is often called the Age of Rationalism and is considered
to succeed Renaissance philosophy and precede the Age of
Enlightenment, but some consider it as the earliest part of the
Enlightenment era in philosophy, extending that era to two
centuries. The 18th century saw the beginning of
secularization in Europe, rising to
notability in the wake of the
French
Revolution.
The
Age of Enlightenment is a
term used to describe a time in
Western philosophy and cultural life
centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated
as the primary source and legitimacy for authority. Developing more
or less simultaneously in many parts of Europe and America.
Developing during the Enlightenment era,
Renaissance humanism was an
intellectual movement spread across Europe. The basic training of
the humanist was to speak well and write (typically, in the form of
a letter). The term
umanista comes from the latter part of
the 15th century. The people were associated with the
studia humanitatis, a novel
curriculum that was competing with the
quadrivium and
scholastic logic.
Renaissance humanism took a close study of the Latin and Greek
classical texts, and was antagonistic to the values of
scholasticism with its emphasis on the
accumulated commentaries; and humanists were involved in the
sciences, philosophies, arts and poetry of classical antiquity.
They self-consciously imitated
classical
Latin and deprecated the use of
medieval Latin. By analogy with the perceived
decline of Latin, they applied the principle of
ad fontes, or back to the sources, across
broad areas of learning.
The
quarrel of
the Ancients and the Moderns was a
literary and artistic quarrel that heated up in
the early 1690s and shook the
Académie française. It opposed
two sides, the Ancients (
Anciens) who constrain choice of
subjects to those drawn from the literature of
Antiquity and the Moderns
(
Modernes), who supported the merits of the authors of the
century of
Louis XIV.
Fontenelle quickly followed
with his
Digression sur les anciens et les modernes
(1688), in which he took the Modern side, pressing the argument
that modern scholarship allowed modern man to surpass the ancients
in knowledge.
Scientific Revolution
The
Scientific Revolution was
a period when European ideas in
classical physics,
astronomy,
biology,
human anatomy,
chemistry, and other
classical sciences were rejected and led
to doctrines supplanting those that had prevailed from
Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages which would
lead to a transition to
modern
science. This period saw a fundamental transformation in
scientific ideas across
physics,
astronomy, and
biology, in
institutions supporting
scientific investigation, and in
the more
widely held picture of the
universe. Individuals started to question all manners of things
and it was this questioning that led to the Scientific Revolution,
which in turn formed the foundations of contemporary sciences and
the establishment of several modern scientific fields.
American wars and revolution
The
French and Indian Wars
were a series of conflicts in North America that represented the
actions there that accompanied the European dynastic wars. In
Quebec, the wars are generally referred to as the Intercolonial
Wars. While some conflicts involved Spanish and Dutch forces, all
pitted Great Britain, its colonies and American Indian allies on
one side and France, its colonies and Indian allies on the
other.
The expanding French and British colonies were contending for
control of the western, or interior, territories. Whenever the
European countries went to war, there were actions within and by
these colonies although the dates of the conflict did not
necessarily exactly coincide with those of the larger
conflicts.
Beginning in the Age of Revolution, the
American Revolution and the ensuing
political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century saw the
Thirteen Colonies of North America overthrow the governance of the
Parliament of Great Britain, and then reject the British monarchy
itself to become the sovereign United States of America. In this
period the colonies first rejected the authority of the Parliament
to govern them without representation, and formed self-governing
independent states. The Second Continental Congress then joined
together against the British to defend that self-governance in the
armed conflict from 1775 to 1783 known as the American
Revolutionary War (also called American War of Independence).
The American Revolution begun with fighting at Lexington and
Concord. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of
Independence, which proclaimed their independence from Great
Britain and their formation of a cooperative union. In June, 1776,
Benjamin Franklin was appointed a
member of the Committee of Five that drafted the
Declaration of Independence.
Although he was temporarily disabled by gout and unable to attend
most meetings of the Committee, Franklin made several small changes
to the draft sent to him by
Thomas
Jefferson.
The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the
American Revolutionary War, the
first successful colonial war of independence. While the states had
already rejected the governance of Parliament, through the
Declaration the new United States now rejected the legitimacy of
the monarchy to demand allegiance. The war raged for seven years,
with effective American victory, followed by formal British
abandonment of any claims to the United States with the Treaty of
Paris.
The
Philadelphia Convention set
up the current United
States
; the United
States Constitution ratification the following year made the
states part of a single republic with a strong central
government. The
Bill of
Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing
many fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratified in
1791.
The French Revolutions
Toward the middle and latter stages of the Age of Revolution, the
French political and social
revolutions and radical change saw the French governmental
structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges
for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy transform, change to forms
based on Enlightenment principles of citizenship and inalienable
rights. The first revolution was the
National Assembly, the second was the
Legislative Assembly, and the
third was the
Directory.
The changes were accompanied by violent turmoil which included the
trial and execution of the king, vast bloodshed and repression
during the Reign of Terror, and warfare involving every other major
European power. Subsequent events that can be traced to the
Revolution include the Napoleonic Wars, two separate restorations
of the monarchy, and two additional revolutions as modern France
took shape. In the following century, France would be governed at
one point or another as a republic, constitutional monarchy, and
two different empires.
National and Legislative Assembly
During the French Revolution, the
National Assembly,
which existed from June 17 to July 9 of 1789, was a transitional
body between the Estates-General and the National Constituent
Assembly.
The
Legislative
Assembly was the legislature of France from October 1, 1791 to
September 1792. It provided the focus of political debate and
revolutionary law-making between the periods of the National
Constituent Assembly and of the National Convention.
The Directory and Napoleonic Era
The
Executive Directory was a body
of five Directors that held executive power in France following the
Convention and preceding the Consulate. The period of this regime
(2 November 1795 until 10 November 1799), commonly known as the
Directory (or Directoire) era, constitutes the second to last stage
of the French Revolution.
The
Napoleonic Era is a period in the
History of France and Europe. It
is generally classified as the fourth stage of the French
Revolution.
The Napoleonic Era begins roughly with
Napoleon's coup d'état,
overthrowing the Directory and ends at the Hundred Days and his defeat at Waterloo
(November 9 1799 – June 28 1815). The
congress of Vienna soon set out to restore Europe to pre-French
revolution days.
Italian unification
Italian unification was the political
and social movement that annexed different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of
Italy
in the 19th century. There is a lack of
consensus on the exact dates for the beginning and the end of this
period, but many scholars agree that the process began with the end
of
Napoleonic rule and the
Congress of Vienna in 1815, and
approximately ended with the
Franco-Prussian War in 1871, though the
last
città irredente did
not join the
Kingdom of Italy until
after
World War I.
Industrial revolutions
The date of the
Industrial
Revolution is not exact.
Eric
Hobsbawm held that it 'broke out' in the 1780s and wasn't fully
felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while
T.S. Ashton held that
it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830 (in effect the reigns of
George III, The
Regency, and
George IV). The great
changes of centuries before the 19th were more connected with
ideas, religion or military conquest, and technological advance had
only made small changes in the material wealth of ordinary
people.
The first Industrial Revolution merged into the
Second Industrial Revolution
around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained
momentum with the development of steam-powered
ships and railways, and later in the nineteenth century
with the
internal combustion
engine and
electric power
generation. The Second Industrial Revolution was a phase of the
Industrial Revolution; sometimes labeled as the separate Technical
Revolution. From a technological and a social point of view there
is no clean break between the two. Major innovations during the
period occurred in the chemical, electrical, petroleum, and steel
industries. Specific advancements included the introduction of oil
fired steam turbine and internal combustion driven steel ships, the
development of the airplane, the practical commercialization of the
automobile, mass production of consumer goods, the perfection of
canning, mechanical refrigeration and other food preservation
techniques, and the invention of the telephone.
Industrialization
Industrialization is the process
of social and economic change whereby a human group is transformed
from a pre-industrial society into an industrial one. It is a
subdivision of a more general
modernization process, where
social change and
economic development are closely
related with
technological innovation,
particularly with the development of large-scale energy and
metallurgy production. It is the extensive organization of an
economy for the purpose of manufacturing. Industrialization also
introduces a form of philosophical change, where people obtain a
different attitude towards their
perception of
nature.
Revolution in manufacture and power
An
economy based on
manual labour was replaced by one dominated by
industry and the
manufacture of
machinery. It began with the mechanization
of the
textile industries and the
development of
iron-making techniques, and
trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of
canals, improved
roads, and then
railways.
The introduction of
steam power
(fuelled primarily by
coal) and powered
machinery (mainly in
textile
manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in production
capacity. The development of all-metal
machine tools in the first two decades of the
19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production
machines for manufacturing in other industries.
The modern
petroleum industry started in
1846 with the discovery of the process of refining kerosene from coal by Nova Scotian
Abraham Pineo
Gesner. Ignacy
Łukasiewicz improved Gesner's method to develop a means of
refining kerosene from the more readily available "rock oil"
("petr-oleum") seeps in 1852 and the first rock
oil mine was built in Bóbrka, near
Krosno
in Galicia
in the following year. In 1854, Benjamin Silliman, a science professor at
Yale
University
in New
Haven
, was the first to fractionate petroleum by
distillation. These discoveries rapidly spread around the
world.
Notable Engineers
Engineering achievements of the revolution ranged from
electrification to developments in materials science. The
advancements made a great contribution to the quality of life. In
the first revolution,
Lewis Paul was the
original inventor of roller spinning, the basis of the water frame
for spinning cotton in a cotton mill.
Matthew Boulton and
James Watt's improvements to the steam engine
were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial
Revolution in both the Kingdom of Great Britain and the
world.
In the latter part of the second revolution,
Thomas Alva Edison developed many devices
that greatly influenced life around the world and is often credited
with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. In
1882, Edison switched on the world's first large-scale
electrical supply network that
provided 110 volts direct current to fifty-nine customers in lower
Manhattan. Also toward the end of the second industrial revolution,
Nikola Tesla made many contributions in
the field of
electricity and
magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Much of Tesla's early work in electrical engineering and
many of his discoveries were of importance. Tesla's patents and
theoretical work formed the basis of modern
alternating current electric
power systems, including the
polyphase systems power distribution and the
alternating current motor, with
which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. In 1887,
Tesla filed a number of patents related to a competing form of
power distribution known as alternating current. In the following
years a bitter rivalry between Tesla and Edison, known as the
"
War of Currents", took place over
the preferred method of distribution. After Tesla's demonstration
of
wireless communication
(
radio) in 1894 and after being the victor in
the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as one of the
greatest electrical engineers who worked in America.
Social effects and classes
The
Industrial Revolutions were major technological, socioeconomic, and cultural changes in late 18th and early 19th century
that began in Britain
and spread
throughout the world. The effects spread throughout
Western Europe and
North America during the 19th century,
eventually affecting the majority of the world. The impact of this
change on
society was enormous and is often
compared to the
Neolithic
revolution, when mankind developed
agriculture and gave up its
nomadic lifestyle.It has been argued that
GDP per capita was much more stable
and progressed at a much slower rate until the industrial
revolution and the emergence of the modern
capitalist economy, and that it has since
increased rapidly in capitalist countries.
Mid-19th century European Revolts
The
European Revolutions of
1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations or the
Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout
the European continent. Described by some historians as a
revolutionary wave, the period of unrest began in France and then,
further propelled by the French Revolution of 1848, soon spread to
the rest of Europe. Although most of the revolutions were quickly
put down, there was a significant amount of violence in many areas,
with tens of thousands of people tortured and killed. While the
immediate political effects of the revolutions were reversed, the
long-term reverberations of the events were far-reaching.
Industrial age reformism
Industrial age
reform movements
began the gradual change of society rather with episodes of rapid
fundamental changes. The reformists' ideas were often grounded in
liberalism, although they also possessed aspects of utopian,
socialist or religious concepts. The Radical movement campaigned
for electoral reform, a reform of the Poor Laws, free trade,
educational reform, postal reform, prison reform, and public
sanitation.
Following the Enlightenment's ideas, the reformers looked to the
Scientific Revolution and industrial progress to solve the social
problems which arose with the Industrial Revolution. Newton's
natural philosophy combined a mathematics of axiomatic proof with
the mechanics of physical observation, yielding a coherent system
of verifiable predictions and replacing a previous reliance on
revelation and inspired truth. Applied to public life, this
approach yielded several successful campaigns for changes in social
policy.
European Hegemony and the 19th century
Historians sometimes define the nineteenth century
historical era stretching from 1815
(the
Congress of Vienna) to 1914
(the outbreak of the
First World War);
alternatively,
Eric Hobsbawm defined
the
"Long Nineteenth Century"
as spanning the years 1789 to 1914. During this time, the fall of
the
Spanish Armada enabled the rise
of the
British Empire.
Imperialism and empires
During the 19th century, the
Spanish,
Portuguese, and
Ottoman empires began to crumble and the
Holy Roman and
Mughal empires ceased. Following the
Napoleonic Wars, the
British Empire became the world's leading
power, controlling one quarter of the World's population and one
third of the land area. It enforced a
Pax
Britannica, encouraged trade, and battled rampant piracy.
Electricity, steel, and petroleum enabled
Germany
to become great
international power that raced to
create empires of its own. The Meiji Restoration was a chain of events
that led to enormous changes in Japan's political and social
structure that was taking a firm hold at the beginning of the
Meiji Era which coincided the opening of
Japan by the arrival of the Black Ships
of Commodore Matthew Perry and made Imperial
Japan
a great power.
However,
Russia
and Qing Dynasty
China failed to keep pace with the other world
powers which led to massive social unrest in both empires.
The Qing Dynasty's military power weakened during the 1800s, and
faced with international pressure, massive
rebellions and defeats in
wars,
the dynasty declined after the mid-19th century.
British Victorian era

National flag of the United
Kingdom.
The
Victorian era of the United
Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 to
January 1901. This was a long period of prosperity for the British
people, as profits gained from the overseas British Empire, as well
as from industrial improvements at home, allowed a large, educated
middle class to develop. Some scholars would extend the beginning
of the period—as defined by a variety of sensibilities and
political games that have come to be associated with the
Victorians—back five years to the passage of the Reform Act
1832.

The British Empire in 1897, marked in
the traditional colour for imperial British dominions on maps
Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial
century" by some historians, around of territory and roughly 400
million people were added to the British Empire. Victory over
Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival,
other than Russia in central Asia. Unchallenged at sea, Britain
adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later
known as the
Pax Britannica,
and a foreign policy of "
splendid
isolation".
Alongside
the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's
dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively
controlled the economies of many nominally independent countries,
such as China
, Argentina
and Siam
, which has
been characterised by some historians as "informal empire". Of note during this
time was the
Anglo-Zulu War, which
was fought in 1879 between the British Empire and the
Zulu Empire.
British imperial strength was underpinned by the
steamship and the
telegraph, new technologies invented in the
second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend
the Empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a
network of telegraph cables, the so-called
All Red Line.
French governments and conflicts
The
Bourbon Restoration followed
the ousting of Napoleon I of France in 1814. The Allies restored
the Bourbon Dynasty to the French throne. The ensuing period is
called the Restoration, following French usage, and is
characterized by a sharp conservative reaction and the
re-establishment of the Roman Catholic Church as a power in French
politics. The
July Monarchy was a
period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King
Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution (or Three Glorious
Days) of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848. The
Second Empire was the Imperial
Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the
Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.
The
Franco-Prussian War was a
conflict between France and Prussia, while Prussia was backed up by
the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the
South German states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The complete
Prussian and German victory brought about the final unification of
Germany under King Wilhelm I of Prussia. It also marked the
downfall of Napoleon III and the end of the Second French Empire,
which was replaced by the Third Republic. As part of the
settlement, almost all of the territory of Alsace-Lorraine was
taken by Prussia to become a part of Germany, which it would retain
until the end of World War I.
The
French Third Republic was
the republican government of France between the end of the Second
French Empire following the defeat of Louis-Napoléon in the
Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and the Vichy Regime after the invasion
of France by the German Third Reich in 1940. The Third Republic
endured seventy years, making it the most long-lasting regime in
France since the collapse of the Ancien Régime in the French
Revolution of 1789.
Slavery and abolition
Slavery was greatly reduced around the world
in the 19th century. Following a successful
slave revolt in Haiti, Britain forced the
Barbary pirates to halt their
practice of kidnapping and enslaving Europeans,
banned slavery throughout its domain,
and charged its navy with ending the global
slave trade. Slavery was then abolished in
Russia,
America, and
Brazil (see
Abolitionism).
African colonization
Following the abolition of the slave trade, and propelled by
economic exploitation, the
Scramble
for Africa was initiated formally at the
Berlin West Africa Conference
in 1884–1885. All the major European powers laid claim to the areas
of
Africa where they could exhibit a sphere
of influence over the area. These claims did not have to have any
substantial land holdings or treaties to be legitimate.
The
French
gained major
ground in West Africa, the British
in East Africa, and the
Portuguese
and Spanish
at various points throughout the continent, while
King Leopold was able to retain his
personal fiefdom, Congo.
Meiji Japan
Around the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, the
Meiji era was a marked by the reign of the
Meiji Emperor. During this time, Japan
started its modernization and rose to world power status. This
era name means "Enlightened Rule".
It wasn’t until the beginning of the Meiji Era that the Japanese
government began taking modernization seriously. Japan expanded its
military production base by opening arsenals in various locations.
The hyobusho (war office) was replaced with a War Department and a
Naval Department. The
samurai class suffered
great disappointment the following years.
Laws were instituted that required every able bodied male Japanese
citizen, regardless of class, to serve a mandatory term of three
years with the first reserves and two additional years with the
second reserves. This action, the deathblow for the samurai
warriors and their
daimyo feudal lords,
initially met resistance from both the peasant and warrior alike.
The peasant class interpreted the term for military service,
ketsu-eki (blood tax) literally, and attempted to avoid service by
any means necessary. The Japanese government began modelling their
ground forces after the French military. The French government
contributed greatly to the training of Japanese officers. Many were
employed at the military academy in Kyoto, and many more still were
feverishly translating French field manuals for use in the Japanese
ranks.
After the death of the Meiji Emperor, the
Taishō Emperor took the throne, thus
beginning the
Taishō period. A
key foreign observer of the remarkable and rapid changes in
Japanese society in this period was
Ernest Mason Satow.
United States egress
Antebellum Expansion
The
Antebellum Age was the a period
of increasing sectionalism that led up to the American Civil War.
The Antebellum Age was a time of great transition because of the
industrial revolution in America. It also was a time of growth in
slavery in the American South. In a sense, the Antebellum Period is
often considered to have begun with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of
1854, though it is sometimes stipulated to extend back as early as
1812.
"
Manifest Destiny" was the
territorial expansion of the United States from 1812 to 1860.
Manifest Destiny incorporated the belief that the United States was
destined, even divinely ordained, to expand across the North
American continent, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific
Ocean. This era, from the end of the War of 1812 to the beginning
of the American Civil War, has been called the "Age of Manifest
Destiny." During this time, the United States expanded to the
Pacific Ocean—"from sea to shining sea"—largely defining the
borders of the contiguous United States as they are today.
US Civil War and Reconstruction
The
American Civil War, also
known as the War Between the States, was a
civil war in the United States of America. Eleven
Southern slave states declared their
secession from the U.S. and formed the
Confederate States of
America . Led by
Jefferson
Davis, they fought against the
U.S. federal government (the
Union), which was supported by all the free states and the five
border slave
states in the north.
Northern leaders agreed that victory would require more than the
end of fighting. It had to encompass the two
strategies: secession had to be totally repudiated
and all forms of slavery had to be eliminated. They disagreed
sharply on the
military tactics and
political tactics for these goals.
They also disagreed on the degree of federal control, that should
be imposed on the South and the process by which Southern states
should be reintegrated into the Union. The
Reconstruction Era in
United States history existed in the
post-Civil War era in the
entire United States between 1865 and 1877.
The Gilded Age and legacy
The
Gilded Age saw a substantial growth
in population in the United States and extravagant displays of
wealth and excess of America's upper-class during the post-Civil
War and post-Reconstruction era, in the late 19th century. The
wealth polarization derived primarily from industrial and
population expansion. The businessmen of the Second Industrial
Revolution created industrial towns and cities in the Northeast
with new factories, and contributed to the creation of an
ethnically diverse industrial
working
class which produced the wealth owned by rising super-rich
industrialists and
financiers called the "robber barons". An example is the
company of
John D. Rockefeller, who was an important figure
in shaping the new oil industry. Using highly effective tactics and
aggressive 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
communication infrastructure, the
corporation became the dominant form of
business organization and a
managerial revolution transformed
business operation. In 1890,
Congress passed the
Sherman Antitrust Act — the source of
all American anti-monopoly laws. The law forbade every contract,
scheme, deal, or conspiracy to restrain trade, though the phrase
"restraint of trade" remained subjective. By the beginning of the
twentieth century, per capita income and
industrial production in the United
States exceeded that of any other country except Britain. Long
hours and hazardous working conditions led many workers to attempt
to form
labor unions despite strong
opposition from industrialists and the courts. But the courts did
protect the marketplace, declaring the Standard Oil group to be an
"unreasonable"
monopoly under the Sherman
Antitrust Act in 1911. It ordered Standard to break up into 34
independent companies with different boards of directors.
Transitions and Enlightenment negation
Around the turn of the 20th century, Enlightenment philosophy was
challenged in various quarters. After the use of
classical physics since the end of the
scientific revolution,
modern
physics arose with the advent of quantum physics;
substituting
mathematics
studies for
experimental
studies and examining
equations to
build a
theoretical structure.
The
old quantum theory was a
collection of results which predate modern
quantum mechanics, but were never complete
or self-consistent. The collection of
heuristic prescriptions for quantum mechanics were
the first corrections to
classical
mechanics. In addition, the various number of
aether theories in classical physics which
supposed a "
fifth element", such
as the
Luminiferous aether, was
nullified by the
Michelson-Morley experiment in
an attempt to detect the motion of earth through the aether. In
biology,
Darwinism gained acceptance and
exposed
adaptation in the theory of
natural selection. The fields of
geology,
astronomy and
psychology also made strides and gained
new insights. In
medicine, there
were advances of
medical theory and
treatment.
Another philosophical trend was Chinese philosophy began to
integrate concepts of Western philosophy, as steps toward
modernization. By the time of the
Xinhai Revolution in 1911, there were many
calls, such as the
May Fourth
Movement, to completely abolish the old imperial institutions
and practices of China. There have been attempts to incorporate
democracy,
republicanism, and
industrialism into Chinese philosophy, notably
by
Sun Yat-Sen (
Sūn yì xiān, in
one Mandarin form of the name) at the beginning of the 20th
century.
Mao Zedong (
Máo zé
dōng) added
Marxism,
Stalinism, and other
communist thought. When the
Communist Party of China took over power, previous schools of
thought, excepting notably
Legalism, were denounced as
backward, and later even purged during the
Cultural Revolution.
Developed from earlier
secular traditions,
modern
Humanism ethical
philosophies affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based
on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to
universal human qualities, particularly
rationality, without resorting to the
supernatural or alleged divine authority from religious texts. For
liberal humanists such as
Rousseau or
Kant, the universal law of
reason guided the way towards total emancipation from
any kind of tyranny. These ideas were challenged. The
young Karl Marx criticized the project of
political emancipation (embodied in the form of
human rights), asserting it to be symptomatic
of the very dehumanization it is supposed to oppose. For
Friedrich Nietzsche, humanism was
nothing more than a secular version of
theism. In his
Genealogy of Morals, he argues that
human rights exist as a means for the weak to collectively
constrain the strong. On this view, such rights do not facilitate
emancipation of life, but rather deny it. In the twentieth-century,
the notion that human beings are rationally autonomous was
challenged by the concept that humans were driven by unconscious
irrational desires.
Notable persons
Sigmund Freud is renowned for his
redefinition of
sexual desire as the
primary motivational energy of human life, as well as his
therapeutic techniques, including the use of
free association, his
theory of transference in the therapeutic
relationship, and the
interpretation of dreams as sources
of insight into
unconscious
desires.
Albert Einstein is known for his
theories of
special relativity
and
general relativity. He also
made important contributions to
statistical mechanics, especially his
mathematical treatment of
Brownian
motion, his resolution of the
paradox
of specific heats, and his connection of
fluctuations and
dissipation. Despite his reservations about its interpretation,
Einstein also made contributions to quantum mechanics and,
indirectly,
quantum field
theory, primarily through his theoretical studies of the
photon.
Social Darwinism
At the end of the 19th century,
Social
Darwinism was promoted and included the various ideologies
based on a concept that competition among all individuals, groups,
nations, or ideas was the framework of social evolution in human
societies. In this view, society's advancement was dependent on the
"
survival of the fittest",
the term was in fact coined by
Herbert
Spencer and referred to in "
The
Gospel of Wealth" theory written by
Andrew Carnegie.
Marxism's society

The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx summarized his approach to
history and politics in the opening line of the first chapter of
The Communist Manifesto
(1848). He wrote:
- The history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles.
The
Manifesto went through a number of editions from 1872
to 1890; notable new prefaces were written by Marx and Engels for
the 1872 German edition, the 1882 Russian edition, the 1883 German
edition, and the 1888 English edition. In general,
Marxism identified five (and one transitional)
successive stages of development in Western Europe.
- Primitive
Communism: as seen in cooperative tribal societies.
- Slave Society: which develops
when the tribe becomes a city-state. Aristocracy is born.
- Feudalism: aristocracy is the
ruling class. Merchants develop into capitalists.
- Capitalism: capitalists are
the ruling class, who create and employ the true working
class.
- Dictatorship of
the proletariat: workers gain class consciousness,
overthrow the capitalists and
take control over the state.
- Communism: a classless and
stateless society.
European decline and the 20th century
Major
political developments saw the former British Empire lose most of
its remaining political power over commonwealth countries, most
notably by ways of the dividing of the British crown into several
sovereignties by the Statute
of Westminster, the patriation of
constitutions by the Canada Act 1982
and the Australia Act 1986, and
by the independence of countries like India
, Pakistan
, South Africa, and
Ireland
. Other events include the
Israeli–Palestinian
conflict, two world wars, and the
Cold
War.
World Wars era
Turn of the 20th century
Begun at
the Battle of
Port Arthur
, the Russo-Japanese
War establishes the Empire of Japan
as a world power. The Russians were in
constant pursuit of a warm water
port on the Pacific
Ocean
, for their navy as well as for maritime
trade. The Manchurian Campaign of the Russian
Empire
was fought against the Japanese over Manchuria and Korea
.
The major
theatres of operations were Southern Manchuria, specifically the
area around the Liaodong Peninsula
and Mukden
, and the
seas around Korea, Japan, and the Yellow Sea
. The resulting campaigns, in which the
fledgling Japanese military consistently attained victory over the
Russian forces arrayed against them, were unexpected by world
observers. These victories, as time transpired, would dramatically
transform the distribution of power in East Asia, resulting in a
reassessment of Japan's recent entry onto the world stage. The
embarrassing string of defeats increased Russian popular
dissatisfaction with the inefficient and corrupt Tsarist
government.
The
Russian Revolution of
1905 was a wave of mass political unrest through vast areas of
the Russian
Empire
. Some of it was directed against the
government, while some was undirected. It included
terrorism, worker strikes, peasant unrests, and
military mutinies. It led to the establishment of the limited
constitutional monarchy, the establishment of
State Duma of the Russian
Empire, the
multi-party
system and
Russian
Constitution of 1906.
In China, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown following the
Xinhai Revolution. The
Xinhai
Revolution began with the
Wuchang
Uprising on October 10, 1911 and ended with the abdication of
Emperor Puyi on February 12, 1912.
The
primary parties to the conflict were the Imperial forces of the
Qing
Dynasty
(1644–1911), and the revolutionary forces of the
Chinese Revolutionary Alliance
(Tongmenghui).
Edwardian Britain
The
Edwardian era in the United Kingdom is
the period spanning the reign of King Edward VII up to the
end of the First World War, including the years surrounding the
sinking of the RMS
Titanic
. In
the early years of the period, the
Second Boer War in
South Africa split the country into anti- and
pro-war factions. The imperial policies of the Conservatives
eventually proved unpopular and in the
general election of
1906 the Liberals won a huge landslide.
The Liberal
government was unable to proceed with all of its radical programme
without the support of the House of Lords
, which was largely Conservative. Conflict
between the two Houses of Parliament over the
People's Budget led to a reduction in the
power of the peers in 1910. The
general election
in January that year returned a hung parliament with the
balance of power held by
Labour
and
Irish Nationalist
members.
World War I
The
causes of World War I
included many factors, including the conflicts and antagonisms of
the four decades leading up to the war.
The Triple Entente was the name given to the
loose alignment between the United
Kingdom, France, and
Russia
after the
signing of the Anglo-Russian
Entente in 1907. The alignment of the three powers,
supplemented by various agreements with Japan
, the
United
States
, and Spain, constituted a powerful
counterweight to the Triple
Alliance of Germany
, Austria-Hungary,
and Italy, the
third having concluded an additional secret agreement with France
effectively nullifying her Alliance commitments. Militarism,
alliances, imperialism, and nationalism played major roles in the
conflict. The immediate origins of the war lay in the decisions
taken by statesmen and generals during the
July crisis of 1914, the spark (or casus belli)
for which was the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria.
However, the crisis did not exist in a void; it came after a long
series of diplomatic clashes between the Great Powers over European
and colonial issues in the decade prior to 1914 which had left
tensions high. The diplomatic clashes can be traced to changes in
the balance of power in Europe since 1870.
An example is the
Baghdad Railway which was planned to
connect the Ottoman Empire cities of
Konya
and Bagdad with a line
through modern-day Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The railway
became a source of international disputes during the years
immediately preceding World War I. Although it has been argued that
they were resolved in 1914 before the war began, it has also been
argued that the railroad was a cause of the First World War.
Fundamentally the war was sparked by tensions over territory in the
Balkans. Austria-Hungary competed with
Serbia and Russia for territory and influence in the region and
they pulled the rest of the great powers into the conflict through
their various alliances and treaties. The
Balkan Wars were two wars in South-eastern
Europe in 1912–1913 in the course of which the Balkan League
(Bulgaria, Montenegro, Greece, and Serbia) first captured
Ottoman-held remaining part of Thessaly, Macedonia, Epirus, Albania
and most of Thrace and then fell out over the division of the
spoils, with incorporation of Romania this time.
[[Image:World War 1.gif|thumb||600px|center|Various periods of
World War I; 1914.07.28 (Tsar Nicholas II of Russia 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 German
Christmas truce), 1915.12 (French and German
Christmas truce), 1916.12 (
Battle of
Magdhaba), 1917.12 (British troops take Jerusalem from the
Ottoman Empire), and 1918.11.11 (World War I ends: Germany signs an
armistice agreement with the Allies).
Allies and Central Powers in the First World War
Allied powers and areas
Central powers and colonies or occupied territory
Neutral countries]]
The
First World War began in 1914
and lasted to the final
Armistice in 1918.
The
Allied Powers, led by the
British Empire, France, Russia
until March
1918, Japan
and the
United
States
after 1917, defeated the Central Powers, led by the German Empire
, Austro-Hungarian Empire and the
Ottoman Empire. The war caused
the disintegration of four empires — the Austro-Hungarian, German,
Ottoman, and Russian ones — as well as radical change in the
European and Middle Eastern maps. The Allied powers before 1917 are
sometimes referred to as the
Triple
Entente, and the Central Powers are sometimes referred to as
the
Triple Alliance.
Much of
the fighting in World War I took place along the Western Front, within a system
of opposing manned trenches and fortifications (separated by a
“No man's land”) running from the
North
Sea
to the border of Switzerland
. On the
Eastern Front, the vast eastern
plains and limited rail network prevented a trench warfare
stalemate from developing, although the scale of the conflict was
just as large. Hostilities also occurred on and under the sea and —
for the first time — from the air. More than 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
genocide committed under the cover of
various civil wars and internal conflicts. Notably, more people
died of the worldwide
influenza outbreak
at the end of the war and shortly after than died in the
hostilities. The unsanitary conditions engendered by the war,
severe overcrowding in barracks, wartime propaganda interfering
with public health warnings, and migration of so many soldiers
around the world helped the outbreak become a
pandemic.
Ultimately, World War I created a decisive break with the old
world order that had
emerged after the
Napoleonic Wars,
which was modified by the mid-19th century’s nationalistic
revolutions. The results of World War I would be important factors
in the development of
World War II
approximately 20 years later. More immediate to the time, the
partitioning of
the Ottoman Empire was a political event that redrew the
political boundaries of the Middle East. The huge conglomeration of
territories and peoples formerly ruled by the Sultan of the Ottoman
Empire was divided into several new nations.
The partitioning
brought the creation of the modern Arab
world and the Republic of Turkey
. The League of
Nations granted France mandates over Syria and Lebanon and granted the United
Kingdom mandates over Mesopotamia and Palestine (which was later
divided into two regions: Palestine and
Transjordan
). Parts of the Ottoman Empire on the Arabian Peninsula became parts of what are
today Saudi
Arabia
and Yemen
.
Russian Revolutions and Civil War

National flag of the Soviet
Union.
The
Russian Revolution is the
series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the
Tsarist autocracy and led to the
creation of the Soviet
Union
. Following the abdication of
Nicholas II of Russia, the
Russian Provisional
Government was established.
In October 1917, a red faction revolution occurred
in which the Red Guard, armed
groups of workers and deserting soldiers directed by the Bolshevik
Party, seized control of Saint Petersburg
(then known as Petrograd
) and began an immediate armed takeover of cities
and villages throughout the former Russian Empire
.
Another
action in 1917 that is of note was the armistice signed between
Russia and the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk
. As a condition for peace, the treaty by the
Central Powers conceded huge portions
of the former Russian Empire to Imperial Germany
and the Ottoman Empire, greatly upsetting nationalists and conservative. The Bolsheviks made
peace with the German
Empire
and the Central
Powers, as they had promised the Russian people prior to the
Revolution. Vladimir Lenin's decision has been attributed to
his sponsorship by the foreign office of
Wilhelm II, German Emperor,
offered by the latter in hopes that with a revolution, Russia would
withdraw from
World War I.
This suspicion was
bolstered by the German Foreign Ministry's sponsorship of Lenin's
return to Petrograd
. The
Western
Allies, expressed their dismay at the Bolsheviks, upset at:
- the withdrawal of Russia from the war effort,
- worried about a possible Russo-German alliance, and
- galvanized by the prospect of the Bolsheviks making good their
threats to assume no responsibility for, and so default on,
Imperial Russia's massive foreign
loans.
In addition, there was a concern, shared by many
Central Powers as well, that the socialist
revolutionary ideas would spread to the West. Hence, many of these
countries expressed their support for the Whites, including the
provision of troops and supplies.
Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism
must be "strangled in its cradle".
The
Russian Civil War was a
multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian
Empire
after the Russian provisional
government collapsed and the Soviets under the
domination of the Bolshevik party assumed
power, first in Petrograd
and then in other places. In the wake of the
October Revolution, the old
Russian Imperial Army had been demobilized; the volunteer-based Red
Guard was the Bolsheviks' main military force, augmented by an
armed military component of the
Cheka, the
Bolshevik state security apparatus. There was an instituted
mandatory conscription of the rural peasantry into the Red Army.
Opposition of rural Russians to Red Army conscription units was
overcome by taking hostages and shooting them when necessary in
order to force compliance. Former Tsarist officers were utilized as
"military specialists" (
voenspetsy), sometimes taking
their families hostage in order to ensure loyalty. At the start of
the war, three-fourths of the Red Army officer corps was composed
of former Tsarist officers. By its end, 83% of all Red Army
divisional and corps commanders were ex-Tsarist soldiers.
The principal fighting occurred between the
Bolshevik Red Army and the
forces of the
White Army. Many
foreign armies warred against the Red Army, notably the
Allied Forces,
yet many volunteer foreigners fought in both sides of the Russian
Civil War. Other nationalist and regional political groups also
participated in the war, including the Ukrainian nationalist
Green Army, the Ukrainian anarchist
Black
Army and
Black Guards, and warlords
such as
Ungern von Sternberg.
The most intense fighting took place from 1918 to 1920.
Major
military operations ended on 25 October 1922 when the Red Army
occupied Vladivostok
, previously held by the Provisional Priamur
Government. The last enclave of the White Forces was the
Ayano-Maysky
District
on the Pacific coast. The majority of the
fighting ended in 1920 with the defeat of General Pyotr Wrangel in the Crimea
, but a
notable resistance in certain areas continued until 1923 (e.g.,
Kronstadt Uprising, Tambov
Rebellion
, Basmachi Revolt,
and the final resistance of the White
movement in the Far
East).
The Twenties and the Depression
The
interwar period was the period
between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the
Second World War. This period was marked by turmoil in much of the
world, as Europe struggled to recover from the devastation of the
First World War.
In North America, especially the first half of this period, people
experienced considerable prosperity in the
Roaring Twenties. The social and societal
upheaval known as the Roaring Twenties began in North America and
spread to
Europe in the
aftermath of World War I. The
Roaring Twenties, often called "
The
Jazz Age", saw a exposition of social, artistic, and cultural
dynamism. '
Normalcy' returned to politics,
jazz music blossomed, the
flapper redefined modern womanhood,
Art Deco peaked. The spirit of the Roaring Twenties
was marked by a general feeling of discontinuity associated with
modernity, a break with traditions. Everything seemed to be
feasible through modern technology. New technologies, especially
automobiles,
movies
and
radio proliferated 'modernity' to a large
part of the population. The Twenties saw the general favor of
practicality, in architecture as well as in daily life. The
Twenties was further distinguished by several inventions and
discoveries, extensive industrial growth and the rise in consumer
demand and aspirations, and significant changes in
lifestyle.

Europe between 1920 and 1938.
Europe spent these years rebuilding and coming to terms with the
vast human cost of the conflict. The economy of the United States
became increasingly intertwined with that of Europe.
In Germany, the
Weimar
Republic
gave way
to saw an episodes of political and economic turmoil, which
culminated with the German hyperinflation of 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 keep the European economy afloat as a large
consumer market for American mass produced goods. By the middle of
the decade,
economic
development soared in Europe, and the Roaring Twenties broke
out in Germany, Britain and France, the second half of the decade
becoming known as the "
Golden
Twenties". In France and francophone Canada, they were also
called the "
années folles" ("Crazy Years").
Worldwide prosperity changed dramatically with the onset of the
Great Depression in 1929. The
Wall Street Crash of 1929
served to punctuate the end of the previous era, as
The Great
Depression set in. The
Great Depression was a
worldwide economic
downturn starting in
most places in 1929 and ending at different times in the 1930s or
early 1940s for different countries. It was the largest and most
important
economic depression
in the 20th century, and is used in the 21st century as an example
of how far the world's economy can fall.
The depression had devastating effects in virtually every country,
rich or poor. International trade plunged by half to two-thirds, as
did personal income, tax revenue, prices and profits.
Cities all around the world
were hit hard, especially those dependent on
heavy industry. Construction was virtually
halted in many countries.
Farming and rural
areas suffered as crop prices fell by roughly 60 percent. Facing
plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas
dependent on
primary
sector industries suffered the most.
The Great Depression ended at different times in different
countries with the
effect
lasting into the next era. America's Great Depression ended in
1941 with America's entry into World War II. The majority of
countries set up relief programs, and most underwent some sort of
political upheaval, pushing them to the left or right. In some
world states, the desperate citizens turned toward nationalist
demagogues — the most infamous being
Adolf Hitler — setting the stage for
the next era of war. The convulsion brought on by the worldwide
depression resulted in the rise of
Nazism. In
Asia, Japan became an ever more assertive power, especially with
regards to China.
The League and crises
The interwar period was also marked 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 was meant to
bring stability was the
League of
Nations, which was created after the First World War with the
intention of maintaining world security and peace and encouraging
economic growth between member countries.
The League was
undermined by the bellicosity of Nazi
Germany, Imperial
Japan
, the Soviet
Union
, and Mussolini's
Italy, and by the non-participation of the United States
, leading many to question its effectiveness and
legitimacy.
A series of international crises strained the League to its limits,
the earliest being the
invasion of Manchuria by
Japan and the
Abyssinian crisis of
1935/36 in which Italy invaded
Abyssinia,
one of the only free African nations at that time. The League tried
to enforce economic sanctions upon Italy, but to no avail. The
incident highlighted French and British weakness, exemplified by
their reluctance to alienate Italy and lose her as their ally. The
limited actions taken by the Western powers pushed Mussolini's
Italy towards alliance with Hitler's Germany anyway. The Abyssinian
war showed Hitler how weak the League was and encouraged the
remilitarization of the Rhineland in flagrant disregard of the
Treaty of Versailles. This was the first in a series of provocative
acts culminating in the
invasion of Poland in September
1939 and the beginning of the Second World War.
World War II
The
Second World War was a
global military conflict that
took place in 1939–1945. It was the largest and deadliest war in
history, culminating in the
Holocaust and
ending with 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 September 1, 1939, when
Nazi Germany invaded Poland
, the
Drang nach Osten.
Within
two days the United
Kingdom
and France
declared war
on Germany, even though the fighting was confined to Poland.
Pursuant
to a then-secret provision of its non-aggression Molotov-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
United
Kingdom
, France
, Australia, Canada
, New Zealand
, South Africa, as well
as British Commonwealth
countries which were controlled directly by the UK, such as the
Indian Empire. All of these
countries declared war on Germany in September 1939.
Following the lull in fighting, known as the "
Phoney War", Germany invaded western Europe in
May 1940.
Six weeks later, France, in the mean time
attacked by Italy
as well,
surrendered to Germany, which then tried unsuccessfully to conquer
Britain. On
September 27,
Germany, Italy, and Japan signed a mutual defense agreement, the
Tripartite Pact, and were known as
the
Axis Powers.
Nine months later, on
June 22,
1941, Germany launched a massive invasion of the Soviet
Union, which promptly joined the Allies. Germany was now engaged in
fighting a war on two fronts. This proved to be a mistake by
Germany - Germany had not successfully carried out the invasion of
Britain and the war turned against of the Axis.
On
December 7, 1941,
Japan
attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor
, bringing it too into the war on the Allied
side. China also joined the Allies, as eventually did most
of the rest of the world. China was in turmoil at the time, and
attacked Japanese armies through guerilla-type warfare.
By the
beginning of 1942, the major combatants were aligned as follows:
the British Commonwealth, the United States, and the Soviet Union
were fighting Germany and Italy; and the British Commonwealth,
China, and the United
States
were fighting Japan. From then through
August 1945, battles raged across all of Europe, in the North
Atlantic Ocean
, across North Africa,
throughout Southeast Asia, throughout
China, across the Pacific
Ocean
and in the air over Japan.
Italy surrendered in September 1943 and split in a northern
Germany-occupied
puppet state and in an
Allies-friendly state in the South; Germany surrendered in May
1945. Following the
atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Japan
surrendered, marking the end of the war on
September 2,
1945.
It is possible that around 62 million people
died in the war; estimates vary
greatly. About 60% of all casualties were civilians, who died as a
result of disease, starvation,
genocide (in
particular, the
Holocaust), and aerial
bombing. The former Soviet Union and China suffered the most
casualties. Estimates place deaths in the Soviet Union at around 23
million, while China suffered about 10 million. No country lost a
greater portion of its population than Poland: approximately 5.6
million, or 16%, of its pre-war population of 34.8 million
died.
The Holocaust (which roughly means "burnt whole") was the
deliberate and systematic murder of millions of Jews and other
"unwanted" during World War II by the Nazi regime in Germany.
Several differing views exist regarding whether it was intended to
occur from the war's beginning, or if the plans for it came about
later. Regardless, persecution of Jews extended well before the war
even started, such as in the
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass).
The Nazis used propaganda to great effect to stir up anti-Semitic
feelings within ordinary Germans.
After World War II,
Europe was informally
split into Western and Soviet
spheres of influence.
Western Europe later aligned as North Atlantic Treaty
Organization
(NATO) and Eastern
Europe as the Warsaw Pact.
There was a shift in power from Western Europe and the
British Empire to the two new superpowers,
the United States and the Soviet Union. These two rivals would
later face off in the
Cold War. In Asia,
the defeat of Japan led to its
democratization.
China's civil war continued through and
after the war, resulting eventually in the establishment of the
People's
Republic of China
. The former colonies of the European powers
began their road to independence.
Post-1945 World
The mid-20th century is distinguished from most of human history in
that its most significant changes were directly or indirectly
economic and technological in nature. Economic development was the
force behind vast changes in everyday life, to a degree which was
unprecedented in human history.
Over the course of the 20th century, the world’s per-capita
gross domestic product grew
by a factor of five, much more than all earlier centuries combined
(including the 19th with its Industrial Revolution). Many
economists make the case that this understates the magnitude of
growth, as many of the goods and services consumed at the end of
the century, such as improved medicine (causing world life
expectancy to increase by more than two decades) and communications
technologies, were not available at any price at its beginning.
However, the gulf between the world’s rich and poor grew wider, and
the majority of the global population remained in the poor side of
the divide.
Still, advancing technology and medicine has had a great impact
even in the
Global South. Large-scale
industry and more centralized
media made
brutal dictatorships possible on an unprecedented scale in the
middle of the century, leading to wars that were also
unprecedented. However, the increased communications contributed to
democratization. Technological
developments included the development of
airplanes and
space
exploration,
nuclear
technology, advancement in
genetics,
and the dawning of the
Information
Age.
American Peace

National flag of the United
States.
Pax Americana is an appellation
applied to the historical concept of relative liberal peace in the
Western world, resulting from the preponderance of power enjoyed by
the United States of America starting around the turn of the 20th
century. Although the term finds its primary utility in the latter
half of the 20th Century, it has been used in various places and
eras. Its modern connotations concern the peace established after
the end of World War II in 1945.
Cold War era
The
Cold War began in the mid-1940s and
lasted into the early 1990s. Throughout this period, the conflict
was expressed through military coalitions, espionage, weapons
development, invasions, propaganda, and competitive technological
development. The conflict included costly defense spending, a
massive
conventional and
nuclear arms
race, and numerous
proxy wars; the two
superpowers never fought one another
directly.
The
Soviet
Union
created the Eastern
Bloc of countries that it occupied, annexing some as Soviet Socialist Republics and
maintaining others as satellite states that would later form the
Warsaw Pact. The United States and
various western European countries began a policy of "containment" of communism and forged myriad alliances to this end,
including NATO
.
Several of these western countries also coordinated efforts
regarding the rebuilding of western Europe, including western
Germany, which the Soviets opposed. In other regions of the world,
such as
Latin America and
Southeast Asia, the Soviet Union fostered
communist revolutionary
movements, which the United States and many of its allies opposed
and, in some cases, attempted to "
roll
back". Many countries were prompted to align themselves with
the nations that would later form either NATO or the Warsaw Pact,
though other movements would also emerge.
The Cold War saw periods of both heightened tension and relative
calm. International crises arose, such as the
Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the
Korean War (1950–1953), the
Berlin Crisis of 1961, the
Vietnam War (1959–1975), the
Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the
Soviet war in Afghanistan
(1979–1989) and
NATO exercises in
November 1983. There were also periods of reduced tension as
both sides sought
détente. Direct
military attacks on adversaries were deterred by the potential for
mutual assured
destruction using deliverable
nuclear
weapons. In the Cold Ware era, the
Generation of Love and the rise of
computers changed society in very
different, complex ways, including higher social and local
mobility.
The Cold War drew to a close in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.
The United States under President
Ronald
Reagan increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressure on
the Soviet Union, which was already suffering from
severe economic stagnation. In the
second half of the 1980s, newly appointed Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the
perestroika and
glasnost reforms.
The Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, leaving the United States as the dominant
military power, though Russia
retained
much of the massive Soviet nuclear arsenal.
Space Age

This high-resolution image of the
Hubble Ultra Deep Field includes galaxies of various ages, sizes,
shapes, and colors.
The smallest, reddest galaxies, are some of the most distant
galaxies to have been imaged by an optical telescope
The
Space Age is a period encompassing the
activities related to the
Space Race,
space exploration, space
technology, and the cultural developments influenced by these
events.
The Space Age began with the development of
several technologies that culminated with the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union
. This was the world's first artificial
satellite, orbiting the Earth in 98.1 minutes and weighing in at
83 kg. The launch of Sputnik 1 ushered a new era of political,
scientific and technological achievements that became known as the
Space Age.
The Space Age was characterized by rapid
development of new technology in a close race mostly between the
United
States
and the Soviet Union
. The Space Age reached its peak with the
Apollo program which captured the
imagination of much of the world's population. The landing of
Apollo 11 was an event watched by over 500
million people around the world and is widely recognized as one of
the defining moments of the 20th century. Since then and with the
end of the space race due to the
collapse of the Soviet Union,
public attention has largely moved to other areas.
Contemporary era
In the
Contemporary era, there were
various socio-technological trends, Among the challenges and
problems the modern world faces was climate change. Regarding the
21st century and the late modern world, the Information age and
computers were forefront in use, not completely ubiquitous but
often present in daily life. The development of Eastern powers was
of note, with India and China becoming more powerful. In the
Eurasian theater, the European Union and Russian Federation were
two forces recently developed. A concern for Western world, if not
the whole world, was the late modern form of terrorism and the
warfare that has resulted from the contemporary terrorist
acts.
Modern History education and schools
The
humanities are academic disciplines
which study the
human condition,
using methods that are primarily
analytic,
critical, or
speculative, as distinguished from the mainly
empirical approaches of the
natural and
social sciences. Although many of the
subjects of modern history coincide with that of standard history,
the subject is taught independently by various systems of education
in the world.
British education
A-level is the lowest tier of education at which
modern history is taught in the UK
, and
students can also choose the subject at University. The material covered includes
from the mid-18th century, to analysis of the
present day. Virtually all colleges and sixth
forms that do teach modern history do it alongside standard
history; very few teach the subject exclusively.
Universities
At the
University
of Oxford
'Modern History' has a somewhat different
meaning. The contrast is not with the Middle Ages but with
Antiquity. The earliest period that can be studied in the
Final Honour School of Modern History
begins in 285.
See also
- Religious: Irreligion, Atheism,
Ancestor Worship, Muslims and the Muslim
world, Christians and Christendom, Huguenots,
Puritans, Church Missionary Society,
Robert
College
, Pietist, London Missionary Society,
Society of Jesus (Jesuits), European wars of
religion
- People and groups: Andreas
Karlstadt, Anne Boleyn, Menocchio, Descartes,
Goethe, Voltaire,
Nostradamus, Isaac Newton, Fugger,
Charles VII, Holy Roman
Emperor, Boers, Congress of Berlin, Lenin, Yamagata
Aritomo, Tojo Hideki, Balkan League, Tutsi,
William Paley, British Whig Party and the
Radical Whigs, US Whig Party, John Stuart Mill, John Partridge, Sir Frederick Pollock,
William Ashley,
American Historical
Association, John Adams, Andrew Jackson and Jacksonian Democracy, United States Republican
party, Joseph Galloway, Frederick Jackson Turner, American Anti-Slavery Society,
A. P.
Herbert, Rosa
Parks, Jackie Robinson, Institute of Contemporary
History
- Companies and businesses: Laissez-faire, Marconi Company, Electric Vehicle Company, Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company, AT&T, Bechtel, Asahi Shimbun, Daily
Mail
- Areas
and histories: List of World
Map changes, Duchy of
Warsaw
, Bohemia, Cape Colony, Transvaal
, History of
the Netherlands, History of
Iran, History of Korea,
History of Manchuria, History of Vladivostok, History of Pakistan, History of Saudi Arabia, History of Kuwait, History of Cambodia, Kansas-Nebraska Act, History of New York City, Moabit
, Levittown
- Culture and society: Iconoclasm, Le
Corbusier, Apsley
House
, Yosano Akiko, Romanticist, Television and Cable
television, History of
modern literature, Symbolist,
The Beatles, Rodgers and Hammerstein, I Love Lucy, Mass-Observation
- Legal:letter of credence,
prisoners of war, laws of war, exequatur,
extradition, right of asylum, jus
soli, jus sanguinis, exterritoriality
- Other: Modernity,
Postmodernity, Romanticism, Free
silver, political
consciousness, Sophisms, Fire of
London
, Tower of
London
, utilitarian, Uitlanders, Pan-Slavism, Sinn Fein,
UNESCO
, Women's suffrage, The Nobel and the Peace
Prize, Origin of Species,
human evolution, Social evolution, Bakelite, Transistors,
Infidelity, Penicillin, Ethanol,
Gasoline, Fuel
Cell, Automobile, personal computers, mobile phone, Falklands War
- Modernism Framework:
- Western Philosophy:
Further reading
- 21st century sources
- Boyd, Andrew, Joshua Comenetz. An
atlas of world affairs. Routledge, 2007. ISBN 0415391695
- Black, Edwin. Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments
Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives. New
York: St. Martin's Press, 2006.
- Briggs, Asa, and Peter Burke. A
Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet.
Cambridge: Polity, 2002.
- Barzun, Jacques. From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life
: 1500 to the Present. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
- 20th century sources
- Burke, Peter. A
Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot.
Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2000.
- CBS News. People of the century. Simon and Schuster, 1999. ISBN
0684870932
- Wang, Ke-wen. Modern China: an encyclopedia of history, culture, and
nationalism. Taylor & Francis, 1998. ISBN 0815307209
- Huffman, James L. Modern Japan: an encyclopedia of history, culture, and
nationalism. Taylor & Francis, 1998. ISBN 0815325258
- Schlesinger, Arthur M. New
Viewpoints in American History. New York: Macmillan, 1922.
- Bakeless, John Edwin. The
Economic Causes of Modern War; A Study of the Period:
1878-1918. New York: Printed for the Department of political
science of Williams college, by Moffat, Yard and Co, 1921
- Day, Clive. A
History of Commerce. New York [etc.]: Longmans, Green, and Co,
1921.
- Moore, Edward Caldwell. The
Spread of Christianity in the Modern World. Chicago, Ill:
University of Chicago Press, 1919.
- Muir, Ramsay. The
Expansion of Europe; The Culmination of Modern History. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917.
- Robinson, James Harvey, and Charles Austin Beard. Readings in Modern European History; A Collection of
Extracts from the Sources Chosen with the Purpose of Illustrating
Some of the Chief Phases of Development of Europe During the Last
Two Hundred Years. Boston: Ginn & Co, 1908.
- McCarthy, Michael J. F. The
Coming Power; A Contemporary History of the Far East,
1898-1905. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1905.
- Kidd, Benjamin. Principles of Western Civilisation. London: Macmillan
and Co., Limited, 1902.
- Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Adolphus William
Ward, G. W. Prothero, Stanley Mordaunt Leathes, and E. A. Benians.
The Cambridge Modern History. New York: Macmillan Co,
1902.
- Wilson, George Grafton, and George Fox Tucker. International Law. New York: Silver, Burdett and co,
1901.
- 19th century sources
- Stubbs, William. Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern
History and Kindred Subjects; Delivered at Oxford, Under Statutory
Obligation in the Years 1867-1884; with Two Addresses Given at
Oxford and Reading. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900.
- Duruy, Victor, and Edwin A. Grosvenor. History of Modern Times, From the Fall of Constantinople
to the French Revolution. New York: H. Holt and company,
1894.
- Fredet, Peter. Modern History; From the Coming of Christ and Change of
the Roman Republic into an Empire, to the Year of Our Lord
1888. Baltimore: J. Murphy & Co, 1888.
- Thalheimer, M. E. An
Outline of General History: For the Use of Schools. Cincinnati:
Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co, 1883.
- Lord, John. A
Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of
Napoleon. Philadelphia: C. Desilver & Sons [etc.],
1877.
- Michelet, Jules, and M. C. M. Simpson. A
Summary of Modern History. London: Macmillan, 1875.
- Timbs, John. Predictions Realized in Modern Times.: Now First Collected
by Horace Welby. London: Kent and Co. Paternoster Row,
1862.
- Post, Truman M. The
Skeptical Era in Modern History; Or, The Infidelity of the
Eighteenth Century, the Product of Spiritual Despotism. New York:
C. Scribner, 1856.
- Modern history. Chambers W. and R., ltd. 1856.
- Michelet, Jules, and Alonzo Potter. Modern History. New-York: Harper & Brothers, 82
Cliff-St, 1846.
- Goodrich, Samuel G. Famous Men of Modern Times. Boston: Bradbury, Soden
& Co, 1843.
- General History of the World: Abridged. Huddersfield:
Brook and Lancaster, 1802.
References
- General information
Books
Websites
- Footnotes
- Dunan, Marcel. Larousse Encyclopedia of Modern History, From
1500 to the Present Day. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
- Helen Miller, Aubrey Newman. Early modern British history,
1485-1760: a select bibliography, Historical
Association, 1970
- Early Modern Period (1485-1800), Sites
Organized by Period, Rutgers University Libraries
- modern. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language: Fourth Edition. 2000
- New Dictionary of the History of ideas, Volume 5, Detroit 2005.
Modernism and Modern
- Islamic Culture and the Medical Arts: Late Medieval
and Early Modern Medicine
- postmodern - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online
Dictionary
- Crawley, C. W. (1965). The new Cambridge modern history. Volume
9., War and peace in an age of upheaval 1793-1830. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
- Goldman, E. O., & Eliason, L. C. (2003). The diffusion of
military technology and ideas. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University
Press.
- Boot, M. (2006). War made new: Technology, warfare, and the
course of history, 1500 to today. New York: Gotham Books.
- Hazen, Charles Downer (1910). "Europe since 1815". American
historical series, H. Holt and Company.
- Paul Oskar Kristeller,
Humanism, pp. 113-4, in Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner
(editors), The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy
(1990).
- Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe
1789–1848, Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd. ISBN
0-349-10484-0
- Joseph E Inikori. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in
England, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-01079-9.
- Business and Economics. Leading Issues in Economic Development, Oxford
University Press US. ISBN 0-19-511589-9.
- Russell Brown, Lester. Eco-Economy, James & James, Earthscan. ISBN
1-85383-904-3.
- Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis essay retrieved Mar. 11, 2006
- See generally Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United
States, 221 U.S. 1 (1911).
- F.K Richtmyer, E.H Kennard, T. Lauristen (1955).
"Introduction". Introduction to Modern Physics (5th edition ed.).
New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. p. 1. LCCN 55-6862.
- Nikola Tesla, "Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World" in
Modern Mechanics and Inventions (July 1934) (ed., "Today's
scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they
wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a
structure [...].")
- The concepts derived are at times abstractions from nature for baselines or reference states. These can be
unattainable in practice, such as free space (electromagnetism)
and absolute
zero (temperature).
- Matrix
mechanics and wave mechanics supplanted other studies to
end the era of the old-quantum theory.
- a substance in early physics considered to be the medium
through which light propagates.
- Typically, abridgments of this definition omit all senses
except #1, such as in the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary,
Collins Essential English Dictionary, and
- .
- That is, all written history. In 1847, the prehistory of
society, the social organization existing previous to recorded
history, was all but unknown. Since then Haxthausen discovered
common ownership of land In Russia, Maurer concluded it to be the
social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history,
and by and by village communities were found to be, or to have
been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to
Ireland. The Inner organization of this primitive Communistic
society was laid bare, In its typical form, by Morgan's work on the
true nature of the gens and Its relation to the tribe. With the
dissolution of these primaeval communities society begins to be
differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes.
- Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, and Wilhelm
Liebknecht. Manifesto of the Communist Party / No Political
Trading / by Wilhelm Liebknecht ; Translated by A.M. Simons and
Marcus Hitch. Chicago, Ill: Charles H. Kerr, 1906.
- Marx makes no claim to have produced a master key to history.
Historical materialism is not "an historico-philosophic theory of
the marche generale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the
historic circumstances in which it finds itself". (Marx, Karl,
Letter to editor of the Russian paper Otetchestvennye Zapiskym,
1877) His ideas, he explains, are based on a concrete study of the
actual conditions that pertained in Europe.
- (Jastrow 1917)
- Roderic H. Davison; Review "From Paris to Sèvres: The Partition
of the Ottoman Empire at the Peace Conference of 1919-1920. by Paul
C. Helmreich" in Slavic Review, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Mar., 1975),
pp. 186-187
- Evan Mawdsley (2008) The Russian Civil War: 42
- Lenin
- the legal notion of Odious debt had not yet been formulated
- Cover Story: Churchill's Greatness. Interview
with Jeffrey Wallin. (The Churchill Centre)
- Read, Christopher, From Tsar to Soviets, Oxford
University Press (1996), p. 237: By 1920, 77% of the Red Army's
enlisted ranks were composed of peasant conscripts.
- Williams, Beryl, The Russian Revolution 1917-1921, Blackwell
Publishing Ltd. (1987), ISBN 9780631150831 0631150838: Typically,
men of conscriptible age (17-40) in a village would vanish when Red
Army draft units approached. The taking of hostages and a few
exemplary executions usually brought the men back.
- Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's
Russia, W.W. Norton & Company (2004), ISBN 0393020304,
9780393020304, p. 446: By the end of the civil war, one-third of
all Red Army officers were ex-Tsarist voenspetsy.
- Williams, Beryl, The Russian Revolution 1917-1921, Blackwell
Publishing Ltd. (1987), ISBN 9780631150831 0631150838
- Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's
Russia, W.W. Norton & Company (2004), ISBN 0393020304,
9780393020304, p. 446:
- Great Depression, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Charles Duhigg, "Depression, You Say? Check Those Safety Nets,"
New York Times, March 23, 2008
- Great Depression and World War II. The
Library of Congress.
- What Ended the Great Depression of 1929?.
Source: The Federal Reserve Board web site, “Remarks by
Governor Ben Bernanke at the H. Parket Willis Lecture in Economic
Policy”, March 2, 2004, FDR Library Web Site.
- J. Bradford DeLong, Cornucopia: Increasing Wealth in the Twentieth
Century. 2000.
- Morrison, Wayne. Theoretical criminology: from modernity to
post-modernism. Page 53.
- Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Program). Ecosystems and Human
Well-Being. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment series. Washington,
D.C.: Island Press, 2005. Page 12
- history.ox.ac.uk
External links