Late modern period
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In many periodizations of human history, the late modern period followed the early modern period. It began around 1800 and, depending on the author, either ended with the beginning of contemporary history in 1945, or includes the contemporary history period to the present day.
Notable historical events in the late 18th century, that marked the transition from the early modern period to the late modern period, include: the American Revolution (1765–91), French Revolution (1789–99), and beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1760. The Industrial Revolution was a period of major industrialization during the late 18th century and the early 19th century. It began in Great Britain and quickly spread throughout the world. This era saw a massive shift in social, economic, and cultural conditions, driven by technological innovations in
The early 20th century was marked by two World Wars and numerous political revolutions. World War I (1914–18) and World War II (1939–45) were global conflicts that reshaped the political, social, and economic landscape of the world. These wars led to the fall of empires and redrawing of national boundaries. The period saw significant political revolutions, such as the Russian Revolution in 1917, which led to the rise of the Soviet Union, and the Chinese Communist Revolution, which culminated in the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
It took all human history to 1804 for the world's population to reach 1 billion; it only took another 123 years for the world population to reach 2 billion in 1927.[1] From then to 1999, world population tripled to 6 billion.[2]
Significant events
As a result of the Industrial Revolution and political revolutions in the early modern period, the world-views of modernism emerged.[citation needed] The industrialization of many nations was initiated with the industrialization of the Kingdom of Great Britain. Particular facets of the late modern period include:
- Increasing role of science and technology
- Spread of social movements
- Institution of representative democracy
- The abolition of slavery
- The Haitian Revolution second only to the French Revolution.
- New Imperialism and the Scramble for Africa, and later decolonization
- Industrialization
- Urbanization
- Increasing role of medicine and sanitation
- Mass literacy and proliferation of mass media
- Women's rights
- Socialism and the Cold War
- Demographic transition
- Green Revolution in agriculture
- Information Age in the latter 20th and the early 21st century
Other important events in the development of the Late modern period include:
- The Unequal Treatiesin China (c. mid-19th century)
- The failed Revolutions of 1848 in Europe
- The development of the telegraph (c. late 18th century) and the adoption of Morse code(c. mid-19th century)
- The American Civil War (1860–1865) and the abolition of slavery in the US (1863–1865)
- The Meiji Restoration in Japan (c. 1868)
- The Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the Unification of Germany (1871), and the Unification of Italy (1871)
- The Berlin Conference (1884–1885) and the Scramble for Africa.
- The development of radio telecommunication (c. 1894)
- The Spanish–American War and the American annexation of the Philippines
- The Austro-Hungarian and OttomanEmpires
- The Sykes–Picot Agreement (1916) between the British and French empires create the modern boundaries of Syria and Iraq
- The Russian Revolution (1917) and the Russian Civil War (1917–1922)
- The Assyrian(1914–1924) genocides
- The Fascism in Italy(1922)
- The Great Depression (1929 – late 1930s) worldwide and the New Deal in the US
- The failed Hitler's rise to powerin Germany (1931–1933)
- The Soviet Kazakhstan.
- The Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931) and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945)
- The Second World War (1939–1945) and The Holocaustin Nazi-occupied Europe (1941–1945)
- The Founding of the United Nations (1945) as a successor to the League of Nations (1920–1946)
- The Bengal famine (1943) and the Partition of India from the British Empire (1947)
- The Chinese Civil War (beginning 1927) and the Chinese Communist Revolution (1945–1949)
- The Cold War (1947–1991) (including Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the Hungarian Uprising (1956), the Cuban Revolution (1953–1959) and Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Vietnam War (1955–1975), the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia (1968), and the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989))
- De-Stalinization (c. mid-1950s) and the Khrushchev Thaw (c. 1950s-early 1960s) in the Soviet Union, and subsequent Sino-Soviet split (1956–1966)
- The Great Leap Forward campaign (1958–1962), the subsequent Great Chinese Famine (1959–1961), and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) in China
- The 1954–1968 civil rights movement in the United States
- The first first man in space (1961) and the first man on the Moon(1969)
- Bangladesh genocide (1971) and Bangladesh Liberation Warfrom Pakistan (1971)
- The Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) in Israel, and the subsequent OPEC oil embargo against Western countries (1973)
- The Cambodian genocide (1975–1979)
- The Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979), and the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988)
- Persian Gulf War(1990–1991)
- The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc (1989–1991), and reunification of West Germany and East Germany (1990)
Possible end of the Late Modern period
There are differing approaches to defining a possible end or conclusion to the Late Modern period, or indeed whether it might be considered to have concluded at all; if that period is indeed concluded, then there are various options for how to label the subsequent era, i.e. the current contemporary era, as described below.
- The historical period that began in the mid-20th century, characterized by a rapid epochal shift from traditional industry established by the Industrial Revolution to an economy primarily based upon information technology.[3][4][5][6]
- Some researchers typify the end of the Late Modern period by the concerns for the environment which began in 1950, as this marks the end of modern confidence about humanity's domination of the natural world.[7]
- The Postmodern era is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity.[nb 1] Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the 1980s or early 1990s – and that it was replaced by postmodernity, and still others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by postmodernity, while some believe that modernity ended sometime after World War II. The idea of the post-modern condition is sometimes characterized as a culture stripped of its capacity to function in any linear or autonomous state, such as e.g. regressive isolationism, as opposed to the progressive mind state of modernism.[8]
- Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseEnlightenment rationality dating back to the 17th century.[12]
- The Post-industrial society is the stage of society's development when the service sector generates more wealth than the manufacturing sector of the economy. The term was originated by Alain Touraine and is closely related to similar sociological theoretical concepts such as post-Fordism, information society, knowledge economy, post-industrial economy, liquid modernity, and network society. They all can be used in economics or social science disciplines as a general theoretical backdrop in research design. As the term has been used, a few common themes have begun to emerge. Firstly, the economy undergoes a transition from the production of goods to the provision of services; also, producing ideas is the main way to grow the economy. The term is used by various researchers and social scientists.[13][14][15]
Possible subdivisions
Additionally, the Late Modern period can be divided into various smaller periods; there are differing opinions and approaches on which time periods to assert in doing so.
- Post-war era. This period refers mainly to social history and domestic economic activity, as it relates to societal progress and the major economic expansion after World War II which occurred in the United States and parts of the Western World.
- Postcolonial Era. This relates to the major increase in decolonization which occurred directly as a result of World War II from 1946 onwards, as major European powers formally relinquished political control over almost all of their colonies and overseas possessions, leading to major new countries being formed with full sovereignty.
- Cold War era. The superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars.
- In 1989, the fall of the abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, the declaration of independence of its constituent republicsand the collapse of communist governments across much of Africa and Asia. The United States was left as the world's only superpower.
- The digital logic, MOSFETs (MOS transistors), integrated circuit (IC) chips, and their derived technologies, including computers, microprocessors, digital cellular phones, and the Internet.[19] These technological innovations have transformed traditional production and business techniques.[20]
- The Internet age dates from late 1990, when Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML, and created the world's first web page, marking the beginning of the World Wide Web.
Industrial revolutions
The development of the
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 19th century with the
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 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.[24] 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
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,
Social effects and classes
The Industrial Revolutions were major technological, socioeconomic, and cultural changes in late 18th and early 19th centuries 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.[25]
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.[26]
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 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.[27][28] 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
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.
Imperial Russia
Under
North America
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 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 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 began 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 claim to the United States with the Treaty of Paris.
The
European dominance and the 19th century
Historians define the 19th century
Imperialism and empires
In the 1800s and early 1900s, the great and powerful Spanish, Portuguese, Ottoman, and Mughal Empires began to break apart. Spain, which was at one time unrivaled in Europe, had been declining for a long time when it was crippled by Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion. Sensing the time was right, Spain's vast colonies in South America began a series of rebellions that ended with almost all of the Spanish territories gaining their independence.
The Ottoman Empire was wracked with a series of revolutions, resulting with the Ottoman's only holding a small region that surrounded the capital, Istanbul.
The Mughal Empire, which was descended from the Mongol Khanate, was bested by the upcoming
Portugal's vast territory of Brazil reformed into the independent Empire of Brazil. With the defeat of Napoleonic France, Britain became undoubtedly the most powerful country in the world, and by the end of the First World War controlled a Quarter of the world's population and a third of its surface. However, the power of the British Empire did not end on land, since it had the greatest navy on the planet. Electricity, steel, and petroleum enabled Germany to become a great
Substantial decolonization of the Americas occurred through various revolutions and wars of independence fought by new countries in the Americas against European colonizers in late 18th and early-to-mid-19th centuries. The Spanish American wars of independence lasted from 1808 until 1829, directly related to the Napoleonic French invasion of Spain. The conflict started with short-lived governing juntas established in Chuquisaca and Quito opposing the composition of the Supreme Central Junta of Seville. When the Central Junta fell to the French, numerous new Juntas appeared all across the Americas, eventually resulting in a chain of newly independent countries stretching from Argentina and Chile in the south, to Mexico in the north. After the death of the king Ferdinand VII, in 1833, only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule, until the Spanish–American War in 1898. Unlike the Spanish, the Portuguese did not divide their colonial territory in America. The captaincies they created were subdued to a centralized administration in Salvador (later relocated to Rio de Janeiro) which reported directly to the Portuguese Crown until its independence in 1822, becoming the Empire of Brazil.
The
European powers controlled parts of Oceania, with French
Decolonization of the Americas |
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British Victorian era
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.
In Britain's "imperial century",
British imperial strength was underpinned by the
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.
Italian unification
Slavery and abolition
(1888).African colonization
Following the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and propelled by economic exploitation, the
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 European power that demonstrated its control over a territory accepted the mandate to rule that region as a national colony. The European nation that held the claim developed and benefited from their colony's commercial interests without having to fear rival European competition. With the colonial claim came the underlying assumption that the European power that exerted control would use its mandate to offer protection and provide welfare for its colonial peoples, however, this principle remained more theory than practice. There were many documented instances of material and moral conditions deteriorating for native Africans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under European colonial rule, to the point where the colonial experience for them has been described as "hell on earth."
At the time of the Berlin Conference, Africa contained one-fifth of the world's population living in one-quarter of the world's land area. However, from Europe's perspective, they were dividing an unknown continent. European countries established a few coastal colonies in Africa by the mid-nineteenth century, which included Cape Colony (Great Britain), Angola (Portugal), and Algeria (France), but until the late nineteenth century Europe largely traded with free African states without feeling the need for territorial possession. Until the 1880s most of Africa remained uncharted, with western maps from the period generally showing blank spaces for the continent's interior.
From the 1880s to 1914, the European powers expanded their control across the African continent, competing with each other for Africa's land and resources. Great Britain controlled various colonial holdings in East Africa that spanned the length of the African continent from Egypt in the north to South Africa. The French gained major ground in West Africa, and the Portuguese held colonies in southern Africa. Germany, Italy, and Spain established a small number of colonies at various points throughout the continent, which included German East Africa (Tanganyika) and German Southwest Africa for Germany, Eritrea and Libya for Italy, and the Canary Islands and Rio de Oro in northwestern Africa for Spain. Finally, for King Leopold (ruled from 1865 to 1909), there was the large "piece of that great African cake" known as the Congo, which became his personal fiefdom. By 1914, almost the entire continent was under European control. Liberia, which was settled by freed American slaves in the 1820s, and Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in eastern Africa were the last remaining independent African states.[34]
Meiji Japan
Around the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, the Meiji era occurred during 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". In Japan, the Meiji Restoration started in the 1860s, marking the rapid modernization by the Japanese themselves along European lines. Much research has focused on the issues of discontinuity versus continuity with the previous Tokugawa Period.[35] It was not 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 daimyōs, 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. Japan's modernized military gave Japan the opportunity to engage in Imperialism with its victory against the Qing Empire in the First Sino-Japanese War Japan annexed Taiwan, Korea and the Chinese province of Shandong.
After the death of the Meiji Emperor, the Taishō Emperor took the throne, the Taishō period was a time of democratic reform granting democratic rights to all Japanese men. Foreigners would be instrumental in aiding in Japan's modernization. A key foreign observer of the remarkable and rapid changes in Japanese society in this period was Ernest Mason Satow.
United States
Antebellum expansion
The
"Manifest destiny" was the belief that the United States was destined to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. 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.[citation needed]
Civil War and Reconstruction
The American Civil War began when seven
Northern leaders agreed that victory would require more than the end of fighting. Secession and Confederate nationalism had to be totally repudiated and all forms of slavery or quasi-slavery had to be eliminated. Lincoln proved effective in mobilizing support for the war goals, raising large armies and supplying them, avoiding foreign interference, and making the end of slavery a war goal. The Confederacy had a larger area than it could defend, and it failed to keep its ports open and its rivers clear as was the case in the Battle of Vicksburg. The North kept up the pressure as the South could barely feed and clothe its soldiers. Its soldiers, especially those in the East under the command of General Robert E. Lee proved highly resourceful until they finally were overwhelmed by Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman in 1864–65. The Reconstruction era (1863–77) began with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and included freedom, full citizenship and voting rights for Southern blacks. It was followed by a reaction that left the blacks in a second class status legally, politically, socially and economically until the 1960s.
The Gilded Age and legacy
During the Gilded Age, there was 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
Science and philosophy
Replacing the
Starting one-hundred years before the 20th century, the Enlightenment philosophy was challenged in various quarters around the 1900s.
Notable persons
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 a "natural" framework for social evolution in human societies. In this view, society's advancement is dependent on the "survival of the fittest". The term was in fact coined by Herbert Spencer and referred to in "The Gospel of Wealth" written by Andrew Carnegie.
Marxist society
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.[46]
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.[47]
- Primitive communism: as seen in cooperative tribal societies.
- Slavery: 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
Australian Constitution
In 1901, the Federation of Australia was the process by which the six separate British self-governing colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia formed one nation. They kept the systems of government that they had developed as separate colonies but also would have a federal government that was responsible for matters concerning the whole nation. When the Constitution of Australia came into force, the colonies collectively became states of the Commonwealth of Australia.
Revolution and Warlords in China
The last days of the Qing dynasty were marked with civil unrest, failed reforms and foreign invasions such as the Boxer Rebellion. Responding to these civil failures and discontent, the Qing Imperial Court did attempt to reform the government in various ways, as the decision to draft a constitution in 1906, the establishment of provincial legislatures in 1909, and the preparation for a national parliament in 1910. However, many of these measures were opposed by the conservatives of the Qing Court, and many reformers were either imprisoned or executed outright. The failures of the Imperial Court to enact such reforming measures of political liberalization and modernization caused the reformists to steer toward the road of revolution.
The assertions of Chinese philosophy
In 1912, the Republic of China was established and Sun Yat-sen was inaugurated in Nanjing as the first Provisional President. But power in Beijing had already passed to Yuan Shikai, who had effective control of the Beiyang Army, the most powerful military force in China at the time. To prevent civil war and possible foreign intervention from undermining the infant republic, leaders agreed to the army's demand that China be united under a Beijing government. On March 10, in Beijing, Shikai was sworn in as the second Provisional President of the Republic of China.
After the early 20th century revolutions, shifting alliances of
Start of the 20th century
In 1900, the world's population had approached approximately 1.6 billion. Four years into the 20th century saw the
The
In China, the Qing Dynasty was overthrown following the
Edwardian Britain
The
World War I
The
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
The First World War began in 1914 and lasted to the final
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.[51]
Ultimately, World War I created a decisive break with the old
Revolution and war in Russia
The Russian Revolution is the series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the
Another action in 1917 that is of note was the armistice signed between Russia and the Central Powers 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.[nb 9]
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".[54]
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the
The principal fighting occurred between the
While the early 1920s was a time of flux for revolutionary Russia and Central Asia, the
The Early Republic of China
In 1917, China declared war on Germany in the hope of recovering its lost province, then under Japanese control. The New Culture Movement occupied the period from 1917 to 1923. Chinese representatives refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles, due to intense pressure from the student 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 military government in Guangzhou in collaboration with southern warlords. Sun's efforts to obtain aid from the Western democracies were ignored, however, and in 1920 he turned to the Soviet Union, which had recently achieved its own revolution. The Soviets sought to befriend the Chinese revolutionists by offering scathing attacks on Western imperialism. But for political expediency, the Soviet leadership initiated a dual policy of support for both Sun and the newly established Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In early 1927, the Kuomintang-CCP rivalry led to a split in the revolutionary ranks. The CCP and the left wing of the Kuomintang had decided to move the seat of the Nationalist government from Guangzhou to
Nanjing period in China
The "Nanjing Decade" of 1928–37 was one of consolidation and accomplishment under the leadership of the Nationalists, with a mixed but generally positive record in the economy, social progress, development of democracy, and cultural creativity. Some of the harsh aspects of foreign concessions and privileges in China were moderated through diplomacy.
The 1920s 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
Europe spent these years rebuilding and coming to terms with the vast human cost of the conflict. The
Worldwide prosperity changed dramatically with the onset of the
The Great 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.
The League and crises
The interwar period was also marked by a radical change in the international order, away from the
However the League failed to resolve any major crises and by 1938 it was no longer a major player. The League was undermined by the bellicosity of
A series of international crises strained the League to its limits, the earliest being the
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.
Tripartite Pact, World War II and contemporary history (post-1945)
Facing resource scarcity due to a growing population, Japan seized
Although Japan had invaded China in 1937, the conventional view is that the World War II began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. 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 Germany on September 17, 1939, to conquer Poland and 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 "
On December 7, 1941,
It is possible that around 62 million people
After World War II, Europe was informally split into Western and Soviet spheres of influence. Western Europe later formed the NATO and Eastern Europe 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 in the establishment of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China. The former colonies of the European powers began their road to independence.
The mid-20th century was 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,[71] much more than all earlier centuries combined (including the 19th with its Industrial Revolution). Many economists made the case that this understated the magnitude of growth, as many of the goods and services consumed at the end of the 20th 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 inception. However, the gulf between the world's rich and poor grew wider,[72] and the majority of the global population remained in the poor side of the divide.[73]
Still, advancements in technology and medicine had a great impact even in the
Pax Americana
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 start 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
In China
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 (1955–1975), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Soviet–Afghan War (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.
The Cold War drew to a close in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The United States under President
Latin America polarization
In Latin America in the 1970s, leftists acquired a significant political influence which prompted the right-wing, ecclesiastical authorities and a large portion of the individual country's upper class to support coups d'état to avoid what they perceived as a communist threat. This was further fueled by Cuban and United States intervention which led to a political polarization. Most South American countries were in some periods ruled by
Space Age
The Space Age is a period encompassing the activities related to the
Information Age
The Information Age began in the mid-20th century, characterized by a rapid epochal shift from the traditional industry established by the Industrial Revolution to an economy primarily based upon information technology.
According to the
Notes
- ^ In this context, "modern" is not used in the sense of "contemporary", but as a name for a specific period in history.
- ^ For more, see Pax Britannica.
- free space (electromagnetism) and practical absolute zero temperature (ed. Special negative temperaturesvalues are "colder" than the zero points of those scales but still warmer than absolute zero).
- ^ 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.
- ^ See also: Counter-Enlightenment, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim.
- ^ Known as continental philosophy.
- ^ Most notably by dividing 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 such as India, Pakistan, South Africa, and Ireland.
- ^ The legal notion of odious debt had not yet been formulated.
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External links
- Internet Modern History Sourcebook, fordham.edu