The history of the world, by convention, is human history, from the first appearance of Homo sapiens to the present. Human history is marked both by a gradual accretion of discoveries and inventions, as well as by quantum leaps — revolutions — that comprise epochs in the material and spiritual evolution of humankind.
Human history, as opposed to prehistory, has in the past been said to begin with the invention, independently at several sites on Earth, of writing, which created the infrastructure for lasting, accurately transmitted memories and thus for the diffusion and growth of knowledge. Writing, in its turn, had been made necessary in the wake of the Agricultural Revolution, which had given rise to civilization, i.e., to permanent settled communities, which fostered a growing diversity of trades.
Such scattered habitations, centered about life-sustaining bodies of water — rivers and lakes — coalesced over time into ever larger units, in parallel with the evolution of ever more efficient means of transport. These processes of coalescence, spurred by rivalries and conflicts between adjacent communities, gave rise over millenia to ever larger states, and then to superstates (empires). The fall of the latter in Europe at the end of antiquity signalled the beginning of the Middle Ages.
In the mid-15th century, Johannes Gutenberg's invention of modern printing, employing movable type, created, effectively, a late-medieval information internet that helped end the Middle Ages and usher in modern times, the European Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution.
By the 18th century, the accumulation of knowledge and technology, especially in Europe, had reached a critical mass that sparked into existence the Industrial Revolution. Over the quarter-millenium since, knowledge, technology, commerce, and — concomitantly with these — war have accelerated at a geometric rate, creating the opportunities and perils that now confront the human communities that together inhabit a finite planet.
Paleolithic Period
"Paleolithic" means "Old Stone Age." This was the earliest period of the Stone Age.
Scientific evidence based on genetics and the study of fossils, places the origin of modern Homo sapiens in Africa [1]. This occurred about 200,000 years ago during the Palaeolithic period, after a long period of evolution. Ancestors of humans, such as Homo erectus, had been using simple tools for over a thousand millennia, but as time progressed, tools became far more refined and complex. Humans also developed language sometime during the Paleolithic period, as well as a conceptual repertoire that included systematic burial of the dead. The latter suggests a development of foresight after consistent exposure to rotting bodies.
Humans of this age also decorated themselves with objects to improve their appearance. During this period, all humans lived as hunter-gatherers, who were generally nomadic.
Modern humans spread rapidly over the globe from Africa and the frost-free zones of Europe and Asia. The rapid expansion of humankind to North America and Oceania took place at the climax of the most recent Ice Age, when today's temperate regions were extremely inhospitable. Yet, by the end of the Ice Age some 12,000 years ago, humans had colonised nearly all the ice-free parts of the globe.
Hunter-gatherer societies have tended to be very small, although in some cases they have developed social stratification, and long-distance contacts may be possible as in the case of Indigenous Australian "highways."
Eventually most hunter-gatherer societies either developed, or were absorbed into, larger agricultural states. Those that did not were either exterminated, or remained in isolation, such as small hunter-gatherer societies which are still present today in remote regions.
Mesolithic Period
The "Mesolithic," or "Middle Stone Age" (from the Greek "mesos," "middle," and "lithos," "stone") was a period in the development of human technology between the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of the Stone Age.
The Mesolithic period began at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, some 10,000 years ago, and ended with the introduction of agriculture, the date of which varied by geographic region. In some areas, such as the Near East, agriculture was already underway by the end of the Pleistocene, and there the Mesolithic is short and poorly defined. In areas with limited glacial impact, the term "Epipaleolithic" is sometimes preferred.
Regions that experienced greater environmental effects as the last ice age ended have a much more evident Mesolithic era, lasting millennia. In Northern Europe, societies were able to live well on rich food supplies from the marshlands fostered by the warmer climate. Such conditions produced distinctive human behaviours which are preserved in the material record, such as the Maglemosian and Azilian cultures. These conditions also delayed the coming of the Neolithic until as late as 4,000 BCE in northern Europe.
Remains from this period are few and far between, often limited to rubbish middens. In forested areas, the first signs of deforestation have been found, although this would only begin in earnest during the Neolithic, when more space was needed for agriculture.
The Mesolithic is characterized in most areas by small composite flint tools — microliths and microburins. Fishing tackle, stone adzes and wooden objects, e.g. canoes and bows, have been found at some sites. These technologies first occur in Africa, associated with the Azilian cultures, before spreading to Europe through the Ibero-Maurusian culture of Spain and Portugal, and the Kebaran culture of Palestine. Independent discovery is not always ruled out.
Neolithic Period
"Neolithic" means "New Stone Age." This was a period of primitive technological and social development, toward the end of the "Stone Age." Beginning in the 10th millennium BCE, the Neolithic period saw the development of early villages, agriculture, animal domestication and tools.
Development of agriculture
A major change, described by prehistorian Vere Gordon Childe as the "Agricultural Revolution," occurred about the 10th millennium BCE with the adoption of agriculture. The Sumerians first began farming ca. 9,500 BCE. By 7,000 BCE, agriculture had spread to the Indus Valley; by 6,000 BCE, to Egypt; by 5,000 BCE, to China. About 2,700 BCE, agriculture had come to Mesoamerica.
Although attention has tended to concentrate on the Middle East's Fertile Crescent, archaeology in the Americas, East Asia and Southeast Asia indicates that agricultural systems, using different crops and animals, may in some cases have developed there nearly as early.
A further advance in Middle Eastern agriculture occurred with the development of organised irrigation, and the use of a specialised workforce, by the Sumerians, beginning about 5,500 BCE. Stone was supplanted by bronze and iron in implements of agriculture and warfare. Agricultural settlements had until then been almost completely dependent on stone tools. In Eurasia, copper and bronze tools, decorations and weapons began to become commonplace about 3,000 BCE. After bronze, the Eastern Mediterranean region, Middle East and China saw the introduction of iron tools and weapons.
The Americas may not have had metal tools until the Chavín horizon (900 BCE). The Moche did have metal armor, knives and tableware. Even the metal-poor Inca had metal-tipped plows, at least after the conquest of Chimor. However, little archaeological research has so far been done in Peru, and nearly all the khipus (recording devices, in the form of knots, used by the Incas) were burned in the Spanish conquest of Peru. As late as 2004, entire cities were still being unearthed. Some digs suggest that steel may have been produced there before it was developed in Europe.
The cradles of early civilizations were river valleys , such as the Yellow River valley in China, the Nile valley in Egypt, and the Indus Valley in the Indian subcontinent. Some nomadic peoples, such as the Indigenous Australians and the Bushmen of southern Africa, did not practice agriculture until relatively recent times.
Before 1800, many populations did not belong to states. Scientists disagree as to whether the term "tribe" should be applied to the kinds of societies that these people lived in. Large parts of the world were "tribal" territories before Europeans began colonizing them[citation needed]. Many tribal societies, in Europe and elsewhere, transformed into states when they were threatened, or otherwise impinged on, by existing states. Examples are the Marcomanni, Poland and Lithuania. Some "tribes," such as the Kassites and the Manchus, conquered states and were absorbed by them.
Agriculture made possible complex societies — civilizations. States and markets emerged. Technologies enhanced people's ability to control nature and to develop transport and communication.
Development of religion
It is to the Neolithic that most historians trace the beginnings of complex religion. Religious belief in this period commonly consisted in the worship of a Mother Goddess, a Sky Father, and of the Sun and Moon as deities. (see also Sun worship). Shrines developed, which over time evolved into temple establishments, complete with a complex hierarchy of priests and priestesses and other functionaries. Typical of the Neolithic was a tendency to worship anthropomorphic deities.
Rise of civilization
State
Agriculture led to several major changes. It allowed far larger population densities, which organised themselves into states. There are several definitions used for the term "state." Max Weber and Norbert Elias defined the state as an organization of people that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a particular geographic area.
The first states appeared in Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley in the late 4th and early 3rd millennia BCE. In Mesopotamia, there were several city-states. Ancient Egypt began as a state without cities, but cities soon arose. A state needs an army to impose the legitimate use of force. An army needs a bureaucracy to maintain it. The only exception to this appears to be the Indus Valley civilization due to a lack of evidence of military force.
States appeared in China in the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia BCE. Major wars broke out between states in the Middle East. The treaty of Kadesh, one of the first peace treaties, was concluded between the Hittites and ancient Egypt ca.1275 BCE. Major empires came into being with conquered areas ruled by central tribes, such as Persia (6th century BCE), the Mauryan Empire (4th century BCE), China (3rd century BCE), and the Roman Empire (1st century BCE).
Clashes among major empires took place in the 8th century CE, when the Islamic Caliphate of Arabia (ruling from Spain to Iran) and the Tang dynasty of China (ruling from Xinjiang to Korea) fought for decades for control of Central Asia. The largest continguous land empire was the Mongolian Empire in the 13th century. By then, most humans in Europe, Asia and North Africa belonged to states. There were states as well in Mexico and western South America. States continued to control more and more of the world's territory and population; the last 'empty' territories were divided among states in the Treaty of Berlin (1878 CE).
City and trade
Agriculture also created, and allowed for the storage of, food surpluses that could support people not directly involved in food production. The development of agriculture permitted the creation of the first cities. These were centers of trade, manufacturing and political power with nearly no agricultural production of their own. The cities formed a symbiotic relationship of a sort, absorbing agricultural products from the surrounding countryside, but providing, in return, manufactured goods and varying degrees of military protection.
The development of cities led to what has been called civilization: first Sumerian civilization in lower Mesopotamia (3500 BCE), followed by Egyptian civilization along the Nile (3300 BCE) and Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley (3300 BCE). There is evidence of elaborate cities with high levels of social and economic complexity. However, these civilizations were so different from each other that they almost certainly originated independently. It was at this time that writing and extensive trade were introduced.
In China, proto-urban societies may have developed from 2500 BCE, but the first dynasty to be identified by archeology is that of the Shang Dynasty. The 2nd millennium BCE saw the emergence of civilization in Crete, mainland Greece and central Turkey. In the Americas, civilizations such as the Maya, the Moche and Nazca emerged in Mesoamerica and Peru at the end of the 1st millennium BCE. Coinage was introduced in Lydia.
Long-range trade routes first appeared in the 3rd millennium BCE, when Sumerians in Mesopotamia traded with the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley. Trade routes also appeared in the eastern Mediterranean in the 4th millennium BCE. The Silk Road between China and Syria began in the 2nd millennium BCE. Cities in Central Asia and Persia were major crossroads of these trade routes. Phoenician and Greek civilizations founded empires in the Mediterranean basin in the 1st century BCE, based on trade. The large scale transportation of commodities before the modern age was unique to the ancient Greek civilization. Arabs dominated the trade routes in the Indian Ocean, East Asia, and the Sahara in the late 1st millennium CE and early 2nd millennium CE. Arabs and Jews also dominated trade in the Mediterranean in the late 1st millennium. Italians took over this role in the early 2nd millennium CE. Flemish and German cities were at the center of trade routes in Northern Europe in the early 2nd millennium CE. In all areas, major cities developed at crossroads along the trade routes.
Religion and philosophy
New philosophies and religions arose in both east and west, particularly around the 6th century BCE. Over time, a great variety of religions developed around the world, with Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Zoroastrianism in Persia being some of the earliest major faiths. The Abrahamic religions also trace their origin to this time[citation needed]. In the east, three schools of thought were to dominate Chinese thinking until the modern day. These were Taoism, Legalism, and Confucianism. The Confucian tradition, which would attain predominance, looked not to the force of law, but to the power and example of tradition for political morality. In the west, the Greek philosophical tradition, represented by the works of Plato and Aristotle, was diffused throughout Europe and the Middle East by the conquests of Alexander of Macedon in the 4th century BCE.
Major civilizations and regions
By the last centuries BCE, the Mediterranean, the Ganges and the Yellow River became the seats of empires which future rulers would strive to imitate. In India, the Mauryan Empire ruled over most of Southern Asia, while the Pandyas ruled the south of India. In China, the Qin and Han dynasties extended the rule of imperial government through political unity, improved communications and also notably the establishment of state monopolies by Emperor Wu.
In the West, the Ancient Greeks established a civilization that is considered by most historians to be the foundational culture of modern Western civilization. Some centuries later the Romans began expanding their territory through conquest and colonisation from the 3rd century BCE. By the reign of Emperor Augustus in the late 1st century, Rome controlled all the lands surrounding the Mediterranean.
The great empires rested on the ability to exploit the process of military annexation and the formation of defended human settlements to become agricultural centres. The relative peace they brought encouraged international trade, most notably were the massive trade routes in the mediterranean sea that were developed by the time of Hellenistic age, with were unparalleled in volume of trade until modern times and the growth of the Silk Road. They also faced common problems, such as those associated with maintaining huge armies and the support of a central bureaucracy. These costs fell most heavily on the peasantry, whilst land-owning magnates were increasingly able to evade centralised control and its costs. The pressure of barbarians on the frontiers hastened the process of internal dissolution. The Han empire fell into civil war in 220 CE, whilst its Roman counterpart became increasingly decentralised and divided around the same time.
Throughout the temperate zones of Eurasia, America, and North Africa, large empires continued to rise and fall.
The gradual breakup of the Roman Empire, which spanned several centuries following the 2nd century CE, coincided with the spread of Christianity westward from the Middle East. The western part of the Roman Empire fell under the domination of various Germanic tribes in the 5th century, and these polities gradually developed into a number of warring states, all associated, in one way or another, with the Roman Catholic Church. The remaining part of the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean was henceforth known as the Byzantine Empire. Centuries later, a limited unity was restored to western Europe through the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire, comprising a number of states in what is now Germany and Italy.
In China, dynasties would similarly rise and fall. Nomads from the north began to invade in the 4th century CE, eventually conquering nearly all of northern China and setting up many small kingdoms. The Sui Dynasty reunified China in 581, and under the Tang Dynasty (618-907) China entered into a second golden age. However, the Tang Dynasty also splintered and, after about half a century of turmoil, the Northern Song Dynasty reunified China in 982. Yet, pressure from nomadic empires to the north became increasingly urgent. All of North China was lost to the Jurchen in 1141 and the Mongol Empire conquered all of China in 1279, as well as almost all of Eurasia's landmass, missing only western and central Europe and Japan.
Northern India was ruled by the Guptas in these times. In southern India, three prominent Dravidian kingdoms emerged: Cheras, Cholas, and Pandyas. The ensuing stability contributed to herald the golden age of Hindu culture in the 4th and 5th centuries CE.
Vast societies also began to be built up in Central America at this time, with the Maya and the Aztecs in Mesoamerica being the most notable. As the mother culture of the Olmecs gradually declined, the great Mayan city-states slowly rose in number and prominence, and Maya culture spread throughout Yucatán and surrounding areas. The later empire of the Aztec was built on neighboring cultures and was influenced by conquered peoples, such as the Toltec.
South America saw the rise of the Inca in the 14th and 15th centuries. The Inca Empire of Tawantinsuyu spanned the entire range of the Andes and held its capital at Cusco. The Inca were prosperous and advanced, known for an excellent road system and unrivaled masonry.
Islam, which began in Arabia in the 7th century, was also one of the most remarkable forces in World history, growing from only a few followers to become the basis of a series of large empires in India, the Middle East, and North Africa.
In Northeast Africa, Nubia and Ethiopia, which both had long been linked to the Mediterranean world, remained Christian enclaves as the rest of Africa north of the equator converted to Islam. With Islam, came new technologies that, for the first time, allowed substantial trade to cross the Sahara. Taxes on this trade led to prosperity in North Africa and the rise of a series of kingdoms in the Sahel.
This period was marked by slow but steady technological improvements with developments of influential importance, such as the stirrup and the mouldboard plough, arriving every few centuries. However, there existed some short periods of rapid technological progress in some regions. Most importantly, the Mediterranean Sea during the Hellenistic period (in which hundreds of technologies were invented), and periods of technological decay and decline like the areas of the Roman Empire during its decline and fall and the subsequent Early Medieval period.
Rise of Europe
Background to European advance
Nearly all the agricultural civilizations were heavily constrained by their environments. Productivity remained low, and climatic changes easily instigated boom and bust cycles that brought about civilizations' rise and fall. By about 1500, however, there was a qualitative change in world history. Technological advance and the wealth generated by trade gradually brought about a widening of possibilities.
Even before the 16th century, some civilizations had developed advanced societies. In ancient times, the Greeks and Romans had produced societies supported by a developed monetary economy, with financial markets and private-property rights. These institutions created the conditions for continuous capital accumulation, with increased productivity. By some estimates, the per-capita income of Roman Italy, one of the most advanced regions of the Roman Empire, was comparable to the per-capita incomes of the most advanced economies in the 18th century. (see[2]) The most developed regions of classical civilization were more urbanized than any other region of the world until early modern times. This civilization, however, gradually declined and collapsed; historians still debate the causes.
One of the most advanced civilizations of the Middle Ages was China. It had developed an advanced monetary economy by 1,000 CE. China had a free peasantry who were no longer subsistence farmers, and could sell their produce and actively participate in the market. The agriculture was highly productive. China was the most urbanized region in Eurasia. It enjoyed a technological advantage over the rest of the Eurasian world and had a monopoly in cast-iron production, piston bellows, suspension-bridge construction, printing and the compass. (see Joseph Needham). But, after earlier onslaughts by the Jurchens, in 1279 the remnants of the Sung empire were conquered by the Mongols.
Outwardly, Europe's Renaissance, beginning in the 14th century, consisted in the rediscovery of the classical world's scientific contributions, and in the economic and social rise of Europe. But the Renaissance also engendered a culture of inquisitiveness which ultimately led to Humanism, the Scientific Revolution, and finally the great transformation of the Industrial Revolution. The Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, however, had no immediate impact on technology; only in the second half of the 18th century did scientific advances begin to be applied to practical inventions.
The advantages that Europe had developed by the mid-18th century were two: an entrepreneurial culture, and the wealth generated by the Atlantic trade (including the African slave trade). While some historians conclude that, in 1750, labour productivity in the most developed regions of China was still on a par with that of Europe's Atlantic economy (see Wolfgang Keller and Carol Shiue), other historians hold that the per-capita productivity of western Europe had by the late Middle Ages surpassed that of all other regions.
A number of explanations are proffered as to why, from the late Middle Ages on, Europe rose to surpass other civilizations, become the home of the Industrial Revolution, and dominate the world. Max Weber argued that it was due to a Protestant work ethic that encouraged Europeans to work harder and longer than others. Another socioeconomic explanation looks to demographics: Europe, with its celibate clergy, colonial emigration, high-mortality urban centers, continual warfare, and late age of marriage had far more restrained population growth, compared to Asian cultures. A relative shortage of labour meant that surpluses could be invested in labour-saving technological advances such as water-wheels and mills, spinners and looms, steam engines and shipping, rather than fueling population growth.
Many have also argued that Europe's institutions were superior, that property rights and free-market economics were stronger than elsewhere due to an ideal of freedom peculiar to Europe. In recent years, however, scholars such as Kenneth Pomeranz have challenged this view.
Europe's geography may also have played an important role. The Middle East, India and China are all ringed by mountains, but once past these outer barriers all are relatively flat. By contrast, the Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians and other mountain ranges run through Europe, and the continent is also divided by several seas. This gave Europe some degree of protection from the peril of Central Asian invaders. Before the era of firearms, these nomads were militarily superior to the agricultural states on the periphery of the Eurasian continent and, if they broke out into the plains of northern India or the valleys of China, were all but unstoppable. These invasions were often devastating. The Golden Age of Islam was ended by the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258. India and China were also subject to periodic invasions, and Russia spent a couple of centuries under the Tartar Yoke. Central and western Europe, logistically more distant from the Central Asian heartland, proved less vulnerable to these threats.
Geography also contributed to important geopolitical differences. For most of their histories, China, India and the Middle East were each unified under a single dominant power that expanded until it reached the surrounding mountains and deserts. In 1600, the Ottoman Empire controlled almost all the Middle East, the Ming Dynasty ruled China, and the Mughal Empire held sway over India. By contrast, Europe was almost always divided into a number of warring states. Pan-European empires, with the major exception of the Roman Empire, tended to collapse soon after they arose.
One source of Europe's success is often said to be the intense competition among rival European states. In other regions, stability was often a higher priority than growth. China's growth as a maritime power was halted by the Ming Dynasty's Hai jin ban on ocean-going commerce. In Europe, due to political disunity, a blanket ban of this kind would have been impossible; had any one state imposed it, that state would have quickly fallen behind its competitors.
Another doubtless important geographic factor in the rise of Europe was the Mediterranean Sea, which, for millennia, had functioned as a maritime superhighway fostering the exchange of goods, people, ideas and inventions.
Also, by contrast with Europe, in the tropics the still more ubiquitous diseases and parasites, sapping the strength and health of humans, and of their animals and crops, were socially-disorganizing factors that impeded progress.
Europe's mercantile dominance
In the fourteenth century, the Renaissance began in Europe. Some modern scholars have questioned whether this flowering of art and humanism was a benefit to science, but the era did see an important fusion of Arab and European knowledge. One of the most important developments was the caravel, which combined the Arab lateen sail with European square rigging to create the first vessels that could safely sail the Atlantic Ocean. Along with important developments in navigation, this technology allowed Christopher Columbus in 1492 to journey across the Atlantic Ocean and bridge the gap from Africa-Eurasia to the Americas.
This had dramatic effects on both continents, in one of the most famous historical Outside Context Problems. The Europeans brought with them diseases that the American natives had never before encountered and an uncertain number of them were killed in a series of devastating epidemics. The Europeans also had the technological advantage of horses, steel and guns that allowed them to overpower the Aztec and Incan empires, along with other cultures of North America.
Gold and resources from the Americas began to be stripped from the land and people and shipped to Europe, while at the same time large numbers of European colonists began to emigrate to the Americans. To meet the great demand for labour in the new colonies, the mass import of Africans as slaves began. Soon, much of the Americas had a large racial underclass of slaves. In West Africa, a series of thriving states developed along the coast, becoming prosperous from the exploitation of suffering interior African peoples.
Europe's maritime expansion, unsurprisingly given its geography, was largely the work of the continent's Atlantic seaboard states: Portugal, Spain, England, France, the Netherlands. The Portuguese and Spanish Empires were at first the predominant conquerors and source of influence, but soon the more northern English, French and Dutch began to dominate the Atlantic. In a series of wars, fought in the 17th and 18th centuries, culminating with the Napoleonic Wars, Britain emerged as the first world power. It accumulated an empire that spanned the globe, controlling, at its peak, approximately one-quarter of the world's land surface, on which the "Sun never set".
Meanwhile, the voyages of Admiral Zheng He were halted by China's Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), established after the expulsion of the Mongols. A Chinese commercial revolution, sometimes described as "incipient capitalism," was also abortive. The Ming Dynasty would eventually fall to the Manchus, whose Qing Dynasty oversaw, at first, a period of calm and prosperity, but would increasingly fall prey to Western encroachment.
Soon after the invasion of the Americas, Europeans had exerted their technological advantage as well over the peoples of Asia. In the early 19th century, Britain gained control of the Indian subcontinent, Egypt and the Malay Peninsula; the French took Indochina; while the Dutch occupied the Dutch East Indies. The British also took over several areas still populated by neolithic peoples, including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and, as in the Americas, large numbers of British colonists began to emigrate there. In the late nineteenth century, the last unclaimed areas of Africa were divided among the European powers.
This era in Europe saw the Age of Reason lead to the Scientific Revolution, which changed man's understanding of the world and made possible the Industrial Revolution, a major transformation of the world’s economies. The Industrial Revolution began in Britain and used new modes of production — the factory, mass production, and mechanisation — to manufacture a wide array of goods faster and for less labour than previous methods.
The Age of Reason also led to the beginnings of modern democracy in the late-18th-century American and French revolutions. Democracy would grow to have a profound effect on world events and on quality of life.
During the Industrial Revolution, the world economy was soon based on coal, as new methods of transport, such as railways and steamships, effectively shrank the world. Meanwhile, industrial pollution and environmental damage, present since the discovery of fire and the beginning of civilization, accelerated drastically.
Twentieth Century onwards
Ascendance through technology
The twentieth century saw the waning of Europe's domination of the world—partly due to the costs and internal devastations of World Wars I and II—and the attendant rise, as rival superpowers, of the United States and the Soviet Union. Following World War II the United Nations was founded, in the hope that it could allay conflicts among nations and prevent future wars. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving the United States in possession of the field as "the sole remaining superpower," termed by some a "hyperpower." (See "Pax Americana.")
The century had given rise to powerful secular ideologies. The first, after 1917 in the Soviet Union, was communism, which after 1945 spread to Central Europe, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, North Vietnam and North Korea; in 1949, to China; and during the 1950s and '60s, elsewhere in the Third World. The 1920s and '30s saw militaristic fascist dictatorships gain control of Italy, Germany, Japan and Spain.
These transformations were linked to wars of unparalleled scope and devastation. World War I destroyed many of Europe's old empires and monarchies, and weakened France and Britain. World War II ultimately saw most of the militaristic dictatorships in Europe destroyed and communism advance into Eastern and Central Europe and into Asia.
This led to the Cold War, a forty-year stand-off between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies. All of humanity and complex life forms were put at risk by the existence of nuclear weapons. The nuclear powers understood the risks, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 nearly precipitated nuclear war. Such war being viewed as impractical, proxy wars were instead waged, at the expense of non-nuclear-armed Third World countries.
In 1991 the world witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet Union, with some of its former republics rejoining Russia in a Commonwealth of Independent States, while other republics as well as several former Soviet "satellites" reached out toward western Europe and the European Union.
The collapse of the communist polities found a delayed reflection in the capitalist realm as the late-20th-century acceleration of free trade and "globalization" led to the United States' growing indebtedness to China, and to the export of American jobs to low-wage countries, at the expense of American workers. The United States' growing internal and external debts boded ill for that country's long-term economic, diplomatic and military position in the world. (Lou Dobbs, War on the Middle Class, 2006.)
The same century saw vast progress in technology, and a large increase in life expectancy and standard of living for the majority of humanity. As the world economy switched from one based on coal to one based on petroleum, new communications and transportation technologies continued to make the world more united. The technological developments of the century also contributed to problems with the environment, though urban pollution is lower today than in the days of coal. As the world's petroleum reserves approached exhaustion within the next few decades, competition for the shrinking resource exacerbated long-standing conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The latter half of the century saw the rise of the information age and globalization dramatically increase trade and cultural exchange. Space exploration reached throughout the solar system. The structure of DNA, the very template of life, was discovered, and the human genome was sequenced, promising to eventually change the face of human disease. The number of scientific papers published each year now far surpasses the total number published prior to 1900[3], and doubles approximately every 15 years.[4] Global literacy rates have continued to increase, and the percentage of the global society's labor pool needed to produce society's food has continued to decrease substantially (Kurzweil 1999).
The same period, however, raised prospects of an end to human history, precipitated by unmanaged global hazards: nuclear proliferation, the greenhouse effect and other forms of environmental degradation caused by the "fissile-fossil complex," international conflicts prompted by the dwindling of resources, fast-spreading epidemics such as HIV, and the passage of near-earth asteroids and comets.
The development of states had always taken impetus from hope of gain and fear of loss. The sense of national identity had always been forged in conflicts with outsiders who were perceived as a threat. As the 20th century closed, the world witnessed the rise of what some saw as a new superstate, the European Union. Tentative steps were also taken, at emulating the European Union, by states in Asia, Africa and South America. Meanwhile the growth, life and collapse of states, organized around various human populations and for the purpose of achieving various human goals, continued to be accompanied by wars, with concomitant loss of life, physical destruction, disease, famine and genocide.
As the 20th century closed and the 21st opened, an increasingly interdependent world faced common hazards that could be averted only by common effort. It more and more seemed that the world must either perish or survive as a whole. This was brought home on October 30, 2006, by the Stern Review, warning of the threat of global warming and rapid climate change. In the historic escalation of human perils, localized internecine and international conflicts began to be edged out, as a focus of dread, by common threats to all mankind.
The global threats posed by environmental degradation and by the exhaustion of material and energy resources were not the first "matergetic crisis" that the world had faced. One of many earlier ones had been triggered by Britain's exhaustion of her supplies of wood needed for the production of iron, and had led to the invention of coking by the Abraham Darbys, father and son, which helped spark the 18th-century Industrial Revolution. Similarly, as the 20th century yielded to the 21st, the world seemed again to be lodged at a historic bottleneck which might be opened up by new technological innovations — by research into fusion power (ITER), and by greatly increased exploitation of solar-based renewable resources in the form of wind, tides, hydroelectric power and direct solar energy (e.g., photovoltaics).
Globalization and westernization
The neutrality of this article is disputed. |
The world was politically united by Europeans, who established colonies in most parts of the world outside Europe. Western culture modernised rapidly due to the industrial revolution and began to dominate the world in the 19th and 20th century, but was greatly influenced by other civilisations. There are still enormous cultural differences between world regions, although the trend is towards unification with a Western dominance.
The mercantile empires of Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France and Great Britain in the 15th to 19th centuries dominated the seas. The industrialisation and the social and political changes in the Western World of the 18th and 19th century led to a feeling of superiority among western thinkers and politicians. Africa and most of Asia became European-controlled, while European descendants ruled in Australia and the Americas. New ideologies emerged aimed at reshaping the world. Social Darwinists and imperialists generally believed that white people were superior and that they should civilize the primitive peoples (other cultures) by introducing Western ways of production (economics) and Western ideologies, such as Christianity. This way, the primitive people could have a 'better', 'more moral' lifestyle, although it was assumed that they could never be as cultivated as the whites. Socialists and liberals wanted to civilize the working classes in western countries as well. Socialists and American liberals believed (and continue to believe) that the society is, in large part, responsible for the behaviour of its citizens and that the society should be changed in order to make the world better. American Conservatives, European liberals, and all Libertarians believed (and continue to believe) in freedom and market forces and want individuals to take responsibility for themselves and hold that a society should guarantee freedom in order for individuals to develop fully. Christians, regardless of political ideology, believe that the individual's relation to their Church and/or God is the critical factor in a satisfactory life. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and other religions have religious concepts of their own.
The 20th century witnessed a strong polarization between these ideologies. Social Darwinism suffered a great loss when Nazi Germany was defeated during World War II. The United States and the Soviet Union enforced decolonization. The Civil Rights movement and the hippie counter culture of the 1960s led to a worldwide domination of a humanist ideology which persists in Westernized countries today.
Socialists attempted to change society with different methods. The two most powerful movements were social democracy and communism. Social democrats tried to reach a socialist society by changing society in cooperation with other political parties. The welfare state was created in many western countries. Left-wing Christians and liberals also shared a belief in the welfare state. Today, the welfare state is unpopular because it withholds economical progress due to inefficient investments. Communists attempted to create a socialist society by destroying the old society, the old elites and all competing ideologies. It led to genocide and substantial poverty, and was widely viewed as unsuccessful. Soviet and Chinese leaders and intellectuals discovered that the 'western' style of production with self-responsibility led to continuing progress, while the communist societies were in a continuous economic depression, so they were forced to become capitalistic.
Non-Western civilizations were first dominated by Western colonisers, who generally treated the local population with extreme harshness as local resources were exploited to benefit the colonial power. Nationalist and communist movements that swept through these countries inspired the local populace to begin thinking of, and initiating, independece movements, wanting equal shares in the world. Many African and Asian colonies became independent in the 1960s. Initially, there was much optimism that the new underdeveloped countries could become developed, but their economic situation generally grew worse after becoming independent. Civil wars and dictatorships wrecked the local societies and economies - the cause of which is sometimes attributed to neocolonialism, particularly that of the United States (see Jingoism, and the Dependency theory). Today, many Latin American and Asian nations are beginning the transition to first-world status; most of Africa and the Middle East, however, is stagnating.
Conservatives and nationalists around the world were afraid that their societies would collapse due to modernisation and new ideologies, so they tried to turn the tide of change. Conservatism is popular in many parts of the world, with neo-conservatism dominating the United States government. Islamic fundamentalists try to stop secularisation by waging war against Western culture. Many state leaders and intellectuals in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa criticise the West for its "immoral" lifestyle. Conservatism is fed, for a large part, by a religious belief in the afterlife with its attendant fears of retribution foreverafter.
Attempts to unite the world by military conquest or revolution met with no success. The nation state became the most important institute in the (western) world. Colonial empires in the 19th century were based on nation states, which controlled large territories containing 'aboriginal' populations. Nation states united in federations during the 20th century. During the interbellum between World War I and World War II, the League of Nations tried to prevent wars. After World War II, the United Nations tried to solve many problems that could not be solved by individual nation states. The League of Nations and United Nations were dependent on the voluntary contribution and desire to cooperate of individual member states. These organizations cannot function without the support of large countries, as was apparent during the 1920s and 1930s and during the Cold War. Many states are not (ethnic) nation states, but exist as multiple nations (sub-Saharan Africa), or only have a small portion of a nation within their boundaries (as in Arab countries).
The number and size of free market economies have increased dramatically since the 19th century, but state-controlled economies were still seen as viable alternatives, until the fall of the USSR in 1989. Free-market economies led to an enormous growth in standards of living. A global free market has, so far, met with mixed success. The free transfer of goods and information led to a growing interdependence of states that are bound by self-interest to cooperate with other states. This process is called globalization.
Overpopulation has been identified as one of the largest worldwide problems. This problem was identified much earlier by thinkers such as Malthus and Max Weber. Weber was afraid that India and China would develop their economies at the cost of Europe, and advocated German imperialism to prevent poverty for the German masses. The technological and economical development of the 20th century proved that the western countries could have economical growth through internal development. The European countries at the time of Max Weber could be seen as Third World countries compared to the wealth they have now. China, India and Latin America have been developing in recent decades, which has consequences for employment in western countries. Increasing population is also linked with the rapidly increasing demand for a share of limited resources and for the increasing destruction of the environment as these resources are used.
American culture has made a huge impact on the world. Hollywood movies and jazz music dominated the whole western world from the 1920s. Youth culture started in America. Jeans, T-shirts, the American style of advertising and pop music gained worldwide dominance in the 1960s and 1970s.
See also
Historical topics
History by period
History by region
Footnotes
- ^ "Origins of Modern Humans: Multiregional or Out of Africa?". Retrieved January 17.
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References
- The Biosphere (a Scientific American book), San Francisco, W.H. Freeman & Co., 1976, ISBN 0-7167-0945-7.
- Jared Diamond (1996). Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-03891-2.
- Fernand Braudel (1996). The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20308-9.
- Fernand Braudel (1973). Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-010454-6.
- Marshall Hodgson, Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam, and World History (Cambridge, 1993).
- Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000).
- Clive Ponting, World History: a New Perspective (London, 2000).
External links
- Universal Concise History of the World, 1832 Full text, free to read, American book on the history of the world with the intriguing perspective of 1832 America.
- WWW-VL: World History at European University Institute
