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| Summary | |
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The early arms races of the 20th century escalated into a war which involved many powerful nations: World War I (1914–1918). Technological advancements changed the way war was fought, as new inventions such as machine guns, tanks, chemical weapons, grenades, and military aircraft modified tactics and strategy. After more than four years of trench warfare in western Europe, and 20 million dead, those powers who had formed the Triple Entente (France, Britain, and Russia, later replaced by the United States and joined by Italy) emerged victorious over the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire). In addition to annexing much of the colonial possessions of the vanquished states, the Triple Entente exacted punitive restitution payments from their former foes, plunging Germany in particular into economic depression. The Tsarist regime of His Imperial Majesty Nicholas II was overthrown during the conflict and Russia was transitioned into the first ever communist state, and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires were dismantled at the war's conclusion.
Ukraine, early days of Nazi invasion. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war,[1] almost half of all World War II deaths.
At the beginning of the period, Britain was the world's most powerful nation;[2] having acted as the world's policeman for the past century. Fascism, a movement which grew out of post-war angst and which accelerated during the Great Depression of the 1930s, gained momentum in Italy, Germany and Spain in the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in World War II (1939–1945), sparked by Nazi Germany's aggressive expansion at the expense of its neighbors. Meanwhile, Japan had rapidly transformed itself into a technologically advanced industrial power. Its military expansion into eastern Asia and the Pacific Ocean culminated in a surprise attack on the United States, bringing it into World War II. After having had several years of dramatic military success, Germany was defeated in 1945, having been repelled and invaded by the Soviet Union from the east and invaded from the west by the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Free France. The war ended with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. Japan later became a U.S. ally with a powerful economy based on consumer goods and trade. Germany was divided between the western powers and the Soviet Union; all areas recaptured by the Soviet Union (East Germany and eastward) were essentially transitioned into Soviet puppet states under communist rule. Meanwhile, western Europe was influenced by the American Marshall Plan and made a quick economic recovery, becoming major allies of the United States under capitalist economies and relatively democratic governments.
World War II left about 60 million people dead. When the conflict ended in 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as very powerful nations. Allies during the war, they soon became hostile to one other as the competing ideologies of communism and democratic capitalism occupied Europe, divided by the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. The military alliances headed by these nations (NATO in North America and western Europe; the Warsaw Pact in eastern Europe) were prepared to wage total war with each other throughout the Cold War (1947–91). The period was marked by a new arms race, and nuclear weapons were produced in the tens of thousands, sufficient to end most human life on the planet had a large-scale nuclear exchange ever occurred. The very size of the nuclear arsenal on both sides is believed by many historians to have staved off an inevitable war between the two, as the consequences of any attack were too great to bear. The policy of unleashing a massive nuclear attack, knowing a massive nuclear counterattack would be forthcoming, was known as mutually assured destruction (MAD). Although the Soviet Union and the United States never directly entered military conflict with each other, several proxy wars, such as the Korean War (1950–1953) and the Vietnam War (1957–1975), were waged as the United States implemented its worldwide "containment" policy against communism.
Albert Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics.
After World War II, most of the European-colonized world in Africa and Asia gained independence in a process of decolonization. This, and the drain of the two world wars, caused Europe to lose much of its long-held power.[citation needed] Meanwhile, the wars empowered several nations, including the UK, U.S., Russia, China and Japan, to exert a strong influence over many world affairs. American culture spread around the world with the advent of Hollywood, Broadway, rock and roll, pop music, fast food, big-box stores, and the hip-hop lifestyle. British culture continued to influence world culture, including the "British Invasion" into American music, leading many top rock bands (such as Swedish ABBA) to sing in English. The western world and parts of Asia enjoyed a post-World War II economic boom. After the Soviet Union collapsed under internal pressure in 1991, the communist governments of the Eastern bloc were also dismantled, followed by rocky transitions into market economies.
Following World War II the United Nations was established as an international forum in which the world's nations could get together and discuss issues diplomatically. It has enacted resolutions on such topics as the conduct of warfare, environmental protection, international sovereignty, and human rights. Peacekeeping forces consisting of troops provided by various countries, in concert with various United Nations and other aid agencies, have helped to relieve famine, disease, and poverty, and to suppress some local armed conflicts. Europe slowly united, economically and, in some ways, politically, into what eventually became the European Union, which consisted of 15 European countries by the end of the 20th century.
In approximately the last third of the century, concern about humankind's impact on the Earth's environment caused environmentalism to become a major citizen movement. In many countries, especially in Europe, the movement was channeled into politics partly through Green parties, though awareness of the problem permeated societies. By the end of the 20th century, some progress had been made in cleaning up the environment though pollution continued apace.[citation needed] Increasing awareness of global warming began in the 1980s, commencing several decades of social and political debate.
Medical science and the Green Revolution in agriculture enabled the world's population to grow from about 1.6 billion to about 6.0 billion. This rapid population increase quickly became a major concern and directly caused or contributed to several global issues, including conflict, poverty, major environmental issues, and severe overcrowding in some areas.
[edit] Tags:Decades,1920s,1930s,1980s,Deaths,Earth,British,German,Ottoman,Austro-hungarian,Soviet Union,Great Depression,Nazi Germany,Italy,Cold War,World War,Environment,Nuclear Weapons,Tanks,Chemical Weapons,Grenades,Military Aircraft,Trench Warfare,Triple Entente,Austria-hungary,Ottoman Empire,Nicholas Ii,World War Ii,Britain,Acted As The World's Policeman,Angst,Free France,Dropping,Atomic Bombs,Consumer Goods,East Germany,Puppet States,Marshall Plan,Democratic Capitalism,Iron Curtain,Berlin Wall,Nato,Warsaw Pact,Mutually Assured Destruction,Proxy Wars,Korean War,Vietnam War,Containment,Albert Einstein,Modern Physics,Decolonization,Rock And Roll,Big-box Stores,Hip-hop,British Invasion,Abba,Post-world War Ii Economic Boom,Eastern Bloc,European Union,Green Parties,Global Warming,Medical Science,Green Revolution,Environmental Issues,Mine,World War I,Korea,Vietnam,Soviet,The End Of,Famine, | |
| The nature of innovation and change | |
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Due to continuing industrialization and expanding trade, many significant changes of the 20th century were, directly or indirectly, economic and technological in nature. Inventions such as the light bulb, the automobile, and the telephone in the late 19th century, followed by supertankers, airliners, motorways, radio, television, antibiotics, frozen food, computers and microcomputers, the Internet, and mobile telephones and many other things, affected the quality of life for great numbers. Scientific research, engineering professionalization and technological development was the force behind vast changes in everyday life.
[edit] Tags:Airliners,Light Bulb,Supertankers,Antibiotics,Frozen Food,Microcomputers,Mobile Telephones,Quality Of Life, | |
| Wars and politics | |
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The number of people killed during the 20th century by government actions could be as high as 400 million.[citation needed] This includes deaths caused by wars, genocide, politicide and mass murders. The deaths from battles, fire bombings and nuclear bombs used during the two world wars alone has been estimated between 50 to 80 million. Political scientist Rudolph Rummel estimated 262,000,000 deaths caused by democide, which excludes those killed in war battles, civilians unitentionally killed in war and killings of rioting mobs.[3] According to Charles Tilly, "Altogether, about 100 million people died as a direct result of action by organized military units backed by one government or another over the course of the twentieth century. Most likely a comparable number of civilians died of war-induced disease and other indirect effects."[4] It is estimated that approximately 70 million Europeans died through war, violence and famine between 1914 and 1945.[5]
After gaining political rights in the United States and much of Europe in the first part of the century, and with the advent of new birth control techniques, women became more independent throughout the century.
Warfare in the early 20th Century (1914–1918)
Clockwise from top: front line Trenches, a British Mark I Tank crossing a trench, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the battle of the Dardanelles, a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks, and German Albatros D.III biplanes.
Rising nationalism and increasing national awareness were among the many causes of World War I (1914–1918), the first of two wars to involve many major world powers including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia/USSR, the United States and the British Empire. World War I led to the creation of many new countries, especially in Eastern Europe. At the time it was said by many to be the "war to end war".
Civil wars occurred in many nations. A violent civil war broke out in Spain in 1936 when General Francisco Franco rebelled against the Second Spanish Republic. Many consider this war as a testing battleground for World War II, as the fascist armies bombed some Spanish territories.
The economic and political aftermath of World War I and the Great Depression in the 1930s led to the rise of fascism and nazism in Europe, and subsequently to World War II (1939–1945). This war also involved Asia and the Pacific, in the form of Japanese aggression against China and the United States. Civilians also suffered greatly in World War II, due to the aerial bombing of cities on both sides, and the German genocide of the Jews and others, known as the Holocaust. In 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed with nuclear weapons.
During World War I, in Russia the Bolshevik putsch took over the Russian Revolution of 1917, precipitating the founding of the Soviet Union and the rise of communism. After the Soviet Union's involvement in World War II, communism became a major force in global politics, notably in Eastern Europe, China, Indochina and Cuba, where communist parties gained near-absolute power. This led to the Cold War and proxy wars with the West, including wars in Korea (1950–1953) and Vietnam (1957–1975).
Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev aboard the USS Sequoia, June 19, 1973
The Soviet authorities caused the deaths of millions of their own citizens in order to eliminate domestic opposition.[6] More than 18 million people passed through the Gulag, with a further 6 million being exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union.[7]
The civil rights movement in the United States and the movement against apartheid in South Africa challenged racial segregation in those countries.
The two world wars led to efforts to increase international cooperation, notably through the founding of the League of Nations after World War I, and its successor, the United Nations, after World War II.
Nationalist movements in the sub continent led to the independence of India and Pakistan.
Gandhi's non-violence and civil disobedience influenced many political movements around the world, including the African American civil rights movement in USA, and freedom movements in South Africa and Burma.
The creation of Israel, a Jewish state in the Middle East, by the British Mandate of Palestine fueled many regional conflicts. These were also influenced by the vast oil fields in many of the other countries of the mostly Arab region.
The end of colonialism led to the independence of many African and Asian countries. During the Cold War, many of these aligned with the United States, the USSR, or China for defense.
After a long period of civil wars and conflicts with European powers, China's last imperial dynasty ended in 1912. The resulting republic was replaced, after yet another civil war, by a communist People's Republic in 1949. At the end of the 20th century, though still ruled by a communist party, China's economic system had transformed almost completely to capitalism.
The Great Chinese Famine was a direct cause of the death of tens of millions of Chinese peasants between 1959 and 1962. It is thought to be the largest famine in human history.[8]
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, culminating in the deaths of hundreds of civilian protestors, were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing,China. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.
The revolutions of 1989 released Eastern and Central Europe from Soviet supremacy. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia dissolved, the latter violently over several years, into successor states, many rife with ethnic nationalism. East Germany and West Germany were reunified in 1990.
European integration began in earnest in the 1950s, and eventually led to the European Union, a political and economic union that comprised 15 countries at the end of the 20th century.
[edit] Tags:Challenged,1950s,Chinese,Russian,Dissolved,Genocide,Rudolph Rummel,Democide,Charles Tilly,Birth Control,Front Line,Trenches,Mark I Tank,Royal Navy,Battleship,Hms Irresistible,Battle Of The Dardanelles,Vickers Machine Gun,Gas Masks,Albatros D.iii,Biplanes,Ussr,British Empire,War To End War,Civil War,Francisco Franco,Second Spanish Republic,Nazism,Aerial Bombing Of Cities, | |
| Culture and entertainment | |
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As the century began, Paris was the artistic capital of the world, where both French and foreign writers, composers and visual artists gathered.
Movies, music and the media had a major influence on fashion and trends in all aspects of life. As many movies and much music originate from the United States, American culture spread rapidly over the world.
1953 saw the glamorous coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, an extremely iconic and revered figure of the 20th century.
Visual culture became more dominant not only in movies but in comics and television as well. During the century a new skilled understanding of narrativist imagery was developed.
Computer games and internet surfing became new and popular form of entertainment during the last 25 years of the century.
In literature, science fiction, fantasy (with well-developed fictional worlds, rich in detail), alternative history fiction gained unprecedented popularity. Detective fiction gained unprecedented popularity between the two world wars.
Blues and jazz music became popularized during the 1910s and 1920s in the United States. Blues went on to influence rock and roll in the 1950s, which only increased in popularity with the British Invasion of the mid-to-late 1960s. Rock soon branched into many different genres, including heavy metal, punk rock, and alternative rock and became the dominant genre of popular music. This was challenged with the rise of hip hop in the 1980s and 1990s. Other genres such as house, techno, reggae, and soul all developed during the latter half of the 20th century and went through various periods of popularity.
Modern Dance is born in America as a 'rebellion' against centuries-old European ballet. Dancers and choreographers such as Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Martha Graham, Jose Limon, Doris Humphrey, Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor[disambiguation needed ] re-defined movement, struggling to bring it back to its 'natural' roots and along with Jazz, created a solely American art form.
I and the Village by Marc Chagall, a modern painter.
In classical music, composition branched out into many completely new domains, including dodecaphony, aleatoric (chance) music, and minimalism.
Synthesizers began to be employed widely in music and crossed over into the mainstream with new wave music in the 1980s. Electronic instruments have been widely deployed in all manners of popular music and has led to the development of such genres as house, synthpop, electronic dance music, and industrial.
The art world experienced the development of new styles and explorations such as expressionism, Dadaism, cubism, de stijl, abstract expressionism and surrealism.
The modern art movement revolutionized art and culture and set the stage for both Modernism and its counterpart postmodern art as well as other contemporary art practices.
Art Nouveau began as the most advanced architecture and design but went unfashionable after World War I. The style was very dynamic and highly inventive, however the depression of the Great War made it difficult to keep up such a high standard.
In Europe, modern architecture departed radically from the excessive decoration of the Victorian era. Streamlined forms inspired by machines became more commonplace, enabled by developments in building materials and technologies. Before World War II, many European architects moved to the United States, where modern architecture continued to develop.
The automobile vastly increased the mobility of people in the Western countries in the early-to-mid-century, and in many other places by the end of the 20th century. City design throughout most of the West became focused on transport via car.
The popularity of sport increased considerably—both as an activity for all, and as entertainment, particularly on television. Several dictators in the 20th century supported organised sport.
[edit] Tags:Centuries,1910s,1960s,1990s,Popular Music, | |
| Science and Mathematics | |
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Advanced by the Turing machine, new fields of mathematics studying computability and computation complexity were developed.
Gödel's incompleteness theorems were formulated and proven.
New areas of physics, like special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics, were developed during the first half of the century.
While some pioneering experiments about internal structure of atoms had been made at the end of 19th century, it is only in 20th century the structure of atoms was clearly understood, followed by discovery of elementary particles.
It was found that all the known forces can be traced to only four fundamental interactions. It was discovered further that two of them, namely electromagnetism and weak interaction, can be merged in the electroweak interaction, leaving only three different fundamental interactions.
Discovery of nuclear reactions, in particular nuclear fusion, finally solved the problem of the source of solar energy. The age of solar system, including Earth, was determined and it turned to be much older than what was considered before (more than 4 billion years rather than 20 million years suggested by Lord Kelvin in 1862[9]).
Radiocarbon dating became a powerful technique to determine the age of prehistoric animals and plants as well as historical objects. No such technique existed in the 19th century.
In astronomy, much better understanding of the evolution of the Universe was achieved, its age was determined, the Big Bang theory was proposed. The planets of the Solar System and their moons were closely observed; planets such as Pluto were discovered in the 1930s on the edge of the Solar System; although Pluto has since been declassified as a planet; and re-classified as a dwarf planet. On the planets in our Solar System it was found that there is no sentient (or complex animal or plant) life on their surfaces. Extrasolar planets were observed for the first time.
In biology, genetics was unanimously accepted and significantly developed. The structure of DNA was determined in 1953 by James Watson,[10][11] Francis Crick,[10][11] Rosalind Franklin[11] and Maurice Wilkins,[10][11] following by developing techniques which allow to read DNA sequences and culminating in starting the Human Genome Project (not finished in 20th century) and cloning the first mammal in 1996.
The role of sex reproduction in evolution was understood, and bacterial conjugation was discovered.
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