The Wright Brothers’ First Flight

Apollo 11

On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers made the first recorded heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

On July 20, 1969, another pair of Americans made the first moon landing.

These two events were separated by only 65 years and 7 months, less than an average American lifespan by 1969 standards.

That a single person could have witnessed both events tells us all we need to know about the tumultuous 20th century. The rate of change – that is, how fast society changes – has been accelerating since the dawn of industrialization, upending the international order and introducing new systems and inventions to the global intellectual marketplace. The 18th and 19th centuries shook traditional cultures to their cores with the introduction of human rights, science, nationalism, and industrialization; in the 20th century, these changes would further upset and complicate the world, opening new possibilities and dissolving old ways of living, sometimes very rapidly and often against some peoples’ will.

Before we take a voyage through the second half of the 20th century, we need to do two things. First, we need to define certain terms, such as “democracy” and “socialism.” These ideas changed how people lived their lives, so we should understand what they mean and why they represented important changes to previous ideas. Also, words like “socialism” are sometimes used incorrectly and often as insults; it wouldn’t be a bad thing to learn the actual meanings, so that we are all discussing the same things when we use these words.

Second, we need to look at global trends prior to World War II, so that we can better understand why the 20th century was a time of profound change. In studying history, it’s always useful to take a “running start” at the time period one is studying by backing up a few decades first.

We will do both in this introduction, defining important terms as we examine the historic trends evident at the start of the 20th century.

The idea of “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is not a new one. The earliest known democracy was 5th Century BCE Athens, although there may have been other democracies in other advanced societies, such as India. Early democracies were direct democracies – that is, the entire town would gather in once place, and vote on issues with a show of hands (with women and slaves excluded, of course). Early democracies, such as Athens or the Roman Republic, did not last, eventually devolving into empires. In the medieval period, democracy sometimes existed at the local or regional level, with peoples’ assemblies retaining the power to make some local decisions, although always under the umbrella of a larger monarchy or oligarchy (rule by a small group of elites). It was not until the American Revolution that the concept of national-level democracy was re-introduced; this time it would be a representative democracy, with elected representatives making the decisions, since in a large society it is impractical for the people get together to vote on every topic.

Democracies have certain advantages over monarchies, which surprised many observers who expected the United States to fail. If the democracy truly represents the will of the people (more or less), the people will perceive it as (more or less) just, and give the system their loyalty. If the system provides justice and equality, why rebel against it? If a system provides freedom, why not defend it against foreign invaders who want to impose their will? Democracies provide the people with more rights and privileges than any other system, and so create more loyalty and attachment than other systems, explaining the popularity of democracy.

But these statements come with many caveats. First, democracies do not need to be liberal democracies – that is, democracies in which all adults have the right to vote. For many years, women in Western democracies were not permitted to vote at the federal level. In the United States, it took decades to remove laws preventing voting by those who did not possess a certain amount of property, or who were not members of certain churches. In the United States, slaves were of course barred from voting. Even after slavery ended, Jim Crow laws in the former Confederate states prevented African Americans from voting in those states. When the American founding fathers created the first modern democracy, they allowed landed white males of the correct churches to vote, and closed the door to freedom on everyone else. The following centuries have largely been the story of those who were originally closed out forcing that door back open so that they can also step through. This applies to all the democracies around the world.

Another important point about democracy is that it means much more than just voting. Democracy means a dispersal of real power across all of society. Voting means very little if a small segment of society holds all the real political or economic power. Democracy means having an independent judiciary – that is, the judges and courts do not answer to political leaders, and can make their own decisions. It means having trials by juries, where citizens are judged by their peers, not by elites. It means freedom of the press, where journalists can criticize the government without fear of retaliation. It means freedom of religion (or from it) and the freedom of association, the right to form workers’ unions or other civic groups. All of this creates a society in which power is dispersed widely through the population, preventing any one group from dominating the others. Of course, since there are always people who want to seize power for themselves, the citizens must constantly be on their guard against consolidation of power and always be ready to use their voices to prevent it. As it has been said: democracy is not a spectator sport. You have to participate.

Democracy is the most difficult form of government to maintain. There are a great many “fake” democracies in the world, where elections are stolen or otherwise manipulated and opposition to the elites is crushed, either bluntly or surreptitiously. This is why elections are not the only requirement of democracy; the system demands a real division of power, which most elites are unwilling to relinquish. Many countries use corrupt elections to convince their citizens that they live in a real democracy and thus buy their loyalty; typically, the people are not convinced by these shows. They understand the real situation.

All these difficulties with democracies makes them inherently unstable, and only the commitment of the citizens keeps them functioning as they should. Democracies can and do fail (see Chapter 1 for examples of this). So perhaps the best description of democracy is Winston Churchill’s: “Democracy is the worst form of government in the world…except for all the others.”

The rebirth of democracy went hand-in-hand with a new concept, born of the French and American revolutions: nationalism. Kingdoms and empires – the most common forms of governments until the 18th century – were primarily the private properties of their respective kings and emperors. The people living in these states were not citizens; they were subjects of the monarchs, just people who lived on the monarch’s land and owed him fealty. Religion was usually used to justify this system. A nation, however, is different. A nation is a state which belongs to the people who live there; since these people are not the subjects of a monarch, they are citizens, co-owners of the nation with certain human rights. In a nation, as opposed to a monarchy, the glue holding the state together was set of traits shared by the citizens. These might include language, religion, ethnicity, and a shared history. These traits create an identity to which, in theory, people give their loyalty (for the best explanation of how this happens, see Benedict Anderson’s classic, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism). Although a nation exists only in peoples’ imagination, it is probably the most powerful idea in history, and millions of people have been willing to fight, kill, and die for their nation.

Starting in the 18th century, certain historical trends combined to weaken monarchies and strengthen nationalism: new Enlightenment concepts of human rights, an empowered middle class which wanted the power and wealth reserved for royalty, and independence movements within empires, among others. These forces led to the revolutions and wars which would, eventually, convert nearly all the world into a community of nations instead of kingdoms.

However, as in democracy, there is an inherent instability within nationalism. Because the nation exists only in the minds of citizens, it invites the question: what is the nature of this nation? What does it mean to be a citizen? Who are the real citizens? Who gets to make these decisions? What happens to those who don’t “fit in?” Furthermore, nationalism tends to be chauvinistic, pushing the narrative that the citizens of the nation are the best people in the world, or at least better than their neighbors across the border. This is a useful tool for national leaders who want to carry out wars or divert attention from internal problems.

These two trends – democracy and nations – are very important to the history of the 20th century, as they represent major continuing trends in world history. The development of fascism (Chapter 1) was a response to these trends.

A third related thread in world history is imperialism, summarized in Chapter 4. Following the growth of nationalism, several of the great empires had fallen by the mid-20th century; for example, nationalism and war had destroyed the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. The remaining empires were European, with the notable exception of the Japanese Empire, which would shortly contend with the West for control of the Pacific.

Today, although nations still try to dominate and control others, no official empires remain; the idea of imperialism has become anathema, so no nation would claim to practice it. Before World War II, empire was still alive and well, but the spread of nationalist consciousness across the world was challenging the concept of empire. People, as a whole, do not like being ruled by foreigners. Furthermore, that the British, French, and Dutch empires should practice democracy at home and autocracy in their empires was viewed as the height of hypocrisy by the colonized. Even many Europeans were beginning to reject imperialism, a sure sign that the imperial project was endangered. The cognitive dissonance of upholding two systems, a free one for white people and an unfree one for nonwhites, could not be maintained for much longer.

Industrialization

A 19th Century Factory Floor

Industrialization basically means using machines to make commodities, rather than making them by hand. Despite this simple definition, industrialization produced the most important transformation of human culture since the development of agriculture twelve thousand years ago.

The process began in 18th century England with the development of the first practical steam engine. Using this new tireless machine, powered by coal, the English first industrialized the textile industry, producing thread, cloth, and clothing with steam-powered looms.  This exponentially increased productivity and the volume of available commodities, which in turn drastically reduced the prices of commodities, suddenly making them affordable to the average person for the first time. Industrialization was also applied to agriculture in the forms of tractors, combines, harvesters, threshers, and other machines. This vastly increased agricultural production, drastically reducing the price of food, which had cost the average person about one-third of their income before industrialization; it reduced starvation and improved the overall health of the population. Furthermore, the amount of raw materials and finished products now being shipped demanded the industrialization of transportation, leading to railroads and steamships to speed up industrial processes. And all the new factories required millions of workers, engineers, and managers, creating new employment opportunities.

But industrialization also caused tremendous problems, for which society was not prepared. As agriculture industrialized, it required far fewer workers. These farm workers, who in earlier times had numbered perhaps ninety percent of the population, were now quickly rendered unemployed – today, in the United States, only about three percent of workers are farmers. Where did all the farmers go? As industrialization spread, people left the farms, where they were no longer needed, and moved into the cities, looking for jobs in the new factories. This unprecedented movement is known as urbanization, and the world’s cities grew as never before.

Unfortunately, they weren’t ready for it. Builders threw up cheap tenements for workers, who needed living space. But there were few building codes in place; the new apartments were therefore built with adequate ventilation or running water or even fire escapes. The tenements became synonymous with squalor and disease, overcrowded hotspots for tuberculosis and dangerous fire traps.

Nor had society had time to adjust to life in the new factories. There were no minimum wage laws, no worker safety standards, no racial or sexual discrimination laws, and no maternity leave. Since labor unions were illegal, workers had no way to advocate for better conditions. There was no unemployment insurance nor old age pensions. Since all the factories had the same conditions, and no motivation to be otherwise, workers had few opportunities to improve their lot in life.

But social change went even further. In preindustrial times, when almost everyone was a farmer, people lived together in families on farms. The family was an economic unit, working together all day to produce wealth. The father was the “boss” in these patriarchal systems, supported by his wife, and the children worked for the family. When the adults were too old to work, their children took care of them. And the elderly, the grandparents, were the most valuable members of society, because over the course of their lives they had acquired all the necessary knowledge related to living on a farm. And if the local elite, perhaps a manor lord, mistreated the people, the people could always appeal to religious authorities to restrain him on moral grounds. This arrangement had existed everywhere in the world since agriculture was developed, twelve thousand years ago.

Then, almost overnight, it all changed. Families were replaced by farm machinery, and the newly-unemployed flooded into the cities to look for work. The factories, short of labor, had jobs ready for them. In the absence of labor laws, workers, including children, worked extremely long hours for low pay in harsh conditions, exposed to dangerous machines and chemicals. They had not a shred of protection from discrimination or other abuse. Perhaps worst of all, family bonds were quickly being eroded. People no longer worked together as family; they worked for bosses, managers, and owners, who were not related to them, who did not care about them at all, perhaps whom they had never even met. Their work lives had become completely impersonal, working with strangers for strangers in places that were not theirs; everything was alien in this new world. Children originally worked in factories with their parents, but before long, societies created compulsory education to give the children a safe environment while their parents worked and to provide a basic education that a worker would need. This separated children from their parents for at least half the day. And the elderly were no longer useful at all, since their knowledge of farm work was no longer relevant. Those too old to work remained at home alone, largely useless to this new society. All these changes produced a social ill that Karl Marx called “alienation,” the feeling of being cut off from others, even one’s own family, in this new industrial culture.

This new world began in England, then spread to continental Europe. From there, industrialization spread across the world. Some societies, or segments of societies, resisted, seeing how it completely changed cultures. Some nations grudgingly accepted it because it was strengthening rival nations; this begrudging change was known as defensive modernization. But it became clear that nonindustrial cultures were at a disadvantage when competing with the power and wealth of industrial nations. Resistance to capitalism and industrialism continues in certain rural cultures to this day.

Karl Marx

Friedrich Engels

The first major industrial city in the world was Manchester, the center of the English textile industry. Upon seeing the living conditions of the factory workers in the city, a young German named Frederick Engels wrote:

Everywhere half or wholly ruined buildings…rarely a wooden or stone floor to be seen in the houses, almost uniformly broken, ill-fitting windows and doors, and a state of filth! Everywhere heaps of débris, refuse, and offal; standing pools for gutters, and a stench which alone would make it impossible for a human being in any degree civilised to live in such a district...Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the construction of this single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants…If any one wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air – and such air! – he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither.

Engels was hardly alone in his assessment of working and living conditions of the English working class; those who had migrated from farm to factory were more than aware of their terrible plight. They had little choice. They had no farm jobs to which to return, no education useful to their new work, and no recourse to the law. Their only relief came from religious and secular charities, which could hardly counterbalance the weight of such widespread poverty. This form of capitalism is known as laissez-faire, in which the government does not regulate business. There were no safety regulations, non-discrimination laws, environmental regulations, and so on. Since the creation of agriculture, most people had lived and worked on farms, and most economic activity revolved around food. Governments had not foreseen the massive social changes wrought by industrialization, and were not legally or legislatively prepared for them. Naturally, there were calls for regulation of business and city planning, to make the workers’ situation more tolerable; these pleas largely fell on deaf ears in the 19th century, since the factory owners and tenement landlords had little incentive to regulate their behavior. Any benefits for workers – higher pay, better working conditions, and so on – would by necessity come out of their profits. And these wealthy business owners had access to politicians and lawyers, allowing them to retain their privileges. If the workers tried to unionize or strike, the police would handle that.

Their problem was that the system could not be maintained for long. The situation was simply too harsh for most people, and hatred of the elites and political pressure grew among the disaffected. The industrializing nations of Europe were increasingly democratic, allowing the citizens to elect representatives who would legislate change. And if the wealthy elites managed to retain power, there was always another, less civilized option: violent revolution. This was the choice that every industrializing nation faced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

An important note before proceeding with the history. Socialism refers to any social system (political and economic) which emphasizes the needs of the many over the wants and needs of the few. For example, regulating a business to prevent it from poisoning the environment is socialistic thinking, instead of granting it the freedom to do whatever it wants (laissez-faire). We are used to thinking of socialism as left-wing (typically called Marxism), but there is also a right-wing form of socialism known as national socialism or fascism (see Chapter 1).

Returning to history: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels described a modern form of left-wing socialism in their writings in the mid-19th century. This is the system we commonly call socialism. Like doctors, Marx and Engels first described the symptoms of modern society, using about ninety percent of their writings to do so; they then described their cure, which constituted the last ten percent.

Marx and Engels asked the question: why did the factory owners have all the power in the new industrial society? The answer was that the elites, known as capitalists or bourgeoisie, owned the means of production, which means the way in which wealth is generated in a society. For example, in preindustrial days, most all wealth came from farms; therefore, those who owned the land (the royals and nobles) had all the power. In early industrial societies, wealth was generated by factories and railroads; therefore, whoever owned those assets had the economic advantage. There are more workers (known as the proletariat) than factories and railroads, so the owners have the more valuable commodities. Furthermore, said Marx and Engels, the owners use their advantageous situation to abuse the workers, giving them just enough to survive while maximizing their own profits. This situation, they claimed, was the reason for the squalor which Engels described in Manchester.

The two political philosophers then elaborated on what they considered to be the solution for the situation. It entailed a revolution in which the proletariat would seize the means of production from the bourgeoisie. The new state would now run all the means of production – the farms, railroads, factories, shipyards, coal mines, and so on – not for a private profit, but for the benefit of the proletariat. In other words, the proletariat owned the means of production collectively, and the state administered them on the proletariat’s behalf. This collective ownership meant that everyone would be economically equal. In such a country, everyone would have as much power and money as everyone else, so that no one would have an advantage over anyone else, and would therefore not be able to abuse anyone else. This form of socialism came to be known as Marxism or, in its Russian context, as Bolshevism.

However, the pair took their program a step further. A socialist nation, they said, should educate its children in socialist ethics, specifically, the rejection of private gain and the endorsement of the social good. New generations of socialists would therefore become increasingly morally pure, doing less and less harm to their fellow citizens. Eventually, over years, police would become unnecessary, because no one would want to break the law. Eventually, they claimed, a government would no longer be necessary, because the people would be capable of running everything themselves without the guidance of politicians. This would lead to a utopian state of anarchy known as communism. The terms “socialism” and “communism” are often used interchangeably, but technically they are different forms of government. Communism refers to socialist anarchy, while in socialism there is still a government, and one which is very involved in peoples’ lives. There has never been a nation matching Marx’s definition of communism.

Marx felt that socialism would begin in labor unions, because they represented centers of power for the proletariat. However, when the Russian Revolution actually created a Marxist state for the first time, Vladimir Lenin decided that Marxism needed modification in order to actually work. Marx believed that people would naturally do this themselves, organized mainly around labor unions, which he thought would be the centers of revolution. Russia, however, had very little industry and therefore little union organization. Therefore, Lenin’s first change was to create a vanguard party, a socialist political party which would lead the people to true communism. The USSR was a one-party state; although there were elections, only members of the Communist Party could run for office, so the party and the government were virtually the same entity.

Furthermore, Marx had advocated for worldwide revolution. Capitalist nations, he claimed, would surely try to destroy any socialist nation, as the bourgeoisie would not allow the workers to be free. Socialism therefore required workers in every country in the world to rise up against capitalism. This messianic view of revolution terrified the capitalists, who viewed socialism as an aggressive philosophy which would, if it caught on, destroy all they had built. Vladimir Lenin did not agree with this policy of worldwide socialist revolution. The USSR was the only socialist country in the world at that time and was hardly in a position to fight the entire world. Therefore, Lenin instituted a policy of “socialism in one country” rather than attempt to free the entire world from capitalist exploitation. Josef Stalin, his successor, continued this policy, as did all other Soviet premiers. That did not assuage the capitalists, who always believed that the USSR was out to dominate the world. These two modifications to Marxism – a vanguard party and socialism in one country -- created a new form of socialism known as Marxist-Leninism, which was the state ideology of the Soviet Union.

Another socialist trait which nettled the capitalists was atheism. Marx and Engels were materialists who rejected any concept of the supernatural and viewed religion and churches as negative influences on mankind. Marx referred to religion as the “opiate of the masses,” a drug which keeps people focused on a better life to come after death. He contended that, if the numbing influence of religion was removed, people would be motivated by the pain of injustice to rise in revolt and end the true source of their pain, which was capitalism. As one might imagine, most of 19th century Europe was appalled by such thinking, and the churches decried socialism as anti-Christ. Later, when they fought the USSR and other socialists, the fascists claimed they were fighting atheism, trying to leverage fear of godless communists.

That, then, is the Marxist critique of industrial society and the remedy it proposes. Marxism was instituted first in the Soviet Union, and later in other nations – for example, Vietnam and Cuba. But Marxism was not the only possible response to laissez-faire capitalism and industrialization. Another way was possible.

Progressivism

Child labor in the United States before Progressivism

Progressivism, in its 19th and early 20th century definition, was a liberal response to the mélange of laissez-faire capitalism and the poor working conditions of industrialization. Broadly defined, progressivism was the belief that it was possible to improve society through science and reason, the foundations of the Enlightenment. As a response to industrialization, it meant government intervention in the economy and society in general to fight poverty and inequality, and thus create a better life for citizens. This would require the government to regulate business. Karl Marx claimed that the bourgeoisie would never allow this to happen, as they had most of the political power in a nation and would use it to prevent any usurpation of their power and wealth. He and Engels claimed that only revolution would work.

The first national leader to attempt to change the laissez-faire system without destroying it was Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the newly-formed nation of Germany in 1871. Bismarck was a conservative and as far from a socialist as one could get; nevertheless, he realized that the socialists had a point. Laissez-faire living conditions were so difficult that the socialists, who were the only ones promising anything to the workers, would eventually win the struggle. That would destroy the capitalist nation that Bismarck was trying to build. And the socialists were a real threat in Germany, which was now going through rapid industrialization.

In order to forestall a successful socialist revolt, Bismarck created legislation to improve workers’ lives. This legislation created a system of health insurance (the cost of which was split between workers and employers), old-age pensions, and accident insurance. He did not press for better working conditions in the factories, believing that it would slow economic growth. Furthermore, rather than term these changes “socialist,” he referred to them as “practical Christianity,” connecting them to Christian charity rather than atheistic Marxism.

It worked. The socialists opposed the new legislation because it would eliminate the socialists’ influence, which it did. Bismarck had created the world’s first “welfare state,” the first laissez-faire nation to modify the system to placate the workers and forestall revolt. These progressive changes made the German worker more loyal to the state; in fact, German immigration to America suddenly decreased, since workers perceived that life in Germany was worth staying for.

Suffering from the same malaise as Germany, other industrialized countries soon followed suit, creating welfare states to balance the power of the industrialists. This did not always go smoothly – Bismarck had considerable difficulty in carrying out his plan, and other national leaders would have to fight hard against both conservatives and socialists to get legislation passed.

Other nations took the welfare state even further once the concept had been proven. In the United States, old-age pension and disability insurance became known as “social security,” so named because it (at least partially) removed some of the paralyzing insecurity of modern industrial life. But social legislation went much further over time. Remember that, despite the power of the factory owners and other bourgeoisie, the industrializing nations were mainly democracies. The workers in those nations could organize and elect politicians who would support welfare legislation, although it sometimes took years to affect change in the face of bourgeois resistance.

The biggest change to laissez-faire economics was the legalization of labor unions, allowing workers to organize and strike for better wages. Out of this came legislation improving working conditions: labor laws outlawing child labor or guaranteeing maternity leave, or granting weekends off and paid overtime. Later developments included worker safety standards (called OSHA in the United States), food and drug safety laws, and anti-monopoly regulations. Some of these changes took decades to enact; for example, laws against discriminatory hiring practices were not passed in the United States until 1964. Nevertheless, outside the communist world, progressivism would sweep every industrializing nation. Today, these is not a single laissez-faire nation left in the world.

But progressivism went beyond economic considerations. New legislation also expanded democracy to all adults to build more loyal citizens who would reject socialism. One by one, industrializing nations removed voting restrictions based on religion or social status, and eventually permitted women to vote, the single greatest democratic leap since the French and American revolutions.

Another major change was compulsory education. Although children worked in factories and mines at the start of the industrial revolutions, all industrialized nations eventually passed child labor laws to protect children from the exploitation of long work days and dangerous work conditions. Mandatory schooling by day not only gave children a safe environment while their parents worked during the day, but also gave them the chance to obtain an education, something that was typically reserved for wealthier families in the past. Allowing all children to receive an education is a great social equalizer, giving lower-class children the opportunity to compete for higher-class jobs and incomes. Compulsory education was not universally popular at first, as the wealthy decried it as a waste of taxpayer money to try to educate the lower classes, and some poor families rejected the demand that their children stop making an income for their families. Nevertheless, compulsory education was eventually accepted in all industrial societies, and governments found them a useful space for indoctrinating young citizens in nationalism.

Social and economic progressivism were based on changing government policies in order to provoke change, and did indeed create tremendous changes in industrialized society. These changes are generally felt to have created stronger nations, since citizens felt that the nation was more apt to look after their best interests; they also reduced crime and distributed wealth more evenly though society. But other less-controlled forces were sweeping industrialized cultures at the same time, and their influences were as profound as progressive forces.

Secularism (a philosophy of basing human conduct on non-religious foundations) gained in popularity in the 20th century in most industrializing nations. Removing religion from politics was a growing force since the Age of Enlightenment, primarily because it prevented the religious warfare which had so devasted Europe. Early public schools were technically secular, although deeply influenced by religious thought; they became increasingly secular over time, meaning that younger generations were less influenced by religious thinking, at least at school. At the same time, consumerism was growing as a social influence. Industrialization made it easier for lower classes buy the various commodities flowing from the factories: cars, appliances, home décor, clothes, and so on. But sales depend on buyers, and buyers need to be convinced to spend their money. Thus, modern advertising was born, filling the pages of newspapers or broadcast over the new device of the radio. It seemed to do as designed: people became increasingly interested in acquiring material things, and it seemed to some that consumerism was replacing religion as the nation’s guiding light.

There was good reason for this change of loyalty. While prayer did not seem to stop disease, medical science could. The developments in medicine in the late 19th and 20th centuries seemed to deliver miracles. The three most important contributions were antibiotics, vaccination, and the purification of drinking water, all the results of germ theory, which became clarified in the 1890s. Many diseases were now curable or, more importantly, preventable. The government became deeply involved in a trend known as public health, building hospitals and funding research and vaccination programs. Human lifespans lengthened and people placed more faith in the new sciences.

While progressive developments were generally felt to be positive, not everyone appreciated them, especially when it came to the children. Compulsory education profoundly changed the traditional family. While education opened the door to new careers and economic opportunity, it also split up the family during the day. While parents worked, children were being educated by adults other than their parents, and spending their time primarily with other children. This was part of what created what is known as youth culture, the idea that children have their own subculture, apart from their parents. This may manifest in their clothing or hair styles, their music and literature and slang, and most importantly their attitudes towards the world. Advertisers were quick to exploit this new youth market, aiming products directly at their demographic. These differences created a gap between parents and children known as the generation gap, where children were living in a different mental and social world from their parents. Many traditionalists, already disturbed by secularism and the decline of patriarchy, decried the new lack of control over their own children.

Other traditionalists had similar misgivings about other social changes: the new political and economic empowerment of women, the right to vote granted to “lower classes” or ethnic minorities, and the general instability of democracy. While progressivism had stabilized economics to some degree, democracy seemed to be upending them, allowing new social voices into the public sphere. Feminists, union leaders, socialists, atheists, and others who were traditionally suppressed were allowed a social space and the subsequent influence. This angered many conservatives, who pushed for a return to “the old days,” even if it meant the degradation of democracy. This would lead to the rise of fascism in certain places (see Chapter 1).

In most industrializing nations, progressivism won the battle against socialism, creating more equitable societies within the context of capitalist societies, though not without a great deal of political and social turmoil in the process. Socialist political parties survived in these nations, constantly agitating for greater equality if not for revolution; they provided a necessary counterbalance against laissez-faire capitalism, providing the motivation for governments to enact progressive legislation to counter the threat, as Bismarck had done in Germany.

By the early 20th century, the standard of living in industrial societies was increasing and promised to rise even more in the future. Europe was experiencing an unusually long period of peace, without a major war since 1871. Medicine was defeating age-old scourges such as smallpox. Unless one lived in a colony, the future tended to look bright.

World War I damaged that optimistic view. The politics and technology that had brought unprecedented peace and prosperity suddenly turned to war. Within four years, between 15 and 22 million people had died, with a similar number wounded. The war’s causalities shocked national leaders, who had not expected such a disastrous slaughter. The long-term human cost of the war can hardly be calculated; for example, half a million French children grew up as orphans, having lost fathers to the war. Millions suffered from trauma, known at the time as “shell shock” (now referred to as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD), for which there was no treatment at the time. People now questioned the ardent nationalism which had built such strong countries, but which they now blamed for the war. Religious belief waned as people questioned why God would allow such a tragedy to occur, a common response after great catastrophes. Although not universal, a wave of disillusionment and nihilism swept the West, with those who had suffered in the war known as the “Lost Generation” who had lost faith in traditional culture.

Improving industrial techniques and capacity led to increasing consumerism in both East and West after the war. Women’s participation in the war, both as nurses and factory workers, gave women a new sense of importance and pride, since they had helped defend the nation. These changes allowed for a new role for women, known as the “New Woman” who was employed, sexually active, socially-engaged, and freed from traditional norms. New medias, such as cinema, helped solidify new norms. This was yet another example of social change disrupting traditional norms and nettling conservatives.

Western economies expanded in the 1920s, but the wealth was largely illusionary; stock markets were based on excessive speculation instead of actual economic health. The world economy was increasingly globalized, so that any disruption would affect almost the entire world – which is exactly what happened in October of 1929. A stock market crash in the United States precipitated the Great Depression, the greatest economic collapse in history. The entire world economy plummeted, further encouraged by a poor response of economic protectionism. Personal savings disappeared as banks failed. Millions of people fell into unemployment and poverty, losing their homes. Factories closed. World War I had created mistrust in nationalism and technology; now, faith in capitalism was failing, and socialists quickly moved to capitalize on its failure.

There were several responses possible to this worldwide malaise. One was to remain committed to democracy and progressivism. This was the course of most of the West, including the United States. President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched an economic recovery program known as the New Deal, which was responsible for most of the progressive policies in the United States; only the desperation of the Depression could allow the passage of such progressive legislation in economically-conservative America. However, in some nations – Germany, Italy, and Japan – the response to the Great Depression was to abandon democracy for a more extreme form of government known as fascism. This move set up the next major event in world history, World War II, which is where this textbook takes up the narrative.

The second half of the 20th century was nearly as tumultuous as the first. The Cold War between the democratic and socialist worlds threatened nuclear annihilation. The last remaining empires collapsed, more than doubling the number of independent countries in the world, each with its own local drama. A new international human rights paradigm disrupted traditional relationships, and rapid technological change disrupted social norms in unforeseen ways. The rate of change was rapidly increasing, and many people found it difficult to keep their feet on the ground. There seemed to be no area of life which remained the same; dependent on their social position, some welcomed the changes, while others resisted them.

So, how do we sum up the 20th century? This time was so varied, so tumultuous, that one could reach many different conclusions. Thérèse Delpech penned a book on this period, and its similarities to our own, and titled it Savage Century: Back to Barbarism. Historian Mark Mazower published a book on 20th century Europe and, in honor of the two world wars, named it Dark Continent. Steven Pinker takes the opposite view, claiming that we are now living in the least violent time in history, and that the 20th century was merely an anomaly; his book is called The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Famed historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote of the 20th century in a book titled The Age of Extremes, pointing to the rapidly-changing nature of this tumultuous time.

Which one of them is right? This book will help the reader come to their own conclusion.

For the Instructor

This textbook is meant for college survey classes in World History form 1945 to the present. Each chapter is approximately 30 pages in length; the intended rate is one chapter per week, so all salient points of postwar world history will be covered in a fifteen-week semester.

The book also contains two chapters (4 and 8) which are considered “Special Topics.” These chapters contain more in-depth information on Colonization and Decolonization, and the civil rights movement in both the US and South Africa. These chapters, while informative, can be skipped without losing major historical subjects, as their contents are summarized in other chapters. The main purpose of the Special Topics chapters is to allow for some expansion in the textbook in the future. Recent History textbooks have the disadvantage of requiring editing as the present becomes the recent past. It is not simply a problem of adding chapters, as the textbook would quickly go beyond 30 pages of reading per week; instead, existing chapters need to be entirely edited to shorten them, therefore allowing new material to be added without lengthening the chapters.

The Special Topic chapters work around this complex problem. In the future, new chapters will be added to bring the textbook up to date; at that time, an instructor could skip the Special Topics chapters and use the new chapters instead without adding or subtracting to the numbers of pages to be read during the semester.

Each chapter is designed to give a basic overview of the postwar historical narrative of a country or region and serves as the foundation for a more in-depth classroom lecture on the topics. It is hoped that the primary source documents included with each chapter will facilitate these lectures.