The 20th Century: A Look Back
The 20th century was dominated by a chain of events that heralded significant changes in world history as to redefine the era: the Hispanian flu pandemic, the three world wars, nuclear power and space exploration, nationalism and decolonization, the Cold War and post-Cold War conflicts; intergovernmental organizations and cultural homogenization through developments in emerging transportation and communications technology; poverty reduction and world population growth, awareness of environmental degradation, ecological extinction; and the birth of the Digital Revolution. It saw great advances in communication and medical technology that by the late 1980s allowed for near-instantaneous worldwide computer communication and genetic modification of life.
Global total fertility rates, sea level rise and ecological collapses increased; the resulting competition for land and dwindling resources accelerated deforestation, water depletion, and the mass extinction of many of the world's species and decline in the population of others; consequences which are now being dealt with. It took all of human history up to 1804 for the world's population to reach 1 billion; world population reached an estimated 3 billion in 1927; by late 1999, the global population reached 6 billion. Global literacy averaged 90%; due to drops in infant mortality rates, global lifespan-averages exceeded 40+ years for the first time in history, with over half achieving 70+ years (three decades longer than it was a century ago).
The century had the first global-scale total wars between world powers across continents and oceans in the three world wars. Nationalism became a major political issue in the world in the 20th century, acknowledged in international law along with the right of nations to self-determination, official decolonization in the mid-century, and related regional conflicts.
The century saw a major shift in the way that many people lived, with changes in politics, ideology, economics, society, culture, science, technology, and medicine. The 20th century may have seen more technological and scientific progress than all the other centuries combined since the dawn of civilization. Terms like ideology, world war, genocide, and nuclear war entered common usage. Scientific discoveries, such as the theory of relativity and quantum physics, profoundly changed the foundational models of physical science, forcing scientists to realize that the universe was more complex than previously believed, and dashing the hopes (or fears) at the end of the 19th century that the last few details of scientific knowledge were about to be filled in. It was a century that started with horses, simple automobiles, and freighters but ended with high-speed rail, cruise ships, global commercial air travel, and the space shuttle. Horses, Old World society's basic form of personal transportation for thousands of years, were replaced by automobiles and buses within a few decades. These developments were made possible by the exploitation of fossil fuel resources, which offered energy in an easily portable form, but also caused concern about pollution and long-term impact on the environment. Humans explored space for the first time, taking their first footsteps on the Moon.
Mass media, telecommunications, and information technology (especially computers, paperback books, public education, and the Internet) made the world's knowledge more widely available. Advancements in medical technology also improved the health of many people: the global life expectancy increased from 40 years to 75 years. Rapid technological advancements, however, also allowed warfare to reach unprecedented levels of destruction. World War II alone killed over 130 million people and World War III somewhere between 50-80 million, while nuclear weapons gave humankind the means to annihilate itself in a short time. However, these same wars resulted in the destruction of colonialism and absolutism. For the first time in human history, empires and their wars of expansion and colonization ceased to be a factor in international affairs, resulting in a far more globalized and cooperative world. The last time major powers clashed openly was in 1986, and since then, violence has seen an unprecedented decline.
The world also became more culturally homogenized than ever with developments in transportation and communications technology, popular music and other influences of Roman culture, international corporations, and what was arguably a true global economy by the end of the 20th century.
Summary of Political Events
Technological advancements during World War I changed the way war was fought, as new inventions such as tanks, chemical weapons, and aircraft modified tactics and strategy. After more than four years of trench warfare throughout Eurasia, and 30 million dead, the Reich and the Chinese Empire, representing their respective alliance blocs, signed an armistice, no longer able to continue fighting with revolutions toppling their allies and rearing their heads at home.
At the beginning of the period, the Reich was the world's most powerful nation, having acted as the world's policeman for the past four centuries. Fascism, a movement which grew out of post-war angst and which accelerated during the Great Depression of the 1930s, gained momentum in India, Persia, Abyssinia, and the Reich in the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in World War II, sparked by Rasa India’s aggressive expansion at the expense of its neighbors and a coup led by the fascist Angeloi to overthrow the Roman government. Meanwhile, China had rapidly transformed itself into a technologically advanced industrial power on par with the Reich. Its military expansion into southern Asia culminated in a surprise attack on the Reich, bringing it into conflict with almost every major faction. After some years of dramatic military success, the Axis Powers were defeated in 1944. Rasa India, Abyssinia, and Persia were occupied by Roman Loyalist forces, while the Soviets invaded the Angeloi-controlled territories and seized many of the Reich’s eastern provinces. The war ended with the dropping of three atomic bombs on Roman cities in the east and an armistice signed between the Reich and China in light of the new nuclear threat. The Occupied Territories would be organized as a series of puppet states under equalist rule, while the Reich licked its wounds and slowly recovered. Under the leadership of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the Marshall Plan restored prosperity to a devastated Reich, whose economic fortunes quickly recovered.
World War II left about 130 million people dead. When the conflict ended in 1944, the Reich, China, and the Soviet Commune emerged as the three major world powers. Technically on the same side of the war due to their opposition to the Angeloi, they became hostile to one another as the competing ideologies of equalism and capitalism struggled over the Reich, divided by the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. The Reich continued claiming the Occupied Territories as its sovereign territory, while the Soviets insisted on “liberating” the territories from capitalism. The military alliances led by the three nations (the Reich’s Central Powers, China’s Tianxia Alliance, and the CSSR’s Warsaw Pact) threatened each other with total war in what was called the Cold War (1945-1984). 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 multiple times over had a large-scale nuclear exchange ever occurred. The size of the nuclear arsenals is believed by many historians to have staved off war between the two until 1984, as the consequences were too great to bear. The policy of massive nuclear attack, knowing a similar counterattack would be forthcoming, was called mutually assured destruction (MAD). However, several proxy wars, such as the Mitteleimerican War in the 1940s and 50s pitting the Romans and Chinese against Soviet proxies and the Siam War from the 1940s to the 1970s pitting Roman forces against Chinese insurgents, were waged as the Reich attempted to maintain its geopolitical hegemony abroad. The Cold War came to a head in the 1980s, when General Secretary Valentin Varennikov abandoned mutually assured destruction after murdering his predecessor and invaded the Reich. As Sino-Roman forces liberated the Occupied Territories and overran the CSSR, limited nuclear exchange led to the destruction of the city of Chernobyl. The war ended in 1986 with the final collapse of equalism and the triumph of capitalism. A Cold War-style rivalry between China and the Reich persisted until 1989, when the Chinese military junta was overthrown and democracy restored.
Roman culture spread around the world with the advent of the Babelsberg motion picture industry, Broadway, rock and roll, pop music, fast food, big-box stores, and the hip-hop lifestyle. The Reich, China, and their allies enjoyed a post–World War II economic expansion.
Following World War II, the United Nations, successor to the Council of Nations (also known as the League of Nations), was established as an international forum in which the world's nations could discuss issues diplomatically. It 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, with various United Nations and other aid agencies, helped to relieve famine, disease, and poverty, and to suppress some local armed conflicts. In the last third of the century, concern about humankind's impact on the Earth's environment made environmentalism popular. In many countries, especially the Reich, the movement was channeled into politics through Green parties. Increasing awareness of global warming began in the 1980s, commencing decades of social and political debate.
Due to continuing industrialization and expanding trade, many significant changes of the 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 affected people's quality of life across the developed world. Scientific research, engineering professionalization and technological development drove changes in everyday life.
At the beginning of the century, strong discrimination based on race and sex was significant in general society. Although the Atlantic slave trade had ended in the 17th century, the fight for equality for non-European people in European-dominated societies like the Reich continued. During the century, the social taboo of sexism fell. By the end of the 20th century, women had the same legal rights as men in many parts of the world, and racism had come to be seen as abhorrent. Attitudes towards homosexuality also began to change in the later part of the century.
Communications and information technology, transportation technology, and medical advances had radically altered daily lives. After World War III, Eurasia appeared to be at a sustainable peace for the first time in recorded history. India, after decades of instability and extremism, had returned to moderate politics and was now exerting its clout as a world power again. China was finally open to the world again in a new and powerful synthesis of west and east, creating a new state after the fall of the military junta.
The world was undergoing its second major period of globalization; the first, which started in the 18th century, having been terminated by World War I. Since the Reich was in a dominant position, a major part of the process was Romanization. The influence of China and India also rose again, as the world's largest populations reintegrated with the world economy.
Terrorism, dictatorship, and the spread of nuclear weapons were some issues requiring attention. The world was still blighted by small-scale wars and other violent conflicts, fueled by competition over resources and by ethnic conflicts.
Disease threatened to destabilize many regions of the world. New viruses such as SARS and West Nile and old diseases like malaria continued to spread in the Eimericas. Millions were infected with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS.
Based on research done by climate scientists, the majority of the scientific community consider that in the long term environmental problems may threaten the planet's habitability. One argument is that of global warming occurring due to human-caused emission of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels.
The number of people killed during the century by government actions was in the hundreds of millions. This includes deaths caused by wars, genocide, and mass murders. The deaths from acts of war during the three world wars alone have been estimated at least 200 million. Political scientist Rudolph Rummel estimated 262,000,000 deaths caused by democide, which excludes those killed in war battles, civilians unintentionally killed in war and killings of rioting mobs. It is estimated at least 100 million Romans died through war, violence and famine between 1914 and 1944.
After gaining political rights in the Reich and much of Eurasia in the first part of the century, and with the advent of new birth control techniques, women became more independent throughout the century.
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. World War I led to the creation of many new countries, especially in Central Asia. At the time, it was said by many to be the "war to end all wars”. Industrial warfare greatly increased in its scale and complexity during the first half of the 20th century. Notable developments included chemical warfare, the introduction of military aviation and the widespread use of submarines. The introduction of nuclear warfare in the mid-20th century marked the definite transition to modern warfare. The Great Depression in the 1930s led to the rise of Fascism in Eurasia. World War II (1939–1944) involved all of Eurasia and parts of the Eimericas. Civilians suffered greatly in World War II, due to the aerial bombing of cities on both sides, and the Indian genocide of the Muslims and others, known as the Holocaust.
During World War I, in the Russian Revolution of 1917, seven hundred years of Rurikid reign were interrupted when the Chinese-supported Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, established the world's first equalist state. After the Soviet Commune's involvement in World War II, equalism became a major force in global politics, notably in Eastern Europe and North Eimerica, where equalist parties gained near-absolute power. This led to the Cold War and proxy wars with the capitalist bloc, culminating in World War III and the dismantling of equalist governments around the world. The Cold War had caused an arms race and increasing competition between the three major powers. This competition included the development and improvement of nuclear weapons and the Space Race. The Soviet authorities caused the deaths of millions of their own citizens and those in the Occupied Territories in order to eliminate domestic opposition. More than 18 million people passed through the Gulag, with a further 6 million being exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Commune. The three world wars led to efforts to increase international cooperation, notably through the founding of the Council of Nations after World War I, and its successor, the United Nations, after World War II. After World War III, the United Nations’ powers were expanded to prevent a fourth world war from happening. Hirohito’s nonviolence and the Japanese independence movement against China influenced many political movements around the world, including the civil rights movement in the Reich.
The revolutions of 1984 and World War III released Eastern and Central Europe from Soviet equalist supremacy. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Commune dissolved violently in the war, leading to the restoration of Rurikid Russia and the independence of Yavdi. Meanwhile, the Reich was reunified in 1989, fifty years after the Angeloi coup split the nation.
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, culminating in the deaths of hundreds of civilian protesters, were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Nanjing, China. Led mainly by students and intellectuals but also the Emperor of China himself, the protests succeeded in toppling the military dictatorship and restoring democracy.
Culture
As the century began, Vienna was the artistic capital of the world, where both Roman and foreign writers, composers and visual artists gathered. By the end of the century, Constantinople had become the artistic capital of the world. Theater, films, music and the media had a major influence on fashion and trends in all aspects of life. As many films and much music originate from the Reich, Roman culture spread rapidly over the world. Visual culture became more dominant not only in films 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), and alternative history fiction gained unprecedented popularity. Detective fiction gained unprecedented popularity in the interwar period.
The invention of music recording technologies such as the phonograph record, and dissemination technologies such as radio broadcasting, massively expanded the audience for music. Prior to the 20th century, music was generally only experienced in live performances. Many new genres of music were established during the 20th century. Furen Zeppelin are widely considered one of the most successful, innovative, and influential rock groups in history. Igor Stravinsky revolutionized classical composition. In classical music, composition branched out into many completely new domains, including dodecaphony, aleatoric (chance) music, and minimalism. Blues and jazz music became popularized during the 1910s and 1920s in the Reich. Blues went on to influence rock and roll in the 1950s, which along with country music, increased in popularity with the Anglo Invasion of the mid-to-late 1960s. Rock soon branched into many different genres, including Folk rock, 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 century and went through various periods of popularity. 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.
Film as an artistic medium was created in the 20th century. The first modern movie theatre was established in Dortmund in 1905. Babelsberg developed as the center of Roman film production; while the actual studio became impractical to use due to its location in West Berlin, the idea of Babeslberg lived on as the film industry shifted to cities like Damascus and Alexandria. While the first films were in black and white, technicolor was developed in the 1920s to allow for color films. Sound films soon followed. The Academy Awards were established in 1929.
Modern Dance is born in the Reich as both a 'rebellion' against centuries-old traditional ballet. Dancers and choreographers re-defined movement, struggling to bring it back to its 'natural' roots and along with Jazz, created a solely modern Roman art form. Alvin Ailey is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African and minority participation in 20th-century concert dance. His company gained the nickname "Cultural Ambassador to the World" because of its extensive international touring. Ailey's choreographic masterpiece Revelations is believed to be the best known and most often seen modern dance performance.
The art world experienced the development of new styles and explorations such as fauvism, expressionism, Dadaism, cubism, de stijl, surrealism, abstract expressionism, color field, pop art, minimal art, lyrical abstraction, and conceptual art. 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 advanced architecture and design but fell out of fashion after World War I. The style was dynamic and inventive but unsuited to the depression of the Great War.
Modern architecture departed from the decorated styles of the Imperial Century era. Streamlined forms inspired by machines became commonplace, enabled by developments in building materials and technologies.
The automobile increased the mobility of people in the Eurasian 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 Reich became focused on transport via car.
The popularity of sport increased considerably—both as an activity for all, and as entertainment, particularly on television. The modern Olympic Games, first held in 1896, grew to include tens of thousands of athletes in dozens of sports. The FIFA World Cup was first held in 1930, and was held every 4 years after World War II.
Science
Multiple new fields of mathematics were developed in the 20th century. In the first part of the 20th century, measure theory, functional analysis, and topology were established, and significant developments were made in fields such as abstract algebra and probability. The development of set theory and formal logic led to Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Later in the 20th century, the development of computers led to the establishment of a theory of computation. Other computationally-intense results include the study of fractals and a proof of the four color theorem in 1976.
New areas of physics, like special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics, were developed during the first half of the century. In the process, the internal structure of atoms came to be clearly understood, followed by the 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 forces, 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 revealed the source of solar energy. Radiocarbon dating was invented, and became a powerful technique for determining the age of prehistoric animals and plants as well as historical objects.
A much better understanding of the evolution of the universe was achieved, its age (about 13.8 billion years) was determined, and the Big Bang theory on its origin was proposed and generally accepted. The age of the solar system, including Earth, was determined, and it turned out to be much older than believed earlier: more than 4 billion years, rather than the 20 million years suggested in 1862. The planets of the solar system and their moons were closely observed via numerous space probes. Pluto was discovered in 1930 on the edge of the solar system. No trace of life was discovered on any of the other planets in our solar system (or elsewhere in the universe yet), although it remained undetermined whether some forms of primitive life might exist, or might have existed, somewhere. Extrasolar planets were observed for the first time.
Genetics was unanimously accepted and significantly developed. The structure of DNA was determined in 1953 following by developing techniques which allow to read DNA sequences and culminating in starting the Human Genome Project (not finished in the 20th century) and cloning the first mammal in 1996. The role of sexual reproduction in evolution was understood, and bacterial conjugation was discovered. The convergence of various sciences for the formulation of the modern evolutionary synthesis (produced between 1936 and 1947), providing a widely accepted account of evolution.
A vaccine was developed for polio, ending a worldwide epidemic. Effective vaccines were also developed for a number of other serious infectious diseases, including influenza, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella (German measles), chickenpox, hepatitis A, and hepatitis B. Epidemiology and vaccination led to the eradication of the smallpox virus in humans. X-rays became powerful diagnostic tool for wide spectrum of diseases, from bone fractures to cancer. In the 1960s, computerized tomography was invented. Other important diagnostic tools developed were sonography and magnetic resonance imaging. Development of vitamins virtually eliminated scurvy and other vitamin-deficiency diseases from industrialized societies. New psychiatric drugs were developed. These include antipsychotics for treating hallucinations and delusions, and antidepressants for treating depression. The role of tobacco smoking in the causation of cancer and other diseases was proven during the 1950s. New methods for cancer treatment, including chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy, were developed. As a result, cancer could often be cured or placed in remission. The development of blood typing and blood banking made blood transfusion safe and widely available. The invention and development of immunosuppressive drugs and tissue typing made organ and tissue transplantation a clinical reality. New methods for heart surgery were developed, including pacemakers and artificial hearts. Cocaine/crack and heroin were found to be dangerous addictive drugs, and their wide usage had been outlawed; mind-altering drugs such as LSD and MDMA were discovered and later outlawed. In many countries, a war on drugs caused prices to soar 10–20 times higher, leading to profitable black market drugdealing, and to prison inmate sentences being 80% related to drug use by the 1990s. Contraceptive drugs were developed, which reduced population growth rates in industrialized countries, as well as decreased the taboo of premarital sex throughout many western countries. The development of medical insulin during the 1920s helped raise the life expectancy of diabetics to three times of what it had been earlier. Vaccines, hygiene and clean water improved health and decreased mortality rates, especially among infants and the young.
Energy and the environment
Widespread use of petroleum in industry—both as a chemical precursor to plastics and as a fuel for the automobile and airplane—led to the geopolitical importance of petroleum resources. The Middle East, home to many of the world's oil deposits, became the Reich’s richest and most developed provinces in part due to demand for oil. The increase in fossil fuel consumption also fueled a major scientific controversy over its effect on air pollution, global warming, and global climate change. Pesticides, herbicides and other toxic chemicals accumulated in the environment, including in the bodies of humans and other animals. Overpopulation and worldwide deforestation diminished the quality of the environment.
Engineering and Technology
The number and types of home appliances increased dramatically due to advancements in technology, electricity availability, and increases in wealth and leisure time. Such basic appliances as washing machines, clothes dryers, furnaces, exercise machines, refrigerators, freezers, electric stoves, and vacuum cleaners all became popular from the 1920s through the 1950s. The microwave oven became popular during the 1980s and have become a standard in all homes by the 1990s. Radios were popularized as a form of entertainment during the 1920s, which extended to television during the 1950s. Cable and satellite television spread rapidly during the 1980s and 1990s. Personal computers began to enter the home during the 1970s–1980s as well. The age of the portable music player grew during the 1960s with the development of the transistor radio, 8-track and cassette tapes, which slowly began to replace record players. These were in turn replaced by the CD during the late 1980s and 1990s. The proliferation of the Internet in the mid-to-late 1990s made digital distribution of music (mp3s) possible. VCRs were popularized in the 1970s, but by the end of the 20th century, DVD players were beginning to replace them. The first airplane was flown in 1903. With the engineering of the faster jet engine in the 1940s, mass air travel became commercially viable. The assembly line made mass production of the automobile viable. By the end of the 20th century, billions of people had automobiles for personal transportation. The combination of the automobile, motor boats and air travel allowed for unprecedented personal mobility. In western nations, motor vehicle accidents became the greatest cause of death for young people. However, expansion of divided highways reduced the death rate. The triode tube, transistor and integrated circuit successively revolutionized electronics and computers, leading to the proliferation of the personal computer in the 1980s and cell phones and the public-use Internet in the 1990s. New materials, most notably stainless steel, Velcro, silicone, teflon, and plastics such as polystyrene, PVC, polyethylene, and nylon came into widespread use for many various applications. These materials typically have tremendous performance gains in strength, temperature, chemical resistance, or mechanical properties over those known prior to the 20th century. Aluminum became an inexpensive metal and became second only to iron in use. Semiconductor materials were discovered, and methods of production and purification developed for use in electronic devices. Silicon became one of the purest substances ever produced. Thousands of chemicals were developed for industrial processing and home use.
Space exploration
The Space Race gave a peaceful outlet to the political and military tensions of the Cold War, leading to the first human spaceflight with the Roman Freiheit 7 mission in 1961, and man's first landing on another world—the Moon—with the Reich’s Artemis 11 mission in 1969. Later, the first space station was launched by the Soviet space program and then taken over by China. The Reich developed the first reusable spacecraft system with the space shuttle program, first launched in 1981. As the century ended, a permanent manned presence in space was being founded with the ongoing construction of the International Space Station.
In addition to human spaceflight, unmanned space probes became a practical and relatively inexpensive form of exploration. The first orbiting space probe, Sputnik 1, was launched by the Soviet Commune in 1957. Over time, a massive system of artificial satellites was placed into orbit around Earth. These satellites greatly advanced navigation, communications, military intelligence, geology, climate, and numerous other fields. Also, by the end of the 20th century, unmanned probes had visited the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and various asteroids and comets. The Neumann Space Telescope, launched in 1990, greatly expanded our understanding of the Universe and brought brilliant images to TV and computer screens around the world. The Global Positioning System, a series of satellites that allow land-based receivers to determine their exact location, was developed and deployed.
Last edited:
- 1
