STUDENTS

World History & Geography 2

Renaissance to the present

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WHG2
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The Students Friend

World History & Geography 2

since the Renaissance

What is history? History is the story of humankind. Why study history? History shows us how the world works. History shows us what it means to be human. History affects our lives directly or indirectly every day. History helps us make judgments about current and future events. History is a fascinating story of human treachery and achievement.

What is geography? Geography is the study of our home, the surface of the planet Earth. Why study geography? Geography is a major factor affecting human history and development. Humans are a major factor affecting the future of planet Earth.

CONTENTS:
Unit 1 - The 1500s and 1600s: Renaissance and the early modern world............ Page 1 Unit 2 - The 1700s: Age of Enlightenment and revolution..................................Page 5 Unit 3 - The 1800s: Industrial Revolution, nationalism and imperialism.................Page 9 Unit 4 - 1900-1925: World War I and the rise of communism................................Page 14 Unit 5 - 1925-1945: The rise of fascism and World War II .....................................Page 17 Unit 6 - 1945 to the present: Cold War and the Space Age..................................Page 21 Unit 7 - Current Issues: Toward a new world order..............................................Page 24

Copyright 2002 Michael G. Maxwell The Students Friend; World History & Geography 2 may be freely reproduced and distributed by teachers and students for educational purposes. It may not be reproduced or distributed for commercial or other purposes without permission. See www.studentsfriend.com for more information and related teaching materials.

Unit 1 - The 1500s and 1600s: The Renaissance and the early modern world
MAP IDENTIFICATION: Italy, Greece, Germany, England, Far East, France, Spain, Netherlands (Holland) Renaissance Renaissance means rebirth or reawakening. The Renaissance was a rebirth of the classical values of ancient Greece and Rome including an emphasis on humanism which is an interest in studying and improving the human experience on Earth. Beginning in Italy, the Renaissance spread through Europe from roughly 1350 to the early 1600s. When people hear the word Renaissance, they often think of great art, but there were at least four major developments that occurred during the Renaissance period: 1) the flourishing of the arts and sciences based on rediscovery of the literature of classical Greece and Rome, 2) the Protestant Reformation that tore apart the Christian world and reduced the power of the Catholic Church, 3) the voyages of discovery that led to the European conquest of America and European supremacy in the world, and 4) the printing press which gave people a reason to learn how to read and write and made it possible for large numbers of people to learn of the new ideas of the Renaissance. In some ways humans grew up during the Renaissance. They learned they were not the center of the universe, they discovered a New World on Earth, artists learned how to accurately portray the world, and true scientific inquiry began. So much changed during the Renaissance that it is considered the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. The term renaissance is now used to describe any revival or rediscovery. Florence The Renaissance was a burst of creative energy that began in the Italian city-state of Florence and reached its peak under the leadership of Lorenzo de Medici, known as Lorenzo the Magnificent. The wealth of Florence was based on commerce and banking, and Lorenzo was a member of the most powerful banking family of Florence. He was a patron (supporter) of Renaissance artists, and he took a great interest in the recovery of classical literature often found neglected in European monasteries. Similar to Athens in ancient Greece, Florence attracted the eras greatest artists and thinkers including Dante (author of The Divine Comedy), Machiavelli ( The Prince), Leonardo DaVinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. If ancient Athens was the cradle of Western Civilization, then Florence was the cradle of the modern world. The Renaissance spread from Florence to Rome and eventually to much of Europe. Like the Classical artists who inspired them, Renaissance artists emphasized humanism in art. Renaissance artists still painted the religious subjects of the Middle Ages, but they also portrayed living people from their own society. Inspired by classical sculpture and new developments in artistic technique such as perspective, Renaissance art became more realistic and three-dimensional than the stiff, flat art of the Middle Ages. Artists of the Renaissance sought a balance between rigid formality and wild emotion, a return to the Classical Greek ideal of the Golden Mean. Reformation The Reformation (also called the Protestant Reformation) was a religious movement of the 1500s that began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church, but resulted in the establishment of Protestant Churches which broke away from it. The Reformation was begun by Martin Luther, a Catholic monk who nailed his 95 Theses (arguments) to the door of a Catholic church in Germany in 1517. The 95 Theses attacked the Catholic Church for the sale of indulgences, a church practice that allowed people to pay money to be forgiven of sins. The invention of the printing press helped to spread the ideas of Luther and the Reformation. Luther believed that every person could have a direct relationship with God, so there was little need for priests. With Bibles being printed in local languages, people could now read the Bible for themselves. The Reformation diminished the authority of the clergy (church officials) and gave many kings and princes the excuse they wanted to limit the power of the Catholic Church. The Reformation brought huge and unexpected changes to European society, changes that were reflected in the European colonies of the New World. No longer did the Roman Catholic Church control all religious thinking as it had since the Roman Empire; Christians now had a choice of religion. And, since it was possible to question and criticize the teachings of mother church, it also became possible to question other long-held beliefs in areas such as science, politics, and society.
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The Counter-Reformation The Catholic Church responded to the Reformation by launching its own CounterReformation which adopted important reforms of the Catholic Church. The sale of indulgences was stopped, for example. But, the Counter-Reformation also had another important task, fighting the new ideas of Protestantism. The Counter-Reformation identified books to be burned, and it stepped up the work of the Inquisition, a system of church courts which placed heretics and sinners on trial. Torture and imprisonment were often used to extract confessions from Protestants and wayward Catholics. The Inquisition was especially strong in Spain where Christians had only recently succeeded in pushing the Muslim Moors back to North Africa. Today, the term inquisition is used to describe any harsh or persistent interrogation. Elizabeth I England officially became a Protestant country in 1534 when King Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church because the pope would not allow Henry to divorce his first wife. Henry went on to marry Anne Boleyn, hoping she would give him a son and heir to the British throne. Instead, Anne and Henry had a daughter who grew up to become Queen Elizabeth I, one of historys most brilliant rulers. Queen from 1558 to 1603, Elizabeth presided over the Renaissance in England, a time which came to be known as the Elizabethan Period , a golden age when England produced much its greatest literature. It was during this time that William Shakespeare wrote and performed his plays at the Globe Theater in London. The English language underwent extraordinary development and expansion during the Renaissance. Shakespeare invented hundreds of new words, and many Greek and Latin words were added to the English vocabulary. Queen Elizabeth was intelligent and confident; she ruled for nearly a half-century, tolerating religious differences and maintaining peace in her kingdom. Called Good Queen Bess by her subjects, Elizabeth never married and was also known as the Virgin Queen. The American state of Virginia, originally a British colony founded shortly after the death of Elizabeth, was named after Englands Virgin Queen. It was during Elizabeths reign that England defeated the invincible Spanish Armada of 130 warships sent by Spain to attack and invade England. At that time Spain was the most powerful country in the world, controlling an empire that stretched from Asia to the Americas. Spains Catholic king wanted to add England to his empire and return England to the Catholic faith. But, luck was with the English. The Spanish invasion army failed to show up at a French port to meet the Armada. While the Armada was waiting at anchor, the British sent burning fire ships against the Spanish vessels, forcing them to scatter. With their battle formation broken, the Spanish fleet was unable to fend off the smaller, faster and more maneuverable British warships. The defeat of the Armada in 1588 was a blow to the pride and confidence of Spain. The British victory proved that England was ruler of the waves. the Wars of Religion Due to increasing conflict over religion, warfare broke out in the 1500s between Protestants and Catholics in Europe, and the fighting lasted for more than a hundred years. Both sides were convinced they were fighting a holy war with God on their side. Consequently, the fighting was especially bloody. Religion wasnt the only issue involved; some rulers used the religious wars as an opportunity to seek advantage against rival powers. The last of the religious wars was the Thirty Years War which involved nearly every country in Europe and is sometimes considered to be the first world war. By the time it was over, one-third of Germany was dead and Europe lay devastated. It was the worst disaster since the Black Death, but this disaster was man-made. At the end of the war, the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) decreed that the ruler of each country could choose the religion for his own nation. Southern Europe (such as France, Italy and Spain) generally chose to remain with the Roman Catholic Church while northern Europe (such as Germany, England, and Scandinavia) generally chose to be Protestant, a geographic division that remains with us today. As another consequence of the Thirty Years War, France took over from Spain as the strongest country in the world.

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capitalism Due to the Renaissance voyages of discovery, the focus of international trade shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Venice declined as a major trading power while Amsterdam (capital of the Netherlands) and London grew. The wealth of nations was being generated by an explosion in international trade directed from the major trading centers of Europe. This flourishing trade led to the rise of an economic system called capitalism. Because European kings received much of their income from taxes on trade, they encouraged merchants to form joint-stock companies to finance trading voyages to new colonies and other distant lands. Similar to modern corporations, stock was sold to many people who shared the expense and risk of expensive ocean voyages. If a ship went down, no single investor would suffer a great financial loss, but all stockholders would share in the profits of a successful voyage. Joint stock companies, such as the East India Company of London and the Dutch East India Company of the Netherlands, raised huge sums of money for ocean commerce, and they paid large profits to their stockholders. (Dutch is a term applied to the people and products of the Netherlands, also called Holland.) Stockholders and merchants were free to use their business profits any way they chose. They might put their money in a bank to draw interest, reinvest the money in another business, buy land or equipment to start a new business, or they might choose to blow their money on gambling and wild parties. Wealth such as gold, money, and property is called capital. Capitalism is an economic system in which individuals are free to own capital, to use it as they see fit and to make a profit. The United States has a capitalist economic system which contrasts with socialism and communism, systems in which capital is owned by the community or the state. African slave trade One profitable capitalist enterprise that developed during this period was commerce in human beings. As overseas colonies grew, plantations were established in new lands to grow crops for trade. To supply needed plantation workers, Europeans began importing slaves from Africa. Slavery had long existed in Africa as it had in many parts of the world. Most African slaves had been enemies captured in battle between African kingdoms. But, as the slave trade grew, Africans began kidnapping other Africans and selling them to European slave traders. Slaves were traded on a Triangular Trade Route that developed between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Due to prevailing winds and ocean currents, an ocean voyage from Europe to North America by sailing ship took twice as long as the return trip. Sailors learned they could make better time on the westward voyage by first going south to Africa and then west to America following favorable currents and trade winds. The last leg of the triangular trade route took advantage of the Gulf Stream ocean current which sped ships back to Europe. Leaving west Africa for America, the Middle Passage of the three-part journey, ship cargo holds were crammed full of Africas chief export, human beings. Conditions on the slave ships were appalling. Many slaves died of disease from eating rotten food and breathing foul air. Some desperate slaves took their own lives. When these African people were sold at slave markets in the New World, the profits were used to purchase plantation products such as sugar, tobacco and cotton which were shipped back to Europe. It was a splendid system of trade for everyone except the slaves. divine right monarchs During the Middle Ages, the Christian church had been the dominant force in Europe. The church controlled most aspects of a persons daily life, and it competed against kings for power. In the early modern era, this changed. The long-running power struggle between the church and the crown was finally resolved with the kings coming out on top. Several factors contributed to this outcome. The Reformation and the resulting Wars of Religion had generated a powerful storm that blew through Europe. After a century of religious conflict, Europeans wanted calm, and they looked to strong monarchs to maintain stability. Growing trade to the Americas and the Far East enriched European kings, and international trade required big merchant fleets and large navies that expanded the power of the kings. Classical Rome served as a model for people of the Renaissance, and in Roman times the power of the emperors was absolute; they were considered gods. All of these developments combined to strengthen the kings of Europe. Monarchs became all-powerful, claiming to rule with a divine right that came directly from God. Rebellion against them was considered a sin. This was the era of absolute monarchy, when the power of the god-kings was not limited by the church, by the nobility, by law or by parliament. A British historian, Lord Acton, would later write, Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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Louis XIV of France The grandest and most extravagant of the divine right monarchs was King Louis XIV (LOO-ee the 14th) of France who called himself the Sun King. His reign, which ended in the early 1700s, was the longest in European history (1643-1715). For seventy-two years Louis ruled France when France was the strongest country in Europe. Louis wrote a famous little rhyme that summed up his view of government, Letat, cest moi (The state, its me.) It is said Louis was a capable ruler; he was athletic, very polite, put people at ease, and he looked good in tights. Because Louis XIV loved the outdoors, and he didnt trust the city of Paris where he witnessed riots against the monarchy when he was a boy, Louis chose to build a new palace in the countryside 12 miles outside Paris. The palace he built, Versailles (ver-SIGH), was fit for a god-king. Decorated with gold leaf and silver, the enormous palace was surrounded by endless gardens including 1,500 fountains, canals with gondolas imported from Venice and portable orange groves that servants wheeled out during warm weather. Other rulers in Europe tried to copy the grandeur of the palace at Versailles, but none ever equaled it. The Sun King shrewdly used his court at Versailles to control the nobility. As many as 5,000 French nobles lived at court, where they had little to do except seek the kings favor. Formerly powerful barons and dukes competed for honors such as holding the candle while the Sun King prepared for bed. Baroque art What is art? Art is a difficult concept to define, but many scholars believe that a work must reflect its own time in history to qualify as serious art. Baroque (buh-ROKE) art reflected the era of Divine Right kings; it was the art of Versailles and the other grand palaces and churches of Europe after the Renaissance. Baroque art was complex and dazzling; it was filled with ornamentation and gold. It was meant to impress all who saw it with the power and wealth of the king or the church. It was art designed to keep people in their place. In Baroque churches, many different kinds of artisans worked together to create an elaborate stage set intended to depict heaven itself complete with clouds, angels, and saints. Human figures were curved, flowing, and emotional in contrast to the solid and balanced figures of the Renaissance such as Michelangelos David. This is a pattern we have seen before. In the ancient world, the stiff and formal art of early Greece and Egypt was replaced by the more naturalistic and balanced style of Classical Greece, which was followed by the elaborate and emotional art of the Hellenistic period. Here again, in the early modern age, we see the flat religious art of the Middle Ages replaced by the realistic, balanced, and humanistic art of the Renaissance, which is followed by the complex and emotional art of the Baroque. The music of this period is also called Baroque. Well-known Baroque composers included Vivaldi, Bach, and Handel. Scientific Revolution Classical literature and the voyages of discovery had opened minds to new ideas. The Reformation had cast doubt on church doctrine. In this freer intellectual climate of the 1600s, true science began. Galileo from Italy observed the heavens with his telescope and concluded that Earth was not the center of the universe. Isaac Newton from England discovered the principle of gravity and showed that all objects in the universe obey the same laws of motion. William Harvey , also of England, discovered that blood is pumped through the body by the heart. A Dutch shopkeeper and amateur scientist, Anton von Leeuwenhoek (LAY-vun-hook), was one of the first people to build a microscope. Peering through his instrument, he was struck with wonder at a thousand living creatures in one drop of water. His discovery of an unknown new world of one-celled organisms caused him to challenge the accepted theory of spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation proposed that small creatures such as insects sprung to life from rocks or air. Von Leeuwenhoek suggested that insects come from eggs. These and other discoveries amounted to an explosion of scientific knowledge in the 1600s which came to be known as the Scientific Revolution. The scientific method, used by scientists today, is based on the work of these pioneering scientists. The scientific method is a logical procedure for gathering information and testing ideas. It generally follows a pattern of careful observation leading to an hypothesis (educated guess) which is then tested by experiment.
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Unit 2 - The 1700s: Age of Enlightenment and Revolution

MAP IDENTIFICATION: Russia, Moscow, Egypt, Belgium, Great Britain, Portugal, Austria, Brazil Age of Enlightenment The Scientific Revolution sparked a major change in the way people looked at the world. Back in the Middle Ages people often did not understand the causes of phenomena they experienced; events were often attributed to God, superstition, witchcraft or mysterious forces such as spontaneous generation. Because of the Scientific Revolution, people began to think that nature followed rules such as Isaac Newtons Laws of Motion. Ignorance and superstition came under attack as people tried to use reason to answer questions not only in science, but also in society, religion and politics. Dare to know became the slogan of the age. Many educated middle class people rejected traditional religion, becoming Deists who believed in God and emphasized morality but did not accept church authority or rituals. Deists found God in nature and accepted only those religious beliefs that agreed with scientific knowledge. During this Age of Reason writers and thinkers began to question why nations should be ruled by monarchs who came to power through an accident of birth. Philosophers including John Locke in England (late 1600s) and Voltaire in France (mid-1700s) wrote of natural laws and self-evident truths that required more democratic forms of government. Old ideas, such as serfdom and absolute monarchy, were considered to be part of the outdated Ancien Regime (Old Regime). Taken together, these new ideas about reason, freedom and democracy came to be known as the Enlightenment, an extremely powerful force in the 1700s which would provide the philosophical basis for the Age of Revolution to come. American Revolution One important Enlightenment idea was a concept called the Social Contract which proposed that people in society agree to live together by following rules that benefit everyone. If anyone violates these rules, that person should be outlawed. If a ruler violates the Social Contract, the people have a natural right to overthrow him. Ideas such as this found fertile ground in the British colonies of America where influential leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington were Enlightenment thinkers and Deists. Americans felt Britain had violated the Social Contract with America by passing unfair laws, so Americans were justified in throwing off British rule. The American Revolution in 1776 made a big impression on many people in Europe who saw it as a turning point in history; Americans had enforced the social contract, ended foreign rule and established the first national democracy since ancient times. The Declaration of Independence, written largely by Thomas Jefferson, began with a restatement of the Enlightenment ideas of British philosopher John Locke, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. By demonstrating that Enlightenment ideas could be used to govern a nation, the young democracy in America became the model for a better world. British Parliament In contrast to America, revolution against the monarchy in England was a long process that proceeded in stages over several centuries. In 1215, English nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta which gave important powers to the Great Council, a group of nobles, government officials, and important land owners. The Magna Carta decreed that the king could not levy taxes unless the Great Council approved. Over the years, the Great Council evolved into the British Parliament which is a law-making body, or legislature, similar to Congress in the United States. Parliament made large gains against the British monarchy in the 1600s. When the king abused his power in the middle of the century, Parliament raised an army which defeated and executed the king. Parliaments military leader during this English Civil War was Oliver Cromwell who served as a dictator until his death, when a new English king was crowned to lead the country. In the late 1600s, Parliament removed the reigning king during the nearly bloodless Glorious Revolution. He was replaced with a king and queen who agreed to follow a new set of laws laid down by Parliament. Called the English Bill of Rights, these laws were influenced by John Lockes Enlightenment views on government. Although the British monarch remained as head of state, Parliament became the true power in Great Britain. Still, England was not yet a democracy because Parliament was controlled by the nobility, and few people had the right to vote. Many aspects of the U.S. government had their origins in the British system such as the U.S. Constitution (Magna Carta), Bill Of Rights (English Bill of Rights), and Congress (Parliament).
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Third Estate In France of the late 1700s, there was no national parliament, but the nobility had gained enough power to prevent the king from raising taxes without their approval. French society was made up of three distinct classes or estates. One estate was the nobility, another was the clergy, and the Third Estate was everybody else, the common people. Although the nobles and the clergy totaled only two percent of the population, they owned one-third of the land and they paid no taxes. It was the commoners of the Third Estate who paid the taxes that ran Frances government. The Third Estate included rural peasants who worked the land, other workers and craftsmen, the urban poor and the middle class which was called the bourgeoisie (burzh-wah-zee). The bourgeoisie were people such as large land owners, merchants, manufacturers, government officials, doctors, lawyers and scholars. These were successful and intelligent people who believed in Enlightenment ideas. They had wealth and economic power, but they had little political power in France. It was middle class people such as these who led the revolution in America. In 1789, Frances King Louis XVI (the Sun Kings great, great, great grandson) called representatives from Frances three estates to the palace at Versailles for a meeting of the Estates General, an old institution from medieval times that had met only once in the past three centuries. The king needed cash. French Revolution France had spent large sums of money supporting the Americans in their revolution against the British, and France was deeply in debt. King Louis XVI convened the Estates General because he wanted approval to raise taxes. Although the nobility and clergy were much smaller in number than the Third Estate, they combined their votes to deny a voice to the common people, the very people who would have to pay any new taxes. Frustrated by this situation, the bourgeoisie declared that the Third Estate was the nations parliament which they called the National Assembly. They took an oath not to go home until France had a modern constitution. The king called out the army. In 1789 France was ripe for revolution. Not only were the bourgeoisie angry, the peasants and the urban poor were hungry after two years of bad harvests. When mobs in Paris demanded cheaper bread, Queen Marie Antoinette is said to have replied, Let them eat cake. (Cake wasnt dessert; it was the hard crusts left over from baking that were usually fed to livestock.) As the kings troops marched toward Paris, the enraged people of the city stormed and captured the Bastille, a prison that represented the Ancien Regime. (Today, July 14th is Bastille Day, the French independence day.) The French Revolution was underway. The mayor of Paris was executed and his head was paraded through the streets on a pole. Hungry women marched to Versailles and forced the king to return to Paris where they could keep an eye on him. Throughout the countryside, peasants attacked the nobility and burned feudal documents. The National Assembly abolished feudalism in France, and in the streets the common people shouted, Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite! (Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood). Inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, the French issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Feudalism and the Ancien Regime were gone, but what would replace them? Reign of Terror Many of Frances nobles fled to other countries where they encouraged foreign kings to stop the French Revolution before it could spread. After Prussia and Austria made threats against France, the French raised an army of volunteers that went to war against the two countries in 1792. The following year, France declared war on Britain, Spain and the Netherlands. France was now at war with most of Europe and being threatened with invasion on all fronts. France began to draft all able-bodied men into the military and soon had an army of nearly one million men. With French armies suffering defeats in battle, and food shortages and economic problems at home, a group of radicals took control of the revolution. The radicals began to take extreme measures against their enemies, real or imagined. After the king and queen were caught attempting to flee from France, they were marched to the guillotine and beheaded. Members of the nobility and the clergy were beheaded. The radicals accused other revolutionaries of not being revolutionary enough and beheaded them. Some 17,000 people were beheaded, and another 23,000 were killed in other ways, during Frances bloody Reign of Terror.

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Napoleon After five years of struggle, the people of France realized that their revolution was spinning out of control. Rather than allowing France to return to the Ancien Regime, the army took over, and Frances new leader became a young general and hero of the revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, who became dictator of France. (A dictator is one who rules with absolute power, but was not born to the position like a king.) Because the French Revolution had swept away the nobility, the army chose its officers based on ability, not noble birth. Leading a capable, dedicated, and battle-hardened army, Napoleon easily conquered much of the European continent, eventually proclaiming himself emperor of Europe. In Egypt, Napoleons armies defeated the ruling Turks, and Napoleon sent scholars and artists to study Egyptian antiquity. Their reports caused an Egyptian sensation back in Europe. It was Napoleons soldiers who discovered the Rosetta Stone, unlocking the secrets of Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is said that Napoleon sat in the shade of the great pyramid at Giza and calculated there was enough stone in the pyramid to build a wall around France one foot wide and ten feet tall. In the lands conquered by Napoleon, feudalism and serfdom were abolished, freedom of religion was established, and a uniform legal system, the Napoleonic Code, was adopted. Based on Roman law, the Napoleonic Code was perhaps Napoleons greatest legacy. He might have acquired his interest in law from his father who was a lawyer. The Napoleonic Code guaranteed liberty and legal equality for men. Equality was virtually unknown in history; it was a new, exciting and radical idea. Equality for women, however, would have to wait another century.

Battle of Trafalgar England was one of the few countries in Europe not conquered by Napoleon, largely because of the British naval victory at Trafalgar. In 1805, a combined French and Spanish fleet of 33 warships set sail from Spain planning to attack England. In the way stood a British fleet of 27 warships under the command of Admiral Horatio Nelson. Nelson was an extraordinary sailor. Wounded in a naval battle about ten years earlier, Nelson lost the use of his right eye. In another sea battle three years later, he lost his right arm. The following year, Nelson defeated a French fleet at The Battle of the Nile, forcing Napoleon to withdraw from Egypt. Three years after that, he was in the midst of a battle against a Dutch fleet when he was informed that the British commander had given the signal to withdraw. Nelson put the telescope to his blind eye and said he could see no such signal. Nelson went on to destroy the Dutch fleet. The Battle of Trafalgar would be Nelsons greatest victory and his last. Before the battle, he told his sailors "England expects that every man will do his duty. In one of the most celebrated naval engagements in history, Nelsons British fleet engaged the larger French and Spanish fleet at Trafalgar off the southwest coast of Spain. When the smoke cleared, 20 French and Spanish ships had been destroyed or captured without the loss of a single British vessel. Admiral Nelson, however, was shot by a French rifleman and died aboard his flagship, the H.M.S. Victory. Before he died, Nelson knew the British had won the battle, and he declared, Thank God I have done my duty. With the triumph at Trafalgar, Britain continued to rule the waves. The British victory wrecked Napoleons plans to invade England and it gave Britain naval supremacy throughout the remainder of the 1800s. Today, the main square in the British capital of London is named Trafalgar Square, and it features a tall column topped by a statue of Lord Nelson.

Napoleons invasion of Russia Napoleons downfall began with his biggest military mistake, an attempt to invade and conquer the vast empire of Russia. The Russians knew they couldnt defeat Napoleons huge and powerful Grand Army of more than 600,000 soldiers, so they burned everything in his path to deny his army food and shelter. Napoleon eventually took the Russian capital of Moscow, but it was empty. Knowing that his army could not survive the coming winter in Russia, Napoleon had to retreat. As the Grand Army made its way back to France, temperatures dropped to 30 degrees below zero during the bitter cold Russian winter of 1812. Between the cold, starvation, Russian attacks and desertion, only 30,000 of Napoleons original soldiers returned to France. It was one of the worst disasters in military history.

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Battle of Waterloo Disgraced by the ruin of his Grand Army, then defeated in battles by an alliance of European nations, Napoleon was forced to give up power and go into exile on the small island of Elba off the coast of Italy. It wasnt long, however, until Napoleon escaped and returned to France where he raised another army. Napoleon met his final defeat at the hands of an allied army under the command of the British general Wellington near the town of Waterloo, Belgium in 1815. Napoleons disaster at Waterloo was so complete that Waterloo has become a synonym for any crushing defeat. Again Napoleon was exiled, this time to St. Helena, a remote island in the South Atlantic, where he died of stomach cancer, or possibly arsenic poisoning, in 1821. Napoleon remains one of historys most fascinating figures. He didnt care for fancy clothes or fine food, and he worked himself day and night. Beethoven said of Napoleon, He understood art and science and despised ignorance. Most observers consider Napoleon to be a military genius and his defenders believe he was a champion of equality and the common man. Others, however, see Napoleon as an egotistical and power hungry tyrant. Napoleon himself said, Power is my mistress. One thing is certain; after Napoleon ended feudalism and extended equality in the countries he conquered, the monarchies of Europe would never be the same. People had tasted liberty and equality, and they liked it. Still, after twenty-five years of revolution, the Reign of Terror and the Napoleonic Wars, France was ready for a period of calm. France again looked to the monarchy for stability, and a new French king was made head of state...but the state had changed since the revolution. Unlike the Sun King, Frances new king was controlled by a modern constitution, and he wore a business suit - not a curly wig and tights. France was now a constitutional monarchy . Simon Bolivar The revolutions in the United States and France inspired the people of Latin America to seek their independence from foreign control. The well-educated son of a wealthy family from Venezuela, Simon Bolivar, became South Americas George Washington. After studying Enlightenment ideas at home and in Europe, Bolivar returned to Venezuela and raised an army to fight for South American independence from Spain. After achieving victory in his native Venezuela, Bolivar went on to defeat the Spanish in what is now Columbia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. But, Bolivar failed to bring South America together in a union, and he died a discouraged man. Nonetheless, today he is called The Liberator, and the country of Bolivia is named in his honor. At the same time Bolivar was fighting for South American independence, countries in Central America and Mexico were also fighting for their independence from Spain. Meanwhile, Brazil declared its independence from Portugal. In a period of just twenty years, the three-hundred-year European domination of Latin America came to an end. Unfortunately, since gaining independence many Latin American countries have been dominated by dictators and various strong men resulting in unstable governments and weak economies. These countries now rank among the worlds poorest. Neoclassical art and Classical music In Europe, divine right, absolute monarchy, and the Ancien Regime were gone; they had been replaced by the Enlightenment, revolution, and Napoleon. A new artistic style was needed to replace the grand, ornate Baroque style of the god-kings. Pompeii had recently been discovered, providing a glimpse into life during the Roman Empire. The Western world turned again to classical antiquity for artistic inspiration. The new style was called neoclassical meaning new classical. Its simple, solid, and pure classical lines stood in sharp contrast to the fancy and gilded Baroque. Emperor Napoleon considered himself to be the new Caesar of the new Rome. He was crowned in the style of Roman emperors, he built classical-style monuments such as the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and he spread Neoclassicism to the countries he conquered. Meanwhile, the young republic in the United States liked Neoclassicism's connection to the democratic governments of the classical world and chose this style of architecture for its new capital in Washington D.C. Changes were also occurring in the way art was produced. Successful members of the middle class now bought art (rather than kings and church leaders), and artists learned their skills at schools called academies, rather than being supported by rich patrons such as Lorenzo de Medici. While the painting and sculpture of the period are called Neoclassical, the music is simply called Classical because the music of classical Greece and Rome had not survived to claim that name. This was Europes greatest age of music, and it was centered in Vienna, Austria , during a remarkable fifty year period (1775-1825) when the musical giants Haydn, Schubert, Mozart, and Beethoven all worked side-by-side in the same city. Before this time, musicians were considered ordinary craftsmen similar to shoemakers or blacksmiths. Haydn demanded respect and he got it in Vienna where music was the center of upper class social life. Papa Haydn gave lessons to Beethoven and encouragement to Mozart. Musicians flocked to Vienna where they found training, employment, money, honor, and fame.
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Unit 3 - The 1800s: Industrial Revolution, nationalism, and imperialism

MAP IDENTIFICATION: Denmark, India, Cuba, Philippines, Latin America, Canada, Australia, Pakistan conservative versus liberal Europe had weathered another storm of history, and it was ready for a period of calm. After the monarchies of Europe finally defeated Napoleon, they wanted no more of revolution and war. Leaders representing the Great Powers of Europe met in Vienna, Austria, to hammer out an agreement meant to undo the changes brought about by the French Revolution, return kings to their thrones and maintain a lasting peace by restoring a balance of power among European nations. Delegates to the Congress of Vienna were members of the aristocracy (upper class) who felt that the revolutionary ideas of the Enlightenment had nearly destroyed civilization. They wanted a return to the old order in which monarchs and the upper class controlled a stable society. People such as these, who resist change and try to preserve traditional ways, are called conservatives. Although conservatives were in control in 1815, many common people still believed in the Enlightenment ideas of democracy, equality and personal freedom. People such as these, who want to adopt new methods for improving society, are often called liberals. Liberals are said to be on the political left while conservatives are on the political right. (The political labels of conservative and liberal are very much with us today in American politics; the Democratic Party is generally considered to be more liberal than, and to the left of, the more conservative Republican Party.) The conservative delegates to the Congress of Vienna were successful in preventing an outbreak of general war in Europe for a century. Nonetheless, liberal revolts erupted repeatedly in the Western world as people continued to seek the Enlightenment goals of freedom and equality. Industrial Revolution Civilization was made possible by agriculture, and in every civilization from Mesopotamia through the Middle Ages agriculture was the main source of wealth. This began to change as an economy based on agriculture was being replaced by an economy that used machines to produce goods in large quantities by big industries. This Industrial Revolution began in the late 1700s in Britains textile (cloth) mills and it spread to other countries during the 1800s. It was given a huge boost by the invention of the steam engine which led to the invention of the train and steamship, both of which could move manufactured goods long distances more quickly and cheaper than ever before. The Industrial Revolution was made possible by technology which is different from science. Science is the study of the basic principles of how the world works. Technologies are the tools that put scientific knowledge to use, tools such as the steam engine and electrical motors. Therefore, it was the Scientific Revolution that paved the way for the Industrial Revolution that followed. The Industrial Revolution had both positive and negative consequences. Factories could produce goods more cheaply than hand labor which meant people could buy more goods, resulting in a higher standard of living . But, factories also put many craftsmen out of work. Factories required large numbers of workers which caused huge migrations of people from the countryside to the city where they often worked long hours for low wages while living in crowded and unsanitary conditions. Small children worked as much as sixteen hours a day becoming so tired that they fell into machinery and were crippled or killed. The Industrial Revolution was a huge technological, economic and social upheaval. Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower was constructed in 1889 for a worlds fair celebrating the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. At a thousand feet tall, the tower was an exuberant demonstration of the impressive steel and iron construction techniques made possible by the Industrial Revolution. The tower was built by the French engineer and bridge builder, Gustave Eiffel, who had earlier built the metal framework for the Statue of Liberty in New York. The Eiffel Tower served as a model for the construction of office buildings and skyscrapers which are also built with skeletons of steel, the first major advance in architecture since the flying buttress. The Eiffel Tower was meant to be temporary, but it grew on the people of Paris and they decided to keep it. Now it symbolizes not only the city of Paris, but the Industrial Age which produced it. A less fortunate symbol of the Industrial Age lies at the bottom of the North Atlantic off the coast of Canada. In 1912, the British passenger ship Titanic was the largest moving object ever built by man, and it was considered unsinkable. On its maiden voyage from England to America, it struck an iceberg and sank, drowning most of the 2,200 people on board. The Titanic serves as a warning to humans not to become overly confident about their ability to overcome nature through technology.
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Impressionism In addition to factories, the steam engine and new construction methods, the Industrial Revolution brought many other technological marvels such as antiseptics to kill bacteria in hospital operating rooms, vaccinations to prevent the spread of deadly diseases, the telegraph, telephone, electric light bulb, automobile, airplane and the camera. This last invention, the camera, had a profound affect on the world of art in the late 1800s. Since the camera could now reproduce scenes from life much more accurately than any artist could, the artist needed to find a new mission in life. Artists began to paint their impressions of a scene rather than trying to accurately reproduce the scene itself. Art changed dramatically as artists became freer to put their own ideas and feelings into their work. In order to capture the changing qualities of light, artists such as Monet and Renoir worked quickly using short, choppy brushstrokes to form vibrant mosaics of color. Later artists such as Cezanne and van Gogh experimented with distorted images. Many art lovers consider the paintings of this period to be among the finest and most beautiful art works ever produced. Once again art had changed to reflect its own time. The Impressionist movement was the greatest artistic revolution since the Renaissance, and it was the beginning of modern art. socialism The Industrial Revolution had changed the world. In a period of seventy years, world population tripled, and each persons consumption of goods nearly doubled. People moved off the land and went to cities to work in factories. In fifty years, the English manufacturing city of Liverpool grew from 82,000 to 376,000 people. Many cities could not cope with the huge influx of workers. A dozen people might be crowded together in one small room in a run-down apartment building called a tenement. Due to a lack of sewage facilities, filth was everywhere, and infectious disease killed one child in four before the age of five. In books such as Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens portrayed the difficult lives faced by the working poor of England. The Industrial Revolution was making a few people very rich creating a new nobility of wealth, but countless others were poor and living in squalid conditions. Under these circumstances, many working-class people adopted the ideas of socialism, a philosophy that called for a more even distribution of wealth. Under socialism, important businesses would be owned by the public (or government), not by a few wealthy individuals. Some socialist thinkers even proposed creating a utopia, an ideal society where entire communities would be owned by the workers who lived and worked in them. Robert Owen, a English industrialist, set up a utopian community in the United States at New Harmony, Indiana. The experiment failed because the residents of New Harmony turned out to be not very harmonious, arguing among themselves and some refusing to work. Despite setbacks such as this, socialist ideas encouraged numerous social reforms in the 1800s and 1900s which helped to improve the lives of working class people of many nations. social reform In 1776, a Scottish philosopher named Adam Smith published an influential book that is still studied and quoted today. In The Wealth of Nations, Smith said that society would work best if government did not interfere in business. According to Smith, the economy is best regulated by the invisible hand of supply and demand in a free market. This economic philosophy came to be known as laissez faire (LES-ay-fair), which is French for leave it alone. Workers who lost their jobs to machines didnt much agree with the idea of leaving business alone, and some took matters into their own hands. The Luddites were a group of masked workers who attacked textile mills smashing machinery to bits and striking fear in the hearts of every factory owner in England. Recognizing that there is strength in numbers, other workers began to form labor unions that called strikes shutting down factories until owners agreed to better pay and working conditions. (Strikes are are still used by labor unions today for very similar reasons.) Meanwhile, socialists were demanding that government take over ownership of major industries such as banking, railroads and factories. Governments responded to these pressures unleashed by the Industrial Revolution not by adopting socialism, but by passing social reform laws to improve the lives of workers. Reforms were encouraged by universal male suffrage which granted all men (but not women yet) the right to vote in many western countries. Germany led the way in social reform legislation. In the mid-1880s Germany adopted laws that insured workers against accidents and sickness, limited working hours and provided old age benefits. France and Italy soon passed similar laws. The British Parliament passed the Factory Act which prohibited the employment of children under the age of nine, and four years later Britain required these children to attend free elementary schools. Britain was the first nation to adopt a work week of 5-1/2 days, which gave workers more leisure time to attend theaters, play sports and ride their newly-invented bicycles.
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nationalism Nationalism is a deep devotion to ones country. An early stage of nationalism is the desire to form a country free from foreign control. The first modern nations of England and France were formed during the Hundred Years War in the late Middle Ages when people developed loyalties to their countries, rather than to local feudal lords. Nationalism came to the Americas in the late 1700s and early 1800s when European colonies threw off foreign control. In 1830, Greece gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire of Turkey. But, in the early 1800s, much of Europe was still divided into an assortment of small kingdoms, baronies, and dukedoms. Italy and Germany, for example, did not yet exist as nations. Due to marriages between the royal families of Europe, people often found themselves ruled by foreigners who didnt even speak the same language as the people they governed. Inspired by Enlightenment ideas and hopes for democracy, people hungered for change. People wanted to belong to nations that reflected their own culture, history, language, religion, and traditions. Nationalism became the strongest political force of the 1800s. Much of the centurys history is a story of people struggling to be free of foreign control. Italy In the mid-1800s, the Italian peninsula was a collection of kingdoms and city-states. Much of northern Italy was ruled by the Austrian royal family while much of southern Italy was ruled by the Spanish royal family. The people of Italy wanted their own nation. The writer, Mazinni, gave voice to these nationalistic yearnings by reminding Italians that their Roman ancestors had ruled the ancient world and that Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance. There were bitter struggles as royal rulers crushed uprisings by Italian patriots. In the entire Italian region there was only one native-born monarch, King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia, so it was natural that unification of the Italians would begin there. Victor Emmanuel had a clever prime minister named Cavour who helped to unite northern Italy. Meanwhile, a popular revolutionary general, Giuseppe Garibaldi, called for volunteers to fight in the south. He said, I offer neither pay nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart follow me. Garibaldi sailed to the island of Sicily (the football being kicked by the Italian boot) with his army of a thousand red shirts and they brought southern Italy into the Italian union. Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed king of Italy in 1861. A few years later, the states of central Italy voted to join the union and Italian unification was complete by 1870. (A prime minister, such as Cavour, serves as the head of a countrys government. In modern times, prime ministers have powers similar to American presidents. Unlike American presidents, however, prime ministers are not elected to their jobs. In England, and in other countries with parliaments, the leader of the strongest political party in parliament becomes the prime minister.) Germany In 1850, Germany was made up of 39 small countries. One of the largest and most powerful was the eastern kingdom of Prussia. Prussias prime minister, Otto von Bismark , was one of the greatest political geniuses of all time. Bismark was a master of realpolitik, politics in which law and principles are less important than success. Bismark developed a machiavellian plan to unify all of Germany under the leadership of Prussia by any means necessary. The Industrial Revolution had made Prussia wealthy, and Bismark set out to build Prussias military strength; he believed German unification would be achieved only through war. He said, Not by speeches and majority votes are the great questions of the day decided, but by blood and iron. Using a step-by-step approach, Bismark started and won three separate wars against Denmark, Austria, and France, each war bringing him closer to his goal. By 1870, Germany was unified and Prussias king was crowned as kaiser (emperor) over all of Germany. Germanys militaristic government was the strongest in the world, a situation which caused concern among the other Great Powers of Europe.

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Social Darwinism In the early part of the 1800s, nationalism was associated with positive ideas such as freedom and independence from foreign control. The last half of the century, however, saw the emergence of a darker side of nationalism which glorified war and military conquest. This extreme form of nationalism often encouraged racism which is a belief that ones own country or race is superior to all others. Racism was supported by the philosophy of Social Darwinism. Charles Darwin was an English scientist who developed the Theory of Natural Selection which proposes that an animal species may change over time as the fittest members survive and the less successful members die out. Social Darwinists attempted to apply Darwins theory to human societies claiming that the worlds more technologically advanced races were intended by nature to dominate lesser races. Governments began to take a new interest in the health of their citizens, encouraging workers to get outside and play games to improve the nations fitness. Organized sports began to play a big role in Western culture; the Olympic Games were revived in 1896. The philosophy of Social Darwinism and survival of the fittest was also adopted by rich industrialists who believed their wealth proved they were superior examples of the human species which meant it was perfectly acceptable for them to enjoy their vast riches while keeping their inferior workers living in poverty. The leaders of industry and banking by now had formed a new aristocracy of wealth and power to replace the nobility of earlier ages. imperialism After the Industrial Revolution gave Western nations wealth and technology that could be used to overpower less advanced societies, the Great Powers went on a binge of empire-building in Asia and Africa. When one country sets out to dominate and control another land, it is called imperialism. In 1800, Western powers controlled 35 percent of the worlds land surface; by 1914 they controlled 84 percent. There were several factors that encouraged imperialism, but probably the most important was greed. The Industrial nations wanted overseas colonies to supply cheap raw materials for European factories, and they wanted new markets where they could sell finished goods produced by those factories. Nationalism was another factor. Spurred on by intense feelings of patriotism, the countries of Europe tried to increase their power and prestige by adding new territories. To be a Great Power required overseas possessions. Nations competed with one another to grab territories before other powers could get them, provoking a series of international conflicts. Even the United States, which had fought for its own independence from colonial rule, joined the imperialist feeding frenzy. Racism was another factor that promoted imperialism. With their advanced technology, and a belief in the theory of Social Darwinism, many people in the Western world felt they were superior to all others. They believed the white man had a natural right to dominate backward people and was actually doing them a favor by bringing them Western technology, religion and education. This attitude was expressed in a famous poem by Rudyard Kipling which encouraged Western man to Take up the White Mans Burden. Imperialism served to place millions of black and brown people under the control of white people. India The country of India was a creation of British imperialism. Britain became involved with India on the last day of 1600 when Queen Elizabeth I chartered a joint-stock company, the English East India Company, to establish trade with India. At the time there was no country of India; only a number of kingdoms controlled by regional rulers. Before long, the English were importing millions of yards of calico cloth every year from India along with sugar, silk, and tea. In the early days of capitalism, business competition could be even more brutal than today. It was not uncommon for trading companies from different countries to battle each other for control of trade in a region. Britain took control of India when the English trading company defeated Frances trading company in a battle in the late 1700s. During two centuries of British rule, relations between Indians and the British were often strained. The clash of cultures led to a rebellion in the mid-1800s by Indian soldiers serving in the British army. Although their Hindu religion taught Indians not to cross open water, Indian soldiers could be required to serve overseas. In addition, army riflemen at this time had to bite off the tops of greased cartridges to load their rifles. Indian soldiers believed the cartridges were sealed with beef fat although cows are sacred to Hindus. Angered by British indifference to their cultural beliefs, the Indian soldiers rebelled, and they were joined by other members of Indian society. After putting down the uprising, Britain tightened its control over India. The British brought many advancements to India including a postal service, telegraph, good roads and a large railroad network. But British technology also harmed India. The spinning of cotton in Indian homes had long been a source of income for peasants until they were put out of work by inexpensive cotton cloth imported from Englands textile mills.
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The Scramble for Africa Slavery came to an end in most of the world by the mid-1800s. Despite its encounter with the slave trade, African society remained largely intact. There were many successful and prosperous native kingdoms in Africa such as the Ashanti kingdom of western Africa and the powerful Zulu nation of southern Africa. This would soon change as the imperialist powers of Europe began to covet Africa for its raw materials and potential new markets. The scramble for Africa was on. To avoid serious conflicts in the competition for pieces of Africa, the major Western powers met at a conference in Berlin in 1884 where they drew lines on a map dividing the continent among themselves. The Africans were not invited to attend. With that settled, the imperialist powers set about the task of defeating the local rulers in Africa, a chore made much easier with modern weapons. During a battle in 1898, for example, a British army using machine guns lost only 28 soldiers while slaughtering more than 10,000 African warriors. Still, conquering the Africans wasnt always easy, and sometimes it took years. In Ethiopia, an Italian army was confronted by African soldiers carrying modern weapons. The Africans defeated the Italians, and Ethiopia maintained its independence. Eventually seven European powers carved Africa into a number of countries with artificial boundaries that bore little relationship to the cultural groups living there. The Europeans set up various types of colonial governments to extract rubber, copper, gold, diamonds, and crops such as cotton and peanuts. Some colonial governments were more harsh than others, but all had one thing in common: whites owned the land and blacks worked it. Men were often separated from their families and sent to work in distant locations, a practice that weakened African village and family life. The European domination of Africa stopped the development of Africa in its tracks, nearly destroying African culture in the process. Imperialism denied the people of Africa the opportunity to grow their own institutions to carry Africa into the twentieth century. Spanish-American War The United States was becoming a major world power and it, too, felt the need to join in the imperialist Monopoly game of collecting overseas possessions. Americas chance came with the Spanish-American War. Many people in the U.S. were genuinely concerned about Spains brutal treatment of Cuba following a revolt by Cubans against Spanish rule. During a visit to Cuba in 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor killing 266 American sailors. Although the explosion was probably an accident not involving the Spanish, extensive coverage by American newspapers inflamed public opinion until the U.S. declared war on Spain. Remember the Maine, was Americas war slogan. In a war that lasted only four months, the American navy destroyed two decrepit Spanish fleets, one in the Philippines and one near Cuba. Theodore Roosevelt and his band of Rough Riders became heroes after newspapers reported their daring cavalry charge at San Juan Hill in Cuba. Spains defeat meant that Spain could no longer be considered a major European power. The American victory in this splendid little war gave the United States its first overseas possessions, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, although it was a very small empire by European standards. Later in the same year, in a separate move, the United States took control of Hawaii. Now, the U.S. had a foothold in Asia where it joined other Western powers in pushing around China and Japan, forcing them to sign trade agreements favorable to the West. Five years later, the hero of San Juan Hill, Theodore Roosevelt, was president of the United States and he declared that the U.S. would take control of any Latin American country that didnt run its government the way the United States thought it should. This arrogant U.S. attitude toward its neighbors in Latin America created resentment that persists to this day. Victorian Age It was during the reign of Queen Victoria in the late 1800s that England rose to the height of its power, controlling a vast colonial empire that included Canada, Australia, India and large chunks of Africa. During the Victorian Age it was said, The sun never sets on the British Empire. During Victorias reign, democracy was greatly expanded in Britain when the nation adopted the secret ballot and universal male suffrage. It was also during Victorias reign that the British monarchy became little more than the powerless figurehead it is today. Although Queen Victoria was interested in political matters, she left the affairs of government to Parliament and able prime ministers similar to American presidents. She was careful not to show favoritism toward either of Britains major political parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals. The greatest writer of the Victorian Age was Charles Dickens whose novels portrayed the poverty and desperation of lower class urban life during the British Industrial Revolution. Because the reign of Queen Victoria was also a time of conservative morality in England, the term Victorian has come to mean repressed or prudish attitudes.
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Unit 4 - 1900 to 1925: World War I and the rise of communism

MAP IDENTIFICATION: The Balkans, Hungary, Switzerland entangling alliances As the twentieth century arrived, the Western world was at peace and people were optimistic about the future. Americans were proud of their new Panama Canal which was dug across the isthmus of Panama to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Beneath the surface, however, an explosion was brewing in Europe, just waiting for a spark to ignite it. European nations were strengthening their armies and navies and forming alliances so they would have friends in case of war. As it turned out, these alliances would be the cause of the greatest war the world had ever seen. The alliance system began because both France and Germany claimed the territory of AlsaceLorraine which lay between them. Germany took control of the territory during the wars of German unification, and Bismark was afraid that France might try to get it back. To prevent this, Germany formed an alliance with Italy and Austria-Hungary. The three countries agreed that if one of them was attacked, the others would come to its aid. Fearful of Germanys growing industrial and military power, France formed its own alliances with Great Britain and Russia. These entangling alliances meant that a war between any two nations could erupt into a much wider conflict involving many more countries. Meanwhile, nationalism and imperialism increased tensions and conflict in Europe as the Great Powers competed against one another for military strength, prestige, and colonial possessions. World War I The spark that ignited World War I came from the Balkans, a region of many cultures and ethnic groups located north of Greece which included the nation of Serbia. Members of a Serbian nationalist movement hoped that Serbs living in Austria-Hungary would break away and join Serbia. In 1914, a young Serbian nationalist, hoping to trigger a Serbian uprising against Austria, assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Austria blamed Serbia for the shooting and declared war on Serbia. Because Russia had close ties to Serbia, Russia started mobilizing its forces (getting them ready for war) against Austria-Hungary. This is when the system of entangling alliances kicked in, trapping the major powers of Europe in an unstoppable chain of events. With Russia threatening war against Austria, Austrias ally, Germany, declared war on Russia and on Russias ally, France. Britain then joined the war on the side of its allies, Russia and France. Less than six weeks after the shooting of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, most of the major powers of Europe and several smaller nations were embroiled in World War I. The alliance led by France, Britain, and Russia came to be known as the Allies while the alliance led by Germany, AustriaHungary, and the Turkish Ottoman Empire came to be knows as the Central Powers. With enemies on both sides, the Central Powers had to fight a war on two fronts. The fighting in Belgium and France was the Western Front while the war with Russia was the Eastern Front. Many patriotic young men from both sides, bored with their quiet civilian lives, eagerly enlisted for the fight which they expected to be over by Christmas. trench warfare The American Civil War of the 1860s was one of the last major conflicts that was fought in the old style of battle that saw soldiers lining up in open fields to attack one another in individual combat. War had always been a battle of men, but now it was becoming a battle of machines. During World War I, five new technologies of the Industrial Revolution changed the nature of warfare; they were the airplane, the tank, the submarine, poison gas and the machine gun. Of these, the machine gun was the most devastating. At the beginning of the war, generals familiar with the earlier style of combat hurled heroic cavalry and infantry charges against the enemy, but horses and human flesh offered little resistance to machine gun bullets. As the first winter of the war approached, soldiers on the Western Front began digging hundreds of miles of muddy, rat-infested trenches where they could temporarily hide from machine guns and exploding artillery shells. Between the trenches of the opposing armies lay a no mans land of barbed wire, shattered trees, shell craters and rotting corpses. When ordered to attack, soldiers climbed out of their trenches, ran across no mans land toward the enemy trenches and were mowed down like fields of wheat by machine gun, rifle and artillery fire. In just one engagement, the Battle of the Somme in northern France, 1,100,000 soldiers died. For three long years, generals kept demanding more soldiers and ordering more massive ground assaults. Young men were dying by the hundreds of thousands, but neither side was gaining ground. It was a stalemate.
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The Lusitania The United States tried to keep out of the war, but it became increasingly difficult as the war dragged on. Britain and France spread propaganda portraying the war against the German kaiser as a battle for democracy. (Propaganda is information designed to influence the opinions of others.) American public opinion further turned against Germany due to unrestricted submarine warfare. The Germans were using their U-Boats (undersea boats) to sink ships carrying supplies to the Allies. In 1915, without warning, a German U-Boat sank the British passenger liner, Lusitania, which was carrying weapons, as well as passengers, from the United States to England. Of the 1200 people killed in the attack, 128 were Americans, mostly women and children. Americans were outraged by the sinking, and there was a public outcry against the Germans. Economic interests also pushed America closer to war. American banks had made large loans to the Allies, and if the Allies lost the war, bankers knew their loans would never be repaid. The United States declared war in 1917 to make the world safe for democracy in the words of President Woodrow Wilson. Germany responded by mounting a large offensive designed to win the war before American troops could be trained and sent to the front. The German attack pushed back French and British troops, and it looked as though Germany was about to achieve victory when a million American troops began arriving in France. The American reinforcements made the difference. The Allies launched a massive counterattack that soon defeated the Central Powers. When the fighting stopped, soldiers from both sides came out of their trenches and cheered. That day, November 11, is now observed as Veterans Day in the United States. During the war, women had gained political strength as they filled jobs of men who left for the front. Women soon had their own reason to cheer as they finally won the right to vote. Treaty of Versailles The peace treaty ending the war between the Allies and Germany was signed at the Palace of Versailles in June of 1919. The war had changed the political landscape of Europe. The decaying Ottoman Empire centered in Turkey was gone as was the empire of Austria-Hungary. Russia had lost its emperor, and Germanys Kaiser had been replaced by a newly formed German republic with its capital in the city of Weimar. The Great War, as it was called, nearly wiped-out an entire generation of young men in Europe. Almost 30 million people were killed or wounded, and over a million civilians died as a result of the fighting. The huge numbers of both military and civilian casualties made World War I the first total war . France was especially bitter because much of the fighting took place on French soil and France suffered great loss of life. The Treaty of Versailles punished the Germans by giving AlsaceLorraine back to France, taking away Germanys overseas territories and limiting the size of Germanys army and navy. Worse for the Germans, the Allies forced Germany to make large payments for war damages. Called reparations , these payments were resented by the German people who pointed out that Germany was not the only country to start the war. The Germans said the reparations were greater than they could afford to pay, and the payments would make it harder for Germanys new Weimar Republic to survive. The Treaty of Versailles also established the League of Nations, an assembly of sixty countries which agreed to work together for world peace. The League was the idea of American President Woodrow Wilson who hoped the Great War would be the war to end all wars. The United States Senate, however, refused to ratify the treaty because many people in America wanted no more foreign entanglements, an attitude called isolationism. Although the League of Nations was not successful in maintaining world peace, it became the forerunner of todays United Nations. Soviet Union Although Russia joined the Great War on the side of the Allies, Russia was not a democracy. Earlier Russian czars (emperors) such as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great had tried to modernize Russia, but at the time of World War I Russia remained a largely feudal society with rich landowners and poor peasants or serfs. Russia was ruled by a monarch, Czar Nicholas II. World War I did not go well for the Russians. After early victories, the Russian army began to fall apart. The army was poorly fed and poorly equipped. Soldiers were sent into battle with no weapons and told to pick up the rifles of the dead. Because of hunger and shortages, poor leadership, and heavy battle losses, the morale (enthusiasm and confidence) of Russian soldiers was low. Shortages hurt the civilian population as well. When soldiers were ordered to shoot women textile workers rioting for more food, the soldiers opened fire on their own officers instead. As the rioting spread, Czar Nicholas was forced to step down as Russian emperor in 1917. Into this power vacuum stepped a well-organized group of socialist revolutionaries known as Bolsheviks who promised land for the peasants and better working conditions for workers in the factories. After the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded in taking control of the Russian Empire, it was renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or the Soviet Union for short.
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communism There are many varieties of socialism; the Bolsheviks based their political system on an extreme form of socialism called communism in which all property and all means of production (such as farms and industries) are owned by the community. In practice, this has meant ownership by the government. The concept of communism was developed by the German philosopher Karl Marx who was troubled by the working class poverty of the Industrial Revolution. Borrowing Hegels idea of the dialectic (conflict between opposites), Marx said all of history could be seen as a class struggle between the owners of production (whom he called the bourgeoisie) and the workers (whom he called the proletariat). Marx named his philosophy dialectical materialism , meaning that the dialectic in history has always been a struggle between people who possessed material wealth and those who did not, the haves versus the have-nots. Only two generations had passed since liberal revolutions in Europe and the Americas had forced the nobility to turn over political power to the middle class, but now Marx was saying that the middle class, or bourgeoisie, had become the enemy of the people and should be overthrown. Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses, meaning that religion, by promising a better life in heaven, discouraged people from trying to improve their lives on Earth. Marx predicted that a working class revolution would eventually overthrow the capitalist system and replace it with communism. In the Communist Manifesto, published with Frederick Engels in 1848, Marx wrote, The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains...They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite! Although Marxs predictions have not come true, his ideas were adopted in many countries including the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. Communist governments such as these have tended to limit personal freedoms and exert strong control over the lives of their people. Lenin The Bolshevik Revolution, also called the Russian Revolution , was led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Lenin became a revolutionary at a young age after his older brother was killed in a plot against the czar. After studying the ideas of Karl Marx, Lenin dedicated his life to overthrowing the czar and setting up a socialist government in Russia. Lenin left Russia after spending five years in prison for his political activities, and he was living in the neutral country of Switzerland when the Russian czar was overthrown during World War I. Germany, hoping to further weaken its Russian enemy, provided transportation for Lenin to return to Russia. The German plan worked; after the Bolsheviks took power, Russia signed a peace treaty with Germany which ended the fighting on Germanys Eastern Front. The Russian negotiator was a Bolshevik leader named Leon Trotsky. Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolsheviks found that taking control of Russia was easier than keeping it. Several foreign governments supported a civil war that broke out against the Bolsheviks. Believing that harsh measures were needed to save the revolution, Lenin established a dictatorship and executed tens of thousands of Russians suspected of opposing communism. Among those killed were Czar Nicholas, his wife Alexandria, and their children. The Bolshevik Red Army, under the capable but ruthless command of Trotsky, eventually won the civil war and preserved the revolution. Lenins next big challenge was saving the Russian economy. After his government banned all political parties except the Communists, Lenin took over the banks, major industries and communications. The strain of the revolution took its toll on Lenins health, and he died in 1924. Although Lenin hoped Trotsky would succeed him, leadership of the Soviet Union passed to another of Lenins followers, the son of a shoemaker, Joseph Stalin . totalitarian government A totalitarian government is one that takes nearly total control over the lives of its people. The Soviet Union became a totalitarian state under Stalin, a brutal dictator who ruled the USSR from the early 1920s to the early 1950s. His name means man of steel. Announcing that his country must modernize because it was 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries, Stalin set up a series of ambitious Five-Year Plans intended to quickly increase the Soviet Unions industrial and agricultural production. Stalin expected every citizen to sacrifice as if Russia were still at war. Stalins plans included combining individual farms into large units called collective farms owned by the Soviet government. Many farmers resisted giving up their land, often killing their livestock rather than turning it over to the state. In the 1920s and 1930s, some ten million peasants were tortured, killed, or sent to prison camps, and Soviet agricultural production plummeted. Although his own people were starving, Stalin exported food to other countries to finance new steel factories and hydroelectric power plants. As millions of Russians died, even some Communist Party members thought Stalin had gone too far. Stalin responded by killing or imprisoning those who disagreed with him. Stalin exiled his chief rival, Leon Trotsky, and then had him murdered in Mexico. Anyone who spoke against the government could expect a knock on the door in the middle of the night from the Soviet secret police. The Soviet Union had become a totalitarian state. (Authoritarian government is similar, but the term implies less control by the state)
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Unit 5 - 1925-1945: The rise of fascism and World War II

MAP IDENTIFICATION: Poland, Luxembourg, Japan, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, Normandy, Norway fascism Russia was not the only country in Europe facing food shortages and economic problems following World War I. In Italy there wasnt enough to eat, prices were rising, unemployment was widespread, and people wanted a change. Membership in socialist political parties was growing which worried business and property owners who feared losing everything in a Russian-style revolution. Amid this turmoil, a strong political leader emerged who promised to stop socialism and restore Italys greatness. His name was Benito Mussolini, leader of the fascists which was an anticommunist political movement that emphasized patriotism, nationalism and obedience to the state. (Fascist leaders have generally been dictators who liked to wear showy military uniforms.) After taking power, Mussolini succeeded in modernizing agriculture and improving the economy. He proclaimed that Italy would become the new Roman Empire. To strengthen his control, Mussolini made himself dictator; he seized the news media and he set up his own secret police. Germany, too, had economic problems following the Great War. The Kaiser had been replaced by the weak Weimar Republic which was not able to stop runaway inflation that made German currency nearly worthless. Inflation got so bad at one point that it took bushels of money to buy a loaf of bread. The life savings of many Germans were wiped out. Then, in 1929, Germany was hit hard by the Great Depression , a worldwide economic downturn that threw half of Germanys labor force out of work and caused the failure of banks and industries. As did the Italians, the Germans looked for a strong leader to fix their economic problems. As did the Italians, Germany chose a fascist, Adolph Hitler. Hitler Adolph Hitler was twice honored for bravery while fighting for Germany during World War I. Following the war he joined a fascist political party called the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazis . Due to his talents as an organizer and inspiring public speaker, Hitler quickly became the leader of the Nazi Party. With crowds of Germans wildly cheering Hitler in huge parades and rallies, the Nazi party grew in strength until the Nazis tried to overthrow the government of the German province of Bavaria. Hitler was arrested and sent to jail where he wrote his famous book, Mein Kamph (My Struggle), which described Hitlers views on nationalism and racism. He said Germans were a master race giving them the right to dominate inferior races such as Jews. Hitler blamed Jews for all of Germanys problems, from the defeat in World War I, to the Great Depression to the spread of communism. Hitler also told Germans that they must win back lands lost under the Treaty of Versailles and build a new German empire in Europe. Hitlers flaming patriotism and nationalist ideas took hold in Germany which felt humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles. Germans were fed up with being told how big their army could be and with paying war reparations. With the backing of powerful anti-communist businessmen, Hitler was given absolute power by the Weimar parliament. He quickly moved to revive the German economy, and in just five years unemployment fell from six million to almost nothing, and the German standard of living rose. Hitler also used his absolute power to ban all political parties except the Nazis, set up a secret police called the Gestapo, kill and torture his enemies, and persecute Jews who were stripped of their German citizenship and their businesses. Hitler said, Power creates justice. Spanish Civil War The years between World War I and World War II were a difficult time for democracies all over Europe as they faced economic problems and were challenged by socialism on the left and fascism on the right. Not only were republics overthrown in Italy and Germany, most of the democracies of eastern and central Europe also fell during this period. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, fascists led by Francisco Franco tried to take control of Spain from the legally elected republican government. Volunteers from many countries, including the U.S., formed International Brigades which went to Spain to fight on the side of the Spanish Republic. The fascists, however, were supported by Mussolini and Hitler. Hitler used the opportunity to test his modern German air force, the Luftwaffe, against human targets. A disturbing painting by Pablo Picasso portrays the bombing of the defenseless people of the Spanish town of Guernica where a thousand residents were killed by German bombers during one night of terror. This was the first time in history that a massive air attack was directed against a civilian population. It would not be the last. After three years of fighting, Francos fascists succeeded in defeating the republicans. Franco remained dictator until his death in 1975 when King Juan Carlos reestablished democracy in Spain.
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appeasement Hitler promised Germans that he would destroy the Treaty of Versailles, and he began by rebuilding the German army in violation of the treaty. Although Britain and France condemned German rearmament, they did nothing to stop it. The following year, Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, an area on the French border which was supposed to remain free of soldiers under terms of the treaty. It was a risky move, but Hitler calculated that nobody would stop him, and he was right. Encouraged by this success, Hitler brought Germany and Austria together in a political and military union although this, too, was forbidden by the treaty. England and France were following a policy of appeasement, which means they were giving in to Hitlers demands to avoid conflict and the possibility of another terrible war. Meanwhile, Hitlers army was growing stronger and each success made Hitler bolder. Next, he threatened war on neighboring Czechoslovakia unless Germany were given the German-speaking Sudatenland region. When Hitler promised to seek no more territory, France and England agreed. Six months later, Hitlers armies invaded and conquered all of Czechoslovakia, and still there was no response from the rest of the world. Six months after that, Hitlers armies invaded Poland. The invasion of Poland finally forced France and England to declare war on Germany. World War II began on September 3, 1939. The alliance of France and England (later joined by Russia and the United States) was called the Allies while Germany, Italy (and later Japan) were known as the Axis powers. Many historians consider World War II to be a continuation of World War I because the opposing sides in both wars were similar and because German discontent over the Treaty of Versailles set the stage for World War II. blitzkrieg To overcome the stalemate of trench warfare, Hitlers military planners developed a new kind of battle called blitzkrieg or lightning war. Blitzkrieg meant attacking quickly with a strong force of concentrated troops supported by artillery, tanks and air power. The Blitzkrieg was highly effective. When World War II broke out, Hitlers powerful German military used the blitzkrieg to quickly conquer Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Next would be France. The French had prepared for war against Germany by building a large army of their own and a physical barrier of strong forts along Frances eastern border with Germany. The German army simply went around these defenses and attacked France through the forests of Belgium. The French army melted away before the German blitzkrieg. Soon, a large force of British, French, and Belgian soldiers were cut off and trapped at the French town of Dunkirk on the English Channel. Every available English boat sailed to Dunkirk to save the stranded soldiers. In one of the strangest events of World War II, an oddball armada of fishing boats, yachts, tugboats, merchant ships, and navy destroyers managed to rescue all 335,000 Allied soldiers just ahead of the invading German army. Dunkirk provided a tremendous boost to British morale. Nonetheless, Nazi troops rolled into Paris in June of 1940. It had taken the Germans only seven weeks to defeat the powerful nation of France. Battle of Britain With France defeated, Hitler turned his attention to Great Britain. Britain had a new prime minister, Winston Churchill, who refused to surrender to Germany. Hitler responded by ordering massive air attacks against Britain in preparation for a planned invasion. These were dark days for the British people, and Churchill told his countrymen, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Nearly every day German bombers attacked British factories, seaports and airfields in what came to be known as the Blitz. Then Hitler threw the full power of his air force against the British capital of London. Although German bombs pounded London for 57 straight nights, the citizens of London refused to give in, and they kept their city functioning. Meanwhile, British Royal Air Force (RAF) Spitfires challenged the Luftwaffe in the skies over England. The RAF was aided by radar, a new technology that allowed the British military to spot German aircraft approaching the British coast. Although the Luftwaffe succeeded in destroying large areas of British cities, German aircraft losses became so great that Hitler was forced to abandon his plan to invade England. Winston Churchill acknowledged the bravery of RAF pilots by declaring,Never, in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few. In winning the Battle of Britain, the British dealt Hitler his first major defeat of World War II. Britains survival meant that British warships continued to control Atlantic shipping lanes despite deadly attacks from German U-boats. Although the U.S. was not in the war, America shipped large quantities of supplies across the Atlantic to aid Britain.

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Pearl Harbor Just as Hitler wanted to dominate Europe, Japan wanted to control Asia. Japan was a nation open to new ideas, and it had learned much from the West about modern industry, military power and imperialism. Before World War II began, Japans strong military had already conquered Korea and large portions of China. With the European Allies busy fighting Hitler, Japan took advantage of the situation and snapped up European colonies in Asia. Only one barrier stood in the way of Japanese plans for complete domination of Asia, the U.S. Navys Pacific fleet with its headquarters at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. After Japan joined the Axis powers and marched into Southeast Asia, the United States imposed an embargo which stopped most American trade with Japan. Furthermore, the U.S. insisted that Japan withdraw from China and Southeast Asia. Japanese leaders became convinced that war with the U.S. was inevitable, and American war planners suspected that the Japanese might try to attack American bases. Just before 8:00 am on December 7, 1941, the quiet of a Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor was shattered when 350 Japanese warplanes suddenly appeared in the skies overhead raining bombs and cannon fire onto ships of the U.S. Pacific fleet. The attack, launched from Japanese aircraft carriers, came as a complete surprise. Neither side had declared war, and the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor was considered safe from a military strike. The attack destroyed or disabled 18 U.S. warships and killed 3,500 Americans. In just two hours, U.S. naval power in the Pacific was crippled. Despite the successful attack, the Japanese commander warned, I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant. The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt went before the American Congress and declared that December 7th would be a date which will live in infamy. Both the United States and Britain declared war on Japan. A few days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Now, we were in it. the arsenal of democracy Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt had said that America must become the great arsenal for democracy. After the attack, the U.S. immediately switched to a war footing. Factories began operating 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Chrysler stopped making cars and started making tanks. As American men were called away to fight, American women went to work in war plants making everything from socks to aircraft carriers. Within a year, U.S. war production equaled that of Japan, Italy and Germany combined. This miracle of production, as Time magazine called it, would have been impossible without Rosie the Riveter, the nickname given to American women fighting the war on the home front. The U.S. built enough ships to replace those sunk by German submarines, permitting American-made supplies to flow uninterrupted across the Atlantic to the Allies. In the Pacific, the U.S. fleet recovered sufficiently from the attack at Pearl Harbor to stop a Japanese advance toward Australia. The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first sea battle in history in which ships didnt fire a single shot; all the fighting was done by carrier-based aircraft. A month later, after breaking Japanese radio codes, the U.S. Pacific Fleet surprised a massive Japanese naval task force near Midway Island, not far from Hawaii. Aircraft from three U.S. carriers sunk four Japanese carriers and five other warships giving the United States naval supremacy in the Pacific for the remainder of the war. The giant was awake. the Holocaust At its high point, Hitlers empire stretched from Scandinavia to North Africa and from the Atlantic Ocean to Russia. People in lands conquered by the Nazis were expected to serve the German master race. Inferior peoples such as Poles, Russians, gypsies, and Jews were to be enslaved or eliminated. Anyone considered a threat to the Nazis, such as political leaders or teachers, were also rounded-up and sent to concentration camps . The Nazis reserved their harshest treatment for the Jews. Hitlers plan for the Jews was called the Final Solution, which meant complete extermination of the Jewish people. All over Europe Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps where they were forced to work or were systematically executed. Children, being too young to work, were killed immediately. About two million people died at Auschwitz (OSH-vitz) in Poland, the most notorious of the death camps. The commander of Auschwitz later said that, Women would hide their children under their clothes, but of course when we found them, we sent the children to be exterminated. Hitlers Final Solution was effective; of Europes eight million Jews, the Nazis succeeded in murdering six million, an event which came to be known as the Holocaust. Late in the war, when Allied soldiers liberated Nazi concentration camps, the world became aware of the full extent of Hitlers criminal madness. A new word was invented to describe it, genocide, which means the intentional and systematic destruction of an entire racial or cultural group.
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Hitlers invasion of Russia Hitler was about to make his biggest mistake of the war, the very same mistake made by Napoleon more than a century earlier. When Hitler couldnt conquer England, he turned to the east. Despite a peace treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union, Hitler launched a three-pronged attack against the Soviets in June of 1941. Hitler wanted to acquire Soviet territory to provide growing room for Germany, a place where Germans could expand and build new settlements. Hitler also wanted Russias wheat, oil and coal to supply his war machine. Hitlers massive blitzkrieg caught Stalin and the Soviets by surprise. In little more than two weeks, the Germans captured 300,000 Soviet soldiers and destroyed 1,000 tanks and thousands of Soviet aircraft. As the Soviets retreated, they adopted the same scorched-earth policy used by the czars soldiers against Napoleon; they burned everything in Hitlers path to deny his troops food and shelter. Britain and the United States began sending supplies to the Soviet Union. The turning point in the Russian fighting and in World War II came at the Battle of Stalingrad (now Volgograd). After fierce house-to-house combat, the Germans captured Stalingrad, but outside the city the Soviets organized a successful counterattack in early 1943 that captured an entire German army. With a seemingly endless supply of troops and tanks, the Soviets began to push the Germans back. From then on, Germany and Italy started losing the war. The Russians, however, paid a terrible price in stopping Hitler, suffering an incredible 23 million dead. Normandy Invasion While fighting raged in Russia, the Pacific, and North Africa, Resistance movements sprung up in European countries under German occupation. Resistance fighters were ordinary men and women who lived dangerous secret lives spying on the Nazis, assassinating German officials, blowing up trains and sabotaging factories. In 1943, Allied forces advanced into Italy after winning hardfought battles in North Africa. From airfields in England, British and American long range heavy bombers, such as the B-17 Flying Fortress, began pounding cities and factories inside Germany. Entire German cities, including Hamburg and Dresden, were wiped-out killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. Hitler was on the defensive but his military remained formidable. After months of planning and preparation, the Allies launched a massive invasion of western Europe in June of 1944; it was meant to be the beginning of a final push toward Germany. On DDay , the day the invasion began, an enormous fleet of Allied ships supported by thousands of aircraft crossed the English Channel carrying American, British, Canadian and Free French soldiers who stormed ashore at five beaches on the coast of Normandy in northern France. At Omaha Beach, German machine gun and artillery fire were so intense that countless American soldiers died in the water before reaching shore. Nonetheless, the invasion of Normandy succeeded. The Germans were now trapped between Allied forces approaching from the west and Russian soldiers closing in from the east. Three months later, American troops were in Paris heading for the German border. On April 30, 1945, with Russian troops only a few blocks from his underground bunker in Berlin, Adolph Hitler committed suicide. The day Germany surrendered, one week later, was called V-E Day for victory in Europe. Hiroshima Meanwhile in the Pacific, fierce fighting continued. American troops fought and won savage battles against determined Japanese forces trying desperately to hold strategic islands including Saipan, the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The Americans succeeded in cutting Japans vital supply lines, and American bombers began striking inside Japan. By the summer of 1945, many Japanese cities had been leveled, nearly half of the capital of Tokyo was destroyed, and Japan was on the verge of collapse; yet Japan refused to surrender. While the U.S. military was readying plans for an invasion of Japan, a team of scientists in New Mexico perfected the atomic bomb. Hoping to avoid a costly invasion, President Harry Truman ordered the atomic bomb used against Japan. The first bomb destroyed the city of Hiroshima where 200,000 were killed immediately or died later. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki with similar results. The next day, Japan asked to end the war. Japanese officials surrendered aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on V-J Day, September 2, 1945. World War II was over; in cities across America strangers hugged and kissed each other in the streets. Controversy still surrounds the decision to use atomic weapons against Japan. Critics point out that Japan was never told about the bomb before it was used. They say a demonstration of the awesome power of the weapon might have convinced Japan to surrender without the deaths of more innocent civilians. World War II marked a fundamental shift in the nature of warfare. In modern times, most people killed in war had been combatants (military personnel). Of the fifty million people killed in World War II, however, more than two-thirds were civilians. The invention of the atomic bomb meant that any future world war might kill everyone.
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Unit 6 - 1945 to the present: Cold War and the Space Age
MAP IDENTIFICATION: Eastern Europe, Berlin, Pakistan, Taiwan, China, Korea, Vietnam Cold War Another of historys storms had swept the world. Following World War II, Japan, Germany and much of Europe were in ruins. After 500 years as the dominant region of the world, Western Europe had surrendered that position to the United States and the Soviet Union. Although the Soviets had suffered the greatest losses ever suffered by any country in any war, it was the only power left in Europe and Asia. The United States ended the war with the strongest economy in the world. These two superpowers represented a new international balance of power. Russia was determined to prevent any future invasions from Europe after fighting off armies of Napoleon in the 19th century and Hitler in the 20th. To give itself a protective barrier, the Soviet Union took control of eight Eastern European countries on its western border. Stalin installed communist governments in these nations and cut off most contacts with the West. The Soviet Union and its satellites came to be known as the Eastern bloc or the Soviet bloc. Although Britain and the U.S. had been allies of the Soviet Union during the war, they were never comfortable with the Soviet Unions communist form of government. When Stalin took control of Eastern Europe following the war, the Western capitalist countries became alarmed at the spread of communism and Soviet power toward the west. Britains Winston Churchill declared that an iron curtain has descended across the continent. The United States created a program called the Marshall Plan which sent billions of dollars in aid to Western Europe to rebuild economies crippled by the war and to strengthen them against communism. This was the beginning of an intense 45-year political struggle between the Western capitalist democracies and the communist Soviet bloc. Capitalism and communism were seen as more than just competing economic theories; they became belief systems, or ideologies, that people were willing to kill and die for. Because the conflict remained largely a war of words and threats, rather than a shooting war between the superpowers, it was called the Cold War. Berlin Wall Nowhere was East-West tension greater than in the German capital of Berlin. Following World War II, Germany was divided into zones occupied by the four major Allied powers. Britain, France, and the U.S. soon agreed to combine their zones and return control to the Germans. The Soviet Union, fearing that a unified Germany might again threaten Russia, chose to keep its zone separate. The Soviet zone became the communist country of East Germany, while the other zones became capitalist West Germany. Although Berlin was located a hundred miles inside East Germany, it, too, was divided. West Berlin was a capitalist island in the midst of communist East Germany. In 1948, the Soviets tried to force the Allies out of West Berlin by blocking all roads and railways into the city. Within two days, the Berlin Airlift began. For over a year, U.S. Air Force transport planes landed in Berlin every one to two minutes around the clock supplying the needs of the city of two million people. Realizing his plan had failed, Stalin ended the blockade in 1949. Prompted by the Berlin blockade and fear of Eastern bloc military power, the U.S. and Western Europe formed a military alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. By 1952, the Marshall Plan had helped restore prosperity to Western Europe. In the communist countries, however, economic conditions were not as good, and many East Germans began seeking a better life in the West. To prevent emigration, East German officials erected a wall in 1961 which separated East from West Berlin. The East German side was patrolled by soldiers with machine guns and attack dogs. The western side was covered with anti-communist graffiti. More than 170 people died trying to escape from East Germany by crossing over the 26-mile long concrete wall. The Berlin Wall became the most prominent symbol of the Cold War. nuclear arms race The United States was the only nation to possess atomic weapons at the end of World War II, but the Soviet Union managed to develop its own atomic bomb in only four years. Cold War competition soon turned into a race to see which nation could develop the most deadly weapons of mass destruction. In 1952, the United States detonated the first hydrogen bomb with 1000 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. A year later, the Soviets had their own H-bomb. Then, both countries developed long-range missiles that could fly across the Earth to rain nuclear destruction on one another. Missiles were placed on submarines that could escape detection, lie in wait and wipe-out large cities in minutes. The superpowers developed the capacity to destroy each other many times over and to turn the Earth into a dead wasteland. Weapons had finally become too terrible to use, a situation termed mutual assured destruction or MAD. Fear of a nuclear holocaust preyed on the mind of man, and that fear kept the peace.
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Peoples Republic of China During World War II Japan took control of much of China. Within China two groups resisted the Japanese occupiers, and when World War II ended with Japans defeat, these two Chinese armies fought each other for control of China. The winners were the Chinese communists, led by Mao Zedong, who established the Peoples Republic of China in 1949. The losers fled to the island of Taiwan, off the coast of China, where they set up an anti-communist government that exists today and receives military support from the United States. Until 1979, the United States recognized the government on Taiwan, not the Peoples Republic, as the legitimate government of China. (The Peoples Republic still considers Taiwan to be part of China and expects to get it back.) Communists were now in control of the worlds largest country, the Soviet Union, and the worlds most populous country, China. Many in the West feared the Chinese might try to take control of East Asia much as the Soviets had taken control of Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, a Soviet leader, Nakita Kruschev, placed Soviet missiles in Cuba only ninety miles of the coast of Florida, and he boasted to the West, We will bury you. In America of the 1950s and 1960s, politics were strongly influenced by a genuine fear of communist world domination. containment The United States set out to stop communist expansion by adopting a policy of containment which meant the U.S. would do everything in its power to keep the communist ideology from spreading to any more countries. Western leaders were afraid that if one country fell to communism, more countries might topple like a row of dominoes; this was called the Domino Theory. The containment policy got its first big test in 1950 when communist North Korea, backed by the Soviets, invaded South Korea which was backed by the United States. This was also the first big test for the United Nations which had been formed at the end of World War II to promote world peace and cooperation. With the Soviet Union absent during the vote, the United Nations approved a U.S. resolution to send troops (mostly American) to repel the North Korean invaders. China was reluctantly drawn into the war in support of North Korea. After three years of see-saw fighting in which both sides gained and lost much ground, the Korean War ended with North and South Korea occupying much the same territory they held when it began. The Cold War turned hot again in Asia in the mid-1960s when the United States sent troops to prevent a communist takeover in South Vietnam. The U.S. had difficulty fighting the Vietnam War because it was a guerrilla war with no front lines and few large-scale battles; the enemy would attack and disappear into the mountains or jungle. Meanwhile, the U.S. was trying to prop-up a series of unstable and ineffective South Vietnamese governments. As the fighting dragged on for eight years and the death toll mounted, public opinion in the United States turned against the war. With no end in sight, the U.S. finally withdrew and allowed the communists to take control of Vietnam in 1975. modern art Modern art began with the Impressionists who were freed by the camera to portray their own impressions of reality rather than trying to copy it. Although the art world has split off in a hundred different directions since then, one thing remains consistent; modern art usually doesnt look much like the real world. Consequently, modern art can be difficult for people to understand and appreciate. Modern art is divided into two major categories, expressive and abstract. Expressive art includes the work of the Impressionists and later artists such as Van Gogh and Picasso. The subject of the painting is recognizable, but it has been distorted to express the artists personal feelings and point-of-view. Abstract art, on the other hand, makes no attempt to portray the real world at all. It tries to offer a more basic view of beauty, or reality, by reducing art to its primary elements of line, shape, and color. Reflecting its own time in history, much modern art has been concerned with the anxiety of a century terrified by two world wars and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Edvard Munchs expressionist painting, The Scream has become a symbol of the horrors of the twentieth century. Pablo Picasso used a blend of expressive and abstract styles to convey his horror at the first bombing of a civilian population by the Nazis at Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. Picassos broken and disturbing images suggest a chaotic world in which principles of morality and human decency have been shattered and civilization is reduced to a pile of rubble. At the middle of the twentieth century, art moved toward the abstract and it was no longer limited to paintings and sculpture; it began to show up on TV screens and computer monitors. Art could be playful; Claus Oldenburg created giant vinyl hamburgers and baseball mitts, and Christo hung a huge orange curtain across Rifle Gap in the Colorado mountains and called it environmental art. Some scholars believe the most important art form of our age is motion pictures which combine visual images with elements of literature, music and the performing arts.
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independence movements Although the twentieth century saw historys worst instances of mans inhumanity toward man, humans also made great strides during the century. It has been said the amount of change that occurred during the twentieth century equaled that of the preceding nineteen centuries combined. Discoveries in the fields of health and medicine increased life expectancy, the standard of living rose for people in much of the world, and democracy triumphed as ever more people were living in societies where they could choose their own leaders. The twentieth century also saw the end of imperialism. After World War II, it became unacceptable for one country to dominate another. Colonies in Asia and Africa, one after another, demanded an end to foreign control. Mahandas Gandhi won the respect of the world by using nonviolent means to gain Indias independence from Great Britain. Gandhi and his followers were willing to accept pain in their struggle for independence, but they were unwilling to inflict it. Adopting a tactic called civil disobedience , members of the Indian independence movement disobeyed British laws which they felt were unjust; they accepted arrest and they went to jail. When India achieved independence in 1947, it was divided into two countries, Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. (Martin Luther King later adopted Gandhis strategy of non-violent civil disobedience during the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.) Most of the countries of Africa gained their independence from European control in the 1950s and 1960s, some by peaceful means and others after violent struggles. Portugal, the first European country to explore Africa, held its colonies into the 1970s. It wasnt until 1993 that white minority rule ended in South Africa when Nelson Mandela was elected as that countrys first black president. Many of the countries freed from European colonial rule after World War II are among the worlds poorest, a group of nations that are called developing nations or the Third World. Space Age The United States and the Soviet Union carried their Cold War rivalry into outer space competing in a space race that was closely related to the arms race because it was long-range missile technology that made space flight possible. The Space Age began in October of 1957 when the Soviets launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik, into Earth orbit. The Soviet achievement caught America off-guard, and the U.S. rushed to develop its own space program which, after a number of failures, succeeded in launching satellites into orbit. Then, in 1961, the Soviets launched the first man into space. The U.S. followed with its own manned space missions. The United States finally overtook Russia in the space race when an American astronaut, Neil Armstrong, became the first human to set foot on the moon in July of 1969, an event which future historians may view as one of the major turning points in history. Something unexpected happened when humans stepped off the Earth and we got our first good look at our home planet. We had never seen anything like it before. In contrast to the dead moon and other lifeless worlds visible in the heavens, Earth appeared as a lovely blue sphere floating in space with white clouds swirling over pinkish continents. A water-covered world teeming with life appeared so extraordinary against the dark, lonely, vastness of space. We began to understand how unusual and precious our planet is. This new view of Earth may have been the most profound shift in human perspective since the Renaissance, and it came at a time when that beautiful blue sphere was being threatened with nuclear and environmental destruction by one of its own species. collapse of the Soviet Union In 1985, a younger communist leader with new ideas came to power in the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev believed that progress in his huge nation depended on making fundamental changes to the Soviet system. Although communism sounded great in theory, it wasnt working very well in practice because people had little incentive to work hard and improve their products. Gorbachev called for economic reforms that looked a lot like capitalism. Gorbachev also signed agreements with the United States to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, and he surprised the world by giving up Soviet control over the satellite countries of Eastern Europe. In a wave of rebellion, most of the countries of Eastern Europe threw off their communist governments in 1989, and the Berlin Wall was joyously smashed to pieces. Germany was reunified the following year. Back in the Soviet Union, the forces unleashed by Gorbachevs reforms were spinning out of his control; regions of the Soviet Union itself were now breaking away and setting up independent republics. In 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and was replaced by fifteen new nations, the largest of which is Russia. These new countries had little idea how to survive without their old communist economies, and for many people life grew even harder. The collapse of the Soviet Union meant that the Cold War was over, and there was only one remaining superpower, the United States.
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Unit 7 - Current Issues: toward a new world order

MAP IDENTIFICATION: Serbia, Israel, Egypt, Iran, Iraq. the new world order For nearly a half century, the world had been divided into pro-Soviet and pro-American camps. When the Cold War ended, there was no longer a balance of power between the countries of the world; one country was dominant, and the world had to find a new way to organize itself. American President George Bush said there was a new world order. Although the threat of nuclear war between Russia and the U.S. has diminished, the world after the Cold War remains a dangerous place. One of the biggest threats facing the new world order is an ancient one, the hatred of one ethnic group for another often based on religious differences. History shows that difference can be deadly; it led to the Crusades in the Middle Ages and the Religious Wars of the Renaissance. Ethnic hatred triggered World War I and it fueled World War II. Since ethnic violence can have such grave consequences for the people of the world, how should the nations of the world deal with it? In 1999, Serbia was accused of ethnic cleansing in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Reports from Kosovo indicated that Christian Serbs were brutally forcing Muslims out of Serbia, killing many Muslims in the process. The countries of NATO, led by the United States, went to war against Serbia to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Today, soldiers from several nations, including Russia and the U.S., are in Kosovo trying to maintain an uneasy peace between Muslims and Serbs. Was NATO justified in going to war against Serbia? Did NATO have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of Serbia? Does the world have a responsibility to stop atrocities such as ethnic cleansing? Who should enforce international morality? Does the United States, as the worlds strongest nation, have a special responsibility? Is warfare acceptable under any circumstances and, if so, under what circumstances? Will humans ever be able to cure the plague of war as they have cured other deadly afflictions such as the Black Death and polio? These are some of the questions that the nations of the world are struggling to answer as they seek to understand the new world order at the beginning of the 21st century. nuclear threats Although the United States and Russia are no longer bitter enemies, the nuclear threat has not ended. Each country still has thousands of nuclear warheads which, if launched intentionally or by mistake, would likely result in the extinction of most life on Earth. Some observers believe the threat of accidental nuclear war is greater now than during the Cold War because the Russian military is in poor condition, and its nuclear control systems may not be as effective. In addition to the U.S. and Russia, six other nations have officially joined the nuclear club and several more countries are suspected of developing nuclear weapons including North Korea, Libya and Iraq which are non-democratic nations with aggressive leaders. One of the most important issues left over from the Cold War is how to contain the spread of nuclear weapons (called nuclear proliferation). South Asia is a region of special concern. Ethnic violence has flared between Muslims and Hindus since 1947 when Britain gave up control of India and the country was divided into two nations, Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. This long-running ethnic struggle is now centered in the mountainous border region of Kashmir which is claimed by both sides. Although Indian and Pakistani armies have fought several sharp wars in Kashmir over the years, the situation has turned more dangerous since both sides acquired nuclear weapons. A different kind of nuclear threat is posed by the dismantling of nuclear weapons in countries which were part of the Soviet Union. As governments changed hands, controls over bomb-making materials weakened, and some nuclear materials were lost. Police in several countries have seized illegal shipments of nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union. There is concern that bombmaking materials might be acquired by leaders of unstable countries or by international terrorists. terrorism Terrorism is the systematic use of violence to achieve a goal. A terrorist usually does not work for a government, and the violence is often directed against civilians. Modern technology and communications have made it possible for terrorists to strike anywhere in the world including the United States where Islamic terrorists have twice attacked the World Trade Center in New York and where American anti-government terrorists destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City. Thus far, terrorists have not successfully used weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. There is growing concern, however, that terrorists - including religious or political fanatics, organized criminals or narcotics traffickers - might gain access to weapons of mass destruction in the future.
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the Middle East Because the world depends on the Middle East for oil, industrialized nations such as the United States are very concerned about what happens there. The Middle East has been a trouble spot since the end of World War II when the Jewish nation of Israel was established in Palestine, an Arab region at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Neighboring Arab countries did not recognize Israels right to exist, and they tried to destroy the new Jewish state in a series of wars that stretched from the 1940s to the 1970s. Israel managed to win the wars and greatly expanded its territory. Israels relations with its Arab neighbors began to improve in 1979 when Egypt became the first Arab country to recognize Israel and to establish normal diplomatic relations. In return, Israel gave back captured Arab territory. Other Arab countries have since improved their relations with Israel, and Israel has also worked out agreements with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), a group which represents the Palestinian people who were left homeless by the creation of Israel. Implementing the agreements between Israel and the PLO has proved difficult, however, and the peace process has broken down. Terrible violence between Israelis and Palestinians continues. Meanwhile, trouble broke out in other areas of the Middle East. In 1979, a new Islamic government in Iran held a number of American citizens hostage for over a year. Iran then fought an eight-year war with the neighboring country of Iraq. Shortly after the Iran-Iraq war ended, Iraqs leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered an invasion of its small neighbor, the oil-rich kingdom of Kuwait. In 1991, the U.S. led a United Nations military force that expelled Hussein from Kuwait during the Gulf War . Hussein remains in power in Iraq, and he is suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction. For this reason, an international embargo remains in effect which has created hardship for the civilian population of Iraq. U.S. warplanes continue to fly patrols over Iraqi territory. Governments in the Middle East tend to be authoritarian, limiting the freedoms of their people. Poverty and dispair have fueled resentment against rich Western nations. Young men with little hope for the future have been willing to die in terrorist attacks against Israel and the U.S. Africa In the 20th century, the arts of sub-Saharan Africa strongly influenced Western culture. African religious art inspired Modern Art, and African music formed the roots of the blues, jazz, and rock-and-roll. Although Africa has greatly enriched the West culturally, Africa is the poorest and most troubled region of the world. During the Scramble for Africa of the late 1800s, the imperialist powers of Europe destroyed Africas native governments. The Great Powers created artificial new countries which included people of various ethnic groups, customs and languages. When African countries gained their independence from colonial rule in the mid-1900s, they had little experience in self-government, but they had to deal with the difficult problem of ethnic divisions within their countries and between neighboring countries. Recurring violence and warfare between ethnic groups remains one of the biggest problems facing Africa today. Many countries in Africa lack adequate farmland and natural resources, making them among the worlds poorest countries. During times of drought or violence, farming and food distribution are disrupted which can lead to famine. International relief agencies try to help by bringing in emergency food supplies, but warfare can make it impossible to get food to the people who are starving. If these problems werent enough, Africa has the worlds most severe epidemic of AIDS. Faced with adverse circumstances such as these, many African nations have found it difficult to establish stable governments since gaining their independence. China Will the 21st century be Chinas century? China has the worlds largest population and some observers believe that Chinas huge labor force and consumer markets could make China the next great superpower. But first, China will have to address some difficult political issues. As with the Soviet Union, China under communism had a weak economy. After the death of Mao Zedong, Chinese leaders encouraged their people to start businesses and make money. China now has a mixed communist and free market economy that is growing stronger. When the Chinese economy started to open up, many people in China hoped for greater political freedoms as well. In 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, thousands of students and workers gathered peacefully at Tienanmen Square in Beijing to call for democratic reforms. The Chinese government responded by sending in troops and tanks. The world was shocked as the army killed hundreds of demonstrators, and student leaders were arrested and executed. Chinese officials said they had to crack down so China would not fall apart like the Soviet Union. China and the United States have a tense relationship due in part to their differing political systems, friction over Taiwan and perhaps because China still resents being treated badly by Western powers during the age of imperialism. The U.S. is urging China to extend greater human rights to its citizens which is another source of tension between the two countries.
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globalism International trade, communications and mass media (radio, TV, movies, the Internet) are drawing the world together in ways that we dont fully understand yet, a phenomenon called globalism. We can sit down at our computers and easily contact people anywhere around the globe. Is the so-called Global Village changing the way the world works? Surely it must be Some people think globalism is good. The more we trade and communicate with one another around the world, the less likely we are to distrust people of different nations and ethnic groups and want to go to war with them. In Europe, countries that were enemies during World War II have joined together in an economic union that has adopted a common currency called the euro. Other people have concerns about globalism. One concern is that countries will lose their distinct identities in a world dominated by Americanized Western culture. Will Paris and Tokyo come to resemble American cities complete with Wal-Marts and McDonalds? Another concern is that the rich industrialized nations of the world are controlling the global economy, consuming the worlds resources, polluting the Earth and leaving little behind for the poorer Third World countries. It is another case of the haves versus the have-nots. One of the challenges of the 21st Century will be to achieve economic justice among the peoples of the world. James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank has said, There isnt a wall around the United States or any of the developed countries...If you have inequity on a global scale, if you have people who are dissatisfied and unhappy, these are the breeding grounds of discontent. Wolfensohn says reducing poverty is the best way to bring peace to the world. the environment Clearly the environment (our surroundings on Earth) is global; power plants in England cause acid rain that can kill fish in Norway and trees in Germany. The destruction of rain forests in Brazil affects the entire planets supply of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Life on Earth is made possible by a complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, weather, temperature and chemical compounds. Concern is growing that humans are interfering with this worldwide balance, over-populating the Earth, polluting air and water and reducing the number of living species. It has been suggested that Earth may be facing a great extinction, and even human life may be threatened. One of todays greatest environmental concerns is global warming. The surface of the Earth is maintained at an average 59 degree temperature by gases in the atmosphere which trap the suns heat much as the glass of a greenhouse holds in heat allowing plants to grow. Without this greenhouse effect, the average surface temperature of the Earth would be below freezing. When we burn gasoline in our cars and coal in our power plants, carbon monoxide and other pollutants are released into the atmosphere. It is feared the increase in greenhouse gasses is trapping too much heat causing the Earth to become warmer, melting polar ice caps, raising sea levels, disrupting agriculture and upsetting the environmental balance of the planet. Scientists agree that the Earths average temperature is rising, but it has not been proven that this rise is caused by burning fossil fuels (fuels formed in the Earth from plant or animal remains) such as gasoline and coal. Nonetheless, most of the major Western industrial nations but not the United States have signed an agreement to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gasses. biotechnology Biotechnology is a term for technologies that can change how plant or animal life functions. We are familiar with biotechnologies that modify crops or cure diseases. Recent advancements in science are taking biotechnology into new and unfamiliar territory, which holds great promise for improving human life but also poses difficult questions about the future of human life. Genetic engineering is the field of biotechnology that deals with genes, which are building blocks in the cells that determine what we are - for example, whether we are tall or short, have brown eyes or blue and whether we are likely to contract diseases such as Alzheimers. Doctors have already begun to treat disease by using drugs to modify or repair human genes, and soon it may be possible to develop gene-based treatments for nearly every disease allowing people to live longer and healthier lives. But, the same technology will make it possible to modify genes such as those for skin color, muscle mass and intelligence. Will people be tempted to alter themselves or their children to make them more attractive and smarter? Might future humans choose to genetically alter themselves to the point where they are no longer human beings? -----------------Since the Stone Age, technology has changed daily life more than any other factor. How will technology affect life during the twenty-first century? When your grandchildren are in history class, will they think kindly of power plants and genetic engineering as we think kindly of steam engines and the automobile? Or, will new technologies become menaces like machine guns and hydrogen bombs? As a citizen in a democracy, it will be your job to help make the right decisions about the uses of technology and other important issues that will affect the future of life on planet Earth.
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