Chapter 2: Shaping the Modern World PDF

Chapter 2. ◦ The ‘modern’ world was shaped by a series of developments. ◦ These include the final collapse of ancient civilisations and the advent of the ‘Dark Ages’; the growing dominance of Europe through the ‘age of discovery’ and, eventually, industrialization; and the growth of European imp...

Chapter 2. ◦ The ‘modern’ world was shaped by a series of developments. ◦ These include the final collapse of ancient civilisations and the advent of the ‘Dark Ages’; the growing dominance of Europe through the ‘age of discovery’ and, eventually, industrialization; and the growth of European imperialism. ◦ WWI was meant to be the ‘war to end all wars’ but, within a generation, WWII had broken out. ◦ The key factors that led to WWII include the WWI peace settlements, the global economic crisis of the 1930s, the programme of Nazi expansion, sometimes linked to the personal influence of Hitler, and the growth of Japanese expansionism in Asia. ◦ 1945 is commonly seen as a watershed in world history. ◦ It initiated two crucial processes. ◦ The first was the process of decolonization and the collapse of European empires. ◦ The second was the advent of the Cold War, giving rise to bipolar tensions between an increasingly US-dominated West and Soviet-dominated East. ◦ Cold War bipolarity came to an end through the Eastern European revolutions of 1989–91, which witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union. ◦ This was a result of factors including the structural weakness of Soviet-style communism, the impact of Gorbachev’s reform process, the advent of the ‘Second Cold War’ and the wider implications of economic and cultural globalization. ◦ ‘Liberal’ expectations about the post-Cold War period flourished briefly before being confounded by the rise of forms of ethnic nationalism and the growth of religious militancy. ◦ This especially applied in the form of 9/11 and the advent of the ‘war on terror’, which has sometimes been seen as a civilizational struggle between Islam and the West. ◦ Power balances within the global economy have shifted in important ways. ◦ While some have linked globalization to the growing economic dominance of the USA, others have argued that the global economy is increasingly multipolar, especially due to the rise of emerging economies.