The study of history provides us with
valuable lessons and perspectives. Throughout time, various periods and events
have had profound impacts on societies, shaping the world we live today. In
your opinion, which period or event in history is most valuable to learn? Why?
☆Let’s
Think
Make a presentation on the historic period
of your choice, answering the following questions.
1) What
impact did the period or event have on today’s society?
2) How
beneficial is it to learn it?
☆Hints for
Points Here are some excerpts from
History.com.
The Internet (World Wide Web):
On April 30, 1993, four years after publishing a proposal for “an idea of
linked information systems,” computer scientist Tim
Berners-Lee releases the source code for the world’s first web browser and
editor. Originally called Mesh, the browser that he
dubbed WorldWideWeb becomes the first royalty-free, easy-to-use means
of browsing the emerging information network that developed into the internet
as we know it today.
Berners-Lee was a fellow at CERN, the
research organization headquartered in Switzerland. Other research institutions
like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University had
developed complex systems for internally sharing information, and Berners-Lee
sought a means of connecting CERN’s system to others. He outlined a plan for
such a network in 1989 and developed it over the following years. The computer
he used, a NeXT desktop, became the world’s first internet server. Berners-Lee
wrote and published the first web page, a simplistic outline of the
WorldWideWeb project, in 1991.
Climate Change:
Climate change is the long-term alteration in Earth’s climate and weather
patterns. It took nearly a century of research and data to convince the vast
majority of the scientific community that human activity could alter the
climate of our entire planet. In the 1800s, experiments suggesting that
human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases could collect in the
atmosphere and insulate Earth were met with more curiosity than concern. By the
late 1950s, CO2 readings would offer some of the first data to corroborate the
global warming theory. Eventually an abundance of data, along with climate
modeling and real-world weather events would show not only that global warming
was real, but that it also presented a host of catastrophic consequences.
NATO and Cold War
In 1949, the prospect of further Communist
expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Soviet Union and its affiliated
Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact,
in 1955. The alignment of nearly every European nation into one of the two
opposing camps formalized the political division of the European continent that
had taken place since World War II (1939-45). This alignment provided
the framework for the military standoff that continued throughout the Cold
War (1945-91).
Nuclear Weapon (Atomic Bomb):
On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber
dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of
Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of
thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a
second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000
people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional
surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the
devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.”
WWII: World
War II, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history, involved more than
50 nations and was fought on land, sea and air in nearly every part of the
world. Also known as the Second World War, it was caused in part by the
economic crisis of the Great Depression and by political tensions left
unresolved following the end of World War I.
The war began when Nazi Germany invaded
Poland in 1939 and raged across the globe until 1945, when Japan surrendered to
the United States after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By
the end of World War II, an estimated 60 to 80 million people had died,
including up to 55 million civilians, and numerous cities in Europe and Asia
were reduced to rubble.
Among the people killed were 6 million Jews
murdered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler’s diabolical “Final
Solution,” now known as the Holocaust. The legacy of the war included the
creation of the United Nations as a peacekeeping force and geopolitical
rivalries that resulted in the Cold War.
The Great Depression: The
Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in modern history, lasting from
1929 until the beginning of World War II in 1939. The causes of the
Great Depression included slowing consumer demand, mounting consumer debt,
decreased industrial production and the rapid and reckless expansion of the
U.S. stock market. When the stock market crashed in October 1929, it
triggered a crisis in the international economy, which was linked via the gold
standard. A rash of bank failures followed in 1930, and as the Dust
Bowl increased the number of farm foreclosures, unemployment topped 20
percent by 1933. Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D.
Roosevelt tried to stimulate the economy with a range of incentives
including Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, but ultimately it took the
manufacturing production increases of World War II to end the Great Depression.
WWI: World
War I, which lasted from 1914 until 1918, introduced the world to the horrors
of trench warfare and lethal new technologies such as poison gas and tanks.
The result was some of the most horrific carnage the world had ever seen, with
more than 16 million military personnel and civilians losing their
lives.
It also radically altered the map, leading
to the collapse of the sprawling Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires
that had existed for centuries, and the formation of new nations to take their
place. Long after the last shot had been fired, the political turmoil and
social upheaval continued, and ultimately led to another, even bigger and
bloodier global conflict two decades later.
The event that sparked the conflagration
was the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in 1914. But historians say that World War I actually
was the culmination of a long series of events, stretching back to the late
1800s. The path to war included plenty of miscalculations and actions that
turned out to have unforeseen consequences.
Imperialism and WWI:
World War I wasn’t just a conflict between nations—it was a war between
empires. Western European empires like Great Britain and France had overseas
colonies around the world, while eastern empires like Austria-Hungary and
Russia ruled European and North Asian territories connected by land.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on July 28, 1914,
was itself an anti-imperialist murder, planned by members of Young Bosnia angry
over Austria-Hungary’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
European competition for imperial
territories helped set the stage for the rivalries that played out
during the First World War, and the war in turn had a major effect on the
balance of imperial power. The Russian, German, Austria-Hungarian and Ottoman
empires all collapsed during or shortly after the war, which ended with a
treaty that ceded Germany’s overseas colonies to the victors.
Slavery in the United States:
Millions of enslaved Africans contributed to the establishment of colonies in
the Americas and continued laboring in various regions of the Americas after
their independence, including the United States. Many consider a significant
starting point to slavery in America to be 1619, when the privateer The
White Lion brought 20 enslaved Africans ashore in the British colony
of Jamestown, Virginia. The crew had seized the Africans from the
Portuguese slave ship São João Bautista. Yet, enslaved Africans had been
present in regions such as Florida, that are part of present-day United States
nearly one century before.
Throughout the 17th century, European
settlers in North America turned to enslaved Africans as a cheaper, more
plentiful labor source than Indigenous populations and indentured servants, who
were mostly poor Europeans.
Existing estimates establish that Europeans
and American slave traders transported nearly 12.5 million enslaved
Africans to the Americas. Of this number approximately 10.7 million
disembarked alive in the Americas. During the 18th century alone, approximately
6.5 million enslaved persons were transported to the Americas. This forced
migration deprived the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest
men and women.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved
Africans worked mainly on the tobacco, rice and indigo plantations of the
southern Atlantic coast, from the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Maryland and
Virginia south to Georgia.
French Revolution:
The French Revolution was a watershed event in world history that began in 1789
and ended in the late 1790s with the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte. During this
period, French citizens radically altered their political landscape, uprooting
centuries-old institutions such as the monarchy and the feudal system. The
upheaval was caused by disgust with the French aristocracy and the economic
policies of King Louis XVI, who met his death by guillotine, as did his wife
Marie Antoinette. Though it degenerated into a bloodbath during the Reign of
Terror, the French Revolution helped to shape modern democracies by showing the
power inherent in the will of the people.
Industrial Revolution:
The Industrial Revolution was a period of scientific and technological
development in the 18th century that transformed largely rural, agrarian
societies—especially in Europe and North America—into industrialized, urban
ones. Goods that had once been painstakingly crafted by hand started to be
produced in mass quantities by machines in factories, thanks to the
introduction of new machines and techniques in textiles, iron making and other
industries.
Enlightenment Period
European politics, philosophy, science and
communications were radically reoriented during the course of the “long 18th
century” (1685-1815) as part of a movement referred to by its participants as
the Age of Reason, or simply the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers in
Britain, in France and throughout Europe questioned traditional authority and
embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational
change.
The Enlightenment produced numerous books,
essays, inventions, scientific discoveries, laws, wars and revolutions. The
American and French Revolutions were directly inspired by Enlightenment ideals
and respectively marked the peak of its influence and the beginning of its
decline. The Enlightenment ultimately gave way to 19th-century Romanticism.
Renaissance:
The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political
and economic “rebirth” following the Middle Ages. Generally described as taking
place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the
rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art. Some of the greatest
thinkers, authors, statesmen, scientists and artists in human history thrived
during this era, while global exploration opened up new lands and cultures to
European commerce. The Renaissance is credited with bridging the gap between the
Middle Ages and modern-day civilization.
Early Human Civilizations:
While modern civilizations extend to every continent except Antarctica, most
scholars place the earliest cradles of civilizations—in other words, where
civilizations first emerged—in modern-day Iraq, Egypt, India, China, Peru and
Mexico, beginning between approximately 4000 and 3000 B.C.
These ancient complex societies, starting
with Mesopotamia, formed cultural and technological advances, several of which
are still present today. “A great many of the details of modern life, not just
in the Middle East and the West, but across the world, have origins that go
back for thousands of years to the ancient cultures in their respective
regions,” says Amanda Podany, author and professor emeritus of history at
California State Polytechnic University.
☆Sample
Response
【Thesis】To lean the very recent history, the period
of the early 21st century, shows us the structural change of the world
since the Industrial Revolution as well as the insight of the humanity, both of
which give us a guiding principle for the future.
【Supporting
Details】There are
two main structural transitions. One is a shift of hegemony. 500 years of rein
of Global North over Global South has started to collapse as their former
colonies gained power and allied in groups such as BRICS. Although the United
States still dominates the world with its military forces larger than all the
militaries on earth combined, its actual dominance is in eclipse, which
advances every time it unjustifiably attacks other countries, capped by the moral
and geopolitical failure of its attack on Iran in 2026. With this shift, world may
have less armed conflicts in the future because, although BRICS countries may
have human right issues domestically, they are less likely to solve diplomatic
issues by force. Another significant shift in this century is growing awareness
of gender and patriarchy. As a result of this change, female leaders in
business and politics have increased around the world. Some countries have more
women than men in their legislature. Even Japan, which ranks the lowest in
gender-equality, has got a ward council in its capitol Tokyo headed by a progressive
female with female council members accounting for half of the seats. These
entities benefit their members more than those with traditionally
male-dominated administrations. (242 words)
