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 lie today. In your opinion, which period or event in
history is most valuable to learn? Why?
☆Hints for Points All excerpts are 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.
Here’s a look at six of the earliest civilizations—and the legacies
they left to the world.
☆Presentation
Make
a presentation on the historic period of your choice, answering the following
questions.
1)
What
impact did the period or event have on society?
2)
How
beneficial is it to learn it?
☆Sample Answer
To lean the very recent history, the period of the early 21st
century, gives us the perspective of the world since the Industrial Revolution
and the insight about the nature of human society, both of which gives us a
guiding principle for the future. 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 have gained power and allied in
groups like BRICS. These countries have abundant resources while their former
colonizers do not have as much. While the United States still dominate the
world with is military forces larger than all the militaries on earth combined,
its actual dominance is in eclipse. With this shift, world could have less
armed conflicts in the long run because, although BRICS countries may have
human right issues domestically, they are less likely to solve diplomatic
issues by force. Meanwhile, gender gap and patriarchy are diminishing. Female
leaders in business and politics have increased around the world. Some
countries have more women than men in their congress or parliament. Even in
Tokyo, Japan, which ranks the lowest in gender-equality, a ward half of which
representatives are females was born. These entities benefit their members more
than those with traditionally male-dominated administrations.
(222 words)
