Some significant historical events in the past 100 years:
1914-18 First World War
1917 Bolshevik Revolution and start of the Communist regime in Russia, leading to formation of the Soviet Union in 1922
1920s-1930s Rise of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany
1929-1930s Great Crash and Great Depression in world economy
1939-1945 Second World War, including genocide of the Jews
1945 The USA uses the atomic bomb against Japan
1945 Foundation of the United Nations
1945-1949 Establishment of Communist governments in many eastern European countries, most controlled by the Soviet Union
1949 Establishment of Communist regime in China
1945-1960s Establishment of ‘the welfare state’ in many European and some other countries
1945-1989 ‘Cold War’ between Western powers and Soviet Union
1950s-1960s End of European imperial control of most of Africa and South Asia
1960s Second Vatican Council
1960s-1970s In many Western countries, the ‘sexual revolution’ makes sexual relationships outside marriage widely acceptable; abortion is legalized in some countries
1960s-1980s Rise of feminism, seeking equality for women (this is now known as feminism’s ‘second phase’; the first was the movement for women to have the vote in the decades around 1900)
From mid-1970s In US and UK, rise of the New Right: a revival of ‘economic liberalism’, now called ‘neo-liberalism’, and critique of welfare state
1980s Emergence of widespread concern about ecological destruction
1989-91 Revolutions in central/eastern Europe bring an end to Communist rule, and to the Cold War
2001 Islamist extremists succeed in the largest ‘peace time’ terrorist attack in history, on the World Trade Centre on New York and Pentagon in Washington DC.
2007-2013 Financial and economic crises mainly affecting Western countries
This is of course a very selective list and you may well have thought of other things that may reasonably be judged to be as significant as the above. Of course, this depends on what counts as historically ‘significant’ – we shall look at this question in Unit 8.
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