What’s the Significance?
Big Picture Questions
In what ways did the Global North/South divide find expression in the past century?
What have been the benefits and drawbacks of globalization since 1945?
Do the years since 1914 confirm or undermine Enlightenment predictions about the future of humankind?
“The most recent century marks the end of the era of Western dominance in world history.” What evidence might support this statement? What evidence might contradict it?
To what extent did the various liberation movements of the past century—communism, nationalism, democracy, feminism, internationalism—achieve their goals?
Looking Back: To what extent did the processes discussed in this chapter (globalization, feminism, fundamentalism, environmentalism) have roots in the more distant past? In what respects did they represent something new in the past century?
Next Steps: For Further Study
Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God (2000). A comparison of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic fundamentalism in historical perspective.
Nayan Chanda, Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization (2007). An engaging, sometimes humorous, long-term view of the globalization process.
Jeffrey Frieden, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century (2006). A thorough, thoughtful, and balanced history of economic globalization.
Michael Hunt, The World Transformed (2004). A thoughtful global history of the second half of the twentieth century.
J. R. McNeill, Something New under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World (2001). A much-acclaimed global account of the rapidly mounting human impact on the environment during the most recent century.
Bonnie Smith, ed., Global Feminisms since 1945 (2000). A series of essays about feminist movements around the world.
“No Job for a Woman,” http://www.iwm.org.uk/upload/package/30/women/index.htm. A Web site illustrating the impact of war on the lives of women in the twentieth century.