Chapter 22

The berlin wall was built in 1961 to separate East Berlin and West Berlin. During the time, Communism was a promise of liberation. Communist regimes had transformed their societies

The communism period provided a major political/ideological threat to the Western world like the cold war, scrambling for influence in the third world between the United States and the USSR then it collapsed. Communism was inspired by Karl Marx, who believed Communism was the final stage of historical development, with full development of social equality and collective living. The peak of the communism era was in the 1970's with 1/3 of the world's population governed by it. Communist revolutions drew on the mystique of the French Revolution by getting rid of landed aristocracies and the old ruling classes,  involving peasant upheavals in the countryside; educated leadership in the cities. The French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions all looked to a modernizing future. Communist revolutions were made by highly organized parties guided by a Marxist ideology and the middle classes were among the victims of communist upheavals, where the middle classes were chief beneficiaries of French Revolution. The revolution of Russia occurred in 1917. In October of 1917, Bolsheviks seized power and began a three year civil war. During the war, the Bolsheviks strengthened their tendency toward authoritarianism and regulated the economy. In 1921, the Chinese Communist Party was founded and grew immensely and transformed its strategy under Mao Zedong. The Chinese Communist Party's People’s Liberation Army waged vigorous war against Japanese invaders using guerrilla warfare tactics. Joseph Stalin built a socialist society in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. Mao Zedong did the same in China in the 1950s and 1960s by using modernization and industrialization and attacked gender and social inequalities. The USSR declared full legal and political equality for women where divorce, abortion, pregnancy leave, women’s work were all enabled or encouraged. In 1919, the USSR’s Communist Party set up Zhenotdel which pushed a feminist agenda, which of course male communist officials and ordinary people often opposed it and Stalin abolished it in 1930. In China, the Marriage Law of 1950 ordered free choice in marriage, easier divorce, the end of concubinage and child marriage, and equal property rights for women. The Great Purges in the USSR resulted in a million people were executed between 1936 and 1941. The Cultural Revolution occurred from 1966–1969 and escaped control of communist leadership. Western Europe was  considered the american sphere was voluntary and the Eastern Europe was imposed to the creation of rival military alliances of the NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The spread of communism in China caused North Korea to invade South Korea in 1950. The communist era ended rapidly and peacefully between the late 1970s and 1991, In China when Mao died in 1979, in Europe when movements overthrew it in 1989. Both showed the economic and moral failure of communism. China grew into a “strange and troubled hybrid” that combines nationalism, consumerism, and new respect for ancient traditions while the Soviet Union broke up. 

Chapter 21

With Europeans in control of most parts of the world, the balance of power in Europe was split between two rival alliances: Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria, Italy) and Triple Entente (Russia, France, Britain) when a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a heir to the Austrian throne. Austria was determined to destroy the nationalism movement and Serbia had Russia along with Russia’s allies behind it. A war broke out by August of 1914. Causes of the war were industrialized militarism, Europe’s colonial empires, popular nationalism which resulted in over ten million deaths and twenty million people wounded. Germany was defeated in 1918. The women began working in factories to replace the men, labor unions were sacrificed, questioning of Enlightenment values and the superiority of the West and its science. The Treaty of Versailles of 1919 resulted in Germany losing its colonial empire and 15 percent of its European territory, required to pay heavy reparations, suffered restriction of its military forces, accept sole responsibility for the outbreak of the war and resented the treaty immensely. During this time, Woodrow Wilson’s ideas Fourteen Points and League of Nations became popular by the Europeans. Wilson's vision largely failed, and the U.S. Senate refused to join the league. In 1929, the great depression happened. The great depression when contracting stock prices wiped out paper fortunes, and many lost their life’s savings. The world trade dropped 62 percent within a few years businesses contracted and unemployment soared; reached 30 percent in Germany and the United States in 1932. The causes of the the great depression were factories and farms produced more goods than could be sold, Europe was impoverished by WWI and didn’t purchase many American products and started producing more of its own goods. Capitalist governments had thought that the economy would regulate itself, some states turned to “democratic socialism,” with greater regulation of the economy and more equal distribution of wealth. President Franklin Roosevelt came up with the New Deal. The New Deal idea of public spending programs permanently changed the relationship between government, the private economy, and individual citizens which efforts to “prime the pump” of the economy, Social Security, minimum wage, and welfare as an economic safety net for the poor, creation of permanent agribusiness through farm subsidies and a vast array of new government agencies to supervise the economy. As far as democracy goes, fascism was big in Europe, the Nazi power ruled Germany and Authoritarianism was important in Japan. In 1931, Japanese military units seized control of Manchuria. In 1937, an attack started WWII and the Japanese felt threated. The United States imposed an oil embargo on Japan and the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred in December 1941. The results of WWII were 60 million people died in WWII, 40% of those deaths were from the USSR, the holocaust where Nazi's killed millions and left the United States the only country not impacted by WWII. 

Chapter 20

The period 1750–1900 was a second phase of European colonial conquest which focused on Asia and Africa. Germany, Italy, Belgium, U.S., Japan were also in apart of this.

The second wave was not demographically catastrophic like the first wave, it was affected by the Industrial Revolution. Europeans preferred informal control. The original European military advantage lay in organization, drill, and command structure. There were numerous wars and the westerns always won them. The Europeans developed an enormous firepower advantage with repeating rifles and machine gun. India and Indonesia grew from interaction with European trading firms by assisted by existence of many small and rival states. In most of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific islands deliberate conquest. “The scramble for Africa” was based on inter-European rivalry over only about 25 years (1875–1900) In Australia and New Zealand were more like the colonization of North America with massive European settlement and diseases killing off most of the native population. In Taiwan and Korea, the Japanese takeover was done European-style while United States and Russia continued to expand and Liberia was settled by freed U.S. slaves. Colonial rule had a deep impact on people’s ways of working.

The world economy increasingly demanded Asian and African raw materials; subsistence farming diminished the need to sell goods for money to pay taxes and desire to buy new products. Asian and African merchants were squeezed out by Europeans. Many colonial states demanded unpaid labor on public projects. The worst abuses were in the Congo Free State

personally governed by Leopold II of Belgium. The reign of terror killed millions with labor demands and forced labor caused widespread starvation, as people couldn’t grow their own crops. Belgium finally stepped in and took control of the Congo to stop abuses. In precolonial Africa, women were usually active farmers and had some economic autonomy. Women and mens roles were different: men tended to dominate the lucrative export crops, while women were left with almost all of the subsistence work and a large numbers of men migrated to work elsewhere while women were left home to cope, including supplying food to men in the cities. The colonial economy also provided some opportunities to women especially small trade and marketing, sometimes women’s crops came to have greater cash value, some women escaped the patriarchy of husbands or fathers which led to greater fear of witchcraft and efforts to restrict female travel and sexuality. By getting a Western education created a new identity for many people, the almost magical power of literacy, escape from obligations like forced labor, gave access to better jobs and social mobility and elite status. The widespread conversion to Christianity in New Zealand, the Pacific islands, and non-Muslim Africa. Around 10,000 missionaries had gone to Africa by 1910 and by the 1960s, some 50 million Africans were Christian. Christianity was associated with modern education, spread through native africans and gave opportunities to the young, the poor, and many women.

Chapter 18

Chapter 18 starts out talking about Mahatma Gandhi and how he criticized industrialization as economic exploitation. The Industrial Revolution was one of the most significant elements of Europe’s modern transformation that happened from 1750–1900. The industrial revolution was similar to the Scientific Revolution and transformed European society. The industrial revolution was the most fundamental revolution since the Agricultural. The Revolution pushed Europe into a position of global dominance. At the heart of the Industrial Revolution lay a great acceleration in the rate of technological innovation, leading to enormous increases in the output of goods and services. use of new energy sources like steam engines in Britain, output increased some fifty fold in the period 1750–1900 based on a “culture of innovation”. Prior to 1800, the major Eurasian civilizations were about equal technologically. The revolution's greatest breakthrough was the steam engine which soon spread from the textile industry to many other types of production and agriculture was transformed. The revolution spread from Britain to Western Europe, then to the United States, Russia, and Japan and became global in the twentieth century.  The middle classes had the most obvious gains from industrialization. The upper middle class became extremely wealthy, and middle class women were mothers, homemakers and wives. I felt like they could have done more than just be wives, mothers and homemakers but clearly the woman's evolution did not start at this time. The lower middle class was 20% of Britain's population and they were clerks, secretaries and other occupations. 70% of Britain's population were working class citizens who benefited least from industrialization. industrial factories offered a very different work environment which included long hours, low wages, and child labor were typical for the poor workers. Trade unions were legalized in 1824

and saw a growing numbers of factory workers joined them. The unions fought for better wages and working conditions and the upper class people were terrified of them. During this time, a great Philosopher and socialist by the name of Karl Marx, spoke about argued that capitalism can never end poverty