20th Century World History

The turbulent world of the 20th century contained historical experiences for most of humanity that stretched from incredible future potential realized to the worst humanity has to offer. The planet grew to nearly eight billion people by the 2000s despite the tragic propensity for humans to kill each other off or be killed off by diseases, malnutrition, genocides, natural resource access issues, and more at the greatest rate ever in world history. The human symbiotic relationship with our planet has gone from one of stewardship, to exploitation to dangerous imbalance. As you explore this work, feel free to make suggestions for resources and changes. It is after all, that ability to adapt that so characterizes humanity and its history on this planet. We can learn from the past to make more informed decisions in the present, toward a better future for ourselves and our planet. However, exactly what the past lessons are from the 20th century and the lasting legacy of that roughly one hundred solar years, is still playing out. So it is an uncertain future we face. One thing is certain: the rate of change is increasing rapidly as we engage in the great urban experiment with over half our population living in cities for the first time ever in world history. Imperialism and colonialism both between civilizations and within civilizations is a common theme or motor of change. Will the future hold more of the same or will rising populations, environmental changes, etc. encourage more cooperation than competition?

Are the oceans the next place humans will turn their attention to or will it be space? Or we will just turn on each other as seems to be our record in the past century? Explore the text and you decide! It is our future, and our past. Below is one of many “history of the world” dynamic maps tracing changes in human history (especially borders and regions) through time. Note how the 20th century is but a sliver of time at the end of the video map. There are many ways to view the history compiled by historians and researchers in the work that follows. Will you take the short view of history or the long view? Perhaps something in the middle or something entirely different?

Attributions and Licenses

This work is an adaptation from the work of Mahalia Méhu as licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, which is an adaptation from Modern World History (on Minnesota Libraries Publishing Project) by Dan Allosso and Tom Williford, and is used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license. The final product is the result of collaboration between Dr. Christopher Howell and students in contemporary world history classes at multiple institutions in the United States and India. Many thanks go to all of the past and future students who help to build and review this ever-changing draft of modern world history!