Problems of the Modern World

Famine in Africa

Political Instability

Poverty

Unsustainable National Debt

War

Terrorism

Global Consequences of the Destruction of Natural Resources

Economic and cultural dislocations caused by technological change

The proliferation of nuclear weapons

The struggle to defend human rights and democratic freedoms against governments that respect neither

 

Connecting with Past Learning: The Rise of Democratic Ideas

The moral and ethical principles of Judaism and Christianity

Influence on Western democratic thought

Belief in dignity and equality of all

The search for social systems that ensure the freedom to make individual moral choice

The duty of each to work for morally just communities

The significance of the Greek philosophers’ belief in reason and natural law in relation to democratic ideas

Plato’s Republic

Aristotle’s Politics

Political life in the city-state of Athens

Significant democratic developments in England

Magna Carta

Common law

Parliament

English Bill of Rights of 1689

Significant ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers

Locke

Rousseau

Effect that Enlightened Ideals had on Democratic Revolutions

England

United States

France

Latin America

The Philosophy on Which the Democratic Revolutions Were Based

Natural Rights

Natural Law

Language of the American Declaration of Independence

United States Constitution

Equality

Justice under the Law

Freedom

Industrial Revolution

Beginnings in eighteenth-century England

The major changes that the mechanization of production wrought in England

Economy

Politics

Society

Culture

Physical environment

Responses to the Industrial Revolution

Development of labor unions

Emergence of socialist thought

The Romantic impulse in art and literature

William Blake

William Wordsworth

John Ruskin

William Morris

Charles Dickens

Hard Times

Social reforms of the era

Abolition of slavery

Reform of the “poor laws.”

The Industrial Revolution in other countries

France

Germany

Japan

Russia

 

Worldwide imperial expansion

Industrial nations’ demand for natural resources and markets

Nationalist aspirations of Industrial Nations

Colonial possessions

France

Germany

Italy

Japan

Netherlands

United States

 

Case Study of Colonialism in India

Review of Indian history preceding British rule

Factors that opened India to colonial domination

The principal beliefs of Hinduism

            The caste system

Imagery of the Ramayana

Differing beliefs and values of Hindu and Muslim cultures in India

Historical aftermath of colonialism in India

The national movement

Religious divisions

Mohandas K. Gandhi

Jawaharlal Nehru

Louis Mountbatten

Creation of the two states of Pakistan and India

 

World War I

Backdrop for World War I

Growth of nationalism

Growth of imperialism

Growth of militarism

Political conditions that led to the outbreak of the war in Europe

Dissolving old empires

Irredentist movements

Spirit of self-determination

The meaning of total war

Targeting civilian populations

Wartime propaganda

False reports of German atrocities

Opposition to the war in the United States

Disillusion that followed the war

 Sense of a world lost

Despair over the destruction of a generation of young men

Loss of idealism when the world turned out not to be “safe for democracy” after all

Case Study: Ottoman Empire

Planned mass deportation and systematic annihilation of the Armenian population in 1915

Reactions of other governments

The United States

World opinion

Effects of the genocide on the remaining Armenian people

Ways in which it became a prototype of subsequent genocides

 

Significant Consequences of the First World War

Importance of Woodrow Wilson’s abortive campaign for the League of Nations

The rise of isolationism in the United States

The punitive terms of the peace imposed on Germany

The Russian Revolution

National revolutions that resulted in the establishment of independent democratic republics

Estonia

Latvia

Lithuania

Poland

Ukraine

The Balfour Declaration

The role of women in the war efforts

The effect women’s involvement had on social attitudes

The cultural changes after the war

Ernest Hemingway

Gertrude Stein

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The impact of Freudian psychology

Changes wrought by new technology

Automobile

Radio

Telephone

 

Totalitarianism in the Modern World

Nazi Germany

Rise of Hitler

Germany’s postwar economic crisis

Collapse of the Weimar Republic

Hitler’s successful appeal to racism and what the historian Fritz Stern called “the politics of cultural despair.”

Jewish culture of central Europe

Artists: Marc Chagall, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, and Franz Kafka

Scientists such as Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud

Scholars such as Edmund Husserl and Rudolph Lipschitz.

Study of the Holocaust

The Nazi party’s racist ideology

The suppression of rights and freedoms

Krystallnacht

Nazi persecution of Gypsies, homosexuals, and others who failed to meet the Aryan ideal

The Final Solution

Death camps

The Nazis’ utilization of bureaucratic social organization and modern technology to gather, classify, and eradicate their victims

Failure of Western governments to offer refuge to those fleeing Nazism.

Revolts and moral courage

Warsaw Ghetto

Oscar Schindler

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Raoul Wallenberg

Stalinist Russia

Historical context of the czarist regimes

Secret police

Censorship

Imprisonment of dissidents

Abortive efforts at reform and revolution

Massive underdevelopment of the nation

The Russian Revolution

The Bolshevik overthrow of the Kerensky government

Difference between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks

Roles of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin in the Revolution

Communist ideology.

The forced collectivization of agriculture

The murder of millions of kulaks

The government-created famine in Ukraine

Starvation of millions of people

Political purges of party leaders, artists, engineers, and intellectuals

Show trials of the 1930s.

Socialist realist art and reading

Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We - the first antiutopian novel

Arthur Koestler’s classic Darkness at Noon

The nature of totalitarian rule

Importance of Liberties and Rights

Free press

Right to criticize the government without fear of reprisal

An independent judiciary

Opposition political parties

Free trade unions

 

World War II: Its Causes and Consequences

Major Nations of the Allied and the Axis Powers.

The War in Europe

Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact

Partitioning Poland

Bringing Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia under Soviet control.

German offensive

Battle of Britain

Major turning points of the war

Stalingrad

Normandy invasion

Effects of the Yalta Conference.

The war in the Pacific

Japan’s prewar expansion in east and Southeast Asia

The attack on Pearl Harbor

The Struggle for the Pacific

The Consequences of World War II

Marshall Plan

The Truman Doctrine

American assistance to Japan and Germany

Case Study of Poland

Three million Polish Jews slaughtered

Approximately one-half million other Poles were systematically executed

Poland’s political and military leaders

Church leaders who spoke out against Nazism

Educators.

Abandonment of  the Polish government-in-exile

Acquiescence to Stalin’s demands for Poland

Mass arrests of noncommunist leaders

Expropriation of private land

Nationalization of industry followed.

Protests

Strikes

Protests

Organization of industrial workers in the Solidarity movement

Other important postwar  Events

Establishment of the state of Israel

The population movement within and immigration to Europe

The changing roles of women in industrialized countries

Multi National Governing Organizations

The creation of the United Nations

The Warsaw Pact

SEATO

NATO

The Cold War

The Korean War

The Hungarian Revolution

The Vietnam War and its aftermath

The genocide committed in Cambodia by the Pol Pot regime.

 

Nationalism in the Contemporary World

Analyses of four pairs of nations connected either by political ideology or by regional location

The former Soviet Union and China

Both were created in the twentieth century as a result of communist revolutions

Both were underdeveloped countries whose leaders imposed collectivist means to modernize the economy and the society

Conditions that preceded the revolutions

Their revolutionary leaders

Lenin

Stalin

Mao

The nature of communist ideology

The human consequences of both revolution

The millions of “class enemies” and political dissidents who were murdered during and after the revolutions

The stifling of religious freedom

The conformity imposed on artists and intellectuals

The economic disruptions caused by forced collectivization

The establishment of party elites exerting absolute control over the government and media.

Israel and Syria

Wars between Israel and the Arab nations

Tensions between Arab nations and among different Islamic groups

Differences between Sunni and Shiite Muslims

Strategic importance as a supplier of oil to the industrialized world

The unresolved problems of the displaced Palestinian refugees

The recurrent use of terrorism among adversaries

The disruptions associated with the interaction of traditional cultures and the forces of modernization

Economic significance of such key states as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran.

Review of the history of Israel

The importance of the land in Jewish religious history

The history of Zionism

Reference to the Holocaust as a factor in the creation of Israel in 1948.

Government of Israel

Democratic parliamentary government

Free press

Independent judiciary.

Challenges for Israel

Accommodating the demands of orthodox religious groups

The internal debate over the West Bank

The issue of Palestinian statehood

The conflict between Jews and Arabs within Israel

An economy overburdened by military expenditures

Israel’s existence in a hostile region.

Syria’s History

Pan Arab unity

Problems of illiteracy, shortage of health services, ethnic rivalries, and religious tensions

Form of government in Syria

The status of minorities

Government control of the media

Syria’s regional and military importance in the world today

Peace process in the Middle East

Role of the United States

Camp David Accords in 1978

Treaty of Peace between Israel and Jordan in 1994

The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement

Ghana and South Africa

Historic kingdoms of Ghana and Mali

Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries more than ten million Africans were enslaved and transported to the Western Hemisphere

About 400,000 of these were brought to British North America. African slave trade existed centuries before the first European contact

The acute labor shortage in the New World created a vast new market for slave labor and systematically depleted Africa of successive generations of young men and women.

The social, cultural, and economic disruption of West Africa due to the slave trade

The late nineteenth century European colonization and economic exploitation of the region

Independence from colonial rule

Case study of Ghana today

A former British colony

First to gain its independence

Nation, rich in gold resources and once the world’s largest cocoa producer

Economic collapse occurring during its 26 years under socialism

Case study of South Africa

Large settlement of Europeans

Government of South Africa developed out of European colonial roots

System of apartheid denied legal equality and political participation to the black majority up to 1994.

The political tensions in South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa

Nelson Mandela

His inaugural address

Mexico and Brazil

Geographic overview of Central and South America

Political divisions

Natural features

Resources

Population patterns

Case study of present-day Mexico

Social revolution of 1910-20

The political and social system that emerged from it

Sense of national identity

Political stability

Economic development until the 1970s

Dominant party system

Social disparities

Economic difficulties in the last part of the twentieth century

Ties to other Latin American nations

Relationship with the United States

North American Free Trade Agreement.

A case study on Brazil

Cultural diversity of the nation

Immigrant population from many nations

Highly industrialized southern cities

Agricultural and mineral wealth

Sporadically settled interior regions

Growth of Brazil’s major cities

Compare to Mexico City and analyze the social

Problems that are created as the rural poor continue to move to these cities

Resettlement programs of the vast interior of Brazil

Amazon

Destruction of the tropical rain forests

Settlers in ranching and agriculture

Effects on the Earth’s biosphere