Unit 7: Global Conflict (1900-Present)

• Crumbling empires

• World wars

• economic disasters

• mass atrocities

🔃 Major Shift in state power

• West dominated global power at the start of the 20th century due to industrialization

• Non-western powers such as the Ottomans fell during this period, contributing to the rise of the west

• Land-based and maritime empires would ultimately give way to new states

🇹🇷 Ottoman Empire

• Attempted industrialization

• Internal problems plagued the tanzimat reforms

  • In response to the problems, two significant reform movements arose:

  • Young Ottomans

    • Called for liberal reforms to check the absolutist sultan

  • Young Turks

    • Overthrew Sultan in 1908 and began their own reform program

    • Secularization of schools and law codes, establishment of political elections, and the imposition of Turkish as the official language of the empire

• Minority Groups Experienced their own wave of nationalism, further fracturing the empire

• Lost more and more territory to other states such as Greece and the establishment of Saudi Arabia

• WW1 was the final blow that destroyed the empire

🇷🇺 Russia (Before Soviet Union)

• Industrialized in the 19th century, under rule by an absolutist czar

• Growing middle class resented the conservatism of Nicholas II’s absolutism

  • demanded a greater voice in government decisions

  • brutal working conditions in industrial factories led to uprisings and insurrections

• WW1 + bad working conditions led to the Russian Revolution of 1917

• Vladmir Lenin - Marxist Visionary that led the Russian Revolution

  • Leader of the Bolsheviks (majority)

• Death of Russian state, Birth of the Soviet Union

  • First communist state in the world

• Brought Russia out of WW1 in 1917

Similarities Between the Ottoman empire and Russia

• had their leader forced to make accommodations to people’s demands

• introduction of a constitution

• legalization of labor unions and political parties

• leader largely ignored reforms and carried on like normal

• WW1 created the conditions for major change

🐉 Qing Dynasty

• Taiping Rebellion

  • Internal factor

  • Successfully put down by the Qing military

  • Still costed a lot of money and lives

• Loss of Opium wars and Sino-Japanese war

  • External factor

  • China was economically imperialized by outside powers

  • Victors carved up China into spheres of influence

• Boxer rebellion - insurrection against the Qing

  • anti-foreign

  • wanted to drive foreigners (ex: British) out of China

  • French and Japanese sent soldiers to put down this rebellion, then made more demands, further leading to the end of the Qing

  • Sun Yat Sen - western educated, led to abdication of the Qing emperor, ending 2000 years of imperial rule

    • A new provisional government was under his rule, but it was very short lived as due to civil war

• Mao Zedong takes power over a new communist state of China

🇲🇽 Mexico

• Mexican Revolution

• Mexico was ruled by a dictator (Porfirio Diaz)

  • His policies angered nearly every social class in Mexico

  • US and Britain approved of his strict free market capitalist policies because they were making money off of it lmao

  • People in Mexico across social classes were against him

• Francisco Madero

  • Socialist-like with land redistribution schemes

  • Elected president in 1910

  • assassinated two years later

• Decade of civil war with massive peasant armies led by:

  • Pancho Villa

  • Emiliano Zapata

  • Neither were able to really seize state power

• Revolution complete by 1917

  • Mexico emerged as a republic with a newly drafted constitution

  • Widespread reforms addressing issues that caused the revolution

🚩 Causes of World War 1

• Militarism

  • Government’s belief that its interests are best protected by maintaining a strong military and using it aggressively

  • Ex: Germany became very militaristic with unification and industrialization

    • Made France nervous as their military was weaker and lost the Franco-Prussian war to Germany in 1871

  • Great Britain had a large military and navy due to their expansion of their maritime empire

    • The maintenance of the empire caused financial strain that Germany did not need to deal with

  • Great Britain and France were worried about Germany locking in

• Alliances

  • Triple Alliance “Central Powers“

    • Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy

  • Triple Entente “Allies“

    • France, Great Britain, Russia

    • Had defensive pacts with other nations

      • Attack on one is an attack on all

• Imperialism

  • Incentivized nation states to project power on the world stage

  • Once there wasn’t much else to conquer, European states had conflict over existing colonial holdings

    • Caused the creation of the alliance system

• Nationalism

  • (review) Nationalism - a sense of commonality between people of similar cultures or ethnicities, defined other nation-states as a common enemy

  • demanded retaliation with force against common enemies

• Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip

  • Caused all of the buildup to explode into a world war due to Austria-Hungary and Serbia being tied in with alliances

💥 How WW1 was fought

• Total war - requires mobilization of a country’s entire population (military and civilian) in order to fight

  • WW1 was a total war

  • Civilian targets are considered legitimate targets for military campaigns

• New technology = deadlier war

  • Due to rapid industrialization

  • Machine guns, chemical gas, tanks

  • Caused Trench Warfare - opposing sides dug fortified trenches

    • Made it super hard to make progress, stalemates

    • Dragged the war on

    • Lots of casualties

• Empires called up colonial armies to help out, will be one of the causes of the breakup of empires

• Widespread propaganda

  • demonized a common enemy with exaggerated media

  • convinced people that their cause was part of a righteous fight vs. evil forces

  • meant to awake nationalism

• US joined in 1917 which was a major help to the allies

• Ended with the Treaty of Versailles

  • Germany and friends lost

  • President Woodrow Wilson tried to force peace without victory, but France and Britain were d1 crashouts and used the treaty to punish Germany

    • Major caused of WW2

🪙 Global Economic Disaster

• Great Depression - began in US but felt globally

• European states broken from WW1 relied on US loans to recover

• US stock market crashed, collapsed American economy and dried up postwar funds for Europe too

🏛 Government intervention

• Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president

  • made government sponsored policies called the New Deal

  • put people to work on infrastructure projects

  • government-sponsored retirement program

  • government medical insurance

    • for elderly and children

  • government spending here near equal spending on WW1 (a lot)

☭ Soviet Union

• involvement in WW1 led to devastated postwar economy

• Vladmir Lenin made government lock in through his new economic plan

  • New economic plan - allowed for a mixed economy rather than full communism

    • The government still has great control but allows peasants to keep and sell some food

• Joseph Stalin with his Five Year Plan aimed to multiply industrial capacity by 5 (a lot)

  • achieved through brutality - purges and paranoia, getting rid of people who would be a threat

  • collectivization of agriculture - merged small agricultural firms into one large state farm

    • nearly all food will be shipped to feed industrial workers

    • Ex: Ukraine - most significant producer of grain in the USSR

      • 1932-1933 harvest was halved compared to years before, but Stalin still made them export their food to feed urban workers, leaving little food for themselves

    • Holodomor (death by hunger) - Stalin’s policy preventing people from leaving their homes made many starve to serve his economic policy

😠 Unresolved tensions after WW1

• regarding colonial empires

• colonies helped the imperial empire but were not rewarded with independence

• European powers and Japan maintained (and sometimes gained) colonial holdings in the interwar period

• Part of the Treaty of Versailles included a new international organization called the League of Nations - a group that existed to help states negotiate solutions rather than resorting to war

  • Victorious powers wanted to take Germany colonies and Ottoman land

  • Woodrow Wilson didn’t want them to as states should have self rule

  • Mandate System - Former Germany colonies would now be mandates of the League of Nations

    • expectation: intended to help them economically until they were ready for self rule

    • reality: colonies just switched hands between Imperial powers

    • Expanded colonial empires through negotiation and treaty rather than conquest

• Colony swapping and conquest led to imperial resistance

• Ex: British India

  • Indian National Congress was formed to formally petition the British for more self-rule

  • Gained esteem after India helped out the British with WW1

  • Mahatma Gandhi - led Indians through nonviolent protests against the British

  • would eventually win independence after WW2

🇯🇵 Japan

• invaded Manchuria to access natural resources

• League of Nations condemned this action, so Japan left the league just kept doing what it was doing

• Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere - Japan’s sphere of influence from Pacific Conquests

📜 Causes of WW2

• Unsustainable Peace Treaty

  • Treaty of Versailles denied Italy territory it was promised for switching sides

  • also cooked Germany as they had to pay crazy reparations and demilitarize

  • Treaty contained War Guilt Clause that pinned the entirety of the war on Germany alone

• Continued Imperialism

  • Japan’s Co-Prosperity sphere

  • Italy invaded Ethiopia and consolidated colonial holdings into an empire

  • Germany started reclaiming lost territory under a Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler

• Global Economic Crises

  • Great Depression

    • left many in Germany and Italy unemployed and hungry, causing them to become fascist states under Adolf Hitler and Mussolini respectively

• Rise of Fascist States

  • Fascism - far right political philosophy characterized by extreme nationalism, authoritarian leadership, and a militaristic means to achieve its goals

    • Very totalitarian - glorified the nationality

    • Advocated for a united nation, not groups of classes

    • Goal: restore the nation state to a greater form

Fascist States

🇮🇹 Italy

• Mussolini reorganized Italy to serve his own vision of the state (expansion and power on the world stage)

  • He used oratorical skills to deliver nationalist speeches glorifying Italian people and their culture

  • Also used nationalistic parades and mass communication technologies to effectively get public support for his policies

🇯🇵 Japan

• Moved to political totalitarianism and ultra-nationalism under emperor Hirohito

🇩🇪 Germany

• Adolf Hitler - skilled orator and used mass communication to spread ultra-nationalistic messages of German greatness (just like Mussolini)

  • Germany was going through a major economic disaster with hyperinflation due to war debts and reparations, facilitating Hitler’s rise to power

  • Nazis were originally not very popular, but this economic disaster was in part caused by the Wiemar Republic (democracy), so people turn to Hitler

  • He defined the common enemies of all German people to be: socialists, communists, and Jews

    • Blames communists for burning the Reichstag, justifies giving himself emergency powers (Enabling Act)

  • He also broke many rules of the Treaty of Versailles

    • Cancelled payment of reparations

    • Remilitarization (especially in the Rhineland)

    • Led campaigns to annex territory in Czechoslovakia and Austria, which Britain and France didn’t really do anything about it (appeasement)

  • He invaded Poland in 1939, and that made Britain and France declare war, kicking off WW2

🔗 Fascism vs. Communism

• Fascism stressed the importance of the nation, inequality (called for the powerful taking over the weak), and war is glorious

• Communism emphasized the importance of the worker and believed that the state will eventually wither away and die

• Both are Totalitarian ideologies but have key differences

🪖 How WW2 was fought

• Total war except bigger and more devastating than WW1

• Axis Powers

  • Germany

  • Italy

  • Japan

• Allied Powers

  • Britain, France, Soviet Union, United States

• Imperial powers called up colonial troops again

• Methods states used to mobilize its people

  • Homefront and battlefield

  • Used propaganda to provoke nationalism and demonize their enemies

    • sowed fear, allowing them to assemble massive armies and keep civilians in line

  • Governments used different ideologies to mobilize for the war

    • Fascist states used extreme nationalism and glorification of the military to organize their whole economy and population to quickly and effectively mobilize for war

    • Soviet Union used communism to mobilize for war with rapid industrialization under his Five Year Plan to make factories produce more output for the war

    • Democracies relied on cooperation of their people to mobilize for war

      • Ex: Great Britain - led by Winston Churchill

        • Made promises to expand the welfare state in exchange for wartime sacrifices

      • United States

      • Massive propaganda campaigns

  • Nearly every state repressed freedoms for at least some part of their population during the war

    • Ex: After Pearl Harbor, US moved 100,000 Japanese immigrants to internment camps because the US feared they were operatives for Japan

    • Ex: In Germany, Jews and other “undesirables” were put in ghettos and concentration camps to be put to hard labor and killed

  • New Military Tactics and Technologies

    • Led to more deaths

    • Ex: German Blitzkrieg

    • Ex: Firebombing - small clusters of explosive devices dropped on urban areas to start fires

      • Allied forces firebombed urban areas such as Dresden, Germany and Tokyo, Japan

      • Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in massive fires and destroyed urban areas

    • Ex: Atomic Bomb

      • US developed and dropped two atomic bombs on Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

      • Killed hundreds of thousands of citizens and ended the war

🥀 Mass Atrocities

• WW1 and WW2 led to heavy death toll

• Rise of extremist groups led to attempted destruction of entire populations

• Ex: Armenian genocide

  • Ottomans re-envisioned their status as Turkic and were influenced by Young Turks to be suspicious of the large Armenian Christian population

  • In WW1, Ottomans thought that the Armenians would support invading armies, so they started a mass extermination of them and relocated some in which people were brutalized and malnourished

    • ~600k to 1.5 million Armenians killed

• Ex: Holocaust

  • Hitler’s extreme nationalism desired a pure race of Germans, wanted to exterminate all who he believed tarnished their purity

    • Similar to Social Darwinism and the Spanish Caste System in their American colonies

  • Final Solution - Hitler’s plan that targeted many groups such as the Jews

    • Used industrial technologies to construct concentration camps

    • ~6 millions Jews were put to death and ~5 million for other targeted groups

• Ex: Rape of Nanking

📒 Topics

https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap-world-history-modern-course-and-exam-description.pdf