John McNeill

Global war 1914 – 45

World history developments in the middle decades of the twentieth century, headed by wars and the major communist revolutions, had important results for family life in many regions. Imperialism, however, that brought the clearest interaction between Western industrial nations and other world regions during the nineteenth century. In the twenty-first century it was estimated that 15 million children had been killed in war and civil strife during the final three decades of the twentieth century alone, with many others orphaned or wounded. Unprecedented global declarations of human rights had important implications, particularly for the position of women and children in the family, and they were supported not only by United Nations agencies but also the host of international Non-Governmental Organizations that began to proliferate from the foundation of Amnesty International, in 1961, onward. Many traditional institutions have virtually disappeared amid the currents of change in modern world history. Families help translate global trends into most personal aspects of modern life.

Atlantic revolutions: a reinterpretation

Urbanization creates a hierarchy of central places, which house a range of political, economic, and cultural institutions, distributing them in space according to levels of demand. The largest cities in many national systems have tended to be political capitals: Moscow, Jakarta, Cairo, and Buenos Aires, for example, each of which also serves as a national commercial and cultural center. Extensive deurbanization of Western Europe followed the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE. Debates about the consequences of urban life have continued throughout the twentieth century as analysts from many political and disciplinary camps have weighed in. Market-driven economies work through inequality, which can be extreme, but they also concentrate wealth and other resources in the larger cities, where they encourage investment. Urban spaces and their allocations signal social values and shape everyday life for ordinary citizens. Industrialization and economic development made possible extensive rearrangements of urban spaces.

Decolonization and its legacy

Technological change accelerated with the Industrial Revolution and extended to all processes on all continents from smelting and mining to power production, to transportation, agriculture, and housing, and to communications. This chapter focuses on the United States, Europe, and the former Soviet Union because these nations have been the major engines of technological change since the 1750s for economic reasons; political reasons; military concerns; and the competition between these states for resources and power. A crucial aspect of the Industrial Revolution, tied to the others, was the rise of steam power. Historians have had their differences over the social consequences of the Industrial Revolution, particularly its impacts upon living standards. Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations have begun to tame the Mekong River delta with scores of hydroelectricity projects that raise questions of post-colonial oustees and environmental degradation. After 1750 a revolution in transportation changed the face of human interaction, commerce, military thinking, diet, leisure, and much else.

The Middle East in world history since 1750

Population change can be interpreted as the result of the continuous confrontation and adaptation between the forces of constraint and the forces of choice. Forces of choice are the ability to modulate and control behaviors that have demographic consequences, such as entering into a reproductive union; having children; protecting and enhancing health with adequate nutrition, housing, and clothing; moving and migrating from one place to another. Modern demography has been characterized by an acceleration with a variety of geographical patterns, and this variety increases the smaller the scale of analysis. This chapter outlines the nature of the demographic systems prevailing in different parts of the world in the eighteenth century. It presents the factors that determine a change or a transformation of a demographic system, therefore affecting population development. To define demographic transition as the process that has reduced mortality and fertility from the high pre-nineteenth-century levels to the low ones that prevail nowadays in Europe, America, and East Asia.