Chapter 20: Collapse at the Center

The Great War which was called The First World War or World War because it was considered a new phase of world history. The Western Europe for more than a century dominated the center of the modern world system. The Europeans controlled the world's other people through their formal empires, their informal influence, or the weight of their numbers. European had the dominance as less than a half a century later. That was the start of the first World War. There was a rivalry, which was Italy and Germany in which they joined a fragmented territories into two major new powers around the 1870. By the 20th century the balance of power was expressed in two rival alliances. the Triple Alliance of Germany, Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Triple Entente of Russia, France and Britain. The system of alliances intended to keep the peace created obligations that drew the Great Powers of Europe into a general war.

The Great Powers of Europe had to complete the colonies, sphere of influence, and superiority in armaments. There was a lot of men that were rushed into recruiting offices and a fear to what the war might end before they could enlist. Europe's armed rivalries had long ensured that military men enjoyed great social prestige, and most heads of state wore uniforms in public. The Great Powers had armies and excepted for Britain, relied on conscription. The rapid industrialization of warfare had generated an array of novel weapons, including submarines, tanks, airplanes, poison gas, machine guns, and barbed wire. The new military technology contributed casualties the war including some 10 million deaths the majority were male and twice that number were wounded, crippled, or disfigured. For women they would be no husbands or children.

World War I was represented as a political collapse of Europe, there was a catastrophe that suggested the Western capitalism system to fall as well. There was unemployed in both Germany and the United States that reached about 30% or more by 1932. Latin American countries who economies were based on the export of agriculture products and raw materials were also vulnerable to the world market. The Great Depression also challenged the government of industrialized capitalist countries and they believed that the economy would regulate itself through the market.

Chapter 19

China was one of the countries that confronted an aggressive and industrializing West while maintaining its formal independence, unlike some colonized areas. The governments of these regions avoided outright incorporations into European colonial empires, retaining some ability to resist the Europeans aggression and to reform or transform their own societies. Europe faced the immense military and political ambitions of rival of the European states. Second, they became a network of trade, investment, and they migrated from an industrializing and capitalist to generate a new world of economy. Third, European culture were inspired from French, English, or German language to convert into Christianity or to the study the European literature and philosophy. Lastly, they believed in a better future and its idea that nationalism, socialism, feminism, and individualism were a logical achievement.

China was one of their own victim of being successful. The economy and American food crops had been enabled because of the substantial population of growth and from that 100 million people in 1685 to some 430 million in 1853. For Europe there was a similar population, but no Industrial Revolution accompanied the amount of the number that increased of people. China also had an internal expansion to the west and south to generate anything that was about wealth and resources that derived from Europe's overseas empire. The state was increasingly enabling the effects as tax collection, flood control, social welfare, and public security. Hong Xiuquan, who is the younger brother of Jesus, was sent to cleanse the world of demons and to establish a "heavenly kingdom of great peace."Hong, himself denounced the Qing dynasty as foreigners who poisoned China and defiled the emperor's throne.

The general failure of 'self-strengthening' became apparent at the end of the century, when there was an anti-foreign movement known as the Boxer Uprising, which was caused by the northern China. The Boxers killed a lot of Europeans and Chinese Christians. The Western powers and Japan had Beijing occupied as to crush the rebellion and imposed a huge payment on China as a punishment. China remained a dependent country under the foreign control. There was also organizations as National Rejuvenation Study Society, Society to Protect the Nation, and Understand the National Shame Society that were not only Western science and technology but they were also the Western political practices that limit the authority of the ruler and permit people to take part in public life.

Japan modern transformation economy grew, it opened trades, and embraced of civilization and enlightenment from the West. Japan escaped from their semi-colonial entanglement with the West, but it also launched its own empire-building enterprise, even as European powers and the United States were carving up much of Asia and Africa into colonies to be influenced

Chapter 18

The industry and empire of Europe had the enormous productive of industrial technology and the growing affluence which created the need for raw material and agricultural products which were wheat from American Midwest/ Russia, meat from Argentina, bananas from Central America, rubber from Brazil, coca and oil from West Africa, tea from Ceylon, an gold and diamonds from South Africa. Also, the European's saw social benefits to foreign markets which served to keep European's factories humming and its workers employed. The "Great Power" was a symbol for a nation and their acquisitions as a matter of urgency and even possess a little economic value. There was another interesting thing about the Europeans they were defined others largely in religious terms. European's adopted the ideas and techniques in how to advance society. Chinese and Indians civilization were in high regard as they were freely mixed and mingled with Asian and African elites and often married their women. Europeans viewed the culture and achievements of Asian and African people through the prism of a new kind of racism, expressed now in terms of modern science. Race was a matter of fact viewed as human intelligence, moral development, and destiny. "Race is everything".

During the second wave Germany, Italy, Belgium, Japan, and the United States who were not all involved in the earlier phase, while the Spanish and Portuguese operated through the economy penetration and military intervention. There was a new European empires in the Afro-Asian world, empires everywhere were involved in military force or the threat of it. The European military advantage lay in the organization, drill, and practice, and also the command structure. In the 19th century, the European also had the advantages of fire powering, as they invented rifles and machine guns as well. The 'scramble for Africa' was half a dozen European powers against one another as they partitioned the entire continent among themselves in only about twenty-five years.

The scramble Africa was a various perspective. European leaders themselves were surprised by the intensity of their rivalries and the speed with which they acquired huge territories. The process involved an endless but peaceful negations among the competing Great Powers about 'who got what' and the extensive and intensive military.