The World in the Long Twentieth Century - by Edward Ross Dickinson (Paperback)

About the Book

"The World in the Long Twentieth Century presents an interpretation of the history of the world in the century and a half between the middle of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. It identifies the most important forces shaping the interactions between world societies and regions, and the complex relationships between those forces and the events, ruptures, upheavals, and continuities they drove. The interactions between science and technology, economics, culture, and politics on the scale of world events and developments are analyzed, stressing the continuities and commonalities that made this entire period of some 150 years a coherent whole. Throughout the book, the emphasis is on the broad dynamics of world developments--the global trends and interactions that determined the course of events both locally, in individual societies, and on a global scale, in the patterns of interactions between regions, countries, and societies. The book places the period of revolutions, wars, and genocides in the early twentieth century in the context of the longer-term development of the world economy, world population, imperial politics on a global scale, and world-wide social and cultural changes between ca. 1850 and ca. 2010. That explosive period, it shows, was a product of the rapid economic, cultural, and political globalization of the late nineteenth century; and it laid the groundwork for the even faster globalizations of the late twentieth."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

What can be called the long twentieth century represents the most miraculous and creative era in human history. It was also the most destructive. Over the past 150 years, modern societies across the globe have passed through an extraordinary and completely unprecedented transformation rooted in the technological developments of the nineteenth century. The World in the Long Twentieth Century lays out a framework for understanding the fundamental factors that have shaped our world on a truly global scale, analyzing the historical trends, causes, and consequences of the key forces at work. Spanning the 1870s to the present, this book explores the making of the modern world as a connected pattern of global developments. Students will learn to think about the past two centuries as a process, a series of political and economic upheavals, technological advances, and environmental transformations that have shaped the long twentieth century.

From the Back Cover

"Clearly written and brimming with insight, Dickinson's global history of the past 150 years is a tour de force. Both novice and veteran historians will find the perspectives in these pages illuminating, especially with respect to political, economic, and environmental history."--J. R. McNeill, author of Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the 20th-Century World

"The World in the Long Twentieth Century offers a sweeping account of the powerful forces that have reshaped our world in modern times. The narrative arc of 'expansion, ' 'explosion, ' and 'acceleration' is compelling, and Dickinson's strongly argued and well-supported emphasis on transformative technological, economic, and environmental forces is original. Moving beyond well-known cultural and political dimensions, this book presents a considerable amount of little-known information--often illustrated through fresh graphic presentations--that offers new ways to integrate this timely history into a truly global frame."--Ian Christopher Fletcher, coeditor of Women's Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation, and Race

"The World in the Long Twentieth Century is a remarkable contribution, offering a truly innovative approach to global history that lays the historical groundwork for understanding the socially and ecologically challenged world we confront today. It tells the story of the past 150 years from the planetary level, that is, from the perspective of human existence in and transformation of the natural world. With this planetary-ecological lens, Dickinson finds a compelling framework with which to synthesize the generally unsynthesizable twentieth century, with stories of mass migration, of imperialism and war and decolonization, of technological and economic transformation of the earth, and of the human condition."--Tracie Matysik, author of Reforming the Moral Subject: Ethics and Sexuality in Central Europe, 1890-1930

"College teachers at all levels will welcome Dickinson's The World in the Long Twentieth Century, an insightful thematic approach to recent world history that presents a clear, logical, and fascinating alternative to traditional textbooks. His focus on long-term, worldwide changes--such as migration patterns, the removal of peasants from grasslands, and the 'explosion' of the early twentieth century--will give students a firm basis for understanding the forces that have built their world. This book is an intelligent, original conceptualization of world history that will stimulate student thinking and discussion. I cannot recommend it highly enough."--Shennan Hutton, editor of Sites of Encounter in the Medieval World, Lecturer in History at University of California, Davis

Review Quotes

"A tremendous achievement, a grand synthesis at its best. . . . its range, its ability to connect sweeping trends to local or national details, and its ability to move from economic to cultural, political to ecological themes, is deeply impressive."-- "New Global Studies"

"Edward Dickinson has written a very important and original survey of modern world history, one that deserves to be widely read and discussed. For specialists in the history of the twentieth century, this is an indispensable text."-- "Journal of Modern History"

About the Author

Edward Ross Dickinson is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Politics of German Child Welfare; Sex, Freedom, and Power in Imperial Germany; and Dancing in the Blood: Modern Dance and European Culture on the Eve of the First World War.