By the end of the century, more technological advances had been made than in all of preceding history. Communications and information technology, transportation technology, and medical advances had radically altered daily lives. Europe appeared to be at a sustainable peace for the first time in recorded history. The people of the Indian subcontinent, a sixth of the world population at the end of the century, had attained an indigenous independence for the first time in centuries. China, an ancient nation comprising a fifth of the world population, was finally open to the world in a new and powerful synthesis of west and east, creating a new state after the near-complete destruction of the old cultural order. With the end of colonialism and the Cold War, nearly a billion people in Africa were left with truly independent new nation states, some cut from whole cloth, standing up after centuries of foreign domination.

The world was undergoing its second major period of globalization; the first, which started in the 18th century, having been terminated by World War I. Since the US was on in a position of almost unchallenged domination, a major part of the process was Americanization. This led to anti-Western and anti-American feelings in parts of the world, especially the Middle East. The influence of China and India was also rising, as the world's largest populations, long marginalized by the West and by their own rulers, were rapidly integrating with the world economy.

However, several problems faced the world. First of all, the gap between rich and poor nations continued to widen. Some said that this problem could not be fixed, that there was a set amount of wealth and it could only be shared by so many. Others said that the powerful nations with large economies were not doing enough to help improve the rapidly evolving economies of the Third World. However, developing countries faced many challenges, including the scale of the task to be surmounted, rapidly growing populations, and the need to protect the environment, and the cost that goes along with it.

Secondly, disease threatened to destabilize many regions of the world. New viruses such as SARS and West Nile continued to spread. In poor nations, malaria and other diseases affected the majority of the population. Millions were infected with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS. The virus was becoming an epidemic in southern Africa.

The geographic distribution of surface warming during the 21^st century calculated by the HadCM3 climate model if a business as usual scenario is assumed for economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions. In this figure, the globally averaged warming corresponds to 3.0 °C (5.4 °F).

Terrorism, dictatorship, and the spread of nuclear weapons were other issues requiring attention. The world was still blighted by small-scale wars and other violent conflicts, fueled by competition over resources and by ethnic conflicts. Despots such as Kim Jong-il of North Korea continued to lead their nations toward the development of nuclear weapons.

Perhaps most importantly, it was recognized that in the long term, environmental problems threatened the planet's liveability. The most serious was global warming due to human-caused emission of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels. This prompted many nations to negotiate and sign the Kyoto treaty, which set mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions.

A significant driver of many of many of these problems was overpopulation. At the century's end, the global population was six and a half billion and rising. There was some hope on this score, because the number of children per woman had been decreasing throughout the world, not only in the rich countries. In the long term, it was predicted that the population would probably reach a plateau of nine billion. However, it remained doubtful whether the planet had the long-term capacity to sustain such numbers.

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See also

• Infectious disease in the 20th century
• Death rates in the 20th century
• List of battles 1901-2000
• 20th century inventions
• The individual decades and years
• 20th century art

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References

1. ^ The historian Eric Hobsbawm has coined the term the short twentieth century for the period from 1914 (the start of World War I) to 1991 (the dissolution of the Soviet Union).
2. ^ 3 billion live on two dollars a day or less: ILO
3. ^ The Other Killing Machine
4. ^ The Gulag Collection: Paintings of Nikolai Getman.
5. ^ Leaders mourn Soviet wartime dead

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Sources

• UNESCO (2008-02-28). "The Twentieth Century". History of Humanity VII. Routledge. 600. ISBN 978-0-415-09311-8. 

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External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

20th century

• The 20th Century Research Project
• Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the Twentieth Century
• TIME Archives The greatest writers of the 20th Century

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Decades and years