World History 1750–1991 — Industrial Revolution to Decolonisation

1. Why World History for UPSC — Scope & Frame

1.1 The four "revolutions" that made the modern world

Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution (1962), Age of Capital (1975), Age of Empire (1987), Age of Extremes (1994) provide the standard four-volume periodisation. Four upheavals — and how they cluster — give the UPSC student a sturdy mental map:

1. Political (1776–1789): American Revolution + French Revolution — sovereignty of the people, written constitutions, rights of man.
2. Economic (c. 1760–1850): Industrial Revolution — fossil fuels, factory, working class, urbanisation, world market.
3. Scientific & intellectual (1543–1900): Copernicus → Newton → Darwin → Einstein; rationalism, secularism, the modern university.
4. Demographic & biological (post-1750): mortality decline → population explosion → urban growth.

1.2 The two ages of revolution in the long 20th century

• 1914–1945: the "Age of Catastrophe" — two world wars, Russian Revolution, Great Depression, fascism, Holocaust.
• 1945–1991: the "Golden Age" of welfare-capitalism & the Cold War — bipolarity, decolonisation, the long boom, then stagflation, then 1989-91 collapse.
• 1991– : the "Landslide" — single-superpower unipolarity, then post-2008 multipolarity, then post-2020 fragmentation.

2. The Enlightenment & the American Revolution (1776)

2.1 The Enlightenment

An 18th-century European intellectual movement that placed reason, individual liberty, religious tolerance, and the social contract at the heart of political life. Centred on the French philosophes, but with Scottish, German, English and American branches.

2.2 The American Revolution — 1763-1783

• Causes: Seven Years' War debt (1756-63) → British taxation of colonies (Sugar Act 1764, Stamp Act 1765, Townshend 1767, Tea Act 1773) → "No taxation without representation".
• Boston Tea Party — 16 December 1773; "Intolerable Acts" 1774.
• First Continental Congress — Philadelphia, 5 September 1774; Battles of Lexington and Concord 19 April 1775; Second Continental Congress May 1775.
• Declaration of Independence — adopted 4 July 1776; drafted by Thomas Jefferson, with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston.
• Saratoga — 17 October 1777 (American victory; French entry); Yorktown — 19 October 1781 (Cornwallis surrenders to Washington).
• Treaty of Paris — 3 September 1783 — Britain recognises American independence.
• US Constitution — drafted at Philadelphia Convention May-September 1787; ratified 21 June 1788; effective 4 March 1789; Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments) ratified 15 December 1791.

2.3 Why it mattered

• First successful overseas colonial revolt — provided the template for Latin America (1810-25) and (eventually) for Asian-African decolonisation.
• First modern written constitution with separation of powers, federal structure, judicial review (Marbury v. Madison, 24 February 1803).
• Provided the rhetorical arsenal for the French Revolution and the 19th-century democratic movements.

3. The French Revolution & Napoleon (1789–1815)

3.1 Causes

• Ancien Régime: three estates (clergy, nobility, commoners — 98% of population); tax-exempt nobility; bankrupt state after American war + Versailles extravagance.
• Bourgeoisie: rising commercial class blocked from political power.
• Enlightenment ideas: Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu — circulated through salons.
• Immediate trigger: 1788-89 harvest failure → bread prices → Estates-General convened 5 May 1789.

3.2 The revolutionary phases

3.3 Napoleon (1799–1815)

• Consul (1799), Emperor (2 December 1804) — coronation by himself in the presence of Pope Pius VII.
• Napoleonic Code (Civil Code) — promulgated 21 March 1804; equality before law, secular state, abolition of feudal privileges; basis of legal systems across Europe and beyond.
• Concordat with Vatican 1801; Continental System 1806 (Berlin Decree, 21 November 1806).
• Victories: Austerlitz (2 December 1805), Jena (14 October 1806), Friedland (14 June 1807), Wagram (5-6 July 1809).
• Russian campaign disaster — June-December 1812; Borodino (7 September 1812); retreat from Moscow.
• Leipzig "Battle of the Nations" 16-19 October 1813; first abdication 6 April 1814 (Elba).
• The Hundred Days 20 March – 8 July 1815; Waterloo 18 June 1815 — defeated by Wellington and Blücher; exiled to St Helena (d. 5 May 1821).

3.4 Legacy

The French Revolution and Napoleon spread nationalism, secular law, civic equality, conscription, meritocracy, and the metric system. They simultaneously provoked the conservative reaction of the Congress of Vienna (Sep 1814 – Jun 1815) — Metternich, Castlereagh, Talleyrand, Tsar Alexander I — which sought to restore "legitimacy" and balance-of-power.

4. The Industrial Revolution (c. 1760–1850)

4.1 Why Britain first?

• Capital from colonial trade (sugar, slaves, Indian textiles).
• Coal & iron in close proximity (Midlands, Wales, Scotland).
• Enclosure movement (15th-19th c.) freed labour from land.
• Banking & markets — Bank of England 1694; reliable property rights post-1688.
• Empire & protected market; deindustrialisation of India funded Lancashire.
• Culture of invention — Royal Society 1660; tinkerer-scientists.

4.2 The technological wave

4.3 Social consequences

• Urbanisation — Manchester's population grew from ~25,000 (1772) to ~70,000 (1801) to ~3.03 lakh (1851).
• Working class — long hours, child labour, factory discipline; Friedrich Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845).
• Factory Acts — 1802 (Sir Robert Peel Sr., Health & Morals of Apprentices Act), 1833 (10-hr day for children), 1847 (10-hr day for women & young persons).
• Chartism — Petitions 1839, 1842, 1848 demanding universal male suffrage.
• Trade Unions — Combination Acts repealed 1824-25; Tolpuddle Martyrs 1834.
• Reform Acts — 1832 (Great Reform Act), 1867, 1884 — slow extension of the franchise.
• Repeal of the Corn Laws 1846 (Robert Peel) — triumph of free trade.

4.4 The "second industrial revolution" (c. 1870-1914)

Shift in leadership to Germany and the United States; new sectors — steel, chemicals, electricity, internal combustion, mass production (Henry Ford's moving assembly line, 1913). This is the period of the great German chemical firms (BASF, Bayer, Hoechst), American steel (Carnegie, US Steel 1901), Standard Oil (Rockefeller 1870), General Electric (1892).

5. Nationalism in Europe — Italy & Germany (1815–1871)

5.1 Italian unification — the Risorgimento

• 1815 baseline: 7 states — Lombardy & Venetia under Austria; Sardinia-Piedmont under House of Savoy; Papal States; Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under Bourbons; Tuscany, Parma, Modena under Habsburg satellites.
• Giuseppe Mazzini — founder of Young Italy (1831, Marseille); Young Europe (1834); "soul" of the movement.
• 1848 revolutions — failed liberal risings across Italy.
• Camillo Cavour — PM of Piedmont 1852-61; diplomacy + Crimean alliance (1853-56) + Plombières meeting with Napoleon III (20 July 1858) → Franco-Sardinian war against Austria (1859) → annexation of Lombardy.
• Giuseppe Garibaldi & the Expedition of the Thousand (Mille / Red Shirts) — sailed from Quarto, 5 May 1860; conquered Sicily and Naples by September 1860; handed over to Victor Emmanuel II at Teano, 26 October 1860.
• Kingdom of Italy proclaimed — Victor Emmanuel II crowned King — Turin, 17 March 1861.
• Venetia added 1866 (after Austro-Prussian War); Rome added 20 September 1870 (after Franco-Prussian War withdrew French garrison); capital moved to Rome 1871. Papal "Roman Question" not resolved till Lateran Pacts of 11 February 1929 (Mussolini-Pius XI).

5.2 German unification

• 1815 baseline: Congress of Vienna creates German Confederation of 39 states under Austrian presidency.
• Zollverein (Customs Union) — 1 January 1834, Prussian-led, 18 states; the economic precondition of unity.
• 1848 Frankfurt Parliament — offered crown to Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who refused the "crown from the gutter" April 1849.
• Otto von Bismarck — Minister-President of Prussia from 22 September 1862; "blood and iron" speech 30 September 1862.
• Three wars of unification:
  • Danish War 1864 — Schleswig and Holstein.
  • Austro-Prussian (Seven Weeks') War 1866 — battle of Sadowa/Königgrätz 3 July 1866; Peace of Prague; North German Confederation 1867 (Prussia-led).
  • Franco-Prussian War 1870-71 — Ems telegram 13 July 1870; Sedan 1-2 September 1870 (Napoleon III captured); Paris siege; German Empire proclaimed at the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 18 January 1871; Wilhelm I as Kaiser; Treaty of Frankfurt 10 May 1871 — Alsace-Lorraine annexed (a wound that would fester till 1918).
• Kulturkampf (Bismarck vs. Catholic Church) 1871-78; anti-socialist laws 1878-90; state insurance (sickness 1883, accident 1884, old age 1889) — the world's first welfare state.
• Bismarck dismissed by Wilhelm II on 18 March 1890; era of Weltpolitik begins → road to World War I.

6. The Long 19th Century — Concert of Europe & 1848

6.1 The Vienna settlement, 1815

• Congress of Vienna — September 1814 – June 1815; chaired by Klemens von Metternich (Austrian Chancellor 1809-48). Castlereagh (Britain), Talleyrand (France), Hardenberg (Prussia), Tsar Alexander I (Russia).
• Principles: legitimacy, balance of power, compensation, encirclement of France.
• Holy Alliance (Russia-Austria-Prussia, 26 September 1815); Quadruple Alliance (above + Britain, 20 November 1815) — formalised the "Concert of Europe".

6.2 The revolutions of 1848 — "Springtime of Peoples"

Beginning in Palermo (12 January 1848) and Paris (22-24 February 1848 — fall of Louis Philippe → Second Republic under Louis Napoleon), uprisings spread to Vienna (13 March, Metternich resigns), Berlin (18 March), Milan, Venice, Rome, Hungary (Kossuth), Bohemia (Palacký), Frankfurt Parliament. Most failed by 1849 — but the legacies were durable: serfdom abolished in Habsburg lands (1848) and Russia (Tsar Alexander II's emancipation edict, 3 March 1861); universal male suffrage in France (1848-51).

6.3 The "long peace" 1815-1914

No general European war between Vienna 1815 and Sarajevo 1914 — only localised wars (Crimean 1853-56, Italian/German unifications). The relative stability — combined with industrialisation, free trade, gold standard, mass migration (50 million Europeans crossed the Atlantic 1820-1914), telegraph, railway — produced the first true "globalisation".

7. Imperialism & the Scramble for Africa & Asia

7.1 The "new imperialism" — c. 1870–1914

By 1900, European powers controlled ~84% of the world's land surface. Causes:

• Economic: markets, raw materials (rubber, cotton, palm oil, copper), capital export (J.A. Hobson's Imperialism: A Study 1902; Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism 1916).
• Strategic: coaling stations, naval bases (Mahan thesis 1890).
• Nationalist / cultural: Social Darwinism, "civilising mission", "White Man's Burden" (Kipling 1899), religious mission.
• Technological: steamships, quinine, machine gun (Maxim 1884), telegraph.

7.2 The Scramble for Africa

• Berlin Conference — 15 November 1884 – 26 February 1885; convened by Bismarck. Set the rules of "effective occupation" and divided Africa among 14 European powers without African participation.
• 1880: 80% of Africa under African rule; 1914: only Ethiopia (defeated Italy at Adwa, 1 March 1896) and Liberia remained independent.
• Belgian Congo — Leopold II's personal "Congo Free State" (1885-1908); 5-10 million dead from forced rubber labour; transferred to Belgian state 1908 after Casement Report 1904.
• Anglo-Boer War 1899-1902 — Britain consolidates South Africa; introduces concentration camps.
• Maji-Maji revolt (German East Africa 1905-07), Herero & Nama genocide (1904-08) in German South-West Africa.

7.3 Asia — competing empires

• British India: see Modern Topics 1-10 in detail.
• Opium Wars — First 1839-42 (Treaty of Nanking; Hong Kong ceded; 5 treaty ports), Second 1856-60 (Treaty of Tientsin); the era of "unequal treaties" begins.
• Taiping Rebellion 1850-64 — ~20-30 million dead; Hong Xiuquan; one of history's bloodiest civil wars.
• Boxer Rebellion 1899-1901 — Eight-Nation Alliance suppression; Boxer Protocol 7 September 1901.
• French Indochina (Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia, by 1887); Dutch East Indies (consolidated by late 19th c.); Spanish then American Philippines (1898 Spanish-American War).

8. American Civil War & Reconstruction (1861–1877)

8.1 Causes

• Slavery — by 1860, ~4 million enslaved Africans in the South. Northern free-labour ideology versus Southern plantation capitalism.
• States' rights versus federal authority; the Missouri Compromise (1820), Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), Dred Scott v. Sandford (6 March 1857).
• Abolitionism — Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852), John Brown (Harpers Ferry, October 1859).
• Election of Abraham Lincoln (Republican) — 6 November 1860; 7 Southern states secede December 1860 – Feb 1861; Confederate States of America formed 4 February 1861 (Jefferson Davis President).

8.2 The war (1861-1865)

• Fort Sumter — South Carolina, 12 April 1861 — first shots.
• Emancipation Proclamation — 1 January 1863 — freed slaves in rebel-held territory; turned the war into a moral crusade.
• Battle of Gettysburg — 1-3 July 1863 — high-water mark of the Confederacy; Gettysburg Address 19 November 1863 ("government of the people, by the people, for the people").
• Sherman's March to the Sea — November-December 1864 (Atlanta to Savannah).
• Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House, 9 April 1865.
• Lincoln assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre, 14 April 1865 (d. 15 April).
• ~620,000 military dead — more than all other US wars combined until Vietnam.

8.3 Reconstruction (1865-1877)

• 13th Amendment (abolition of slavery) ratified 6 December 1865; 14th (equal protection, citizenship) ratified 9 July 1868; 15th (no race-based denial of vote) ratified 3 February 1870.
• Freedmen's Bureau 1865-72; Civil Rights Act 1866.
• Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction; Jim Crow laws in the South; Plessy v. Ferguson (18 May 1896) — "separate but equal" — to be reversed only by Brown v. Board of Education (17 May 1954).

9. The Rise of Japan — Meiji Restoration (1868)

9.1 From Tokugawa to Meiji

• Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868) — closed-country (sakoku) policy after 1639; only Dutch contact via Dejima.
• Commodore Matthew Perry's "Black Ships" arrive in Edo Bay 8 July 1853; Treaty of Kanagawa 31 March 1854 — Japan forcibly opened.
• Boshin War 1868-69; Tokugawa shogunate falls.
• Meiji Restoration — Emperor Meiji (Mutsuhito) restored, 3 January 1868; capital moved Kyoto → Edo (renamed Tokyo).
• Charter Oath 6 April 1868 — five-article modernisation pledge.

9.2 The modernising programme

• Abolition of feudal domains (han) 1871; abolition of samurai class 1873; conscription 1873.
• Iwakura Mission 1871-73 — leaders tour US and Europe.
• Land tax reform 1873; universal primary education 1872; state-led industrialisation (textiles, shipyards, arsenals, railways).
• Meiji Constitution (Itō Hirobumi) — 11 February 1889; based on Prussian model; first Diet 1890.
• Zaibatsu (family conglomerates — Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda) become engines of growth.

9.3 Japan as a great power

• Sino-Japanese War 1894-95; Treaty of Shimonoseki 17 April 1895 — Korea independent, Taiwan and Liaodong to Japan.
• Anglo-Japanese Alliance 30 January 1902 — first equal treaty with a Western power.
• Russo-Japanese War 8 February 1904 – 5 September 1905 — first defeat of a European power by an Asian one in modern times; Treaty of Portsmouth mediated by Theodore Roosevelt. This victory electrified Asian nationalists — including the Indian extremist generation of Tilak, Aurobindo, Bipin Chandra Pal.
• Annexation of Korea — 22 August 1910.

10. The Russian Revolution of 1917

10.1 The setting — Tsarist Russia

• Romanov autocracy — Nicholas II (1894-1917), last Tsar.
• Backwardness: ~80% peasant, late industrialisation, no parliamentary tradition.
• 1905 Revolution — Bloody Sunday 22 January 1905 (Father Gapon); general strike; Tsar issues October Manifesto 30 October 1905 establishing the Duma; Stolypin reforms 1906-11.
• World War I — by 1916, 1.7 million Russian war dead; food shortages; transport collapse; Rasputin (assassinated 30 December 1916).

10.2 February Revolution (March in Gregorian calendar)

• International Women's Day strikes — Petrograd, 23 February 1917 (8 March NS).
• Strikes spread; troops mutiny; Tsar Nicholas II abdicates 2 March 1917 (15 March NS).
• Provisional Government formed (Prince Lvov, then Alexander Kerensky from July); Petrograd Soviet exercised parallel "dual power".
• Lenin returns from Swiss exile via the sealed German train, 3 April 1917 (NS).
• April Theses — "All power to the Soviets", "Peace, Land, Bread".

10.3 October Revolution (November NS)

• Bolshevik seizure of the Winter Palace, Petrograd — night of 24-25 October 1917 (6-7 November NS); led by Lenin, Trotsky (chair of Petrograd Soviet), Stalin.
• Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) formed; Lenin Chairman.
• Decree on Peace & Decree on Land — 26 October 1917 OS.
• Constituent Assembly elected November 1917 — Bolsheviks won 23.5% — dissolved by force after one day (5-6 January 1918).
• Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany — 3 March 1918 — humiliating territorial losses (later voided by Versailles).
• Russian Civil War 1918-22 — Reds vs. Whites + Allied intervention; ended with Bolshevik victory and the creation of the USSR on 30 December 1922.
• War Communism 1918-21 → New Economic Policy (NEP) 1921; Lenin dies 21 January 1924; Stalin emerges; Trotsky exiled 1929, assassinated 21 August 1940 (Mexico City).

10.4 Why it mattered globally

• First successful socialist revolution; Third International (Comintern) founded March 1919.
• Inspired colonial liberation movements (Lenin's writings on imperialism & the right of self-determination of nations).
• Direct ideological impact on India — Communist Party of India founded at Tashkent on 17 October 1920 (M.N. Roy); legal CPI 26 December 1925, Kanpur.
• Set in motion the East-West confrontation that would define the Cold War.

11. World War I & the Treaty of Versailles (1914–1919)

11.1 The long fuse — MAIN causes

• Militarism — Anglo-German naval race after Tirpitz's Navy Laws (1898, 1900); Dreadnought 1906; doctrine of "war as continuation of policy" (Clausewitz).
• Alliances — Triple Alliance 1882 (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy) vs. Triple Entente 1907 (France, Russia, Britain — built on Franco-Russian Alliance 1894, Entente Cordiale 8 April 1904, Anglo-Russian Convention 31 August 1907).
• Imperialism — Moroccan crises (1905, 1911), scramble for colonies.
• Nationalism — Balkan tinder-box; Pan-Slavism vs. Pan-Germanism; Italian irredentism; Balkan Wars 1912-13.

11.2 The trigger and outbreak

• Sarajevo — Archduke Franz Ferdinand (heir to Austro-Hungarian throne) and Sophie assassinated by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip (Young Bosnia / Black Hand), 28 June 1914.
• July Crisis; Austria's ultimatum (23 July) → declaration of war on Serbia 28 July 1914 → German "blank cheque" → Russian mobilisation → Germany declares war on Russia (1 Aug), France (3 Aug); invasion of Belgium → Britain declares war on Germany (4 Aug); Ottoman Empire joins Central Powers Nov 1914; Italy switches sides, joining Entente May 1915.

11.3 Course of the war

• Schlieffen Plan stalls at the First Battle of the Marne (5-12 September 1914); Western Front becomes trench stalemate from Switzerland to the Channel.
• Eastern Front — Tannenberg (26-30 August 1914), Masurian Lakes; Russia eventually collapses.
• Gallipoli April 1915 – January 1916 — Allied failure.
• Verdun (Feb-Dec 1916, ~7 lakh casualties); Somme (1 Jul – 18 Nov 1916, ~10 lakh casualties); Jutland (31 May 1916, only major naval battle).
• USA enters — 6 April 1917, after Zimmermann Telegram (Jan 1917) and unrestricted submarine warfare; Russia exits — Brest-Litovsk 3 March 1918.
• Hundred Days Offensive 8 August – 11 November 1918; Armistice signed at Compiègne, 11 November 1918 at 11 a.m.
• Casualties: ~16-20 million dead; Spanish Flu 1918-19 killed a further 50 million globally.

11.4 Peace settlement — Paris Peace Conference

Opened 18 January 1919; dominated by the "Big Four" — Woodrow Wilson (USA), David Lloyd George (UK), Georges Clemenceau (France), Vittorio Orlando (Italy).

11.5 Versailles & its discontents

• Article 231 ("War Guilt Clause") blamed Germany for the war.
• Reparations ~£6.6 billion (1921).
• Territorial losses: Alsace-Lorraine to France; Eupen-Malmedy to Belgium; Saar under League for 15 years; Polish Corridor; Danzig free city; all overseas colonies as League "mandates"; demilitarised Rhineland; army capped at 100,000.
• League of Nations — Wilson's brainchild; founded 10 January 1920; US Senate never ratified (Lodge Reservations).
• Wilson's Fourteen Points (8 January 1918) — including self-determination; betrayed in practice (especially for colonised peoples).
• J.M. Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) — early devastating critique; framework for later interpretation.

12. The Interwar Years — Depression, Fascism, Nazism

12.1 The Great Depression — 1929 onwards

• "Black Thursday" / "Black Tuesday" — Wall Street crashes 24 / 29 October 1929; the New York Stock Exchange loses 89% of its value by July 1932.
• US unemployment peaks at 24.9% (1933); German at ~30%.
• Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (17 June 1930) — protectionism deepens collapse.
• Britain off the gold standard — 21 September 1931; cascade across Europe.
• New Deal — Franklin D. Roosevelt sworn in 4 March 1933; First New Deal (1933-34): Emergency Banking Act, NRA, AAA, TVA, CCC, FDIC, SEC. Second New Deal (1935): Social Security Act (14 August 1935), Wagner Act, WPA.
• John Maynard Keynes — The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) — intellectual foundations for state-led demand management.

12.2 Italian Fascism

• Benito Mussolini founded the Fasci di Combattimento, Milan, 23 March 1919; renamed PNF in 1921.
• March on Rome — 28 October 1922; King Victor Emmanuel III invites Mussolini as PM, 30 October 1922.
• Matteotti murder (10 June 1924) → Aventine Secession → dictatorship from 3 January 1925.
• Lateran Pacts with Pius XI — 11 February 1929 — resolves Roman Question; recognises Vatican City as sovereign state.
• Corporatist state; aggression — Ethiopia (3 October 1935), Spain (1936-39), Albania (April 1939); Rome-Berlin Axis (1 November 1936); Pact of Steel (22 May 1939).

12.3 German Nazism

• Weimar Republic proclaimed 9 November 1918; Constitution 11 August 1919; born in defeat and instability.
• Hyperinflation 1923 — 1 USD = 4.2 trillion marks (November 1923); ended by Rentenmark + Dawes Plan (1924) + Young Plan (1929).
• Adolf Hitler (b. 20 April 1889 Braunau am Inn) — joined DAP 1919 (became NSDAP 1920); Beer Hall Putsch Munich 8-9 November 1923 (failed); imprisoned, wrote Mein Kampf.
• NSDAP wins 37.3% in July 1932 elections; Hitler appointed Chancellor 30 January 1933.
• Reichstag Fire 27 February 1933 → Reichstag Fire Decree → suspension of civil liberties.
• Enabling Act 24 March 1933 → dictatorial powers.
• Night of the Long Knives 30 June 1934 — Röhm/SA purged; SS rises.
• Hindenburg dies 2 August 1934; Hitler becomes Führer.
• Nuremberg Laws 15 September 1935 — Reich Citizenship Law & Blood Protection Law — strip Jews of citizenship and rights.
• Anschluss with Austria 12 March 1938; Sudetenland crisis → Munich Agreement 30 September 1938 (Chamberlain's "peace for our time"); Kristallnacht 9-10 November 1938; occupation of Czechoslovakia 15 March 1939.
• Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact 23 August 1939 (with secret protocol partitioning Poland).

12.4 The collapse of the League of Nations

Manchurian Incident (18 September 1931) → Lytton Report 1932 → Japan walks out 27 March 1933. Italy's Ethiopian invasion (1935) → sanctions fail. Re-militarisation of Rhineland (7 March 1936). German-Italian intervention in Spanish Civil War (1936-39). The League's authority was effectively dead by 1936.

13. World War II & the Holocaust (1939–1945)

13.1 Outbreak & European theatre

• 1 September 1939 — Germany invades Poland; 3 September 1939 — Britain & France declare war.
• Soviet invasion of eastern Poland 17 September 1939; Poland partitioned per secret protocol.
• "Phoney War" Sep 1939 – Apr 1940; Blitzkrieg in the West — Denmark & Norway April 1940; Low Countries & France May 1940; Dunkirk evacuation 26 May – 4 June 1940; France surrenders 22 June 1940 (Vichy regime under Pétain).
• Battle of Britain 10 July – 31 October 1940 — first major German setback; Churchill's "finest hour".
• Operation Barbarossa — 22 June 1941 — German invasion of USSR; ~3 million troops; Wehrmacht halted at Moscow (Dec 1941); Stalingrad (23 Aug 1942 – 2 Feb 1943) is the turning point on the Eastern Front; Kursk (Jul-Aug 1943) — largest tank battle in history.
• D-Day Normandy landings 6 June 1944 — Eisenhower commanding; Paris liberated 25 August 1944; Battle of the Bulge Dec 1944 – Jan 1945.
• Hitler suicide 30 April 1945, Berlin bunker; Germany surrenders 7-8 May 1945 (VE Day).

13.2 Pacific theatre

• Japan invades Manchuria 1931, China 1937 (Marco Polo Bridge incident 7 July 1937); Nanjing Massacre Dec 1937-Jan 1938.
• Pearl Harbor — 7 December 1941 — US enters war; Hitler declares war on US 11 December.
• Coral Sea May 1942; Midway 4-7 June 1942 — Pacific turning point.
• Island-hopping: Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa.
• Atomic bombs — Hiroshima (Little Boy) 6 August 1945; Nagasaki (Fat Man) 9 August 1945. Approved by Truman; Manhattan Project led by J. Robert Oppenheimer.
• Japan surrenders 15 August 1945 (Emperor Hirohito's radio address); formal surrender on USS Missouri, Tokyo Bay, 2 September 1945 (VJ Day).

13.3 The Holocaust (Shoah)

• Wannsee Conference 20 January 1942 — Heydrich, Eichmann; "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" codified.
• Death camps — Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek. Industrial mass murder.
• ~6 million Jews killed (~2/3 of European Jewry); plus 200,000 Roma/Sinti; 250,000+ disabled persons; LGBT, Slavs, political prisoners — total ~11 million.
• Nuremberg Trials 20 November 1945 – 1 October 1946 — 22 leading Nazis tried; "crimes against humanity" defined as new category of international law.

13.4 Wartime conferences

WWII casualties: ~70-85 million dead (~3% of world population) — the deadliest conflict in human history.

14. The UN, Bretton Woods & the Post-War Order

14.1 The United Nations

• UN Charter signed at San Francisco, 26 June 1945 by 50 nations; came into force 24 October 1945 (UN Day).
• India a founding member (it had signed the Atlantic Charter declaration on 1 January 1942, though still under British rule).
• Principal organs (Article 7): General Assembly, Security Council (5 permanent: USA, USSR/Russia, UK, France, China — with veto + 10 elected), Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), Trusteeship Council (suspended 1994), International Court of Justice (The Hague), Secretariat (Trygve Lie first Sec-Gen, 2 February 1946).
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights — adopted by UNGA, Palais de Chaillot, Paris, 10 December 1948; principally drafted by Eleanor Roosevelt's committee with René Cassin, Charles Malik, P.C. Chang, Hansa Mehta (who replaced "all men are born free" with "all human beings").
• Genocide Convention — 9 December 1948 (Raphael Lemkin); Refugee Convention 28 July 1951; ICCPR & ICESCR 16 December 1966; CEDAW 18 December 1979; CRC 20 November 1989.
• Peacekeeping — first UN Emergency Force after Suez (UNEF I, November 1956); India has been one of the largest troop contributors throughout.

14.2 Bretton Woods system

• Conference at Mount Washington Hotel, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, 1-22 July 1944; 44 nations; John Maynard Keynes (UK) vs. Harry Dexter White (US) — White's plan prevailed.
• Established IMF (currency stability, BoP support) and IBRD/World Bank (reconstruction loans); pegged exchange rates to gold-dollar (1 oz gold = $35).
• GATT — General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, signed Geneva 30 October 1947; came into force 1 January 1948; eight rounds (Uruguay Round 1986-94 produced the WTO, 1 January 1995).
• Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program) — announced 5 June 1947 (George Marshall, Harvard); $13 billion to 16 European countries 1948-52; Eastern bloc declined.
• End of Bretton Woods convertibility — "Nixon Shock", 15 August 1971 — US suspends gold convertibility; floating exchange rates from 1973.

14.3 NATO and Warsaw Pact

• North Atlantic Treaty — signed Washington, 4 April 1949; 12 founding members; Article 5 collective defence; invoked only once (after 9/11).
• Warsaw Treaty Organization — signed 14 May 1955; 8 communist states; formal response to West Germany's NATO accession (9 May 1955); dissolved 1 July 1991.
• Council of Europe 5 May 1949; European Coal and Steel Community 18 April 1951 (Treaty of Paris, Schuman Declaration 9 May 1950); Treaty of Rome — EEC & Euratom 25 March 1957; EU/Maastricht Treaty 7 February 1992.

15. Decolonisation in Asia & Africa (1945–1990)

15.1 Why decolonisation accelerated after 1945

• European exhaustion — Britain bankrupt, France humiliated, Netherlands occupied, Belgium in collapse.
• Two anti-imperial superpowers — USA (Wilsonian self-determination + market access) and USSR (Leninist anti-imperialism).
• UN Charter Article 1(2) — self-determination; UN Trusteeship System; UNGA Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (Resolution 1514) — 14 December 1960.
• Mobilised colonial troops: 2.5 million Indians, 1 million Africans served in WWII; returned with arms, organisation, and the experience of equality.
• Nationalist parties already in place from the interwar years: Congress (1885), Wafd in Egypt (1919), CPP in Ghana, KANU in Kenya, FLN in Algeria, Viet Minh.

15.2 The waves

15.3 The Non-Aligned Movement & the Bandung moment

• Asian Relations Conference — Delhi, 23 March – 2 April 1947 (Nehru-led).
• Bandung Conference — 18-24 April 1955 — 29 Asian and African states; "Ten Principles of Bandung" (extension of Panchsheel); attended by Nehru, Zhou Enlai, Sukarno, Nasser, Tito (observer).
• NAM founded Belgrade Summit 1-6 September 1961; by 1990s, 100+ members.
• Group of 77 — UN, 15 June 1964; demand for NIEO (New International Economic Order), 1 May 1974.

16. The Cold War — Crises & Détente

16.1 Origins

• Iron Curtain speech — Winston Churchill, Fulton Missouri, 5 March 1946 — "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."
• Truman Doctrine 12 March 1947 — containment; aid to Greece-Turkey.
• Marshall Plan 5 June 1947.
• Kennan's "Long Telegram" 22 February 1946 → "X article" in Foreign Affairs July 1947 — containment doctrine.
• Berlin Blockade & Airlift 24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949.
• Two Germanys 1949; NATO 1949 / Warsaw Pact 1955.

16.2 The hot wars and crises

16.3 Détente and arms control

• Partial Test Ban Treaty 5 August 1963; NPT opened for signature 1 July 1968, in force 5 March 1970 (India did not sign).
• SALT I 26 May 1972 (Nixon-Brezhnev, Moscow) + ABM Treaty; SALT II 18 June 1979 (never ratified); INF Treaty 8 December 1987 (Reagan-Gorbachev, Washington); START I 31 July 1991.
• CSCE Helsinki Accords 1 August 1975 — 35 states; "Basket III" human rights provisions used by Eastern bloc dissidents.
• "Second Cold War" 1979-85 (Afghanistan, Pershing/SS-20, Reagan SDI "Star Wars" 23 March 1983).

17. The Chinese Revolution & Communism in Asia

17.1 From Qing to Republic

• Wuchang Uprising 10 October 1911 → Xinhai Revolution → end of Qing dynasty (12 February 1912).
• Republic of China — Sun Yat-sen first provisional president 1 January 1912; Yuan Shikai's dictatorship (d. 6 June 1916); warlord era 1916-28.
• May Fourth Movement — Beijing, 4 May 1919 — student protests against Versailles transfer of Shandong to Japan; cultural-political awakening.
• Chinese Communist Party founded — Shanghai, 23 July 1921.
• First United Front KMT-CCP (1923-27); Shanghai Massacre 12 April 1927 (Chiang Kai-shek purges Communists).
• Long March — October 1934 – October 1935; ~9,000 km from Jiangxi to Yan'an; Mao consolidates leadership at Zunyi Conference January 1935.
• Second Sino-Japanese War 1937-45; Civil War resumed 1946-49.

17.2 People's Republic and after

• Mao Zedong proclaims the People's Republic of China — Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1 October 1949; Chiang Kai-shek retreats to Taiwan.
• Sino-Indian Friendship Treaty / Panchsheel 29 April 1954.
• Great Leap Forward 1958-62 — communisation, backyard furnaces; famine death toll ~30-45 million.
• Sino-Soviet split 1956-66 (Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation).
• Cultural Revolution 1966-76 — Red Guards; persecution of intellectuals; Lin Biao plot 1971; Mao dies 9 September 1976.
• Deng Xiaoping's reforms from 18 December 1978 (Third Plenum of 11th CC) — "Reform and Opening Up"; Four Modernisations; Shenzhen SEZ 1980.
• Tiananmen Square massacre — 3-4 June 1989 — crackdown on student-led democracy movement.
• For India, the 1962 War (Modern Topic 11) and the post-1991 normalisation are the key bilateral threads.

17.3 Communism elsewhere in Asia

• North Korea under Kim Il-sung — DPRK proclaimed 9 September 1948; Kim dynasty continues.
• North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh; reunified after fall of Saigon 30 April 1975.
• Cambodia — Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot, 17 April 1975 – 7 January 1979; ~1.5-2 million dead; ended by Vietnamese invasion.
• Laos — Pathet Lao take over 2 December 1975.

18. The Middle East — Israel-Palestine, Oil & Iran

18.1 From Sykes-Picot to Israel

• Sykes-Picot Agreement — secret Anglo-French partition of Ottoman lands, 16 May 1916.
• Balfour Declaration — 2 November 1917 — British support for "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine.
• British Mandate of Palestine — 24 July 1922 – 14 May 1948.
• Arab Revolt 1936-39; Jewish migration accelerates after Nazism; UN Partition Plan Resolution 181, 29 November 1947.
• Declaration of the State of Israel — Tel Aviv, 14 May 1948 (David Ben-Gurion).
• 1948 Arab-Israeli War (Israeli War of Independence / Nakba) — ~7.5 lakh Palestinians displaced.

18.2 The Arab-Israeli wars

18.3 Oil & OPEC

• OPEC founded at Baghdad, 14 September 1960 — Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Venezuela.
• 1973 oil embargo after Yom Kippur — prices quadrupled; ended the post-war boom; triggered stagflation in the West.
• 1979 second oil shock — Iranian Revolution.

18.4 Iranian Revolution and after

• Mossadegh nationalisation of AIOC 1951; CIA-MI6 coup (Operation Ajax) 19 August 1953 restores Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
• White Revolution 1963; growing opposition led by Ayatollah Khomeini (exiled to Najaf, then Paris).
• Iranian Revolution — Shah leaves 16 January 1979; Khomeini returns from Paris 1 February 1979; Islamic Republic proclaimed 1 April 1979.
• US Embassy hostage crisis 4 November 1979 – 20 January 1981 (444 days).
• Iran-Iraq War 22 September 1980 – 20 August 1988 — ~1 million dead.
• First Gulf War — Iraq invades Kuwait 2 August 1990 → US-led Operation Desert Storm 17 January – 28 February 1991.

19. End of the Cold War & Collapse of the USSR (1989–1991)

19.1 The Gorbachev moment

• Mikhail Gorbachev — General Secretary of CPSU, 11 March 1985 (succeeded Konstantin Chernenko); aged 54, youngest in decades.
• Twin pillars — perestroika (restructuring of the economy) and glasnost (openness, free expression); announced at the 27th Party Congress, February 1986.
• Chernobyl disaster 26 April 1986 — corroded faith in the Soviet system.
• INF Treaty 8 December 1987 (Washington); Reykjavík summit October 1986 was its precursor.
• "Sinatra Doctrine" (October 1989, Gennadi Gerasimov) — Eastern European countries free to choose their own paths; reversal of Brezhnev Doctrine.

19.2 The annus mirabilis of 1989

• Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan completed 15 February 1989.
• Poland — Round Table Talks Feb-Apr 1989; semi-free elections 4 June 1989 — Solidarity sweep; Tadeusz Mazowiecki PM 24 August 1989 (first non-communist PM in Eastern Europe since 1948).
• Hungary opens border with Austria 2 May 1989; "Pan-European Picnic" 19 August 1989.
• East Germany — Monday demonstrations in Leipzig from September; Erich Honecker resigns 18 October; Berlin Wall falls 9 November 1989.
• Czechoslovakia — Velvet Revolution 17 November – 29 December 1989; Václav Havel President.
• Romania — violent overthrow; Nicolae Ceaușescu and wife executed 25 December 1989.
• Bulgaria — Todor Zhivkov ousted 10 November 1989.

19.3 German reunification & Soviet collapse

• Two-plus-Four Treaty 12 September 1990; German reunification 3 October 1990.
• Baltic states declare independence — Lithuania 11 March 1990; Estonia and Latvia 20-21 August 1991.
• August Coup against Gorbachev 19-21 August 1991 — failed; Yeltsin's defiance from atop a tank made him the era's hero.
• Belovezha Accords 8 December 1991 (Yeltsin-Kravchuk-Shushkevich) — dissolution of USSR.
• Alma-Ata Protocol 21 December 1991 — Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
• Gorbachev resigns 25 December 1991; Soviet flag lowered over the Kremlin; USSR formally dissolves 26 December 1991.

19.4 Significance for India

The collapse of the USSR removed India's most reliable Cold War partner and accelerated the 1991 economic reforms (see Modern Topic 13) and the foreign-policy shift from non-alignment to multi-alignment (see Modern Topic 14 & 15). Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" thesis (1989) — proved short-lived.

20. Political Ideologies — Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism