The World in 1900: Empires, Questions and Evidence

A new century

Imagine opening a newspaper in 1900. The headlines are about empires. Foreign armies are marching into Beijing to end the Boxer Uprising. Britain is fighting the South African War against the Boer republics. The United States has just taken the Philippines from Spain and is fighting Filipino independence forces. In Paris, the World's Fair shows off electric lights, moving sidewalks and films.

If you had been born that year, you could have lived to see two world wars, the end of most of those empires, people walking on the Moon and the start of the internet. This unit is the story of that century and the years since. It is the last unit of CHY4U, so it builds on everything you learned in The World, 1789–1900: industrialization, nationalism and imperialism are the forces that shaped 1900.

The world in 1900: an age of empire

• Europe was at the height of its power. Britain ruled the largest empire; by about 1920 it covered roughly a quarter of the world's land. France, Germany, Russia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal and Italy also held colonies.
• Africa had been divided among European powers after the Berlin Conference (1884–1885). Only Ethiopia, which defeated Italy at Adwa in 1896, and Liberia remained independent.
• Asia: Britain ruled India. France ruled Indochina. The Dutch ruled what is now Indonesia. Qing China was still independent but had been forced to grant foreign powers ports, trading rights and "spheres of influence". Japan had industrialized quickly, defeated China in 1894–1895 and took Taiwan.
• The Americas: most countries were independent, but many economies depended on exporting raw materials to Europe and the U.S. Mexico was ruled by Porfirio Díaz, whose long rule would end in revolution in 1910.
• Indigenous peoples on every continent lived under these states and empires. They were not passive: they negotiated, resisted, and kept their languages, laws and cultures alive, a theme you will follow to the end of this unit.

The big forces of the twentieth century

Historians often organize the century since 1900 around a few big forces:

1. Total war: two world wars that mobilized whole societies.
2. Ideologies: liberal democracy, communism and fascism competed to shape the world.
3. Decolonization: colonized peoples in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific won independence, mostly between 1945 and 1975.
4. The Cold War: a rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, about 1945 to 1991.
5. Human rights: new laws and movements for equality, from the United Nations to civil rights, women's rights and Indigenous rights.
6. Globalization and technology: faster travel and communication, world trade, and new problems such as climate change and pandemics.

The curriculum groups these into three overall expectations. You will see the codes on every lesson.

How historians investigate: the inquiry process

In CHY4U you do not just learn what happened. You learn to investigate like a historian. That is the job of strand A.

1. Formulate questions. Good questions guide good research. Historians use different kinds:

• Factual: What happened during the Boxer Uprising?
• Comparative: How was Japan's response to Western pressure different from China's?
• Causal: Why did the Qing government support the Boxers in 1900?
• Evaluative: How significant was the Boxer Uprising in the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912?

Evaluative questions are the hardest and the most useful, because they need a judgement backed by evidence.

2. Gather and organize evidence. A primary source was created at the time by someone involved (a letter, photograph, treaty, diary, film, government record). A secondary source interprets the past later (a textbook, a historian's book, a documentary). You need both. Organize your notes with a chart, timeline or cause-and-consequence web.

3. Interpret and analyse. Ask who made the source, when, why and for whom. What does it show, and what does it leave out?

4. Evaluate and draw conclusions. Weigh the evidence and reach a judgement you can defend.

5. Communicate and cite. Present your argument in a form that suits your audience (essay, presentation, podcast, infographic), and document every source.

Citing your sources

University history departments in Canada usually ask for Chicago style with footnotes and a bibliography. Some courses accept MLA or APA. Whatever style you use, be consistent and give enough information for a reader to find the source.

A Chicago bibliography entry for a book looks like this:

• Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991. London: Michael Joseph, 1994.

For a website, add the title of the page, the organization, the date published or accessed, and the URL. For an interview you did yourself, give the person's name, "interview by the author", the place and the date.