I.
THE RESHAPING OF EUROPEAN SOCIETIES
A. Population Growth, Emigration, and Urbanization
1. Because of the rise in economic prosperity, better public health, and new crops, the
mortality rate fell in Europe, and the population grew; Europe’s population grew from
100 million in 1650 to 190 million in 1800 and 420 million in 1900.
2. Population growth and poverty spurred migration within Europe and emigration
overseas.
3. Emmigration cut Ireland’s population in half between 1841 and 1922; Eastern European
Jews migrated to Western Europe and the Americas to escape the pogroms of the
Russian government
4. Rapidly expanding cities lacked social services such as sanitation, street cleaning, and
water distribution.
5. Western European rural life also changed; new agricultural technology and techniques
increased yields with less labor, causing agricultural workers to search for work in the
cities; feudal traditions remained influential in Eastern Europe, especially Russia and
Poland, where the landed gentry maintained control over peasants.
6. Emigration to the New World was a major demographic shift from 1841 to 1914.
B. Social Life, Families, and Gender Relations
1. After 1870, newspapers, organized sports leagues, vacation travel, and other activities
connected people within and between nations.
2. Industrialization reshaped sexual attitudes, and the poor were burdened with negative
stereotypes.
3. People married at a later age, and more families were nuclear in structure.
4. Women and children were also drawn into the industrial economy, and their pay was far
less than adult males.
5. In the late nineteenth century one also observes the appearance of less conventional
living arrangements such as the same-sex and unwed cohabitation.
6. The Industrial Revolution put men and women into separate work worlds, lowering
women’s status by increasing their dependence on men; middle-class women lost their
roles as direct producers, many becoming housewives.
7. In the later 1800s European women gained more legal rights and economic opportunities.
8. Feminism, a philosophy promoting equality between men and women, emerged in the
nineteenth century; suffragettes demanded voting rights.
C. Thought, Religion, and Culture
1. Industrial, political, and social changes influenced European philosophy, which led to a
critique of Enlightenment and pure Reason.
2. While Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) doubted that a perfect society was possible, Friedrich
Nietzsche rejected the idea of progress and argued that with no absolute truth, absolute
good and evil cannot exist.
3. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, there was a religious revival among evangelical
Christians, which heavily emphasized emotion, favored missionary activity, and
condemned sinful behavior.
4. John Wesley (1703-1791) founded the Methodist movement.
5. Catholics and Protestants became more tolerant towards each other; these faiths also
attempted to strengthen their positions, but the Greek Orthodox Church fragmented into
national churches in Greece, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria.
6. Romanticism, an artistic movement that questioned Enlightenment values, influenced
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827) to
compose numerous classical symphonies, operas, and concertos.
7. Writers and artists embraced realism in the nineteenth century, portraying a grimy
industrial world filled with uncertainty and conflict.
8.
II.
In the late 1800s, a new intellectual movement— Modernism—became fashionable,
celebrating progress and the future.
9. Impressionism, which emphasized immediate impressions and expressed them in
changing light and color, arose in France.
D. Science and Technology
1. The Modern Era was accompanied by spectacular achievements in science and
technology.
2. Charles Darwin (1809-1882), a British naturalist, offered a theory of evolution
emphasizing natural selection of species, which suggested that organisms have evolved
over time.
3. Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955) theory of relativity established the foundations of modern
physics in the early 1900s.
4. Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) invented wireless telegraphy, and Karl Benz and
Gottlieb Daimler invented the first gasoline-powered vehicle in the 1880s.
The Rise of the United States
A.
The Early Republic and American Society
1. The newly organized United States had a weak government and was surrounded by
hostile neighbors in British Canada and Spanish America, still resentful over the
territorial losses suffered during the 1700s.
2. American ultimately forged a distinctive representative democracy while constructing an
economic framework to preserve independence and encourage free enterprise.
3. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights established a relatively powerful central
government within a federal system recognizing member states’ lawmaking powers.
4. The founders made tyranny difficult by separating powers into executive, legislative, and
judiciary branches.
5. Many founders insisted that economic independence was necessary to safeguard political
independence and preferred self-reliance and protectionism, using trade barriers to shield
American industries from foreign competition.
6. Trade issues and border conflicts between the United States and Britain resulted in the
War of 1812, in which the British captured Washington, the capital, burned the White
House, and repulsed an U.S. invasion of Canada; after some U.S. victories, the war
ended in a negotiated peace.
7. The new society was described as being committed to democracy, individualism, and the
mixing of social ranks, but the nation was divided on the issue of slavery.
8. The abolitionists Sojourner Truth (ca.1797-1883) and Frederick Douglas (1818-1895),
both former slaves, eloquently advocated the elimination of slavery, gender equality, and
women’s suffrage.
9. American society did not often follow rigid religious doctrines and dogmas and was
largely tolerant of diverse ideas, though Puritan and Calvinist values remained
influential.
B. Manifest Destiny and Expansion
1. Gradually, the new nation expanded westward, providing a counterpart to European
imperialism in Asia and Africa.
2. Americans embraced Manifest Destiny, the conviction that their country’s unmatched
institutions and culture entitled them to expand over the continent, a religious sanction
for U.S. nationalism and territorial expansion.
3. By 1913, the United States had grown to forty-eight states, with many western territories
acquired at the expense of Mexicans, Spaniards, and Native Americans.
4. In 1823, President Monroe issued a unilateral statement warning against European
interference in the New World, which became the Monroe Doctrine, a protectionist
policy that forged complex links between the United States and Latin America.
5.
C.
D.
E.
During the nineteenth century, the United States built an informal empire based on
extending U.S. power through financial controls, trade, and military operations.
The Civil War, Abolition, and Industrialization
1. From 1861 to 1865 the United States went through a civil war, which transformed its
society.
2. The victory of the Northern states ended slavery and destroyed much of the Southern
monocultural economy.
3. In spite of their emancipation, African Americans suffered from segregation, racism,
restrictive laws, and barriers to voting and were relegated to the bottom of the economic
ladder.
4. Native Americans also suffered as the result of the European-American expansion into
their territories; defeated and impoverished, Indians were put on government-controlled
reservations.
5. An increase of industrial development following the Civil War vaulted the United States
to the lead among industrialized nations by 1894.
6. Technological innovations such as electric power, adding machines, telephones and
telegraphs increased business productivity.
7. The Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1869, Henry Ford’s (1863-1947) motor
company, founded in 1903, and Orville and Wilbur Wright’s achievement of powered
flight, also in 1903, meant better means of transportation and made Americans more
mobile.
8. Industrialization led to monopoly capitalism, which meant the accumulation of great
wealth in the hands of a very few people.
9. Industrialization also created new economic classes of workers, who often lived and
worked in harsh and dangerous conditions.
Social Change, Thought, and Culture
1. From 1870 to 1916, at least 25 million Europeans immigrated to the United States.
2. With the encouragement of the federal government, many families moved to the Midwest
to settle as farmers.
3. Since factories produced more goods than Americans could consume, by the 1890s
economic depression and labor conflicts led to working-class radicalism.
4. A number of popular movements, fought for democratic rights, including the radical
Industrial Workers of the World (“Wobblies”) of the early 1900s.
5. The struggle for civil rights was a major issue for women in the United States, and the
Suffragettes engaged in decades of marching, publicizing their cause, and lobbying male
politicians before they convinced Congress to approve women’s right to vote in 1920.
6. In the nineteenth century a distinct American literary tradition was formed and was
headed by writers such Walt Whitman (1819-1892) and “Mark Twain” (Samuel
Clemens, 1835-1910).
7. In philosophy, John Dewey and William James argued for pragmatism, arguing that
ideas had little value unless they increased our concrete knowledge of reality.
8. The blending of black and white traditions produced unique types of music led to the
creation of music such a blues and jazz, both forms indigenous to the United States.
American Capitalism and Empire
1. Industrial capitalism fostered imperialism and warfare; repeated economic depressions
from the 1870s through the 1890s spurred demand for foreign markets.
2. Commercial capitalism in the United States also sought open foreign markets for the
goods manufactured in the country.
3. The search for markets led to U.S. military interventions in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.
4. The Hawaiian Islands were annexed by the United States in 1898.
The Spanish-American War (1898-1902) was fought over Spain’s colonies in Latin
America and the Pacific, unleashing nationalist fervor in the United States.
6. Colonization of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and economic and political
domination over nominally independent Cuba transformed the United States’ informal
empire into a territorial empire.
III. LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN IN THE GLOBAL SYSTEM
A. New Latin American Nations
1. The end of the Spanish rule resulted in the creation of a number of politically unstable
Latin American countries of various sizes and resources.
2. Most of the new countries were undemocratic and ruled by the elites who shared little
with the masses; political instability fostered military dictatorships.
3. In many countries, military strongmen, known as caudillos, and hired horsemen and
fighters known as gauchos, organized militias to protect the interests of the ruling
classes.
4. Liberals favored federalism, free trade, and the separation of Church and State, and they
opposed the Catholic Church’s institutional power; conservatives sought centralization,
trade protectionism, and the maintenance of Church power.
5. Brazil was ruled by a monarchy until 1889, when the military replaced it with a republic
with highly restricted suffrage.
6. Under General Santa Anna (1797-1876), Mexico lost half of its territory to the United
States in the Mexican War (1846-1848).
7. A liberal president, Benito Juarez (1806-1872), defeated conservative forces and began a
series of reforms in the country, leading to a short-lived occupation by French forces.
8. In 1876, Mexico came under the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz (1830-1915).
9. Diaz brought about stability and economic progress, but foreign business interests and
investors control much of Mexico’s economy; civil war and the Mexican Revolution of
1910–1920 brought an end to Diaz’s dictatorship.
10. In Cuba, the writings of Jose Marti (1853-1895) inspired an independence movement in
1895, and after U.S. intervention, the country fell into the American sphere of influence.
B. Latin American Economic and Social Change
1. The pursuit of free trade by the Latin American countries led to their concentration on
exports of raw materials and agricultural products, mainly to the United States.
2. Attempts to industrialize Brazil, Columbia, and Mexico failed because of foreign
competition from European imports.
3. Elite families along with foreign corporations owned most usable land, creating political
unrest in the twentieth century.
4. By 1854 slavery was abolished in most of Latin America, though emancipation did not
improve economic conditions dramatically.
5. Between 1850 and 1900, the population of Latin America doubled, reaching 60 million,
largely because of European immigration.
6. The social structure of Latin America remained conservative with the creole elites
dominating the political system.
7. Brazil developed a more tolerant society, but blacks, mulattos, and Indians suffered from
racism and lack of economic opportunity.
C. Latin American and Caribbean Cultures
1. Latin American intellectuals and artists created their own unique cultures.
2. Novelists focused on social themes, such as the lives of the poor, and modernism
(modernism) flourished from 1880 to World War I as Latin America’s most important
literary innovation.
3. A unique artistic development in Argentina was a sensuous dance called the tango, which
also became popular in Europe, while freed slaves in Brazil invented the samba.
5.
4.
Among Caribbean peoples, a new style of song called calypso appeared, with lyrics that
dealt with everyday life and struggles.
D. The United States in Latin America
1. American economics, military force, and influence touched many Latin American
countries, which resulted in dislike and suspicion of the United States.
2. The construction of the Panama Canal and the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government
in 1912 deeply involved the United States in Latin American affairs.
3. The Panama Canal, 51 miles long and crossing a 10-mile-wide zone leased by Panama to
the U.S. in perpetuity, allowed ships to sail between the Atlantic and Pacific, cutting
down expensive shipping routes around South America; the canal was one of the great
engineering feats in technology and construction.
IV. NEW SOCIETIES IN CANADA AND THE PACIFIC BASIN
A. Making a Canadian Nation
1. The British defeat of the French in Canada in 1763 led to an uneasy situation in which
French colonists resisted English domination and attempts at assimilation, though by
1774 the British had granted official recognition to Catholicism and French civil law in
Quebec.
2. Americans were afraid that the Canadian government might support the Native
Americans who resisted American expansion in the Ohio region.
3. The War of 1812 ended U.S. attempts to expand northward and fostered a separate
Canadian identity.
4. Canadians favored remaining a part of the British Empire rather than becoming fully
independent, fearing U.S. power.
5. The westward expansion of the Canadians created much resentment among the Native
Americans and the French-speaking Metis of mixed descent.
6. By 1905, Canada included all the present territory of Canada except Newfoundland.
7. Gold strikes in the northwest and the promise of free land attracted many immigrants to
Canada in the second half of the nineteenth century.
8. By 1911, Canadians controlled their own foreign affairs and diplomacy, while
maintaining the British monarch as symbolic head of state.
B. Exploration and Colonization of the Pacific Islands
1. By the seventeenth century, the Spaniards had colonized Guam, and the British and
French began to explore the Pacific Ocean Basin by the mid-1700s.
2. In the eighteenth century, the Englishman, Captain James Cook (1728-1779) reached
Tahiti.
3. The Russians established settlements in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, hunting seals
and sea otters to near-extinction for their fur.
4. The path to colonization was paved by traders and missionaries who were active in the
nineteenth century.
C. The Rise of Australia and New Zealand
1. British settlements in Australia began in 1788, when the first convicts were sent there.
2. The Aborigines, who had lived in Australia for thousands of years, suffered greatly at the
hands of the British.
3. The discovery of gold in southeastern Australia in 1851 attracted Asian miners who were
discriminated against by European settlers.
4. By 1890 Australia had become a self-governing state; in 1901, the Commonwealth of
Australia was formed.
5. New Zealand was also colonized by British settlers, whose numbers increased in time, at
the expense of the Polynesian Maori people.
6.
In New Zealand, too, the discovery of gold led to more immigration by the Europeans,
which eventually gave it a unique identity; New Zealand gained self-government as a
British dominion in 1907.