The Modern History Portal
The modern era or the modern period, also known as modern history or modern times, is the period of human history that follows the Middle Ages from about 1500 AD and continues into the present. It is a form of periodization that is applied primarily to European and Western history. From about the 1990s, it has been more common to referred to an early modern period from about 1500 to 1800 with "modern period" often reserved for events from about 1800 until today. The time from the end of World War II (1945) can also be described as being part of contemporary history.
The modern period saw wide-ranging intellectual, political and economic change, with European influence spreading around the Earth. It began with the Age of Discovery (including European colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade) and the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation, proceeding with absolutism and the Age of Enlightenment. The early modern period ended with Age of Revolutions and the French Revolution, later spreading to other countries, partly by the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The modern period involved the spread of the Industrial Revolution across the world, the transition to nationalism towards the rules-based international order, continuing to the present 21st century.
The modern period has been a period of significant development in the fields of science, politics, warfare, and technology. It has also been an Age of Discovery and globalization. During this time, the European powers and later their colonies, began a political, economic, and cultural colonization of the rest of the world. (Full article...)
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Image 1
Flag of the Arab Kingdom of Syria (1920)
The modern history of Syria begins with the termination of Ottoman control of Syria by French forces and the establishment of the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration during World War I. The short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria emerged in 1920, which was however soon committed under the French Mandate, which produced the short-lived autonomous State of Aleppo, State of Damascus (later State of Syria), Alawite State and Jabal al-Druze (state); the autonomies were transformed into the Mandatory Syrian Republic in 1930. Syrian Republic gained independence in April 1946. The Republic took part in the Arab-Israeli War and remained in a state of political instability during the 1950s and 1960s.
The 8 March 1963 coup resulted in the installation of the National Council for the Revolutionary Command (NCRC), a group of military and civilian officials who assumed control of all executive and legislative authority. The takeover was engineered by members of the Ba'ath Party led by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. He was overthrown in early 1966 by Marxist-Leninist military dissidents of the party led by General Salah Jadid. Since the Arab Spring of 2011, Bashar al-Assad's government has been involved in the ongoing Syrian civil war. (Full article...) -
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Ireland was part of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1922. For almost all of this period, the island was governed by the UK Parliament in London through its Dublin Castle administration in Ireland. Ireland underwent considerable difficulties in the 19th century, especially the Great Famine of the 1840s which started a population decline that continued for almost a century. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a vigorous campaign for Irish Home Rule. While legislation enabling Irish Home Rule was eventually passed, militant and armed opposition from Irish unionists, particularly in Ulster, opposed it. Proclamation was shelved for the duration following the outbreak of World War I. By 1918, however, moderate Irish nationalism had been eclipsed by militant republican separatism. In 1919, war broke out between republican separatists and British Government forces. Subsequent negotiations between Sinn Féin, the major Irish party, and the UK government led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which resulted in five-sixths of the island seceding from the United Kingdom, becoming the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland), with only the six northeastern counties remaining within the United Kingdom. (Full article...) -
Image 3The history of Spain dates to contact between the pre-Roman peoples of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula made with the Greeks and Phoenicians. During Classical Antiquity, the peninsula was the site of multiple successive colonizations of Greeks, Carthaginians, and Romans. Native peoples of the peninsula, such as the Tartessos people, intermingled with the colonizers to create a uniquely Iberian culture. The Romans referred to the entire peninsula as Hispania, from which the name "Spain" originates. As was the rest of the Western Roman Empire, Spain was subject to the numerous invasions of Germanic tribes during the 4th and 5th centuries AD, resulting in the end of Roman rule and the establishment of Germanic kingdoms, marking the beginning of the Middle Ages in Spain.
Germanic control lasted about 200 years until the Umayyad conquest of Hispania began in 711. The region became known as Al-Andalus, and except for the small Kingdom of Asturias, the region remained under the control of Muslim-led states for much of the Early Middle Ages, a period known as the Islamic Golden Age. By the time of the High Middle Ages, Christians from the north gradually expanded their control over Iberia, a period known as the Reconquista. As they expanded southward, a number of Christian kingdoms were formed, including the Kingdom of Navarre, the Kingdom of León, the Kingdom of Castile, and the Kingdom of Aragon. They eventually consolidated into two roughly equivalent polities, the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon. The early modern period is generally dated from the union of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon in 1469.
The marriage and joint rule of Isabella I and Ferdinand II is historiographically considered the foundation of a unified Spain. The conquest of Granada, and the first voyage of Columbus, both in 1492, made that year a critical inflection point in Spanish history. The voyages of the various explorers and conquistadors of Spain during the subsequent decades helped establish a Spanish colonial empire which was among the largest ever. King Charles I established the Spanish Habsburg dynasty. Under his son Philip II the Spanish Golden Age flourished, the Spanish Empire reached its territorial and economic peak, and his palace at El Escorial became the center of artistic flourishing. However, Philip's rule also saw the calamitous destruction of the Spanish Armada, numerous state bankruptcies and the independence of the Northern Netherlands, which marked the beginning of the slow decline of Spanish influence in Europe. Spain's power was further tested by its participation in the Eighty Years' War, whereby it tried and failed to recapture the newly independent Dutch Republic, and the Thirty Years' War, which resulted in continued decline of Habsburg power in favor of the French Bourbon dynasty. Matters came to a head during the reign of Charles II of Spain, whose mental incapacity and inability to father children left the future of Spain in doubt. Upon his death, the War of the Spanish Succession broke out between the French Bourbons and the Austrian Habsburgs over the right to succeed Charles II. The Bourbons prevailed, resulting in the ascension of Philip V of Spain, who took Spain into the various wars to recapture the Spanish-controlled lands in Southern Italy recently lost. (Full article...) -
Image 4A History of the Modern World is a work initially published by the distinguished American historian at Princeton and Yale universities Robert Roswell Palmer in 1950. The work has since been extended by Joel Colton (from its second edition, 1956) and Lloyd S. Kramer (from its ninth edition, 2001), and currently counts 12 editions. First published in 1950, and translated into six languages, the book is used in more than 1,000 colleges and universities, as well as many high school advanced placement courses.
The second edition (1956), comprises two volumes, 20 main chapters and 110 sub-chapters. The author focuses on World History from a European perspective, and the newer editions also exists under the title "A History of Europe in the Modern World". (Full article...) -
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The Spanish Republic (Spanish: República Española), commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic (Spanish: Segunda República Española), was the form of democratic government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931 after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII. It was dissolved on 1 April 1939 after surrendering in the Spanish Civil War to the Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco.
After the proclamation of the Republic, a provisional government was established until December 1931, at which time the 1931 Constitution was approved. During this time and the subsequent two years of constitutional government, known as the Reformist Biennium, Manuel Azaña's executive initiated numerous reforms to what in their view would modernize the country. In 1932 religious orders were forbidden control of schools, while the government began a large-scale school-building project. A moderate agrarian reform was carried out. Home rule was granted to Catalonia, with a local parliament and a president of its own.
Soon, Azaña lost parliamentary support and President Alcalá-Zamora forced his resignation in September 1933. The subsequent 1933 election was won by the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA). However the President declined to invite its leader, Gil Robles, to form a government, fearing CEDA's monarchist sympathies. Instead, he invited the Radical Republican Party's Alejandro Lerroux to do so. CEDA was denied cabinet positions for nearly a year. In October 1934, CEDA was finally successful in forcing the acceptance of three ministries. The Socialists triggered an insurrection that they had been preparing for nine months. A general strike was called by the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in the name of the Alianza Obrera. The rebellion developed into a bloody revolutionary uprising, aiming to overthrow the republican government. Armed revolutionaries managed to take the whole province of Asturias, killing policemen, clerics, and businessmen and destroying religious buildings and part of the University of Oviedo. In the occupied areas, the rebels officially declared a proletarian revolution and abolished regular money. The rebellion was crushed by the Spanish Navy and the Spanish Republican Army, the latter using mainly Moorish colonial troops from Spanish Morocco. (Full article...) -
Image 6The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is a global military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks and is the most recent global conflict spanning multiple wars. Some researchers and political scientists have argued that it replaced the Cold War.
The main targets of the counterterrorist campaign are militant Islamist movements like Al-Qaeda, Taliban and their allies. Other major targets included the Ba'athist regime in Iraq, which was deposed in an invasion in 2003, and various militant factions that fought during the ensuing insurgency. After its territorial expansion in 2014, the Islamic State militia has also emerged as a key adversary of the United States. As for Al-Qaeda in its current status, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued an official statement on January 12, 2021, stating: “Al-Qaeda has a new base of operations: it is the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Al-Qaeda’s de facto leader, Saif al-Adel, is currently believed to be living in Iran. Between late 2023 and 2024, following the spillover of the Israel-Hamas war and the eventual Red Sea crisis, the Houthis have been re-designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The Houthi aggression in the Red Sea is alleged to mark the most serious threat to shipping and trade in decades.
The "war on terror" uses war as a metaphor to describe a variety of actions which fall outside the traditional definition of war. U.S. president George W. Bush first used the term "war on terrorism" on 16 September 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to Congress. Bush indicated the enemy of the war on terror as "a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them." The initial conflict was aimed at al-Qaeda, with the main theater in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a region that would later be referred to as "AfPak." The term "war on terror" was immediately criticized by individuals including Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and eventually more nuanced terms came to be used by the Bush administration to define the campaign. While "war on terror" was never used as a formal designation of U.S. operations, a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal was and is issued by the U.S. Armed Forces. However, the American military ceased issuing its National Defense Service Medal on 31 December 2022. (Full article...) -
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The New-York Tribune printed this map on 9 November 1919, of the armed conflicts in Central and Eastern Europe in 1919, one year after World War I had ended:- Baltic States War of Independence and Russian Civil War
- White Army of Yudenich
- North Russia intervention
- White Army of Kolchak: Siberia
- Denikin: White Army
- Petliura: Ukrainian directorate
- Polish–Soviet War
- Silesia tension between the Poles and Germans.
- Romanian occupation of Hungary
- Gabriele D'Annunzio seizes Fiume, creates the Italian Regency of Carnaro
- Promiscuous fighting in Albania
- Turkish War of Independence
In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period (or interbellum) lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II (WWII). It was relatively short, yet featured many social, political, military, and economic changes throughout the world. Petroleum-based energy production and associated mechanisation led to the prosperous Roaring Twenties, a time of social and economic mobility for the middle class. Automobiles, electric lighting, radio, and more became common among populations in the first world. The era's indulgences were followed by the Great Depression, an unprecedented worldwide economic downturn that severely damaged many of the world's largest economies.
Politically, the era coincided with the rise of communism, starting in Russia with the October Revolution and Russian Civil War, at the end of WWI, and ended with the rise of fascism, particularly in Germany and Italy. China was in the midst of a half-century of instability and the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party. The empires of Britain, France, and others faced challenges as imperialism was increasingly viewed negatively and independence movements emerged in many colonies; in Europe, after protracted low-level fighting most of Ireland became independent.
The Russian, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and German Empires were dismantled, with the Ottoman territories and German colonies redistributed among the Allies, chiefly Britain and France. The western parts of the Russian Empire, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland became independent nations in their own right, and Bessarabia (now Moldova and parts of Ukraine) chose to reunify with Romania. (Full article...) -
Image 8A Second Cold War, Cold War II, or the New Cold War has been said to describe heightened geopolitical tensions in the 21st century. The terms have been used to describe tense relations between the United States and China and between the United States and Russia—the successor state of the Soviet Union, which led the Eastern Bloc during the original Cold War.
The terms are sometimes used to describe tensions in multilateral relations. Some commentators have used them as a comparison to the original Cold War, while others have discouraged their use to refer to any ongoing tensions. (Full article...) -
Image 9
Europe by cartographer Abraham Ortelius in 1595
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD 500), the Middle Ages (AD 500–1500), and the modern era (since AD 1500).
The first early European modern humans appear in the fossil record about 48,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic era. Settled agriculture marked the Neolithic era, which spread slowly across Europe from southeast to the north and west. The later Neolithic period saw the introduction of early metallurgy and the use of copper-based tools and weapons, and the building of megalithic structures, as exemplified by Stonehenge. During the Indo-European migrations, Europe saw migrations from the east and southeast. The period known as classical antiquity began with the emergence of the city-states of ancient Greece. Later, the Roman Empire came to dominate the entire Mediterranean Basin. The Migration Period of the Germanic people began in the late 4th century AD and made gradual incursions into various parts of the Roman Empire.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476 traditionally marks the start of the Middle Ages. While the Eastern Roman Empire would continue for another 1000 years, the former lands of the Western Empire would be fragmented into a number of different states. At the same time, the early Slavs began to become established as a distinct group in the central and eastern parts of Europe. The first great empire of the Middle Ages was the Frankish Empire of Charlemagne, while the Islamic conquest of Iberia established Al-Andalus. The Viking Age saw a second great migration of Norse peoples. Attempts to retake the Levant from the Muslim states that occupied it made the High Middle Ages the age of the Crusades, while the political system of feudalism came to its height. The Late Middle Ages were marked by large population declines, as Europe was threatened by the bubonic plague, as well as invasions by the Mongol peoples from the Eurasian Steppe. At the end of the Middle Ages, there was a transitional period, known as the Renaissance. (Full article...) -
Image 10
Ukraine's borders were declared by the Ukrainian People's Republic delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919-20.
Ukraine emerged as the concept of a nation, and Ukrainians as a nationality, with the Ukrainian National Revival which began in the late 18th and early 19th century. The first wave of national revival is traditionally connected with the publication of the first part of "Eneyida" by Ivan Kotlyarevsky (1798). In 1846, in Moscow the "Istoriya Rusov ili Maloi Rossii" (History of Ruthenians or Little Russia) was published. During the Spring of Nations, in 1848 in Lemberg (Lviv) the Supreme Ruthenian Council was created which declared that Galician Ruthenians were part of the bigger Ukrainian nation. The council adopted the yellow and blue flag, the current Ukrainian flag.
Ukraine first declared its independence with the invasion of Bolsheviks in late 1917. Following the conclusion of World War I and with the Peace of Riga, Ukraine was partitioned once again between Poland and the Bolshevik Russia. The Bolshevik-occupied portion of the territory became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with some boundary adjustments.
In 1922, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, together with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, became the founding members of the Soviet Union. The Soviet famine of 1932–33 or Holodomor killed an estimated 6 to 8 million people in the Soviet Union, the majority of them in Ukraine. (Full article...) -
Image 11A modern language is any human language that is currently in use as a native language. The term is used in language education to distinguish between languages which are used for day-to-day communication (such as French and German) and dead classical languages such as Latin and Classical Chinese, which are studied for their cultural and linguistic value. SIL Ethnologue defines a living language as "one that has at least one speaker for whom it is their first language" (see also Language § Linguistic diversity). (Full article...)
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Image 12The history of Ireland from 1691–1800 was marked by the dominance of the Protestant Ascendancy. These were Anglo-Irish families of the Anglican Church of Ireland, whose English ancestors had settled Ireland in the wake of its conquest by England and colonisation in the Plantations of Ireland, and had taken control of most of the land. Many were absentee landlords based in England, but others lived full-time in Ireland and increasingly identified as Irish. (See Early Modern Ireland 1536-1691). During this time, Ireland was nominally an autonomous Kingdom with its own Parliament; in actuality it was a client state controlled by the King of Great Britain and supervised by his cabinet in London. The great majority of its population, Roman Catholics, were excluded from power and land ownership under the penal laws. The second-largest group, the Presbyterians in Ulster, owned land and businesses but could not vote and had no political power. The period begins with the defeat of the Catholic Jacobites in the Williamite War in Ireland in 1691 and ends with the Acts of Union 1800, which formally annexed Ireland in a United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 and dissolved the Irish Parliament. (Full article...)
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Image 13
The Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España) entered a new era with the death of Charles II, the last Spanish Habsburg monarch, who died childless in 1700. The War of the Spanish Succession was fought between proponents of a Bourbon prince, Philip of Anjou, and the Austrian Habsburg claimant, Archduke Charles. After the wars were ended with the Peace of Utrecht, Philip V's rule began in 1715, although he had to renounce his place in the succession of the French throne.
Spain entered a period of reform and renewal, as well as continued decline. Ideas of the Age of Enlightenment entered Spain and Spanish America during the eighteenth century. The invasion of the Iberian Peninsula by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Peninsular War upended the stability of the Spanish state and empire and although France was defeated, the turmoil in Spain led to the Spanish American wars of independence.
The 18th century in Spanish historiography is often referred to as Bourbon Spain, but the Spanish Bourbons continued to reign from 1814 to 1868 (following the restoration of Ferdinand VII), from 1874 to 1931, and since 1975. (Full article...) -
Image 14Former prime ministers Gordon Brown (2007–2010), Tony Blair (1997–2007), John Major (1990–1997), Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and then-Prime Minister David Cameron pictured together in 2011
The modern political history of the United Kingdom (1979–present) began when Margaret Thatcher gained power in 1979, giving rise to 18 years of Conservative government. Victory in the Falklands War (1982) and the government's strong opposition to trade unions helped lead the Conservative Party to another three terms in government. Thatcher initially pursued monetarist policies and went on to privatise many of Britain's nationalised companies such as British Telecom, British Gas Corporation, British Airways and British Steel Corporation. She kept the National Health Service. The controversial "poll tax" to fund local government was unpopular, and the Conservatives removed Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1990, although Michael Heseltine, the minister who did much to undermine her, did not personally benefit from her being ousted.
Thatcher's successor, John Major, replaced the "poll tax" with Council Tax and oversaw successful British involvement in the Gulf War. Despite a recession, Major led the Conservatives to a surprise victory in 1992. The events of Black Wednesday in 1992, party disunity over the European Union and several scandals involving Conservative politicians all led to the Labour Party winning a landslide election victory under Tony Blair in 1997. Labour had shifted its policies from the political left closer to the centre, under the slogan of 'New Labour'. The Bank of England was given independence over monetary policy and Scotland and Wales were given a devolved Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly respectively, whilst London wide local government was also re-established in the form of an Assembly and Mayor. The Good Friday Agreement was negotiated in 1997 in an effort to end The Troubles in Northern Ireland, with a devolved, power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly being established in 1998.
Blair led Britain into the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars before leaving office in 2007, when he was succeeded by his Chancellor, Gordon Brown. A global recession in 2008–10 led to Labour's defeat in the 2010 election. It was replaced by a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, headed by David Cameron, that pursued a series of public spending cuts with the intention of reducing the budget deficit. In 2016, the UK voted in an advisory referendum to leave the European Union, which led to Cameron's resignation. Cameron was succeeded by his Home Secretary, Theresa May. (Full article...) -
Image 15
Political boundaries at the beginning of year 1700
The 18th century lasted from 1 January 1701 (represented by the Roman numerals MDCCI) to 31 December 1800 (MDCCC). During the 18th century, elements of Enlightenment thinking culminated in the Atlantic Revolutions. Revolutions began to challenge the legitimacy of monarchical and aristocratic power structures. The Industrial Revolution began during mid-century, leading to radical changes in human society and the environment. The European colonization of the Americas and other parts of the world intensified and associated mass migrations of people grew in size as part of the Age of Sail. During the century, slave trading expanded across the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, while declining in Russia and China.
Western historians have occasionally defined the 18th century otherwise for the purposes of their work. For example, the "short" 18th century may be defined as 1715–1789, denoting the period of time between the death of Louis XIV of France and the start of the French Revolution, with an emphasis on directly interconnected events. To historians who expand the century to include larger historical movements, the "long" 18th century may run from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 or even later.
In Europe, philosophers ushered in the Age of Enlightenment. This period coincided with the French Revolution of 1789, and was later compromised by the excesses of the Reign of Terror. At first, many monarchies of Europe embraced Enlightenment ideals, but in the wake of the French Revolution they feared loss of power and formed broad coalitions to oppose the French Republic in the French Revolutionary Wars. Various conflicts throughout the century, including the War of the Spanish Succession and the Seven Years' War, saw Great Britain triumph over its rivals to become the preeminent power in Europe. However, Britain's attempts to exert its authority over the Thirteen Colonies became a catalyst for the American Revolution. The 18th century also marked the end of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as an independent state. Its semi-democratic government system was not robust enough to prevent partition by the neighboring states of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. (Full article...)
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Image 3Hong Kong, under British administration from 1842 to 1997, is one of the original Four Asian Tigers. (from 20th century)
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Image 7The Blue Marble, Earth as seen from Apollo 17 in December 1972. The photograph was taken by LMP Harrison Schmitt. The second half of the 20th century saw humanity's first space exploration. (from 20th century)
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Image 8Ralph Baer's Magnavox Odyssey, the first video game console, released in 1972. (from 20th century)
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Image 10Earthrise, taken on December 24, 1968 by astronaut William "Bill" Anders during the Apollo 8 space mission. It was the first photograph taken of Earth from lunar orbit. (from 20th century)
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Image 11Wheat yields greatly increased from the Green Revolution in the world's least developed countries. (from 20th century)
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Image 13Oil field in California, 1938.
The first modern oil well was drilled in 1848 by Russian engineer F.N. Semyonov, on the Apsheron Peninsula north-east of Baku. (from 20th century) -
Image 15India's Prayag Kumbh Mela is regarded as the world's largest religious festival. (from Modern era)
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Image 17A visualization of the various routes through a portion of the Internet. Partial map of the Internet based in 2005. (from Contemporary history)
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Image 18Countries by real GDP growth rate in 2014. (Countries in brown were in recession.) (from Contemporary history)
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Image 19A stamp commemorating Alexander Fleming. His discovery of penicillin changed the world of medicine by introducing the age of antibiotics. (from 20th century)
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Image 20Photo of American astronaut Buzz Aldrin during the first moonwalk in 1969, taken by Neil Armstrong. The relatively young aerospace engineering industries rapidly grew in the 66 years after the Wright brothers' first flight. (from 20th century)
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Image 21The mushroom cloud of the detonation of Little Boy, the first nuclear attack in history, on 6 August 1945 over Hiroshima, igniting the nuclear age with the international security dominating thread of mutual assured destruction in the latter half of the 20th century. (from 20th century)
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Image 22The rise of MP3 players, downloadable music, and cellular ringtones in the mid-2000s ended the decade-long dominance that the CD held up to that point. (from Modern era)
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Image 23Martin Luther King Jr., an African American civil rights movement leader (Washington, August 1963) (from 20th century)
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Image 24First flight of the Wright brothers' Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina; Orville piloting with Wilbur running at wingtip. (from 20th century)
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Image 25Elvis Presley in 1956, a leading figure of rock and roll and rockabilly. (from 20th century)
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Image 27The international community grew in the second half of the century significantly due to a new wave of decolonization, particularly in Africa. Most of the newly independent states, were grouped together with many other so called developing countries. Developing countries gained attention, particularly due to rapid population growth, leading to a record world population of nearly 7 billion people by the end of the century. (from 20th century)
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Image 28Decolonization of the British Empire in Africa. (from Contemporary history)
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