World History: 18th Century to the Mid-20th Century

What the official syllabus says

UPPCS Main Examination, General Studies I.

History of the world will include events from 18th century to middle of the 20th century such as French revolution of 1789, Industrial revolution, World Wars, redraw of national boundaries, Socialism, Nazism, Fascism etc.: their forms and effect on the society.

Topics in detail

The official line names the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the World Wars, the redrawing of boundaries and three ideologies, and asks for their forms and their effect on society. Study each event for causes, course, outcome and social impact.

Age of revolutions

• American War of Independence (1775-83) and the Declaration of Independence (1776)
• French Revolution of 1789: the Estates-General, the fall of the Bastille, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the Jacobins and the Terror
• Napoleon Bonaparte: reforms, the Napoleonic Code, conquest and defeat; the Congress of Vienna (1815)
• Ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity, and their spread

Industrial Revolution

• Why it began in Britain: capital, coal and iron, colonies, agricultural change
• Inventions in textiles, steam power (James Watt), iron and transport (railways)
• Spread to Europe, the United States and Japan
• Effects on society: factory towns, the working class, child labour, trade unions, the Chartists

Nationalism and imperialism

• The 1848 revolutions; unification of Italy (Mazzini, Cavour, Garibaldi) and of Germany (Bismarck, 1871)
• Colonialism in Asia and Africa; the Berlin Conference (1884-85) and the scramble for Africa
• The Opium Wars and the opening of China; the Meiji Restoration in Japan

Socialism

• Utopian socialists (Robert Owen, Saint-Simon); Marx and Engels and the Communist Manifesto (1848)
• Russian Revolution of 1917: the fall of the Tsar, the Bolsheviks under Lenin, the New Economic Policy, Stalin's five-year plans
• Forms of socialism (Marxist, Fabian, democratic) and their effect on labour laws and welfare states

First World War and its aftermath

• Causes: alliances, militarism, imperial rivalry, nationalism; the assassination at Sarajevo (1914)
• The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles (1919)
• Redrawing of national boundaries: the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, German and Russian empires; new states such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia; the mandate system
• League of Nations: aims, work and failure
• Great Depression (1929) and its social effects

Fascism and Nazism

• Fascism in Italy: Mussolini and the march on Rome (1922); the corporate state
• Nazism in Germany: the Weimar Republic, Hitler's rise to power (1933), racial ideology and the Holocaust
• Militarism in Japan; the Spanish Civil War; appeasement and the Munich Agreement (1938)
• Common features: the one-party state, propaganda, cult of the leader, suppression of dissent

Second World War and the mid-century world

• Causes and main phases (1939-45); the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• The United Nations (1945) and its organs
• Post-war boundaries: the division of Germany and of Korea; the beginnings of the Cold War
• Decolonisation begins: India and Pakistan (1947), Indonesia (1949); the Chinese Revolution (1949)