World History from the Eighteenth Century

What the official syllabus says

UPSC Civil Services (Main) Examination, Paper II: General Studies I.

History of the world will include events from 18th century such as industrial revolution, world wars, redrawal of national boundaries, colonization, decolonization, political philosophies like communism, capitalism, socialism etc.— their forms and effect on the society.

Topics in detail

Revolutions of the late eighteenth century

• The Industrial Revolution in Britain: causes, key inventions (spinning jenny, water frame, Watt’s steam engine, power loom), social and economic effects; its spread to Europe, the United States and Japan
• The American Revolution (1775–83): causes, the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Constitution (1787)
• The French Revolution (1789): causes, stages, ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity; Napoleon and his legacy

The nineteenth century

• The Congress of Vienna (1815) and the revolutions of 1830 and 1848
• Nationalism: the unification of Italy (Mazzini, Garibaldi, Cavour) and of Germany (Bismarck)
• Independence movements in Latin America (Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín)
• The American Civil War and the abolition of slavery
• China: the Opium Wars and the Taiping rebellion; Japan: the Meiji Restoration (1868)

Colonisation and imperialism

• Theories of imperialism (Hobson, Lenin); economic and strategic motives
• The Scramble for Africa and the Berlin Conference (1884–85)
• Colonialism in South and South-East Asia, China and the Pacific
• Effects of colonial rule on colonised societies

The First World War and after

• Causes (militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism) and the course of the war
• The Russian Revolution (1917), the USSR and Stalin’s five-year plans
• The Paris Peace Conference, the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations
• The Great Depression (1929) and the New Deal
• The rise of fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany and militarism in Japan

The Second World War

• Causes, the course of the war and its end; the Holocaust; the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Consequences: the United Nations (1945), the Bretton Woods institutions, the decline of European empires

Redrawal of national boundaries

• After the First World War: the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires; mandates in West Asia
• After the Second World War: the division of Germany and Korea, the partition of India, the creation of Israel (1948)
• The end of the Cold War: German reunification (1990), the break-up of the USSR (1991), Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
• Other new states: Bangladesh (1971), Timor-Leste (2002), South Sudan (2011)

Decolonisation

• Asia: India, Indonesia, Indo-China and the Vietnam wars
• Africa: Ghana (1957), Kenya, Algeria, the Congo; the end of apartheid in South Africa
• The Afro-Asian solidarity movement and the Non-Aligned Movement

The Cold War

• The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; NATO (1949) and the Warsaw Pact (1955)
• The Chinese Revolution (1949), the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Vietnam War
• Détente, arms control and the end of the Cold War

Political philosophies and their effect on society

• Liberalism and capitalism: Adam Smith and the free market; laissez-faire; the welfare state
• Socialism: utopian socialism, Fabian socialism, democratic socialism
• Communism: Marx and Engels (the Communist Manifesto, 1848); Leninism, Maoism
• Fascism and Nazism: features and consequences
• Nationalism, anarchism, feminism and environmentalism as political ideas
• Their forms in practice and their effect on society: the working class, women, colonies, the state’s role

Overlaps

• International relations today belong to General Studies II; this page covers the history behind them.
• The Optional Subject History includes world history from the eighteenth century.