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Commodore Matthew Perry "opens" Japan for Trade
After several unsuccessful American attempts to establish commercial realtions with Japan, Perry steamed into Edo (now Tokyo) Bay and demanded diplomatic relations with the emperor. Senior officials reluctantly signed a treaty with the U.S. that opened two ports and permitted trade. -
Meiji Restoration in Japan
A coalition led by aptriotic samuri seized control of the government with hardly any bloodshed and restored the political power of the emperor. This was a great turning point in Japanese developement. -
Completion of Suez Canal
With the support of khedive, or prince, Ismail the canal was completed byt a French company. This was among many things he did to imporve Egypt. -
"Hundred Days of Reform" in China
The governemnt launched this in an attempt to meet the foreign challenge, More rdical reformers, such as Sun Yat-sen, saught to overthrow the dynasty altogether and establish a republic. -
Kipling discusses the "The White Man's Burden
The white man's burden was an important factor in the decision to rule, rather then liberate, the Phillipines after the Spanish-American War. -
Joseph Conrad writes "Heart of Darkness"
Conrad castigated the "pure selfishness" of Europeans in civilizing" Africa; the main character, once a liberal scholar, turns into a savage brute. -
J.A. Hobson writes Imperialism
Hobson contended that the rush to acquire colonies was due to the economic needs of unregulated capitalism, particularly the need of the rich to find outlets for their surplus capital. Yet, he argued, imperical possessions did noot pay off economically for the country as a whole. -
First Balkan War
Serbian joined Greece and Bulgaria to attack the Ottoman Empire and then quarreled with Bulgaria over the spoils of victory -- a dispute that led to the Second Balkan War. -
Assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand
Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones, wand his pregnant wife, Sophie, were assassinated by Serbian revolutionaries living in Bosnia during a state visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The leaders of Austria-Hungary concluded that Serbia was implicated and had to be severely punished once and for all. -
Period: to
World War I
When the Germans invaded Belgium, they and everyone else believed that the war would be short. However, this was far from the case. Germany ended up losing the war and taking the majority of the blame for it. -
Ministry of Munitions established in Britain
A serious shortage of shells led to the establishment of the Ministry under David Lloyd George. It organized private industry to produce for the war, controlled profits, allocated labor, fixed wage rates, and sttled labor disputes. -
Progressive Bloc
Calls for a new government responsible to the Duma rather then to the tsar. After Russia suffers two million casualties, Tsar Nicholas adjourns the Duma and departs for the front; Alexandra and Rasputin exert a strong influnce of the government. -
Auxiliary Service Law
Required all German males between seventeen and sixty to work only at jobs considered critical to the war effort. This forced-labor law was also aimed at women and children, although they were not specifically mentioned. -
Bread Riots Take Place in Petrograd
Women calling for bread started riots, which spontaneously spead to the factories and then elsewhere throughout the city. From the front, the tsar ordered troops to restore order, but discipline broke down, and the soldiers joined the revolutionary crowd. -
Rasputin Murdered
In a deserate attempt to right the situation and end unfounded rumors that Rasputin was the empress's lover, three members of the high aristocracy murdered Rasputin. The empress went into semipermanent shock, her mind haunted by the dead man's prophecy: "If I die or you desert me, in six months you will lose your son and your throne." Food shortages in the cities worsened; morale declined. The dead man's prophecy had come true. -
Russian Revolution
The Duma declared a provisional government. The reorganized government formed in May included the fiery agrarian socialist Alexander Kerensky, who became prime minister in July. This government did not last and soon Russia became a dictatorship under Vladimar Llyich Lenin. -
Lenin Returns from Exile
He rejected all cooperation with the "bourgeois" provisional government of the liberals and moderate socialists. -
Army Order No. 1
Stripped officers of their authority and placed power in the hands of elected committees of common soldiers. Designed primarily to protect the revolution from some counter-revolutionary Bonaparte on horseback, the oder instead led to a total collapse of army discipline. Many an officer was hanged for his sins. -
Constituent Assembly
The Bolsheviks had cleverly proclaimed their regime only a "provisional workers' and peasants' government," promising that this freely elected assembly would draw uo a new constitution -
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
A third of old Russia's population was sliced away by the German meat ax. Lenin had escaped the certain disaster of continued war and could pursue his goal of absolute political power for the Bolsheviks within Russia. -
Treaty of Versailles
Germany's colonies were given to France, Britain, and Japan as League of Nation mandates. Alsace-Lorraibe was returned to France. Parts of Germany inhabited primarily by Poles were ceded to the new Poilish state. The Allies declared that Germany was responsible for the war and had therefore to pay reparations equal to all civilian damages caused by the war. -
Ernest Rutherford splits the atom
By 1944 seven subatomic particles had been identifies, of which the most important was the neutron. The neutron's capacity to pass through other atoms allowed for even more intense experimental bombardment of matter, leading to chain reactions of unbelievable force. This was the road to the atomic bomb. -
Keynes writes "Economic Consequences of the Peace"
John Maynard Keyes denounces The Treaty of Versailles. According to his interpretation, astronomical reparations and harsh economic measures would impoverish Germany and also increase economic hardship in all countries. -
Virginia Woolf writes "Jacob's Room"
Woolf created a novel made up of a series of internal monologues, in which ideas and emotions from different periods of time bubble up as randomly as from a patient on a psychonalyst's coach. -
James Joyce writes Ulysses
Into an account of an ordinary day in the life of an ordinary man, Joyce weaves an extended ironic parallel between his hero's aimless wanderings through the streets and pubs of Dublin and the adventures of Homer's hero Ulysses on his way home from Troy. The language is intended to mirror modern life itself. -
T.S. Eliot writes "The Waste Land"
This poem depicts a world of growing desolation, although after his conversion to Anglo-Catgloicism in 1927, Eliot came to hope cautiously for humanity's salvation -
Ludwig Wittgenstein writes "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"
He argues that philosophy is only the logical clarification of thoughts, and therefore it becomes the study of language, which expresses thoughts. The great philosophical issues of the ages are quite literally senseless, a great waste of time, for statements about them can be neither tested nor demonstrated. -
French and Belgian Armies Occupy the Ruhr
The German government ordered the people of the Ruhr to stop working and start passively resisting the French occupation. The French answer to passive resistance was to seal off the Ruhr and the entire Rhineland from the rest of Germany, letting in only enough food to prevent starvation. -
Dawes Plan
Created by Charles G. Dawes and an appointed international committee of financial experts, the plan was accepted by France, Germany, and Britain. Germany's yeaarly reparations were reduced and depended on the level of German economic prosperity. Germany would also recieve large loans froms the U.S. and pay reparations to Frannce and Britain, thus enabling those countries to repay the large sums they owed the U.S. -
Franz Kafka writes "The Trial"
Along with "The Castle" (1926), as well as several of his greatest short stories, pottray helpless individuals crushed by inexplicably hostile forces. -
Alban Berg's Opera "Wozzeck" First Performed
Blending a half-sung, half-spoken kind of dialogue with harsh, atonal music, "Wozzek" is a gruesome tale of a soldier driven by Kafka-like inner terrors and vague suspicions of unfaithfulness to murder his mistress. -
Kellogg-Briand Pact
Signed by fifteen countries, the pact "condemned and renounced was as an instrument of national policy." The signing states agreeed to settle international disputes peacefully. Often seen ad idealistic nonsense because it made no provisions for action in case war actually occured, the pact was still a positive step. -
Period: to
The Great Depression
What was new about this depression was its severity and duration. It struck the entire world with ever-greater intensity from 1929-33, and recovery was uneven and slow. -
William Faulkner writes "The Sound and the Fury"
Using a similar technique as Virginia Woolf in "Jacob's Room", Faulkner portrays intense drama through the confused eyes of an idiot. -
Riefenstahl's Documentary film "The Triumph of the Will"
In Germany, Hitler turned to a young and immensly talented woman film maker, Leni Rifenstahl, for a masterpiece of documentary propaganda bases on the Nazi party rally at Nuremberg in 1934. She combined stunning aerial photography, joyful crowds welcoming Hitler, and mass processions of young Nazi fanatics. -
Creation of WPA as Part of New Deal
The most famous of the new agencies that were created by Roosevelt in order to attack the problem of unemployment directly. One-fifth of the entire labor force worked for the Workers Progress Administraion at some point in the 1930's, constructing public buildings, bridges, and highways. -
Formation of Popular Front in France
Frightened by the growing strength of the fascists at home and abroad, the Communists, the Socialists, and the Radicals formed an alliance for the national elections of May 1936. Their clear victory reflected the trend toward polarization. The number of Communists in the parliament jumped dramatically from 10 to 72, while Socialists, led by Leon Blum, became the strongest party in France, with 146 seats.
