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We have already seen how Stalin’s domination of Eastern Europe after World War II and the West’s reaction to his aggression led to a vicious Cold War cycle of one side, fearful of the other, developing new weapons, which caused the other side to do the same and so on.  Of course, the single factor making the Cold War so unique and dangerous was nuclear weapons. And just as the Cold War’s roots lay back in World War II, so did the roots of the nuclear arms race.

Starting in 1942, almos...

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Pressures to conform

World War II gave Americans an unprecedented era of affluence, technological growth, leisure, and opportunities for education and research. Out of this came four new factors pressuring people to conform, and especially to spend more to keep the consumer economy growing: modern advertising, television, credit cards, and babies.

Advertising had grown in tandem with the industrial consumer economies that emerged in the nineteenth century. As production of ...

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The death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 marked the end of an era both in the Soviet Union and the world, although no one was sure just what it meant for the future. For many Soviets, the end of Stalin’s brutal dictatorship also meant the end of stability. They wondered who would watch over and defend the Soviet Union now that his strong hand had been removed. To others, it meant an opportunity to dismantle at least some, if not all, the repressive aspects of Stalinist rule. People in Eastern Europe w...

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By 1948, the United States and Soviet Union had established their respective spheres of influence in Western and Eastern Europe. However, unlike World War I when a definitive treaty emerged to determine a new balance of power, no such treaty emerged after World War II because of the quick falling out between Stalin and the Western allies. So far, the post-war settlement had been determined without direct conflict between the two superpowers. But, by 1948, when the two superpowers had established...

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The Soviet Union never deserts its friends. — Soviet ambassador, threatening intervention in Hungary
The aftermath of World War II

The human capacity for self-destruction had reached new heights in World War II. An estimated 55,000,000 people had died, 27,000,000 in the Soviet Union alone. Most of the dead were civilians who just happened to be caught in the path of a new and ever more destructive warfare. In addition to the dead were another 50,000,000 refugees. There were peopl...

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"Yes, this delightful land which we inhabit and which nature caresses with love is made to be the domain of liberty and happiness...I am French, I am one of thy representatives!...Oh, sublime people!  Accept the sacrifices of my whole being.  Happy is the man who is born in your midst; happier is he who can die for your happiness." — Robespierre
"France will have but one thought, to reconstitute her forces, gather her energy, nourish her sacred anger, raise her young generation to form an a...

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The 1800's were not kind to China.  Whereas geographic and technological limitations had once kept China fairly isolated from the rest of the world, other forces, in particular the Industrial Revolution then sweeping Europe and America, were closing in to wrench China out of its self-imposed isolation.  As in India, the British East Indies Company would lead this intrusion on China's privacy.
The Opium War and its aftermath (1839-64)

In the early 1800's, China, by its own design,...

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It has been said that the British Empire was picked up in a "fit of absence of mind."  Nowhere was this more true than in the case of India which gradually came under British rule, not by the efforts of Britain's government, but by those of the British East Indies Company, founded in 1599 by a group of merchants in search of nothing more than "quiet trade."  However, circumstances would thwart these peaceful intentions, and over the next 250 years the British would find themselves more and more ...

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"Whatever happens we have got/The Maxim gun and they have not." — 19th century European poem
Introduction

Ever since the rise of a capitalist economy and strong nation states armed with efficient military machines (c.1500), Europe had steadily extended its power across the globe.  By 1800, European and European derived colonies had extended the dominance of European culture over 35% of the globe.  Up until this point, the usual explanation for European expansion was the "three G'...