Social and Political Changes in the West during the 19th and 20th Centuries - Essay Example

As the century changed to the twentieth mode, modernism arose, which affected war sentiments and shaped the civil rights movement (Childs 20). The most important ideas and events during the nineteenth century were nationalism, feminism, and the Industrial Revolution; in the twentieth century, they were modernism and World War I.

In the nineteenth century, the most significant ideas and events were nationalism, feminism, and the Industrial Revolution. Nationalist sentiments resulted in numerous revolutions all over the world. These revolutions occurred from 1820 to 1848 and included the Spanish Revolution of 1820, the Greek Revolution of 1821, and the Revolution in France in 1830. Throughout this time, America was growing economically but was ravaged politically, until the American Civil War erupted in 1861 and lasted until 1865 (Duiker and Spielvogel 586). After this war, nevertheless, nationalism formed as the states greatly united toward nationalist directions and interests (Duiker and Spielvogel 587). Feminism grew alongside these changes, particularly after the Emancipation Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucrita Mott organized the Seneca Falls Convention, where they signed a Declaration of Sentiments, which was designed to emulate Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence (Larson). The Declaration of Sentiments called for women’s right to vote, aside from women's equality, which was considered a revolutionary change in the aspirations of the women’s movement in America (Larson). Feminism is important because it supported the ideals of modernism and the civil rights movements during the twentieth century. Aside from Feminism, the first phase of the Industrial Revolution occurred, which technological developments supported. Britain's industrial expansion throughout the 19th century began in the latter part of the 1800s.

Throughout the 1900s, Britain became the most powerful nation in the world through its formation of rail networks and steamships that stimulated national and international business and trade (Atterbury). Britain ruled the sea with the British India Steam Navigation Co., created in 1856, the biggest shipping line in the world, and dominated the world steel industry (Atterbury). The winners in the nineteenth century were those who had access to production resources, while the losers were the workers because labor rights hardly existed yet and agrarian sectors. Industrial Revolution did not accompany industrial rights, and so workers were employed in unjust and unsafe working conditions. Farmers lost many lands while becoming slaves to emerging manufacturing plants. The injustice is felt at the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, although the middle class was increasing.

The twentieth century brought forth modernism and World War I, which influenced other movements and events. Modernism broke off with Victorian morality and asserted a pessimistic understanding of the world economy and politics (Childs 20). The literature and art world challenged morality and traditional conventions, wherein T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Franz Kafka experimented with a literary form to shape modernist literary content (Childs 20). Modernists supported the later waves of feminism and the civil rights movement too, which produced important civil rights legislation from the 1960s onwards. Apart from modernism, World War I erupted, the Greatest War in terms of casualties and expenditures during this time, as well as technological development.

The Treaty of Versailles was a critical turning point because it resulted in perceptions of injustice among several nations, including Germany, Austria, and China (Duiker and Spielvogel 691). Germany felt humiliated with the loss of its territories and reduced army forces, while China was angry with the loss of some lands to Japan, its foremost enemy (Duiker and Spielvogel 691). Because of these sentiments, nationalism grew in these nations. Adolf Hitler became a symbol of hope for Germans, a chance to redeem their lost glory and integrity (Duiker and Spielvogel 691). World War I is argued as not ending but continued only as World War II (Duiker and Spielvogel 691).  World War I shifted the war from being personal to mechanistic and impersonal approaches, with the use of Gattling guns, poison gas, cannons, and other automatic weapons.

After the Great War, nationalism took new forms, which produced extreme racial prejudice and discrimination. World War II expanded genocide through the Holocaust and increased violence through the use of new weapons of mass destruction through atomic bombs. In the twentieth century, the winning sectors were large corporations and workers and the losers were veteran soldiers. Workers gained momentum through worker rights laws. These large corporations profited from the war and post-war years. Veterans of the wars lost because of the impact of wars on their psychology and economic conditions. The twentieth century faced numerous adversities, with different sectors winning and losing in different ways. The U.S. can also be considered a winner because it replaced Britain as the new superpower.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed profound social and political changes in the West. Nationalism resulted in civil wars and wars for independence. Feminism and liberal ideology promoted equal rights and freedoms. The Industrial Revolution stimulated the economy and the rise of Western powers, but to the cost of workers and agrarian sectors. Twentieth-century contributed to positive advancements of minority rights and freedoms, but not after two bloody world wars. Modernism reacted to these wars with pessimism and self-reflexivity. World War I never ended but continued as World War II, with these wars shaping and changing how people see violence and its operations and effects. Read More