H3C_Final_Study_Guide

Why was the twentieth century the world’s bloodiest? Was this simply a matter of scale, or was there something about the ideology of conflict that was more difficult to solve in the past 100 years?

What major burdens did newly de-colonized nations assume in the second half of the twentieth century and why was civil war so common in former colonial territories? On balance, was de-colonization a positive or negative thing?

At the end of the twentieth century, more areas of the world were democratic than ever before, and the global threat to the environment from human activity was greater than ever before. What do these two facts tell us about the notion of “progress”? Do they offer any guide to where we are headed in the future and how we might steer the most beneficial course?

One of the major focal points of Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s The World: A History has been human interaction with the environment. The last chapter of the text deals with “the embattled biosphere” and articulates the major problems facing the human community in the twentieth century. Write an essay in which you explore these environmental issues in relation to three key global events/ideas of the twentieth century. Do humans continue to operate without considering the environment? What has been the legacy of the twentieth century in regulating our approach to ecological concerns?