Contemporary history
Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from approximately 1945 to the present. Contemporary history is either a subset of the late modern period, or it is one of the three major subsets of modern history, alongside the early modern period and the late modern period. The term contemporary history has been in use at least since the early 19th century.
Contemporary history is politically dominated by the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union whose effects were felt across the world. The confrontation, which was mainly fought through proxy wars and through intervention in the internal politics of smaller nations, ultimately ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact in 1991, following the Revolutions of 1989. The latter stages and aftermath of the Cold War enabled the democratisation of much of Europe, Africa, and Latin America. In the Middle East, the period after 1945 was dominated by conflict involving the new state of Israel and the rise of petroleum politics, as well as the growth of Islamism after the 1980s. The first supranational organisations of government, such as the United Nations and European Union, emerged during the period after 1945, while the European colonial empires in Africa and Asia collapsed, gone by 1975. Countercultures rose and the sexual revolution transformed social relations in western countries between the 1960s and 1980s, epitomised by the Protests of 1968. Living standards rose sharply across the developed world because of the post-war economic boom, whereby such major economies as Japan and West Germany emerged. The culture of the United States, especially consumerism, spread widely. By the 1960s, many western countries had begun deindustrializing; in their place, globalization led to the emergence of new industrial centres, such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and later China, which exported consumer goods to developed countries.
Science made new advances after 1945: spaceflight, nuclear technology, laser and semiconductor technology were developed alongside molecular biology and genetics, particle physics, and the Standard Model of quantum field theory. Meanwhile, the first computers were created, followed by the Internet, beginning the Information Age.
In 2020, an outbreak of the COVID-19 virus first documented in 2019 in Wuhan, China spread to other countries becoming a global pandemic which saw major socio-economic disruption all over the world, the likes of which had not been seen since the early and first half of the 20th century. Many countries ordered mandatory lockdowns on movement and closures of non-essential businesses. It was described by some commentators as the biggest event in world history in the 21st century, new millennium and recent memory of world history.
Timeline
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bar:Technology color:era
from:1900 till:1945.67 text:Machine Age
from:1945.67 till:1948.5 text:Tube
from:1948.5 till:1958.7 text:Transistor
from:1958.7 till:1970 shift: text:Integrated
from:1958.7 till:1970 shift: text:circuits
from:1970 till:2019.3333 text:Information Age
from:2010 till:2019.3333 text:Big Data
bar:Conflicts color:era
from:1914.57 till:1918.86 text:WWI
from:1918.86 till:1939.666 text:Interwar period
from:1939.666 till:1945.667 text:WWII
from:1945.67 till:1962 text:Post-war era
from:2001.69 till:2019.3333 text:War on Terror
bar:Depressions color:era
from:1929.83 till:1939 shift: text:Great
from:1929.83 till:1939 shift: text:Depression
bar:Cold War color:era
from:1945 till:1991.98 text:Cold War
bar:Atomic color:era
from:1945.54 till:2019.3333 text:Atomic Age
bar:Space color:era
from:1957.76 till:2019.3333 text:Space Age
bar:US Trends color:era
from:1900 till:1933.25 shift: text:Progressive Era
from:1900 till:1941.93 shift: text:Social liberalism
from:1933.25 till:1941.93 text:New Deal
from:1941.93 till:1960 text:Beatniks
from:1960 till:1973 text:Counterculture
from:1973 till:1985 shift: text:New Left
from:1973 till:1985 shift: text:New Right
from:1985 till:2019.3333 shift: text:Neoliberalism
from:1985 till:2019.3333 shift: text:Neoconservatism
bar:Crisis color:era
from:1918 till:1920 text:Spanish flu
from:2019 till:2020 text:COVID-19 Pandemic
bar:Decades color:era
from:1900 till:1945 shift: text:Late modernity
from:1945 till:2020 shift: text:Post-Modern
from:1900 till:1910 text:Aughts
from:1910 till:1920 text:Teens
from:1920 till:1930 text:Twenties
from:1930 till:1940 text:Thirties
from:1940 till:1950 text:Forties
from:1950 till:1960 text:Fifties
from:1960 till:1970 text:Sixties
from:1970 till:1980 text:Seventies
from:1980 till:1990 text:Eighties
from:1990 till:2000 text:Nineties
from:2000 till:2010 text:Noughties
from:2010 till:2020 text:Tens
Modern era
In the first half of the 20th century, the world saw a series of great conflagrations, World War I and World War II. Near the end of the first world war, there were a series of Russian Revolutions and a Russian Civil War. In between the world wars, the 1920s saw a great rise in prosperity where much of the world saw progress and new technology, but this was soon ended by the Great Depression. During this time, the League of Nations was formed to deal with global issues, but failed to garner enough support by the leading powers, and a series of crises once again led the world into another epoch of violence.Post-1945
Notable events during the modern period of universal history include two world wars and the Cold War, characterized by the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.The Cold War began in 1947 and lasted until 1991. The Space Age was concurrent with this time, encompassing the activities related to the Space Race, space exploration, space technology, and the cultural developments influenced by these events. Pax Americana is an appellation applied to the historical concept of relative liberal peace in the Western world, resulting from the preponderance of power enjoyed by the United States of America after the end of World War II in 1945.
The post-1945 world experienced the establishment of many new states. Throughout the post-1945 period, the Cold War was expressed through military coalitions, espionage, weapons development, invasions, propaganda, and competitive technological development. The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc of countries that it occupied, annexing some as Soviet Socialist Republics and maintaining others as satellite states that would later form the Warsaw Pact. The United States and various Western European countries began a Containment policy for communism and forged alliances to this end, including NATO. The conflict included defense spending, a conventional and nuclear arms race, and various proxy wars; the two superpowers never fought one another directly.
The post-1989 world saw the end of the totalitarian regimes of the Cold War and the ending of client state status for many states. The Cold war was effectively ended by the Revolutions of 1989, and the Malta Summit on 3 December 1989. The Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991. Various "post-Cold War regimes" established were democratic republics, though some were authoritarian/oligarchic republics.
In Latin America, military regimes supported by the CIA, such as that facilitated by the United States intervention in Chile, also fell. The Pinochet regime collapsed in 1990. In Southeast Asia, the right-wing developmental dictatorships were overthrown by popular uprisings.
Information age and computers
The Information Age or Information Era, also commonly known as the Age of the Computer, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously. The idea is heavily linked to the concept of a Digital Age or Digital Revolution, and carries the ramifications of a shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based around the manipulation of information. The period is generally said to have begun in the latter half of the 20th century, though the particular date varies. The term began its use around the late 1980s and early 1990s, and has been used up to the present with the availability of the Internet.During the late 1990s, both Internet directories and search engines were popular—Yahoo! and Altavista were the respective industry leaders. By late 2001, the directory model had begun to give way to search engines, tracking the rise of Google, which had developed new approaches to relevancy ranking. Directory features, while still commonly available, became after-thoughts to search engines. Database size, which had been a significant marketing feature through the early 2000s, was similarly displaced by emphasis on relevancy ranking, the methods by which search engines attempt to sort the best results first.
"Web 2.0" is characterized as facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, User-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. It has led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and web applications. Examples include social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies. Social networking emerged in the early 21st century as a popular social communication, largely replacing much of the function of email, message boards and instant messaging services. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all major examples of social websites that gained widespread popularity. The information distribution continued into the early 21st century with mobile interaction and Internet access growing massively in the early 21st century. By the 2010s, a majority of people in the developed world had Internet access and a majority of people worldwide had a mobile phone. Marking the rise of mobile computing, worldwide sales of personal computers fall 14% during the first quarter of 2013. The Semantic Web begins the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, converting the current web dominated by unstructured and semi-structured documents into a "web of data".
With the rise of information technology, computer security, and information security in general, is a concern for computers and networks. Concerns include information and services which are protected from unintended or unauthorized access, change or destruction. This has also raised questions of Internet privacy and personal privacy globally.
Late contemporary times
Terrorism and warfare
Major political developments in the 2000s for the United States and the Middle East revolved around recent modern terrorism, the War on Terrorism, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War..
The September 11 attacks – which were described as a "watershed moment" of contemporary history – were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by Al-Qaeda upon the United States on 11 September 2001. On that morning, 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania, after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. Major terrorist events after the 11 September 2001 Attacks include the Moscow Theatre Siege, the 2003 Istanbul bombings, the Madrid train bombings, the Beslan school hostage crisis, the 2005 London bombings, the October 2005 New Delhi bombings, and the 2008 Mumbai Hotel Siege.
The United States responded to the 11 September 2001 attacks by launching a "Global War on Terrorism", invading Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, who had harbored al-Qaeda terrorists, and enacting the Patriot Act. Many other countries also strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded law enforcement powers. The 'Global War on Terrorism' is the military, political, legal and ideological conflict against Islamic terrorism and Islamic militants since the 2001 attacks.
troops in Kunar province
The War in Afghanistan began in late 2001 and was launched by the United States with the United Kingdom, and NATO-led, UN authorized ISAF in response to the 11 September attacks. The aim of the invasion was to find the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking al-Qaeda members and put them on trial, to destroy the whole organization of al-Qaeda, and to remove the Taliban regime which supported and gave safe harbor to al-Qaeda. The Bush administration policy and the Bush Doctrine stated forces would not distinguish between terrorist organizations and nations or governments that harbor them. Two military operations in Afghanistan are fighting for control over the country. Operation Enduring Freedom is a United States combat operation involving some coalition partners and operating primarily in the eastern and southern parts of the country along the Pakistan border. The second operation is the International Security Assistance Force, which was established by the UN Security Council at the end of 2001 to secure Kabul and the surrounding areas. NATO assumed control of ISAF in 2003.
The multinational infantry actions, with additional ground forces supplied by the Afghan Northern Alliance, and aerial bombing campaign removed the Taliban from power, but Taliban forces have since regained some strength. The war has been less successful in achieving the goal of restricting al-Qaeda's movement than anticipated. Since 2006, Afghanistan has seen threats to its stability from increased Taliban-led insurgent activity, record-high levels of illegal drug production, and a fragile government with limited control outside of Kabul. At the end of 2008, the war had been unsuccessful in capturing Osama bin Laden and tensions have grown between the United States and Pakistan due to incidents of Taliban fighters crossing the Pakistan border while being pursued by coalition troops.
The Second Gulf War began in March 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a multinational force. The invasion of Iraq led to an occupation and the eventual capture of Saddam Hussein, who was later executed by the Iraqi Government. Violence against coalition forces and among various sectarian groups soon led to asymmetric warfare with the Iraqi insurgency, strife between many Sunni and Shia Iraqi groups, and al-Qaeda operations in Iraq. Evidence of war crimes committed and sanctioned by the United States Department of Justice created controversy globally, and helped dispel the notion of the United States as a liberating force in the War of Terror. Member nations of the Coalition withdrew their forces as public opinion favoring troop withdrawals increased and as Iraqi forces began to take responsibility for security. In late 2008, the U.S. and Iraqi governments approved a Status of Forces Agreement effective through to the end of 2011. The Iraqi Parliament also ratified a Strategic Framework Agreement with the U.S., aimed at ensuring international cooperation in constitutional rights, threat deterrence, education, energy development, and other areas. In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama announced an 18-month withdrawal window for "combat forces".
The Obama administration has renamed the War on Terror as the "Overseas Contingency Operation". Its objectives are to protect US citizens and business interests worldwide, break up terrorist cells in the US, and disrupt al-Qaeda and affiliated groups. The administration has re-focused US involvement in the conflict on the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq, the closing of Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and the surge in Afghanistan. Using information obtained from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in 2007, the name and whereabouts of one of Bin Laden's couriers, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, was learned, and the courier eventually led U.S. intelligence to the location of Osama bin Laden, which was located in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a suburban area 35 miles from Islamabad. On 1 May 2011, he was killed and the papers and computer drives and disks from the compound were seized. In 2011 Europe, the former Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladić, wanted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, is arrested on 26 May in Serbia by the Military Security Agency.
In 2011, the United States formally declared an end to the Iraq War. The Arab Spring began in earnest in 2010 with anti-government protests in the Muslim world, but quickly escalated to full-scale military conflicts in countries like Syria, Libya, and Yemen and also gave the opportunity for the emergence of various militant groups including the Islamic State. The IS was able to take advantage of social media platforms including Twitter to recruit foreign fighters from around the world and seized significant portions of territory in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt from 2013 and ongoing. On the other hand, some violent militant organizations were able to negotiate peace with governments including the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines in 2014. The presence of IS and the stalemate in the Syrian Civil War created a migration of refugees to Europe and also galvanized and encouraged high-profile terrorism attacks and armed conflicts around the world, such as the November 2015 Paris attacks and the Battle of Marawi in the Philippines in 2017. In 2014, the United States decided to intervene against the Islamic State in Iraq, with most IS fighters being driven out by the end of 2018. Russia and Iran also jointly launched a campaign against IS in Syria, in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, coming at odds with United States aims.
The Government of Russia, largely led by President Vladimir Putin, have opposed the enlargement of NATO as encroaching on Russian autonomy. In the last fifteen years, they have intervened in a variety of military conflicts in its neighboring countries including Georgia and Ukraine.
Great Recession
In the beginning of the 2000s, there was a global rise in prices in commodities and housing, marking an end to the commodities recession of 1980–2000. The US mortgage-backed securities, which had risks that were hard to assess, were marketed around the world and a broad based credit boom fed a global speculative bubble in real estate and equities. The financial situation was also affected by a sharp increase in oil and food prices. The collapse of the American housing bubble caused the values of securities tied to real estate pricing to plummet thereafter, damaging financial institutions. The late-2000s recession, a severe economic recession which began in the United States in 2007, was sparked by the outbreak of a modern financial crisis. The modern financial crisis was linked to earlier lending practices by financial institutions and the trend of securitization of American real estate mortgages. The emergence of Sub-prime loan losses exposed other risky loans and over-inflated asset prices.The Great Recession spread to much of the industrialized world, and has caused a pronounced deceleration of economic activity. The global recession occurred in an economic environment characterized by various imbalances. This global recession has resulted in a sharp drop in international trade, rising unemployment and slumping commodity prices. The recession renewed interest in Keynesian economic ideas on how to combat recessionary conditions. However, various industrial countries continued to undertake austerity policies to cut deficits, reduced spending, as opposed to following Keynesian theories.
From late 2009 European sovereign-debt crisis, fears of a sovereign debt crisis developed among investors concerning rising government debt levels across the globe together with a wave of downgrading of government debt of certain European states. Concerns intensified early 2010 and thereafter making it difficult or impossible for sovereigns to re-finance their debts. On 9 May 2010, Europe's Finance Ministers approved a rescue package worth €750 billion aimed at ensuring financial stability across Europe. The European Financial Stability Facility was a special purpose vehicle financed by members of the eurozone to combat the European sovereign debt crisis. In October 2011 eurozone leaders agreed on another package of measures designed to prevent the collapse of member economies. The three most affected countries, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, collectively account for six percent of eurozone's gross domestic product. In 2012, Eurozone finance ministers reached an agreement on a second €130-billion Greek bailout. In 2013, the European Union agreed to a €10 billion economic bailout for Cyprus.
Contemporary world
Present and future
The world is in the millennium. The century is the century of the Christian Era or Common Era in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. It began on 1 January 2001 and will end 31 December 2100. The, or The , decade runs from 1 January, to 31 December.The third millennium is the third period of one thousand years. As this millennium is in progress, only its first decade, the 2000s, can be the subject of the conventional historian's attention. The remaining part of the 21st century and longer-term trends are researched by futures studies, an approach that uses various models and several methods. Ever since the invention of history, people have searched for "lessons" that might be drawn from its study, on the principle that to understand the past is potentially to control the future. A famous quote by George Santayana has it that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Arnold J. Toynbee, in his monumental Study of History, sought regularities in the rise and fall of civilizations. In a more popular vein, Will and Ariel Durant devoted a 1968 book, The Lessons of History, to a discussion of "events and comments that might illuminate present affairs, future possibilities... and the conduct of states." Discussions of history's lessons often tend to an excessive focus on historic detail or, conversely, on sweeping historiographic generalizations.
Future Studies takes as one of its important attributes the ongoing effort to analyze alternative futures. This effort includes collecting quantitative and qualitative data about the possibility, probability, and desirability of change. The plurality of the term "futures" in futurology denotes the rich variety of alternative futures, including the subset of preferable futures, that can be studied.
Practitioners of the discipline previously concentrated on extrapolating present technological, economic or social s, or on attempting to predict future trends, but more recently they have started to examine social systems and uncertainties and to build scenarios, question the worldviews behind such scenarios via the causal layered analysis method create preferred visions of the future, and use backcasting to derive alternative implementation strategies. Apart from extrapolation and scenarios, many dozens of methods and techniques are used in futures research.
Socio-technological trends
At the end of the 20th century, the world was at a major crossroads. Throughout the century, more technological advances had been made than in all of preceding history. Computers, the Internet, and other modern technology radically altered daily lives. Increased globalization, specifically Americanization, had occurred. While not necessarily a threat, it has sparked anti-Western and anti-American sentiment in parts of the developing world, especially the Middle East. The English language has become a leading global language, with people who did not speak it becoming increasingly disadvantaged.A trend connecting economic and political events in North America, Asia, and the Middle East is the rapidly increasing demand for fossil fuels, which, along with fewer new petroleum finds, greater extraction costs, and political turmoil, saw the price of gas and oil soar ~500% between 2000 and 2005. In some places, especially in Europe, gas could be $5 a gallon, depending on the currency. Less influential, but omnipresent, is the debate on Turkey's participation in the European Union. New urbanism and urban revival continue to be forces in urban planning in the United States. However, evidence shows that growth of American suburbs still outpaces urban growth.
Challenges and problems
In the contemporary era, several issues are faced in the world.First of all, wealth is concentrated among the G8 and Western industrialized nations, along with several Asian nations and OPEC countries. The richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000 and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. The bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1% of global wealth. Another study found that the richest 2% own more than half of global household assets. Despite this, the distribution has been changing quite rapidly in the direction of greater concentration of wealth.
Climate change
and global warming reflects the notion of the modern climate. The changes of climate over the past century, have been attributed to various factors which have resulted in a global warming. This warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. Some effects on both the natural environment and human life are, at least in part, already being attributed to global warming. A 2001 report by the IPCC suggests that glacier retreat, ice shelf disruption such as that of the Larsen Ice Shelf, sea level rise, changes in rainfall patterns, and increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events are attributable in part to global warming. Other expected effects include water scarcity in some regions and increased precipitation in others, changes in mountain snowpack, and adverse health effects from warmer temperatures.It usually is impossible to connect specific weather events to human impact on the world. Instead, such impact is expected to cause changes in the overall distribution and intensity of weather events, such as changes to the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation. Broader effects are expected to include glacial retreat, Arctic shrinkage, and worldwide sea level rise. Other effects may include changes in crop yields, addition of new trade routes, species extinctions, and changes in the range of disease vectors. Until 2009, the Arctic Northwest Passage pack ice prevented regular marine shipping throughout most of the year in this area, but climate change has reduced the pack ice, and this Arctic shrinkage made the waterways more navigable.
Contemporary technologies
, the recent developments and convergences in various fields of technology, hold possible future impacts. Emerging technologies cover various cutting-edge developments in the emergence and convergence of technology, including transportation, information technology, biotechnology, robotics and applied mechanics, and material science. Their status and possible effects involve controversy over the degree of social impact or the viability of the technologies. Though, these represent new and significant developments within a field; converging technologies represent previously distinct fields which are in some way moving towards stronger inter-connection and similar goals.The first fully functional Space Shuttle orbiter was Columbia, launched into Earth orbit in April 1981. In 1996, Shuttle mission STS-75 conducted research in space with the electrodynamic tether generator and other tether configurations. In 135 missions, the program suffered with two shuttles destroyed. The successful landing at Kennedy Space Center after completing STS-135 concluded the shuttle program. The Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program began in 2006. The retirement of NASA's Space Shuttle fleet took place from March to July 2011.
There are various spaceports, including spaceports of human spaceflight and other launch systems. Private spaceflight is flight beyond the Kármán line that is conducted and paid for by an entity other than a government agency. Commercialization of space is the use of equipment sent into or through outer space to provide goods or services of commercial value, either by a corporation or state. Space trade plans and predictions began in the 1960s. Spacecraft propulsion is any method used to accelerate spacecraft and artificial satellites.
NASA announced in 2011 that its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured photographic evidence of possible liquid water on Mars during warm seasons. On 6 August 2012, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, the most elaborate Martian exploration vehicle to date, landed on Mars. After the WMAP observations of the cosmic microwave background, information was released in 2011 of the work done by the Planck Surveyor, estimating the age of the Universe to 13.8 billion years old. Another technological advancement came in 2012 with European physicists statistically demonstrating the existence of the Higgs boson.