Ideologies, Globalisation, and the Information Age

The 20th century began with the most brutal and wide-ranging conflict the world had ever seen. The First World War, or the Great War, as it was known at the time, saw the major European powers struggle for dominance on the world stage, with none of them emerging better off.

This was primarily a European conflict that eventually drew in many of the world's powers, including the British Empire, France, Russia, Italy, and the United States on the side of the Allies; and Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria on the side of the Central Powers. The war began following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in June 1914, a spark that ignited already high tensions among the powerful nations.

The First World War was notorious for its stagnant trench warfare, which led to enormous losses for minimal territorial gain. New technologies and methods of warfare, such as machine guns, tanks, and chemical weapons, were introduced during this period, contributing to the high casualty rates.

The conflict concluded with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, which imposed heavy reparations and territorial losses on Germany—the principal aggressor according to the Allies. This treaty, however, sowed the seeds of further discontent that would eventually lead to World War II.

While World War I was known as a ‘world’ war, World War II was the first truly global conflict. This war was fought out across many continents and was a true ideological struggle.

In the aftermath of World War I Germany was left in a state of crisis. Decimated by sanctions, the economy entered a state of hyper-inflation, and there was huge social unrest. Into this power vacuum, the Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler, rose to power.

The Nazis espoused a fascist ideology, believing in the ethnic and cultural superiority of the German people over others. This ideology clashed harshly with the two other political ideologies that were vying for power in Europe at the time: communism and democracy.

Germany's expansionist ambitions and bellicose rhetoric meant that war was soon once again on the horizon for Europe.

After the failure of various appeasement strategies, the world was once again pulled into a war between the Axis powers – Germany, Italy and Japan – and the Allied powers, who were made up of the USSR, Britain, and the USA.

The war began with Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939. The ensuing war would expand far beyond the European borders, affecting countries in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.

The Holocaust, the genocide of six million Jews and millions of other victims, was one of the darkest chapters of World War II, showcasing the brutal racial policies of the Nazi regime. The war also saw the development of the atomic bomb, which was dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, leading to Japan's surrender and the end of the war.

By the end of the war in 1945, there was a new world order. The days of the major European colonial powers were over. Instead, the USA and the USSR, sworn enemies, dominated the globe.

There was also a new ideological order – the United Nations, set up in the aftermath of the war, worked on the principles of liberalism and world peace. This meant that even nations who were enemies – such as the USA and USSR – were committed on some level to shared goals of global cooperation.

An example of this new attempt at global cooperation was the UN Declaration on Human Rights. This committed member nations of the UN to respect the basic rights of all human beings. In many ways, this was rooted in the Enlightenment values we discussed in Tile 3.

The belief that all lives were valuable, and that there were some rights that could never be taken away from anyone, was a huge development in the global status quo.

You may remember our discussion of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto in Tile 4. Emerging from the worker’s movements of the late Industrial Revolution, the communist ideology advocated for the seizure of the privately-owned means of production (meaning factories and other businesses) to be replaced with a system of public ownership.

This political movement gathered momentum over the latter half of the nineteenth century. By the time of the outbreak of the First World War, it had fervent supporters across the world.

One country where this movement was especially strong was Imperial Russia. Russia had been ruled for centuries by the Romanov dynasty, who had made few of the reforms that had modernised other major European powers.

This fact, in combination with the brutal experience of the First World War, bolstered support for communism. In 1917, led by Vladimir Lenin, the Russian communists staged a violent revolution, killing the royal family and instating the world’s first communist government.

The Russian Revolution marked the arrival of communism, a totally new system of governing and structuring a society, on the global stage. In the imagination of Lenin and his comrades, known as the Bolsheviks, this revolution would take place across the globe, and lead to an emancipated, classless society governed by the workers, for the workers.

The reality was different. The revolutionary vision quickly morphed into a totalitarian regime, focusing more on state control and survival than on public welfare. Lenin was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, whose rule was marked by extreme state oppression, extensive purges, and severe famines that claimed millions of lives, leaving a dark imprint on history.

World War II was in many ways a conflict of ideologies. Nazi Germany was under the grip of the fascist ideology, Soviet Russia saw itself as the defender of the communist revolutionary ideology, and Western powers such as Britain and the USA sought to protect the values of liberal democracy and capitalism.

For the purposes of defeating fascism, there was an uneasy alliance between the Western democratic powers and the Soviet Union. After the Second World War, this alliance crumbled, kicking off the Cold War.

The Cold War was the ongoing geopolitical tension between the USA and the USSR that followed the Second World War. While it never turned to outright violence between these powers, it came very close on several occasions. There were multiple ‘proxy wars’, such as in Afghanistan and Vietnam, in which the USA and USSR backed two different sides in an attempt to spread their respective ideologies around the world.

Over the second half of the 20th century, the USA gradually emerged as the superior economic and military power to the USSR. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968 in Czechoslovakia were both failed attempts to overthrow Soviet power, but they demonstrated that the USSR’s grip on their satellite states was fragile, and that the will of the people was not with them.

Another major event in the waning of Soviet power was the introduction of perestroika policies in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. These were liberalising reforms that pulled back on some of the draconian restrictions that had defined the Soviet economy for much of the 20th century.

These events foreshadowed the eventual collapse of Eastern European socialist regimes in 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the USSR, bringing an end to the Cold War.

The twilight years of the 20th century also saw a notable shift towards neoliberalism, a response to the disintegration of traditional ideologies and the decline of the post-war consensus around liberal democracy and welfare states. Following the collapse of communism, neoliberal policies emphasizing market efficiency and minimal state intervention became the norm worldwide.

By the 1990s, it was felt by many that the war of ideologies was over forever – free-market capitalism and liberal democracy stood undefeated as the dominant ways of organising societies and governments. Political theorist Francis Fukuyama went as far as to say that this was the ‘end of history’ – the age of great upheavals of the world order was over. Or so he thought.

Running in parallel to the ideological conflicts of the twentieth century, a quiet revolution was occuring. This was a revolution in technology, and from its humble beginnings in the garages of hobbyists, it would go on to have a more profound impact than any of the grand ideological battles that people thought were shaping the world.

The Ancient Greeks and Chinese had developed their own rudimentary versions of computing machines, and some steps towards modern computing were made in the 19th century, but the first major leap forward in computing came during the Second World War, with the development of the Colossus and ENIAC computers.

These machines were created to meet urgent wartime needs for secure communication and rapid complex calculations, marking a pivotal moment in the evolution of digital technology.

Post-1945, the world saw significant technological breakthroughs that had a profound impact on global connectivity. The invention of the transistor in 1947, for instance, revolutionized electronics and computing. Transistors led to smaller, more efficient electronic devices and were foundational in the development of computers, mobile phones, and other digital technologies that now underpin the global information economy.

The 1960s and 1970s further accelerated this pace with the advent of satellites and fiber optics, dramatically enhancing communication capabilities across continents. Satellites enabled real-time, cross-continental broadcasting of television and radio, shrinking the global village and allowing people to witness worldwide events simultaneously.

Meanwhile, fiber optics, developed primarily in the 1970s, provided the backbone for the Internet and global telecommunications, supporting faster and more reliable data transfer.

In the second tile we spoke about the invention of the alphabet, which radically increased the ease with which people could record information. In the third tile, we saw how the invention of the printing press led this information capacity to grow by another order of magnitude.

In the 1980s, the invention of the internet, and later the world wide web, was a similarly seismic growth event in the history of the recording and sharing of human information.

Initially a project within the United States Department of Defense, the Internet spread to academic and then commercial networks, eventually becoming a global phenomenon. By the mid-1990s, the World Wide Web had transformed the Internet from a niche tool for researchers into a platform essential for commerce, communication, and information sharing.

This technological infrastructure facilitated economic globalization. Multinational corporations expanded their operations worldwide, supported by advances in transportation technology, such as the development of container shipping and the Boeing 747 jumbo jet in the 1960s.

These innovations drastically reduced the cost and increased the speed of global trade. Financial markets also became tightly integrated, thanks in part to real-time communications and the electronic processing of transactions, epitomized by the globalization of stock exchanges and capital markets.

Cultural globalization accompanied these economic changes. Media and entertainment were globalized through formats like television, music, and film, which crossed borders more freely. Brands and consumer culture spread worldwide, and a more integrated world economy began to reflect a shared, though diverse, global culture.

As the twentieth century came to an end, the world entered a new era, where many of the prevailing trends of the 20th century would fall by the wayside, as the world realised new global struggles.

The century began with the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which tragically struck the United States, leading to profound global repercussions. This event precipitated the global 'War on Terror', including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by the United States and its allies. These conflicts not only led to significant loss of life and political instability in the Middle East but also affected international relations and internal security policies worldwide.

In the economic sphere, the 21st century witnessed significant shifts. The financial crash of 2008 marked an end to decades of economic consensus, originating from the collapse of the housing market bubble in the United States and quickly spreading as a global financial crisis.

This event highlighted the vulnerabilities of interconnected global financial systems and led to widespread economic downturns, prompting changes in regulatory frameworks and fiscal policies in numerous countries. The crisis underscored the need for greater oversight and prudence in financial markets, sparking debates that continue to influence economic policy today.

Parallel to these upheavals, the rise of China as a global economic powerhouse has been a major narrative of the century. Building on economic reforms started in the late 20th century, China has become the world's second-largest economy. Its economic ascendancy has been accompanied by significant political and military advancements, positioning China as a central player in global affairs and altering the strategic calculations of nations worldwide.

Another significant storyline of the 21st century is the rise of India as a major economic and technological hub. With its large and youthful population, India has presented itself as a significant counterbalance to China in Asia. Its economic growth has been bolstered by advancements in information technology and services, making it a critical node in the global economy.

The technological advances of the 21st century have also profoundly affected social dynamics, particularly through the rise of social media. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have created a world in which people are more connected – and less private – than ever before. Large-scale political movements such as the Arab Spring and the Black Lives Matter protests in America have been supercharged by the arrival of these instant communication platforms.

Finally, the outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019 has had sweeping impacts on the global stage, affecting every aspect of human life. The pandemic triggered global health crises and severe economic disruptions, leading to a reevaluation of globalization, health policy, and economic structures. It exposed the vulnerabilities of global supply chains and healthcare systems, prompting nations to reconsider their domestic capabilities and international dependencies.

And that brings us, just about, to the present day. 13.8 billion years ago, a massive amount of energy and matter was released, and everything that has happened since then is the tailspin of that explosion.

The story of the human race is a happy accident that arose out of this chaotic expansion, a confluence of the right particles in the right conditions. In the few hundred thousand years since the evolution of Homo sapiens, the universe took its most complex known form.

From the earliest men and women to pick up tools, to the first farmers in the fertile crescent, to the great emperors that spread their civilizations across the globe, to the intellectual titans who laid the ground for the modern world – the human race has continually innovated and looked outwards to the next horizon of what’s possible. Who knows where they’ll go next…