Historians cannot necessarily study everything that happened in the past, thus, they are choosy in their own investigations. Some historical events, people, dates or occurrence are more significant to historical studies than others. In order to make sense out of history, one has to incorporate the idea of significance.
Generally, historians use criteria of significance to decide between the significant and trivial events, as a way of making history to be more meaningful.
Modern historians use a set of five factors of significance: importance, profundity, quantity, durability, and relevance. Educational research on topics of school history provides further three sets of related criteria of significance, including intimate interests, symbolic significance, and contemporary lessons.
This paper will be based on using profundity as criteria of significance in the study of history. Profundity is normally used to offer an evaluative component to the factor of importance. In order to appreciate and contextualize the importance of the past, it is crucial to consider how deeply people were affected by an event.
For example, in relation to the event, profundity offers an instructive factor for understanding various people’s reactions to a significant event. Hence, it helps students to understand events that deeply transformed people’s lives. The next part of this paper will evaluate how events of Cold War, Decolonization, and Globalization period in the post World War 2 era have deeply affected people.
Following independence of China, the Nationalist Party led by Jiang Jieshi began war with the Communist Party led by Mao Zedong. Due to this war, people of china suffered greatly, since the nationalists did little to improve the lives of people as promised.
Mao eventually managed to overthrow the government in 1949. Under Mao and Communism, the lives of Chinese were greatly affected due to transformation of their society from agricultural society into an industrial society.
The existing economic set-up was also transformed through the elimination of old landlords and business classes and free health care for peasants. Under communism’s one-party dictatorship, the freedoms of the people of China were immensely suppressed.
Following the Cultural Revolution and the broad shifts in leadership in China to the present, there have been great gains in terms of freedoms, leadership, and economic welfare of people of China, but they still continue to suffer to some extent, since the promised equality and brotherhood that was originally promised in revolution has not been completely implemented.
The end of World War II marked the beginning of an age of nationalist movements in European colonies in Africa and Asia. For example, the outbreak of World War II led to collapse of the uneasy alliance between Britain and Indian National Congress. This was marked by massive protests and civil disobedience campaigns, with the arrest of Gandhi and Nehru straining the relationship between the two.
The resulting cause led to independence of India, Sri Lanka and Burma following retreat of British, the Dutch and French followed similar trends in Indonesia and Vietnam. In Africa liberation of non-settler Africa was initiated by western educated individuals, leading to independence in most British, French, Portuguese and Belgian non-settler colonies in the 1960s.
While in settler colonies such as Kenya, Zimbabwe and Algeria, independence was gained after years of bloody fighting. In studying history of these movements, it is prudent to involve profundity in order to understand how colonization and struggles for independence affected people of these nations.
The collapse of the soviet by 1991 was mainly caused by political and economic crisis as a result of culture of war. Following the collapse, the Soviet Union lost the arm race and competition for international markets with the West. The United States and other western nations were able to benefit from their imperialist exploitation of other countries, with the socialism loosing significantly in terms of economic competition.
Under-collapsed Soviet Union, consumers turned to imports and there were no enough exports to meet balance of trade. Thus, there was a gloomy background of worsening market situation that had a depressing effect on the people. In order to study these events, the factor of profundity would be essential, since people were greatly affected by the transformation from socialist to capitalistic economy.
This conferred suffering to many people within the ruble of Soviet Union and it would also assist in understanding how these developments affected the world, and its reaction.
The origin of nationalist and Islamist movements in the late 20th century is a direct response to global changes that characterize modernity. The modernization of societies through the formation of national states, the organization of capitalist economies, technological and scientific developments, and the cultural and social changes that accompany these phenomena have led to these movements.
Generally, these movements have been associated with guerrilla and terrorism activities, which have significantly impacted negatively on their communities. Profundity finds its place in trying to evaluate the effects that have led to their origins and how they are affecting the local and global societies.
The Latin America has a long history of political violence and in the second half of the 20th century, political violence included civil wars, guerrilla movements, military intervention, coups, terrorism and other forms of violent confrontation. The political violence is mainly linked to the socio-economic structure of Latin America that is characterized by large inequalities of income and wealth, poverty and volatile grow.
The region is also affected by recurrent external shocks and distributive conflict. For example, indigenous groups in Ecuador and Bolivia have been engaged in conflict following demands for more rights and greater autonomy.
Dictatorship and unequal societies provided agenda for rebels in the Cuban revolution of the late 1950s. In learning history of this region profundity plays a key role since these events are shaped by how different group are affected by various aspects of their countries.