Innovation, Revolution and Global Crisis Essay

The reading under evaluation is the chapter from the book “Panorama: World’s History from 1300,” written by Ross Dunn and Laura Mitchell. The chapter is entitled “Innovation, Revolution, and Global Crisis.” The chapter describes the increase in nations’ prosperity during the last decades of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century.

Then, the chapter focuses on the increasing inequalities despite the great improvement of trade and prosperity. Finally, the authors of the reading under analysis describe the most devastating consequence of the crisis — the Great War.

The central Why question of the chapter under consideration is as follows: “Why did the increasing prosperity result in the global crisis of the twentieth century?”. The authors divide the reading into three sub-sections. All sub-sections are arranged in a manner that demonstrates the logical development of the problem.

The significance of the research question is predetermined by the fact that it addresses the controversial problem of the humankind and opens new perspectives of the vision of world history. The central argument of the paper refers to the statements that, despite the efficient world trade an immense gold deposits, urbanization, scientific and technological advances, global inequalities have grown drastically and resulted in the First World War.

Three key ideas should be addressed to understand the argument:

• Commerce, gold, urbanization, migration, technological and scientific progress were central factors that promoted the global economic growth;
• Increasing inequalities (caused by a variety of factors) led to the outbreak of revolutionary movements around the world;
• The Great War became the highest peak of the world’s crisis and resulted in massive destruction and losses.

The global prosperity was a result of the expansion of the industry. Thus, leading European countries financed the development of railway systems in neo-European countries. This initiative facilitated industry and production (Dunn & Mitchell, 2014). The influx of immigrants provided countries with the immense labor force.

Finally, scientific inventions (such as the telephone) also contributed drastically to the promotion of global business. The first key quote from the reading refers to the explanation of the second idea. Thus, “an irony of late-nineteenth-century economic expansion is its correlation to natural disasters that took millions of lives and worsened poverty in many lands” (Dunn & Mitchell, 2014, p. 703).

Severe outbreaks of plague, for instance, seem to appear in coastal regions. Thus, foreign traders could have brought the plague. At the same time, dissatisfactions in colonies arose and resulted in violent revolutionary movements (Dunn & Mitchell, 2014). It is impossible to define the exact reasons for war. A variety of prerequisites led to the conflict. The rivalry between countries and the increasing number of controversial ideologies were some of them.

The second key quote from the reading explains the nature and peculiarity of the Great War: “The major opposing states mustered numerous public institutions, private businesses, the entire economic infrastructure, and men and women of all classes and occupations to win the struggle, waging what historians call total war” (Dunn & Mitchell, 2014, p. 717).

Authors of the reading provide profound information concerning the connection between global inequalities and the outbreak of the Great War. However, two questions that derive from reading are rather controversial because exact answers cannot be found in Google or Bing, for example. The first question is, “Would it be possible to avoid WWI if there were no global inequalities?”. The second question — “What would be the world without WWI?”.

Reference

Dunn, R., & Mitchell, L. (2014). Panorama: World History from 1300. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education.