Portal:Modern history

Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented with literary form and expression, as exemplified by Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new." This literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of the time. The horrors of the First World War saw the prevailing assumptions about society reassessed, and much modernist writing engages with the technological advances and societal changes of modernity moving into the 20th century. In Modernist Literature, Mary Ann Gillies notes that these literary themes share the "centrality of a conscious break with the past", one that "emerges as a complex response across continents and disciplines to a changing world". (Full article...)

The history of Germany from 1945–1990 spans the period following World War II, from the Berlin Declaration marking the abolition of the German Reich and Allied-occupied period in Germany on 5 June 1945 to German reunification on 3 October 1990.

Following the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945, and its defeat in World War II, Germany was stripped of its territorial gains; more than a quarter of its old pre-war territory was annexed to communist Poland and the Soviet Union and their German populations were expelled to the west. Saarland was French protectorate from 1947 to 1956 without the recognition of the "Four Powers", because the Soviet Union opposed it, making it a disputed territory.

At the end of World War II, there were some eight million foreign displaced people in Germany, mainly forced laborers and prisoners. This included around 400,000 survivors from the Nazi concentration camp system, survivors from a much larger number who had died from starvation, harsh conditions, murder, or being worked to death. 12 to 14 million German-speaking refugees and expellees arrived in Western and central Germany from its Eastern territories and other countries in Eastern Europe between 1944 and 1950; an estimated two million of them died on the way there. Some nine million Germans were prisoners of war. (Full article...)

The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing global counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks and is also the most recent global conflict spanning multiple wars. The main targets of the campaign were militant Islamist and Salafi jihadist armed organisations such as Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and their international affiliates, which were waging military insurgencies to overthrow governments of various Muslim-majority countries. Other major targets included the Ba'athist regime in Iraq, which was toppled during an invasion in 2003, and various militant factions that fought during the ensuing Iraqi insurgency.

The "war on terror" uses war as a metaphor to describe a variety of actions which fall outside the traditional definition of war. 43rd President of the United States George W. Bush first used the term "war on terrorism" on 16 September 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to Congress. Bush indicated the enemy of the war on terror as "a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them." The initial conflict was aimed at al-Qaeda, with the main theater in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a region that would later be referred to as "AfPak". The term "war on terror" was immediately criticized by individuals including Richard Myers, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and eventually more nuanced terms came to be used by the Bush administration to define the campaign. While "war on terror" was never used as a formal designation of U.S. operations, a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal was issued by the U.S. Armed Forces.

The "war on terror" was officially declared over in May 2010 and again in May 2013. On 23 May 2013, US President Barack Obama announced that the "war on terrorism" was over, saying that the U.S. would not wage war against a tactic but would instead focus on a specific group of terrorist networks. Other American military campaigns during the 2010s have also been considered part of the "war on terror" by individuals and the media. The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria during 2014-2015 led to the global Operation Inherent Resolve, and an international campaign to destroy the terrorist organization. This was considered to be another campaign of the "war on terror". With the major wars over and only low-level combat operations in some places, end of the war in Afghanistan in August 2021 symbolises the visible ending of the war, or at least its main phase, for many in the West. The United States Military ceased awarding the National Defense Service Medal for the Global War on Terror on December 31, 2022. As of 2023, various operations in the campaign are ongoing, including an ongoing counter-insurgency campaign in Somalia. (Full article...)

Fin de siècle (French: [fɛ̃ də sjɛkl]) is a French term meaning "end of century,” a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom "turn of the century" and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without context, the term is typically used to refer to the end of the 19th century. This period was widely thought to be a period of social degeneracy, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning. The "spirit" of fin de siècle often refers to the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, including ennui, cynicism, pessimism, and "a widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence."

The term fin de siècle is commonly applied to French art and artists, as the traits of the culture first appeared there, but the movement affected many European countries. The term becomes applicable to the sentiments and traits associated with the culture, as opposed to focusing solely on the movement's initial recognition in France. The ideas and concerns developed by fin de siècle artists provided the impetus for movements such as symbolism and modernism.

The themes of fin de siècle political culture were very controversial and have been cited as a major influence on fascism and as a generator of the science of geopolitics, including the theory of Lebensraum. Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Nottingham, Michael Heffernan, and Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote about the origins of geopolitics: (Full article...)

Contemporary archaeology is a field of archaeological research that focuses on the most recent (20th and 21st century) past, and also increasingly explores the application of archaeological thinking to the contemporary world. It has also been referred to as the archaeology of the 'contemporary past'. The use of this term in the United Kingdom is particularly associated with the Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory (CHAT) conference group. The field forms part of historical archaeology, or the archaeology of the modern period. Unlike ethnoarchaeology, contemporary archaeology studies the recent and contemporary past in its own right, rather than to develop models that can inform the study of the more distant past. (Full article...)

Modern reenactment is historical reenactment of events of the modern period, most commonly events from the 18th century to the present.

The period starts with events such as the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, and the peak of the Royal Navy's power.

The Victorian era is included, although not as well covered in terms of events as the major battles before and after it, with the notable exception of the American Civil War, which has a large and active community of reenactors. (Full article...)

The History of France from 1914 to the present includes:

• the later years of the Third Republic (1870–1940)
• World War I (1914–1918)
• Interwar Period (1918–1939)
• World War II (1939–1945)
• the Fourth Republic (1946–1958)
• the Fifth Republic (since 1958)

(Full article...)

The French Fourth Republic (French: Quatrième république française) was the republican government of France from 27 October 1946 to 4 October 1958, governed by the fourth republican constitution. It was in many ways a revival of the Third Republic that was in place from 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War to 1940 during World War II, and suffered many of the same problems. France adopted the constitution of the Fourth Republic on 13 October 1946.

Despite the political dysfunction, the Fourth Republic saw an era of great economic growth in France and the rebuilding of the nation's social institutions and industry after World War II, with assistance from the United States provided through the Marshall Plan. It also saw the beginning of the rapprochement with former longtime enemy Germany, which in turn led to Franco-German co-operation and eventually to the development of the European Union.

Some attempts were also made to strengthen the executive branch of government to prevent the unstable situation that had existed before the war, but the instability remained and the Fourth Republic saw frequent changes in government – there were 21 administrations in its 12-year history. Moreover, the government proved unable to make effective decisions regarding decolonization of the numerous remaining French colonies. After a series of crises, most importantly the Algerian crisis of 1958, the Fourth Republic collapsed. Wartime leader Charles de Gaulle returned from retirement to preside over a transitional administration that was empowered to design a new French constitution. The Fourth Republic was dissolved on 5 October 1958 following a public referendum which established the modern-day Fifth Republic with a strengthened presidency. (Full article...)

This is a timeline of modern Greek history. (Full article...)

The 16th century begins with the Julian year 1501 (MDI) and ends with either the Julian or the Gregorian year 1600 (MDC) (depending on the reckoning used; the Gregorian calendar introduced a lapse of 10 days in October 1582). The Habsburg Spanish Empire, Portuguese Empire, Ottoman Empire, Safavid Persia, Mughal India and Ming China were the most powerful and hegemonic states.


The 16th century is regarded by historians as the century which saw the rise of Western civilization and the Islamic gunpowder empires. The Renaissance in Italy and Europe saw the emergence of important artists, authors and scientists, and led to the foundation of important subjects which include accounting and political science. Copernicus proposed the heliocentric universe, which was met with strong resistance, and Tycho Brahe refuted the theory of celestial spheres through observational measurement of the 1572 appearance of a Milky Way supernova. These events directly challenged the long-held notion of an immutable universe supported by Ptolemy and Aristotle, and led to major revolutions in astronomy and science. Galileo Galilei became a champion of the new sciences, invented the first thermometer and made substantial contributions in the fields of physics and astronomy, becoming a major figure in the Scientific Revolution.


Spain and Portugal colonized large parts of Central and South America, followed by France and England in Northern America and the Lesser Antilles. The Portuguese became the masters of trade between Brazil, the coasts of Africa, and their possessions in the Indies, whereas the Spanish came to dominate the Greater Antilles, Mexico, Peru, and opened trade across the Pacific Ocean, linking the Americas with the Indies. English and French privateers began to practice persistent theft of Spanish and Portuguese treasures. This era of colonialism established mercantilism as the leading school of economic thought, where the economic system was viewed as a zero-sum game in which any gain by one party required a loss by another. The mercantilist doctrine encouraged the many intra-European wars of the period and arguably fueled European expansion and imperialism throughout the world until the 19th century or early 20th century. (Full article...)

In many periodizations of human history, the late modern period followed the early modern period. It began approximately around the year 1800 and depending on the author, either ended with the beginning of contemporary history after World War II in 1945, or includes the contemporary history period up to the present day. Notable historical events in the late 18th century that marked the transition from the early modern period to the late modern period include – the American Revolution (1765–1791), the French Revolution (1789–1799), and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1760.

It took all of human history up to the year 1804 for the world's population to reach 1 billion; it only took 123 years later for the world population to reach 2 billion in 1927. From then to the close of the 20th century in 1999, the world population had tripled to 6 billion people. (Full article...)

Libya (Italian: Libia; Arabic: ليبيا الايطالية, romanized: Lībyā al-Īṭālīya) was a colony of Fascist Italy located in North Africa, in what is now modern Libya, between 1934 and 1943. It was formed from the unification of the colonies of Italian Cyrenaica and Italian Tripolitania, which had been Italian possessions since 1911.

From 1911 until the establishment of a unified colony in 1934, the territory of the two colonies was sometimes referred to as "Italian Libya" or Italian North Africa (Africa Settentrionale Italiana, or ASI). Both names were also used after the unification, with Italian Libya becoming the official name of the newly combined colony. It had a population of around 150,000 Italians.

The Italian colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were taken by Italy from the Ottoman Empire during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-1912, and run by Italian governors. In 1923, indigenous rebels associated with the Senussi Order organized the Libyan resistance movement against Italian settlement in Libya, mainly in Cyrenaica. The rebellion was put down by Italian forces in 1932, after the so-called "pacification campaign", which resulted in the deaths of a quarter of Cyrenaica's population. In 1934, the colonies were unified by governor Italo Balbo, with Tripoli as the capital. (Full article...)

From the 1680s to 1789, Germany comprised many small territories which were parts of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Prussia finally emerged as dominant. Meanwhile, the states developed a classical culture that found its greatest expression in the Enlightenment, with world class leaders such as philosophers Leibniz and Kant, writers such as Goethe and Schiller, and musicians Bach and Beethoven. (Full article...)

* Louis XII, the Father of the People 1498–1515, great-grandson of Charles V of France (Full article...)

The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of rapid scientific discovery, standardization, mass production and industrialization from the late 19th century into the early 20th century. The First Industrial Revolution, which ended in the middle of the 19th century, was punctuated by a slowdown in important inventions before the Second Industrial Revolution in 1870. Though a number of its events can be traced to earlier innovations in manufacturing, such as the establishment of a machine tool industry, the development of methods for manufacturing interchangeable parts, as well as the invention of the Bessemer process to produce steel, the Second Industrial Revolution is generally dated between 1870 and 1914 (the beginning of World War I).

Advancements in manufacturing and production technology enabled the widespread adoption of technological systems such as telegraph and railroad networks, gas and water supply, and sewage systems, which had earlier been limited to a few select cities. The enormous expansion of rail and telegraph lines after 1870 allowed unprecedented movement of people and ideas, which culminated in a new wave of globalization. In the same time period, new technological systems were introduced, most significantly electrical power and telephones. The Second Industrial Revolution continued into the 20th century with early factory electrification and the production line; it ended at the beginning of World War I.

The Second Industrial Revolution is followed by the Third Industrial Revolution starting in 1947. (Full article...)