acc. PHILLIPS
  • acc. PHILLIPS
  • America
    • Introduction
      • Course Overview
      • Policies
      • Essential Documents
    • 1492-1754
      • Colonization
    • 1754-1848
      • Revolution
      • Constitution
      • Expansion
    • 1848-1898
      • The Civil War
      • The Gilded Age
    • 1898-1945
      • The American Empire
      • The Great Depression
      • The Second World War
    • 1945-1991
      • The Early Cold War
      • The Great Society
      • The Late Cold War
    • 1991-Today
      • The Culture Wars
      • The War on Terror
  • Europe
    • Introduction
    • 1200-1450
    • 1450-1648
      • Renaissance
      • Reformation
      • Exploration
      • Links
      • Assignments
      • Videos
        • John Green Videos
        • Tom Richey Videos
        • Rick Steves Videos
        • Assorted Videos
      • Slideshows
    • 1648-1815
      • Sovereignty
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      • Links
      • Readings and Assignments
      • Videos
        • John Green Videos
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      • Slideshows
    • 1815-1914
      • Industry
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      • Videos
        • John Green Videos
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    • 1914-Today
      • WWI
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      • Cold War
      • EU
      • Links
      • Assignments and Readings
      • Videos
        • John Green Videos
        • Tom Richey Videos
        • Assorted Videos
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  • World
    • Ancient
    • Modern
      • Introduction
        • Course Overview
        • Policies
        • Essential Documents
        • Exam
      • 1200-1450
        • Asia
        • Africa
        • Europe
        • Americas
        • Trade
      • 1450-1750
        • Discovery
        • Maritime Empires
        • Land Empires
      • 1750-1900
        • Revolutions
        • Industrialization
        • Imperialism
      • 1900-Today
        • World Wars
        • Postwar World
        • Globalization
  • Research
  • Resources
  • About
  • Contact
  • acc. PHILLIPS
  • America
    • Introduction
      • Course Overview
      • Policies
      • Essential Documents
    • 1492-1754
      • Colonization
    • 1754-1848
      • Revolution
      • Constitution
      • Expansion
    • 1848-1898
      • The Civil War
      • The Gilded Age
    • 1898-1945
      • The American Empire
      • The Great Depression
      • The Second World War
    • 1945-1991
      • The Early Cold War
      • The Great Society
      • The Late Cold War
    • 1991-Today
      • The Culture Wars
      • The War on Terror
  • Europe
    • Introduction
    • 1200-1450
    • 1450-1648
      • Renaissance
      • Reformation
      • Exploration
      • Links
      • Assignments
      • Videos
        • John Green Videos
        • Tom Richey Videos
        • Rick Steves Videos
        • Assorted Videos
      • Slideshows
    • 1648-1815
      • Sovereignty
      • Commerce
      • Reason
      • Revolution
      • Links
      • Readings and Assignments
      • Videos
        • John Green Videos
        • Tom Richey Videos
        • Assorted Videos
      • Slideshows
    • 1815-1914
      • Industry
      • Ideology
      • Empire
      • Modernity
      • Links
      • Readings and Assignments
      • Videos
        • John Green Videos
        • Tom Richey Videos
        • Assorted Videos
      • Slideshows
    • 1914-Today
      • WWI
      • WWII
      • Cold War
      • EU
      • Links
      • Assignments and Readings
      • Videos
        • John Green Videos
        • Tom Richey Videos
        • Assorted Videos
      • Slideshows
  • World
    • Ancient
    • Modern
      • Introduction
        • Course Overview
        • Policies
        • Essential Documents
        • Exam
      • 1200-1450
        • Asia
        • Africa
        • Europe
        • Americas
        • Trade
      • 1450-1750
        • Discovery
        • Maritime Empires
        • Land Empires
      • 1750-1900
        • Revolutions
        • Industrialization
        • Imperialism
      • 1900-Today
        • World Wars
        • Postwar World
        • Globalization
  • Research
  • Resources
  • About
  • Contact

Global Challenges,
​c. 1900-Today

The Postwar World

c. 1900-Today

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Contents


The Postwar World, c. 1900-Today:
  • Objectives
  • The Iron Curtain
  • East Asia, 1945-present
  • South Asia, 1945-present
  • The Middle East, 1945-present
  • Africa, 1945-present
  • Latin America, 1945-present
  • Fall of Communism
  • The European Union and Russia
  • The Post-Cold War United States
  • Global Separatist Movements

Objectives

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  • ​​​​Explain the historical context of the Cold War after 1945. 

  • Explain the causes and effects of the ideological struggle of the Cold War.

  • ​​​Compare the ways in which the United States and the Soviet Union sought to maintain influence over the course of the Cold War.

  • ​​Explain the causes and consequences of China’s adoption of communism.

  • ​Explain the causes and effects of movements to redistribute economic resources.

  • ​​​Explain the causes of the end of the Cold War.
    ​
  • ​​​Advances in U.S. military and technological development, the Soviet Union’s costly and ultimately failed invasion of Afghanistan, and public discontent and economic weakness in communist countries led to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

  • ​​Compare the processes by which various peoples pursued independence after 1900.

  • ​​​Explain how political changes in the period from c. 1900 to the present led to territorial, demographic, and nationalist developments.

  • ​Explain the economic changes and continuities resulting from the process of decolonization.

  • ​​Explain various reactions to existing power structures in the period after 1900.

The Iron Curtain

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  • ​Hopes for greater self-government were largely unfulfilled following World War I; however, in the years following World War II, increasing anti-imperialist sentiment contributed to the dissolution of empires and the restructuring of states.

  • Technological and economic gains experienced during World War II by the victorious nations shifted the global balance of power.​

  • ​​​The global balance of economic and political power shifted during and after World War II and rapidly evolved into the Cold War. The democracy of the United States and the authoritarian communist Soviet Union emerged as superpowers, which led to ideological conflict and a power struggle between capitalism and communism across the globe.
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Political cartoon depicting the expansion of Soviet influence over Eastern Europe.
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labeling used on Marshall Plan aid
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Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the "I Have a Dream" speech during the 1963 March on Washington.
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Castle Romeo thermonuclear test on Bikini Atoll.
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Article: 8 Times The World Narrowly Avoided A Potential Nuclear Disaster
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1968 was a year of turbulent protests and riots around the world.
  • United Nations
  • UN Security Council
  • Bretton Woods Conference
  • International Monetary Fund
  • World Bank
  • General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
  • Cold War
  • satellite nations
  • Eastern bloc
  • Iron Curtain
  • Harry S. Truman
  • Long Telegram
  • Truman Doctrine
  • containment
  • Marshall Plan
  • Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon)
  • Josip Broz Tito
  • Brotherhood and unity
  • Tito-Stalin split
  • Beveridge Report
  • cradle-to-grave welfare state
  • Clement Atlee
  • technocrat
  • National Security Act of 1947
  • Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
  • ​Radio Free Europe
  • German Federal Republic
  • German Economic Miracle
  • German Democratic Republic
  • Berlin Airlift
  • North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
  • Warsaw Pact
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • Eisenhower Doctrine
  • John Foster Dulles
  • brinkmanship
  • massive retaliation
  • military-industrial complex
  • Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, 1954
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Nikita Khrushchev
  • Secret Speech
  • de-Stalinization
  • Hungarian Uprising
  • Suez Crisis​
  • House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
  • Joseph McCarthy
  • Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
  • hydrogen bomb
  • Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM)
  • Sputnik I
  • Space Race
  • NASA
  • Project Mercury
  • Kitchen Debate​
  • U-2 Incident
  • Francis Gary Powers
  • John F. Kennedy
  • Berlin Wall
  • Yuri Gagarin
  • ​Project Apollo
  • ​​​Telstar I​
  • Neil Armstrong
  • Fidel Castro
  • Bay of Pigs
  • Cuban Missile Crisis
  • ​Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
  • Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
  • Baby Boomers
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965
  • Black Power Movement
  • 1968 protests
  • Second-Wave Feminism
  • Charles de Gaulle
  • Prague Spring
  • Alexander Dubček
  • Brezhnev Doctrine
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Article: First signs of thaw
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Article: Is Capitalism or Communism Better for Women? How the Kitchen Debate Gave a New Meaning to the Cold War 'Home Front'
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The Mercury and Apollo programs led to the first moon landing by American astronauts in 1969.
The Iron Curtain
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East Asia, 1945-present

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After World War II, Tokyo was completely rebuilt. Today, with a population of around 37 million people, it is the most populated urban area on Earth. Japan experienced tremendous growth during the Japanese economic miracle from 1945 to 1991.
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"Turn China into a prosperous, rich and powerful industrialized socialist country under the leadership of the Communist Party and Chairman Mao!"
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The Tiananmen Square protests, Beijing, China, 1989 challenged Communist Party rule, but were brutally repressed.
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The Kim dynasty has ruled North Korea as a totalitarian state since 1945.
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Satellite image of the Korean Peninsula at night, showing North Korea in almost complete darkness. Material shortages are widespread in the Hermit Kingdom.
  • ​​As a result of internal tension and Japanese aggression, Chinese communists seized power. These changes in China eventually led to communist revolution.
    ​
  • In communist China, the government controlled the national economy through the Great Leap Forward, often implementing repressive policies, with negative repercussions for the population.
  • 1947 Constitution of Japan
  • Liberal Democratic Party
  • Japanese economic miracle
  • Lost Decades
  • Shinzo Abe
  • ​Chinese Civil War
  • Chiang Kai-shek
  • Republic of China (Taiwan)
  • Chiang Ching-kuo
  • Mao Zedong
  • People’s Republic of China
  • People's Liberation Army
  • party cadres
  • Chinese occupation of Tibet
  • Korean War
  • Mass Line
  • Great Leap Forward
  • Great Chinese Famine
  • backyard furnaces
  • pragmatists
  • Liu Shaoqi
  • Zhou Enlai
  • Cultural Revolution
  • Red Guards​
  • Little Red Book
  • Gang of Four
  • Jiang Qing
  • ​Lin Biao
  • Ping Pong Diplomacy
  • Deng Xiaoping
  • Four Modernizations
  • One Child Policy
  • Tiananmen Square Massacre
  • Transfer of Hong Kong
  • United States-China Relations Act
  • 2008 Summer Olympics
  • BRIC
  • Republic of Korea
  • People's Democratic Republic of Korea
  • Kim dynasty
  • 38th Parallel
  • police action
  • Chinese intervention
  • Douglas MacArthur
  • limited war
  • Demilitarized zone (DMZ)
  • Four Asian Tigers
  • Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)
  • North Korean nuclear proliferation​
Article: Understanding the Relationship Between Hong Kong and China
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Article: Hong Kong’s Protests Have Cemented Its Identity
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East Asia, 1945-present


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Together China and India are home to more than 1/3 of the human population.

South Asia, 1945-present

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Mohandas K. Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement, is one of the most celebrated figures of the 20th century.
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Jawaharlal Nehru was Mohandas K. Gandhi's friend and successor.  He was the first prime minister of independent India from 1947 to 1964.
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Benazir Bhutto, a prime minister of Pakistan, was the first woman to head a democratic government in a Muslim majority nation. She was assassinated in 2007 by al-Qaeda and Taliban Islamic extremists.
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US military and political experts believed the Domino Theory that if communism took root in a Southeast Asian nation it would spread to neighboring countries.
images from the Vietnam War​​
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  • ​​The Cold War produced new military alliances, including NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and led to nuclear proliferation and proxy wars between and within postcolonial states in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. ​
    ​
  • ​Movements to redistribute land and resources developed within states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, sometimes advocating communism or socialism.

  • Groups and individuals, including the Non-Aligned Movement, opposed and promoted alternatives to the existing economic, political, and social orders.
  • decolonization
  • Indian National Congress
  • ​Bal Gangadhar Tilak
  • All-India Muslim League
  • Morley-Minto reforms
  • Muhammad Ali Jinnah
  • Defense of India Act
  • Rowlatt Acts
  • Amritsar Massacre
  • Montagu-Chelmsford reforms
  • Mohandas K. Gandhi
  • satyagraha
  • Salt March
  • Government of India Act (1935)
  • Quit India movement
  • Indian Independence Act
  • Partition of India
  • Kashmir
  • ​​Commonwealth of Nations 
  • Jawaharlal Nehru
  • Green Revolution
  • ​​Bangladesh
  • Smiling Buddha
  • Indira Gandhi
  • Golden Temple massacre
  • Rajiv Gandhi
  • Bhopal disaster
  • Sri Lankan Civil War
  • Tamil Tigers (LTTE)
  • Benazir Bhutto
  • dowry deaths
  • BRIC
  • Philippine Independence
  • Ferdinand Marcos
  • Imelda Marcos
  • Corazon Aquino
  • Indonesian War of Independence
  • Sukarno
  • Indonesian genocide
  • Suharto
  • Lee Kuan Yew
  • Four Asian Tigers
  • ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)
  • French Indochina
  • Vietnamese Nationalist Party
  • Communist Party of Vietnam
  • ​Ho Chi Minh
  • Vo Minh Giap
  • Viet Minh
  • Dien Bien Phu
  • Geneva Accords
  • 17th Parallel
  • Vietnam War​
  • SEATO
  • Ngo Dinh Diem
  • Vietcong
  • Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)
  • Domino Theory
  • Robert McNamara
  • Lyndon B. Johnson
  • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
  • Agent Orange
  • Napalm
  • Tet Offensive
  • Richard Nixon
  • Henry Kissinger
  • Realpolitik
  • Vietnamization
  • bombing of Cambodia
  • Ho Chi Minh Trail
  • Pentagon Papers
  • Paris Peace Accords
  • Fall of Saigon
  • Khmer Rouge
  • Cambodian genocide
  • Aung San Suu Kyi
  • Rohingya genocide
Article: The need for a museum on British colonisation of India
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Article: Worst Leaders in History? Winston Churchill as 'Evil' as Hitler, Mao and Stalin, Indian Lawmaker Says
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Article: The Partition of India: Divisions & Violence in the 20th Century
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South Asia, 1945-present

The Middle East, 1945-present

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Israeli jets during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Israel fought neighboring Arab states in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973. Arab terrorist campaigns have continued against Israel ​since the 1979 Camp David Accords with Egypt.
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American president Jimmy Carter mediated the Camp David Accords signed by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin.
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Political cartoon of a mujahideen resistance fighter during the Soviet-Afghan War, 1979-1989
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Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution.
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The revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran relied on child-soldiers for its survival during the grueling Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
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Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1995
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The ​9/11 terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda led to the United States' Global War on Terror.
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US marines toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Iraq (2003) shortly after the start of the Iraq War. Instability in Iraq led to the rise of ISIS.
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Long-term Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi (1969-2011) was overthrown during the pro-democracy Arab Spring revolts.
  • ​​The redrawing of political boundaries after the withdrawal of former colonial authorities led to the creation of new states.
    ​
  • The redrawing of political boundaries in some cases led to conflict as well as population displacement and/or resettlements, including those related to the Partition of India and the creation of the state of Israel.
    ​
  • ​In newly independent states after World War II, governments often took on a strong role in guiding economic life to promote development.

  • ​​​Although conflict dominated much of the 20th century, many individuals and groups— including states—opposed this trend. Some individuals and groups, however, intensified the conflicts.
    ​

  • Militarized states often responded to the proliferation of conflicts in ways that further intensified conflict.

  • Some movements used violence against civilians in an effort to achieve political aims.
  • khedives
  • Lord Cromer
  • Denshawai incident
  • Sykes-Picot Agreement
  • Zionism
  • Balfour Declaration
  • League of Nations mandates
  • Hussein bin Ali
  • Sa'd Zaghloul
  • Wafd Party
  • ​​​Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
  • Reza Shah Pahlavi
  • Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud
  • Haganah
  • Israel
  • Israeli War of Independence
  • Mohammad Mosaddegh
  • Operation Ajax
  • Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
  • White Revolution
  • Pan-Islamism
  • Muslim Brotherhood
  • Free Officers Movement
  • Farouk I
  • Gamal Abdel Nasser
  • Suez Crisis
  • Pan-Arabism
  • United Arab Republic (UAR)
  • Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
  • Yasser Arafat
  • Six-Day War
  • Two-State Solution
  • Muammar Gaddafi
  • Ba'athism
  • Hafez al-Assad
  • Munich Olympics massacre
  • Yom Kippur War
  • OPEC oil embargo
  • ​Camp David Accords
  • Anwar Sadat
  • Menachem Begin
  • Soviet-Afghan War​
  • mujahideen
  • religious revivalism
  • Iranian Islamic Revolution
  • Ruhollah Khomeini
  • Iran Hostage Crisis
  • Ali Khamenei
  • Hezbollah
  • Saddam Hussein
  • Iran-Iraq War
  • Persian Gulf War
  • Intifada
  • Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
  • Hamas
  • Osama bin Laden
  • al-Qaeda
  • 9/11
  • George W. Bush
  • Bush Doctrine
  • Taliban
  • Mohammed Omar
  • U.S. War in Afghanistan
  • Hamid Karzai
  • Axis of Evil
  • Iraq War
  • Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
  • Abu Ghraib
  • Hosni Mubarak
  • Arab Spring
  • Bashar al-Assad
  • Syrian Civil War
  • ISIS
  • Iranian nuclear deal
  • Kurds
  • Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
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U.S. President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and other members of the national security team watch updates in the White House Situation Room during the 2011 special forces mission that killed Osama bin Laden, the founder and leader of the al-Qaeda terror network.
The Middle East, 1945-present

Africa, 1945-present

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Gold Coast became the first British African colony to win independence in 1957. Under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, the new state called itself Ghana after the medieval empire of that name.
Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu painted key moments from Congo’s brutal colonial past, the fight for independence and later struggles for power.
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Mobutu Sese Seko was the notoriously corrupt military dictator of Zaire (Congo) from 1965 to 1997, a period of widespread human rights violations during which he embezzled up to $15 billion from his people. ​
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Idi Amin, dictator of Uganda (1971-1979), committed appalling acts of violence against his people. An estimated 300,000-500,000 civilians were killed by his regime.
Article: Buried for 50 years: Britain’s shameful role in the Biafran war
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Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress (ANC) party worked with F.W. de Klerk to dismantle the apartheid system. He became the first black prime minister of South Africa in 1994 after the ANC won the first genuinely democratic elections in the country's history.
  • ​​Nationalist leaders and parties in Asia and Africa sought varying degrees of autonomy within or independence from imperial rule.

  • After the end of World War II, some colonies negotiated their independence, while others achieved independence through armed struggle.
    ​
  • Regional, religious, and ethnic movements challenged colonial rule and inherited imperial boundaries. Some of these movements advocated for autonomy.​
    ​
  • The migration of former colonial subjects to imperial metropoles (the former colonizing country), usually in the major cities, maintained cultural and economic ties between the colony and the metropole even after the dissolution of empires.
  • Pan-African movement
  • W.E.B. DuBois
  • Marcus Garvey
  • Simon Kimbangu
  • Afrikaner National Party
  • apartheid
  • ​Bantustan homelands
  • African National Congress (ANC)
  • Freedom Charter
  • Sharpeville massacre
  • Year of Africa
  • Kwame Nkrumah
  • ​Convention People's Party (CPP)
  • Organisation of African Unity (OAU)
  • neocolonialism
  • Kikuyu
  • Kenya African Union (KAU)
  • Jomo Kenyatta
  • Mau Mau Uprising
  • French Algeria
  • Setif massacre
  • Algerian War
  • Secret Army Organization (OAS)
  • National Liberation Front (FLN)
  • French Fourth Republic
  • French Fifth Republic
  • Non-Aligned Movement
  • negritude
  • Chinua Achebe
  • Leopold Sedar Senghor
  • Frantz Fanon
  • Kofi Awoonor
  • Dennis Brutus
  • Patrice Lumumba
  • Mobutu Sese Seko
  • Zaire
  • Nigerian Civil War
  • Idi Amin
  • Angolan Civil War
  • Haile Selassie
  • Derg
  • Mengistu Haile Mariam
  • Robert Mugabe
  • Nelson Mandela
  • Walter Sisulu
  • Steve Biko
  • F.W. de Klerk
  • Algerian Civil War
  • Somali Civil War
  • Rwandan genocide
  • First Congo War
  • Second Congo War
  • AIDS epidemic
  • African Union (AU)
Africa, 1945-present

Latin America, 1945-present

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The beautiful Evita Peron, wife of Argentine president Juan Peron, campaigned for women and the poor during her time as First Lady of Argentina (1946-1952). Beloved by the masses, three million attended her funeral when she died of cancer at age 33.
Left-wing movement such as the Zapatistas, Sandinistas, FARC, and Shining Path have been suppressed by U.S.-backed counterrevolutionaries such as the Contras and right-wing dictators including Augusto Pinochet.
Images of Argentine communist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, a key actor in the Cuban Revolution, are prolific symbols of socialist revolution throughout Latin America.
PEMEX, PDVSA, and Petrobras, the state-owned oil companies of Mexico, Venezuela, and Brazil, are the three largest corporations in Latin America.
Brasilia was built between 1956 and 1960 to be the new federal capital of Brazil. It was designed by modernist architect Lúcio Costa.
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Chilean right-wing military dictator meeting Augusto Pinochet with American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Pinochet waged a Dirty War against socialists and communists with heavy U.S. assistance through Operation Condor.
  • ​​The Cold War produced new military alliances, including NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and led to nuclear proliferation and proxy wars between and within postcolonial states in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. ​
    ​
  • ​Movements to redistribute land and resources developed within states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, sometimes advocating communism or socialism.

  • Groups and individuals, including the Non-Aligned Movement, opposed and promoted alternatives to the existing economic, political, and social orders.
  • First World
  • Second World
  • ​​Third World
  • Non-Aligned Movement
  • ​​Institutional Revolutionary Party (​PRI)
  • Lazaro Cardenas
  • PEMEX
  • El Milagro Mexicano
  • liberation theology
  • Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas
  • North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
  • maquiladoras
  • Zapatistas
  • banana republics
  • Banana Wars
  • United Fruit Company
  • Juan Jose Arevalo
  • Jacobo Arbenz
  • Guatemalan Civil War
  • Efrain Rios Montt
  • Augusto Sandino
  • Good Neighbor Policy
  • Anastasio Somoza Garcia
  • FSLN (Sandinista party)
  • AMNLAE
  • Daniel Ortega
  • Contras
  • Violeta Chamorro
  • Central American Common Market
  • Panama Canal Treaty
  • Manuel Noriega
  • Fulgencio Batista
  • Fidel Castro
  • Ernesto "Che" Guevara
  • Cuban Thaw
  • Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier
  • narcoterrorism
  • FARC
  • Pablo Escobar
  • Romulo Betancourt
  • PDVSA
  • pink tide
  • Hugo Chavez
  • Getulio Dornelles Vargas
  • Petrobras
  • Juscelino Kubitschek
  • Brasilia
  • BRIC
  • Shining Path
  • Alberto Fujimori
  • Alliance for Progress
  • Operation Condor
  • Eduardo Frei
  • Salvador Allende
  • Augusto Pinochet
  • Raul Prebisch
  • dependency theory
  • primary products
  • neocolonial economy
  • Juan Peron
  • Evita Peron
  • descamisados
  • Argentine Dirty War
  • Falklands War
  • Mercosur
Latin America, 1945-present

Fall of Communism

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Soviet intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile system
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Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-1991) introduced dramatic reforms that accelerated the USSR's collapse.
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People hugged, kissed, sang, cheered, and cried as the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989 bringing a dramatic and joyous end to the Cold War. East and West Germany reunited into a single state on October 3, 1990.
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Advances in U.S. military and technological development, the Soviet Union’s costly and ultimately failed invasion of Afghanistan, and public discontent and economic weakness in communist countries led to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
  • Sino-Soviet split
  • ​Leonid Brezhnev
  • Brezhnev Doctrine
  • détente
  • Era of Stagnation
  • Richard Nixon
  • Henry Kissinger
  • ​SALT I
  • Yom Kippur War
  • OPEC oil embargo
  • ​stagflation
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • Helsinki Accords
  • ​Soviet-Afghan War​
  • mujahideen​
  • Ronald Reagan
  • Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)
  • Mikhail Gorbachev
  • uskorenie
  • Glasnost
  • Perestroika
  • New Political Thinking
  • Democratization
  • Chernobyl meltdown
  • Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty
  • Leszek Kolakowski
  • ​Solidarity
  • Lech Walesa
  • Pan-European Picnic
  • Erich Honecker
  • Fall of the Berlin Wall
  • German reunification
  • Todor Zhivkov
  • Velvet Revolution
  • Alexander Dubček
  • Václav Havel
  • Velvet Divorce
  • Nicolae Ceaușescu
  • January Events
  • August Coup
  • Boris Yeltsin
  • Bolovezha Accords
  • Dissolution of the USSR
  • Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
  • Breakup of Yugoslavia
  • Yugoslav Wars
​Article: The Gorbachev Era: Glasnost & Perestroika Pre-Fall of the Soviet Union
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Article: The August Coup: The Soviet Plan to Overthrow Gorbachev
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Article: The Soviet Union: How and Why Did it Fall?
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The 1991-2008 breakup of Yugoslavia led to the genocidal Yugoslav Wars.
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The Cold War, 1945-1991.pdf from Dave Phillips
Fall of Communism

The European Union and Russia

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Formed in the Cold War's wake in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, falling British support for the European Union led to the 2016 Brexit referendum to leave the EU.
​France's large Muslim population, largely descended from France's former North African colonies, has clashed with French police and with French nationalists who argue that Islamic values are contradictory to traditional French liberal and Christian values.
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​Conflicts in African and the Middle East led to a humanitarian disaster as a flood of immigrants crossed the Mediterranean into Europe during the 2015 Refugee Crisis.
​In newly independent states after World War II, governments often took on a strong role in guiding economic life to promote development.
  • ​Europeanism
  • Euroskepticism
  • European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)
  • Treaty of Rome
  • European Economic Community (EEC)
  • Maastricht Treaty
  • European Union
  • euro
  • Eurozone
  • European Central Bank
  • Treaty of Lisbon
  • Global financial crisis
  • European debt crisis
  • austerity measures
  • Angela Merkel
  • Greens
  • Gastarbeiter
  • North African immigration
  • Rivers of Blood
  • Jean-Marie Le Pen
  • National Front
  • Islamophobia
  • banlieue riots
  • French Roma expulsion
  • burqa ban
  • Refugee crisis
  • Brexit
  • Marine Le Pen
  • Alternative for Germany
  • ​EU Blue Card
  • Chechen Wars
  • Nord-Ost siege
  • Vladimir Putin
  • South Ossetia
  • Russo-Georgian War
  • Color Revolutions
  • Viktor Yanukovych
  • Russian annexation of Crimea
  • War in Donbass
  • Russo-Ukrainian War
  • Volodymyr Zelenskyy
  • BRIC
  • Eurasian Economic Union (EEU)
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Russia destroyed most of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, suppressing a Chechen independence movement in the 1990s-2000s.
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The still under construction Moscow International Business Center is home to $12 billion of newly constructed skyscrapers. However, much of the office space sits empty.
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Vladimir Putin has overseen a Russian resurgence with military expansion in the brief Georgian War, annexation of Crimea, and involvement in the  Syrian Civil War.
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In February 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered a Russian invasion of Ukraine that was opposed by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
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The European Union and Russia

The Post-Cold War United States

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President George W. Bush addresses rescue workers in New York City after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
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Above: The White House was lit with rainbow colors after the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision recognizing constitutionality of same-sex marriages.

Below: The White House went dark on May 31, 2020 as President Trump sheltered in a bunker during Black Lives Matter protests against police murder of George Floyd.
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​Above: Barack Obama, the first African American president, ringed by citizens during the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches which led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Below: President Donald J. Trump flanked by militarized riot police during a heavily-criticized photo op on June 1, 2020.
Acts of terror committed by right-wing extremists have been a grave threat to American society.
Article: The Long 20th Century Comes to a Shuddering End
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The development of ideas, beliefs, and religions illustrates how groups in society view themselves, and the interactions of societies and their beliefs often have political, social, and cultural implications.
  • Persian Gulf War
  • 1992 LA Riots
  • NAFTA
  • Oklahoma City bombing
  • Bush v. Gore
  • 9/11
  • USA Patriot Act
  • Guantanamo Bay
  • Iraq War
  • Abu Ghraib
  • Hurricane Katrina
  • 2008 Great Economic Recession
  • Barack Obama
  • Tea Party
  • Occupy Wall Street
  • Unite the Right Rally
  • Capitol Insurrection
The Post-Cold War United States

Global Separatist Movements

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rally for Catalan independence from Spain held in Barcelona in 2012
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The Nigerian Civil War was fought to prevent Biafran independence.
Article: The Kurds have no country of their own and their story is largely untold. A planned museum in Erbil aims to change that.
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Regional, religious, and ethnic movements challenged colonial rule and inherited imperial boundaries. Some of these movements advocated for autonomy.
  • Basque ethnic group in Spain and France
  • Bosnian Serb ethnic group in Bosnia-Herzegovina
  • Catalan ethnic group in Spain
  • Chechen ethnic group in Russia
  • Igbo ethnic group in Nigeria
  • Kurdish ethnic group in Turkey
  • Québécois independence in Canada
  • Scottish independence in the United Kingdom
  • Tamil ethnic group in Sri Lanka
  • Tuareg ethnic group in Mali
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Many French-speaking Canadians seek independence for Quebec. A 1995 independence referendum was narrowly defeated with 49.42% in favor of independence and 50.58% against.
Global Separatist Movements
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  • acc. PHILLIPS
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