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Category: Historic Impact

Tumult At the Start: 1900 To 1918

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History seems to have packed hundreds of years of happenings into a single 20-year period starting approximately in the year 1900.

The world was a very different place. It was predominantly ruled by a nobility who were drastically interrelated. They held their autocratic prerogatives closely feeling that the common people were not sophisticated enough to rule themselves. In Europe, ethnic groups were restless and longed for their own countries based on similar religions, languages and cultures. In Africa, India, China and the Far East these European powers struggled with each other to hold on to colonies for raw materials and cheap labor. Meanwhile, the major powers such as Britain, France and the United States were rapidly industrializing. People were moving from the countryside to the cities looking for work in factories and living wherever they could afford and preyed upon by a criminal class. There were no restrictions on child labor, safety codes to protect workers in mines, mills or manufacturing. Trade unions were organized and politicized. And there was no standardized education or required years in school. The rich sent their children (mostly the boys) to private preparatory schools and then off to college and the poor by 1906 sent their children off to free primary and secondary schools set up to create workers for industry. Most children dropped out by age 12.

The middle classes were reading and organizing, seeking either no government (called anarchy) or a government of the people. Impatient for change from the rigid social structures of their times, some turned to violence hoping to spark the immediate overthrow of the owners of businesses and the upper classes. Others worked to get the ability to vote in democratic governments to end their disenfranchisement. 

It was a time of rapid change of fashion, literature, dance, music, journalism and cultural mores. Yet, for the Jews, it was a time of isolation, impoverishment in some areas liberation and new citizenship in other areas, but major anti-semitism worldwide.

In 1900, a snapshot of state leaders is all that is needed to understand how entrenched and encrusted with privileges this world was and that it all came tumbling down by 1914 by "The War to End All Wars":

A sampling of events that happened in the year 1910 portrays the richness of cultural and technological developments and the seething violence beneath the surface:

 

Here is a sampling of assasinations that occurred between the years 1900 and 1914:

City of 72 Names looks at this time through the eyes of four very different people and how their lives intersected with all this change happening around them. Here are some of the large events that impacted our protagonists:

Important Events And Political Movements Worldwide

SonsnowiceShtetl1
ShestviyeuNarvskikhvorotThe Russian Revolution of 1905
PolaykovPalace
701px-1904-1905peterhof
677px-1914-1916b
637px-WladiwostokParade1918
SecondaliyahPioneersinMigdal1912inkuffiyeh
640px-ChineseLabourCorps
692px-Puyi-ManchukuoPu-yi
KomingtanSun Yat-Sen's Koumintang

 

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