Consider the intense and rapid changes that transformed the political, social, and economic struggles of the world during the 20th century: the first flight and space flight, the Manhattan Project and the welfare state, Nietzsche and Freud, the Great Depression and inflation, moving pictures and home computers, the Cold War and terrorism - and war and peace. These 48 comprehensive lectures examine this extraordinary history and provide a multidisciplinary understanding of how the modern world came to be and how democracy has emerged as a political ideal, although the parameters of a truly democratic world order are still being vigorously contested. You'll see how the 20th century can be read as a history of ideas, and how those ideas both influenced events and were in turn influenced by them to shape today's world. Professor Radcliff not only distills political and economic trends from a century of world history, but she explains them with clarity, drawing on other disciplines as necessary to make key points come alive. She defines the perspective of this course as including what she calls the "Enlightenment Project" - the adoption of liberal, democratic, rationalist principles in much of the world - while emphasizing the unresolved nature of the struggle for democracy. As you move chronologically through the century, you'll explore a range of ideas in depth, including the "crisis of meaning" unleashed by World War I, the different approaches of Fascism and Communism to organizing and mobilizing masses, and how art provided a window into the psychological forces swirling through public life. Detailed case studies also bring history's ideas alive.
Interpreting the 20th Century: The Struggle over Democracy
01: Framing the 20th Century
This lecture defines the perspective of the course, including what we will call the Enlightenment Project "the adoption of liberal, democratic, rationalist principles in much of the world" while emphasizing the unresolved nature of the struggle.
02: The Opening Act—World War I
This lecture analyzes why most historians see World War I as the real beginning of the 20th century and why it had such a destabilizing impact on the existing world order.
03: Framing the Peace—The Paris Peace Treaties
A complex peace settlement embodies and feeds the contradictions of an uncertain world order, helping to set the stage for political challenges from inside and outside Europe.
04: Intellectual Foundations—Nietzsche and Freud
This lecture begins to examine the "crisis of meaning" articulated by a generation of European artists and intellectuals, focusing on two influential thinkers, Nietzsche and Freud.
05: Art and the Post-War "Crisis of Meaning"
Building on the intellectual foundations of Nietzsche and Freud, avant-garde artists turn isolated ideas into a popular movement, expressed by the Dadaists, Surrealists, and Futurists.
06: Gender Crisis—The "Woman Question"
This lecture examines the anxieties about gender roles and looks at the variety of solutions offered by liberal feminists and communists.
07: The Origins of "Mass Society"
The identity crisis exemplified by the debates over the "woman question" take a different form in anxieties raised by an emerging "mass society." We examine the phenomenon's paradoxical roots in the evolution of liberal democracy and capitalism in Western society.
08: Defining Mass Society and Its Consequences
This lecture defines the nature of mass society and how it functioned, emphasizing the pessimistic views articulated by the Frankfurt school of German philosophers in the 1920s and 1930s.
09: Crisis of Capitalism—The Great Depression
The Great Depression of the 1930s brings into question the economic system of capitalism and the liberal principles that brought prosperity to Europe and the West.
10: Communist Ideology—From Marx to Lenin
This lecture explores how the theories of Marx were adapted by Lenin and begins a discussion of communism and fascism as serious political challenges to liberal democracy.
11: The Rise of Fascism
We look at the fascist platform and at who joined the movement, and examine why it appeared at this moment in history.
12: Communist Revolution in Russia
The Russian Revolution provides the first opportunity for a communist movement to take power. This lecture analyzes why this happened and the revolution's symbolic meaning to the rest of the world.
13: The Totalitarian State? Nazi Germany
Some scholars have argued that fascism and communism, though different in theory, create similar totalitarian regimes in practice. This lecture looks at Nazi Germany's unique combining of mass mobilization and dictatorial power.
14: The Totalitarian State? The Soviet Union
While the Nazis were master manipulators of the tools of mass society, Stalin and his party use consent and terror to create mass society in an underdeveloped country.
15: China—The Legacy of Imperialism
We shift our focus to challenges to the West's political and moral leadership, beginning with the impact of Western imperialism on China and its role in shaping the 1911 revolution.
16: The Chinese Revolution
In this lecture, we follow the two major strands of Chinese nationalis - the liberal Nationalists of Sun Yat Sen, and the communists led by Mao Tse-tung.
17: India—The Legacy of Imperialism
This lecture introduces the Indian model of nonviolent anti-imperialism and examines the legacy of India's imperialist experience.
18: India—The Road to Independence
We follow the nationalist movement from its origins in the late 19th century to independence in 1947, including the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and his role in Indian nationalism.
19: Mexico—The Roots of Revolution
This lecture explores the legacy of imperialism and ends with a summary of the social, cultural, and economic problems that provoked a revolution a century after formal independence.
20: The Mexican Revolution and Its Consequences
As in China, the Mexican revolution is a struggle for control between different nationalist visions. This lecture argues that the eventual settlement of the revolution was an attempt at compromise.
21: Japan—The Path to Modernization
Japan provides a nearly unique instance of a non-Western country that resists Western imperialism and follows an independent path to economic and political modernization and empowerment.
22: Japan—A New Imperial Power
This lecture explains how Japan becomes the first non-Western country to compete directly with the Western powers in the imperial arena and explores how this leads to war.
23: The Pacific War
While the Pacific war is partly an extension of the struggle against fascism, it is also a battle over the imperialist world order - with race a fundamental element.
24: The European War
We follow the course of the war and analyze why Germany and its allies lost, moving on to the outlines of an emerging fascist world in German occupation policies.
25: The Holocaust
This lecture describes the "final solution" and considers the broader international failure to stop the genocide as a culmination of the post-WWI "crisis of meaning."
26: Existentialism in Post-War Europe
This lecture examines the Existentialist movement's bleak but dignified way for individuals to survive in a post-Auschwitz world.
27: Origins of the Cold War
This lecture discusses how the Cold War emerged out of WWII, including American and Soviet perspectives on the question of responsibility.
28: The Cold War in American Society
This lecture considers the impact of the Cold War on American domestic and foreign policy, including a discussion of McCarthyism and its implications.
29: Science and the State in Cold War America
With the Manhattan Project, massive federal funding, monopolization, and the channeling of research into government projects create a new relationship between the state and private industry.
30: The Welfare State
This lecture compares and contrasts the northern European welfare state and the American model constructed on the foundations of Roosevelt's New Deal.
31: The Process of Decolonization
This lecture introduces the phenomenon of decolonization that began in the first decades after World War II, including its symbolic importance in creating what became known as the third world.
32: Challenges for Post-Colonial Societies
We examine the problems faced by postcolonial nations: economic dependence, poverty, debates over neocolonialism, conflicts provoked by diversity, lack of an experienced political elite, and the influence of Cold War politics.
33: Competing Nationalisms—The Middle East
This lecture charts the evolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and examines the broader issues of competing nationalist claims and the problematic collision of nationalism, ethnic and religious diversity, and democracy.
34: Development Models—Communist China
In this lecture we begin to look at different roads to development, using case studies to compare and contrast their successes and failures.
35: Development Models—Democratic India
Because China and India began the process of development with similar problems, they provide ideal points of comparison. This lecture uses India as an example of the capitalist democratic model in the third world.
36: The Authoritarian Development State—Japan
This lecture examines the hybrid model used to achieve Japan's spectacular prosperity, a model that has taken elements from both the classic liberal and communist approaches to development.
37: The Japanese Model—Available for Export?
This lecture analyzes the adoption of Japan's "soft authoritarianism" by a variety of neighboring countries and speculates on the general applicability of the Japanese model in the third world.
38: Latin America—Dictatorship and Democracy
Latin American countries have attempted many paths in their efforts to resolve long-standing economic and social problems. This lecture surveys those efforts and evaluates the prospects for democracy.
39: Hard Cases—Africa
Africa's political and economic problems have seemed intractable. The lecture begins with a general consideration of the lack of measurable progress.
40: An African Case Study—Nigeria
Scholars still debate the endemic versus colonialist roots of third-world problems. This lecture delves into the Nigerian case as a way to understand and evaluate this debate.
41: A Generation of Protests—Civil Rights
This lecture examines the challenge to racial discrimination in the United States.
42: A Generation of Protests—1968
This lecture analyzes movements in the United States, Western Europe, and elsewhere, with a focus on the mobilization of American students against the Vietnam War and the phenomenon of the counterculture.
43: Global Women
This lecture discusses the origins and goals of contemporary feminism with a broad global perspective that acknowledges the many types of women's movements.
44: The Rise of Fundamentalist Politics
This lecture introduces the roots of fundamentalism as a global movement and the nature of its challenge to the secularism of both Western democratic and communist systems before narrowing its focus to Islamic fundamentalism.
45: Communism—From Reform to Collapse, 1956–90
We analyze the long-term crisis within communist society and the various failed attempts at reform, from Khrushchev to Dubcek, and, finally, to Gorbachev.
46: The "End of History"
This lecture argues that the final victory of Western liberal democracy has not yet been achieved and examines the parameters of the post-Cold War world, analyzing the complex prospects for democracy around the globe.
47: Globalization and Its Challenges
In the post-Cold War world, the prospects for democracy rest not only on the health of individual nations but on the increasingly complex interdependence that has been labeled globalization.
48: A New World Order?
Despite the end of the Cold War, the "new world order" has yet to coalesce. We use the 2003 war in Iraq to discuss the dramatically different visions of the new world order that have emerged for the 21st century.
Overview Course No. 8090
About
Pamela B. Radcliff is a Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. She received her PhD in History from Columbia University. Her dissertation on the origins of the Spanish Civil War later became her first book, From Mobilization to Civil War. Her other books on Spanish history are Modern Spain: 1808 to the Present and Making Democratic Citizens in Spain. She also coedited Constructing Spanish Womanhood and has received teaching awards for undergraduate and graduate instruction.
