Netherlands VWO 3 (onderbouw) History
Chapters: 1
1. Ten eras (part 2)
Wigs and revolutions; citizens and steam engines · World wars and the Holocaust · Television and computers · Modern times and the present (adopted, legal 2027)
- The Age of Industrialisation – Before factories, merchants gave raw material to peasant families who spun and wove at home (proto-industrialisation). From the 1760s Britain built cotton mills, machines like the spinning jenny and James Watt's improved steam engine. Change was slow: hand labour stayed cheap and common. In India, weavers once supplied world markets; the East India Company controlled them through gomasthas, and Manchester cloth later flooded India. From 1854 Indian mills grew in Bombay and elsewhere, and small workshops also grew. Makers sold goods through labels, calendars and adverts, and swadeshi adverts appealed to national pride.
- The Two World Wars Compared: Causes, Costs and the New World Order – World War I (1914–1918) grew out of militarism, rival alliances, imperial competition and nationalism, set off by one assassination in 1914. Its peace settlement, the Great Depression and the rise of dictators led to World War II (1939–1945). Both were total wars that used whole economies and new technology, and WWII killed about four times as many people, more than half of them civilians, including the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. After WWI the League of Nations failed; after WWII the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and decolonisation reshaped the world.
- World History Since 1900: Global and Regional Interactions – In 1900 a few empires ruled much of the world. Two world wars, the Great Depression and the rise of dictators broke that order. After 1945 the United Nations was created, the USA and USSR competed in the Cold War, and more than 100 colonies, including India, became free nations. Since 1991 the world has become more connected through trade, the internet and migration, while regional conflicts and global problems still need countries to cooperate.