The Short Twentieth Century Analysis

The Twentieth Century was an epoch of tremendous impact for Europe because of a set of wars, revolutions, and movements that happened during this time. Previous to 20th Century, During the 19th century, Europe had won a special status before the world; the world was considered Eurocentric. Europe reached this status due to amazing advancements they have achieved during this time. Those achievements were mainly in the fields of science, politics, arts and literature and industry. However, for the following century, The Twentieth century, plenty of things change in the world, especially in Europe. Hobsbawm coined this unstable period of history “The Short Twentieth Century”. The Short Twentieth Century is essentially the time between the First

The author mentions “In this book the structure of the short Twentieth Century appears like a sort of triptych or historical sandwich” (6), according to this quote Hobsbawm draws the idea that this century was a chain reaction; he sees the events on the 20th as all related, thus encourage him to describe this epoch as a time in which every single event that happened was related to each other and somehow the 20th century could be condensed to just a few words. The 20th century was a time in which most of the major events took place within earlier decades of the century and happened to shape the fate of what would be the rest of the century. From my point of view, the author extensively emphasizes what really determined what the 20th century, happened in a short period of time if the 20th century is looked as a whole. It is worth to mention that, Hobsbawm also coined the term “The Long 19th Century”, which he describes extensively in the areas in which it excelled, such as; science, arts, literature, politics, industry, economy, power, growth in population, among others. From my perspective, the author pairs these two centuries who happened to be next to each other and compares them in the advances and events that took place in each of those two centuries. Unlike the 19th century, the 20th could be described in fewer events that

This economic crisis was destroying what liberal capitalism had created previously in the 19th century, a unified world economy. Capitalism seemed to be collapsing during this time, and here was when communism, which initial plan was to destroy capitalism joined forces to help capitalism buoyed during the mid-20th century. The sudden alliance between the communist and capitalist was an unprecedented union to the world because these two ideologies had opposites points of view. Early in the 20th century occurred the October revolution, which ultimate goal was to destroy capitalism. This revolution was led by a group of communist. Ironically this revolution whose main purpose was to destroy idealism of the capitalist ended saving the fate of capitalism, as stated by the author “It is one of the ironies of this strange century that the most lasting results of the October revolution, whose object was the global overthrown of capitalism, was to save its antagonist, both in war and peace” (7). The author explains that the constant pressure that the October revolution was exerting on the capitalism, was what this group needed in order to survive the aftermath of the Second World War. Because of this push that the communist party gave to capitalism, it was able to emerge on the Golden Age. Despite their difference they also held similar points in rationalism