World and World History

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The Wall Street Journal – 122,397,004.

The Los Angeles Times – 94,889,543.

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New York Daily News – 82,225,690.

Source: Internet/May 13, 2016
(ranked by total unique monthly visitors for the past 12 months)

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A United Nations (UN) General Assembly session brings together delegates from nearly all the world's nations. The UN works to settle disputes among countries and to maintain world peace.

Voting is a right of the citizens of many countries. People vote to choose their leaders and to decide public issues. These Rus­sian citizens are casting their ballots in a Moscow election.

Growth of the world's population

The world's population grew slowly before A.D. t. It then almost doubled by the year 1000. In about 45 years the world's popula­tion will double. The world will have over 6 billion people by the year 2000.

Traditional farming practices survive in many parts of the world that lack modern machinery. These women in Senegal are threshing peanuts by hand, as their ancestors did years ago.

Making barren land productive through modern techniques increases the world's food supply. This irrigation project in Libya enables farmers to raise crops in the desert. The project spreads water from an underground source over circular plots.

World is the planet earth viewed especially as the home of human beings and other living things. The earth is just one of countless heavenly bodies in the uni­verse. But it is the only one known to support life.

From the very beginning of their life on the earth, people have had to adapt to conditions in the world to survive. The earliest human beings lived by hunting and gathering wild plants. They made clothing from animal hides and furs and used branches and other natural ma­terials to build shelters. About 10,000 years ago, some people began to raise plants and animals after food be­came scarce. People who farmed could settle in one place and produce enough food to feed many others. Villages grew up, and people developed methods of liv­ing in large groups. New occupations and forms of gov­ernment became necessary. Over the years, people cre­ated more advanced technology and increasingly complicated forms of social life. They built great cities, developed civilizations, and found ways to control many powerful natural forces.

The world's surface consists of water and land. Air surrounds the surface and extends to outer space. Water—chiefly the great oceans—covers about 70 per cent of the world's surface. All living things must have water to live, just as they must have air. People also use water for irrigation, industry, power, and transportation. In addition, the oceans, lakes, and rivers provide fish and other foods.

The oceans separate huge land masses called conti­nents Most of the world's countries lie on the conti­nents. Others are on islands. Each country has its own political and economic systems. However, countries co­operate with one another in many ways. For example, they make trade agreements and sign treaties designed to reduce the likelihood of war.

The physical features of a country strongly influence where the people of that country live. People can most easily grow food on plains or in river valleys, where the soil is rich and deep. Mountainous regions generally are not suitable for crop farming because the soil is thin and easily eroded (washed away) by rainfall. Many of the grid's biggest cities began as important trading centres on seacoasts, lakeshores, and riverbanks. Thus, the majority of the world's people live on flat, fertile plains and in large cities that border major water transporta­tion routes.

Today, about more than 7 billion people live in the world. They are distributed unevenly over the land. Many areas are heavily populated. Other areas have no people at all. The population is increasing far more rapidly in some countries than in others.

All the world's people belong to the same species, Homo sapiens, which means they have a common an­cestry. But many groups of people have lived apart for such a long time that they have developed certain physi­cal variations. In the past, scholars used physical varia­tions to classify people into races. The members of one race were thought to resemble one another more than they resembled the members of other races. Today, most anthropologists (scientists who study human beinqs) reject the idea that human beings can be biologi­cally classified into races. However, people in numerous societies continue to view themselves and others as members of various races. See Races, Human.

Physical differences among people have often been confused with cultural differences, such as differences in language or religion. Physical and cultural differences have been a basis of discrimination and prejudice. At times, these differences have served as an excuse for slavery, violence, and war.

This article provides an overview of the world as the home of human beings. It briefly describes the world's nations, people, and surface features. For information on the world as a planet, see the article Earth. History is traced in the article History of the World. 

Nations of the world

In 1995, the world had 192 independent countries and 43 dependencies. An independent country controls its own affairs. Dependencies are controlled in some way by independent countries. In most cases, an independ­ent country is responsible for the dependency's foreign relations and defence, and some of the dependency's local affairs. However, many dependencies have com­plete control of their local affairs. About 5 J billion peo­ple live in independent countries. Only about 15 million people live in dependencies.

The largest nation in the world in area is Russia. It covers 17,075,400 square kilometres. Each of the next four largest nations—Canada, China, the United States, and Brazil—covers more than 7.8 million square kilome­tres. The five smallest independent countries in the world, in descending order, are San Marino, Tuvalu, Nauru, Monaco, and Vatican City. Each of these coun­tries covers less than 65 square kilometres. Vatican City has an area of only 0.4 square kilometre.

Throughout history, the political map of the world has changed repeatedly. The most important changes have resulted from major wars. During ancient times, such military leaders as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar conquered many different groups of people and estab­lished vast empires. Numerous empires rose and fell during later periods of history, and boundaries changed again and again.

Beginning about 1500, many European nations estab­lished colonies in North America, South America, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Most national boundaries estab­lished by the ruling countries remained after the colo­nies gained their independence.

World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945) resulted in many important changes on the world map. World War I led to the formation of a number of new nations in Europe, including Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. After World War II, the world map changed again as several nations gained or lost ter­ritory, and many new nations were established in Asia.

In Africa, an independence movement swept the conti­nent. More than 45 African colonies have gained inde­pendence since the 1950's.

How nations are grouped. The nations of the world may be grouped in various ways. They may be grouped by region, such as the Far East the Middle East, and Central America. People often call the countries of the Eastern Hemisphere the Old World and those of the Western Hemisphere the New World. Countries are also often identified by their continent, such as African or Asian.

Economists generally divide the nations of the world into two groups—industrial nations and developing na­tions. Industrial nations have a wide variety of industries and, in general, are wealthier than developing nations. Developing nations have long depended on agriculture and have few industries. Most of them are poor. Indus­trial nations include Australia, Canada, Japan, the United States, and most countries in western Europe. More than 120 countries are considered to be developing na­tions. The majority are in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Most industrial nations lie in the Northern Hemisphere.

Other terms have also been used to identify groups of nations. The term First World once referred to the in­dustrial countries of the Western bloc, while the Com­munist bloc was known as the Second World. Neutral, or nonaligned countries, have often been called the Third World. With the collapse of Communism in east­ern European countries in the late 1980's, these terms have become less meaningful.

Forms of government. Nearly all governments claim to be democracies. But governments differ greatly in how closely they fulfil the democratic ideal of govern­ment by the people. In a democracy, the people elect representatives to make laws and to govern according to those laws. The people may run for office and remove officials who behave improperly. Nations and govern­ments can be classified as being more or less demo­cratic, depending on the extent to which the people may take part in the process of government.

Democratic nations may be republics or constitu­tional monarchies. For example, the United States is a Independent countries of the world

republic in which the president serves as head of state and head of government. The United Kingdom is a con­stitutional monarchy. A king or queen serves as head of state, and a prime minister serves as head of govern­ment. Other countries with democratic governments in­clude Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and most countries of western Europe.

Many countries that claim to be democracies actually have an authoritarian government. In such countries, rel­atively few people have power, and most citizens play a limited role in making decisions. Authoritarian govern­ments may rule by persuasion, force, or both. Commu­nist Party organizations control authoritarian govern­ments in China and some other nations. Dictators supported by the army rule many authoritarian coun­tries in Latin America and Africa.

Economic systems. Every country has an economic system to determine how to use its resources. The three major economic systems today are (1) capitalism, (2) Communism, and (3) mixed economies.

Capitalism is based on free enterprise—that is, most ₀fthe resources needed for production are privately owned. Individuals and private firms determine what to produce and sell. They also decide how to use their in­come. Capitalism is practised in the United States, Can­ada, Australia, New Zealand, and many countries of western Europe.

Communism traditionally has been based on govern­ment ownership of most productive resources. The gov­ernment also plays a large role in deciding what goods to produce and how to distribute income. However, in some Communist nations, the economic system has un­dergone change. For example, in China in the late 1970's, the Communist government began to relax strict control of the economy and to allow private ownership of farms and factories.

Mixed economies combine both private control and government control. Under a mixed economy, the gov­ernment may own such industries as banks, railways, and steel. However, other industries are privately owned. The government does some economic planning, but it also allows much private choice. The United King­dom, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and certain Latin- American countries have mixed economies.

Cooperation among nations. Every nation depends on other nations in some ways. The interdependence of the entire world and its peoples is called globalism. Na­tions trade with one another to earn money and to obtain manufactured goods or the natural resources that they lack. Nations with similar interests and political be­liefs may pledge to support one another in case of war. Industrial countries provide developing nations with fi­nancial aid and technical assistance. Such aid strength­ens trade as well as defence ties.

A number of international organizations promote co­operation among countries. The United Nations (UN) is the largest such organization. Nearly all independent countries are UN members. The UN works mainly to try to settle disputes among nations and to maintain world peace. It also has programmes intended to aid needy people and to improve health and education, particu­larly in developing nations.

Many international organizations are designed to en­courage economic progress among member nations. Such groups stimulate trade among members by elimi­nating tariffs and other trade barriers within the organi­zation. These groups include the European Union (EU), the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA), and the Cen­tral American Common Market.

People of the world

Population. In 1996, the world's population totalled about 5 billion. The yearly rate of population growth in the mid-1990s was 1.6 per cent. At that rate, the popula­tion of the world would almost double in size in about 45 years.

If all the world's people were distributed evenly over the land, about 38 people would live on every square kilometre. However, the world's people are not distrib­uted evenly, and so the population density {the average number of people in a specific area) varies greatly.

Some regions, including Antarctica and certain desert areas, have no permanent settlers at all.

The most densely populated regions of the world are in Europe and in southern and eastern Asia. North America has heavy concentrations of people in the northeastern and central regions and along the Pacific coast. Africa, Australia, and South America have densely populated areas near the coasts. The interiors of those continents are thinly settled.

Just as the population density varies from one part of the world to another, so does the rate of population growth. Developing countries generally have higher av­erage rates of increase than industrial nations. Africa has a population growth rate of 2.8 per cent yearly, the high­est of all continents. Both Asia and South America have a 1.6 per cent rate of increase. Australia's rate of increase is 1.3 per cent and North America's rate is 0.9 per cent. Europe has the lowest population growth rate, only 0.3 per cent.

The world's largest country in terms of population is China, which has more than a thousand million people. India ranks second largest, followed in descending order by the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, and Russia. More than half the world's people live in these six na­tions. Vatican City has the smallest population of any of the world's nations. It has only about 1,000 people.

The growth and change of the world's population throughout history are described in the article Popula­tion. See also the articles on individual countries, states, and provinces for population details.

Languages. There are about 3,000 spoken languages in the world. However, only 12 are widely used. Each of these languages is spoken by over 100 million people. More people speak English than any other language. Mandarin Chinese ranks second, followed by Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German, Malay-lndonesian, and French.

Beginning in the 150Cfs, England, Spain, Portugal, and France established colonies in various parts of the world. For this reason, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French are now spoken in many nations outside their countries of origin. English became the chief lan­guage of such nations as the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. It is also one of the main languages in Canada and South Africa. Spanish became the chief lan­guage throughout most countries of Latin America. Por­tuguese became the main language of Brazil, Mozam­bique, and Angola.

French, like English, is an important language of Can­ada. Most people in the province of Quebec speak French. French is also widely spoken in Algeria, Chad, Morocco, and some other countries in northern and western Africa and Vietnam.

For information about the development of the worlds languages, see Language. See also the articles on indi­vidual countries for the most widely used languages in those nations.

Religions. The peoples of the world practise thou­sands of religions, but only eight religions have follow­ers that number in the millions. Christianity has about 1.1 billion members, more than any other religion. Islam has more than 500 million members. The six other major religions are Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism,

Shinto, Taoism, and Judaism.

Christianity originated in the Middle East. Today, most Christians live in Europe and North and South America. Islam also began in the Middle East and is now the chief religion throughout most of the area. It is also the major faith in northern Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Hinduism has most of its followers in India, where the religion originated. Buddhism, which also developed in India, is the major religion of Sri Lanka and the mainland of southeastern Asia. It also has many followers in such countries as japan and South Korea. Shinto is the native religion of japan.

Confucianism and Taoism are native religions of China. The Communist government of China discourages them and all other religions. But Chinese people in Taiwan still practise Confucianism and Taoism. Judaism originated in the Middle East. Today, the largest number of Jews live in the United States,

Israel, France, and Russia. Thousands of local traditional religions are practised by ethnic groups in Africa, Asia, Australia, North America, South America, and the Pacific Islands.

For a description of the major religions, see Religion and the separate articles on the various faiths. See also the Religion section of the country and continent articles.

Problems among the world's people. Through the years, human beings have made great progress in pro­viding for their basic needs. Modern methods of pro­ducing food, clothing, and shelter have helped many people live more comfortably. Education has become available to more and more people, and scientists have discovered cures for many diseases.

But serious problems still face the world's people. Millions of people in developing countries lack ade­quate food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and educa­tion. Many people in industrial countries, especially in

large cities, suffer from poverty, unemployment, and discrimination. New problems have also developed. Nu­merous nations face the growing problem of environ­mental pollution. Gases and smoke in the air, chemicals and other substances in water, and solid wastes, fertiliz­ers and pesticides on land are all common forms of pol­lution. In addition, the threat of nuclear war has become a worldwide concern.

Physical features of the world

The surface area of the world totals about 509,400,000 square kilometres. Water covers about 359,200,000 square kilometres, or about 71 per cent of the world's surface. Only about 29 per cent consists of land, which covers about 150,202,000 square kilometres.

The physical geography of a specific region includes the region's surface features and climate. It also includes the soil, mineral deposits, plant and animal life, and other natural resources. Physical geography thus helps determine the economy of a region and how people in the region live.

This section describes the two major surface features of the world: (1) water and (2) land.

Water. Oceans, lakes, and rivers make up most of the water that covers the surface of the world. The water surface consists chiefly of three large oceans—the Pa­cific, the Atlantic, and the Indian. The Pacific Ocean is the largest. It covers about 181 million square kilome­tres, or about a third of the world's surface. The Atlantic Ocean is about half as large as the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean is slightly smaller than the Atlantic. These three oceans come together around Antarctica. The Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean meet again near the North Pole, where they form the Arctic Ocean.

The world's largest lake is the Caspian Sea, a body of salt water that lies between Asia and Europe east of the Caucasus Mountains. The Caspian covers about 371,000 square kilometres. The world's largest body of fresh water is the Great Lakes in North America. These five lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—are interconnected, and so they can be re­ferred to as one body of water. Together, they cover about 244,780 square kilometres.

The longest river in the world is the Nile in Africa, which flows 6,671 kilometres. The second longest river, the Amazon in South America, has a length of 6,437 kilo­metres. The Missouri is the longest river in the United States. It flows 4,090 kilometres.

All living things need water to stay alive. People ob­tain drinking water from rivers, freshwater lakes, and wells. We also require water for our way of life. We use water in our homes for cleaning and cooking. The man­ufacture of almost all our products requires water. In dry regions, farmers draw water from rivers, lakes, and wells to irrigate crops. Oceans, lakes, and rivers supply us with fish and other foods.

Water is also a source of power. The force of falling water from rivers, waterfalls, and dams can be used to generate hydroelectricity. In such countries as Brazil and Norway, hydroelectric power stations supply nearly all the electricity used in industry and homes.

The waters of the world also serve as major transpor­tation routes. Every day, thousands of cargo ships cross the oceans, sail along seacoasts, and travel on inland waters. A nation's location along a seacoast can have a powerful influence on its progress and prosperity. The United States, United Kingdom, Japan, and some other leading trading nations have long coastlines. Many of the world's major cities border important water trans­portation routes.

Land. The land area of the world consists of seven continents and many thousands of islands. Asia is the largest continent, followed by Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Geog­raphers sometimes refer to Europe and Asia as one con­tinent called Eurasia.

The world's land surface includes mountains, pla­teaus, hills, valleys, and plains. Relatively few people live in mountainous areas or on high plateaus. Most such re­gions are too cold, rugged, or dry for comfortable living or for crop farming and other human activities. The soil is poor and easily washed away by rain. However, some mountain valleys and high grassy plateaus serve as graz­ing land for cattle, sheep, and other livestock. The ma­jority of the world's people live on plains or in hilly re­gions. Most plains and hilly regions have excellent soil and an abundant water supply. They are good regions for farming, manufacturing, and trade. Many areas un­suitable for farming, particularly mountainous regions, have plentiful mineral resources. Some desert areas, es­pecially in the Middle East, have large deposits of petro­leum.

A region's natural resources influence its economic development. The Pampa, a grassy plain in central Ar­gentina, has excellent pastureland for raising cattle and rich soil for growing wheat. Beef and wheat make up Ar­gentina's leading exports. The United Kingdom lacks enough good farmland to support all its people, but large deposits of coal and iron ore have helped make the country an industrial power. Such countries as Can­ada, Russia, and the United States have a variety and abundance of natural resources, which have greatly helped their economies.

Threats to the environment. For centuries, people have used the world's natural resources to make their lives more comfortable. However, these resources are not always used wisely. Many problems have thus re­sulted that threaten the environment.

Many water supplies have become polluted by sew­age, industrial chemicals, and other wastes. The burning of fuel in motor vehicles, factories, and furnaces has caused air pollution in numerous cities. Forest regions have been stripped of large areas of trees, resulting ⁱⁿ soil erosion and the destruction of animal life. Certain farming practices, including the use of chemical fertiliz­ers and pesticides, have polluted the soil. Many farmers plant the same crop in a field year after year, which re­duces the soil's fertility.

Since the mid-1900's, people have become increas­ingly aware of the need to protect their environment.

Local and national governments have passed laws to control the use of natural resources. But it takes many years to renew a water supply, grow a forest, or replace a layer of topsoil. People must practise conservation continuously to repair damage that has already oc­curred and to prevent future problems.

Related articles:

Continents: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America

Regions: Arctic, Balkans, Central America, Far East Latin America Middle East, Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia

Geography: Climate, Desert, Geography, Island, Lake, Geography, Mountain, Ocean, Plain, Plateau, Rain, River, Volcano, Water, Waterfall, and Weather

Government and economics: Capitalism, Law, Communism, Multinational corporation, Democracy, Poverty, Economics, Socialism, Government, Standard of living, Gross national product, Trade, International trade, and World government.

Related articles:

See also the following articles:

ANZUS

Arab League

Asian Development Bank

Colombo Plan

Europe, Council of

European Union

European Free Trade Association

European Monetary System

European Space Agency

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

International Air Transport Association

International Bureau of Weights and Measures

International Energy Agency

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Organization of African Unity

Organization of American States

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

Warsaw Pact

Nations of the world: 

How nations are grouped, and Forms of government

People of the world: 

Population, Languages, and Religions

Physical features of the world: 

Water, Threats to the environment, and Land

Questions

How does the geography of a region help determine how peo­ple in the region live?

How does an independent country differ from a dependency?

What threats to the environment have resulted from the unwise use of natural resources?

What three oceans make up most of the water surface of the world?

Which of the world's languages is spoken by the largest number of people?

What are the three major economic systems practised in the world today?

How do people use the world's water supplies?

What has caused the most important changes in the world's po­litical map throughout history?

Why do most of the world's people live on plains or in hilly re­gions?

How do international organizations help countries cooperate with one another?

Ancient – The Golden Age of Greece – The Middle Ages

The Renaissance - World War I - The space age

The civilization of ancient Egypt began to develop in the Nile River Valley about 3100 B.C. Agri­culture thrived in the valley, where floodwaters of the Nile deposited rich soil year after year. The farming scenes shown above were painted on a tomb during the 1400s B.C

The history of the world is a dramatic story that began about 5,500 years ago with the invention of writing. It traces human progress from the first civilizations to the space age.

A stone seal from the Indus Valley civilization has a carved fig­ure of an animal and some writing. The seal, which is about 4,000 years old, was uncovered at Mohenjo-Daro, Pakistan.

A bronze ceremonial vessel shows the skill of an ancient Chi­nese artist. The vessel dates from the Shang dynasty, which arose in the valley of the Huang He during the 1700's B.C. 
Greek civilization was the first advanced civilization on the European mainland. It became the most magnificent civilization of ancient times and spread to other lands. Creek colonists built many temples, such as this one in southern Italy, in regions they settled.

Assyrian King Ashurbanipal and his queen are shown feast­ing in the royal garden on this stone carving. The carving, found at the king's palace in Nineveh, dates from the 600’s B.C

An ancient Greek dish portrays the god Apollo, patron of musicians and poet and the ideal of manly beauty. Creek culture thrived in the 400’s B.C, the Golden Age of Greek civilization.

A famous Roman aqueduct, the Pont du Card near Nimes, France, stands as a reminder of one of the world's greatest empires. At its peak of power, in the A.D. l00’s, the Roman Empire covered about half of Europe, much of the Middle East, and the north coast of Africa.

Constantine the Great was the first Roman emperor to be­come a Christian. He came to the throne in A.D. 306 and formed close ties between the Christian church and the Roman Empire.

A Hindu stone temple built during the A.D. 500's stands at Aihole, India, near Belgaum. It reflects a style of architecture that became popular under the Gupta dynasty.

The Great Wall of China was built to keep out invaders from the north. Emperor Shi Huangdi began major work on it in the 200's B.C by linking walls built by earlier rulers. Rebuilt under later rulers, it is about 6,400 kilometres long today.
A jade ornament of a bearded man dates from the Han dynasty, which ruled China from 202 B.C to A.D. 220.

European life in the Middle Ages centred on control of the land. Lords owned most of the land, which was farmed by their peasants. The lords lived in mighty castles like the one above.

Medieval monks like the one above copied many valuable manuscripts written by ancient Creek and Roman scholars. Their work helped preserve knowledge of ancient times.

The Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, Italy, is one of the outstanding examples of Byzantine architecture in western Europe. The Roman Catholic church was built during the 1000's.

A Muslim pharmacist is shown preparing a drug in an illustra­tion from a medical book of the 1200's. Muslims, followers of Islam, contributed greatly to advances in science and the arts.

A Chinese block print from 975 symbolizes China's technolog­ical progress despite its isolation. The Chinese invented block printing during the Tang dynasty, which ruled from 618 to 907.

Rival Japanese clans fought for control of the country's government during the 1100's. Members of the Minamoto family helped kidnap a Taira family emperor in 1160, left, but failed to gain power. Mina­moto leaders finally won control of Japan in 1185. They later established a military government known as the shogunate.

The Sankore Mosque in Timbuktu, Mali, became an important Islamic house of worship in the Mali Empire. During 1200's, the Mali Empire replaced the Ghana Empire as the most powerful state in western Africa. The Mali Empire flour­ished until the 1400.

Early civilizations in the Americas were developed by the Maya people in Mexico and Central America and by the Inca in Peru. The jade carving of a Maya official on the far left dates from about 900. The silver cup on the left was made by an Inca artist in about 1500. 
People of the Renaissance developed bold new ideas that led to major achievements in archi­tecture, painting, sculpture, and literature in western Europe from the 1300’s to the 1500’s Venice, Italy, above, an early centre of the Renaissance, attracted many visitors.

An atlas printed in 1547 in­cluded this map of the Carib­bean region. The map is fairly accurate, but it shows the re­gion upside down. A great age of European exploration began during the 1400's. By 1700, the general outlines of most of the world's major land masses were known.

New scientific devices, such as the telescope and the microscope, contributed to a rapid growth of knowledge during the 1600's and 1700's. On the far left are telescopes used by the Italian astrono­mer Galileo, who made revo­lutionary discoveries in as­tronomy. On the left is a Dutch microscope made dur­ing the 1700's. It has three re­flecting mirrors.

The French Revolution began on July 14, 1789, with an attack on the Bastille, left. This famous prison in Paris had come to symbolize the hated government of King Louis XVI. The French revolu­tionaries issued a great document—the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The revolution lasted 10 years.

Smoking factory chimneys signalled the start of the In­dustrial Revolution in Europe during the 1700's. The rise of industrialism reshaped West­ern civilization and changed the lives of millions of people in many parts of the world.

A tiger hunt in India was a popular sport among the British during the 1800's. India was then the largest single part of the British Empire, which covered about a fourth of the world's land.
Walking in space was one of the most exciting achievements of the space programme. The space age began in the mid-1900's and opened a new chapter in the history of exploration.

Rejection of Communism swept across the Soviet Union in 1991. Soviet citizens, celebrate the toppling of a statue Felix Dzerzhinsky, an early Communist leader.

History of the World, Human beings have probably lived on the earth about 2 million years. But the story of world history begins only about 5,500 years ago with the invention of writing. The period before people began to write is usually called prehistory.

Archaeologists have pieced together the story of pre­history by studying what the people left behind, includ­ing artwork, tools, ruins of buildings, fossils, and even their own skeletons. Such objects provide the main evi­dence of what prehistoric people were like and how they lived. For a description of life in prehistoric times, seethe World Book article Prehistoric people.

The first traces of writing date from about 3500 B.C From then on, people could record their own history. By writing down their experiences, they could tell future generations what they were like and how they lived. From these documents, we can learn firsthand about the rise and fall of civilizations and the course of other im­portant events. The history of the world—from the first civilizations to the present—is based largely on what has been written down by peoples through the ages.

The beginnings of agriculture about 9,000 B.C. brought about a great revolution in human life. Prehis­toric people who learned to farm no longer had to roam in search of food. Instead, they could settle in one place. Some of their settlements grew to become the world's first cities. People in the cities learned new skills and de­veloped specialized occupations. Some became build­ers and craftworkers. Others became merchants and priests. Eventually, systems of writing were invented. These developments gave rise to the first civilizations.

For hundreds of years, the earliest civilizations had lit­tle contact with one another and so developed inde­pendently. The progress each civilization made de­pended on the natural resources available to it and on the inventiveness of its people. As time passed, civiliza­tions advanced and spread, and the world's population rose steadily. The peoples of various civilizations began to exchange ideas and skills. Within each civilization, groups of people with distinctive customs and lan­guages emerged. In time, some peoples, such as the Ro^_ mans, gained power over others and built huge em­pires. Some of these empires flourished for centuries before collapsing. Great religions and later science and scholarship developed as people wondered about the meaning of human life and the mysteries of nature.

About 500 years ago, one civilization—that of western Europe—started to exert a powerful influence throughout the world. The Europeans began to make great advances in learning and the arts, and they came to surpass the rest of the world in scientific and techno­logical achievements. The nations of Europe sent explor­ers and military forces to distant lands. They set up over­seas colonies, first in the Americas and then on other continents, and conquered other regions. As a result, Western customs, skills, political ideas, and religious beliefs spread across much of the world.

Today, the many peoples of the world continue to be separated by different cultural traditions. But they also have more in common than ever before. Worldwide sys­tems of communications and transportation have bro­ken down barriers of time and distance and rapidly in­creased the exchange of ideas and information between peoples. However far apart people may live from one another, they are affected more and more by the same political and economic changes. In some way, almost everyone can now be affected by a war or a political cri­sis in a faraway land or by a rise in petroleum prices in distant oil-producing countries. The separate cultures of the world seem to be blending into a common world culture. Much of world history is the story of the way different civilizations have come closer together.

For hundreds of thousands of years, prehistoric peo­ple lived by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants. Even small groups of people had to roam over large areas of land to find enough food. A group usually stayed in one place only a few days. The discovery of ag­riculture gradually ended the nomadic way of life for many people. After prehistoric men and women learned to raise crops and domesticate animals, they no longer had to wander about in search of food. They could thus begin to settle in villages.

Agriculture was developed at different times in differ­ent regions of the world. People in the Middle East began to grow cereal grasses and other plants about 9000 B.C. They also domesticated goats and sheep at about that time, and they later tamed cattle. In southeast­ern Asia, people had begun raising crops by about 7000 B.C. People who lived in what is now Mexico probably learned to grow crops about 7000 B.C.

The invention of farming paved the way for the devel­opment of civilization. As prehistoric people became better farmers, they began to produce enough food to support larger villages. In time, some farming villages developed into the first cities. The plentiful food sup­plies enabled more and more people to give up farming for other jobs. These people began to develop the arts, crafts, trades, and other activities of civilized life.

Agriculture also stimulated technological and social changes. Farmers invented the hoe, sickle, and other tools to make their work easier. The hair of domestic an­imals and fibres from such plants as cotton and flax were used to make the first textiles. People built ovens to bake the bread they made from cultivated grain and learned to use hotter ovens to harden pottery. The prac­tice of agriculture required many people to work to­gether to prepare the fields for planting and to harvest

the crops. New systems of government were developed to direct such group activities.

The changes brought about by agriculture took thou­sands of years to spread widely across the earth. By about 3500 B.C, civilization began. It started first in Southwest Asia. Three other early civilizations devel­oped in Africa and in south and east Asia. All these early civilizations arose in river valleys, where fertile soil and a readily available water supply made agriculture easier than elsewhere. The valleys were (1) the Tigris-Euphrates Valley in the Middle East, (2) the Nile Valley in Egypt, (3) the Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan, and (4) the Huang He Valley in northern China.

While civilization was developing in the four valleys, people in most other parts of the world were still fol­lowing their old ways of life. Little cultural progress was being made in such regions as northern and central Eu­rope, central and southern Africa, northern and south­eastern Asia, and most of North America. In parts of Central and South America, the people were developing some new ways of life. But advanced civilizations did not appear there until hundreds of years later.

The Tigris-Euphrates Valley. One of the most fertile regions of the ancient world lay between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq)- Silt deposited by the rivers formed a rich topsoil idea! for growing crops. By the 5000's B.C., many people had settled in villages in the lower part of the Tigris- Euphrates Valley, an area later called Sumer.

The Sumerians lived by farming, fishing, and hunting the wild fowl of the river marshes. They built dykes to control the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and irrigation canals to carry water to their fields. By about 3500 B.C.. some Sumerian farm villages had grown into small cities, which marked the beginning of the world's first civilization. A number of these cities de­veloped into powerful city-states by about 3200 B.C.

The Sumerians produced one of the greatest achieve­ments in world history. By about 3500 B.C, they had in­vented the first form of writing. It consisted of picture- like symbols scratched into clay. The symbols were later simplified to prhduce cuneiform, a system of writing that used wedge-shaped characters (see Cuneiform). Ar­chaeologists have found thousands of clay tablets with Sumerian writings. These tablets show the high level of development of the Sumerian culture. They include his­torical and legal documents; letters; economic records; literary and religious texts; and studies in mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.

The Sumerians used baked bricks to build great pal­aces and towering temples called ziggurats in their cit­ies. They believed that their gods lived on the tops of the ziggurats. Sumerian craftworkers produced board games, beautifully designed jewellery, metalware, musi­cal instruments, decorative pottery, and stone seals en­graved with pictures and inscriptions. The Sumerians in­vented the potter's wheel and were among the first people to brew beer and make glass. Their system of counting in units of 60 is the basis of the 360-degree cir­cle and the 60-minute hour. For more information on the Sumerian civilization, see Sumer.

The Sumerian city-states had no central government or unified army and continually struggled among them­selves for power. As time passed, they were increas­ingly threatened by neighbouring Semitic peoples, who were attracted by the growing wealth of the Tigris- Euphrates Valley. During the 2300's B.C, a Semitic king, Sargon of Akkad, conquered Sumer. Sargon united all Mesopotamia under his rule, creating the world's first empire. The Akkadians combined Sumerian civilization with their own culture. Their rule lasted more than 60 years. Then invaders from the northeast overran the em­pire. These invaders soon left Mesopotamia, and Sumer was once again divided into separate city-states. One city-state, Ur, briefly controlled all the others. See Sar­gon of Akkad.

By about 2000 B.C, the Sumerians had completely lost all political power to invading Semites. Mesopotamia then broke up into a number of small kingdoms under various Semitic rulers. The city of Babylon became the centre of one kingdom. The Babylonian rulers gradually extended their authority over all Mesopotamian peo­ples. The greatest Babylonian king was Hammurabi, who ruled from about 1792 to 1750 B.C Hammurabi devel­oped one of the first law codes in history. The famous Code of Hammurabi contained nearly 300 legal provi­sions, including many Sumerian and Akkadian laws. It covered such matters as divorce, false accusation, land and business regulations, and military service. See Bab­ylonia; Hammurabi.

In Syria in the 200ffs B.C., a powerful Semitic kingdom called Ebla grew up in northern Syria. Its economy was based upon the making of metal products and textiles and it traded with many states. Other states paid tribute (taxes) to Ebla. Ebla was destroyed before 2000 B.C. See Fhla.

The Nile Valley. The civilization of ancient Egypt began to develop in the valley of the Nile River about 3100 B.C. Agriculture flourished in the valley, where the floodwaters of the Nile deposited rich soil year after year. Beyond the Nile Valley lay an uninhabited region of desert and rock. Egyptian culture thus developed with little threat of invasions by neighbouring peoples.

During the 3000's B.C, Egypt consisted of two large kingdoms. Lower Egypt covered the Nile Delta. Upper Egypt lay south of the delta on the two banks of the river. About 3100 B.C., according to legend, King Menes of Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt and united the two kingdoms. Menes also founded the first Egyptian dynasty (series of rulers in the same family). The rulers of ancient Egypt were believed to be divine.

The ancient Egyptians borrowed little from other cul­tures. They invented their own form of writing—an elab­orate system of symbols known as hieroglyphics (see Hi­eroglyphics). They also invented papyrus, a paperlike material made from the stems of reeds. The Egyptians developed one of the first religions to emphasize life after death. They tried to make sure their dead enjoyed a good life in the next world. The Egyptians built great tombs and mummified (embalmed and dried) corpses to preserve them. They filled the tombs with clothing, food, furnishings, and jewellery for use in the next world. The most famous Egyptian tombs are gigantic pyramids in which the kings were buried. The pyramids display the outstanding engineering and surveying skills of the Egyptians. The government organized thousands of workers to construct the pyramids, as well as temples and palaces, in the Egyptian cities. The cities served chiefly as religious and governmental centres for the surrounding countryside. Most of the people lived in villages near the cities.

Over the years, huge armies of conquering Egyptians expanded the kingdom's boundaries far beyond the Nil Valley. At its height in the 1400's B.C., Egypt ruled Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and part of the Sudan. As a powerful state at the junction of Asia and Africa, Egypt played an important role in the growth of long-distance trade. Egyptian caravans carried goods throughout the vast de­sert regions surrounding the kingdom. Egyptian ships sailed to all the major ports of the ancient world. From other lands, the Egyptians acquired gems, gold, ivory, leopard skins, fine woods, and other rich materials, which they used to create some of the most magnificent _art of ancient times.

Although the ancient Egyptians had contacts with other cultures, their way of life changed little over thou­sands of years. Their civilization gradually declined, and the Egyptians found it harder and harder to resist invad­ers who had greater vigour and better weapons. Egyp­tian records from the 1200's and 110O's B.C. describe constant attacks by "sea peoples." These peoples may have come from islands in the Aegean Sea or from lands along the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. After 1000 B.C., power struggles between rival Egyptian dynasties further weakened the kingdom.

The Indus Valley. Historians have only partly trans­lated the writings left behind by the ancient civilization that arose in the valley of the Indus River and its tribu­taries. As a result, they have had to rely almost entirely on archaeological findings for information about the Indus culture. The ruins of two large cities—Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa—tell much about the Indus Valley civ­ilization. The remains of hundreds of small settlements have also been discovered in the valley. Some of these settlements were farming villages, and others were sea­ports and trading posts.

Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa probably had more than 35,000 inhabitants each by about 2500 B.C. The people of the Indus Valley had a well-developed system of agricul­ture that provided food for the large population. They dug ditches and canals to irrigate their farms. The Indus cities had brick buildings and well-planned streets laid out in rectangular patterns. Elaborate brick-lined drain­age systems provided sanitation for the towns. Craft-workers made decorated furniture, fine jewellery, metal utensils, toys, and stone seals that were engraved with animal and human forms. Inscriptions on these seals as well as on some pottery and a few other objects, pro­vide the only traces of Indus writing that have been dis­covered so far.

Archaeologists have discovered that standardized sizes of bricks and uniform weights and measures were used throughout the Indus Valley. The Indus settlements traded with one another and with foreign cultures. Traces of seals used on goods from the Indus Valley have been found as far away as Mesopotamia. The Indus people probably also traded with people of central Asia, southern India, and Persia.

Between 2000 and 1750 B.C., the Indus Valley civiliza­tion began to decay. Scholars do not know why this process of decay took place. Changing river patterns may have disrupted the agriculture and economy of the region. Overuse of the land along the riverbanks may also have damaged the territory. By about 1700 B.C., the Indus civilization had disappeared.

The Huang He Valley. The earliest written records of Chinese history date from the Shang dynasty, which arose in the valley of the Huang He during the 1700's B.C. The records consist largely of writings scratched on animal bones and turtle shells. The bones and shells, known as oracle bones, were used in religious ceremo­nies to answer questions about the future. After a ques­tion was written on an oracle bone, a small groove or hole was made in the bone. The bone was then heated so that cracks ran outward from the groove or hole. By studying the pattern of the cracks, a priest worked out the answer to the question.

Thousands of these oracle bones have been found. They provide us with much information about the an­cient Chinese. Many of the bones record astronomical events, such as eclipses of the sun and moon, and the names and dates of rulers. The system of writing used by the Shang people had more than 3,000 characters. Some characters on the oracle bones resemble modern Chinese characters.

Little remains of the cities of the Shang period. Most of the buildings were made of mud or wood and have long since crumbled away. However, the foundations of pounded earth survive and indicate that some of the cit­ies were fairly large and surrounded by high walls. The people of the Shang period cast beautiful bronze ves­sels. They also carved marble and jade and wove silk.

The Shang people had many gods. They attached great importance to ties of kinship and worshipped the spirits of their ancestors. They believed that their ancestors could plead with the gods on their behalf.

The Shang people were governed by a king and a he­reditary class of aristocrats. The king and the nobility carried out religious as well as political duties. How­ever, only the king could perform the most important religious ceremonies. The Shang leaders organized ar­mies of as many as 5,000 men and equipped them with bronze weapons and horse-drawn war chariots. They used their armies to control the other peoples of the Huang He Valley. The Shang ruled much of the valley for about 600 years. See Shang dynasty.

From about 1200 B.C. to A.D. 500, Mesopotamia and Egypt were increasingly affected by the gradual growth of a new civilization on the islands and shores of the Ae­gean Sea. The most magnificent civilization of ancient times—that of the Greeks—eventually developed in the Aegean region. For a time, the Greeks dominated much of the ancient world. Later, the lands of the Greeks, as well as Mesopotamia and Egypt, became part of the Roman Empire. The combined arts, philosophies, and sciences of ancient Greece and Rome provided much of the foundation of later European culture.

As the civilizations of ancient times grew and spread, they began to have certain features in common. By about A.D. 500, for example, all the major civilizations had learned how to make iron. The spread of such knowledge was helped by trade, conquest, and migra­tion. Traders carried the products of one culture to other cultures. The soldiers of invading armies often set­tled in the conquered lands, where they introduced new ways of life. Groups of people migrated from one region to another, bringing the customs, ideas, and skills of their homelands with them.

The most important migrations in ancient times were made by peoples belonging to the Indo-European lan­guage groups. The Indo-European peoples once lived in the area north of the Black Sea, in southeastern Europe. Sometime before 2000 B.C., large numbers of them began moving into other parts of Europe, into the Mid­dle East, and across the highlands of Persia to India. Many of the migrations resulted in the destruction of old states and the creation of new ones.

Middle Eastern civilizations. For several hundred years following 1200 B.C.. various Indo-European and Semitic peoples struggled for power in the Middle East.

One of the Semitic peoples, the Hebrews, founded a kingdom in what is now Israel about 1020 B.C. The He­brews, also called Jews, established the first religion based on the belief in one God. The Hebrew faith, called Judaism, had a lasting influence on human history. Both Christianity, the most widespread religion of modern times, and Islam, the religion of the Muslims, developed from Judaism. See Jews.

During the 700's B.C., much of the Middle East was conquered by the Assyrians, a northern Mesopotamian people. The cities of Nineveh and Assur on the upper Ti­gris River were the chief centres of their empire. The As­syrians were a rough, warlike people who often treated their subject peoples cruelly. Conquered rulers were re­placed by brutal Assyrian governors who acted on or­ders from the central government in Nineveh. For more information, see Assyria.

In 612 B.C., the Babylonians and an Indo-European people called the Medes joined forces and destroyed Nineveh. The Assyrian Empire thus ended. The Medes then established the Median Empire, which included the area north of Mesopotamia (see Media). In Mesopo­tamia and to the west, the New Babylonian Empire, sometimes called the Chaldean Empire, came into being. Under its most famous ruler, Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylon became one of the most magnificent cities of the ancient world. Nebuchadnezzar probably built the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the An­cient World (see Seven Wonders of the Ancient World [with picture]).

About 550 B.C., the Persians, led by Cyrus the Great, overthrew the Medes and established the Persian Em­pire. Cyrus went on to conquer Babylonia, Palestine, Syria, and all Asia Minor. Cyrus' son Cambyses added Egypt to the empire in 525 B.C The Persians built excel­lent roads throughout their vast empire. They divided the empire into provinces, each governed by a Persian official. Unlike the Assyrians, the Persians allowed the conquered peoples to keep their own religions and tra­ditions. See Persia, Ancient.

The Persian Empire lasted more than 200 years. Under Persian rule, Medes, Babylonians, Jews, and Egyptians were united for the first time. Although they still had dif­ferent traditions and customs, they could no longer be thought of as belonging to separate civilizations. An­other people who came under Persian control were the Phoenicians, who lived along the coasts of what are now Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. The Phoenicians were great explorers and traders who helped spread civilization among the peoples living in coastal areas along the Ae­gean Sea and in what is now Turkey. The Phoenicians in­vented an alphabet that became the basis of the Greek alphabet. All other Western alphabets, in turn, have been taken from the Creek. See Phoenicia.

The Greeks. The first major civilization in the region of Greece began to develop on Crete, an island in the Aegean Sea, about 3000 B.C. Scholars call this civiliza­tion the Minoan culture after Minos, the legendary king of the island (see Minos). The Minoans were skilled art­ists and architects and active traders. By about 2000 B.C., they had begun to build a series of magnificent palaces, the most elaborate of which was the Palace of Minos in the town of Knossos.

The Minoans traded with peoples in the Middle East, Sicily, and Greece. Their trade routes provided an im­portant link between Middle Eastern civilizations and mainland Europe. Minoan culture flourished for about 500 years. It began to decline after 1450 B.C., when fire destroyed nearly all the towns on Crete. By about 1100 B.C, the culture had disappeared.

The most important early culture on the mainland of Greece centred on the southern city of Mycenae. The people of Mycenae were probably descendants of Indo- European peoples who had been migrating to Greece since about 2000 B.C. By the 1500's B.C., the Mycenaean culture had become rich and powerful. Mycenae was the leading political and cultural centre on the Greek mainland until it collapsed in the early 1100's B.C. About

this time, barbarian peoples from the north began mov­ing into Greece. Later Greeks called these people the Dorians. Historians are not sure what part the Dorians played in the fall of Mycenae.

Greek civilization developed between about 800 and 500 B.C. The first recorded Olympic Games were held for Greek athletes in 776 B.C., and the first surviving Greek inscriptions date from about 50 years later. The ancient Creeks settled in independent communities called city-states. Between 750 and 338 B.C., the chief city-states were Athens, Corinth, Sparta, and Thebes. The city-states were never united politically, and the people were divided into various groups. However, the Greeks were tied together by a common culture and language, and they thought of themselves as distinct from other peoples. The first democratic governments were established in the Greek city-states. Neither slaves nor women could vote, but more people took part in government in Greece than in any earlier civilization.

Greek culture gradually spread to other lands. The Greeks established many towns and trading posts in Sic­ily and in what are now southern Italy and Turkey. Greek colonists also founded settlements as far away as pres­ent-day Portugal, France, Libya, and India. Many Greeks served as craftworkers, teachers, and soldiers in the courts of foreign rulers.

In 479 B.C., the Greeks defeated the Persians after a long war. Greek civilization then entered its Golden Age. Architects constructed masterpieces of classical beauty. Lasting works of art, literature, drama, history, and phi­losophy were produced. Greek scientists made great ad­vances in mathematics, medicine, physics, botany, and zoology. During this period, Athens became the cultural centre of the Greek world.

The achievements and growing power of Athens were the envy of the other Greek city-states. Hostility be­tween the Athenians and their fellow Greeks led to the bitter Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C). Athens lost the war. The victorious city-states soon started to quarrel among themselves, and Greece began to decline in power.

In 338 B.C, Philip II of Macedonia conquered the Greek city-states. His son, Alexander the Great, suc­ceeded him in 336 B.C Until his death in 323 B.C, Alex­ander expanded his empire through conquests of much of the civilized world from Egypt to the Indus Valley. Al­exander helped spread Greek ideas and the Greek way of life into all the lands he conquered.

After Alexander died, his empire was divided among his generals. They continued to preserve Greek culture. The period after Alexander's death became known as the Hellenistic Age in Greece and the Near East. It lasted until the Romans took control, ending in Greece in 146 B.C Egypt, the last major stronghold of the Hellenistic world, fell to the Romans in 30 B.C See Alexander the Great; Hellenistic Age.

The Romans. By the 50ffs B.C, Greek traders and col­onists had established many settlements in Italy and Sic­ily. They carried Greek civilization directly to the mixed group of peoples living there, most of whom were de­scendants of Indo-European immigrants. These peoples included the Etruscans, who had settled in west-central Italy during the 80ffs B.C In 509 B.C, the people of Rome, one of the cities under Etruscan control, revolted. The Romans gained their independence and declared Rome a republic.

For hundreds of years, Roman conquerors expanded the republic. By 290 B.C., Rome controlled most of Italy.

It soon became one of the most powerful states of the western Mediterranean. During the 200's and 100's B.C., Rome defeated its only major rival, the former Phoeni­cian colony of Carthage, in a series of struggles called the Punic Wars (see Punic Wars). As a result of the wars, Sicily and Spain became Roman provinces. Rome also expanded into the eastern Mediterranean. In 148 B.C, the Romans made Macedonia their first eastern prov­ince. Two years later, they conquered Greece. In 55 and 54 B.C, the Roman general Julius Caesar invaded Britain. Other conquests followed until the original city of Rome had grown into an enormous empire. At its height, in A.D. 117, the empire covered about half of Europe, much of the Middle East, and the entire north coast of Africa.

Roman territory included all the Greek lands of the Hellenistic Age. The Romans imitated Greek art and lit­erature, made use of Greek scientific knowledge, and based their architecture on Greek models. Educated people throughout the Roman Empire spoke Greek. By imitating Greek accomplishments, the Romans pre­served and passed on much Greek culture that other­wise might have been lost.

The Romans also contributed their own achievements to the ciyilization they developed. They were superb en­gineers who constructed massive aqueducts and bridges, vast systems of roads, and monumental arches. The Romans developed an excellent legal system. Their legal code forms the basis of civil law in numerous European and Latin-American countries, and many of its principles and terms are part of English and American common law. Latin, the language of the Romans, was the official language of the empire. It became the basis of French, Italian, Spanish, and other Romance lan­guages of today.

The Romans excelled in the art of government. One of their most important achievements was the empire it­self, which provided a stable framework of government for many peoples with widely different customs. The Ro­mans showed great respect for these customs and won the good will of many of the peoples they governed. Rome was a republic until 27 B.C., when Augustus took supreme power. Augustus and his successors retained republican titles and forms of government, but Rome actually became a monarchy ruled by emperors.

During the A.D. 100's and 20ffs, Rome was increas­ingly threatened by barbarian invaders in both the east and the west. As a result, the army became more and more powerful and began to play a major role in choos­ing Rome's emperors. One of the most important em­perors the army helped bring to power was Constantine the Great, who came to the throne in 306. In 313, Con­stantine granted Christians of the Roman Empire free­dom of worship. Christ had been born during the reign of the Emperor Augustus and was crucified by the Roman authorities in about A.D. 30, during the rule of Ti­berius. The Romans had at times persecuted the Chris­tians. However, after Constantine granted Christians legal recognition, a strong link was formed between the Christian church and the Roman Empire. Emperor Theo­ dosius I proclaimed Christianity the official religion of the empire in the late 300's.

A period of great disorder followed Constantine's death in 337. In 395, the Roman Empire split into two parts—the West Roman Empire and the East Roman, or Byzantine, Empire. The West Roman Empire soon fell to Germanic tribes, but the Byzantine Empire was to thrive for many years. For more information on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, see Rome, Ancient.

Achievements in India. About 1500 B.C, bands of Aryans, an Indo-European people, began migrating to India. The Aryans came from the plains of central Asia through the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush. By 1000 B.C, they had taken over most of the valley of the upper Ganges River in northern India.

The Aryans never invaded southern India, but their in­fluence gradually extended over the entire country and greatly affected Indian culture. Sanskrit, the language developed by the Aryans, is the basis of languages still spoken in India. Hinduism, the religion of most Indians today, is rooted in Indo-European beliefs. The division of present-day Indian society into social classes called castes dates from the divisions of early Aryan society into four classes. These classes were priests and schol­ars; rulers and warriors; merchants and professionals; and labourers and servants. See Caste.

At various times in its history, the Aryan territory was divided into many states. In one state, a prince named Siddhartha Gautama was born about 563 B.C Gautama abandoned a life of luxury to seek religious enlighten­ment. He became a great religious teacher known to his followers as Buddha (Enlightened One). Gautama's teachings are the foundation of Buddhism, one of the world's major religions. See Buddhism.

By about 300 B.C, much of India was united for the first time under one dynasty, the Maurya. The Maurya Empire reached its peak under Emperor Asoka, who ruled during the 200's B.C. From his capital at Pataliputra (now Patna) in northern India, Asoka controlled almost all India and part of central Asia. Asoka supported Bud­dhism, which spread and prospered during his reign.

He sent Buddhist missionaries to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and other countries. See Asoka; Maurya Empire.

The Maurya dynasty ended with the assassination of its last emperor in 185 B.C. For most of the next 500 years, India was divided into small political units under no one ruler. In A.D. 320, a new dynasty, the Gupta, came to power in northern India. The Gupta dynasty lasted about 200 years. During the Gupta period, Indian civilization enjoyed a golden age of peace, good gov­ernment, and cultural development. Beautiful cities arose, and universities were founded. Sanskrit literature, particularly drama, flourished during the Gupta era. The Gupta emperors were Hindus, but Buddhism also thrived under their rule. See Gupta dynasty.

Achievements in China. About 1122 B.C, the Zhou people of western China overthrew the Shang and es­tablished their own dynasty. The Zhou ruled until 256 A.C. The Zhou kings introduced the idea that they had been appointed to rule by Heaven. All later Chinese dynasties adopted that idea. From its beginning, the Zhou dynasty directly controlled only part of northern China. The rest of the kingdom consisted of semi­-independent states. As time passed, the lords of these states grew increasingly powerful and so weakened the dynasty. In 771 B.C., the Zhou were forced to abandon their capital, near what is now Xi'an, and move eastward to Luoyang.

For hundreds of years after the Zhou moved their capital, fighting raged among the states for control of all

China. Efforts to restore order to Chinese society led to the birth of Chinese philosophy during this period. The great philosopher Confucius stressed the importance of moral standards and tradition and of a well-ordered so­ciety in which people performed the duties of their sta­tions in life. See Confucianism.

In 221 B.C, the Qin (also spelled Ch'in) state in north­western China defeated all its rivals. The Qin created the first unified Chinese empire controlled by a strong cen­tral government. The name China came from the name of their dynasty. The first Qin emperor, Shi Huangdi, standardized weights and measures and the Chinese writing system. He also built extensive irrigation proj­ects. To keep out barbarian invaders, he ordered major construction on the Great Wall of China.

The Qin dynasty lasted only until 206 B.C. The Han dynasty gained control of China in 202 B.C. Under the Han emperors, Confucianism became the philosophical basis of government. Candidates for government jobs had to take a civil service examination based on Confucian ideals. Art, education, and science thrived during the Han period. By A.D. 1, the Chinese had invented paper. Sometime before A.D. 100, Buddhism was intro­duced into China from India.

Han China expanded southwest to what is now Tibet. Han warriors also conquered parts of Indochina and Korea and overcame nomadic tribes in the north and west. Political struggles among the Han leaders led to the collapse of the dynasty in A.D. 220. For the next 400 years, China was again divided into warring states. See Han dynasty.

Various parts of the world gradually came more closely into contact with one another during the period from 500 to 1500. In fact, some regions came into con­tact with other regions for the first time. However, the various regions still remained largely independent of one another during most of that time, and their histories continued to progress along separate lines.

Great changes occurred in the old areas of civilization during the 1,000-year period. In western Europe, a num­ber of separate states eventually arose from the disorder that followed the fall of the West Roman Empire. The East Roman, or Byzantine, Empire continued to survive and flourish. A new world religion, Islam, sprang up in Arabia and spread to many other parts of the world. Meanwhile, China continued to preserve its special way of life under a series of dynasties. Partly under influence from China, another Oriental civilization appeared, that of Japan. In the Americas, civilizations developed with­out any outside influences.

In European history, the period between about 500 and 1500 is often referred to as the Middle Ages or the

medieval period. The word medieval comes from the Latin words medium, meaning middle, and aevum, meaning age. The terms Middle Ages and medieval pe­riod made sense to later Europeans who looked back on those years as a distinct period in the middle of their history between the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome and the start of modern times. But the terms can­not be applied to world history as a whole because the histories of many parts of the world have no connection with ancient Greece and Rome.

Medieval Europe. By A.D. 400, many barbarian in­vaders and immigrants from the east had settled within the West Roman Empire. In 476, a Germanic chieftain named Odoacer overthrew the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus. By that time, Germanic conquerors had carved kingdoms out of all the West Roman provinces. The framework of government created by the Romans had disappeared.

Roman culture was not completely destroyed, how­ever. Many Germanic rulers adopted some Roman cus­toms and converted to Christianity. The Christian church became the most important civilizing force among the Germanic peoples. Its missionaries introduced the bar barians to Roman ideas of government and justice. Ca­thedrals and monasteries provided the main centres of learning and philosophy. The monks and the clergy helped continue the reading and writing of Latin and preserved many ancient manuscripts.

For hundreds of years after the fall of the West Roman Empire, the Germanic kings had great difficulty defending themselves against invaders. The invaders in­cluded Arabs from the south, Vikings from the north, and Magyars and Avars from the east. During these troubled times, a new military and political system known as feudalism developed in western Europe. Under this system, powerful lords—who owned most of the land—gave some of their holdings to less wealthy noblemen in return for pledges of allegiance. These lesser nobles, called vassals, swore to fight for the lord when he needed their help. Peasants worked the fields of the lords and their vassals. By the 900s, most of west­ern Europe was divided into feudal states. The feudal lords completely controlled their estates. Kings ruled only their own lands and vassals. See Feudalism.

During the 1000's, many lords established strong gov­ernments and achieved periods of peace under the feu­dal system. Trade revived along the old land routes and waterways used by the Romans. Towns sprang up and prospered along the trade routes. The peasants learned better farming methods and gained new farmland by clearing forests and draining swamps. The population rose. Learning and the arts thrived as trade brought in­creasing contact with the advanced Byzantine and Is­lamic civilizations. During the 1100's and 1200's, the first European universities were established.

The people of the medieval towns often supported the kings against the feudal lords. The townspeople agreed to pay taxes to the kings in return for protection and freedom. During the 1300's and 1400's, some kings became increasingly powerful and began to extend their states ruled by monarchs. For more information about medieval Europe, see Middle Ages.

The Byzantine Empire was a continuation of the East Roman Empire. Its capital and military stronghold was Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). The Byzan­tine rulers kept Roman governmental and legal tradi­tions. However, the East Roman provinces had always been more influenced by Greek culture than by Latin culture. As a result, the Byzantines helped preserve an­cient Greek language, literature, and philosophy.

Christianity flourished in the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine church was the chief civilizing force among the Slavic peoples of southeastern Europe and Russia. Byzantine missionaries converted the Slavs to Christian­ity and invented a script in which the Slavic languages were written down. The church in Constantinople was united with the church in Rome for many years. But ri­valries developed between the churches, and they drifted apart. The Western church eventually became known as the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Or­thodox Churches developed out of Byzantine Christian­ity. See Eastern Orthodox Churches.

The Byzantine Empire reached its greatest extent under Emperor Justinian, who came to the throne in 527. His empire included Italy, much of southeastern Europe, part of Spain, much of the Middle East, and lands along the north coast of Africa. At the command of Justinian, Byzantine scholars collected and organized the many laws of the ancient Romans. The resulting code of laws, called the Justinian Code, clarified the laws of the times and is today the basis of the legal systems of many coun­tries (see Justinian Code). Art and architecture flour­ished during Justinian's reign. The Byzantines con­structed domed cathedrals with ornately decorated interiors. One of these cathedrals is the magnificent Hagia Sophia built by Justinian in Constantinople. See Byzantine art; Hagia Sophia.

For hundreds of years, the Byzantine Empire pro­tected western Europe from attacks from the east by barbarians, Persians, and such Muslim invaders as the

Arabs and Ottoman Turks. Beginning in the 1000's, how­ever, the Byzantine emperors fought a losing battle against the Muslims. By 1400, the Ottoman Turks had taken much of southeastern Europe and all the Asian territories of the Byzantines. In 1453, the Ottomans cap­tured Constantinople. This conquest brought to an end the last remnants of the old Roman Empire. See Byzan­tine Empire.

The Islamic world. In the 600's, Islam, a new religion based on the teachings of Muhammad, began in Arabia. Muhammad was born about 570 and grew up in Mecca, a major trading centre on the Arabian Peninsula. At that time, most Arabs believed in nature gods and prayed to idols and spirits. But Muhammad urged the Arabs to worship one God. The Meccans rejected Muhammad's teachings and persecuted him and his followers. In 622, Muhammad and his disciples fled to the city of Medina (then called Yathrib). Muhammad's flight, called the He­gira, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. The people of Medina accepted Muhammad as God's mes­senger. By 630, Muhammad and his followers had cap­tured Mecca.

After Muhammad's death in 632, authority to head the Islamic community passed to religious leaders later called caliphs. The first caliphs were members of Mu­hammad's family. Under their leadership, Islam became a great conquering force. The Muslim armies defeated the tribes of southern Arabia and then spread north to Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia. In 661, the ca­liphate passed to another family, the Umayyads, who es­tablished their capital at Damascus. The Umayyad caliphs led the Muslim Arabs to new victories. By the early 700's, the Arabs had conquered Cyprus, Rhodes, Sicily, northern Africa, and Afghanistan. Muslim forces had also pushed into Spain and India and reached the bor­ders of China.

In 750, the Abbasids became the caliphs of the ex­panding Islamic world. They moved the capital to Bagh­dad. Under the Abbasids, Islamic civilization reached its greatest heights. Baghdad became a huge city, rivalling Constantinople in wealth and population. Islamic art and architecture flourished, and many Islamic academies and universities were founded. As a result of their con­quests, the Muslims had come into contact with Persian astronomy, history, and medicine; Indian mathematics; and Greek science and philosophy. The Arabs became learned in these fields and made significant contribu­tions of their own in mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and other sciences. They also developed literature of their own in Arabic. Many ancient Greek texts were translated into Arabic and eventually introduced into western Europe.

The Abbasid caliphate declined during the 900's as peoples from central Asia began invading the Middle East. Some of these peoples were Turks who had been converted to Islam. During the early 1300's, the Ottoman Turks, who had settled in Anatolia (now Turkey), became the military leaders of the Islamic world. After the Otto­mans seized Constantinople in 1453, they made the city the capital of their empire. By 1700, the Ottoman Empire covered southeastern Europe, southern Russia, part of northern Africa, and much of the Middle East. See Otto­man Empire.

For more details on the history of the Islamic world, see Muslims.

China. From 500 to 1500, Chinese civilization still owed little to the outside world. Land travellers found it hard to reach China, and few travellers came by sea. Iso­lation helped make Chinese society extremely stable and self-sufficient. During the Tang dynasty (618-907) and

the Song dynasty (960-1279), China enjoyed great pros­perity and cultural accomplishment.

The Tang and Song rulers continued to use the sys­tem of civil service examinations based on Confucianism that had begun hundreds of years earlier during Han times. Successful candidates for government office thus shared a common body of beliefs and a respect for tra­ditional ways. Cities and towns grew rapidly during the Tang and Song periods. The Tang capital at Chang'an (now Xi'an) had more than a million people. The Tang and Song emperors continued to extend the Grand Canal system, which had already linked the rice-growing lower Yangtze Valley with the north by the early 600'S. Literature, history, and philosophy flourished under the Tang and Song dynasties. During the Tang period, the Chinese invented block printing. Chinese inventions during the Song period included gunpowder, the mag­netic compass, and movable type for printing. See Tang dynasty; Song dynasty.

During the 1200s, Mongol warriors swept into China from the north. The Mongol leader Kublai Khan estab­lished the Yuan dynasty, which lasted from 1279 to 1368. The Mongol period marked the first time that all China had come under foreign rule. Kublai Khan encouraged commerce and cultural exchange with other civilized peoples. During Yuan times, Europeans became increas­ingly interested in China as a result of the reports of travellers and traders. Rebellions drove the Mongols from China during the mid-1300's. In 1368, Chinese rule was reestablished under the Ming dynasty, which held power until 1644. See Mongol Empire.

The rise of Japanese civilization. The development of Japanese civilization was greatly influenced by the neighbouring Chinese culture. During the 500's, Confu­cianism, Buddhism, and knowledge of ironmaking reached Japan from China. The Japanese borrowed the Chinese system of writing and adopted some Chinese ideas of government and administration. Japanese gov­ernment, like Chinese government, centred on an em­peror. Beneath the emperor, Japanese society was di­vided into various dans (related families).

During the late 700's and early 800's, the Fujiwaras, an aristocratic clan, rose to power in japan. The Fujiwaras gained control over the emperor and his court by inter­marrying with the imperial family. Under the Fujiwaras, the court nobility enjoyed a life of splendour and luxury. The people of Japan began to cast off Chinese cultural influences. Some of the first masterpieces-of Japanese literature were written during the Fujiwara era. The Jap­anese also produced fine ceramics and lacquerware and developed such arts as flower arranging, landscape gar­dening, and silk weaving. Japanese exports gradually began to appear in the markets of China and southeast­ern Asia. The Fujiwara clan ruled Japan about 300 years. During that time, the emperors lost all real power, though they still officially reigned.

During the 1000's, civil wars between rival noblemen brought an end to Fujiwara rule. Another powerful clan, the Minamoto, seized control of the imperial court in 1185. The Minamoto leaders established a form of mili­tary government called the shogunate. The emperor re­mained in retirement, and a Minamoto shogun (military commander! ruled in his name (see Shogun). The Mina­moto shogunate collapsed in the early 1300's, when Japan was again torn by violent civil wars. The wars slowed the growth of cities and towns and weakened

the nation. But Japan remained safe from attack by for­eign powers because of its isolated island position. The Mongols tried to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281, but both attempts failed because of typhoons in the Sea of Japan. See Japan (History).

The age of invasions of India. After the Gupta Em­pire fell in about 500, India broke up into many small kingdoms. From then until the early 1500's, India suf­fered repeated invasions from the northwest. In the early 700's, Muslim invaders from Arabia swept across northwestern India but were eventually overcome by In­dian forces. During the late 1100's, Muslim Turks from central Asia conquered the Indus Valley. By 1206, they had established a sultanate (government by a sultan) in Delhi. The Delhi sultanate soon controlled all northern India. During the sultanate, many Muslims came to India to serve as soldiers, government officials, merchants, and priests. Muslim holy men converted many Indians to Islam. See Delhi sultanate.

In 1398, a Mongol army raided India and captured Delhi. The Mongols soon withdrew, however. The sul­tanate regained Delhi, but the rest of the sultanate terri­tory was split into kingdoms. In 1526, Babar, a Muslim prince from what is now Afghanistan, invaded India and defeated the forces of the last sultan of Delhi. Babar founded the Mughal Empire and made himself emperor. By the time Babar died in 1530, the Mughal Empire stretched from Kabul in Afghanistan to the mouth of the Ganges (Ganga) River in what is now Bangladesh. See Babar; Mughal Empire.

African civilizations. The Muslim Arabs completed their conquest of northern Africa by 710. For hundreds of years, the Islamic faith and culture spread to other parts of Africa. Camel caravans that crossed the Sahara brought northern Muslims into contact with western Af­rica. Muslim traders who sailed the Indian Ocean con­verted the peoples living along the east coasts of what are now Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania. Black African em­pires developed and prospered along some of the major trade routes.

Islamic records provide information about the Ghana Empire, the first great black empire in western Africa.

The empire existed from the 300's to the mid-1000's. The Arabs called Ghana the "land of gold" because Ghanaian traders supplied them with gold from regions south of the empire. During the 1200's, an even bigger empire, the Islamic Mali Empire, arose as the most powerful state in western Africa. One of Mali's cities, Timbuktu, became an important centre of trade and Muslim cul­ture. The Mali Empire began to break up during the 1400s. By 1500, most of it had come under the control of the Songhai Empire. This empire, which was also Is­lamic, became powerful mainly by controlling trade across the Sahara. Songhai lasted until 1591. See Ghana Empire; Mali Empire; Songhai Empire.

Islamic influence did not extend into southern Africa. Much of the south was originally settled by black peo­ples who spoke Bantu languages. About the time of Christ, these peoples began migrating southward from what is now the border region between Nigeria and Cameroon. Their migrations lasted over 1,000 years.

On the east coast of Africa, the Bantu peoples came into contact with traders from the Persian Gulf region who wanted to buy gold, copper, iron, ivory, and slaves. Several large trading empires developed in southeast­ern Africa, but little is known about them. One empire, the Mwanamutapa Empire, arose during the 1400's in what are now Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The city of Zimbabwe served as the empire's capital. During the late 1400's, the Changamire Empire conquered the Mwanamutapa and took over the capital. Massive tow­ers and walls from a royal residence and burial place built during Changamire times still stand on the site of the city. See Zimbabwe (History).

Civilizations in the Americas. The first civilizations in the Americas arose in Central America and in what are now Mexico and Peru. The Maya people of Central America and Mexico developed one of the most ad­vanced early cultures. Between about 250 and 900, the Maya built large religious centres that consisted of pal­aces, pyramids, temples, and terraces. The Maya studied astronomy, invented an accurate yearly calendar, and developed an advanced form of writing. For reasons still unknown, Maya civilization began to decline during the 900's. Many Maya sites were abandoned. See Maya.

From about 900 to 1200, the Toltec people were the dominant people in the central Mexican highlands. By the early 1400's, the Aztec replaced the Toltec as the most powerful people in central Mexico. The Aztec built a magnificent capital city, Tenochtitlan, on the site of present-day Mexico City and established a mighty em­pire. The Aztec devoted much of their time to religious practices. Human sacrifice was the central feature of their religion. The Aztec waged war on neighbouring peoples mainly to obtain prisoners to sacrifice to their gods. See Aztec.

By the 1200s, civilization had made great advances in Peru. Peruvian farmers were using bronze tools, and Pe­ruvian stonemasons had become master builders. The people used quipu, a cord with knotted strings of vari­ous lengths and colours, to keep records and send mes­sages. During the 1300's and 1400's, the Inca people gained control of the Peruvian civilization. By the early 1500's, the Inca ruled an empire that stretched between what are now southern Colombia and central Chile. A vast network of roads linked the distant provinces of the empire. Conquered peoples were forced to help build and maintain the roads, to raise crops for the Inca, and to serve in the Inca army. See Inca.

The spread of Western civilization

Great changes occurred in the course of world his­tory between 1500 and 1900. The world's population rose dramatically, from about 450 million in 1500 to more than 11 billion by 1900. Cities and towns grew steadily. Western, or European, civilization began to lead the world in cultural, economic, and technological progress. A world in which civilizations developed largely independently of one another gradually gave way to the dominance of Western civilization.

A number of factors contributed to the wide expan­sion of Western influence. A great age of European ex­ploration during the 1400's and 1500's led to the found­ing of European colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Thousands of Europeans migrated to these colonies. Industrialization began in Europe during the 1700's, and the continent soon became the manufactur­ing centre of the world. The European nations estab­lished more and more colonies overseas to serve as markets for their manufactured products and as sources of raw materials for industry. Growing trade with these colonies brought increasing wealth and power to the continent. Political rivalries among the European states

also encouraged them to expand their empires abroad. Advances in technology, such as better ships and weap­ons, helped the Europeans conquer new territories.

The Europeans often introduced their arts and tech­nology and their systems of law, government, and edu­cation into the areas where they settled. Thus, the ideas and skills of Western civilization became more wide­spread than those of any other civilization in history.

The Renaissance. European culture during the Middle Ages largely reflected the powerful influence of Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church. But during the late Middle Ages—between 1300 and 1500— scholars and artists began to develop a new way of looking at life. They became less concerned with religion and con centrated, instead, on understanding people and the world. This new outlook became known as humanism- Humanist scholars pioneered in the revival of ciassica studies—the literature, history, and philosophy of an­cient Greece and Rome. They believed that by returning to the classics, they could begin a new golden age o culture. See Humanism.

The humanist philosophy formed the intellectual core of the Renaissance, a 300-year period of great ad­vancement in the arts and learning in Europe. The Ren­aissance began in Italy in the early 1300's and spread throughout most of Europe during the 1400's and 1500s. Renaissance thinkers stressed that the duty of intellectu­als was to concentrate on human problems, not to seek an understanding of religious questions. Writers of the period described human feelings and situations that people could easily understand. Renaissance artists tried to capture the dignity and majesty of human be­ings in lifelike paintings and sculptures. Architects de­signed many nonreligious buildings that incorporated elements of classical style. Many world masterpieces of architecture, literature, painting, and sculpture were created during the Renaissance. See Renaissance.

Other changes that occurred during the Renaissance affected the Christian church itself. During the early 1500's, a religious movement called the Reformation led to the birth of Protestantism. The Reformation followed many earlier attempts by religious reformers to correct abuses that had developed within the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning in 1517, Martin Luther, a German monk and theology professor, became the leader of the reform movement. Luther's criticisms gradually led him and his followers to break completely with the Catholic Church.

By the mid-150ffs, the Reformation had resulted in the establishment of Protestant churches in nearly half the European countries. Many Protestant groups developed, which helped create a mood of religious toleration in many parts of Europe. The Protestant movement led to the Counter Reformation, a reform and renewal move­ment in the Catholic Church. The Counter Reformation removed many bad practices within the church and greatly strengthened the authority of the pope. See Ref­ormation; Counter Reformation.

The spread of new ideas during the Renaissance was made faster and easier by the invention of movable type in Europe in the mid-1400s. Most of the first printed books were classic Creek and Roman texts or religious books, particularly the Bible. But the Renaissance stimu­lated a renewed interest in scientific research and in the study of the natural world, and so books on scientific subjects began to appear by the late 1500's. During the 1600's, scientists developed the modern scientific method, with its emphasis on experimentation and care­ful observation. The invention of such instruments as the microscope and telescope contributed to a rapid growth in scientific knowledge. By 1700, new discover­ies had revolutionized such fields as anatomy, astron­omy, chemistry, and physics.

The great age of exploration. A remarkable wave of European exploration had begun in the early 1400s. Portuguese explorers in search of an eastward sea route to Asia started to sail down the west coast of Africa. They gradually developed better navigational charts and improved the rigging of their sailing ships. By 1473, a Portuguese ship had crossed the equator, and another one had reached the Cape of Good Hope at the south­ern tip of Africa by 1487. Christopher Columbus, an Ital­ian navigator in the service of Spain, reached America in 1492. In 1497 and 1498, a Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, made the first voyage from Europe around Africa to India.

During the 1500's and 1600's, Europeans continued to gain geographical knowledge. In the early 1500s, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator in the service o Spain, set out on an expedition to sail around the world Magellan was killed on the journey, but one of his snip completed the voyage. Sailors from France, England, and the Netherlands led the search for shorter routes Asia—either a Northwest Passage across North America or a Northeast Passage north of Europe. Explorers slowly began to work their way through the land mass ₀f America. See Exploration (The great age of European discovery).

The discovery of new territories provided opportuni­ties for the expansion of European commerce. By 1700, Europeans were trading throughout the world, and some European nations had acquired colonial empires. The colonies provided Europeans with bananas, coffee, cotton fabrics, timber, spices, and other products. New crops, such as potatoes and tobacco, were introduced into Europe from America. A flourishing slave trade de­veloped with Africa. In addition, a continuous flow of gold and silver from the New World enabled Europeans to increase their trade with India and China, where de­mand for the precious metals was high.

The colonization of America. The search for gold drew many of the first Spanish explorers and conquista­dors (conquerors) to the New World. The most famous conquistador was Hernando Cortes. In 1519, he landed in Mexico, marched his army to the Aztec capital at Tenochtitlan, and took the Aztec emperor captive. The Aztec rebelled in 1520. They were finally defeated in 1521. Cortes then claimed Mexico for Spain. In 1533, an­other Spaniard, Francisco Pizarro, conquered the wealthy empire of the Incas in Peru. See Cortes, Her­nando; Pizarro, Francisco.

Except for members of the Spanish clergy, few Span­iards had respect for the Indians and their ways of life. They made the Indians give them a fortune in gold and other riches and forced them to work in their mines and on their plantations. Millions of Indians died of mistreat­ment or of diseases brought by the Spaniards.

Spanish rule rapidly expanded in the Americas. By 1700, Spain controlled Mexico, Central America, and most of South America. The Spaniards established cities and universities throughout their territory. European government, the Spanish language, and the Catholic

Church became dominant in most of Latin America. The population of the colonies rose as more settlers arrived and the Indians acquired some resistance to European diseases. Many Spaniards and Indians intermarried, pro­ducing the beginning of a population of mixed ancestry. However, the ruling class of the colonies consisted only of people of unmixed European ancestry.

Much of Latin America had been colonized before the first lasting English settlement was established at jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. By 1733, there were 13 English colonies, with a total population of about a mil­lion, along the Atlantic coast of North America. Many colonists were drawn to the New World by its economic opportunities, such as the availability of plentiful land. Some settlers, including Puritans, Quakers, and Roman Catholics, came to the English colonies to escape perse­cution for their religious beliefs. Most of the colonists were English. But other European immigrants also came. In 1624, for example, the Dutch settled New Netherland, which included parts of what are now Connecticut, Del­aware, New jersey, and New York. Farther north, French colonists settled throughout the St. Lawrence River Val­ley.

The English colonists were soon able to grow enough food to support themselves. They also produced to­bacco and other valuable exports to pay for imports from England. But unlike the Spanish colonies, the Eng­lish colonies had no silver or gold. In addition, the Eng­lish settlers in North America did not find highly ad­vanced Indian societies like those in Mexico and Peru.

At first, the Indians and the settlers had friendly rela­tions. But as more and more settlers claimed greater amounts of Indian hunting grounds, wars broke out be­tween the two groups. See Indian wars (Colonial days).

The Islamic empires. Parts of Europe and Asia re­mained under control of the Ottoman Turks until the early 1900's. The Ottoman Empire never had a strong central government. Ottoman governors ruled the prov­inces of the empire. Their chief tasks included collecting taxes and raising armies. But they interfered as little as possible in the lives of the conquered peoples. For ex­ample, Christians and Jews could practise their faiths as long as they paid their taxes. The subject peoples thus continued to be divided into separate communities and felt no loyalty to their Ottoman rulers. This lack of unity weakened the empire.

The Ottomans could not control some areas of their empire. Mesopotamia was especially difficult to govern. For nearly 200 years, this valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was the site of warfare between the Ot­tomans and another Islamic power, Persia. A new dynasty, the Safavid, had been established in Persia in the early 1500's. The greatest Safavid king was Shah Abbas, who came to the throne in 1587. Fie successfully fought the Ottomans and Uzbek tribes from Turkestan. Shah Abbas and his successors strongly supported the development of the arts. Isfahan, which became the Sa­favid capital in 1598, was known as one of the world's most beautiful cities. The Safavid dynasty began to de­cline after Shah Abbas died in 1629. It ended in 1722, when armies from Afghanistan invaded Persia and cap­tured Isfahan.

In addition to fighting the Ottomans, the Safavid rul­ers fought another great Islamic power, the Mughal Em­pire of India. The Mughal Empire reached its height under Akbar, who ruled from 1556 to 1605. Akbar con­trolled most of northern and central India plus Afghani­stan. He ruled wisely, and his religious tolerance won the loyaity of many Hindus. The empire weakened under

Akbar's successors. Serious trouble developed during the reign of Aurangzeb, who became emperor in 1658. Aurangzeb placed a special tax on Hindus and de­stroyed many of their temples. He also tried to force non-Muslims to convert to Islam. Partly as a result of Aurangzeb's policies and costly wars with Persia, the Mug­hal Empire began breaking up soon after his death in 1707. See Akbar; Aurangzeb.

At first, the spread of European influence had little ef­fect on the Islamic world, though trade gradually in­creased between the European nations and the Islamic empires. But as the Islamic powers declined, the Euro­peans took advantage of the situation and began to as­sume control of Islamic lands. By 1900, European na­tions dominated most of the Islamic world. The French established themselves in northern Africa, and the Dutch took Indonesia. Britain occupied Egypt and the Sudan, set up an empire in India, and ruled Malaya. Dur­ing the 1900's, Italy seized Turkish territories in northern Africa and along the eastern shores of the Mediterra­nean Sea.

Developments in China and Japan. The Ming dynasty, which had come to power in China in 1368, began to decline during the 1500's. Rebellions in outly­ing provinces troubled the empire, and Indochina and other distant dependencies slipped out of its control. The Ming emperors looked down on all things foreign and regarded the European traders who visited China as inferiors. But some rights were granted to the Europe and as the dynasty weakened. The Portuguese were a lowed to establish a permanent settlement at Macao, on the southeast coast of China, in 1557. A European com­munity later grew up in the port city of Canton, a major centre of foreign trade with China.

In 1644, the Ming asked the Manchus, a barbarian people from Manchuria, for help in putting down rebel­lions within the empire. The Manchus then invaded China—but only to establish their own dynasty, the Qing, on the throne. The Manchus ruled China until 1912. They had great respect for Chinese civilization and did little to change Chinese life or government. The Manchu rulers pushed back Russian advances in the Amur River Valley, established imperial control over Tibet, regained parts of Indochina, and added Korea to their territory. During the 1700's, the Qing empire en­joyed stability and prosperity. Contacts with Europeans multiplied, and Christian missionaries were welcomed at the Manchu capital, Beijing. The Manchus admired the Europeans' scientific knowledge and their skills in mapmaking and the manufacture of guns, but they did not wish to imitate European ways of life. Chinese cul­ture remained largely cut off from the rest of the world.

japan was even more isolated than China. The Tokugawa family seized power in Japan in 1603 and estab­lished the Tokugawa shogunate. The Tokugawas ruled for more than 250 years. They were determined to end the civil wars that had troubled the country for years and restore order to Japanese society. Under Tokugawa rule, Japan was divided into about 250 regions, each headed by a lord who swore allegiance to the shogun.

European traders and Christian missionaries had begun arriving in Japan during the 1500's. But the Toku­gawa rulers feared that the missionaries might soon bring European armies with them to conquer Japan. In the early 1600's, they ordered all missionaries to leave the country. They also tried to force all Japanese con­verts to give up their new faith. Those who refused were persecuted or killed. By 1640, Christianity had been al­ most eliminated. The Tokugawa government also be­lieved that contact with the outside world must end to keep order in Japan. During the 1630's, it therefore cut ties with other nations. All European traders except the Dutch had to leave the country. The Dutch were permit­ted a small trading station on the tiny island of Deshima in the harbour at Nagasaki. The Tokugawa shogunate al­lowed one Dutch ship to come to the trading station each year.

The rise of democracy and nationalism. During the 1700's and 1800's, most countries in the Western world were affected by two powerful political forces— democracy and nationalism. During this period, many peoples won the right to take part in their governments. Nationalistic feelings—particularly the desire of people who shared a common culture to be united as a nation- led to the formation of many new states.

In some areas, the movement toward democracy and nationalism triggered revolts against existing political systems. One of the most important revolts was the American Revolution. Relations between Great Britain and its colonies in America began to break down in the mid-1700's. The colonists, who had enjoyed a large measure of self-government, wanted even greater free­dom. They deeply resented efforts by the British govern­ment to tighten its control over the colonies. The Revo­lutionary War began on April 19, 1775. On July 4,1776, the colonists issued the Declaration of Independence, in which they declared their freedom from British rule and the formation of a new nation, the United States of America. The Revolutionary War ended with Britain's de­feat. In 1783, Britain acknowledged the independence of the colonies. The United States Constitution, adopted in 1788, officially established the new nation as a republic. See Declaration of Independence; American Revolu­tion.

Another major revolution occurred in France. The French Revolution lasted from 1789 to 1799. It began when King Louis XVI called a meeting of the Estates- General, the French national assembly, to solve the state's financial problems. Commoners in the Estates-General revolted and seized control of the government, declaring themselves the legal National Assembly of France. The Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. This document set forth the principles of human liberty and the rights of in­dividuals. The French nobles gave up most of their titles and special privileges. In 1792, the revolutionaries estab­lished the First French Republic. See Rights of Man, Declaration of the; French Revolution.

During the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, a professional soldier, began to attract notice as a suc­cessful general. In 1799, he overthrew the revolutionary government and seized control of France. Napoleon made himself emperor in 1804. Under his leadership, the French came to control most of western Europe. But Napoleon lost much of his army when he invaded Rus­sia in 1812. In 1815, allied European forces crushed Na­poleon in the Battle of Waterloo, ending his attempt to rule Europe. See Napoleon I.

From late 1814 to early 1815, European leaders held a series of meetings called the Congress of Vienna. By that time, the ideas of the French Revolution had spread throughout Europe. The great rulers at the congress feared the effects of these ideas and wanted to smother liberal and nationalistic feelings among their subjects. They restored monarchies in Italy, Spain, and several other countries where they had been overthrown by Na­poleon. They also approved the restoration of the French monarchy. But the congress failed to halt the spread of liberalism and nationalism in the long run. See Vienna, Congress of.

By 1880, nearly every European nation had a constitu­tion. In some, all adult males had received the right to vote. Germany and Italy, which had been divided into many small states, were each united as a nation under a constitutional monarchy. Many new nations with consti­tutional governments appeared in southeastern Europe

as the Ottoman Empire began to crumble. The United States had survived the crisis of the Civil War (1861- 1865), when its unity as a nation had been at stake. By 1900, many people believed that democracy and nation­alism would continue to spread and eventually solve all the world's political problems. But in some areas, these forces had already started to create new problems. Na­tionalism posed serious threats for Russia and Austria- Hungary, which governed peoples of many different na­tionalities. Quarrels among the new nations of south­eastern Europe also threatened to disrupt peace.

The Industrial Revolution. During the 1700's and 1800's, the spread of power-driven machinery helped bring about a rapid growth of industry. Large factories replaced homes and small workshops as manufacturing centres. The use of the new machinery and the develop­ment of factories led to a huge increase in the produc­tion of goods. As industrial nations began exporting manufactured products and importing raw materials for their factories, a worldwide system of markets took shape. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain. By the mid-1800's, industrialization had become wide­spread in western Europe and the northeastern United States. Such countries as Russia and Japan also began to develop their industries. See Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution transformed human life more dramatically than any other change since the de­velopment of agriculture. Before the Industrial Revolu­tion, most Europeans lived in farm areas. Towns and vil­lages served chiefly as market centres for the farmers. But as factories appeared, towns grew into industrial cities. People streamed into the cities to take factory jobs. Better transportation and communication between cities became necessary. Many railways, roads, and water- ways were built. By 1837, invention of the telegraph had furnished fast long-distance communication.

Industrialization brought many social changes. The middle class prospered and grew rapidly. Members of the middle class owned most of the factories, hired t e workers, and operated the banks, mines, and railways. They believed that business should be regulated by supply and demand, largely without government control. This idea forms the basis of capitalism, an economic sys­tem in which the chief means of production are pri­vately owned. During the early 1800's, Britain began to develop the first capitalist economy. Capitalism soon spread to other industrial nations. See Capitalism.

Often, early factory workers were poorly paid and had to work long hours under unhealthy conditions. They could not form trade unions, and their working conditions were not regulated by law. In the growing in­dustrial cities, housing could not keep up with the mi­gration of workers from rural areas. Severe overcrowd­ing resulted, and many people lived in extremely unsanitary conditions that led to outbreaks of disease. Unemployed workers rioted and destroyed machinery in an attempt to gain revenge against the factories they blamed for their joblessness. Employed workers joined in riots, went on strike, and formed illegal trade unions to fight for their rights.

Some people believed that the evils of industrializa­tion resulted from capitalism. Socialism became the chief rallying point for many such people. The socialists wanted to put all industrial production under the con­trol of the workers. From that basic idea, Karl Marx, a German writer and social philosopher, developed the theories of communism. Marx believed that workers would be driven by the march of history to rise up against the wealthy and to establish socialist economic systems and classless societies. By 1900, many European socialists had accepted Marx's ideas and belonged to political parties whose aim was the overthrow of the capitalist system. See Communism (Origins of Commu­nism); Marx, Karl (Marx's theories).

During the 1800's, workers in many countries won the right to form trade unions. Laws regulating working conditions were passed in the United States and Great Britain during the 1840's. Great Britain and Germany pio­neered social legislation that provided accident, sick­ness, and unemployment insurance for industrial em­ployees. By the late 1800's, most industrial nations had laws that regulated working conditions and raised the workers' standards of living.

Imperialism. The Industrial Revolution contributed to a great rise in imperialism (colonial expansion) during the 1800^rs. The industrialized nations acquired more and more colonies as they eagerly sought raw materials for their factories, markets for their manufactured goods, and opportunities for investment. Africa was one of the main areas of colonial expansion. By the late 1800's, Bel­gium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, and Spain had divided up almost all of Africa. Only Ethi­opia and Liberia remained independent.

European nations also took over large sections of southeastern Asia and many islands in the South Pacific Ocean. The only major Asian nations that remained in­dependent were China, Japan, and Siam (now Thailand). However, China's government had weakened, and the country had given up Indochina and many of its other outlying dependencies to Western nations. After the British defeated the Chinese in the Opium War in 1842, China lost all real control over the presence of foreign­ers in its territory. Many Chinese ports were opened to foreign residence and trade. Japan began to develop into an industrial and military power in the 18G0's and successfully resisted imperialist interference. By the early 1900's, Japan had become strong enough to seize parts of Chinese territory and to win a war against Rus­sia over control of southern Manchuria and Korea.

In Latin America, a series of wars of independence during the early 1800's freed many colonies from Euro­pean rule (see Latin America (The wars of independ­ence!). The United States, backed by Great Britain, acted to protect the new Latin-American republics against Eu­ropean attempts to reestablish colonial rule. In 1823,

U.S. President James Monroe issued the Monroe Doc­trine, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.

The United States expanded into new areas during the 1800's. As a result of the Mexican War (1846-1848), it gained Mexican territory that now covers California, Ne­vada, Utah, and parts of four other states. In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia. Spain sur­rendered Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States after losinq the Spanish-American War in 1898.

Imperialism affected the colonial peoples in various ways. In some areas, it brought economic development and raised living standards by introducing Western agri­cultural, industrial, and medical techniques. Colonial rule also ended local wars in numerous lands. However, many imperialist nations took advantage of their colo­nies by exporting natural resources without providing economic benefits in return to most of the people. Colo­nial administrations often cared little about local cus­toms and destroyed old ways of life. As time passed, in­justices under the imperialistic system triggered nationalistic feelings, resistance movements, and de­mands for self-government among the colonial peoples.

Since 1900, the world has changed faster than ever before. The population has continued to rise rapidly.

The world had about 1 3/4 billion people in 1900, about 2 1/2 billion in 1950, and about 5 3/4 billion in the mid-1990s. Industrial output has soared as more and more coun­tries have become industrialized, and international trade has expanded enormously. Advances in science and technology have altered basic ways of life to an extent that would never have been dreamed possible during the 1800's. In 1957, the space age began when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite to circle the earth. In 1969, two American astronauts became the first human beings to walk on the moon. See Space explora­tion.

The great colonial empires of the 1800's have disap­peared, and many new nations have emerged. Europe no longer dominates international affairs. Between 1945 and about 1990, the United States and the Soviet Union ranked as the world's superpowers. However, serious economic problems contributed to a sharp loss of So­viet power after 1985, and the nation ceased to exist in late 1991. China and japan have also developed into world powers.

Differences in beliefs and customs continue to divide the many peoples of the world. But at the same time, people throughout the world increasingly share similar experiences and problems. Many of the same political and economic forces operate around the globe, and events in one country can now quickly affect distant na­tions. The development of one world culture—which began with the spread of Western culture during the 1700's and 1800's—continues to be an important trend.

The world wars. War—fought on a greater scale than ever before—overshadowed world developments in the first half of the 1900's. World War I raged from 1914 to 1918, and World War II from 1939 to 1945.

World War I resulted chiefly from the competition for colonial and economic power among European nations, the desire of national groups to gain independence, and the secret military alliances among the nations of Eu­rope. in the war, the Allies, which included France, Rus­sia, ltaly, and the United Kingdom, fought the Central

Powers, which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. The United States joined the Allies in 1917. In November 1917 (October on the old Russian calendar), a revolution in Russia established a Commu­nist dictatorship there, and Russia withdrew from the war. The Allies gained victory in 1918. The Treaty of Ver­sailles, signed in 1919, ended the war with Germany (see Versailles, Treaty of). The Allies signed separate treaties with the other Central Powers. See World War I.

World War 1 was fought at a terrible cost. Millions of people were killed, and whole cities were destroyed. The economic damage was huge. The war brought many changes in the political map of Europe.

Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forced to disarm, give up much of its territory, and pay war damages to the Allies. Many of the German people felt that they had been treated too harshly. Adolf Hitler, head of the Nazi Party, won their support by promising to rebuild Germany into a mighty empire. In 1933, he be­came dictator of Germany. See Hitler, Adolf.

In 1938, German forces seized Austria and part of Czechoslovakia. In March 1939, they took the rest of Czechoslovakia. On September 1, Germany invaded Po­land, and World War II began. In the war, Germany,

Italy, Japan, and other Axis powers fought the Allies, which included France, the Soviet Union, Canada, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The United States entered the war in 1941, after Japan attacked U.S. military bases at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The war in Eu­rope ended with Germany's surrender in May 1945. In August 1945, U.S. planes dropped the first atomic bombs used in warfare on the Japanese cities of Hiro­shima and Nagasaki. The next month, Japan signed the terms of surrender. See World War II.

The cost of World War II, both financially and in terms of human suffering and loss of life, was even greater than that of World War I. The political effects were also more sweeping. Europe lay in ruins. Germany, once the strongest European nation, was occupied by Allied military forces. The major European nations were too weak to hold on to their colonies. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged from the war as the world's leading powers. Out of the horror of World War II came attempts by nations to settle their disputes peacefully. A new international organization, the United Nations (UNI, was established near the end of the war to provide a meeting place where countries could try to work out their political differences. See United Nations.

The rise of Communism. The Communist move­ment, which achieved its first major success in Russia in 1917, grew quickly after World War II. In the late 1940's, Soviet-controlled Communist governments were formed in most countries of Eastern Europe. Germany was divided into West Germany, which was governed by freely elected representatives, and Communist- controlled East Germany. In 1949, Chinese Communists established the People's Republic of China. Other Asian nations also came under Communist control.

Alarmed by Communist expansion, the United States and its allies began giving military and economic aid to non-Communist countries and pledged to help nations threatened by Communist take-over. The struggle between the Communist world, led by the Soviet Union, and the non-Communist world, led by the United States, became known as the Cold War. See Cold War.

Tensions between Communist and non-Communist nations increased during the 1950's and 1960's. The Ko­rean War (1950-1953) broke out when troops from Communist-ruled North Korea invaded South Korea (see Ko­rean War). Cold War incidents occurred from time to time in the divided German city of Berlin. In 1961, for ex­ample, the Communists built a wall between democratic West Berlin and Communist-controlled East Berlin to prevent East Germans from escaping. Probably the most serious Cold War incident was the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Communists had come to power in Cuba in 1959. In October 1962, the United States learned that the Soviet Union had installed missiles in Cuba that could launch nuclear attacks on American cities. The crisis passed after the Soviet Union agreed to President John F. Kennedy's demands to remove the missiles. The Viet­nam War, which began in 1957, became a major contest between Communist and non-Communist forces. The war ended in 1975 in a Communist victory. See Berlin; Cuba (The Cuban missile crisis); Vietnam War.

The birth of new nations. Large-scale colonialism ended during the 1950's and 1960's. After World War II, the European nations had neither the money nor the will to continue to rule their colonies. In addition, nationalis­tic feelings and demands for self-government had been growing among colonial peoples in Africa and Asia. Be­tween 1950 and 1980, more than 45 African colonies gained their freedom. Most European colonies in Asia and the Middle East also became independent.

The formation of so many new nations led to a big in­crease in the membership of the UN and greatly af­fected the balance of power in the organization. Many former colonies became part of a group of economically developing countries called the Third World. The Third World countries had a majority of the votes in the UN General Assembly. See Third World.

The end of colonialism has made international poli­tics much less stable. In numerous cases, the ruling powers had given the colonial peoples too little training in self-government. As a result, leaders in many new na­tions have found it hard to handle crises in political, economic, and social affairs. Large areas of the world once governed peacefully by imperialist powers have been torn by conflicts among the new nations. For ex­ample, disputes have occurred periodically between India and Pakistan, areas once ruled by Britain.

Many of the new nations had hoped that an end to colonial exploitation would automatically bring eco­nomic well-being. Instead, they continue to face such grave problems as rapid population growth, poverty, il­literacy, disease, and food shortages. Most of the former colonies have found it almost impossible to develop their economies without investment from wealthier countries. But such investment has often led to renewed political interference from the countries providing aid.

The easing of Cold War tensions. Tensions be­tween Communist and non-Communist nations began to decrease sharply in the late 1980's. The decrease oc­curred after top Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev im­

proved Soviet relations with the United States and other non-Communist nations. In 1987, Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed a treaty that called for the destruction of all U.S. and Soviet ground-launched, medium-range nuclear missiles. Tensions decreased further in 1989, when the Soviet Union completed with­drawal of its military forces from Afghanistan.

Also, during the late 1980's, Gorbachev worked to de­centralize the Soviet economic system to improve the nation's poor economy. He also worked to increase de­mocracy and freedom of expression in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev encouraged similar economic and political changes in Eastern Europe. As a result, non-Communist governments came to power in several Eastern Euro­pean nations that had been Communist dictatorships since the late 194ffs. In 1990, East Germany and West Germany were reunited. Many people believe these events marked the end of the Cold War.

The collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1991, the Com­munist Party of the Soviet Union lost control of the So­viet government after conservative Communist officials attempted to overthrow Gorbachev. The attempt failed, and the Soviet parliament suspended all Communist Party activities. By the end of 1991, most of the republics that made up the Soviet Union had declared independ­ence, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. A majority of the republics formed a new, loose confederation called the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Scientific and technological achievements. Dur­ing the 1900's, advances in science and technology have changed the world in many dramatic ways. Aeroplanes, cars, communications satellites, computers, lasers, plas­tics, refrigerators, and television are only a few of the in­ventions that have transformed human life in this cen­tury. Research into the structure of the atom has expanded scientists' view of the universe and led to the discovery of nuclear energy as a source of power. Un­manned space probes have explored other planets and sent back data on them. Antibiotics and other new drugs have helped control most infectious diseases. Agricultural output has soared as scientists have developed better varieties of plants and highly efficient fertilizers _and pesticides. The rapid medical progress and in­creases in food supplies have enabled millions of peo­ple to live healthier and longer lives.

In a number of cases, the scientific and technological achievements of the 1900's have created new problems. Breakthroughs in nuclear research, for instance, have led to the development of powerful weapons of mass destruction. The rapid growth of industrial technology has created such serious side effects as environmental pollution and fuel shortages (see Technology [Side ef­fects of technology!). Increases in life expectancy have contributed to overpopulation in many of the world's developing countries, where birth rates have remained high as death rates have declined.

The interdependence of nations. In some ways, the world today seems full of divisions. No war has bro­ken out directly between major world powers since World War II ended in 1945, but fighting has gone on in one part of the globe or another almost every day since then. In 1991, for example, the United States, Britain, and other countries drove Iraq out of Kuwait after Iraq had invaded and occupied Kuwait in 1990. Since the late 1980's, tensions between Communist and non-Commun- ist nations have decreased. But the fact that several na­tions have nuclear weapons still makes the threat of nu­clear war a worldwide concern. In economics, the gulf

between developing and developed countries is much greater than it has ever been. About 60 per cent of the people in the Third World live in extreme poverty, while resources are consumed in huge quantities in devel­oped countries simply to provide luxuries.

In spite of all the divisions in the world today, peo­ples and nations are tied together more closely than ever before. Electronic communications and worldwide systems of transportation make it possible for ideas and information to be shared quickly by peoples around the globe. Exchanges between cultures are more rapid and widespread than at any time in the past. Nations have become increasingly interdependent as such problems as pollution and the reduction of natural resources have grown too big for any one government to handle. Many countries belong to international economic or political organizations. Some developed countries give develop­ing nations financial aid and technical assistance.

The breakdown of barriers between cultures began with the spread of European civilization. Westernization, more than any other force, has shaped much of the modern world and laid the foundation for the develop­ment of a common world culture. Today, many peoples throughout the world recognize the interdependence of nations and the need for international cooperation. The growing unity of human experience offers some hope that nations can settle their differences peacefully and avoid another world war.

Outline

Early centres of civilization

The Tigris

The Nile Valley

The Indus Valley

The Huang He Valley

The advance of civilization

Middle Eastern civilization

The Romans

The Greeks

Achievements in India

Achievements in China

The world from 500 to 1500

Medieval Europe

The Byzantine Empire

The Islamic world        

China         

African civilizations

Civilizations in the Americas

The rise of Japanese civilization

The age of invasions of India

The spread of Western civilization

The Renaissance

The great age of exploration

The colonization of America

The Islamic empires

Developments in China and Japan

The rise of democracy and nationalism

The Industrial Revolution

Imperialism

The world since 1900

The world wars

The rise of Communism

The birth of new nations

The easing of Cold War tensions

The collapse of the Soviet Union

Scientific and technological achievements

The interdependence of nations

Questions

How did the invention of farming pave the way for the develop­ment of civilization?

In what ways was early Japanese civilization influenced by Chi­nese culture?

What major contributions did the Aryans make to present-day civilization in India?

Why did large-scale colonialism end after World War II?

How have advances in science and technology transformed human life during the 1900's?

What were some of the important accomplishments of the Sumerians? Of the Egyptians?

How did European leaders at the Congress of Vienna try to halt the spread of democracy and nationalism?

How was Greek culture preserved in the Roman Empire?

What factors contributed to the spread of Western civilization after 1500?

World Bank is an international organization that pro­vides loans to countries for development projects. It lends money to member governments and their agen­cies and to private organizations in the member nations. The World Bank is a specialized agency of the United Nations. Its official name is the International Bank for Re­construction and Development. About 150 countries are members. The World Bank gets funds from member countries and by borrowing in the world market.

The World Bank operates through a board of gover­nors and about 20 executive directors chosen by mem­bers. The bank makes loans to members that cannot ob­tain money from other sources at reasonable terms. These loans help members develop their national econ­omies. The bank encourages private investment in mem­ber countries. It also provides many technical assistance services for members. The bank was founded at an eco­nomic conference held in Bretton Woods, New Hamp­shire, U.S.A., in 1944. It began operating in 1946. The bank's headquarters are in Washington, D.C Related articles include: Bretton Woods, International Finance, Food supply (Food supply programmes), Corporation, International Monetary Fund, and International Development Association.

World Community of Islam in the West. See Black Muslims.

World Council of Churches is a worldwide organi­zation of about 300 Protestant, Anglican, Old Catholic, and Orthodox churches. The council works to promote cooperation and unity among all the churches of the world. The churches that belong to the council have about 400 million members in more than 100 countries.

The Roman Catholic Church, though not a member of the council, works with the organization in a number of ways. The council has also opened discussions with such non-Christian groups as Buddhists and Muslims.

The council's activities include education; worldwide missionary and evangelical work; aid to refugees, the sick, and underprivileged; and the promotion of world peace and social and interracial justice. It has sponsored studies on the future of human society in an age of sci­entific and technical progress. It has also studied the role Christians should play in improving government, courts, prisons, and other social institutions.

The World Council of Churches was founded in 1948 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Member churches elect six presidents and a 145-member central committee. This group meets annually to set council policies. The council has its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. World Court. See International Court of Justice. World Cup. See Skiing; Football, Association (Interna­tional competition).

World government. Some people believe that a sin­gle authority should dispense justice and maintain law and order for the whole world. They would like to see a world government make the major decisions concern­ing security and the welfare of individuals that separate national governments now make. World government could come about through conquest, just as the Romans conquered the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. But people who favour world government think of it as the result of persuasion and agreement.

Supporters of world government believe that war is inevitable as long as separate national governments exist. They point out that war has become a threat to the survival of the whole human race. They argue that coun­tries should give a world government the right to make the final decisions regarding war and peace. Some schemes for world government foresee a federal sys­tem, in which subdivisions of the world would continue to perform some governmental functions. Most advo­cates are unwilling to wait for international organiza­tions to grow slowly into a world government. They want the change to come peacefully, but all at once.

World Health Organization (WHO) is a special­ized agency of the United Nations. It helps build better health systems throughout the world, especially in de­veloping countries.

WHO establishes standards in a variety of fields, such as food, biological and pharmaceutical goods, diagnos­tic procedures, and environmental health protection It also helps name and classify diseases. Prevention of dis­ease is a key goal of WHO. The agency works with gov­ernments to provide safe drinking water, adequate sew­age disposal, and immunization against childhood diseases. WHO also identifies important research goals and organizes researchers all over the world to try i^u achieve these goals. WHO has about 165 members. Us principal organs are the World Health Assembly, the Ex­ecutive Board, and the Secretariat. The World Health As­sembly meets once a year and consists of national dele­gations. The Executive Board advises the World Health Assembly and implements its policies. The Secretariat, headed by a director general, consists of workers at VVHO's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, and around the world. WHO also has six regional offices in various parts of the world. It was founded in 1948.

World Heritage List is an international registry of sites that have great natural or cultural value. Some sites are listed as part of the World Heritage because of their spectacular or unusual scenery and wildlife. Others are included because of their importance as part of humani­ty's cultural heritage. Some areas possess both natural and cultural importance.

The World Heritage List was established at a General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1972. The con­vention was ratified (adopted) in 1976 at an assembly of UNESCO states in Nairobi, Kenya.

The aim of the convention is to protect, conserve, and transmit the cultural and natural heritage to future gen­erations. The list includes monuments, groups of build­ings, and cultural and natural sites. Sites are included if they are judged to have outstanding universal value from a historic, artistic, or scientific viewpoint.

Over 300 properties are included on the World Herit­age List. They range from natural sites such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, to buildings or even entire cit­ies, such as the city of Bath in the United Kingdom. The list covers almost every area in the world. The commit­tee requires governments to preserve and protect World Heritage sites.

Over 100 of the listed properties are in Europe. Many of them are prehistoric or ancient sites. They include the Altamira Caves in Spain, the Acropolis in Greece, Stone­henge in the United Kingdom, and the Thracian tomb of Kazanlak in Bulgaria. Many groups of buildings are also included, such as the historic centres of Florence in Italy, and Cracow in Poland. Individual buildings on the list include Chartres Cathedral in France and Aachen Ca­thedral in Germany.

The main World Heritage sites in North and South America are large areas of national parkland. Among these are the Iguacu National Park in Brazil and Argen­tina, and the Canadian Rocky Mountains Parks. Also in­cluded are several important pre-colonial sites, such as the Mayan city of Copan in Honduras and the city of Chi-chen-ltza in Mexico.

In Africa, a number of national parks are on the list. They include the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, the Virunga National Park in Zaire, and the Victoria Falls in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Among the notable African buildings on the list are the Great Zimbabwe National Monument, and the Royal Palaces of Abomey, in the Re­public of Benin.

Most of the Asian properties on the World Heritage lists are in India or China. Nineteen sites in India are listed. They include the Taj Mahal, the caves at Ajanta and Ellora, the Manas Wildlife Sanctuary, and the monu­ments at Khajuraho. The most important sites in China are the Great Wall, the Imperial Palace, and the Peking Man Site at Choukoutien. Among other Asian properties

are the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal and the ruins of Mo- henjo-Daro in Pakistan.

Ten areas in Australia and New Zealand are included on the list. Among these are the Willandra Lakes Region, the Tasmanian Wilderness, and the Wet Tropics of Queensland, in Australia, and the Westland and Mount Cook National Park in New Zealand.

World Hockey Association. See Hockey.

World Intellectual Property Organization is an international agency that works to protect legal rights in artistic and literary works, inventions, trademarks, and other original creations. Such rights are known as intel­lectual property. The organization promotes interna­tional agreements concerning copyright, patents, trade­marks, and other original creations. It also furnishes technological information and other assistance to devel­oping countries. The organization, known as WIPO, is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN). WIPO has a membership of more than 110 countries. Its headquar­ters are in Geneva, Switzerland.

WIPO administers two treaties that were established in the 1880's. One protects copyright. The other protects patents, trademarks, and other original creations. Ad­ministrative agencies of the two treaties joined in 1893 and were replaced by that of WIPO when it was found­ed in 1 967. The agency became part of the UN in 1974. World Jewish Congress is an international associa­tion of Jewish organizations from more than 70 coun­tries. These groups work together to promote unity among Jews and to maintain Jewish cultural, religious, and social customs. The congress stresses the impor­tance of Israel as the centre of Jewish heritage. It issues publications on various economic, political, and social matters. The association also sponsors the Institute of Jewish Affairs in London, which conducts research into various problems facing Jews.

The association tries to protect the rights of Jews throughout the world. For example, it attempted to res­cue Jews from Nazi persecution before and during World War II (1939-1945). The congress later set up re­lief and rehabilitation programmes for the victims. Dur­ing the 1970's, the congress helped arrange the release of thousands of Jews from the Soviet Union.

The World Jewish Congress was founded in 1936. The organization has its headquarters in New York City. World map. See World.

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN). It spon­sors such programmes as the World Weather Watch programme for the rapid exchange of observations to forecast the weather. The programme consists of net­works of weather stations in all parts of the world, satel­lites and computers, and a worldwide telecommunica­tions system. The WMO's technical cooperation programme helps developing countries set up or im­prove their meteorological services. The organization also offers advice on how weather conditions affect nat­ural resources and such activities as farming and air and sea transportation.

The organization was founded in 1873 as the Interna­tional Meteorological Organization. In 1951, it changed its name and became part of the United Nations. WMO headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. World trade. See International trade.