Here is an excellent resource on the basic elements of The Enlightenment, especially in relation to the art and music of that period.

A HALF-CENTURY OF CRISIS AND ACHIEVEMENT, 1900-1945

On a winter’s day in 1903 the “Kitty Hawk,” Orville and Wilbur Wright’s experimental flying machine, lifted off the ground for twelve seconds. In the decades that followed air travel was perfected, and all the physical barriers that had obstructed long-distance communication among human groups virtually disappeared. Oceans, deserts, and mountain ranges no longer mattered much when people living thousands of miles apart were determined to meet, talk, negotiate, or do business. For the first time in history the north polar region became a crossroads of international travel as air pilots sought the shortest routes between countries of the Northern Hemisphere. Radio and, at mid-century, television revolutionized communication in another way. Long-distance messages no longer had to be transported from one point to another by boat or train or even transmitted along wires or cables. Now messages, whether designed to inform, entertain, persuade, or deceive, could be broadcast from a single point to millions of listeners or watchers simultaneously.

These and other technological wonders both expressed and contributed to the growing complexity and unpredictability of human affairs. In some ways peoples of the world became more tightly knit than ever before. Global economic integration moved ahead. Literacy spread more widely. Research and knowledge networks reached round the world. However, in other respects division and conflict multiplied. Economic and territorial rivalries among nations became harsher. Laboratories and factories turned out more lethal weapons and in greater quantities than ever before. People rose up against autocratic governments on every continent. Among the turbulent trends of the era, two developments seem most prominent.

The 20th-Century’s Thirty Years: The powers of destruction that centuries of accumulated technical and scientific skill gave to human beings became horrifyingly apparent in the two global wars of the 20th century. In the Thirty Years War of the 1600s, one of Europe’s most destructive contests, more than 4 million people may have died. The wars of 1914-1945, by contrast, took 45 million lives. Since World War I sowed copious seeds of the second conflict, the complex links of cause and effect over the entire period make a compelling subject for the World History student. Though both wars engulfed Europe, the globe is the proper context for understanding them. Air power, especially in World War II, meant that no country’s borders were safe, whatever the distances involved. Campaigns were fought from the mid-Pacific to West Africa and from Siberia to the North Atlantic. Combatants came from many lands, including thousands from European colonial possessions. The century’s first five decades were not, however, all violence and gloom. In the midst of war and world depression heroism and ingenuity abounded. Age-old diseases were conquered or brought under control. Democracy endured in many states despite recurrent crises, and governments responded with remarkable efficiency to the demands of war-time management and welfare.

Revolution and Protest: Human aspirations toward democratic government, national independence, and social justice were first expressed on a large scale in human affairs in the 1750-1914 era. These aspirations continued to inspire revolutions throughout the first half of the 20th century. The most dramatic political changes occurred in Russia, China, Mexico, and Turkey. In all these places jarring shifts and disturbances in economic life, both local and international, were at the root of the political crises. In all of them, moreover, contests quickly developed between the advocates of liberal, parliamentary democracy and those who championed an authoritarian or single-party state as the most efficient instrument of political and economic transformation. Apart from revolutions, relatively peaceful movements of protest and dissent forced a broadening of the democratic base, including voting rights for women, in a number of countries. The European colonial empires saw few violent risings between 1900 and 1945. There was, however, no colonial “golden age.” Resistance, protest, and calls for reform, drawing heavily on the liberal and nationalist ideals that the Western powers proclaimed, dogged imperial regimes all across Africa and Asia.

Why Study This Era?

  • Exploration of the first half of the 20th century is of special importance if students are to understand the responsibilities they face at the close of the millennium. The two world wars were destructive beyond anything human society had ever experienced. If students are to grasp both the toll of such violence and the price that has sometimes been paid in the quest for peace, they must understand the causes and costs of these world-altering struggles.
  • In this era , the ideologies of communism and fascism, both rooted in the 19th century, were put into practice on a large scale in Russia, Italy, Germany, and Japan. Both movements challenged liberal democratic traditions and involved elaborate forms of authoritarian repression. The fascist cause was discredited in 1945, and communism by the early 1990s. Even so, assessing the progress of our own democratic values and institutions in this century requires a parallel study of these two alternative political visions. What did they promise? How did they work as social and economic experiments? In what conditions might they find new adherents in the future?
  • Active citizens must continually re-examine the role of the United States in contemporary world affairs. Between 1900 and 1945 this country rose to international leadership; at the end of the period, it stood astride the globe. How did we attain such a position? How has it changed since mid-century? Any informed judgment of our foreign policies and programs requires an understanding of our place among nations since the beginning of the century.
  • In both scientific and cultural life this era ushered in the “modern.” The scientific theories as well as aesthetic and literary movements that humanity found so exhilarating and disturbing in the first half of the century continue to have an immense impact on how we see the world around us.