Afterword

This history of the world ends in the twentieth century, not the twenty-first; its final chapter deals with events in 1994.

On September 11, 2001, two American airplanes, hijacked by radical Muslim terrorists, crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York City. A third crashed into the Pentagon. A fourth, apparently headed for Washington DC, went down in a field in Pennsylvania.

I have not brought this history up to 2001, because I don’t understand how 9/11 will play into history. At the time that I write this, the war that the event spawned is still going on. The administration that took us into the war is still in power. Reconstruction in the countries shattered by that war has only just begun. These are current events, not history; they are acts that cannot yet be interpreted. Only now can we interpret World War II, and in many ways the Vietnam War still evades our understanding. Instead of ending with 2001 (or later), I have instead tried to give the historical background that led up to the current chaos. If we can begin to understand the background of that chaos, we may find ourselves understanding a little more about the chaos itself.

Table of Dates

A Chronology of the Modern Age

Below are the events from Volume 4 of The Story of the World. Following each entry is the chapter in which it can be found. Entries without chapter numbers are not included in Volume 4, but are included as a contextual aid in your study of history. If you are searching for specific events within Volume 4, check the index (immediately following this chronology, on page 489).

1821		“New Spain” declares independence from Spain and becomes Mexico [20]
1830		Les Trois Glorieuses (the Three Glorious Days) in France [7]
1831		“The Carbonaria” revolts against Austrian rule [4]
1837		Victoria begins her reign in England
1841		Pedro II becomes Emperor of Brazil [13]
1845		The blight comes to Ireland; the Potato Famine begins [12]
1846		Iowa becomes a state [16]
1848		Young Italy rebels against Austria [4]
1848		The French Republic makes Louis-Napoleon president [7]
1848		Karl Marx publishes The Communist Manifesto
1851		The Australian Gold Rush begins [11]
1851		The Crystal Palace is built in London for the Great Exhibition [1]
1852		Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin
1853		Matthew Perry arrives in Japan [2]
1853–1856		The Crimean War [2]
1855		Dost Mohammad Khan signs treaty with Britain [3]
1856		Peace of Paris signed, ending the Crimean War [2]
1856–1860		Second Opium War
1857		Livingstone writes Missionary Travels [3]
1857–1858		The Sepoy Rebellion [1]
1859		Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species
1860		The Taipings march towards Shanghai [4]
1861		Victor Emmanuel II crowned king of Italy [4]
1861		Italian states are united under King Victor Emmanuel [24]
1861–1865		The American Civil War [5]
1862		Francisco Solano López comes to power in Paraguay [6]
1863		Dost Mohammad Khan drives foreign invaders from Afghanistan [3]
1864		The Qing army retakes Nanjing [4]
1864		Prussia and Austria attack Denmark [7]
1864–1870		The War of the Triple Alliance [6]
1865		John Wilkes Booth assassinates U.S. President Abraham Lincoln [5]
1865		U.S. Congress bans slavery in the United States [5]
1867		The Dominion of Canada forms [6]
1867		The North German Confederation is created [7]
1868		Japan re-opens during the Meiji era [8]
1868–1912		Meiji Restoration [8]
1869		The first transcontinental railroad in the U.S. is completed [8]
1869		The Suez Canal opens [10]
1870		France becomes a republic [7]
1870–1871		The Franco-Prussian War [7]
1871–1918		The Second Reich [7]
1873–1903		Acheh War [9]
1876		Bulgarian revolutionaries rebel against the Turks [9]
1876		Abdul Aziz is assassinated [9]
1876		The Battle of Little Bighorn [16]
1876		Alexander Graham Bell submits a patent for the telephone
1877		The Satsuma Revolt in Japan [8]
1877–1878		The Russo-Turkish Wars [9]
1877–1879		The Zulu-British Wars
1878		Umberto I becomes king of Italy [24]
1878–1880		The Second Afghan War
1879		Thomas Edison invents the electric light [8]
1879		The War of the Pacific begins in South America [10]
1880		Police arrest Ned Kelly [11]
1880–1881		The First Boer War [12]
1881		Assassins kill Czar Alexander II [14]
1882		The Triple Alliance forms [24]
1883		The U.S. adopts time zones [8]
1884		The Berlin Conference [11]
1886		Parliament votes against the Home Rule Bill [12]
1889		Brazil is declared a republic; Pedro II leaves Brazil [13]
1889		Menelik takes control of Ethiopia [14]
1892		Abbas II named khedive of Egypt [24]
1894		The Armenians rebel against the Ottoman Turks [13]
1894		Nicholas II becomes czar of Russia [14]
1894–1895		The Sino-Japanese War [15]
1895		The creation of Rhodesia [12]
1896		Italy recognizes Ethiopian independence [14]
1898		The Spanish-American war begins [15]
1899–1902		The Second Boer War [12]
1895		The “Young Turks” try to reform the Ottoman Empire [13]
1900		The Boxer Rebellion in China [17]
1901		The Commonwealth of Australia is established
1902		Alfonso XIII is crowned king of Spain [27]
1903		Macedonians declare themselves independent from Turkish rule [18]
1903		Phan Boi Chau forms Duy Tan Hoi—The Restoration Society [19]
1903		Wright brothers make the first powered and controlled flight
1904–1905		The Russian-Japanese War [17]
1905		Irish Catholics form Sinn Féin [22]
1906		The first Majles begins after Liberal rebellion [18]
1908		Empress Cixi dies [19]
1908		Phan Boi Chau leaves Japan [19]
1910		Mexican Revolution begins [20]
1911		The end of the Qing dynasty [19]
1911		Delhi becomes capital of India [22]
1912		Sun Yixian flees to Canton [25]
1912		The Titanic sinks
1912		Arizona becomes a state [16]
1912		The First Balkan War [18]
1912		Sun Yixian forms the Kuomintang [25]
1913		The Second Balkan War [18]
1914		World War I begins [18, 20]
1914		Russia enters WWI [21]
1914		Egypt becomes a British protectorate [24]
1915		Italy joins Allied Forces [24]
1915		A German submarine sinks the Lusitania [20]
1916		Rasputin is killed [21]
1916		Easter Uprising in Ireland [22]
1916		Yuan Shikai dies [25]
1917		The U.S. joins WWI [20, 21]
1917		Kerensky takes over Russia’s Provisional Government [21]
1917		Bolshevik Revolution [21]
1917		Bolsheviks renamed “Communist Party” [21]
1917		Ahmad Fu'ad becomes sultan of Egypt [24]
1918		Germany surrenders to the Allied Powers [21]
1918		Germany signs armistice to end fighting of World War I [21]
1918		Romanov family assassinated [21]
1918		Great Britain gives women right to vote [21]
1918		White Army forms [23]
1918		Egyptian delegates visit England in wafd [24]
1918–1921		Russian Civil War [23]
1919		Sinn Féin sets up Irish Assembly [22]
1919		Treaty of Versailles is signed [23]
1919		League of Nations forms [23]
1919		Amritsar massacre in India [22, 30]
1919		Fascist Party is formed in Italy [24]
1920		U.S. Congress gives women the right to vote [21]
1921		Sinn Féin and Great Britain reach peace agreement [22]
1921		Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is elected head of the Congress Party [22]
1921		Chinese Communist Party is formed [25]
1922		Mussolini marches to Rome [24]
1922		Michael Collins assassinated during Irish Civil War [22]
1922		Lenin suffers stroke; Stalin takes control of Russia [23]
1922		Britain grants Egypt independence [24]
1923		Chiang Kai-shek starts Kuomintang military academy [25]
1923		Irish Free State begins to govern itself [22]
1923		Italy under control of the Fascists [24]
1924		Lenin dies; Petrograd renamed Leningrad [23]
1924		Henry Puyi leaves China [25]
1925		Sun Yixian dies [25]
1926		Emperor Hirohito ascends the Japanese throne [25]
1926		Mao Zedong and CCP members rebel against Kuomintang [25]
1928		Kuomintang takes control of China’s government [25]
1929		The Wall Street Crash [26]
1930		Gandhi leads thousands on Salt March [22]
1930–1960		Russian Gulag in operation [23]
1931		Japan withdraws from League of Nations [25]
1932–1933		Famines in Russia kill up to 5 million people [23]
1933		Franklin Roosevelt becomes President [26]
1933		Hitler takes power in Germany [26]
1934–1935		Mao Zedong’s Long March [25]
1936		Berlin hosts the Olympics; Jesse Owens wins four gold medals [28]
1936–1939		Spanish Civil War [27]
1937		Japanese capture Shanghai and Beijing [28]
1938		Kristallnacht [28]
1939		Germany invades Poland; World War II begins [27]
1939		General Franco gains control of Spain [27]
1940		Japan joins the Axis powers [28]
1940		The Dunkirk Evacuation [29]
1941		U.S. enters WWII after Japan bombs Pearl Harbor [28]
1942		The Battle of Midway [28]
1943		Italian troops in North Africa surrender [29]
1943		Juan Perón leads a revolt in Argentina [34]
1944		D-Day: Allied soldiers land at Normandy [29]
1945		Six million Jews have been killed in the Holocaust [28]
1945		The founding of the United Nations [29]
1945		The U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki [29]
1945		World War II officially ends [29]
1946–1954		War over the French control of Indochina [33]
1947		India and Pakistan gain independence from Britain [30]
1947–1948		Palestine is partitioned [30]
1948		Israel becomes a country [30]
1948		The Marshall Plan [31]
1948		Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi assassinated [30]
1948		National Party comes to power in South Africa [32]
1949		The Communist Party takes control of China [32]
1950–1953		Korean War [33]
1952		Eva “Evita” Perón dies [34]
1952		Gamal Abdel Nasser comes to power [31]
1953		Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi regains control of Iran [39]
1954		Brown v. Board of Education [36]
1954		French give up claim to Vietnam [33]
1954		U.S. tests atomic bombs in the Pacific [29]
1955		Armed forces rebel against Argentinian president Perón [34]
1955		Bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama [36]
1956		Lumumba petitions Belgian government for the Congo’s freedom [34]
1956		Suez Crisis [31]
1957		Soviet Union launches Sputnik [35]
1957		John F. Kennedy wins Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in Courage [36]
1959		Revolution in Cuba puts Fidel Castro in power [35]
1960		Congo gains independence from Belgium [34]
1960		Nigeria and Zaire become independent [34]
1961		Berlin Wall is built [31]
1961		Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, first man to orbit the Earth [35]
1962		Cuban Missile Crisis [35]
1962–1966		Civil rights protests [36]
1962		Ruanda-Urundi is divided into Rwanda and Burundi [42]
1963		John F. Kennedy assassinated [36]
1964–1975		Vietnam War [37]
1965		U.S. enters Vietnam War [37]
1966		Beginning of the Cultural Revolution in China
1967		Six-Day War [37]
1967–1970		Civil war in Nigeria
1968		Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated [36]
1968		Soviet troops invade Czechoslovakia [38]
1969		American astronauts walk on the moon [35]
1969		IRA starts to campaign for a united Ireland [38]
1969		ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet, is created
1971		Bangladesh becomes independent [39]
1972		Black September takes hostages at Olympics [38]
1973		U.S. signs treaty to withdraw from Vietnam [37]
1973		Yom Kippur War [37]
1973–1974		OPEC increases oil prices; gas shortages result [37]
1975		Mozambique is free from Portuguese control [42]
1975		General Franco dies in Spain, ends dictatorship
1976		Mao Zedong dies [41]
1978		Begin and Sadat win the Nobel Peace Prize [37]
1978		Rebel group assassinates king of Afghanistan [38]
1979		Shah of Iran overthrown [39]
1979		USSR invades Afghanistan [38]
1979		Nuclear accident at Three Mile Island [40]
1980–1988		Iran-Iraq War [39]
1982		Israel invades Lebanon
1983		Argentinian government overthrown in favor of democracy
1984		Indira Gandhi assassinated [39]
1984		Factory gas leak in Bhopal, India [39]
1985		Gorbachev becomes leader of USSR [40]
1986		Chernobyl nuclear disaster [40]
1986		Space shuttle Challenger explodes during liftoff
1987		U.S. and USSR sign the INF treaty [40]
1987		Hole in the ozone layer confirmed
1989		Tiananmen Square massacre [41]
1989		Berlin Wall comes down [41]
1989		Ceaucescu is overthrown in Romania
1990		Iraq invades Kuwait [42]
1990		Tim Berners-Lee creates the World Wide Web
1990		East and West Germany are reunited [41]
1991		Nelson Mandela is released from prison [42]
1991		Gorbachev resigns; Communist Party outlawed in USSR [41]
1991		America goes to war with Iraq [42]
1994		Genocide begins in Rwanda [42]
1994		Nelson Mandela is elected the first black president of South Africa [42]
2001		Terrorists attack World Trade Center in New York, Pentagon in Washington DC [Afterword]

Also Available from Peace Hill Press

Don’t just read about history—experience it! Designed to turn The Story of the World, Volume 4 into a complete history program, this activity book provides comprehension questions and answers, sample narrations, maps and geography activities, coloring pages, lists of additional history and literature readings, and many hands-on learning activities, all designed for students reading Volume 4 of The Story of the World!

• Figure out how big the Chinese army was!

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I started my 9-year-old daughter on Story of the World, Volume 1 this year and assigned her a chapter to read every week or so. About halfway through it she said to me “This is great!” and she proceeded to read on through it. Then she begged me to buy the next two volumes. I told her she could keep reading but we would need to go back to some of the previous chapters and learn more in depth. She said, “Great, I want to read them again anyway!” She went on to read Volumes 2 and 3 in her free time in the next two or three weeks and is on her second round of reading them all the way through, by herself. She will come to me and tell me things she has learned that she thought were really interesting. Thanks so much for getting her excited about history!

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