Globalization (1900-Present)

Technological change after 1900 accelerated the movement of goods, people, and information. Transistors and computers produced networked communication, and the World Wide Web spread rapidly in the 1990s alongside mobile telephones and satellites. Air travel and shipping containers cut transport costs and knit together global supply chains. The Green Revolution, associated with Norman Borlaug, brought high-yield seeds and irrigation to Mexico and South Asia, raising harvests while increasing chemical use.

Medicine extended life expectancy even as new diseases emerged. Antibiotics and vaccines curbed infections, and a World Health Organization campaign led to the declaration that smallpox was eradicated in 1980. HIV and AIDS spread widely from the 1980s and hit sub-Saharan Africa hardest before antiretroviral drugs made the illness survivable. Malaria and tuberculosis persisted in poorer regions, while longer lives made heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's leading causes of death.

Industrial growth and rising population strained the environment. Burning coal, oil, and gas raised atmospheric carbon dioxide and drove global warming, while clearing of the Amazon and Southeast Asian forests destroyed habitat. Soviet irrigation for cotton shrank the Aral Sea, and the Chernobyl reactor explosion in 1986 spread radiation across Europe. Responses included the Montreal Protocol of 1987 on ozone-depleting chemicals and the Paris Agreement of 2015, alongside investment in solar and wind power.

Markets integrated as governments lowered barriers to trade and investment. Deng Xiaoping's reforms after 1978 opened China to foreign capital, and leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan promoted privatization and deregulation. The World Trade Organization, created in 1995 to succeed the GATT, set trade rules, and regional pacts such as NAFTA linked national economies. Multinational corporations shifted production to lower-wage countries, widening inequality within many nations.

Activists and institutions pressed for rights and protections on a global scale. The United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and Amnesty International, founded in 1961, publicized political imprisonment and torture. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 helped launch modern environmentalism, and groups like Greenpeace and Doctors Without Borders took up ecological and humanitarian causes. Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda led to the International Criminal Court.

Mass media and migration spread cultural forms far beyond their places of origin. Hollywood and Bollywood films, Japanese animation, Korean popular music, and hip-hop found worldwide audiences, and English became a common language of business and science. Global brands such as Coca-Cola and McDonald's became symbols of consumer culture, while the Olympics and the World Cup drew vast audiences. Governments pushed back, as when France defended its film industry and Iran restricted Western media.

Globalization provoked organized opposition from several directions. Protesters disrupted the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999, and the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas began in 1994 as NAFTA took effect. Religious movements, including the Iranian Revolution of 1979 under Ayatollah Khomeini and militant networks such as al-Qaeda, rejected Western political and cultural influence. Economic dislocation fed nationalist politics, visible in the 2016 British vote to leave the European Union.

New institutions were built to manage an interconnected world. The United Nations, founded in 1945, took on peacekeeping, refugee relief, and health work through agencies such as the World Health Organization. Western European states moved from the Treaty of Rome in 1957 to the European Union established at Maastricht in 1993 and a common currency. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund financed development and set conditions on borrowers, while ASEAN, OPEC, and the African Union organized regions.

The twentieth and twenty-first centuries brought dramatic change alongside stubborn continuity. Technology, trade, and migration linked distant places more tightly than ever, and empires gave way to nation-states and bodies like the United Nations. Yet wealth stayed concentrated, with poverty persisting across much of sub-Saharan Africa even as China and South Korea industrialized. Local languages and religions endured and were often revived, while aging populations in Japan and Europe reshaped societies.