From World War to World War
1937 Japan Invades China
1914–1918 World War I
1934–1938 “Okies” and “Arkies” Flee the Dust Bowl
The event that triggered the First World War was the assassination in June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro- Hungarian empire, by a Bosnian Serb nationalist. The deeper causes of the war, however, lay in the rivalries and resulting anxieties developed by the great imperialist powers during the preceding decades. Following the assassination and Austria-Hungary’s ensuing attack on Serbia, European alliances came into play. A general war broke out in August 1914, with Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey arrayed against Britain, France, Russia, and subsequently Italy. The United States remained neutral for almost three years, but after Germany embarked on unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic in January 1917, Congress endorsed President Woodrow Wilson’s call for war “to make the world safe for democracy.” The four-year conflict, which ended with an armistice in November 1918, witnessed unprecedented levels of death, destruction, and turmoil. Among its results were the overthrow of three monarchies (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia), the emergence of several new states (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia), and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia The Russian Revolution of 1917 developed in stages, involving major political upheavals in February and October. The February revolution was precipitated by the pain and failure of the ongoing war, but it grew from decades of popular unrest deriving from poor urban conditions, peasant resentments toward aristocratic landowners, inadequate efforts at reform, and military defeat. The upheaval of February, led by liberals and moderate socialists, deposed Tsar Nicholas II and replaced his regime with a provisional government. During the October revolution, the Bolshevik (or left- socialist) party, led by Vladimir Lenin in concert with workers councils and units of the armed forces, overthrew that government. The Bolsheviks quickly took control of major
1933–1941 Franklin Roosevelt Fashions New Deal
1933 Nazis Come to Power in Germany
Figure 29. Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, father of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Image courtesy of Library of Congress.
industries, redistributed land, and publicized their wish for peace. In March 1918 their leaders ended Russia’s participation in World War I by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany. Meanwhile, they founded the world’s first communist state and worked tirelessly to crush internal and external opposition. SEE FIGURE 29 1920 19th Amendment Gives U.S. Women Voting Rights Nineteenth century efforts to obtain the right to vote for women were largely unsuccessful, primarily because there was no extensive and unified movement advocating these changes. The women’s rights movement began at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, but by the time of the Civil War its champions had come to disagree seriously over tactics. During the campaign for the 14th Amendment, which granted voting rights to African-American men, women’s rights advocates such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony favored the inclusion of women. Others cautioned that it was “the Negro’s hour.” Twenty years later, by 1890, these rival groups had come together to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and their great cause, while not widely endorsed, was no longer dismissed as unrealistic. Despite early victories in western states such as Colorado and Idaho, it would require a Progressive movement and participation in a war before women gained the vote with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
1929–1939 The Great Depression
1926 Pacific Coast Highway Completed in Orange County
1920 Oil Discovered in Huntington Beach
1920 19th Amendment Gives U.S. Women Voting Rights
1917 Communist Revolution in Russia
1914–1918 World War I
FROM WORLD WAR TO WORLD WAR
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