The World in the Long Twentieth Century: An Interpretive History Unavailable

A global history has much to cover. It requires, as Dickinson explains, a “coherent model of the causes and effects” of global transformations, a framework that identifies “the fundamental forces and developments that have shaped world history” (1). The great virtue of Dickinson’s new study of the “long twentieth century” is to meet this challenge and to present a lucid and compelling analysis of global developments during the “long twentieth century,” from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Dickinson locates the motor of global change in the technological revolution that began with high industrialization in Europe and has continued, despite a major interruption in the early twentieth century, to this day. Technological advance resulted first in population growth and then in the greatest migrations of human history into the world’s dry grasslands and beyond. Industrial development followed from a base in Western Europe and North America, as much of the...