Meaning of short twentieth century | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The period between 1914 and 1991, from the beginning of World War I to the fall of the Soviet Union.
   specifically
2. Any period of years defined by significant historical events falling within the 20th century (1 January 1901 to 31 December 2000).

Equivalents

Examples

“How are we to make sense of the Short Twentieth Century, that is to say of the years from the outbreak of the First World War to the collapse of the USSR which, as we can now see in retrospect, forms a coherent historical period that has now ended? We do not know what will come next, and what the third millennium will be like, even though we can be certain that the Short Twentieth Century will have shaped it.”

“In the wake of the end of the short twentieth century and the related collapse of the received certainties of the cold war which had shaped the understandings of European and American thinkers, it has become clear that a new integrated global industrial-capitalist system is taking shape. […] However, setting aside the issue of the overall evolution of the global system to one side, it is the case that the end of the short twentieth century has seen not merely debate in respect of the creation of an integrated system but also a concern for an apparently deepening tripolarity.”

“The year 1914 will be the crucial date for the beginning of this "short twentieth century," for the world war which began in August of that year marked a break with the classic liberal values of free enterprise, individual autonomy, and political liberty that had suffused nineteenth-century European societies.”

“[Karl] Marx’s philosophy and its concretely applied adaptations would have extraordinary consequences especially in the short twentieth century, from the outbreak of World War I through the fall of the Soviet Union.”

“The epoch from whose dreams I wish to awaken is the twentieth century, and more particularly what Eric Hobsbawm has called "the short twentieth century" between the outbreak of World War I on 1 August 1914 and the collapse of the Soviet Union on 31 December 1991—a period that was incidentally, and probably not coincidentally, the bloodiest in recorded human history.”

“The continuity that exists between the two centuries would appear to distance [Carl] Schmitt from [Eric] Hobsbawm and his description of the short 20th century. But we must squelch this first impression. […] The long 19th century can be explained as adding the "setback of over 60 years", from 1848 to 1917, to Hobsbawm's short 20th century.”

“However, Wang Hui's strong dissatisfaction with [Eric] Hobsbawm's "short 20th century" is that he believes that this concept was developed mainly from the European perspective, without taking into account the proper place of Chinese events and the Chinese revolution in the 20th century, […]”

“[…] Salvadorean history – including that of its literary development since independence – falls into three clear-cut periods: a very long 19th century until the Great Massacre of 1932; a very short 20th century from 1932 to the signing of the Peace Accords of 1992, and since then the possibility, at least, of a New Dawn of political reconciliation.”

“This essay explores the comparison between the revolution which marked the opening of Russia’s ‘short twentieth century’, the overthrow of Tsarism and of the Provisional Government in 1917, and the upheaval which marked its close, the destruction of both traditional and reformed Communist rule.”

“There is an alternative way of viewing the great events in the expansion and contraction of the [British] Empire in the last one hundred years. In this scheme the critical epoch falls within the framework of a ‘short’ twentieth century. The nineteenth-century Empire comes to a close only with the outbreak of war in 1914, and the twentieth-century Empire comes clattering down in the 1960s. […] Many of the chapters in this volume focus on the years of the short twentieth century.”

“The problem with ‘short’ twentieth centuries, therefore, is that they say more about the nature of the second half than the first.”

“The period covered by this book represents a ‘short twentieth century’ dating roughly from 1914 to 1970. In commencing coverage with the outbreak of the First World War, it begins where much historical discussion of Britain and Latin America traditionally finished. The late 1960s and early 1970s, where it ends, represented something of a watershed for Britain’s global role.”

CEFR level