[the Story of the World] Ch.23

Ch.23 “Peace” and a Man of War

The Peace of Versailles

- And the debt imposed on Germany made it poorer and poorer, and its people more and more miserable. In a few years, the German people would be ready to listen to anyone who offered to revenge the wrongs done to Germany, and who promised to make their country great again.


The Rise of Joseph Stalin

- Solzhenitsyn wrote that revolution can never get rid of the evil inside human beings. It can only get rid of particular governments. Even when the evil of those governments is destroyed, the evil inside human beings remains.
- Solzhenitsyn was right. The communist government had been formed to get rid of tyranny. But Joseph Stalin, the leader of Communist Russia, was as cruel, as tyrannical, and as evil as any Russian czar had ever been.

[the Story of the World] Ch.22

Ch.22 National Uprisings

The Easter Uprising

- The most powerful of these resistance groups was organized in 1905. It was called Sinn Fein, which is Gaelic for “Us Alone”.
- Sinn Fein wanted Ireland to remain under the British crown, but to get its own parliament and its own self-rule back again.
- But Protestants in the north of Ireland (“Ulster”) were afraid of what might happen if Ireland - which still had more Catholics than Protestants in it - got self-government back again.
- By 1923, the Irish Free State was governing itself. Fourteen years later, Great Britain would agree to allow the Irish Free State to become a completely independent country called “Eire”, or “the Republic of Ireland”.
- But Ulster remained part of the British Empire - an unhappy and trouble-filled part, where Catholics were too often harassed, robbed, and even beaten by their neighbors.


Indian Nationalism

- Instead of fighting with weapons, Gandhi and the Congress Party began to use other methods of resisting the British.
- “noncooperation” - refused to pay taxes to the British government.
- “boycott” British goods
- After the Amritsar Massacre, the British finally agreed that they would start to change the way India was governed, so that the country could slowly become m independent. But it would take thirty years for that promise to be fully kept.

Ch.21 A Revolution Begins, an...

Ch.21 A Revolution Begins, and the Great War Ends

The Russian Revolution

- Now Lenin and the Bolsheviks were in charge. Lenin suggested renaming the Bolsheviks the ˝Communist Party‘-the party working for the common good. The communists believed that Christianity was false and wrong, so they changed the names of the cities in Russia that were named after Christian saints. St. Perersburg became Leningrad˝ And right away, Lenin and the communists signed a peace treaty with Germany.
- This new way of living, ˝communism,˝ was supposed to make sure that the government, instead of a small group of powerful people, had control over Russia. But who was in the government? That‘s right- a small group of powerful people, Lenin and his followers!


The End of World War I

- The new strength of the American soldiers, joining with the Allied forces that had fought for four long, weary years, finally tipped the balance of the war against the Central Powers. On November 11th, 1918, Germany was forced to surrender. The power of the Second Reich was broken. All over the world, exhausted soldiers heard the great news: An armistice (an end to fighting) had been declared.
- In 1918, Great Britain passed a new law called the Reform Act. Because women had worked so hard to help win the war, every woman over the age of thirty could vote. (In 1928, Britain changed the law so that women twenty-one and older could vote, too.)
- For women in America to vote, an amendment to the Constitution had to be passed. In 1918, Congress agreed to begin the process of changing the Constitution so that women could gain suffrage.

Ch.20 Revolution In the Ameri...

Ch.20 Revolution In the Americas… War In the World

The Mexican Revolution

- the president of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz, over 20 years dictatorship
- For the next thirty years, civil war, assassinations, struggle and rebellion continued in Mexico. The Mexican Revolution had gotten rid of a tyrannical president-but it had not brought peace to Mexico.


World War I

- On June 28th, 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian assassin named Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne.
- The truth was that most of the countries of Europe were ready to fight anyway. For decades, they had been arguing with each other about their borders, the size of their armies, and who got to control which colonies in Asia and Africa. Even though the bullet that killed the Archduke was often described as ˝the bullet that started World War I, the Archduke‘s assassination didn‘t really cause World War I.
- On August 4th, 1914, Great Britain declared war on Ger-many. The war had truly begun.
- Before long, most of Europe was in on the fight. On one side were the ˝Central Powers˝ the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria, and Germany, soon joined by the Ottoman Turks. On the other side were the ˝Allied Forces˝-Great Britain, France, Russia, China, Greece, Japan, Serbia, and a collection of other countries (including Belgium, which wasn‘t neutral any more).
- On April 6th, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. Now American soldiers would join the British, Canadian, and French soldiers, along with the soldiers of a dozen other nations, in fighting against Germany and its allies.

Ch.19 China, Vietnam - and Fr...

Ch.19 China, Vietnam - and France

The Last Emperor


The Vietnamese Restoration Society