HIS 102

Imagine that an ancestor traveled across the world in the years after the Second World War. How was the world changed in the aftermath of the worst war it had ever seen?  What would your traveler now see in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas? What were the political systems now in place? How did political ideologies like communism and liberal democracy shape culture and events in these places? What were the effects of the end of colonial empires? How had trade networks and other connections between distinct parts of the world evolved?  At the end of the journey, your traveler writes a summary of the trip, recounting the story of some of the more significant places that he or she has visited and, most importantly, offering an argument about which of the changes that the traveler observed that have had the most impact on the world today. 

To make your case, you should reference historical events/issues that shaped the world in the second half of the 20th century, such as the Cold War, decolonization, globalization, and the Middle Eastern conflict. You must use at least four documents from the Envisioning Reader.  You should also use the textbook and the lectures to provide context.  We strongly discourage (but don’t prohibit) the use of outside sources, but if you use sources other than the text, reader, and lecture, you must provide full sources using a standard citation format.  For the assigned sources, you can use abbreviated citations.  When you use the textbook, you should put the author’s name Hanson and the page number in parenthesis.  Direct quotes from any source must be in quotation marks. Your paper should be seven double-spaced-pages long and use a traditional 12-point font (such as Times New Roman).