Chapter 22: Global Communism

Global communism seemed to have been inspired by Karl Marx in the nineteenth century. Most of the European socialist believed that they were capable of achieving their goals through the democratic process. Many people during the time would want to be known as “communist” in the late 1900’s but what it led for a revolution. Russia was one of those countries to go into revolution during the communist era. The Soviet Union was united with Russia so they as well went into revolution. There was a point where communism was very high and most of the world’s population was being governed by communist regimes. The most important communist societies was the USSR and China but it also spread to the eastern side of Europe, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Afghanistan. As we can see communism spread in a lot of countries and parties took control in many areas.

Chapter 21: The Collapse and Recovery of Europe

This chapter focuses on the First World War and the crisis it caused mainly in Europe. The reason for this war was because Europe was beginning to get challenged by other countries. The war began with the triple alliance that was Germany, Italy and Austria then the triple Ettente who was Brittain, Russia, and France.  The war caused weak industrialism, nationalism, and not a defensive military. Other than focusing on World War One throughout the chapter Strayer reveals the marks of a crisis in the modern society politically and economically during these big events. 

Chapter 20- Colonial Encounters

In the beginning of this chapter Strayer begins with a short story of his experience in Kenya along with his friends. As years passed by while he was gathering information for Ph.D. research about the British missionaries, he saw a letter that argued about the teachings of English to the Africans.The reasons given in that letter were "the danger in which such a course would place our white women and girls" and "the danger of organizing against the government and Europeans". Here we are able to see that there is this fear that the natives will go against the government and they imply that there is a need to protect white women, there is still an existence of racial boundaries by the Africans. Because of this issue there was an intense colonial concern to maintain distance and difference between the whites and blacks.
The chapter focuses on the two waves of colonialism and it's consequences from it. The first wave took place in the Americas and its perpetrators were England, France, Spain, and Portugal. The first wave caused a major and permanent demographic change especially because racial blends of people were taken place in the Americas. Most of these peoples' intentions were to live in the Americas, they would take their women and families. The second wave took place in Africa and Asia and their perpetrators were Germany, Japan, Belgium, and England. The second wave didn't cause much of a demographic change. The people isolated racially and worked with local authorities. These people weren't settlers like the ones who stayed in the Americas.