The Global 20th Century

TEXTS	CONTEXTS
1899 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness	1899–1902 Boer War in South Africa
	1900 Max Planck proposes quantum theory, the first step in the discovery of the atom
1903 Henry James, The Ambassadors	1903 Wright brothers invent the powered airplane
1904 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Private publication of poems by Constantine Cavafy
1905 Sigmund Freud, “Dora” (Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria)	1905 Modern labor movement begins with the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
1907 August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata	1907 Japanese immigration to the United States prohibited
1908 Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
1909 F. T. Marinetti, Futurist Manifesto	1909 Commercial manufacture of plastic begins NAACP founded in the United States
	1910 Mexican Revolution begins
1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica (eleventh edition)
1912 Thomas Mann, Death in Venice	1912–1913 Balkan wars
1913 Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, first volume of Remembrance of Things Past (1913–27) D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
1914 James Joyce, Dubliners, which includes The Dead	1914–1918 World War I involves Europe, Turkey, the Middle East, Africa, the United States, and the Pacific
1915 Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock	1915 Albert Einstein formulates general theory of relativity First transcontinental phone call in America
1916 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
	1917 Russian Revolution overthrows the Romanov dynasty
1918 Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto	1918–1919 Global influenza epidemic; more than 20 million die
1919 Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West  Paul Valéry, The Crisis of the Mind Alfonsina Storni, Irremediably	1919 League of Nations formed (U.S. Senate rejects membership, 1920)
1920 Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence	1920 Mahatma Gandhi leads India’s struggle for independence from Britain Women given the vote in the United States
1921 Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author	1921–1935 Harlem Renaissance, black literary and artistic movement
1922 T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land Paris publication of James Joyce, Ulysses (imported copies burned in U.S. Post Office) Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus	1922 Irish Free State established USSR formed Discovery of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb
1923 Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies	1923 Turkey becomes a republic
1924 Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain André Breton, First Surrealist Manifesto	1924 Insecticides first used
1926 Franz Kafka, The Castle Paul Éluard, Capital of Pain
1927 Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion
1928 William Butler Yeats, The Tower  André Breton, Nadja	1928 Sixty-two nations sign the Kellogg- Briand antiwar pact in Paris First Five-Year Plan in USSR Penicillin discovered First scheduled television broadcasts Women given the vote in Great Britain
1929 William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents	1929 Stock market crash heralds beginning of world economic crisis; Great Depression lasts until 1937
1930 Katherine Anne Porter, Flowering Judas
1932 Zuñi Ritual Poetry published by anthropologist Ruth L. Bunzel
1933 Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding	1933 Adolf Hitler given dictatorial powers in Germany Nazis build first concentration camps
	1934 Stalin begins purges of Communist party
1937 Wallace Stevens, The Man with the Blue Guitar
1938–1940 Bertolt Brecht, The Good Woman of Setzuan
1939 Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land	1939 Germany invades Poland; all Europe is drawn into World War II
1940 Richard Wright, Native Son
1941 Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths	1941 United States formally enters World War II
1942 Albert Camus, The Stranger  William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses
1943 T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets  Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
1944 Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House and Other Short Stories, which includes An Unwritten Novel
1945 Hannah Arendt, Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility	1945 World War II ends with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki United Nations and Arab League founded
1946 George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature  Tadeusz Borowski, Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber	1946 Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech marks beginning of Cold War Pan-African Federation formed
	1947 Religious massacres accompany partition of India and Pakistan into independent states Transistor invented
1948 Ezra Pound, Pisan Cantos	1948 Creation of Jewish state in Palestine
1949 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex  George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four	1949 Communist People’s Republic of China established Apartheid Instituted in South Africa
1950 Pablo Neruda, General Song	1950–1953 Korean War involves North and South Korea, the United Nations, and China
1951 Doris Lessing, The Old Chief Mshlanga
1952 Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man	1952 Revolution in Egypt, which becomes a republic in 1953 First hydrogen bomb
1953 Joyce Mansour, Screams	1953 Discovery of DNA structure launches modern genetic science
1955 Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Voyeur
	1956 First Congress of Black Writers meets in Paris
1957 Albert Camus, Exile and the Kingdom, which includes The Guest  Samuel Beckett, Endgame
1958 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart	1958 European Common Market established Algerian War of Independence (ends in 1962)
1960 Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour	1960–1962 Independence for Belgian Congo, Nigeria, Tanganyika, and Uganda
1961 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth	1961 Soviet astronaut orbits Earth
	1961–1973 United States engages in the Vietnam War
1962 Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook  Alain Robbe-Grillet, Snapshots, which includes The Secret Room
1963 Anna Akhmatova, Requiem, published Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Matryona’s Home
	1966 First Dakar Arts Festival provides showcase for African culture
1967 Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
1968 Alice Munro, Dance of the Happy Shades, which includes Walker Brothers Cowboy
	1969 American astronaut is first man on the moon
1970 Gabriel García Márquez, Death Constant beyond Love
1972 Ingeborg Bachmann, Three Paths to the Lake, which includes The Barking  Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
	1973 Arab oil producers cut off shipments to nations supporting Israel; ensuing energy crisis reshapes global economy
1977 Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
1978 Edward Said, Orientalism
1981 Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children  Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller, which includes Yellow Woman	1981 AIDS virus identified and named; kills 6 million worldwide by 1996
1984 Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, which includes Age,Race,Class, and Sex
	1986 Nuclear disaster in Chernobyl spreads radiation contamination throughout Europe
	1987 World stock market crash
1989 Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other	1989 Mikhail Gorbachev restructures the Soviet state Berlin Wall demolished
1990 Derek Walcott, Omeros	1990 East and West Germany united
	1991 United States and USSR agree to arms reduction Economic chaos and nationalist unrest bring end of Soviet Union
	1992 Rio Earth Summit: 172 nations discuss global environmental damage and disagree on economic responsibility Fighting between Christian Serbs and Muslim Croats marks beginning of ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia; UN troops intervene and effect temporary peace
	1993 European Community, the West’s largest trading unit, formed; talks begin on a common currency
	1994 Nelson Mandela becomes president of South Africa after first multiracial elections Israel and PLO sign peace agreement and begin negotiating its conditions
	1996 Scientists in Scotland create Dolly, the clone of an adult sheep
	1997 Death of Mother Teresa
	2001 Terrorists attack the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on September 11
2002 Salman Rushdie, Step across This Line	2002 Euro banknotes and coins introduced as legal tender for members of European Monetary Union
	2004 Death of Yasser Arafat