Eye-Witness The 20th Century [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION A man walks on the moon. To the crowds which gathered in London and New York to see the new century on the winter's evening of 31 December 1899, such an event was the stuff of the wildest fantasy. The aeroplane itself was still on the drawing board of an obscure duo of North Carolina brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright. Yet humankind's ability to escape from the confining gravity of Earth is neatly symbolic of how far the frontiers of technology and knowledge have been conquered in the twentieth century. The fact that many millions could watch the 1969 moon landing live at home through the medium of television only proves the point that this has been, without doubt, the most revolutionary century in history. It has also been the most turbulent. On the eve of 1900 about a quarter of the world's population looked to Britain as their ruling nation. The Empire on which the 'sun never sets' stretched from Cardiff to Calcutta. Yet, even as the new century dawned, Britain's imperial grip was starting to slacken. The most prescient of the revellers in Trafalgar Square may have realized the future belonged to others; a portent of this was the surprising trouble the British were having in winning the then recent, remote war against uppity Dutch settlers in South Africa. Paradoxically, the two great events which finished Britain as the