Textbook Critique essay

The modern world is characterized by the high degree of integration and growing partnership between different nations and certain cultural interrelatedness. However, such global interrelatedness is not a phenomenon that sprang out in the 20^th century because of the unique conditions of development of the world but it is rather the result of the historical development of the world community.

In this respect, it is possible to refer to the book “Twentieth-Century World” by Carter Vaughn Findley and John Alexander Murray Rothney. The first three chapters of the book focuses on the historical development of the world prior to the 20^th century but, at the same time, the authors closely interlinked this historical period to the 20^th century and modernity in order to prove the fact that the development of the world, especially global interrelatedness that became obvious in the 20^th century, is the result of the historical heritage of the previous epoch. Moreover, the authors manage to show that the global interrelatedness is not unique and it is not the characteristic of the 20^th century solely but it was observed in the past epoch as well.

The authors underline that the development of various countries situated in different parts of the world was traditionally interrelated. For instance, the authors indicate to the fact that, regardless the huge geographical distance between China and European countries, such as Hungary, these countries were interrelated to each other since there existed a strong link between them which was enforced not only by economical factors, such as trade, but political as well, such as the Mongol Empire, which though was “only one in a set of trading zones that existed roughly between 1250 and 1350, each overlapping one or more of the others” (Findley and Rothney, 6). The similar trend to interrelatedness could observed during the formation of nation states leading to the growing integration between various communities, while the age of geographic discoveries enforced this trend even more.

As a result, the 20^th century global interrelated should be viewed not as unique phenomenon but rather as a logical result of the historical development of the world prior to this period.