Empires Give Way
A century that begins and ends differently
- The West dominated the global political order at the beginning of the 20th century, but both land-based and maritime empires gave way to new states by the century's end.
- That single sentence is the frame for units 7 and 8 together.
- The unit's job is to explain the transition between those two states of the world.
Select all the land-based empires the CED says collapsed.
Britain is a maritime empire, and it gives way later, in unit 8.
Three land empires collapsed
- The older, land-based Ottoman, Russian and Qing empires collapsed due to a combination of internal and external factors.
- A combination is the CED's own qualifier — no single cause explains any of the three.
- These changes in Russia eventually led to communist revolution.
The CED explains the collapses with...
No single cause explains any of the three.
Internal and external, in every case
- Internal: fiscal strain, contested reform, regional and national movements inside the empire.
- External: military defeat, foreign loans and concessions, and rivals with industrial economies.
- Unit 5 and unit 6 supplied both halves — the reform struggles of 5.8 and the economic imperialism of 6.5.
Internal factor, external factor, or the frame?
Sort each item in the collapse of the old order.
The CED says changes in ____ eventually led to communist revolution.
The collapse and the revolution are written as one sequence.
No single cause explains any of the three collapses. The CED writes a combination of internal and external factors for the Ottoman, Russian and Qing empires together — so an answer resting on one war, or one reform failure, has replaced the CED's own qualifier with a simpler story.
The Mexican Revolution is included as an example of states challenging the existing order.
The CED's example is deliberately outside Europe and outside the collapsing empires.
Challenges from many directions
- States around the world challenged the existing political and social order, including the Mexican Revolution that arose as a result of political crisis.
- The CED's example is deliberately outside Europe and outside the collapsing empires.
- So the challenge to the old order was not one movement but many, with different causes in different places.
Match each factor to its type.
Neither half would have been fatal alone.
Internal and external factors, again
- The objective is how internal and external factors contributed to change in various states after 1900 — the same pair used in 6.3.
- A good answer names one of each for a single state, and says how they interacted.
- Fiscal strain plus a lost war is a stronger explanation than either alone, which is what a combination means.
An empire borrows abroad to modernise, loses a war, and finds its creditors setting terms it cannot refuse while reformers and traditionalists inside fight over what to do next. Neither the loan nor the defeat nor the internal quarrel would have been fatal alone — and that is precisely why the CED says combination.
The West dominated the global political order at the beginning of the 20th century, but land-based and maritime empires gave way to new states by its end. The Ottoman, Russian and Qing empires collapsed due to a combination of internal and external factors, and changes in Russia eventually led to communist revolution. States around the world challenged the existing order, including the Mexican Revolution.