♦ III ♦
The
emphasis in the preceding section has been placed on two elements in
the history of the twentieth century—the immense change of scale, and
the vast alterations in the political and social climate of the world.
The former can be illustrated statistically more conveniently than the
latter. Nevertheless, the fundamental characteristic of the political
scene is the transition from the domination of the world by a few
European 'Great Powers', the United States of America and Japan, to the
multiplication of new independent or quasi-independent states in
Europe, in Asia and, to an increasing extent, in Africa. War and
revolution have destroyed the Russian,4 Austro-Hungarian,
German and Turkish Empires; the British Empire has ceased to exist and
has been replaced by an association of largely self-governing and
virtually independent countries;5 the French Empire has
undergone a somewhat similar change. The 'colonial empire' of Holland
has all but disappeared: those of Belgium and Italy have vanished
altogether. Since the end of World War I the spiritual and economic
unity of Western civilization has been destroyed; two rival
philosophies of government and of social and economic conduct compete
for the adherence of the new states; not the 'Great Powers', but the
'Soviet bloc', the 'Western bloc' and the 'Afro-Asian bloc' maintain a
precarious balance and use the nascent organ of world opinion, the'
United Nations', as an instrument of persuasion, of propaganda, of
collective effort and of political pressure. The really astonishing
feature of the history of the world is that, in spite of the fall of
empires, in spite of war, revolution, inflation and the conflict of
ideologies, all of them disruptive in their eftect upon the state of
confidence, of investment and of enterprise, material progress has
continued, even upon an accelerated scale.
In
that economic development the Union of South Africa, and, in later
years, also the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, have fully
shared. Moreover, however much the pattern of the distribution of
benefits resulting from this development may have been distorted by
racial policies, it is a development which has benefited all the diverse
4 Yet,
in all probability, the replacement of Imperial Russia by the Union of
Socialist Soviet Republics has not changed the underlying realities of
centralized military and political power to any significant extent.
5 Only
the future can tell whether the centrifugal forces now at work —
exemplified by the decision of the Union of South Africa to leave the
Commonwealth—will enable even this loose form of association to
survive. The course of events in what was formerly the French Colonial
Empire is not a very encouraging precedent.
Flickr
Stumbleupon
Scribd
