Why the Early 20th Century

Poems are so depressing

•duration of war•size of fighting forces•number of casualties•number of countries involved•proportion of combatants to

total population

War in the 20th Century (within Europe alone) far exceeds the

violence, destruction and death of all of the conflicts of the preceding eight centuries

combined.

The 20th Century had more food available and lower

food prices than the previous two centuries, yet it had more people starving.

Second World WarFirst World WarKorean WarChinese Civil WarVietnam WarIran-Iraq WarRussian Civil WarChinese Civil WarFrench IndochinaMexican RevolutionSpanish Civil WarFrench-Algerian WarAfghanistanRusso-Japanese WarRiffian WarFirst Sudanese Civil WarRusso-Polish WarBiafran WarChaco WarAbyssinian War

Major 20th Century wars

1899–1901: The Boxer Rebellion 1903: The Ilinden Uprising of the Macedonians in the Ottoman Empire 1904: A liberal revolution in Paraguay 1905: The failed bourgeois-liberal revolution against Tsar Nicholas II in Russia1905–1906: The Persian/Iranian constitutional revolution1905–1906: The Maji Maji Rebellion in German East Africa1907: The Romanian Peasants' Revolt1908: The Young Turk Revolution1910-1920: The Mexican Revolution 1910: The republican revolution in Portugal1910–1911: The Sokehs Rebellion erupts in German-ruled Micronesia1911: The Xinhai Revolution of the Republic of China1914: The Ten Days War in Colorado, USA1914: The Boer Revolt against the British in South Africa1915: The Armenian Revolt in city of Van against the Ottomans in Turkey 1916: The Easter Rising in Dublin, Ireland 1916: An anti-French uprising in Algeria1916: The Central Asian Revolt 1916–1917: The Tuareg rebellion in northern Niger. 1916–1918: The Arab Revolt from the Ottoman Empire. 1916–1923: The Irish War of Independence 1916–1947: Gandhi's struggle against the British for Indian Independence1917: The French Army Mutinies1917: The February Revolution overthrows Tsar Nicholas II in Russia. 1917: The Green Corn Rebellion takes place in rural Oklahoma1917: The October Revolution in Russia: Bolshevik seizure of power1918: The Finnish Civil War1918: The Christmas Uprising in Montenegro1918: The Wilhelmshaven mutiny1918: The German Revolution overthrows the Kaiser 1918–1919: A wave of strikes and student unrest shakes Peru 1918–1919: The Greater Poland Uprising 1918–1920: The Georgian-Ossetian conflict 1918–1921: The Ukrainian Revolution1918–1922: The Third Russian Revolution1918–1931: The Basmachi Revolt in Central Asia1919–1920: The Euphrates Revolt in Iraq

List of revolutions in only the first half of the

20th Century

1919–1921: The Tambov Rebellion in Soviet Union1919–1921: The Silesian Uprisings of the ethnic Poles 1919–1922: The Turkish War of Independence 1919: The German Revolution1919: A revolution in Hungary 1920: The Pitchfork Uprising in what is today Tatarstan1920–1947: Mohammad Ali Jinnah's struggle for a separate state for the Muslims of India1920–1922: Gandhi led Non-cooperation movement1921: The Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia, USA 1921: The Kronstadt rebellion of Soviet sailors against the government 1921–1923: The Yakut Revolt1921–1924: A revolution in (Outer) Mongolia 1922–1923: The Irish Civil War 1923: The overthrow of the Ottoman Empire 1923: The Klaipėda Revolt in the Memel territory in Germany 1924–1927: The Sheikh Said Rebellion1925: The July Revolution in Ecuador1925–1927: The Syrian Revolution1926: The National Revolution in Portugal 1926–1929: The Cristero War in Mexico 1926–1927: The first PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) rebellion1927–1931: The Kurdish Rebellion against Turkey1927–1933: A rebellion against the United States presence in Nicaragua1930: The Brazilian Revolution of 1930 1930: The Salt Satyagraha, a campaign in colonial India. 1932: The Constitutionalist Revolution in Brazil 1932: The Aprista revolt in Trujillo, Peru1932: The Siamese coup d'état of 1932 in Thailand1933: The popular revolution against Cuban dictator Gerardo Machado1934: In October, workers revolution in the Spanish regions of Asturias and Catalonia, Spain1936: The Febrerista Revolution in Paraguay. 1936: Polish insurgent at a Warsaw Uprising barricade1936: The Spanish Civil War, leading to the Spanish Revolution1936–1939: A period of so-called "military socialism" in Bolivia 1937–1938: The Dersim Rebellion in modern Turkey1937: The "Jornadas de Mayo", a workers' revolution in Catalonia, Spain

1938–1948: The Zionist Revolution in Palestine 1940–1944: The Insurgency in Chechnya1941: The June Uprising against the Soviet Union in Lithuania1941–1945: Yugoslav People's Liberation War 1942: Sri Lankan soldiers ignite the Cocos Islands Mutiny1942: The destruction of the German garrison in Lenin1943: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising1943: The uprising at Treblinka extermination camp1943: The uprising at Sobibór extermination camp1944: The Guatemalan Revolution 1944: The Warsaw Uprising 1944: The Paris Uprising staged by the French Resistance against the German Paris garrison1944: The Slovak National Uprising against Nazi Germany1944: The uprising at Auschwitz extermination camp1944–1947: A Communist-friendly government installed in Bulgaria following the Soviet invasion. 1944: Communists declared the People's Republic of Albania in January 19461944–1949: The Greek Civil War1944–1965: The Forest Brothers Rebellion in Baltic states against Soviet Union. 1945–1949: The Indonesian National Revolution 1945: The Prague uprising against German occupation 1945: The August Revolution in Vietnam 1945: A democratic revolution in Venezuela 1946: The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny 1947: Civil war broke out in Paraguay1946–1951: The Telengana Rebellion in Hyderabad State, India1947–1952: The Albanian Subversion in Communist-ruled Albania1947: The 228 Massacre in Taiwan 1948: Following the liberation of Korea, Marxist former guerrillas take over Korea 1948–1960: The Malayan Emergency1949: The Communist-led Chinese Revolution establishes the People's Republic of China1950: The Jayuya revolt in Puerto Rico1954–1962: The Algerian War of Independence

The following are actual photos of U.S. nuclear bomb

tests in the 20th Century

The creation of the world’s most destructive weapon and its use at the end of World War II: The atomic bomb

11 miles up from ground zero

Nagasaki – before and after

The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki was only 4/10,000 (four ten thousandths) the explosive magnitude of the

largest modern nuclear bomb.

*Approximate Deaths by War and Oppression in the 20th Century alone

Genocide and Tyranny: 83,000,000

Military Deaths in War: 42,000,000

Civilian Deaths in War: 19,000,000

Man-made Famine: 44,000,000 *Matthew White, Historical Atlas of the

Twentieth Century, 2001

TOTAL:188,000,000

(This is over five times the population of California.)

Approximately 4,126,000,000 people have died during the 20th century from all causes.

If man-made megadeaths account for 188 million of them, then one out of every 22 human deaths during the 20th Century have been caused by fellow human beings.

These are the reasons why the British and Irish poets of the 20th

Century tended to be negative and rather depressing with the subject

matter of their poetry.