1900

The plot covers the lives of two men born around 1900 on the same estate, and in 4+ hours, Bertolucci is able to cover a lot. Depardieu's character is born to a peasant family working on the estate, and DeNiro's is born to the owner of the estate. IMDB says that it covers their lives through the rise of communism, facism, and World War II, but knowing there were still several hours to go, I just wasn't able to get much beyond their childhoods on the estate.

• The Boxer Rebellion erupts in northern China, as a anti-foreign society of destitute peasantry besieges foreign enclaves in Peking and Tientsin for three months with the tacit approval of the Manchu regime. The uprising is suppressed by a muti-national China Relief Expedition.
• The Boer War rages in South Africa. The tide begins to turn against the Boers as massive numbers of British reinforcements arrive under the command of Lord Roberts and his chief-of-staff Horatio Kitchener.
• The Great Galveston Hurricane smashes Galveston, Texas to splinters, killing about 12,000 people in the worst natural disaster in American history.
• The British parliament approves the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia.
• France hosts a World's Fair, the Paris Exposition Universelle.
• President William McKinley signs the Gold Standard Act, requiring US paper money to be backed by gold.
• American temperance advocate Carry Nation turns to violence in Kansas, as she and her followers run amuck smashing saloons and liquor-selling establishments.
• Irish patriot Arthur Griffith founds the Irish nationalist movement Sinn Féin.
• Three investigators independently rediscover Austrian monk Gregor Mendel's groundbreaking discoveries in genetics, which had languished unnoticed for 34 years.
• Max Planck develops quantum theory.
• Ferdinand von Zeppelin invents and successfully flies the first rigid airship, LZ 1.
• Eastman Kodak introduces a $1 box camera, the "brownie," making photography accessible to the average person for the first time.
• Sigmund Freud publishes his seminal work on his psychoanalytic theory, The Interpretation of Dreams.
• American novelist Frank Baum publishes his novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, an allegory about the gold standard.
• French novelist Colette publishes Claudine à l'école, the first novel in her sensationalistic four-part Claudine series.

These people were born in 1900:

• American jazz trumpet immortal Louie Armstrong.
• American composer Aaron Copland.
• French poet Jacques Prévert.
• Austrian born physicist Wolfgang Pauli, formulator of the Pauli exclusion principle.
• German Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler.
• Iranian Shiite fundamentalist religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini.
• Ukrainian-born American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky.
• American quality-control guru William Deming.
• American actor Spencer Tracy.
• American journalist Ernie Pyle.
• American statesman Adlai Stevenson.
• American novelist Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind.
• American poet and critic Yvor Winters.
• American composer George Antheil.
• British aristocrat Lord Louis Mountbatten, last viceroy of India.
• Dutch astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort.
• American baseball great Lefty Grove.

These people died in 1900:

• German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
• Irish author and witicist Oscar Wilde.
• American novelist Stephen Crane.
• English composer Arthur Sullivan, the musical half of the brilliant oppretta-composing duo Gilbert and Sullivan.
• German philologist Max Müller.
• Japanese statesman Kuroda Kiyotaka, second Prime minister of Japan.
• American railroad magnate Collis Huntington.
• Heroic American locomotive engineer Casey Jones.
• Confederate Civil War spy Belle Boyd.
• Italian king Umberto I, yet another ruler assassinated by an anarchist.
• English philosopher Henry Sidgwick.
• German auto pioneer Gottleib Daimler.

1899 - 1900 - 1901

20th Century

In 1900 the world at the beginning of the 20th century was largely an imperial one, with major European powers and the United States benefitting from the industrialisation of the 19th century. Nationalism and industrial forces for change would play a major part in shaping the world in the next hundred years. This writeup will explore the empires and industrial technology of 1900.

The world of the early 20th century was dominated by several large empires. The empires of China and the Ottomans had a history stretching back many centuries. The Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese colonial empires dated back to the 16th century, while Britain, France, Germany and Italy had empires which had grown largest in the preceding fifty years. The Americas had formerly been part of those European empires, and shared their languages and culture. Europe, too, had its own empires, notably those of the Austrian Habsburgs and the Russian Romanovs.

Most of the Pacific islands and Africa had been colonised since the 1870s, and Britain would win the Boer War in 1902, placing much of southern Africa under British rule. The British Empire was the largest in the world, including Canada, Australia, and the jewel in the crown, India.

Europeans were confident that they were bringing progress and civilisation to the world, and exported their languages, Christian religion, and many of their people.

Empires, however, were not destined to dominate the world of the twentieth century. European expansion was a factor in the decline of Ottoman Turkey and Manchu China, and European social and political forces such as nationalism, social change, democracy, and socialism would all contribute to the downfall of empire and the rise of the nation state.

Industrial growth and technological change would prove to have a major impact on the economies of the world. Germany, the United States, and Japan had modernised considerably in the latter years of the 19th century, and grown in industrial power as a result. The European nations had also benefitted from technological advances, and used them to help their political expansion.

In 1900 Britain and Germany produced two-thirds of Europe's steel output, which itself totalled 17 million tons. Britain also produced more coal and textiles than the rest of Europe in total. Much of the rest of Europe was still agricultural, however, and outside Europe, only the United States was fully industrialised. Indeed even at this stage, the US was the world's leading manufacturing nation. Outside Europe, industrialisation was mainly limited to food processing and mineral extraction.

By 1900, Britain was at the heart of international commerce, with London as centre for mercantile loans, shipping, insurance, and commodity brokers. World trade had expanded over the preceding century, and some individuals had grown very wealthy, although the majority of the population were far less opulent.

Iron, coal, and railways had transformed 19th century industry, and by 1900 new technology was emerging based on chemicals, electricity, and the internal combustion engine. 1900 can therefore be seen as a time when the seeds for a vibrant new century were already in place.