Abstract
On 1 January 2000 a world of just over 6 billion people, divided into 195 different states, with up to 10,000 spoken languages, entered a new millennium. Contrary to the fears of many, there were no midnight catastrophes, no breakdowns of technology, no religious or political upheavals, no apocalyptic strikes of nature. After a century of major wars, most of the world was at peace, but not all — about two dozen wars raged and in the months preceding 1 January both major powers in the world had themselves been at war, the USA in Kosovo, the Russians in Chechnya. Whatever else divided them, the world’s 3 billion labour force was united in one common endeavour, that of seeking to find and retain a source of income.
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Notes
For a cogent alternative view, one that is sceptical of pessimism and more forthright in its belief in progress than the analysis here, see Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal, Anticipating the Future: Twenty Millennia of Human Progress (London: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
Eric Hobsbawm with Antonio Polito, The New Century (London: Little, Brown, 2000).
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London: HarperCollins, 1988).
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© 2001 Fred Halliday
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Halliday, F. (2001). A World in Transition. In: The World at 2000. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-333-99427-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-333-99427-6_1
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