The Routledge Companion to World History since 1914

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This new Routledge Companion (the successor to the former Longman Handbook of World History since 1914) attempts to provide a convenient reference work for both teachers and students of the modern world from the outbreak of the First World War to the present day. It is a highly condensed work, bringing together chronological, statistical and tabular information which is not to be found elsewhere within a single volume. The Companion covers not only political and diplomatic events, but also the broader fields of social and economic history. It includes biographies of important individuals, a wealth of material on wars and conflicts, a wide-ranging topic bibliography and an extensive glossary.

No book of this type can be entirely comprehensive, nor is it intended as a substitute for textbooks and more specialist reading, but we have attempted to include those key facts and figures which we believe are most useful for understanding courses in the history of the world during the last hundred years. The coverage of the volume is designed to reflect the key themes now studied by modern historians—the two world wars, Nazism and communism, imperialism and decolonization, the rise of America to global hegemony, the emergence of China and the changed world since the fall of the Soviet Union. Its geographical coverage is worldwide, from the Asia-Pacific Rim to the Baltic, and from Latin America to the Middle East. The term billion is used to mean a thousand million.

The Companion also covers very recent events, from developments in the American war on terrorism after 11 September 2001 to the historic changes now taking place in the enlarged European Union. As courses in world history continue to change and as new research puts events in global history in a different perspective, both authors would welcome suggestions for additional material to be included in future editions of this Routledge Companion.

Chris Cook, London School of Economics
John Stevenson, Worcester College, Oxford