Excerpt from World History: 1815 1920 The present work has an altogether different purpose. It will attempt to survey the history of the last hundred years from a really universal point of View. It will not aim at a schematic treatment of different continents as Of equal importance. A world history which should devote the same attention to the chance happenings of a tribe of African negroes and to the development Of the British Em pire would be as unworthy of the name as a history of Italy in the nineteenth century which treated in equal detail the Duchy of Parma and the Kingdom of Sardinia. On the contrary, events Shall be so selected as to bring into the foreground those which have universal significance; the criterion of importance shall be, not the local, but the universal importance. Europe and the European nations will indeed be given first place; but only those phenomena shall be set forth in detail which have exercised a wide influence beyond Old Europe. A brief exposition like the present is better adapted to this aim than a detailed narrative. If one has to refrain from discussing many interesting details it is all the easier to make clear the major lines of development and the connecting threads in the history of lands and peoples. The outline of the background will stand forth all the more clearly if the number of decorative figures in the foreground of the landscape is restricted to the most significant and essential ones. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.