What are the 10 most important events in world history? Justify your answer.
1 Answer
The broad sweep of history is a complex issue, and few particular events can really stand out as 'turning points' except for some key battles, and a few other singular episodes.
Explanation:
If it is possible to identify the ten most events in world history (meaning there must be a historical record) around them, everyone would have a different list. However:
1) The Battle of Salamis: This naval battle off Athens in 480 BC allowed the survival of Hellenic Civilization against an overwhelming Persian invasion; thus preserving the many Greek contributions to the World.
2) The Mission of St. Paul, instrumental in spreading Christianity from merely being a Jewish sect into the rest of the Mediterranean World.
3) The invention of Gutenberg's Printing Press -- making near universal literacy possible and acceleratiing the pace of human development.
4) The Black Death -- the Pandemic of the 1340s broke down the Feudal system and, in Western Europe, led to a more dynamic society (and had the reverse effect in Eastern Europe, where autocratic control tightened).
5) The 4th Crusade and the 1204 capture of Constantinople -- the Byzantine Empire -- and the Crusading Movement -- never recovered from this, and the main constraint against Turkish/Islamic expansion into Europe was fatally weakened.
6) The arrival of Small Pox in the New World: An unintended consequence of Cortez's campaign against the Aztecs (and its arrival was probably inevitable), but successive waves of this deadly disease crippled any chance of the New World fending off the Europeans.
7) The Reign of Asoka -- this 3rd Century BC ruler of India allowed -- among many other thngs -- for Buddhists to spread beyond the Ganges Valley and begin their missionary work across Asia. Like Christianity, Buddhism has had a powerful influence on the arts, culture and thought.
8) The Magna Carta -- while European monarchs had never been as personally powerful as others elsewhere, the 1215 Agreement between King John and his nobles placed British monarchs under the law, much flowed from this.
9) The Death of Ögedei in 1241 -- this brought the Mongol expansion to a sudden halt at the gates of Europe, southern China, and India, and the massive empire fragmented afterwards.
10) The French Revolution -- here is where Western Civilization may have started to come off the rails, a cleavage point between the reason and liberal rationality of the Enlightenment and the birth of such Romantic ideologies as Nationalism, Socialism, and eventually Marxism and Nazism.
