Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Year 1975

Starting point is 00:00:00 From 1950 to 1975, the world had seen 25 years of radical change. The changes seen in the first half of the 20th century now accelerated even faster. Energy, inflation, and civil rights, which had always been issues, were now front and center. Empires ended. There were social and technical revolutions. New nations were created, humans landed on the moon, and the world was in the middle of the Cold War. Learn more about the world in the year 1975, and the 1,000, 975 episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

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Starting point is 00:01:25 1950. And since then, a great deal has changed. In 1950, the world was only five years removed from the Second World War and just beginning the Cold War. Western Europe and Japan were still physically and economically scarred. Colonial empires in Asia and Africa were largely intact. The global population was about two and a half billion people. And most people on Earth lived in poor, rural societies with short life expectancies, limited education, and little access to modern technology. By 1975, just a quarter century later, the map of power, wealth, and daily life had been totally transformed. The period from 1950 to 1975 is a story of decolonization, Cold War rivalries, economic growth, technical revolutions, and sweeping societal and demographic

Starting point is 00:02:15 changes. Politically, the world of 1975 was dominated by the Cold War and the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. But that rivalry had evolved. In 1950, the Cold War was still in its early, hard-edged phase, with the Berlin blockade freshly resolved and the Korean war about to erupt. Over the following decades, both superpowers built globe-spanning alliances. NATO and the U.S. security system extended from Western Europe to Japan, South Korea, and and various anti-communist regimes around the world. The Soviets consolidated control in Eastern Europe, forwards the Warsaw Pact,

Starting point is 00:02:53 and supported revolutionary movements from Vietnam to Angola. Crises like the Berlin standoffs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the war in Vietnam, showed how dangerous this confrontation could be, with nuclear weapons always lurking in the background. By the early 1970s, the tone had shifted towards d'Ataunt. The 1972 Salt 1 Agreement put the first, limits on nuclear weapons proliferation, and the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 ratified Europe's

Starting point is 00:03:21 post-war borders and established a framework for security, cooperation, and human rights. At the same time, the rigid two-camp structure of the early Cold War had fractured. One of the most important political changes since 1950 was the emergence of a large block of newly independent states in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. In 1950, most of Africa was still under European rule. The Middle East was a patchwork of recent and older mandates, and European influence remained strong in South and Southeast Asia. India, Pakistan, and Indonesia were already independent by 1950.

Starting point is 00:03:58 But over the next 25 years, decolonization swept the world. Ghana, Nigeria, Algeria, Kenya, and dozens of other countries went from colonies to fully independent nations. Violent struggles like the wars in Algeria, Vietnam, and the Portuguese colonies often accompanied the decolonization process. By 1975, European colonial empires in Africa and Asia had largely been dismantled, with the notable exception of the white majority regime in Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. Newly independent countries sought to assert autonomy through the non-aligned movement, trying to avoid strict alignment with either Washington or Moscow. However, in practice, the superpower still competed vigorously for influence in the third world. The Soviet Union saw the

Starting point is 00:04:45 death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 and the subsequent denunciation of Stalinism by Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev was subsequently removed from power in 1964 and was replaced by Leonoyd Brezhnev, who was the Soviet leader as of 1975. The United States suffered its own political turmoil. After eight years of President Dwight Eisenhower, his successor, John Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963. His vice president, Lyndon Johnson, was elected in 1964 but then declined to run in 1968, given the struggles he was facing in Vietnam. The presidency then passed to Richard Nixon, who became the first and only president in history to resign from office. His vice president, Gerald Ford, initially advanced to the job when Nixon's original vice president,

Starting point is 00:05:31 Spiro Agnew, resigned. So when Ford became president, he was the first and only person to serve as president of the United States, who was never elected on a presidential ticket. China also had significant changes between 1950 and 1975. In 1950, the People's Republic of China had just been proclaimed following the communist victory in the civil war. It was aligned with the Soviet Union and isolated from Western institutions. Over the next several decades, it went through dramatic and often catastrophic domestic upheavals, including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which reshaped Chinese society and cost millions of lives. Geopolitically, the Sino-Soviet alliance deteriorated into a bitter rivalry,

Starting point is 00:06:14 creating a triangular balance amongst Washington, Moscow, and Beijing. By the early 1970s, the United States began a reproachment with China, symbolized by Nixon's 1972 visit, and in 1971, the PRC took China's seat at the United Nations from Taiwan. In Europe, the political landscape was also changed significantly. Western Europe in 1950 was a set of recovering nation-states, dependent upon American aid. Over the next 25 years, European integration advanced through the formation of the European coal and steel community, the common market, and eventually the European economic

Starting point is 00:06:50 community, which by 1975 included not just the original six members, but also Britain, Ireland, and Denmark. In Eastern Europe, communist regimes backed by the Soviet Union were consolidated, and efforts to reform or liberalize, such as Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, were crushed by Soviet military intervention. In the Middle East and North Africa, the collapse of colonial rule in the Arab-Israeli conflict rearranged the political landscape. The creation of Israel in 1948, was followed by wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, which produced cycles of refugees, border changes, and superpower involvement. Egypt moved from monarchy to nationalist republic, flirted with the Soviet Union, and then under Anwar Sadat shifted towards the United States, and,

Starting point is 00:07:38 after the 1973 war. The oil-producing monarchies in the Persian Gulf, relatively marginal in 1950, had by 1975 become central to world politics and economics due to the power of OPEC and the 1973 oil embargo. Latin America in 1950 was already nominally independent, but the political story from then to 1975 was one of recurrent coups, revolutions, and United States influence. The Cuban Revolution of 1959 created the first common. communist state in the Americas outside the Soviet orbit. It became a focal point of Cold War tensions, including the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Elsewhere, military governments came to power in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and other countries, often with explicit anti-communist

Starting point is 00:08:24 justification and varying degrees of U.S. support. Revolutionary movements and guerrilla warfare grew in places like Central America. Economically, the world experienced unprecedented growth between 1950 and 1975, followed by a shock at the end of the period. In 1950, large parts of Europe and Asia were still in ruins, and many countries relied on agriculture and primary commodity exports. The subsequent quarter century saw rapid development in the industrialized world. Western Europe and Japan, aided by American capital and technology, rebuilt, and then surpassed pre-war output. Mass production, rising productivity and expanding welfare states produced high growth rates, low unemployment, and rising living standards.

Starting point is 00:09:07 The United States, already an economic giant in 1950, maintained its leadership and technology, finance, and trade, though by the 1970s it faced greater competition from Europe and Japan. Internationally, the Bretton Wood system of fixed exchange rates created in the 1940s underpinned the post-war world economic order. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade all facilitated global economic activity between countries.

Starting point is 00:09:34 Over time, however, pressure is built up as U.S. inflation rose in other countries accumulated dollars. In the early 1970s, the United States abandoned the convertibility of the dollar into gold, and the fixed exchange rate system effectively collapsed. A few years later, in a secret deal, Saudi Arabia and the United States agreed to price oil and dollars, ushering in the petrodollary regime. The 1973 oil crisis marked a turning point in the global economy. In 1950, oil was important, but cheap and controlled mainly by Western firms linked to Western governments. Over the next two decades, producing countries gradually asserted more control, forming OPEC and

Starting point is 00:10:15 negotiating better terms. In the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, several Arab exporters imposed an oil embargo and raised prices sharply. The resulting spike in energy costs contributed to inflation, recession, and a sense that the post-war era of effortless growth was supposed to. coming to an end. For oil producers, especially in the Gulf, the sudden influx of revenue greatly increased their geopolitical weight and funded ambitious state building and development projects. Technological change over these 25 years was also profound. The space race reshape

Starting point is 00:10:50 both technology and national symbolism. Sputnik in 1957, Yuri Gagarin's flight, and the U.S. Apollo program that culminated in the moon landing in 1969, showcased dramatic advances in rocketry, material science, telecommunications, and control systems. By 1975, satellites were widely used for weather forecasting, communications, navigation, and reconnaissance, knitting the world together in new ways and enhancing military and commercial capabilities. The joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975 hinted at how space could also become a domain of international cooperation. Electronics and computing transformed industry in daily life as well. The invention of the transistor in the late 1940s and the integrated circuit in the late

Starting point is 00:11:36 1950s allowed for smaller, more reliable, and more powerful devices. By 1975, mainframe computers supported governments, scientific research, and the operations of banks, airlines, and large companies. Many computers and early microprocessors were beginning to appear setting the stage for personal computing later on. Consumer electronics such as transistor radios, stereosystems, calculators, and color televisions became common in wealthier societies. Telecommunications improved through undersea cables and communication satellites, so that international telephone and television links that had been rare or impossible in 1950 were much more common by the mid-1970s.

Starting point is 00:12:17 Transportation also changed. Jet Airlines revolutionized long-distance travel, shrinking travel times between continents from days to hours, and facilitating tourism, business travel, and migration on an unprecedented scale. Containerization and shipping began to transform global trade by drastically reducing load times and shipping costs. Highways and automobile ownership expanded, especially in North America and Western Europe, reshaping urban life and settlement patterns. Socially and culturally, the years between 1950 and 1975 saw intense upheaval.

Starting point is 00:12:51 In the United States, the civil rights movement dismantled legal segregation, through court decisions and landmark legislation such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, even though de facto, inequality still persisted. The status of women changed significantly. While women had gained the vote in many countries earlier in the century, the period from the 1960s to the mid-70 saw a second wave of feminism that focused on issues such as workplace discrimination, reproductive rights, sexual norms, and legal equality. The advent of the birth control pill and more liberal attitudes towards sexuality in many Western countries

Starting point is 00:13:25 contributed to what is often called the sexual revolution. Youth culture and mass media created new forms of identity and protest. Rock and roll in the 1950s set the stage for the explosion of popular music, film, television, and countercultural movements in the 1960s. Demographically, the world from 1950 to 1975 experienced rapid and uneven growth. In 1950, the global population, which was around 2.5 billion, was concentrated in rural areas and the average life expectancy world. worldwide was under 50 years. Over the next quarter century, death rates fell sharply due to improved

Starting point is 00:14:01 health care and food production, while birth rates declined more slowly, especially in poorer countries. The result was a population explosion, with the world approaching 4 billion people by the mid-1970s. Much of this growth occurred in Asia, Latin America, and parts of Africa, while in Europe and North America, the post-war baby boom was already giving way to lower fertility in aging populations. Urbanization accelerated dramatically. Millions left the countryside for cities in search of work, education, and services. Mega cities such as Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, and Bombay, swelled as people crowded into formal and informal settlements.

Starting point is 00:14:40 In 1950, only a minority of the world's population lived in cities, but by 1975, that share had risen significantly, reshaping cultures, economies, and politics. Urban growth also created opportunities for industrialization and socialization and service economies, but also brought overcrowding, slums, and social tensions. The period from 1950 to 1975 saw enormous change at almost every level of society in nearly every country in the world. The rampant changes the world saw in the 20th century, however, didn't end in 1975.

Starting point is 00:15:17 They continued for the rest of the century, and the world once again seemed completely different just 25 years later. in the year 2000. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord.

Starting point is 00:15:45 That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you two can have it read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Year 1975

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