American History: A Survey (Brinkley), 13th Edition

Chapter 29: CIVIL RIGHTS, VIETNAM, AND THE ORDEAL OF LIBERALISM

America in the World

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1968

The year 1968 was one of the most turbulent in the postwar history of the United States. Much of what caused these upheavals were specifically American events—the growing controversy over the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, racial unrest in the nation's cities, student protests on campuses throughout America. But the turmoil of 1968 was not confined to the United States. There were tremendous upheavals in many parts of the world that year.

The most common form of turbulence around the world in 1968 was student unrest. In France, in May 1968, there was a student uprising that far exceeded in size and ferocity anything that occurred in the United States. It attracted the support of French workers, briefly paralyzed Paris and other cities, and contributed to the downfall of the government of Charles de Gaulle a year later. In England, Ireland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Mexico, Canada, Japan, and South Korea, students and other young people also demonstrated in great numbers, and at times with some violence, against governments and universities and other structures of authority. Elsewhere, 1968 created more widespread protest, as in Czechoslovakia, where hundreds of thousands of citizens took to the streets in support of what became known as "Prague Spring"—a demand for greater democracy and a repudiation of many of the oppressive rules and structures imposed on the nation by its Soviet-dominated communist regimes—until Russian tanks rolled into the city to crush the uprising.

For over thirty years, many people have tried to explain why so much instability emerged in so many nations at the same time. One factor that contributed to the worldwide turbulence of 1968 was simple numbers. The postwar baby boom, which occurred in many nations, had created a very large age cohort that by the late 1960s was reaching adulthood. In Western industrial nations, in particular, this rising generation was a powerful new social force. The sheer size of the new generation produced a tripling of the number of people attending colleges and universities in fewer than twenty years, and a heightened sense of the power of youth. The long period of postwar prosperity and relative peace in which this generation had grown up contributed to heightened expectations of what the world should offer them—and a greater level of impatience than previous generations had demonstrated with the obstacles that stood in the way of their hopes. A new global youth culture emerged that was in many ways at odds with the dominant culture of older generations. It valued nonconformity, personal freedom, and even rebellion.

A second force contributing to the widespread turbulence of 1968 was the power of global media. Satellite technology introduced in the early 1960s made it possible to transmit live news instantly across the world. Videotape technology and the creation of lightweight portable television cameras enabled media organizations to respond to events much more quickly and flexibly than in the past. And the audience for these televised images was by now global and enormous, particularly in industrial nations but even in the poorest areas of the world. Protests in one country were suddenly capable of inspiring protests in others. Demonstrators in Paris, for example, spoke openly of how campus protests in the United States in 1968—for example, the student uprising at Columbia University in New York—had helped motivate French students to rise up as well. Just as American students were protesting against what they considered the antiquated paternalistic features of their universities, French students demanded an end to the rigid, autocratic character of their own academic world.

In most parts of the world, the 1968 uprisings came and went without fundamentally altering the institutions and systems they were attacking. But many changes came in the wake of these protests. Universities around the globe undertook significant reforms. Religious observance in mainstream churches and synagogues in the West declined dramatically after 1968. New concepts of personal freedom gained legitimacy, helping to inspire new social movements in the years that followed—among them the dramatic growth of feminism in many parts of the world. The events of 1968 did not produce a revolution, in the United States or in most of the rest of the world, but they did help launch a period of dramatic social, cultural, and political change that affected the peoples of many nations.

http://archiv.radio.cz/history/history14.html - Radio Prague: The Prague Spring

1			What was the Prague Spring? Why do you think it occurred when it did? Do you see any relationship between the turbulent events in Czechoslovakia that year and the tumultuous American experience that year? If so how? If not, why not?

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/13/newsid_2512000/2512413.stm - BBC: On this Day - Workers Join Student Protest

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/France68/paris.html - Art from a Change: Posters in the 1968 Paris Uprising

2			Using the sites above, briefly summarize the events that occurred in Paris in 1968. How do they compare or contrast to events in America that year? How would you evaluate the success of both popular movements? What about the governmental response to this upheaval?

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http://www.pvhs.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/revs/1848essy.html - 1848 Revolutions

http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc2/lectures/rev1848.html - The Revolution of 1848

3			As with 1848, 1968 was a year marked by popular uprisings around the globe. Do you see any similarities between the revolutions of 1848 and 1968? How would you account for the remarkable upheavals of either period? Is it just coincidence that these events occurred in the same year both times, or something more? Explain.

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