On being asked to name the single greatest fact in modern political history, Otto von Bismarck is reported to have answered: ‘The inherent and permanent fact that North America speaks English.’ Now, as the world teems with incident, event and unpredictability, we asked the world’s leading historians what they think is the single greatest fact in modern political history in 2022.
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In my opinion the single greatest fact in modern political history is the triumph of English as the universal language.
— Anthony Adamthwaite, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley
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The rise of China is the most astonishing and significant political and economic development of the last few decades – its transformation from an impoverished empire into an industrial powerhouse constructed out of a strange alloy of communism and capitalism, after losing many millions of its citizens in Chairman Mao’s dogmatic experiments.
— David Abulafia, Life Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
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