The interwar years were marked by a fundamental change in the relations between those nations associated with “Western civilization” and the nations and peoples of Asia and the Middle East, and to a lesser extent, of Africa.
Though virtually the whole of the world had been brought into the European and American orbits during the age of imperialism, people in the West had not recognized that the societies of Asia and Africa had histories of their own.
Even though the history of the West and that of other parts of the world had impinged upon each other through trade, cultural borrowing, the migration of peoples, and the setting up of empires, the histories of Japan or China, for instance, had not become significant as yet to an understanding of Western history.
Now they would become so, and Western history and world history would be virtually indistinguishable.