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Luckily for us AP World History students from Egypt, Abdel Nasser couldn’t sit still.  He was an important figure in the mid-twentieth century whose personality and actions illustrate several key themes.  Learning about Abdel Nasser is a good way to learn about the entire time period.

His rule fell during the Cold War, and Abdel Nasser was a part of it—though he sometimes tried not to be (which might also be a part of being a part of it, you'll see…)  As you know, the Arab-Israeli wars were proxy wars; the Soviet Union supplied the Arab militaries and the United States armed Israel.  As was usual in proxy conflicts, each superpower sought to establish some sort of dominance in the region.  It gets so much messier, though: Consider that Saudi Arabia has always been a US ally, despite being Arab.  As well, Egypt played both superpowers for its own gain.  The Soviets built the Aswan High Dam for Egypt, but American engineers have maintained it for more than fifty years.  You can see that the knife cut both ways – superpowers manipulated proxies, but those proxies could offer their love to the highest bidder as well.  One more thing: some smaller states sought to avoid Cold War alliances altogether.  Egypt was one of them.  Abdel Nasser was a part of the Non-Aligned Movement, which he established with the leaders of India and Indonesia.  Rather than running to a superpower for protection, the non-aligned countries avoided them altogether or sold their loyalty to the highest payer.  The easy dichotomy of two superpowers and their obedient ducklings doesn’t hold true on closer inspection.

Our old pal Nasser didn’t have Egypt to go it alone, though.  You know of the short-lived unification of Egypt and Syria.  Nasser used radio to speak to the entire Arab world in an attempt to unify it through the pan-Arab movement.  Radio wasn’t exactly new in the 50s, but it was becoming universal—which was probably more important for mass communication.  Nasser used radio broadcasts (and the Arab world’s familiarity with Egyptian dialect from film and music) to speak to the entire Arab world.  His goal was to unite Arabs as one people (perhaps under one government, though he didn’t really push for that).  In the dangerous setting of the Cold War, friends were everything.  To Abdel Nasser, unity among Arab nations would help protect them from the whims of the superpowers.  Of course, he had ideas about who would lead this newly-sort of-unified Arab world…

Let me get back to one thing mentioned briefly above—the Aswan High Dam.  Flooding is controlled, but look at the downsides.  Fertile silt collects in the bottom of Lake Nasser.  Farmers need to fertilize the land now, and the delta is slowly being eroded away without annual silt layers to offset erosion.  As well, silty floods fed a shrimp and sardine industry in the Mediterranean that has now collapsed.  The dam is an example of the sort of giant project that totalitarians love—remember Magnitogorsk and the Five-Year Plans?  China’s Three Gorges Dam is the same sort of thing, but in your lifetime.  The point of all this rambling, though, is to introduce the Green Revolution, which involved fertilizer and a lot of population growth.  I think I need say no more….

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Take a gander at this Picasso painting, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.  Don’t worry—spelling won’t count on the test.  Actually you needn’t remember the name of the painting, but do remember Picasso – he’s a great example of art in the twentieth century.

You can see that this painting shows a group of five women posing.  You might also notice that the blue background is a curtain being parted by one of the women.  At the bottom is a slice of melon, some grapes, and other fruits.  Here’s why this artist is significant.  He was inspired to make the mask-like faces of these figures by looking at – you guessed it – masks.  Europe’s imperializers were busy hauling cultural treasures back to fill their museums but didn’t realize that some of the gawkers would be inspired.  Much art in the twentieth century draws on non-traditional inspiration (a terrible pun, even by Seif’s standards).  Picasso loved African masks, Matisse took Morocco’s colors back to France, and Warhol mimicked television advertising.  Remember Picasso and African influences, that they came by way of imperialism, and that, overall, twentieth-century art drew on a wider set of inspirations.

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You won’t have any trouble remembering what the Green Revolution is all about.  Basically, it was a mid-century movement that used science to advance agriculture.  More specifically, it involved the development of new forms of wheat, rice, and other crops that offered higher yields, greater drought resistance, and the like.  Essentially, standard food crops were bred to be more efficient in different environments.  At the same time, the Green Revolution promoted the development and use of chemical agents to improve farm production – fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.

This combination of improved crop varietals and chemical enhancements helped developing-world farmers to produce more food.  Think back to some of the great agricultural leaps forward from our studies – the Agricultural Revolution itself, champa rice, the Columbian Exchange – and you can figure out the main effect of the Green Rev.  If not, dig the image below…

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What do Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Abdel Nasser have in common?  If you guessed silly mustaches, close but no cigar (Churchill joke…).  All of them used radio to spread and maintain their political authority.
Mass communication and weaponry present very different examples of how technology changes society.  With weapons, newer is usually better.  The most cutting-edge weapons will tip the balance to one side in war.  Thinking back, I can list gunpowder, atomic weapons, and others.  Mass communication works the other way, though.  Instead of the newest invention, you want one that has been around enough to be widespread.
Radio hit the sweet spot for these guys: each of them rose to power when radio was the dominant medium of mass communication in their society.  Each of them could talk to the entire nation using it, and did so to spread their message and rally public support.