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Article: THE TROUBLE WITH NAMES.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Foreign Policy
- Article date:
- June 22, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Naming our new era leads to a conundrum: Alt the interesting choices are inaccurate in some way, while the accurate ones are already clich[acute{e}]s.
Historians have often named previous ages after wars, like the "pre-World War I" or "interwar" periods. Since a remarkable absence of large-scale war characterizes our age, it would be inappropriate to choose a conflict as a reference point.
Other ages have been named after prominent political leaders (the "Wilhelmine" or "Victorian" eras). But our age has notably lacked statesmen of the stature of Roosevelt, Stalin, or Churchill. Future generations of schoolchildren are unlikely to spend much time ...