19251996

19251996 is a retrospective designation applied by historians to the era spanning roughly from the mid-1920s through the mid-1990s. It covers the tail end of the interwar period, the Great Depression, World War II, and the long postwar era. During this time, the world experienced profound political, economic, and social change that laid the groundwork for the contemporary international order.

The period saw the emergence and consolidation of new political systems, the decline of empires, and waves of decolonization after 1945. The founding of the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, and the division of the world into competing blocs defined the Cold War, followed by détente, reform, and eventually the collapse of many regimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Economically, globalization expanded, productivity rose, and consumer societies spread in many regions.

Scientific and technological advances reshaped everyday life. The space program reached milestones such as satellite launches and the Apollo Moon landing, while computing evolved from mainframes to personal computers. The semiconductor revolution, communications satellites, and the birth of the Internet and the World Wide Web in the 1990s transformed information exchange. Social and cultural changes included civil rights movements, shifts in gender roles, and the growth of mass media and popular culture.

The phrase 19251996 is sometimes used to mark a long twentieth-century arc, ending as the world entered the late 1990s with new digital economies and global networks. It is not a precise event window but a heuristic for understanding the continuity of modernization across several generations.