100 Documents That Changed the World

by Scott Christianson

  Marshall called for a comprehensive programme of massive US foreign aid, aimed at rebuilding devastated regions, removing trade barriers, modernizing industry and achieving renewed prosperity.

  Most nations of Western Europe readily accepted the offer, but the Soviet Union declined, believing that it would give the US too much say in the affairs of communist bloc countries. President Truman adopted the Marshall Plan and sent it to Congress where it was passed and signed into law as the Economic Cooperation Act on 3 April 1948.

  The programme offered financial aid, mostly for the purchase of American goods. Over the next four years, the US contributed $17 billion (more than $160 billion in current dollar value) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies, including West Germany’s.

  For being its architect and advocate, Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, and the term ‘Marshall Plan’ came to stand for a large-scale rehabilitation programme.

  Marshall arrives at Harvard on 5 June 1947 to deliver his speech on European economic recovery.

  Universal Declaration of Human Rights

  (1948)

  Activists from different nationalities and backgrounds work together for two years to devise an unprecedented universal declaration of human rights that will transcend parochial political, religious, cultural and ideological beliefs in order to clearly define the basic rights of all humankind.

  In 1946, an International Commission of Human Rights consisting of 18 members from various backgrounds was formed within the United Nations under the chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt, the former First Lady. Mrs. Roosevelt gave a Canadian law professor, John Peters Humphrey, the daunting task of serving as principal drafter of an international bill of human rights that would prove acceptable to the diverse world body.

  Humphrey and his staff pored over previous rights documents created throughout history in order to produce a 408-page report that could guide their work. The French member, René Cassin, then used Humphrey’s materials to write the first draft, which he structured after the Code Napoléon.

  The subcommittee’s final draft was later discussed by the Commission and presented to the UN General Assembly for its consideration. The vote was held on 10 December 1948 in Paris, where 48 voted in favour, none were opposed, two were absent and eight abstained.

  A member of the drafting subcommittee, Hernán Santa Cruz of Chile, later recalled: ‘I perceived clearly that I was participating in a truly significant historic event…there was an atmosphere of genuine solidarity and brotherhood among men and women from all latitudes, the like of which I have not seen again in any international setting.’

  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims: ‘Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.’ Its 30 articles grant an assortment of basic individual freedoms, such as the right to life, liberty and security of person, to all persons in the world. The Declaration forbids slavery and torture, and calls for equal justice under law. Everyone is entitled to education and allowed to freely participate in cultural activities. Specific remedies are provided to combat violations.

  Considered the first global expression of human rights, the UN’s Declaration is a milestone document in history, yet one which is never fully adhered to.

  The original text is now available from the UN website in 439 different translations. The anniversary of its adoption is commemorated as International Human Rights Day.

  Eleanor Roosevelt, Chair of the International Commission of Human Rights, reviews a printed poster of the English-language edition.

  Although the treaties are officially called the Geneva Conventions, the 1949 agreements, which updated the previous treaties of 1864, 1906 and 1929, are usually referred to as the Geneva Convention (singular).

  Geneva Convention

  (1949)

  In the wake of World War II’s unparalleled atrocities against non-combatants, existing treaties were updated to cover the treatment of non-combatant civilians in occupied areas. The result was ratified by 196 countries.

  Prior to World War II, three international treaties (adopted in 1864, 1906 and 1929) established protections for wounded and sick soldiers and sailors, and extensively defined the basic wartime rights of prisoners-of-war. Owing to their sponsorship by the International Committee of the Red Cross based in Geneva, the agreements were known as the Geneva Conventions.

  Shocked by the rampant abuses against civilians that had been committed in World War II, plenipotentiaries from almost every country in the world worked together for four months and then approved the text of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, which reaffirmed, expanded and updated the three previous Geneva agreements and added another class of protected parties. The Fourth Geneva Convention sets forth the basic principles of international law for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, covering all individuals ‘who do not belong to the armed forces, take no part in the hostilities and find themselves in the hands of the Enemy or an Occupying Power.’

  The 1949 treaty provides that such protected civilians ‘shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.’ They must be shielded from acts or threats of violence, ‘outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment,’ and cared for if they are wounded or sick. ‘Protected persons are entitled to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs.’

  Protected civilians must be allowed to exchange family news of a personal kind and aided to secure news about other family members who may have been displaced by the conflict. They must be allowed to practise their religion with spiritual leaders of their own faith. Interned civilians possess the same rights as POWs. Wherever possible, families should be housed together and provided with the facilities that can enable them to live as a family. Wounded or sick civilians, civilian hospitals and staff, and hospital transport by land, sea or air must be specially respected and may be placed under protection of the Red Cross or Red Crescent. Protected civilians cannot be used as human shields or discriminated against because of race, religion or political opinion. Nor can they be subjected to collective punishment, torture, mutilation, rape or other indecent treatment.

  The United Nations Security Council is the final international tribunal for all issues related to the Geneva Conventions. The most serious violations, known as ‘grave breaches’, are eligible to be treated as war crimes.

  Although the application of the laws remains a source of constant controversy, as evidenced by many recent debates and waves of inhumane treatment across the globe, the documents are still considered a cornerstone of contemporary international law.

  Signing of the Geneva Convention.

  Population Registration Act

  (1950)

  The ruling party of white-dominated South Africa establishes a new ‘pillar’ of apartheid, even more stringent than America’s Jim Crow racial segregation laws. It requires the creation of a racial register for the nation’s entire population, represented in a unique document for each individual.

  Slavery of blacks in South Africa began under Dutch rule and continued until the British abolished it in 1834. With the removal of the last vestiges of British rule and the establishment of the Union of South Africa in the 1930s, however, racial segregation intensified under the banner of apartheid (meaning ‘the state of being apart’) – a movement of white supremacy that was championed by the Afrikaners (white South Africans of Dutch, German, Belgian or French ancestry).

  Following the general election of 1948, the new ruling National Party went about establishing apartheid as South Africa’s governing policy. After enacting a series of laws regarding marri
age, the lawmakers passed the Population Registration Act Number 30 of 1950, which required that each inhabitant of South Africa be classified and registered in accordance with his or her ‘racial characteristics’ in keeping with the apartheid system.

  The law required everyone to be identified and registered from birth as one of four distinct racial groups: White, Coloured, Bantu (Black African), and Indian (workers from India having been imported under British colonial rule). Every person over 18 was required to obtain an identity card specifying his or her racial group. Official Boards were established to resolve any disputes over the racial designation, so that every person could be classified by ‘race’.

  A ‘White Person’ was defined as one who ‘in appearance is obviously a white person who is generally not accepted as a coloured person; or is generally accepted as a white person and is not in appearance obviously a white person.’ A ‘Bantu’ was ‘a person who is, or is generally accepted as, a member of any aboriginal race or tribe of Africa,’ and a ‘Coloured’ was ‘a person who is not a White Person or a Bantu...’

  Apartheid law determined rights, privileges and economic status based on race. But administration of the apartheid system was impossible. As Nelson Mandela later noted, ‘Where one was allowed to live and work could rest on such absurd distinctions as the curl of one’s hair or the size of one’s lips.’ World opinion turned against the regime. Apartheid was eventually abandoned before it would have been overthrown.

  Although the South African Parliament repealed the act on 17 June 1991, its effects will be felt for generations to come. The surviving racial identity documents serve as a tangible and official reminder of racist repression.

  An exhibition of South African identity cards in the Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg.

  The first page of the Act defines its use of the terms ‘coloured’, ‘ethnic’, ‘native’ and ‘white’.

  Pages one and three of Crick’s seven-page letter to his son.

  DNA

  (1953)

  A father-to-son letter by one of the discoverers of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century reveals the first-known written description of ‘the secret of life’. Before closing his note, he advises: ‘Read this carefully so that you understand it. When you come home we will show you the model.’

  In early 1953 the molecular biologists Francis Crick (1916–2004) and James Watson (1928–) were research scientists at the Medical Research Council unit of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. The pair had been pursuing their overwhelming desire to figure out the true structure of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a molecule thought to contain the ‘blueprint of life’ of all known living organisms and many viruses.

  On 19 March 1953 Crick penned a handwritten letter to his 12-year-old scientifically inclined son, Michael, who was sick with the flu at his boarding school in England. In it Crick shared some exciting news. ‘Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery,’ he wrote. The pair had just figured out the double-helix structure of DNA.

  ‘We have built a model for the structure of des-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid (read it carefully) called D.N.A. for short,’ the elder Crick wrote. He described DNA as being ‘like a code’ and explained how its bases – guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine – pair up to hold together two twisting strands of molecules. He also spelled out how DNA replicates itself and sketched some drawings of its structure to illustrate what he meant. ‘Read this carefully so that you understand it. When you come home we will show you the model,’ he told the boy. ‘Lots of love, Daddy.’

  Scientists had been aware of DNA since 1869 when a Swiss researcher discovered a mysterious substance in pus. By 1927 the Russian biologist Nikolai Koltsov was suggesting that traits could be inherited via a ‘giant hereditary molecule’ made up of ‘two mirror strands that would replicate in a semi-conservative fashion using each strand as a template.’ But Watson and Crick revolutionized science’s understanding of DNA.

  Crick’s seven-page letter was written more than a month before the publication of his famous article with Watson in Nature, which announced DNA’s structure and genetic implications. Watson and Crick formally announced their discovery at a Solvay conference on proteins that was held in Belgium on 8 April 1953, but the announcement didn’t receive any media coverage. Although Watson had written a letter to fellow biologist Max Delbrück five days earlier, that document dealt mostly with DNA’s structure and it did not contain as much information about how DNA might reproduce itself. So Michael Crick later described his father’s note as ‘the first written description of what my father calls “how life comes from life”.’

  In 2013 the document was sold for $5.3 million – a record-breaking price for a letter sold at auction.

  Crick’s rough sketch of DNA structure was later drawn up by his wife, Odile, and published in the 25 April 1953 edition of Nature.

  Treaty of Rome

  (1957)

  Nations from a continent divided by language, culture and history attempt to come together to form a common economic union. But right from the start, problems behind the scenes indicate that doing even the most basic tasks together may sometimes prove difficult.

  Centuries of conflict culminating in two world wars had made Europe’s leaders worried about their future. Recovery from the catastrophes was slow, painful and uneven, leading several nations to favour the establishment of a common economic community.

  Following a series of international meetings and agreements on the subject, an Intergovernmental Conference on the Common Market and Euratom (European Atomic Energy Community) was slated to begin in Belgium in June 1956. Representatives of six nations (France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) gathered at a magnificent castle estate, the Château de Val-Duchesse, outside Brussels to draft an agreement. The United Kingdom had also been invited but the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, quipped that he did not want to join a club of ‘six nations, four of whom we had to rescue from the other two.’

  The participants shared some common concerns – their nations had suffered invasion, defeat and foreign occupation during the war, resulting in long-term distress – and they wanted to protect their democratic institutions from future takeover. Economic collaboration was seen as key.

  The drafters worked in secrecy for nine months before coming up with the final version. Then they hurried to have it ratified, knowing that France’s imminent election of the fierce nationalist Gen. Charles de Gaulle would doom its approval. The formal signing ceremony was set for a few days later at the historic Hall of the Horatii and Curiatii in the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome.

  But then disaster struck. All of the necessary equipment and supplies needed for the conference – the typewriters, mimeograph machines and embossed official paper – were delayed at the Swiss and Italian borders, for lack of the required certificates, and upon their arrival at the hall the designated space was blocked by huge Rubens paintings. So the vital materials had to be put in the basement until other arrangements could be made. But janitors had mistakenly tossed the paper and crucial stencils into the garbage.

  With time running out, the panicked organizers quickly devised the only solution they could: in place of the treaty document, they prepared a blank sheet of paper for the heads of state to sign, and barred members of the press from viewing the agreement’s text.

  On 25 March 1957, amid considerable pomp and splendour, the heads of state officially signed the Treaty of Rome, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) – an agreement that would ultimately form the basis for the European Common Market and the European Union, but a document which had actually consisted of only a signature page.

  The story of the famous ‘blank page’ was finally revealed in 2007.

  The document and the signing ceremony, at the magnificent Hall of the Horatii and Curiatii in the Palazzo dei Conservatori.

  A handwritten draft of Kennedy’s inaugural address,
written three days before he delivered his speech at the United States Capitol in Washington, DC on January 20, 1961.

  John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address

  (1961)

  A glamorous new President takes up the torch for a new generation and delivers one of the greatest speeches in American history. Adopting the cadences of Lincoln and language drawn from the Bible, his address exudes youthful idealism, a sense of history, strong ideas and soaring rhetoric.

  On a bright but frigid January day, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States in an event that 80 million Americans watched live on television.

  The youthful Kennedy had worked on his inaugural address for two months, scribbling notes on yellow notepads and exchanging messages and drafts with his chief speechwriter, Ted Sorenson, who collected bushels of striking ideas and eloquent expressions from JFK’s circle of top advisors. Together the pair honed each sentence to strike the perfect image and tone.

  The result was a masterpiece of memorable phrases that had been adapted from others, such as Kennedy’s line ‘Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate,’ which resembled a suggestion from Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. Or Kennedy’s ‘If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich,’ which had slightly altered a phrase from former Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson II.

  It also utilized an assortment of skilled rhetorical devices and striking sentence structure to craft a speech that would deliver Kennedy’s messages in a distinctive classical form. Using elevated language that stirred emotions for national traditions and ideals, JFK called for citizens to work together for the common good. ‘Let every nation know,’ he wrote,