Attempts to elucidate the sociological factors in 19th century history
Review essay on The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century by Jürgen Osterhammel
History books tend to move between narrative and analysis, or put simply, a story vs. an interpretation of the forces and trends behind events. The narrative stresses the role and impact of individuals, while the analysis looks to abstractions and ideals. Osterhammel’s book skews as far to the analytic side as may be possible, in a sense it is a sociology of 19th century history and all the changes that were set in motion by the rise of the democratic impulse, the end of aristocratic privilege, the decline of religion, and the development of industrial capitalism, romanticism, nationalism, and the rule of law. Osterhammel defines the period as starting with the French Revolution and ending during the Great War.
According to Osterhammel, the 19th century is a Sattelzeit (a fundamental transitional time), where: 1) the fiscally sound military state emerged, ready for conquest and competition; 2) there was a partial emancipation of lower classes and slaves in certain societies; 3) political inclusiveness increased in variations of “national solidarity”; 4) popular involvement entered as a major factor in elite decision-making; 5) economic power in society began to devolve from rentier aristocratic estates to more dynamic class-based societies; 6) industrial capitalism took hold on a self-reinforcing scale, initiating phenomenal economic growth; 7) cultural exchanges brought mutual influences, encouraging the development of universal, constitution-based ideals that should apply to all humanity.
The concrete manifestations of these trends were imperial expansion, the establishment of a global trade regime, a lethal technological arms race, highly consequential political upheaval, and the growing assertiveness of non-western peoples. By 1914, the world no longer had vast expanses to discover, but was “closed”. Finally, the perception of time became linear rather than cyclical or static: there was some sense of, and naive confidence in, progress (shattered irrevocably by World War I).
For the rest of the book, Osterhammel goes over the details of these trends. The increase and ease of mobility – in transport, population growth, and predominantly voluntary emigration – was unprecedented and dropping in cost as chemical energy replaced wind and muscle power. Once-isolated populations faced extinction from disease, even as the living standards of the west were rising exponentially. There was an agricultural revolution in productivity due to crop rotation, mechanization, and the dissemination of scientific techniques, though physical ecological limits threatened wellbeing, as exemplified in Ireland’s potato famine and the sweet-potato environmental catastrophe in China.
The trend to urbanization throughout the century is a major issue in the book. It quickened the pace of social development, creating networks as a new landscape with its own problems emerged. Politicians took on urban planning and later public welfare as one of their responsibilities, a sea change in their mandate and engagement. Eventually, interest groups and mass political parties emerged, radically altering the national polity with revolutionary upheaval. (The chapter on cities unfortunately struck me as disjointed.)
If the city functioned as the staging ground to define the nation, the periphery – or frontier – became a place of empiric competition and missionary experimentation. The Western powers claimed the right to conquer with terra nullius (a legal claim against “ownerlessness”). Nomads were forced into more sedentary lifestyles. Most important, settler colonialism offered a chance to white colonizers to start over, taking the best land that could be bought cheaply or outright appropriated with full legal justification, annihilating local elites if they refused to be co-opted. The colonists maintained a complex relationship with the sponsoring state, often establishing a semi-autonomous administration as the basis for their own independent state, along the lines of the US. As a result, the entire world made the first steps toward a globalization that would transform the lives of virtually everyone on the planet.
Osterhammel takes the controversial view that multi-ethnic empires dominated the 19th century rather than nationalism. Nonetheless, nation-states were on the cusp of emerging through a mix of breakaway revolution (e.g. Haiti), hegemonic unification of nationalist entities (modelled as mini-empires, e.g. Hungary), or evolution towards autonomy (e.g. Australia). Undergirding this was the gradual abandonment of dynastic justifications for state policy, favoring instead abstract concepts that strove to represent universal values or at least the “interests” of the governed (military security, national prestige) rather than princely caprice. In this way, the notion of citizenship (citoyenneté) grew in importance, which required a sense or narrative of homogeneity, legitimacy from below, and the goal of autonomy in a given home territory.
Diplomacy was also changing fundamentally. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, Osterhammel identifies 3 phases of international order: the Congress of Vienna rules for diplomatic management of conflict (to 1853); the realpolitik wars along with tumultuous internal revolts (to 1871); Belle Époque stability, in which the great powers were industrializing, arming themselves to promote their aspirations of militant nationalism, and pursuing colonies in the periphery as a “safety valve” for their aggression. As the aristocracy maintained control of foreign policy and negotiated a plethora of treaties, face-to-face diplomacy of executives and kings took on a new importance.
Even in peace, so much was changing that the elites understood that they were struggling for their existence. To avoid falling behind, they attempted to systematically apply science and engineering knowhow to enhance military effectiveness with industrial precision and scale; perhaps more important was the organization of military forces into smaller, flexible units connected with the telecommunications and new logistical capabilities. For example, in less than two generations, naval ships converted to coal engines as well as sheathed themselves in steel. Though the American Civil War was the only examples of modern total war in the period, it demonstrated that the entire population and productive capacity of a continent could be mobilized to fight. All of this culminated in the Great War, which lived up to its potential for slaughter and destruction. At the same time, transnational groups flourished, promoting universal norms and causes ranging from pacifism and socialism, to women’s rights.
Osterhammel struggles with the concept of “revolution” as the “onset of modernity”. Defenders of the “old order” gradually morphed in the popular view from God-mandated maintainers of order into obsolete reactionaries, even as aristocrats were able to maintain some power alongside the rising bourgeoisie and industrialists. Though the synchronous 1848 revolutions seemingly failed – peasant revolts were crushed, urban poor won no immediate concessions and suffered brutal repression, and urban intellectuals provoked a conservative backlash from their own “constituents” – the neo-absolutists who retained power were more open to negotiation and change than before. Democracy would have to wait.
One of the most fascinating chapters covers the early modern state. Beyond the military-industrial axis, the modern bureaucracy was invented with a hitherto unprecedented reach. It expanded the ability to collect taxes, redefined the sphere of public responsibility (adding welfare, clean water, transport safety and the like), and administered the rule of law in accordance with nascent constitutional rights and rules for the citizen (who could challenge official decisions and enjoy a free press and property rights). Moreover, this bureaucracy was professionalized (salaried and subject to review) and “rationalized” with a division of labor and specializations, sharing power with the other branches of government. If less exciting as a subject, history teachers have neglected this development, which literally enabled the maintenance of the modern state.
New forms of dictatorship and their supporting authoritarian, perhaps even proto-fascist, ideologies also emerged. This involved technocratic management, a direct outgrowth of Enlightenment overconfidence in finding the correct way forward. These authoritarians took care of client participant-supporters and tended to seek popular approval by “acclamation”.
Though it is a bit too vague for my taste, Osterhammel sketches the elements of 19th century capitalism. First, it required a special organization of production, with the division of labor and elaborate bureaucratic hierarchies to run the corporation. Second, the process aimed to produce goods for the “market”, in which profits could accumulate for re-investment. Third, the economy operated under a “generalized commodification”, i.e. money was used as the medium to regulate just about everything, leaving communal tradition and paternalist protections-in-kind behind. Fourth, managers were increasingly flexible and open, seeking to find and employ the most productive technologies and organization. Fifth, contradicting Marx, capitalism in most cases did not “arise from feudalism”. Sixth, with the invention of in the first multi-national corporations, economic activity was no longer dependent on a national territory or state, but global. Seventh, it developed, or already had, a material foundation in mines, rail transport and other infrastructure. Eighth, workers were highly mobile, as were other “factors of production”. If a nice catalogue, there was nothing original or controversial in this.
In the UK, industry flourished in an internally tariff-free territory at peace. Engineering and tool making set the world's highest standards. Agriculture was highly productive. The elite encouraged innovation. Then, there was that quasi-mystical entrepreneurial spirit. By the end of the century, the US was overtaking the UK in this role, while variations of a more nationalistic capitalism were established in Germany and Japan.
The intellectual base of modernist development was science, which had gained an unassailable cultural authority in the 19th-century search for truth. Not only was the modern research university invented in Prussia in 1830 or so, but in them scientific inquiry became a highly networked and competitive profession. Professionals of knowledge irreversibly replaced the recondite pursuits of aristocratic amateurs.
The university – a key export of European culture – became "a training center to structure, preserve and generate knowledge". It was also meeting place for the young, who could develop their identities and even their political philosophies in a safe, controlled environment. Growing literacy added to the pool of applicants and contributed to the “model citizen” concept under tightly controlled state auspices. Disciplines proliferated, religion began a phase of retreat before modern science, and a vast network of intellectual cross-fertilization grew into the fabric of society. This is an extraordinary thing.
Unfortunately, alongside this intellectual progress, the West was not just arrogant in its dismissal of knowledge available in the periphery, but used its military and organizational superiority to support an open, often virulent, racism. A racial hierarchy of sorts was imposed, limiting the possibilities of indigenous peoples and rendering their anti-colonial opposition and ideological hostility inevitable. “Scientific racism” was created to support these policies.
Given this incredible concatenation of ideas and issues, I was very disappointed at how Osterhammel tried to pull it all together. The concluding chapter is strangely abstruse, often incomprehensible in its jargon. He says, for example, that there was an “asymmetrical reference density”, which translates into beneficial exchanges of information on a global scale. He also says the 19th century’s “contradictions” paved the way to the catastrophe of World War I, but doesn’t fully explain what he means. Was it inevitable? How might the “contradictions” have been resolved? Finally, while referring to “modernism” throughout the text, his definition of it never satisfied me.
The reason I am fascinated with this period is that all of its developments and movements can be seen as antecedents to today’s world, a watershed that Osterhammel attempts to summarize in his massive and ambitious book. The quality of the chapters is uneven. Furthermore, though at nearly 1,200 pages the book clocks at 4 lbs., the type is frustratingly small. There are no maps or illustrations, and too few tables and charts. Nonetheless, at its best, it goes over essential issues with great clarity and economy of expression, however frustrated I got with the level of historical detail. If you don’t know 19th century well, I would recommend starting with Hobsbawm’s narrative trilogy.
This is one of the best books I’ve read to get to the most basic schematic nub of the myriad of issues of the 19th century. It is a rigorous exercise in methodology: essential, but a slog.
A complementary review:
