Q2

19th-century Europe during this period was both united and deeply
divided. Several basic cultural trends, including new literary styles and
the spread of science, ran through the entire continent. European states
were increasingly locked in diplomatic interaction, culminating in
continent wide alliance systems after 1871. At the same time, this was a
century of growing nationalism, in which individual states jealously
protected their identities. The American, French and Caribbean
revolutions of 1776 and 1789 were not simply local revolts, but
important developments in the history of human society. The clear
enunciation of the principle of "No taxation without representation" and
of the "rights of man" had an extraordinary impact. What was
remarkable was that these rights were held to be self-evident and
freestanding - no king, divine authority or imperial interest could nullify
them. David Frum: It seems legitimate to use the word "crisis" for the
epochal changes of the years 1780 to 1820 when profound ideological
conflicts erupted alongside struggles over material resources. The global
interconnectedness of the economic and political turbulences of this era
is so striking, he writes. The study examines the interlinking of financial
and military crises across the world. The period from 1660 to about 1720
had seen a broad upswing in activity across the world, with relative
peace and stability following the consolidation of the great agrarian
states of Asia and Africa. The East Indies may have suffered a trade
depression in the seventeenth century, but there is little sign that this
seriously affected South or East Asia. Europe, too, was past its wars of
religion and internal commerce flourished; cities grew rapidly as many
killer diseases of the earlier era became endemic in populations rather
than epidemic. Historians have argued for years as to why this was so;
one suggestion is that the expansion of world trade had put money and
power into the hands of local men and peasants who would not submit to
imperial control. After 1722, the century-old Safavid regime in Iran fell
apart. At about the same time, the Mughal dominion in South Asia also
began to fragment. Between 1757 and 1765, the English East India
Company seized the rich weaving and rice-growing territory of Bengal.
This subtly tilted the balance of world power well before the Industrial
Revolution got up steam. The Ottomans were to have greater staying
power than the Mughals, the Safavids, and perhaps even the Qing. But
military failure against the Austrians and Russians in the 1690s and
1760s humiliated the regime. Throughout the eighteenth century, Egypt,
the empire's richest province, was independent. Europe's "military
revolution" in Europe had its global dimension. The collapse of the
Safavids released the gargantuan ambitions of Nadir Shah, who invaded
India in 1739. Further economic decline in Nadir's Persia destabilized
the Ottoman Empire's eastern provinces. Conflict spiraled outward,
attracting the greed and ambition of the Europeans. The costs of war and
strategic goods were rising, but this was not offset by higher
productivity in northern Europe or Asia. If governments raised land
taxes too high, they risked peasants deserting their fields and sparking
revolt among local magnates. They also risked being drawn into
desultory frontier wars, which raised the exchequer further. After 1670
Aurangzeb became bogged down in a long war of occupation against the
Maratha chieftains of western India at the same time as he faced
desertion and rebellion nearer his imperial capital. His successors found
themselves forced to extreme solutions to solve the "military-fiscal"
conundrum. Much the same problem faced all the other Afro-Asian
regimes during the same period. In the 1740s and 1760s, European wars
became wars of the Asian and American littoral. European elites were
beginning to supplement their incomes as landowners from the proceeds
of the Atlantic slave economies. Trade reflected directly on European
credit in a way that political economists could no longer ignore. Nelson's
flagship, HMS Victory, cost five times as much as Abraham Crowley's
steelworks, one of the most important investments of the Industrial
Revolution. The stakes were raised by the disciplined, disciplined
methods of deploying firepower developed by Frederick the Great of
Prussia. In the 18th and 19th centuries, European states were
increasingly being forced into warfare, but most did not have the
resources to prosecute wars that were so costly in terms of men and
materiel. What the British spent most of was money, not blood; they
used their fiscal power to give huge subsidies to their allies to keep them
in the war. Governments were still dependent on cliques of large
landowners; the effects of industrialization had not yet reached many
parts of Europe. Reformers tried to reform some of the old European
autocracies, but their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. The
European-Atlantic sector was most affected by the Seven Years' War
(1756-63). Inside Europe, the war revealed the military and financial
weaknesses of monarchies. Outside Europe, it became a costly game of
grabbing colonies. After 1757 Britain fought France in the Caribbean,
Canada, and India. After 1763 it tried to recoup the vast\cost of its wars
against France and Spain in North America. The French saw this as an
opportunity to break Britain's stranglehold on international trade. The
American Revolution aimed to restore the powers of local assemblies,
which were being eaten away by the Crown. Between 1789 and 1849
Europe dealt with the forces of political revolution and the first impact
of the Industrial Revolution. Between 1849 and 1914 a fuller industrial
society emerged, including new forms of states and diplomatic and
military alignments. The mid-19th century looms as a particularly
important point of transition within the extended 19th century. Between
1780 and 1849, Europe underwent an economic transformation that
embraced the first stages of the great Industrial Revolution and a still
more general expansion of commercial activity. Articulate Europeans
were initially more impressed by the screaming political news generated
by the French Revolution and ensuing Napoleonic Wars, but in
retrospect, the economic upheaval proved more fundamental. Western
Europe's population growth during the late 18th century and early 19th
century led to major social and economic change. Between 1750 and
1800, the populations of major countries increased between 50 and 100
percent. Peasant and artisanal children found their paths to inheritance
blocked by sheer numbers and thus had to seek new forms of paying
labor. Families of businessmen and landlords also had to innovate to
take care of unexpectedly large surviving broods. As the 18th century
passed, Europe's social structure changed toward a basic division, both
rural and urban, between owners and non-owners. Vigorous peasants
increased their landholdings, often at the expense of their less fortunate
neighbors, who swelled the ranks of the near-property less. Domestic
manufacturing soared, as hundreds of thousands of rural producers
worked full- or part-time to make thread and cloth, nails and tools for
urban merchants. Craftwork in the cities began to shift toward
production for distant markets, which encouraged artisan owners to treat
journeymen less as fellow workers and more as wage laborers. In 1840,
British steam engines were generating 620,000 horsepower out of a
European total of 860,000. By 1860 British steam-generated horsepower
made up less than half the European total. Governments and private
entrepreneurs worked hard to imitate British technologies after 1820.
French coal and iron output doubled in the same span; German pig iron
production soared. Technological change soon spilled over from
manufacturing into other areas. Inventions in manufacturing led to huge
demands on transportation systems to move raw materials and finished
products. Steam shipping plied major waterways soon after 1800 and by
the 1840s spread to oceanic transport. Railroad systems, first developed
to haul coal from mines, were developed for intercity transport during
the 1820s. In communication, the invention of the telegraph allowed the
faster exchange of news and commercial information. Steam and water
power required a concentration of labor close to the source of power,
which allowed new discipline and specialization. In Paris, the
department store, introduced in the 1830s, ushered in an age of big
business in the trading sector. Rapid City growth produced new
hardships, for housing stock and sanitary facilities could not keep pace.
Gas lighting improved street conditions in better neighborhoods from the
1830s onward. For the better-off, rapid suburban growth allowed some
escape from the worst urban miseries. By 1850 in Britain, far and away
the leader still, only half the total population lived in cities, and there
were as many urban craft producers as there were factory hands. In
Western Europe, economic change produced massive social
consequences during the first half of the 19th century. Basic aspects of
daily life changed, and work was increasingly redefined. The 1920s saw
the culmination of fifty years of rapid American industrialization. New
products seemed to burst from American production lines with the
potential of revolutionizing American life. Other products that had
previously been toys for the rich were now available to a majority of
Americans.