An Emerging Modern World 1750–1870

About this book

For as long as there have been nations, there has been an "international" – a sphere of cross-border relations. But for most of human history, this space was sparsely occupied. States and regions were connected by long-distance commerce and the spasms of war, yet in their development, they remained essentially separate. The century after 1750 marked a major shift. Fleeting connection gave way to durable integration. Culture, politics, and society were increasingly, and indelibly, entangled across continents. An Emerging Modern World charts this transformative period, addressing major questions about the roots of the present from a distinctly global perspective.

Why, for instance, did industrialization begin in England and not in China? Was there early capitalist development outside of the West? Was the Enlightenment exclusively a European event? Led by editors Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel, a distinguished group of historians tackles these issues, along with the roles of nomads and enslaved people in fostering global integration, the development of a bourgeoisie outside Euro-America, Hinduism's transformation from local practices into a universal system, the invention of pan-Islamic identity, and the causes and effects of the revolution in time regimes. The world appeared to be undergoing such a radical renewal that the impression of an epochal watershed was widespread.

This fourth volume in the six-volume series A History of the World engages the political, economic, social, and intellectual ferment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries outside Europe and North America. In doing so, it bears witness to the birth of the modern world.

Contents

Introduction [Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel]
I. Regions and Empires in the Political History of the Long Nineteenth Century [Cemil Aydin]
    Introduction
    1. From the World of Regions to a Globalized Imperial World
    2. The Era of Imperial Self-Strengthening
    3. Re-regionalization of the Imperial World Order
    4. Regional, Ethnic, and Geopolitical Roots and Consequences of an Inter-imperial War
II. Possibilities of Plenty and the Persistence of Poverty: Industrialization and International Trade [R. Bin Wong]
    Introduction
    1. The Legacy of Preindustrial Political Economies
    2. Nineteenth-Century Industrialization: Foundations of a European Century in Global History
    3. Nineteenth-Century Economic Trajectories in the Americas
    4. The Atlantic World’s Late Nineteenth-Century Industrial Capitalism
    5. Nineteenth-Century Economies in the World of Western Colonization
    6. East Asia: Industry, Trade, and Capitalism
    7. The Global Economy of Late Nineteenth-Century Industrial Capitalism
III. A Cultural History of Global Transformation [Sebastian Conrad]
    Introduction
    1. Regions, Integration, and Global Awareness: A Changing World Order
    2. The Global History of the Enlightenment
    3. “Nothing Is the Way It Should Be”: The Organization of Time
    4. Religion in the Global World
IV. Hierarchies and Connections: Aspects of a Global Social History [Jürgen Osterhammel]
    Introduction
    1. Discovering the Social
    2. The Road to a World Society
    3. Hierarchies
    4. Mobilities and Networks
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Sebastian Conrad is a Professor of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin. Jürgen Osterhammel is a Professor of Modern History at the University of Konstanz. Akira Iriye is Charles Warren Professor of American History, Emeritus, at Harvard University.