This unit covers 164 years of history. That’s both strangely long and surprisingly short.

On the one hand, the 164-year period we’re covering here is a bit on the long side to be called a century—which literally means 100 years. On the other hand, all the units up to this point have covered hundreds and thousands of years, which makes this unit incredibly short by comparison. What was going on during this (relatively) short period to warrant an entire unit?

By the start of the long nineteenth century in 1750, the pace of change was accelerating. Thanks to revolutions and new technologies, things were changing really fast. That’s why this unit is so short—there’s a lot of stuff crammed into those 164 years.

Now, why is this period, which is called the long nineteenth century, so much longer than an actual century? Well, historians generally agree that, from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the start of the First World War, a globally connected set of changes emerged that transformed our world. We can better understand each individual change by studying them all together. These global changes involved the following:

• The use of fossil fuels as energy.
• Widespread new political systems with democratic features.
• The economic systems of capitalism, socialism, and communism.
• The massive growth of factories and cities and the pollution and consumer culture that accompanied them.
• Much more rapid communications through steamships, railroads, and the telegraph, and then later, the automobile and telephone.
• Modern imperialism and colonialism (and ideas about race and gender that justified these systems).
• Unprecedented migration of people to new places.
• The scientific method and the changing worldviews that it supported.

We sometimes refer to these changes as revolutions because they were such enormous transformations that, combined, they turned the world upside down and created the “modern” world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Liberal revolutions and national revolutions

First, the liberal revolutions that started early in this period: These were radical transformations that produced a new kind of political community: the nation-state. The word liberal emerged in this era from the Latin term liberalis, meaning free man. By 1750, the idea that people (or at least some people) should have individual liberties (a word that also came from liberalis) was becoming increasingly popular. This idea was one result of a new debate about how to look at the world. This debate focused on some big philosophical questions: Which should carry greater weight—faith or evidence? How should we think about the Universe and humankind? What is the best way to govern society? We call this debate the Enlightenment, and its center was in the Atlantic world, although many people in other places participated in it.

One of the main assertions being made during the Enlightenment was that free men should have a voice in governing themselves. These ideas of individual liberty and participatory government led to political revolutions that sought to take power from kings and emperors in favor of a larger political class of citizens. Some revolutions were led by a middle class that hoped to get new rights. Other revolutions featured demands from a working class seeking better lives. Still other revolutions were driven by enslaved people fighting for their liberty. These revolutions first occurred in areas around the Atlantic seaboard—including the United States, France, Haiti, and Latin America. But these new ideas soon spread and influenced other areas of the world.

Amid the tumult of these political revolutions, a new set of ideas emerged, called nationalism. Nationalism is the idea that a people should govern a state of their own. It’s tied to another important idea from this era: sovereignty, meaning self-rule. Nationalism played an important role in the creation of a Haitian nation, a French nation, an American nation, and many new nations in Latin America. But nationalism didn’t end with the Atlantic revolutions. Revolutionaries around the world seized on the ideas of sovereignty and nationalism and were inspired to fight for their own nations.

Industrialization

The liberal and national political revolutions of the long nineteenth century were also driven by economic change. New groups of people were emerging in many countries. These included a wealthy class who had money but didn’t have access to power, as well as new groups of workers who lived in cities and were paid wages for their labor. Both groups were partly a product of a social and economic revolution called industrialization.

The Industrial Revolution changed the way humans produced and distributed goods. Until the eighteenth century, we relied on human and animal labor, water and wind power, and burning wood to make and move what we needed. But by 1750, new sources of energy were discovered, most important, the burning of coal to produce steam to power machines. The use of fossil fuels—like coal—to power increasingly complex machines changed the way humans lived and worked. In 1500 CE, a single shirt required as much as 500 hours of human labor to produce. But steam engines automated aspects of weaving, sewing, and spinning yarn. With these advances, the amount of human labor required to produce a shirt dramatically decreased. More shirts (and many other goods) were soon available to more people for less money.

The Industrial Revolution also led to dramatic changes in human networks. For the first time, large numbers of people could travel long distances on steam-powered railroads and ships. This led to large and widespread migrations of tens of millions of people. At the same time, the telegraph allowed information to travel nearly instantaneously across long distances. This revolution not only affected human life on Earth but also the Earth itself, as it led to the pollution of air and water in ways that will last for millions of years.

Imperialism

Just as industrialization had both good and bad effects, the liberal revolutions had their limits as well. The very countries that enthusiastically embraced ideas of liberty and democracy—countries such as Britain, France, and the United States—were, during this period, building empires based on racial discrimination, exclusion, and exploitation.

Empires were a significant consequence of the era of revolutions. Sure, there had been empires before, but the new, oceanic empires of this era were industrialized. They used the power and sophistication of industry to build the ships, guns, and commodities that allowed them to invade new regions.

These industrial states also deployed the concepts of nationalism to build and justify empires. Nationalism drove some countries to compete with one another, and one way to compete was by seizing overseas territory and extracting natural resources. Liberal ideas sometimes justified imperialism. Their proponents argued that seizing foreign territories was acceptable because their goal was to “civilize and improve” the people living there. Unfortunately, the imperialists’ idea of improvement was usually less “how can we help?” and more “how can we change you to fit our needs?” Imperialist claims of racial superiority were also becoming powerful in this era, so colonial subjects were often seen and treated as inferior.

In part because of this racism, the inhabitants of colonies were not citizens of an empire. They were subjects who had few or no political rights. Their experiences varied from place to place and from person to person. We will see that people’s lives in Ghana, India, and China, for example, differed. But colonial subjects everywhere had enough in common that their shared set of experiences can be called colonialism.

The inhabitants of the colonies did not just accept this treatment, of course. Some people found ways to negotiate for slightly better treatment. Others believed they could adapt by imitating some parts of European society. Most people just tried to survive in an oppressive system, as people do. Many colonial subjects actively resisted colonial rule, with strategies including military action. More often, however, people resisted through quieter, hidden forms of resistance that helped them organize for the future.

Reform movements

Within industrialized societies, as well, people resisted both governments and economic change. Industrialization tended to concentrate wealth in the hands of business owners and investors. It also changed the type of work most people did. Increasingly, people worked for wages that were paid every week or month. Capitalism may have helped increase overall productivity in the world, but it also made working conditions harder for many people. Workers—including children—labored on farms, plantations, or in factories to increase profits. In response, many pushed for reforms. They called for an end to child labor, bad working conditions, and slavery. Reform movements also called for women’s rights. One type of reform proposed an alternative economic system called socialism, which promised to place more power in the hands of workers and to distribute wealth more equally.

Conclusion

Were the many revolutions of the long nineteenth century good or bad? Did they lead to progress, or did they cause suffering? There’s no easy answer. Each revolution changed the world, but not everybody was affected equally or in the same ways. For some, revolution brought new freedoms and new economic opportunities. For others, it brought oppression and suffering. But we shouldn’t treat each revolution in isolation. They were all part of a wider debate and struggle among people who sought benefits, either selfish or shared, and tried to shape the future—the society we live in today!