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Era 6 Overview Video
Era 6 Overview Video
The “long nineteenth century” was an age of revolutions. How did these transformations create the modern world in which we live today?
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
What does the video list as features of the modern world that came into existence during this period?
What were the contradictory political results for the people of Senegal in this period? How did this reflect bigger changes in communities in this period?
How does this video claim that communities were changing in this period?
How did the Industrial Revolution change life during Era 6?
What happened to systems of weights, measures, and qualities in this period?
What happened to global CO2 emissions during this period?
: Colby, have you ever wondered why we both speak English
: even though we're from
: completely different hemispheres?
: And nowhere near England?
: It's weird, right?
: It is weird.
: It's also imperialism.
: Um, Kim?
: Can I borrow your shoe?
: What for?
: I'll tell you later.
: (music playing)
: Hi, I'm Kim Lochner and along with Colby Burnett,
: we're introducing Era 6, the long 19th century.
: In our story, or stories, of human history so far,
: the world of 1750 CE seems a long way
: from the first eras that came before.
: But life for people in 1750 wasn't really all that different
: from the lives of their great-grandparents,
: or great-great-grandparents, or even more distant ancestors.
: Most of the things that we think of as modern
: didn't yet exist.
: Most people were still farmers, fishers, or herders.
: Few had paying jobs as we would think of them today.
: People interacted with only members of their own town
: or village or some neighboring communities
: for almost their entire lives.
: Those who wanted to travel
: had to embark on camels, or horses, or sailing ships.
: More often, they traveled by foot.
: The telegraph hadn't been invented yet.
: Mail service was limited to a privileged few.
: The idea of a democratic government--
: or even of a nation of citizens--
: did not yet exist.
: By 1914, however,
: many features of the modern, connected world
: had come to exist.
: The telephone and telegraph had been invented.
: People could communicate rapidly across vast distances
: for the first time.
: There were early types of airplanes,
: and plenty of trains and even--
: in some places-- cars to move people and goods.
: Many people were still farmers,
: but others worked in factories or in business offices
: like they do today.
: They earned a wage for their work,
: and they used that money to buy their food
: from grocery stores and market sellers.
: And while there were many kings and shahs and emperors,
: people increasingly believed themselves
: to be citizens of a nation,
: and that that nation should have a state,
: and that that state should be independent and ruled
: at least somewhat democratically.
: For these reasons,
: many historians view the long 19th century--
: a period from about 1750 to 1914--
: as a time of revolutionary change.
: But what really changed between 1750 and 1914?
: How did the world we live in come into being?
: What engines of change created our modern world?
: To answer these questions, we must look
: at long 19th century revolutionary change
: from the varied perspectives of people who lived in big cities,
: small towns, and farms around the world.
: Let's start with the French colony of Senegal,
: in West Africa.
: Often ignored by world histories,
: this African colony participated in, and was affected by,
: some of the momentous events and trends of the day.
: It was a colony that formed around one major trade--
: in enslaved people.
: After abolition, the main trade was gum arabic,
: used in the industrial cloth industry.
: As the locals involved in this trade scrambled for profit,
: they participated in revolutions in France.
: They found opportunity in the 1789 and 1848 uprisings
: against French aristocrats as an opportunity
: to take on French companies that dominated the gum trade.
: They also fought for political representation,
: eventually winning the right to elect one member
: of the French Parliament.
: But they also increasingly came under the authoritarian rule
: of French imperialism.
: So while the Senegalese are not found
: in the stories of revolutionary change,
: they were in fact participating in the making
: of the modern world.
: The origins of modernity,
: or the coming of the modern world,
: was a series of revolutions that occurred
: between 1750 and 1914.
: These transformations arguably began
: with a shifting sense of what a community is,
: who is a member, and how it should be run.
: Communities, in this era,
: were changing in two contradictory ways.
: The first was the rise of vast empires
: made up of lots of smaller states.
: The inhabitants of one state became a ruling class,
: and all the others became subjects of the empire.
: Subjects had fewer rights and less voice
: in how they were governed.
: These empires promoted inequalities
: that still exist today.
: They led to modern categories like "race" and "ethnicity."
: But the other, and in many ways even more significant,
: transformation in how people began to organize themselves
: was the idea of a nation that emerged at this time.
: Nations are different than empires
: because they are made up of a great majority of people
: that are aware of having a common identity
: as members of that nation.
: As members of the nation, they begin to think
: that they should have certain rights
: to help govern the nation,
: to be citizens rather than subjects.
: Because of this, two ideas about community--
: a slightly evolved view of empire
: and a new view of nation--
: grew and competed during the long 19th century.
: Changes in how communities organize themselves
: may not have been the most dramatic revolution of the era.
: Changes in technology also began to transform
: how people lived in most places around the world.
: The Industrial Revolution may have been
: the single most dramatic transformation
: in production and distribution in the history of the world,
: certainly since humans learned how to farm.
: Using fossil fuels as energy,
: people put machines to work in factories and on farms
: producing vast amounts of food and finished products.
: Many people, displaced by machines,
: moved from farms to cities to work in new factories
: making goods to sell to others.
: With new industrial machines and the use of fossil fuels,
: farms and factories could produce
: far more goods and products.
: More and more, adults, and sometimes children,
: went to work for businesses that paid them wages--
: wages they could use to buy and then consume
: the goods and products from factories and industrial farms.
: Workers and business owners alike became participants
: in the capitalist economic system
: that dominates the world today.
: Industrial technology also allowed people and things
: to move around more rapidly.
: New inventions such as the train and the steamship,
: and later the car and the airplane,
: let people travel as tourists, ship goods long distances,
: and even migrate to new nation-states.
: Other technologies allowed them to communicate rapidly as well,
: via phone and telegraph.
: These technologies together, in this era,
: helped to create the modern, global network
: that characterizes our era.
: The developments of the long 19th century
: also encouraged communities across the world
: to adopt some common practices or ways of doing things.
: We call bringing a common and established
: size, weight, quality, or criteria to something
: "standardization."
: Standardization increased
: as both industrialization and empires expanded.
: Consider the example of shoe size.
: Once upon a time, a cobbler would measure your foot
: to make a shoe that fit that foot.
: With industrialization, shoes sizes became standard.
: The foot now had to fit a common shoe size.
: The demand to create common standards
: put pressure on people's common or local ways of doing things.
: We continue to see standardization today.
: In fact, I'll bet you took a standardized test this year.
: We find evidence for the transformations
: of the long 19th century
: in the documentary history of the age.
: In constitutions and declarations,
: in patent letters for new inventions,
: and in advertisements for an increasing range
: of consumer goods,
: and in the standardization of things that impact daily life.
: We also find evidence in quantitative data.
: Industrialization and standardization,
: for example, is extremely measurable.
: For instance, if we look at the CO2 emissions
: from 1750 to today,
: we can see that they have gone
: from 280 to over 400 parts per million.
: That's the highest level in the last two million years.
: While CO2 can actually be cycled out of the atmosphere
: relatively quickly, as it absorbs
: into vegetation and the soil, the impact of human activities
: can last for hundreds of years.
: This chart gives us one picture of how the Industrial Revolution
: changed the environment in which we live,
: as viewed through the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere.
: Your daily life is affected by many of these changes.
: Your cell phone, the lights in your house,
: and pretty much everything you own were only made possible
: by the Industrial Revolution.
: Most of them, along with your daily food,
: were probably bought with wages
: earned in a capitalist economic system.
: You are probably a citizen of a nation-state
: with a government that both guarantees and limits
: your personal rights and freedoms.
: These are all products of the long 19th century,
: an era of great change,
: an era in which the modern world was forged.
: Thinking about all the changes that occurred
: during this time period, ask yourself--
: were these changes shared equally across the world?
: Who did these changes happen to?
: And when?
: How were they experienced differently by different people?
: Did everyone benefit from these equally?
: Did some bear the burden of change more than others?
: Historians use evidence to answer these questions.
: Their answers are not all the same.
: We hope you'll weigh some of these questions and answers
: and perhaps create your own to help you think
: about the world in which we live.
: Wow, that's...
: It's a lot.
: I mean, like, what if they decide
: industrialization was the wrong way to go?
: It's not like they can turn it off.
: Colby, remember, we talked about this.
: End on a high note.
: Uh, what about if I just give you your shoe back?
: Well, that works, yeah.