Towards modernisation

The last section of the book asks how the modern world was made. Two developments set the stage for 'modernisation': the Industrial Revolution, and political revolutions that turned subjects into citizens, starting with the American Revolution (1776 to 1781) and the French Revolution (1789 to 1794).

Industrialisation. Britain was the world's first industrial nation, and it was long thought to be the model every country followed. Historians now see it differently: each country learnt from others without copying any single model.

• In Britain, the first phase was built on coal and cotton textiles; railways came in a second phase.
• Russia, which industrialised much later (from the late nineteenth century), began with railways and heavy industry straight away.
• The role of the state and of banks differed from country to country.
• Britain's example also showed the costs: the hard lives of the labouring poor, especially child workers, damage to the environment, and epidemics of cholera and tuberculosis. Theme 7 shows how industrial poisoning later stirred mass protest in Japan.

Colonialism took several forms:

• Settler colonies, where Europeans settled in large numbers and took over the land: the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa.
• Direct imperial control, as in British rule in India, where a small number of foreign officials ruled a large population.
• Semi-colonies, like China in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where Britain, France, Germany, Russia, the USA and Japan meddled in its affairs and exploited its resources without taking over state power.
• Settlers, with a market-minded outlook, bought and sold everything, including land and water. The native peoples could not understand how anyone could own and sell the air or the sparkle of water; things could be gifted, not sold.

Nationalism. Almost everywhere, colonial rule was challenged by nationalist movements, though nationalism also arose where there was no colonial rule, as in western Europe and Japan. All nationalisms hold that power should rest with the people (popular sovereignty), which makes nationalism a modern idea. There are two broad kinds:

• Civic nationalism defines the nation by citizenship: sovereignty belongs to all people, whatever their language, ethnicity, religion or gender. Most western countries today define themselves this way.
• Ethnic or religious nationalism defines the nation by a shared language, religion or tradition. In a country with many groups, it may claim power for one 'chosen' people and treat minorities as lesser. Germany's ethnic nationalism, going back to the reaction against French occupation in 1806, had a long and troubling history.
• The two have competed across the world, including in modern India, China and Japan.

Different roads to modernity. Each society built its own version of modern life. Japan stayed free of colonial rule and industrialised fast; by 1910, primary school fees had largely ended and enrolment was universal. Its path brought tensions between democracy and militarism, and between 'tradition' and 'westernisation'. China resisted foreign exploitation and its own landed elite through peasant rebellion, reform and revolution; the Communist Party came to power in 1949, reduced inequality and spread education, but also used repression, and later embraced market principles to become an economic powerhouse.