#26 Transformation and Western Social Science

I explored the concept of ‘transformation’ in the previous blog and will continue to discuss this important concept here. Transformation is not a theme that has yet been taken up by the social sciences. Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our Time is a notable exception. This book is a classic, although it does not deal with transformation as on a global scale. Polanyi's The Great Transformation was written in 1944. It was concerned with the destruction of the previous 30 years and the deficiencies of the self-regulating economies created in the 19th century, which he argued were primary causes of the destruction after 1914. My concern is that all old societies, which includes China, India and the greater Middle East, needed to be transformed if they were to move into the new Industrial era which originated in Western Europe.

Transformation is a complex process. It offers a useful construct and an important explanatory opportunity as I will illustrate.

Here is a brief timeline of the period of transformation I am discussing:

Historically speaking, it is useful to understand transformation in two stages. The first stage encompasses those countries that began the process before 1914, that is:

-          In Europe, France the Netherlands and the UK who were the first Nations, over a period from two and half centuries from the beginning of colonisation in 1600.

-          Germany and Italy over the 19th century.

-          North America the USA also during the 19th century.

-          In Asia, Japan from the Meiji rebellion in the 1860s.

Before 1914 many old Empires attempting to defend themselves against the threat from European colonialization. They bought European-made arms but failed to realise the enormity of the changes that were necessary to transform their societies.

The second stage of the transformation to industrialisation began after the turmoil of the 1914 war, with the USSR after 1918, followed by China after 1949, then by South Korea and Singapore.

In this blog, I wish to ignore this second stage of global transformation and return to this stage in later blogs. The second stage remains at least as important as the first stage. The historical conditions for industrial transformation had changed and altered after the wars of 1914 to 1945. Here I focus on the early stages. 

We need to ask and understand what are the necessary conditions for a society to transform itself so that it can industrialise?  This question is perhaps one of the critical issues of history. In this blog, I examine what transformation entails for society and what conditions are necessary for this to occur.

The conditions of Transformation

The components needed for transformation include the following occurring more or less simultaneously:

1.      The reformation of ideas. Everywhere old ideas, in particular, religious frameworks are challenged. After much debate and turmoil, explanatory concepts become materialized. Relations between humanity, nature and the universe become scientific.

2.     The state was fundamentally altered. Ancient monarchies were overthrown and replaced by political systems which build in political, economic and social change.

3.     Societies become characterized by constant technological change.

4.     Private property becomes the accepted mode of accumulation, and nature herself become a commodity to be bought and sold.

These four activities had to occur more or less simultaneously if any country was to successfully move into industrialisation and capitalism. Historians have often seen each as a separate entity by themselves instead of examining any one activity in the context of the wider whole.

The consequences of transformation include:

a.      Rapid urbanisation and massive slum life where the majority eke out a living.

b.     Equally rapid population growth, death rates rise and birth rates increase.

c.      A new middle class of people and skilled artisans.

d.     New political turmoil as new classes demand a greater say in the affairs of the state.

e.     New social turmoil as old social axioms of living are questioned.

f.       An economy in permanent change, growth, and uncertainty as capitalism controls all levels of economic life.

We see a world unlike any that had occurred in history before emerges.

At its beginning in Europe was the destruction of the old ideas that held peoples together with the Reformation. Elsewhere the process outlined under components of Transformation had to occur together as Japan so ably illustrated in the second half of the 19th century.

Transformation and Industrialisation… Why the Process is so Difficult

Behind Europe's industrialisation was decades of violence and war with her neighbours. It was religious violence and turmoil that had begun the process. The British decapitated their King in 1649; 39 years later, under the combined forces of the English Lords and the Dutch monarchy, then King James the Second was overthrown, and parliament becomes dominant in matters of taxation, appointments, the royal succession, and the right to wage war. The 1689 Bill of Rights created elections for parliament and freedom of speech there. In essence, ancient rights and royal oligarchical rule through a monarch had been broken in England. The way had been prepared for constant political structural change over the coming centuries: the essential prerequisites for a constantly changing economy:  these were the key characteristics of transformation towards capitalism which would be replayed out in the years afterwards by country after country across the world.

The execution of King Charles I, by unknown artist. Text: "The most abhorrent outrageous execution, performed on the most serene and most grandly powerful Carl Stuart, king in Great Britain, France and Ireland etc. in London before Whitehall Palace, Tuesday 30th January [Julian] / 9th February [Gregorian] in the year 1649, between 2 and 3 pm." via Wikimedia Commons.

No societies willingly up-end their ancient communities in preparation for capitalism and industrialisation. Everywhere, leaders felt forced to do so; and even then, they did not understand just how complete the changes needed to be. New revolutionary leaders in Japan, Russia and China later led the way.  The movement towards capital meant changing every maxim, every ideal that people had held dear down the ages. It meant upending the political order, the state, the emperor, (where there was one) and the court that surrounded the state. It meant changing everything that had been valued and held dear by one generation to the next.

Of course, not everyone lived under an emperor; many peoples across the world lived nomadic lives as hunters and gatherers. Perhaps most peoples lived in terms of knowledge and technology that had prevailed for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. Every people had an idea of what was theirs and what was foreign; everyone had a means of trading goods with their neighbours. And everyone had religion, a basis for explaining nature and the wider world of the sun, the moon, and the stars. Religion everywhere provided the basis of ethics and human beings’ relations with each other and the wider universe. In short, being human involved living in civilisations of huge diversity. No human being willingly gave up what was familiar.

Yet the transformation demanded by a capitalistic and transformed society Europeans required exactly that: rethinking the world.

Transformation and Violence

To make meaningful the simple concept of transformation, I turn now to examine the violent forces of war and revolution from the middle 1750s to 1815. These violent events led to the break-up of the old political order in much of Europe, and to conditions that led inexorably towards a new industrial and capitalist order. I shall then attempt to explain why the North Americans and Japanese, and finally those in central Europe, successfully industrialised.

The core argument of Wealth and Power is that transformation into an industrial capitalist society is not a 'natural' process. Societies like Japan in the 19th century felt forced down this road of change to protect themselves from the egregious dangers they foresaw if they did not make the changes. Both Japan and China saw the Europeans and Americans as amoral barbarians who presented a dire threat to their civilisation.

European societies in the late 18th century felt threatened by each other. The old assumption that every society, nation, or kingdom had to fight for its survival meant that no peoples were safe from threats of invasion. Only the powerful survived and industrial transformation provided a defence.

As I have argued already, historians can tend to skate over these issues with the concept of 'modernisation'. Modernisation allows them to ignore the scale of the fundamental changes that every society had to make, and to this day continue to have to make, if they are to incorporate capitalism in its entirety.

Tawney, as we saw in earlier blogs, focused on the religious change that the Protestant Reformation introduced in Europe; how much of the old moral order had to be thrown out to allow in human greed. He might have gone further and added that some ancient social habits had to be thrown into the bin of history around marriage and gender equality: issues with which the most developed capitalist societies still struggle.

Here and in the following blogs, I explain just what transformation entailed: how war and political revolution were necessary to destroy ancient political orders. The wars and violence over the period 1750 to 1815 were the first stages in the unintended consequences or the necessary conditions that introduced industrial capitalism throughout the area.

These wars and the struggles of this period were overtly for European dominance, but unintentionally the events created the conditions for the transformation to capitalism across much of Europe

Britain, France and Spain had feared invasion from each other and were unable to move troops long distances to defend their colonies in case one or the other attacked them at home. In the 13 colonies along the East American coast, after the successful wars of independence, British loyalists moved north to Canada or south to the West Indies.

Domestic convicts from Britain at this time began to be sent to Australia in large numbers.

The colonial wars between the European colonising societies in the 50 years preceding the French Revolution in 1789 had been fought across the world, in the Indies and the Americas, as well as in Europe. The French, Dutch, Portuguese and the British had fought each other almost continuously.

Wars are messy businesses; very often it is difficult to see any perspective behind the smoke of violence. The Europeans were fighting each other for colonial dominance. In the end, they had all lost the North American continent to the English settlers. And the French had been defeated by the British in the Seven Years War.

So, the French Revolution that erupted in 1789 did not occur in a vacuum. The ancient French feudal king remained as the total leader despite the growth of French colonial wealth and a new middle class of slavers, shipbuilders, West Indian traders and the beginnings of new towns. In other words, the French social and economic structure had changed significantly while the political structure remained unaltered. The revolution destroyed the power of the ancient monarch and paved the way for a new power structure more suitable to the conditions of an aggressive global power pushing her way around the world.

The revolution in Haiti in 1795, six years later, was the first successful rising of enslaved people against their masters, sending shivers of fear throughout all the West Indian planters in adjoining islands. France refused to recognise the new state, and Haiti went from being the richest West Indian island to being the poorest. The Haitian Revolution led to the outlawing of trade, but not the end of slavery in the Americas.

The French Revolution led to Napoleon and 20 years of war and turmoil across much of Europe. The old feudal powers and the Holy Roman Empire lost control of all their levers of power; the ancient Russia empire remained standing in 1815. By the time the smoke had cleared, and the fighting had ended, the shape of Europe had fundamentally altered. Napoleon had tried to unify Europe into a single entity; he failed. It would be another 150 years before that European unification would be made again. Napoleon had secularised the ecclesiastical bishops. He left behind an infrastructure of law and politics which prepared the Europeans for the huge transformation from feudal power into an industrial, urban capitalistic environment.

“Europe in 1812. Political situation before Napoleon's Russian Campaign” by Alexander Altenhof, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“Europe 1815. Political situation after the Congress of Vienna in June 1815.” By Alexander Altenhof, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

My next blog will continue to look at this period of global turmoil and the transformation of societies towards industrial capital.

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