#24 A Transformative Timeline: Transformation and Destruction
These blogs will now change direction. For now, I leave the variations in colonial invasions behind and move on to some of the key consequences for the non-Western world. Now, I focus on the destructive elements mentioned in the title of these blogs and the transformative elements too.
The twin historical forces of colonialism and capitalism ‘destroyed’ much of the ancient social, economic, ideological and political systems of the world and transformed it. Today we call this ‘progress’. Progress did not happen all at once, of course. People, states, and governments resisted over long periods, but in the end, most peoples were overwhelmed. Still, the remnants of the old persist under the aegis of the Taliban or Isis. But, the tides of history are not on their side.[1]
In this blog and the following three, I examine the two key concepts of ‘transformation’ and ‘destruction’ in global history. Transformation and destruction are the second pair of concepts which make up the title of my global story. Both concepts are rarely central to either national or global histories and they appear even more rarely in social science. Historians use the word ‘modernisation’ in several forms; while social scientists, especially economists, use ‘development’ equally in a multitude of forms.
Social science has development studies, and historians have economic and social history as sub-sectors of their discipline. Development studies in a few universities does have a substantial role, Sussex University being one example, where they do good work mainly on contemporary issues. Students who do study economic history will find a rich literature mainly dealing with the history of industrialisation as if this was the natural order of things, rather than a unique experience of the world. My point is a simple one: colonialism over 450 years – 1492 to 1950, to be more exact – destroyed much of the old social, political and economic order. In addition to histories of wealth and power, the concepts of transformation and destruction break across all western-based disciplines and boundaries to provide a unique perspective on global change and development.
I hope to offer an intervention across disciplines and argue that transformation and destruction ‘ought’ to be significant conceptual tools in many disciplines studying historical and societal phenomena. This and the next three blogs explore these two concepts in various dimensions and then the blogs that follow utilise them as we continue to traverse history.
My concern, simply put, is that the historical movement of any peoples away from their old society and its morals practised over centuries, and into a world where they can compete and live involves the destruction of the old and transformation to the new on an unprecedented scale. Words like ‘modernisation’ simply confuse the trajectory and fail to understand what has happened. The destruction of old ways for many peoples is like a volcano destroying everything that was held near and dear. I hope to capture the move into capitalism or socialism through the concept of ‘transformation’ which involves adopting an understanding from below, that is from the perspective of the peoples moving or resisting.
Today peoples don’t have the choice of maintaining their ancient ways of life. Whether nomads, or small tribal agriculturalists, or great empires of the past, modern secular capitalism or socialism are the two offerings available. Expressed so starkly, it seems simple, but the process is not at all easy; people everywhere resist and continue to resist. Examples abound, in the West, sexual mores are the last bastion of the old principles; in the rest of the world sexual mores are just one part of the rapid movement destroying the ‘old ways’. The most dynamic resistance is the significant numbers of peoples of the Islamic faith who resist to this day. From North Africa across the Islamic world moving East through to Afghanistan, great movements of people are violently resisting. They have been designated as terrorists. No attempts have been made to ask why they violently resist. Their old ways of life have been destroyed, and they don’t wish to have a transformed new life. We have failed so far to find the tools to understand this process.
The Transformation in Western Europe
In past blogs, I have discussed some of the key issues that transformed Western European societies as they moved towards industrial urban capitalism. R. H. Tawney emphasised the consequences of the new Protestant religion on its older sister, Catholicism. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Europeans experienced incessant internal religious wars over this two-hundred-year period where Protestants fought Catholics for the ‘true’ religion.
The Islamic world in the late 20th and 21st century is fighting parallel issues. A similar search for true faith is ongoing. Over the times of these earlier conflicts in Europe, the ancient European feudal order was torn asunder and a new world, one more secular and more material was born. The consequences were the transformation of the religious, social, economic and political frameworks in Britain, France and the Netherlands. There are thousands of books on this history, largely examining different specific events of the time. The historically simplified concept is the term 'the Reformation', which by itself does not do justice to the enormity of change.
Very few books see the process of change in society as a whole; though Tawney is an exception who clearly understood the changes as revolutionary: the destruction of the ancient regime and a transformation to the new.
Once readers grasp the events of global history in this way, it is necessary to understand that all peoples that decided to ‘industrialise’ their social order would have to undergo parallel processes - namely to materialise their social thinking. This meant destroying a large proportion of the principles and values of their old order. It is difficult to exaggerate the enormity of the changes that were and still are necessary.
Destruction in Western Europe
The years from 1750 to 1815 were a time in Europe of intense destruction, wars, revolution and expanded colonisation, all of which prepared the path in different ways for the societal transformation and industrialisation of the 19th century on a global scale. The engine of colonisation across the world and industrialisation in Europe at this stage of world history was the new expanding European powers. As we can see from this brief timeline from some key moments during this period when destruction and transformation moved side by side:
The British East India Company took control of Bengal and destroyed the central Mogul empire that ruled the Indian continent in 1757
The American European settlers seized political power in 1776
France lost political control of its key colonies after 1789
The French Revolution overthrew the feudal monarchy in 1793
The enslaved peoples of Saint Domingo successfully threw out the French settlers in 1795
The rise of Napoleon and his wars across Europe and Russia from 1793-1815, provided the initial destruction of war, alongside the beginning of the transformation of great empires
The wars that followed the French Revolution under Napoleon devastated Europe. This blog examines how all this turmoil prepared the way for the industrialisation that followed.
Britain, France and the Netherlands were the first European societies to make the initial sets of transformational changes to their social economic and political fabric over the years roughly from 1600 to 1815. Nobody at the time could have guessed that the following 200 years would find the most of world following suit. Germany, Japan and North and South America were next in line in the 19th century.
Blog 28 and onwards will briefly examine some of the key elements during the years from 1815 to 1914 that created the first industrial urban capitalist world. The British, final victors of the wars that preceded this period, became the leading global nation-state. The 19th century can be understood as the second part of the transformative process. British industrial capitalism began to create an integrated world system based on industrial production, world trade and a financial system to match. Britain aimed to dominate much of the world just as the USA aims to today.
Colonisation and the threat of Destruction
During the 19th century, many non-colonised empires outside of Europe began to understand the threat that Europe presented to their wellbeing and their future. Many attempted to copy European weapons, and some even attempted to similarly transform themselves. Japan succeeded, while the Ottoman Empire tried but failed and was consequently destroyed. Future blogs examine the example of Japan’s industrialisation success story and compare it with many other failures.
Japan both made the transition to both an industrial society and readied herself to colonise soon after. This contrasts with the Ottoman Empire that failed to make the political changes to its preindustrial system of power and control. In a later blog on Japan, I illustrate just how important this latter breakup of dynastic monarchy was. After Japan’s breakthrough, there was a gap in time.
Stalin also understood in the late 1920s that the new USSR had either to catch up, which meant pursuing industrialisation, or it would be destroyed. As Stalin says of the task of industrialising the USSR:
“you know we inherited from the past a technical backward impoverished and ruined country. Ruined by four years of imperialist war and ruined again by three years of civil war, a country with a semi-literate population... With isolated industrial oases in a sea of dwarf peasant farms, such was the country we inherited from the past. The task was to transform this country from its mediaeval darkness to modern industrial and mechanized agriculture… Either we solve this problem is the shortest possible time and consolidate socialism in our country or we do not ….we will lose our independence and become a stake in the game of the imperialist powers”
Source: Alexander Finnegan 13/8/19, Quora 3/8/20. National Archives, Heroes and Villains; Stalin and Industrialisation. Stalin’s understanding of the task confronting USSR and the new regime
Not till after 1945 did the rest of the world begin to try to catch up. Catching up was not an option. Societies soon discovered that once they were colonised they were impoverished. Industrial urban capitalism was a rapacious system: either you joined, or you were defeated and then used.
Later blogs will begin to sketch out the forces that were unleashed, which began to draw the new nation-states into a global confrontation, which 30 years later transformed the world system a second time.
A Transformative Timeline
I use the concept of transformation in these blogs as a process. Once begun, the process takes decades and more to work through any society. The timeline presented below summarises some of the beginnings of changes societies underwent as they began to break away from their ancient feudal and pre-capitalist anchors.
a) The first peoples to transform their societies were the Protestant western Europeans. They have taken by far the longest, as they were the first to move. Each European nation-state has had its own trajectory. Britain, France and the Netherlands formed the first stage, from the 1600s to 1815. It is worth noting that the Catholic-dominated states - Spain and Portugal – were the first to create colonies but were unable to create an urban industrial society until well into the 20th century. Equally, the newly liberated Latin American Catholic-dominated states likewise failed to industrialise in the 19th century.
b) The same process for Germany, largely Protestant, begins with the Napoleonic wars. Germany becoming a single nation-state was a necessary condition, so she had to be unified in the 1870s.
c) The corresponding American transformation began at the time of political independence in 1763. The new regime rejected a centralised monarchical society. The move into industrialisation was rapid at the beginning of the 19th century. It was not completed until the entire continent was conquered at the end of the 19th century. The Americans and much of the southern states had a relatively easy time; there was no old order to cast aside. By killing the indigenous societies, they opened the way towards capital-based industrialisation, like the Australian and New Zealand settlers.
d) Japan’s Meiji rebellion overthrowing the ancient feudal state in 1868 begins the transformation, and stage one is completed by the end of the century when Japan defeats the Russian navy in 1903.
e) The rest of the world had to wait until after 1945. Both independent states and empires failed to create sufficient changes or did not have options as colonies. Many made serious attempts, but none - except for the Japanese - overthrew the central authority, kings or monarchs, of their old order.
We can broadly see that transformation involves at least three processes, which for any society are revolutionary:
1. Politically, it involves overthrowing the ancient ruling systems, often monarchs, and moving towards a secular state apparatus, which has taken several forms.
2. Economically, it involves moving toward a science-based system of production, incorporating the latest science and technology. Included in this is an education system for the people.
3. Socially, over time, societies have been turned upside down as the social structure has radically changed. For instance, accepted ways of handling life and death, marriage and everything in between have been challenged and largely overthrown.
Within this definition, transformation is a near-total process, at least politically and economically. That is why the process has been so destructive of ancient ways. In the 19th century, many societies faced by western aggression attempted a partial economic transformation without the political element. Russia is a good example.
Social transformation has nearly always lagged behind.
In social terms, an industrial urban capitalist society automatically created a new dynamic in the social structure. People begin to travel more widely, infant mortality rates fall, the age of marriage rises as women are formally educated. Without formal plans, the structure of social life changes.
Women everywhere begin to demand rights that would have been unthinkable in past ages. This discussion here obviously simplifies complex social processes of change. Everywhere there is fervent debate on matters of sexual behaviour, marriage arrangements, and very much more. Everything that was once considered fixed and beautiful is thrown onto the dust heap of history as new means to conduct social life is discussed and altered. I have Karl Marx to thank for making this process so clear!
There seems to be a definite lag in terms of social changes long after society has become fully industrialised and has overthrown its ancient centralised political authority. The lag in time can be for some societies a few decades and others a much longer period.
[1] The issues of the Taliban and the other Islamic movements across Central Asia and much of Africa requires deeper analysis than I can manage here. These movements have many variants. The one thing they do have in common is a deep sense of resistance and a desire to maintain a precapitalistic religious frame of refence to their world.
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Before 1815, there had been no global world power. Today in the 21st century we have become used to living with a single dominant power. We are so used to this fact that no one questions it. It is possible that ancient China might have decided to become such a power; she had the technical shipbuilding knowledge, but she showed no interest. A world power needed a superior military force, a vibrant economy to support its military might, a navy able to travel across the world, and some purpose that encompassed the world.