Customer Reviews
Brilliant study of the long 19th century - By: William Podmore, 06 Jun 2007 
In this outstanding book, Professor Bayly studies the world crises of 1776-1820 & 1848-65, & the great acceleration of 1890-1914, when imperial rivalries, industrialisation & urbanisation really took off.
He allows, "Lenin's view that what we are calling here the great acceleration after 1890 was rootedin the uneven development of capitalism at a global level still has something to recommend it."
He accepts that empires were based on the drive for profits: "Classic Marxist & liberal theories of economic change have emphasised the rationality of expanding capitalism. On this theory, the aim of Western expansion was to seize resources & subordinate labour. This is truein great measure."
He shows how empires benefited the ruling classes of the imperial powers by exploiting the labour power of the world's workers & peasants. "The argument that European growth helped hold down living standards elsewhere works well for many areas of the incipient poor colonized `south' which became raw material exporters to the rich `north'. This is clear if one examines the figures for the distribution of profits from some of the great nineteenth-century cash crops, such as raw cotton, hides, jute, cocoa, & palm oil. In all these cases, it was the overseas shippers, insurers, carriers & vendorsin Europe & North America who took the vast proportion of `value added' to a quantity of producein world trade. Local African, Asian, or South American merchants, let alone the peasant-producers, got only a very small percentage of the profits. On the other side, developing economies were forced to buyin at high cost the machinery for processing these agricultural raw materials. Thus the terms of trade were very much to the disadvantage of the `south' throughout the nineteenth-century, & actually deteriorated as more relatively poor areas became producers of basic export crops."
Ruling classes gained, by impoverishing the masses. "Indeed, it can be suggested that the stasisin Europe wasin part the product of the annexation to itself of a huge extra-European hinterland which could only be governed by force & conservatism. At the beginning of the nineteenth-century, empire-builders had argued that their brutal conquest paved the way for the rise of civilisation, trade, & humane governmentin erstwhile barbarous states. Asia & Africa would be transformed by Christianity, utilitarian government, the doctrine of the rights of man, & perhaps by American freedoms. The situationin 1900 hardly seemed to bear out these predictions. The urban population throughout the British & French empiresin Asia & North Africa remained stubbornly stuck at about 10 percent of the total, barely changed from the precolonial figure, & standards of living may even have fallen over the previous century. Anecdotal evidence collected by the first generation of Asian & African nationalists asserted that many once-prosperous bodies of peasants & artisans were actually worse off & more dependent on magnates than they had beenin 1800."
He concludes, "intensified rivalry between the great, technologically armed European powers was a critical reason for the great leap forward of European empires after 1870. ... The `great acceleration' - the dramatic speeding up of global social, intellectual, & economic change after about 1890 - set loose a series of conflicts across the world which quite suddenly, & not necessarily predictably, became unmanageablein 1913-14. This was undoubtedly a European Great War. Yet it was also a world war and,in particular, a worldwide confrontation between Britain & Germany. As many contemporaries acknowledged, this was a war which had its rootsin Mesopotamia & Algeria, Tanganyika & the Caucasus, as well as on the Franco-German & German-Russian frontiers. In one sense, Lenin was right when he argued that the First World War was an `imperialist war'. Economic, political, & cultural rivalriesin the Balkans, Asia, & Africa were central causes of a conflict which was internationalin character."
Not unusually nowadays, good historians acknowledge that the great Marxists saw things more clearly than their enemies did.
The Birth of the Modern World - By: , 04 Oct 2004 For someone who studied this period of history for my 'A'-levels I was very impressed by this book.
It brought back to me (and to life) the twists & turns of a periodin world history that saw the global economy develop (with Britain playing a crucial role) & factors that really set the scene for how the twentieth century panned-out.
I believe this book could be seen as a landmark publication for this era that is scholarly, readable & informative without being too 'in-depth'.
Top book for the period.
