The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century

by Jürgen Osterhammel, Patrick Camiller

Overview

A panoramic global history of the nineteenth century

A monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation of the World offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jürgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and towering erudition. He examines the powerful and complex forces that drove global change during the "long nineteenth century," taking readers from New York to New Delhi, from the Latin American revolutions to the Taiping Rebellion, from the perils and promise of Europe's transatlantic labor markets to the hardships endured by nomadic, tribal peoples across the planet. Osterhammel describes a world increasingly networked by the telegraph, the steamship, and the railways. He explores the changing relationship between human beings and nature, looks at the importance of cities, explains the role slavery and its abolition played in the emergence of new nations, challenges the widely held belief that the nineteenth century witnessed the triumph of the nation-state, and much more.

This is the highly anticipated English edition of the spectacularly successful and critically acclaimed German book, which is also being translated into Chinese, Polish, Russian, and French. Indispensable for any historian, The Transformation of the World sheds important new light on this momentous epoch, showing how the nineteenth century paved the way for the global catastrophes of the twentieth century, yet how it also gave rise to pacifism, liberalism, the trade union, and a host of other crucial developments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691169804
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2015
Series:	America in the World , #20
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	1192
Sales rank:	450,756
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 2.20(d)

About the Author

Jürgen Osterhammel is professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of Konstanz. He is the coauthor of Globalization: A Short History and a coeditor of A History of the World.

Table of Contents

Preface xi
Introduction xv
PART ONE: APPROACHES
I Memory and Self-Observation: The Perpetuation of the Nineteenth Century 3
1Visibility and Audibility 5
2Treasuries of Memory and Knowledge 7
3Observation, Description, Realism 17
4Numbers 25
5News 29
6Photography 39
II Time: When Was the Nineteenth Century? 45
1Chronology and the Coherence of the Age 45
2Calendar and Periodization 49
3Breaks and Transitions 52
4The Age of Revolution, Victorianism, Fin de Siécle 58
5Clocks and Acceleration 67
III Space: Where Was the Nineteenth Century? 77
1Space and Time 77
2Metageography: Naming Spaces 78
3Mental Maps: The Relativity of Spatial Perspective 86
4Spaces of Interaction: Land and Sea 94
5Ordering and Governing Space 104
6Territoriality, Diaspora, Borders 107
PART TWO: PANORAMAS
IV Mobilities 117
1Magnitudes and Tendencies 117
2Population Disasters and the Demographic Transition 124
3The Legacy of Early Modern Migrations: Creoles and Slaves 128
4Penal Colony and Exile 133
5Ethnic Cleansing 139
6I nternal Migration and the Changing Slave Trade 144
7Migration and Capitalism 154
8Global Motives 164
V Living Standards: Risk and Security in Material Life 167
1The Standard of Living and the Quality of Life 167
2Life Expectancy and "Homo hygienicus" 170
3Medical Fears and Prevention 178
4Mobile Perils, Old and New 185
5Natural Disasters 197
6Famine 201
7Agricultural Revolutions 211
8Poverty and Wealth 216
9Globalized Consumption 226
VI Cities: European Models and Worldwide Creativity 241
1The City as Norm and Exception 241
2Urbanization and Urban Systems 249
3Between Deurbanization and Hypergrowth 256
4Specialized Cities, Universal Cities 264
5The Golden Age of Port Cities 275
6Colonial Cities, Treaty Ports, Imperial Metropolises 283
7Internal Spaces and Undergrounds 297
8Symbolism, Aesthetics, Planning 311
VII Frontiers: Subjugation of Space and Challenges to Nomadic Life 322
1Invasions and Frontier Processes 322
2The North American West 331
3South America and South Africa 347
4Eurasia 356
5Settler Colonialism 368
6The Conquest of Nature: Invasions of the Biosphere 375
VIII Imperial Systems and Nation-States: The Persistence of Empires 392
1Great-Power Politics and Imperial Expansion 392
2Paths to the Nation-State 403
3What Holds Empires Together? 419
4Empires: Typology and Comparisons 429
5Central and Marginal Cases 434
6Pax Britannica 450
7Living in Empires 461
IX International Orders, Wars, Transnational Movements: Between Two World Wars 469
1The Thorny Path to a Global System of States 469
2Spaces of Power and Hegemony 475
3Peaceful Europe, Wartorn Asia and Africa 483
4Diplomacy as Political Instrument and Intercultural Art 493
5Internationalisms and the Emergence of Universal Norms 505
X Revolutions: From Philadelphia via Nanjing to Saint Petersburg 514
1Revolutions—from Below, from Above, from Unexpected Directions 514
2The Revolutionary Atlantic 522
3The Great Turbulence in Midcentury 543
4Eurasian Revolutions, Fin de Siècle 558
XI The State: Minimal Government, Performances, and the Iron Cage 572
1Order and Communication: The State and the Political 572
2Reinventions of Monarchy 579
3Democracy 593
4Bureaucracies 605
5Mobilization and Discipline 616
6Self-Strengthening: The Politics of Peripheral Defensive 625
7State and Nationalism 629
PART THREE: THEMES
XII Energy and Industry: Who Unbound Prometheus, When, and Where? 637
1Industrialization 638
2Energy Regimes: The Century of Coal 651
3Paths of Economic Development and Nondevelopment 658
4Capitalism 667
XIII Labor: The Physical Basis of Culture 673
1The Weight of Rural Labor 675
2Factory, Construction Site, Office 685
3Toward Emancipation: Slaves, Serfs, Peasants 697
4The Asymmetry of Wage Labor 706
XIV Networks: Extension, Density, Holes 710
1Communications 712
2Trade 724
3Money and Finance 730
XV Hierarchies: The Vertical Dimension of Social Space 744
1Is a Global Social History Possible? 744
2Aristocracies in (Moderate) Decline 750
3Bourgeois and Quasi-bourgeois 761
XVI Knowledge: Growth, Concentration, Distribution 779
1World Languages 781
2Literacy and Schooling 788
3The University as a Cultural Export from Europe 798
4Mobility and Translation 808
5Humanities and the Study of the Other 814
XVII Civilization and Exclusion 826
1The "Civilized World" and Its "Mission" 826
2Slave Emancipation and White Supremacy 837
3Antiforeignism and "Race War" 855
4Anti-Semitism 865
XVIII Religion 873
1Concepts of Religion and the Religious 873
2Secularization 880
3Religion and Empire 887
4Reform and Renewal 894
Conclusion: The Nineteenth Century in History 902
1Self-Diagnostics 902
2Modernity 904
3Again: The Beginning or End of a Century 906
4Five Characteristics of the Century 907
Abbreviations 921
Notes 923
Bibliography 1021
Index 1119

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Jürgen Osterhammel is the Braudel of the nineteenth century. His global panorama is a triumph of the historian's craft. In elegant and lucid prose, he examines, across the entire world, the Janus face of the era: both distant past and yet also origin of our contemporary condition."—Jonathan Sperber, author of Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life

"The comparison with Braudel's magnum opus is not misplaced. Osterhammel's The Transformation of the World is a brilliant work of historical imagination, of absolutely show-stealing erudition, and of wide-apertured original insight! Reflecting on space and time, empire and slavery, war and peace, economy and diplomacy, monarchy and opera, and much else, Osterhammel changes our whole understanding of the nineteenth century."—Helmut W. Smith, Vanderbilt University

"This big, kaleidoscopic book follows the many strands of change over the course of a long century of transformation. It belongs on a short list of key resources for understanding the origins of many of the challenges we face today."—John E. Wills, Jr., University of Southern California

"Arguably the most important book by a German historian to be published in the past quarter century. It is a truly magisterial account of the global history of the nineteenth century, powerfully argued and beautifully rendered."—Sven Beckert, author of The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896

Editorial Reviews

"Writing meaningfully about global history is ambitious at best, but this work on the 19th century succeeds. . . . Nearly every page offers new insights about world history and specific countries' global contexts. This book is eminently suitable for advanced general readers and undergraduates and should be mandatory reading for all graduate students of modern history as a way to set their own specializations in a broader context."

Choice

"Jürgen Osterhammel, Winner of the 2017 Toynbee Prize, Toynbee Prize Foundation"

"Jürgen Osterhammel, Winner of the 2012 Gerda Henkel Prize, of the Gerda Henkel Foundation"

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2014"

"One of Project Syndicate’s Best Reads in 2017 (chosen by Mark Leonard)"

"One of Bloomberg Businessweek’s Best Books of 2014, chosen by Satiyajit Das"

"One of Marginal Revolution.com's (Tyler Cowen) Best Non-Fiction Books of 2014"

From the Publisher

"In this sweeping panorama, Osterhammel captures the dramatic shifts in how people lived and understood life during the nineteenth century. . . . Osterhammel offers a rich 'global history' of the century, one that features the West prominently but avoids Eurocentrism with vivid portraits of non-Western peoples and societies."

Foreign Affairs