The Eurocentric idea of the inevitable rise of western Europe to dominion over the rest of the world in the last few centuries cannot satisfactorily be explained without the included proponents of fortuitous circumstance and brutal colonization which, among other proceedings, led to industrialization. Modernization arising from industrialization, in turn, sparked a series of contingent events which led to European control of trade, economy, and industry throughout the known world, through no superiority of the European nations. The speed at which this took place was unique throughout history as global exploration and colonization spread ideas, goods, and wealth, but also disease, war, and poverty. Throughout this paper, it will be shown that the chance circumstances of the west’s rise to power since the end of the 18th century has had mixed results affecting countless facets of both history and modern life which we cannot yet fully comprehend today.
In the late 18th century, many nations, including France, England, China and India, were reaching a point of necessary outward expansion to feed their growing populations, burning forest lands for fuel and using that newly deforested area for agrarian purposes. In confined and heavily populated areas of the world, like western Europe, this outward expansion had begun centuries before with the colonization and enslavement of peoples in the New World. Moreover, this led to imported silver, in addition to goods like sugar and chocolate, which were immediately in high demand across Europe and further abroad. This cheap land and free labor enabled Europeans to shift a portion of the working class away from farming, as surplus food could be shipped in from the colonies while they focused on pursuits like overtaking India in textile production, mining coal (of which England was fortune enough to have tons underground) and developing steam power.
Additional tariffs on imported Indian cloth were the nail in the coffin for India’s proto-industrialization, from which they would not recover until the 20th century, but when England surpassed its own need for cotton, they forced India into a free trade network to maximize profits from the weavers they had sent back to the farms and fields of rural India.
Meanwhile, the East India Trading Company had begun spending increasing amounts of silver on Chinese tea, depleting English treasuries as the beverage increased in popularity. To combat the loss of silver, opium from India was shipped to China by the English, Dutch and French, then introduced inexpensively to the Chinese to procure a market of addicts to the narcotic (Marks, 120). This led to multiple Opium Wars which China lost, opening themselves up to Europe to be divvied into ports and trading centers for European companies to begin the subjugation of Asian markets. Other western nations followed England to industrialize, including France, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United States, Germany, Japan and Russia and by 1900 these new modernized countries had begun to create wide gaps of inequality between themselves and the poorer countries they colonized and fought for land, goods and economic advantages (Vann, 31.). Thereby, while modernization was beneficial to those with the upper hand, it led to impoverished conditions of living and death for millions.
These industrialized nations together accounted for about 80 percent of industrial output by 1900, with the majority coming from Europe alone. However, the reason for this massive output was the intake of raw goods and material from colonies in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Forced to labor as slaves, serfs, and sharecroppers, indigenous people in European colonies did not enjoy the comfortable lifestyle of those who grew rich buying up or forcefully taking land in the name of colonization. In this way, the west had dominated much of the rest of the world, and industrialization continued at an alarming speed.
Consequently, unexpected effects of industrialization began to become apparent those workers in major cities of industry. The burning of coal, and indiscriminate dumping of waste products killed plants and produce, contaminated water sources, and contributed to disease. Additionally, the lack of environmental protection laws began an era of human initiated climate change, known as the Anthropocene, in which mankind was releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and affecting the environment in new and unknown ways. However, it can also be said that Chinese rice paddies and contributed to the release of these same gases, and on the other hand, the depopulation of Africa in the slave trade may have contributed to the reforestation of Africa; two factors that stand in contrast to the industrial causes of global warming (Marks, 145). Regardless, as industry grew, the changes became more severe and more permanent, to the point that it is a major global issue facing the world today.
Meanwhile, with the spread of industrialized factories, social upheavals began in cities cursed by smog, where working conditions declined and even modernized countries and workers began to grow increasingly unhappy with their lot. Long hours, little pay, and filthy, unpleasant work was fought by lone renegades, and later by working unions. In 1848, Marx published his famous manifesto, which later gave birth to Marxist communism, while most countries struggled onward in capitalist societies. However, the Lenin-led Russian revolution of the early 20th century ended Russian participation and World War I and started the first communist government based around the removal of the bourgeoisie and the proliferation of the proletariat (Notes of 17 Oct.). Nonetheless, many other countries flourished under free market, capitalist governments; most prominently in the 10th century, the United States. The major differences between whether capitalism or communism fared better in a country often came down to its method of modernization and how recently slaves, serfs, or colonized peoples had been emancipated.
In China, the generations of dense serf-like populations had claimed almost all arable land and there was mass movement from rural areas to cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This created a shortage of jobs in those cities and small riots and revolutions were common in the early 1900s. In 1927, Mao Zedong created the Communist Party of China, and eventually defeated the nationalist government under Chiang Kai-Shek, creating the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Under his Marx-Leninist inspired rule, he began a cultural revolution to industrialize China and bring communism to his people. His initiatives, however, resulted in a famine which killed more than 50 million Chinese (Spence, 147.). In Russia and eastern Europe, serfdom had been relinquished very recently, while in western Europe and for white in the United States, democracy had been won further back in history. This led to laissez-faire markets that were doing well by the time of industrialization and the workers were not as poorly off as the Bolsheviks.
Even worse off, however, were the countries still being exploited through colonization, including, at this time, much of the interior of Africa which was now accessible due to river navigating steam boats and malaria-resistant drugs like quinine. Many of these countries didn’t gain independence until the mid-20th century, after decades or more of fighting and protest. India, for example, was not free from British rule until 1947, after years of nationalist non-violent civil disobedience led by Mahatma Gandhi (Notes of 15 Nov.). In this instance, and in many similar instances of colonized groups united by nationalism, nation-building successfully aided states in freeing themselves from oppressive, foreign-led regimes of colonizers. Nationalism allowed the people of many South American, Asian, and African countries to fight for independence and form governments of their own for the first time in history. But nationalism could also be used for evil, as was the case in Europe, where growing pride and ethnocentrism fueled by social Darwinism led to over 100 million deaths between the two world wars.
Fortunately, there is much that can be learned from these differing outcomes of nationalism in the 20th century; which was what many countries decided when they joined in creating the United Nations in 1945, a new international committee created with “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without discrimination as to race, sex, language, or religion” (Hunt 203.). Later, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would come of the United Nations, an attempt at a set of international laws that would prevent future atrocities such as were witnessed during WWI and WWII, especially in regard to genocide, torture, biological warfare, nuclear warfare and other disastrous weapons of the past 30 years. The five permanent members of the United Nations were the Soviet Union, United States, France, Republic of China and Great Britain; noticeably missing are the axis powers of World War II, but it is more astounding that two of the founding countries would lead the second half of the 20th century into the threat of war.
