Abstract
The nineteenth century was a major watershed in the Big History storyline in general and in the history of globalization in particular. This watershed is related to the modern Technological Revolution that brought profound changes to nearly all spheres of human life. In this chapter, we will touch upon some of the changes that were most relevant to globalization and/or evolved into truly global processes that changed humanity. These include the Industrial Revolution, the changed patterns of global technological dynamics (the emergence of modern technological paradigms) and global economic development (the appearance of global economic cycles and global crises, as well as the impact of some particular breakthrough innovations in transport (railways, steamships) and information transmission (the telegraph). New technologies formed new material networks, which gradually spanned the whole world, leading global connectivity to a totally new level. These newly emerged networks were filled with new types of content, both material (e.g., bulk agricultural goods) and non-material (European-style modernity itself). The acceleration of technological development and increases in global connectivity greatly contributed to the World System core countries’ successful escape from the Malthusian trap. They also played an important role in the start of the global demographic transition, which encompassed the World System core countries in the nineteenth century.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that the compression phase (described in Chap. 4) may be considered as a period of bifurcation because some of its typical features are also inherent to so-called primitive accumulation, which, according to Marx, prepares the transition of society to capitalism. The two essential components of such a transition are labor and capital. During the compression phase, land shortage, bankruptcy of landowning peasants, and a mass exodus of impoverished peasants to cities (where they try to make a living from petty trade or craft) creates a large pool of labor. At the same time, a strong income stratification of the population along with the growth of large estates form the concentration of capital, which, when properly invested, creates a second necessary component for a potential transition to capitalism.
- 2.
The length of medium-term business cycles gradually shortened from approximately 11 years between 1825 and 1847 to 8–10 years in the late nineteenth century and 7 years in the twentieth century.
- 3.
Medium-term business cycles are called Juglar cycles after the French economist Clément Juglar (1819–1905). He was the first to identify the periodic character of crises (Juglar 1862, 1889). In contemporary economics, two main phases of such cycles are singled out, the phase of expansion and the phase of recession. The peak point of overheating and the lowest point of recession are considered to be inflection points (Samuelson and Nordhaus 2005).
- 4.
The Amsterdam Stock Exchange established in 1611 is the first classic example of a stock exchange.
- 5.
They frequently lasted forty days, and the term itself is derived from the Italian word quaranta meaning “forty.”
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Zinkina, J. et al. (2019). Modern Globalization: Global Technological and Economic Transformations in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. In: A Big History of Globalization. World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05707-7_8
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