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

**The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century** by Jürgen Osterhammel, an expert on global history, concentrates on the 19th century, a period when human history was already globally connected.

Osterhammel carefully avoids telling a story of the 19th century. Instead in the beginning he looks at carefully selected aspects  1. the image that people had of themselves at that time, 2. their understanding of time and 3. space.

Looking at self-image and understanding of time, he always sees the 19th century in terms of its characteristic differences from the earlier centuries and the changes that brought about the structures of the 20th century. The sentence "Before the 20th century, not a single year can be seen as epochal for all mankind" (p. 96) can be considered exemplary. The 19th century is placed in the continuity of the previous centuries and on the other hand clearly differentiated from the degree of globalization of the 20th.

This also applies to his statements about space. He carefully takes care that common terms are not used unchecked as they were in the 19th century:

"The collective name 'Southeast Asia' was created in Japan during the First World War." (p. 137) "The category the 'West', for example, [...] cannot be found as a dominant figure of thought before the 1890s." (P.143) "In the long nineteenth century there was much more talk of the 'civilized world' than of the 'West'. [...] In Japan it was even the goal of national politics to be accepted as a civilized country." (P.144)

## Panoramas

Osterhammel then gives an overview of eight major realities under the heading _Panoramas_ without claim to completeness, which are intended to capture essential elements of the overall history of the 19th century:

**Sedentary and Mobile -** Here Osterhammel looks at the entire demographic development, not only on migration and the followings

**Living standards -** Living standards can be described quantitatively, even if wealth can mean something very different depending on society.

**Cities -** He sees them on the one hand as representatives of entire civilizations and as nodes. In this role he looks especially at metropolises and ports.

**Frontiers -** Cities and Frontiers have in common that they attract migrants.

**Empires and nation-states -** "The 20th century was the great epoch of the nation-state. In the 19th century, the empire, not yet the nation-state, was the dominant territorial organizational form of power on a world scale."

**Power systems, wars, internationalisms -** The European state system followed agreed rules from 1815, but these only applied in Europe, not to non-European powers. There was a "deliberate de-globalization of international politics

**Revolutions -** After discussing several definitions of revolution, Osterhammel uses the example of the American and the French Revolution to explain why he sees them as the starting point of 'political modernity'.

**State -** During the 19th century one could find the greatest variety of political forms.

## Subjects

**Energy and industry**
- "The industrialization achieved around 1900 around the world was due to an innovation boost in England after 1760. But "industrialization was, at least in its beginnings, never a national but always a regional phenomenon ". (p.910)" Industrial revolution was  "the common historical term for the period after 1760, but the "industry has never been more revolutionary than today" (p.916) At that time there were growth figures of 2%. (8% as in China around 2000 were unthinkable at the time.) "This Growth took place on the basis of a new energy regime, which opens up fossil energy sources for material production "

**Work and employment**
- Work can be done in the home, in a larger village community, or within a more complex organization such as a factory, government agency, or army. The idea of a regular 'job' only came up in Europe in the 19th century. Much of the work has been (and is) being carried out 'irregularly'. As a rule, work follows standardized processes, ie it moves along the lines of 'work processes'. Such processes are social in nature. They usually involve direct collaboration with others, they are always indirectly involved in social order.

**Nets**
- "The period between the middle of the century and the First World War, just six decades, was a period of unprecedented networking." "In 1838 Friedrich List designed a railway network" for Germany. Before the railway networks were the canals, which were boosted by steam shipping. "A closed  network of canals had already been [...] created in the Netherlands between 1814 and 1848."

**Hierarchies**
- Hierarchy is one of the most important dimensions of society. "Therefore, 'national' societies can be characterized particularly well by their legal institutions."

**Knowledge**
- "'Knowledge' is a particularly volatile substance. As a social dimension, different from the various concepts of knowledge in philosophy, it is the invention of a science that is less than a hundred years old, the sociology of knowledge. It advances what was called 'spirit' in idealistic philosophy was, in the middle of society, related to life practices and social situations. 'Knowledge' (German: _Wissen_) is a somewhat narrower term than the all-encompassing concept of 'culture' (German: _Kultur_)." "In the 19th century, the old concept of 'science' was enriched for the first time by aspects that we firmly associate with it today. The subject system, as it is still used, only goes back to this era. Modern institutional forms of knowledge acquisition and dissemination were created: the research university, the laboratory, the humanities seminar. The relationships between science and its applications in technology and medicine became closer."

**"Civilization" and exclusion**
- 'Civilization' in the normative sense of socially constituted refinement is a universal idea. It is often associated with the idea that civilized people have the task or even the duty to spread their cultural values and their way of life. The idea of civilization was never as powerful as in the 19th century. [...] Cultural monuments like the Luther Bible or the great baroque churches can be understood as instruments of civilization missions."

**Religion**
- "There are good reasons for placing religiosity, religion and religions at the center of a world history of the 19th century. Back then, religion was the most important form of meaning formation for everyday life, that is, the center of all intellectual culture."

#### Five Features

Osterhammel describes five special features of the 19th century:
- the age of asymmetrical efficiency growth
- mobility
- the tendency to asymmetrical reference density
- the tension between equality and hierarchy
- emancipation

## The special importance of the book

Osterhammel does not tell from a certain perspective, but looks at the connections, the non-simultaneity of the simultaneous, the diversity of cultures and the time shift of institutions and cultural elements in different cultures from different perspectives. He justifies this courageous approach as follows: "In retrospect, the 19th century can be thought of being globally because it thought so about itself."

Patrick Manning: "In sum, I find the book to be an effective overview of the world history literature as it now exists. The author has demonstrated the ability to draw comprehensively on the literature for many topics and regions for his long nineteenth century, and has articulated it in accounts of many large-scale issues. The book presents a multifaceted narrative of approaches, panoramas, and themes. It reaches back before 1800 to trace the origins of the nineteenth-century world, but puts more effort into showing consequences for the twentieth century."

J. R. McNeill: "In 2009, he published this work in German, and it won acclaim and vaulted Osterhammel to the front rank of historians. When Chancellor Angela Merkel celebrated her sixtieth birthday in 2014, the festivities even featured a lecture by Osterhammel."

## Reviews

- Patrick Manning on Osterhammel, 'The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century
- "Readers in German, English, and other languages will find insightful comparisons, beginning with operas in China and Italy in the eighteenth century, and continuing with cities, labor organizations, diseases, and libraries, in a way that shows the century as a kaleidoscope of varied processes. I think readers may end up concluding that world history is a serious, complex, and not entirely mysterious field of study, and that it demonstrates the influence of one age on another and even the ways in which regions influence one another.
- At the end of the book, Osterhammel wraps up with a list of five characteristics of the nineteenth century and supports them with brief commentary. The century was an “age of asymmetrical efficiency growth,” as reflected in growing productivity, the opening of new frontiers, and the increased efficiency of armed forces. Mobility, the second characteristic, grew in scale, in the technical innovations supporting migration, and the infrastructure supporting migration. Third was the “tendency to asymmetrical reference density,” the flow of ideas and cultural content, through which both the West and the East learned much about each other. The tension between equality and hierarchy centered on the expanding recognition of legal equality in Europe, and on its tension with hierarchies in other parts of the world and the new hierarchy of great powers. Fifth, this was “a century of emancipation,” in which numerous emancipation projects advanced, but in which imperialism and colonialism stunted its expansion."
- J. R. McNeill: JÜRGEN OSTERHAMMEL. The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century.
- Further 52 reviews of readers in goodreads.com

## Criticism

"Osterhammel, like the field of world history as a whole, has underemphasized social history, leaving readers with a view of the past that exaggerates elite initiatives as the source of change. [...] The relative brevity of Osterhammel’s discussions on Africa and Latin America, as compared with Europe, North America, and Asia, reflects world-historical bias in favor of initiative from the centers of power and fits with the strengths of the published literature."(Patrick Manning)