Heyday
Subtitle: The Victorian Discovery of the World 1851-1867
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Orion Publishing Group, Limited
Published: 2016-05-03
Language: eng
Number of pages: 462
ISBN-13: 9780297864103
Description: 'Heyday' brings to life one of the most extraordinary periods in modern history. From 1851, in the space of little more than a decade, the world was reshaped by technology, trade, mass migration and war. As instantaneous electric communication bridged the vast gulfs that separated human societies, millions of settlers travelled to the far corners of the Earth, building vast cities out of nothing in lightning-quick time. A new generation of fast steamships and railways connected these burgeoning frontier societies, shrinking the world and creating an interlinked global economy. In the company of fortune-seekers and ordinary migrants, we journey to these rapidly expanding frontiers, savouring the frenetic activity and optimism of the boom-towns of the 1850s in Australia, New Zealand the United States. This is a story not only of rapid progress, but of the victims of an assurgent West.