Yesterday
The following few chapters analyze the events that happened in the short period, between early 18th century and today. As this period is so short as compared to the length of history, this chapter is called Yesterday , signifying that the period in which the events occurred was no more than a day in the long history of mankind, The historical events are really a string of processes, with one notable exception, the Watershed. It has a special position in the events leading to the present. It includes both World Wars, as well as the ideological upheavals that poisoned European life between the two World Wars and beyond them. It is called the Watershed because it signifies the policy of western civilization to the rest of the world. Before that watershed, western civilization has expanded. After it came a period of retrenchment that was demanded both by the worsening demographic ratio between the west and the rest of the world and the disenchantment felt by most westerners at the collapse of the ideologies. The others are really long processes with one common denominator; they all are direct or indirect results of a demographic explosion, which started at the middle of the 18th century and still continuing.
It is well known that historical processes or events have a multitude of possible originating factors. This book does not claim otherwise. It only claims that an unprecedented demographic explosion was one of the major factors that caused the processes, probably the most important one. Nevertheless, there are facts and there are opinions. The following chapters, whose summaries is listed below, will show the contribution of the demographic factors to the processes, they might even give opinion, but it will remain to the reader to formulate the degree of importance.
The historical events, whose list is shown below, have a number of common elements:
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The events might have been consecutive or contemporary, but there was always a strong causal connection between them. As an example, it is difficult to state that the emergence of the Middle Class was before the Industrial Revolution or vice versa. It has no importance. They were contemporary processes and had a mutual positive feedback. |
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The events were links in a chain that started at the end of the feudal system and ends today with the New World Order.
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The unprecedented increase of the world's population within the timeframe of this book, and the even more unprecedented jump in the ratio between the increase of Europe and that of the rest of the world, was the mainspring that activated the historical events. |
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The events that were chosen as links in a chain leading to the present, were all European in origin. European means here in the sense as Prof. Huntington has defined Western Civilization. That the events were of European origin is not a value judgment. It does not mean that this book deems the developments, led by European events, as desirable or good. Even the possibility of using adjectives, like desirable or good, is beyond the task of historians; it belongs to the realm of politics.
There were processes in other parts of the world, and they might have had extreme local importance. However, analysis shows that they were either derivatives or reactions to one of the links in the chain of events. It is possible that Gandhi's work was extremely important to the Indian sub-continent, as was the Meiji reforms in Japan. Nevertheless, Gandhi's movement was part of the decolonization process, and the Meiji reforms regulated Japan's association or competition with Europe, |
One more comment should be added here. The book analyses and dissects the history of the world of the last few hundred years. That was the period when Europe passed from the Feudal Age to the Information Age, and is moving from there to something that is still in the shadows of the future and the more we near it the more frightening it seems. The period up to the present is not a new history; it is the same history we learned in High School.
What is new in it is the way it looks at the familiar landscape of history through a prism of demography, and that view reveals details that would be missing when viewed through any other viewpoint. It is true for any other viewpoint. History of the last few hundreds of years is such a huge edifice, it is looming before the historian like a huge mountain. So, whatever we see and whatever we miss, it is the same huge mountain, which includes an additional dimension of a time factor.
When Jacques Barzun in his book: From Dawn to Decadence, looked at that mountain from a cultural viewpoint, he saw a travel between Dawn and Decadence through a process of four revolutions: religious, monarchical, liberal and social. One can certainly view the world from that viewpoint, if one sees the world as a cultural expression. According to his beliefs, Jacques Barzun was right. However, if my viewpoint is correct, and that mountain of history, including cultural history, is controlled by basic natural conditions, then the way stations enumerated below are more applicable, as they are all connected to a basic natural phenomenon, which is an unprecedented demographic explosion.
The way stations are different here and from those in the book of Jacques Barzun, because the viewpoints are different. There is, however, one common point between the two. Barzun defines his trip as from Dawn to Decadence; my journey starts from the Feudal Age and end at the present. The question of the future is not raised, neither here nor there. The future lurks around the corner, still in the shadows. How the world will manage, if at all, with nine billion people? What cultural or socio-economic system can act within such an environment?
The future in which the population will grow from 6 to 9 billion people is an absolute unknown. Each projection to the future is a trip to the unknown, but in this case even the tools are unknowns. There is a famous question where a 800 lbs. gorilla will sit, and the answer to that question is that it will sit where it wants. There is no doubt that in anyone's mind, least of all in mine, that life with such a gorilla will not be similar to anything we experienced in all the thousands of years. We also know that there is no ethical way to prevent the
increase, meaning that the increase of 3 billion people, from 6 to 9 billions can not be prevented.
So, Jacques Barzun brought his book to the present and called in Decadence. I call it the present and both meanings are identical. The way stations to the present were:
Nation States were the latest European development. It replaced feudalism that was the system in Europe since after the last days of the Western Roman Empire. Although its introduction is generally related to the Thirty-Year War, it was a natural development of the demographic increase in Europe.
Middle Class - This is how the results of the French Revolution can be explained. The victory of the Middle Class has spread eventually all over Europe, even to those countries, like Germany and Russia, who were the most opposed to its principles. That opposition was probably the result of their handling the first European demographic increase in the late Middle Ages.
Industrial Revolution - the trigger of the European expansion all over the world. It was caused by a demographic increase in Europe whose rate was higher than the rate of increase of the rest of the world. It was a unique occurrence, not repeated before or since.
Colonization – was a companion of the Industrial Revolution. It filled two important needs: provided raw materials and tropical products to the burgeoning European population, and a ready market for mass-produced industrial goods and supplier of raw materials.
The Watershed contains the two World Wars and the ideological upheavals that poisoned Europe between the two wars, and even beyond. It is called the watershed, as before it the western world was in optimism and expansion, and after it came pessimism and retrenchment. It is not yet known whether the pessimism is an outward sign of decadence or it is recognition that the changing ratio between the populations of the two parts of the world requires caution and prudence.
Decolonization – It started first as one of the results of the Second World War, and represented the weakening of the West in Asia. However, the real cause of the decolonization was demographic. There were a number of colonies whose liberation from colonization directly followed the end of the War. Those were India, Indonesia, and others. The book claims that even without the War, Europe would have reached the same conclusion as with the War. Chart 3 shows the reason why. The curve of the European increase started to turn downward at the same time that the curve of the Poor World started to turn up. There were no more economic justifications for the colonies, so Europe has cut its losses and went on to create the New World Order, which is a direct replacement of colonization.
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