Why were the economic, political, and military transformations of the nineteenth century so difficult? Contrast the lives of ordinary people in 1900 with those in 1200 . What had changed, how rapidly, and how much had it changed?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: Industrialization, the biggest story in the nineteenth-century world, was a response to a global energy crisis. It happened when and where global population was exploding—which might have made mechanization seem unnecessary. But up to a critical threshold, it seems, population increase generated demand for new scales and new kinds of production. Beyond that threshold, as in China, surplus manpower inhibited mechanization. A startling result was the shift in the global balance of wealth and power away from China and South Asia to Europe and—by the end of the century— the United States. The world split between industrializing regions and those that, by choice or coercion, produced primary goods for the industrializers. The former imposed their power on the latter, enforcing political unification, for instance, in Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States. Peoples untouched by industrialization became the victims of the disparities it empowered. In Africa and much of Southeast Asia, indigenous states could not resist European imperialism unless they "modernized" along European lines. In the Americas, industrially equipped armies and colonists displaced native peoples. Industrialization transformed the world's labor force. States got stronger. Intellectual trends became mass movements and attracted worldwide followings. Finally, by demanding huge amounts of coal and, increasingly, oil, industrialization transformed the scale on which people valued resources and edged the world toward conflicts over increasingly precious fossil fuels.