Three weeks ago, I talked about the significance of the year 1453 as a landmark in European history and how it fit into my periodization of “Early Modern Europe” for a course I’m currently giving. Today, I’m going to talk about 1776, less as an end point of that elusive concept of “Early Modern” Europe than as an illustrative year, a point at which the differences from 1453 can be more clearly seen and enable us to see the extent of the changes only vaguely foreshadowed in the 15C.
I won’t reiterate my discussion of periodization generally, merely note that there’s less debate about the end of the period than there is about the beginning. Of course, the very phrase “Early Modern Europe” presupposes the existence of a “Late Modern Europe” and the need to demarcate the two. Traditionally, that demarcation is carried by the French Revolution and the beginning of the period of rapid global economic and technical development usually labelled the “Industrial Revolution.” Even if we use the storming of the Bastille (July 14, 1789) as a convenient marker for the former (it arguably ran for ten (some say twenty-five) years), there is no comparable date for the increased changes in industrialization which began in England. Those changes were demonstrably incremental and cumulative and, so, isolating one step along the way (even the launch of Watt’s famous steam engine) is somewhat arbitrary.
One of those incremental steps in Watt’s engine development did occur in 1776 when a reasonably mature design went into production. As with Donatello’s 1453 sculpture and the Renaissance, this development is illustrative of a larger phenomenon: continual improvement, interconnection of technologies, and a fundamental shift in the relationship between human labor and things produced. Still, that’s not the principal reason why I picked that particular year to illustrate the end of an era.
Speaking to an American audience, I naturally have to go with the Continental Congress’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4 as one key development of that year. Of course, no one knew then whether the noble sentiments in Jefferson’s essay would come to fruition (indeed, whether the members would all be hung within a year!). But, despite precarious circumstances, things (more-or-less) worked out and we’ll all be ready for the big 250th bash next year. In terms of impact, the creation of a new entity—a republic! and a modestly democratic republic at that—which came to become a political role model and the leading global power for the last 100 years is sufficient reason for inclusion. The unlikelihood of a French Revolution in the following decade without the success of American independence underlines its global impact, not to mention the reinvigoration of the British Empire having seen off this challenge.
A few months before the action in Philadelphia, Adam Smith in Edinburgh published a massive tome entitled “The Wealth of Nations,” part of a robust period of intellectual development which we call the Enlightenment. It had a critical impact in creating not only the modern science of economics (then called “political economy”) but also in becoming the theoretical touchstone of the mode of organizing business and trade which we call “capitalism.” Smith’s work is among those which are far more cited than read and, as with the other examples cited for 1453 and 1776, cannot be fully appreciated without contextualizing them amid their interlocutors. As with Watt and Jefferson, while they might recognize their progeny in the world of today, they could not have imagined the paths which we have taken to get here. As with all important thinkers and doers (Columbus and Marx come to mind, not to mention Jesus), we can’t hold them personally responsible for what subsequent thinkers and doers did in their names.
Still, leaving Smith personally to the side, his 1776 publication is an excellent marker for the domination of capitalism (i.e., an epistemology which is based on calculation, money, and efficiency) across the modern globe.
Those paths—capitalism, industrialization, democratization—are the core of the story of modernity—in Europe and around the world. The demarcation of the “early modern” and “late modern” periods is thus one of recognition of the starting points of the latter; sufficiently recognizable as driving the past 250 years as they are clearly products of an earlier age.
The last item on my list for 1776 is the third voyage of James Cook, the British naval officer and explorer who left Plymouth, England that July (before word had arrived from Philadelphia) and whose crew returned over four years later (he was killed in Hawaii). This imperial expedition was not just about conquest and glory, it also embraced the acquisition of knowledge of the natural world and the shape of the planet. Moreover, Cook, himself, seems to have been at least somewhat aware of the European tendency towards arrogance and domination vis-à-vis the indigenous peoples with whom he interacted. Cook’s legacy was another illustration of the Enlightenment and the European exploration of the world. He sought (and brought!) a degree of order to our understanding of the shape of the world, with detailed maps and observations. It was a fitting capstone, 250 years after, to Magellan’s initial circumnavigation and a fitting foundation, 55 years in the future, to Darwin’s voyage and his own reconceptualization of our world.
The strands to and from each of these are multitudinous and thick. They highlight that the historian’s effort to compartmentalize the past into manageable chunks of chronology is inevitably arbitrary and often distorting, even if often convenient and practically necessary.
In the midst of what seems to be a tumultuous and striking year, it’s good to remember that we don’t know at the time (and maybe for a long while later) what will prove to be epochal and what will come to be seen as transitory.
I won’t reiterate my discussion of periodization generally, merely note that there’s less debate about the end of the period than there is about the beginning. Of course, the very phrase “Early Modern Europe” presupposes the existence of a “Late Modern Europe” and the need to demarcate the two. Traditionally, that demarcation is carried by the French Revolution and the beginning of the period of rapid global economic and technical development usually labelled the “Industrial Revolution.” Even if we use the storming of the Bastille (July 14, 1789) as a convenient marker for the former (it arguably ran for ten (some say twenty-five) years), there is no comparable date for the increased changes in industrialization which began in England. Those changes were demonstrably incremental and cumulative and, so, isolating one step along the way (even the launch of Watt’s famous steam engine) is somewhat arbitrary.
One of those incremental steps in Watt’s engine development did occur in 1776 when a reasonably mature design went into production. As with Donatello’s 1453 sculpture and the Renaissance, this development is illustrative of a larger phenomenon: continual improvement, interconnection of technologies, and a fundamental shift in the relationship between human labor and things produced. Still, that’s not the principal reason why I picked that particular year to illustrate the end of an era.
Speaking to an American audience, I naturally have to go with the Continental Congress’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4 as one key development of that year. Of course, no one knew then whether the noble sentiments in Jefferson’s essay would come to fruition (indeed, whether the members would all be hung within a year!). But, despite precarious circumstances, things (more-or-less) worked out and we’ll all be ready for the big 250th bash next year. In terms of impact, the creation of a new entity—a republic! and a modestly democratic republic at that—which came to become a political role model and the leading global power for the last 100 years is sufficient reason for inclusion. The unlikelihood of a French Revolution in the following decade without the success of American independence underlines its global impact, not to mention the reinvigoration of the British Empire having seen off this challenge.
A few months before the action in Philadelphia, Adam Smith in Edinburgh published a massive tome entitled “The Wealth of Nations,” part of a robust period of intellectual development which we call the Enlightenment. It had a critical impact in creating not only the modern science of economics (then called “political economy”) but also in becoming the theoretical touchstone of the mode of organizing business and trade which we call “capitalism.” Smith’s work is among those which are far more cited than read and, as with the other examples cited for 1453 and 1776, cannot be fully appreciated without contextualizing them amid their interlocutors. As with Watt and Jefferson, while they might recognize their progeny in the world of today, they could not have imagined the paths which we have taken to get here. As with all important thinkers and doers (Columbus and Marx come to mind, not to mention Jesus), we can’t hold them personally responsible for what subsequent thinkers and doers did in their names.
Still, leaving Smith personally to the side, his 1776 publication is an excellent marker for the domination of capitalism (i.e., an epistemology which is based on calculation, money, and efficiency) across the modern globe.
Those paths—capitalism, industrialization, democratization—are the core of the story of modernity—in Europe and around the world. The demarcation of the “early modern” and “late modern” periods is thus one of recognition of the starting points of the latter; sufficiently recognizable as driving the past 250 years as they are clearly products of an earlier age.
The last item on my list for 1776 is the third voyage of James Cook, the British naval officer and explorer who left Plymouth, England that July (before word had arrived from Philadelphia) and whose crew returned over four years later (he was killed in Hawaii). This imperial expedition was not just about conquest and glory, it also embraced the acquisition of knowledge of the natural world and the shape of the planet. Moreover, Cook, himself, seems to have been at least somewhat aware of the European tendency towards arrogance and domination vis-à-vis the indigenous peoples with whom he interacted. Cook’s legacy was another illustration of the Enlightenment and the European exploration of the world. He sought (and brought!) a degree of order to our understanding of the shape of the world, with detailed maps and observations. It was a fitting capstone, 250 years after, to Magellan’s initial circumnavigation and a fitting foundation, 55 years in the future, to Darwin’s voyage and his own reconceptualization of our world.
The strands to and from each of these are multitudinous and thick. They highlight that the historian’s effort to compartmentalize the past into manageable chunks of chronology is inevitably arbitrary and often distorting, even if often convenient and practically necessary.
In the midst of what seems to be a tumultuous and striking year, it’s good to remember that we don’t know at the time (and maybe for a long while later) what will prove to be epochal and what will come to be seen as transitory.
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