Rapid Population Growth
Technological Innovation
Large Increase in Productivity
Harnessing of Fossil and other Forms of Energy
Large Communities
Bureaucracy
Nationalism
Longer Life Expectancy
Broader Role for Women
Commercialization
Global Networks
Destruction of Foraging and Agrarian Lifeways
Of about 0.8 percent per annum and represents a doubling time of about eighty-five years. (Compare this with estimated doubling times of fourteen hundred years during the agrarian era and eight thousand to nine thousand years during the era of foragers.) An eightfold increase in human numbers was possible only because productivity rose even faster. The estimates of the economist Angus Maddison suggest that global gross domestic product rose more than ninetyfold during three hundred years, whereas production per person rose ninefold.
100,000 bce
40,000 bce
Modern Era
¦ <1% of human history 68% of population
Agrarian Era
4% of human history ¦ 20% of population
10,000 bce I,000 bce
0
1750 ce
All history is necessarily written from the standpoint of the present, and is, in an inescapable sense, the history not only of the present but of that which is contemporaneously judged to be important in the present. • John Dewey C1859—1952)
For more on these topics, please see the following articles: Colonialism p. 381 (v2)
Democracy, Constitutional p. 508 (v2)
Diasporas p. 521 (v2)
Empire p. 640 (v2)
Global Imperialism and Gender p. 838 (v2)
Global Migration in Modern Times p. 844 (v3)
Indigenous Peoples Movements p. 970 (v3)
Industrial Technologies p. 981 (v3)
Information Societies p. 985 (v3)
Modernity p. 1287 (v3)
Population p. 1484 (v4)
Technology—Overview p. 1806 (v5)
Urbanization p. 1925 (v5)
Western Civilization p. 2041 (v5)
Women’s and Gender History p. 2046 (v5)
World Cities in History—Overview p. 2066 (v5)
World System Theory p. 2075 (v5)
These astonishing increases in productivity lie behind all the most significant changes of the modern era. Productivity rose in part because new technologies were introduced. In agriculture, for example, food production kept pace with population growth because of improved crop rotations, increased use of irrigation, widespread application of artificial fertilizers and pesticides, and the use of genetically modified crops. However, productivity also rose because humans learned to exploit new sources of energy. During the agrarian era each human controlled, on average, 12,000 kilocalories a day (about four times the energy needed to sustain a human body), and the most powerful prime movers available were domestic animals or wind-driven ships. During the modern era humans have learned to harvest the huge reserves of energy stored in fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas and even to exploit the power lurking within atomic nuclei. Today each person controls, on average, 230,000 kilocalories a day—twenty times as much as during the agrarian era. A world of planes, rockets, and nuclear power has replaced a world of horses, oxen, and wood fires.
City Sprawl
As populations have increased, so has the average size of human communities. In 1500 about fifty cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants, and none had more than a million. By 2000 several thousand cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants, about 411 had more than a million, and 41 had more than 5 million. During the agrarian era most people lived and worked in villages; by the end of the twentieth century almost 50 percent of the world’s population lived in communities of at least five thousand people. The rapid decline of villages marked a fundamental transformation in the lives of most people on Earth. As during the agrarian era, the increasing size of communities transformed lifeways, beginning with patterns of employment: Whereas most people during the agrarian world were small farmers, today most people support themselves by wage work in a huge variety of occupations.
Innovations in transportation and communications have transformed relations between communities and regions. Before the nineteenth century no one traveled faster than the pace of a horse (or a fast sailing ship), and the fastest way to transmit written messages was by state-sponsored courier systems that used relays of horses. Today messages can cross the world instantaneously, and even perishable goods can be transported from one end of the world to another in just a few hours or days.
Increasingly Complex and Powerful Governments
As populations have grown and people’s lives have become more intertwined, more complex forms of regulation have become necessary, which is why the business of government has been revolutionized. Most premodern governments were content to manage war and taxes, leaving their subjects to get on with their livelihoods more or less unhindered, but the managerial tasks facing modern states are much more complex, and they have to spend more effort in mobilizing and regulating the lives of those they rule. The huge bureaucracies of modern states are one of the most important by-products of the modern
This plate shows a variety of tools of increasing technological complexity used by humans at different times and places to twist fiber. Spindles 1 and 2 are the simplest forms (other than human fingers) with fiber wound around a wooden peg. Spindles 3 through 7 are more complex, with a whorl added to the spindle. Spindle 9 marks the transition to modern spindles shown in 10 and 11 with flywheels.
Revolution. So, too, are the structures of democracy, which allow governments to align their policies more closely with the needs and capabilities of the large and varied populations they rule. Nationalism—the close emotional and intellectual identification of citizens with their governments—is another by-product of these new relationships between governments and those they rule.
The presence of democracy and nationalism may suggest that modern governments are more reluctant to impose their will by force, but, in fact, they have much more administrative and coercive power than did rulers of the agrarian era. No government of the agrarian era tried to track the births, deaths, and incomes of all the people it ruled or to impose compulsory schooling; yet, many modern governments handle these colossal tasks routinely. Modern states can also inflict violence more effectively and on a larger scale than even the greatest empires of the agrarian era. Whereas an eighteenth-century cannon could destroy a house or kill a closely packed group of soldiers, modern nuclear weapons can destroy entire cities and millions of people, and the concerted launch of many nuclear weapons could end human history within just a few hours.
A subtler change in the nature of power is the increased dependence of modern states on commercial success rather than raw coercion. Their power depends so much on the economic productivity of the societies they rule that modern governments have to be effective economic managers. The creation of more democratic systems of government, the declining importance of slavery, the ending of European imperial power during the twentieth century, the collapse of the Soviet command economy in 1991, and the ending of apartheid (racial segregation) in South Africa in 1990 and 1991 all reflected a growing awareness that successful economic management is more effective than crudely coercive forms of rule.
Growing Gap between Rich and Poor
Although wealth has accumulated faster than ever before, the gap between rich and poor has widened, both within and between countries. The estimates of Angus Maddison suggest that in 1820 the GDP per person of the United States was about three times that of all African states; by 1998 the ratio had increased to almost twenty times that of all African states. Yet, some of the benefits of modern technologies have been shared more generally. Improvements in the production and supply of food and in sanitation, as well as improved understanding of diseases and the introduction of vaccinations (during the nineteenth century) and antibiotics (during the twentieth century) help explain why, for the first time in human history, so few people die in infancy or childhood that average life expectancies have more than doubled, rising from about
This interesting plate of knives shows the development of the hand knife used throughout human history for working wood. Knives 1 through 7 are all of stone, each one more carefully finished than earlier ones. Knives 8 through 10 show specialized use of bamboo, ivory, and clam shell. The remainder of the knives all have metal blades and show increasing sophistication with handles, hinges, springs, and several blades in one knife.
Twenty-six years in 1820 to about sixty-six years at the end of the twentieth century. These gains have not been shared equally, but all parts of the world have felt their impact.
Improved Opportunities for Women
Relations between men and women have been renegotiated in many parts of the world. New energy sources have reduced the importance of physical strength in employment, new forms of contraception have given women and men more control over reproduction, and new technologies, such as bottle feeding, have allowed parents to more easily share the task of caring for infants. Reduced infant mortality and new forms of socialized old-age support have reduced the pressure to have many children as a form of old-age insurance. Finally, urbanization and commercialization have created more varied forms of employment for women as well as men. Women are less closely tied to their traditional role as child rearers, particularly in the most industrialized regions of the world. Nevertheless, gender inequality still survives even in those societies most deeply transformed by the modern revolution. Even in the United States and western Europe the average wages of women lag behind those of men.
Destruction of Premodern Lifeways
Finally, the modern revolution has destroyed premodern lifeways. Until the twentieth century independent communities of foragers survived in many parts of the world, but by the end of the twentieth century no foragers lived
World History
