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248

The Origin of Cmlisation

nuclear age, the space age and the information revolution, propelling us euer forward at a breathtaking, almost alarming pace. Yet we must not confuse an explosive local burst of economic growth with a fuli blown civilisation eruption, just as researchers generally accept the aborted early blossoming of Oericho cannot be compared to the Sumerian efflorescence.

Contrasting 1873 to 1850, Rostow etnploys the languagę of exponential growth when he abserues:

The world of 1873 looked quite different from that of 1850; it contained well over 100,000 morę mlles of railroads - a fiue fold increase. Some six mi11ion immigrants had crossed the seas to a United States whose transport links now spanned the continent. The world economy had moved into dependence on the flow of a critical margin of American wheat as well as cotton. Coal production and the use of steam power had quintrupled; pig iron output had tripled; Western Europę and the United States had joined Britain in mastery of heawy industry; the age of Steel had been born. These productiwe transformations however were accorapanied by intervals of war and by substantial diuersions of resources to gold mining.¹⁰²

Despite overwhelming euidence for change, he exposes the paradox of change and continuity intermingled, when he notes the considerable continuity in economic process in the century between 1815 and 1914.¹ He attributes this to both the absence of any major International war on a scalę comparable to the Napoleonie struggles of 1793 to 1815, and to the role played by Great Britain as the acknowledged centre of the world economy. The role she played created a stability consistent with the Pax Augustus or Pax Tartarica of earlier times. Howewer, 1 beliewe this British dominance cannot be properly assessed as an economic phenomenon, just as the Roman Empire was morę than a trading arrangement between Romę and her prowinces. The entire Uictonan era had a five-subsystem orientation of gathering change, centred on supremacy of the British Empire and Europęan imperialism. Here, within the broad sweep of rapid change and bedrock continuity, spanning two centuries of spreading industrialisation, we can discover the concept of a 'swift crystallisation', again condensed into a brief forty years of explosive change. This concept of an abrupt ciuilisation genesis is, therefore, equally as applicable to modern times as we found it to be for the Sumerian and Greek ciwilisations.

Norman Stone sees the forty years of 1878-1919 as Europę's trans format ion:

From 1870 to 1900, Europę changed at a faster ratę than ever before or, arguably, sińce. In 1870, most Europęans liwed in the countrysi de , obeying their pastors, priests or landowners. Most of them did not bother with politics. Host were illiterate. Most could look forward only to a life of extreme harshness, which could easily end in an early death from disease or faminę. In the cities, the death-rate exceeded the birth-rate and the towns kept up their populat-

ions only by importing people .......... There was a huge gulf

between the west-end world of the well-off,and the east-end world of the poor: the uncounted armies of unemployed casual labour, of 8ervants-of-servanta, of seamstresses crammed seven to a room. In

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the St Petersburg of Dostoyeusky's "Crime and Punishment," cholera was a regular wisitor. It was brought in the city's canals, which were filled with sewage and rubbish of all kinda.¹⁰⁴

He pointa out that there was only minimal provision for welfare, either through the Church or institutions a uch as the English Poor Law, but most people relied on their families or the priests, and as cities grew, the resources of both became swamped. Comparing this state of affairs to 1900, Stone deseribes how Europę was tranformed, and once morę we can identify the monumental changes that took place within this short period of thirty years, across all the five diuisions of the cultural subsystems.

There was a great flight from the land:milliana of people emigrated or went to the towns. Twenty-five million Europęans reached the United States in the last guarter of the century, and millions went to other countries overseas (SSs:provisioning & social). The countryaide rapidly became morę modern. Lack of labour forced wages up, (SSseconomic;SN:producers) euerywhere peasant cottages became better constructed, eguipped with furniture similar to that of the towns - wooden chests and benchea being replaced with cupboards and chairs (SS:production;SN:finished goods). But it was the cities that were most transformed.

By 1900 horse-drawn traffic, the rule almost everywhere in 1870, had been supplemented by city railways and subways - the Berlin

Stadtbahn, the London 'tubę' or the Paris 'metro¹ (1901) ..........

Elsewhere, electric traction permitted trams and trolleys to proliferate in the 18908 (SSseconomic; SN:Communications). This easy and cheap transport allowed the morę modern cities - London above all - to develop suburbs [population mouements (SStsocial) and new housing (SS:production;SN:finished goods)].

There was an explosion of printing matter. New printing techniques, cheap timber and a huge new reading public caused the four jounaux d'Information of Paris in the L860s to deuelop into seuenty news-papers a generation later (SSs: product ion & economic; SN‘.Communications) .....Education developed as fast as the press. Books and

libraries proliferated......One spectacular discouery or inuention

succeeded another (SS:knowledge;SN:innovations). Hedicine improved almost beyond recognition. In earlier times, most people died if they underwent an operat ion - not, usually, from a cause any morę complicated than the simple shock of the pain. Now, hospitals became hygienic (SS:knowledge;SN:sciences); people sun/iued, rather

than died in them...... There seemed no end to this process of im-

prowement. In 1895 the novelist Henry James acquired electric lighting (SSiproduction;SN:intermediate goods); in 1896 he rode a bicycle (SSseconomic;SN:communications); in 1897 he wrote on a typewriter (SSteconomic; SN: commun icat ions); in 1898 he saw a c mętna tograph (SS:economic;SN:leisure). Within wery few years, he could have had a freudian analysis, travelled in an aireraft, understood the principles of the jet-engine or even of space travel. The great cities had already embarked on clearances of their own worst areas,

the 'slums*........ The years from 1870 to 1900 were the classic

age of progress.¹⁰⁵