The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Environmental Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century(World Social Change)

This clearly written and engrossing book presents a global narrative of the origins of the modern world from 1400 to the present. Unlike most studies, which assume that the “rise of the West” is the story of the coming of the modern world, this history, drawing upon new scholarship on Asia, Africa, and the New World and upon the maturing field of environmental history, constructs a story in which those parts of the world play major roles, including their impacts on the environment. Robert B. Marks defines the modern world as one marked by industry, the nation state, interstate warfare, a large and growing gap between the wealthiest and poorest parts of the world, increasing inequality within the wealthiest industrialized countries, and an escape from the environmental constraints of the “biological old regime.” He explains its origins by emphasizing contingencies (such as the conquest of the New World); the broad comparability of the most advanced regions in China, India, and Europe; the reasons why England was able to escape from common ecological constraints facing all of those regions by the eighteenth century; a conjuncture of human and natural forces that solidified a gap between the industrialized and non-industrialized parts of the world; and the mounting environmental crisis that defines the modern world. Now in a new edition that brings the saga of the modern world to the present in an environmental context, the book considers how and why the United States emerged as a world power in the twentieth century and became the sole superpower by the twenty-first century, and why the changed relationship of humans to the environmental likely will be the hallmark of the modern era—the Anthopocene. Once again arguing that the US rise to global hegemon was contingent, not inevitable, Marks also points to the resurgence of Asia and the vastly changed relationship of humans to the environment that may in the long run overshadow any political and economic milestones of the past hundred years.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures and Maps Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: The Rise of the West? The Rise of the West “The Gap” and Its Explanations Eurocentrism Stories and Historical Narratives The Elements of an Environmentally Grounded Non-Eurocentric Narrative Notes Chapter One: The Material and Trading World, circa 1400 The Biological Old Regime The Weight of Numbers Climate Change Population Density and Civilization The Agricultural Revolution Towns and Cities in 1400 Nomadic Pastoralists Wildlife Population Growth and Land Famine The Nitrogen Cycle and World History Epidemic Disease The World and Its Trading System circa 1400 The Black Death: A Mid-Fourteenth-Century Conjuncture Conclusion: The Biological Old Regime Notes Chapter Two: Starting with China China The Voyages of Zheng He, 1405–1433 India and the Indian Ocean Dar al-Islam, “The Abode of Islam” Africa Slavery Europe and the Gunpowder Epic Armed Trading on the Mediterranean Portuguese Explorations of the Atlantic Armed Trading in the Indian Ocean Conclusion Notes Chapter Three: Empires, States, and the New World, 1500–1775 Empire Builders and Conquerors Russia and China Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman Expansion The Dynamics of Empire The Americas The Aztecs The Inca The Conquest of the Americas and the Spanish Empire The Columbian Exchange The Great Dying Labor Supply Problems Silver The Spanish Empire and Its Collapse China’s Demand for Silver The New World Economy Human Migration and the Early Modern World The Global Crisis of the Seventeenth Century and the European State System State Building Mercantilism The Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763 Notes Chapter Four: The Industrial Revolution and Its Consequences, 1750–1850 Cotton Textiles India The New World as a Peculiar Periphery New Sources of Energy and Power China Markets Exhausting the Earth England, Redux Coal, Iron, and Steam Recap: Without Colonies, Coal, or State Support Science and Technology Tea, Silver, Opium, Iron, and Steam Tea Silver Opium Iron and Steam Conclusion: Into the Anthropocene Notes Chapter Five: The Gap The Gap Opium and Global Capitalism India Industrialization Elsewhere France The United States Germany Russia Japan New Dynamics in the Industrial World The Environmental Consequences of Industrialization Sources of Global Warming Gases in the Nineteenth Century The Social Consequences of Industrialization Factories and Work Women and Families Resistance and Revolution Industrialization and Migration Nations and Nationalism The Scrambles for Africa and China Africa China El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World Social Darwinism and Self-Congratulatory Eurocentrism Conclusion Notes Chapter Six: The Great Departure Introduction to the Twentieth Century and Beyond Part I: Nitrogen, Wars, and the First Deglobalization, 1900–1945 World War I and the Beginning of the Thirty-Year Crisis (1914–1945) Revolutions Colonial Independence Movements Normalcy? The Great Depression of the 1930s World War II Part II: The Post–War and Cold War Worlds, 1945–1991 Decolonization Asian Revolutions Development and Underdevelopment Consumerism versus Productionism Consumerism Third World Developmentalism Migration, Refugees, and States Global Inequality Inequality within Rich Countries Part III: Globalization and Its Opponents, 1991–Present The End of the Cold War The End of History? A Clash of Civilizations? Global Free Trade Energy, Oil, and War Deterritorialization Does History Repeat Itself? Part IV: The Great Departure: Into the Anthropocene Conclusion Notes Conclusion: Changes, Continuities, and the Shape of the Future The Story Summarized Globalization Into the Future Notes

About the Author :
Robert B. Marks is Richard and Billie Deihl Professor of History at Whittier College. His books include China: Its Environment and History (Rowman & Littlefield). He is the recipient of Whittier College’s Harry W. Nerhood Teaching Excellence Award.

Review :

My students truly enjoyed reading The Origins of the Modern World, which I used as a text for my Introduction to Global Studies course. They found the book easy to digest despite the complexities inherent in dealing with such a large span of world history. Thank you for making my task as an instructor that much easier and more enjoyable!