A Short History of the World

by Christopher Lascelles

  In the 1783 peace settlement that officially ended the war, the Americans received all the land between Canada and Florida east of the Mississippi. It is worth noting that while American territory doubled (and would double again when the Americans bought Louisiana from the French in 1803), at that point Spain still owned a larger territory in the Americas than the Americans themselves did.

  Terra Australis Incognita

  One unintended consequence of the American Revolution was a focus on the peopling of Australia. From the time of antiquity people had thought that Terra Australis Incognita – or an unknown land of the south – existed as a counterweight to the continents north of the equator. Already occupied by Aborigines for some 50,000 years, Australia had been cut-off from the rest of the world by rising sea levels after the end of the last ice age. It was not till 1606 that Europeans first became aware of the continent after a Dutchman, Willem Janszoon, landed on the west coast while seeking new trade routes to the East. However, he failed to realise that it was a separate continent.

  In 1644 another Dutchman, Abel Tasman, explored the northern part of the continent and named it New Holland – a name the continent carried for over a hundred years. Tasman had also previously discovered New Zealand in 1642, which the Dutch had named Nieuw Zeelandia, most probably after the Dutch province of Zeeland, but Tasman never set foot on the island and the Dutch never followed up on this discovery.

  The Dutch did not colonise Australia for two main reasons. First, they were more interested in trade with the established Asian markets; Australia seemed dry and barren, and so was predominantly used as a navigational aid in the journey from Europe to the East Indies, or otherwise as a stopping point to take on fresh water. Second, the 17th century was a time of war between the European powers and the Dutch had limited extra resources with which to colonise a new continent.

  It was not until 1770 that the Englishman, Captain James Cook, having already claimed New Zealand for the British Crown in 1769, did the same for Australia, landing on the hitherto unexplored east coast and naming the territory New South Wales. When it became clear that the American colonies, which had previously served as a dumping ground for prisoners for many decades, were winning their War of Independence, Australia was soon promoted as a place for Britain to rid itself of its unwanted criminals.

  In January 1788 a penal colony was set up near Port Jackson (later to be renamed Sydney after the British Home Secretary) to house the 736 convicts that had left England eight months previously. With the prisoners came a number of entrepreneurs seeking adventure and looking to take advantage of an inexpensive labour force. Thus began the proper settlement of Australia.

  The indigenous Aborigines were treated like other peoples who had been discovered by European settlers elsewhere in the world – with murderous contempt. It was not uncommon for them to be hunted like animals, and many of them were wiped out further by European diseases to which they had no immunity.

  It was not until 1840 that the Maori, the indigenous tribe of New Zealand, accepted sovereignty of the British Crown under the Treaty of Waitangi and became British subjects. Both Australia and New Zealand became a good source of wool and wheat to Britain, as well as providing men to support it during the world wars of the 20th century. Both countries remain tied to Britain to this day as part of the British Commonwealth.

  VI

  The Modern Period

  AD 1780 - Present

  The French Revolution (1789–1799)

  The war that had helped the American colonies become independent from Britain also cost the French crown dearly; so dearly in fact that the French king, Louis XVI, was forced to look for new ways to raise money to pay for the costs of the state. Specifically, the king was keen to end the tax exemptions that the Church (the First Estate) and the nobility (the Second Estate) had hitherto enjoyed. When they refused to pay any tax, Louis called the nearest thing France had to a parliament, the Estates-General, which included the Third Estate of peasants, the middle class and urban workers, who between them made up over 95% of the population. When the Estates-General, which had last met in 1614, finally met in May 1789, it aroused great hopes of reform; at the time, the majority of the taxes were falling on the growing middle classes who hoped the parliament would give them a greater voice.

  However, things did not go according to plan for the king. When it became apparent that the nobles and clergy held an unfair monopoly on voting rights, those who represented the Third Estate broke away to form their own National Assembly, taking up the slogan ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité’ and swearing not to disperse until France had a constitution that gave them the recognition they felt they deserved. At the same time a series of bad harvests had caused the price of bread – the staple diet at the time – to rise. The general challenge to the old order that had grown through the writings of French enlightenment philosophers in the 18th century only fuelled the revolutionary zeal of the people.

  At one point, alarmed by rumours of an army gathering near the residence of the king at Versailles, outside Paris, the mob was urged to arm itself for its own defence. In an effort to gain supplies of guns and gunpowder, the mob stormed the Bastille, the main prison in Paris, on 14th July. While the prison held only seven prisoners at the time, the event served as a symbolic attack on the king’s authority and the date is generally recognised as the beginning of the French Revolution.

  The king vacillated and gave in to the people’s demands to replace his army with their own militia. When he and his Austrian wife, Marie Antoinette, were marched by the mob from Versailles to central Paris so that they could be more closely watched, they realised that it was in their interests to flee. They eventually did so in June 1791. However, despite disguising themselves, they were recognised when only 20km from the border and returned to Paris, where they were duly imprisoned. The newly formed French Republic eventually executed the king in January 1793, and the queen suffered the same fate in October of that year. From that point onwards, ‘the revolution in France had become war in Europe: not an old-fashioned, familiar kind of war between monarchs for territory, but a newer ideological war between peoples and kings for the ending of old institutions and the fulfilment of dreams of a new society’.85

  The reaction in Europe was one of shock: a king had been murdered by his own people. What’s more, the revolution threatened to expand beyond the borders of France. When Austria, ruled by Marie Antoinette’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold II, refused to return French émigrés whom France had accused of plotting against the revolution, France declared war. Fearful of the message of the revolution, nations across Europe joined forces in an alliance against France, beginning a war that would spread across the globe, cause terrible suffering and end only in 1815.

  With the country surrounded by enemies, extremists rapidly gained power in France, and anyone who spoke against the revolution was declared an enemy of the people and sent to the guillotine. Ironically, Maximilien Robespierre and Georges Danton, two of the leaders of this movement of terror, were both executed in this way in 1794.

  Napoleon Bonaparte: Emperor of the French (1799–1815)

  Filled with revolutionary zeal, the French rapidly achieved a number of stunning victories. The exploits of one young Corsican officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, were recognised by the French to such an extent that in 1799, at the age of 30, he was able to seize power and claim a military dictatorship without too much opposition; all this despite his inglorious defeat at the hands of the Englishman Horatio Nelson during Napoleon’s attempt to conquer Egypt and block Britain’s route to India. Five years later, Napoleon became emperor of the French, inviting the Pope to crown him in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, but famously putting the crown on his own head at the last minute in a sign that he was in control not only of France, but also of his own destiny.

  The British continued to frustrate Napoleon’s ambitions, notably smashing a combined French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafal
gar off the coast of south-west Spain in 1805 – a battle during which the British destroyed or captured some 20 French and Spanish ships without losing one themselves. Napoleon’s anger at this defeat was perhaps somewhat assuaged by the death of his old adversary, Admiral Nelson, who was mortally wounded. Despite this defeat on sea, the French continued to have great success on land, defeating Austrian, Russian and Prussian armies in quick succession.

  Increasingly concerned by the possibility of Europe becoming unified under a hostile power, the British organised a new anti-French coalition, an act which naturally infuriated Napoleon. Unable to invade Britain while the British navy commanded the English Channel, Napoleon sought to implement a blockade of British goods, forbidding their import into any part of Europe under his control – or even allied to him for that matter – and declaring all British ships open game. He hoped that this action would force Britain to sue for peace.

  Most countries fell in line, but the Portuguese, old allies of Britain, proved recalcitrant. This provided Napoleon with a reason to invade the Iberian peninsula in 1808 and place his brother, Joseph, on the Spanish throne. The king of Portugal fled to his colony in Brazil, which was established as the temporary capital of the Portuguese Empire. To Napoleon’s dismay, the Spanish did not accept a French king and, with British help, the entire Iberian peninsula caused Napoleon problems for many years and succeeded in distracting his attention when it needed to be focused elsewhere.

  Despite these setbacks on the peninsula, by 1812 Napoleon controlled a quarter of Europe’s population and members of his family sat on thrones in Spain, Naples and Holland, creating a new dynastic family in Europe. He even took for his wife Marie Louise, the Habsburg daughter of the Austrian emperor, Francis I, who happened to be a niece of Marie Antoinette, the queen the revolution had executed.

  Yet it was not only the Portuguese who refused to play ball; the Russians also continued to trade with Britain. Distrusting Russia’s imperial intentions, Napoleon invaded the country in the summer of 1812 with approximately half a million men, but the Russians adopted a scorched-earth policy that deprived Napoleon of food to feed his army. Disease, desertion and an inconclusive battle just outside Moscow at Borodino, in which some 50,000 of his soldiers were killed, meant that Napoleon reached Moscow with only 100,000 of his men.

  Worse still, when it finally became clear to Napoleon that the Russians had no intention of surrendering, his army was forced into a retreat during the Russian winter. Where desertion and hunger failed to work, ‘General Winter’ and ‘General Typhus’ succeeded. Of the half a million men that had set out, only some 20,000–40,000 returned. The huge number of horses that died en route, estimated by some at up to 200,000, also contributed directly to Napoleon’s defeats over the coming years in a world in which the cavalry could make or break a battle.

  Like the Habsburg Empire before it, Napoleon’s growing empire was a threat to other European powers. Encouraged by his defeat in Russia, these powers formed yet another alliance against him, advancing together on Paris where, in 1814, Napoleon was forced to surrender. He was sent to exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba, which he was effectively given as a sovereign principality, along with an income and title. Not one to give up easily though, Napoleon escaped from the island, managed to pull together a huge army of loyal soldiers while marching north through France, and waged war in Europe one last time.

  But his time had passed. He was finally and decisively beaten in 1815 by an allied army led by the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo,86 near Brussels, in present-day Belgium, and banished to the island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic, under British guard and far enough away for him never to cause trouble again. He lived peacefully for another six years before dying of cancer in 1821 at the age of 51.

  Napoleon’s thirst for power had led to death and destruction and, ‘far from establishing a united Europe under French command, he accelerated the growth of nationalism which would eventually lead to the First ‘World War’.87 Nevertheless, his numerous reforms changed the way in which Europe was run: he introduced a legal code that serves as the basis for the legal system in many European countries today, and his regime challenged the institutions and beliefs of the old order. For better or for worse, he brought the secularism of the revolution into mainstream thought. It is to Napoleon’s campaigns in Egypt that we owe the discovery of the Rosetta Stone that allowed us to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, a discovery that subsequently opened up the world of Egyptian history to mankind.

  The Industrial Revolution (1780s–1900)

  Britain was not without its own revolution in the 18th century, albeit one of a different kind. A major turning point in human history, some have gone so far as to call the Industrial Revolution the most far-reaching, influential transformation of human society since the advent of agriculture.

  Early 18th-century Britain, and most of the world for that matter, was predominantly agricultural, with economic activity focused around products farmed from – or on – the land, chiefly crops and wool. Britain had a small population of five million and modest life expectancy. Malnutrition and famine were common. Moreover, there was no electricity, nor cars or trains, but only wind power, water power, horsepower and manual labour. A person in 1750 could travel no faster than Caesar had travelled 1,800 years previously.

  In many ways however, Britain was in a good position compared with its continental neighbours. Geographically, ‘the steady shift in the main trade routes from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the great profits that could be made from colonial and commercial ventures in the West Indies, North America, the Indian subcontinent, and the Far East naturally benefited a country situated off the western flank of the European continent’.88 For a long time Britain had a monopoly on trade with its northern American colonies which, as with Britain’s other colonies, provided both a supply of raw materials and demand for manufactured goods. The economy had become global and London had taken its place at its centre.

  Closer to home, other advantages included large deposits of easily accessible coal and iron ore – the two natural resources upon which industrialisation would come to depend – a laissez-faire attitude by the government that encouraged innovation and trade, and a risk-taking private sector with capital to invest. Finally, an absence of internal duties on commerce meant that, compared to mainland Europe, moving goods internally was cheap.

  Britain was also on the verge of a population explosion the likes of which it had never seen. Agricultural reform had encouraged larger farms, which increased agricultural output and led to cheaper food. People’s diets also improved thanks to regular imports of meat from the colonies. Advances in medical knowledge and sanitation meant that fewer people died in infancy, and the average lifespan also increased. Importantly, lower prices of food meant that people did not have to spend everything they earned on eating and could therefore purchase other products. This subsequently led to increasing pressure to produce a greater volume of manufactured goods, the most sought after of which were textiles.

  Demand for cotton – both from within Britain and from its colonies – was virtually unlimited as cotton was much smoother on the skin than wool and was also longer lasting and cheaper, not to mention easier to clean. Such was the quantity of cotton imports that England banned the import of cotton cloth from India in 1700 in an effort to prop up its own wool industry. Businesses responded by importing raw cotton in order to finish it in Britain. This increased the competition for labour, which became more expensive, thereby raising production costs.

  It was this combination of increasing labour costs and surging demand that led merchants to explore ways of reducing their costs, rather than increasing their prices, in order to become more competitive. Machines which were developed to speed up production helped make local cotton not only cheaper but also finer and stronger than Indian cotton. However, the industry became a victim of its own success; demand increased to such an extent that the s
upply of cotton could not keep up. The problem was only solved when an American, Eli Whitney, invented the cotton gin,89 a machine that enabled a worker to clean 50 times more cotton than normal.

  Despite these great improvements, it was the application of the steam engine to the textile industry that really drove the revolution and changed the face of society. Initially developed to pump water from coal mines in the early 1700s, the steam engine was improved upon in the 1760s by James Watt, a Scottish engineer from whose name we get that of a unit of power: a watt. Two decades later Watt developed a rotary engine that could power machines to spin and weave cotton cloth. The new methods, which increased the amount of goods produced, while decreasing the costs, proved to be the death knell for handlooms.90

  In coal, British industry had found a cheap and efficient source of power to take over from dwindling supplies of wood and its by-product, charcoal. Iron makers began preferring coal over wood charcoal as it burned cleaner and hotter. As more and more machines were manufactured out of iron – which was also used to build railway lines, trains and ships – the demand for coal increased. The revolution may well have failed, or at the very least been significantly slower, had Britain not been blessed with an abundant supply of coal.

  Large profits were made during this time, with industrial capitalists becoming a powerful force to be reckoned with. In order to maximise their returns, many of them invested their capital into the infrastructure required to improve the transport of both coal and finished products. Canals, railways and roads all received significant investment. Steam-powered vessels that did not rely on wind for their propulsion gradually replaced less reliable sailing ships, and steam-powered locomotives revolutionised transport on land.