Global History and the 'long 19th Century

- A march towards progress

- Victorians saw themselves as modern

- Innovation after Innovation

- Modernity - Term is an issue - every generation sees themselves as modern

1. Work and discipline

2. Commodities and Ownership - Showing off wealth

3. Free trade, civilisation and cooperation

4. Church and Welfare - Middle class Victorians felt they had moral duties to making living and working conditions better

5. Power and success

- Britain changed from an agrarian society to an industrialised and urbanised country

- Britain first country to industrialise 

- Social groups suffered

- How a victorian lived was based on class

- British society and the economy was unprecedented experiment in industrial and financial capitalism

- Victorians felt they lived in a modern age

- People worked to fulfil moral obligations - Everyone worked

- Sunday = Religious devotion

- Leagues against the Sabbath made to reinforce religion on Sunday

- Leisure increased - people could only participate if they had money and depending on their class

- Industrialisation drives leisure time

- Sport was hard and earnest and relaxation was to be bracing and improving

- Class played a role in the kind of sports people could participate in

- Mass market for items developed

- Items that weren't necessary brought to show wealth

- Cheaper version of items

- Houses packed with curios

- Great Exhibition 1851 - showcasing Britain

- 6 million people visited

- Symbolised a different future 

- Industrial revolution

- 1845 revolutions

- Indian Mutiny

- Scramble for Africa

- Home Rule

- Although we need to be made wary of the march towards 'progress' thesis

- History is no longer just national - we need to be thinking of global interactions

- Is the way forward Global history?

- Paradox of self-reference (Hofstadter) 

- Global History is broader in progress - looks beyond the boundaries of the nation-state

- Because of the broad scope it's not always written by historians

- Some see it as beneficial

- Others see it as wrong because of exploitation

- Began in the 19th century

- Force of god, or of evil? 

- How new is globalisation?

- Is it inevitable?

- Challenges the idea that Globalisation is a new force and is not unique

- Globalisation is not just about the west e.g. Chinese tributary system - shaped politics in Eastern Asia

1. Foundations for current era laid at this time

3 KEY = Trade, movement of capital, spread of ideas and people

- Colonial expansion and globalisation saw connections which had never been seen before

- Increased mobility - spread in views

- Flows of goods, capital and people

- A function of economic conditions? Exploiting countries

- Westerns - Colonisation

- A political project (Bisley) - spreading views

- Empires engine of the 19th-century globalisation

- Forerunner of globalisation