Prophecies (Not Just Religious)

In Europe, the aftermath of the industrial and commercial revolution had different effects in the mid-term. On the one hand, we must point out the division of labor and the creation of new industries that produced novel goods to be sold in faraway places, transforming, thus, traditional economies and helping countries like England to be wealthier and also to improve the living conditions of its dwellers. Meanwhile, people moved to the cities and, consequently, societies become more and more organized around the urban. However, there were several social clashes both at the epicenter of the changes and the periphery, many times led by, and based on, prophetical movements: Islamic Revitalization, Taiping Rebellion or Socialism. I'm going to write about this sort of interactions this time.

Islamic Upheavals

To start with, I must stressed those revolts that happened in the Islamic world during this period, in which wahhabism became the most powerful religious device to deal with the european threat (as wahhabists said). Its main leader was a man called Muhammad Ibn abd al-Wahhab who claimed that every problem arabian people had was a consequence of the foreign commercial activities in the area, so ‘he demanded a return to the pure Islam of Muhammad and the early caliphs’ (pag 602). In fact, he strongly believed that Islam was at that time in a degraded state (in particular because of the polytheistic beliefs) and defended the absolute oneness of Allah (his followers were the muwahhidins: Unitarians). As a result, wahhabists spread all over the arabian peninsula and sacked important places like Mecca and Medina. It’s true that they found resistance within the Ottoman Empire, from where egyptians sent troops to defeat them (what they did), but wahabbism mantained great power and influence in the zone. Additionally, it was also important the role that played Abd al-Qadir, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abi al-Qasim and his daughter, Zaynab, in order to protect Algeria’s political and religious autonomy from french rulers.

Click above to see picture details - Map of the Sokoto Caliphate (Source: http://hlovejoy.wordpress.com/)

In West Africa, another similar movement led by Usman dan Fodio (a Fulani muslim cleric) took place in what is today northern Nigeria. Its aim was to recover the ancient credences, so ‘It attacked false belief and heathenism and urged followers to wage holy war (jihad) against unbelievers’ (p. 605). Although its principal enemies, the old Hausa rulers (ancient city-states), were known as not enough believers, ‘muslim revolts [also] erupted from Senegal to Nigeria, responding in part to increased trade with the outside world and the circulation of religious ideas from across the Sahara Desert’. Hausa rulers were finally overthrown and Usman dan Fodio created a new Confederation of Islamic Emirates better known as Sokoto Caliphate. As in the case of Algeria, here we have an important contribution from women (respecting the Sharia) in the person of Nana Asma’u, dan Fodio's daughter. Otherwise, it’s also important to highligth the transformations occurred in the south of Africa, like the Mfecane movement (forced migrations).

Taiping Rebellion

During the first half of the nineteenth century, China was suffering the impact of natural disasters, economic problems and social unrest. Because of that, the Qing Dinasty was in trouble, so the First Opium War worsened the situation: China was forced to open its lands to the global trade, harming, in consequence, its traditional economy. It was in this context that the figure of Hong Xiuquan (born in Guangzhou) appeared. He became a political prophet after having problems with the Chinese system of examinations to entry in the army and, after that, his aim was to create a Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (of Christian inspiration) in response to the social injustices. In that movement ‘policies were strict: they prohibited the consumption of alcohol, the smoking of opium, or any indulgence in sensual pleasure. Men and women were segregated for administrative and residential purposes ...’ (p. 610). Although the rebels had captured cities like Nanjin, Manchus and Han elites, supported by european forces that didn´t like that perversion of Christianity, managed to defeat the rebels (Hong Xiuquan died there).

Socialism

In 1848, at the same time that Revolutions spread all over Europe, was published The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in which they 'predicted that [under Capitalism] there would be overproduction and underconsumption, which would lead to lower profits for capitalists and, consequently, to lower wages or unemployment for workers - which would ultimately spark a proletarian revolution' (p. 618). 'They were also confident that the clashes between industrial wage workers - or proletarians - and capitalists would end in a colossal transformation of human society and would usher in a new world of true liberty, equality, and fraternity. This revolution would result in a “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the end of private property' (p. 618). However, they were wrong in some of their predictions when talked about only two social classes: Capitalists and Proletarians. In fact, in 1848 and later those who did the revolution were, above all, artisans and other traders denouncing the privilegies of the aristocracy.

To sum up, I would like to finish the article with this sentence from Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: 'like their counterparts in the Islamic world and Africa, the Taiping rebels promised to restore lost harmony. Despite all the differences of cultural and historical background, what Abd al-Wahhab, dan Fodio, Shaka, and Hong had in common was the perception that the present world was unjust' (p. 610).

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The Panic of 1907

'For the past two centuries recurrent crises have shaken the banking system and financial markets in the United States. One severe crises, the Bank Panic of 1907, disrupted financial markets to such an extent that it became and important catalyst for creating the Federal Reserve and the U.S. banking system as it operates today [...]' 

Click and Read: Lessons from The Panic of 1907 (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 1990)

Flag draped Wall Street with Trinity Church in the distance (Andy Kingsbury / Corbis)

                                              
More Information: Video - John Pierpont Morgan    

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Westward Expansion

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The Enlightenment: Reason and Rights

Maybe thanks to the commerce and surely driven by science, literacy and critical thinking, european people started to view the world from another perspective, which was originated with the second half of the sixteen hundreds and was extended throughout the eighteenth century. Jeremy Adelman illustrates this shift when he talks about the consumption of tea, coffee or sugar (the old preciosities from Asia and America) in places like coffeehouses, where people exchanged their knowledges or studies and defended novel and powerful ideas. This new pattern of socialization truly modified the understanding of the individual and perhaps the world, even though states used it to defend slavery and submission later (treatment of Africans). That’s someway The Enlightenment, 'an extraordinary cultural flowering that blossomed in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries' (p. 542)

To start with, I would like to point out the role that played commerce and travel in this evolution, which was crucial. As you probably know, the trade interdependence along the whole world not only forced some countries to adapt their economies and policies to the new situation but also helped them to raise concerns and to study each other anywhere. 'They sought universal and objective knowledge that would not reflect any particular religion, political view, class, or gender' (p. 542) For instance, James Cook used his scientific expeditions in the Pacific Ocean to bring knowledge to Europe in order to study and classify it to mass consumption (fauna, flora, food, culture and so on). By the way, it was in the coffeehouses of which I talked before where this new issues were discussed. However, the spread of critical thinking did not stopped in public places, being the production of books to personal consumption (Diderot and his Enciclopedie) another important factor to understand the emergence of the new ways of thinking (Scientific Method, p. 545), sometimes quite controversial. That could be the case of Adam Smith, who criticized Mercantilism in ‘The Wealth of Nations’, or even that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau who claimed ‘Man is born good’ but ‘It is society that corrupts him’ in ‘The Social Contract’ (p. 546) and that we must link with the respect to other countries, peoples and cultures.

Zu den blauen Flaschen (Anonymous, c. 1900)

Furthermore, besides Rousseau, Smith or Diderot, it came out women like Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote, among others, a book called ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ in which she argued that they aren’t naturally inferior to men (p. 547). Was it the dawn of feminism? It's highly probable. Meanwhile, Olympe de Gauges worried about women rights and slavery, being ‘L’esclavage des noirs’ her best known play. Otherwise, after two centuries of conquest in America and commercial superiority in other parts of the world like India or China, people began to study the differences, if there were, between european people and the others, even those born of mixtures with natives. The point here was to explain the nature of ‘criollos’, ‘mestizos’ or ‘mulatos’, which nowadays we can analyze observing and studying ‘The Casta Paintings’ in places where spanish were sharing their lives with the aboriginal ones. Sometimes europeans wanted to justify their dominion with this kind of explanations, but at the end this were the basis to ending slavery. As John Locke said at its time, 'cultural differences were not the result of unequal natural abilities, but of unequal opportunities to develop one’s abilities' (p. 547) 

Moreover, the ways in which empires were using mercantilism were amply denounced, but this time not from Adam Smith’s economic perspective, but blowing on the crimes and misdemeanors as a result of this sort of commercial and military domain and exploitation which were, above all, in the hands of a few men. What’s more, Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of Bengal was accused of corruption in an impeachment in 1787. Although he was acquitted in 1795, the case exemplifies the strains and different opinions of the time. 'The criticism of corruption did not come only from high intellectuals. Pamphlets charging widespread corruption, fraudulent stock speculation, and insider trading circulated widely. Sex, too, sold well. Works like Venus in the Cloister or the Nun in a Nightgown racked up as many sales as the now-classic works of the Enlightenment' (p. 546). Finally, Religion's vision also suffered some changes, because, even though many thinkers were believers, they gave precedence to the reason and defended toleration.

To sum up, I would like to say that the main benefit of the Enlightenment was to provide devices to the people in order to learn, to think critically for yourself and to create a framework in which the individual (in opposition to the State) gain more power and acquires fundamental rights. 

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