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E.H. GombrichA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Gombrich, in his chapter on the advent of industrialization, first considers the aftereffects of the Napoleonic Wars. In many ways, the leaders of Europe succeeded in reverting to the way things were before the French Revolution. However, the Enlightenment approach to observing and studying nature could not be repressed, and a new world emerged from its inventions.
Gombrich now suggests that the history of an invention is not as simple, or linear, as the reader may think. Often, the person who first came up with an idea would abandon it, and whoever was able to take that idea and create something useful from it would be considered the inventor. Gombrich names the steam engine as the first such invention, but the machines that made the greatest impact were the ones that automated labor, like the mechanical loom. Suddenly, guilds and artisans were rendered useless. One no longer needed a lifetime of training to create these products, only a few hours, and one mechanical loom could do more than 100 trained weavers for no pay at all. There were far fewer jobs to go around, and the people whom the machines had replaced were starving. This turn of events gave a great deal of power to a business owner. He could hire people to work for next to nothing, in dangerous conditions, because everyone was desperate for a job.
A new idea started spreading: that the owners of these machines should not be able to treat everyone else so poorly. The profits should be shared with the workers who created that profit. This principle is called socialism. The most famous socialist of this time was Karl Marx, a German scholar. He thought that the only solution was for the workers to stick together. If they operated as one, they would hold power. When he published the Communist Manifesto in 1848, the discord between classes had become a struggle against the nobility of Europe, who wanted to keep power and prosperity among themselves. That same year, there was a new revolution in France, and it spread all over Europe. The old regime had ended, and a new industrial era had begun.
According to Gombrich, the world became a smaller place after the invention of the steam engine. From this time onward, history is truly global, not isolated by geography. In this chapter, Gombrich focuses on China, Japan, and America. Before 1800, China had flourished as largely the same civilization it had been almost 2,000 years before. When the British arrived in their steamboats, they brought opium, an addictive and dangerous substance. The Chinese authorities tried to stamp out this trade, but in 1860, British and French troops sacked and looted Peking, and the emperor was forced to flee. The ancient empire now had no choice but to let European merchants sell wherever and whatever they pleased.
Meanwhile, in Japan, European ambassadors began arriving at the island, which had barred foreign visitors for over 200 years. The emperor of Japan decided that to protect Japan and its culture from foreigners, they must learn of their inventions and use them against them. Thus, foreigners were welcomed, but once Japan had its own steamboats and cannons, the country forced the Europeans out and closed its borders once again.
Turning to the United States, where the people had gained their freedom from Britain, settlers were pushing further and further west. New states were appearing as soon as they were settled, and different regions operated quite differently. In the wealthy southern states, industry relied on large plantations where African slaves labored. Further north, the colder climate was similar to that of Europe, and people had farms and towns where they did the work themselves. The Northerners believed that the Southerners were shameful for cruelly using slaves to perform their labor. The South was much more economically powerful than the North, and it seemed the South would never give in. When Abraham Lincoln, an advocate for the abolition of slavery, was elected president in 1861, the southern states declared themselves an independent Confederacy and seceded from the country. The resulting civil war was bloody and devastating, but in 1865, all slaves in the defeated and dissolved Confederacy were freed. The United States soon became the most powerful country in the world.
Turning back to the affairs in Europe, Gombrich remarks how strange it seems that he knows people who were alive before Germany and Italy existed as they do today. He then describes the political situation at this time in mainland Europe. The empire of Austria was ruled by Franz Josef, who also ruled over Hungary and Poland. Meanwhile, Germany had been left in disarray after Napoleon had dissolved the empire. Its independent states had formed a confederation, called the German Confederation, which also included Austria. In France, an ancestor of Napoleon had been elected president and soon afterwards was declared Emperor Napoleon III. Russia suffered under serfdom until 1861. Though much of the population now was educated in Enlightenment ideas, the tsar ruled strictly, and citizens were not allowed to speak freely. Turkey and Spain had become powerless. France and Austria were still fighting over Italian cities, but now the Italians felt that they had a united identity of their own, and Italy became a unified state in 1866.
The Prussian prime minister at this time was a man named Bismarck, a politician who wasn’t afraid to disagree with the Prussian king, William. His goal was to unite the German states into an empire once again, with Prussia at the helm. In 1866, Bismarck’s forces attacked Austria in the hopes of forcing it out of the German Confederation and leaving Prussia as the most powerful member of the new empire. King William became the emperor of Germany, thanks to Bismarck. To make peace, France had to give up large parts of the country to Germany. The French kicked a relative of Napoleon off of the throne and formed a republic. Bismarck was now chancellor of the German Empire. He opposed the socialist teachings of Karl Marx and improved the conditions of workers slightly to prevent the spread of such ideas.
Gombrich opens this chapter by saying that now he has arrived at the time when his parents were young and can describe it just as they did to him. To explain rising international tensions, he describes the changing global economy. It had become vital for European industrialized countries to have colonies, but there was little land left to claim. Whatever land there was would have to be fought over. All of Europe knew that conflict between them could erupt at any moment, and they built up their armies and navies, waiting for the first strike.
In 1914, the heir to the Austrian throne was assassinated by a Serb. War was inevitable. Russia joined up with Serbia, while Germany allied with Austria. Germany marched through Belgium to attack Paris. Britain joined up with the French, worried that a victorious Germany would become too powerful. Germany and Austria were known as the “central powers,” and the countries allied against them were the “allied powers” (267). In 1915, Italy joined the allies. Millions fought in armies that dug trenches in the ground, forming a wasteland of destruction and corpses between them. Americans joined the fight on the side of the allies in 1917, and after 11 million deaths, in 1918, the central powers agreed to a ceasefire. The emperors of Austria and Germany were forced to abdicate. The various peoples of the Austrian Empire founded new states. When a peace treaty was negotiated in Paris, Germany was blamed for the war and had to pay the allies enormous sums of money.
Gombrich now reflects on just how civilization got to airplanes and wars so unfathomably deadly as this, imagining history as a long river. The future, he says, is unknown; we can only gaze into the mist. This is where Gombrich first concluded his book, and his story, in 1935. In parting, he tells the reader “what we call our fate is no more than our struggle in that great multitude of droplets in the rise and fall of one wave. But we must make use of that moment. It is worth the effort” (272).
In his chapter on the Industrial Age, Gombrich introduces the inventions that defined the era by framing them as direct consequences of Enlightenment scientific thought that could not be erased by the nobility of Europe. In fact, Gombrich suggests that they were more effective tools for dismantling the powers of the old world than the revolutions discussed in his previous chapters: “this hidden aspect of the Enlightenment led to a far greater revolution and dealt a far more deadly blow to the old forms and institutions than the Parisian Jacobins ever did with their guillotine” (240). Not only did the inventions of this period change the nature of labor and wealth, but they also changed the nature of trade and global relationships.
In Chapter 37, Gombrich compares the fates of Japan and China, two countries that were threatened by the aggression and greed of Western traders. He discusses the American Civil War, his first and only in-depth description of domestic affairs in the United States, as a consequence of a changing economy of labor. Similarly, he sets up the increasingly aggressive relationships between European countries as a direct consequence of global trade and industry, and the lack of resources and land to match the insatiable desire for more money and power.
This discussion culminates in his chapter on the First World War, an event occurring during his own lifetime. He tells the reader that this period is one that his own parents can tell him about, placing himself as the audience of their story of “How vast suburbs spread to house the workers, and factories with powerful machines kept thousands busy doing work which used to be done by perhaps hundreds of thousands of artisans” (264). Not only is this cataclysmic war set up as a direct consequence of the “truly new age” of invention by the previous chapter, but in his conclusion, Gombrich explicitly describes all of history as leading to this event and whatever lies beyond (486). Originally the final chapter of his book, Gombrich ends his history here by reflecting on the strange, fluid nature of time and how we cannot know what is next in our own portion of this story. We are “droplets on the waves of time” (271), churning up to the surface and down again in a long, winding river, subject to the unstoppable force of change.