Age of Revolutions Part I: Chapters 4 & 5 Summary & Analysis

Part I: Revolutions Past
4. The Mother of All Revolutions: Industrial Britain
5. The Real American Revolution: Industrial United States

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 put in place conditions that soon gave birth in Great Britain to the Industrial Revolution. Chapter 4 mentions a few technological innovations of the 18th and 19th centuries. These include a safety-enhancing water pump for coal mines, a new, labor-saving type of shuttle for weaver’s looms, and eventually steam-powered locomotives and accurate pocket watches. These developments and many others facilitated an explosive rise in industrial manufacturing activity. With the technological changes came social changes, such as fixed working hours, leisure time for wage earners, and women’s participation in the labor force. The material benefits to working people (Zakaria argues) more than justified the resulting social friction. However, violent protests against job-threatening technologies and against political inequities eventually prompted reforms to Britain’s political system, starting in 1832. These reforms would gradually give the working class a stronger voice in Parliament. A major change in economic policy was the 1846 repeal of a Corn Law limiting foreign grain imports. The law had benefited grain-growing landowners but harmed urban workers, by raising the price of bread. Meanwhile, the British Empire expanded globally, thanks to a navy that ruled the seas. The free trade of affordable textiles and other goods produced in the colonies further raised standards of living for British working people. Thus, through a combination of legal reforms and economic prosperity, Britain flourished while France lagged behind.

Read about Main Idea #1 of Age of Revolutions: Classical liberalism has made the world a better place.

Inevitably, the Industrial Revolution spread to the United States, where it brought about far more dramatic societal changes than the War of Independence had. Chapter 5 mentions the steam-powered riverboat, rail and canal transportation networks, and the telegraph as innovations that fueled the United States’ growth into a world power. During the Gilded Age, industrialists such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie grew famously wealthy even as urban workers struggled to make ends meet. Unlike European workers, however, American workers never rose up in organized socialist opposition to free-market capitalism. The main political tensions, at first, were between the interests of industrialists and urban workers on one side and rural agricultural interests on the other. Because infrastructure development on a national scale required an activist central government, the party of big business was also the party of big government. This was Lincoln’s Republican Party, the party of the industrialized North. The Democrats, on the other hand, were the party of farmers and of states’ rights. By the time the 19th century came to a close, however, business-minded Republicans were coming to see the federal government as more an impediment to their agenda than a help. Meanwhile Democrats sought the government’s aid for those left behind, or actively harmed, by technological progress. This included farmers, rural citizens, and, increasingly, industrial workers.

Read an explanation about a key quote (#2) about the importance of the Industrial Revolution.

Zakaria concludes Part I by summarizing how the Left-versus-Right opposition shifted over time in Great Britain and the United States. As the Corn Law repeal illustrates, free-market capitalism was originally embraced by the Left as an instrument of social progress, and resisted by the landed gentry. By the early 20th century, however, it was the wealthy few who most strongly favored markets free of government interference. Zakaria calls Teddy Roosevelt, who believed in capitalism but wanted government to ensure that the free market worked for the benefit of all, “the last progressive Republican.” By 1929, unrestricted capitalism had become the orthodoxy of the Right. The subsequent activist-government moves by Franklin Roosevelt to pull the United States out of the Great Depression became emblematic of the Left.

Read about Main Idea #2: The Left-versus-Right debate is giving way to a debate about Open-versus-Closed.

Zakaria’s way of framing the dance of Left and Right at the end of Chapter 5 is in tension with his suggestion early in the book that historically, Left and Right have largely agreed in endorsing classical liberalism. In the early chapters, laissez-faire is shorthand for classically liberal economics, but by the end of Part I it signifies the views of the Right. In fact, Zakaria writes, during the Cold War the dispute between Right and Left became a battle between democratic capitalism and authoritarian communism.