The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830
A classic study of fifteen crucial years in the formation of the modern world
The Birth of the Modern has established itself as a new kind of historical work - an examination of the way the matrix of the modern world was formed. Paul Johnson, one of today's most popular historians, takes fifteen critical years and subjects them to a fascinatingly detailed analysis: their geopolitics and politics, their cultural and intellectual life, their technology and science. He investigates every area of life, in every corner of the world. And he makes of this huge variety of elements a coherent narrative, told through the lives and actual words of the age's people - outstanding and ordinary - so that the reader feels he was there.
"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false." Paul Johnson
In this 1000 page volume, Johnson tells how the modern society rapidly took shape in a relatively short period of time after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte.This literally weighty but lively tome argues for the years 1815-30 as "those during which the matrix of the modern world was formed," citing developments like the rise of democracy and the separation of science from the broader culture. Johnson leaps from country to country, from politics to art to literature to medicine, in a fashion that makes for better browsing than consecutive reading.It is an interesting and compelling thesis. The industrial revolution, which created a lot of "self-made" men, and the arrival of the white men to all continents with their modern morals and superior weapons, the emergence of science, the popularization of music, art, communication media and eventually politics, all interacted to bring about an era of politics of the masses, or democracy, in the West.
Throughout this thick book, every European or American military adventure in Asia, Africa, or the Americas is reported with modifiers like "had to," "like it or not," and "reluctantly." Thus we read that Britain went to war in China "for altruistic as well as commercial reasons," as if China was in need of a foreign power to peddle opium to its people and then shell its port cities. There is no doubt that most European officers really believed in the "mission civilisatrice," but it seems ridiculous for a latter-day historian to agree with them in this sly way. I would recommend taking this book with a grain of salt, remembering that the slaves who manufactured table salt during this period had a history as well.
Johnson's analysis throughout the book is helpful in placing happenings into an understandable context. For example he talks about the defense of religion given by Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, saying, "It explained why, as the French themselves had discovered during the atheistic 1790s, religion was a necessary part of human life--and always would be so--why reason and the cold intellect were not enough and why Blaise Pascal had been right to insist that 'the Heart has its reasons which Reason knoweth not'"
The anguish of the lack of the heart's desire being met is illustrated in the life of one of the famous composers of the era. "Beethoven's overbearing selfishness was compounded by his failure to marry and the loneliness it bred--'Oh God,' he wrote in anguish, 'may I find her at last, the woman who may strengthen me in virtue, who is permitted to be mine.' But no one was willing to be Beethoven's wife" (p. 122).
The Battle of Waterloo, back on the European continent is also described and labeled as "one of the decisive battles of history" (p. 83).The book contains insightful asides such as the one about Talleyrand's love of music. We're told "He hired one of Joseph Haydn's pupils, Sigismond Neukomm, to play the piano softly--background music, hours at a time--while he worked at his desk" (p. 99).
Counter point...
In addition to being foolish, bigoted, and frivolous, this book is also full of factual errors and shameless indulgence of idle assumption. If Safire is deliciously conservative, and David Brooks amusingly so, we are here shown how a senile conservative could actually be dull.
For Mr. Johnson's information, Formosa was not Japanese until 1895; China was not a theocracy during Qing Dynasty, and opium did not become popular in China until 1820s (as opposed to 1729, as Mr. Johnson asserted). And there were volumes written in UK on how Great Brittain government, as well as East India Company, deliberately introduced opium to balance its trade with China.
I can understand why some people like the book. The prose is feather-light, the sentiments easy to understand, and the anti-intellectualism must be crowd-pleasing. If Mr. Johnson stayed to his true course, writing for Entertainment Weekly, I would have no objection. But why he has to meddle in history, where a pretension to truth is still regarded as at least courteous, in spite of the repeated onslaught of post-modernism, is frankly beyond the comprehension of my own feeble intellect.
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