Unit 9: The Modern Revolution - Big History Project

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Learning Outcomes

Lesson Outline
By the end of Unit 9, students should be able to:1. Describe accelerating global change and the factors that describe it.2. Understand the key features that define the Anthropocene.3. Describe how economies have developed and changed since the Industrial Revolution. 9.0 AccelerationIn the last 500 years, our world has undergone a dramatic transformation. The speed of communication and transportation have accelerated, leading to greater interconnection of the four world zones. The consequences have been in the pace of innovation, collective learning, and the human appetite for energy.9.1 The AnthropoceneFor the first time in the history of the biosphere, a single species can effect major change on a global level. The Industrial Revolution has led us into the modern world. In the opinion of many, we are on the brink of a new threshold: the Anthropocene.9.2 Changing EconomiesSmith, Marx, and Keynes are three of the most important economic thinkers of the Modern Revolution. These men had great influence on modern thinking about commerce, labor, and the global economy.

Key Concepts

THRESHOLD 8—THE MODERN REVOLUTIONFor most of the Agrarian era, the various agrarian civilizations had little contact with orknowledge of agrarian civilizations in the other world zones.The lack of global connections slowed innovation and growth. The linking of the four world zones enabled the exposure of people cultures, ideas, foods, plants, and diseases from the other world zones. This increased the exchanges between the different zones and increased the possibilities for innovations. The modern world as we know it developed from these changes.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONThe industrial revolution happened at about the same time as the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, but it focused more on economics than politics. This revolution transformed how people lived, how goods were made, and how economies operated.Before the Industrial Revolution, 80 percent or more of people were involved in agriculture. The Industrial Revolution ushered in an era of wage labor. People moved from the countryside to the cities, and the numbers of people doing agricultural work began to decline in many parts of theworld.The Industrial Revolution began in England around 1750, and this revolution was characterized by the introduction of machines into the manufacturing process. Fossil fuels came to be the energy source for these machines.The economies of India and China dominated the world textile market prior to the Industrial Revolution. The innovations introduced in English factories, coupled with the fact that British could transport their products virtually anywhere, help explain why European countriessurpassed India and China in this period.The Industrial Revolution is the name given to a series of economic and social changes first observed in England about 250 years ago when the English began using coal, a fossil fuel.Steam engines used coal and water to power locomotives, steamboats, and machines in factories. Using fossil fuels allowed humans to generate huge amounts of power.While the Industrial Revolution was born in England, its effects soon spread to the rest of Europe, America, Russia, and Japan.Industrialized countries needed raw materials for factories and markets for finished goods, so they began conquering non-industrialized countries to gain access to resources and markets.These unequal relationships have had lasting impact: there are significant differences in income, life expectancy, birth rates, and levels of education between industrialized and non- industrialized countries today.
HOW DID CHANGEACCELERATE?The modern era is characterized by acceleration. This is shown most clearly by the dramatic rise in human population in the last 200 years.Acceleration has been driven by three important factors:1. The breakdown of barriers between the four world zones, which made a truly global, network possible.2. The rise of commerce and markets, where competition spurred innovation that was critical for success.3. New sources of energy, primarily fossil fuels, which powered these expanding networks and new connections.
Picture ACCELERATIONThe increasing speed of expansion of the Universe provides evidence of acceleration at thecosmic level. On Earth, we see acceleration when we look at the rate of human population growth, the paceof human history, the expansion of humans’ global economy, and the rate of human consumption of fossil fuels.Technology may provide the clearest example of acceleration in human life:From the introduction of the worldwide web in 1990, to the introduction of the iPad in 2010,there is an enormously long list of new technologies that have been introduced in recentdecades. These technologies have facilitated access to increasingly large amounts of information,as well as increasing the speed of human communication.
HOW WAS THE MODERNWORLD CREATED?Humans have become the most powerful force for change in the world. Some change has been positive: there have been increases in life expectancy, literacyrates, and gender equality.Other change has been negative: there have been world wars, atomic bombs, and gaps in living standards between the industrialized and non-industrialized worlds.In the modern world, innovations in food production and economic expansion have resulted in an unprecedented rise in human population without the declines typical of the agrarian era.Some scholars argue that the Earth has entered a new age, the Anthropocene. This name reflects the dominant role that humans play in the modern world. Picture Nuclear weapon test in the Nevada dessert
THE ANTHROPOCENEThe Anthropocene is the name proposed by scientists for a new geological epoch. They believe that the human impact on the biosphere is so profound that this new geological epoch ought to be created to distinguish it from earlier times when the human impact was not as great.These scientists cite the movement of plants into new regions, glacial melting, the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, and changes in the chemistry of the oceans as evidence of the nature of human impact.While change should be expected to result from the geologic and climatic processes that take place naturally in the biosphere, change in a number of areas is greater than expected, and many see humans as the cause. Some of these changes, like increases in carbon in the biosphere, can happen without human intervention, but humans can also contribute to the rise of carbon in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
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