A monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation of the World offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jurgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and towering erudition.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• PART ONE: APPROACHES
• I Memory and Self-Observation: The Perpetuation of the Nineteenth Century
• 1 Visibility and Audibility
• 2 Treasuries of Memory and Knowledge
• 3 Observation, Description, Realism
• 4 Numbers
• 5 News
• 6 Photography
• II Time: When Was the Nineteenth Century?
• 1 Chronology and the Coherence of the Age
• 2 Calendar and Periodization
• 3 Breaks and Transitions
• 4 The Age of Revolution, Victorianism, Fin de Siècle
• 5 Clocks and Acceleration
• III Space: Where Was the Nineteenth Century?
• 1 Space and Time
• 2 Metageography: Naming Spaces
• 3 Mental Maps: The Relativity of Spatial Perspective
• 4 Spaces of Interaction: Land and Sea
• 5 Ordering and Governing Space
• 6 Territoriality, Diaspora, Borders
• PART TWO: PANORAMAS
• IV Mobilities
• 1 Magnitudes and Tendencies
• 2 Population Disasters and the Demographic Transition
• 3 The Legacy of Early Modern Migrations: Creoles and Slaves
• 4 Penal Colony and Exile
• 5 Ethnic Cleansing
• 6 Internal Migration and the Changing Slave Trade
• 7 Migration and Capitalism
• 8 Global Motives
• V Living Standards: Risk and Security in Material Life
• 1 The Standard of Living and the Quality of Life
• 2 Life Expectancy and “Homo hygienicus”
• 3 Medical Fears and Prevention
• 4 Mobile Perils, Old and New
• 5 Natural Disasters
• 6 Famine
• 7 Agricultural Revolutions
• 8 Poverty and Wealth
• 9 Globalized Consumption
• VI Cities: European Models and Worldwide Creativity
• 1 The City as Norm and Exception
• 2 Urbanization and Urban Systems
• 3 Between Deurbanization and Hypergrowth
• 4 Specialized Cities, Universal Cities
• 5 The Golden Age of Port Cities
• 6 Colonial Cities, Treaty Ports, Imperial Metropolises
• 7 Internal Spaces and Undergrounds
• 8 Symbolism, Aesthetics, Planning
• VII Frontiers: Subjugation of Space and Challenges to Nomadic Life
• 1 Invasions and Frontier Processes
• 2 The North American West
• 3 South America and South Africa
• 4 Eurasia
• 5 Settler Colonialism
• 6 The Conquest of Nature: Invasions of the Biosphere
• VIII Imperial Systems and Nation-States: The Persistence of Empires
• 1 Great-Power Politics and Imperial Expansion
• 2 Paths to the Nation-State
• 3 What Holds Empires Together?
• 4 Empires: Typology and Comparisons
• 5 Central and Marginal Cases
• 6 Pax Britannica
• 7 Living in Empires
• IX International Orders, Wars, Transnational Movements: Between Two World Wars
• 1 The Thorny Path to a Global System of States
• 2 Spaces of Power and Hegemony
• 3 Peaceful Europe, Wartorn Asia and Africa
• 4 Diplomacy as Political Instrument and Intercultural Art
• 5 Internationalisms and the Emergence of Universal Norms
• X Revolutions: From Philadelphia via Nanjing to Saint Petersburg
• 1 Revolutions—from Below, from Above, from Unexpected Directions
• 2 The Revolutionary Atlantic
• 3 The Great Turbulence in Midcentury
• 4 Eurasian Revolutions, Fin de Siècle
• XI The State: Minimal Government, Performances, and the Iron Cage
• 1 Order and Communication: The State and the Political
• 2 Reinventions of Monarchy
• 3 Democracy
• 4 Bureaucracies
• 5 Mobilization and Discipline
• 6 Self-Strengthening: The Politics of Peripheral Defensive
• 7 State and Nationalism
• PART THREE: THEMES
• XII Energy and Industry: Who Unbound Prometheus, When, and Where?
• 1 Industrialization
• 2 Energy Regimes: The Century of Coal
• 3 Paths of Economic Development and Nondevelopment
• 4 Capitalism
• XIII Labor: The Physical Basis of Culture
• 1 The Weight of Rural Labor
• 2 Factory, Construction Site, Office
• 3 Toward Emancipation: Slaves, Serfs, Peasants
• 4 The Asymmetry of Wage Labor
• XIV Networks: Extension, Density, Holes
• 1 Communications
• 2 Trade
• 3 Money and Finance
• XV Hierarchies: The Vertical Dimension of Social Space
• 1 Is a Global Social History Possible?
• 2 Aristocracies in (Moderate) Decline
• 3 Bourgeois and Quasi-bourgeois
• XVI Knowledge: Growth, Concentration, Distribution
• 1 World Languages
• 2 Literacy and Schooling
• 3 The University as a Cultural Export from Europe
• 4 Mobility and Translation
• 5 Humanities and the Study of the Other
• XVII Civilization and Exclusion
• 1 The “Civilized World” and Its “Mission”
• 2 Slave Emancipation and White Supremacy
• 3 Antiforeignism and “Race War”
• 4 Anti-Semitism
• XVIII Religion
• 1 Concepts of Religion and the Religious
• 2 Secularization
• 3 Religion and Empire
• 4 Reform and Renewal
• Conclusion: The Nineteenth Century in History
• 1 Self-Diagnostics
• 2 Modernity
• 3 Again: The Beginning or End of a Century
• 4 Five Characteristics of the Century
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography