The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century

Marks argues that by the start of the 20th century “the major elements of the modern world had been created” (169). These included nation-states becoming the dominant form of government, industrialization, an economic gap between the West and the Global South, and the adoption of racist ideas of innate superiority in the West and Japan. However, this began to change by the middle of the 20th century when both World Wars fatally weakened or outright destroyed Europe and Japan’s colonial empires. The aftermath of the World War II in 1945 and the end of the Cold War in 1991 brought further globalization. However, Marks argues, “Globalization peaked in 2008 and has been slowly unwinding since then” (171). Another significant change was the increased environmental impact of human civilization and the “‘great departure’ of humans and our history from the rhythms and constraints of the biological old regime” (171).

Marks notes that the invention of synthetic ammonia in 1909 definitively ended the biological old regime by removing “the constraints that nature had placed on the availability of nitrogen for plant growth” (174). He argues that this is why the human population in the 20th century increased from 1.6 to 6.2 billion. The dawn of the 20th century also saw the colonial and imperial powers claiming nearly all of the globe. Tensions between these powers led to World War I. Casualties were high because of the use of technologies like poison gas, tanks, submarines, and battleships. The end of World War I brought about the collapse of empires such as Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire but also led to other empires like Britain and Japan consolidating and expanding their holdings. At the same time, the world experienced an outbreak of influenza that resulted in “between fifty and one hundred million deaths” (177). World War I and the movement of soldiers and military equipment around the world contributed to the spread of influenza virus.

The early 20th century also brought political unrest. The world’s first communist government, the Soviet Union, emerged soon after the collapse of the Russian monarchy. The Mexican Revolution, which took place from 1910 to 1920, resulted in a government that enacted policies favoring “land reform and limiting foreign ownership of Mexican natural resources” (178). By 1911, the Chinese imperial monarchy was overthrown. Led by Benito Mussolini, the first Fascist party appeared in Italy and took power. In addition, nationalist and independence movements occurred in areas and countries that colonial powers had ruled over or exploited, such as India, China, Palestine, Egypt, and Vietnam.

In the 1920s, the US became an extremely important economic power, so much so that “U.S. capital was keeping the global system afloat” (179). However, a stock market crash triggered the Great Depression. The Soviet Union prospered, while the capitalist West struggled. In response, nations abandoned free trade and became protectionist, returning to tariffs. The Great Depression also encouraged authoritarian movements in Germany and Japan: “The world system disintegrated into competing and then warring blocs, and it might have solidified in that deglobalized form if not for a second world war” (181). World War II caused even more casualties than World War I given the use of firebombing, the direction of countries’ industrial capacity almost entirely toward the war effort, and the first atomic bombs. Marks deems this era of the World Wars and the Great Depression the “Thirty-Year Crisis” (182). While this period devastated Europe and Japan, the aftermath created “more income equality within the countries of the industrialized world, especially when coupled with tax and wage policies that improved the lot of working people” (182).

World War II wiped out or began the unraveling of all colonial empires, while China came under the rule of a communist government by 1949. Both China and the newly independent former colonies in Africa and Asia pursued industrialization. The two great global powers left standing were the Soviet Union and the US. The leaders of the US believed that capitalism, free trade, and globalization were the best ways to prevent another world war. To this end, the US supported the creation of several international economic institutions, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. The Soviet Union likewise promoted anticolonial independence movements to encourage the spread of communism around the world. This drove the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the US. The Cold War was defined by the fear that either side would destroy the other and human civilization through nuclear warfare, which was officially termed “mutually assured destruction” (MAD). Nonetheless, the Cold War led the US to embark on violent actions, such as involvement in the Korean War and the Vietnam War and overthrowing various left-wing Latin American governments.

In addition, decolonization led to further conflicts. Examples include the partition of independent India into the Hindu-majority country of India and Muslim-majority Pakistan and new nations based on arbitrary borders determined by colonial powers in Africa and the Middle East. Most colonial nations are underdeveloped, since colonial policies prevented them from industrializing or economically developing in ways other than providing exports. Therefore, many former colonial countries adopted state-run industrialization and economic programs, which conflicted with the US promotion of private ownership of capital and free trade. To preserve its political influence and its economic supremacy, the US established military alliances, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

In contrast to the capitalist US, where people worked for wages under a capitalist system shaped by employers and corporations, the Soviet Union followed a “productionist” model. The state employed people to produce for state-run industry or the military. Through this system, focusing on scientific and technological development, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. China likewise attempted to rapidly industrialize through its first Five-Year Plan from 1953 to 1957, though along with drought it caused a devastating famine that killed “an estimated fifteen to forty-three million people” (191). Both the Soviet Union and China isolated their economies from the capitalist West. Meanwhile, the US engineered its economy toward consumerism, focusing production on creating consumer goods for the general public rather than for industrial or business expansion. Advertising and planned obsolescence (the practice of making products to become obsolete or broken rather than to last) helped keep consumer demand high. The car and housing markets similarly centered on consumerism. This had political, social, and environmental ramifications: “Americans had come to equate consumer purchases with ‘freedom’ and to condemn the Soviet Union for its absence” (194). Likewise, the spread of cheap household appliances gave women some freedom, helping pave the way for the women’s rights movement of the 1960s. Additionally, consumerism meant a steady demand for oil and natural gas, which motivated the US political focus on Latin America and the Middle East, and contributed to global warming, deforestation, and severe air pollution around the world, most famously when smog plagued the city of Los Angeles.

Outside the West and the Soviet Union was the “third world,” or what is now more commonly called the Global South. The economies of these countries were underdeveloped because of colonialism and tended to remain economically dependent on the West even after achieving political independence. In addition, they remained largely rural, and like most predominantly rural societies, they tended to experience large population booms. Taking advantage of better communication and transportation, these countries somewhat benefited from oil extraction and consumer manufacturing, though wages remained low and some countries stayed underdeveloped.

The violence of 20th century wars, genocides, and repressive regimes caused many waves of migration to wealthier nations that have better economic opportunities, mainly Europe and North America. This, in turn, inspired anti-immigration policies and movements. In China, migration from rural areas to cities is significant: By 2030, experts anticipate that at least two-thirds of China’s population will live in urban areas. Additionally, the economic gap between the Global South and the West remains. The World Bank claims that globalization has reduced the global poverty rate, which anthropologist Jason Hickel disputes, arguing that, at most, the global poverty rate has declined only slightly. Countries like Japan and the US pursue policies that keep the Global South poor, like imposing high tariffs on agricultural imports to protect their own agricultural production. Despite this and the rise of China and India as economic powerhouses, the gap between wealth and poverty has not narrowed.

Likewise, income inequality within the West itself has grown. The first few decades after World War II promoted greater wealth equality. However, economic inequality began to rise again by the early 1980s to the point that it has recently returned to pre-World War I levels:

In nearly all rich countries now, the top 10 percent own 60 to 90 percent of all wealth, the least wealthy bottom 50 percent own less than 5 percent, and the remaining 40 percent […] own 5 to 35 percent of a country’s wealth (mostly from home ownership) (203-04).

Because the wealthiest consume less than poorer countries, which tend to have to spend rather than save money, demand for consumer goods stagnates, and the poor go into debt, harming economies.

The Soviet Union has been in economic decline since the 1950s, and its system was creating environmental damage. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, it broke up into smaller nations that adopted the capitalist, free-trade model. This left free market capitalism the only major model for economic organization, paving the way for a new wave of globalization. Additionally, the Cold War came to an end. Meanwhile, China, though remaining nominally communist, adopted some capitalistic practices while keeping its energy and banking sectors state-owned. In place of the Cold War and especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US, some have noted an ongoing “clash of civilizations” (208) between the US and China and/or the Middle East. Despite US anxieties over Islamic terrorism, “insurrections and wars in the Middle East were mostly sectarian conflicts within and between Islamic states” (209), and the tensions between the US and China have been largely over trade issues. These conflicts resulted from the “China shock,” referring to China’s exporting large amounts of consumer goods at the expense of other countries’ manufacturing. While China benefited from post-Cold War globalization, Americans, especially white men without college degrees, suffered. Despite job losses in the US and elsewhere, advocates of globalization argued that it would bring other economic benefits to the entire world and lead to the democratization of the Chinese government, neither of which has yet happened. Another cause of US-China tensions is the Chinese government’s harsh treatment of the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim minority in China’s western province of Xinjiang, and Taiwan, which was once part of China but has been an independent capitalist nation since 1949.

The economic crash of 2008, leading to the so-called Great Recession, took away millions of people’s jobs and security. In the US, where health care is out of reach for many of the poor, it also led to “deaths of despair” (215): People who found themselves economically destitute either die by suicide or succumb to drug addiction. These pressures have spurred opposition to capitalist globalization from both the political left and the right, as evident in Brexit (when Britain left the European Union) and the election of Donald Trump as president. Increased economic development in the 20th and 21st centuries has escalated humans’ impact on the environment to the point that the current geological era is called the Anthropocene, meaning an era in which human action drives environmental change. This era is defined by a “substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth” (231) and the threat of climate change. Even with global challenges like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, however, “the reaction to unfettered globalization has revitalized movements determined to protect the prerogatives of sovereign states” (237).