Page 106 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

tfw-46 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Although the modern era is often thought
of as more secular and rational than
earlier eras, religion and faith continue to
be important for many people. This photo
shows a procession of pilgrims walking
down the High Street of Little Walsingham,
Norfolk, United Kingdom, carrying a
statue of the Virgin and Child in 1997.

methods of rule granted political influence to wider sec-
tions of the population in exchange for increasing regu-
lation as governments began to recruit into mass armies,
to take detailed censuses, and to regulate life in factories,
offices, and even households.

Cultural Changes
Cultural life was also transformed. Mass education
spread literacy to a majority of the population in much
of North America and Europe during the nineteenth cen-
tury, while the emerging mass media gave citizens plenty
to read and informed them of events in their own nation
and the world at large. Mass education, combined with
new forms of mass entertainment, also began to give cit-
izens a more modern sense of a shared “national” iden-
tity. All religious traditions had to face the challenge
posed by modern science, and most did so by incorpo-
rating some aspects of a new scientific view of reality age, increased taxation, and new opportunities in the
while rejecting others. The spectacular successes of towns undermined village life in most of the world.
nineteenth-century science raised the prestige of science However, as socialists pointed out, conditions in early
and challenged traditional worldviews. industrial towns were often worse than those in the vil-
Particularly challenging was the theory of evolution lages.Together, the slow erosion of peasant lifeways and
put forward by the English naturalist Charles Darwin the appalling conditions in early industrial towns created
(1809–1882), which seemed to imply that life itself explosive social tensions in all industrializing societies.
might be the product of blind forces. Yet, precisely Governments outside the core region of the early
because it relied so much on rational explanations, the Industrial Revolution had to face the impossible chal-
scientific worldview could not offer the spiritual conso- lenge of trying to match European economic and military
lation of traditional religions, which is why the challenge performance without undermining the traditional social
of science, far from destroying traditional religions, seems and cultural structures on which their own power was
to have stimulated new forms of religious activity, such as based. The transition was bound to be painful because
evangelical forms of Christianity. the dominant polities of the agrarian era had been based
Outside the Atlantic core region the indirect effects of primarily on traditional forms of landlordship rather
the Industrial Revolution were largely destructive as the than on commerce; yet, people increasingly realized that
growing political, commercial, and military power of industrialization was linked closely with commercial
Europe and North America threatened traditional politi- activity. Not surprisingly, the creation of modern forms of
cal and economic structures and eroded faith in ancient government frequently led to the violent breakdown of
ways of thinking. Rapid population growth, land short- traditional social structures and systems of rule. Japan