Page 98 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

tfw-38 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

All history is necessarily written from the standpoint of the
present, and is, in an inescapable sense, the history not only of
the present but of that which is contemporaneously judged to be
important in the present. • JOHN DEWEY (1859–1952)

City Sprawl
For more on these topics, please see the following articles:
As populations have increased, so has the average size of
Colonialism p. 381 (v2)
human communities. In 1500 about fifty cities had more
Democracy, Constitutional p. 508 (v2)
than 100,000 inhabitants, and none had more than a
Diasporas p. 521 (v2)
million. By 2000 several thousand cities had more than
Empire p. 640 (v2)
100,000 inhabitants, about 411 had more than a mil-
Global Imperialism and Gender p. 838 (v2)
lion, and 41 had more than 5 million. During the agrar-
Global Migration in Modern Times p. 844 (v3)
Indigenous Peoples Movements p. 970 (v3) ian era most people lived and worked in villages; by the
Industrial Technologies p. 981 (v3) end of the twentieth century almost 50 percent of the
Information Societies p. 985 (v3) world’s population lived in communities of at least five
Modernity p. 1287 (v3) thousand people.The rapid decline of villages marked a
Population p. 1484 (v4) fundamental transformation in the lives of most people
Technology—Overview p. 1806 (v5) on Earth. As during the agrarian era, the increasing size
Urbanization p. 1925 (v5) of communities transformed lifeways, beginning with pat-
Western Civilization p. 2041 (v5) terns of employment: Whereas most people during the
Women’s and Gender History p. 2046 (v5) agrarian world were small farmers, today most people
World Cities in History—Overview p. 2066 (v5) support themselves by wage work in a huge variety of
World System Theory p. 2075 (v5) occupations.
Innovations in transportation and communications
These astonishing increases in productivity lie behind have transformed relations between communities and
all the most significant changes of the modern era. regions. Before the nineteenth century no one traveled
Productivity rose in part because new technologies faster than the pace of a horse (or a fast sailing ship), and
were introduced. In agriculture, for example, food pro- the fastest way to transmit written messages was by state-
duction kept pace with population growth because of sponsored courier systems that used relays of horses.
improved crop rotations, increased use of irrigation, Today messages can cross the world instantaneously, and
widespread application of artificial fertilizers and pesti- even perishable goods can be transported from one end
cides, and the use of genetically modified crops. How- of the world to another in just a few hours or days.
ever, productivity also rose because humans learned to
exploit new sources of energy. During the agrarian era Increasingly Complex and
each human controlled, on average, 12,000 kilocalories Powerful Governments
a day (about four times the energy needed to sustain a As populations have grown and people’s lives have
human body), and the most powerful prime movers become more intertwined, more complex forms of regu-
available were domestic animals or wind-driven ships. lation have become necessary, which is why the business
During the modern era humans have learned to harvest of government has been revolutionized. Most premodern
the huge reserves of energy stored in fossil fuels such as governments were content to manage war and taxes, leav-
coal, oil, and natural gas and even to exploit the power ing their subjects to get on with their livelihoods more or
lurking within atomic nuclei. Today each person con- less unhindered, but the managerial tasks facing modern
trols, on average, 230,000 kilocalories a day—twenty states are much more complex, and they have to spend
times as much as during the agrarian era. A world of more effort in mobilizing and regulating the lives of those
planes, rockets, and nuclear power has replaced a world they rule. The huge bureaucracies of modern states are
of horses, oxen, and wood fires. one of the most important by-products of the modern