SUMMARY:

This is a Russian translation of a few chapters from the book by Jürgen Osterhammel, Transformation of the World: History of the Nineteenth Century” (Munich, 2009). He starts with an affirmation of the historical and cultural conditionality of periodizations and of a linear calendar. The author then proceeds with an explication of his understanding of the “nineteenth century”: at its core is not a linear chain of developments from A to Z, but ruptures and transformations that are defined by their specific temporal structures yet are nevertheless interconnected. The nineteenth century is thus understood as the simultaneous continuation of transformations of the preceding epoch and the prehistory of “modernity.” Therefore, the narrative in Osterhammel’s book is structured by a twofold logic: that of a calendar century (1801–1900 ) and that of a “long nineteenth century,” defined as a matrix of interdependences and correlations (approximately 1770 to the early 1920s). Osterhammel comments on the constructed nature of historical “epochs” such as “Hellenism,” “the Late Medieval age,” or “Early Modern history,” yet points to the fact that the nineteenth century escaped this kind of classification. Historically, the year from 1880 to 1881 was experienced as the border of the new century only in Christian regions of the world. “The West” is thus identical to the territories whose population cared about the border of epochs. Osterhammel discusses the Gregorian calendar as the most successful cultural export of Europe of the Modern epoch, and presents a picture of the calendar pluralism that used to characterize the world. He broadens this discussion to include perceptions of historical and social time in different regions of the world. Then he switches to the issue of ruptures as manifested by multiple layers and modes of human existence (economics, politics, private life, intellectual process, etc.) and by different scales of generalization (a national history based on the consensus of major turning points versus European history versus world history). From this perspective, the rupture of the French Revolution cannot serve as a political beginning of the nineteenth century because it would be relevant only for France, Germany, and Haiti. The whole nineteenth century was defined by the failure of Ancient Regimes. In Japan political modernity began only in 1868. Then Osterhammel tests the periodization based on popular and cultural developments and ruptures connected with the concept of “early modern times” (the end of these times is the beginning of the nineteenth century). He admits the Eurocentric nature of the concept of “early modern times,” yet points to the historiographic consensus regarding 1450–1600 as the years of “big changes” for most of Eurasia and America (the rise of trade, the introduction of new technologies, the centralization of state and religious disturbances that were not directly connected to European expansion). However, the end of these more or less universal “early modern times” is far from obvious. To deal with this complexity, Osterhammel borrows from Reinhart Koselleck the concept of Sattelzeit, as a long transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century (approximately 1770–1830) and divides the nineteenth century into Sattelzeit – Victorian decades – Fin de Siècle. He offers a detailed discussion of the meaning as well as global applicability and limitations of these sub-epochs. He then balances this analysis by turning to microprocesses, insofar as epochal thresholds are created not by some “objective” meanings but by the overlapping of multiple thin time nets. In other words, they are condensations of similar and repetitive changes. To reveal this overlapping, besides a linear concept of time, one also has to allow a nonlinear time (thus resisting a Eurocentric homogenization of historical narratives). A separate chapter in Osterhammel’s book deals with different experiences of time characteristic of the nineteenth century and with its unification. He explicates the complex dynamics of the parallel unification and nationalization of time. He positively resolves the question of acceleration as a universal human experience in the nineteenth century, but is more reluctant to recognize the universal nature of the acceleration of historical time (as opposed to personal experiences of speed, movement, etc.).
The second part of the published extract from the book deals with the problem of space and its correlation with time. In spacial terms, the nineteenth century is represented in Osterhammel’s chapters through the center–periphery model. The nineteenth century is also discussed as a time of dominance of European geographical knowledge. However, the nineteenth century represented not only the first phase of creation of a scientific geography but also the last phase of the epoch of great discoveries. Osterhammel considers individual and group expeditions of the nineteenth century and the new territories they discovered. He stresses that in the nineteenth century large geographic territories still had rather flexible affiliations, their names and borders were not stable and universally accepted. The metamorphoses of the European semantics of space are illustrated in detail in a special paragraph dedicated to the region that today is known as Eastern Asia or the Far East. The tension between the tendency toward a metageographical simplification and geographical (terminological) sophistication is illustrated by the works of Carl Ritter, Friedrich Ratzel, and Elisée Reclus.
The next level of discussing space is connected with mental geography. Here the major categories under discussion are the “West” as it emerged in the 1890s from the expansion of the transatlantic civilization model, and “Europe” (its center, its civilization borders and open frontiers, etc.). Next Osterhammel discusses the spacial Chinese mentality of the same period. Later in the text he turns to another dimension of space – space as a contact arena, a zone of interactions. Among such zones he treats the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean; the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans; and continental spaces. Osterhammel also raises the issue of power and space and focuses on states’ efforts to rationalize and order spaces. He claims that this is usually, but not necessarily, the prerogative of modern states. This thesis is tested by three cases: that of China, the United States, and Russia.
Finally, Osterhammel discusses issues of territoriality, diaspora, and borders. These issues are also connected with the role of the state in the nineteenth century. The imagined ideal state territory was large and contiguous. This contradicted the actual discontinuity of the social space – the fullest expression of which Osterhammel finds in diasporas. He concludes that the collecting of national spaces under one power and the formation of emotional attachment to one territory was accompanied by the emergence of transnational spaces that were marked by less intensive yet still quite visible territoriality. Borders are included in this picture as enabling multiple understandings of territoriality. Osterhammel shows that linear borders (instead of frontier zones) were not invented in the nineteenth century and that linear state borders were not an invention of European imperialism introduced to the non-European world. Yet the spread of semiotically marked, fortified linear borders became the main tendency of territoriality of power in the nineteenth century, when control over a country became more important than control over people.