It seems to us that progress is accelerating and nothing could be crazier than our hectic age. Mobile phones, self-driving electric cars, nuclear reactors, reusable spacecraft, Mars rovers… We live in an incredible time. However, in terms of the magnitude of the changes that occurred, the nineteenth century undoubtedly surpasses any other. A calendar century does not always coincide with a historical one, but the 19th century, surprisingly, lasted exactly one hundred years: from 1814 to 1914.
In 1814, Russian troops under the command of Prussian generals entered Paris, mainly concluding the Napoleonic Wars, except for the “Hundred Days”92. Lancers with lances, cuirassiers in armor with broadswords ride into the city in rows, and infantry regiments with flintlocks enter. Bayonets: one shot – and you can charge with bayonets93. Horse-drawn carriages haul muzzle-loading cannons with round shots and fuses. Looking at this army, neither Wallenstein94 nor Turenne95 nor possibly even Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror96 would be surprised. It’s clear that flintlocks are not arquebuses or muskets, let alone bows and crossbows, but the progress over half a millennium is quite recognizable: swords remained swords, armor remained armor. People, horses, sharp sticks, except that the firearms with smoky powder began to have a stronger influence on the outcomes of battles; however, still “the bullet is foolish – the bayonet is brave,” and the scale of battles and campaigns is limited by the size of the field and the voracity of the army.
In 1914, long trains pulled by locomotives transport millions of people to the front, armed with machine guns, repeating rifles, and rapid-fire artillery hurling shells far beyond the horizon. Cordite and trinitrotoluene97 explode. In arsenals, shells with mustard gas await their time. A couple more years – and tanks will break through fortifications of trenches and barbed wire. Telegraph, telephone, and radio transmit orders almost instantly. In the air, giant dirigibles and swift airplanes soar. Cars rattle along the roads. If Murat or Ney98 found themselves on the battlefield, they would hardly be able to understand what was happening around them, let alone command fronts stretching for thousands of kilometers. Perhaps Nelson99 would grasp the tactics of the Battle of Jutland, although fast battleships and cruisers were incredibly different from his multi-gun wooden sailing ships, but torpedo attacks by submarines and forcing through minefields would surely leave him bewildered. In a hundred years, all the military experience of millennia went straight to the dump.
And not only military. In the early 19th century, the world was unimaginably vast. To travel from St. Petersburg to the Caucasus, Pushkin and Lermontov needed months. Along the way, one could visit, for example, Kishinev100 (this is quite far from the Caucasus) – still, no one will find out. And when they do, it will be too late to take action: the fastest means of communication is a courier on horseback, and it takes him more than a week to travel back and forth. Crossing the ocean is even more time-consuming and requires extraordinary courage: ships leak, hit reefs, get caught in storms, and sink. Few, except professional sailors, undertake such a journey more than a couple of times in their lives. Where there are no roads – in Siberia, Africa, Australia – maps are filled with white spots occupying the lion’s share of the continent. With the setting sun, most work ceases: how much can be done by candlelight? Most people are illiterate, book print runs are small, education is the privilege of the elite. Not to mention education, almost all food products are strictly local: how much can you transport in the hold of a sailing ship, barge, or, worse, on a horse-drawn cart? How much can you keep fresh? Wealthy gentlemen can afford to eat exotic foods, but they are the chosen few. The rest make do with what the local land produces. However, this is true for other goods as well; only a few, like tea, wool, and tobacco, are moved around the world on a truly massive scale.
The world of 1914 is certainly not the world of 2014, when any point on the globe can be reached in a day or two. Nevertheless, it is many times more compact than the world a century earlier. The railroad made all civilized and a significant part of non-civilized lands are accessible for travel quickly and comfortably. The Atlantic is crossed by giant liners in three to four days, and you are on the other side of the ocean. Electric trams clatter through cities, cars are available for the particularly wealthy, and the most impatient can use an airplane. Letters, dispatches, documents are transmitted in hours and minutes. A ship going to sea no longer disappears from the world for months and years; constant radio communication makes navigation much safer and more predictable. Ships and trains transport millions of tons of cargo, and there is no longer any sense in adhering to local goods. Ships are built in England, machines in Germany, grain comes from America and Russia, nitrate from Chile, wine from France.
Technical progress leads to economic progress. Engaging in agriculture in northern non-black soil countries is now completely unprofitable. Peasants move and entire villages migrate to cities. The few manufacturing workers turn into the proletariat – factory workers, becoming the most numerous category of the population. The urban population grows, and infrastructure inevitably follows: sewage, gas, electricity, transport. Books, newspapers, theaters, boulevard novels, yellow press. A different world, different opportunities, a different society – the 19th century changed everything.
Or almost everything. In 1814, the Congress of Vienna101 begins – an amazingly archaic event. Shocked by the revolutionary nihilism of the French, and aggrieved by the fact that the upstart Bonaparte unexpectedly managed to join their ranks, European rulers from ancient lineages gather to hold a council. They, or rather their diplomats, spend a long time chewing over various topics, refining formulations, and preparing extensive documents, but the entire purpose of the event is to create a mechanism that secures the “divine right of kings” and the old world order based on absolute or at least minimally restricted monarchy, the class-based organization of society, and maintaining a balance of power among established world powers. In other words, the most influential people in Europe spend almost a year agreeing on how exactly they will hinder and suppress social progress, not only in their own countries but also in the surrounding ones.
This strange event – the Holy Alliance of terrified rulers still believing in their blue blood and divine rights – didn’t go well from the start. The British, without whom the world politics of that time were unimaginable, did not support the idea. Their kings had already had reasons to doubt their exclusivity for a century and a half102, and now they were preparing to hand over real power to the Parliament, though not recruited from peasants, does not claim divinity. The French, against whom the alliance was actually conceived, quickly grew disenchanted with the Bourbons and returned to their old ways – revolutions. Moreover, there was no one to calm them down since the agreeing rulers immediately quarreled among themselves. But the trouble was not in this. At the Congress of Vienna, European powers laid the foundations of diplomacy for the next two hundred years, introducing into usage dubious phrases that still exist: “spheres of influence,” “national interests,” “policy of containment,” and postulating that all these vague abstractions are worth shedding blood for.
They shouldn’t have done it. Honestly, they shouldn’t have. The Russians were the first to get caught up. The victory over the undefeated Napoleon and the liberation of Europe instilled almost messianic emotions in the Russian emperors. And while Alexander103, who had been defeated at Austerlitz104, surrendered at Tilsit105,