Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  So, as the imperialism of the West became more and more aggressive, nationalism grew in the East to counter it and fight it. All over Asia, from the Arab nations in the West to the Mongolian nations of the Far East, national movements took shape, advanced cautiously at first and moderately, and then became more and more extreme in their demands. India saw the beginnings and early years of the National Congress. The revolt of Asia had begun.

  Our survey of the nineteenth century is far from over yet. But this letter is long enough and must end.

  108

  The Nineteenth Century Continued

  November 24, 1932

  I told you in my last letter of some of the distinguishing features of the nineteenth century and of the many things that resulted from the industrial capitalism which took possession of western Europe after the coming of the big machine. One of the reasons why western Europe took the lead in this was the possession by it of coal seams and iron ore. Coal and iron were essential for the making and working of the big machines.

  This capitalism led, as we saw, to imperialism and nationalism. Nationalism was no new thing; it had existed before. But it became intenser and narrower. At the same time it bound together and separated; those living in one national unit came closer to each other, but they were cut off more and more from others living in a different national unit. While patriotism grew in each country, it was accompanied by dislike and distrust of the foreigner. In Europe, the industrially advanced countries glared at each other like beasts of prey. England, having got most of the booty, wanted naturally to stick to it. But for other countries, notably Germany, there was too much of England all over the place. So friction increased, and ended in open fighting. The whole structure of industrial capitalism, and its offshoot imperialism, leads to this friction and conflict. Inherent in them there seem to be contradictions which cannot be reconciled, based as they are on conflict and competition and exploitation. Thus in the East, nationalism, child of imperialism, became its bitter enemy.

  In spite of these contradictions, however, the capitalist form of civilization taught many a useful lesson. It taught organization, for the big machine and large-scale industry require a great deal of organization before they can function. It taught co-operation in large undertakings, It taught efficiency and punctuality. It is not possible to run big factories or a railway system unless these qualities are present. Sometimes it is said that these qualities are typical Western qualities and the East does not possess them. In this, as in most other matters, there is no question of the East and the West. The qualities were developed because of industrialism, and the West, being industrialized, possesses them, while the East, being still largely agricultural and not industrialized, is lacking in them.

  Industrial capitalism performed one other great service. It showed how wealth could be produced by power production—that is, with the help of the big machine and coal and steam. The old fear that there was not enough in the world to go round, and so there must always be vast numbers of poor people, had the bottom knocked out of it. With the help of science and machinery, enough food and clothing, and every other thing that was necessary, could be produced for the world’s population. The problem of production was thus solved, at least in theory. And yet there it stopped. Wealth was undoubtedly produced abundantly, but the poor remained poor and, indeed, became poorer. In the Eastern and African countries, under European domination, there was of course naked and unashamed exploitation. There was no one to care for the unhappy people who lived there. But even in western Europe poverty remained and became more and more obvious. For a while the exploitation of the rest of the world brought wealth to western Europe. Most of this wealth remained with the few rich people at the top, but a little percolated through to the poorer classes, and their standard of living went up a little. Population also increased very greatly.

  But much of this wealth and the raising of the standard of living was at the expense of exploited people in Asia, Africa, and other non-industrialized areas. This exploitation and flow of wealth hid for a while the contradictions of the capitalist system. Even so, the difference between the rich and the poor grew; the distance became greater. They were two different peoples, two separate nations. Benjamin Disraeli, a great English statesman of the nineteenth century, has described them:

  Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, are not governed by the same laws . . . the Rich and the Poor.

  The new conditions of industry brought large numbers of workers to the big factories, and so a new class arose—that of the factory-worker. These people were different from the peasants and field-workers in many ways. The peasant has to rely a great deal on the seasons and the rainfall. These are not under his control, and so he begins to think that his misery and poverty are due to supernatural causes. He becomes superstitious and ignores economic causes, and lives a dull, hopeless life, resigned to an unkind fate which he cannot alter. But the factory-worker works with machines, things made by man; he produces goods regardless of the seasons and the rainfall; he produces wealth, but he finds that this very largely goes to others and that he himself remains poor; to some extent he can see economic laws in action. And so he does not think of supernatural causes and is not so superstitious as the peasant. For his poverty he does not blame the gods; he blames society or the social system, and especially the capitalist owner of the factory who takes such a big part of the profits of his labour. He becomes class-conscious, and sees that there are different classes and the upper classes prey on his class. And this leads to discontent and revolt. The first murmurs of discontent are vague and dull; the first uprisings are blind and thoughtless and weak, and they are easily crushed by the government. For the government now wholly represents the interests of the new middle class which controls the great factories and their offshoots. But hunger cannot be crushed for long, and soon the poor worker finds a new source of strength in union with his comrades. So trade unions arise to protect the worker and fight for his rights. They are secret bodies at first, for the government will not even permit the workers to organize themselves. It becomes clearer and clearer that the government is definitely a class government, out to protect by all means the class it represents. Laws also are class laws. Slowly the workers gain strength, and their trade unions become powerful organizations. Different kinds of workers see that their interests are really one as against the exploiting class in power. So different trade unions co-operate together and the factory-workers of a country become one organized group. The next step is for the workers of different countries to unite, for they too feel that their interests are common and the enemy is a common one. Thus arises the cry: “Workers of the World Unite”, and international organizations of workers are formed. Capitalist industry also grows meanwhile, and becomes international. And so labour confronts capitalism, wherever this industrial capitalism flourishes.

  I have gone ahead too fast and must go back. But this nineteenth-century world is such a jumble of many tendencies, often contradicting each other, that it is difficult to keep them all in view. What will you make, I wonder, of this strange mixture of capitalism and imperialism and nationalism and internationalism and wealth and poverty? But life itself is a strange mixture. We have to take it as it is, try to understand it, and then to better it.

  This jumble of misfits made many people in Europe and America think. Early in the century, after Napoleon fell, there was little liberty in any European country. In some of these countries there was the king’s despotism, in some, like England, a small aristocratic and rich class was in power. Everywhere, as I have told you, there was repression of the liberal elements. But in spite of this, the American and the French Revolutions had made the ideas of democracy and political liberty known and ap
preciated by liberal thinkers. Democracy, indeed, began to be looked upon as the cure for all the ills and troubles of the State and the people. The democratic ideal was that there should be no privilege; every person should be treated by the State as of equal social and political value. Of course people differ greatly from each other in many ways: some are stronger than others, some wiser, some more unselfish. But the believers in democracy said that whatever their differences might be, men should have the same political status. And this was to be brought about by giving everyone the vote. Advanced thinkers and liberals believed in the virtues of democracy fervently, and they tried hard to bring it about. The conservatives and reactionaries opposed them, and everywhere there was a great tussle. In some countries there were revolutions. England was on the verge of civil war before the franchise was extended—that is, votes for electing members to Parliament were given to some more people. Gradually, however, democracy triumphed in most places, till by the end of the century most men at least had the vote in western Europe and America. Democracy had been the great ideal of the nineteenth century, so much so that the century might also be called the century of democracy. Democracy had triumphed in the end, and yet, when this end came, people had begun to lose faith in it. They found that it had failed to put an end to poverty and misery and many contradictions of the capitalist system. What was the good of a vote to a man who was hungry? And what was the measure of the liberty he had if his vote or his services could be purchased for the price of a meal? So democracy fell into disrepute, or, to be correct, political democracy went out of favour. But this is outside the scope of the nineteenth century.

  Democracy dealt with the political aspect of liberty. It was a reaction against autocracy and other despotisms. It offered no special solution of the industrial problems that were arising, or of poverty, or class conflict. It laid stress on a theoretical freedom of each individual to work according to his bent, in the hope that he would try, from self-interest, to better himself in every way, and thus society would progress. This was the doctrine of laissez-faire, about which I think I wrote to you in a previous letter. But the theory of individual freedom failed because the man who was compelled to work for a wage was far from free.

  The great difficulty that arose under the system of industrial capitalism was this: those who worked and thus served the community were poorly paid, the rewards went to others who did not work. Thus the rewards were divorced from the services. This resulted, on the one hand, in the degradation and impoverishment of those who laboured; and, on the other hand, in the creation of a class who lived, or rather sponged, on industry without themselves working in it or adding in any way to its wealth. It was like the peasantry, who worked on the land, and the zamindar, who profited by their labour, without working on the land himself. This distribution of the fruits of labour was manifestly unjust; what is more. the worker, unlike the long-suffering peasant, felt that it was unjust, and resented it; it tended to get worse as time went on. In all the industrialized countries of the West these discrepancies became glaring, and thoughtful and earnest people tried to find a way out of the tangle. Thus arose the set of ideas known as socialism, child of capitalism, and enemy of it, and perhaps destined to supplant it. In England it took a moderate form, in France and Germany it was more revolutionary. In the United States of America the comparatively small population in a vast country had plenty of opportunity for growth, and so the injustices and misery which capitalism brought to western Europe were not apparent to the same extent for a long time.

  In the middle of the nineteenth century there arose a man in Germany who was destined to become the prophet of socialism and the father of that form of socialism which is known as communism. His name was Karl Marx. He was not just a vague philosopher or a professor who discussed academic theories. He was a practical philosopher, and his method was to apply the technique of science to the study of political and economic problems, and thus to find a remedy for the world’s ills. Philosophy, he said, had hitherto merely set out to explain the world;

  communist philosophy must aspire to change it. Together with another man, Engels, he issued the “Communist Manifesto” which gave the outline of his philosophy. Later he published a mighty book in German called Das Kapital or Capital, in which he reviewed the world’s history scientifically, and showed in what direction society was developing and how this process could be hurried up. I shall not try to explain the Marxian philosophy here. But I should like you to remember that Marx’s great book had tremendous influence on the development of socialism, and it is today the Bible of Communist Russia.

  Another famous book, which came out in England about the middle of the century, and created a great sensation was Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Darwin was a naturalist—that is, he observed and studied Nature, and especially plants and animals. He showed, with the help of many examples, how plants and animals had developed in Nature, how one species had changed into another by a process of natural selection, how simple forms had gradually become more complex. This kind of scientific reasoning was directly opposed to some religious teachings about the creation of the world and the animals and man. There was then a great argument between the scientists and the believers in these teachings. The real conflict was not so much about facts as about the attitude to life generally. The narrow religious attitude was largely one of fear and magic and superstition. Reasoning was not encouraged, and people were asked to believe in what they were told, and were not to question why. Many subjects were wrapped up in a mystic covering of sanctity and holiness, and were not to be uncovered or touched. The spirit and methods of science were very different from this. For science was curious to find out everything. It would not take anything for granted, nor would the supposed holiness of a subject frighten it away. It probed into everything, and discouraged superstition, and believed only in such things as could be established by experiment or reason.

  The spirit of science won in this struggle with a fossilized religious outlook. Most people who thought about these matters had already, even as far back as the eighteenth century, become rationalists. You will remember that I told you of the wave of philosophic thought in France before the Revolution. But now the change went deeper into society. The average educated person began to be affected by the progress of science. He did not perhaps think very deeply on the subject, nor did he know much about science. But he could not help being awed by the pageant of discovery and invention that unfolded itself before him. The railway, electricity, the telegraph, telephone, phonograph and ever so many other things came one after the other, and they were all children of the scientific method. They were hailed as the triumph of science. Science was seen not only to increase human knowledge, but also to increase man’s control over Nature. It is not surprising that science triumphed and that people bowed down in worship before this all-powerful new god. And the men of science of the nineteenth century became very complacent and cocksure of themselves, and very definite in their opinions. Science has made vast progress from those days half a century ago, but today the attitude is very different from that complacency and cocksureness of the nineteenth century. Today the real scientist feels that the ocean of knowledge is a vast and boundless one, and though he seeks to sail on it, he is humbler and more hesitating than his predecessors.

  Another notable feature of the nineteenth century was the great progress of popular education in the West. This was opposed with great vigour by many members of the ruling classes, who said that it would make the common people discontented, seditious, insolent, and un-Christian! Christianity, according to this argument, consists in ignorance and a willing obedience to the rich and powerful. But in spite of this opposition, elementary schools were introduced and popular education spread. Like many other features of the nineteenth century, this also was a consequence of the new industrialism. For the big factory and big machine required industrial efficiency, and this could only be produced by education. The society of the period was in great n
eed of all kinds of skilled labour; this need was met by popular education.

  This widespread elementary education produced a very large class of literate people. They could hardly be called educated, but they could read and write, and the habit of reading newspapers spread. Cheap newspapers came out and had enormous circulations. They began to exercise a powerful influence over people’s minds. Often indeed they misled and roused men’s passions against a neighbouring country, and thus led to war. But, in any event, the “Press” definitely became a power to be reckoned with.

  Much that I have written in this letter applies chiefly to Europe, and particularly to western Europe. To North America also, it applies to some extent. The rest of the world, Asia, with the exception of Japan, and Africa, were passive and suffering agents of Europe’s policy. The nineteenth century was, as I have said, the century of Europe. Europe seemed to fill the picture; Europe occupied the centre of the world’s stage. In the past there had been long periods when Asia dominated Europe. There were periods when the centres of civilization and progress lay in Egypt or Iraq or India or China or Greece or Rome or Arabia. But the old civilizations exhausted themselves and became petrified and fossilized. The vital element of change and progress left them, and life passed on to other regions. It was Europe’s turn now, and Europe was all the more dominant because of the progress in communications which made all parts of the world easily and rapidly accessible.

  The nineteenth century saw the flowering of European civilization —bourgeois civilization it is called, because the bourgeois classes, produced by industrial capitalism, dominated it. I have told you of many of the contradictions and bad points of this civilization. We in India and the East saw these bad points especially, and suffered from them. But no country and no people can rise to greatness unless they have something of the stuff of greatness in them, and western Europe had such stuff in her. And the prestige of Europe rested ultimately not so much on her military power as on the qualities which had made her great. There was an abundant life and vitality and creative power evident everywhere. Great poets and writers and philosophers and scientists and musicians and engineers and men of action were produced. And undoubtedly even the lot of the common man in western Europe was far better than it had ever been before. The great capital cities—London, Paris, Berlin, New York—became bigger and bigger, and higher and higher went their buildings, and luxury increased, and science offered a thousand ways of lessening human toil and drudgery and of adding to the comfort and pleasure of life. And life among the well-to-do classes became mellow and cultured, and a certain complacency and self-sufficiency and unctuousness came to them. It seems almost like the pleasant afternoon or evening of a civilization.