Western Accomplishments

Western Civilization’s conquest of the techniques of production are so outstanding that they have been honored by the term “revolution” in all history books concerned with the subject. The conquest of the problem of producing food, known as the Agricultural Revolution, began in England as long ago as the early eighteenth century, say about 1725. The conquest of the problem of producing manufactured goods, known as the Industrial Revolution, also began in England, about fifty years after the Agricultural Revolution, say about 1775. The relationship of these two “revolutions” to each other and to the “revolution” in sanitation and public health and the differing rates at which these three “revolutions” diffused is of the greatest importance for understanding both the history of Western Civilization and its impact on other societies. Agricultural activities, which provide the chief food supply of all civilizations, drain the nutritive elements from the soil. Unless these elements are replaced, the productivity of the soil will be reduced to a dangerously low level. In the medieval and early modern period of European history, these nutritive elements, especially nitrogen, were replaced through the action of the weather by leaving the land fallow either one year in three or even every second year. This had the effect of reducing the arable land by half or one-third. The Agricultural Revolution was an immense step forward, since it replaced the year of fallowing with a leguminous crop whose roots increased the supply of nitrogen in the soil by capturing this gas from the air and fixing it in the soil in a form usable by plant life. Since the leguminous crop which replaced the fallow year of the older agricultural cycle was generally a crop like alfalfa, clover, or sainfoin which provided feed for cattle, this Agricultural Revolution not only increased the nitrogen content of the soil for subsequent crops of grain but also increased the number and quality of farm animals, thus increasing the supply of meat and animal products for food, and also increasing the fertility of the soil by increasing the supply of animal manure for fertilizers. The net result of the whole Agricultural Revolution was an increase in both the quantity and the quality of food. Fewer men were able to produce so much more food that many men were released from the burden of producing it and could devote their attention to other activities, such as government, education, science, or business. It has been said that in 1700 the agricultural labor of twenty persons was required in order to produce enough food for twenty-one persons, while in some areas, by 1900, three persons could produce enough food for twenty-one persons, thus releasing seventeen persons for nonagricultural activities. This Agricultural Revolution which began in England before 1725 reached France after 1800, but did not reach Germany or northern Italy until after 1830. As late as 1900 it had hardly spread at all into Spain, southern Italy and Sicily, the Balkans, or eastern Europe generally. In Germany, about 1840, this Agricultural Revolution was given a new boost forward by the introduction of the use of chemical fertilizers, and received another boost in the United States after 1880 by the introduction of farm machinery which reduced the need for human labor. These same two areas, with contributions from some other countries, gave another considerable boost to agricultural output after 1900 by the introduction of new seeds and better crops through seed selection and hybridization. These great agricultural advances after 1725 made possible the advances in industrial production after 1775 by providing the food and thus the labor for the growth of the factory system and the rise of industrial cities. Improvements in sanitation and medical services after 1775 contributed to the same end by reducing the death rate and by making it possible for large numbers of persons to live in cities without the danger of epidemics.

TRAGEDY AND HOPE A History of THE WORLD in Our Time Carroll Quigley

This summary brings Russian society down to about 1200. In the next six hundred years new experiences merely intensified the Russian development. These experiences arose from the fact that the new Russian society found itself caught between the population pressures of the raiders from the steppes to the east and the pressure of the advancing technology of Western Civilization. The pressure of the Ural-Altaic speakers from the eastern steppes culminated in the Mongol (Tarter) invasions after 1200. The Mongols conquered Russia and established a tribute-gathering system which continued for generations. Thus there continued to be a foreign exploiting system imposed over the Slav people. In time the Mongols made the princes of Moscow their chief tribute collectors for most of Russia. A little later the Mongols made a court of highest appeal in Moscow, so that both money and judicial cases flowed to Moscow. These continued to flow even after the princes of Moscow (1380) led the successful revolt which ejected the Mongols. As the population pressure from the East decreased, the technological pressure from the West increased (after 1500). By Western technology we mean such things as gunpowder and firearms, better agriculture, counting and public finance, sanitation, printing, and the spread of education. Russia did not get the full impact of these pressures until late, and then from secondary sources, such as Sweden and Poland, rather than from England or France. However, Russia was hammered out between the pressures from the East and those from the West. The result of this hammering was the Russian autocracy, a military, tribute-gathering machine superimposed on the Slav population. The poverty of this population made it impossible for them to get firearms or any other advantages of Western technology. Only the state had these things, but the state could afford them only by draining wealth from the people. This draining of wealth from below upward provided arms and Western technology for the rulers but kept the ruled too poor to obtain these things, so that all power was concentrated at the top. The continued pressure from the West made it impossible for the rulers to use the wealth that accumulated in their hands to finance economic improvements which might have raised the standards of living of the ruled, since this accumulation had to be used to increase Russian power rather than Russian wealth. As a consequence, pressure downward increased and the autocracy became more autocratic. In order to get a bureaucracy for the army and for government service, the landlords were given personal powers over the peasants, creating a system of serfdom in the East just at the time that medieval serfdom was disappearing in the West. Private property, personal freedom, and direct contact with the state (for taxation or for justice) were lost to the Russian serfs. The landlords were given these powers so that the landlords would be free to fight and willing to fight for Moscow or to serve in Moscow’s autocracy. By 1730 the direct pressure of the West upon Russia began to weaken somewhat because of the decline of Sweden, of Poland, and of Turkey, while Prussia was too occupied with Austria and with France to press very forcibly on Russia. Thus, the Slavs, using an adopted Western technology of a rudimentary character, were able to impose their supremacy on the peoples to the East. The peasants of Russia, seeking to escape from the pressures of serfdom in the area west of the Urals, began to flee eastward, and eventually reached the Pacific. The Russian state made every effort to stop this movement because it felt that the peasants must remain to work the land and pay taxes if the landlords were to be able to maintain the military autocracy which was considered necessary. Eventually the autocracy followed the peasants eastward, and Russian society came to occupy the whole of northern Asia. As the pressure from the East and the pressure from the West declined, the autocracy, inspired perhaps by powerful religious feelings, began to have a bad conscience toward its own people. At the same time it still sought to westernize itself. It became increasingly clear that this process of westernization could not be restricted to the autocracy itself, but must be extended downward to include the Russian people. The autocracy found, in 1812, that it could not defeat Napoleon’s army without calling on the Russian people. Its inability to defeat .the Western allies in the Crimean War of 1854-1856, and the growing threat of the Central Powers after the Austro-German alliance of 1879, made it clear that Russia must be westernized, in technology if not in ideology, throughout all classes of the society, in order to survive. This meant, very specifically, that Russia had to obtain the Agricultural Revolution and industrialism; but these in turn required that ability to read and write be extended to the peasants and that the rural population be reduced and the urban population be increased. These needs, again, meant that serfdom had to be abolished and that modern sanitation had to be introduced. Thus one need led to another, so that the whole society had to be reformed. In typically Russian fashion all these things were undertaken by government action, but as one reform led to another it became a question whether the autocracy and the landed upper classes would be willing to allow the reform movement to go so far as to jeopardize their power and privileges. For example, the abolition of serfdom made it necessary for the landed nobility to cease to regard the peasants as private property whose only contact with the state was through themselves. Similarly, industrialism and urbanism would create new social classes of bourgeoisie and workers. These new classes inevitably would make political and social demands very distasteful to the autocracy and the landed nobility. If the reforms led to demands for nationalism, how could a dynastic monarchy such as the Romanov autocracy yield to such demands without risking the loss of Finland, Poland, the Ukraine, or Armenia? As long as the desire to westernize and the bad conscience of the upper classes worked together, reform advanced. But as soon as the lower classes began to make demands, reaction appeared. On this basis the history of Russia was an alternation of reform and reaction from the eighteenth century to the Revolution of 1917. Peter the Great (1689-1725) and Catherine the Great (1762-1796) were supporters of westernization and reform. Paul I (1796-1801) was a reactionary. Alexander I (1801-1825) and Alexander II (1855-1881) were reformers, while Nicholas I (1825-1855) and Alexander III (1881-1894) were reactionaries. As a consequence of these various activities, by 1864 serfdom had been abolished, and a fairly modern system of law, of justice, and of education had been established; local government had been somewhat modernized; a fairly good financial and fiscal system had been established; and an army based on universal military service (but lacking in equipment) had been created. On the other hand, the autocracy continued, with full power in the hands of weak men, subject to all kinds of personal intrigues of the basest kind; the freed serfs had no adequate lands; the newly literate were subject to a ruthless censorship which tried to control their reading, writing, and thinking; the newly freed and newly urbanized were subject to constant police supervision; the non-Russian peoples of the empire were subjected to waves of Russification and Pan-Slavism; the judicial system and the fiscal system were administered with an arbitrary disregard of all personal rights or equity; and, in general, the autocracy was both tyrannical and weak. The first period of reform in the nineteenth century, that under Alexander I, resulted from a fusion of two factors: the “conscience-stricken gentry” and the westernizing autocracy. Alexander himself represented both factors. As a result of his reforms and those of his grandmother, Catherine the Great, even earlier, there appeared in Russia, for the first time, a new educated class which was wider than the gentry, being recruited from sons of Orthodox priests or of state officials (including army officers) and, in general, from the fringes of the autocracy and the gentry. When the autocracy became reactionary under Nicholas I, this newly educated group, with some support from the conscience-stricken gentry, formed a revolutionary group generally called the “Intelligentsia.” At first this new group was pro-Western, but later it became increasingly anti-Western and “Slavophile” because of its disillusionment with the West. In general, the Westernizers argued that Russia was merely a backward and barbaric fringe of Western Civilization, that it had made no cultural contribution of its own in its past, and that it must pass through the same economic, political, and social developments as the West. The Westernizers wished to speed up these developments. The Slavophiles insisted that Russia was an entirely different civilization from Western Civilization and was much superior because it had a profound spirituality (as contrasted with Western materialism), it had a deep irrationality in intimate touch with vital forces and simple living virtues (in contrast to Western rationality, artificiality, and hypocrisy), it had its own native form of social organization, the peasant village (commune) providing a fully satisfying social and emotional life (in contrast to Western frustration of atomistic individualism in sordid cities); and that a Socialist society could be built in Russia out of the simple self-governing, cooperative peasant commune without any need to pass along the Western route marked by industrialism, bourgeoisie supremacy, or parliamentary democracy. As industrialism grew in the West, in the period 1830-1850, the Russian Westernizers like P. Y. Chaadayev (1793-1856) and Alexander Herzen (1812-1870) became increasingly disillusioned with the West, especially with its urban slums, factory system, social disorganization, middle-class money-grubbing and pettiness, its absolutist state, and its advanced weapons. Originally the Westernizers in Russia had been inspired by French thinkers, while the Slavophiles had been inspired by German thinkers like Schelling and Hegel, so that the shift from Westernizers to Slavophiles marked a shift from French to Germanic teachers. The Slavophiles supported orthodoxy and monarchy, although they were very critical of the existing Orthodox Church and of the existing autocracy. They claimed that the latter was a Germanic importation, and that the former, instead of remaining a native organic growth of Slavic spirituality, had become little more than a tool of autocracy. Instead of supporting these institutions, many Slavophiles went out into the villages to get in touch with pure Slavic spirituality and virtue in the shape of the untutored peasant. These missionaries, called “narodniki,” were greeted with unconcealed suspicion and distaste by the peasants, because they were city-bred strangers, were educated, and expressed anti-Church and antigovernmental ideas. Already disillusioned with the West, the Church, and the government, and now rejected by the peasants, the Intelligentsia could find no social group on which to base a reform program. The result was the growth of nihilism and of anarchism.

Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (pp. 101-105). GSG & Associates Publishers. Kindle Edition.