From Free Life, Issue 17, January 1993
ISSN: 0260 5112

The early decades of the 19th century were some of the most crowded and important in history. They should be of interest ot libertarians because industrialism, the vote and the role of the State were topics of fierce controversy throughout the period. Many current issues, such as taxation or control of the currency, were certainly making just as much news 160 years ago.

I always enjoy reading about this period. The years between Waterloo and the collapse of the Wellington Ministry contain a gallery of fascinating and influential personalities, numbering among many others - Jackson, Metternich, Shelley, beethoven, Bolivar, Telford, Ricardo, Castlereagh and Delacroix. It was not a boring time. Unlie our own era of health fascists and Australian tv soaps, the first three decades of the last century did not suffer from tedium, at least so far as the chattering classes were concerned.

It is therefore a delight to see that Mr Johnson has written on the subject. It gripped my imagination to the last page. His control of narrative, handling of detail and breadth of background knowledge are astonishing. How does he do it? The source notes are huge. Preparing this splendid volume must have been a Herculean effort, and it is a measure of his skill that the pages slip past so effortlessly.

Part of Mr Johnson's trick is to divide his subjects under logical headings. One chapter looks at the econly, another at scinece, another at democratic change. This helps him to tackle subjects in detail and in different countries without losing his tight grip on chronology. It is an object lesson in how to write Big History. Once or twice, things do not quite work out. Even so, his structure is generally sound.

What is his basic thesis? If I understand him correctly, he believes that the fifteen years covered witnessed the birth of the modern world in crucial respects. He contends - and I think his case is convincing - that so much of what we call modernity came here to the fore that the period fully deserves the title given to his book.

Of course, the French Revolution can also be seen as having sired much that one now observes - for example, self-appointed political lites purporting to speak for "the workers". Mr Johnson certainly does not ignore this point, but feels that his own chosen decades witnessed a wider range of modern developments.

Another theme stressed is the giddy turmoil in the realm of ideas. Romanticism, defined as the placing of emotions over "cold rationalism", was in the ascendant, not just in poetry and music, but also in philosophy and politics. The darker side of the new ideas is stressed, showing how the ratinal liberalism of the Enlightenment began to weaken. Reactionary politics were very much alive. Burkean conservatism - I think Mr Johnson is quite a fan - had a powerful influence through such british journals as The Quarterly Review, while the utilitarianism of Bentham and James Mill anticipated the Fabians of a century later. The poisonous philosophies of Hegel and Comte which developed at this time helped pave the way for Marx and the catastrophies of collectivism. All this is described in telling detail.

The book opens with the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, in which the future American President Andrew Jackson was established as a great soldier, and which proved the turning point in this bitter, futile war between Britain and the United States. Mr Johnson's choice of a New World introduction is clever, because no discussion of modernity can make sense without looking at the English-speaking areas outside Europe. We are taken also to China, Latin America, the East Indies and Africa in a tour peppered with personalities.

As one might expect, bearing in mind the British pre-emininence in these years, much space is given to British life: industrial change, politics, relations between the sexes, the arts, clashing ideas and science. Few doubts are expressed about the Industrial Revolution: it was Good Thing - and so, of course, it was. Mr Johnson provides a sackful of details and figures to illustrate the beneficial effects of industrial capitalism on the masses.

Mr Johnson is justly kind to the statesmen who guided this country though these turbulent years. This was the time of Peterloo, Catholic Emancipation, Captain Swing, Luddism, and huge urban growth. Tores like Huskisson, Peel, Lord Liverpool and Canning were not marble saints, but they are portrayed as a huane and intelligent group of men facing issues as capably as any other. Shelley's violently abusive poems against them strike me as hysterical. Compared witht he grey non-entities of today, these men were giants. In fact, the archaic voting system swept away by the Great Reform Act of 1832 threw up a surprisingly large number of able politicians.

Inevitably, the book highlights famous people, but is not "lite" history. It is almost painfully crammed with details about ordinary life. We are told about gardening, plumbing, the manufacture of machine tools, painting techniques, the price of bread - even developments in underwear. Mr Johnson does not neglet the "little guy" even as he delights in describing the acts of the great. The Marxists have tried too long to monopolise the history of ordinary people. Thank goodness, this is slowly changing.

Scientific advances and the achievements of great engineers like Telford an Brunel are recounted in detail. This was an era of tremendous vigour and enterprise. Contrary tot he usual Marxist claims, upward mobility was possible even for the humblest, given brains and determination. The description of the sheer gusto of businessmen and their incredible engineering feats is like something from an Ayn Rand novel.

The sections on the New World, which are excellent, praise the achievements of the European settlers, but Mr Johnson explains the sufferings of Red Indians, Negro slaves and Aborigines in harrowing detail. Though I doubt if we should feel guilty about the White Man's advance, it is necessary to understand the human costs of what happened.

I have said several nice things about this book. One quibble: Mr Johnson seems at times to assume that the questioning of religious beliefs by atheists such as Shelley inevitably heralded moral relativism. Because he is a devout Roman Catholic, this is a mistake easily made. But he is wrong, plain wrong, as anyone working in the Aristotelian-Natural Law-Objectivist tradition would know. One of the tragedies of 19th century romanticism was that its proponents assumed reason to be in conflict with "the passions". This bogus conflict, never properly resolved at the time, has done untold damage in philosophy and politics.

I also found myself occasionally getting lost in the sheer volume here of names and details. This, however, may be my fault. Sometimes the vast number of anecdotes left me reeling from literary indigestion.

But the faults in this work are notable for their rarity. This is a brillian book, and one of the best that Mr Johnson has ever written. I Understand that this socialist turned conservative is now planning to write a history of the United States. There seems to be no limit to his ambition.

Tom Burroughs