HEYDAY: The 1850s and the Dawn of the Global Age

Publisher's Weekly said: "From the gold fields of Victoria, South Africa, to the wharves of San Francisco, Wilson's vertiginous narrative takes in vast swaths of time and space, describing nothing less than "the birth of the modern world." The optimism Wilson argues for as characteristic of the age is perhaps best captured by the tale of a Minnesota real estate agent who walks his speculator client through the site of a proposed town, confidently pointing out trees and bogs as the spots of future neighborhoods, and a patch of dense forest as "the fashionable quarter." Wilson doesn't gloss over the dark side of all this energy and expansion - colonial expropriation, ecological collapse, forced labor - and the narration is lively and breakneck." Over the course of the 1850s, the world was reshaped by technology, trade, mass migration and war. The global economy expanded fivefold, millions of families emigrated to the ends of the earth to carve out new lives, technology revolutionised how people communicated, and steamships and railways cut across vast continents and oceans, shrinking the world and creating the first global age. It was a decade of breathtaking and remorseless transformation, fuelled by the promise of exponential progress. The 1850s were witness to the laying of the first undersea cable in 1851, the rush for gold from California to Australia, and fleets of pirate vessels docked in Hong Kong harbour, eager to take advantage of booming trade. The West's insatiable hunger for land, natural resources and new markets encouraged free trade, bold exploration, and colonisation like never before. Buoyed by supreme self-confidence, as well as new technologies of war, nations clashed across the globe, and indigenous peoples fell victim to an assurgent West. Reckless economic expansion led to lasting ecological damage, and to the demise of local cultures which could not keep pace with the blistering pace of capitalism and free trade. We encounter Muslim guerrilla fighters in the Caucasus Mountains and freelance empire-builders in the jungles of Nicaragua, British free trade zealots preying on China and Samurai warriors resisting Western incursions in Japan. Illus., 520 pages. Save £30.