Days Weeks Months Years and Centuries of Time and Events

I do not subscribe to the validity of the old cliché that History repeats itself;

Yes, I do agree that it may seem like it if one compares events. Greed, like birth and death, are repetitive events much the same as War but all of it in one century by no means repeat history when it happens, as it will, in another or the following Century.

The second point is that History isn’t made on the instant; it takes time for something to become history. Young history students research real old history of time long gone in the past. I often marvel at what they unearth of wars and events of the 12th century and before that; love reading it too but what I am concerned with is what is known about the 300 years from 1660 to 1960 and what we can learn from that today. In that perspective 1960 to 2010 is not yet history; that must still be written.

I ask my readers to be patient. This is only one short Article and cannot possibly be a detailed summary of hundreds of authoritative works on the subject; you have to read that elsewhere as I have done [as we all should do, in fact, if we want to be fair on ourselves today.] Therefore, just one or two very short sentences will have to suffice on the period before 1660.

America had been discovered by White Europe by then and the first white settlers had moved in. Africa still waited in the open sun [ready for the taking] and nobody in the West bothered to find out about Russia, China, Japan and the entire “East” that had always been there. The rest of the world is only now starting to look at that but we can assume that the East, like America was sparsely inhabited by today’s standards.

Colonialism as it became of America and Africa happened with a bang in the century from 1660 to 1760. In the following century from 1760 to 1860 it was completed and the first Colony [America] had taken their independence from the Motherland in a bloody War. African colonialism and India [Pakistan] was completed.

America of old stepped into the half century beginning 1860 with the Civil War; some in later years still preferred to call it the War between the States; whatever, that ended slavery in America.

Now you must get a beverage and sit down calmly to ponder what was in the World at that stage, all the while remembering that it was a mere 150 years ago [just 3 half centuries back in the past from 2010] What did the world have at that point compared to today?

The first railroads were operating around many countries. The First Steamships had gone out to sea by 1840 but the great oil driven ones weren’t there yet by 1860

Oil was first discovered in America January 1865 in Titusville PA. The first telephone was developed in 1875. The first Electricity became available to manufacturing in 1875 but home consumers had to wait until 1913.

The gold rush fever produced massive migration of people between continents from the seventies to the end of the nineties and provided some excitement.

There is a still ongoing argument between supporters of Edison et al and other claimants to the honor but the first electric light bulb only became reality in 1875.

The automobile and those wonderful men in their flying machines came right at the end of that half a century.

So, a World entirely different from the one we had in 2010 started out in 1910 with William Howard Taft presiding in America, England going strong, Africa still slumbering under the blazing sun, Australia heralding the arrival of every new day but otherwise doing their own thing whilst guarding the southern oceans, nobody in the World having bothered to find out about Russia and China and strong rumors of War in Europe.

To be continued with the World 1910 to 2010.

Tags: History of the World today, The Real World