Long and Short Centuries
Why do some historians say that the 19th century was long? And that the 20th century was short? Our professional historians break down this terminology in our latest blog post.
If you have read books about Europe or the Americas in the 19th century, perhaps in class or maybe for a history paper, you might have encountered an unusual phrase: the long nineteenth century. If you haven’t seen this phrase yourself, a quick search of recently publications turns up dozens of history books with The Long Nineteenth Century in their title. Even more books discuss the idea of the long nineteenth century within their pages.
The opposite phenomenon appears for the following 100 years: history books often write about the short 20th century.
But how can this be the case? Surely any century lasts as long as any other (with the exception of the infrequent calendar correction). Centuries are always 100 years—we can look at the starting digits of a year and know the century in which that year occurred.
In one sense, yes, of course centuries last for 100 years. Observers on New Years Eve are aware every 100 years that they are living through the end of one century and the beginning of the next.
But to historians, centuries do not last exactly 100 years. Of course, historians mean ‘century’ in a different sense. For historians, a century is a neat way to give bookends to an era: a time in which trends in politics, society, and culture were linked together strongly enough to distinguish one grouping of years from what came before or after.
Human events do not line up exactly with 100-year increments. Therefore, when demarcating the beginnings and ends of eras, historians might label some centuries as long and others as short. In other words, some eras have their logical starting and ending points more than 100 years away. Other eras start and end within 100 years.
Let’s take a look at the two most recent centuries, which often both get this kind of treatment.
The Long Nineteenth Century
Historians of the Americas and Europe typically see the nineteenth century as long, stretching from the 1700s into the 1900s. This is because many of the hallmarks of this era began in the 1700s and remained firmly entrenched until the start of World War I in 1914. Some of these hallmarks include:
Political consolidation: the 19th century was a time when European countries and the US were building strong centralized governments. This process began earlier in places like Britain and started later in countries like Italy and Germany.
Empire building: the 19th century was also a time of expanding overseas empires. The British and French Empires led expansionism earlier in the century. Later, countries like Belgium, Germany, and the United States also became involved in obtaining overseas territories.
Technological change: for people like ourselves living in a time of profound technological change, it can be easy to forget that other eras experienced similar technological transformations. In the 19th century, new methods of communication like the telegraph and new methods of transportation like the railroad connected people in ways never before imagined. Electricity illuminated cities. And factories meant that goods could be produced in ways like never before.
Growing internationalism: trade and other business concerns increasingly spanned across the entire globe in the 19th century, with more individuals and livelihoods tied to international trade and commerce.
Urbanization: these growing technological and economic considerations led to factories and the growth of urban areas. By the hundreds of thousands, people moved from villages and farms into growing cities across North America and Europe, profoundly changing the makeup of entire countries and redefining lifestyles for all social classes.
Political rights: throughout the 19th century, individuals asserted fundamental rights. We can see these rights within the US Declaration of Independence—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—but they also continued right across the century, including rights like voting rights, women’s rights, civil rights, property rights, and labor laws.
Ideologies: finally, historians point out the ideologies that developed in the 19th century, in response to growing calls for rights and recognition for ordinary citizens. Communism, for instance, first gained popularity in the 19th century.
If these are the hallmarks of the 19th century, it is difficult to argue that these changes began within the 1800s themselves. For instance, take just the one example of the Boston Tea Party, in 1773. In many ways, it already shows the hallmarks of the 19th century. In the Boston Tea Party, colonists—upset that their rights had been violated—dumped tea imported from China via the British East India Company into Boston Harbor. Here, we see many items from the list above: strong, centralized governments, imperialism, international trade, urbanization, a concern for political rights, and of course the technological developments that allowed ships to travel on long ocean voyages.
Historians, then, usually cite the beginning of the 19th century somewhere in the mid to late 1700s, depending on the particular national context in which they are looking. Some might cite the French Revolution, the US Revolution, or pick a nice round year like 1750. In any event, historians seem to agree that the hallmarks of the 19th century were clear before the calendar read 1800.
The same issue is apparent when deciding when to end the century. What is a moment where we can say that these trends came to an end? Historians typically turn to World War I as the ending point of the 19th century. By the end of the war, many of the previous hallmarks had disappeared:
Many old monarchies had collapsed, with states like Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire disappearing entirely.
European empires, while not entirely gone, were starting to encounter problems in maintaining their wide-reaching empires, which would ultimately result in decolonization after World War II.
The internationalism that had defined the years leading up to the war was in sharp decline, especially in the United States.
Social classes were changing, including an end to the old aristocracy, the rise of the middle class, and better opportunities for the working classes.
Social mores were also in flux. For instance, take the example of women: many women across Europe and the United States won the right to vote in the years after World War I. Women’s fashion changed, they began working more frequently outside of the home, and they became more independent.
All in all, it seems fair to say that many of the hallmarks of the 19th century had been fundamentally changed by—or were about to fundamentally change in the years following—World War I.
The Short Twentieth Century
The short twentieth century, then, begins with this period of political and social transformation following World War I. But the question, then is when to end the twentieth century.
Currently, many historians end the twentieth century with the end of the Cold War. If we start the century at World War I and end it with the end of the Cold War, we can see many continuities across this period. Politically, the world shifted from one controlled by empires to one dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union. Ideologically, we see the rise of democracy and communism as the two main global ideologies, with many states around the world strongly identifying with one and rejecting the other. Along with the end of empires and the end of World War II, the twentieth century ushered in an era of decreasing influence from western Europe. At the same time, states beyond western Europe grew in importance both because of decolonization and on account of US and Soviet competition for allies across the world. The end of the Cold War, by contrast, signaled an end to this international structure of two central ideologies and of political might vested in two superpowers.
Concluding Thoughts
Historians often find it convenient to gather years together to form eras. These eras can act as a shorthand for many assumptions about what life was like at a certain time. For instance, the single phrase ‘Victorian England’ conjures up a particular image of aristocracy, industrialization, urbanization, the plight of the working class, and pollution without having to spell all those developments out. The same is true for defining centuries by hallmarks of the era, as opposed to their temporal definitions. Historians recognize that these assumptions about an era do not hold true for all people at all times, but these eras do provide a common ground on which to start engaging with the past.
These demarcations of centuries also do not mean that the bookends established periods of real change. People, for instance, rarely change overnight, and of course most people alive in 1988 before the end of the Cold War were also alive in 1992, after the end of the Cold War. Politicians, writers, and artists all continued previous attitudes and ways of thinking. For historians, though, these lines of division at least signal that the changes between era have become perceptible.
Another caution, of course, is that changing eras do not always apply equally well to all places. Especially with the long 19th century, this definition applies much better to assumptions of what life was like in Europe and the Americas (especially North America) than it does to other continents like Africa and Asia. While it is perfectly fine for historians to set the timeframes of the eras for the locations that they are studying, historians must also avoid transplanting one location’s historical divisions onto another place, without regard for whether those same divisions make sense in a new context.
Finally, these demarcations might someday need revisiting. Especially, the end of the twentieth century is also the start of the 21st century. And it is difficult for us to have a good perspective on the 21st century, since we are living at the beginning of it. With time, though, historians will have more perspective on the ultimate legacies of both the 20th and 21st centuries, which might change the demarcation line between the two. Who knows, maybe future historians will decide that you are reading this post from the 20th century.
Fascinated by how centuries can be long or short?
So are we.