The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914

The Birth of the Modern World is a wonderfully ambitious book that effectively demonstrates the global nature of the modern world and the need to decentre national histories and think big. It is a 'thematic history' demonstrating how 'historical trends and sequences of events, which have been treated separately in regional or national histories, can be brought together' (p. 1)....

The Birth of the Modern World is a wonderfully ambitious book that effectively demonstrates the global nature of the modern world and the need to decentre national histories and think big. It is a 'thematic history' demonstrating how 'historical trends and sequences of events, which have been treated separately in regional or national histories, can be brought together' (p. 1). Bayly's emphasis is on the interdependencies and interconnectedness of political and social changes across the world in a period well before contemporary globalisation. It is in part a culmination of his own work over a long period – using his rich and detailed knowledge of Indian and South Asian history as he did previously in Imperial Meridian – as a basis from which to reflect on national, imperial and global concerns. It is an intervention in the current debates over globalisation, for he shares the insistence of A. G. Hopkins and others that the contemporary version of this is not the first; theorists must be more careful to specify the particularities of phases of globalisation given its long history. (2) It is also an attempt to put a particular reading of connection and interdependence at the heart of the making of the modern world, thereby unseating E. J. Hobsbawm's magisterial four volumes on the long nineteenth century, The Age of Revolution, Industry and Empire, The Age of Capital and The Age of Empire with its drama of the unfolding logic of capitalism and exploitation, and providing a new account for these post-Marxist times. In the process it cocks many a snook at post-colonial theorists with their 'polemic' and their 'jargon' and the particular sets of antagonisms and dynamics that they stress – racialised difference –and is proud of its sceptical stance towards theory, keen to avoid 'pretentious words'. The strength of Bayly's analysis is that it insists on modernity as a global process. The downside from my perspective is the absence of an analysis of power. As he admits right at the end of the book an emphasis on networks and connections can (and indeed does in this instance) take away from the question of power – who wields it, over whom, and how? His account, he insists, is not one of collaboration but subordination.

克里斯托弗•阿兰•贝利（C. A. Bayly）是剑桥大学南亚研究中心主任和圣凯瑟林学院院长，也是大英博物馆的理事之一，从事1700 年以来的印度史、英帝国史和全球史等领域的研究和教学。30 多年来，先后发表了《印度政治的地方根源 》、《印度社会和英帝国的形成》、 《南亚民族的起源》等多部著作。《现代世界的诞生：1780-1914 年》一书是贝利教授的全球史研究成果。因其多年的历史研究实践和在历史写作领域的杰出贡献，贝利荣获2004 年英国沃尔夫森历史写作个人奖（Wolfson History Prize），2007年，因其对历史学的贡献被授予爵位。