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David Harcourt
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Posted: 16 Jul 2008 02:16 am |
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There was once a generation of people - they're all dead now - who spent some or all of their adult years living in the period 1880-1910.
This is the period known as the Fin de siecle. (There is a not very comprehensive or helpful article about it on Wikipedia; a deficiency which I hope someone will remedy before too long.)
It occurred to me today that we may be about to enter a very similar period, but to explain how that is I first of all have to explain how I see the Fin de siecle.
Two closely-related things gave the period 1880-1910 its very particular feel for those who lived through it as adults:
* First, the end of the Napoleonic Wars at Waterloo in 1815 provided a very significant watershed in human history. Before 1815 the civilised world was riven with conflict. No government anywhere was permanently stable (although, of course, some were less unstable than others) and no one anywhere was permanently safe. After 1815, wars and revolutions were usually (but not always) of short duration. Most of the time they took place in remote parts of the world - such as the Crimea, China, or South Africa - or within the borders of one country (as in the case of the American Civil War). From 1815 until 1914 there was no war which threatened the lives and livelihoods of the citizens of many countries, as Napoleon had done. (And here I would note that the pride of many French people in the achievements of Napoleon has always completely mystified. The man was a thug, and a murderer as well: he ordered the execution of 2000 prisoners in Egypt. It's as if the people of Cambodia, a hundred or so years from now, decided to make a hero of Pol Pot. But I digress..) By the 1880s, therefore, war across a continent was something which had occurred in the remote past. It belonged to history, and could stay there, so far as virtually everyone was concerned. By the Edwardian age (1901-1910) this perception that more or less universal peace was the natural state of things - the default position, if you will - was deeply entrenched.
* Second, the century between 1815 and 1914 was seen by those who lived in its closing stages decades as one of more or less continuous progress:
> Slavery was abolished.
> The right to vote was extended in a rapidly growing number of countries, first to larger classes of male electors and then to women.
> Other social reforms of almost if not equal significance were made.
> Extraordinary advances were made in science, medicine and engineering.
> It was a time of great literary and other artistic achievement.
Generally, it was felt, the world was becoming a much better place to live in, for many more people, than at any stage in human history.
The French are a very odd people. Their greatest hero is a man who brought suffering and death to millions. It's as if the German people were to start displaying busts of Heinrich Himmler, and quoting his pithy sayings on the need for racial purity, and celebrating his birthday each year ...
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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 12 Jul 2006 |
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Posted: 16 Jul 2008 02:17 am |
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And this was probably right, but then the Great War - "the war to end all wars" - broke out, and the illusions created over 99 years were irrevocably smashed. Progress is not linear, inevitable, and irreversible.
Oddly, the decade or so following the end of that first world war was a period of growing hope that the Golden Age which had preceded it might be renewed. That hope was, of course, dashed by the Great Depression and the world war which followed it.
It is now sixty years since the end of the Second World War. Although there have been many very nasty wars since then - especially in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East and the Gulf states - there's been nothing to compare with the two world wars.
So the question I ask myself is this:
If relative peace continued for another forty years - and especially if any conflict involving nuclear weapons were to be avoided (which seems increasingly improbable) - would humankind succeed in persuading itself for a second time that war was something which belonged in the past; in that foreign country where, as L P Hartley observed, they do things differently?
In short, will there be a second Fin de siecle; a second time in which we persuade ourselves that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds?
I wonder.
This the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Well, maybe.
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