Marks' environmental history approach to Western industrial dominance and global inequality

In the introduction to the third edition of The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Environmental Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century, Robert Marks opens with alarming facts about global carbon emissions. The author uses historical methods to assess the evolution of industrialization and modernization: the key culprits of greenhouse gas emissions and thus, climate change. A slight nod to the methods used by Jared Diamond, Marks also questions why some parts of the world like Western Europe and North America industrialized first, the so-called “rise of the West.” The author also shows how political structures and institutions, particularly the notion of the autonomous nation-state, fostered industrial growth and development. Marks also addresses the way industrialization created the massive schism between the first and third worlds. In a greater conceptual leap, Marks then introduces the concept of the Anthropocene age, in which human beings’ impact on the planet rivals that of any other major “force of nature,” (2). The term “Anthropocene” is an apt one because the problems of climate change are problems that impact the entire world and need to be solved collectively. In “The Rise of the West?” Marks questions the validity of common assumptions about European industrial and economic dominance. The age of exploration and imperialism allowed the so-called West to emerge as the great economic powerhouse. Spain, France, Britain, and the Netherlands plundered the raw material from the colonies they held, exploiting labor, and systematically deeming indigenous inhabitants of those same territories as being inferior beings. This is the story of colonialism in a nutshell, and is the most obvious explanation for how Europe was able to gain and control power over the world. Even when they were outnumbered, Europeans were able to successfully overpower the indigenous kingdoms because they brought diseases—an unconscious form of bioterrorism. It was also widely believed that European civilization was superior to any other, a mindset that justified further colonial expansion. Even in the era of post-colonialism, it has still been presumed that Western institutions have enabled industrialization and that industrialization is the root cause of global wealth disparities. However, the author’s main argument is that “Western” political institutions like the nation-state and the free market system are not the actual cause of global disparities. Using environmental history, Marks shows that all major civilizations have played a part in taking human beings where we are today. The author intends to achieve this goal throughout the remainder of the book, focusing on China and India as well as Europe. Some of the points the author makes are painfully obvious, but framed as novel ideas. For example, Marks states that it was not “English pluck, inventiveness, or politics” but rather “global developments that included India, China, and the New World Colonies” that sparked the Industrial Revolution (16). This statement is hardly a new revelation; England would not have had the raw materials with which to create a manufacturing base were it not for its colonies. However, other aspects of The Origins of the Modern World are unique and inventive. Marks does shed new light on existing historical questions and pressing present problems like climate change. For example, the author focuses on the “polycentric” world systems, painting a more realistic and richer portrait of what globalization was like circa 1400. Similarly, the author uses the term “conjuncture” to discuss the interconnectedness and interdependence of various societies (13). Indeed, the view that globalization is a new phenomenon is short-sighted and frankly wrong. World trade preceded the modern nation-state. As the author also points out, world trade that did not involve Europe also impacted the evolution of human industry. Industrial development could just as easily have started in China or India or Africa and then later caught on in Europe. Whether it would have meant fewer disparities, fewer gross violations of human rights, or fewer environmental problems is unlikely.