Long Nineteenth Century, 1750-1914

The Long Nineteenth Century, 1750-1914 is a global history textbook with a difference. It is a guide for students to the actions and experiences by which communities and individuals in different parts of the world constructed, contested, and were affected by major trends and events in the global past.The book explores the global history of the 19th century holistically. Its content is framed in chapters that tackle themes rather than geographic regions or chronological sub-divisions. Moreover, in order to connect human experiences and perspectives with global trends and events, each chapter – whether it focuses on politics or religion, economics or environment – is underpinned by an approach emphasizes social and cultural history. Through its pages, students critically encounter important global trends and key events from the Industrial Revolution to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The book ends with an epilogue on the First World War that brings all of the themes of the volume together in one place and also provides a segue into the mid-20th century.

With great subtlety Trevor Getz has taken a common European-focused periodization - the long nineteenth century - and turned it on its head. The text is organized according to recognizable key themes of the period, from poltical, economic, environmental and intellectual history. While there is plenty of interesting European history here, the book is striking in the key roles assigned to peoples of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. In sum, this is a highly readable global history of the period that belongs on the shelves and in the classrooms of every serious world historian., Trevor Getz’ The Long Nineteenth Century, is a brief, but thorough examination of the dramatic changes the world and its populations underwent between 1750 and 1914. Highly accessible, the work questions assumptions about modernity while simultaneously leveraging it to unfold the dramatic, worldwide shifts taking place across the era. Getz goes beyond artificial boundaries like “East and West” or “Core and Periphery,” to engage students in the complexities of seemingly commonplace terms like Nationalism, Imperialism, and Faith., Trevor Getz has crafted a compelling global narrative of the rise of modernity in the long nineteenth century that brings together critical themes in world history, linking political, economic, intellectual, and environmental histories. Getz presents complex ideas to students, using current scholarship to conceptualize a global experience of modernity, which highlights the diverse perspectives of various groups of peoples and the role of interactions between them in shaping the modern world.

Trevor R. Getz is Professor of History at San Francisco State University, USA. He is a historian of modern Africa and the world. He is the author of Abina and the Important Men (second edition 2015), the first of Oxford University Press’ new Graphic Histories series and winner of the James Harvey Robinson Prize from the American Historical Association.