Some Guy Wrote:Some points. I do NOT see the turning cycle as operating on a global scale, I think it roughly corresponds to nation states. I am just noting that a lot of countries seem to have their cycles roughly aligned, most particularly Western Europe/the US outside Ireland.
Not global, world system. I assumed you knew the term, my bad. A world system is a portion of the world that is linked by dense trade and cultural links so that it can be treated as a single system for certain types of historical analyses the way people do for nation-states. After all, in Europe there really weren’t nations until quite recent times. Western Europe, sans Ireleand roughly corresponds to a world system that arose in the Medieval times through a combination of the Hansa cities and the overland trade route from the Mediterranean to Bruges. Later this route was replaced by an oceanic route along the Atlantic coast. It tended to bind Northern Italy, France, Germany, the low countries, Scandinavia, Britain, Spain and Portugal, and portions of Poland and the Baltic region into a world system.
So if you look at the frequency of peasant revolts in Europe you find at times there are simultaneous peaks in a variety of countries suggesting that their historical cycles are in sync. For example, below is a giant cluster of events in the 1376-84 period. This clustering of events was noticed by the authorities who wondered if there was a conspiracy. They noted that the Ciompi had resulted in the spread of radical ideas and that Italians had been seen in London before the Peasants Revolt (this event really got a rise out of the English elite, sort of like 911), but others noted that there was always Italians in London. The spirit of Trump was there 650 years ago, people continue to be people
1376-1376 HRE Knochenhauerauftstand
1376-1376 HRE Urban Insurrenction
1378-1378 France Urban Riots
1378-1378 HRE Urban Insurrenction
1378-1378 Italy Revolt of the Ciompi
1378-1378 Teut.Order Urban Insurrenction
1379-1379 France Urban Uprising
1379-1382 HRE Revolt of Ghent
1380-1380 France Peasant Revolt in Midi
1380-1380 France Tax Revolt
1380-1380 HRE Guild Revolt
1380-1380 Switzerland Peasant Revolt in Weggis
1381-1381 England Revolt in Essex
1381-1381 England Revolt in Kent
1381-1381 England The English Peasants' Revolt
1381-1381 France Urban Riots
1382-1382 France Harelle Riots
1382-1382 France Maillotin Riots
1382-1382 France Riot at Beziers
1383-1383 France Conflicts in Paris
1384-1384 HRE Urban Riots
Quote:I largely agree with your remaining assessment. Britain in the 1850s-1860s is unusual, in that it had lots of things going on overseas, but managed to avoid getting tangled in any of them. The Chartist movement kind of evaporated in this time frame, and the economy was booming (This period is generally thought of as the "Golden Age" of Victorian Britain.The Chartist movement pretty much had had it after the debacle of 1848. From my secular cycles paper:
me Wrote:The 1848 revolution on the continent spurred the last major expression of Chartist protest. Economic downturn had spawned riots in London, Glasgow, Manchester and other cities. The Chartists had decided to convene a mass demonstration on Kennington Common to submit to Parliament their petition for political rights. About 150,000 gathered on April 10 for the demonstration and the leaders submitted the petition, which was ignored (Royle 2000:126). Popular anger did not dissipate. There were reports of workingmen forging pikes, conducting military drills, and dangerously inflammatory rhetoric at political meetings (Royle 2000:129). Secretary to the Privy Council Charles Grenville recorded in his diary on June 3 that “it was quite new to hear any Englishman coolly recommend assassination” and that “it was impossible not to feel alarm when we consider the vast amount of the population as compared to any repressive power that we possess” (Royle 2000: 130). The Chartist movement was infiltrated with spies and the government was able to thwart the “1848 conspiracy” with mass arrests, ending the last revolutionary attempt of the era (Royle 2000:134).
Royle, Edward. 2000. Revolutionary Britannia? Reflections on the threat of revolution in Britain 1789-1848. Manchester University Press, New York.
Some Guy Wrote: So, since the US and Britain were presumably on the same secular track up through the Revolution, and then again with WWII, and have had similar social movements since (the 60s in both places, Thatcher/Reagan, Blair/Clinton, Trump/Brexit), we are left with the conclusion that Britain either decided to take the rest of the 19th century off, or it just had unusually competent leadership during the period when the rest of the West was in crisis, defusing both social movements like the Chartists and war scares with the US, France, Prussia, or what have you.Well it’s not just the mid-19th century 4T for which evidence of its existence is absent. There is also the 4T corresponding to the American Revolution. Britain had a revolutionary crisis era, it was just later than the one in the US:
me Wrote: The mutinies, invasions and armed uprisings over 1797-1803 suggested revolution was possible, even likely, at least in the eyes of the authorities (Royle 2000:25). Charles Tilly lists this episode as a revolutionary situation (Tilly 1995, Table 4.2). The realization that measures were needed to control Ireland and to reduce tensions led to the one major constitutional reform of the period, the 1800 Act of Union with Ireland (Royle 2000:25). The beginning of this crisis in 1797 was used to date the shift from integrative to disintegrative trend for the mercantile cycle.
Crime rates soared during the second decade of the 19th century to an initial peak in 1817-19 (Figure 7). At about the same time (1816-20) was a spate of sociopolitical instability twice as severe (by the Sorokin measure) as one of the Jacobite revolts of the 18th century (an integrative trend conflict). After a brief decline, crime rates rose to a second peak which occurred at about the same time as another outburst of sociopolitical instability over 1829-32 that was even more severe than the 1817-1819 violence. Over this same period two more constitutional reforms were adopted: Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the Reform Act of 1832. After a decline to 1836, crime rates rose to a 19th century peak in 1842. A sharp rise in riotous offenses were also seen in that year, presumably associated with the Chartist-inspired 1842 general strike (Figure 7). The disturbances of 1842 were the most intense of any that occurred in Britain from the time of the French Revolution to the Chartist détente of 1848 (Royle 2000:113).
In other words it was a time of significant reordering of institutions that is the hallmark of a 4T. We have what looks like three 4Ts over a period when the US had four. Unlike the US ones, the British ones are more closely aligned with the M&T cycle. This is why I am no longer as sure of the idea of alignment of cycles (the world-system as a unit of analysis).