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Since 1945 they have become increasingly independent and self-determining. The three-fold division of the planet was determined in part by the age-old ideas, principles and practices of civilized peoples during the past six thousand years. In part, it was the outcome of the planet-wide revolution of 1750-1970.
Arnold Toynbee describes the entire episode as the "down grading" of Europe. He might have added two words and reported "the down grading of Europe by Europeans", as a glaring example of large scale, long continued, deliberate self-destruction. Fundamental social changes were bound to follow the revolutionary technical transformations that took place during the world-wide revolution of 1750-1970.
The great revolution of 1750-1970 has made two notable contributions to the institutions of western civilization. In the field of politics it has contributed the nation state. In the field of economics it has contributed industrialization with its twin sociological consequence, mechanization and urbanization. Machines and cities are the Siamese twins of the modern age.
The planet still has immense, unused or little used reserves of natural resources. The old order is slipping, floundering, wasting. Civilization has told the best of its story and is busy writing its epitaph. The revolution of 1750-1970 provides the opportunity for a new beginning. The place is here. The time is now.
Trends inherent in the world-wide revolution of 1750-1970 suggest a cycle that reached its high point at the turn of the century and began its downward course around 1900. The chief European empires were jointly and severally involved in the bitter struggle for survival and supremacy from 1870 onward.
Economic integration is an obvious must and a logical outcome of the industrial integration that has gone on so swiftly during the great revolution of 1750-1970.
They were further augmented by a spectacular expansion of trade, travel, capital investment and scientific research and interchange. Events since war's end in 1945 have marked out the steps which the human race might take in the immediate future to deal with the new problems arising out of the world revolution of 1750-1970 and to stabilize human life on the planet. Step 1.
Since the period of general social relaxation usually known as the Dark Ages was superceded by the multiple innovations of the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the scientific-technical developments of the 1750-1970 Revolution, man the dreamer, inventor, designer, planner, architect and engineer has modified many aspects of nature and transformed the social environment.
Throughout the past two centuries mankind has been confronted by an epoch-making, many sided development the great revolution of 1750-1970. As I write, the great revolution is modifying the structure and functioning of human society and, consequently, the forces which condition, shape and, in large measure, determine the directions and channels in which humanity lives, moves and has its being.
An even more profound transformation of European society is made in the course of the Great Revolution of 1750-1970. The transformation is in its early stages.
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