The Year 1800

Podcast Transcript

In the year 1800, the last year of the 18th century, the world was on the precipice of radical change.

The scientific revolution, the agricultural revolution, and the industrial revolution had all begun, but were yet to hit full swing.

There were also literal revolutions afoot. Countries began overthrowing their leaders or colonial masters, a trend which would only continue in the next century.

Learn more about the world in the year 1800 on the 1,800th episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Every hundred episodes since the 1500th episode, I’ve been doing an overview of the world every century.

One of the themes in those episodes has been change. In those episodes, there was a change taking place around the world, but the change was slow.

However, in this episode, as we look at the world in the year 1800, the pace of that change has increased dramatically.

You can think of this this way, from 1500 to 1700, the car was getting warmed up and the engine was starting to rev. In 1800, the car was starting to move.

So let’s get started by looking at the different regions of the world to see what was happening, and we’ll start in the Pacific.

The Manila Galleons were still crossing the sea, sailing from Manila to Acapulco carrying silver from Mexico and goods from Asia.

Most of the individual islands in the Pacific didn’t see a lot of change since the year 1700. In fact, most of them were still unknown to the European powers that were exploring the region. Even if the islands were observed and recorded, they might not have been visited, and if so, only briefly.

The voyages of Captain James Cook between 1768 and 1779 were among the most consequential. Cook charted large portions of the Pacific, including the eastern coast of Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawai‘i, opening these regions to future colonization and trade.

His voyages combined scientific mapping with the acquisition of imperial intelligence and contributed to the mythologizing of the Pacific as a place of both noble simplicity and exploitable potential.

Cook’s voyages would provide the information necessary for later European colonization of the region.

Australia had been claimed by Britain in 1770, and the first penal colony had been established at Sydney in 1788. The indigenous Aboriginal populations were beginning to experience the devastating impacts of European colonization, though the full extent of continental settlement lay in the future.

Asia in 1800 presented a complex picture of declining traditional powers and emerging European influence. The Mughal Empire in India, once one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful states, had fragmented into numerous competing kingdoms and principalities.

This fragmentation had created opportunities for the British East India Company, which by 1800 controlled large portions of Bengal and other territories through a combination of military conquest and political manipulation.

China under the Qing Dynasty remained the world’s most populous and arguably most prosperous nation, but signs of future troubles were emerging. The empire’s isolationist policies and resistance to foreign trade were creating tensions with European powers, particularly Britain, which sought access to Chinese markets.

The population had grown dramatically during the 18th century, straining resources and creating social pressures that would eventually contribute to internal rebellions.

In 1800, Japan was a closed and insular society governed by the Tokugawa shogunate, a military regime that had ruled since 1603 and maintained strict control over the country through a feudal system centered in Edo (modern-day Tokyo). The emperor in Kyoto held symbolic religious authority but no real power, which rested firmly in the hands of the shogun.

Japan’s isolationist policy, known as sakoku, prohibited most foreign contact and trade, limiting it primarily to the Dutch and Chinese through the port of Nagasaki under heavily regulated conditions.

In 1800, the Ottoman Empire was a vast but increasingly strained multiethnic empire stretching across the Middle East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe, ruled from Constantinople by Sultan Selim III. Although still one of the largest empires in the world, its military and administrative systems were showing signs of deepening decline. The empire had suffered major territorial losses, particularly to Austria and Russia.

Africa in 1800 was profoundly shaped by the Atlantic slave trade, which had reached its peak during the 18th century. Millions of Africans had been forcibly transported to the Americas, creating demographic disruptions and political instability across much of West and Central Africa. Some African states had grown wealthy by participating in the slave trade, while others had been devastated by slave raids and warfare.

The continent’s political landscape remained largely African-controlled, with European presence limited to coastal trading posts and the Dutch Cape Colony in the south. However, the foundations were being laid for the European colonial expansion that would transform Africa in the 19th century.

??The Americas in 1800 reflected the century’s most successful challenge to European colonial authority. Thirteen British colonies in North America had not only won their independence but had established a functioning republic under the Constitution of 1787. This American experiment in self-governance provided a powerful example for other colonial territories and oppressed peoples worldwide.

This was the first time a European colony managed to break free and achieve independence. It set a precedent for what was going to happen in the decades ahead throughout the Americas.

The second country that would break away was in the middle of its own revolution in 1800: Haiti.

Haiti was in the midst of a revolutionary upheaval that would soon lead to the world’s first successful slave revolt and the establishment of the first Black republic. The French colony had been the richest in the Caribbean, producing vast amounts of sugar and coffee through brutal slave labor, but in 1791, enslaved Africans launched a massive uprising inspired by the principles of the French Revolution.

In 1800, Latin America was still overwhelmingly under European colonial rule, primarily dominated by Spain and Portugal. The Spanish Empire controlled nearly all of South America except for Portuguese Brazil and a few contested frontier regions.

These colonies were governed through a rigid hierarchy that privileged peninsulares, Spaniards born in Europe, over criollos, those of European descent born in the Americas, while Indigenous peoples, Africans, and mixed-race populations were subject to discriminatory laws, tribute demands, and labor exploitation.

Now, I would like to turn my attention to Europe and the 18th-century intellectual and philosophical movement that transformed Europe and ultimately the world: the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment emphasized reason, science, individual liberty, and skepticism of traditional authority. It sought to apply rational thought to society, politics, economics, and human nature, challenging long-standing structures such as monarchy, the Church, and rigid social hierarchies.

Enlightenment thinkers advocated for freedom of speech, religious tolerance, constitutional government, and the idea that human beings could improve society through knowledge and education.

These ideas, which are commonplace today, were revolutionary in the 18th century.

Notable 18th century Enlightenment figures included Voltaire, who championed civil liberties and criticized religious dogma; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who explored ideas of social contract and popular sovereignty; John Locke, who laid the foundation for liberal political theory with his emphasis on natural rights and government by consent; Baron de Montesquieu, who proposed the separation of powers; and Immanuel Kant, who defined the Enlightenment as humanity’s emergence from self-imposed ignorance.

In economics, Adam Smith advanced ideas of free markets and capitalism in his work The Wealth of Nations, while Denis Diderot compiled the Encyclopédie, a landmark effort to systematize human knowledge.

These ideas impacted a host of arenas.

Monarchs such as Frederick the Great of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia adopted certain Enlightenment ideals in their efforts to modernize their states. This phenomenon became known as “Enlightened absolutism.”

The country that adopted enlightenment ideas most radically was, of course, France.

In France, the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV’s era had given way to revolutionary upheaval. The French Revolution, which began in 1789, had not only overthrown the old order within France but also sent shockwaves across the entire continent.

By 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte had emerged as First Consul, consolidating power and preparing for the imperial expansion that would define the early 19th century. In a little over a decade, the Revolution had ended up right back to one man rule.

Enlightenment ideas were also behind the American Revolution and the Haitian Revolution.

These countries were only the first to adopt these ideas. There would be even more changes made in the 19th century.

As big as the impact the Enlightenment had on the world of politics, it was dwarfed by its impact on the world of technology, science, and economics.

The 18th century marked the convergence of three major revolutions, the Scientific, Agricultural, and Industrial revolutions, that together reshaped human understanding, society, and the global economy.

The Scientific Revolution, though it began in the 16th and 17th centuries with figures like Galileo and Newton, continued to evolve during the 18th century and laid the intellectual foundation for Enlightenment thought.

This period saw the expansion of empirical observation, experimentation, and the application of the scientific method to natural phenomena. Advances in chemistry, biology, astronomy, and physics flourished, with scientists like Antoine Lavoisier, often called the father of modern chemistry, revolutionizing the understanding of combustion and chemical reactions.

William Herschel discovered new celestial bodies like Uranus and deepened knowledge of the solar system. Scientific societies and publications spread knowledge widely, contributing to a growing belief in progress and rational inquiry.

The Agricultural Revolution, which overlapped chronologically with the Scientific Revolution, involved a series of innovations in farming practices that greatly increased food production in parts of Europe, particularly Britain.

These included the widespread adoption of crop rotation, the use of new tools like the seed drill, popularized by Jethro Tull, the enclosure movement that consolidated small plots into larger, more efficient farms, and the selective breeding of livestock. These changes not only improved yields and reduced famine but also freed up labor from the countryside, fueling urbanization and the growth of industrial labor forces.

The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the mid-to-late 18th century, introduced a profound shift from manual, agrarian-based production to machine-driven manufacturing.

Powered by innovations such as the steam engine, perfected by James Watt, the spinning jenny, and the power loom, industrialization revolutionized textile production.

It later expanded to iron, coal, and transportation industries. Factories became the new centers of economic activity, drawing millions into cities and creating an entirely new working class. The Industrial Revolution also transformed global trade, imperialism, and environmental conditions, setting the stage for modern capitalism and the mass production economy.

As much change as there was in the 18th century, walking around most cities in the year 1800 wouldn’t seem radically different from the year 1700.

While new techniques were available to farmers, they weren’t universally adopted yet, and the life of most farmers wasn’t much different either.

However, by the year 1800, the table had been set for the truly radical changes that would come in the next two centuries.

Because the changes that are to come in the 19th century are so great, the next episode like this one isn’t going to take place on episode 1900, rather, I’ll be doing another one on episode 1850.

The 18th century and the Enlightenment unleashed a whole new way of thinking and looking at the world. Everything which had been assumed or taken for granted, from political institutions to our understanding of the natural world, was now questioned.

That is what made the year 1800 such a pivotal year in world history.