In short, the world after 1500 had become a more integrated world, wherein many formerly independent societies functioned less and less as such. An international scientific community began to develop. Thinking people acknolwledged this in their writings, and proposed further improvements based upon this trend. In the early part of the century, Sir Thomas More, adopting a religious tack to this concept, observed that "realms" were but artificial, secondary divisions in the ultimately indivisible body of Christendom. In 1625, Hugo Grotius published Law of War and Peace, wherein were formulated systems of international law which he based upon standards of conduct that humans everywhere seemed to observe and exhibit. In 1672, a work by Pufendorf appeared (Law of Nature and of Nations), calling for all of the national states of the time to work together for the common good, and declaring that their sovereignty was in fact subordinate to a more overriding principle, being a concept of reason and justice for all.
During the eighteenth century, Deism preached that God was the essence of reason; and that a common identical sense of morality underlay all of man's religions. By this time, the world's economy was an oceanic economy; and an international trading community was doing business around the globe. Montesquieu wrote that we had thus created an international "Grand Republic," which was uniting all merchants and trading nationsAcross the world's boundaries. Rousseau as well expressed a conviction that all men were brothers and members of an international social and moral totality.
This was the age of the Enlightenment, marked by the emergence of an international intelligentsia, who shared and expressed a generalized intellect and spoke in common terms about it. It was also the age of revolution, wherein the factionalism of class was dethroned and integrated into the united classless sovereignty of the citizenship of a nation.
In Russia, Alexander I, in a monarch's effort to deal with the impending revolutions of the day, organized a Holy Alliance. Its document was a covenant forming an international order, to be signed and thus adopted by the subscribing rulers, whereby they promised to uphold Christian principles of peace and charity for the benefit of their subjects.
In 1819, Prussia established a uniform tariff for all her territories. In 1848, a group composed mainly of private citizens undertook to organize a united Germany. A subsequent result was the founding, in 1871, of a federal empire consisting of twenty five German states, having a common Reichstag.
At about the same time, Napoleon III expressed what has come to be called "a doctrine of nationalities," which considered the consolidation of nations to be the next forward step at that stage of history. Between 1859 and 1870, Italy was unified; and the Habsburgs joined Austria with Hungary forming the Dual Monarchy.
During the same period, on the other sideof the Atlantic, the Dominion of Canada was formed. And unity was preserved in the United States via the Civil War--which put an end to any remnants of a view of the Union as a confederation of member states; and replaced it with an immutable image of a united people irrevocably bound together.
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Thus it appears that history marched a great distance farther forward during the periods through and including the nineteenth century, wherein consolidation and joinder played a major role. In India, people who in former times would have kept themselves apart from each other were compelled to interact more. This, coupled with the adoption of English as a common language, produced a unity among the Indian people that resulted in the eventual overthrow of English rule. And in Japan, the Meiji Restoration of 1868 followed a similar track, wherein the country's four most powerful clans voluntarily returned their territories to the emperor, in order to avoid hostility and provide the basis for a uniform rule.
Additionally, during the nineteenth century, an early pamphlet by Karl Marx expressed a conviction that change takes place in our world not so much as a result of arguments, or campaigns, or persuasion that it is morally desirable--but, rather, because it but constitutes a manifestation of the actual and inevitable current of history. Concepts would change or fall, he said, not because the present state of things is impractical, harmful, or morally wrong--but because its day is over, and it is thus historically doomed. I intend to herein demonstrate that the days of factionalism and nationalism are likewise over--and that they too are consequently doomed.
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The twentieth century bore witness to more and more consolidation. Historians have said that, after 1900, history is actually a single, global history. For the first time, it was possible to speak of a world civilization, a world economy, and a world market. The price of a commodity in New Zealand could affect business affairs in London--and vice-versa. Railroads began to join together. In the United States, for example, at the turn of the century, six companies controlled what had originally been numerous small local lines. The small family farm began to transform into large-scale, single-crop enterprises, whose products could now be shipped far and wide. Even retail sales activity became less singular and more unified in nature, as specialty shops began to be replaced by larger and larger "department stores," which carried more and more types and quantities of goods for sale to the public.
The twentieth century was, moreover, the century wherein man had reached the stage of international meetings, conferences and conventions. In April, 1907, a Peace Conference opened in New York, as a preliminary to a more major peace conference scheduled for later that year at the Hague, in regard to which President Theodore Roosevelt urged the institution and future implementation of international arbitration. Subsequently during that year, the aforesaid Hague conference was held. An agreement concerning armaments could not be reached; but (in what must seem a perverse irony) international "courtesy" in the conduct of warfare was agreed upon, the then-existing conventions of war were renewed, and eleven new canons added to the rulebook. In February, 1909, President Roosevelt proposed a second world conference, regarding conservation, to be held at the Hague.
In January, 1917, as World War I raged, President Woodrow Wilson, speaking to the U.S. Senate, described an anticipated coalition of nations having as its purpose the preservation of peace. "Peace without victory" was what he called for--a notion that bears certain similarities to the concept of "abdication and joinder" which I will later suggest and describe in these suggestions.
In January, 1918, while World War I dragged on, President Wilson set forth what came to be known as his famous "Fourteen Points." They embodied a number of references to world unity, including:
a) an end to secret treaties between separate states;
b) freedom of travel for all;
c) removal of barriers to international trade; and
d) formation of an international organization of nations to assure world peace by settling disputes via conferences and negotiation.
This last point, Wilson's most cherished wish, would lead to the formation of the League of Nations in 1919. He pointed out that the League was not to be a "vehicle of power"--but, rather, one via which "the conscience of the world...[might] express itself." Unfortunately, the United States declined membership--an absence which many have attributed to the League's failure, and to the eventual tragedy of World War II.
Another, quite different different, worldwide body was also founded in 1919. In Moscow, an international communist organization came into being, and stated its goal to be the fostering of worldwide revolution--"a new world order of united working people of all nations." Approve or disapprove as you wish, concerning a particular philosophy or proposed economic or political system, the age of the worldwide conference and worldwide organization appears to have at this time become a common element in our history.
During the 1920s, more mergings and consolidations were taking place in other departments on domestic home fronts. When the decade began, more than a hundred companies were manufacturing automobiles in the United States. By 1929, there were only forty four; and these were dominated by the "Big Three" (Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors). Moreover, spurred by the revolution that the automobile had created in our society, nations began to be transformed from a geography dotted with numerous scattered rural hamlets, to a much smaller quantity of bustling urban hubs srrounded on their perimeters by suburbs.
Furthermore, the world of production and domestic consumption went from one in which workers in small shops produced a few items at a time, and people purchased their daily needs at the corner store--to one in which modern mass production and merchandising made for high volumes of production and purchases.
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