Enlightenment and Revolutions, 1763–1815

Abstract

As we have seen in the previous chapter, Crutzen and Stoermer concede that to assign a specific date to the onset of the Anthropocene Era seems ‘somewhat arbitrary’. However, they suggest that the new era began in the latter part of the eighteenth century, because the initial creation of ‘greenhouse gases’ and ‘biotic assemblages’ occurred at the same time as James Watt's ‘invention of the steam engine in 1784’. Here, we might also appear arbitrary in our choice of the year 1763. However, this is not a random selection, for the following reasons. Let us briefly recall the argument of our introduction: that evidence from the study of history and other humanities, as well as from the social and natural sciences, must be examined in any adequate analysis of the Anthropocene Era, and that it is the history on which we will concentrate. In 1763, a significant global conflict came to an end. It was marked by a victory of Great Britain over France, whose power was broken in Canada and India and reduced in Europe. The way was clear for Great Britain to become the workshop of the world via the Industrial Revolution. For example, K. N. Chaudhuri observes: ‘The final stage in the dynamic movements in the Indian Ocean was reached in the second half of the eighteenth century when British military and naval power fused with European technological revolution to redraw the civilisational map of the Indian Ocean.’