Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present

“Radical advance is followed by backlash and a yearning for a past golden age imagined as simple, ordered, and pure. This is a pattern we see throughout history.”

With this passage, Zakaria observes that those who fear the future are predisposed to romanticize the past. By making this statement in the introduction, Zakaria sets up the tension between progress and regression that he will trace as the pattern of all revolutions for the past 400 years.

“It is important to appreciate the organic nature of society, which can absorb only so much disruption without being torn apart. But at the end of the day, there is only one plausible path in the long run: forward.”

This observation implies a plea for tolerance, especially given that the polarization of contemporary politics leaves little room for tolerating—much less understanding—the opposite view. Fanatical zeal for change results in contempt for stasis and those who promote it. Zakaria suggests that most people, regardless of their political persuasion, have a limit when it comes to unrelenting instability.

“The Dutch also set the trend that has defined power in the modern world: that the dominant country is not the one with the largest population or the strongest army but the one with the most prosperous economy and innovative technology.”

Revolutions occurred before the 16th century, but by focusing on the Dutch model as his starting point, Zakaria seeks to emphasize the sweeping change in the nature of power dynamics that took place during the Dutch Golden Age. During this time, Europe was turning away from an aggressor model of building wealth and focusing instead on an innovator model.

“The story of their rise, Golden Age, and downfall shows the power of trade, openness, and free thinking—as well as the grave risks that arise when economic growth and ideological change leave many behind.”

In this passage, Zakaria is referring to the decline of the Netherlands as a great trading power once the population recoiled from the idea of continuous expansion. This is the first instance in the book in which the author mentions an idea that he will repeat multiple times in subsequent discussions. He contends that innovators need to pay greater attention to those whose lives will be made worse by the ripple effects of revolutionary change.

“In the Glorious Revolution, conservative Tories and liberal Whigs found a consensus to reject the extremes of Catholic absolutism and radical republicanism that had wracked England.”

Unlike the Dutch Revolution, the Glorious Revolution in England was not driven by economics. Instead, religious ideology fueled political instability. Significantly, the problem was solved by the introduction of a Dutch king. The long tradition of religious tolerance in the Netherlands helped to ease the British sectarian animus.

“Above all, the French Revolution shows the danger of revolution imposed by political leaders, rather than growing naturally out of broad social, economic, and technological changes.”

Again, this is a statement that Zakaria will repeat at multiple points in the book, for it constitutes his core belief that widespread change cannot be mandated by a small group of fanatical ideologues. Instead, he contends that such change must arise naturally from the convergence of multiple liberal tendencies within the culture itself.

“France during the revolution can best be understood as new wine in old bottles. It was a deeply traditional, rural, religious, and aristocratic society—into which the revolutionaries poured a more modern, urban, secular, and republican spirit.”

This observation illustrates the folly of trying to remake a culture’s ideology from the top down overnight. The plan might work in theory but fails in practical execution. France’s revolution was driven by elites who had been circulating notions of universal male equality since the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment. Unfortunately, the common folk were never included and did not have the capacity to facilitate the changes that the elites wished to implement.

“British industrialization revolutionized the human condition itself, drastically changing people’s relation to time and space. Railroads annihilated distance, moving goods and people far faster than ever before.”

In this quote, Zakaria emphasizes that a revolution can have widespread transformative effects on any given culture, and he uses the example of British industrialization to drive this observation home. While the material lot of the common man and woman improved exponentially during this time frame, improving their physical conditions also had the effect of broadening their outlook on the world.

“Women’s shift from performing unpaid household labor to earning their own money upended both the workforce and the family. It took more than a century after women entered the industrial workforce for them to earn the right to vote, but there was a clear connection between the two developments.”

While women gained some measure of economic independence through factory work, their real emancipation from second-class-citizen status would take another 100 years to effect. A tertiary wave of female liberation is currently being fought over reproductive rights, but the seeds of this backlash against bodily autonomy were planted by the first woman to earn a living through factory work.

“The more the new technology becomes ubiquitous, the more a country’s economic structure changes, and the more its political leaders scramble to keep up with this jerky forward movement and the backlash to it. In the midst of this disruption, politics gets very turbulent.”

In this quote, Zakaria is suggesting that America’s currently polarized political parties are the result of the rapid changes that affected American society in the 1960s. He therefore predicts the perpetuation of a zigzag pattern until the ramifications of those changes sort themselves out. The author also implies that this increased level of apparent chaos levels out as each new innovation becomes assimilated by the culture. Unfortunately, he also believes that America is now in the midst of an uncomfortable sorting phase with regards to the rise of technology.

“Industrialization massively shifted economic and technological power to the North, giving the Union an edge in the Civil War. Subsequent industrialization redefined political coalitions in the United States, creating the left-right divide we know today.”

Zakaria makes the point that the Civil War was the defining moment for the America that exists today, for the United States has been plagued by the problem of race relations ever since the conclusion of this conflict. The agricultural Southeast aligned with the Right to maintain privileged hierarchies, but because the industrial North did not face the crisis of assimilating the formerly enslaved population into mainstream society, the threat represented by future change wasn’t as acutely felt in that region.

“The coming century of American life would be largely defined by political warfare between the Right, championing laissez-faire dynamism, and the Left, championing social security and stability. There was little room for Roosevelt’s centrist synthesis.”

This quote highlights the difference between political alignments in the 19th century and the 20th century. At this point, a party stance was no longer defined by the simple economic clash between saving or spending. Instead, political alignments coalesced around how much to save and where to spend it.

“Technological progress and global trade fuel economic growth and raise incomes. But this combination also creates losers and unsettles societies, which often leads to a backlash following the inevitable crash or deep recession. That backlash then clears the way for politicians to channel anxiety, fear, and discomfort into anger—and sometimes solutions.”

While this quote repeats Zakaria’s central premise that progress and backlash go hand-in-hand, these words imply something more, for the author believes that each backlash will favor a populist champion of one kind or another. Demands to retrench therefore precipitate a crisis that may also lead to a new synthesis to accommodate both change and stability.

“A new liberalism—not the old laissez-faire liberalism of the nineteenth century but a social democratic form with some government intervention in the economy—was the order of the day.”

This quote builds upon the preceding one, for the author asserts that the nationalistic protectionism that prevailed after World War I may have contributed to desperate attempts by Germany and Japan to acquire resources through conquest. It was not until the end of World War II that the world learned a new lesson; at that point, government intervention became necessary to regulate economies because no country could act in its own self-interest without imperiling the rest.

“Because the developing world did not have the time to slowly develop its institutions, democratization in the 1980s and ’90s was swift and shallow.”

Here, Zakaria refers to certain democracies that sprang up during the time of the so-called “Pax Americana.” However, he believes that attempts to emulate American democratic ideals were ill-conceived. As was true of France, these nations also layered democratic institutions on top of despotic traditions, and the result was far from ideal.

“Time and again, antiglobalization movements crop up in the wake of a serious financial crisis, precisely because the failure of the system generates mistrust toward those who manage it.”

After the mortgage crisis of 2008, several populist movements rose and fell as a reaction to the financial mismanagement by America’s banks. This reactive response fails to take account of the complexity of circumstances that conspired to produce a global market crash. The appeal of populism is in its seductive promise of simplistic answers to complex problems. To make matters worse, populist movements also quickly assign blame to a single scapegoat.

“Today’s antiestablishment movements espouse an exclusionary vision of ‘the people,’ leaving out many groups they deem as foreign or corrupted.”

This statement highlights the tendency of both the Far Right and the Far Left to paint enemies and friends in absolute terms. Taking an extreme ideological stance requires one to dismiss the reality that people and their motives are complex. Rather than seeking to find common ground, zealots are more interested in excluding anyone who does not agree with their agenda. As always, Zakaria counsels the moderate approach of building consensus rather than assigning blame.

“We have gotten convenience and efficiency at the cost of losing civic engagement, intimacy, and authenticity […] Into the void left by eroded communities, the internet has promoted unhealthy behaviors and connections.”

This quote illustrates the author’s point about the growing sense of alienation and isolation that has emerged with the rise of the internet. Paradoxically, although people have access to virtually anyone on the planet, their connection is forged through a piece of technology rather than a handshake or a community gathering. This issue is exacerbated by the common truism that in cyberspace, no one is necessarily who they appear to be.

“Revolutions can erupt from desperation and despair, as in France in 1789. But a different kind of revolution can originate from a state of abundance—and that is the case of the identity revolution.”

This quote indicates another contrast between revolutions of the past and those that are taking place now. In modern America, identity politics has replaced economic considerations because people are no longer driven by the simple necessity to survive, and their material needs are easily met. Now, the need for personal freedom and self-expression has precipitated a revolution of the spirit.

“In a trend that would intensify with time, religiosity became associated with the Right, and secularism with the Left.”

Once again, the author defines current revolutions as moving beyond the realm of simple economics. The fight for self-actualization, as expressed by the civil rights and feminist movements, also takes on moral overtones. The Right rejects both movements as contrary to religious tradition; religiosity itself is equated with rectitude, and rationalism with depravity.

“The tragic asymmetry of contemporary American life is this: the Right often punches above its weight in politics but yearns for cultural power. The Left owns the culture but constantly pines for political power.”

This quote is a singular observation that is repeated nowhere else in the book. It is a parenthetical comment that holds a profound truth about the aspirations of the Right and Left. As Zakaria contends, each faction envies the power that the other holds. In other words, both sides want cultural sway and political control, and each views the other as the obstacle to achieving this goal.

“He wants to keep the fruits of growth, but regulate the pace of these societal changes—or stop them entirely. History suggests that, in the long run, this is not a winning strategy.”

Zakaria is commenting on the double bind in which Xi Jinping finds himself as he steers China’s future course. The author suggests that liberalism is an inevitable byproduct of a booming economy in a global marketplace. Xi Jinping wants it both ways, but past precedent indicates that granting social freedom is the price he must pay for prosperity.

“An international system in which the most powerful player retreats into isolation and protectionism will be one marked by aggression and illiberalism, whereas a system with an engaged superpower can safeguard peace and liberalism.”

Zakaria is cautioning against the populist belief that America should withdraw from the world stage and protect its own interests. In the book, he offers numerous examples to explain why this tactic is ultimately unsuccessful. He is also offering a veiled prediction of what the world might look like under another Trump administration. In the author’s view, such an outcome would enable the rise of authoritarianism across the world.