Andrea Wulf on lessons from ‘the long 18th century’

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"}],[{"start":6.7,"text":"The past shapes both the present and future, or as George Forster — the extraordinary 18th-century naturalist, explorer, revolutionary — once said, “everything that happens is determined by what came before and is connected to what follows.”"}],[{"start":22.35,"text":"In a world driven by speed and instant gratification — the next news story, the next scandal, the next celebrity fad — history can seem like a collection of dusty ideas that linger in the past with little relevance to our lives today. But I beg to differ. I became a historian because I want to make sense of why we are who we are today. "}],[{"start":44.1,"text":"That is why I have for the past two decades been fascinated by the so-called long 18th century, a period stretching from the Glorious Revolution in 1688 to the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. It encompasses the Enlightenment (but also the beginnings of Romanticism), the American and French revolutions, as well as the early stages of industrialisation. It bridges Opticks, Isaac Newton’s famous treatise, in which he explained that rainbows were created by light refracting through raindrops, and Romantic poet John Keats, who declared that Newton had “destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow, by reducing it to a prism”. "}],[{"start":85.15,"text":"Much of what we think today, at least in the western world, has its roots in this period — good and bad. The ideas that emerged during these decades shaped our modern society, influencing everything from our concept of nature as an interconnected whole to modern democracies and capitalism. "}],[{"start":102.60000000000001,"text":"Had you been born in 1750, you would have entered a world electrified by a faith in reason, rational thought and empirical observations. This new age was shaped by the Scientific Revolution, when scientists demonstrated the mechanics of the universe by applying mathematics to nature. The world began to be seen as reassuringly predictable, provided humankind could uncover and understand the laws that governed it. "}],[{"start":128.20000000000002,"text":"Microscopes zoomed into the minutiae of life and telescopes revealed our place in the universe. New scientific instruments enabled more accurate navigation and fuelled the expansion of empires. Steam engines transformed production, and agricultural innovations such as crop rotation brought greater yields. Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod tamed what many had once regarded as God’s fury, while smallpox inoculations saved countless lives. "}],[{"start":156.10000000000002,"text":"Nature, it seemed, could be measured, controlled, harnessed and exploited. The tick-tock of increasingly precise clocks became the heartbeat of western society — a mechanical rhythm dictating when people ate, worked, prayed and slept. Life grew faster. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Humankind appeared to be striding forward along a haloed path of progress, each generation envying the next because their world, surely, would be a better one: more inventions, more knowledge, more medical advances, more prosperity."}],[{"start":188.3,"text":"Across Europe, thinkers were roused by a growing sense of possibility, advocating self-determination and independent enquiry. At the close of the 17th century — or the beginning of the long 18th century — the English philosopher John Locke insisted that we “made use of our own thoughts”. Rather than blindly following doctrine or tradition, he urged people to observe the world and come to their own conclusions and opinions. Those who didn’t question accepted truths and social norms, he argued, could be more easily manipulated and were less able to shape their own destiny. "}],[{"start":225.10000000000002,"text":"As literacy rates rose and the book trade expanded, ideas began to circulate more freely. Writers, scholars and scientists opened their eyes to the world around them, seeking knowledge through systematic investigation and empirical evidence. Everything was classified and organised: plants, animals, minerals, chemicals, language. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":248.35000000000002,"text":"In Britain, Samuel Johnson published his groundbreaking A Dictionary of the English Language in 1755, while in France Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert laboured over their monumental Encyclopédie. Language, knowledge and nature were ordered into neat categories grounded in observation and reason. The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus devised classification systems not only for plants and animals but also for humans, dividing Homo sapiens into four supposed categories or variations distinguished by the colour of their skin, as well as deeply racist stereotyping. "}],[{"start":281.40000000000003,"text":"The French philosopher Montesquieu, in his 1748 treatise The Spirit of the Laws, dissected the anatomy of power and exposed its dangers. Aware of the fragility of liberty, he advanced a radical new idea: the separation of powers. Legislative, executive and judicial branches, each operating independently, would restrain one another and guard against tyranny. Montesquieu envisioned a political order governed not by the arbitrary will of a sovereign but by laws — a careful choreography of checks and balances that would later shape the revolutions in America and France. "}],[{"start":319.3,"text":"The long 18th century still echoes in our world. It was a time full of contradictions that saw the rise of liberty but also the expansion of the transatlantic slave trade, the celebration of reason as well as the exploitation and annihilation of ancient civilisations and Indigenous peoples in the name of science and progress. This period gave birth to republics as well as to new inequalities. It bore witness to the idea of human rights along with beliefs in racial hierarchies. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":349.85,"text":"So while I find this time illuminating, that doesn’t mean I admire everything. Far from it. There is much to dislike and condemn, from absurd theories of racial hierarchy and the defence of slavery to ruthless colonial expansion and the artificial separation of the arts and the sciences. Still, I do miss the trust in reasoned thought that seems to be vanishing today. "}],[{"start":372.3,"text":"At the time, few people worried that nature itself might be destroyed, or openly challenged imperialism, white supremacy and slavery, but towards the end of the long 18th century some voices began to dissent. And we can learn from those individuals who emerge from the past like beacons in our troubled times, reminding us that we’re not entirely determined by the age into which we are born. We possess the capacity to resist, to change and to imagine differently."}],[{"start":402,"text":"Take, for example, the polymath and intrepid explorer Alexander von Humboldt, the most famous scientist of his age, who gave us the concept of nature as a web of life and who has more places, plants and animals named after him than anyone else. In an age when other scientists divided the world into neat and separate taxonomic units, Humboldt insisted that everything was interconnected. Where others imposed tidy classification on to the natural world, he saw global climate and vegetation zones — and a planet that was a living organism. Once nature is perceived as a web, its vulnerability also becomes obvious. And so, more than 200 years ago, he was the first to warn about harmful human-induced climate change. His advice might not have been followed, but he grasped these consequences with prescient insight. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":451.55,"text":"Or consider the aforementioned George Forster, who joined Captain James Cook’s second voyage as the assistant naturalist and draughtsman at just 17. Unlike the rest of the crew, Forster approached the Indigenous people without prejudice. He observed, recorded and learnt — and refused to judge others solely through the prism of European morals. He was dismayed by the crew’s liberal use of firearms. “It is much to be lamented that the voyages of Europeans cannot be performed without being fatal to the nations whom they visit,” he wrote in his popular A Voyage Round the World. He returned with an unshakeable belief in the equality of races, and was one of the first to use the concept of “human rights” when he wrote about the “general rights of mankind” in 1777. "}],[{"start":498.15000000000003,"text":"At a time when other Europeans regarded Indigenous people with contempt and brutal disgust, Forster kept an open mind. His life is proof that bigotry and racism were not inevitable ways of seeing the world, but choices. Different peoples, he believed, had different cultures and value systems. Good and evil existed in all societies. Humanity is not clearly divided into virtuous and depraved but instead is a complex tapestry woven from the many shades of our lives and experiences. "}],[{"start":532.45,"text":"For the rest of his life, Forster wrote in his bestselling books, essays and reviews against slavery and white supremacy. “There is no difference,” he insisted, “in a black and white head.” And although he is almost forgotten today, his ideas and his writings remain relevant in our current climate. Looking back, I think, can also mean looking forward. There is something comfortingly solid about history in our quicksand age, where everything seems to change in an instant. "}],[{"start":561.5500000000001,"text":"Andrea Wulf’s new book ‘The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and His Search for Humanity’ is published next week"}],[{"start":570.4000000000001,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning"}],[{"start":589.2,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1780152698_5613.mp3"}