1789-1792
and 1989-1992: Global social
movements and their oceanic connections
Patrick
Manning
Northeastern University
Social
movements proceed according to both local and global dynamics.
The campaigns of groups to change their circumstances arise
out of local conflicts and realities, but they also build on
connections with people in nearby and distant regions.
Occasionally the interactions among social movements build to
a fever pitch, and a continental, hemispheric or even global
social movement coalesces, giving for a time the appearance
that it will carry all before it and change the world.
The demands and the symbols leap from one region to another,
and the movements change shape as they travel. Then after
a time the encompassing global movement subsides and disaggregates,
leaving a mixture of victories and defeats for each of its constituent
pieces. The succeeding generations are left to debate
what has changed and what has not.
In
this study, I will consider two cases of four sucessive cycles
from winter to winter in the northern hemisphere ã or four cycles
from summer to summer below the equator. The seasons within
these four years seem to reinforce the dynamic: spring
is a time for the flowering of new movements; winter is a time
for crushing the remaining blooms. There is nothing inherent
or magical in a four-year cycle, yet this time frame is convenient
for comparison of major sets of social movements. I compare
1789-1792 with 1989-1992 because of the fortuitous symmetry
of two great movements for democratization. But one could
just as well address the periods 1968-1971, 1848-1851, 1917-1920,
or even 1905-1909 or 1829-1832, each of which brought analogous
confluences of localized social movements into global clamors
for social change.
The
participants in social movements are the various segments of
society. In terms of vertical strata, one may distinguish
the economic elite, the political elite, the middling classes,
and toilers on the land, in workshops, and at sea. Among
horizontal strata one may distinguish ethnic groups and religious
affiliations, but groups also form based on other shared interests.
For instance, in terms of our present focus on seascapes, one
may distinguish groups near the seas from those far away.
The
largest part of this paper presents narratives of the two four-year
periods, which lay the groundwork for the subsequent analysis.
Thereafter I consider the linkages of localized social movements
into movements of broader scope, and focus especially on the
place of the seas in these linkages. I conclude with statements
on the importance of oceanic connections in social movements
of 1789-1792, as compared with 1989-1992.
The Events of 1789-1792
The
great events of 1789, from the opening of the Estates General
in Versailles in May through the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the Citizen in August, were set in motion when on July
5, 1788, Louis XVI acceded to the call of the Parlement of Paris,
representing a nobility concerned with the level of taxes, for
him to summon a meeting of the Estates General for May of 1789.
Other
social movements had been building at the same time.
First, rebellions of peasants against absolutist expansion of
taxation and regulation had shaken Russia in 1773 and Spanish
South America in 1780-81. Shays's Rebellion of 1786-87
in Massachusetts was arguably of the same outlook.
A
second movement ã for creation of formal, written constitutions
ã had led to a convention and an agreement in the U.S. in 1787,
with ratification by the states assured in 1788. The new
national administration formed in New York in March of 1789.
In the booming Brazilian captaincy of Minas Gerais, a well educated
group of landowners and professionals formed a conspiracy in
1788, intended to replicate the North American war of independence.
More successfully, a new session of the Polish Sejm, convened
in October 1788, sought to escape dominance of Russia through
alliance with Prussia. By January 1789 the Sejm had decided
to govern for itself, and to raise an army of 100,000.
In March the Sejm instituted the taxation of the lands of the
nobility and of clerical estates.
Third,
an anti-slavery movement spread throughout the English-speaking
lands to the lands of adjoining powers. It was by now
strongest in England after the formation of the anti-slavery
society in 1787, which began circulating petitions and submitting
bills to Parliament calling for abolition of slave trade.
Other wings of this movement in France and Denmark were calling
for abolition of slave trade and emancipation of slaves; in
the United States, slavery had already been abolished in several
northern states. On its formation in 1787 the Antislavery
society had brought to the public Josiah Wedgwood's medallion,
"Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" to symbolize the oppression
of slavery. In July of 1789, from drawings of the slave ship
"Brookes," the committee created an image showing the
tight placement of hundreds of captives during the Middle Passage.
The latter graphic was especially effective: it helped
collect thousands of signatures on petitions to parliament in
England, and it also created a stir in France, where the Sociþtþ
des Amis des Noirs, created in 1787, supported the rights of
free people of color in the colonies. Also in 1789, Olaudah
Equiano published his autobiographical Interesting Narrative,
which became another powerful documents in the antislavery campaign.
Thus,
when the Estates General convened on May 5, 1789, delegates
were prepared to debate the place of the various social strata
in France (as prompted for instance by the pamphlet of Abbþ
Sieyús, published in January, "What is the Third Estate?").
But they were also prepared to debate the abolition of slavery
and slave trade, the formal drafting of constitutions as initiated
in the United States, and the formal recognition of the rights
of citizens. The small delegations from the French colonies
on every continent brought they own concerns into the discussion.
The range of the debates of the time, in addition to the economic
difficulties of the moment, helps to explain why delegates to
the Estates General were persuaded to become the National Assembly
on June 17, and to swear on June 20 that members would continue
their work until they had completed a constitution. The July
14 seizure of the Bastille raced ahead of that logic in a sort
of popular sovereignty, but its results were rapidly accepted
as definitive. This event determined unmistakably that
a revolution was in course.
In
July the Great Fear spread through the French countryside; in
practice it was a peasant insurrection in which peasants siezed
control of land and resources from the nobles. The nobles,
in turn, found that their representatives in the National Assembly
had formally given up their privileges in August. In one of
the most remembered events, the Constituent Assembly promulgated
on August 26 the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.
The defining debates over the American Bill of Rights took place
at exactly the same time. While the general dimensions
of these rights had developed out of the debates in 1788 over
the constitution, James Madison's June proposal was debated
and revised through August and adopted formally by Congress
in September of 1789.
In
September of 1789 the Polish Sejm appointed a commission to
draft a constitution. By November, delegates from Polish
towns asked for admission to the Sejm, alongside the nobility,
and their request was granted. When in the fall of 1789 the
Constituent Assembly in France confiscated property of the Catholic
Church, and proclaimed a civil constitution of the clergy, it
was treading ground already opened by the Polish Sejm.
By
the beginning of 1790, other responses to the events of 1789
became clear. In January a group of patriots in the Austrian
Netherlands declared independence as the "United States of Belgium,"
but was easily put down. Yet also in January Joseph II
of Austria gave way to popular demand for reforms in Hungary,
and returned the crown of St. Stephen to Buda. Across
the Atlantic in St.-Domingue, the planter-dominated assembly
convened in St. Marc. In Paris, a committee on colonies began
to discuss the abolition of slavery in the colonies, or alternatively
the possibility of separate constitutions for the colonies.
Free people of color, as numerous and sometimes as wealthy as
the whites, struggled for equal rights at home in the colonies
and in Paris. In October 1790, Vincent Ogþ, a lawyer and
leader of the free people of color, landed in the north of St.-Domingue
with American arms and a call for elections by all free men;
he then took up arms but was soon captured and given a long,
public execution.
The
tide of social movement seemed still to be rising in 1791.
William Wilberforce brought an anti-slave-trade bill to the
British parliament, gained 88 votes in support against 163 in
opposition, and vowed to continue the struggle. On May
3 the Polish Sejm adopted a constitution: this constitutional
monarchy, a compromise between monarchical and republican interests,
brought a moment of national unity.
The king of France, in contrast, chose in June to flee the country,
but was seized at Varennes and brought back to Paris.
In
St.-Domingue, as the factions of free people continued their
struggle, Boukman Dutty presided over a late night meeting at
Bois Ca´man in the North on August 21. The resulting slave
uprising that changed the relations of power all around the
Atlantic. By November Boukman had been killed and the
initial advances of the rebels had been reversed. A delegation
from Paris negotiated an agreement with several rebel leaders,
but the provincial assembly at Le Cap rejected it, and the struggle
continued.
By
1792, black sailors arriving at Salvador in Bahia wore medallions
celebrating the slave uprising. Word spread similarly
to every coast of the Atlantic and Mediterranean. We cannot
yet document the spread or impact of the news in African ports,
but sailors always carried news, and sailors on slave ships
usually included Africans knowledgeable in local languages.
The contemporaneous critique of the enslavement of Muslims,
by Shehu Usuman dan Fodio in what is now northern Nigeria, may
thus have drawn on news of Caribbean struggles.
In
early 1792 the move to abolish slave trade appeared to be gaining
irreversible momentum. In March the Danish government
announced that slave trade by Danish subjects would be abolished
in ten years. In Britain nearly 600 petitions were circulated
in 1792, collecting as many as 400,000 signatures. In
response to this unprecedented campaign, in April the British
House of Commons voted 230 to 85 for gradual abolition of slave
trade, as early as 1796. The House of Lords, largely opposed
to the bill, was able to delay further consideration.
But
national competition cut across the ideas of universal human
rights. Threats of war arose as early at August of 1791,
when Austria and Prussia threatened France with the Declaration
of Pillnitz. Within France, legions began to form out
of refugees from various parts of Europe, preparing for an opportunity
for regime change in their homeland. In April of 1792
a Belgian legion formed, in July a Batavian legion, followed
by a legion of Germans and one of Swiss, Savoyards, and
Piedmontese. On April 20 the National Assembly declared
war on Austria, and fighting began soon thereafter.
In
May 1792 Russian troops, freed up by the end of the Russo-Turkish
war in January, entered Poland to repress the constitutional
regime. The Poles put up an unexpectedly strong resistance,
and it took until August 1793 for the Russians to force them
to accept the second partition, cutting the size of the country
in half.
On
August 10, 1792, the insurrection that formed the Commune of
Paris led soon thereafter to the election of the National Convention,
and on September 22 to the proclamation of the republic.
In December 1792 Louis XVI was formally accused of treason.
On January 16, 1793, the king was executed.
This
act of regicide at once confirmed the path of the republic and
ensured the firmest of opposition by monarchs everywhere. Events
continued for the coming years within the parameters set during
these four years. The year 1793, the fifth year of this revolutionary
upheaval, brought the Committee for Public Safety, the Terror,
British landings in the West Indies, the formal abolition of
slavery in St.-Domingue, the collapse in the British campaign
against slave trade, and the Russian occupation of Poland. In
1794 and thereafter, a series of movements emerged in Poland,
the Mediterranean, Italy, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, Pennsylvania,
Louisiana, Grenada, and England. The Polish insurrection
of 1794 advanced revolutionary rhetoric including the freeing
of the serfs, but met with suppression and the third partition.
Most of the uprisings were conspiracies rather than mass movements,
and they had little hope of success. After 1792, revolution
and social change moved ahead only where it was carried by force
of arms. Still, the language of the rights of man, the forms
of the republic, and the ideals of liberation from oppressive
rule (by absolutist monarchs, feudal aristocrats, or slave owners)
continued to echo widely. The images and rhetoric of these
movements became enshrined in the minds of those hoping to change
the world.
The
Events of 1989-1992
The
great events of 1989 began with the demonstrations of Chinese
students in favor of democratic reforms. The movement
began in April as a memorial to communist party leader Hu Yaobang,
who had been sympathetic to reform efforts, but it soon expanded
to call for immediate changes. In this well publicized
mass movement, students, professionals, and workers combined
in effort to bring change state policy by public appeal.
The movement built in turn on contemporary changes in other
regions where governments were withdrawing from unpopular positions.
Such changes at the beginning of 1989 included the Soviet withdrawal
from Afghanistan, South African withdrawal from Namibia, and
the agreement of the communist-led government in Poland to elections
that would surely cause it to step down.
Throughout May of 1989, print and electronic media around the
world showed Chinese demonstrators using fax machines and telephones
to circumvent government efforts to cut off their communication,
and governmental caution about repressing the demonstrations.
In the waning days of the movement, a ten-meter-tall, styrofoam
"Goddess of Democracy" was sent from Shanghai to Tiananmen.
The demonstrations were repressed on June 3 and 4. Some
trials, executions, and a governmental reshuffle followed.
But
June 4 was also the date of the Polish election, in which the
adherents of Solidarity gained a majority of parliamentary seats.
The combination of these two processes helped unleash a second
wave of great events in 1989, in Europe. The growing efforts
of citizens of the German Democratic Republic to leave their
country during the summer led the Hungarian government, in August,
to announce that it would begin granting asylum to GDR citizens
requesting it. On September 10 Hungary opened the border
to Austria, so that GDR citizens could move freely to Austria
and West Germany. Within the GDR, Monday evening meetings
in Leipzig of those calling for reforms grew, ultimately exceeding
100,000. In Czechoslovakia a forum of critical activists
took shape.
Parallel events were unfolding in a third wave in southern Africa,
though from an opposite end of the political spectrum. Under
United Nations protection, resistance leader Sam Nujoma returned
to Namibia in September after years of exile, to campaign for
the presidency. At the end of August P. W. Botha resigned as
president of South Africa; his replacement, F. W. DeKlerk, promised
reforms, and in October he released African National Congress
leader Walter Sisulu from prison.
With the fortieth anniversary of the GDR in October, Mikhail
Gorbachev visited Berlin but expressed his critique of the government;
Erich Honecker soon resigned. When Egon Krenz's new government
issued a new set of travel regulations on November 9, large
numbers of people showed up at the frontier of East and West
Berlin, and officials simply opened the gates. They did
not close again. When police in Prague took the contrasting
approach of attacking a group of demonstrators eight days later,
the doom of the communist government was sealed immediately.
It was under these circumstances that presidential elections
took place in Brazil in November and Chile in December.
Both countries were recovering cautiously from periods of military
rule. Patricio Aylwin, the moderate victor in Chile, soon
set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to report on the
period of military rule. This was a fifth wave of democratization.
Large-scale violence broke out in two regions in December:
in Romania, where the government and the security police sought
to repress any public protests, and in Panama, where the U.S.
government occupied the country and seized president Manuel
Noriega, a former ally, on charges of drug-running. Almost
all the events of Romania, including the capture and execution
of President Ceaucescu, were recorded on videotape.
On February 3, 1990, South African president de Klerk announced
that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison, and on February
11 Mandela walked out of Pollsmoor Prison. In a whirlwind
of activity, Mandela spoke first to a crowd in Cape Town, then
traveled through South Africa, around the African continent,
and in May and June to Europe and North America. In Katmandu,
Nepal, political activists celebrated Mandela's release in the
streets on February 12, and thereafter demanded reconstitution
of Nepal's parliament, which had not met for years.
A sixth chapter in democratization movements opened in Benin,
one of many African and Asian countries where IMF structural
adjustment policies had led to dramatic cutbacks in the public
sector. A threatened general strike was averted on December
8, 1989, by the announcement that a national conference would
be convened to address the country's outstanding issues. Television
screens, meanwhile, were dominated by Romanian civil strife.
From February 19 through 28 the national conference of Benin
met in Cotonou. In a process that echoed the Estates General
of 1789 in its decisions and in its elegant and impassioned
rhetoric, delegates were selected from a panoply of constituencies,
the conference declared itself sovereign, achieved the acquiescence
of President Kþrþkou in its sovereignty, and set up an interim
High Commission which would plan for a new constitution and
national elections. Videotapes of the conference circulated,
and immediately the demand for national conferences arose in
most French-speaking African countries and in such English-speaking
countries as Zambia.
By October of 1990, a constitution had been adopted and elections
scheduled in Nepal, elections in the Soviet republics brought
confirmation of Boris Yeltsin as president of Russia, Germany
had been unified, and president Jaruzelski had stepped down
in Poland, enabling a special election that brought Lech Walensa
to the presidency. On the other hand, while parliamentary elections
were held in Myanmar, the military government declined to convene
parliament; in Algeria the government prepared to crack down
on the Islamic Front that had won in municipal elections, protests
against the government of Liberia turned into civil war, and
the U.S. broke off the recently opened discussions with the
Palestine Liberation Organization.
Most
centrally, on August 2 Iraqi troops occupied Kuwait and president
Hussein of Iraq announced its annexation. The U.S. responded
by building a consensus at the United Nations, insisting on
Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, imposing sanctions and preparing
a military alternative. In November the U.S. unilaterally
doubled the size of its forces in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile,
as the U.S. focused on its troop buildup in the Persian Gulf,
the elections scheduled in Haiti took a surprising turn.
With the U.S.-supported World Bank economist Jean Bazin poised
to win with little opposition, Jean-Bertrand Aristide entered
the race at the last moment and won an overwhelming victory.
Aristide, a former Catholic priest with an outlook based on
liberation theology, had launched the Lavalas (avalanche) movement
among the common people of countryside and city.
The January Gulf War itself can be seen as a moment further
chilling the movement for democracy. While it was a statement
of democracy in reversing Iraq's occupation of a sovereign nation,
and an implementation of a momentary global political consensus,
but also a demonstration of great power coercive power and therefore
of the limits of popular movements. Yet popular complaints
against governmental authority continued. The widespread
broadcasting of a videotape of the police beating of motorist
Rodney King in Los Angeles on March 3, 1991, confirmed common
impressions about police brutality. Later in March, the
armed assault of police in Mali on a group of mothers and children
who were demonstrating against the government led to insurrection,
overthrow of the government, and convening of a national conference
by a social movement that was already victorious.
The place of the Soviet Union in this complex set of developments
was at best precarious. In December 1990 Eduard Shevardnadze,
Gorbachev's closest ally, had resigned as foreign minister,
and on March 31 the Georgian Republic, Shevardnadze's home,
voted for independence. Gorbachev sought to restrain public
demonstrations, but his efforts only brought larger demonstrations
in Moscow. In April of 1991 Boris Yeltsin gained powers
to govern Russia by decree. The effort to form a new union
of nine republics plus the central government did not halt the
slide of power to the level of republics. A major coal
strike Russia was resolved only be transferring control
of the mines from the Soviet to Russian governments, and the
latter arranged a settlement in May. Now Yeltsin was ready
to present himself in a popular vote, and won confirmation as
president of Russia with 60% of the vote on June 12.
In the French-speaking African nations, the dance of national
conferences continued, with "civil society" calling for convening
and empowerment of such conferences, and "the power" straining
to substitute party conferences and quick elections for open-ended
conferences. In Ethiopia, militarized through civil war
and Cold War, popular discontent took the form of a military
rising, and president Mengistu fled the country on May 21.
On the same day, the two contending military and political parties
in Angola, MPLA and UNITA, agreed to national elections at a
conference brokered by Portugal.
In June the last Soviet troops left Czechoslovakia and Hungary,
and on July 1 the Warsaw Pact disbanded. But the opposition
within the Soviet leadership to Gorbachev's acquiescence to
change solidified, and on August 17 Gennady Yanaev announced
that Gorbachev had been replaced. By August 21, the coup
had crumbled for lack of public support, and Gorbachev had returned
to Moscow. On August 24 he called on the Communist Party
to dissolve itself. Within two months the Soviet Union
ceased to exist; its resources and powers were divided among
the republics. This dissolution of a powerful confederation
and of the Cold War itself took place, for the moment, peaceably.
As the strength of popular movements for new democratic rights
ebbed, governmental and military authorities were able to reassert
themselves: the military displaced President Aristide
of Haiti in September, and in the same month, president Eyadema
of Togo displaced that country's national conference and regained
full administrative power.
In January 1992 the United Nations debated how its organization
might respond to the changes in balance of world power. Despite
the substantial campaigns for establishment of new permanent
memberships on the Security Council, in behalf of Japan, Germany,
India, Brazil, and even Nigeria, the remaining four of the "big
five" of the Security Council moved rapidly to pass the Soviet
seat on to Russia and prevent creation of any new permanent
memberships.
The breakup of Yugoslavia followed that of the Soviet Union.
Slovenia announced is secession from Yugoslavia in mid-1991.
When Croatia seceded thereafter, Serbian elements of the Yugoslav
army began incursions into Croatia, to link up to Serbian populations.
Following the lead of Germany, the European Community nations
recognized the governments of Slovenia and Croatia in January,
and in April of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Hardening communal boundaries
led suddenly to full-scale war and genocidal killings, with
the military struggle centered on the Bosnian city of Sarajevo.
In May the United Nations declared an embargo on the remains
of Yugoslavia, but the fighting throughout the region and especially
at Sarajevo continued throughout 1992.
In this atmosphere of national dissolution, a campaign for division
of Czechoslovakia developed in mid-1992, and the country split
into Slovakia and the Czech Republic at the beginning of 1993.
Nationalistic "skinheads" in Germany supported Neo-Nazi demonstrations
and attacked Germans of Turkish ancestry. Famine and fratricidal
strife in Somalia brought another U.N. resolution and U.S. occupying
force. In December, Hindus destroyed a major mosque in
the Indian city of Ayodhya.
The June 1992 global conference on the environment in Rio brought
a substantial consensus on major issues, but the big powers
declined to cut back on their pollution. Soon after the conference,
the newly elected Brazilian president Collor was impeached corruption,
and he resigned at the end of December. In contrast, Peruvian
president Fujimoro had suspended the constitution in April,
but his agents' success in capturing Abimael Guzman, leader
of the Shining Path rebels, won him back some support.
South Africa alternated between confrontation and conciliation.
White voters in March approved a referendum supporting de Klerk's
negotiations for a transition in power, but Inkatha killings
of ANC supporters began in June. By the end of 1992, the
ANC had admitted instances of torture by its forces and had
agreed to share power with the Nationalists, and de Klerk had
removed known assassins from the military. In the years
thereafter South Africa was able to contain its tensions make
a largely successful transition to a broadly-based, constitutional
government. To the north in Central Africa, similar tensions
went uncontained, and from 1994 launched the most extreme cases
of genocide of the decade.
Interactions
among Social Movements
How
do social movements occasionally reinforce each other to bring
sudden waves of global social contestation? This is a
question in short-term analysis, and as such it may be contrasted
with studies of long-term transitions in working-class movements
or anti-slavery. For instance, the extraordinary study
of rebellious commoners by Linebaugh and Rediker, while it includes
much close analysis of specific contestations, focuses its principal
theses on a transformation in the character of social contestation
in the 1790s. In their view, from the 1790s forward, social
movements would be constrained to work within racial and national
lines that had been crossed regularly by earlier activists.
A structurally similar argument is that of Eugene Genovese in
From Rebellion to Revolution, in which he argued that,
by the late eighteenth century, rebellious slaves went beyond
the desire to escape slavery individually and launched campaigns
to destroy the whole system of slavery.
The concern here, in contrast, is with the weekly, seasonal,
and annual interactions of social movements ã how they reinforce
each other either positively or negatively in the short term.
What follows is a set of considerations that fall far short
of a theory, but provide an exploratory list of relevant factors
and patterns. To begin with, social movements draw on
pre-existing conflicts and debates that can flare up with any
new irritation or shift in the balance of influences.
In 1789 these included debates on levels of taxation, monarchical
powers, aristocratic privileges, an emerging vision of national
identity and destiny, the line between freedom and slavery,
and the rights of individuals. In 1989 the equivalent
debates included rights to self-expression, freedom from government
restraint, recognition of individual rights, and recognition
of communities.
Second, some major change or conflict brought by human agency,
most often in a distant region, helps to launch social groups
into activity. Such mobilizations in identification and
solidarity with new-found brothers and sisters are in contrast
to movements of sympathy for people in other regions who have
suffered such acts of God as floods, famines, and earthquakes.
Third, a language of identification and common cause serves
to link social movements to each other. The metaphors
and slogans work better if they are not too specific, so that
the participants in each social situation can fill in their
own details yet retain identification with those far away who
must fill in quite different details. In 1789 "the rights
of man" and "abolition of feudal privilege" worked well; in
1989 "democracy" and "multiparty elections" worked equally well.
For social movements to gain an interactive momentum, several
of them must involve mobilization of large numbers of people
outside the established institutions and modes of behavior.
The demonstrations and barricades of Paris, the petitions of
the anti-slave-trade campaign, the uprising of Haitian slaves,
and the many public demonstrations of 1989 and thereafter provided
signals of the strength of feeling behind them. As an additional
factor, migrations and visits of people among the various places
involved in social conflicts served to heighten a sense of mutual
identification as well as to exchange information. More
broadly, each social movement became more effective to the degree
that it was able to enunciate its goals as serving the needs
of broad communities and of humanity itself. In addition to
words, the movements needed to enunciate their goals through
visual symbols: still images in 1789 and videotapes in
1989.
Finally, the communication among social movements involved the
development and exchange of models for policy and behavior.
The convening of assemblies, the taking of oaths, the very institutions
of government and warfare ã these were passed among each of
the great parties on all sides of these transregional social
struggles.
Oceanic
Connections Then and Now
The full range of oceanic linkages among dry-land regions and
foyers of human society is wide indeed. Maritime connections
bring news, new ideas, travelers, sailors, commodities, merchants,
food, pests, diseases, the military forces of friend and foe,
and more. Which of these (and which other connections
by land) do most to convey and link social movements?
The differences of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries are
profound. In the late twentieth century, news traveled
preferentially by electronic media and by air, though some news
still traveled by sea. Most travelers went by air; those
who traveled distances by sea included some of the rich and
some of the poor. Most bulky commodities still traveled
by sea; light and perishable commodities went by air.
The improvements in rail and highway transport meant that the
excess cost of overland transport had declined sharply in the
past two centuries. The number of sailors and longshore
workers probably declined in absolute numbers, and declined
precipitously in its proportion of the labor force. Navies
remained influential in warfare more because of their ability
to move materials than soldiers.
All of these factors indicate that oceanic connections were
less central to social activities in 1989 than in 1789.
Yet it would be too much to suggest that oceanic ties are slipping
into insignificance. North Atlantic connections retain
their importance, and connections across the South Atlantic
have been renewed in the postcolonial era. Indian Ocean
connections linked South Africa and Nepal in empathy, and surrounding
regions in material terms. Linkages and identities across
the Pacific were arguably stronger in the twentieth century
than in the eighteenth.
This study has touched impressionistically on the transoceanic
linkages that enable social movements, occasionally, to reinforce
each other across wide spaces. One is left with the sense that
these links are numerous and varied, but also that they could
use more specification and study.
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