Since 1600, the world has changed in the first quarter of every century

It's reboot time for the world: almost as if someone has set a timing device that sets off epochal changes in the West.

After the ignominious exit of America from Afghanistan three weeks ago, everyone is wondering about the shape of things to come. In terms of historical parallels, it is on par with the defeat Russia suffered at the Japanese in 1894 and in Afghanistan in 1989.

Ruminating over this, last Saturday T N Ninan, a distinguished former editor of this paper, wrote that the world was witnessing a major transition wherein the 500-year dominance of the Western Hemisphere was getting rapidly eroded.

That’s absolutely true. But it is also worth reiterating that this has been happening with unfailing regularity in the last quarter of the old century and first quarter of every century since at least 1600. It’s reboot time for the world. It’s almost as if someone has set a timing device that sets off epochal changes in the West.

1600-25: This was when an ‘emerging’ England finally subdued an established Spain whose last armada was defeated by England. In 1604 Spain signed a peace agreement--on England’s terms.

Spain went bankrupt as a result of its wars with England. However, it did expand in South America, while England expanded in North America. Also, the East India Company was founded in 1600. We know all about it. It changed the world over the next 100 years by establishing western dominance of the world.

1700-25: This was the start of the period--now known as the Enlightenment--wherein science began to replace religion as the main way of thinking about everything. To be sure, there were many political developments as well but the key feature of this period is the emergence of an alternative view of the world.

But it was not just that the Church slowly began to be separated from the State, this period also saw the inauguration of the cabinet system of government in England.

We take it for granted now but it was a completely new form then. For the first time in history a distinction emerged between the head of State and head of government. 

1800-25: This was the period when the political, social and juridical consequences of the French Revolution (1789) took firm hold in the West. The key idea was that the people were sovereign, not some monarch.

But far away from Europe, 14 years earlier in 1775, America had broken free of British rule. Then in 1812 it enunciated the Monroe Doctrine which said that the area to the west of the halfway mark in the Atlantic was its area of influence. 

That was the end of British dominance in the Americas.

1900-25: This is when Germany began challenging England and Japan, China and Russia. Both happened because like China today, Germany and Japan undertook a programme of rapid industrialisation in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Two world-transforming events of this period were the First World War which resulted in the beginning of the end for England and, of course, the Communist revolution in Russia that pitted two opposing ideologies throughout the 20th century.

2000-25: The same kind of thing is happening once again. China has become the predominant power in the Far East and is refusing--just as  Germany and Japan did with Anglo-French rules in the late 1890s--to accept American rules. The Islamicists are doing the same thing in West Asia.

So, if you ask me, the key question is not what happens next--we can make a fairly accurate guess--but what is it about the first quarter of a century that changes the DOS of the world. 

It’s been happening with such precision that political theorists, historians and economists need to examine the phenomenon.