Arthur Zimmermann, a German civil servant, organised and instigated some of the most destructive events of World War I.
He’d helped fund Irish rebellion against Britain and he’d tried his hand at fomenting Islamic jihad in the Middle East. But his biggest tricks were still to come.
300 year ago, the Industrial Revolution was the biggest story to happen to mankind. It all began on a small island: Great Britain.
The engine for all of this was… the engine. Steam engines burned up the buried energy of millennia, captured in coal, and used it to create immediate power.
Leo Tolstoy and Tsar Alexander realised that for Russia to prosper, it would have to free all of it’s serfs.
Alexander’s reforms had failed. Eventually many of the serfs drifted to the cities, where they would eventually become the foot soldiers for a revolution which would sweep away old Russia.
Commodore Matthew Perry delivered the ultimatum from the US President that would force Japan to open her doors and modernise.
Saigo told his warriors to face death with honour. This was a tragic moment in Japanese history, tearing the nation apart. The soldiers waiting to attack Saigo’s samurai hated what they were about to do.
Abraham Lincoln prevailed over the American South, during the Civil War, by abolishing slavery thereby crippling the Confederate economy.
Freed of its slave economy, the United States rushed to modernise. For the first time, Americans began to impose themselves around the world. Already, they were looking West, across the Pacific.
When China confiscated Britain’s opium, it had been trading for tea, the first ironclad battleship was sent in to deal with the problem.
China had been forced at gunpoint to open herself up to the modern global economy. The message was clear - industrialisation could transform a tiny country like Britain into a world superpower.
After Henry Morton Stanley discovered Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium was quick to recognise the potential of it’s vast resources.
The worst excesses of the Belgian Congo ended after a campaign by Christian groups, by newspapers and outraged individuals, which was really the first ever international human rights campaign.
The race to modernise would change cultures and people all over the world. The Age of Industry would transform everything.
The old world of kings and landowners was crumbling under the force of the Industrial Revolution. The world was accelerating, and the modern age of superpowers was being born.
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