Transport costs had kept inland exploitation in check for centuries; the situation in 1800 was barely better than it was in ancient times, when it was cheaper to ship from Constantinople to Spain than overland 75 miles. But the railroad, invented originally to haul coal, opened the land for exploitation of people and resources. The return on money invested was phenomenal, making possible the colonization of both inland Europe and what was to become the third world. In hard times, the Paris sans-culottes proved that self-rule by ordinaryfolk worked even in one of the world's largest cities. Expectations on investment returns were high, and the economic pressure on borrowed money has continued to drive capital and technology into every comer of natural and human existence. For the sake of profit, ancient lifestyles were uprooted, spawning romanticism, starvation, migration and the dissolution of medieval agrarian self-sufficiency. When the economy slowed down towards the end of the 19th century, formally laissez-faire states began to panic and compete with each other for markets and resources, leading to the 20th century’s unprecedented new wars. Transactions within the tight trading districts of cities facilitated this growth, but cities cannot be completely blamed for the new phenomenon. The industrial revolution started in the countryside, spawning new cities as it grew successful. Cities and their citizens can most usefully be seen as tools of the process, but not passive ones: they resisted many changes along the way. Artisans involved in export production, such as home weavers who were paid to use hand looms well into the industrial revolution, were completely lost as automation began to take over. They resisted and played a major role in the first half of the 19th century, such as in the nationally organized Chartist movement in Britain, and in most of the revolutions leading to the continent wide rebellions in 1848. Guilds, and later labor unions, were often banned because of the insurrectionary potential of artisans, and central city police forces now first appeared to put down riots over food and living/working conditions. Rioting occurred more often in cities than in the countryside in part because their were obvious sites for protest. The mral situation was much worse, however. In Ireland the famine of 1846-1848, when one million died and another million emigrated, was a consequence of the pressure for rents by absentee landlords. A civic resistance now fought the massive centralization taking place for the sake of capital. In the worst of times in Europe, both before the 1848 revolts and after the depression starting in the 1870’s, mutual aid societies, revolutionary organizations and socialist groups pushed their way onto the political stage, leading many nationalist movements and toppling many monarchs. These groups pushed for democracy, usually in the form of electoral republicanism. It must be said that modem democracy developed in reaction to capitalism, mostly in the second half of the 19th century, and in spite of the hesitance of a liberal commercial class who at the time paid mostly lip-service to equal rights. The corporate elite looked for easier game to exploit than the newly enfranchised people in their own countries. They began to look towards overseas conquest, and the popular support it would bring in the industrialized world. This mix of mass politics and gunboat economic growth ended in territorial wars by countries no longer satisfied with the kind of sophisticated, bounded political treaties Bismark was so good at forging in the late 19th century. Industry and capital grew in great leaps, and national ambitions replaced civic ones as cities grew larger and more impersonal. When conditions grew bad enough in cities to affect the wealthy, greater expenditure and management was forthcoming in the form of planning. Local exploitation sparked global migration, so within cities to this day, we see very strong immigrant neighborhoods not so easily assimilated to corporate consumer culture. Cities are still hotbeds of activism, their needs and density allowing cooperation that is not detectable, for example, in the suburbs of the United States, where much of the country lives. It is difficult to imagine insurrection in suburbia, with political discussion limited by distances and a prevailing tendency to ‘hire’ government to do politics and run cities. In suburbia we can see considerable loss of social Rain Winter/Spring 1992 Volume XIV, Number 2 Page 39
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