Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present

Age of Revolutions (2024) is a nonfiction work by political commentator and journalist Fareed Zakaria. The author is best known for hosting the CNN program Fareed Zakaria GPS. In addition to his work as a television personality and essayist, Zakaria has written several other influential books on the subject of global politics. His best-known titles include The Future of Freedom (2003), The Post-American World (2011), In Defense of a Liberal Education (2015), and Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World (2020). Age of Revolutions is classified under the categories of 21st Century World History and Globalization & Politics.

This guide refers to the W. W. Norton and Company 2024 Kindle edition.

Summary

Fareed Zakaria traces the historical events that led up to revolutions in several different countries in Europe, as well as the United States. The author’s discussion begins with the Dutch Golden Age in the 1600s and ends with the current global revolutions in economics, technology, and identity. The author presents this material from the perspective of a centrist, offering advice on the best way to manage change in a rapidly expanding world economy. By tracing cycles of innovation and the resulting attempts to contain them, the author focuses on the cycles of progress and backlash, contrasts the attributes of beneficial and detrimental revolutions, and analyzes the broader paradigm shift of globalization.

Age of Revolutions is divided into two distinct parts. The first segment analyzes the revolutions of the past, while the second segment describes the current revolution of globalization, which is creating an unprecedented level of interdependence among nations worldwide. The author begins his study by explaining the dual meaning of the word “revolution.” In its more commonly used sense, it describes an abrupt change in the status quo, but its original definition describes the motion of an object around a fixed axis; in this understanding of the word, that movement always results in a return to the starting point. This seemingly contradictory definition suits Zakaria’s treatment of the topic of revolution as a social phenomenon, for he posits that all progress is met by backlash and explains that liberals advocate for rapid growth, while conservatives resist change.

Using this dual framework of progress and backlash, Zakaria begins by describing the Dutch Revolution of the 1600s. The author traces three key factors that determine the success of any revolution: economics, technological innovation, and community identity, asserting that the Netherlands was unlike any other country in Western Europe at the time. Most nations were agricultural societies governed by absolute monarchs, but the geography of the Netherlands limited opportunities for agriculture and centralized rule and instead required innovative solutions to the problem of flood control. As a result, the country organized itself into large urban centers that emphasized foreign trade. The government was decentralized, and power was distributed among the various cities, allowing for a nascent democratic spirit to develop in the population. This liberal attitude also allowed for greater religious freedom, compelling dissenters from other countries to settle in Holland. Given its favorable economic, technological, and cultural conditions, the Netherlands was primed for rapid growth. The Dutch trajectory was only halted by a French invasion, setting the stage for the next significant revolution.

The 1688 Glorious Revolution in Britain settled the question of religious doctrine by inviting the Protestant Dutch head of state, William of Orange, to govern the country along with his English wife, Queen Mary. Significantly, this coup was initiated by an act of Parliament and shifted the balance of power away from absolute monarchs, vesting some authority in the hands of the people. Additionally, the 1700s brought further change to Europe in the form of the French Revolution. Zakaria uses this upheaval as an example of the wrong way to launch a revolution. Both the Dutch and English revolutions grew organically from the ground up, based on social and economic changes that had already altered the cultural values of these two nations. By contrast, France’s revolution was mandated by a small group of ideologues who forced their philosophy of liberty, equality, and fraternity on a nation that was unready to accept such values. The results were violence and disaster. The subsequent British and American Industrial Revolutions followed the earlier Dutch model by leveraging the existing values of the culture, and both succeeded in improving the lives of their populace immeasurably.

The second part of Age of Revolutions skips forward to the 20th and 21st centuries to examine the roles of technology and free trade in creating a global economy. The author asserts that during this time period, the unprecedented degree of interdependence among nations requires a new skillset to manage. Zakaria concludes that all revolutions involve the dynamic of progress and backlash and asserts that humanity’s best hope for navigating change in the global community of the 21st century is to embrace compromise and understanding in order to balance change with stability.