When exploring the question, ‘if ideas inaugurate world history’, we have to assume that this certain ‘idea’ belongs to a larger congregation of people with the same ideology. If there is a large assemblage of people who share the same motive to bring change to a particular systemin an attempt to overthrow it, we can say that this could be regarded as a revolution. Although this does not answer the aforementioned question, we can say that the emergence of ideas from revolutions inaugurate world history. In this essay, we will attempt to examine the above statement while taking examples of the Industrial Revolution and the French revolution. A revolution can be regarded as a mass social or political movement with the intention to overthrow or modify a previous regime with a new one. In the case of both the French and the Industrial Revolution, the common masses were actively involved. The mass struggle of the common people and the peasants against the aristocratic and elite classes in a revolution can be associated as a classic eschatological struggle between right and wrong, or good and evil. A revolution is mostly limited in a particular geographical location. What set the French and the industrial revolution apart was that the outcome of these revolutions brought upon a new world order.  If we take the instance of the French revolution, the ideas and the politics that arose out of that period have been incorporated by the majority of the world. One of the ideas that emerged out of this revolution was that of liberty. During the latter years of the 18th century, there was material discontent and impoverishment in France. The worst affected were the common people. The result of this socio-economic crisis, in ordinary circumstances, would have been rioting but only for a short period of time. But, due to a large-scale convulsion that took place during France at that time, combined with propaganda and elections, a new political dimension was added to the people’s voices. On a political stage, with the backing of the masses, the idea of liberty became an expectation. The thought of liberty from hierarchal despotism was unheard of anywhere in the world at that time. Eric Hobsbawm puts it best when he says “They introduced a tremendous and earth-shaking idea of liberation from gentry and oppression“(Hobsbawm 1996, p. 61). Thus, we can say that the common people were drowned in the revolutionary rhetoric of liberty. It should also be noted that when we mean the notion of liberty was never unheard of before, it  was meant in terms of slavery. Up until then, liberty was only used to describe in contradiction to slavery. Thus the common people gained a more legal interpretation of the term liberty during the revolution. Another political decree that has been adopted by many governments around the worldis that of popularsovereignty. As the common people have elected representatives to run their government, they are answerable to the people and that the government is sustained by the people. This decree was a major paradigm- shift in the political sphere. This is because,before the revolution, many kings claimed to have been chosen by God itself to rule, thus giving them a sense of divine power that cannot be challenged by anyone. This shift from ruling due to the backing of God to ruling due to the backing of the people was first seen during the French revolution. Hobsbawm informs us that “A constitutional monarchy based on a propertied oligarchy expressing itself through a representative assembly was more congenial to most bourgeois liberals than the democratic republic which might have seemed a more logical expression of their theoretical aspirations; though there were some who did not hesitate to advocate this also.( Hobsbawm , 1996, p.59) He also says that- No doubt the French nation, and its subsequent imitators, did not initially conceive of its interests clashing with those of other peoples, but on the contrary, saw itself as inaugurating, or taking part in, a movement of the general liberation of peoples from tyranny.( Hobsbawm 1996, p. 59)  The prospect of overthrowing the king and establishing a constitutional monarchy was seen by many as the first step to establish a democratic or even an egalitarian society. The rise and fall of Maximilien Robespierreand the Jacobin club are examples of political sovereignty as the government was overthrown even after it was elected by the people. There are many other ways in which france influenced the world. Oen such instance is that of anti-clericalism. The separation of the state from the church was   previously never experinecd before and thus due to this, many lands and holding that were in the power of the church were given back to the people. The church were also excempted from paying the tax when they occupied the lands, so this in  fact made some more cash inflow for the common people. Another major area where the French influenced the world was through their indirect influence on various world political system. As previously mentioned, the ideaas of the French revolution were ecumenical. And such is the case that many of these ideas were later adopted into many of the political systems in the contemporary world. One such instance is that of communism. According to its theoretical doctrine, communism mans that the entire society should be owned by the community and the all the resources should eballocated according to the abilities of an individual, and not their status in the society. We can identify such a pettern emerging in the French revolution.  Communsin calls for the overthrowing of capitalism, the same way the common people called for the eradication of the rigid and the old fashioned feudal laws. The emergence of the middle class also helped them allocate resources accordingly. The relevance of communism in the modern world is truly extraordinary. The main aim of the Bolshevik revolution was to overthrow the tzar authority and thus they implemented a communist society. The cold war, which was a war between communism and capitalism, which influenced the world politics of the eastern world, can also be noted to be one of the major indirect outcomes of the French revolution. China, which is a communist party, is a perfect example of the influence of communism in today’s world. If France influenced the rest of the world with its ideas and politics, then Britain influenced the world with its new economic structure and social framework. The industrial revolution was seen as a major breakthrough, both in the social and economic spheres. According to Hobsbawm- For the first time in human history, the shackles were taken off the productive power of human societies, which henceforth became capable of the constant, rapid and up to the present limitless multiplication of men, goods,and services. This is now technically known to the economists as the 'take-off into self-sustained growth'. No previous society had been able to break through the ceiling which a pre-industrial social structure, defective science and technology, and consequently periodic breakdown, famine,and death, imposed on production.( Hobsbawm 1996, p. 28) The industrial revolution brought upon a shift from the existent agrarian and feudal society to an industrial society. .As industries would require a lot of investment, in terms of both time and material, only the very rich were able to maintain industries. This new economic method, which involved private ownership of land and of the production with the sole motive of making a profit, would be known as capitalism. This method would go on to be adopted by much of Europe during the 20th century. The profit gained from a rapidly expanding economy would only increase through the process of mercantilism. The prospect of connecting Britain with the world market led to one of the most important inventions to come out of the revolution, which was the introduction of railways. This new railway system transformed the entire capital goods industries. Its ability to transport tons of goods and materials over a relatively short period of time was nothing short of remarkable. In fact- “No innovation of the Industrial Revolution has fired the imagination as much as the railway, as witness the fact that it is the only product of nineteenth-century industrialization which has been fully absorbed into the imagery of popular and literate poetry. Hardly had they been proved technically feasible and profitable in England (c. 1825-30), before plans to build them were made over most of the Western world, though their execution was generally delayed.”( Hogsbawm 1996, p. 44) “The reason was doubtless that no other invention revealed the power and speed of the new age to the layman as dramatically; a revelation made all the more striking by the remarkable technical maturity of even the very earliest railways.”( Hogsbawm 1996, p. 44) Not only did transportation become much more efficient, but the railways also opened Britain to foreign trade and investment. Although the expansion of the railway system to the rest of Europe happened much later on, it unquestionably opened the world to a new era of globalization. As we can see from this essay, the revolutions that occurred in France and Britain in the latter stages of the 18th century and the 19th century respectively played a key role in developing ideas that have made the modern world as it is now. We can also see how the enlightenment period that happened in Europe during that time helped to develop new political ideas. Thus, we can conclude by stating that even though a revolution might be restricted to a particular geographical location, the logic that was involved and the ideas that developed out of it do not fall under the same restriction. REFFERENCES- Hogsbawm, Eric. 1996. The Age of Revolution. Vintage Books: New York      

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