The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century

Marks argues that by the start of the 20th century “the major elements of the modern world had been created” (169). These included nation-states becoming the dominant form of government, industrialization, an economic gap between the West and the Global South, and the adoption of racist ideas of innate superiority in the West and Japan. However, this began to change by the middle of the 20th century when both World Wars fatally weakened or outright destroyed Europe and Japan’s colonial empires. The aftermath of the World War II in 1945 and the end of the Cold War in 1991 brought further globalization. However, Marks argues, “Globalization peaked in 2008 and has been slowly unwinding since then” (171). Another significant change was the increased environmental impact of human civilization and the “‘great departure’ of humans and our history from the rhythms and constraints of the biological old regime” (171).

Marks notes that the invention of synthetic ammonia in 1909 definitively ended the biological old regime by removing “the constraints that nature had placed on the availability of nitrogen for plant growth” (174). He argues that this is why the human population in the 20th century increased from 1.