From the article in More Intelligent Life Magazine
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/what-was-most-important-year-ever
What was the most important year in human history? How we answer it says a lot about who we are.
The author of the article believes 1776
Other writers for the magazine include:
1439
1944
1791
Christ's birth
What other readers said
1848
1241
1206
1962
Universally, I'd think 1439 is the most important. The printing press changed everything.
Now, who has a better idea?
http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/story/what-was-most-important-year-ever
What was the most important year in human history? How we answer it says a lot about who we are.
The author of the article believes 1776
Besides the declaration of independence of the US, it also saw the publication of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations".Christians might go for the birth of Christ, or his crucifixion (though would have to agree a year for each first) and Muslims, the Prophet’s migration to Medina in 622AD. For English patriots it might be Alfred’s defeat of the Vikings in 878, while Marxists could vote for the publication of “Das Kapital” in 1867.
But my contention would be that we are looking for a universally important year. In the absence of a truly universal religion, that would rule out a religious moment. In almost every case it rules out a national date too. One can argue that the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was crucial to the world--no independent England, no Britain, no British empire, a world of difference. But that requires too much speculative spooling forward to be convincing.
So what about years which saw an event which affected many countries and peoples? If you introduce that thought, you bring the most significant year nearer to modern times. For the basic facts of travel and the transmission of ideas mean that the further back you go—unless you play games with the dawn of humanity—the less universal the choice is likely to be. There are plenty of key dates for classical times but when Caesar was killed in 44BC, even his empire was just a wobbly circumference in one small part of the world. If you scroll forward to 1453 and the fall of Constantinople, certainly a momentous year for Christendom, it’s hard to argue that anyone noticed or cared about it in China, Japan or Africa.
We could, it’s true, try to find a year during which a large number of different events happened. In 1492, Christopher Columbus bumped into the Americas; the last Muslim ruler of Spain surrendered; Sonni Ali, who founded Africa’s vast Songhai empire, died; and the arts were taken to new heights by Mitsunobu Toba in Japan and Leonardo and Mantegna in Italy. It was also a big year for the Poles and the Lithuanians. Yet somehow, that’s all a bit…bitty. Columbus apart, these coincidence years are lacking in thwack.
Another approach is to say that since mankind is driven by ideas we should be looking for intellectual turning points. This is to assert the primacy of cause over mere events. The trouble is that few great ideas have a single source. We have had a lot of fun with the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s “Origin”, but 1859 wasn’t his eureka year.
Or take political liberalism, still just about the dominant political idea now. Do you choose a book by Locke from the 1690s, or one of the Enlightenment heroes, or 1776 and the American Declaration of Independence, or the more all-embracing Declaration of the Rights of Man in Paris in 1789? If you go for the books, there are too many; if you go for Paris, then how do you deal with the world-sized irony of the approaching Terror?
Even as economic power, thanks to our great crash, seems to be moving East, the world is still dominated by the American example, and so 1776 is the most persuasive of these liberal moments. Unlike Magna Carta (Intelligent Life, spring 2009) or Britain’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, the formation of the United States has touched most people alive in one way or another. It’s certainly on my shortlist. It nudges out 1919, when so much of the political world we live in emerged from the disastrous Versailles treaty—mainly because 1919 depends on 1914, so that’s two years, not one.
But alongside 1776, we must include 1945. The atomic bombs alone changed the world’s sense of itself, never mind the final defeat of Nazi Germany, whose attempted genocide of the Jewish people remains the single most important moral fact of modern times, the one that has done most to change the way we think. It was the year when American hegemony in the West was established and when the long Stalinist bondage of eastern Europe began, and when India took decisive steps towards independence. If there was a year in which events overtook causes, from India and China to the Middle East, this surely was it. Later epochal moments—the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, Mandela’s release in 1990, the discovery of DNA in 1953—are big, but not quite as big.
I have a final candidate. If humanity is most threatened by global warming and if it requires urgent international action, then is not the Copenhagen summit quite close to being our last real chance to take it? Some people, I know, choke on both ifs. But 2009 is my third candidate.
Other writers for the magazine include:
1439
Spoiler :
This is the year—as near as one can say—when Johannes Gutenberg, in his workshop in Mainz, first set movable metal types in a wooden frame, blacked them with ink from a roller, and saw them make words on a sheet of paper. No other single action has been so influential. A spoken word, even from the mouth of the greatest ruler, prophet or sage, dissolves into the air. Words that are printed survive, thrive and multiply.
Since 1439 words printed by Gutenberg’s process have driven every invention, change of thinking and political idea. And in Gutenberg’s type—if not in our uniform, lifeless electronic fonts—words also contain light and shade, and dance.
The same year that saw this inky, clumsy birth also saw the death of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick: warrior, pilgrim and tutor of the child-king Henry VI. His gilt-bronze effigy, in full armour, lies in St Mary’s church in Warwick. His eyes are open, and he raises his hands to the stained glass window above him, where the Virgin waits to receive him into Heaven at the Last Judgment.
That whole structure of certainty, hierarchy and faith, the closed medieval universe, was never more efficiently blown open than by the careful placing, many miles away, of little squares of metal in a press; even if printing the Bible was the first thing Gutenberg thought he would do.
Since 1439 words printed by Gutenberg’s process have driven every invention, change of thinking and political idea. And in Gutenberg’s type—if not in our uniform, lifeless electronic fonts—words also contain light and shade, and dance.
The same year that saw this inky, clumsy birth also saw the death of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick: warrior, pilgrim and tutor of the child-king Henry VI. His gilt-bronze effigy, in full armour, lies in St Mary’s church in Warwick. His eyes are open, and he raises his hands to the stained glass window above him, where the Virgin waits to receive him into Heaven at the Last Judgment.
That whole structure of certainty, hierarchy and faith, the closed medieval universe, was never more efficiently blown open than by the careful placing, many miles away, of little squares of metal in a press; even if printing the Bible was the first thing Gutenberg thought he would do.
1944
Spoiler :
This was the transformative year of the modern era, when the world was recast by events and by ideas. The hegemony of European imperial powers gave way to a new world order of opposing blocks based on ideology. The new power of America led the liberation of old Europe, eclipsing any lingering pretensions to world leadership held by the weary titan, Britain. Soviet Russia, advancing on Nazi Germany from the east, affirmed its own intentions to rule eastern Europe; by the end of the year, the cold war was on. That was to dominate world history for the next 45 years—some argue it still does.
The Bretton Woods conference in July set up the pillars of the modern economic, financial and trading system: the IMF and the World Bank. Talks began on setting up the United Nations.
The Holocaust continued remorselessly; the worst crime in history killed millions this year. That led eventually to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 and the confrontation with the Arab world that followed—and still continues.
There was also an intellectual rebellion against the habits of thinking that had prevailed since the age of enlightenment, which had led, so the critics believed, to the Holocaust and Fascism in general. Two books published in 1944 encapsulated this rebellion: “Dialectic of Enlightenment” by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, and “The Road to Serfdom” by Friedrich Hayek. The first inspired the post-modernist philosophy that would change societies so much in the 1960s and 1970s; the second, the intellectual revival led by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Despite the credit crunch, we still live in a world moulded by those two seminal works.
The Bretton Woods conference in July set up the pillars of the modern economic, financial and trading system: the IMF and the World Bank. Talks began on setting up the United Nations.
The Holocaust continued remorselessly; the worst crime in history killed millions this year. That led eventually to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 and the confrontation with the Arab world that followed—and still continues.
There was also an intellectual rebellion against the habits of thinking that had prevailed since the age of enlightenment, which had led, so the critics believed, to the Holocaust and Fascism in general. Two books published in 1944 encapsulated this rebellion: “Dialectic of Enlightenment” by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, and “The Road to Serfdom” by Friedrich Hayek. The first inspired the post-modernist philosophy that would change societies so much in the 1960s and 1970s; the second, the intellectual revival led by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Despite the credit crunch, we still live in a world moulded by those two seminal works.
1791
Spoiler :
It was the year Claude Chappe and his brothers first demonstrated their new invention for sending messages rapidly over long distances, using a system of telescopes and movable panels mounted on towers. For the first time information could be transmitted faster than a letter could be carried by horse or ship. Chappe’s invention, the “télégraphe”, was swiftly adopted by the French state, which built a nationwide network.
1791 also saw the birth of Samuel Morse, the American artist and inventor who developed an improved version of the telegraph based on sending electrical impulses along wires. The telegraph transformed commerce, politics and social relations, as did its successors: the telephone, the telex, and eventually the internet and mobile phones. More than half the world’s population now has a mobile. The process of building a global telecommunications network linking everyone on earth, which seems likely to be completed in the next few years, began in 1791. It has changed the world.
The most important year in history is both easy to identify and hard to pinpoint. Easy to identify because we use it to divide our calendar into “before” and “after”. Hard to pinpoint because there is some confusion about whether we got the calendar right.
1791 also saw the birth of Samuel Morse, the American artist and inventor who developed an improved version of the telegraph based on sending electrical impulses along wires. The telegraph transformed commerce, politics and social relations, as did its successors: the telephone, the telex, and eventually the internet and mobile phones. More than half the world’s population now has a mobile. The process of building a global telecommunications network linking everyone on earth, which seems likely to be completed in the next few years, began in 1791. It has changed the world.
The most important year in history is both easy to identify and hard to pinpoint. Easy to identify because we use it to divide our calendar into “before” and “after”. Hard to pinpoint because there is some confusion about whether we got the calendar right.
Christ's birth
Spoiler :
You do not have to be a believer (and the author of this article is not) to recognise that Jesus’s birth was the most important event in human history. Jesus inspired the world’s most popular religion and plays an important role in both Judaism and Islam. But he also shaped all subsequent secular history. The Roman Catholic church is the world’s oldest global institution. The Reformation, which helped to inspire individualism and capitalism, was an attempt to return the church to its original purity. The French and Russian revolutions were inspired, in large part, by hatred of the religious establishment. Two thousand years after Jesus’s birth, about 2 billion people, or a third of the world’s population, call themselves Christians.
The frustrating thing is that we cannot pinpoint Jesus’s birth-year exactly. The Christian calendar presumes that it took place in year 1—everything before that is BC. But modern scholars have complicated the picture. The Gospel of Matthew places Jesus’s birth under the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4BC. The Gospel of Luke says that he was born during the first census of Judea in 6AD. The consensus is that he was born between 6 and 4BC. Let’s call it 5BC for the sake of simplicity—not as clear-cut as some of the other dates suggested, but then the year of Jesus’s birth is such a momentous event that it makes other contenders for the most important year look feeble by comparison.
The frustrating thing is that we cannot pinpoint Jesus’s birth-year exactly. The Christian calendar presumes that it took place in year 1—everything before that is BC. But modern scholars have complicated the picture. The Gospel of Matthew places Jesus’s birth under the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4BC. The Gospel of Luke says that he was born during the first census of Judea in 6AD. The consensus is that he was born between 6 and 4BC. Let’s call it 5BC for the sake of simplicity—not as clear-cut as some of the other dates suggested, but then the year of Jesus’s birth is such a momentous event that it makes other contenders for the most important year look feeble by comparison.
What other readers said
1848
Spoiler :
year of revolutions, Communist Manifesto, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the Mexican-American War.
1241
Spoiler :
Year of the death of Ogodei who forced Batu Kahn, who was already in Wien after having conquered Russia, Poland, former Yugoslavia and Hungary, to go back to Mongolia for the election of the successor and in this way he saved Europe from the conquest of the Mongols.
1206
Spoiler :
was a pivotal point, as Temujin was crowned Chingiz Khan, or Universal Ruler. He then proceeded to take over most of Eurasia and even attempted to invade Indonesia and Japan. His empire helped spread the Black Plague and is therefore a legacy each of us carries in our blood. The empire also left an important political legacy throughout Eurasia and the power of the Mongols is physically visible today, as the Great Wall was built to keep them out, while St.Basil's was built to commemorate the defeat of a Mongol successor state.
1962
Spoiler :
Cuban Missile Crisis. Probably the closest we've come to ending the human race and obliterating the entire planet. We passed through our "technological adolescence" without destroying ourselves. Pretty important.
Universally, I'd think 1439 is the most important. The printing press changed everything.
Now, who has a better idea?
