Book excerpt: This book is a thematic history of the world from 1780, the pivotal year of the revolutionary age, to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It brings together historical data and arguments from different societies in order to show how interconnected the world was, even before the onset of modern globalization. "The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 demonstrates how events in Asia, Africa, and South America, from the decline of the eighteenth-century Islamic empires to the anti-European Boxer rebellion of 1900 in China, had a direct impact on European and American history. Conversely, it sketches the "ripple effects" of crises such as the European revolutions and the American Civil War. The book also considers the great themes of the nineteenth-century world: the rise of the modern state, industrialization, liberalism, and the progress of world religions. Engaging and original, this book both challenges and complements the dominant regional and national approaches traditionally adopted by historians.