A century on from that transformation and Romein’s birth, morethan thirty years after his death and the enunciation of hisformula, the role of the masses may not appear quite so active,while other transformations of at least equal, probably greater,significance have occurred. Without any intention to diminishthe worth of Romein’s contribution to the understanding of theprocesses of history, let us recall that the year of his death, 1962,was near the beginning of a decade of overall significancethroughout the world. Arguably, our own age does not beginbefore the 1960s, or, more precisely before the latter part of thatdecade. In an essay entitled ‘1968, Revolution in the World-System’ first published in the spring of 1989, ImmanuelWallerstein put forward six theses:1 The year 1968 brought a revolution in and of the worldsystem.2 The primary protest of 1968 was against US hegemony in theworld system (and Soviet acquiescence in that hegemony).3 The secondary, but ultimately more passionate, protest of 1968was against the ‘old left’ systemic movements (for example,against Stalinism).4 Counterculture was part of revolutionary euphoria, but wasnot politically central to 1968.5 Revolutionary movements representing ‘minority’ or under-dog strata need no longer, and no longer do, take second placeto revolutionary movements representing presumed‘majority’ groupsThe debate on the fundamental strategy of social transform-ation has been reopened among the antisystemic movements,and will be the key debate of the coming twenty years.Without entering into a debate with Wallerstein, or evenspelling out his six theses, we may note that even he wouldprobably want to make some reformulations in view ofdevelopments since the spring of 1989 when his essay was firstpublished, beyond his suggestion in 1991 that: ‘The regimechanges of 1989 were...the outcome of the latent, continuingrevolt of 1968.’27How much more, then, would Romein have wanted to reviseat least some of his views which now have even more of aperiod ring about them. Moving towards a conclusion, let usnote at least some of the developments unnoticed by him.Altogether, they make necessary an approach to world orderwhich he could not appreciate. This is neither a criticism noran excuse, just a bald statement of the fact that the world is ina constant state of flux, with each generation of historianstaking up new challenges regarding the distinctive feature oftheir discipline, the passage of time. Let us take one, but themost important, example of how significant circumstanceshave changed since Jan Romein’s death in 1962, the problemof the environment. To be sure, there was some awareness ofthese problems some years before 1962. In 1948, for example,Romein’s formula of transformation, A --> A(b) --> B(a) --> B,had been preceded by another, a ‘bioequation’ expressing‘certain relationships— almost universally ignored—that everyminute of every day touch the life of every man, woman andchild on the face of the globe’: C=B:E. Here, C indicates thecarrying capacity of any given area of land, that is its ability toafford food, drink and shelter. B stands for biotic potential, orthe ability of that land to produce plants, especially for food,but also for shelter and clothing. E indicates environmentalresistance, or limitations imposed by the environment. So, thecarrying capacity is the resultant of the ratio between the othertwo factors.This ‘bioequation’ was devised in 1948 by William Vogt,drawing on a number of earlier authorities stretching as far backas Malthus and Darwin. While his Road to Survival may not havemade the impact it deserved, later publications from RachelCarson’s Silent Spring of 1962 onwards did succeed in bringingan increasingly serious problem to wide public attention in theWestern world.28 Another book published in 1962, the year ofRomein’s death, and also very influential until it was overtakenby ever more activity in the global village, was Marshall McLu-han’s The Gutenberg Galaxy,29 in a sense doing for new electronicsounds and sights what Rachel Carson’s book did for ominoussilence and disappearance in nature.But Jan Romein could not have read it, nor could he havehad more than an inkling of the Cuba Crisis, the most seriouscrisis since 1945 because it took us closest to nuclear war. Hecould not have known that subsequent hopes for limitations ofnuclear and other armaments would be frustrated as vast stock-piles built up in the USA, USSR and elsewhere. He died beforethe Chinese ‘Cultural Revolution’ and the escalation of theVietnam War, the events of 1968 and significant phases in theprocess of decolonisation, while the collapse of communism inEastern Europe and the Soviet Union itself must have beenbeyond his wildest flights of fancy. He may have had some ideaof the imminence of space travel, intercontinentaltelecommunication and the spread of computer use, but he couldnot have appreci-ated the full extent of the technological or thirdindustrial revolution which was about to bring a new meaningto his concept of the Common Human Pattern.In this chapter I have attempted to illustrate how the highhopes for universal history of Henri Pirenne and others afterthe First World War were dashed by developments in thefollowing decades. The approach has been individual ratherthan general. That is to say, representative figures, Tarle, Beardand Romein, have been taken into consideration rather than thework of their colleagues overall. Other members of the greatguild could have been selected: for example, from the UnitedKingdom alone, Toynbee, Carr and Barraclough. Each of theircareers provides much material pertinent to the discussion ofapproaches to world order.30 However, our choice was far fromrandom, for Tarle and Beard reflected developments in Europe’stwo outliers, the USSR and USA, while Romein did the samefor Europe itself. Between them their careers throw light on thepre-war and post-war years, clearly indicating that the terms ofthe pH test had radically changed. However much it might bedisguised by such concepts as ‘the English-speaking peoplesor ‘the Atlantic community’, the USA had indeed establishedhegemony in the world system; in other words it had becomethe ‘universal indicator’ to which Europe and the USSR wouldreact. And so, while taking notice of the fact that the globe hadin many ways shrunk, world order was still Western world order,and normally much more constitutional than revolutionary.
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