I know the idea of a 1st world, 2nd world etc. only dates from the 20th c. but, 125 years ago, what countries would’ve been considered “1st world countries”?
At least the European countries with sizable colonies, like England and France.
Yes, they couldn’t nuke anyone but they were well-set to Duke it out.
I don’t know if any powers came close to the British Empire at the end of the 19th. France was close and still rising a bit. The Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and middle European empires were all faded or fading. Russia was isolated and had one foot firmly in the peasant zone, as always.
I’d say the British Empire formed the “first world,” with France and the US in the second - France on its way down, and the US on its way up.
I think most of the countries in which the Industrial Revolution was well under way would qualify as “First World.”
In addition to the countries mentioned, I’d say the Netherlands and most of what’s now Germany were First World.
How exactly was the Third Republic - the second-largest empire in the world, the nation of Renoir and Monet, Pasteur and Curie, Flaubert and Zola, Verne and Lumière - “on its way down”? The differences between France and Britain in terms of economic power, military strength and cultural importance at the turn of the 20th Century were negligible at best, and if it weren’t for WW1, its star might have ascended even higher.
The second world in that formulation was the USSR and the other countries in the Communist world, so there is no possible equivalent in the 19th century. The third world were the countries that were being competed for by the two blocs and again have no good equivalent in the 19th century. Merely being a developing country isn’t sufficient. Third world nations only have meaning from after WWII.
The OP seems to be using the term first world - never properly written 1st world - as an opposite to third world, in the way that the term third world countries is sometimes used today. Our world has a first world and third world but really no second world, and nobody ever uses first world for any good purpose.
You have to divide the world in a new and arbitrary fashion to decide what first world countries might be in the past. You can do so in any way you like. But you really shouldn’t. Using first world that way can only lead to confusion.
I’m not sure anyone in 1890 would seriously say Boston, New York or Philadelphia were any less civilized than, say, Glascow. Or really any other non-London English city or non-Paris French city. I think Chicago even would be considered civilized (maybe the exciting border of civilization, sure, but inside the line). No doubt even Boston had to some degree the refreshing and/or rude American spirit, but still civilized places where one could expect to find the same amenities as an English city.
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I may be thinking of France in the WWI and aftermath era, when they started losing their colonies and influence.
Also, there’s more to it than “civilization”; I am not sure the US could have handled a full-out war with the Brits until sometime after WWI.
A few things would be surprising. Buenos Aires would be one of the richest and most promising cities in the world. Western African cities like Kano and Katsina would appear tidy and pleasant to Europeans, and African small farmsteads wouldn’t be seen as particularly impoverished. China would be remarkably sophisticated and urbane (though with plenty of deep poverty).
As has been said, the terms “First World,” “Second World,” and “Third World” were originally primarily political/ideological rather than economic. The terms in this sense are obsolete.
Today the term “developed countries” covers most of the former First World. Some of the former Second World countries (e.g. Poland, Czech Republic) may also be included in this group. Other countries may be grouped as “developing” or “undeveloped.” Most former Third World countries, and some Second World, would fall in this group.
Russia is certainly among the industrialized countries, but since the economic collapse following the fall of the Soviet Union it tends to be grouped with rising economic powers that were originally part of the Third World, such as India and Brazil.
One could discuss countries in the 19th Century in these terms, with respect to the degree of industrialization and economic influence.
That depends on the terms of the war. Before about the time of Teddy Roosevelt, we couldn’t take a war to Britain… but at least as of 1814, they couldn’t effectively take a war to us, either. Whichever side was just looking to be left alone would have won.
In 1870, China -by this estimate - had the highest GDP in the world, followed by India.
Argentina is part of Latin America outside Mexico and as a total is less than Japan.
I think GDP/captia is probably a much more meaningful measure then total GDP. Otherwise you get places like India and China being much more developed then, say, Luxemborg or the Netherlands, which obviously isn’t true.
Actually, first and second worlds are something of a back-formation from Barzun’s exposition of the “third world.” While it’s pretty easy to assign members to that group, arguing who’s on first or second gets pretty murky.
I had the scale usefully expanded for me in a long-ago course: Third World nations are those that are industrialized and succeeding but behind the major powers. (Mexico, Brazil, India until recent decades, etc.)
Fourth World nations are failing or at least not succeeding but have the resources to become successful. (Many African countries.)
Fifth World nations are failed and have no reasonable foundation on which to become successful (Haiti, Somalia, etc.)
Probably simplistic and outdated, but I’ve found it useful sometimes.
In 1812/15 we were more than a little distracted by events closer to home - that pesky Napoleon. Britain was weary of war and pretty well broke, so no, we couldn’t win a war on the other side of the atlantic then.
First, don’t forget I was responding to even sven’s comments about urbanity. China might have been urbane in some ways, whatever that might mean, but because it had a lack of technological development and not much of a working army we tend to forget today how powerful and wealthy a nation it was. The internal distribution of wealth was incredibly skewed, much worse than the U.S. is today, but total population does correlate with power. (The comment that China had “plenty of deep poverty” I mercifully ignored. Name me one sizable country (bigger than, say, Monaco) in world history for which that wasn’t true.)
Second, we’re all just making up our own measures for “first world.” You can say that per capita GDP is important if you like. It’s just as meaningful as urbanity.
IMHO, the equivalent of first world in the 1800’s would include:
- a relatively decent sized middle class: (which comes with industrialization and commercial activity). So a decent proportion of the population enjoys relatively good lifestyle, no shortage of housing, food, clothing, and all the other physical benefits of modern civilization. Also, without some progress toward industrialization, the majority of the lower class lives in the countryside and does not much better than subsistence living. The percentage of city dwellers is a reflection of the productivity (and hopefully, the wealth) of the farming class - usually aided by the nascent green revolution, mechanized labour-saving farm machinery. Without industrial production, the usual economic demographic is a small rich aristocracy and a large but very poor peasant class.
-political freedom: The government may not be democratic, may have peculiar areas of society where freedom is limited (i.e. can’t criticize the King) but in general, there is a moderately open discourse on social and political matters, no fear of the secret police, etc.
(The combination of economic and political freedom leads toward cultural richness, where artists are more willing to be expressive.)
-Along with the above, economic freedom: the hallmark of a commercially advanced society is that the average middle class to rich person is free from oppressive taxes and arbitrary or random shakedowns, du to corruption or petty bureaucracy.
-Rule of Law: In general, the average well-off person should not need to hire a small army to ensure the security of their possessions. There will always be crime but the government makes an effort to control the level of crime, without being too oppressive or harsh. Similarly, contract law is enforced relatively fairly, so merchants can be sure they are not subject to arbitrary losses.
Using these guidelines, I would assign “first world status”, whatever it means, in step with the progress of the industrial revolution and the wealth of the population (not just the upper crust). So in 1890, Britain and the USA, eventually Australia and Canada, New Zealand, etc. in the empire; France, Germany, Austria, and to some extent Scandinavia, northern Italy, etc.; Argentina, too.
Dueling cites, but French historian Paul Bairoch would have put Chinese per capita income at roughly equivalent to Western Europe in 1800. More recently Angus Maddison has suggested that it was actually rather more like half of Western Europe’s by 1820 ( though the “core area” of the lower Yangtze with ~20% of the population may have been closer to the 75% mark ). Whoever is correct ( or if the actual answer is somewhere in the middle ), regardless in 1820 the Chinese economy was still relatively massive - total GDP as estimated by Maddison was about 1/3 larger than that of a 12 country Western Europe combined. However by 1870 that had reversed and the Chinese GDP was not much more than half of those same countries as a group.
A pretty good illustration of the relative stagnation of Asia and explosion of Europe in that period.
Mostly I’m saying that if a 19th century European walked in to a 19th century Chinese city, they’d think “Wow, that’s a decently nice city.” You’d have public parks and restaurants and classy hangout and great shopping.
As for the poverty, I don’t want to paint pre-20th century China as some kind of wonderland, which is a thing that some people do.
It’s not so much that China was wonderful back in the past, as that Europe was much poorer than it is today. Like, much much poorer. The wealth gap that existed between Europe and China in, to pick a date, 1965 wasn’t nearly as pronounced in 1865, was non-existent in 1765, and reversed in 1665. Not because China got substantially poorer over time, but because Europe got much richer. Slums and starving peasants were still common in Europe in the 1800s. The Irish Potato famine was in 1845 and lasted years.
The 19th Century doesn’t really have an equivalent of the split between Western and Communist bloc countries that characterized the 2nd half of the 20th century. It wasn’t organized around superpowers and their allies, but was multipolar. It’s possible to consider France to the be the sole superpower of the early 19th century, what with the Napoleonic wars and all, I suppose. But the UK certainly wasn’t a superpower in the latter half, despite painting a lot of the globe pink. The British Army was always much smaller than the armies of the continental powers.
It’s just not very productive to try to project analogies of the NATA vs Warsaw Pact split onto the past. There were no ideological differences that split countries into camps, you’d have to go back to the 1600s for Protestant vs Catholic vs Muslim vs Orthodox blocs.