[2019—it’s been
real, it’s been good, but it ain’t been real good. Actually, I’m not even sure
I’d say it’s been good, but it has definitely been eventful. So this week I’ll
AmericanStudy a handful of major 2019 stories I haven’t been able to cover on
the blog, leading up to a few predictions for what’s likely to be an even more
eventful 2020.]
Happy New Year! On
two ways to think about one of last year’s biggest global stories.
I know I said I
wouldn’t dedicate another post in this week’s series to a Saturday Evening Post Considering History column of mine, and I
promise that I have new things to say in today’s post. But in place of this
first paragraph, I would ask you to check out one
more column inspired by a topic I didn’t get to cover here on the blog: the
July 2019 mass
protests in Puerto Rico.
Welcome back! Those
PR protests of course unfolded in response to specific circumstances and
factors in that place and community, as protests tend to do (and as I hope I
analyzed through the lens of Puerto Rican activism in that column). But it’s
impossible to tell the story of 2019—especially the second half of the year—without
noting the similarly large-scale protests that took place around the globe:
from Hong
Kong to Chile,
Lebanon
to Spain.
Those news stories were all taken from a single week, late in October, but they
certainly reflect this multi-month,
global trend. And I think their global nature is a key part of analyzing
these protests—not just that they took place around the world, but that they
were in various ways inspired (or at the very least encouraged) by one another.
Social
media, another complex global force, has played a significant role in
amplifying such global interconnections, not just by raising and spreading
awareness but by offering models and blueprints for the protests (and more exactly
the protesters) themselves.
Social media is
of course a 21st century context, and an example of what might make
this set of global protests distinct from prior historical events or moments. Yet
at the same time, the historian in me would note that there are important such
past parallels that, at the very least, would be worth engaging as another
contextual layer for our current moment. Perhaps the closest such parallel is 1848,
a year in which so many revolutions swept through Europe that it came to be known
as the “Year
of Revolution” (another nickname was the “Spring
of Nations,” which as that hyperlinked articles notes make 1848 an
interesting counterpart to the 21st century, multi-national revolts
that came to be known as the Arab
Spring). While I’m far from a European historian, I do know that 1848
offers one particularly
clear takeaway: that such contemporary and conjoined revolutions don’t
simply reflect their moment, they also and crucially influence all that follows
it (even in nations
where they do not take place). Without getting into 2020 predictions too fully
(come back this weekend for more of that!), I’ll say that this feels like a
truly revolutionary moment here in the US as well—and as it unfolds we have
many lessons we can take away from these global protests.
Next 2019 review
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? 2019 stories you’d highlight?
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