“What we designate modernity was not something natural or automatic. It involved a set of difficult-to-attain attributes – mass production, mass culture, mass politics – that the greatest powers mastered. Those states, in turn, forced other countries to attain modernity as well, or suffer the consequences, including defeat in war and possible colonial conquest.”

“What we designate modernity was not something natural or automatic. It involved a set of difficult-to-attain attributes – mass production, mass culture, mass politics – that the greatest powers mastered. Those states, in turn, forced other countries to attain modernity as well, or suffer the consequences, including defeat in war and possible colonial conquest.”

— Stephen Kotkin