I think part of the problem is the story of the long 19th century needs to be interpreted as a singular global phenomenon beginning with its European context in the French Revolution of 1789. Hobsbawm describes 1789-1848 as a period of a ‘Dual Revolution’ in both politics and economics that would see its consequences reveal themselves in the following period of 1848-1913. I might consider that period the “gilded age” though that is a phrase particularly well liked by Americans. To the French 1871-1914 has usually be considered ‘La Belle Epoque’ and of course to the British it is a Victorian golden age of Empire.

So what actually was going on, and was it similar to our own period?

Leaving aside the specifics of any particular Nation I think there are a few things we can say on a macro level: The “Spring Time of Nations” that occured in Europe during the period of the dual revolution enforced conceptions of the role of the state beyond the absolutist monarchs of the 18th century. This required the creation of strong national institutions in order to maintain parity with the other states in the European State System, in turn those strong centralized institutions required the veneer of legitimacy which Nationalism, who’s history begins before this period, was happy to fill.

While these strong state models are percolating in the ‘West’, by the 1860s the economic changes of the dual revolution began to be felt beyond their heartland in Britain, the low countries and NE USA. Industrialization, commercial chemistry, and most importantly transportation and communications (the steam engine and telegraph) all dramatically reshape both ecnomics and human geography in each polity they come into contact with.

In order to feed these two new systems, both Political and Economic, the human geography of the globe needed to be re-ordered. The feudal polities of the past were not designed to exist in this new world and each would be faced with either reformation or predation at the hands of the new European states. Long standing early modern ‘states’ were all faced with similar pressures, first the Mughals, then then Ming, and even the long time boogey-man of Europe, the Ottomans all faced these challenges and eventually collapsed. In their place came the global empires of the Europeans which would began expanding into those places yet untouched by the extractive needs of industrial capitalism. Rubber, coal, iron, foodstuffs and eventually petroleum needed to come from somewhere and this required extending the power of the industrial capitalism into just about everywere but the most remote places in the world.

By the end of the 19th century what this had resulted in was the creation of a hyper rich Bourgeoisie class that we associate with the ‘Gilded Age’. Even in states like Britain, where the bourgeoisie had been one of the biggest political players since the mid-17th century, suddenly had captains of industry and colonialism that seemed to tower above their predecessors. The remaining absolutist states like Russia saw the writing on the wall and moved slowly to try and modernize their empires.

However, this system wasn’t stable, not at all. Competition and extraction increased tensions between these newly created empires. At the same time the creation of an industrial proletariat to work this system had created unease in the imperial cores. That world as it was marched to its own death in August of 1914
So what about now? What makes our time period similar and what makes it different

I’d certainly agree the comparisons to the 19th century are useful, their world began after the disastrous Wars of the French Revolution/Napoleon which were fought for nearly 25 years. Much like the post war period policy makers after 1815 sought to create a new international system that would prevent more catastrophic fighting. Like us they found the ground moving beneath their feet within a few decades as the economic and political realities of the globe shifted. In the core of our system, here in the US, our economic anxieties had more or less returned by 1968.

However, I don’t think comparing de-industrization to industrialization is very useful. The breaking of the feudal system to create an industrial proletariat was centuries in the making the process contributed to a general feeling of crisis in much of the 19th century. The breaking of the post-war affluent middle class that we bemoan when we discuss de-industrialization is only comparable in the broadest of strokes. There is certainly a move to make the laborers of our time more precarious but this isn’t a fundamental reordering of the socio-economic system. We still live under industrial capitalism, the winners and losers are just shifting.

Its also worth discussing the difference in global empires today. The European state system of the late 19th century were generally speaking all ‘territorial empires’ while ours today are generally ‘hegemonic empires’. We prefer to excersize our strengths via international systems and soft power rather than colonial expansion and extraction. The results may be similar but the process and the conditions it creates in the imperial periphery are very different.

Finally the most identifiable part of the the ‘Gilded Age’ to me is definitely the extreme economic inequality. This to me seems less like a specific feature of the gilded age and more of a general rule for the progression of human society. In ‘The Great Leveler’ Walter Scheidel makes a pretty convincing argument that in broad strokes the tendency of societies is to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few. What generally undoes this process and resets things are violent societal convulsions. Wars, plagues, and communists are generally your best bet if you’d like a rapid reset of your societies gini coefficient. The gilded age came at the end of the 19th century, which was 99 years of peace between the second capture of Napoleon and death of Franz Ferdinand.

As to why things seem to be accelerating the last few decades compared to the mid-century: I’d like to point out that America has been anxious about its status and economic power more or less since 1968 and we’re still the largest economy in the world. Secondly I would suggest the existence of the soviet socio-economic political system had a disciplinary effect on the capitalist tendencies of western states. The bolshevik revolution was into its second and third generations by the end of the second world war and it would not simply be pulled out root and all like many had hoped in 1919-22. It was generally accepted that the Soviets were there to stay on the international scale and the ‘Free World’ would need to demonstrate its superiority to the yet still non-aligned states that emerged with the collapse of the British and French empires following Suez in 1956.

Long story short: The gilded age is an informative period to consider and it certainly informs the present. However, the 19th century seems to me to be both the closing act of a previous dialectic and the opening act of a new one. In my opinion nothing has quite broken with the past the way the events of the 19th century did, we still vaguely live in that dialectic.