"In the middle of the eighteenth century most people in the world (and perhaps most Europeans, too) could still believe that history would go on much as it seemed always to have done. The weight of the past was everywhere enormous and often it was immovable . . . In the next century and a half change was to come thick and fast almost everywhere and to ignore the fact was to be much harder if not impossible." (J.M. Roberts, The Penguin History of the World, 1995 revision, page 671)

What does this mean? Do you agree or disagree with it? Why?