Download Late 1900s - Glasgow Independent Schools

Optimism and Tensions:
Europe in the second half of the 19th century
I. The Struggles of Nationalism





The concept of nationalism did much to shape the history of Europe during the nineteenth
century
o From France and across the central and southern portions of the continent,
proponents of nationalism vigorously pushed their agendas
o But what did nationalism mean to people in the nineteenth century?
 Did it mean the same to the Magyars as it did to the Lombards, the
Prussians, or the French?
 Nationalism can be viewed as a group of people believing their identity is
shaped by a nation
 What does it take to make a nation?
 Generally, the criteria include having one or more of the following
in common: language, religion, culture, historical experiences,
and politics
 During the nineteenth century, some nationalists argued that it
only took one of the criteria to make a nation, while others
argued that it took all of the criteria
o Regardless of which definition was used, nationalism proved to be a powerful
motivating force for many people during the century.
The major European powers frowned on the concept of nationalism, except when it fit
their purposes
o The disfavor derived from the fact that the groups which pushed nationalism, in
its various forms, wanted to create their nation from lands already owned or
controlled by another nation
o Rulers throughout Europe believed that nationalism would be a destabilizing
force in existing governments
 Turmoil would result, upsetting the balance of power on the continent
 Therefore, they did all they could to crush nationalist sentiments within
their own domains and sometimes helped their neighbors put down
nationalist uprisings
o Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, European monarchs were
able to resist efforts of groups within their countries to form their own nations
Nowhere were the urges of nationalism more prevalent than in Central Europeparticularly the Austrian empire
o During 1848 and 1849, a series of rebellions swept across the lands controlled
by the Hapsburgs
o Although the nationalists won some early victories, the Austrian government
finally proved able to crush the rebellions and restore stability
Impact of the Crimean War
o However, the stability in Europe proved to be short-lived
o The Crimean War, which lasted from 1854 to 1856, weakened the authority of
several rulers, undermined the existing balance of power system in Europe, and
strained international relations so much that rulers would no longer come to the
aid of a neighbor or friend in times of crisis
1860s & 1870s see rebirth of nationalist sentiment
o Thus, when nationalist movements arose again in Europe in the 1860s and
1870s, they found much more fertile ground than they had twenty to thirty years
earlier



Also making things easier for the nationalists was the fact that the
telegraph had created a revolution in communications and made it easier
to spread information to a wide audience
 These factors combined with nationalist sentiments that had been
dormant, but had not disappeared, and a wave of conflict resulted
o Some groups sought to unify like-minded people in one nation, while others
sought to bring people sharing cultural similarities out from under the rule of vast
polyglot empires
o When the conflicts ended in the 1870s, the many states on the Italian peninsula
had become Italy, Prussia had united most of the German-speaking peoples
outside of Austria under the banner of Germany, the Bulgars and Serbians had
won their independence from the Ottoman Empire, and the Magyars had forced
the Austrian empire to create a dual monarchy in which they had a large degree
of autonomy
Impact of the new nations
o Although the dominant groups in these new nations were elated by their
accomplishments, the creation of these new countries created almost as many
problems as they had solved
o With the exception of Germany, instability proved to be a major problem with the
new governments
 Germany, eager to prove it was a major power, embarked on an
aggressive plan of colonial expansion in the vulnerable areas of the
world
o The Ottoman Empire truly became "the tired old man" of Europe, hardly a shell of
its former self and open to exploitation by stronger powers
o The new Austro-Hungarian empire was only in slightly better condition; there
were still large minorities within it that wanted their independence
o France went through a brief revolution and changed its system of government
o All of these nations, old and new, became very conscious about their positions
within the European community and the world at large
The nationalist movements of the second half of the nineteenth century left in their wake
instability and tensions that would contribute directly and indirectly to World War I
o However, the problems of nationalism did not end with that war
o As you will see later, nationalist sentiments remained strong throughout the
twentieth century and continue even today in many parts of the world, resulting in
numerous conflicts involving every part of the world.
II. Liberalization of European Politics


Prosperity and Liberalism
o While the conflicts inspired by nationalism wreaked havoc on much of central and
southern Europe, the nations not involved enjoyed relative prosperity
o During the twenty years following the Crimean War, Great Britain, France, Russia,
and the United States underwent a series of transformations that granted greater
political and legal rights to large portions of their populations
o These changes, sometimes peaceful and other times violent, stemmed directly
from eighteenth-century Enlightenment critiques of political absolutism and the
expansion of such ideas by nineteenth-century philosophers such as Jeremy
Bentham and John Stuart Mill
o The major conclusion of these critiques was that the power of government over
the individual should be reduced and that everyone, at least all males, should
have the right to participate in government.
Great Britain
o By mid-century, the government of Great Britain had become the envy of many
around the world
o
o
o


Liberal and Conservative Parties
 A clear two-party system, Liberal and Conservative, emerged
 The Liberal party tended to be more open to changes, while the
Conservatives sought to preserve traditional practices and values
 Both parties had able leadership-William Gladstone led the Liberals and
Benjamin Disraeli the Conservatives
Second Reform Bill (1867)
 In 1867, the competition for power between the two parties led to the
Second Reform Bill which extended suffrage through a lowering of the
property ownership requirements for voting
 This increased the number of eligible voters from 1.4 to 2.5 million males
 Although some traditionalists in Parliament worried about letting the
masses vote, no radical changes occurred
 There was a bolstering of the British political system because now more
people felt they had a stake in the system
Although the immediate gains to the wider population of Britain were moderate
(the first two working-class members of Parliament were elected in 1874), the
reforms showed the promise of the democratic turn Great Britain was taking
France
o France also became a liberal democracy during the second half of the nineteenth
century
o However, the French had followed a much more turbulent path than the British
o Louis Napoleon
 In 1848, Louis Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, won
election as president of France
 Three years later he arranged to have his term of office extended an
additional ten years
 The following year he cemented his power by getting the French
populace to elect him emperor for life
 During this period, many Frenchmen enjoyed prosperity, so most people
supported Louis Napoleon's move of becoming emperor Napoleon III
 However, some supporters of the French republic strongly objected, and
Napoleon sought to win them to his side
 He eased censorship rules and made his government more accountable
to the French parliament
 Despite these efforts, opposition to his position as emperor continued to
mount
 Tensions came to a head in 1870, following the disastrous French defeat
in the Franco-Prussian war
o In 1875, after much criticism from the left and right, the French government
created a liberal government centered around a democratic parliament
o Thus, almost a century after the French revolution had introduced the idea of a
republican form of government to the country, France finally had such a
government
The United States and Russia
o As the changes in Great Britain and France occurred, liberalism gained support
in the United States and Russia
o The United States
 By the 1850s, almost all of the United States had abolished property
qualifications for white male suffrage
 Following the Civil War, the U.S. government emancipated the nearly
four million slaves
 It also extended the right to vote to African-American men
 Although white southerners established a series of barriers to
prevent the freedmen from voting and enjoying economic
independence, many blacks still found ways to cast their votes

In theory, if not always in fact, the United States granted universal
suffrage to all male citizens
o

Russia
 In eastern Europe, Tsar Alexander II of Russia made a major move
toward liberalizing his country by freeing approximately twenty-two
million serfs
 Serfdom, which dated back to the medieval period, was a system that
tied the Russian peasants to the land and gave their landlords authority
over them similar to slaveholders in the United States
 Like the emancipation of the American slaves, the freeing of the serfs
came with its own set of problems
 The Russian landlords demanded compensation in exchange for
their agreement to free the serfs
 As a result, the liberated serfs had to reimburse the government,
with mortgages that lasted up to 50 years, for the land they
received at their freedom
o The freedmen in the United States and Russia still faced very difficult battles to
exercise their new-found freedoms.
Continuing problems
o Although political liberalism brought significant change to a number of western
nations, many problems remained
o Although universal male suffrage had come about in Great Britain, France, and
the United States (the former serfs of Russia could not vote), all of these
countries denied women the right to vote
o In the United States and Russia, the former slaves and serfs found themselves
faced with major economic barriers that they were powerless to change
o Colonialism and liberalism
 By the end of the century, the major European nations were all colonial
powers
 To maintain absolute control over colonial peoples, European nations
refused to extend the same political rights to them that they granted to
their own people
 Such policies had tragic consequences both then and even much later
into the twentieth century
 Still, the political liberalism that began during the nineteenth century
provided the groundwork for our current systems of government.
III. Changing Daily Life in Europe


The same liberal ideas that sparked so much political change in the Western world during
the second half of the nineteenth century also helped bring about new ways of thinking
about national economies
o These ideas, along with a variety of new technological and managerial
innovations, brought about an era of unprecedented prosperity in Europe
o Although the benefits of this new-found affluence went primarily to the upper- and
middle-classes, the working classes began to achieve a higher level of material
wealth
o This prosperity came with costs, such as miserable and hazardous working
conditions in factories, overcrowding in many cities, and harsh exploitation of
colonial peoples in order to satisfy an almost insatiable need for raw materials
Second Industrial Revolution
o After 1850, a wave of related economic changes that became known as the
"second industrial revolution" swept over much of western Europe
o The primary features of this revolution were:




new materials (particularly such things as mass-produced steel for
building and synthetic dyes for clothes)
 an increased speed of production
 and a reduction in the prices of many everyday goods
o New techniques for manufacturing items and increased capital to finance
businesses helped spur this industrial expansion
o So did the new technologies in transportation and communications
o By 1850, railroads were just becoming a major form of transportation in Europe
 Thirty years later there were over 102,000 miles of track laid primarily
through the industrial heartlands of the continent
o Before the telegraph, communications went only as fast as a person could travel
 But with its advent, people could send messages across Europe and
around much of the world in a matter of minutes
 The invention of the telephone in 1875 allowed people to talk directly
with one another over great distances
Impact on Daily Life
o These industrial and technological developments changed the way many people
lived, particularly those residents of the industrial cities in the west
o Middle- and working-class people were greatly affected by such developments
 Both groups increased as new professions and occupations emerged to
accommodate the needs of the expanded industrial world
 The middle-class learned a new set of values as leisure time and
"conspicuous consumption" made their way into their lives
o Workers found that, in general, they too enjoyed some of the benefits of
industrialization as they gained:
 more leisure time
 better food and housing
 and increased forms of entertainment
o The increase in prosperity during this age was spread unevenly among different
groups
o Life for many workers remained one of poverty, disease, and economic
hardships.
Urban Life
o Life in the cities also improved during the second half of the nineteenth century
 The old, haphazard methods of governing cities shifted to a new
professionalized system that brought with it better planning and better
services to urban residents
o New services to urban dwellers
 Running water
 sewer systems
 and police and fire protection became common features of most cities
 Government health departments did much to alleviate one of the worst
aspects of urban life-the spread of contagious diseases
o Improved transportation systems allowed some residents to move away from the
inner cities to more pleasant suburban surroundings
Optimism
o In general, the lifestyles of many western Europeans changed for the better
during the latter part of the nineteenth century
o Major problems still existed, but many people felt optimistic, believing that they
had created a much better world than the one in which their grandparents, or
even their parents, had lived
o A major question facing many Europeans of this era was what would they do with
this world they had created
IV. Enlightenment Harmony


What were Europeans thinking about in the late nineteenth century?
o No doubt much of their time was spent thinking about relationships, work,
salvation, paying the bills, and so on
o But how did people think their world worked?
o How did the world "out there" operate, and how were its operations related to
daily life and the questions of the meaning of life of Europeans?
 It might be useful to divide these thoughts into two broad categories
 (1) dominant ideas that many would have felt were
unquestionably true
 and (2) worrisome notions that were emerging at the time that
many wanted to dismiss out of hand as patently false-or even
idiotic
What seemed to be unquestionably true?
o To oversimplify, the cornerstones of most Europeans' thinking were the beliefs of
Christianity and the understandings of science that followed after the ideas of Sir
Isaac Newton (often regarded as part of the Enlightenment heritage of Western
civilization
o While Christianity provided the meaning of life for most Europeans, science told
Europeans that they lived in a world made harmonious by the operation of
natural laws
 Remember that one spin-off of the work of Newton was Deism--the idea
of God as the great watchmaker whose world, once created, did not
need further involvement from God (there were no miraculous
interventions from "on high")
 This "harmony" was the result of the operation of natural laws that were
believed to affect all parts of the world, from the falling of an apple to the
pay that one earned on the job
o Remember that one's pay and the price of food and other necessities were
determined by the laws of supply and demand
o While people might not always like the operation of these laws, the assumption
was that in the long run everyone was better off if these laws prevailed over the
sentiment of voters and politicians who might want to create human laws to offset
the hardships that resulted from the workings of these laws
 From this perspective, employers were "helpless" to violate them
because these laws determined the price of a transaction
 In discussing the Industrial Revolution, you encountered both the social
costs of industrial production as well as the rapidly dropping prices for
consumer goods
 Analysts, then and since, would identify these trade-offs as part
of the natural order of things
 The net result of these trade-offs was believed to be progress,
achieved through applying human reason to gain a better
understanding of the underlying harmony of nature
 People who lived in harmony with nature were also assured of a better
life than those who tried to go against the laws of nature
o Utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham)
 The belief in a world governed by natural laws was extended to each
individual mind through the philosophy of utilitarianism which held that
people calmly and rationally weighed any and all actions according to the
pleasure and pain involved
 In theory, given any situation, people "weighed" the costs (or pains)
associated with any action in relation to the benefits (or pleasures) that
would come from an action
 For example, while you might derive more immediate pleasure
from watching TV than from experiencing the "pain" of studying
these course materials, you might ultimately decide that your

long-range pleasure from successfully finishing the course is
more than offset by the immediate costs of study
 As a broader example, legislatures use a utilitarian approach
when they increase the penalties for certain crimes, such as
doubling jail time, in the belief that criminals will "weigh" the
added "pain" in their thought processes and decide to forego the
criminal act.
o Overall, these views were very "comforting" and contributed to the sense of many
Europeans that their culture was the best
 If they felt fearful about the world, that fear could be overcome by
attempts to understand the operations of nature because fear was
caused by ignorance or superstition
 Furthermore, the burgeoning flow of material goods and rising standard
of living could be seen as the "payoff" for living according to these laws
 People who lived by these laws experienced more "progress" than those
who did not
o But what if these ideas weren't true?
Harmony Disturbed
o By the late nineteenth century, science had regained its position as the central
way of knowing about the world
 Romanticism had been replaced by the desire to represent the world "as
it actually was"
 Novelists added numerous "realistic" details to their stories,
including the condition of the paint on the interior walls of houses,
while historians sought to represent the past with photographic
faithfulness
 However, new scientific understandings challenged European notions of
harmonious nature and rational people
 Scientific understanding marched on but at the expense of the sense of
"comfort" that it had provided in the Enlightenment era
 The characteristics of the Enlightenment heritage, as stated in
previous lectures, centered on the idea of a universe and nature
that were "knowable" to rational beings who used the scientific
method to uncover the underlying laws governing creation and
ensuring a harmonious world
 In this view, conflict and disharmony were the products of people
failing to act reasonably and rationally or acting contrary to the
laws of nature that laid out how the world and its people should
interact
o Five that challenged the worldview
 Five people challenged this view and left Europeans fearing that there
was no knowable "grand plan" for the universe, that conflict rather than
harmony was nature's normal condition, and that people themselves
were not truly rational creatures
 Although Europeans initially rejected these views, the shattering impact
of World War I forced them to consider the possibility that these new
views were correct
 Darwin and Marx
 The works of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx provided the
groundwork for the idea that conflict rather than harmony was
the "natural" state of affairs in nature and society
 Each developed a theory that held that biological and historical
changes were the product of conflict
 In the case of Darwin, this conflict was captured under the term
"survival of the fittest," while Marx talked about a "class struggle"
or, more formally, "dialectical materialism."


Darwin believed that this struggle was not directed toward the
achievement of any final outcome such as a "perfect" human
species or even the continuation of humans at all
 Marx believed that the goal of history was the attainment of a
harmonious, classless society to which each person contributed
according to their ability, and each received all that they needed
 Both writers, essentially contemporaries, challenged European
religious beliefs of the time
 Marx called religion the "opiate of the people," while
Darwin challenged the notion of an orderly creation of
the world in six literal days
 While many might try to dismiss their ideas, both
contended that they had reached their conclusions
through scientific methods
 Collectively, these two conflict theorists undermined
elements of European religion, faith in science, and a
belief in harmony
 Darwin's theory about evolution essentially overturned
the traditional theological framework for understanding
the natural world
Sigmund Freud
 Freud expressed the notion that humans were rationalizers
rather than rational and therefore did not base their actions on a
carefully measured analysis of pleasure and pain
 For most students, he is best remembered for his
concept of the mind as divided into id, ego, and
superego
 While your psychology instructor may tell you that
Freud's ideas are not correct, that is not important for
this analysis
 The late nineteenth and especially the early twentieth century
world saw Freud as a leading practitioner of the "science of the
mind" and regarded his findings as disturbing because they
seemed to be "scientifically valid"
 They had no way of knowing that Freud's ideas would be
challenged, modified, and, by many, discredited, in a half
century or so
 Freud's division of the mind into three components-id, ego and
sugerego, was historically significant because this approach
directly contradicted the image of the mind as a rational,
analytical calculator
 Instead, in Freud's view, decisions were the result of the
interplay and conflict among the different components of
the mind, where the idea of the "long-term best interests"
of the person could be subordinated to a variety of shortterm or instinctual goals
 In this view, people did not plan rationally but rather
employed the appearance of rational planning for
decisions that were truly the outcome of conflicts within
the mind
 Here is one example
 On the night before a big exam, a friend
suggests that you go to a local bar for happy
hour
 You know you should study for the test (and
your superego stresses that issue) but your id, in

its search for immediate pleasures and
immedate need fulfillment, argues for the happy
hour option
 If your id is really powerful, it may win the
"argument" with the superego, resulting in your
"decision" to go drinking
 How do you justify this decision? One way is to
suggest that one needs to be relaxed in order to
study effectively and that some early evening
time at happy hour will help you do this
 This argument is, of course, bogus
 But, when you hear a person make this claim, it
sounds almost valid because it sounds as if the
person has a plan and is in charge of his or her
actions
 From a Freudian perspective, this "plan" was not a
rational response to an analysis of a situation
 Instead, it was a rationalization that makes you appear
rational rather than under the influence of a powerful id
 This idea that people are "rationalizers" rather than "rational"
undermined the image of Europeans as calculating people who
looked to the long term and built a superior society characterized
by progress
 Furthermore, it suggested that there might be limits to the power
of education to "elevate" lives, and it narrowed the distance
between the "civilized" and the "savage" minds that justified (or
would justify) late nineteenth century imperialism
Nietzsche
 Nietzsche offered the idea that "God is dead" and that will power
rather than rational analysis held the key to understanding
historical change
 Although he was institutionalized in 1889, his ideas were
nurtured in the coming years through the efforts of his
sister and came to be one of the key elements of
existential philisophy and, in some ways, a support for
the ideas of the Nazi movement
 The late nineteenth century was very pleased with its
material progress as measured by consumer
opportunities and its governmental reforms that gave a
voice to more and more members of society
 Against this backdrop, the ideas of Nietzsche, when
believed, deflated the pretensions of people who were
seeking to define themselves as the most advanced
members of humanity
 Nietzsche's idea about "God is dead" meant that people did not
have to weigh their thoughts and plans against a divine standard
and, in the case of Christians, against a "Judgment Day"
 He argued that people had "invented" the idea of God in
order to make themselves seem more important in the
cosmos and not as insignificant, boring, self-indulgent,
and self-satisfied as he believed they actually were
 In fact, for Nietzsche, Christian morality shielded
believers from having to make big decisions or confront
their timid nature




o
Instead, they could assert that "I could undertake suchand-such an action, but I won't because God doesn't
want me to"
 In this way, to Nietzsche, people used religion to glorify
their timid and unimportant existences
 The assertion that "God is dead" was a liberating notion
for Nietzsche and the existentialists
 With that idea in mind, people were free to
undertake any actions they wished, because
they had only this one moment of existence and
could spend it any way they chose
 After all, in Nietzsche's final analysis, there were
no better or worse choices from the standpoint
of morality
 This notion was horrifying to many when it was
pronounced
Superman
Nietzsche is also famous for the idea of the "superman"
 If most people are like those described by Nietzsche in
the previous paragraph, how does historical change take
place?
 The answer is that the world periodically
produces a "superman" who restructures the
world, not to improve it, but because he can and
he wants to
 The new world is no better or superior to the
prior one, just different
 The superman, in an act of will, rearranges the world
and its beliefs or its organization just because it pleases
him aesthetically in the same way that a poet might
choose one phrase over another for a poem
 Nietzsche, therefore, scorned the majority of his fellow
late-nineteenth-century humans as mediocre and
deluded by the religion they had created
 In turn, he valued the "superman" as the only person
worthy of admiration because he rearranges the world to
please himself--Napoleon might be an example and
Hitler would consider himself to be a "superman" and,
therefore, above the laws and opinions of his fellow
Germans
Einstein
 Einstein produced his theory of relativity that held that observers,
such as scientists, could not make any statements about the
world that were absolutely true, because all such statements
depended on where the observer was standing
 If you changed your observation point, what you saw and your
measurements of it changed as well
 For this reason, the world was never fully knowable in the sense
that no two people might see the world in exactly the same way
because they observed it from different positions, and each was
right from his or her own perrspective
 This argument undercut the idea drawn from Newton and the
laws of nature that Nature could be described with a set of laws
that were everywhere true
The old certitude about the world was fading

o
o
The sense of security of living in a world which could ultimately be fully
known, described, and understood was gone
 Some people felt cast adrift in the same way that earlier Europeans felt
lost when the idea of a sun-centered universe superceded the idea of a
universe where everything revolved around earth and humanity at its
center
Collectively these new ideas upset most of the underlying ideas derived from the
world of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment
It would take some years, even a century, for all of these new ideas to percolate
through European and American culture, but the result was the creation of a
world of modern ideas sharply different from those cherished by mainstream
thinkers in the late nineteenth century