Download AP European Study Guide From After Black Death to Current History

AP European
Study Guide
From After Black Death to Current History
Chapter 13: European Society in the age of the
renaissance

Italian society and in the fifteenth century, this “Renaissance” spread to northern
Europe

Economic growth laid the material basis from the Italian Renaissance, from 1050
to 1300, witnessed commercial and financial development, the growing political
power of self-governing cities, and great population expansion (cultural
achievements)

The period from the late sixteenth century was characterized by artistic energies

In the great commercial revival of the eleventh century, northern Italian cities led
the way

Venice, supported by a huge merchant marine grew rich through overseas trade

Genoa and Milan enjoyed benefits of a large volume of trade with the Middle
East and Europe (exchange between the East and West)

Genoa and Venice also made advancements in shipbuilding allowing ships to sail
all year long and the increased the volume of goods that could be transported
(accelerated speed) --the risks in such operations of trade were great, but the
profits were enormous

The first artistic and literary manifestations of the Italian Renaissance appeared
in Florence but toward the end of the thirteenth century, Florentine merchants
and bankers acquired control of papal banking (acted as tax collectors for the
papacy)

For Florence, profits from loans, investments, and money exchanges contributed
to the city’s economy but the wool industry was the major factor in the city’s
financial expansion and population increase as they purchased the best quality of
wool

Florence developed remarkable techniques for its manufacture into cloth, and
employed thousands of works in the manufacturing process

The economic foundations of Florence were so strong that even severe crises
could not destroy the city such as huge debts of King Edward III or the Black
Death

Northern Italian cities were communes, worn associations of free men
seeking complete political and economic independence from local nobles and
fought for and won independence

Marriage vows often sealed business contracts between the rural nobility and the
mercantile aristocracy forming the new social class, an urban nobility

New class made citizenship in the communes dependent on a property
qualification, years of residence within the city, and social connections

A new force, popolo, disenfranchised and heavily taxed, bitterly resenting their
exclusion from power, wanted places in the communal government

Throughout thirteenth century, popolo used violence to take over the city
governments

Because they practiced the same sort of political exclusivity as had the noble
communes, the popolo never won the support of other groups

The popolo could not establish civil order within their cities and the movements
for republican government failed and by 1300, signori(despots)
or oligarchies (rule of merchant aristocracies) had triumphed everywhere

Nostalgia for the Roman form of government, combined with calculating
shrewdness, prompted the leaders of Venice, Milan, and Florence to use the old
forms

In the fifteenth century, political power and elite culture centered at the princely
courts of despots and oligarchs who flaunted their patronage of learning and the
arts by munificent gifts to writers, philosophers, and artists

Renaissance Italians had a passionate attachment to their individual city-states
which hindered the development of one unified state of Italy

In the fifteenth century, five powers dominated the Italian peninsula: Venice,
Milan, Florence, the Papal States, and the kingdom of Naples

Venice, with its trade and vast colonial empire, ranked as an international power

Central Italy consisted mainly of the Papal States—Pope Alexander VI aided
militarily and politically by his son Cesare Borgia united the peninsula by
ruthlessly conquering

The large cities used diplomacy, spies, paid informers, and any other available
means to get information that could be used to advance their ambitions while the
states of northern Europe were moving toward centralization and consolidation

Whenever one Italian state appeared to gain a predominant position within the
peninsula, other states combined to establish a balance of power against the
major threat

Renaissance Italians invented the machinery of modern diplomacy: permanent
embassies with resident ambassadors in capitals where political relations and
commercial ties needed continual monitoring

Imperialistic ambitions resulted in an inability to form a common alliance against
potential foreign enemies made Italy an inviting target for invasion

When Florence and Naples entered into an agreement to acquire Milanese
territories, Milan called on France for support

At Florence, the French invasion had been predicted by Dominican friar Girolamo
Savonarola who attacked paganism and moral vice of the city, the undemocratic
government of Lorenzo de’ Medici and the corruption of Pope Alexander VI

Girolamo Savonarola was excommunicated by the pope and executed

The invasion of Italy by the French king Charles VIII inaugurated a new period in
Italian and European power politics; Italy became the focus of international
ambitions and foreign army

Florence, Rome, and Naples soon bowed and Charles VIII’s son Louis XII,
formed the League of Cambrai with the pope and German emperor Maximilian
for the purpose of stripping rich Venice of its mainland possessions

Pope Leo X called on the Spanish and Germans in a new alliance to expel the
French

When France returned to Italy in 1522, a series of battles called the HabsburgValois Wars began and in the sixteenth century, the political and social life of
Italy was upset by the relentless competition for dominance between France and
the empire

Italian cities suffered from continual warfare and thus the failure of the city-states
to form some federal system, consolidate, or at least establish a common foreign
policy led to the continuation of the centuries-old subjection of the peninsula by
outside invaders

Renaissance was characterized by self-conscious awareness and the realization
that something was happening came to men of letters such as poet/humanist
Francesco Petrarch

He considered the first two centuries of the Roman Empire to represent the peak
in the development of the human civilization

The sculptors, painters, and writers of the Renaissance spoke contemptuously of
their medieval predecessors and identified themselves with the thinkers/artists of
Greco-Romans

A humanism characterized by a deep interest in the Latin classics and a
deliberate attempt to revive antique lifestyles emerged

Christian humility discouraged self-absorption and provided strong support for
the individual and to exercise great social influence (new sense of historical
distance from earlier periods)

A large literature specially concerned with the nature of individuality emerged

Italians of unusual abilities were self consciously aware of their singularity and
unafraid to be unlike their neighbors; they had enormous confidence in their
ability to achieve great things

Individualism stressed personality, uniqueness, genius, and the fullest
development of capabilities and talents; thirst for fame, a driving ambition, and a
burning desire for success drove such people to the complete achievement of
their potential

In cities of Italy, civic leaders and the wealthy populace showed phenomenal
archeological zeal for the recovery of manuscripts, statues, and monuments

Pope Nicholas V planned the Vatican Library, which remains one of the richest
repositories of ancient and medieval documents (built by Pope Sixtus IV)

There was a profound interest in the study of the Latin classics (“new learning” –
humanism)

Humanists studied the Latin classics to learn what they reveal about human
nature and emphasized human begins, their achievements, interests, and
capabilities

Where medieval writers accepted pagan and classical authors uncritically,
Renaissance humanists were skeptical of their authority

Renaissance humanists studied human nature, and while they fully grasped the
moral thought of pagan antiquity, Renaissance humanists viewed humanity from
a strongly Christian perspective: men and women were made in the image and
likeness of God

Humanists rejected classical ideas that were opposed to Christianity or they
sought reinterpretation of an underlying harmony between the pagan and secular
and Christianity

Fourteenth and fifteenth-century humanists loved the language of the classics
and considered it superior to the corrupt Latin of the medieval schoolmen

They became concerned more about form than about content, more about
expression

Secularism involves a basic concern with the material world instead of with the
eternal world of spirit and thinking finds the explanation of everything and the
final end of human beings

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed the growth of such secularism in
Italy

Worries of life did not leave much time for thoughts about penance and purgatory
as wealth allowed greater material pleasures and a more comfortable life

Humanist Lorenzo Valla in his study On the False Donation of
Constantine demonstrated by careful textual examination that an anonymous
eighth-century document supposedly giving the papacy jurisdiction over vast
territories in western Europe was a forgery; thus, exemplifying the application of
critical scholarship to old and almost sacred writings as well as the new secular
spirit of the Renaissance

Nor did church leaders do much to combat the new secular spirit; the papal court
and the households of the cardinals were just as worldly as those of great urban
patricians

Renaissance popes beautified the city of Rome, patronized artists and mean of
letters, and expended enormous enthusiasm and huge sums of money

Papal interests, far removed from spiritual concerns, fostered the new worldly
attitude

Renaissance evokes admiration for its artistic master pieces of painting,
architecture and sculpture in which the city of Florence led the way

In the period art historians describe as the “High Renaissance,” Rome took the
lead and the main characteristics of High Renaissance art—classical balance,
harmony, and restraint—are revealed in the masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci,
Raphael, and Michelangelo

Powerful urban groups such as guilds or religious confraternities commissioned
works of art

The works of Florentine cloth merchants represented the merchants’ dominant
influence

Religious themes appeared in all media—wood, carvings, painted frescoes,
stone sculptures, paintings; art served as educational purpose—a religious
picture or statue was intended to spread a particular doctrine, act as a profession
of faith

A great style of living, enriched by works of art, served to prove the greatness of
the ruler

The study of classical texts brought deeper understanding of ancient ideas;
classical themes and motifs, such as the lives and loves of pagan gods and
goddesses, figured into art pieces

The individual portrait became distinct artistic genre (Renaissance portraits
mirrored reality)

Florentine Masaccio, sometimes called the father of modern painting, inspired a
new style characterized by great realism, narrative power, and remarkably
effective use of light/dark

Rich color decorative detail, curvilinear rhythms, and saying forms (international
style)

Narrative artists depicted the body in a more scientific and natural manner

Perspective in painting, the linear representation of distance and space on a flat
surface

In the Renaissance the social status of the artist improved as the Renaissance
artist was considered a free intellectual worker and usually worked on
commission from a powerful prince; thus the artist’s reputation depended on the
support of the powerful patrons

Renaissance society respected and rewarded the distinguished artist

Renaissance artists were not only aware of their creative power, they also
boasted about it; some medieval painters and sculptors had signed their works
but now, Renaissance artists almost universally did so, and many of them
incorporated self-portraits

The medieval conception recognized no particular value in artistic originality

Renaissance artists and humanists thought that a work of art was the deliberate
creation of a unique personality, of an individual who transcended traditions,
rules, and theories

The culture of the Renaissance was that of a small mercantile elite, a business
participant with aristocratic pretensions; the Renaissance maintained a gulf
between the learned minority and the uneducated multitude that had survived for
so many centuries

One of the central preoccupations of the humanists was education and moral
behavior such as the treatises on the structure and goals of education and the
training of rulers

Part of Vergerio’s treatise specifies subjects for the instruction of young men in
public life: history teaches virtues by examples from the past, ethics focuses on
virtue itself, and rhetoric or public speaking trains for eloquence

Baldassare Castiglione’s The Courtier sought to train, discipline, and fashion the
young man into the courtly ideal, the gentleman; the educated man of the upper
class should have a broad background in many academic subjects, and his
spiritual and physical as well as intellectual capabilities should be trained (familiar
with dance, music, the arts)

The subject of The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli is political power: how the ruler
should gain, maintain, and increase it – also addressed citizen’s relationship to
the state

Machiavelli concluded that human beings are selfish and out to advance their
own interest and this pessimistic view of humanity held him to maintain that the
prince may have to manipulate the people in any way he finds necessary (fox
and lion)

Medieval political theory had derived ultimately from Saint Augustine’s view that
the state arose as a consequence of Adam’s fall and people’s propensity to sin

The test of good government was whether it provided justice, law, and order

They set high moral and Christian standards for the ruler’s conduct (increase of
power?)

Machiavelli even showed his strong commitment to republican government

In the thirteenth century, paper money and playing cards from China reached the
West; they were block-printed (characters were carved into a wooden clock,
inked, and the words or illustrations transferred to paper) -- method expensive
and time consuming

In 1455, Johann Gutenberg, Johann Fust, and Peter Schoffer started movable
type; the mirror image of each letter was carved in relief on a small block

Since letters could be arranged into any format, an infinite variety of texts could
be printed by reusing and rearranging pieces of type

The knowledge of paper manufacture had originated in China, and the Arabs
introduced it to the West in the twelfth century; durable paper was far less
expensive than parchment

Printing transformed both the private and the public lives of Europeans making
propaganda possible, emphasizing differences between opposing groups, such
church and state

These differences laid the basis for the formation of distinct political parties

Printing also stimulated the literacy of lay people and eventually came to have a
deep effect on their private lives; printers printed moralizing, medical, practical,
and travel manuals

Since books and other printed materials were read aloud to illiterate listeners,
print bridged the gap between written and oral cultures

During the Renaissance the status of upper-class women declined – in terms of
the kind of work they performed, their access to property and political power, and
their role in shaping the outlook of their society, women had generally less power
than women in the feudal age

In cities of Renaissance Italy, young ladies learned their letters and studied the
classics and many read Greek as well as Latin, knew poetry, and could speak
Spanish or French

Laura Cereta illustrates the successes and failures of educated Renaissance
women

Educated by her father. She learned languages, philosophy, theology, and
mathematics and she gained self-confidence and a healthy respect for her own
potential

The question of marriage forced the issue; she could choose a husband, family,
and full participation in social life or else study and withdrawal from the world

Women’s inferiority was derived not from the divine order of things but from
themselves

Men frequently believed that in becoming learned, a woman ceased to be a
woman

Women were supposed to know how to attract artists and literati to her
husband’s court and how to grace her husband’s household, whereas an
educated man was supposed to know how to rule and participate in public affairs

In Castiglione’s The Courtier, the woman was to make herself pleasing to the
man; with respect to love and sex, the Renaissance witnessed a downward shift
in the women’s status

Educational opportunities being severely limited, few girls received an education
(social divide) but apart from that, the works of the Renaissance had no effect on
ordinary women

Rape was not considered a particularly serious crime against either the victim or
society. Noble youths committed a higher percentage or rapes than their small
numbers

The rape of a young girl of marriageable age or a child under twelve was
considered a graver crime than the rape of a married woman

By contrast, the sexual assault of a noblewoman by a man of working-class
origin, which was extraordinarily rare, resulted in a sever penalization because
the crime had social and political overtones

Early medieval penitential and church councils had legislated against abortion
and infanticide

Infanticide -- some were simply abandoned outdoors; some were said to have
been crushed to death while sleeping in the same bed with their parents; some
died from “crib death” or suffocation and occurred to frequently to have all been
accidental

Far more girls than boys died, thus reflection societal discrimination against girl
children as inferior and less useful than boys (also sometimes the cause was
poverty)

But beginning in the fifteenth century, sizable numbers of black slaves entered
Europe

Black servants, because of their rarity, were highly prized and much sought after

Many served as maids, valets, and domestic servants

They supplemented the labor force in virtually all occupations---as agricultural
laborers, craftsmen, herdsmen, frappe pickers, workers in the manufacture of
olive oil, and seamen on ships going to Lisbon and Africa

Most Europeans’ knowledge of the black as a racial type were based entirely on
theological speculation; theologians taught that God was light and so blackness,
therefore represented the hostile forces of the underworld: evil, sin, and the devil

Blackness symbolized the emptiness of worldly goods, the humility of the
monastic way of life; black clothes permitted a conservative and discreet display
of wealth (Christ had said that those who mourn are those who are blessed)

In Renaissance society, blacks, like women, were signs of wealth; both used for
display

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century, Italian Renaissance thought and ideals
penetrated northern Europe; students from the Low Countries, France, Germany,
and England flocked to Italy, imbibed the “new learning” and carried it back to
their countries

Northern humanists interpreted classical antiquity, individualism, and humanism
in terms of their own traditions, even though in Italy, secular and pagan themes
and Greco-Roman motifs received more humanistic attention

Christian humanists believe that the best elements of classical and Christian
cultures should be combined for example, classical ideals of calmness, stoical
patience, and broad-mindedness with Christian virtues of love, faith, and hope

Northern humanists were impatient with Scholastic philosophy and believed it
was capable of improvement through education, which would lead to peaty and
an ethical way of life

Works of French priest Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples attempted to apply humanistic
learning to religious problems and wrote a solid education in the Scriptures would
increase piety and raise the level of behavior in the Christian society

Englishman Thomas More towered above other figures in sixteenth-century
English social and intellectual history (Utopia written in 1516)

Utopia describes an ideal socialistic community on an island somewhere where
children receive a good education, primarily in the Greco-Roman classics, and
learning does not cease with maturity, for the goal of all education is to develop
rational faculties; adults divide their days equally between manual labor or
business pursuits and activities

Because the profits from business and property are held strictly in common, there
is absolute social equality and the citizens lead an ideal existence living by
reason

Society’s flawed institutions were responsible for corruption and war

More, the key to improvement and reform of the individual was reform of the
social institutions that molded the individual

Better known by contemporaries was Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus of
Rotterdam

Two fundamental themes run through all of Erasmus’s scholarly work

Education is the means to reform, the key to moral and intellectual improvement;
the core of education ought to be study of the Bible and the classics

“The philosophy of Christ” -- Christianity is an inner attitude of the heart of spirit;
Christianity is not formalism, special ceremonies, or law. Christianity is Christ—is
life and what he said and did, not what theologians have written (the Sermon on
the Mount, for Erasmus, expresses the heart of the Christian message)

French humanist Francois Rabelais was convinced that “laughter is the essence
of manhood”

Rabelais combined the Renaissance zest for life and enjoyment of pleasure with
a classical insistence on the cultivation of the body and the mind

Jan van Eyck, one of the earliest artists to use oil-based paints successfully,
shows the Flemish love for detail in paintings such asGhent
Altarpiece or Giovanni Arnofini and his Bride, the effect is great realism and
remarkable attention to human personality

A quasi-spiritual aura likewise infuses architectural monuments in the north from
shrines by the northern architecture was little influenced by the classical revival

Sheriffs, inquests, juries, circuit judges, professional bureaucracies, and
representative assemblies all trace their origins to the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries

The resurgent power of feudal nobilities weakened the centralizing work begun
earlier

Rulers began the work of reducing violence, curbing unruly nobles and
troublesome elements, and establishing domestic order

Dictators and oligarchs of the Italian city-states preferred to be secure, rather
than loved

These monarchs were new in that they invested kingship with a strong sense of
royal authority and national purpose; they stressed that monarchy was the one
institution that linked all classes and peoples within definite territorial boundaries

These monarchs ruthlessly suppressed opposition and rebellion, especially from
the noble

They seized the maxim of the Justinian Code, “what pleases the prince has the
force of the law” and rulers tended to rely on middle-class civil servants

With tax revenues, medieval rulers had built armies to crush feudal anarchy

The Hundred Years’ War left France badly divided, drastically depopulated,
commercially ruined, and agriculturally weak under the control of Charles VII

Charles reconciled the Burgundians and Armagnacs, who had been waging civil
war for thirty years and by 1453, the French armies had almost completely driven
out the English

Charles reorganized the royal council, giving more influence to the middle-class
men and strengthened royal finances with taxes such as those on salt and land

Charles created the first permanent royal army by establishing regular
cavalry/archers

Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, asserting the superiority of a general council
over the papacy, giving the French crown major control over the appointment of
bishops and depriving the pope of French ecclesiastical revenues (Gallican
liberties)

Charles’s son Louis XI (“Spider King”) promoted new industries, such as silk
weaving and welcomed tradesmen and foreign craftsmen, he entered into
commercial treaties

With the army Louis stopped aristocratic brigandage and slowly cut into urban
independence (goal of expanding royal authority and unifying the kingdom)

On the timely death of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, France gained the
territory and the extinction of the house of Anjou France gained Anjou, Bar,
Maine, and Provence

Louis was thought to be typical of the new monarchs in his reliance on finances
supplied by the middle classes to fight feudal nobility

Francis I and Pope Leo X formed a new treaty, the Concordat of Bolonga, in
1516

The treaty canceled the Pragmatic Sanction’s superiority of the general council
over the papacy and approved the pope’s right to receive the income of new
bishops and abbots; in return, Leo X recognized the French ruler’s right to select
French bishops and abbots

Population decimated by the Black Death, continued to decline in England

Henry V was dependent on the feudal magnates who controlled the royal
council/Parliament

Henry V’s death gave the barons a perfect opportunity to entrench their power
and between 1455 and 1471, the ducal houses of York and Lancaster waged
civil war, commonly called the Wars of the Roses (York -- white and Lancastrians
– red)

The war hurt trade, agriculture, and domestic industry

Edward IV began establishing domestic tranquility and defeated the Lancastrian
forces and began to reconstruct the monarchy and consolidate royal power after
1471

Edward, a brother Richard III, and Henry VII of the Welsh house of Tudor worked
to restore royal prestige, to crush the power of the nobility, and to establish order
and law at local level

All three rulers used methods that Machiavelli would have praised -ruthlessness, efficiency, and secrecy

The Parliament had been the arena where nobles exerted their power and
because the monarchy was dependent on the Lords and the Commons for
revenue, the king had to call Parliament and he lived on his own financial
resources

Edward conducted foreign policy on the basis of diplomacy avoiding expensive
wars

Henry VII used these assemblies primarily to confirm laws and Parliament
remained the highest court in the land and a statute approved there by the lords,
bishops, and Commons gave the appearance of broad national support plus
thorough judicial authority

The center of royal authority was the royal council which handled any business
the king put before it -- executive, legislative or judicial

The council also prepared laws for parliamentary ratification

Henry VII set up the court of Star Chamber to prevent aristocratic interference in
the administration of justice and to combat fur-collar criminal activity

Unlike Spain/France, England had no standing army or professional civil service
bureaucracy

The Tudors won the support of the influential upper middle class because the
Crown linked government policy with the interests of that class

Henry VII rebuilt the monarchy and encouraged the cloth industry and merchant
marine

Henry VII crushed an invasion from Ireland and secured peace with Scotland

He left a country at peace both domestically and internationally, a substantially
augmented treasury, and the dignity and role of the royal majesty much
enhanced

The central theme in the history of medieval Spain was disunity and plurality

The centuries-long reconquista -- the attempts of northern Christian kingdoms to
control the entire peninsula -- had both military and religious objectives:
expulsion or conversion of the Arabs and Jews and political control of the south

The wedding in 1469 of Isabella, heiress of Castile and Ferdinand, heir of Aragon
was the final major step in the unification and Christianization of Spain

Although Ferdinand and Isabella pursued a common foreign policy, Spain under
their rule remained a loose confederation of separate states

Each kingdom continued to maintain its parliament, laws, systems of coinage &
taxation

To curb rebellious and warring aristocracy, they revived an old medieval
institution: the hermandades, or “brotherhood,” which were popular groups in the
towns given the authority to act both as local police forces and judicial tribunals

They also restructured the royal council in which aristocrats and great territorial
magnates were rigorously excluded; thus the influence of the nobility on state
policy was reduced

Thus, executive, judicial, and legislative power was under the monarchy

The council, people of middle-class background, supervised the local authorities

Through a diplomatic alliance with the Spanish pope Alexander VI, the Spanish
monarchs secured the right to appoint bishops and because of this the monarch
could influence ecclesiastical policy, wealth, and military resources

Revenues from church estates could raise an army to continue the reconquista

Granada in the south was incorporated into the Spanish kingdom and in 1512,
Ferdinand conquered Navarre in the north

Although the Arabs had been defeated, there still remained a sizable amount of
Jews

Jews had played a decisive role in the economic and intellectual life of several of
the Spanish kingdoms

Anti-Semitic riots and pogroms in the late fourteenth century led many Jews to
convert; they were called conversos

At first, Isabella and Ferdinand continued the policy of royal toleration but many
conversos reverted back to their faith of their ancestors and Ferdinand and
Isabella secure Rome’s permission to revive the Inquisition, a medieval judicial
procedure for heretic punishment

The Spanish Inquisition commonly applied torture to extract confessions

Shortly after the reduction of the Moorish stronghold at Granada in 1492, Isabella
and Ferdinand issued an edict expelling all practicing Jews from Spain (150,000
out of 200,000)

Absolute religious orthodoxy and purity of blood (untainted by Jews or Muslims)
served as the theoretical foundation of the Spanish national state

When Charles’s son Philip II united Portugal to the Spanish crown in 1580, the
Iberian Peninsula was at last politically united
Chapter 14: Reform an Renewal in the Christian
Church
1. Introduction
1. The Christian humanists of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—
More, Erasmus, Colet, and Lefevre d’Etaples—urged reform of the church
on the pattern of the early church, primarily through educational and social
change
2. The need for reform of the individual Christian and of the institutional church
is central to the Christian faith (new -- criticism of educated lay people,
religious needs not met)
2. The Condition of the Church
1. Introduction
1. Papal conflict with German emperor Frederick II, Babylonian Captivity
and Great Schism badly damaged the prestige of church leaders
2. Humanists of Italy and Christian humanists denounced corruption in the
church
3. “We Italians are irreligious and corrupt above others, because the
Church and her representatives set us the worst example.” —
Machiavelli
2. Signs of Disorder
1. Clergy identified religion with life injecting religious symbols and
practices
2. In the early sixteenth century, critics of the church concentrated their
attacks on:
1. Clerical immorality: many priests had concubines and reports of
neglect of the rule of celibacy such as drunkenness, gambling, and
indulgence in fancy dress
2. Clerical ignorance: many priests could barely read and write but
clerical educational standards in the early sixteenth century
improved
3. Clerical absenteeism and pluralism: many clerics held several
benefices (offices) at the same time but rarely visited them and
even less, performed responsibilities – instead they collected
revenues and hired a poor priest paying him a fraction
4. Italian officials in the papal curia held benefices in England, Spain,
and Germany, and provoked charges, by the critics, of nationalistic
resentment
3. Because church officials served their monarchs, those officials were
allowed to govern the church (councilors, diplomats, treasury officials,
chancellors, viceroys)
1. In most countries except England, members of the nobility occupied
the highest church positions (popes of the period 1450-1550 lived
as secular princes)
3. Signs of Vitality
1. In Holland beginning in the late fourteenth century, “Brethren of the
Common Life” lived simply while carrying out the Gospel teaching of
feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, and preparing
devout candidates for priesthood
2. “Oratories of Divine Love in Italy” – oratories: groups of priests living in
communities who worked to revive the church through prayer and
preaching
3. Europeans in the early 1500s remained pious and loyal to the Roman
Catholic church
4. Pope Julius II summoned an ecumenical council to discuss Church
reform 1512-1517
1. Council recommended higher standards for education f the clergy
and instruction
2. Bishops placed responsibility of eliminating bureaucratic corruption
on papacy
3. Martin Luther and the Birth of Protestantism
1. Introduction
1. German Augustinian friar, Martin Luther launched the Protestant
Reformation
2. Luther of the sixteenth century articulated the widespread desire for
reform of the Christian church and a deep yearning for salvation
2. Luther’s Early Years
1. Martin Luther was born at Eisleben in Saxony and attended the
university of Erfurt
2. Luther became a friar but had terrible anxieties about sin and worried
continually about his salvation, and later believed salvation comes
through simple faith in Christ
3. The Ninety-five Theses
1. The twenty-seven-year-old archbishop of Magdeburg, Albert, was also
the administrator of the see of Halberstadt and had been appointed
archbishop of Mainz to hold these offices at the same time required
papal dispensation
2. Pope Leo X needing money to continue construction of Saint Peter’s
Basilica, collected money from Archbishop Albert who had borrowed
money from the Fuggers and Leo X authorized Archbishop Albert to sell
indulgences in Germany to repay
1. Indulgence: in order to be reconciled to God, the sinner must
confess his or her sins to a priest and do the penance assigned
2. Doctrine of indulgence: God is merciful, but just, Christ and the
saints establish ed a “treasury of merits,” which they can draw, and
third, the church has the authority to grant sinners the spiritual
benefits of those merits
3. Later, people believed that an indulgence secured total remission
penalties of sin
3. Archbishop Albert hired Dominican friar John Tetzel to sell the
indulgences and soon men and women could buyindulgences not only
for themselves but also for deceased parents, relatives, or friends
4. Luther, on the eve of All Saints’ Day, October 31, 1517, attached to the
door of the church at Wittenberg Castle a list of ninety-five theses
(propositions) on indulgences
1. Luther firmly rejected the notion that salvation could be achieved by
indulgences and some of the theses challenged the pope’s power
to grant such indulgences and others criticized the papal wealth
2. The theses were soon translated, printed, and read throughout the
empire and when Luther was questioned, he rested his
fundamental argument on the principle that there was no biblical
basis for indulgences
3. In 1519, he publicly challenged the authority of the Pope and the
church council and the papacy responded by giving him two
months or be excommunicated
4. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V declared him an outlaw of the
empire and denied legal protection, but the Duke Frederick of
Saxony protected him
4. Protestant Thought
1. Between 1520 and 1530, Luther worked out the basic theological tenets
that became the articles of faith for his new church and for all the
Protestant groups
1. Protestant derives from the protest drawn up by a small group of
reforming German princes at the Diet of Speyer in 1529
2. Protestant first meant “Lutheran” but eventually meant all nonCatholic Christians
2. Luther provided new answers to four old, basic theological issues
1. How is a person to be saved? -- salvation comes by faith alone
2. Where does religious authority reside? -- authority rests in the Word
of God as revealed in the Bible alone and as interpreted by an
individual’s conscience
3. What is the church? -- re-emphasized the Catholic teaching that the
church consists of the entire community of Christian believers
4. What is the highest form of Christian life? -- all vocations have
equal merit, whether ecclesiastical or secular, and that every
person should serve God in his or her individual calling
3. Whereas Catholic doctrine held that there are seven sacraments, Luther
believed that the Scriptures support only three sacraments—baptism,
penance, and the Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper
1. Catholic Church held transubstantiation -- bread and wine because
the actually body and blood of Christ, who is then fully present in
the bread and wine
2. Luther defined consubstantiation -- belief that after consecration the
bread and wine undergo a spiritual change whereby Christ is really
present but food same
3. Swiss reformed Ulrich Zwingli affirmed that the Lord’s Supper is
a memorial
4. John Calvin believed Luther’s consubstantiation (consumed
spiritually)
5. The Social Impact of Luther’s Beliefs
1. Two significant late medieval developments prepared the way for
Luther’s ideas
1. Since the fifteenth century, city governments had expressed
resentment at clerical privileges and immunities
2. Critics of the late medieval church condemned the irregularity and
poor quality of the sermons -- town burghers established
preacherships to support good preachers
2. Luther in his 1520 treatise On Christian Liberty: “A Christian man is the
most free lord of all and subject to none.” (words contributed to social
unrest)
3. After crop failures in 1523 and 1524, Swabian peasants demanded an
end to death taxes, new rents, and noble seizure of village common
lands forming the Twelve Articles, which Luther who wanted to prevent
rebellion, supported by warned that nothing justified the use of armed
force
4. Revolts soon broke out using Luther’s writings as their slogans but he
had written of the “freedom” of the Christian, but he had meant the
freedom to obey the Word of God, for in sin men and women lose their
freedom and break their God relationship
5. Lutheranism came to exalt the state and subordinate church to the
secular rulers
6. Many disciplines attributed Luther’s fame and success to the invention
of the printing press, which rapidly reproduced and made known his
ideas (incredible skill with language attracted humanists and educated
people)
7. Hymns, psalms, and Luther’s two catechisms, compendiums of basic
religious know-ledge, also show the power of language in spreading the
ideals of the Reformation
8. Luther’s claim that all vocations are equal, Protestant rejection of
celibacy and monasticism, the insistence that all men and women
should read the Bible, and Luther’s acceptance of sexual desire in
marriage lock all contributed to some improvement in women’s
circumstances during the Middle Ages
4. Germany and the Protestant Reformation
1. Introduction
1. The Golden Bull of 1356 legalized what had long existed—government
by an aristocratic federation and each of the seven electors gained
virtual sovereignty
2. Against this background of decentralization and strong local power,
Martin Luther launched a movement to reform the church
2. The Rise of the Habsburg Dynasty
1. In 1477, the marriage of Maximilian I of the house of Habsburg and
Mary of Burgundy united the Austrian empire making the family the
strongest in Germany
2. The Habsburg-Burgundian marriage angered the French, who
considered Burgundy part of French territory and had lusted after
Burgundian Netherlands for centuries
3. From his father, Habsburg Charles V inherited Spain, Spanish
dominions in Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Naples, Habsburg lands in
Austria, southern Germany, the Low Countries, and Franche-Comte in
east-central France
4. In 1519, Charles V secured Holy Roman Emperor and Germans urged
placing the administration in the hands of an imperial council
5. Charles continued the Burgundian policy that German revenues and
German troops were subordinated to the needs of other parts of the
empire, first Burgundy
3. The Political Impact of Luther’s Beliefs
1. Luther’s appeal to German patriotism gained him strong support, and
national feeling influenced many princes indifferent to the complexities
of the religious issues
2. The church in Germany possessed great wealth and rejection of Roman
Catholicism and adoption of Protestantism would mean the legal
confiscation of land
3. Charles V was a vigorous defender of Catholicism but he lacked the
material resources to oppose Protestantism and he was preoccupied
with gaining land
4. Five times between 1521 and 1555, Charles V went to war with the
Valois kings of France (French supported Lutheran princes within
Germany)
5. In the Peace of Augsburg (1555) accepted religious status quo in which
each prince of Germany was permitted to determine the religion of his
territory
5. The Growth of the Protestant Reformation
1. Introduction
1. By 1555 much of northern Europe had broken with the Roman Catholic
church and the most significant new form of Protestantism was
Calvinism
2. Calvinism
1. Calvin’s theological writings profoundly influenced the social thought
and attitudes
2. In 1533 he experienced a religious crisis, in which he converted to
Protestantism
3. Convinced that God selects certain people to do his work, Calvin
believed that God had specifically called to reform the church (The
Institutes of the Christian Religion)
1. The cornerstone of Calvin’s theology was his belief in the absolute
sovereignty and omnipotence of God and the total weakness of
humanity
2. Predestination: the eternal decree of God, by which he has
determined in himself, what he would have become of every
individual of mankind (can do nothing)
3. Rather than considering fatalism, the Calvinist believed in the
redemptive work of Christ and was confident that God had saved
him or her (great struggle)
4. Calvin aroused Genevans to a high standard of morality and had two
remarkable assets: complete mastery of the Scriptures and exceptional
fluency in French
1. In Geneva, the Genevan Consistory consisted of twelve laymen
plus the Company of Pastors headed by Calvin and absence from
sermons, criticism of ministers, dancing, card playing, family
quarrels, and heavy drinking banned
2. Between 1542 and 1546 alone, 67 people were banished and 58
were executed including Spanish humanist Michael Servetus (no
scriptural basis for the Trinity, rejected child baptism and insisted a
person under 20 cannot commit a mortal sin
5. Calvinism because force in international Protestantism and Calvinist
ethic of “calling” dignified all work with a religious aspect (aggressive,
vigorous activities)
3. The Anabaptists
1. Anabaptists (means “to baptize again” and described as “left wing of the
Reform-ation”) believed in adult baptism, that children could not be
baptized, religious tolerance, separation of church and state, sharing of
property, and female ministers
2. They wanted to rebaptize believers who had been baptized as children
3. Zwingli, Luther, Calvin, and Catholics saw the separation of church and
state as leading ultimately to the complete secularization of society and
banished them.
4. The English Reformation
1. With copies of English humanist William Tyndale’s English Bible and
some of Luther’s ideas, the Lollards represented the ideal of “a
personal, scriptural, non-sacramental, and lay-dominated religions
(Protestant doctrines)
2. Traditional Catholicism exerted strong, diverse, and vigorous hold over
the imagination and loyalty of the people
3. In 1527, English King Henry VIII, having fallen love with Anne Boleyn,
wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon and used series of Acts to
reform England
1. The Act in Restraint of Appeals (permanent break from Rome)
declared the king to be the supreme sovereign in England and
forbade judicial appeals to the papacy
2. The Act of Submission of the Clergy required churchmen to submit
to the king and forbade the publication of ecclesiastical laws without
royal permission
3. The Supremacy Act declared the king the supreme head of the
Church of England
4. Appeals and Supremacy Acts led to heated debate in the House of
Commons and those such as John Fisher, bishop of Rochester and
Thomas More were beheaded
4. When Anne Boleyn failed twice to produce a male child, Henry VIII
charged her with adulterous incest and in 1536 had her beheaded
5. Between 1535 and 1539, under influence of his chief minister, Thomas
Cromwell, dissolved the English monasteries selling the land to the
middle and upper classes and the proceeds were then spent on war
6. In 1536 popular opposition in the north to the religious changes led to
the Pilgrimage of Grace, a massive multiclass rebellion that was the
largest in English history
7. The nationalization of the church and the dissolution of the monasteries
led to important changes in government administration (under Crown’s
jurisdiction)
8. Rule shifted from Edward VI to Mary Tudor (sharp move back to
Catholicism) to Elizabeth whose subjects wanted a Roman Catholic
ruler and the ones would wanted all Catholic elements in the Church of
England eliminated (“purify” -- “Puritans”)
5. The Establishment of the Church of Scotland
1. Kings James V and his daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, staunch
Catholics and close allies of Catholic France, opposed reform while
Scottish nobles supported reform
2. John Knox, a minister who had studied in Geneva with Calvin,
persuaded the Scottish parliament to set up the Presbyterian Church of
Scotland which was strictly Calvinist in doctrine (presbyters, or minister,
not bishops, governed them)
6. Protestantism in Ireland
1. To the ancient Irish hatred of English political and commercial
exploitation, the Reformation added the bitter antagonism of religion
2. The Irish parliament severed the church from Rome making the English
king sovereign over ecclesiastical organization and practice (remained
Roman Catholic)
7. Lutheranism in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
1. In Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, the monarchies led in the religious
Reformation
2. Lutheranism state churches spread out and consolidation of Swedish
monarchy
3. Christian III, king of Denmark and of Norway, secularized church
property and set up a Lutheran church (Denmark adopted Lutheranism
as its state religion)
6. The Catholic and the Counter-Reformations
1. Introduction
1. The Catholic Reformation began before 1517 and sought renewal
basically through the stimulation of a new spiritual fervor
2. The Counter-Reformation started in the 1540s as a reaction to the rise
and spread of Protestantism and involved Catholic efforts to convince or
coerce heretics to return
2. The Slowness of Institutional Reform
1. The spiritual leaders of the Western church moved so slowly because of
preoccupation with the Habsburg-Valois wars and the difficulty of
reforming so complicated a bureaucracy as the Roman curia
3. The Council of Trent
1. Cardinal Farnese, a Roman aristocrat, humanist, and astrologer,
promised he would summon a council and ruled as Pope Paul III
2. The Council of Trent met intermittently and reaffirmed authority of the
Scripture, the Church tradition, seven sacraments, and
transubstantiation
3. The Council of Trent required bishops to live in their land, ended
pluralism, simony, and disallowed the selling of indulgences
4. On marriage, cows had to be exchanged publicly to be considered true
5. The Council of Trent did not meet everyone’s expectations as
reconciliation with Protestantism was not achieved, nor was reform
brought about immediately
4. New Religious Orders
1. One important need: to raise the moral and intellectual level of the
clergy and people
2. The Ursuline order of nuns, founded by Angela Merici attained prestige
for the education of women and combated heresy though Christian
education
3. The Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola, a former Spanish
soldier, resisted the spread of Protestantism, converting Asians and
Latin American Indians to Catholicism, and spreading Christian
education all over Europe (Spiritual Exercises)
1. Members called “Jesuits” and candidates underwent a two-year
novitiate, in contrast to the usual one-year probation then traditional
vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, professed members
vowed “special obedience to the sovereign pontiff regarding
missions”
2. Within Europe, the Jesuits brought southern Germany and much of
eastern Europe back to Catholicism
5. The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office
1. In 1542, Pope Paul III created the Sacred Congregation of the Holy
Office to manage the Roman Inquisition, which operated under the
principles of Roman law
2. The Holy Office published the Index of Prohibited Books, a catalogue of
forbiddens
3. The Inquisition was a committee of six cardinals with authority to
investigate, judge, and punish heretics (also had to power to execute
those heretics)
Chapter 15: The Age of European Expansion
and Religious Wars
1. Discovery, Reconnaissance, and Expansion
1. Introduction
1. Period from 1450, to 1650 called “Age of Discovery, Reconnaissance,
Expansion”
2. Age of Discovery refers to the era’s phenomenal advances in
geographical knowledge and technology (often trial and error)
3. Age of Reconnaissance refers to the fact that much of the geographical
information they had gathered was tentative and not fully understood
4. Age of Expansion refers to the migration of Europeans to other parts of
the world
2. Overseas Exploration and Conquest
1. Outward expansion of Europe began with Viking voyages across the
Atlantic and under Eric the Red and Leif Erickson, the Vikings
discovered Greenland and North America and had settlements in
Iceland, Ireland, England, Normandy, and Sicily
2. Crusades of seventh through thirteenth centuries also explored
continent
3. By 1450, a new threat appeared in the East—the Ottoman Turks
1. Combining excellent military strategy with efficient administration of
their conquered territories the Turks controlled most of Asia Minor
2. The Muslim Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mohammed II captured
Constantinople in 1453, and by the early sixteenth century
controlled the eastern Mediterranean
4. Political centralization in Spain, France, and England explained the
expansion and with the more united Spain, the Spanish monarchy was
in a position to support foreign ventures; it could bear the costs and
dangers of exploration
5. Portugal, on the southwestern edge of the continent, started European
expansion
1. The objectives of Portuguese policy included the historic Iberian
crusade to Christianize Muslims and to find gold, an overseas route
to the spice markets of India, and the mythical Christian ruler of
Ethiopia, Prester John
2. Prince Henry (“the Navigator” because of the annual expeditions he
sent down the western coast of Africa) reached Guinea and
established trading posts and forts reaching all the way to Timbuktu
(gold used to come from West Africa)
3. Portuguese pushed to sail around Africa and Vasco da Gama
reached India in his 1497-1499 expedition and returned to Lisbon
loaded with Indian wears
4. King Manuel dispatched Pedro Alvares Cabral with Diaz claiming
the coast of Brazil in South American in 1500 and then proceeded
around the Cape of Good Hope and returned with six spice-laded
vessels (entrance port of Asian Goods)
5. Muslims had controlled the rich spice trade of the Indian Ocean, but
Portuguese commercial activities were accompanied by the
destruction or seizure of strategic Muslim coastal forts (Alfonso de
Albuquerque governor of India)
6. Christopher Columbus had secured Spanish support for an expedition
to the East and landing in October 1492, he landed on an island he
named “San Salvador”
3. Technological Stimuli to Exploration
1. The development of the large cannon made of iron and bronze and
placing them on heavy hulling sailing vessels gave power to the
European expansion
2. Improved techniques of shipbuilding and instrumental development for
exploration
1. Galleys: narrow, open boats propelled largely by manpower
2. Caravel: small, light, three-mast sailing ship (wind power for
manpower)
3. The magnetic compass enabled sailors to determine their
direction/position at sea
4. Astrolobe: instrument used to determine the altitude of the sun and
other celestial bodies permitted mariners to plot their latitude and
improved maps and sea charts
4. The Explorer’s Motives
1. The expansion of Europe was not motivated by overpopulation (Black
Death)
2. The desire to Christianize Muslims and pagans played a central role in
expansion
3. After the reconsquista, enterprising young men of the Spanish upper
classes (nobles and merchants) found their economic and political
opportunities severely limited
4. Government sponsorship and encouragement of exploration accounted
for voyages because mariners and explorers could not as private
individuals afford the sum
1. Strong financial support of Prince Henry the Navigator led to
Portugal’s success
2. The Dutch in the seventeenth century through such governmentsponsored trading companies as the Dutch East India Company
reaped enormous wealth
3. Henry VII’s lack of interest in exploration delayed English
expansion
5. Renaissance curiosity about the physical universe, the desire to know
more about the geography and people of the world
6. The basic reason for European exploration and expansion was the
quest for material profit and spices (nutmeg, mace, ginger, cinnamon,
and pepper added flavor and variety) were another important incentive
to voyages of discovery
5. The Problem of Christopher Columbus
1. Columbus enslaved and killed the Indians he encountered, he was an
ineffective governor of Spain’s Caribbean colony, and he did not
discover the continent
2. The central feature of Christopher Columbus is that he was a deeply
religious man and likely witnessed the Spanish reconquest of Granada
(believed voyage was linked)
3. Columbus was knowledgeable about the sea
1. Columbus’s successful thirty-three-day voyage to the Caribbean
2. Columbus aimed to find a direct sea route to Asia and India
3. Described the Caribbean as a peaceful garden of Eden but
returned in 1496, forcibly subjugated the island of Hispaniola,
enslaving the Indians, and laid the basis for a system of land grants
tied to the Indian’s labor service
2. Later Explorers
1. Introduction
1. News of Columbus’s first voyage rapidly spread across Europe and his
letter, titled Mundus Novus, was the first document to describe America
as a separate continent
2. The Caribbean islands—the West Indies—represented to missionaries
as millions of Indian natives for conversion to Christianity (forced labor
and diseases brought by Europeans killed off huge populations of native
people)
3. Search for precious metals determined the direction of Spanish
exploration and expansion into South America
4. Under Spanish ruler Charles V, Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the
Cape Horn, entered the Pacific Ocean, and although he died, his crew
eventually circumnavigated
5. Hernando Cortez sailed to Mexico from Hispaniola conquering the Aztec
Empire of Central Mexico by taking captive emperor Montezuma then
founding Mexico city as the new capital (1522) and Francisco
conquered Inca Empire of the Andes (1536)
6. Between 1525 and 1575, wealth of Americas poured into Spanish port
of Seville and the Portuguese capital Lisbon but Flemish city of
Antwerp, controlled by the Spanish Habsburgs, served as commercial
and financial capital of the entire European world
7. The Dutch East India Company became the cornerstone of Dutch
imperialism by expelling the Portuguese from the East Indian islands
and had successfully intruded on the Spanish possessions in the
Americas
8. In 1497, John Cabot of England explored the northeast coast of
Americas founding Newfoundland and in mid 1530s, Frenchman
Jacques Cartier explored Saint Lawrence region of Canada
2. The Economic Effects of Spain’s Discoveries in the New World
1. The sixteenth century has often been called the “Golden Century” of
Spain as influ-ence of Spain rested largely on the influx of precious
metals from the New World
2. Spain was experiencing a steady population increase creating a sharp
rise in demand for foods/goods but economy could not meet the new
demands and inflation occurred
3. No direct correlation between silver imports and inflation rates but the
government declared bankruptcy several times and by the 17th century
the economy had failed
3. Colonial Administration
1. According to the Spanish theory of absolutism, the Crown was entitled
to exercise full authority over all imperial lands and the Crown divided its
New World territories into four viceroyalties (administrative divisions of
New Spain, Peru, New Granada)
2. Crown claimed the quinto, one-fifth of all precious metals mined in
South America
3. Portuguese governed their colony of Brazil in a similar manner (Local
officials called corregidores held judicial and military powers)
3. Politics, Religion, and War
1. Introduction
1. In 1559, France and Spain signed the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis,
which ended the Habsburg-Valois Wars and France had to
acknowledge Spanish dominancy in Italy
2. Before 1559, Spain and France had fought for control of Italy and after
1559, the two Catholic powers aimed their guns at Protestantism
3. Warfare of the 16th and 17th centuries was different from earlier wars
1. Armies were larger and more expensive (government reorganized
administration)
2. Use of gunpowder altered the nature of war (killing and wounding
from a distance) and popular attitudes toward war (not an ennobling
process)
4. Late-sixteenth-century conflicts fundamentally tested the medieval ideal
of a unified Christian society governed by one political ruler, the
emperor, to whom all rules were theoretically subordinate, and one
church, to which all people belonged
2. The Origins of Difficulties in France (1515-1559)
1. The population losses caused by the plague and the disorders
accompanying the Hundred Years’ War created such a labor shortage
that serfdom had disappeared
2. Francis I and his son Henry II governed through small but effective
councils
3. In 1539, Francis issued an ordinance that placed the whole of France
under the juris-diction of the royal courts and taille, a tax on land,
provided strength to monarchy
4. The Habsburg-Valois Wars, waged through the first half of the sixteenth
century, were financed by Francis I selling public offices (tax exempt
class called the “nobility of the robe” -- beyond jurisdiction of crown)
5. Francis I worked out a treaty with the papacy called the Concordat of
Bologna in which Francis gained the power to appoint bishops and
abbots in France giving the monarchy money in return, Francis agreed
to recognize the supremacy of the papacy over a universal council -main reason why France did not later become Protestant
6. Calvinism spread across France even under government bans and
massive burnings
3. Religious Riots and Civil War in France (1559-1589)
1. French monarchs were unstable under the sons of Henry II and almost
half of the French nobility became Calvinist (demonstrating
independence from central power)
2. Among the upper classes the Catholic-Calvinist conflict, the main
struggle was for power but among the lower classes, the issue was
more about religion
3. On August 24, 1572, which would later become known as Saint
Bartholomew’s Day, Catholics slaughtered thousands of Huguenots,
French Calvinists
4. The Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre launched the War of the Three
Henrys, a civil conflict between Catholic Henry of Guise (wanted “Holy
League,” destroy Calvinism, and replacement of Henry III), King Henry
III, and the Protestant Henry of Navarre, a politique who became Henry
IV
1. Politiques: small group of Catholic moderates who believed that
only the restoration of strong monarchy could reverse the trend
toward collapse
2. Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes, protecting the Huguenots
4. The Netherlands Under Charles V
1. The Netherlands—pivot around which European money, diplomacy and
war revolved
2. Emperor Charles V had inherited the seventeen provinces that compose
present-day Belgium and Holland and was a center of commerce
(Antwerp—greatest $ market)
3. As in the Low Countries, corruption in the Roman church and the critical
spirit of the Renaissance provoked pressure for reform
4. In 1556, Charles V abdicated, dividing his territories between his
brother, Ferdinand, who received Austria and the Holy Roman Empire,
and his son Philip (Spain, Low Countries, Milan, kingdom of Sicily, and
the Spanish possessions in the Americas)
5. The Revolt of the Netherlands (1566-1587)
1. By 1560s, Calvinism spread and appealed to the middle classes
because of its intellectual seriousness, moral gravity, and emphasis on
any form of labor well done
2. Calvinism took deep root among the merchants and financiers in the
northern provinces and working-class people also converted partly to
please their employers
3. In 1559, Philip II appointed his half-sister Margaret as regent of the
Netherlands who introduced the Inquisition to combat Calvinism and
raised taxes
4. In August 1566, Calvinists rampaged through the Low Countries aimed
attacks at religious images and destroyed churches as well as burning
irreplaceable libraries
5. Philip II sent twenty thousand Spanish troops under the duke of Alva,
opened his own tribunal (“Council of Blood”), Alva resolved the financial
crisis by levying a 10 % sales tax on every transaction, and civil war
raged between 1568 and 1578
6. In 1576, the seventeen provinces united under the leadership of Prince
William of Orange (“the Silent”) and in 1578 Philip II sent his nephew
Alexander Farnese
7. The ten southern provinces the Spanish were able to control became
Belgium and the seven northern provinces, led by Holland, formed the
Union of Utrecht and in 1581, declared their independence from Spain
(United Provinces of the Netherlands)
8. Spain repeatedly invaded the United Provinces who repeatedly asked
the Protestant queen of England, Elizabeth, for assistance and three
developments forced her hand
1. Wars in the Low Countries badly hurt the English economy (English
wool)
2. The murder of William the silent in July 1584 eliminated a great
Protestant leader but the chief military check on the Farnese
advance
3. Collapse of Antwerp appeared to signal a Catholic sweep through
the Netherlands
6. Philip II and the Spanish Armada
1. Philip II considered himself the international defender of Catholicism
and the heir to the medieval imperial power and hoping to keep England
with the Catholic church when his wife, Mary Tudor, died, Philip asked
Elizabeth to marry him but she refused
2. Pope Sixtus V promised to pay Philip one million gold ducats the
moment Spanish troops landed in England and Philip moved to attack
England
3. On May 9, 1588, la felicissima armada “the most fortunate fleet,” sailed
from the Lisbon harbor with 130 vessels carrying over thirty thousand
men and were met by an English fleet of about 150 ships in the Channel
4. English fleet was composed of smaller, faster, more maneuverable
ships, many which had greater firing power, storms and squalls, spoiled
food and rank water, and inadequate Spanish ammunition, the English
fleet defeated this “Spanish Armada” thus preventing Philip from forcing
England back into the Catholic Church
7. The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)
1. The Augsburg settlement, in recognizing the independent power of the
German princes, further undermined any authority of the central
government
1. Lutherans, in violation of the Peace of Augsburg, were steadily
acquiring German bishoprics and because the Augsburg settlement
had only pertained to Lutheranism and Catholicism, Calvinists
ignored it and converted several princes
2. Lutheran princes formed the Protestant Union (1608) and the
Catholics formed the Catholic League (1609) (each alliance
determined to stop spread of the other)
2. Ferdinand I had inherited the imperial title and the Habsburg lands in
central Europe, including Austria and his Catholic cousin, Ferdinand of
Styria secured election as king of Bohemia, a title that gave him
jurisdiction over states such as Bohemia
1. When Ferdinand proceeded to close some Protestant churches, the
heavily Protestant Estates of Bohemia protested
2. On May 23, 1618, Protestants hurled two of Ferdinand’s officials
from a castle window in Prague, falling 70 feet, but surviving
(Catholics claimed that angels had caught them) and called
the “Defenestration of Prague”, this event marked the beginning of
the Thirty Year’s War (1618-1648)
3. Historians traditionally divide the war into four phases -1. The first, or Bohemian phase was characterized by civil war in
Bohemia between the Catholic League, led by Ferdinand, and the
Protestant Union, headed by Prince Frederick of the Palatinate
(held power until 1529 when defeated at Battle of the White
Mountains by Ferdinand, who had become Holy Roman emperor)
2. The second, or Danish, phase called so because of the
participation of King Christian IV of Denmark, the ineffective leader
of the Protestant cause and the Catholic imperial army led by Albert
of Wallenstein gained many victories
3. The Jesuits persuaded the emperor to issue the Edict of
Restitution, whereby all Catholic land lost to Protestantism since
1552 were to be allowed to be restored and only Catholics and
Lutherans (not Calvinists) were allowed to practice
4. The third, or Swedish, phase of the war began with the arrival in
Germany of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus intervening to
support the Protestants and victories ended Habsburg ambition of
uniting all the German states
5. The death of Adolphus and defeat of the Swedes at the Battle of
Nordlingen in 1634 prompted the French to enter the war on the
side of the Protestants bringing about the French, or international,
phase of the Thirty Years’ War
4. Finally in October 1648, peace was achieved and treaties signed called
the “Peace of Westphalia” making a turning point in European political,
religious and social history
1. Treaties recognized the sovereign, independent authority of the
German princes with complete power and the Holy Roman Empire
as a real state was destroyed
2. The independence of the United Provinces of the Netherlands,
France gained on eastern frontiers, denied the Pope the right to
intervene in German religious affairs, and divided up Germany
among Lutheran, Catholic and Calvinist princes
8. Germany After the Thirty Years’ War
1. The Thirty Years’ War was a disaster for the German economy and
society, probably the most destructive event in German history before
the twentieth century
2. Population losses due to military actions, disease, and leaving of
refugees
3. Economy suffered and agricultural areas suffered catastrophically
4. Changing Attitudes
1. Introduction
1. The clash of traditional religious and geographical beliefs with the new
knowledge provided by explorers bred confusion, uncertainty, and
insecurity
2. The exploration of new continents reflected deep curiosity and broad
intelligence, yet Europeans believed in witches and burned thousands
at the stake
2. The Status of Women
1. Manuals on marriage described as the husband was obliged to provide
for the material welfare of his wife and children and to rule firmly but
justly. A wife was to be a household manager, mature, and faithful
spouse; rejected the double standard on adultery, believed marriage
should be based on respect and trust -- rejected arranged
2. Catholics viewed marriage as a sacramental union which could not be
dissolved and protestants held that women and men were spiritually
equal and marriage -- contract
3. Protestant and Catholic governments licensed house of prostitution (for
single men)
4. Single women worked in many occupations and professions (worked
with husband)
5. Protestants believed celibacy h ad no scriptural basis and favored
suppression of women’s religious houses and encouraged ex-nuns to
marry
3. The Great European Witch-Hunt
1. Witches were thought to be individuals who could mysteriously injure
other people or animals (old women who made travels on broomsticks
to sabbats or assemblies)
2. Since the pacts with the devil meant the renunciation of God, witchcraft
was considered heresy and persecution reached its peak in the late
16th and 17th centuries in where tens of thousands of witches were
executed
3. Explanations for witch-hunts include explained random misfortunes,
people believed that witches worshipped the devil, persecuting the
nonconformists through charges of witchcraft, view on women by
religion
4. Broad spread of women hatred stemmed from belief that women were
susceptible to the Devil’s evil, and the belief that women were sexually
unquenchable
4. European Slavery and the Origins of American Racism
1. The bubonic plague, famines, and other epidemics created a sever
shortage of agricultural and domestic workers throughout Europe,
encouraging Italian merchants to buy slaves from the West (early slaves
were all white)
2. In 1453, the Ottoman capture of Constantinople halted the flow of white
slaves from the Black Sea region
3. History of slavery tied up with history of the demand for sugar with
Portuguese voyages to West Africa and the occupation of the Canary
and Madeira islands
4. European expansion across the Atlantic led to the economic exploitation
of the Americas and unaccustomed to any form of forced labor, the
Indians died
5. The Spaniards brought in enslaved Africans to work on the sugar crops
and which began the African slave trade in 1518
6. Settles’ beliefs and attitudes toward blacks derived from two basic
sources: Christian theological speculation (primarily), and medieval
Arab views of the peoples of Africa
5. Literature and Art
1. The Essay: Michel de Montaigne
1. Skepticism is a school of thought founded on doubt that total certainty or
definitive knowledge is ever attainable
2. A humanist, he believed that the object of life was to “know thyself,” for
self-knowledge teaches men and women how to live in accordance with
nature and God
3. Montaigne developed a new literary genre, the essay to express his
thoughts and ideas
4. As a skeptic, he rejected the notion that nay single human being knew
the absolute truth and rejected the notion that one culture was better
than any other culture
2. Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature
1. The terms Elizabethan and Jacobean are used to designate the English
music, poetry, prose, and drama of this period (named after rulers
Elizabeth I and her son, James I)
2. The dramas of William Shakespeare and the stately prose of the
Authorized, or King James, Bible marked the Elizabethan and Jacobean
periods as golden age
1. Shakespeare’s plays included Julius Caesar, Pericles, and Antony
and Cleopatra dealing with classical subjects and figures
2. The nine history plays, including Richard II, Richard III, and Henry
IV
3. Tragedies including Hamlet (individuality and moral problems with
revenge), Othello (flaw in character), andMacbeth (exorbitant
ambition) exploring an enormous range of human problems are
open to variety of interpretations
3. Baroque Art and Music
1. The term baroque (may have come from Portuguese for “odd-shaped,
imperfect pearl”) was commonly used by late-eighteenth-century art
critics as an expression of scorn for what they considered an overblown,
unbalanced style
2. In addition to this underlying religious emotionalism, the baroque drew
its sense of drama, motion, and ceaseless striving from the Catholic
Reformation
3. The baroque style spread partly because its tension and bombast spoke
to an agitated age, which was experiencing great violence and
controversy in politics and religion
4. Peter Paul Rubens, the most outstanding and representative of baroque
painters, developed his own rich, sensuous, colorful style, which was
characterized by animated figures, melodramatic contracts, and
monumental size
5. In music, the baroque style reached its culmination with Johann
Sebastian Bach, one of the greatest composers the Western world has
ever produced (organ music combined the baroque spirit of invention,
tension, and emotion in striving)
Chapter 16: Absolutism and Constitutionalism in
Western Europe
1. Absolutism
1. Introduction
1. In the absolutist state, sovereignty is embodied in the person of the ruler
and absolute kings claimed to rule by divine right, (they were
responsible to God alone)
2. Absolute kings secured the cooperation of the nobility, the greatest
threat to monarch
3. The key to the power and success of absolute monarchs lay in how they
solved their financial problems and the absolutist solution was the
creation of new state bureau-cracies that forced taxes ever higher or
devised alternative methods or raising revenue
1. Bureaucracies were posed of career officials
appointed/accountable to the king
2. The key difference between seventeenth-century bureaucracies
and their predecessors was that they served the state as
represented by the king (public or state positions and not supposed
to use their positions for private gain)
4. Absolute monarchs also maintained permanent standing armies (secret
police)
5. Rule of absolute monarchs was not totalitarian
1. Totalitarianism: seeks to direct all facets of a state’s culture—art,
education, religion, the economy, and politics—in the interests of
the state (lacked resources)
2. Resembled totalitarianism in glorification of the state over all other
aspects of the culture and in the use of war and an expansionist
foreign policy to divert attention
2. The Foundations of French Absolutism: Sully and Richelieu
1. The Huguenot-turned-Catholic Henry IV ended the French religious
wars with the Edict of Nantes and with his minister Maximilian de
Bethune, duke of Sully, laid the foundations of later French absolutism
1. Henry lowered the taxes on the overburdened peasantry
2. Sully began to build up the treasury by reviving an annual tax,
the paulette, on people who had purchases judicial and financial
offices who had preciously been exempt from taxation (provided a
specific amount of revenue each year)
3. In twelve years, Henry IV and Sully restored public order in France
and laid the foundations for economic prosperity -- Henry IV
murdered in 1610
2. After the death of Henry IV, Marie de’ Medici headed the government for
the child-king Louis XIII but the feudal nobles and princes of the blood
dominated politics
3. In 1624, Marie de’ Medici secured the appointment of Armand Jean du
Plessis (Cardinal Richelieu) to the council ofministers -- became first
minister of the Crown
1. Richelieu’s policy was the total subordination of all groups and
institutions to the French monarchy and broke up the power of the
nobility by reshuffling the royal council, leveling castles, and
executing aristocratic conspirators against the king
2. He divided France into thirty-two generalites (districts) in each of
which a royal intendant had extensive responsibility for justice,
police, and finances
3. Intendants recruited soldiers for the army, supervised tax collection,
kept an eye on the local nobility, presided over the administration of
local laws, and regulated economic activity
4. Intendants were to use their power to enforce royal orders in the
generalites of their jurisdiction and to weaken the power and
influence of the regional nobility
4. French foreign policy under Richelieu was aimed at the destruction of
the fence of Habsburg territories that surrounded France (factor in
political future of Germany)
5. Richelieu supported foundation of the French Academy and
standardization of French language by the academy of philologists
6. Richelieu and Louis XIII temporarily solved their financial problems by
sharing the money from increased taxation with local elites
7. Jules Mazarin was appointed as the successor of Richelieu and when
Louis XIII died in 1643, a regency headed by Queen Anne of Austria
governed for the child-king Louis XIV and Mazarin became dominant
power in the government
8. Mazarin provoked aristocratic rebellion (frondeurs -- the nobility and
middle class) called the Fronde in 1648 when he proposed new
methods of raising state income
9. Fronde showed the government would have to compromise with the
bureaucrats and social elites, the economy would take years to rebuild,
and Louis XIV decided the only alternative to anarchy was turning to
absolute monarchy
3. The Absolute Monarchy of Louis XIV
1. The reign of Louis XIV (“Sun King”) was the longest in European history
and the French monarchy reached the peak of absolutist development
2. Louis grew up with absolute sense of his royal dignity and he married
Queen Maria Theresa, whom he married as a result of a diplomatic
agreement with Spain
3. Louis XIV achieved constituted collaboration with the nobility rather than
absolute
4. French government rested on the social and political structure of France
and Louis XIV installed his royal court at Versailles that was used to
awe subjects and visiting dignitaries (state policy) -- others constructed
versions of Versailles
5. Beginning in the reign of Louis XIV, French became the language of
polite society and the vehicle of diplomatic exchange
6. Louis XIV separated power from status and grandeur using court
ceremonies, entertainment, spies, and informers to reduce the power of
the nobility
7. Councilors of state came from the recently ennobled or the upper
middle class and chose bourgeois officials because he wanted people
to know by the rank of men who served him that he had no intention of
sharing power with them
4. Financial and Economic Management Under Louis XIV: Colbert
1. Finance was the grave weakness of Louis XIV’s absolutism because the
professional bureaucracy, the court of Versailles, and extensive military
reforms cost money
2. With the rich and prosperous classes exempt, the tax burden fell heavily
on the poor peasants because tax revenues fell short of the
government’s needs
3. Louis XIV named Jean Baptiste Colbert, the controller general of
finances and later came to manage the entire royal administration and
became chief financial minister
1. Mercantilism: collection of governmental policies for the regulation
of economic activities, especially commercial activities, by and for
the state
2. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century economic theory, a nation’s
international power was thought o be base on its wealth,
specifically its gold supply
3. Colbert using his principle theory, insisted that the French sell
abroad and buy nothing back and used subsidies for domestic
industries, tariffs, and policies to attract foreign artisans in order to
make France self-sufficient and to boost exports
4. Colbert’s most important work was the creation of a powerful merchant
marine to transport French goods and promoted colonization of French
territories in N. A.
5. The national economy, however, rested on agriculture (many peasants
emigrated)
5. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
1. The absolutist state also attempted to control religion and in 1685, Louis
XIV evoked the Edict of Nantes because he wanted to pursue “one king,
one law, one faith”
2. In the early years of Louis XIV’s reign, religious liberty was not a popular
policy and the monarchy never intended religious toleration to be
permanent
3. While contemporaries applauded Louis XIV, scholars in the eighteenth
century did not for the negative impart on the economy and foreign
affairs (Huguenots left)
6. French Classicism
1. The art and literature of the age of Louis XIV was termed the “French
classicism,” which imitated the subject matter and style of classical
antiquity, that their work resembled that of Renaissance Italy and that
French art possessed the classical qualities of discipline, balance, and
restraint
2. After Louis’s accession to power, the principles of absolutism molded
the ideals of French classicism; individualism was not allowed, and
artists’ efforts were directed to the glorification of the state as
personified by the king
3. Louis XIV enjoyed music and theater using them as a backdrop for court
ceremonies
1. Nicholas Poussin is considered the finest example of French
classicist painting and was deeply attached to classical antiquity
believing that the highest aim of painting was to represent noble
(The Rape of the Sabine Women)
2. Jean-Baptiste Lully’s orchestral works combined lively animation
with the restrained austerity typical of French classicism (also
composed court ballets)
3. Francois Courperin, whose harpsichord and organ works
possessed the regal grandeur the king loved, and Marc-Antioine
Charpentier (solemn religious music)
4. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was a playwright, stage manager, director,
and actor, produced comedies that exposed the hypocrisies and
follies of society; his contemporary Jean Racine analyzed the
power of love with tragedies
7. Louis XIV’s Wars
1. In 1666 Louis appointed François le Tellier (later marquis de Louvois)
who created a professional army that employed the soldier but the king
himself took command and directly supervised all aspects and details of
military affairs
2. Louvois used several methods in recruiting troops by dragooning (men
seized off the streets), conscription, and the lottery after 1688
(regiments of foreign mercenaries)
3. Under the strict direction of Jean Martinet, the foreign and native-born
soldiers were turned into a tough, obedient, military machine
(commissariat established to feed the troops, ambulance corps,
uniforms and weapons standardized, and training program)
4. Louis XIV made territorial gains in the Low Countries and Lorraine
before his armies could not fight anymore (William of Orange became
king of England, joined the League of Augsburg, composed of
Habsburg, Spain, and Sweden, and Louis could not compete against
the Bank of Amsterdam and the Bank of England after 1694
5. Claude Le Peletier, minister of finance, resorted to devaluation of the
currency, old device of selling offices, tax exemptions, and titles of
nobility
6. High taxes to support the military and bad weather from 1688-1694 led
to revolts and mass starvation in some areas of France (at least onetenth of its population lost)
7. In 1694, the controller general of finance, Louis Pontchartrain, imposed
the capitation, an annual poll tax on the theory that the poor would pay
more willingly if they knew that the rich also were taxed (entire
population participated in war effort)
8. The War of the Spanish Succession involved the dynastic question of
the succession to the Spanish throne; King Charles II of Spain died in
1700
1. Charles passed the Spanish throne to Louis XIV’s grandson (Philip
of Anjou); England, Holland, Austria, and Prussia united against
France to preserve the European balance of power and check the
French expansion in the Americas, Asia, and Africa (Louis XIV
reneged on the treaty and accepted the will)
2. The war, which ended in 1713 with the Peace of Utrecht, applied
partition and Philip, remained the first Bourbon king of Spain
(French and Spanish never unite)
3. The Peace of Utecht represented the balance-of-power principle in
operation, setting limits on the extent to which any one power could
expand
4. The treaty completed the decline of Spain as a great power,
expanded the British Empire, and marked the end of French
expansionist policy
8. The Decline of Absolutist Spain in the Seventeenth Century
1. Spanish absolutism had preceded the French and in the sixteenth
century, Spain (Kingdom of Castile) developed the standard features of
absolute monarchy
2. Gold and silver from the Americas were the basis for Spanish power but
the lack of a strong middle class, expulsion of Jews and Moors, the
agricultural crisis and population decline, the failure to invest in
productive enterprises, the intellectual isolation and psychological
malaise all combined to reduce Spain to a lower power
3. The Spanish-Atlantic economy decreased when trading with other
countries started and colonies began to develop their own local
industries
4. Thousands entered economically unproductive professions or became a
priest or nun
5. Philip IV left the management of his several kingdoms to Count-Duke of
Olivares who devised new sources revenue but wanted to return to
imperial tradition to solve
6. The imperial traditions demanded the revival of war and Spain became
part of the Thirty Years’ War; by the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659,
which ended the French-Spanish wars, Spain was compelled to
surrender extensive territories to France
7. The most cherished Spanish ideals were military glory and strong
Roman Catholic faith by the decadence of the Habsburg dynasty and
the lack of effective royal councilors contributed to the Spanish failure
(Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes)
2. Constitutionalism
1. Introduction
1. England and Holland evolved toward constitutionalism: the limitation of
government by law -- implies balance between authority of government
and rights of the subjects
2. A nation’s constitution may be written or unwritten, but the state must
govern according to the laws and people look on the laws as protectors
of rights and liberties
3. However, a constitutional government was not fully democratic in that all
people have the right to participate either directly or indirectly in the
government of the state and therefore, democratic government is tied
up with thefranchise (the vote)
2. The Decline of Royal Absolutism in England (1603-1649)
1. In the seventeenth century, England executed one king, experience a
bloody civil war, dictatorship, then restored son, and finally established
constitutional monarchy (1690)
2. Success of Elizabeth I rested on political flexibility, careful management
of finances, selection of ministers, manipulation of Parliament, and
sense of dignity and devotion
3. Her successor, James I, lacked the common touch, was devoted to the
theory of the divine right of kings, lectured the Hose of Commons,
implied total royal jurisdiction over the liberties, persons, and properties,
and antagonized the Parliament
4. The House of Commons appreciated its own financial strength,
intending to use that strength to acquire a greater say in the
government, brought around by many changes
1. The dissolution of the monasteries and the sale of monastic land
enriched many
2. Agricultural techniques such as the draining of wasteland and the
application of fertilizers had improved the land and its yield
3. People invested in commercial ventures at home, such as the cloth
industry, and through partnerships and joint stock companies
engaged in foreign enterprises
5. The members of the House were largely members of a new wealthy and
powerful capitalist class that objected against the king on the issue of
religion
1. Many English people were dissatisfied with the Church of England
established by Henry VIII and reformed by Elizabeth and many
Puritans wanted to “purify” the Anglican church of Roman Catholic
elements
2. Others were attracted to John Calvin’s theology, which included
hard work, sobriety, thrift, competition, postponement of pleasure,
and linked sin and poverty with weakness and moral corruption
3. James I and Charles I gave the impression of being highly
sympathetic to Roman Catholicism and Charles had supported the
policies of William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, who tried to
impose elaborate ritual ceremonials in churches (Court of High
Commission – enforced uniformity of church services)
4. In 1637, Laud attempted to impose on the church organization in
Scotland: a new prayer book, modeled on the Anglican Book of
Common Prayer and bishoprics, which the Presbyterian Scots
firmly rejected (Charles summoned Parliament)
6. Long Parliament from 1640-1660 proceed to enact legislation that
limited the power of the monarch and made arbitrary government
impossible
7. In 1641, the Commons passed the Triennial Act, which compelled the
king to summon Parliament every three years and the Commons
impeached Archbishop Laud and abolished the Court of High
Commission
8. The English Civil War (1642-1649) tested whether sovereignty in
England was to reside in the king or in Parliament and the period
between 1649 (after King Charles I was executed) to 1660 was called
the “Interregnum” because it separated two monarchial periods,
witnessed England’s solitary experience of military dictatorship
3. Puritanical Absolutism in England: Cromwell and the Protectorate
1. After King Charles I was beheaded on January 30, 1649, a
commonwealth, or republican form of government, was proclaimed and
legislative power rested on members of Parliament and executive power
was lodged in a council of state
2. Oliver Cromwell controlled the army that had defeated the royal forces
and though called the “Protectorate,” rule under Cromwell constituted
military dictatorship
1. Oliver Cromwell came from the country gentry, the class that
dominated the House of Commons in the seventeenth century and
sat in the Long Parliament
2. By infusing the army with his Puritan convictions, he molded the
“New Model Army” and prepared a constitution, the Instrument of
Government (1653) which gave executive power in a lord protector
and a council of state and also provided for triennial parliaments
and gave Parliament the sole power to raise taxes
3. Cromwell tore up the Instrument but proclaimed quasi-martial law
by dividing England into twelve military districts, each governed by
a major general
4. Cromwell tolerated Catholicism except Roman Catholics, crushed
rebellion in Ireland, regulated the nation’s economy (mercantilism)
and enforced a Navigation Act (1651) that required English goods
be transported on English ships
5. The government collapsed when Cromwell died in 1658 and
restored monarchy
4. The Restoration of the English Monarchy
1. The Restoration of 1660 re-established the reign of Charles II, houses
of Parliament, established Anglican church, the courts of law, and the
system of local governments but failed to resolve attitude of Puritans,
Catholics, and dissenters from the state church and what was to be the
relationship between the king and the Parliament
2. New members of the Parliament proceeded to enact a body of laws that
sought to compel religious uniformity and according to the Test Act of
1673, those who refused the sacrament of the Church of England could
not vote, hold public office, preach, teach, attend the universities, or
even assemble for meetings (could not be enforced)
3. The relationship between the Parliament and Charles II was due to the
king’s appointment of a council of five men who served both as his
major advisers and as members of Parliament, thus acting as liaison
agents between the executive and the legislature (body known as the
“Cabal” and was the ancestor of the cabinet system)
4. Harmony existed on the understanding that Charles would summon
frequent parliaments and that Parliament would vote him sufficient
revenues
5. But, because of insufficient revenue, Charles entered into a secret
agreement with Louis XIV in 1670 in which the French king would give
Charles 200,000 pounds ad in return, Charles would relax the laws
against Catholics, re-Catholicizing England
6. But details slipped out, a anti-Catholic fear swept England because
Charles had no legitimate children and his brother and heir, James,
duke of York, who publicly acknowledged his Catholicism, would
inaugurate a Catholic dynasty
7. James II succeeded his brother and in direct violation of the Test Act,
James appointed Roman Catholics to positions in the army, the
universities, and local government; James issued declaration of
indulgence granting religious freedom to all
8. Revolution was brought about when seven Anglican bishops reused to
read James’s proclamation, were arrested but acquitted, and when
James’s wife produced a son (Catholic dynasty seemed assured) and
Parliament offered the throne to James’s Protestant daughter Mary and
her Dutch husband, Prince William of Orange; in December 1688
James fled to France and William and Mary were crowned
5. Triumph of England’s Parliament: Constitutional Monarchy and Cabinet
Government
1. The English call the events of 1688 to 1689 the “Glorious Revolution”
because it replaced one king with another with a minimum of bloodshed
and William and Mary accepted the English throne from Parliament
recognizing supremacy of Parliament
2. Parliament framed their intentions in the Bill of Rights, which was
formulated in direct response to Stuart absolutism; law was made by
parliament not by the Crown
1. Parliament had to be called at least every three years
2. Both elections to and debate in Parliament were not to be
interpreted by Crown
3. The Crown could no longer get judicial decisions by threats of
removal
4. There was to be no standing army in peacetime—a limitation
designed to prevent the repetition of either Stuart or Cromwellian
military government
5. Granted freedom of worship to Protestant dissenters and
nonconformists
3. The Glorious Revolution found its best defense in political philosopher
John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil Government maintaining that
people set up civil governments to protect life, liberty, and property
1. Under a tyrannical government, the people have the natural right to
rebellion
2. Locke linked economic liberty and private property with political
freedom and Locke served as the great spokesman for the liberal
English revolution of 1688
3. The revolution placed sovereignty in Parliament and Parliament
represented the upper classes; the great majority of English people
acquired no say in their government
4. The cabinet (derived from the small private room in which English rulers
consulted their chief ministers) system of government evolved and in a
cabinet system, the leading ministers, formulated common policy and
conducted the business of country
5. During the administration of one royal minister, Sir Robert Walpole
(1721-1742), the idea developed that the cabinet was responsible to the
House of Commons (The Hanoverian king George I, normally presided
at cabinet meetings throughout reign)
6. In the English cabinet system, both legislative power and executive
power are held by the leading ministers, who form the government
(prime minister)
6. The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century
1. The seven northern provinces of the Netherlands formed the United
Provinces and Philip III compromised and the Peace of Westphalia
meant the Dutch independence
2. The seventeenth century witnessed Dutch scientific, artistic, and literary
achievement and is often called the “golden age of the Netherlands”
3. The Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands was a
constitutional state
1. Within each province an oligarchy of wealthy merchants called
“regents” handled domestic affairs in the local Estates and the
provincial Estates held all power
2. A federal assembly, or States General, handled matters of foreign
affairs
3. The States General did not possess sovereign authority since all
issues had to be referred back to the local Estates, and the States
General appointed a representative, the stadholder, in each
province (Estates assembled at The Hague)
4. The Dutch were republican, the government was controlled by
wealthy merchants and financiers, and was a weak union of strong
provinces
4. The political success of the Dutch rested on the phenomenal
commercial prosperity of the Netherlands and moral and ethical bases
of that commercial wealth were thrift, frugality, and religious toleration
(allowed people to practice religions in private)
1. Toleration attracted a great deal of foreign capital and investment
2. The Calvinist province of Holland under its highest official, Jan van
Oldenbarne-veldt, allowed Catholics to practice their faith
5. The fishing industry was the cornerstone of the Dutch economy and the
Dutch merchant marine was the largest in Europe (sixteen thousand
merchant ships)
6. In 1602, a group of regents of Holland formed the Dutch East India
Company, a joint stock company (seized the Cape of Good Hope and
established trading posts)
7. Trade and commerce brought the Dutch prodigious wealth and low
prices
8. Although the initial purpose of the Dutch East and West India
companies was commercial—import of spices and silks to Europe—the
Dutch found themselves involved in the imperialist exploitations of parts
of East Asia and Latin America
9. War with France and England in the 1670s hurt the United Provinces,
the long War of the Spanish Succession drained Dutch labor and
financial resources and the peace signed in 1715 to end the war marked
the beginning of Dutch economic decline
Chapter 17: Absolutism in Eastern Europe in 1740
1. Lord and Peasants in Eastern Europe
1. Introduction
1. Absolute monarchy was built on social and economicfoundations (14001650)
2. Princes and nobility of eastern Europe reimposed a harsh serfdom on
the peasants
2. The Medieval Background
1. The period of time from 1050-1300 (“High Middle Ages”) was a period of
general economic expansion characterized by the growth or trade,
towns, and population
2. After 1300, Europe’s population and economy dived because of the
Black Death, and both east and west sought to solve their economic
problems by exploiting peasantry
3. East of the Elbe, lords used political and police power to exploit the
peasantry
1. Kings and princes issued laws that restricted/eliminated the
peasant’s right of free movement and a peasant could no longer
leave without the lord’s permission (In Prussian territories by 1500,
runaway peasants were hunted down and returned)
2. Lords took more and more of their peasants’ land and imposed
heavier and heavier lab obligations (gradual erosion of the
peasantry’s economic position was bound up with manipulation
of the legal system)
3. The Consolidation of Serfdom
1. All the old privileges of the lords reappeared and peasants were also
assumed to be in “hereditary subjugation” to their lords unless they
could prove the contrary
2. All this occurred in Poland, Prussia, and Russia and law cod set no
limits on the lord
3. The consolidation of serfdom accompanied the growth of estate
agriculture (influx)
4. Political, rather than economic, factors resulted in rise of serfdom in the
east
1. Eastern lords enjoyed much greater political power than the
western counterparts
2. The noble landlord class increased its political power at the
expense of monarchy (weak kings were forced to grant political
favors to win support of the nobility)
3. The political power of the peasants were weaker in the eastern
Europe and landlords systematically undermined the medieval
privileges of the towns
2. The Rise of Austria and Prussia
1. Introduction
1. Strong kings began to emerge in many lands and war and the threat of
war aided rulers greatly in their attempts to build absolute monarchies
2. The would-be absolutist monarchs of Eastern Europe monopolized
political power
1. By imposing and collecting permanent taxes without consent
2. By maintaining permanent standing armies that policed the country
3. By conducting relations with other states as they pleased
2. Austria and the Ottoman Turks
1. Czech nobility, largely Protestant, dominated the Bohemian Estates, the
represent-ative body of the different legal orders in Bohemia but at
Battle of the White Mountain, Habsburg defeated Protestants and new
nobility “enslaved” local peasants
2. After the Thirty Years’ War, Ferdinand III, centralized the government in
the hereditary German-speaking provinces (Austria, Styria, and Tyrol -permanent army)
3. Ottomans, from Anatolia (Turkey), reached their peak in the middle of
the sixteenth century under Suleiman the Magnificent and their
possessions stretched from western Persia across North Africa and up
into the heart of central Europe
4. Apostles of Islam, the Ottoman Turks were foes of the Catholic
Habsburgs
5. The Ottoman Empire was built on the conception of state and society
where all the agricultural land of the empire was the personal hereditary
property of the sultan
6. The top ranks of the bureaucracy were staffed by the sultan’s slave
corps (slave tax)
7. Ottomans were more tolerant of other religions than the Europeans
were
8. Weak sultans failed to keep up with European military advances and
finally with an alliance with Louis XIV of France, surrounded Vienna and
laid siege to it in 1683, but the Habsburg defeated them, expanding into
Hungary and Transylvania
9. In 1713, Charles VI proclaimed the so-called Pragmatic Sanction, which
state that the Habsburg possessions were never to be divided and
passed to single heir intact
10. The Hungarian nobility, despite its reduced strength, thwarted the full
development of Habsburg absolutism as most of them being Protestants
continued to insist on their traditional rights and rebelled under Prince
Francis Rakoczy in 1703 (compromise)
3. Prussia in the Seventeenth Century
1. While local princes lost political power and influence, a revitalized
landed nobility became the ruling class; the Hohenzollern family ruled
the electorate of Brandenburg and Prussia (largest landowners in a
landlord society)
1. Brandenburg was completely cut off from the sea and the territory
of the elector’s cousin, the duke of Prussia, was totally separated
from Brandenburg
2. In 1618 the junior branch of the Hohenzollern family died and
Prussia reverted to the elector of Brandenburg who was a helpless
spectator in the 30 Years’ War
2. Devastation of Brandenburg and Prussia prepared the way for
Hohenzollern absolutism because foreign armies weakened the political
power of the Estates
3. The weakening of the representative assemblies of the realm, allowed
elector Frederick William (“Great Elector”) to take step towards royal
absolutism
4. The Great Elector was determined to unify Brandenburg (area around
Berlin), Prussia (part of Poland), and scattered holdings along the Rhine
in western Germany
5. Taxes could be charged with their consent and the Estates of
Brandenburg and Prussia were dominated by the nobility and
landowning classes, known as “Junkers”
6. To pay for the permanent standing army (1660) Frederick William forced
the Estates to accept the introduction of permanent taxation without
consent and the soldiers became the core of the rapidly expanding state
bureaucracy (In 1688, the army contained thirty thousand, many French
Huguenots welcomed as citizens)
7. Two factors that appear central are war (invasion by the wild Tartars of
southern Russia softened Estates and strengthen the urgency for more
soldiers) and nobility having long dominated the government through
the Estates for narrow self-interest
8. The Great Elector reduced the political power of the Estates but
accepted a compromise whereby the bulk of the new taxes fell on towns
and royal authority stopped at the landlords’ gates (Konisberg leader
arrested and imprisoned)
4. The Consolidation of Prussian Absolutism
1. The Great Elector’s successor Elector Frederick III (“the Ostentatious”),
was focused on imitating the style of Louis XIV (crowned King Frederick
I for aiding the Holy Roman emperor in the War of the Spanish
Succession)
2. Frederick William I, “the Soldiers’ King,” part of the Hohenzollern family,
established Prussian absolutism creating the best army in Europe (size)
3. Frederick William loved tall soldiers and his love of the army was based
on a conception of the struggle for power and a dog-eat-dog view of
international politics
4. He created a strong centralized bureaucracy but he was always in
conflict with the noble landowners, the Junkers (instead of destroying
them, enlisted them in the army)
1. A new compromise was worked out whereby the nobility
imperiously commanded the peasantry in the army as well as on
the estates
5. Frederick William’s standing army reached eighty-three thousand, his
bureaucracy administered the country, even trying to build
economically, but the Prussian people still paid a heavy and lasting
practice for the obsessions of their royal drillmaster
3. The Development of Russia
1. Introduction
1. Both the conversion of the eastern Slavs to Christianity and the loose,
real political unification of the eastern Slavic territories under a single
ruling family were medieval (The typical feudal division of the landbased society into a boyard nobility and a commoner peasantry was
also medieval)
2. From the mid-thirteenth century to the late seventeenth century, the
lands of the eastern Slavs followed a unique path of European
development and when absolutism triumphed under Peter the Great, it
was a different type of monarchy from anywhere
2. The Mongol Yoke and the Rise of Moscow
1. The eastern Slavs emerged from the Middle Ages intact because of
Mongol conquest
1. Mongols unified under Genghis Khan subdued all of China and
turned westward but pulled back in 1242 because of uncertainties
after the Great Khan died
2. The Mongol army—the Golden Horde—devastated and conquered
the eastern Slavs for more than two hundred years (built capital of
Saray on lower Volga)
3. Mongols forced all Slavic princes to submit to their rule and to give
them tribute
2. Although the Mongols conquered, they were willing to use local princes
as obedient servants and tax collectors and beginning with Alexander
Nevsky in 1252, the “great prince” loyally put down popular uprisings
and collected the khan’s harsh taxes
3. Ivan I (1328-1341) was known as Ivan the Moneybag and built up a
large personal fortune enabling him to buy more property (most serious
rival was prince of Tver)
1. In 1327, the population of Tver revolted against Mongol oppression
and the prince of Tver joined his people but Ivan when to the
Mongol capital of Saray where he was appointed commander of a
large Russian-Mongol army
2. He laid waste to Tver and its lands and the Mongols made Ivan the
general tax collector for all the Slavic lands and named him great
prince
3. Ivan I convinced the metropolitan of Kiev to settle in Moscow and
thus he gained greater prestige and the church gained a powerful
advocate before the khan
4. After a hundred years of innumerable wars and intrigues, Ivan III (14621505) assumed the title and after purchasing Rostov, he conquered and
annexed other principalities, of which Novgorod, was the most crucial
(land extending to Baltic Sea)
5. Ivan III was the absolute ruler, the tsar—the Slavic contraction for
caesar—and the Muscovite idea of absolute authority was powerfully
reinforced by two developments
1. Around 1480, Ivan III stopped acknowledging the khan as supreme
ruler
2. After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, the tsars saw
themselves as the heirs of both the caesars and Orthodox
Christianity, the one true faith
3. Tsar and People to 1689
1. As peasants had begun losing their freedom of movement in the
fifteenth century, the noble boyars begun losing power, were required to
serve the leader and the rise of the new service nobility accelerated
under Ivan IV, the famous Ivan the Terrible
2. At age sixteen he suddenly pushed aside his hated boyar advisers,
married Anastasia of the popular Romanov family, the tsar defeated the
faltering khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan adding vast territories to
Russia and waged an unsuccessful war against the large PolishLithuanian state, which joined Poland with much of Ukraine in the 1500s
3. Ivan IV struck down the ancient Muscovite boyars executing in mass by
secret police
4. As service nobles demanded more from the remaining peasants, more
and more fled toward the wild, recently conquered territories to the east
and south, forming free groups and outlaw armies known as
“Cossacks,” formed independence beyond reach
1. In the time of Ivan the Terrible, not only were serfs bound to the
land, urban traders and artisans were also bound to their jobs so
that the tsar could tax them
2. If a new commercial activity became profitable, it was often taken
over by the tsar and made a royal monopoly and the tsar’s service
obligations checked the growth
5. The death of Ivan the Terrible in 1584 ushered in an era of confusion
and violent struggles for power and when Ivan’s son, Theodore died in
1598 without an heir, event got worse (years between 1598 and 1613
were called the “Time of Troubles”)
6. Cossack bands marched northward, rallying peasants and slaughtering
nobles, calling for the “true tsar” who would restore their freedom of
movement and in 1613, nobles elected Ivan’s sixteen-year-old
grandnephew, Michael Romanov, the hereditary tsar
1. Michael was kinder to supportive nobility than toward the sullen
peasants and in the long reign of Michael’s successor, the pious
Alexis, the nobility gained more exemptions from military service,
while the peasants were further ground down
2. The result was a second round of mass protest and later the unity
of the Russian Orthodox church was torn apart by a great split
started by Nikon, a dogmatic purist who wished to correct Russian
practices towards the Greek Orthodox line
3. Great numbers left eh church and formed illegal communities of
“Old Believers”
7. The Cossacks revolted against the state and under Stenka Razin,
moved up the Volga River in 1670 but this rebellion to overthrow the
established order was defeated
4. The Reforms of Peter the Great
1. Peter the Great, under his kind of monarchial absolutism, was interested
primarily in military power and after gaining a large mass of Ukraine
from Poland and completing the conquest of the tribes of all Siberia,
Muscovy was three times larger than Europe
2. Peter sought personal gain overturning the regency in 1689 and
assumed personal rule
3. To keep up with the professional standing armies in Europe, Peter
required every nobleman was once again required to serve in the army
or in the civil administration for life (required five years of compulsory
education from home for every nobleman)
4. Peter greatly increased the service requirements of the commoners by
assigning serfs to work in the growing number of factories and mines
5. He established a regular standing army of more than 200,000 soldiers,
made up mainly of peasants commanded by officers from the nobility
and constant warfare of Peter’s reign consumed 80 to 85 percent of all
revenues
6. Great Northern War with Sweden, lasting from 1700 to 1721 crowned
Russia the victor and Peter’s army crushed the smaller army of
Sweden’s Charles XII in Ukraine at Poltava in 1709, one of the most
significant battles in Russian history; Sweden never regained the
offensive and Russia annexed Estonia and much of Latvia
7. For the first time, under Peter, a Russian tsar attached explanations to
his decrees in an attempt to gain the confidence and enthusiastic
support of the populace
4. Absolutism and Baroque Architecture
1. Introduction
1. Royal absolutism interacted with baroque culture, art, baroque music
and literature
2. Inspired by Louis XIV of France, the great and not-so-great rulers called
on the artistic talent of the age to glorify their power and magnificence
2. Palaces and Power
1. Dramatic baroque palaces symbolized the age of absolutist and
baroque palaces were intended to overawe the people with monarch’s
strength (modeled after Versailles)
2. Emperor Leopold ordered the building of Schonbrunn, an enormous
Viennese Versailles to celebrate Habsburg might, Charles XI of Sweden
ordered construction of his Royal Palace in Stockholm, and Frederick I
of Prussia built palace in Berlin
3. Prince Eugene, under the service of Emperor Leopold I, led the Austrian
army, and called architects J.B. Fischer (Winger Palace in Vienna) and
Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt (Summer Palace on the city’s outskirts)
4. Palaces expressed the baroque delight in bold, sweeping statements,
and to create this experience, masters dissolved the traditional artistic
frontiers: the architect permitted the painter and the artisan to cover a
building’s undulating surfaces with wildly colorful paintings, graceful
sculptures, and fanciful carvings
3. Royal Cities
1. Broad, straight avenues radiated out from the palace (all roads were
focused on ruler)
2. The distinctive features of new additions were their broad avenues, their
imposing government buildings, and their rigorous mathematical layout
(speeding carriages)
4. The Growth of St. Petersburg
1. St. Petersburg demonstrates the close ties among politics, architecture,
and urban development (small Swedish fortress on an island at the
mouth of the Neva River)
2. From a new city, his “window on Europe,” Peter believed it would be
easier to reform the country militarily and administratively
3. Peter wanted modernity, otherwise broad, straight, stone-paved
avenues; houses built in a uniform line and not haphazardly set back
from the street,; large parks; canals for drainage; stone bridges; and
street lighting
1. All building had to conform strictly to detailed architectural
regulations set down by the government and each social group was
to live in a certain part of the town
2. To create St. Petersburg, the government drafted twenty-five to
forty thousand men each summer to labor in St. Petersburg from
three months without pay
4. The building of St. Petersburg was an enormous direct tax levied on the
wealthy, which in turn forced the peasantry to do most of the work
5. The only immediate beneficiaries were the foreign architects and urban
planners
Chapter 19: The Expansion of Europe in the 18
Century
1. Agriculture and the Land
1. Introduction
1. With the exception of Holland, at least 80 percent of the people of all
western European countries drew their livelihoods from agriculture
(Eastern higher percent)
2. In 1700 European agriculture was much more ancient and medieval
with an average of only five or six bushels of grain for every bushel of
wheat sown
3. In crisis years, when crops were ruined by drought or flood, starvation
forced people to use substitutes—the “famine foods” of
a desperate population
1. People gathered chestnuts and stripped bark in the forests, they cut
dandelions and grass, and they ate these substitutes to escape
starvation
2. Such unbalanced, inadequate food in famine years made people
weak and susceptible to epidemics—dysentery, intestinal problems,
influenza, smallpox
4. In preindustrial Europe, the harvest was the real king, which was often
cruel
2. The Open-Field System
1. The greatest accomplishment of medieval agriculture was the open-field
system of village agriculture developed by European peasants
1. Open-field system was divided the land to be cultivated by the
peasants of a given village into several large fields, which were in
turn cut up into long, narrow strips that were not enclosed into small
plots by fences or hedges
2. The land of those who owned land were nobility, clergy, and
wealthy
2. The ever-present problem was exhaustion of the soil and when the
community planted wheat year after ear, the nitrogen in the soil was
soon depleted—crop failure
1. In the early Middle Ages, the only way for the land to recover its
fertility was for a field to lie fallow for a period of time (alternating
crop and idle)
2. Three-year rotations were introduced that permitted a year of wheat
or rye to be followed by a year of oats or beans and then by a year
of fallow (still plowed)
3. Traditional village rights reinforced the traditional pattern of farming and
in addition to rotating, villages maintained open meadows for hay and
natural pasture set aside for draft horses, oxen, cows, and pigs of the
village community
4. Poor women would go through the fields picking up the few single
grains that had fallen to the ground in course of harvest (The
Gleaners by Jean François Millet)
5. In the age of absolutism and nobility, state and landlord continued to
levy heavy taxes and high rents that stripped the peasants of much of
their meager earnings
6. In eastern Europe, peasants were worst off because of serfdom and
social conditions were better in the west where they could own land and
pass it on to their children
7. Peasants of a region of France had to pay heavy royal taxes, the
church’s tithe, and dues to the lord as well as set aside seed for the next
season (half of their crop left)
3. The Agricultural Revolution
1. European peasants could improve their position by taking land from
those who owned buy did not labor but powerful forces stood ready to
crush any protest
2. If peasants could replace the idle fallow with crops they could increase
their land under cultivation by 50 percent and an agricultural revolution
followed that occurred slowly throughout Europe but progressively
eliminated the use of the fallow
3. Because grain crops exhaust the soil and make fallowing necessary, the
secret to eliminating fallow lies in the alternating grain with certain
nitrogen-storing crops such as land reviving crops such as peas and
beans, root crops such as turnips and potatoes, and clovers and
grasses (turnips, potatoes, and clover were new-comers)
4. New patterns of organization allowed some farmers to develop
increasingly sophisticated patterns of rotation to suit different kinds of
soils
5. Improvements in farming had multiple effects
1. The new crops made ideal feed for animals and peasants had more
fodder, hay and root crops for the winter, they could build up herds
of cattle and sheep
2. More animals meant more meat and better diets for the people and
also meant more manure for fertilizer and therefore more grain for
bread and porridge
6. Advocates of the new rotations included an emerging group of
experimental scientists, some government officials, and landowners,
believed that new methods were scarcely possible within the traditional
system of open fields and common rights
7. A farmer who wanted to experiment had to get all landholders in a
village to agree so they argued that farmers should enclose and
consolidate their scattered holdings into compact, fenced-in fields in
order to farm more effectively
8. But with land distributed unequally all across Europe by 1700, common
rights were precious to there poor peasants and when small land
holders and the village poor could effectively oppose the enclosure of
the open fields and common pasture, they did so—only powerful social
and political pressure could overcome such opposition
9. The promise of the new system was only realized in the Low Countries
and England
4. The Leadership of the Low Countries and England
1. The new methods of the agricultural revolution originated in the Low
Countries and Holland was most advanced in many areas of human
endeavor including shipbuilding navigation, commerce, banking,
drainage and agriculture—provided model
1. Enclosed fields, continuous rotation, heavy manuring, and a wide
variety of crops
2. The reasons for early Dutch leadership were the dense populated
areas in the Low Countries and the pressure of population was
connected with the second cause, the growth of towns and cities in
the Low Countries (allowed specialization)
3. The English were the best students and they received instruction in
drainage and water control, draining the extensive marshes, or
fens, of wet and rainy England
2. The most famous of Dutch engineers, Cornelius Vermuyden, directed
large drainage projects in Yorkshire and Cambridge—converting the
land into one of the most fertile
3. Viscount Charles Townsend, one of the pioneers of English agricultural
improvement, learned about turnips and clover while serving as English
ambassador to Holland and when he returned to Norfolk spoke of
turnips (“Turnip Townsend”)
4. Jethro Tull, was another important English innovator, using horses
rather than slower moving oxen for plowing and advocated sowing seed
with drilling equipment
5. There were also improvements in livestock—selective breeding of
ordinary livestock was a marked pattern over the old pattern (breeding
faster horse for races and hunts)
6. The great surge of agricultural production provided for England’s urban
population
5. The Cost of Enclosure
1. In England, open fields were enclosed fairly but other historians argue
that because large landowners controlled Parliament, which made laws,
they had Parliament pass hundreds of “enclosure acts” each that
authorized the fencing of open fields in a given village and the division
of the common in proportion to one’s property in the fields
2. The heavy legal and surveying costs of enclosure were also divided
among the people, peasants had pay cost and landless cottagers lost
access to common pastures
3. By 1750, as much as half of English farmland was enclosed and many
English lost their ability to produce wool, from sheep, for the growing
textile industry
4. By 1700, a highly distinctive pattern of landownership and production
existed in England, where the were the few large landowners, at the
other extreme were a large mass of landless cottagers who labored
mainly for wages, and in between, small, independent peasant farmers
who owned their own land and substantial tenant farmers who rented
land from landowners, hired laborers, and sold output on market
5. The tenant framers, who had formerly been independent owners, were
the key to mastering the new methods of farming, because the tenant
farmers fenced fields, built drains, and improved the soil with
fertilizers—increasing employment opportunities
6. By eliminating common rights and greatly reducing the access
enclosure movement marked the completion of two major historical
developments in England
1. The rise of the market-oriented estate agriculture
2. The emergence of a landless rural proletariat—wealthy English
land owners help most of the land, leasing their holdings to middlesized farmers, who in turn relied on landless laborers for their
workforce (proletarianization—this transformation of large numbers
of small peasant farmers into landless rural wage earners)
2. The Beginning of the Population Explosion
1. Limitations on Population Growth
1. Commonly held ideas about population that are wrong included the idea
that people married young and had large families and societies were so
ignorant that they could do nothing to control the numbers and that
population was always growing too fast
2. Until 1700, the total population of Europe grew slowly much of the time
following an irregular cyclical pattern, which had great influence on
social and economic life
3. The Black Death created a sharp drop in population and prices after
1350 and also created a labor shortage throughout Europe—increased
standard of living
4. The second great surge of population growth outstripped the growth of
agricultural production after 1500 where food prices rose more rapidly
than wages resulting in a decline in the living standards for the majority
of people throughout Europe
5. Population slowed and stopped in seventeenth-century Europe and
birthrate and death rate were about balanced and population grew
about 0.5 to 1 percent in a normal year
6. In periods, increases in deaths occurred periodically in the seventeenth
century on a local scale— famine, epidemic disease, and war caused
demographic crisis
1. Famine, the result of poor farming methods and periodic crop
failures accompanied by disease killed (bubonic plague, dysentery,
and smallpox)
2. The indirect effects were more harmful than the organized killings—
war spread disease—armies passed venereal disease throughout
the countryside
2. The New Pattern of the Eighteenth Century
1. Population growth was especially dramatic after about 1750—caused by
fewer deaths
2. Fewer deaths occurred due to the disappearance of the bubonic plague
in part because of stricter measures of quarantine in Mediterranean
ports and along Austrian border
3. Bubonic plague was a disease that was mainly carried around by the
black rat’s flea (carrying around bacillus) and after 1600, a new rat of
Asiatic origin, the brown, or wander, rat began to drive out and
eventually eliminated the black rat
4. The most important advance in preventive medicine in this period was
the inoculation against smallpox and improvements in the water supply
and sewerage promoted better public health, drainage of swamps and
marshes reduced insect population
5. Human beings also became more successful in their efforts to
safeguard the supply of food and protect against famine and advances
in transportation lessened the impact of local crop failure and family—
emergency supplies could be brought in
6. Population grew in the eighteenth century primarily because years of
abnormal death rates were less catastrophic; famines, epidemics, and
wars continued but moderated
7. There was only so much land available and agriculture could not
provide enough work for the rapidly growing labor force, and people had
to look for new ways
3. The Growth of the Cottage Industry
1. Introduction
1. The growth of population contributed to the development of industry in
rural areas; manufacturing with hand tools in peasant cottages and
workshed grew—peasants had always made clothing, processed some
food, and constructed some housing
2. A new system emerged called “cottage industry” or “domestic industry”
that distinguished it from the factory industry and scholars have
preferred to speak of “protoindustrialization,” by which they mean a
stage of rural industrial development with wage workers and hand tools
that preceded the emergence of factory industries
3. Putting-out system is used by contemporaries to describe the key
features of eighteenth-century rural industry (new form of industrial
production)
2. The Putting-Out System
1. The two main participants in the putting-out system were the merchant
capitalist and the rural worker—the merchant loaned, raw materials to
several cottage workers, who processed the materials in homes and
returned the finished product to the merchant
2. The system was a kind of capitalism and grew because it had
competitive advantages
1. Since countryside was unregulated, workers and merchants could
change procedures and experiment but they did not need to meet
rigid guild standards
2. Textiles: all manner of knives, forks, and housewares; buttons and
gloves; clocks; and musical instruments could be produced in the
countryside
3. Rural manufacturing did not spread across Europe at an even rate, first
appearing in England and by 1500, half of England’s textiles were being
produced in the countryside and in France, Colbert revived the urban
guilds and used them to control
4. In 1762, the government encouraged the growth of cottage
manufacturing and thus in France, as in Germany and other areas, the
later part of the eighteenth century witnessed the remarkable expansion
of rural industry in certain populated regions
3. The Textile Industry
1. The making of linen, woolen, and cotton cloth was the typical activity of
cottage works engaged in the putting-out system—way of life and
economic system
1. The rural worker lived in a small cottage with tiny windows and little
space and it was often a single room that served as a workshop,
kitchen, and bedroom
2. There were only a few pieces of furniture, the most important being
the loom changed when John Kay’s invention of the flying shuttle
enabled the weaver to throw the shuttle back and forth between the
threads with one hand
2. The cottage industry was first and foremost a family enterprise and all
members of the family helped in the work—every person from seven to
eighty—while women and children prepared the raw material and spun
the thread, the man of the house wove the cloth and children helped
wash dirt out of the raw cotton
3. The work of four or five spinners was needed to keep one weaver
steadily employed and often widows and unmarried women were
recruited by the wife to spin
4. There were constant disputes over the weights of materials and the
quality of the cloth and rural labor was cheap, scattered, and poorly
organized—it was hard to control
5. After getting paid on Saturday afternoon, the family did not work on
“holy Monday”
6. Labor relations were often poor, and the merchant was unable to control
the quality of the cloth or the schedule of the workers
4. Building the Atlantic Economy
1. Introduction
1. The expansion of Europe in the eighteenth century was characterized
by the growth of world trade—Netherlands, France, and, above all,
Great Britain benefited most
2. Great Britain, formed in 1707 by the union of England and Scotland in a
single kingdom, gradually became the leading maritime power (longdistance trade)
2. Mercantilism and Colonial Wars
1. Britain’s commercial leadership in the eighteenth century had its origins
in the mercantilism of the seventeenth century—European mercantilism
was a system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of
the state
2. Practiced by Colbert under Louis XIV, mercantilism aimed at creating a
favorable balance of foreign trade in order to increase a country’s stock
of gold
3. What distinguished English mercantilism was then idea that government
economic regulations could and should serve the private interest of
individuals and groups as well as the public needs of the state—others
put needs of state ahead of individuals
4. The result of the English desire to increase both military power and
private wealth was the mercantile system of theNavigation Acts passed
under Oliver Cromwell
1. The acts required that goods imported from Europe into England
and Scotland be carried on British-owned ships or on ships of the
country producing the article
2. Acts gave British merchants and shipowners monopoly on trade
with the colonies
3. The colonists were required to buy almost all of their European
goods from Britain and people believed that they were be a
guaranteed market for products
4. The Navigation Acts were a form of economic warfare in that their
initial target was the Dutch, who were far ahead of the English in
shipping and foreign trade and three Anglo-Dutch wars between
1652 and 1674 damaged Dutch commerce
5. Late in the seventeenth century, the Dutch and English became allies to
stop the expansion of France’s Louis XIV and the Netherlands followed
Spain into decline
6. From 1701 to 1763, Britain and France were locked in a series of wars
to decide, in part, which nation would become the leading maritime
power (share of profits)
7. The War of the Spanish Succession which started when Louis XIV
declared his willingness to accept the Spanish crown willed to his
grandson—union of France and Spain threatened to destroy the British
colonies in America (coalition of states)
1. Louis XIV was forced in the Peace of Utrecht (1713) to cede
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay territory to Britain
2. Spain was compelled to give Britain control of the West African
slave trade (asiento) and let Britain send one ship of products into
Spanish colonies yearly
8. The War of Austrian Succession, which started when Frederick the
Great Prussia seized Silesia from Austria’s Maria Theresa, gradually
became a world war
1. The seizure of French territory in Canada by New England colonists
in 1745 led France to sue for peace in 1748 and to accept a return
to the territorial situation existing in North America at the beginning
of the war
2. France’s Bourbon ally, Spain, defended itself well and remained
intact
9. The inconclusive standoff was followed by the Seven Years’ War (17561763) where in central Europe, Austria’s Maria Theresa sought to win
back Silesia and crush Prussia re-establishing control in German affairs
(she almost succeeded, skillfully winning both France, Habsburg’s longstanding enemy and Russia to her cause)
10. The seven Years’ War was decisive between the Franco-British
competition for colonial empire and led by William Pitt, the British
concentrated on using sea power to destroy the French fleet and choke
off French commerce around the world (British captured Quebec and
strangled France’s sugar trade with its Caribbean Islands)
11. With the Treaty of Paris, France lost all its possessions on the mainland
of North America—French Canada and territory east of Mississippi
River passed to Britain, and France ceded Louisiana to Spain as
compensation for loss of Florida to Britain
12. By 1763, British naval power, built on the rapid growth of British
shipping industry after the passing of the Navigation Acts, triumphed
decisively
3. Land and Labor in British America
1. The settlements along the Atlantic coast provided an outlet for surplus
population
2. The possibility of having one’s own farm was attractive to ordinary men
and women from the British Isles; land in the England was concentrated
in the hands of the nobility and gentry; white settles who came to
colonies as free men, indentured servants (work for seven years for
passage), and prisoners could obtain own land
3. Unlike the great majority of European peasants, American farmers could
keep most of what they produced; availability of land made labor
expensive in the colonies
4. Cheap land and scarce labor were critical factors in the growth of
slavery in the southern colonies (Spanish introduced slavery into the
Americas in the 16th century)
5. In the 18th century, framers of New England and middle colonies
produced food exporting the products to West Indies (people depend on
the mainland colonies)
6. The English could not buy cheaper sugar from Brazil, nor allowed to
grow tobacco and the colonists had their place in the mercantile system
of the Navigation Acts
7. The abundance of almost free land resulted in a rapid increase in the
colonial population in the 18th century (the population increased ten fold
from 1700-1775)
8. Agricultural development resulted in fairly high standards of living for
colonists
4. The Growth of Foreign Trade
1. The rapidly growing and wealthy agricultural population of the mainland
colonies provided an expanding market for English manufactured goods
2. Rising demand for manufactured goods in North America as well as in
the West Indies, Africa, and Latin America allowed English cottage
industry to continue
3. Like England earlier, European states adopted protectionist, mercantilist
policies, and by 1773, England was selling only about two-thirds as
much woolen cloth to northern and western Europe as its had in 1700
(wool cloth was only important product)
4. Decline in many markets meant that the English economy needed new
markets and protected colonial markets came to the rescue and from
1700-1773, manufactured products to the Atlantic economy—mainland
colonies of North America and West Indian sugar islands—soared from
£500,000 to £4.0 million
5. English exports became much more balanced and diversified (to
America and Africa went large quantities of metal items) and the
mercantilist system formed in the seventeenth century to attack the
Dutch achieved success in the 18th century
6. The English concentrated much of the trade flowing through the Atlantic
economy
5. Revival in Colonial Latin America
1. When the last Spanish Habsburg, Charles II, died in 1700, Spain’s vast
empire lay ready for dismemberment but Spain recovered under the
leadership of Louis XIV’s grandson, Philip V, who brought men and
ideas from France
2. Peace was restored after the War of Spanish Succession and a series
of ministers reasserted royal authority, overhauling state finances and
strengthening defense
3. Spain received Louisiana from France in 1763 and missionaries and
ranchers extended Spanish influence all the way to northern California
and economy improved
4. In 1800 Spanish America accounted for half of world silver production
and silver mining encouraged food production for large mining camps
and allowed Creoles—people of Spanish blood born in America—to
purchase more European goods
5. The Creole elite came to rival the top government officials dispatched to
govern the colonies and estate owners believed that work in the fields
was the proper occupation of the peasantry and slavery and periodic
forced labor gave way todebt peonage
6. Debt peonage—a planter or rancher would keep the estate’s
Christianized Indians in perpetual debt bondage by periodically
advancing food, shelter, and a little money
7. The large middle group in Spanish colonies consisted ofmestizos, the
offspring of Spanish men and Indian women and at the end of the
colonial era, about 20% were white (Creoles), 30 % were mestizo, and
about 50 % were of African origin
8. In the 18th century Spanish and Portuguese colonies developed a
growing commerce in silver, sugar, and slaves as well as in
manufactured goods for Europeanized elite
6. Adam Smith and Economic Liberalism
1. Wanting bigger positions in overseas commerce, independent
merchants in many countries began campaigning against “monopolies”
and called for “free trade”
1. Although mercantilist policies strengthened both the Spanish and
British colonial empires, Creole merchants were annoyed by
regulations imposed in Madrid
2. Small English merchants complained about the injustice of handing
over exclusive trading rights to great trading combines such as the
East India Company
2. The general idea of freedom of enterprise in foreign trade was
developed by Scottish professor of philosophy Adam Smith,
whose Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations founded modern economics was highly critical of mercantilism
3. To Smith, mercantilism meant a combination of stifling government
regulations and unfair privileges for state-approved monopolies and
government favorites and free competition, which would best protect
consumers from price gouging and give all citizens a fair and equal right
to do what they did best (“system of natural liberty”)
4. Smith argued that the government should limit itself to “only three
duties”
1. The government should provide a defense against foreign invasion
2. The government should maintain civil order with courts and police
protection
3. The government should sponsor certain indispensable public works
and institutions that could never earn an adequate profit for private
investors
5. Smith was one of the enlightenment’s most original and characteristic
thinkers rely-ing on the power of reason to unlock the secrets of the
secular world (spoke truth)
6. Unlike many disgruntled merchant capitalists, Smith applauded the
modest rise in real wages of British works in the 18th century saying, “No
society can surely by flourish-ing and happy, of which the far great part
of the members are poor and miserable.”
7. Believing that employers as well as workers and consumers were
motivated by narrow self-interest, Smith did not call for more laws and
more polic power but made the pursuit of self-interest in a competitive
market the source of an underlying and previously unrecognized a
harmony, a harmony that would result in gradual process
8. The “invisible hand” of free competition for one and for all disciplined the
freed of selfish individuals and provided the most effective means of
increasing wealth
9. Smith’s work emerged as the classic argument for economic liberalism
and capitalism
Chapter 21: The Revolution in Politics
1. Liberty
1. Introduction
1. Two ideas fueled the revolutionary period in the world: liberty and
equality
2. The call for liberty was first of all a call for individual human rights and
liberals of the revolutionary era protested the way the most enlightened
monarchs regulated what people wrote and believed (demanded an end
to censorship, written and spoken)
1. Called for a new government and believed that the people were
sovereign and alone had the authority to make laws limiting the
individual’s freedom of action
2. Liberals believed that every nation, every ethnic group, had this
right of self-determination and thus a right to form a free nation
3. Liberals argued, in theory, all citizens should have identical rights and
civil liberties and above all, the nobility had no right to special privileges
based on birth
4. Most eighteenth-century liberals were men and generally shared with
other men the belief that equality between men and women was neither
practical nor desirable
1. Men of the French Revolution limited formal political rights of
women, the right to vote, to run for office, to participate in
government
2. Liberals never believed that everyone should be equal
economically
3. The essential point was that everyone should legally have an equal
chance
5. The economic inequality based on artificial legal distinctions were
criticized by liberals, not economic inequality itself
2. The Roots of Liberalism
1. The ideas of liberty and equality had deep roots in Western history; the
ancient Greeks and the Judeo-Christian tradition had affirmed for
hundreds of years the sanctity and value of the individual human being
2. Classical liberalism first crystallized at the end of the seventeenth
century and during the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and
reflected the stress on human dignity and human happiness on earth
(faith in science, rationality, and progress)
3. Writers of the Enlightenment preached religious toleration, freedom of
press and speech, and fair and equal treatment before the law
4. John Locke and Baron de Montesquieu were the two important thinkers
responsible for joining the Enlightenment’s concern for personal
freedom and legal equality to a theoretical justification of liberal selfgovernment
1. John Locke maintained that England’s long political tradition rested
on “the rights of Englishmen” and on representative government
through Parliament
2. Montesquieu believed that powerful intermediary groups, such as
the judicial nobility, offered the best defense of liberty against
despotism
3. The Attraction of Liberalism
1. The belief that representative institutions could defend their liberty and
interests appealed powerfully to well-educated, prosperous groups as
well as liberal ideas about individual rights and political freedom
2. Representative government did not mean democracy, which liberal
thinkers tended to frown upon, but they envisioned voting for
representatives as being restricted to those who owned property
(liberalism found broad support among elites in western Europe)
3. Liberalism lacked from the beginning because of weak popular support
1. Liberals questioned theoretical and political ideas while common
people’s questions were immediate and economic (enough to eat?)
2. Traditional practices and institutions that they wanted to abolish
were important to peasants and urban workers (enclosure
of lands and regulation of food prices)
2. The American Revolution (1775-1789)
3. The French Revolution (1789-1791)
1. The Breakdown of the Old Order
1. Many French soldiers, such as Marquis de Lafayette, left to fight
France’s traditional enemy, served in America and were impressed by
the ideals of the Revolution
2. The French Revolution was more radical and more complex, more
influential and more controversial, more loved and more hated (opened
the modern era in politics)
3. The French Revolution origin was the financial difficulties of the
government and the efforts of monarchy to raise taxes stopped by the
Parlement (popular support)
4. The government was forced to finance all its expenditures during the
American war with borrowed money and the national debt and annual
budget deficit soared
1. By 1780s, 50 percent of France’s annual budget went for everincreasing interest payments, another 25 percent when tot maintain
the military, 6 percent absorbed by Versailles, and less than 20
percent left for productive functions of state
2. One way out would have been for the government to declare partial
bankruptcy, forcing its creditors to accept greatly reduced payments
on the debt and France declared this after an attempt to establish a
French national bank ended in 1720
3. By the 1780s, the French debt was being held by an army of
aristocratic and bour-geois creditors, and the French monarchy had
become far too weak for this action
5. King and his ministers could not print money creating inflation to cover
their deficits because France had no central bank, non paper currency,
and could not create credit
6. In 1786, France had no alternative but to try increasing taxes and
increased revenues were possible only through fundamental reforms
(opens social and political demands)
2. Legal Orders and Social Realities
1. France’s twenty-five million inhabitants were still legally divided into
three orders, or “estates,” the clergy, the nobility, and everyone else
2. The first estate, the clergy, numbered about 100,000, owned about 10
percent of the land, paid little taxes to the government every five years
1. Church levied a tax (tithe) on landowners, which averaged less
than 10 percent
2. Much of the church’s income was drained from local parishes by
political appointees and worldly aristocrats at the top of the church
hierarchy
3. The second legally defined estate consisted of some 400,000 nobles,
the descendents of “those who had fought” in the Middle Ages (owned
about 25 percent of France)
1. Taxed lightly, nobles enjoyed certain privileges of lordship
(manorial rights) which allowed them to tax the peasantry for their
won profit done by exclusive rights to hunt, fish, monopolies on
baking bread and making wine, fees for justice
2. Nobles had “honorific privileges,” such as the right to precedence
on public occasions and the right to wear a sword (legal superiority
and social position)
4. Everyone else was a commoner, a member of the third estate; a few
commoners were merchants or lawyers and officials (could buy
manorial rights), others were urban artisans and unskilled day laborers,
but the vast majority consisted of peasants and agricultural workers in
the countryside (united by their shared legal status)
5. There were growing tensions between the nobility and
thebourgeoisie (middle class)
6. Aided by general economic expansion, the middle class tripled to about
2.3 millions people (8 percent) and became exasperated by “feudal”
laws restraining the economy and by the growing pretensions of
reactionary nobility (closing ranks on bourgeoisie)
1. The French bourgeoisie eventually rose up to lead the entire third
estate in a great social revolution that destroyed feudal privileges
and established a capitalist order based on individualism and a
market economy
2. Revisionist historians see both bourgeoisie and nobility as highly
fragmented as the nobility was separated by differences in wealth,
education
7. Revisionist historians stress three development, in particular
1. The nobility remained a fluid and relatively open order (commoners
continued to obtain noble status through government service and
purchase of positions)
2. Key sections of the nobility and bourgeoisie formed together the
core of the book-hungry Enlightenment public and both groups saw
themselves forming part of the educated elite standing well above
the common people (peasants and urban poor)
3. The nobility and the bourgeoisie were not really at odds in the
economic sphere in that both looked to investment in land and
government services
4. The ideal of the merchant capitalist was to gain wealth, to retire
from trade, purchase estates, and live as a large landowner
(mining, metallurgy, foreign trade)
8. The old Regime had ceased to correspond with social reality by the
1780s and France had already moved toward a society based on wealth
and education
3. The Formation of the National Assembly
1. The Revolution was under way by 1787 and spurred by a depressed
economy and falling tax receipts, Louis XVI’s minister of finance
proposed to impose a general tax on all landed property as well as
provincial assemblies to help administer the tax
1. Called an assembly of notables to gain support and the assembled
notables, noblemen and clergy, were not in favor and in return for
their support, demanded that control over all government spending
be given to the provincial assemblies
2. Government refused and the notables responded that tax changes
required the approval of the Estates General, the representative
body of all three estates (had not met since 1614); dismissed the
notables and established new taxes by decrees
3. The Parlement specified the “fundamental laws” against which no
king could transgress, such as national consent to taxation and
freedom for arbitrary arrest
4. In July 1788, Louis XVI bowed to public opinion, called for the
Estates General
2. Clergy, nobles, and commoners came together in their respective
orders to draft petitions for change and to elect their respective
delegates to the Estates General
1. The local assemblies of the clergy frowned upon the church
hierarchy and two-thirds of the delegates were chosen from among
the parish priests
2. The nobles, split by wealth and education, remained politically
divide and a majority was drawn from the poorer and numerous
provincial nobility but one-third of the nobility’s representatives were
liberals committed to major changes
3. There was great popular participation in the elections for the third
estate because almost all male commoners twenty-five years or
older had the right to vote but most of the representatives selected
were well-educated, prosperous members of the middle class
(lawyers and government officials)
4. Social status and prestige were matters of concern and no
delegates were elected from the mass of laboring poor, that
encouraged the peasants and urban artisans to intervene directly
and dramatically at numerous points in the Revolution
3. The petitions of change coming from the three estates showed general
agreement
1. Royal absolutism show give way to constitutional monarchy, in
which laws and taxes would require the consent of the Estates
General meeting regularly
2. Individual liberties would have to be guaranteed by law and that the
economic position of the parish clergy would have to be improved
3. Thought that economic development required reforms (internal
trade barriers)
4. During the electoral campaign: How would the Estates General vote,
and who would lead in the political reorganization that was generally
desired?
5. Any action had required the agreement of at least two branches, a
requirement that virtually guaranteed control by the nobility and the
clergy
6. The Parlement of Paris ruled that the Estates General should once
again sit separately
7. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes argued in 1789 in his famous pamphlet What
is the Third Estate? that the third estate constituted the true strength of
the French nation
8. The government agreed that the third estate should have as many
delegates as the clergy and nobility combined then negated the act by
enforcing separate order
9. In May 1789 the twelve hundred delegates of the three estates went into
Versailles but the delegates of the third estate demanded that the group
sit as a single body
10. After six weeks, a few parish priests joined the third estate, which on
June 17 called itself the “National Assembly” and on June 20, the third
estate excluded because of “repairs” moved to a large indoor tennis
court where they swore the famous Oath of the Tennis Court, pledging
not to disband until they had written a new constitution
11. On June 23, he urged the estates to meet but at the same time following
advice of court nobles called an army to Versailles and dismissed his
liberal ministers
12. Facing opposition, Louis XVI resigned himself to bankruptcy and now
sought to reassert his historic “Divine right” to rule (delegates disbanded
at bayonet point)
4. The Revolt of the Poor and Oppressed
1. Grain was the basis of the diet of ordinary people in the eighteenth
century and in 1788 the harvest had been poor and the price of bread
began to soar (bread could cost 8 sous per pound even though the poor
could barely afford to pay 2 sous per pound)
2. Harvest failure and bread prices unleashed a classic economic
depression of the pre-industrial age and the demand for manufactured
goods collapsed (half needed relief)
3. The people of Paris entered decisively onto the revolutionary stage and
believed that the they should have steady work and enough bread at fair
prices to survive and feared that the dismissal of the king’s moderate
finance minister would put them at the mercy of aristocratic landowners
and grain speculators
1. On July 13 the people began to seize arms for the defense of the
city and marched to Bastille to search for gunpowder (gunpowder
was in a medieval fortress)
2. The prison surrendered; the prison governor and the mayor of Paris
were killed
3. The next day, a committee of citizens appointed the Marquis de
Lafayette commander of the city’s armed forces and the king was
forced to recall the finance minister and disperse his troops
(uprising saved the National Assembly)
4. All across France, peasants began to rise in spontaneous, violent, and
effective insurrection against their lords, ransacking manor houses and
burning obligations
5. Fear of vagabonds and outlaws—called the Great Fear—seized the
countryside and fanned the flames of rebellion (free themselves from
manorial rights and exploitation)
6. Some liberal nobles and middleclass delegates responded to peasant
demands at Versailles with a maneuver on the night of August 4, 1789
(duke of Aiguillon, one of France’s greatest nobles, urged equality in
taxation and elimination of feudal dues)
7. All the old exactions imposed on the peasants—serfdom, hunting rights,
fees for justice, village monopolies, and others—were abolished
(without compensation)
8. Peasants never paid feudal dues and the French peasants now
protected their triumph
5. A Limited Monarchy
1. On August 27, 1789, the National Assembly issued the Declaration of
the Rights of Man, which states, “Men are born and remain free and
equal in rights”
1. Maintained that mankind’s natural rights are “liberty, property,
security, and resistance to oppression” and “everyman is innocent
until proven otherwise”
2. Law is an expression of the general will; all citizens have the right
to concur personally or through their representatives in its
formations”
3. Every citizen may therefore speak, write, and publish freely (free
expression)
2. Call for the liberal revolutionary guaranteed equality before the law,
representative government for a sovereign people, and individual
freedom
3. The questions of how much power the king should retain and whether
he could permanently veto legislation led to another deadlock, decided
by poor women of Paris
1. Women customarily bought the food and managed the poor family’s
resources and in Paris great numbers of women also worked for
wages (garments)
2. Plummeting demand for luxuries intensified the general economic
crisis and increasing unemployment and hunger resulted in another
popular revolt
3. On October 5, seven thousand desperate women marched to
Versailles, demanding action, invaded the Assembly, invaded the
royal apartments searching for the queen, Marie Antoinette, and the
intervention of Lafayette and the National Guard saved the royal
family (the king was ordered to live in Paris)
4. The next day, the royal family and the National Assembly, followed the
king to Paris until September 1791, saw the consolidation of the liberal
Revolution
1. The National Assembly abolished the French nobility as a legal
order and created a constitutional monarchy, which Louis XVI
reluctantly agreed to in July 1790
2. In the final constitution, the king remained the head of state, but all
lawmaking power was given to the National Assembly, elected by
the economic males
5. New laws broadened women’s rights to seek divorce, to inherit property,
and to obtain financial support from fathers for illegitimate children
1. Majority of National Assembly believed that women should raise the
child, complete domestic duties and leave politics and most public
activities to men
2. Delegates were convinced that political life in absolutist France had
been corrupt and one way was immoral aristocratic women had
used their sexual charms
6. The National Assembly replaced the historic provinces with eighty-three
departments of approximately equal size, introduced the metric system
in 1793, promoted liberal concept of economic freedom and prohibited
monopolies, guilds, and worker’s combinations and abolished barriers to
trade within France
7. Assembly imposed a radical reorganization on the Catholic church by
nationalizing the church’s property and abolished monasteries as
useless relics of a distant past
8. The government used all former church property as collateral to
guarantee a new paper currency, the assignats, then sold these
properties to support the state’s finances
9. Reorganization of France brought the new government into conflict with
the Catholic church and Christians, but many delegates harbored a
deep distrust of popular piety
10. The Assembly established a national church, with priests chosen by
voters then required the clergy to take a loyalty oath to the new
government and this resulted in a division within both the country and
the clergy on the religious question
11. Policy toward the church was the revolutionary government’s first
important failure
4. World War and Republican France (1791-1799)
1. Foreign Reactions and the Beginning of War
1. France was seen as a mighty triumph of liberty over despotism and in
Great Britain, people hoped that this would lead to a fundamental
reordering of the political system
1. The system consolidated in the revolution of 1688 to 1689, placed
Parliament in the hands of the aristocracy and a few wealthy
merchants
2. Conservative leaders such as Edmund Burke (Reflections on the
Revolution in France, 1790) defend inherited privileges of English
monarchy and aristocracy, glorified the unrepresentative
Parliament, and predicted that thoroughgoing reform, like in France,
would lead only to chaos and tyranny
3. Mary Wollstonecraft was incensed by Burke’s book and wrote (A
Vindication of the Rights of Man) then developed for the first time
the logical implications of natural-law philosophy in her
masterpiece, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
4. Wollstonecraft set high standards for women, advocated
coeducation, and marked the birth of the modern women’s
movement for equal rights (give women chance)
2. among European kings and nobility that revolution would spread
resulted in the Declaration of Pillnitz (1791), which threatened the
invasion of France by Austria and Prussia (expected to have a sobering
effect on revolutionary France w/o causing war)
3. When the National Assembly disbanded, it sought popular support be
decreeing that none of its members be eligible for election to the new
Legislative Assembly
1. The great majority of the legislators were still middle-class men but
were younger and less cautious than their predecessors (called
“Jacobins,” after the name of their political club and were
passionately committed to liberal revolution)
2. The Jacobins lumped “useless aristocrats” and “despotic monarch”
together and believed that if the courts o Europe were attempting to
incite war of kings against France, ten million Frenchmen would be
able to change the face of the world
4. France declared war on Francis II, the Habsburg monarch but the
crusade went poorly at first because Prussia joined Austria in the
Austrian Netherlands and French forces broke and fled at first
encounter with armies of this First Coalition
1. It is possible that only conflict between the eastern monarchs over
the division of Poland saved France from defeat (as the road to
Paris lay wide open)
2. Military reversals and Austro-Prussian threats caused a wave of
patriotic fervor to sweep France and the Legislative Assembly
declared the country in danger
3. Volunteer armies from the provinces stream through Paris singing
(Marseillaise)
4. On August 10, 1792, on news of treason by the king and queen, a
revolutionary crowd attacked the royal palace at the Tuileries
capturing the palace, while the royal family fled to the Legislative
Assembly, which suspended the king from all his functions,
imprisoned him, and called for a new National Convention to be
elected by universal male suffrage
2. The Second Revolution
1. The fall of the monarchy marked radicalization of the Revolution
(second revolution)
1. Louis’s imprisonment was followed by the September Massacres
where stories seized the city that imprisoned counter-revolutionary
aristocrats and priests were plotting with the allied invaders and half
the men and women were slaughtered
2. The new, popularly elected National Convention proclaimed France
a republic
2. The republic sought to create a new popular culture that glorified the
new order by adopting a revolutionary calendar, addressing each other
with “thou” instead of “you,” promoting democratic festivals (brought the
entire population together)
3. All the members of the National Convention were Jacobins and
republicans but the convention was divided into two bitterly competitive
groups—the Girondists, named after a department in the France, and
the Mountain, led by Robespierre and Georges Jacques Danton (called
this because members sat on uppermost benches of hall)
4. By a single vote (361 of 720), the National Convention convicted Louis
XVI of treason and sentenced him to death in January 1793 (died on
guillotine)
5. The Prussians had been stopped at the indecisive Battle of Valmy on
September 20, 1792; republican armies captured Nice, the city of
Frankfurt, won their first major battle at Jamappes and by November
1792, occupied the entire Austrian Netherlands
6. French armies found support among peasants and middleclass people
but lived off the land, requested food and supplies; started to look like
invaders and tensions mounted
1. In February 1793, the National Convention, already at war with
Austria and Prussia, declared war on Britain, Holland, and Spain
(France was now at war with almost all of Europe, a war that would
last almost without interruption until 1815)
2. Driven from the Austrian Netherlands, peasants did not want to be
drafted and were supported in their resistance by devout Catholics,
royalists, foreign agents
7. The National Convention found itself locked between Girondists and the
Mountain
1. The two groups were in general agreement on questions of policy
but the Girondists feared a dictatorship by the Mountain and the
Mountain was convinced that the more moderate Girondists would
turn to conservatives even royalists
2. With the middle-class delegates divide, the laboring poor of Paris
decided
8. The laboring men and women had drove the Revolution forward and
petty traders and laboring poor were often known as the sansculottes (“without breeches”) because men wore trousers instead of the
breeches of the aristocracy and the solid middleclass
1. In the spring of 1793, rapid inflation, unemployment, and food
shortages encouraged by so-called angry men, such as journalist
Jacques Roux, sans-culottes men and women demanded political
action to guarantee them daily bread
2. The Mountain joined the Girondists in rejecting these demands but
the Mountain and Robespierre became more sympathetic, joined
with sans-culottes in a popular uprising forcing the Convention to
arrest 31 Girondists deputies for treason on June 2 and all the
power passed to the Mountain
3. Total War and the Terror
1. In July 1794, the Austrian Netherlands and the Rhineland were under
the French and the First Coalition was falling apart and was due to the
government’s success in harnessing the explosive forces of a planned
economy, revolutionary terror, and modern nationalism in a total war
effort
2. Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety advanced with
resolution (1793-94)
1. Collaborated with patriotic and democratic sans-culottes, who
retained the common people’s faith in fair prices and a moral
economic order; established a planned economy with egalitarian
social overtones
2. The government decreed the maximum allowable prices for a host
of key products, rationing was introduced, and quality was also
controlled
3. Production of arms and munitions for the war effort were controlled
and craftsmen and manufacturers were told what to produce and
when to deliver
4. The second revolution and the ascendancy of the sans-culottes had
produced an embryonic emergency socialism (subsequent
development of socialist ideology)
3. During the Reign of Terror (1793-1974), special revolutionary courts
responsible only to Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety tried
political crimes and some 40,000 French died and another 300,000
suspects crowded the prisons
1. Robespierre’s Reign of Terror was a political weapon directed
against all who might oppose the revolutionary government (secular
ideology)
2. Strengthened belief that France had replaced a king with a bloodily
dictatorship
4. The most decisive element in the French republic’s victory over the First
Coalition was its ability to continue drawing on the explosive power of
patriotic dedication to a national state and a national mission (French
people stirred by a common loyalty)
5. All unmarried young men were subject to the draft; the French armed
forces grew to one million men in fourteen armies and were led by
generals who had risen rapidly from the ranks and personified the
opportunities the Revolution offered to the people
6. By the spring of 1794, French armies were victorious on all fronts
(republic saved)
4. The Thermidorian Reaction and the Directory, 1794-1799
1. Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety relaxed the emergency
economic controls but extended the political Reign of Terror; their goal
was an ideal democratic republic where justice would reign and there
would be neither rich nor poor
1. Unrestrained despotism and the guillotine struck down on any who
opposed order
2. Robespierre’s Terror wiped out many men who had criticized him
for being soft on the wealthy and who were led by the radical social
democrat Jacques Hebert
3. After March 1794, several of Robespierre’s collaborators led by
Danton, marched up the steps on the guillotine when howled down
Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794) and the next day,
Robespierre was guillotined to death
2. France experienced a reaction to the despotism of the Reign
(Thermidorian reaction)
3. Respectable middle-class lawyers and professions who led the liberal
revolution of 1789 reasserted their authority and the National
Convention abolished many economic controls, printed more paper
currency, and let prices rise sharply
4. The Convention restricted local political organizations and speculators
celebrated the end of the Terror with self-indulgence and ostentatious
luxury (worsen working poor)
5. The sans-culottes believed in small business, decent wages, and
economic justice and finally revolted in Paris against the new order in
early 1795 (used army to control)
6. As the government began to retreat on the religious issue from 1796 to
1801, the women of rural France brought back the Catholic church and
open worship of God
7. National Convention wrote another constitution in 1795, which would
guarantee their economic position and political supremacy where the
mass voted for electors who elected members of a legislative assembly,
who in turn chose the Directory (five men)
8. The Directory continued to support French military expansion abroad
and unprin-cipled action of Directory reinforced widespread disgust with
war and starvation
9. After the national elections of 1797 (conservative and monarchist
deputies) and the Directory used the army to nullify the elections and
began to govern dictatorially
10. Napoleon Bonaparte ended the Directory in a coup d’etat and
substituted a strong dictatorship; effort to establish stable representative
government had failed
5. The Napoleonic Era (1799-1815)
1. Napoleon’s Rule of France
1. In 1799, young General Napoleon Bonaparte was a national hero and
seized power; (born in Corsica in 1769) Napoleon rose rapidly in the
army and placed in command of French forces in Italy where he won
brilliant victories in 1796 and 1797 (Egypt)
2. Napoleon learned of members of the Legislative Assembly who were
plotting against the Directory (weak dictatorship and firm rule had more
appeal than liberty)
1. Abbe Sieyes wrote that the nobility was over privileged and that
entire people should rule the French nation; wanted a strong
military ruler like Napoleon
2. The conspirators and napoleon organized a takeover and on
November 9, 1799, they ousted the Directors, and the following day
soldiers disbanded the Assembly
3. Napoleon was named first consul of the republic and a new
constitution consolidating his position was approved in December
1799
3. Essence of Napoleon’s domestic policy was to use powers to maintain
order and end civil strife and did so by working out unwritten
agreements with powerful groups in France where groups received
favors in return for loyal service
1. Napoleon’s bargain with the middle class was codified in the
famous Civil Code of 1804, which reasserted principles of the
revolution of 1789: equality of all male citizens before the law and
absolute security of wealth and private property
2. Napoleon and leading bankers of Paris established the privately
owned Bank of France, which loyally served the interests of the
state and the financial oligarchy
3. Napoleon’s defense of the new economic order also appealed to
the peasants, who had gained both land and status from the
revolutionary changes
4. Napoleon reconfirmed the gains of the peasantry and reassured the
middle class
4. Napoleon also accepted and strengthened the position of the French
bureaucracy and building on the government from the Old Regime, he
perfected a centralized state
5. A network of prefects, subprefects, and centrally appointed mayor s
depended on Napoleon and in 1800 and 1802, Napoleon granted official
pardon to the nobles on the condition that they return to France and
take a loyalty oath (occupied high posts)
6. In 1800, the French clergy was divided into those who had taken the
oath of allegiance to the revolutionary government and those in exile
who had refused
1. Napoleon, personally uninterested in religion, wanted a united
Catholic church in France that could serve as a bulwark of order
and social peace
2. Napoleon and Pope Pius VII signed the Concordat of 1801 where
the pope gained for French Catholics the right to practice religion
freely, but the government now nominated bishops, paid the clergy,
and exerted influence of the church of France
7. Napoleon’s domestic initiatives gave the great majority of French people
a welcome sense of order and stability and Napoleon added the glory of
military victory
8. Under Napoleon’s authoritarian rule, women lost many of the gains and
could not make contracts or even have bank accounts in their name and
re-established a “family monarch” where the power of the husband and
father was absolute over the rest
9. Free speech and freedom of the press, rights of the liberal revolution in
the Declaration of the Rights of Man, were continually violated where
number of newspapers in Paris were reduced (government
propaganda), harsh penalties for politic offense, Napoleon left control of
police state in France to Joseph Fouche who organized an efficient spy
system and by 1814, there were 250,000 political prisoners
2. Napoleon’s Wars and Foreign Policy
1. After coming to power in 1799, he sent peace feelers to Austria and
Great Britain, the two remaining members of the Second Coalition,
which had been formed in 1798
1. After being rejected, French armies led by Napoleon defeated the
Austrians; in the Treaty of Luneville (1801) were Austria lost almost
all of its Italian possessions and German territory on the west bank
of the Rhine
2. Napoleon concluded the Treaty of Amiens with Great Britain in
1802 where France remained in control of Holland, the Austrian
Netherlands, the west bank of the Rhine, and most of the Italian
peninsula (diplomatic triumph)
2. Redrawing the map of Germany to weaken Austria and attract the
secondary states of Germany toward France, Napoleon threatened
British interests in the eastern Mediterranean and tried to restrict British
trade with all of Europe
1. Deciding to renew war with Britain in May 1803, Great Britain
remained dominant on the seas and a combined French and
Spanish fleet was annihilated by Lord Nelson at the Battle of
Trafalgar on October 21, 1805; invasion of England was impossible
but renew fighting allowed to proclaim himself emperor in 1804
2. Austria, Russia, and Sweden joined Britain to form the Third
Coalition against France before the Battle of Trafalgar and
assumption of the Italian crown had convinced Alexander I of
Russia and Francis II of Austria of Napoleon’s threat
3. Napoleon scored a brilliant victory over the Austrians and Russians
at the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805 and accepted territorial
losses for peace
3. Napoleon abolished many of the German states in 1806 and
established by decree the German Confederation of the Rhine (minus
Austria, Prussia, and Saxony) and named himself “protector” of the
confederation (firmly controlled western Germany)
1. Prussians mobilized, Napoleon attacked, and won two more brilliant
victories in October 1806 at Jena and Auerstadt and after Prussia,
joining with Russia, lost to Napoleon’s larger armies, Alexander I of
Russia wanted peace
2. In June 1807, the tsar and emperor negotiated and finally at the
treaties of Tilsit, Prussia lost half of its population, while Russia
accepted Napoleon’s reorganization of Europe and also promised
to enforce the economic blockade
4. Napoleon saw himself as the emperor of Europe (“Great Empire”),
which was consisted of three parts, the expanding France as the core, a
number of dependent satellites and allies that were expected to support
Napoleon’s continental system after 1806, and the independent but
allied states of Austria, Prussia, and Russia
5. In the areas incorporated into France and in the satellites, Napoleon
introduced many French laws, abolished feudal dues and serfdom, and
put the prosperity and special interest of France first in order to
safeguard his power base (conquering tyrant)
6. The first great revolt occurred in Spain where in 1808 a coalition of
Catholics, monarchists, and patriots rebelled against attempts to make
Spain a French satellite
7. In 1810, Britain remained at war with France, helping the guerrillas in
Spain and Portugal, the economic blockage was a failure creating hard
times for French artisans and middle class, and Napoleon turned on
Alexander I of Russia (scapegoat)
8. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia began in June 1812 with a force that had
600,000 and although planning to winter in the Russian city of
Smolensk, Napoleon pressed on a
1. Defeated the Russians at the battle of Borodino, but Alexander
ordered the evacuation of Moscow, which then burned, and
Alexander refused to negotiate
2. After five weeks in the burned-out city, Napoleon ordered a retreat,
one of the great military disasters in history; the Russian army and
Russian winter cut Napoleon’s army to pieces and only 30,000 men
returned to their homelands
9. Prince Klemens von Metternich, offered the proposal that France get
reduced to its historical size but Austria and Prussia joined Russia and
Great Britain in the fourth Coalition and was cemented by the Treaty of
Chaumont, intended to last twenty years
10. On April 4, 1814, Napoleon abdicated his throne and granted him the
island of Elba off the coast of Italy as his own state and allowed him to
keep his imperial title
11. The allies agreed to the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty and the new
monarch, Louis XVIII tried to consolidate that support by issuing the
Constitutional Charter, which accepted many of France’s revolutionary
changes and guaranteed civil liberties
12. A constitutional monarchy established in 1791 allowed few people to
vote for repre-sentatives to the resurrected Chamber of Deputies and
was treated leniently by allies\
13. Louis XVIII lacked the glory and magic of Napoleon and hearing of
political unrest in France, Napoleon stage an escape from Elba in
February 1815, used appeals for support and French officers and
soldiers who had fought for him responded but the allies were united
against him at the tend of a period known as the Hundred Days, the
Duke of Wellington crushed Napoleon at Waterloo on June 18, 1815
14. Napoleon was imprisoned on the island of St. Helena and Louis XVIII
returned “in the baggage of the allies” but now the allies now dealt more
harshly with the apparently incorrigible French (Napoleon wrote
memoirs and an era had ended)
Chapter 22: The Revolution in Energy and
Industry
1. The Industrial Revolution in England
1. Eighteenth-Century Origins
1. The expanding Atlantic economy of the eighteenth century served
mercantilist England well and the colonial empire, helped by strong
position in Latin America and in the African slave trade provided a
growing market for English manufactured goods
2. It was much cheaper to ship goods by water and no part of England was
more than 20 miles from navigable water and in the 1770s, a canalbuilding boom enhanced this natural advantage and provided easy
movement of England’s enormous deposits of iron and coal, critical raw
materials in Europe’s early industrial age
3. Agriculture played a central role in bringing about the Industrial
Revolution; English farmers second only to Dutch in 1700, and
continually adopted new methods
1. The result, especially before 1760, was a period of bountiful crops
and low food prices and families could spend more on
manufactured goods (instead of all food)
2. Demand for goods within Britain complemented the demand from
the colonies
4. England had other assets that gave rise to industrial leadership
1. England had an effective central band and well-developed credit
markets
2. The monarchy and the aristocratic oligarchy, which had jointly ruled
since 1688, provided stable government and let the domestic
economy operate with few controls, encouraging personal initiative,
technical change, and a free market
3. English had a large class of hired agricultural laborers, rural
proletarians whose numbers increased during the enclosure
movement and these rural wage earners were relatively mobile and
along with cottage workers formed a potential industrial labor force
for capitalist entrepreneurs
5. All the factors combined to initiate the Industrial Revolution, coined by
people in the 1830s to describe the burst of major inventions and
technical change; technical revolution together with an impressive
quickening annual rate of industrial growth
1. Industry had grown at only 0.7 percent between 1700 and 1760,
while industry grew at the rate of 3 percent between 1801 and 1831
(industrial transformation)
2. The decisive quickening of growth probably came in the 1780s,
after the American war for independence (longer process than the
political revolutions)
6. The Industrial Revolution was not complete in England until 1850 but
had no real impact on the continental countries until after 1815
2. The First Factories
1. The first decisive breakthrough of the I.R. was the creation of the
world’s first large factories in the English cotton textile industry and
technological innovations in the manufacture of cotton cloth led to a
system of production and social relationships
2. The putting-out system of merchant capitalism was expanding across
Europe in the eighteenth century (most developed in England) but under
the pressure of growing demand, the system’s limitations first began to
outweigh its advantages (after 1760)
3. Constant shortage of thread in the textile industry focused attention of
improving spinning, as wool and flax was hard to spin with the improved
machines
1. Cotton was different and cotton textiles had first been imported into
England from India and by 1760, there was a tiny domestic industry
in northern England
2. After many experiments, James Hargreaves invented his cottonspinning jenny in about 1765 and barber-turned-manufacturer
named Richard Arkwright invented (or possibly pirate) another kind
of spinning machine, the water frame
3. Hargreaves’s jenny was simply, inexpensive, and hand operate; up
to 24 spindles were mounted on a sliding carriage and each spindle
spun a fine thread when the woman moved the carriage back and
forth and turned a wheel to supply power
4. Arkwright’s water frame acquired a capacity of several hundred
spindles and demanded water power; water frame required
specialized mills, but could only spin coarse, strong thread, which
was put out for respinning on cottage jennies
5. Samuel Crompton invented another technique around 1790 that
required more power than the human arm and cotton spinning was
concentrated in factories
4. Cotton goods became much cheaper and were bought by all classes
and families in cottage industry could now obtain thread spun on the
jenny or obtain it from a factory
5. Wages of weavers, how hard pressed to keep up with the
spinners, rose markedly until about 1792 and were among the best-paid
workers in England
6. One result of the prosperity was a large numbers of agricultural laborers
became handloom weavers and was an example of how further
mechanization threatened certain groups of handicraft workers, for
mechanics and capitalists soon sought to invent a power loom to save
on labor costs; Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom in 1785
and handloom weavers received good wages until at least 1800
7. Working conditions in the early factories were worse than those of
cottage workers
1. Until the late 1780s, most English factories were in rural areas,
where they had access to waterpower and employed small
percentage of all cotton textile workers
2. People were reluctant to work in them because they had low pay
and factory owners turned to young children as a source of labor
(abandoned by parents)
3. Under care of local parishes, parish officers often “apprenticed”
orphans to factory owners where the parish saved money and
factory had workers
8. Apprenticed as young as five, children were forced by law to labor for
their “master” for as many as fourteen years and were housed, fed, and
locked up nightly in houses
1. The young workers received little or no pay and hours were
commonly fourteen hours a day, six days a week; harsh physical
punishment maintained discipline
2. Wholesale coercion of orphans as factory apprentices constituted
exploitation and attracted the conscience of reformers and
reinforced humanitarian attitudes towards children and their labor in
the early nineteenth century
9. The creation of the world’s first modern factories in the English cotton
textile in the 1770s and 1780s industry was a major historical
development and by 1831, the cotton textile industry accounted for 22
percent of the country’s entire industrial production
3. The Problem of Energy
1. The growth of the cotton textile industry might have been cut short if the
water from rivers and streams had remained the primary source of
power for the new factories, but a solution was found to the problem of
energy and power
2. Adult humans need 2,000 to 4,000 calories daily to simply fuel their
bodies, work, and survive and have constructed machines to convert on
form on energy into another
1. More efficient use of water and wind in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries enabled human to accomplish more and
society in the eighteenth century continued to rely on plants, and
humans and animals performed most work
2. The land was the principal source of raw materials needed for
industrial production, which was difficult to expand (needed to
produce more)
3. The shortage of energy had become sever in England by the eighteenth
century
1. Most of the forests of medieval England had been replaced by
fields of grain and hay and wood was in ever-shorter supply yet still
remained important
2. Wood was the primary source of heat for all homes and industries
and the key to transportation since ships and wagons were made of
wood
3. Wood and iron ore were basic raw materials of the iron industry as
processed wood (charcoal) was mixed with iron ore in the blast
furnace to produce pig iron
4. The iron industry’s appetite for wood was enormous and lay bare
the forests of England as well as parts of continental Europe; by
1740 the English iron industry was declining but vast forests
enabled Russia to become the world’s leading producer of iron and
after a few decades Russia reached the barrier of inadequate
energy
4. The Steam Engine Breakthrough
1. England looked toward its reserves of coal as an alternative to wood
1. First used in England in the late Middle Ages as a source of heat;
by 1640 most homes in London were heated with coal and was
used to make various products
2. Coal was not used to produce mechanical energy or to power
machinery
2. One pound of good bituminous coal contains about 3,500 calories of
heat energy and a hard-working miner could dig out 500 pounds of coal
a day using hand tools
1. An inefficient converter, which transforms only 1 percent of heat
energy in coal into mechanical energy, produced 27 horsepowerhours of work from the 500 pounds of coal while the minder only
produced about 1 horsepower-hour
2. Early steam engines were such inefficient converters and as more
coal was produced, mines were dug deeper and were constantly
filling with water
3. Mechanical pumps, powered by animals walking in circles, had to
be installed
3. Thomas Savery (1698) & Thomas Newcomen (1705) invented the first
steam engines
1. Both engines were extremely inefficient and burned coal to produce
steam, which was then injected into a cylinder or reservoir; in
Newcomen’s engine, the steam in the cylinder was cooled, creating
a partial vacuum, which allowed the pressure of the earth’s
atmosphere to push the piston in the cylinder and operate a pump
2. In the early 1760s, a gifted young Scot named James Watt was
drawn to a study of the steam engine (University of Glasgow) and
saw why the Newcomen engine was so inefficient—cylinder was
being heated and cooled every piston stroke
3. Watt added a separate condenser where the steam could be
condensed without cooling the cylinder and greatly increased the
efficiency of the steam engine
4. Watt partnered with a wealthy, progressive toymaker that provided
a risk capital and a manufacturing plant and from manufacturers
such as cannonmaker John Wilkinson (bore cylinders), Watt was
able to purchase precision parts; these parts allowed Watt to create
an effective vacuum and regulate a complex engine
4. The steam engine of Watt was the Industrial Revolution’s most
fundamental advance in technology and people had unlimited power at
their disposal; the steam engine provide even more coal and began to
replace waterpower during the 1780s
5. The English iron industry was transformed and the use of steam-driven
bellows in blast furnaces helped ironmakers switch over from limited
charcoal to unlimited coke in the smelting of pig iron; Henry Cort
developed the puddling furnace which allowed pig iron to be refined in
turn with coke and developed steam-powered rolling mills
6. The economic consequence of the innovations was a great boom in the
English iron industry (17,000 tons in 1740, 68,000 tons in 1788, and
3,000,000 tons in 1844)
7. Iron became the cheap, basic, indispensable building block of the
economy
5. The Coming of the Railroads
1. The second half of the eighteenth century saw extensive construction of
roads but passenger traffic benefited most and overland shipment of
freight, relying on horsepower, was limited and expensive (inventors
tried to use steam power solution)
2. As early as 1800, an American ran a “steamer on wheels” and English
engineers created steam cars but horses continued to reign highways
and streets for the century
3. The coal industry had been using plank roads and rails to move coal
wagons in mines and the surface because rails reduced friction and
allowed carry of heavier loads
4. In 1816 a stronger rail was developed, George Stephenson built an
effective loco-motive in 1825 and in 1830, his Rocketsped down the
track of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at 16 miles per hour
(world’s first important railroad)
5. The line from Liverpool to Manchester was a financial and technical
success and many private companies were quickly organized to build
more rail lines
1. Companies had to get permission from Parliament and pay for the
rights of way and within twenty years, they had completed the main
trunk lines of Great Britain
2. The railroad dramatically reduced the cost and uncertainty of
shipping freight overland and this advance had many economic
consequences
3. Markets had tended to be small and local but as the barrier of high
transportation cost were lowered, they became larger and even
nationwide
4. Larger markets encouraged larger factories in the growing number
of industries and such factories could make goods cheaply and
provided severe competition
6. The construction of railroads contributed to the growth of a class of
urban workers and although rural workers did not leave their jobs to go
work in factories, the building of railroads created a strong demand for
labor, especially unskilled labor
1. Many farm laborers and peasants, accustomed to temporary
employment, went to build railroads, life back home in the village
seemed dull and many men drifted to towns in search of work—with
the companies, in construction, and in factories
2. By the time they had sent for their family, they had become urban
workers
7. The railroad changed the outlook and values of the entire society and as
the last and culminating invention of the Industrial Revolution, the
railroad increased the speed of the new age (by 1850, trains were
traveling down the tracks at 50 miles per hour)
8. Joseph M.W. Turner and Claude Monet succeeded in expression and
leading railway engineers Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas
Brassey became idols of their day
6. Industry and Population
1. In 1851, the Great Exposition, a famous industrial fair, was held in
London in the new Crystal Palace, an architectural masterpiece made of
glass and iron (now abundant)
2. Britain produced two-thirds of the world’s coal and about one-half iron
and cotton cloth and in 1860, Britain produced 20% of the world’s output
of industrial goods
3. Britain became the first industrial nation and as the economy increased
the produc-tion, the gross national product (GNP) rose fourfold between
1780 and 1851 and the population increased from nine million to almost
twenty-one million during that time
4. Historians believe that more people meant a more mobile labor force
where there were many young workers but contemporaries were less
optimistic about the growth
1. Thomas Malthus (Essay on the Principle of Population) argued that
population would tend to grow faster than the food supply and
young people had to limit the growth of population by the old triedand-true means of marrying late in life
2. English leading economist David Ricardo argued that the pressure
of population growth would cause wages to sink to subsistence
level (“the dismal science”)
3. Economist Keynes said of the Great Depression, “we are all dead
in the long run.”
5. Until the 1820s, or even the 1840s, contemporary observers concluded
that the economy and total population were racing neck and neck, with
the outcome unknown
6. Another problem was that perhaps workers, farmers, and ordinary
people did not get their rightful share of the new wealth while the rich
got richer and poor got poorer
2. Industrialization in Continental Europe
1. National Variations
1. A per capita companion of levels of industrialization is a comparison of
how much average industrial product was available to each person in a
country in a given year
2. In 1750, all countries were fairly close together and that Britain was only
slightly ahead of France and that Britain had opened up a noticeable
lead over all continental countries by 1800; gap widened as the British
Industrial Revolution accelerated
3. Third, variations in the timing and in the extent of industrialization in the
continental powers and the United States are also apparent; Belgium
rich in iron and coal, led in adopting Britain’s new technology, and
France consistently developed gradually
4. By 1913, Germany was rapidly closing in while the United States had
already passed
5. Finally, All the European states (As well as the United States, Canada,
and Japan) managed to raise per capita industrial levels in the
nineteenth century but stood in contrasted to most non-Western
countries, most notably in China and India
6. Rates of wealth and power creating industrial development, which
heightened inequality in Europe, also magnified inequities between
Europe and rest of the world
2. The Challenge of Industrialization
1. Throughout Europe the eighteenth century was an era of agricultural
improvement, population increase, expanding foreign trade, and
growing cottage industry
2. When the pace of English industry began to accelerate in the 1780s,
continental businesses began to adopt new methods and at first the
Continent was close behind
1. While English industry maintained the momentum of the 1780s, on
the Continent, the political and economic upheavals that bean with
the French Revolution disrupted trade, created runaway inflation,
and foster social anxiety
2. War severed normal communications between England and the
Continent handicapping continental efforts to use the new British
machinery and technology
3. The widening gap mad it more difficult, if not impossible, for other
countries to follow the British pattern in energy and industry after
peace was restored in 1815
4. British technology had become so advanced that few engineers
outside England understood it and the technology of steampower
had grown much more expensive which involved investments in
iron and coal (required existence of railroads)
5. Landowners and government officials were often suspicious of the
new form of industry and changes; disadvantages slowed the
spread of modern industry
3. After 1815, continental countries that faced the British challenge had
few advantages
1. Continental countries had a rich tradition of putting-out enterprise,
merchant capitalists and skilled urban artisans (ability to adapt and
survive in new market)
2. Continental capitalists did not need to develop their own advanced
technology and rather could borrow the new methods developed in
Great Britain
3. European countries such as France and Russia had strong
independent govern-ments, which did not fall under foreign political
control and could fashion economic polices to serve their own
interests
3. Agents of Industrialization
1. The British tried to keep their secrets to themselves and until 1825, it
was illegal for artisans and skilled mechanics to leave Britain and until
1843, the export of textile machinery and other equipment was
forbidden; many ambitious workers left illegally
2. William Cockerill, a Lancaster carpenter, began building cotton-spinning
equipment in Belgium (1799) and in 1817 son John Cockerill, converted
the palace Liege into an industrial enterprise, which produced
machinery, steam engines, and locomotives
1. Cockerill’s plants became an industrial nerve center and skilled
British workers came illegally to work for Cockerill, and some went
on to found their companies
2. Newcomers brought the latest plans and secrets to Cockerill; British
technicians and skilled workers were a powerful force in the spread
of early industrialization
3. A second agent were talented entrepreneurs such as Fritz Harkort
(business pioneer)
1. Serving in England as a Prussian army officer, Harkort was
impressed with what he saw and set up shop in a castle in Ruhr
Valley, Germany (“Watt of Germany”)
2. Harkort looked to England for mechanics and he imported thick iron
boilers that he needed from England at great (had to be dismantled
and shipped separately)
3. Despite all the problems, Harkort built and sold engines, winning
fame and praise but efforts over sixteen years resulted in large
financial losses and in 1832, he was forced out of his company by
his financial backers, who wanted to reduce losses
4. Continental industrialization usually brought substantial but uneven
expansion of handicraft industry; rising income of middle class
created foreign demand
4. A third force was government (often helped business people in
continental countries)
1. After 1815, France was suddenly flooded with cheaper, better
English goods and the government laid high tariffs on English
imports to protect the French economy and the continental
governments bore the cost of building roads and canals
2. In an effort to tie the independent nation together, the Belgian
government decided to construct a state-owned railroad system
(stimulated heavy industry)
3. The Prussian government guaranteed that the state treasury would
pay the interest and principal on railroad bonds if the private
companies where unable to do and railroad investors in Prussia ran
little risk and capital was quickly raised
4. Government helped pay for railroads, the leading sector in
continental industrial-ization; Friedrich List reflected government’s
role in industrialization and con-sidered the growth of modern
industry of utmost importance because manufac-turing was a
primary means of increasing people’s well-being (defend the
nation)
5. List (National System of Political Economy) focused on the practical
policies of railroad building and the tariff; he supported the
formation of a customs union (Zollverein) among the separate
German states—tariff union came around in 1834 and also he
supported a high protective tariff allowing infant industries to
develop
5. Banks played a larger and more creative role on the Continent than in
England
1. Previously, almost all banks in Europe had been private, organized
as secretive partnerships, and all active partners were liable for all
the debts of the firm and partners of private banks tended to be
quite conservative and avoided risks
2. In the 1830s two important Belgian banks received permission from
the government to establish themselves as corporations enjoying
limited liability; a stockholder could lose only his original investment
in the bank’s common stock
3. Publicizing the risk-reducing advantage of limited liability, Belgian
banks were able to attract shareholders and became industrial
banks (promoted industry)
4. Similar corporate banks became important in France and Germany
in the 1850s and 1860s and they established and developed many
railroads and many companies working in heavy industry and the
most famous bank was Credit Mobilier of Paris founded by Isaac
and Emile Pereire, journalists from Bordeaux
6. The combined efforts of skilled workers, entrepreneurs, governments,
and industrial banks meshed successfully between 1850 and the
financial crash of 1873
7. In Belgium, Germany, and France, key indicators of industrial
development—such as railway mileage, iron and coal production, and
steam engine capacity—increased at average annual rates of 5 to 10
compounded
3. Capital and Labor
1. The New Class of Factory Owners
1. Industrial development brought new social relations and intensified longstanding problems between capital and labor in both urban workshops
and cottage industry
2. New thinking about social relations led to the development of a new
overarching interpretation—a new paradigm—regarding social
relationships (class consciousness)
3. Manufacturers waged a constant battle to cut their production costs and
stay afloat as much of the profit had to go back into the business for
new and better machinery
4. Artisans and skilled workers of exceptional ability had unparalleled
opportunities and the ethnic and religious groups that had been
discriminated against in the traditional occupations controlled by the
landed aristocracy jumped at new changes; Quakers and Scots in
England, Protestants and Jews dominated banking in Catholic France
5. As factories grew larger, opportunities declined; formal education
became more important for advancement and formal education at an
advanced level was expensive
6. In England, France, and Germany, leading industrialists were likely to
have inherited their well-established enterprises and had a greater
sense of class consciousness, fully aware that development had
widened the gap between themselves and their workers
2. The New Factory Workers
1. The countries that followed England were able to benefit from English
experience in social and technical matters (conditions of European
workers improved after 1850)
2. The Industrial Revolution in England had critics, among the first were
romantic poets
1. William Blake (1757-1827) called the early factories “satanic mills”
and protested against the hard life of London poor
2. William Wordsworth lamented the destruction of the rural way of life
and the pollution of land and water; workers (Luddites) attacked
whole factories in northern England in 1812 and smashed the new
machines (taking their jobs)
3. Malthus and Ricardo concluded that workers would earn only
enough to stay alive
4. Friedrich Engels, revolutionary and colleague of Karl Marx,
published The Condition of the Working Class in England, a
reflection on middle classes and wrote new poverty of the industrial
workers was worse (culprit—capitalism)
3. Other observers believed that conditions were improving for the working
people
1. Andrew Ure wrote in 1835 in his study of the cotton industry that
conditions in most factories were not harsh and were even quite
good
2. Edwin Chadwick, a conscientious government official, concluded
that the laboring community was able to buy more of the
necessities and minor luxuries
4. If working people suffered a great economic decline, as Engels and
socialists assert-ed, then the purchasing power of the working person’s
wages must have declined
1. There was little or no increase in the purchasing power of the
average British worker from about 1780 to 1820 (period from 1792
to 1815 -- war with France)
2. Only after 1820, and especially after 1840, did wages rise
substantially, so that the average worker earned and consumed 50
percent more in 1850 than in 1770
3. The hours in the average workweek increased and workers earned
more
4. The war years colored early experience of modern industrial life in
somber tones
5. A way to consider the workers’ standard of living is to look at what they
purchased
1. Workers ate food of higher nutritional quality as the Industrial
Revolution progressed and diets became varied—potatoes, dairy
products, fruits, vegetables
2. Clothing improve, but housing for working people probably
deteriorated
6. Per capita use of goods supports the position that the standard of living
of the working classes rose, at least moderately, after the long wars with
France
3. Conditions of Work
1. The first factories were cotton mills in the 1770s and cottage workers
accustomed to the putting-out system, were reluctant to work in
factories as the work was different
1. In the factory, workers had to keep up with the machine and follow
its tempo and had to show up every day and work long,
monotonous hours (factory whistle)
2. Cottage workers set their own pace and could interrupt their work
when they wanted to as long as they met the deadlines for that
week
3. Early factories resembled English poorhouses increased cottage
workers’ fear
2. The cottage worker’s reluctance to work in the factories prompted early
cotton mill owners to turn to abandoned and pauper children for their
labor (contracted officials)
1. Pauper children were badly treated and overworked in mills, and in
the eighteenth century, semi-forced child labor seemed necessary
and was socially accepted
2. By 1790, the use of pauper apprentices was in decline was
forbidden in 1802
3. Many factories were being built in urban areas were they could use
steampower other than waterpower and attract a workforce more
easily then in the countryside
4. People came from near and far to work in the cities, both as factory
workers and as laborers, builders, and domestic servants (helped
modify the system)
3. People often came to the mills and the mines as family units and the mill
or mine owner bargained with the head of the family; mothers and
children supported father
4. The preservation of the family as an economic unit in the factories mad
the surroundings more tolerable during the early stages of
industrialization
1. The presence of the whole family meant the children and adults
worked the same, dreadful long hours; twelve-hour shifts were
normal in cotton mills in 1800
2. Some very young children were employed solely to keep the family
together
3. Jedediah Strutt believed children should be at least ten years old to
work in the mills; adult workers were not interested in limiting the
minimum working age or hours of their children as long as family
members worked side by side
5. Enlightened employers and social reforms argued that humane
standards were necessary, used widely circulated parliamentary reports
to appeal to public opinion
1. Robert Owen, a successful manufacturer in Scotland, testified in
1816 that employing children under ten years of age as factory
workers was “injurious to the children, and not beneficial to the
proprietors” (slow growth and learning)
2. Owen had raised the age of employment (twelve) in his mills and
was promoting education for young children and workers also
provide testimony as such hearings
6. The Factory Act of 1833 limited the factory workday for children
between nine and thirteen to eight hours and that of adolescents
(fourteen to eighteen) to twelve hours, although the act made no effort
to regulated hours at home or in small businesses
1. The law also prohibited the factory employment of children under
nine years old, who were to be enrolled in the elementary schools
that factory owners were required to establish and the employment
of children declined rapidly
2. The Factory Act broke the pattern of whole families working
together in the factory because efficiency required standardized
shifts for all workers
7. Many manufacturer and builders hired workers through subcontractors
who paid them on the basis of what the subcontractors and their crew
produced and in turn, the subcontractors hired and fired their own
workers, many who were friends and relation
8. The relationship between subcontractor and work crew was close and
personal
9. Ties of kinship was important for newcomers, who often traveled great
distances to find work and many urban workers in Great Britain were
from Ireland, forced out by population growth and deteriorating
economic conditions from 1817 on
10. Even though Irish workers were not related directly by blood, they were
held together by ethnic and religious ties and like other immigrant
groups, they worked together
4. The Sexual Division of Labor
1. By tradition, certain jobs were defined by sex but tasks might go to
either sex because particular circumstances dictated family’s response
in its battle for economic survival
2. Woman found lonely limited job opportunities and were generally denied
good jobs at good wages outside the house after the first child arrived
(housework, child care)
1. Married women were much less likely to work full time for wages
outside the house after the first child arrived but earn small
amounts in the putting-out system
2. Married women who did work for wages usually came from the
poor, desperate families, where the husbands were poorly paid,
sick, unemployed, or missing
3. The poor married women were joined by groups of young
unmarried women, who worked full time but only in certain jobs;
confined to low-paying, dead-end jobs
3. Scholars stress the role of male-dominated craft unions in denying
women access to good jobs and in reducing them to unpaid maids
dependent on their husbands
4. Others believe that the gender roles were result of economic and
biological factors to explain why women were unwilling to halt the
emergence of a division of labor
1. The new and unfamiliar discipline of the clock and the machine was
especially hard on married women; factory discipline conflicted with
child care
2. Running a household in conditions of primitive urban poverty was
an extremely demanding job in its own right; everything had to be
done on foot such as the shopping and feeding the family and
another brutal job didn’t appeal to women
3. The desire of males to monopolize the best opportunities and hold
women down
4. The growth of factories and mines brought unheard-of opportunities
for girls and boys to mix on the job, free of familial supervision and
such intimacy also led to the illegitimacy explosion that began in the
eighteenth century and the segregation of jobs by gender was to
help control the sexuality of the working youth
5. The middle-class men leading the inquiry about the British coal industry
failed to appreciate the physical of the girls and women but were
shocked to see them without shirts and assumed the prevalence of
immoral sex with male miners
1. The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited underground work for all women
as well as for boys under ten and some women protested against
being excluding from coal mining, which paid higher wages than
most other jobs open to women
2. But girls and the women who had worked underground who were
part of families that could manage economically, were generally
pleased with the law
5. The Early Labor Movement
1. Many kinds of employment changed slowly; farm and domestic labor
continued to be most common, and small-scale handicraft production
remained unchanged in many trades which helped eased the transition
to industrial civilization (small workshops)
2. Working class solidarity and class consciousness developed,
particularly in the north of England, and many employers adopted the
feeling that unions were a form of restriction on industrial growth
1. The liberal concept of economic freedom gathered strength in the
late eighteenth century and the British government attacked
monopolies, guilds, and combination
2. The Combination Act of 1799 passed by Parliament outlawed
unions and strikes
3. In 1813 to 1814, Parliament repealed the old and disregarded the
law of 1563 regulating the wags of artisans and the conditions of
apprenticeship
3. Workers who continued to organize and strike disregarded the
Combination Acts and Parliament repealed the Combination Acts in
1824 and unions were tolerated
4. Robert Owen pioneered in industrial relations by combining firm
discipline with concern for the health, safety, and hours of his workers
1. Owen tried to create a national union of workers (the GNCTU), and
then after 1851 the craft unions ("new model unions") won benefits
for their members
2. The most famous of these unions was the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers
5. Chartism was a workers' political movement that sought universal male
suffrage, shorter work hours, and cheap bead; workers developed a
sense of their own identity
Chapter 23: Ideologies and Upheavals
1. The Peace Settlement
1. The European Balance of Power
1. The conservative, aristocratic monarchies, with their armies and
economies (Great Britain exception), appeared firmly in control once
again; great challenge for political leaders in 1814 was to construct a
peace settlement that would last and not start war
2. The allied powers were concerned with the defeated enemy, France
and agreed to the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty (Peace of Paris
with Louis XVIII; May 30, 1814)
1. The allies were lenient toward France, gave them boundaries it
possessed in 1692 and France lost the territories conquered in
Italy, Germany, and Low Countries
2. France did not have to pay any war damages; when the four allies
met at the Congress of Vienna, they agreed to raise a number of
formidable barriers against French aggression and the Low
Countries were united and Prussia received more territory on
France’s eastern border to stand as a “sentinel” against France
3. In their moderation toward France, the allies (the Great Powers) were
motivated by self-interest and traditional ideas about the balance of
power
1. To Klemens von Metternich and Castlereagh (foreignministers of
Austria and Britain) as well as their French counterpart Charles
Talleyrand, the balance of power meant an internal equilibrium of
political and military forces that would preserve the freedom and
Austria, Britain, Prussia, Russia, and France
2. They had to arrange international relations so that none of the
victors would be tempted to strive for domination in its turn
4. The victors used the balance of power to settle dangerous disputes at
the Congress of Vienna and agreed that each of them should receive
compensation in the form of territory for their successful struggle against
the French
1. Great Britain won and retained colonies and strategic outposts
during the war
2. Austria gave up territories in Belgium and southern Germany but
took in rich provinces in northern Italy as well as Polish
possessions
3. Prussia and Russia deserved to be compensated but almost led to
war in 1815
5. Alexander I of Russia had taken Finland on his northern border and
Bessarabia on his southern border but wanted to restore kingdom of
Poland and Prussians were willing to give up their Polish territories as
long as they could take in Saxony
1. Castlereagh and Metternich feared an unbalancing of forces in
central Europe
2. On January 3, 1815, Great Britain, Austria, and France signed a
secret alliance directed against Russia and Prussia; the outcome
was compromise rather than war because threat of war caused
rulers of Russia and Prussia to moderate demands
3. They accepted Metternich’s proposal and Russia established a
small Polish kingdom and Prussia received two-fifths of Saxony;
France had regained its Great Power status and ended its
diplomatic isolation by siding with Metternich
6. When the peace settlement had been almost complete, Napoleon
reappeared and after Napoleon was defeated, the resulting peace—the
second Peace of Paris—was still relatively moderate toward France and
Louis XVIII was restored to his throne
7. France lost some territory and had to pay an indemnity of 700 million
francs and had to support a large army of occupation for five years
8. The Quadruple Alliance agreed to meet periodically to discuss their
interest and consider appropriate measures of the maintenance of
peace in Europe
2. Intervention and Repression
1. In 1815 under Metternich’s leadership, Austria, Prussia, and Russia
embarked on a crusade against the ideas of politics of the dual
revolution (lasted until 1848)
2. The Holy Alliance, formed by Austria, Prussia, and Russia in September
1815 proclaimed intention of the three eastern monarchs to rule on the
basis of Christian principles and to work together to maintain peace and
justice on all occasions (soon became symbol of repression of liberal
and revolutionary movements across Europe)
3. In 1820 revolutionaries succeeded in forcing the monarchs of Spain and
Italian kingdom of the Two Sicilies to grant liberal constitutions against
their wills
1. Calling a conference at Troppau in Austria under the provisions of
the quadruple Alliance, Metternich and Alexander I proclaimed the
principle of active intervention to maintain all autocratic regimes
whenever they were threatened
2. Austrian forces marched into Naples and restored Ferdinand I to
the throne of the Two Sicilies and the French armies of Louis XVIII
restored the Spanish regime
4. Great Britain remained aloof, arguing that intervention in the domestic
politics of foreign states was not an object of British diplomacy and
opposed any attempts by the Spanish monarchy to reconquer its former
Latin American possessions (market)
5. Encouraged by the British position, the United States proclaimed its
celebrated Monroe Doctrine in 1823, which declared that European
powers were to keep their hands off the New World and in no way
attempt to re-establish their political system
6. Metternich continued to battle liberal political change but sometime she
could do little as in the new Latin American republics nor the dynastic
changes of 1830 and 1831 in France and Belgium; Metternich’s system
proved effective until 1848
7. Metternich’s policies dominated entire German Confederation, which
was composed of thirty-eight independent German states, including
Prussia and Austria and theses states met in complicated assemblies
dominated by Austria, with Prussia a willing junior partner in the
planning and execution of repressive measures
8. Metternich had the infamous Carlsbad Decrees issued in 1819 and
required German member states to root out subversive ideas in their
universities and newspapers
3. Metternich and Conservation
1. Born into the middle ranks of the landed nobility of the Rhineland,
Prince Klemens von Metternich was an internationally oriented
aristocrat and marriage to Eleonora von Kaunitz opened the door to the
highest court circles and a diplomatic career
1. Austrian ambassador to Napoleon’s court in 1806 and Austrian
foreign minister from 1809 to 1848, Metternich remained loyal to his
class
2. Metternich defended the rights of his class with a clear conscience;
the nobility was one of Europe’s most ancient institutions and
regarded tradition as the basic source of human institutions
(monarchy, bureaucracy, aristocracy, commoners)
2. Metternich’s commitment to conservatism was coupled with a
passionate hatred of liberalism; liberal demands for representative
government and civil liberties had captured some of the middle-class
lawyers, business people, and intellectuals
1. Metternich believed these groups had been and still were engaged
in a vast conspiracy to impose their beliefs on society and destroy
existing order
2. Like many other conservatives, Metternich blamed liberal
revolutionaries for stirring up the lower classes, which he believed
to be indifferent to liberal ideas
3. The threat of liberalism appeared doubly dangerous to Metternich
because it went with national aspirations and liberals, believed that each
national group, had a right to establish its own independent government
and seek to fulfill its own destiny
4. Metternich thought national self-determination threatened the existence
of the aristo-cracy and threatened to destroy the Austrian Empire and
revolutionize central Europe
5. The vast Austrian Empire of the Habsburgs were a great dynastic state
1. Germans had supported and profited by the long-term territorial
expansion of Austria; Germans accounted for a quarter of the
population
2. The Magyars, a substantially smaller group, dominated the
kingdom of Hungary
3. The Czechs, the third major group were concentrated in Bohemia
and Moravia
4. The various Slavic peoples, together with the Italians and the
Rumanians, represented a widely scattered and completely divided
majority in an empire dominated by Germans and Hungarians
5. Different parts of provinces of the empire differed in languages,
customs, and institutions but were held together by their ties to the
Habsburg emperor
6. The multinational state Metternich served was both strong and weak
1. Austria was strong because of its large population and vast
territories
2. Austria was weak because of its many and potentially dissatisfied
nationalities
3. In those circumstances, Metternich had to oppose liberalism and
nationalism for Austria was unable to accommodate those
ideologies of the dual revolution
7. Other conservatives supported Austria because they could imagine no
better fate
2. Radical Ideas and Early Socialism
1. Liberalism
1. Revived conservatism, with stress on tradition, a hereditary monarchy, a
strong and privileged landowning aristocracy, and an official church,
was rejected by radicals
2. The principal ideas of liberalism—liberty and equality—were not
defeated in 1815
1. Political and social philosophy continued to challenge to revived
conservatism
2. Liberalism demanded representative government as opposed to
autocratic monarchy, equality before the law as opposed to legally
separate classes
3. The idea of liberty continued to mean specific individual freedoms:
freedom of
press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and
freedom of arbitrary arrest
4. Louis XVIII’s Constitutional Charter and Great Britain with its
Parliament and historic rights of English people had realized much
of the liberal program in 1815
3. Liberalism faced more radical ideological competitors in the early
nineteenth century and that liberalism resolutely opposed government
intrusion in social and economic affairs even if the need for action
seemed great to social critics and reformers
1. This form of liberalism is often called “classical” liberalism in the
United States in order to distinguish it sharply from modern
American liberalism, which favors more government programs to
meet social needs and to regulate the economy
2. Opponents of classical liberalism criticized its economic principles,
which called for unrestricted private enterprise and no government
interference (laissez faire)
4. The idea of a free economy had first been formulated by Adam Smith
(Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations) who
founded modern economics
1. Smith was highly critical of eighteenth-century mercantilism
2. Smith argued that freely competitive private enterprise would result
in greater income for everyone, no just the rich (general economic
development)
5. British economy was liberalized as old restrictions on trade and industry
were relaxed or eliminated; this liberalization promoted continued
economic growth in the I.R.; economic liberalism and laissez-faire
economy were embraced by business groups and became a doctrine
associated with business interest; labor unions outlawed
6. Thomas Malthus, who argued that population would always grow faster
than supply of food and Ricardo, who said that wages would be just
high enough to keep workers from starving, helped make economic
liberalism an ideology of business interests
7. Liberal political ideals became more closely associated with narrow
class interests
1. Early-nineteenth-century liberals favored representative
government, but generally wanted property qualifications attached
to the right to vote
2. Liberalism became increasingly identified with the middle class
after 1815 and inspired by memories of the French Revolution and
Jacksonian democracy, they called for universal voting rights, at
least for males (would lead to democracy)
8. Many people who believed in democracy also believed in the republican
form of government; they detested the power of the monarchy, the
privileges of the aristocracy, and the great wealth of the upper middle
class (democrats and republi-cans were also more willing than most
liberals to endorse violent upheaval for ideals)
2. Nationalism
1. Nationalism was the second radical idea that came after 1815, with
three major points
1. Nationalism has normally evolved from a real or imagined cultural
unity, manifesting itself especially in a common language, history,
and territory
2. Nationalists have usually sought to turn this cultural unity into
political reality so that the territory of each people coincides with its
state boundaries; explosive in central and eastern Europe where
there were too many states or too little states
3. Modern nationalism’s immediate origins in French Revolution and
Napoleonic wars; people used nationalism to repel foreign foes
during the Reign of Terror
2. Between 1815 and 1850, most people who believed in nationalism also
believed in either liberalism or radical, democratic republicanism (love of
liberty and nation)
3. A common faith in the creativity and nobility of the people was perhaps
the single most important reason for the linking of the love of liberty and
the love of nation
1. Liberals and democrats saw people as ultimate source of all
government; people elected officials and governed themselves
within framework of personal liberty
2. Common loyalties rested above all on a common language; liberals
and nationalists agreed that a shared language forged the basic
unity of a people
4. Early nationalists usually believed that every nation, like every citizen,
had the right to exist in freedom and to develop its character and spirit
(freedom of other nations)
1. Symphony of nations would promote the harmony and ultimate
unity of peoples
2. Jules Michelet (The People) wrote each citizen “learns to recognize
his country” and Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini believed that “in
laboring according to true principles of our country we are laboring
for Humanity.”
3. Liberty of the individual and the love of free nation overlapped
greatly
5. Early nationalists talked of helping humanity but stressed differences
among people
1. German pastor and philosopher Johann Herder argued that every
people has its own particular spirit and genius, which it expresses
through culture and language
2. Early nationalism developed a strong sense of “we” and “they”
(often enemy)
6. Leader of the Czech cultural revival, the passionate democrat Francis
Palacky, praised the Czech people’s achievements, which he
characterized as a long struggle against brutal German domination; to
this “we-they” outlook, they added highly volatile ingredients: a sense of
national mission and a sense of national superiority
7. German and Spanish nationalists had a very different opinion of France
and to them, the French seemed as oppressive as the Germans
seemed to the Czechs (mission)
8. Early nationalism was ambiguous and its main thrust was liberal and
democratic; but below, ideas of national superiority and national mission
lurked (aggressive crusades)
3. French Utopian Socialism
1. Almost all socialists were French and were aware that the political
revolution in France and rise of modern industry in England had been a
transformation of society
2. Socialists believed there was an urgent need for reorganization of
society to establish cooperation and a new sense of community
(searched past and analyzed present)
1. Early French socialists believed in economic planning and argued
the government should organize the economy and not depend on
destructive competition
2. Socials shared an intense desire to help the poor and protect them
from the rich
3. Socialists believed private property should be regulated by the
government or that it should be abolished and replaced by state or
community ownership
3. One of the most influential early socialist was Count Henri de SaintSimon who believed the key to progress was proper social organization,
which required the “parasites”—court, aristocracy, lawyers,
churchmen—give way to the “doers”—leading scientists, engineers, and
industrialists (improved conditions for the poor)
4. Charles Fourier, socialists critique of capitalism, envisaged selfsufficient communities of people living on acres devoted to agriculture
and industry (utopian)
5. Fourier advocated total emancipation of women and called for the
abolition of marriage, free unions based only on love, and sexual
freedom (socialist program)
6. Louis Blanc (Organization of Work) urged workers to agitate for
universal voting rights and to take control of the state peacefully (right to
work became sacred)
7. Pierre Joseph Proudhon (What is Property?) believed that property was
theft stolen from the worker (unlike most socialists Proudhon feared the
power of the state)
8. The message of French utopian socialists interacted with the
experiences of French urban workers (opposed laissez-faire laws;
socialist movement in 1830s and 1840s)
4. The Birth of Marxian Socialism
1. Karl Marx was an atheistic who was influenced by the French socialist
thought
2. Early French socialists often appealed to the middle class and the state
to help the poor but Marx thought such appeals were naïve and argued
that the interests of the middle class and those of the working class
were inevitably opposed to each other
1. In 1848, Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
published the Communist Manifesto, which became the bible of
socialism
2. In Marx’s view, one class had always exploited the other and with
the advent of modern industry, society was split even more now
(bourgeoisie and proletariat)
3. Marx predicted the proletariat would conquer the bourgeoisie in a
revolution as the poorer proletariat was constantly growing in size
and class consciousness
4. Communist Manifesto ends with “Working Men of All Countries,
Unite!”
3. Marx united sociology, economics, and human history in a vast and
imposing edifice
4. Marx, following Ricardo, argued that profits were really wages stolen
from the workers and incorporated Engels’s charges of oppression of
the new factory workers
5. Marx’s theory of historical evolution was built on the philosophy of the
German Georg Hegel who believed that history was “ideas in motion”:
each age is characterized by a dominant set of ideas, which produces a
synthesis
6. Marx retained Hegel’s view of history as a dialectic process of change
but made economic relationships between classes the driving force;
Marx believed it was the bourgeoisie’s turn to give way to the socialism
of revolutionary workers (secular)
3. The Romantic Movement
1. Romanticism’s Tenets
1. The romantic movement was in part a revolt against classicism and the
Enlightenment
2. Romanticism was characterized by belief in emotions, unrestrained
imagination, and spontaneity in both art and personal life (“Storm and
Stress” 1770-80s in Germany)
1. Romantics lived lives of tremendous emotional intensity (suicides
and strange illnesses common); many led bohemian lives, wearing
hair long and uncombed
2. Romantic artists rejected materialism and wanted to escape to lofty
spiritual heights through their art (full development of one’s unique
human potential)
3. Romantics driven by yearning for the unattained, unknown, and
unknowable
3. Romanticism’s general conception of nature totally different of
classicism
1. Nature was portrayed by classicists as beautiful and chaste (like
formal garden)
2. The romantics were enchanted by nature, seeing it as awesome
and tempestuous and others saw nature as a source of spiritual
inspiration
3. Most romantics saw the growth of modern industry as an attack on
their beloved nature and human personality and sought escape to
“unspoiled” lands
4. Some romantics found awesome moving power in the new industrial
landscape
5. Fascinated by color and diversity, the romantic imagination turned
toward the study of history with a passion (history was beautiful and
important in its own right)
6. History was believed to by the art of change over time (organic and
dynamic)
7. Historical studies supported the development of national aspirations and
encourage entire peoples to seek in the past their special destinies
(European thought)
2. Literature
1. Britain was the first country where romanticism flowered fully in poetry
and prose and the British romantic writers were among the most
prominent in Europe
2. Romanticism found its distinctive voice in poetry, as the Enlightenment
had in prose
3. William Wordsworth was the leader of English romanticism and was
influenced by the philosophy of Rousseau and the spirit of the early
French Revolution
1. Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, one of the
most influential literary works in the history of English language
(language of ordinary speech)
2. Wordsworth’s romantic conviction that nature has power to elevate
and instruct
4. Walter Scott personified the romantic movement’s fascination with
history; he was influenced by German romanticism, particularly by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
5. The strength of classicism in France inhibited the growth of romanticism
there at first but between 1820 and 1850 the romantic impulse broke
through in poetry and prose
6. Victor Hugo was the greatest in both poetry and prose in France
7. Hugo achieved an amazing range of rhythm, language, and image in his
lyric poetry
1. Powerful novels exemplified the romantic fascination with fantastic
characters
2. In his play Hernani, Hugo renounced his early conservatism and
equated freedom in literature with liberty in politics and society
(broke all the old rules)
8. Amandine Dupin, known as George Sand, defied the narrow
conventions of her time in an unending search for self-fulfillment
(romantic love of nature, moral idealism)
9. In central and eastern Europe, literary romanticism and early
nationalism often reinforced each other and romantics plumbed their
own histories and cultures
3. Art and Music
1. The greatest and most moving romantic painter in France was Eugene
Delacroix who was a master of dramatic, colorful scenes that stirred the
emotions (Liberty Leading the People celebrated the nobility of popular
revolution in general and revolution)
2. The most notable romantic painters in England was Joseph M. W.
Turner and John Constable and both were fascinated by nature; while
Turner depicted nature’s power and terror, Constable painted
landscapes in which humans were with environment
3. Great romantics transformed the classical orchestra and gave range
and intensity to music (achieved the most ecstatic effect and realized
endless yearning of the soul)
4. The composer Franz Liszt vowed to do for the piano what Nicolo
Paganini
5. Ludwig can Beethoven used contrasting themes and tones to produce
dramatic conflict and inspiring resolutions and his range was
tremendous (richness and beauty)
4. Reforms and Revolutions
1. National Liberation in Greece
1. National, liberal revolution succeeded in Greece after 1815 (had been
under control by the Ottoman Turks since the fifteenth century; united
under language and religion)
2. The rising national movement led to the formation of secret societies
and then to revolt in 1821, led by Alexander Ypsilanti, Greek patriot and
general in Russian army
3. The Great Powers were opposed to all revolution and refused to back
Ypsilanti
1. Educated Europeans were in love with the culture of classical
Greece
2. Russians were stirred by the piety of the Greek Orthodox brethren
3. Writers and artists, moved by romantic impulse, responded to the
Greek struggle
4. In 1827 Great Britain, France, and Russia responded to popular
demands and directed Turkey to accept an armistice but when Turkey
refused, navies defeated the Turkish fleet and Russia established a
protectorate over land that had been under Turkish rule
5. Russia finally declared Greece independent in 1830 and installed a
German prince as king of the new country in 1832 (nation had gained
independence against empire)
2. Liberal Reform in Great Britain
1. Eighteenth-century British society was dominated by the landowning
aristocracy
2. The Tory party, controlled by landed aristocracy, was fearful of radical
movements and the same intense conservatism motivated the Tory
government (balance)
3. After 1815 the aristocracy defended its ruling position by repressing
popular protest
1. In 1815, they began with the Corn Laws, which had regulated the
foreign grain trade before (shortages of grain had occurred and
agricultural prices skyrocketed but peace meant that grain could be
imported again and prices went down)
2. The new regulation prohibited the importation of foreign grain
unless the price at home rose above 80 shillings per quarter (classbased interpretation)
3. The Corn Laws led to protests and demonstrations by urban
laborers and were supported by radical thinkers who campaigned
for a reformed House of Commons
4. In 1817, government responded by temporarily suspending the
rights of peaceable assembly and habeas corpus; two years later,
Parliament passed the Six Acts controlling heavily taxed press and
practically eliminated all mass meetings
5. These acts followed an orderly protest at Saint Peter’s Fields
(‘Battle of Peterloo’)
4. Ongoing industrial development strengthened the upper middle class
5. In the 1820s the Tory government moved in the direction of better urban
direction, greater economic liberalism, and civil equality of Catholics
(heavy tariff)
1. The Whig party introduced an act to amend the representation of
people
2. The Reform Bill of 1832 allowed the House of Commons to emerge
as the all-important legislative body and new industrial areas of the
country gained representation in the Commons and electoral
districts were eliminated
3. As a result, the number of voters increased by about 50 percent,
giving about 12 percent of the total population the right to vote
6. The principal radical program was embodied in the “People’s Charter” of
1838 and Chartist movement (core demand was universal male
suffrage, not female suffrage)
1. Parliament rejected petitions for male suffrage and many workingclass people joined with middle-class manufacturers in the AntiCorn Law League (1839)
2. The climax of the movement came in 1845, the year of the Ireland’s
famine and to avert catastrophe Robert Peel and the Whigs
repealed the Corn Laws in 1846
7. In 1847, the Tories passed the Ten Hours Act of 1847, which limited the
workday for women and young people in factories to ten hours and
healthy competition between the aristocracy and strong middle class
was a factor in the peaceful evolution
8. Exploited and growing in numbers, Irish peasants had come to depend
on the potato crop and its economy was a subsistence economy, which
lacked network of trade
9. Potato crop failure in 1846, 1848, and 1851 caused the Great Famine
and widespread starvation and mass fever epidemics followed (many
immigrants died or fled)
3. The Revolution of 1830 in France
1. Louis XVIII’s Constitutional Charter of 1814 was basically a liberal
constitution
1. Louis appointed moderate royalists his ministers who sought to
obtain the support of a majority of the representations elected to the
lower Chamber of Deputies
2. Louis’s charter allowed only about 100,000 of the wealthiest people
to vote for deputies, who with the king and his ministers, made the
laws of the nation
2. Charles X, Louis’s successor, wanted to re-establish the old order in
France
1. Charles repudiated the Constitutional Charter in 1830, issued
decrees stripping much of the wealthy middle class of its voting
rights and censored the press
2. The immediate reaction was an insurrection in capital by printers
and in “three glorious days,” the government collapsed and the
upper middle class skillfully seated Charles’s cousin, Louis
Philippe, duke of Orleans on the vacant throne
3. Louis Philippe accepted the Constitutional Charter of 1814 and was
merely “king”
4. The wealthy notable elite actually tightened its control as the old
aristocracy retreated
5. For the upper middle class, there had been a change in dynasty in order
to protect the status quo and narrowly liberal institutions of 1815
5. The Revolutions of 1848
1. A Democratic Republic in France
1. Pre-Revolutionary” outbreaks occurred all across Europe (revolution in
Paris)
2. Louis Philippe’s “bourgeois monarchy” was characterized by stubborn
inaction
1. Lack of social, legislation, and politics was dominated by corruption
2. The king’s chief minister in the 1840s, Francois Guizot, was
personified and satisfied with the electoral system were only rich
could vote for deputies
3. Barricades went up on the night of February 22, 1848 and by February
24, Louis Philippe had abdicated in favor of his grandson but refusal led
to the proclamation of a provisional republic, headed by a ten-man
executive committee supported by public
4. A generation of writers had praised the First French Republic and
revolutionaries were firmly committed to a republic as opposed to any
form of constitutional monarchy and they immediately set about drafting
a constitution for France’s Second
1. Government truly wanted the forces of the common people (could
reform society)
2. Revolutionary compassion and sympathy for freedom were
expressed in the freeing of all slaves in French colonies, the
abolition of the death penalty, and the establishment of a ten-hour
workday for workers in Paris
5. The revolutionary coalition were the moderate, liberal republicans of the
middle class
1. They viewed universal male suffrage as the ultimate concession;
but they opposed any further radical social measures but on the
other hand, were radical republicans
2. The radical republicans were committed to socialism (various
degrees)
6. Worsening depression and rising unemployment raised issues
7. Louis Blanc represented the republican socialists in the provincial
government
1. Blanc argued for permanent government-sponsored cooperative
workshops
2. Moderate republicans were willing to provide only temporary relief
and the resulting compromise set up national workshops and
established a special commission under Blanc to “study the
question” (nobody satisfied)
8. French masses went to election polls and the people elected to the new
Constituent Assembly 500 moderate republics, 300 monarchists, and
100 radicals—socialists
9. This socialist revolution was a violent reaction among the peasants and
according to Alex de Tocqueville (Democracy in America) the peasants
were bond with land
10. The clash of ideologies of liberal capitalism and socialism became a
clash of classes
1. The government’s executive committee dropped Blanc and
included no representative of the Parisian working class (workers
invaded Constituent Assembly on May 15 and tried to proclaim a
new revolutionary state)
2. On June 22, the government dissolved the national workshops in
Paris, giving the workers the choice of joining the army or going to
workshops in the provinces
3. The result was a spontaneous and violent uprising and barricades
sprang up
4. Class war had begun and working people fought with the courage
of utter desperation but the government had the army and the
support of peasant France
5. After three terrible “June Days” and the republican army stood
triumphant
6. In place of a generous democratic republic, the Constituent
Assembly completed a constitution featuring a strong executive;
allowed Louis Napoleon to win election
2. The Austrian Empire in 1848
1. News of the upheaval in France evoked liberals to demand written
constitutions, representative government, and greater civil liberties from
authoritarian regimes; monarchs collapsed after popular revolts but
traditional forces recovered and reasserted their authority and reaction
was everywhere victorious
2. The revolution in the Austrian Empire began in Hungary and in 1848,
under the leadership of Louis Kossuth, the Hungarians demanded
national autonomy, full civil liberties, and universal suffrage but the
monarchy in Vienna hesitated
1. Viennese students and workers took to the streets on March 13 and
added their own demands and the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I
capitulated and promised reforms and a liberal constitution
(Metternich fled to London)
2. On March 20, the monarchy abolished serfdom and newly free men
and women of the land then lost interest in the political and social
questions in the urban areas
3. The Hungarian revolutionaries were also nationalists and wanted the
ancient Crown of Saint Stephen transformed into a unified, centralized,
Hungarian nation; the Habsburg monarchy exploited the fears of the
minority groups and locked in combat
4. Czech nationalists based in Bohemia, led by Czech historian Palacky,
came into conflict with German nationalists and saw their struggle for
autonomy as a struggle against a dominant group and peoples of the
empire came into sharp conflict
5. Throughout Austrian and the German states the middle class wanted
liberal reform complete with constitutional monarchy limited voting
rights, and social measures
6. When the urban poor rose in arms presenting their own demands for
socialist workshops and universal male suffrage, the middle classes
recoiled in alarm
7. Conservative aristocratic forces gathered around Emperor Ferdinand I,
who was encouraged by the archduchess Sophia to abdicate in favor of
her son Francis Joseph
1. Prince Alfred Windischgratz bombarded Prague and crushed a
working class revolt in Prague on June 17; Austrian armies
reconquered Austria’s possessions
2. At the end of October, the Austrian army attacked the student and
working-class radicals in Vienna and retook the city (Austrian
aristocracy and loyalty of army)
8. Francis Joseph was crowned emperor of Austria in December 1848 and
Nicolas I of Russia let 130,000 Russian troops; on June 6, 1849, the
army subdued the country
3. Prussia and the Frankfurt Assembly
1. Prior to 1848, the goal of middle-class Prussian liberals had been to
transform absolutist Prussia into a liberal constitution (then merging
German states into nation)
2. After the fall of Louis Philippe, Prussian liberals pressed for the creation
of liberal constitutional monarchy and the artisans and factory workers
exploded
3. Frederick William IV hesitated and on March 21, he promised to grant
Prussia a liberal constitution and to merge it into a new national German
state to be created
4. Urban workers wanted a more radical revolution and the Prussian
aristocracy wanted no revolution at all and joined the conservative
group to urge a counter-reformation
5. A self-appointed group of liberals from various states met for the first
time on May 18 in Frankfurt to write a federal constitution for a unified
German state
6. The Frankfurt National Assembly was absorbed with the issue of the
provinces of Schleswig and Holstein (provinces in Germany but ruled by
the king of Denmark)
7. When Frederick VII, the new king of Denmark tried to integrate both of
these provinces, the Germans there revolted (called on Prussian army
to help)
8. In March 1849 the National Assembly completed its draft constitution
and elected Frederick William of Prussia the new emperor of the
German national state
9. Frederick William rejected the National Assembly and retook control of
the state
Chapter 24: Life in Changing Urban Society
1. Taming the City
1. Industry and the Growth of Cities
1. European cities had been centers of government, culture, and largescale commerce and people were packed together almost as tightly as
possible within the city limits
1. People were always more likely to die in the city than in the country
more people died each year than were born and urban populations
were able to maintain their numbers only because newcomers were
continually arriving from rural places
2. As industry grew, already overcrowded and unhealthy cities rapidly
expanded
2. The number of people living in cities of 20,000 or more in England and
Wales jumped from 1.5 million (17%) in 1801 to 6.3 million (35%) in
1851 and reached 15.6 million (54%) in 1891 (other countries duplicated
the English pattern)
3. In the 1820s and 1830s, people in Britain and France began to worry
about conditions and the number of British cities were increasing by 40
to 70 percent each decade
4. Buildings were erected on the smallest possible lots in order to pack the
people
1. Many people lived in small, often overcrowded cellars or attics
2. Highly concentrated urban populations lived in unsanitary and
unhealthy conditions
5. Open drains and sewers flowed alongside or down unpaved streets and
because of poor construction and an absence of running water, the
sewers often filled
6. Toilet facilities were primitive in the extreme and as many as two
hundred people shared a single outhouse, which filled up rapidly and
since they were infrequently emptied, sewage often overflowed and
seeped into cellar dwellings
2. The awful conditions were caused by tremendous pressure of more people
and the total absence of public transportation and another factor was that
government in England, both local and national, was slow to provide sanitary
facilities and establish adequate building codes - caused by need to explore
and identify what should be done
1. Legacy or rural housing conditions in preindustrial society combined
with appalling ignorance was most responsible for the awful conditions
(housing was not propriety)
3. The Public Health Movement
1. Edwin Chadwick was a commissioner charged with administration relief
to paupers under the revised Poor Law of 1834 (Benthamite, follower of
radical philosopher Jeremy Bentham, taught that problems ought to be
dealt on a rational, scientific basis
1. He saw that problems of poverty and welfare budget was caused
by disease and death because a sick worker was an unemployed
worker (clean up environment)
2. Chadwick collected reports from local Poor Law officials on the
sanitary conditions of the laboring population and reports published
in 1842
3. The key to the energetic action Chadwick proposed was an
adequate supply of clean piped water was essential for hygiene,
bathhouses, cleaning, and industry
4. Chadwick correctly believed that the excrement of communal
outhouse could be dependably carried off by water through sewers
as less than one-twentieth the cost of removing it by hand (iron
pipes and tile drains would provide running water)
2. In 1848, with the cause strengthened by the cholera epidemic of 1846,
Chadwick’s report became the basis of Great Britain’s first public health
law, which created a national health board and gave cities authority to
build modern sanitary systems
3. The public health movement won support in the United States, France
and Germany
4. In Great Britain, governments accepted at least limited responsibility for
the health of all citizens and they adopted programs of action that broke
the high morality rates
4. The Bacterial Revolution
1. In the nineteenth century, reformers were handicapped by the
prevailing miasmatic theory of disease—the theory that smells cause
disease (empirical observations)
2. Observation by doctors and public health officials in the 1840s and
1850s suggested that contagion was spread through filth and not
caused by filth
3. The breakthrough was development of the germ theory of disease by
Louis Pasteur
1. People used fermentation to make break and wine that would spoil
mysteriously
2. Pasteur, a French chemist began studying fermentation in
1854 and found that fermentation depended on the growth of living
organisms and that the activity of these organisms could be
suppressed by heating the beverage (“pasteurizing” it)
3. The implication was that specific diseases were caused by specific
living organisms—germs—and that host organisms could be
controlled in people
4. In the middle of the 1870s, German country doctor Robert Koch
developed pure cul-tures of harmful bacteria, described their life cycles
and over twenty years, researchers—mainly Germans—identified the
organisms responsible for disease after disease, led to a number of
effective vaccines and emergence of modern immunology
5. English surgeon Joseph Lister noticed that patients with simple factures
were much less likely to die than those with compound fractures, in
which the skin was broken and internal tissues were exposed to the air
and after Pasteur in 1865 showed the air was full of bacteria, applied a
chemical disinfectant to a wound dressing (sterilizing)
6. In the 1880s, German surgeons sterilized everything that entered the
operating room
7. Mortality rates began to decline dramatically in the European countries
by 1910, the death rates for people in urban areas were generally no
greater than in the rural areas
5. Urban Planning and Public Transportation
1. Important transformations significantly improved the quality of urban life
1. Urban planning after 1850 was revived and extended and France
took the lead during the rule of Napoleon III, who sought to stand
above class conflict and promote welfare of all his subjects through
government action (Second Empire)
2. Napoleon III believed that rebuilding much of Paris would provide
employment, improve living conditions, and testify the power and
glory of his empire
3. Napoleon placed baron Georges Haussmann, an aggressive,
impatient Alsatian in charge of Paris who was an authoritarian
planner capable of facing opposition
2. Haussmann and his fellow planners razed old buildings in order to cut
broad, straight, boulevards through the center of the city, which allowed
for traffic to flow freely
1. New streets stimulated the construction of better housing and small
neighborhood parks and open spaces were created throughout the
city; the city also improved its sewers and a system of aqueducts
doubled the city’s supply of good fresh water
2. In city after city, public authorities mounted an attack on many of
the related problems of the urban environment (better water supply
and waste disposal)
3. Zoning expropriation laws allowed a majority of owners of land in given
quarter of the city to impose major street or sanitation improvements on
a reluctant minority
4. The development of mass public transportation improved urban living
conditions
1. In the 1870s, many European cities authorized private companies
to operate horse-drawn streetcars to carry the riders, developed in
the United States
2. Then in the 1890s, European countries adopted another American
transit innovation, the electric streetcar, which were cheaper, faster,
and dependable
3. Each person used public transportation four times as often in 1910
as in 1886
5. The new boulevards and transportation gave people access to new,
improved housing and still-crowded cities were able to expand and
become less congested
6. On the Continent, many city governments in the early twentieth century
were building electric streetcar systems that provided transportation to
new public and private housing developments in outlying areas of the
city for the working classes
2. Rich and Poor and Those in Between
1. Social Structure
1. A great change was an increase in the standard of living for the average
person
1. The wages of British workers almost doubled between 1850 and
1906 and similar increases occurred in continental countries as
industrial development quickened
2. Greater economic rewards for the average person did not eliminate
hardship and poverty, nor was the income of the rich and the poor
significantly more equal
3. The poorest 80 percent—the working classes, including peasants
and agricultural laborers—received less altogether than the two
richest classes
2. The great gap between rich and poor endured, in part, because
industrial and urban development made society more diverse and less
unified but did not split into two
3. Rather, economic specialization enabled society to produce more
effectively and in the process created more new social groups than it
destroyed
4. In an atmosphere of competition and hierarchy, neither the middle
classes nor the working classes acted as a unified force (economic
inequality remained intact)
2. The Middle Classes
1. At the top stood the upper middle class, composed mainly of the must
successful business families from banking, industry, and commerce
(beneficiaries)
1. People of the upper middle class were drawn to aristocratic
lifestyle; genuine hereditary aristocracy retained wealth, prestige,
and political influence, especially in central and eastern Europe
where the monarch continued to hold power
2. The number of servants was an important indicator of wealth and
standing
3. The topmost reaches of the upper middle class tended to shad off
into the old aristocracy to form a new upper class (5% of the
population with 33% of wealth)
4. Wealthy aristocrats tended increasingly to exploit their agricultural
and mineral resources as if they were business people (marriages
to American heiresses)
2. Below the wealthy upper middle class were much large, much less
wealthy, and increasingly diversified middle-class groups (industrialists,
merchants, professionals)
3. Below them were shopkeepers, small traders, and manufacturers (lower
middle class)
4. The traditional middle class was gaining two particularly important
additions
1. The expansion of industry, technology created growing demand for
experts with specialized knowledge and most valuable became
solid middle-class professions
2. Architects, chemists, accountants, and surveyors first achieved
professional standing in this period and established criteria for
advanced training and certifi-cation and banded together in
organizations to promote and defend their interests
3. Management of large public and private institutions also emerged
as a kind of profession as governments provided more services and
corporations came about
5. Industrialization also expanded and diversified the lower middle class
1. The number of independent, property-owning shopkeepers and
small business people grew and white collar employees, who did
not own land and earned no more than skilled workers, were
committed to the ideal of moving up in society
2. Many white-collar groups aimed at achieving professional standing
and the accompanying middle-class status (school teachers,
nurses, dentistry)
6. The middle classes were loosely united by a certain style of life and
food was the largest item in the household budget, for middle-class
people liked to eat very well
1. The English were equally attached to substantial meals, which they
ate three times a day and consumed meat in abundance (25% of
income was spent on meals)
2. Spending on food was big because the dinner party was this class’s
favored social occasion and dinners were served in the “French
manner” (8-9 separate courses)
7. The middle-class wife could cope with this endless procession of meals,
courses, and dishes because she had both servants and money at her
disposal; the employment of at least one helpful full-time maid to cook
and clean was the single best sign that a family had crossed the vague
line between working classes from the middle class
8. A prosperous English family, with 10,000 dollars a year, in 1900 spend
fully 25 percent of its income on a hierarchy of ten servants (second
largest item on budget)
9. The middle classes were also well housed by 1800 and many quite
prosperous families rented, rather than owned, their homes (apartment
living)
10. By 1900 the middle class was also quite clothes conscious and the
factory, the sewing machine, and department store helped reduce the
cost of the variety of clothing
11. Education was another growing expense as the middle-class parents
tried to provide their children with education (keystones of culture were
books, music, and travel)
12. The middle classes were loosely united by a shared code of expected
behavior and morality and laid great stress on hard work, self-discipline,
and personal achievement; middle class people were supposed to know
right from wrong and act accordingly
3. The Working Classes
1. About four out of five people belonged to working classes at the turn of
the century, people whose livelihoods depended on physical labor and
who did not employ domestic servants were still small landowning
peasants and hired farm hands (east)
1. In Great Britain, less than 8 percent of the people worked in
agriculture in 1900
2. While in Germany only 25% and less than 50 % in France
depended on the land
2. The urban working classes were less unified than the middle classes
1. Economic development and increased specialization expanded the
traditional range of working-class skills, earnings, and experiences
(semiskilled groups)
2. Skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers developed widely
divergent lifestyles and cultural values, and their differences
contributed to a keen sense of social status and hierarchy within
the working classes (variety but limited class unity)
3. Highly skilled workers (15%) became a real “labor aristocracy,” earning
about 2 pounds per week in Great Britain, about twice the earnings of
unskilled workers
1. The most “aristocratic” of the highly skilled workers were
construction bosses and factory foremen; the class also included
highly skilled handicraftsmen makers of scientific and musical
instruments, cabinetmakers, potters, jewelers, bookbinders,
engravers and printers (under pressure as factory methods
expanded)
2. The labor aristocracy was enlarged by growing need for highly
skilled workers such as shipbuilders, machine-too makers, railways
locomotives and spinners; labor elite remained in a state of flux as
crafts and individuals moved in and out
3. To maintain standing, the upper working class adopted puritanical
values and was strongly committed to the family and to economic
improvement
4. Families in the upper working class saved money regularly, but
viewed them-selves as the natural leaders of the working classes
(self-discipline and morality)
5. The upper working class frowned on heavy drinking and sexual
permissiveness
4. Below the labor aristocracy stood semiskilled and unskilled urban
workers
1. Workers in established crafts, carpenters, bricklayers, pipefitters,
stood near the top and a large number of the semiskilled were
factory workers with good wages
2. The unskilled workers included day laborers, people who had skills
and performed valuable services, but were unorganized and
divided
5. One of the largest components of the unskilled group was domestic
servants and in Great Britain, one of every seven employed persons
was a domestic servant in 1911
1. A great majority were women and domestic service was still hard
work at low pay with limited personal independence (babysitting,
shopping, cooking and cleaning)
2. In great households, the girl was at the bottom of a rigid hierarchy
(servant above)
6. Domestic service had real attractions for country girls with hands and
skills
1. Marriage prospects were better in the city and wages were higher
2. Many young domestics made transition to working-class wife and
mother but such a woman often had to join the working women in
the “sweated industries”
3. Some women did hand-decorating but the majority made clothing
(sewing machine) and these women accounted for inexpensive
“ready-made” clothes
7. The urban working classes sought fun and recreation and turned to
drinking, the favorite leisure-time activity of working people (curse of the
modern age)
8. The heavy problem drinking declined in the late nineteenth century and
this decline reflected in part the moral leadership of the upper working
class; social drinking in public places by couples became accepted and
this participation of women helped civilize the world of drink and hard
liquor
9. Two other leisure-time passions of the working classes were sports and
music halls
1. Cruel sports declined throughout Europe by the late nineteenth
century and their place was filled by modern spectator sports
(soccer and racing most popular)
2. Music halls and vaudeville theaters, the working-class counterparts
of opera and classical theater, were enormously popular throughout
Europe
3. Drunkenness, sexual intercourse and pregnancy before marriage,
marital difficulties, and problems with mothers-in-law were favorite
themes and songs
10. Religion and Christian churches continued to provide working people
with solace and meaning and German Pietism and English Methodism
carried over into the century
11. In the last two or three decades of the nineteenth century saw a decline
in both church attendance and church donations; it appears urban
working classes in Europe did become more secular in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
1. Part of the reason for the change was the construction of churches
failed to keep up with the rapid growth of urban population
2. Throughout the nineteenth century, Catholic and Protestant
churches were normally seen as conservative institutions defending
social order and custom and working classes saw “territorial
church” as defending what they wished to change
3. The pattern was different in the United States as most churches
also preached social conservatism but church and state had always
been separate and people identified churches much less with
political and social status quo
4. Churches thrived in the United States as means of asserting ethnic
identity
3. The Changing Family
1. Premarital Sex and Marriage
1. By 1850, the preindustrial pattern of courtship and marriage was gone
among the working classes and in its place, the ideal of romantic love
had triumphed
2. Economic considerations in marriage remained important to the middle
classes after 1850 and in France, dowries and elaborate legal marriage
contracts were common
1. Marriage was for many families one of life’s most crucial financial
transactions
2. The preoccupation with money led many middle-class men in
France and else- where to marry late and chose women younger
and less experienced (tension)
3. The romantic life of a young woman of the middle class was
supervised by her mother who schemed for marriage and guarded
her daughter’s virginity like credit
4. Middle-class boys were watched but by the time they reached late
adolescence, they had usually attained considerable sexual
experience with maids or prostitutes
3. There was an “illegitimacy explosion” between in 1750 and 1850 and by
the 1840s, as many as one birth in three was occurring outside of
wedlock in many large cities
4. The pattern of romantic ideals, premarital sexual activity, and
widespread illegitimacy was firmly established by mid-century among
the urban working classes
5. In the second half of the century, the pattern of illegitimacy was
reversed and more babies were born to married mothers (growth of
puritanism is unconvincing)
6. The percentage of brides who were pregnant continued to be high and
showed almost no decline after 1850 and unmarried people almost
certainly used cheap condoms and diaphragms the industrial age had
made available to prevent pregnancy (protestant)
7. Unmarried young people were engaging in just as much sexual activity
but pregnancy for a young single women led increasingly to marriage
and the establishment of a two-parent household; this reflected growing
respectability of the working classes
2. Prostitution
1. In Paris alone, 155,00 women were registered as prostitutes between
1871 and 1903, and 750,000 others were suspected of prostitution in
the same years
2. Men of all classes visited prostitutes, but the middle and upper classes
supplied most; though many middle-class men abided by the code of
puritanical morality, others indulged their appetites for prostitutes and
sexual promiscuity
3. My Secret Life, an autobiography written by an English sexual
adventurer from the servant-keeping classes, revels the dark side of sex
and class in urban society
4. Men of the comfortable classes often purchased sex and even affection
from poor girls both before and after marriage; brutal sexist behavior
that women detested
5. For many poor women, prostitution, was a stage of life and not a
permanent employ-ment and they usually went on to marry men of their
own class and establish families
3. Kinship Ties
1. Within working-class homes, ties to relatives after marriage (kinship
ties) were strong
1. For many married couples after 1850, ties to mothers and fathers,
uncles and aunts, were more important than ties to nonrelated
acquaintances
2. People turned to their families for help in coping with sickness,
unemployment, death and old age; although governments generally
provided more welfare service by 1900, unexpected death or
desertion could leave people in need of financial aid
2. If a couple was very poor, an aged relation often moved in to cook and
mind the children so that the wife could earn badly needed income
outside the house
3. Often the members of a large family group all lived in the same
neighborhood
4. Sex Roles and Family Life
1. After 1850 the work of most wives became more distinct and separate
from that of their husbands while husbands became wage earners,
wives tended to stay home and manage households and car for children
(hiring entire families in factories declined)
2. As economic conditions improved, married women tended to work
outside the home only in poor families and strict division of labor by sex
appeared (see above)
1. The division of labor meant that married women faced great
injustice if they tried to move into the man’s world of employment
outside the home
2. Married women were subordinated to their husbands by law and
lacked many basic legal rights; wives in England had no legal
identity, didn’t own property and the Napoleonic Code enshrined
female subordination (property, divorce, custody)
3. Some women rebelled because the lack of legal rights proceeding on
two main fronts
1. Following in the steps of women such as Mary Wollstonecraft.
Organizations founded by middle-class feminists campaigned for
equal legal rights for women as well as access to higher education
and professional employment (suffrage)
2. Women inspired by utopian and Marxism socialism argued that the
liberation of working-class women would come only with the
liberation of the entire working class through revolution (won some
practical improvements in Germany)
4. As home and children became the typical wife’s main concerns, her
control and influence became increasingly strong throughout Europe
and began to manage money; all major domestic decisions were the
women’s decision
1. Women ruled at home partly because running the urban household
was a complicated, demanding, and valuable task (full-time
occupation)
2. The wife also guided the home because a good deal of her effort
was directed toward pampering her husband as he expected and
the women’s guidance of the household corresponded with the
increased emotional importance of family
5. By 1900 home and family were what life was all about for people of all
classes
6. Married couples also developed stronger emotional ties to each other
and marriages in the later nineteenth century were based on sentiment
and sexual attraction
7. Affection and eroticism became more central to the couple after
marriage; Gustave Droz saw love within marriage as the key to human
happiness and urged women to follow their hearts and marry a man
more nearly their age
8. Many French marriage manuals of the late 1800s stressed that women
had legitimate sexual needs and the rise of public socializing by couples
in cafes and music halls as well as franker affection suggests a more
pleasurable intimate life for women
5. Child Rearing
1. Emotional ties deepened within the family with the growing love to their
tiny infants
1. In preindustrial Western society, indifference, unwillingness to
make sacrifices for the welfare of the infant, began to give way
among comfortable classes
2. Mothers increasingly breast-fed their infants, involved sacrifice, and
this surge of maternal feeling gave rise to specialized books on
child rearing and hygiene
3. Gustave Droz urged fathers to get into the act and pitied those who
could not
4. Another sign from France of increased infection was that fewer
illegitimate babies were abandoned as foundlings after 1850 and
the practice of swaddling disappeared—instead, mothers allowed
their babies freedom of movement
2. There was a greater concern for old children and adolescents
1. European women began to limit the number of children they bore in
order to care adequately for hose they had and birthrate continued
to decline until after WW II
2. The most important reason for this reduction in family size (welleducated classes took the lead) was parents’ desire to improve
their economic and social position
3. The growing tendency of couples in the late nineteenth century to
use a variety of contraceptive methods reflected increased concern
for children
3. Many parents, especially in the middle classes, became too concerned
about their children many of who came to feel trapped and in need of
greater independence
4. Prevailing biological and medical theories led parents to believe in the
possibility that their own emotional characteristics were passed on to
their offspring; moment the child was conceived was thought to be of
enormous importance
5. Another area of excessive parental concern was the sexual behavior of
the child
1. Masturbation was viewed with horror and viewed as an act of
independence and defiance and diet, clothing, games, and sleeping
were carefully regulated
2. Attempts to repress the child’s sexuality were a source of unhealthy
tension, often made worse by the rigid divisions of sexual roles
within the family; usually mother and child loved each other easily
but relations between father and child were difficult as his world of
business were far removed for the maternal world
3. Fathers were also demanding, often expecting the child to succeed
where he himself had failed and making his love conditional on
achievement
4. Russian Feodor Dostoevski’s The Brothers Karamazovepitomizes
idealism
6. Sigmund Freud, the Viennese founder of psychoanalysis, formulated
the most striking analysis of the explosive dynamics of a family in the
late nineteenth century
1. Freud noted that the hysteria of his patients appeared to originate
in bitter early childhood experiences wherein the child had obliged
to repress strong feelings
2. One of Freud’s most influential ideas concerned the Oedipal
tensions resulting from the son’s instinctive competition with the
father for the mother’s affection
3. Freud postulated that much of human behavior is motivated by
unconscious emotional need where nature and origins are kept
from conscious awareness by carious mental devices he called
“defense mechanisms” (sexual energy)
7. Working classes probably had more avenues of escape from such
tensions than did the middle classes, working-class boys and girls went
to work when they reached adolescence and could bargain for greater
independence within the household
4. Science and Thought
1. The Triumph of Science
1. Breakthroughs in industrial technology stimulated scientific inquiry as
researchers sough to explain theoretically how such things as steam
engines actually worked and the result was an huge growth of
fundamental scientific discoveries after the 1830s
2. The translation of better scientific knowledge into practical human
benefits was the development of the branch of physics known
as thermodynamics
1. Thermodynamics investigated relationships between heat and
mechanical energy
2. The law of conservation of energy held that different forms of
energy could be converted but neither created nor destroyed
(physical world governed by laws)
3. Chemistry and electricity were two other fields characterized by
scientific progress
1. In 1869, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev codified the rules of
chemistry in the periodic law and the periodic table (chemistry
subdivided into many branches)
2. Researchers in large German chemical companies discovered
ways of transforming useless coal tar into beautiful, expensive
synthetic dyes for fashion
3. The basic discoveries of Michael Faraday on electromagnetism in
the 1830s and 1840s resulted in the first dynamo (generator) and
opened the way for subsequent development of electric motors,
electric lights, and electric streetcars (1880-1913)
4. The triumph of science and technology had at least three significant
consequences
1. Though ordinary citizens continued to lack scientific knowledge,
everyday experience and popularizers impressed the importance of
science on popular mind
2. As science became more prominent, the philosophical implications
of science formulated in the Enlightenment spread to broad
sections of the population
3. Methods of science acquired unrivaled prestige after 1850 and for
many, the union of careful experiment and abstract theory was the
only reliable rout to truth and objective reality (“unscientific”
intuitions of poets and saints seemed inferior)
2. Social Science and Evolution
1. After the 1830s, many thinkers tried to apply the objective methods of
science to the study of society—efforts simply perpetuated the critical
thinking of the philosophes
2. The new “social scientists” had access to massive sets of numerical
data that govern-ments had begun to collect and developed new
statistical methods to analyze these facts and supposedly to test their
theories (systems of social scientists unified—Marx)
3. Another influential system builder was French philosopher Auguste
Comte, disciple of the utopian socialist Saint Simon, Comte
wrote System of Positive Philosophy
1. Comte postulated that all intellectual activity progresses through
predictable stages; the Theological (fictitious), the Metaphysical
(abstract), and the Scientific
2. Comte noted that the prevailing explanation of cosmic patterns had
shifted from the well of God to the will of an orderly nature to the
rule of unchanging laws
3. By applying the scientific or positivist method, Comte believed
sociology would discover the eternal laws of human relations (chief
priest of religion of science)
4. In geology, Charles Lyell discredited the view that earth surface had
been formed by sort-lived cataclysms and instead according to Lyell’s
principle of uniformitarianism, the same geological processes that
existed slowly formed the earth’s surface long ago
5. Jean Baptiste Lamarck asserted that all forms of life had arisen through
continuous adjustment to the environment but his work was flawed in
that he believed in the principle of acquired characteristics; he prepared
the way for Charles Darwin
6. Charles Darwin was most influential of all nineteenth-century
evolutionary thinkers
1. Darwin came to doubt the general belief in a special divine creation
of each species of animals and concluded that all life had gradually
evolved from a common ancestral origin in an unending “struggle
for survival”
2. He summarized his theory in his work On the Origin of Species by
the Means of Natural Selection in which Darwin argued that
variations that prove useful in the struggle for survival are selected
naturally and spread through reproduction
3. Darwin was hailed as the “Newton of biology” and his findings
reinforced the teachings of secularists such as Comte and Marx,
who dismissed religious belief
7. Many writers applied the theory of biological evolution to human affairs,
such as Herbert Spencer, English disciple of Comte, who saw the
human race driven forward by specialization and progress by the
economic struggle (popular with upper class)
3. Realism in Literature
1. In 1868 Emile Zola, the giant of the realist movement in literature,
defended his criticized first novel against charges of pornography and
corruption of morals
1. Zola’s literary manifesto articulated the key themes of realism which
had emerged in the 1840s and continued to dominate Western
culture and style until the 1890s
2. Realist writers believed that literature should depict life exactly as it
was; they deserted poetry for prose and emotional viewpoint for
scientific objectivity
2. The major realist writers focused their power of observation on
contemporary everyday life and began with a dissection of the middle
classes from which, many realists eventually focused on the working
classes (urban working classes)
3. Unlike the romantics, realists were strict determinists and believed that
heredity and environment determined human behavior; good and evil
were just social conventions
4. The realist movement began in France, where romanticism had never
been dominant and three of its greatest practitioners, Balzac, Flaubert,
and Zola were French
1. Honore de Balzac wrote The Human Comedy, portraying more than
two thousand characters from all sectors of French society
struggling for wealth and power; in Le Pere Goriot, a poor student
surrenders his idealistic integrity to greed
2. Madame Bovary, the work of Gustave Flaubert, tells the ordinary
story of a frustrated middle-class housewife who has an adulterous
love affair and is betrayed by her lover; Flaubert portrays middle
class as petty and hypocritical
3. Zola is most famous for his seamy, animalistic view of workingclass life and like many later realists, Zola sympathized with
socialism, evident in Germinal
5. Realism spread quickly beyond France
1. In England, Mary Ann Evans, under the pen name George Eliot,
wrote Middle-march: A study of Provincial Life that examines the
ways in which people are shaped by their social medium as well as
their own inner conflicts and morals
2. Thomas Hardy was more in the Zola tradition and his novels, “Tess
of the D’Urbervilles and Return of the Native, depict men and
women frustrated by fate
3. The greatest Russian realist, Count Leo Tolstoy combined realism
in description and character development with an atypical
moralizing; his greatest work was War and Peace, a novel set
against Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, and Tolstoy probed deeply
into the lives of a multitude of unforgettable characters
4. Tolstoy developed his fatalistic theory of history and his central
message was one of human love, trust, and everyday family ties
are life’s enduring values
6. Thoroughgoing realism (“naturalism”) arrived late in the United States
and appeared in the work of Theodore Dreiser and his work, Sister
Carrie, a story of an ordinary farm girl who does well going wrong in
Chicago
7. The United States became a bastion of literary realism in the twentieth
century after the movement had faded away in Europe
Chapter 25: The Age of Nationalism
1. Napoleon III in France
1. The Second Republic and Louis Napoleon
1. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte’s victory in the December 1848 elections
against General Cavaignac of June Days fame was probably due to the
Napoleonic legend; another explanation stressed the fears of middleclass and peasant property owners in the face of the socialist challenge
of urban workers (classes wanted protection)
2. In 1848 Louis Napoleon had a positive “program” for France, which
guided him throughout most of his long reign (Napoleonic
Ideas and The Elimination of Poverty)
1. Louis Napoleon believed government should represent the people
(economically)
2. When politicians ran a parliamentary government, they stirred up
class hatred because they were not interested in helping the poor
and Louis believed that the answer was a strong, authoritarian,
national leader, who would serve the people
3. The leader would be linked by direct democracy and universal male
suffrage
4. These ideas accompanied his vision of national unity and social
progress
3. Elected to a four-year term, President Louis Napoleon had to share
power with a conservative National Assembly; Louis also signed a bill to
increase greatly the role of the Catholic church in primary
and secondary education
4. Louis also signed another law depriving many poor people of the right to
vote because he wanted the Assembly to vote funds to pay his
personal debts and he wanted it to change the constitution so he could
run for a second term
5. In 1851 Louis Napoleon began to organize a conspiracy and on
December 2, 1851, he illegally dismissed the Assembly and seized
power in a coup d’etat
6. Restoring universal male suffrage Louis Napoleon called on the French
people to legalize his actions (92 %) and a year later, 97 % agreed in a
national plebiscite to make him hereditary emperor and Louis Napoleon
was elected to lead France
2. Napoleon III’s Second Empire
1. Emperor Napoleon III experienced both success and failure between
1852 and 1870
2. His greatest success was with the economy, particularly in the 1850s
1. His government encouraged the new investment banks and
massive railroad construction that were at the heart of the Industrial
Revolution on the Continent
2. The government fostered general economic expansion through a
program of public works, which included the rebuilding of Paris to
improve the environment
3. Napoleon III’s regulation of pawnshops and his support ofcredit
unions and better housing for the working class showed why he had
support and in the 1860s, he granted workers the right to form unions
and the right to strike (denied earlier)
4. Political power remained in the hands of the emperor; Napoleon III
chose his ministers and restricted but did not abolish the Assembly and
members were elected by universal male suffrage every six years
(parliamentary elections handled seriously)
5. Government used its officials and appointed mayors to spread the word
that the election of the government’s candidates was the key to roads,
schools, and tax rebates
6. In 1857 and in 1863, Louis Napoleon’s system worked brilliantly; he won
electoral victories but in the 1860s, France’s problems in Italy and the
rising power of Prussia led to increasing criticism from Catholic and
nationalist supporters back home
7. The middle-class liberals wanted a less authoritarian regime
(denounced his rule)
8. In the 1860s, he progressively liberalized his empire by giving the
Assembly greater powers and the opposition candidates greater
freedom and in 1870, Louis Napoleon granted France a new
constitution, which combined a basically parliamentary regime with a
hereditary emperor as chief of state
9. In a final plebiscite on the eve of a disastrous war with Prussia, 7.5
million Frenchmen voted in favor of the new constitution and only 1.5
million opposed it
2. Nation Building in Italy and Germany
1. Italy to 1850
1. The Italian peninsula was divided in the Middle Ages into competing
city-state, which led the commercial and cultural revival of the West with
amazing creativity
2. Sought after 1494, Italy was reorganized in the 1815 at the Congress of
Vienna
3. Between 1815 and 1848, the goal of a unified Italian nation captured the
imaginations of increasing numbers of Italians and there were three
approaches
1. The radical program of the idealistic Guiseepe Mazzini stated that
Italy become a centralized democratic republic based on universal
suffrage and will of the people
2. Vincenzo Gioberti, a Catholic priest, called for a federation of
existing states under the presidency of a progressive pope
3. The third was the program of those who looked for leadership
toward the autocratic kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, as Germans
looked toward Prussia
4. The third alternative was strengthened by the failures of 1848, when
Austria smashed and discredited Mazzini’s republicanism and Sardinia’s
monarch, Victor Emmanuel, retained the liberal constitution granted
under duress in March 1848
5. The constitution provided for a fair degree of civil liberties and real
parliamentary government complete with elections and parliamentary
control of taxes
6. To the Italian middle classes, Sardinia appeared to be a liberal
progressive state ideally suited to achieve the goal of national
unification but Mazzini seemed quixotic
7. As for the papacy, the initial support by Pius IX for unification had given
way to fear and hostility after he was driven from Rome during the
upheavals of 1848
8. The papacy opposed socialism, separation of church and state, and
religious liberty
2. Cavour and Garibaldi in Italy
1. Cavour was the dominant figure in the Sardinian government (18501861)
1. Cavour’s personal development was an early sign of coming tacit
alliance between the aristocracy and the middle class under a
strong nation-state
2. Cavour turned toward industry and entered the world of politics
after 1848 and became chief minister in the liberalized Sardinian
monarchy in 1852
3. Cavour’s national goals were limited and realistic and until 1859, he
sough unity only for the states of northern Italy (moderate
nationalist and aristocratic liberal)
2. Cavour in the 1850s wishing to consolidate Sardinia as a liberal
constitutional state introduced a program of highways and railroads, of
civil liberties and opposition to clerical privilege, increasing support for
Sardinia throughout northern Italy
3. Cavour worked for a secret diplomatic alliance with Napoleon III against
Austria and in July 1858, he succeeded and provoked Austria into
attacking Sardinia
1. Napoleon III came to Sardinia’s defense and after the victory of the
combined Franco-Sardinian forces, Napoleon III did a complete
turn around
2. Criticized by French Catholics for supporting the pope’s declared
enemy, Napoleon III abandoned Cavour and made a compromise
peace with the Austrians at Villafranca in July 1859 (Sardinia
received Lombardy, around Milan)
4. Cavour’s plans were salvaged by popular revolts and Italian
nationalism; while war against Austria had raged in the north,
nationalists in central Italy and driven out their rulers and nationalist
fervor seized the urban masses (called for fusion of Sardinia)
5. The other Great Powers opposed this but the nationalists held firm and
Cavour returned to power when the people of central Italy voted to join
Sardinia
6. For patriots such as Garibaldi, the job of unification was only half done
1. Garibaldi personified the romantic, revolutionary nationalism of
Mazzini (1848)
2. Sentenced to death in 1834 for his part in an uprising in Genoa,
Garibaldi escaped to South American where he led a guerrilla band
in Uruguay’s independence
3. Returning to Italy to find fight in 1848, he led a corps of volunteer
against Austria and in 1860, Garibaldi had emerged as a powerful
force in Italian politics
7. Cavour secretly supported Garibaldi’s bold plan to liberate the Kingdom
of the Two Sicilies (to use him and to get rid of him) and in May 1860,
Garibaldi’s band of thousand “Red Shirts” outwitted the twenty-thousand
royal army of Austria
8. Garibaldi then prepared to attack Rome and the pope but Cavour sent
Sardinian forces to occupy most of the Papal Sates (to intercept
Garibaldi)
9. Cavour realized that an attack on Rome would bring about war with
France and immediately organized a plebiscite in the conquered
territories; Garibaldi did not oppose Cavour and the people of the south
voted to join Sardinia
10. When Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel rode through Naples, they sealed
the union of the north and south, of the monarch and the people of Italy
11. Cavour had controlled Garibaldi and turned popular nationalism into
conservatism; the parliamentary monarchy under Victor Emmanuel with
the liberal Sardinian constitution of 1848, only a small minority of Italian
males had the right to vote (gap)
3. Germany Before Bismarck
1. The German states were locked in a political stalemate
1. With Russian diplomatic support, Austria had blocked the attempt
of Frederick William IV of Prussia to unify Germany “from above”
(German Confederation)
2. This action contributed to a growing tension between Austria and
Prussia
2. Modern industry growth within the German customs union (Zollverein);
developed under Prussian lead, the exclusion of Austria contributed to
Austro-Prussian rivalry
1. Tariff duties were reduced so that Austria’s high, protected industry
couldn’t join
2. Austria tried to destroy the Zollverein by inducing the southern
German states to leave the union, but without success (by 1853,
only Austria had not joined)
3. William I of Prussia, replacing Frederick William IV as regent in
1858, becoming king himself in 1861, wanted to double the size of
the highly disciplined army; he also wanted to reduce the
importance of the reserve militia (need defense budget)
3. Prussia emerged from 1848 with a parliament, which was in the hands
of the liberal middle class by 1859; but the landed aristocracy, greatly
represented in the Prussia electoral system, wanted society to be less,
nor more, militaristic
4. The Parliament rejected the military budget in 1862 and King William
considered abdicating in favor of his more liberal son but in the end,
William called on Count Otto von Bismarck to head a new ministry and
defy the parliament
4. Bismarck Takes Command
1. Otto von Bismarck was one of the most important figures in German
history; he was born a Junker, Bismarck had a strong personality and
unbounded desire for power
2. Bismarck became a diplomat and acquiring a reputation as an
ultraconservative in the Prussian assembly, he fought against Austria as
the Prussian ambassador to the German Confederation from 1851 to
1859 (wanted to build up Prussia’s strength)
3. Bismarck was convinced that Prussia had to control completely the
northern part of the German Confederation and saw three possible
paths open before him
1. He could work with Austria to divide up the smaller German states
2. He might combine with foreign powers (France, Italy, or even
Russia)
3. He might ally with forces of German nationalism to defeat and expel
Austria
4. He explored each possibility but ultimately choose the last option
4. Bismarck would join with the forces of German nationalism to increase
Prussia’s power seemed unlikely when he took chief minister in 1862;
he declared that the government would rule with parliament consent and
lashed at middle-class opposition
5. Bismarck had the Prussian bureaucracy go right on collecting taxes
without parliament consent, reorganized the army, and from 1862 to
1866 voters continued to express their opposition be sending large
liberal majorities to the parliament
5. The Austro-Prussian War, 1866
1. When the Danish king tried to incorporate Schleswig-Holstein, Prussia
joined Austria in a short and successful war against Denmark in 1864
2. Both agreed to joint administration of the German land; now Bismarck
could force Austria into peacefully accepting Prussian domination in the
north or starting a war
3. Bismarck had to be certain the Prussian expansion would not provoke a
mighty armed coalition and Bismarck had already gained Alexander II’s
gratitude by supporting Russia’s repression of a Polish uprising in 1863
4. Considering Napoleon III, Bismarck had charmed Napoleon into
neutrality with vague promises of territory along the Rhine and he was in
position to declare war
5. The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 lasted only seven weeks
1. Using railroads to mass troops and the need gun to achieve
maximum firepower, the reorganized Prussian army overran
northern Germany
2. The Prussians defeated Austria decisively at the Battle of Sadowa
in Bohemia
3. Bismarck offered Austria realistic, generous, peace terms in which
Austria paid no reparations, lost no territory to Prussia, although
Venice was given to Italy
6. The German Confederation dissolved; Austria agreed to leave from
German affairs
7. The new North German Confederation was led by an expanded Prussia
6. The Taming of the Parliament
1. Bismarck believed that because of the event so f1848, the German
middle class could be led to prefer the reality of national unity under
conservative leadership
2. After the victory, Bismarck fashioned a federal constitution for the new
North German Confederation where each state retained its local
government, but the king of Prussia became president of the
confederation and the chancellor was under president
3. The federal government (William I, Bismarck) controlled the army and
foreign affairs and there was a legislature consisting of two houses that
shared equally in the making of laws; delegates to the upper house
were appointed by the different states, but members of the lower house
were elected by universal, single category, male suffrage
4. Bismarck had opened the door to popular participation (right over
middle class)
5. After the victory, the landed nobility and the ultraconservatives expected
Bismarck to suspend the Prussian constitution and asked the parliament
to pass a special indemnity bill to approve after the fact all of the
government’s spending (1862-1866)
1. For four long years, liberals opposed and criticized Bismarck’s
“illegal” measures
2. At the end, Bismarck, the king, and the army with its aristocratic
leadership had persevered and these conservative forces had
succeeded above the middle class
6. In 1866, German unity was in sight and many liberals repented their
“sins” and none repented more ardently or more typically than Hermann
Baumgarten, a member of the liberal opposition, repented in his essay,
“A Self-Criticism of German Liberalism”
7. The German middle class was bowing respectfully before Bismarck and
the monarchial authority and aristocratic superiority he represented
7. The Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871
1. Four south German states were added into the Zollverein (customs
parliament) 1867
2. Bismarck realized that a war with France would drive the south German
states into his arms; the pretext was diplomatic involving whether a
distant relative of Prussia’s William I (and France’s Napoleon II) might
become king of Spain
3. By 1870 the French leaders of the Second Empire decided on war to
teach Prussia and as soon as war began in 1870, Bismarck had the
support of German states
4. With the other governments standing still, German forces under
Prussian leadership defeated Louis Napoleon’s armies at Sedan on
September 1, 1870 and three days later, French patriots proclaimed
another French republic but after five months, Paris surrendered and
France accepted Bismarck’s harsh peace terms
5. By this time, the south German estates agreed to join a new German
empire and William was proclaimed the emperor of Germany in
Versailles
6. The Franco-Prussian War released a surge of patriotic feeling in
Germany
7. The weakest of the Great Powers in 1862, Prussia with fortification by
the other German states became the most powerful state in Europe
8. Semi-authoritarian nationalism and a “new conservatism” based on an
alliance of the propertied classes and sought the active support of the
working classes triumphed
3. The Modernization of Russia
1. The “Great Reforms”
1. In the 1850s Russia was an agrarian society, industry was little
developed, and almost 90 percent of the population lived on the land
(ancient open-field system existed)
2. Serfdom was still the basic social institution; serfs were bound to the
lord on a hereditary basis, serfs were sold, serfs were obliged to furnish
labor services or money payments and the lord could choose for army
recruits (serve for 25 years)
3. The Crimean War of 1853 to 1856 caused reforms by the government
1. Began over a dispute with France over who should protect certain
Christian shrines in the Ottoman Empire (fighting concentrated in
Crimean peninsula)
2. Russia’s transportation network failed to supply the Russian armies
and France and Great Britain, aided by Sardinia and the Ottoman
Empire, defeated Russia
3. The Russian state had been built on the military and Russia had
not lost a major war for 150 years and showed Russia it had fallen
behind industrialized nations
4. Russia needed railroads, better armaments, and reorganization of the
army; but war had caused hardship and raised the specter of massive
peasant rebellion
5. Alexander II (1855-1881) was forced along the path of rapid social
change
1. Human bondage was abolished forever in 1861 and the
emancipated peasants received, on average, about half of the land
(villages responsible for payments)
2. In 1864, government established a new institution of local
government (zemstvo) where members of the local assembly were
elected by a three-class system of towns, peasant villages, and
noble landowners (dealt with local problems)
3. The establishment of zemstvos marked a step toward popular
participation but the local zemstvo remained subordinated to the
traditional bureaucracy and the local nobility, which were heavily
favored by the property-based voting system
4. Reform of the legal system, which established independent courts
and equality before the law; education was also liberalized and
censorship was relaxed
2. The Industrialization of Russia
1. Russia’s industry and transport were transformed in two industrial
surges
1. After 1860, the government encouraged and subsidized private
railway companies
2. The resulting railroads enabled agricultural Russia to export grain
and earn money for further industrialization; domestic
manufacturing was stimulated, and by the end of the 1870s, Russia
had a well-developed railway-equipment industry
2. Industrial development strengthened Russia’s military forces and gave
rise to territorial expansion to the south and east (nationalists supported
the government)
3. In 1881, Alexander II was assassinated by a small group of terrorists
and the new tsar, Alexander III was a reactionary; Russia experience
hard times economically in 1880s
4. Political modernization remained frozen until 1905, but economic
modernization sped forward in the massive industrial surge of the 1890s
5. Nationalism under leader, Sergei Witte, minister of finance from 18921903
1. Witte, having read the writings of Friedrich List, believed that the
railroads were a powerful weapon for the direction of economic
development of the country
2. Following List’s advice, Witte established high protective tariffs to
build Russian industry and the country on gold standard in order to
strengthen Russian finances
3. Witte used the West to catch up with the Test and encouraged
foreigners to use their capital and advanced technology to build
great factories in backward Russia
4. The policy was successful, especially in southern Russia where
foreign capitalists built steal and coal industry and Russia’s steel
and petroleum industry boomed
5. Witte, once approached by a leading foreign businessman
demanding that the Russian government fulfill a contract it had
signed and pay certain debts; Witte asked to see the contract then
tore it to pieces and trashed it without explanation
3. The Revolution of 1905
1. By 1903, Russia had established a sphere of influence in Chinese
Manchuria and cast their eyes on northern Korea; imperialistic Japan
launched a surprise attack in 1905 and Asian Japan scored repeated
victories, forcing Russia to accept defeat (Feb-Aug)
2. Military disaster abroad brought political upheaval at home
1. Business and professional classes wanted to turn the last of
Europe’s absolutist monarchies into a liberal, representative regime
(political modernization)
2. Factory workers were organized into a radical and still illegal labor
movement
3. Peasants had gained little from the era of reforms and suffered
from poverty
4. Nationalist sentiment was emerging among the empire’s minorities
5. Separatist nationalism was strongest among the Poles and
Ukrainians
3. The beginning of the revolution of 1905 pointed up incompetence of the
government
4. In a Sunday in January 1905, a massive crowd of workers and families
converged peacefully on the Sinter Palace in St. Petersburg to present
a petition to the tsar
1. Led by a trade-unionist priest named Father Gapon, who had been
supported by the police, as a preferable alternative to more radical
unions
2. Nicholas II had fled the city and suddenly troops opened fire, killing
and wound-ing hundreds; the “Bloody Sunday” massacre turned
workers against the tsar
5. Outlawed political parties came out into the open, and by the summer of
1905 strikes, peasant uprisings, revolts among minority nationalities,
and troop mutinies appeared
6. The revolutionary surge culminated in October 1905 in a paralyzing
general strike, which forced the government to surrender and the tsar
issued the October Manifesto
1. The manifesto granted full civil rights and promised a popularly
elected dum (parliament) with real legislative power; the manifesto
split the opposition
2. It satisfied most moderate and liberal demands, but Social
Democrats rejected it and led a bloody worker’s uprising in Moscow
in December 1905; frightened middle-class leaders helped the
government survive as a constitutional monarchy
7. On the eve of the opening of the first Duma in May 1906, the
government issued the new constitution, the Fundamental Laws in
which the tsar retained great powers but the Duma, elected indirectly by
universal male suffrage, and a large upper house could debate and
pass laws, but the tsar had an absolute veto (minister system)
8. The disappointed, predominately middle-class liberals, the largest group
in the newly elected Duma, saw the Fundamental Laws as a step
backward
9. The tsar dismissed the Duma only to find a more hostile and radical
opposition elected in 1907 in the second Duma, which was dismissed
after three months
10. The tsar and his reactionary advisers rewrote the electoral law to
increase greatly the weight of the propertied classes at the expense of
workers, peasants, and minorities
11. The government secured a loyal majority in 1907 and again in 1912
12. The armed, tough chief minister, Peter Stolypin, pushed through
important agrarian reforms designed to break down collective village
ownership of land and to encourage the more enterprising peasants -“wager on the strong”
4. The Responsive National State, 1871-1914
1. The German Empire
1. European politics after 1871 had a common framework of a established
national state; the emergence of mass politics and growing mass loyalty
toward the national state
2. The new German Empire was a federal union of Prussia and 24 smaller
states
1. Everyday business of government was conducted by separate
states but there was a national government (chancellor) and
popularly elected parliament (Reichstag)
2. Bismarck refused to be bound by a parliamentary majority and gave
the political parties opportunities (Bismarck relied mainly on the
National Liberals, who supported legislation useful for further
economic and legal unification until 1878)
3. The National Liberals Bismarck’s attack on the Catholic church
(Kulturkampf, or “struggle for civilization”) – Pius IX’s declaration of
papal infallibility in 1870; the dogma seemed to ask German Catholics
to put loyalty to church above their nation
4. Catholics throughout the country generally voted for the Catholic Center
party and finally in 1878 Bismarck abandoned his attack and entered an
alliance (economic)
5. After a worldwide financial bust in 1873, European agriculture was in a
difficult position as wheat prices plummeted as cheap grain poured in
from North America
1. Many peasants, especially in western/southern Germany, could not
compete and the Catholic Center party relied on higher tariffs to
protect the economic interests
2. The Protestant Junkers embraced the cause of higher tariffs and
Bismarck went along with protective tariff in 1879, winning supports
in the Reichstag, the Center part of the Catholics and the
Conservative party of the Prussian landowners
6. The 1880s and 1890s saw a widespread return to protectionism (led to
trade wars)
7. Bismarck tried to stop socialism growth in Germany because he feared
its revolutionary language and allegiance to a movement transcending
the nation-state
8. Bismarck used a national outcry to introduce and pass a law that
controlled socialist meetings and publications and outlawed the Social
Democratic party
9. Bismarck’s nation-state pioneered with social measures to win support
of workers
1. The laws of 1883 and 1884 established national sickness and
accident insurance
2. The law of 1889 established old-age pensions and retirement
benefits
3. The national social security system, paid for through compulsory
contributions by wage earners and employers as well as grants
from the state was a first of its kind
4. The system gave workers a small stake in the system and
protected them from the urban industrial world; this development
was a produce of competition
10. The great issues in German domestic politics were socialism and the
Marxian Social Democratic party; William II opposed Bismarck’s attempt
to renew the law outlawing the Social Democratic party and eager to
please, forced Bismarck to resign in 1890
11. Socialist ideas spread rapidly and more and more Social Democrats
were elected to the Reichstag in the 1890s; after a colonial war in
Southwest Africa in 1907 that led to important losses in the general
elections of 1907, the party broadened its base
12. After the elections of 1912, the party became the single largest party in
the Reichstag shocking aristocrats and middle-class (revolutionary
socials lessened before WW I)
2. Republican France
1. In 1871, the patriotic republicans who proclaimed the Third Republic in
Paris after the military disaster at Sedan, refused to admit defeat,
defended Paris for weeks but were eventually starved into submission
by the German armies in January 1871
2. When national elections send a majority of conservatives and
monarchies to the National Assembly, the Parisians exploded and
proclaimed the Paris Commune
1. In March 1871, the leaders wanted to govern without the
conservative peasants
2. The National Assembly led by Adolphe Thiers ordered the French
army into Paris and crushed the Commune; twenty thousand
people died in the fighting
3. The monarchists could not agree who should be king and the
compromise Bourbon candidate refused to rule except under the white
flag of his ancestors (unacceptable)
4. President Thiers showed the Third Republic might be moderate/socially
conservative
5. Another stabilizing factor was the skill and determination of the
moderate republicans
1. The most famous was Leon Gambetta who preached a republic of
truly equal opportunity; Gambetta was instrumental in establishing
absolute parliamentary supremacy between 1877 and 1879, when
deputies forced MacMahon to resign
2. By 1879, the majority of members of both the upper and lower
houses of the National Assembly were republics, the Third Republic
had firm foundations
6. Trade unions were fully legalized and France acquired a colonial
empire; under the leadership of Jules Ferry, the moderate republicans
passed a series of laws between 1879-1886 establishing free
compulsory elementary education for children
7. The government expanded the state system of public tax-supported
schools; free compulsory elementary education in France became
secular republican education
8. Unlike most western countries, the Third Republic encouraged young
teachers to marry and guaranteed that both partners would teach in the
same location
1. Married female and male teachers with their own children provide a
vivid contrast to celibate nuns and priests, who had taught
generations primary education
2. Republican leaders believed that married women and men would
better cope with the potential loneliness and social isolation of
unfamiliar towns and villages
3. French politicians worried continually about France’s low birthrate
after 1870
9. French Catholics rallied to the republic in the 1890s after the
educational reforms
10. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army, was falsely
convicted of treason
1. His family fought to reopen the case and the case was split in 1898
into two sides of which was the army, joined by anti-Semites, and
the other side which stood the civil libertarians and most of the
more radical republicans
2. After Dreyfus was declared innocent, it revived republican feeling
against the church and between 1901 and 1905, the government
severed all ties between the state and the Catholic church (Catholic
schools lost a third of their students)
3. Great Britain and Ireland
1. Great Britain was under an effective two-party parliament that skillfully
guided the country from classical liberalism to full-fledged democracy
1. The right to vote was granted to males of the solid middle class in
1832 but people, like John Stuart Mill (On Liberty), were uncertain
about future extension
2. In 1867, Disraeli and the Conservatives extended the vote to all
middle-class males and best-paid workers in order to gain new
supporters
3. Third Reform Bill of 1884 gave the vote to almost every adult male
2. While the House of Commons drifted toward democracy, the House of
Lords, between 1901-1910 ruled against labor unions in two important
decisions
1. After the Liberal party came to power in 1906, the Lords vetoed
several measures passed by the Commons, including the People’s
Budget (Lords finally gave in)
3. Extensive social welfare measures were passed in a rush between 1906
and 1914
4. The Liberal party between those years, inspired by David Lloyd George,
raised taxes on the rich as part of the People’s Budget and this income
helped the government pay for national health insurance,
unemployment benefits, and old-age pensions
5. On the eve of World War One, the question of Ireland brought Great
Britain to the brink of civil war; after the Great Famine, English slowly
granted concessions
6. Liberal prime minister William Gladstone introduced bills to give Ireland
self-government in 1886 and 1893 but both failed to pass
7. Irish nationalists saw their change and supported the Liberals in their
battle of the People’s Budget and received a home-rule bill for Ireland in
return for their support
8. Irish achieved self-government but Ireland was composed of two people
1. The Irish Catholic majority in the southern counties wanted home
rule as much as the Irish Protestants of the northern counties of
Ulster came to oppose it
2. The Ulsterites vowed to resist home rule in northern Ireland and by
December 1913, they had raised 100,000 armed volunteers
(supported by English public)
3. In 1914, the Liberals in the House of Lords introduced a
compromise home-rule bill that did not apply to the northern
counties but was rejected and in September the original home-rule
bill was passed but simultaneously suspended for hostility
9. The momentous Irish question had been overtaken by world war in
August 1914
4. The Austro-Hungarian Empire
1. In 1849 Magyar nationalism had driven Hungarian patriots to declare an
independent Hungarian republic which was savagely crushed by
Russian and Austrian armies
2. Throughout the 1850s, Hungary was ruled as a conquered territory and
Emperor Francis Joseph and his bureaucracy tried hard to centralize
the state
3. In wake of defeat by Prussia in 1866, Austria was forced to strike a
compromise and establish the dual monarchy in which the empire was
divided in two and the nationalistic Magyars gained virtual
independence for Hungary (shared monarch)
4. In Austria ethnic Germans were only one-third of the population and by
1895, many Germans saw their traditional dominance threatened by
Czechs, Poles, and Slavs
5. From 1900 to 1914, the parliament ruled instead by decree and
endeavors that led to the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1907
proved to be largely unsuccessful
6. Conservatives and socialists tried to defuse national antagonisms with
issues
1. Anti-Semitism was particularly virulent in Austria and when
extremists charged the Jews with controlling the economy and
corrupting German culture with alien ideas and ultramodern art,
anxious Germans of all classes tended to listen
2. Dr. Karl Lueger combined anti-Semitic rhetoric with calls for
“Christian socialism” and municipal ownership of basic services
(appealed to Hitler)
7. In Hungary the Magyar nobility in 1867 restored the constitution of 1848
and used to dominate both the Magyar peasantry and the minority
populations until 1914
8. The parliament was the creature of the Magyar elite and laws promoting
use of the Hungarian language in schools and government were bitterly
resented
9. While Magyar extremists campaigned loudly for total separation from
Austria, radical leaders of the subject nationalities dreamed in turn of
independence from Hungary
5. Marxism and the Socialist Movement
1. The Socialist International
1. Socialism appealed to working men and women in the late nineteenth
century
2. By 1912, socialism was the largest party in the Reichstag (most
successful, Germany)
3. In France, various socialist parties re-emerged in the 1880s after the
carnage of the Commune and were unified in 1905 in the French
Section of Workers International
4. Marxian socialist parties were linked together in an international
organization; Marx had laid out his intellectual system in the Communist
Manifesto (1848) and urged proletarians of all nations to unite against
their governments (Capital, 1867)
5. Marx played an important role in founding the First International of
socials—the International Working Men’s Association (1864) and used it
to spread doctrines
6. Marx embraced patriotism of the Paris Commune, seeing it as step
toward socialist revolution, and more moderate British labor leaders left
(First International collapsed)
7. In 1889, socialist leaders from many individual parties came together to
form the Second International, delegates met to interpret Marxian
doctrines (ended 1914)
8. May 1st (May Day) was declared an annual international one-day strike
day
2. Unions and Revisionism
1. Socialist parties looked toward gradual change and steady improvement
for the working class and less and less toward revolution (workers won
tangible benefits)
2. Workers were progressively less inclined to follow radical programs
1. Workers gained the right to vote and to participate politically in the
nation-state
2. Their attention focused more on elections than on revolutions
3. Workers responded positively to parades and aggressive foreign
policy as they loyally voted for socialists but workers were not a
unified social group
3. Worker’s standard of living rose gradually but substantially after 1850;
workers tended more and more to become militantly moderate
demanding gains, but they were less likely to take to the barricades in
pursuit of their demanding gains
4. The growth of labor unions reinforced this trend toward moderation and
in the early states of industrialization, modern unions were generally
prohibited by law
5. Great Britain led the way in 1824 when unions won the right to exist, but
not to strike
6. After Owen’s attempt to form one big union in the 1830s, new and more
practical kinds of unions appeared, limited to highly skilled workers
(avoided radical politics)
7. In Britain in the 1870s, unions won the right to strike without being held
legally liable for financial damage on employers; unions for unskilled
workers developed (1890)
8. Germany was the most industrialized, socialized, and unionized
continental country
1. German unions were not granted important rights until 1869 and
until the antisocialist law was repealed in 1890, they were
frequently called socialist fronts
2. Socialist leaders believed in iron law of wages and need for political
revolution
3. Increasingly, unions in Germany focused on bread-and-butter
issues—wages, hours, working conditions—rather than
dissemination of socialist doctrine
4. Genuine collective bargaining was recognized as desirable by the
German Trade Union Congress in 1899 and between 1906 and
1913, successful collective bargaining gained place in German
industrial relations (gradual improvement)
9. Revisionism was an effort by various socialists to update Marxian
doctrines to reflect the realities of the time (Edward
Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism)
10. In France, socialist leader Jean Jaures formally repudiated revisionist
doctrines to establish a unified socialist party (socialist leaders
supported their governments)
Chapter 26: The West and The World
1. Industrialization and the World Economy
1. The Rise of the Global Inequality
1. The ultimate significance of the Industrial Revolution was that it allowed
those regions of the world that industrialized in the nineteenth century to
increase their wealth and power enormously in comparison to those that
did not
1. The gap between the industrializing regions and the
nonindustrilaizing regions open up and grew steadily throughout the
nineteenth century
2. Pattern of uneven global development became institutionalized or
built into the structure of the world economy (“lopsided world” -world of rich lands and poor)
3. Developed (industrialized) and the “Third World” (Africa, Asia, Latin
America)
2. In 1750, the average standard of living was no higher in Europe as a
whole than in the rest of the world (Great Britain was the wealthiest
European country)
3. Industrialization opened the gaps in average wealth and well-being
among regions
4. Income per person was idle in the Third World before 1913 and only
after 1945 did Third World countries finally make some real economic
progress (industrialization)
5. Some historians believe that the West used science, technology,
capitalist organization to create wealth and well-being while others
argues that the West used its political and economic power to steal
much of its riches during era of expansion
2. The World Market
1. Commerce between nations had been a powerful stimulus to economic
development
2. World trade grew modestly until about 1840, and then trade took off
after that time
1. In 1913, the value of world trade was about twenty-five times than
in 1800
2. Enormous increase in international commerce summed up the
growth of an interlocking world economy centered in and directed
by Europe
3. Great Britain played a key role in using trade to tie the world together
economically
1. The technological breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution
allowed Britain to manufacture cotton textiles, iron, more cheaply
and far outstrip domestic demands and British manufacturers
sought export markets around Europe, then the world
2. After the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, Britain became the
world’s single best market and until 1914 remained the world’s
“emporium” (free access)
4. The growth of trade was facilitated by the conquest of distance
1. The earliest railroad construction occurred in Europe and in
America north of the Rio Grande and wherever railroads were built,
they reduced transportation costs, opened new
economic opportunities and called forth new skills and attitudes
2. The power of steam revolutionized transportation by sea as well as
land
3. Steampower began to supplant sails on the oceans of the world in
the late 1860s
4. Passenger and freight rates tumbled and the intercontinental
shipment of lower-priced raw materials became feasible
(development of 19th century global trade)
5. The revolution in land and sea transportation helped European pioneers
open up vast new territories and produce agricultural products and raw
materials for sale in Europe
6. Intercontinental trade was enormously facilitated by the Suez and
Panama canals; investment in modern port facilities made lading and
unloading cheaper and more dependable; transoceanic telegraph
cables inaugurated rapid communications
7. The growth of trade and the conquest of distance encouraged the
expanding European economy to make massive foreign investments
(Great Britain, France, and Germany)
8. Most of the capital exported did not go the European colonies or
protectorates in Asia and Africa but rather to other European countries
(construction of utilities for settling)
9. Europeans collected interest and opened up trade but victims were
native American Indians and Australian aborigines who were decimated
by expanding Western society
3. The Opening of China and Japan
1. With densely populated civilizations, Europeans increased their trade
and profit
2. The expanding Western society was prepared to use force, if
necessary, to attain its desires in China and Japan (examples of general
pattern of intrusion)
3. Traditional Chinese civilization was self-sufficient and China had sent
more goods and inventions to Europe than it had received in the
eighteenth century (Chinese tea)
1. Trade with Europe was carefully regulated by the Chinese imperial
government (Manchu Dynasty) which was more interested in
isolating and controlling the strange “sea barbarians” than in
pursuing commercial exchange
2. The imperial government refused to establish diplomatic relations
with Europe and required all foreign merchants to live in the
southern city of Canton
3. Practices considered harmful to Chinese interests, such as the sale
of opium and the export of silver from China, were strictly forbidden
4. By the 1820s, the dominant group, the British, introduced the smoking
of opium
1. Grown legally in India, opium was smuggled into China by means
of fast ships and bribed officials and as the British merchants
became greedier, the more they resented the patriotic attempts of
the Chinese government to stem drug addiction
2. By 1836, the aggressive goal of the British merchants in Canton
was an independent British colony in China and “safe and
unrestricted liberty” in trade
3. They pressured the British government to take decisive action and
at the same time, the Manchu government decided that the opium
trade had to be stopped
4. The government began to prosecute Chinese drug deals and in
1839, send special envoy Lin Tse-hsu to Canton who ordered the
merchants to obey China’s laws
5. Using troops from India and controlling the seas, the British occupied
several coastal cities and forced China to surrender after declaring war;
in the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, the imperial government was forced to
cede the island of Hong Kong, pay an indemnity of 100 million dollars
and open up four cities to foreign trade (low tariffs)
6. The opium trade and Hong Kong developed rapidly as an AngloChinese commune
7. The Chinese, however, refused to accept foreign diplomats in Peking,
the imperial capital, and there was a second round of foreign attack
between 1856 and 1860, culminating in the occupation of Peking by
British and French troops; another round of harsh treaties gave
European merchants and missionaries privileges and protection
8. The government of Japan decided to seal off the country from all
European influences in order to preserve traditional Japanese culture
and society (after 1640)
9. Japan’s unbending isolation seemed hostile to the West, particularly to
the U.S.
1. The isolation complicated the practical problems of shipwrecked
American sailors and the provisioning of whaling ships and China
traders sailing in the Pacific
2. Americans shared self-confidence and dynamism of expanding
Western society
10. After unsuccessful attempts to establish commercial relations with
Japan Commodore Matthew Perry steamed into Edo Bay in 1853
demanding diplomatic negotiations
11. Senior officials realized how defenseless cities were against naval
bombardment and they reluctantly signed a treaty with the U.S. that
opened two ports permitting trade
4. Western Penetration of Egypt
1. European involvement in Egypt led to a new model of formal political
control
2. Egypt had been ruled by the Ottoman Turks and then after the
occupation of the French armies for three years stepped in Turkish
general, Muhammad Ali
1. First appointed governor of Egypt by the Turkish sultan, Ali set out
to build his own state on the strength of a large, powerful army
organized along European lines; he drafted the illiterate and hired
army European army officers to train
2. By the time of his death in 1849, Muhammad Ali had established a
strong and virtually independent Egyptian state to be ruled by his
family on hereditary basis
3. Ali’s policies of modernization attracted large numbers of
Europeans to Egypt
4. Europeans served as army officers, engineers, doctors, high
government officials, and police officers; other found prosperity in
trade, finance, and shipping
3. To pay for a modern army and European services and manufactured
goods, Muhammad Ali encouraged the development of commercial
agriculture geared to the European market (new landlords made the
peasants their tenants and forced them to grow cash crops for
European markets and modernized agriculture in Egypt)
4. Muhammad Ali’s grandson Ismail, (in 1863 began rule as
Egypt’s khedive, or prince) was a westernizing autocrat, promoting large
irrigation networks (cotton production)
5. Ismail borrowed large sums to install modern communications; Suez
Canal completed by a French company in 1869 and Arabic of the
masses became the official language
6. Egyptians educated in Europe helped spread new skills and ideas in the
bureaucracy
7. Ismail’s projects were too expensive and by 1876, Egypt owned foreign
bondholders 450 million dollars but the governments of France and
Great Britain intervened politically to protect the European bankers who
held the Egyptian bonds; they forced Ismail to appoint French and
British commissioners to oversee Egyptian finances
8. Foreign financial control evoked a nationalistic reaction among Egyptian
religious leaders and in 1879, under Colonel Ahmed Arabi, they formed
the Egyptian Nationalist party and forced Ismail to abdicate in favor of
his weak son Tewfiq
9. All this resulted in bloody anti-European riots in Alexandria in 1882 and
a number of Europeans were killed and Tewfiq and his court had to flee
to British ships for safety
10. Riots swept the country but a British expeditionary force decimated
Arabi’s forces and as a result, occupied all of Egypt; the British
maintained the façade of the khedive’s government as an autonomous
province of the Ottoman empire and the British consul, General Evelyn
Baring (Lord Cromer) ruled the country after 1883
11. Egypt shoed such expansion was based on military force, political
domination, and a self-justifying ideology of beneficial reform
(predominate until 1814)
2. The Great Migration
1. The Pressure of Population
1. In the early 18th century, the growth of European population entered a
decisive stage; birthrates eventually declined in the nineteenth century
but so did death rates because of rising standard of living and medical
revolution (population doubled in Europe)
2. Between 1815 and 1932, more than sixty million people left Europe and
the population of North America grew from six million to eighty-one
million from 1800-1900; population grew more slowly in Africa and Asia
(Europeans 38 % of world)
3. The growing number of Europeans provided the drive for expansion and
emigration
1. In most countries migration increased twenty years after a rapid
growth in population and this pattern was prevalent when rapid
population increase predated extensive industrial development
(hope of creating jobs and reducing poverty)
2. The number of people who left Europe increased rapidly before
World War One
3. Different countries had very different patterns of movement; people
left Britain and Ireland in large numbers, German migration was
irregular, and Italians left
4. Migration patterns mirrored social and economic conditions in the
country
5. Although the United States absorbed the largest number of
European migrants, less than half of all migrants went to the United
States
2. European Migrants
1. The European migrant was often a small peasant landowner or
craftsman whose traditional way of life was threatened by too little land,
estate agriculture, or factories
1. German peasants who left southwestern Germany between 183054 felt trapped by the “dwarf economy” with its tiny landholdings
and declining craft industries
2. Many sold out and moved to buy much cheaper land in the
American Midwest
2. Migrants were a great asset to the countries that received them (vast
and unmarried); they came ready to work hard in the new land, at least
for some time
3. Many Europeans moved but remained within Europe, setting
temporarily or permanently in another European country (vast bulk of
this movement was legal)
4. Many Europeans were truly migrants as opposed to immigrants
(returned after some time) and the likelihood or repatriation varied
greatly by nationality
5. The possibility of buying land in the old country was of central
importance
6. The Russia Jews were left in peace until 1881 when a new tsar brought
discrimination
1. Russia’s five million Jews were confined to the market towns and
small cities of the so-called Pale of Settlement where they worked
as artisans and petty traders
2. When Russian Jewish artisans began to escape both factory
competition and oppression by migrating in the 1880s, this was a
once-and-for-all departure
7. The mass movement of Italians illustrates many characteristics of
European migration
1. In the 1880s, three in every four Italians depended on agriculture
and with the influx of cheap North American wheat, industry was
not advancing fast enough to provide jobs for the rapidly growing
population and Italians began to leave
2. Migration provided Italians with an escape valve and possible
income to buy land
3. Many Italians went to the United States, but more went to Argentina
and Brazil
4. Many Italians had no intention of setting abroad permanently
(“swallows”) and harvesting Italy, flew to Argentina to harvest wheat
during the winter months and returned to Italy in the spring and
repeated this exhausting process
5. Italian migrants dominated building trades and architectural
profession in L.A.
8. Other Italians migrated to other European countries and many went to
France
1. Ties of family and friendship played a crucial role in the movements
of peoples
2. Many landless Europeans left because of the spirit of revolt and
independence (young people frustrated by privileged classes in
Norway and Sweden)
9. Migration slowed down when the people won basic political and social
reforms such as the right to vote and the social security system
3. Asian Migrants
1. A substantial number of Chinese, Japanese, Indians, and Filipinos
responded to rural hardship with temporary or permanent migration
(three million moved before 1920)
2. Most went as indentured laborers to work under incredibly difficult
conditions and white estate owners often used Asians after the
suppression of the slave trade
3. In the 1840s, the Spanish government recruited Chinese laborers in
Cuba and they came under eight-year contracts, where paid and fed but
between 1853 and 1873, more than 130,000 Chinese laborers went to
Cuba and spent their lives as slaves
4. Asians fled the plantations and gold mines as soon as possible, seeking
greater oppor-tunities in trade and towns and came into conflict with
setters in settlement areas
5. These settlers demanded a halt to Asian migration and by the 1880s,
Americans and Australians were building discriminatory laws designed
to keep Asians out
6. A final, crucial factor in the migrations before 1914 was the general
policy of “whites only” in the open lands of possible permanent
settlement (part of Western dominance)
3. Western Imperialism
1. The Scramble for Africa
1. As late as 1880, European nations controlled only 10 percent of the
African continent
1. The French had begun conquering Algeria in 1830 and European
colonists settled
2. In South Africa, the British had taken possession of Dutch
settlements at Cape Town during the wars of Napoleon I and had
led Dutch ranchers and farmers in 1835 to make the Great Trek
into the interior, where they fought natives for land
3. After 1853, the Boers (Afrikaners, descendents of the Dutch in the
Cape Colony) proclaimed their political independence and
defended it against British armies
4. By 1880 Afrikaner and British settlers taken control from the Zulu
and Xhosa
5. The British conquered in southern Africa in the bloody Boer War
(1899-1902)
2. European trading posts and forts dating back to the Age of Discovery
and the slave trade dotted the coast of West Africa (Portuguese held
some old possessions)
3. From 1880-1900, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy fought for African
possessions and by 1900 nearly the whole continent had been split &
placed under European rule; only Ethiopia in northeast Africa and
Liberia in West Africa remained independent
4. There was the role of Leopold II of Belgium, a monarch with lust for
distant territory
1. By 1876, Leopold was focusing on central Africa and formed a
financial syndicate under his personal control to send Henry M.
Stanley to the Congo basin
2. Stanley was able to establish trading stations, sign “treaties” with
African chiefs, and plant Leopold’s flag (France send out an
expedition under Pierre de Brazza)
3. In 1880 de Brazza signed a treaty of protection with the chief of a
large Teke tribe and began to establish a French protectorate on
the north bank of the Congo river
5. Leopold’s buccaneering intrusion into the Congo area raised the
question of the political fate of black Africa—Africa south of the Sahara;
when the British successfully invaded Egypt in 1882, Europe had caught
“African fever”
6. Jules Ferry of France and Otto von Bismarck of Germany arranged an
international conference on Africa in Berlin in 1884 and 1885 and
established the principle that European claims to African territory had to
rest on “effective occupation”
1. It meant that Europeans would push relentlessly into interior
regions from all sides and that no European power would be able to
claim the entire continent
2. The conference recognized Leopold’s personal rule over a neutral
Congo free state and declared all of Congo basin a free trade zone
(wanted to stop slavery)
3. The Berlin conference coincided with Germany’s sudden
emergence as an imperial power; Bismarck has seen little value in
colonies before 1880
4. In 1884 and 1885, Bismarck and Germany established
protectorates over a number of African kingdoms and tribes in
Togo, Cameroon, southwest Africa, and, later, East Africa
(cooperated against the British with France’s Ferry)
5. The French pressed southward from Algeria eastward from the
Senegal coast, and northward from the Congo River (object of
these three thrusts was Lake Chad)
7. The British began enlarging their West African enclaves and pushed
northward from the Cape Colony and westward from Zanzibar (thrust
southward from Egypt was blocked in the Sudan by independent
Muslims who won at Khartoum in 1885)
8. In 1895 another British force, under General Horatio Kitchener moved
up the Nile River building a railroad to supply arms and reinforcements
as it went
1. Finally in 1898, the British troops met the Muslim tribesmen, armed
with spears, at Omdurman but were massacred by the recently
invented machine gun
2. Continuing up the Nile after the Battle of Omdurman, Kitchener’s
armies found a French force in the village of Fashoda (France had
tried to beat the British to one of Africa’s last unclaimed areas—the
upper reaches of the Nile
3. The result was a serious diplomatic crisis and even the threat of
war
4. Wracked by the Dreyfus affair, France backed down and withdrew
its forces
2. Imperialism in Asia
1. In 1815, the Dutch ruled the island of Java in the East Indies and
brought almost all of the archipelago under their political authority
(shared with Britain and Germany)
2. In the 1880s, the French under the leadership of Ferry took Indochina
3. Two other great imperialist powers, Russia and the United States, also
acquired rich territories in Asia; Russia had been marked by almost
continual expansion continued to move south of the Caucasus and in
central Asia and nibbled at Far East in 1890s
4. The United States’ great conquest was the Philippines, taken from
Spain in 1898 after the Spanish-American War and when it became
clear independence was not going to be granted, Philippine patriots
rose in revolt and were suppressed after bitter fighting
3. Causes of the New Imperialism
1. Economic motives played an important role in the extension of political
empires, especially the British Empire; by the 1870s, France, German,
and the United States were industrializing rapidly behind rising tariff
barriers
1. Great Britain was losing its lead and facing competition in foreign
markets, Britain came to value old possessions, such as India and
Canada, more highly
2. When continental powers began to grab all unclaimed territory in
the 1880s, the British followed suit and feared that France and
German would seal off empires with high tariffs and restrictions and
that economic opportunities would be lost
2. The overall economic gains of the new imperialism proved quite limited
before 1914
1. The new colonies were just too poor to buy much and offered few
investments
2. Colonies became important for political and diplomatic reasons and
countries saw colonies as crucial to national security, military
power, and international prestige
3. National security was a factor in a U.S. decision to establish
Panama Canal Zone
3. Many people were convinced that colonies were essential to great
nations and Treitschke’s belief reflected aggressiveness of European
nationalism
4. Social Darwinism and harsh racial doctrines fostered imperialist
expansion as well as the industrial world’s unprecedented technological
and military superiority
1. The rapidly firing machine gun was the ultimate weapon in any
unequal battle
2. The newly discovered quinine proved effective in controlling attacks
of malaria
3. The combination of the steamship and the international telegraph
permitted Western powers to quickly concentrate their firepower in
a given area
5. Social tensions and domestic political conflicts contributed to overseas
expansion
1. Conservative political leaders were charged with manipulating
colonial issues in order to divert popular attention from the class
struggle at home (national unity)
2. Government leaders and their allies in the press successfully
encouraged the masses to savor foreign triumphs and glory in the
supposed increase in prestige
6. Certain special-interest groups in each country were powerful agents of
expansion
1. Shipping companies wanted lucrative subsidies and white settlers
on dangerous frontiers constantly demanded more land and greater
protection
2. Missionaries and humanitarians wanted to spread religion but stop
the slave trade; explorers and adventurers sought knowledge and
excitement
3. Military men and colonial officials saw rapid advancement and highpay positions in growing empires (actions of such groups thrust
course of empire forward
7. Imperialists developed arguments in order to satisfy their consciences
and their critics
1. Europeans could and should “civilize” more primitive, nonwhite
peoples
2. Many Americans accepted the ideology of the white man’s burden
and was an important factor in the decision to rule, rather than
liberate, the Philippines
3. Peace and stability under European control permitted the spread of
Christianity—the true religion and Europeans competed with Islam
in seeking converts
4. Such successes in black Africa contrasted with general failure of
missionary effort in India, China, and the Islamic world (Christian
believers did not increase)
4. Critics of Imperialism
1. The expansion of empire aroused critics and a forceful attack was
delivered in 1902, after the unpopular Boer War, by English economic
Hobson in his Imperialism
1. Hobson contended that the rust to acquire colonies was due to the
economic needs of unregulated capitalism (the need of the rich to
find outlets for surplus capital)
2. Yet, he argued, imperial possessions did not pay off economically
for the country and only special-interest groups profited from them,
at the expense of people
3. Most people were sold on the idea that imperialism was
economically profitable for the homeland, and a general
enthusiasm for the empire developed
2. Similarly in Heart of Darkness, novelist Joseph Conrad castigated the
“pure selfishness” of Europeans in “civilizing” Africa
3. Critics charged Europeans with applying a degrading double standard
and failing to live up to their own noble ideals (Europeans imposed
military dictatorships on Africans and Asians, forced them to work like
slaves, and discriminated (liberation)
4. Reponses to Western Imperialism
1. Introduction
1. The initial response of African and Asian rulers was to try drive the
foreigners away but beaten in battle, many concentrated on preserving
their cultural traditions
2. Political participation in non-Western lands was usually limited to small
elites and the Europeans received considerable support from both
traditionalists (local chiefs, landowners, religious leaders and
modernizers (Western-education professionals)
3. The nonconformists—the eventual anti-imperialist leaders-developed a
burning desire for human dignity and came to feel such dignity was
incompatible with foreign rule
4. Potential leaders found in the West the ideologies and justification for
their protest
5. Nonconformists found themselves attracted to modern nationalism,
which asserted that every people had the right to control its own destiny
(India, Japan, and China)
2. Empire in India
1. India was ruled more or less absolutely by Britain for a very long time
1. Arriving in India, the British East India Company had conquered the
last independent native state by 1848 and the last “traditional”
response to European rule (military force by ruling classes) was
broken in India in 1857 and 1858
2. During the Great Rebellion, the insurrection by Muslim and Hindu
mercenaries in the British army spread throughout northern and
central India before it was crushed by loyal native troops from
southern India (European domination)
2. After 1858 India was ruled by the British Parliament in London and
administered by a tiny, all-white civil service in India (white elite, backed
by white officers and native troops, was competent and well disposed
toward the welfare of the peasant masses
3. Most of the members considered the Indian people and castes to be
racially inferior
4. The British Parliament in 1883 was considering a major bill to allow
Indian judges to try white Europeans in India, the British community
rose in protest and defeated it
5. The British established a modern system of progressive secondary
education in which all instruction was in English (offered some Indians
opportunities for advancement)
6. The new bureaucratic elite played a crucial role in modern economic
development
1. Irrigation projects for agriculture, the world’s third largest railroad
network for good communications, and large tea and jute
plantations were developed
2. With a well-educated, English-speaking Indian bureaucracy and
modern communications, the British created a unified, powerful
state
3. The British placed under the same general system of law and
administration the different Hindu and Muslim people and the
vanquished kingdoms of the continent
7. The decisive reaction to European rule was the rise of nationalism
among the elite; the top jobs, the best clubs, the modern hotels were
sealed off the Indian people
8. By 1885 when educated Indians came together to found the
predominately Hindu Indian National Congress, demands were
increasing for the equality and self-government; reform of the Hindu
religion called for national independence
3. The Example of Japan
1. When Commodore Perry arrived at Japan (1853), Japan was a complex
feudal society
1. At the top stood a figurehead emperor but real power had been in
the hands of a hereditary military governor, the shogun and with the
help of a warrior-nobility known as samurai, the shogun governed a
country of hard-working people
2. The intensely proud samurai were humiliated by the sudden
American intrusion
2. When foreign diplomats and merchants began to settle in Yokohama,
radical samurai reacted with a wave of anti-foreign terrorism and
antigovernment assassinations between 1858 and 1863; the imperialist
response was swift and unambiguous
3. An allied fleet of American, British, Dutch and French warships
demolished key forts, and further weakening the power and prestige of
the shogun’s government
4. In 1867, a coalition led by patriotic samurai seized control of the
government and restored the political power of the emperor (Meiji
Restoration)
1. The most important goal of the new government was to meet the
foreign threat
2. The young but well-trained, idealistic but flexible leaders of Meiji
Japan dropped their anti-foreign attacks and were convinced that
Western civilization was indeed superior in its military and industrial
aspects (reform along modern lines)
5. In 1871, the new leaders abolished the old feudal structure of
aristocratic, decentralized government and formed a strong unified
state; they dismantled the four-class legal system and declared social
equality (freedom of movement granted)
6. The overriding concern of Japan’s political leadership was always a
powerful state
1. A powerful modern navy was created and the army was completely
reorganized, with three-year military service for all males and a
professional officer corps
2. Japan also borrowed rapidly and adapted skillfully the West’s
science and modern technology, particularly in industry, medicine,
and education
7. By 1890, Japan established an authoritarian constitution and rejected
democracy and Japan successfully copied the imperialism of Western
society (expansion)
1. Japan opened Korea with gunboat diplomacy of imperialism in
1876, defeated China in a war over Korea in 1895 and took
Formosa (current-day Taiwan)
2. In 1904, Japan attacked Russia without warning and Japan
emerged victorious
8. Japan became the first non-Western country to use the ancient love of
country to transform itself and thereby meet the many-sided challenge
of Western expansion; Japan provide as an example of national
recovery and liberation
4. Toward Revolution in China
1. In 1860, the Manchu Dynasty in China appeared on the verge of
collapse; efforts to repel foreigners had failed, and rebellion and chaos
wracked the country
2. The government drew on its traditional strengths and made a surprising
comeback
1. Traditional ruling groups temporarily produced new and effective
leadership; loyal scholar-statesmen and generals quelled
disturbances such as the great Tai Ping rebellion and empress
dowager Tzu Hsi revitalized the bureaucracy
2. Destructive foreign aggression lessened for the Europeans had
obtained their primary goal of commercial and diplomatic relations
3. Europeans reorganized China’s customs office and increased tax
receipts, others represented China in foreign lands and helped
strengthen central government
3. The parallel movement toward domestic reform and limited cooperation
with the West collapsed under the blows of Japanese imperialism
4. The Sino-Japanese war of 1894 to 1895 and the subsequent harsh
peace treaty revealed China’s helplessness in the face of aggression,
triggering a rush for foreign concessions and protectorates in China
(jealously saved China from partition
5. The U.S. Open Door policy, which opposed formal annexation of
Chinese territory may have helped tip balance (impact of foreign
penetration accelerated after 1894)
6. Like the leaders of the Meiji Restoration, some modernizers saw
salvation in Western institutions and in 1898, the government launched
a desperate “hundred days of reform” in an attempt to meet the foreign
challenge; many radical reforms came from the peasantry and sought to
overthrow the dynasty altogether and establish a republic
7. Some traditionalists turned back toward ancient practices, political
conservatism and fanatical hatred of the “foreign devils” (clashed with
foreign missionaries)
8. In the agony of defeat and unwanted reforms, secret societies such as
the Boxers rebelled and many foreigners were killed in northeastern
China
9. Again response was swift and Peking was occupied by foreign armies
(indemnity)
10. The years after the Boxer Rebellion (1900-1903) were more troubled
and finally in 1912, a spontaneous uprising toppled the Manchu
Dynasty; loose coalition of revolutionaries proclaimed a West-style
republic and called for an elected parliament
Chapter 27: The Great Break: War and Revolution
1. The First World War
1. The Bismarckian System of Alliances
1. After the Franco-Prussian war and the founding of the German Empire
in 1871, France was forced to pay a large war indemnity and give up
Alsace-Lorraine and from 1862 to 1871, Bismarck had made PrussiaGermany the most powerful nation
2. Bismarck’s first concern was to keep an embittered France
diplomatically isolated and without military allies; his second concern
was the threat to peace posed by the east, by Austria-Hungary and from
Russia (systems of alliances)
3. Bismarck’s solution was a system of alliances to restrain Russia and
Austria-Hungary
1. The first step was the creation in 1873 of the conservative Three
Emperors’ League, which linked the monarchs of Austria-Hungary,
Germany, and Russia in an alliance against radical movements
2. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, he saw that Austria obtained the
right to “occupy and administer” the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia
and Herzegovina to counterbalance Russia and Balkan states were
carved from the Ottoman Empire
3. Bismarck’s balancing efforts at the congress infuriated Russian
nationalists and led Bismarck to conclude a defensive military
alliance with Austria against Russia in 1879; Italy joined Germany
and Austria in 1882 (forming the Triple Alliance)
4. In 1881, Bismarck cajoled Austria-Hungary and Russia into a secret
alliance with Germany (Alliance of Three Emperors lasted until 1887)
and established the principle of cooperation among all three powers in
any further division of the Ottoman Empire
5. In 1887 Russia declined to renew the Alliance of the Three Emperors
because of the new tensions in the Balkans and Bismarck substituted
the Russian-German Reinsurance Treaty which promised neutrality if
the other was attacked
2. The Rival Blocs
1. In 1890, the emperor William II dismissed Bismarck and then refused to
renew the Russian0German Reinsurance Treaty and this departure in
foreign affairs prompted long-isolated republican France to court
absolutist Russia, offering loans, and arms
2. In 1894, France and Russia became military allies after earlier
agreements in 1891
1. This alliance was to remain in effect as long as the Triple Alliance
existed
2. As a result, continental Europe was dangerously divided into two
rival blocs
3. Great Britain’s foreign policy became increasingly crucial as the British
held no permanent alliances, Britain after 189a was the uncommitted
Great Power
1. Britain, with a cast and expanding empire, Britain was often in
serious conflict with the countries such as France and Russia
around the world
2. Britain found German Emperor William II’s pursuit of greater world
power after 1987 disquieting, but people believed that their leaders
would form an alliance
3. Relations turned to a bitter Anglo-German rivalry soon after the
19th century
4. Several reasons for this development was commercial rivalry in world
markets increasing sharply in the 1890s and Germany’s decision in
1900 to expand greatly its battle fleet posed a challenge to Britain’s
long-standing naval supremacy
1. This coincided with the Boer War between the British and the tiny
Dutch republics of South Africa (political leaders saw Britain was
overextended)
2. Many nations denounced this latest manifestation of British
imperialism
3. British leaders set about supporting their positions with alliances
and agreements
5. Britain improved its relations with the United States and in 1902
concluded a formal alliance with Japan, responded favorably to the
advances of France’s skillful foreign minister, Theophile Delcasse, who
wanted better relations with Britain and was willing to accept British rule
in Egypt in return for helping the French in Morocco
6. The resulting Anglo-French Entente of 1904 settled all outstanding
colonial disputes
7. Frustrated by Britain’s turn toward France in 1904 and wanting a
diplomatic victory to gain popularity, Germany’s leaders decided to test
the strength of the entente
1. Germany first threatened and bullied France into dismissing
Delcasse and rather then accept the territorial payoff of imperial
competition in return for French primacy in Morocco, the Germans
insisted on a international conference in 1905
2. Germany’s crude bullying forced France and Britain closer together
and Germany left the resulting Algecrias Conference of 1906 (about
Morocco) empty-handed
3. Britain France, Russia, and even the United States began to see
Germany as a potential threat, a would-be intimidator that might
seek to dominate all Europe
4. German leaders began to see sinister plots to “encircle” Germany
and block its development as a world power and in 1907 Russia
agreed to settle its quarrels with Great Britain in central Asia with a
special Anglo-Russian Agreement
8. Germany’s decision to add an expensive fleet of big-gun battleships to
its expanding navy heightened tensions after 1907 and German
nationalists, led by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, saw a large navy as a
mark of great world power and a source of unity
9. But British leaders such as Lloyd George saw it as a detestable military
challenge and economic rivalry also contributed to distrust and hostility
between the two nations
10. Proud nationalists in both countries admired and feared the power and
accomplishments of their nearly equal rival and the leading nations of
Europe were divided into two hostile blocs, both ill-prepared to deal with
upheaval in southeast
3. The Outbreak of War
1. War in the Balkans was inevitable as nationalism was destroying the
Ottoman Empire and threatening to break up the Austro-Hungarian
Empire (Greece began nationalism)
2. In 1875 widespread nationalist rebellion in the Ottoman Empire had
resulted in Turkish repression, Russian intervention, and Great Power
tensions and Bismarck had helped resolved this crisis at the 1878
Congress of Berlin (division of Turkish land)
3. After 1878 imperialism diverted attention away from the southeastern
Europe but by 1903, Balkan nationalism was on the rise again while
Serbia led the way, becoming openly hostile toward both AustriaHungary and the Ottoman Empire
1. The Serbs, a Slavic people, looked to Slavic Russia for support of
their national aspirations and to block Serbian expansion and to
take advantage of Russia’s weakness after the revolution of 1905,
Austria in 1908 annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with their
large Serbian, Croatian, and Muslim populations
2. In 1912, in the First Balkan war, Serbia turned southward and with
Greece and Bulgaria took Macedonia and then quarreled with
Bulgaria over the spoils of victory—a dispute that led in 1913 to the
Second Balkan War
3. Austria intervened in 1913 and forced Serbia to give up Albania and
nationalism had finally destroyed the Ottoman Empire (elated the
Balkan nationalists)
4. Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian and Hungarian
thrones, and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated by Bosnian
revolutionaries on June 28, 1914
5. This was during a visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo and the
assassins were closely connected to the ultranationalists Serbian
society The Black Hand
4. The leaders of Austria-Hungary concluded that Serbia had to be
severely punished and on July 23, Austria-Hungary presented Serbia
with an unconditional ultimatum
5. The Serbian government had just two days to agree to cease all
subversion in Austria and all anti-Austrian propaganda in Serbia and an
investigation of all aspects of the assassination was to be undertaken in
Serbia (amounted to control of Serbian state)
6. When Serbia replied moderately but evasively, Austria began to
mobilize and then declared war on Serbia on July 28 (chose war to stop
the spread of nationalism)
7. Germany’s unconditional support was important as Emperor William II
and his chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg urged aggressive
measures in early July
8. Germany realized that war between Austria and Russia was the most
probable result as Russia as itself as the protector and as eventual
liberator of southern Slavs
9. The diplomatic situation was already out of control (military plans
dictated policy)
1. Russia would require much longer to mobilize its armies than
Germany and Austria-Hungary and on July 28 as Austrian armies
bombarded Belgrade, tsar Nicholas II ordered a partial mobilization
against Austria-Hungary
2. Russian general staff had assumed a war with both Austria and
Germany and on July 29, Russia ordered full mobilization and in
effect declared general war
10. The German staff’s plan for war—the Schlieffen plan, the work of Count
Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the German general staff, called for
knocking out France with a lightning attack through neutral Belgium
before turning to Russia
11. On August 2, 1914, General Helmuth con Moltke, demanded that
Belgium permit German armies to pass through its territory but Belgium
whose neutrality had been guaranteed in 1839, refused and Germany
attacked on August 3; Great Britain joined France and declared war on
Germany the following day; World War I had begun
4. Reflections on the Origins of the War
1. Austria-Hungary deliberately started the Third Balkan war and a war for
the right to survive was Austria-Hungary’s desperate response to
aggressive revolutionary drive of Serbian nationalists to unify their
people in a single state
2. Germany not only pushed and goaded Austria-Hungary but was also
responsible for turning a little war into the Great War by means of attack
on Belgium and France
3. German leaders lost control of the international system after Bismarck’s
resignation and felt that Germany status as a world power was declining
unlike the rest of Europe
4. The Triple Entente—Great Britain, France, and Russia—were checking
Germany’s aspirations to strange Austria-Hungary, Germany’s only real
ally (failure of leaders)
5. Other historians say domestic conflicts and social tensions lay at the
root of Germany increasingly belligerent foreign policy from the late
1890s onward; the German classes were willing to gamble on
diplomatic victory and even on war as the means of rallying its masses
to its side and preserving its privileged position
6. Stimulating debate over social tensions and domestic political factors
suggests the triumph of nationalism was a crucial underlying
precondition of the Great War
7. The international bankers and socialists were frightened by the prospect
of war
8. In each country the great majority of the population enthusiastically
embraced the outbreak of war in August 1914 (patriotic nationalism
brought unity in the short run)
5. The First Battle of the Marne
1. When Germans invaded Belgium in 1914, everyone believed the war
would be short and the Belgian army defended its homeland and feel
back in good order to join a rapidly landed British army corps near the
Franco-Belgian border (complicated plan)
2. Under leadership of General Joseph Joffre, the French attacked a gap
in the German line at the Battle of the Marne on September 6 and for
three days, France threw everything into the attack and finally the
Germans fell back and France was saved
6. Stalemate and Slaughter
1. The attempts of the French and British armies to turn the German
retreat into a rout were unsuccessful and both sides began to dig
trenches to protect themselves from machine gun fire; by November,
trenches extended from Belgian to the Swiss frontier
2. In the face of this unexpected stalemate, slaughter on the western front
began in earnest and defended on both sides dug in behind rows of
trenches and barbed wire
3. The massive French and British offensives during 1915 never gained
more than 3 miles of blood-soaked earth from the enemy (Battle of the
Somme, German campaign against Verdun, French attack at
Champagne, British attack at Passchendaele)
4. War of the trenches shattered an entire generation of young men and
while young soldier went to war believing in the world of their leaders
and elders, the pre-1914 world of order, progress, and patriotism,
millions of men died on the western front
5. Gap formed between veterans and civilians making postwar
reconstruction difficult
7. The Widening War
1. Badly damaged by the Germans under Generals Paul von Hindenburg
and Erich Ludendorff at the Battles of Tanenberg and the Masurian
Lakes in 1914, Russia never threatened Germany again and on the
Austrian front, armies suffered enormous losses
1. Serbian peasant armies held off the Austro-Hungarian armies twice
but with help of German forces, they reversed Russian advances
and forced the Russians to retreat into their territory in the eastern
campaign of 1915 (2.5 million lost)
2. Changing tides of victory and defeat brought neutral countries into
the war
3. Italy, a member of the Triple Alliance had declared its neutrality in
1914 on the grounds that Austria had launched a war of aggression
and then in May 1915, Italy joined the Triple Entente in return for
promises of Austrian territory; Bulgaria allied with Austria and
Germany (Central Powers) to battle Serbia
2. The entry of Italy and Bulgaria in 1915 was part of the general widening
of the war
1. The Balkans came to be occupied by the Central Powers and the
British forces were badly defeated in 1915 trying to take the
Dardanelles from Turkey, ally of Germany (more successful in
inciting Arab nationalists against Turkish lords)
2. Lawrence of Arabia aroused the Arab princes to revolt in early 1917
and in 1918 British armies from Egypt smashed the Ottoman
Empire once and for all; British had drawn forces from Australia,
New Zealand, and India
3. War extended around the globe as Great Britain, France, and
Japan seized Germany’s colonies (United States declared war on
Germany in April 1917)
3. American intervention grew out of war at sea, sympathy for the Triple
Entente, and increasing desperation of total war; Britain and France had
established a total naval blockade to strangle the Central Powers and
although the blockade annoyed Americans, profits from selling war
supplies to countries blunted indignation
4. In early 1915 Germany launched a counter-blockade using the
murderously effective submarine, a new weapon that violated traditional
niceties of fair warning under international law (German submarines
began sinking British ships in war zone)
5. In 1917, Germany after being forced to relax submarine warfare to
prevent the United States from entering, resumed unrestricted
submarine warfare
6. British shipping losses reached staggering proportions and by late 1917,
naval strategists had come up with an effective response: the convoy
system for safe transatlantic shipping; United States entered the war
almost three years after its start
2. The Home Front
1. Mobilizing for Total War
1. In every country the masses believed that their nation was in the right
and defending itself from aggression; even socialists supported the war;
in Germany the trade unions voted not to strike and socialist in
Reichstag voted money for war (counter Russia)
2. By mid-October generals and politicians had begun to realize that more
than patriotism would be needed to win the war, whose end was not in
sight
3. Every country experience a relentless, desperate demand for men and
weapons; countries faced countless shortages, for prewar Europe had
depended on foreign trade and a great international division of labor
(organization and economic life changed)
4. In each country a government of national unity began to plan and
control economic and social life in order to wage “total war” (free-market
capitalism was abandoned)
1. Government planning boards established priorities and decided
what was to be produced and consumed; rationing, price, and wage
controls, and even restrictions on workers’ freedom of movement
were imposed by the government
2. The planned economy of total war released the tremendous
energies but total war was based on productive industrial
economies not confined to a single nation
3. The war was a war of whole peoples and entire populations
4. The ability of governments to manage and control highly
complicated economies strengthened the cause of socialism
(became a realistic economic blueprint)
5. Germany went the furthest in developing a planned economy to wage
total war
1. Walter Rathenau, the Jewish industrialist convinced the
government to set up the War Raw Materials Board to ration and
distribute raw materials
2. The board launched successful attempts to produce substitutes,
such as synthetic nitrates which was used to make explosives
(highly important and useful)
3. Food was rationed in accordance with physical need and men and
women doing hard manual work were given extra rations while only
few received milk rations
6. Following the battles of Verdun and Somme in 1916, Chancellor
Bethmann-Hollweg was driven from office in 1917 by military leaders
Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who became the real rulers of Germany;
decreed the ultimate mobilization for total war
7. In December 1916, military leaders rammed through the Reichstag the
Auxiliary Service Law, which required all males between seventeen and
sixty to work only at jobs considered critical to the war effort (many
women were working in factories already and children were organized
by their teachers into garbage brigades)
8. In Germany, total war led to the establishment of history’s first
“totalitarian” society and war production increase while some people
starved to death
9. In Great Britain, a shortage of shells led to the establishment of the
Ministry of Munitions under David Lloyd George which organized private
industry to produce for the war, controlled profits, allocated labor, fixed
wages, and settled labor disputes
10. More than 90 percent of all imports were bought and allocated directly
by the state
2. The Social Impact
1. Millions of men at the front and the insatiable needs of the military
created a tremendous demand for works and demand for labor brought
about changes
1. Having proved their loyalty in August 1914, labor unions became a
partner of government and private industry in the planned war
economy; unions cooperated with war governments on work rules,
wages, and production schedules in return for real participation and
important decisions (paralleled entry of socialist leaders)
2. In every country, large numbers of women left home and domestic
service to work in industry, transportation and offices and women
became highly visible
3. Government pressure and the principle of equal pay for equal work
overcame objections as the war expanded the range of a woman
and as a result of the women’s war effort, Britain, Germany, and
Austria granted suffrage after the war
2. War also promoted greater social equality, blurring class distinctions
and lessening the gap between the rich and the poor (Great Britain was
the prime example as bottom third of population lived better than they
had ever had; labor shortage)
3. Death had no respect for traditional social distinctions and it decimated
the young aristocratic officers who led the charge and feel heavily on
the mass of drafted peasants and unskilled workers who followed but
death often spared the aristocrats of labor, the skilled works and the
foremen (need to train the unskilled workers)
3. Growing Political Tensions
1. During the first two years of war, most soldiers and civilians supported
governments; belief in just cause, patriotic nationalism, the planned
economy, and a shared burdens united peoples behind their various
national leaders (newspapers were censored)
2. Governments used both crude and subtle propaganda to maintain
popular support; patriotic posters, slanted news, and biased editorials
inflamed hatreds and helped sustain efforts but people were beginning
to crack under the strain of war in 1916
3. In April 1916 Irish nationalists in Dublin tried to take advantage of this
situation and rose up against British rule in their great Easter Rebellion;
strikes over inadequate food began to flare up and soldiers’ morale
began to decline
4. A rising tide of war-weariness and defeatism also swept France’s
civilian population before Georges Clemencause emerged as wartime
leader in November 1917
5. After the death of Francis Joseph, a symbol of unity disappeared and in
April 1917, the minister feared another winter of war would bring
revolution and disintegration
6. The strain of total war and of the Auxiliary Service Law was evident in
Germany; national political unity was collapsing and a growing minority
of socialists in the Reichstag began to vote against war credits calling
for a compromise
7. In July 1917 a coalition of socialists and Catholics passed a resolution in
the Reichstag to that effect and when the bread ration was reduced,
more than 200,000 workers struck and demonstrated for a week in
Berlin returning to work only under the threat of prison and military
discipline (countries were beginning to crack)
3. The Russian Revolution
1. The Fall of Imperial Russia
1. Tsar Nicholas II vowed never to make peace as long as the enemy
stood on Russian soil and Russia’s lower house, the Duma, voted war
credits; conservatives anticipated expansion in the Balkans, while
liberals and most socialists believed alliance with Britain and France
would bring democratic reform (for a moment, Russia was united)
2. Despite declining morale among soldiers and civilians and heavy losses
in 1915, Russia’s battered peasant army did not collapse but continued
to fight until early 1917
3. Russia moved toward full mobilization on the home front and the Duma
took the lead, setting up special committees to coordinated defense,
industry, transportation and agriculture; Russia mobilized less effectively
for total war than any other country
4. The great problem of Russia was leadership (under a constitution from
1905)
1. The tsar had retained complete control over the bureaucracy and
the army
2. Legislation proposed by the Duma (wealthy and conservative
classes) was subject to the tsar’s veto and Nicholas II wished to
maintain the sacred inheritance of supreme royal power, with the
Orthodox church, was, for him, the key to Russia
3. Nicholas failed to form a close partnership with his citizens and rely
on the bureaucratic apparatus, distrusting the moderate Duma,
rejecting popular involvement, and resisting calls to share power
(could have been more effective)
5. The Duma, the educated middle classes, and the masses became
increasingly critical of the tsar’s leadership and following Nicholas’s
dismissal of the minister of war, demands for more democratic and
responsive government exploded in Summer 1915
6. In September 1915, various parties formed the Progressive Bloc, which
called for a completely new government responsible to the Duma
instead of the tsar; in answer, Nicholas temporarily adjourned the Duma
and announced that he was traveling to the front in order to lead and
rally Russia’s armies; his departure was a fatal turning point
1. Control of the government was taken over by the hysterical
empress, Tsarina Alexandra and the monk Rasputin (her most
trusted adviser)
2. Rasputin’s influence rested on mysterious healing powers and only
Rasputin could stop the bleeding of Alexis, the heir, who suffered
from hemophilia
3. In an attempt to right the situation and end rumors that Rasputin
was the empress’s lover, three members of the high aristocracy
murdered Rasputin in December 1916 and the empress went into
shock because of his prophecy: “If I die or you desert me, in six
months you will lose your son and throne”
4. On March 8 women calling for bread in Petrograd started riots;
soldiers joined the revolutionary crowd and the Duma responded by
declaring a provisional government on March 12, 1917 and
Nicholas II abdicated three days later
2. The Provisional Government
1. The patriotic upper and middle classes rejoiced at the prospect of a
more determined and effective war effort, while workers happily
anticipated better wages and food; all classes and political parties called
for liberty and democracy (were not disappointed)
2. The provisional government established equality before the law;
freedom of religion, speech, and assembly; the right to unions to
organize and strike; and the rest of the classic liberal program (but
socialists leaders rejected social revolution)
3. The reorganized government formed in May 1917, which included
agrarian socialist Alexander Kerensky, refused to confiscate large
landholdings and to give them to peasants, fearing that such action
would only disintegrate Russia’s peasant army
4. The provisional government had to share power with a formidable
rival—the Petrograd Society of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, a huge
fluctuating mass meeting of two to three thousand workers, soldiers,
and socialist intellectuals
5. The Society undermined the work of the provisional government even
issuing the Army Order No. 1 which issued to all Russian military forces
formed by the provisional government (stripped officers of their authority
and placed power in the hands of elected committees of common
soldiers -- protect revolution)
6. The Army Order No. 1 led to total collapse of army discipline and many
peasant soldiers began returning to their villages to help their families
get a share of land, which peasants were simply seizing as they settled
old scores in upheaval
7. Liberty was turning into anarchy in the summer of 1917 and it was an
opportunity for the most radical and most talented of Russia’s socialists
leaders, Vladimir Lenin
3. Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution
1. Lenin found revolutionary faith in Marxian socialism; three ideas were
central to him
1. Lenin stressed that capitalism could be destroyed only by violent
revolution and denounced all revisionists theories of a peaceful
evolution to socialism
2. Under certain conditions a socialist revolution was possible even in
a relatively backward country like Russia (peasants were poor and
potential revolutionaries)
3. Lenin believed that at a given moment revolution was determined
more by human leadership than by vast historical laws and leading
to his third idea: the necessity of a highly disciplined workers’ party
(controlled by intellectuals)
2. At meetings of the Russian Social Democratic Labor party in 1903,
Lenin demanded a small, disciplined, elitist party, while his opponents
wanted a more democratic party and the party split
into Bolsheviks (supported Lenin, majority) andMensheviks
3. Lenin saw the war as a product of imperialistic rivalries and as a
marvelous opportunity for class war and socialist upheaval (observed
events from Switzerland)
4. Since propaganda and internal subversion were accepted weapons for
total war, the German government provided Lenin and colleagues with
safe passage across Germany and back into Russia in April 1917
(hoped Lenin would undermine Russia)
5. Arriving on April 3, Lenin attacked at once and rejected all cooperation
with the “bourgeois” provisional government of the liberals and
moderate socialists
6. An attempt by the Bolsheviks to seize power in July collapsed and
although he was charged with being a German agent, conspiracy
between Kerensky and his commander in chief, General Lavr Kornilov
resulted in Kornilov’s leading an attack against eh provisional
government (counterrevolutionary threat)
7. Kerensky had lost all credit with the army, the only force that might have
saved him and the democratic government in Russia
4. Trotsky and the Seizure of Power
1. Throughout the summer of 1917, the Bolsheviks appealed effectively to
the workers and soldiers of Petrograd, increasing their popular support
and in October, the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the Petrograd Soviet
and Lenin had found a strong right arm in Leon Trotsky, the second
most important person in Russian Revolution
1. Trotsky first convinced the Petrograd Soviet to form a special
military-revolutionary committee in October and make him its leader
(military power)
2. Trotsky’s second master stroke was to insist that the Bolsheviks
reduce opposition to their coup by taking power in the name of the
more popular, democratic soviets
3. On the night of November 6, militants from Trotsky’s committee
joined Bolshevik soldiers to seize government buildings and went
on to the congress of soviets where a Bolshevik majority declared
that all power had passed to the soviets and named Lenin head of
the new government
2. The Bolsheviks came to power for three key reasons in late 1917
1. Democracy had given way to anarchy: power was there to be taken
for
2. In Lenin and Trotsky the Bolsheviks had an utterly determined and
truly superior leadership, which both the tsarist and provisional
government lacked
3. In 1917, the Bolsheviks succeeded in appealing to many soldiers
and urban workers, people who were exhausted by war and eager
for socialism
5. Dictatorship and Civil War
1. Since summer, a peasant revolution had been sweeping across Russia
as the peasants invaded and divided among themselves the estates of
the landlords and the church and thus Lenin’s first law supposedly gave
land to the peasants (already happened)
2. Lenin also granted urban workers direct control of factories by workers’
committees
3. Lenin acknowledged that Russia had lost the war with Germany (peace
at any price)
1. Germany demanded in December 1917 that the Soviet government
give up all its western territories (Poles, Finns, Lithuanians, and
other non-Russians)
2. In February 1918, Lenin had his way in a close vote in the Central
Committee
3. Russia lost a third of its population in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in
March 1918
4. In November 1917 the Bolsheviks proclaimed their regime only a
“provisional workers’ and peasants’ government promising that a freely
elected Constituent Assembly would draw up a new constitution (free
elections produced setback)
5. The Socialist Revolutionaries (peasants’ party) had a clear majority and
the Constituent Assembly met for only one day, on January 18, 1918,
was permanently disbanded by Bolshevik soldiers, and Lenin formed a
one-party government
6. The officers of the old army took the lead in organizing the White
opposition to the Bolsheviks in southern Russia, Ukraine, Siberia, and
west of Petrograd and the Whites came from many social groups united
by their hatred of the Reds
1. By summer of 1918 eighteen self-proclaimed regional governments
were competing with Lenin’s Bolsheviks in Moscow and the Whites
began to attack in October 1919 as they closed in on Lenin’s
government from three sides
2. By the spring of 1920, the White armies had been almost
completely defeated and the Bolshevik Red Army had retaken
Belorussia and Ukraine
3. The Communists also reconquered the independent nationalists
governments of the Caucasus the following year; the civil war was
over and Lenin had won
7. Lenin and the Bolsheviks had won the civil war for several reasons
1. Strategically, they controlled the center, while the Whites were
always on the fringes and disunited; it did not unite all the foes of
the Bolsheviks under one
2. General Anton Denikin refused to call for a democratic republic and
a federation of nationalities although he knew that doing so would
help his cause
3. The Communists had developed a better army; in March 1918,
Trotsky as war commissar reestablished the draft and the most
drastic discipline for the newly formed Red Army (soldiers
disobeying an order were summarily shot)
4. Establishing “war communism” the application of total war concept
to a civil conflict, they seized grain from peasants, introduced
rationing, nationalized all banks and industry, and required
everyone to work (labor discipline)
8. Revolutionary terror also contributed to the Communist victory
1. The old tsarist secret police was re-established as the Cheka,
which hunted down and executed thousands of real or supposed
foes, such as the tsar and his family
2. The terror caused by the secret police became a tool of the
government (fear)
9. Foreign military intervention in the civil war ended up helping the
Communists
1. After Lenin made peace with Germany, the Allies (Americans,
British, and Japanese) sent troops to prevent war material they had
sent to the provisional government from being captured by the
Germans; Western governments, particularly France, began to
support White armies after nationalization
2. Allied intervention permitted the Communists to appeal to patriotic
nationalism
10. A radically new government, based on socialism and one-party
dictatorship, came to power in a European state, maintained power, and
encouraged worldwide revolution
4. The Peace Settlement
1. The End of War
1. After the Russian Revolution in March 1917, there were major strikes in
Germany
1. In July a coalition of moderates passed a “peace resolution” in the
Reichstag, calling for peace without territorial annexations; in
response to this moderation born of war-weariness, the German
military established a virtual dictatorship
2. The military exploited the collapse of Russian armies after the
Bolshevik Revolution and won concessions from Lenin in the Treaty
of Brest-Litovsk
2. General Ludendorff and company fell on France once more in the spring
of 1918
1. German armies pushed forward but his overextended forces never
broke through
2. The German army was stopped in July at the second Battle of the
Marne, where fresh American soldiers saw action; the addition of 2
million men in arms to the war effort by August by America tipped
the scales in favor of Allied victory
3. By September, British, French, and American armies were
advancing steadily on all fronts and General Ludendorff realized
that Germany had lost the war
3. General Ludendorff insisted that moderate politicians shoulder the
shame of defeat and on October 4, the emperor formed a new, more
liberal German government to sue for peace; negotiations over an
armistice dragged and German people finally rose up
4. On November 3 sailors in Kiel mutinied and throughout northern
Germany soldiers and workers began to establish revolutionary councils
on the Russian soviet model; also on that day, Austria-Hungary
surrendered to the Allies and began to break apart
5. Revolution broke out in Germany and with army discipline collapsing,
the emperor abdicated and fled to Holland; socialist leaders in Berlin
proclaimed a German republic on November 9 and agreed to tough
Allied terms of surrender
6. The armistice went into effect on November 11, 1918 and the war was
over
2. Revolution in Germany
1. Military defeat brought political revolution to Germany and AustriaHungary
1. In Austria-Hungary the revolution was nationalistic and republican
in nature even though they started the war to preserve an
antinationalistic dynastic state
2. In its place, independent Austrian, Hungarian, and Czechoslovak
republics were proclaimed, while the expanded Serbian monarchy
united under Yugoslavia
2. German Revolution of November 1918 resembled the Russian
Revolution of 1917
1. In both cases, a genuine popular uprising toppled an authoritarian
monarchy and established a liberal provisional republic (liberal and
moderate socialists took control, while workers’ and soldiers’
councils formed a counter-government)
2. In Germany, however, moderate socialists won while the Lenin-like
radical didn’t
3. In communist terms, Germany was a bourgeois political revolution
3. There were several reasons for the outcome of German’s new
government
1. The great majority of Marxian socialists leaders in the Social
Democratic part wanted to establish real political democracy and
civil liberties, and they favored the gradual elimination of capitalism
(less support for extreme radicals)
2. The German peasantry, which already had most of the land, did not
provide the elemental force that had driven all great modern
revolutions
3. The moderate German Social Democrats accepted defeat and
ended the war the day they took power; act ended decline in
morale among soldiers and held army
4. When radicals headed by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg tried to
seize control of the government in Berlin in January, the moderate
socialists called on the army to crush the uprising and the followers
were brutally murdered by army leaders
5. The act caused the radicals in the Social Democratic party to break way
and form a pro-Lenin German Communist party (moderates could not
have ruled Germany)
3. The Treaty of Versailles
1. The peace conference opened in Paris in January 1919 with seventy
delegates representing twenty-seven victorious nations and
expectations were high; general optimism and idealism had been
strengthened by President Wilson’s 1918 peace proposal, the Fourteen
Points, which stressed national self-determination and rights
2. The real powers at the conference were United States, Great Britain,
and France, for Germany was not allowed to participate and Russia was
locked in civil war
1. President Wilson became almost obsessed with creating the
League of Nations; he believed that only an international
organization could prevent future wars
2. Lloyd George of Great Britain and Clemenceau of France were
concerned with punishing Germany; Lloyd George had won
electoral victory with this belief
3. France’s Georges Clemenceau, the “Tiger” who had broken
wartime defeatism and led his country to victory, like most
Frenchmen, wanted revenge and security
4. Clemenceau believed this required the creation of a buffer state
between France and Germany, the permanent demilitarization of
Germany, and vast German reparations (Wilson and George did
not like this and Wilson left in April)
3. Clemenceau’s obsession with security reflected his anxiety about
France’s weakness and he gave up a Rhineland buffer state in return
for a formal defensive alliance with the United States and Great Britain
(promised to come to aid in German attack)
4. The Treaty of Versailles between the Allies and Germany was the key to
the settlement; Germany’s colonies were give to France, Britain, and
Japan as League of Nations mandates and parts of Germany were
ceded to the new Polish state; Germany had to limit its army to 100,000
men and agree to build no forts in the Rhineland
5. The Allies declared that Germany with Austria was responsible for the
war and had therefore to pay reparations equal to all civilian damages
caused by the war
6. When presented with the treaty, the German government protested
vigorously but there was no alternative and on June 28, 1919, German
representatives of the ruling moderate Social Democrats and the
Catholic party signed the treaty at Versailles
7. Separate peace treaties were concluded with other defeated powers—
Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey (ratified existing situation in
east-central Europe)
1. Hungary was ceded to Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and
Yugoslavia
2. Italy got some Austrian territory and the Turkish empire was broken
up
3. France received Lebanon and Syria, while Britain took Iraq and
Palestine
4. Germany’s holdings in China was mandated to Japan
5. Officially League of Nations mandates were one of the more
imperialistic elements of the peace settlement (age of Western
imperialism lived on)
4. American Rejection of the Versailles Treaty
1. The principle of national self-determination was accepted and a new
world organization complemented a traditional defensive alliance of
satisfied powers
2. Two great interrelated obstacles to peace were Germany and the United
States
1. Germany was plagued by communist uprisings, reactionary plots,
and popular disillusionment with losing the war at the last minute;
German socialists and their liberal and Catholic supporters need
time to established a democratic republic
2. The U.S. Senate and the American people rejected Wilson’s
handiwork; Republican senators led by Henry Cabot Lodge refused
to ratify the Treaty of Versailles without changes in the articles
creating the League of Nations
3. The key issue was the League’s power to require member states to
take collective action against aggression and Lodge believed this
gave away Congress’s constitutional right to declare war; Wilson
ordered Democratic senators to support
4. In doing so, Wilson assured that the treaty would never be ratified
by the United States in any form and that United States would
never join the League of Nations
3. The Senate refused to ratify Wilson’s defensive alliance with France and
Great Britain and effectively, America had turned its back on Europe
4. Using America’s action as an excuse, Great Britain too, refused to ratify
its defensive alliance with France and France, bitterly betrayed by its
allies, stood alone
5. France would later take actions against Germany that would feed the
fires of German resentment and seriously undermine democratic forces
in the new republic
6. The Western alliance had collapsed, and a grandiose plan for
permanent peace had given way to a fragile truce (the United States
must share the guilt for their actions)
Chapter 28: The Age of Anxiety
1. The Search for Peace and Political Stability
1. Germany and the Western Powers
1. Under the Allies’ naval blockade and threat to extend military occupation
from the Rhineland had Germany’s new government signed the Treaty
of Versailles in 1919
2. The treaty had neither broken nor reduced Germany, which was still
very strong
3. By the end of 1919, France wanted to stress the harsh elements in the
Treaty of Versailles and much of rich, industrialized France had been
devastated
1. Expected costs of reconstruction were staggering and like Great
Britain, France had also borrowed large sums from the United
States during the war
2. Betrayed by the United States, many French leaders saw that large
reparation payments could hold Germany down indefinitely and
achieve its goal of security
3. After the war a healthy, prosperous Germany appeared to be
essential to the British economy as Germany had been Great
Britain’s second-best market
4. Many English people agreed with economist John Maynard Keynes
(Economic Consequences of the Peace) who argued that
reparations and harsh economic measures would indeed reduce
Germany to the position of a second-rate power
5. However such impoverishment would increase economic hardship
in all countries
4. The British were suspicious of France’s army (largest) and France’s
foreign policy
1. Since 1890, France had looked to Russia as an ally against
Germany, but France soon turned to the newly formed states of
eastern Europe of diplomatic support
2. In 1921 France signed a mutual defense pact with Poland and
associated itself closely with the so-called Little Entente, an alliance
that joined Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia against
defeated and bitter Hungary (League of Nations)
5. The Allied reparations commission complete its work in April 1921 and
announced
1. Germany had to pay the enormous sum of 132 billion gold marks
(33 billion) in annual installments of 2.5 billion bold marks; facing
possible occupation of more of its territory, the young German
republic made its first payment in 1921
2. In 1922, wracked by rapid inflation and political assassinations and
motivated by hostility, the Weimar Republic announced its inability
to pay more and proposed a moratorium on reparations for three
years (implication that money be reduced)
6. The British were willing to accept his offer, but the French were not and
led by their legalistic prime minister, Raymond Poincare, France
decided they either had to call German’s bluff or see the entire peace
settlement dissolve to France’s disadvantage
7. Despite strong British protests, France and ally Belgium decided to
pursue a firm policy and in 1923, French and Belgian armies began to
occupy the Ruhr district, heartland of industrial Germany, creating a
serious international crisis of the 1920s
2. The Occupation of the Ruhr
1. The strategy of Poincare and his French supporters was simple: since
Germany was resisting to pay reparations in hard currency or gold,
France and Belgium would collect reparations in kind—coal, steel, and
machinery (used occupation)
2. The German government ordered the people of the Ruhr to stop
working and start passively resisting the French occupation; 10 percent
of Germany need relief
1. The French answer to passive resistance was to seal off not only
the Ruhr but also the entire Rhineland from the rest of Germany,
letting in only enough food; the French also revived plans for a
separate state to be formed in the Rhineland
2. French armies could not collect reparations from striking workers at
gunpoint and even though French occupation was paralyzing
Germany and its economy (80 percent of Germany’s steel and
coal); occupation of the Ruhr turned rapid German inflation into
runaway inflation and the German government began to print
money to pay its bills (Germany money rapidly lost all value)
3. Runaway inflation brought about a social revolution as middle-class
virtues of thrift, caution, and self-reliance were mocked by
catastrophic inflation and the German middle and lower middle
classes burned with resentment
4. Many hated and blamed Western governments and their own
government
3. In August 1923, Gustav Stresemann assumed leadership of the
government and adopted a compromising attitude calling off the passive
resistance in the Ruhr and in October agreed in principle to pay
reparations for asked for a re-examination of Germany’s ability to pay;
Poincare accepted (he became increasingly unpopular)
4. In Germany and France, power was passing to the moderates and after
five years of hostility and tension culmination in a kind of undeclared
war in the Ruhr in 1923, Germany and France decided to give
compromise and cooperation a try
3. Hope in Foreign Affairs, 1924-1929
1. The reparations commission appointed an international committee of
financial experts headed by American banker Charles G. Dawes to reexamine reparations in Germany; the committee made a series of
recommendations known as the Dawes Plan (1924)
1. The plan having been accepted by France, Germany, and Britain
stated that German reparations were to be reduced and placed on
a sliding scale, like income tax, payments depending on the level of
German economic prosperity
2. The Dawes Plane also recommended large loans to Germany,
which came U.S.; these loans were to help Stresemann’s
government put its new currency on a firm basis and promote
German recovery; Germany would get private loans from the U.S.
and pay reparations to France and Britain, allowing them to repay
the U.S.
2. The German republic experienced a spectacular economic recovery and
Germany easily paid about 1.3 billion dollars in reparations in 1927 and
1928
3. In 1929 the Young Plan, named after the American businessman
representing the U.S., further reduced German reparations and
formalized the link between German reparations and French-British
debts to the United States (worldwide recovery)
4. In 1925 the leaders of Europe signed a number of agreements at
Locarno, Switzerland
5. Stresemann had suggested a treaty with France’s Aristide Briand
(returned to office in 1924) and by this treaty, Germany and France
pledged to accept their common border, and both Britain and Italy
agreed to fight either country it if invaded the other
1. Stresemann also agreed to settle boundary disputes with Poland
and Czechoslovakia by peaceful means and France promised
those countries military aid if they were attacked by Germany
2. Stresemann and Briand shared Nobel Peace Prize in 1926; the
spirit of Locarno gave Europeans a sense of growing security and
stability in international affairs
6. In 1926 Germany joined the League of Nations, where Stresemann
continued his “peace offensive” and in 1928 fifteen countries signed the
Kellogg-Briand Pact, which “condemned and renounced war as an
instrument of national policy”
7. The pact grew out of a suggestion by Briand that France and the United
States renounce the possibility of war between their two countries;
Secretary of State Frank Kellogg had proposed a multinational pact;
optimism rested on hope that United States would accept its
responsibilities as a world power and contribute to stability
4. Hope in Democratic Government
1. In Germany in 1923 communists momentarily entered provincial
governments and in November a nobody named Adolf Hitler proclaimed
a “national socialist revolution” but Hitler’s plot to seize control of the
government was poorly organized and easily crushed, and Hitler was
sentenced to prison (wrote My Struggle in prison)
2. Throughout the 1920s, Hitler’s National Socialist party attracted support
only from few anti-Semites, ultranationalists, and disgruntled exservicemen; democracy seemed to take root in Weimar Germany, new
currency, and economy boomed
3. The moderate businessmen who tended to dominate the various
German coalition governments were convinced that economic
prosperity demanded good relations with the Western powers and
supported parliamentary government at home
4. Although elections were held regularly, there were political divisions in
the country
1. Many nationalists and monarchists populated the right and the
army; Germany’s Communists were active on the right and the
Communist, directed from Moscow, reserved their greatest hatred
for the Social Democrats (betrayed revolution)
2. The working class were divided politically, but most supported the
nonrevolutionary but socialist Social Democrats (similar to France’s
situation)
3. In France, Communists and Socialists battled for the support of the
workers and after 1924 the democratically elected government
rested in the hands of coalitions of moderates, and business
interests were well represented
4. The expenses, however, led to a large deficit and substantial
inflation; Poincare was recalled to office, while Briand remained
minister for foreign affairs
5. The Poincare government proceeded to slash spending and raise
taxes, restoring confidence in economy; franc was “saved” and
good times prevailed until 1930
5. Despite political shortcomings, France attracted artists and writers from
all over the world in the 1920s (much of intellectual and artistic ferment
flourished in Paris); France appealed to foreigners and the French as a
harmonious combination of small businesses and family farms, of bold
innovation and solid traditions
6. Britain faced challenges after 1920; wartime trend toward greater social
equality continued helping maintain social harmony but the great
problem was unemployment
1. In June 1921, 23 percent of the labor force were out of work and
throughout the 1920s unemployment hovered at around 12 percent;
the state provided unemployment benefits of equal size to all those
without jobs and supplemented those payments with subsidized
housing, medical aid, and old-age pensions
2. Relative social harmony was accompanied by the rise of the Labour
party as the determined champion of the working classes and of
greater social equality
3. Committed to the kind of moderate, “revisionist” socialism, the
Labour party replaced the Liberal party as the main opposition to
the Conservatives
4. The prominence of the Labour party reflected the decline of old
liberal ideals of competitive capitalism, limited government control,
and individual responsibility
7. In 1924 and 1929, the Labour party under Ramsay MacDonald
governed the country with the support of the smaller Liberal party yet
Labour moved toward socialism gradually and democratically, as the
working classes won new benefits
8. The Conservatives under Stanley Baldwin showed the same
compromising spirit on social issues and social unrest in Britain was
limited in the 1920s and 1930s; In 1922 Britain granted southern,
Catholic Ireland full autonomy after bitter guerrilla war, thereby removing
an other source of prewar friction (cautious optimism in late 1920s)
2. The Great Depression 1929-1939
1. The Economic Crisis
1. Though economic activity was declining in many countries by 1929, the
crash of the stock market in the United States in October of that year
started the Great Depression
1. The American stock market boom had seen stock prices double
between early 1928 and September 1929, was built on borrowed
money
2. Many investors and speculators had bought stocks by paying only a
small fraction of the total purchase price and borrowing the
remainder from stock brokers
3. Such buying “on margin” was dangerous as when prices started
falling, the margin buyers either had to put up more money to sell
shares to pay off brokers
4. As thousands of people started selling all at once, the result was a
financial panic
2. The general economic consequences were swift and severe; battered
investors and citizens started buying fewer goods and production began
to slow down and unemployment began to rise (the American economy
was caught in spiraling decline)
3. The financial panic in the United States triggered a worldwide financial
crisis and that crisis resulted in a drastic decline in production in country
after country
1. Throughout the 1920s, American bankers and investors had lent
large amounts of capital not only to Germany but also to many
other countries and once panic broke, New York bankers began
recalling them (gold reserves to United States)
2. It became very hard for European business people to borrow
money and the panicky public began to withdraw its savings from
the banks; these banking problems eventually led to the crash of
the largest bank in Austria in 1931
3. The recall of private loans by American bankers accelerated the
collapse in world prices, as business people around the world
dumped industrial goods and agricultural commodities in a frantic
attempt to get cash to pay what they owed
4. The financial crisis led to a general crisis of production: between 1929
and 1933, world output of goods fell by an estimated 38 percent (every
country turned to itself)
5. In 1931, Britain went off the gold standard, refusing to convert bank
notes into gold, and reduced the value of its money; Britain’s goal was
to make its good cheaper and more salable in the world market but
because more than twenty nations including the U.S. in 1934 also went
off the gold standard, no country gained a real advantage
6. Country after country followed the example of the United States when it
raised protective tariffs to their highest levels ever in 1930 trying to seal
off national markets
7. Two factors probably best explain the relentless slide from 1929 to early
1933
1. The international economy lacked a leadership able to maintain
stability when the crisis came; the unites States cut back its
international lending and erected tariffs
2. Poor national economic policy in almost every country existed;
government generally cut their budgets and reduced spending
when they should have run large deficits in attempt to stimulate
economies (Since World War II, such a “counter-cyclical policy”
advocated by Keynes became a good weapon against depression)
2. Mass Unemployment
1. The need for large-scale government spending was tied to mass
unemployment; as the financial crisis led to cuts in production, workers
lost their jobs and purchased less
2. In Britain between 1930 and 1935, an average of 18 percent of the
workers were unemployed while in 1932, unemployment soared to
about 33 percent of the entire labor force in the United States (fourteen
million people were out of work)
3. Only by pumping new money into the economy could the government
increase demand and break the vicious cycle of decline; along with
economic effects, mass unemployment posed a great social problem
that mere numbers cannot express
1. Millions of people lost their spirit and dignity in an apparently
hopeless search for work; homes and ways of life were disrupted in
millions of personal tragedies
2. People postponed marriages they could not afford, and birthrates
fell sharply; there was an increase in suicide and mental illness;
poverty became a reality
4. Mass unemployment was a terrible time bomb preparing to explode
3. The New Deal in the United States
1. Of all the major industrial countries, only Germany was harder hit by the
Great Depression, or reacted more radically to its, than the United
States
2. The Great Depression and the response to it marked a major turning
point in history
1. President Herbert Hoover and his administration initially reacted to
the stock market crash and economic decline with dogged optimism
and limited action
2. When the full force of the financial crisis struck Europe in summer
of 1931 and boomeranged back to the United States, people’s
worst fears became reality
3. Banks failed, unemployment soared and industrial production fell
50 percent
4. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (crippled by polio) won a landslide
electoral victory with grand but vague promises of a “New Deal for
the forgotten man”
3. Roosevelt’s basic goal was to reform capitalism in order to preserve;
Roosevelt rejected socialism and government ownership of industry in
1933 and to right the situation, he chose forceful government
intervention in the economy
4. Roosevelt and his advisers were greatly influenced by American
experience in World War I as the American economy had been
thoroughly planned and regulated; government adopted similar policies
to restore prosperity and reduce social inequality
5. Government intervention and experimentation were combined in the
New Deal
1. The most ambitious attempt to control and plan the economy was
the National Recovery Administration (NRA) that was established
by Congress
2. The key idea was to reduce competition and fix prices and wages
for everyone
3. This goal required government, business, and labor to hammer out
detailed regulations for each industry (sponsored public work
projects assure recovery)
4. By the time the NRA was declared unconstitutional in 1935,
Roosevelt and the New Deal were already moving away from
planning and controlling the economy
6. Roosevelt and his advisers attack the key problem of mass
unemployment; new agencies were created to undertake a vast range
of public works projects
1. The Works Progress Administration (set up in 1935) employed at its
peak in late 1938, the government agency employed more than
three million individuals
2. The WPA was enormously popular in a nation long schooled in selfreliance; the hope of a job with the government helped check the
threat of social revolution
3. The U.S. government in 1935 established a national social security
system, with old-age pensions and unemployment benefits to
protect many workers
4. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gave unions organizers
the green light by declaring collective bargaining to be the policy of
the United States
5. Following some strikes (sit-down strike at GM) the union
membership more than doubled between 1935 and 1940 and
government rulings helped ordinary people
7. The New Deal was only partly successful as a response to the Great
Depression; the economic situation then worsened seriously in the
recession of 1937 and 1938, production fell sharply, and unemployment
was still ten million in September 1939
8. The New Deal never did pull the United States out of the depression;
many argue the New Deal did not put enough money into the economy
through deficit financing and like his predecessors, Roosevelt was
attached to the ideal of the balanced budget
4. The Scandinavian Response to the Depression
1. Of all the Western democracies, the Scandinavian countries under
Socialist leadership responded most successfully to the challenge of the
Great Depression
2. Having grown in the late nineteenth century, the Socialists became the
largest political party in Sweden and then in Norway after the First
World War
3. In the 1920s they passed important social reform legislation for both
peasants and workers, gained practical administrative experience, and
developed unique socialism
4. Flexible and nonrevolutionary, Scandinavian socialism grew out of a
strong tradition of cooperative community action (labor leaders and
capitalists worked together)
5. When the economic crisis struck in 1929, Socialists in Scandinavia built
on pattern of cooperative social action and Sweden in particular
pioneered in the use of large-scale deficits to finance public works and
maintained production and employment
6. Scandinavian governments also increased social welfare benefits, from
old-age pensions and unemployment insurance to subsidized housing +
maternity allowances
7. All this spending required a large bureaucracy and high taxes, first on
the rich and then practically everyone (private, cooperative enterprise,
and democracy thrived)
5. Recovery and Reform in Britain and France
1. In Britain MacDonald’s Labour government and then, after 1931, the
Conservative-dominated coalition government followed orthodox
economic theory; budget was balanced, but unemployed workers
received barely enough welfare to live
2. For Britain, the years after 1932 were actually somewhat better than the
1920s had been, quite the opposite situation in the United States and
France
3. The performance reflected the gradual reorientation of the British
economy
1. After going off the gold standard in 1931 and establishing protective
tariffs in 1932, Britain concentrated increasingly on the national
market
2. New industries, such as automobiles and electrical appliances,
grew in response
3. Low interest rates encouraged a housing boom and by the end of
the decade, there were highly visible differences between the old
industrial areas of the north and the new, growing areas of the
south (encouraged Britain to look inward)
4. Because France was relatively less industrialized and more isolated
from the world economy, the Great Depression came late, but once it hit
France, it stayed and stayed
1. Economic stagnation both reflected and heightened an ongoing
political crisis there were no stability in government and coalition
cabinets formed and fell
2. The French lost the underlying unity that had made government
instability bearable before 1914; fascist-type organization agitated
against parliamentary democracy and looked to Mussolini’s Italy
and Hitler’s Germany for inspiration
3. In February 1934 French fascists and semi-fascists rioted and
threatened to overturn the republic; at the same time, the
Communist party and workers opposed to the existing system were
looking to Stalin’s Russia for guidance
5. Frightened by the growing strength of the fascists at home and abroad,
the Communists, the Socialists, and the Radicals formed an alliance—
the Popular Front—for the national elections of May 1936 (victory
reflected trend of polarization)
6. Communists and Socialists increased their numbers while the moderate
Radicals slipped and the conservatives lost ground to the semi-fascists
7. Blum’s Popular Front government made the first and only attempt to
deal with the social and economic problems of the 1930s in France; the
Popular Front encouraged the union movement and launched a farreaching program social reform, complete with paid vacations and a
forty-hour workweek (inflation and cries of revolution)
8. Wealthy people sneaked their money out of the country, labor unrest
grew, and France entered a sever financial crisis; Blum forced to
announce “breathing spell”
9. The fires of political dissension were also fanned by civil war in Spain
and communists demanded that France support the Spanish
republicans, while many French conservatives would gladly have joined
Hitler and Mussolini in aiding the attack of Spanish fascists (Blum was
forced to resign in June 1937, the Popular Front quickly collapse and
France was within sight of civil war)
Chapter 29: Dictatorships and the Second World
War
1. Authoritarian States
1. Conservative Authoritarianism
1. The traditional form of antidemocratic government in European history
was conservative authoritarianism (leaders of such governments tried to
prevent major changes that would undermine the existing social order)
2. Authoritarian leaders depended on obedient
bureaucracies,vigilant police departments and trustworthy armies;
liberals, democrats, and socialists prosecuted
3. The old-fashioned authoritarian government were preoccupied with the
goal of mere survival and limited their demands to taxes, army recruits,
and passive acceptance
4. The parliamentary regimes that had been founded on the wreckage of
empires in 1918 fell one by one and by early 1938 only economically
and socially advanced Czechoslovakia remained true to liberal political
ideals
1. The lands lacked a tradition of self-government, with restraint and
compromise
2. Many of these new states were torn by ethnic conflicts that
threatened existence
3. Dictatorship appealed to nationalists and military leaders as a way
to repress such tensions and preserve national unity (middle class
weak in Eastern Europe)
5. Although some of the conservative authoritarian regimes adopted
certain Hitlerian and fascist characteristics in the 1930s, their general
aims were limited
1. They were more concerned with maintaining the status quo then
with forcing society into rapid change or war; this tradition has
continued into our own time
2. In Hungary, Bela Kun formed a Lenin-style government, but
communism in Hungary was soon crushed by foreign troops,
landowners, and hostile peasants
3. A combination of landowners instituted a semi-authoritarian regime,
which maintained the status quo in the 1920s; Hungary had a
parliament with controlled elections and the peasants did not have
the right to vote (landed aristocracy)
4. In the 1930s the Hungarian government remained conservative and
nationalistic and it was increasingly opposed by a Nazi-like fascist
movement, the Arrow Cross, which demanded radical reform and
mobilization of the masses
6. Another example of conservative authoritarianism was newly
independent Poland, where democratic government was overturned in
1926 when General Joseph Pilsudski established a military dictatorship;
Pilsudski silenced opposition and tried to build a strong state
(supporters were army, major industrialists, and nationalists)
7. Yet another example of conservative authoritarianism was Portugal in
western Europe
1. Shaken by military coups and uprisings after a republican revolution
in 1910, Portugal finally got a strong dictator in Antonio de Oliveira
Salazar in 1932
2. Salazar gave the church the strongest possible position in the
country, while controlling the press and outlawing most political
activity but there was no attempt to mobilize the masses or to
accomplish great projects (tradition)
2. Totalitarianism or Fascism?
1. While conservative authoritarianism predominated smaller states of
Europe by the mid-1930s, radical dictatorships emerged in the Soviet
Union, Germany, and Italy
2. Leaders of the radical dictatorships rejected parliamentary restraint and
liberal values; they exercised unprecedented control over the masses
and sought to mobilize them for constant action (three main approaches
to understanding radical dictatorships)
1. The first approach relates the radical dictatorships to the rise of
modern total-itarianism and the second focuses on the idea of
fascism as the unifying impulse
2. The third stresses the limitations of such generalization and
uniqueness of regime
3. The concept of totalitarianism emerged in the 1920s and the 1930s and
in 1924 Mussolini spoke of the “fierce totalitarian will” of his movement
in Italy; in the 1930s many exiled writers used the concept of
totalitarianism to link Italian and German fascism with Society
communism under a common antiliberal umbrella
1. Early writers believed that modern totalitarianism burst on the
scene with the revolutionary total war effort of 1914 to 1918
(subordinate all institutions)
2. As stated by French thinker Halevy, the varieties of modern
totalitarian tyranny—fascism, Nazism, and communism—are
related with the nature of modern war
3. Writers such as Halevy believed that the crucial experience of WW
I was carried further by Lenin and the Bolsheviks during the
Russian civil war; Lenin showed how a dedicated minority could
make a total effort and achieve victory
4. Lenin showed how institutions and human rights are subordinated
to the needs of a single group and its leader and provided a model
for single-party dictatorship
5. Modern totalitarianism reached maturity in the 1930s in the Stalinist
U.S.S.R. and Nazi Germany, according to this school of
interpretation
4. The grandiose vision of total state control broke decisively not only with
conservative authoritarianism but also with nineteenth-century liberalism
and democracy; indeed, totalitarianism was a radical revolt against
liberalism as classical liberalism had sought to limit the power of the
state and to protect the sacred rights of the people
5. Liberals stood for rationality, peaceful progress, economic freedom, and
a strong middle class and the totalitarianism believed in will power,
preached conflict, and worshiped violence (individual was infinitely less
valuable than the state)
6. Modern totalitarianism was based not on an elite but on people who had
become engaged in the political process, most notably through
nationalism and socialism; real totalitarian states built on mass
movements and possessed boundless dynamism
7. Totalitarianism was in the end a permanent revolution,
anunfinished revolution, in which rapid, profound change imposed from
on high went on forever (Trotsky)
8. A second group of writers approached radical dictatorships outside the
Soviet Union through the concept of fascism; a term of pride for
Mussolini and Hitler, who used it to describe the supposedly “total” and
revolutionary character of their movements, fascism was severely
criticized by these writers
1. Fascism was linked to reactionary forces, decaying capitalism and
domestic class conflict and Marxists argued that fascism was the
way powerful capitalists sought to manipulate a mass movement
capable of destroying the revolutionary working class and thus
protect eh profits to be reaped through war and territorial expansion
2. Less doctrinaire socialists saw fascism as only one of the several
possible ways for the ruling class to escape from a general crisis of
capitalism
3. Fascist movements all across Europe showed that they shared
many characteristics, including extreme, often expansionist
nationalism; an antisocialism aimed at destroying working-class
movements; alliances with capitalists and landowners; mass parties
appealing to the middle class and peasantry; a dynamic and violent
leader, and glorification of war and the military
4. European fascism remains a product of class conflict, capitalist
crisis, and postwar upheaval in these more recent studies but
interpretation has become convincing
9. Historians often adopt a third approach which emphasizes the
uniqueness of developments in a country (challenge interpretations of
totalitarianism and fascism)
10. Four tentative judgments concerning these debates seem appropriate
1. Leading schools of interpretation are rather closely linked to the
political passions and the ideological commitments of the age
(some liked totalitarian framework)
2. The concept of totalitarianism retains real value (Germany and
Soviet Union made an unprecedented “total claim” on the belief and
behavior of their citizens
3. Antidemocratic, antisocialist movements sprang up all over Europe
but only in Italy and Germany (and some would say Spain) were
they able to take power
4. The problem of Europe’s radical dictatorships is complex few easy
answers exist
2. Stalin’s Soviet Union
1. From Lenin to Stalin
1. By the spring 1921 after Lenin and the Bolsheviks had won the civil war,
in southern Russia drought combined with the ravages of war to
produce one of the worst famines; the Bolsheviks had destroyed the
economy as well as their foes
2. In the face of economic disintegration, riots by peasants and workers,
and an open rebellion by previously pro-Bolsheviks sailors at Kronstadt
changed Lenin’s course
1. In March 1921 Lenin announced the New Economic Plan, which reestablished limited economic freedom in an attempt to rebuild
agriculture and industry
2. With the NEP, Lenin substituted a grain tax on the country’s
peasants producers, who were permitted to sell their surpluses in
free markets; peasants were encouraged to buy as many goods as
they could afford from private traders
3. Heavy industry, railroads, and banks, however, remained wholly
nationalized
3. The NEP was shrewd and successful both politically and economically
1. It was a necessary but temporary compromise with the Soviet
Union’ peasantry
2. Flushed with victory after the revolutionary gains of 1917, the
peasants would have fought to hold onto their land (Lenin realized
that in 1921, his government was not strong enough to take land
from the peasants) Brest-Litovsk Treaty
3. The NEP brought rapid recovery and in 1926 industrial output
surpassed levels of 1913 and Soviet peasants were producing
almost as much grain as before the war
4. Counting shorter hours and increased social benefits, workers were
living better than they had lived in the past (as the economy
recovered and the government relaxed its censorship and
repression, intense struggle for power began within the Communist
party between stolid Stalin and the flamboyant Trotsky (after 1924)
4. Joseph Dzhugashvili, later known as Stalin, joined the Bolsheviks in
1903 and after engaging in many revolutionary activities in the southern
Transcaucasian area during the WW I, including a daring bank robbery
to get money for the Bolsheviks
5. This raid gained Lenin’s attention and approval; Stalin in his early
writings focused on the oppression of minority peoples in the Russian
Empire (good organizer)
1. Trotsky, a great and inspiring leader who had planned the 1917
takeover and then created the victorious Red Army, appeared to
have all the advantages
2. Stalin succeeded Lenin because Stalin was more effective at
gaining the all-important support of the party, the only genuine
source of power in the state
3. Rising to general secretary of the party’s Central Committee just
before Lenin’s first stroke in 1922, Stalin used his office to win
friends and allies with jobs and promises and Stalin also won
recognition as commissar of nationalities, a key position in which he
governed many of the minorities of the vast Soviet Union
6. The “practical” Stalin also won because he appeared better able than
the brilliant Trotsky to relate Marxian teaching to Soviet realities in the
1920s
1. As commissar of nationalities he built on Lenin’s idea of granting
minority groups a certain degree of freedom in culture and
language while maintaining rigorous political control through
carefully selected local communists (multinational state)
2. Stalin developed a theory of “socialism in one country” that more
appealing to the majority of communists than Trotsky’s doctrine of
“permanent revolution”
3. Stalin argued that the Russian-dominated Soviet Union had the
ability to build socialism on its own while Trotsky maintained that
socialism in the Soviet Union could succeed only if revolution
occurred quickly throughout Europe
4. Trotsky’s views seemed to sell their country short and to promise
risky conflicts with capitalist countries by recklessly encouraging
revolutionary movements
5. Stalin’s willingness to break with the NEP and push socialism at
home appealed to young militants (provided the party with a
glimmer of hope against NEP)
7. Stalin achieved absolute power between 1922 and 1927
1. First, Stalin allied with Trotsky’s personal enemies to crush Trotsky,
expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929 and eventually murdered in
Mexico in 1940
2. Stalin aligned with the moderates, who wanted to go slow at home,
to suppress Trotsky’s radical followers and third, having defeated
all the radicals, he turned against his allies, the moderates, and
destroyed them as well
3. Stalin’s final triumph came at the party congress of December
1927, which condemned all “deviation from the general party line”
formulated by Stalin
2. The Five-Year Plans
1. The party congress of 1927, which ratified Stalin’s seizure of power,
marked the end of the NEP and the beginning of the era of socialist fiveyear plans; the first five-year plan had staggering economic objectives
(total industrial output increases by 250%)
1. Heavy industry, the preferred sector, was to grow even faster (steel
production)
2. Agricultural production was slated to increase by 150 percent and
one-fifth of the peasants in the Soviet Union were scheduled to give
up private plots and join socialist collective farms (by 1930
economic and social change swept the country)
2. Stalin unleashed his “second revolution” for a variety of interrelated
reasons
1. There were ideological considerations and since the country had
recovered economically and their rule was secure, they burned to
stamp out the NEP’s private traders, independent artisans, and few
well-to-do peasants
2. A new socialist offensive seemed necessary if the economy were to
grow rapidly
3. There were political considerations and internationally, there was
the old problem of catching up with the advanced and capitalist
nations of the West
4. Domestically, there was what communist writers of the 1920s called
the “cursed problem”—the problem of the peasants; for centuries,
the peasantry had wanted to own the land and finally they had it
and sooner or later, the communists reasoned that peasants would
become conservative capitalists and pose a threat to regime
5. Therefore, Stalin decided on a preventive war against the
peasantry (absolutism)
3. The war was collectivization—the forcible consolidation of individual
peasants farms into large, state-controlled enterprises and beginning in
1929, peasants all over the Soviet Union were ordered to give up their
land and join these collective farms
4. As for the kulaks, the better-off peasants, Stalin instructed party workers
to “liquidate them as a class” and stripped of land, the kulaks were
generally not permitted to join the collective farms and many starved or
were deported to forced-labor camps; the term kulak soon meant any
peasant who opposed the new system
5. Forced collectivization of the peasants led to economic and human
disaster
1. Large numbers of peasants slaughtered their animals and burned
their cops in sullen, hopeless protest, and between 1929 and 1933,
the number of livestock fell by at least half; nor were the statecontrolled collective farms more productive
2. The output of grain barely increased between 1928 and 1938
(identical to 1913)
3. Communist economists had expected collectivized agriculture to
pay for new factories but instead, the state had to invest heavily in
agriculture and was unable to make any substantial financial
contribute to industrial development at first
4. Collectivization created human-made famine in 1932 and 1933
(many perished)
6. Collectivization was a political victory of sorts for the Soviet Union
government
1. Regimented and indoctrinated as employees of the all-powerful
state, the peasants were no longer even a potential political threat
to Stalin and the Communist party
2. The state was assured of grain for bread for urban workers, who
were much more important politically than the peasants (collective
farmers had to meet quotas)
7. The industrial side of the five-year plans was more successful—quite
spectacular
1. The output of industry doubled in the first five-year plan and
doubled in the second; No other major country had ever achieved
such rapid industrial growth
2. Heavy industry led the way, consumer industry grew slowly, and
steel production (Stalin means “man of steel”) increased roughly
500 percent from 1928 to 1937
8. Industrial growth also went hand in hand with urban development and
more than twenty-five million people migrated to cities during the 1930s
in the Soviet Union
1. The great industrialization drive was achieved at enormous
sacrifice and the creation of new factories required a great increase
in total investment and a sharp decrease in consumption (few
nations had ever invested more than one-sixth of their net national
income); Soviet planners decreed more than one-third of the net
income be devoted and that meant money being collect by hidden
sales taxes
2. There was therefore no improvement in average standard of living
and average wages apparently purchases only about half as many
goods in 1932 as in 1928
9. Two other factors contributed to rapid growth: labor discipline and
foreign engineers
1. Between 1930 and 1932, trade unions lost most of their power and
the government could assign workers to any job and individuals
could not move
2. Foreign engineers were hired to plan and construct many of the
new factories and highly skilled American engineers were
particularly important until newly trained Soviet experts began to
replace them after 1932 (surge of socialist industry)
3. Life in Stalinist Society
1. The aim of Stalin’s five-year plans was to create a new kind of society
and human personality as well as a strong industrial economy and a
powerful army for the state
2. Once everything was owned by the state, they believed, a socialist
society and a new kind of human being would inevitably emerge and
this had both good and bad aspects
1. The most frightening aspect of society was brutal, unrestrained
police terrorism; first directed against the peasants after 1929,
terror was increasingly turned on leading Communists, powerful
administrators, and ordinary people for no reason
2. In the early 1930s, the top members of the party and government
were Stalin’s obedient servants but there was some grumbling in
the party
3. After Stalin’s wife complained at a small gathering in November
1932, she died that same night, apparently by her own hand and in
late 1934 Stalin’s number-two man, Sergei Kirov, was suddenly and
mysteriously murdered
4. In August 1936, sixteen prominent old Bolsheviks confessed to all
manner of plots against Stalin in spectacular public trials in Moscow
and then in 1937 lesser party officials and newer henchmen were
arrested; in addition to party members, union officials, managers,
intellectuals, army officers, and citizens were struck
5. In all, at least eight million people were probably arrested
3. Stalin’s mass purges were baffling and many explanations have been
given for them
1. Possibly Stalin believed that the old Communists, like the peasants
under NEP, were a potential threat to be wiped out in a
preventative attack
2. Many leading Communists confessed to the crimes probably “in
order to do a last service to the Party,” the party they loved even
when it was wrong
3. Some prisoners were cruelly tortured and warned that their loved
ones would also die if they did not confess (Stalin’s bloodbath
weakened the government/army)
4. Others see the terror as an aspect of the fully developed totalitarian
state, which must by its nature always be fighting real or imaginary
enemies (message)
4. Another aspect of life in the 1930s was constant propaganda and
indoctrination
1. Party activists lectured workers in factories and peasants on
collective farms, while newspapers, films, and radio broadcasts
endlessly recounted achievements
2. Art and literature became highly political (“engineers of human
minds”)
3. Writers who could effectively combine creativity and political
propaganda often lived better than top members of the political elite
(glorified Russian nationalism)
4. Stalin seldom appeared in public, but his presence was everywhere
and although the government persecuted religion and turned
churches into “museums of atheism,” the state had both MarxismLeninism and Joseph Stalin
5. Life was hard in Stalin’s Soviet Union and mass of people lived primarily
on black bread and wore old, shabby clothing (constant shortages in the
stores and in housing)
6. A relatively lucky family received one room for all its members and
shared both a kitchen and a toilet with others on the same floor as that
family (average 4 per room)
7. Idealism and ideology had real appeal for many communists, who saw
themselves heroically building the world’s first socialist society while
capitalism crumbled
8. On a more practical level, Soviet workers did receive some important
social benefits, such as old-age pensions, free medical services, free
education and day-care centers
9. The keys to improving one’s position were specialized skills and
technical education
1. Industrialization required massive numbers of train experts, such as
skilled workers, engineers and plant managers (state provided
tremendous incentives)
2. The technical elite joined with the political and artistic elites in a
new upper class, who members were rich, powerful, and insecure,
especially during the purges
3. Yet the possible gains of moving up outweighed the risks of the
purges
4. Mobilizing Women in the Soviet Union
1. Marxists had traditionally believed that both capitalism and the middleclass husband exploited women and the Russian Revolution of 1917
immediately proclaimed complete equality of rights for women (in the
1920s divorce and abortion available)
2. Women were encouraged to work outside the home and liberate
themselves sexually
3. After Stalin came to power, sexual and familial liberation was played
down and the most lasting changes for women involved work and
education
1. Young women were constantly told that they had to be fully equal to
men, that they could and should do anything men could do
(peasant women enjoyed equality on collective farms with the
advent of the five-year plans)
2. Most of the opportunities open to men through education were also
open to women and determined women pursued their studies and
entered the ranks of the better-paid specialists in industry and
science (medicine became women’s job)
3. Stalinist society gave women great opportunities but demanded
great sacrifices
4. The vast majority of women simply had to work outside because wages
were so low that its was almost impossible for a family to live only on
the husband’s wages
5. Most of the Soviet men in the 1930s still considered the home and the
children the woman’s responsibility (men continued to monopolize the
best jobs)
3. Mussolini and Fascism in Italy
1. The Seizure of Power
1. In the early twentieth century Italy was a liberal state with civil rights and
a constitutional monarchy and on the eve of WW I, the parliamentary
regime finally granted universal male suffrage but serious problems
existed in Italy
1. Much of the Italian population was still poor and many peasants
were more attached to their villages and local interests than to the
national state
2. The papacy, many devout Catholics, conservatives, and
landowners remained strongly opposed to liberal institutions and to
the heirs of Cavour and Garibaldi, the middle-class lawyers and
politicians who ran the country for their own benefit
3. Class differences were also extreme and a revolutionary socialists
movement developed and only in Italy did the radical left win go the
Socialist party gain the leadership as early as 1912 (Socialists party
from Italy opposed war in beginning)
2. The war worsened the political situation (having fought on the side of
the Allies for purposes of territorial expansions, the parliamentary
government bitterly disappointed Italian nationalists with Italy’s modest
gains at Versailles; no social and land reform)
1. The Russian Revolution inspired and energized Italy’s revolutionary
socialist movement and the radical workers and peasants began
occupying factories and seizing land in 1920, scaring and
mobilizing the property-owning class
2. After the war, the pope lifted his ban on participation by Catholics in
Italian politics and a strong Catholic party quickly emerged and thus
by 1921 revolutionary socialists, antiliberal conservatives, and
property owners were all opposed—through for different reason—to
the liberal parliamentary government
3. Into the crosscurrents of unrest and fear stepped Benito Mussolini
(1883-1945)
1. Influenced by antidemocratic cults of violent action, the young
Mussolini urged that Italy join the Allies, or which he was expelled
from the Socialist party
2. Returning home after being wounded at the front in 1917, Mussolini
began organizing bitter war veterans into a band of fascists (“a
union of forces”)
3. Mussolini’s program was a radical combination of nationalists and
socialists demands, including territorial expansion, benefits for
workers, and land reform
4. It competed directly with the well-organized Socialist party and
failed to get off; when Mussolini saw that his violent verbal assaults
on rival Socialists won him growing support from conservatives and
middle classes, he shifted gears in 1920
4. Mussolini and his growing private army of Clack Shirts began to grow
violent; typically fascists would sweep down on a few isolated Socialist
organizers but soon socialist newspapers, union halls and local Socialist
headquarters were destroyed
5. Mussolini’s toughs pushed Socialists out of the city governments of
northern Italy
6. Mussolini allowed his followers to convince themselves that they were
not just opposing the “reds” but also making a real revolution of their
own (dynamic)
7. With the government breaking down in 1922, Mussolini stepped forward
as the savior of order and property and striking a conservative note in
his speeches and gaining the sympathetic neutrality of army leaders,
Mussolini demanded the resignation of the existing government and his
own appointment by the king
8. Victor Emmanuel II asked Mussolini to form a new cabinet, Mussolini
seized power “legally” and was granted dictatorial authority for one year
by king and parliament
2. The Regime in Action
1. Mussolini became dictator on the strength of Italians’ rejection of
parliamentary government coupled with fears of Soviet-style revolution
(power not clear until 1924) Some of his dedicated supports pressed for
a “second revolution” but Mussolini’s ministers included conservatives,
moderates, and reform-minded Socialists
2. A new electoral law was passed giving two-thirds of the representatives
in the parliament to the party that won the most votes, a change that
allowed the Fascists and their allies to win an overwhelming majority in
the elections of 1924
3. Shortly after, five of Mussolini’s fascist kidnapped and murdered
Giacomo Matteotti, the leader of the Socialists in the parliament
(opposition demanded violence cease)
4. Declaring his desire to make the nation Fascist, he imposed a series of
repressive measures; freedom of the press was abolished, elections
were fixed, and the government ruled by decrees (Mussolini arrested his
political opponents) and moreover, he created a fascist youth
movement, fascist labor unions/organizations
5. By the end of 1926, Italy was a one-party dictatorship under Mussolini’s
leadership but Mussolini did not complete the establishment of a
modern totalitarian state
1. His Fascist party never destroyed the old power structure, as the
communists did in the Soviet Union, or succeeded in dominating it,
as the Nazis did in Germany
2. Interested primarily in personal power, Mussolini was content to
compromise with the old conservative classes that controlled the
army, the economy, and state
3. Mussolini never tried to purge these classes and controlled and
propagandized labor but left big business to regulate itself (no land
reform occurred in Italy)
6. Mussolini also drew increasing support from the Catholic church and in
the Lateran Agreement of 1929, he recognized the Vatican as a tiny
independent state and he agreed to give the church heavy financial
support (pope urged Italians to support)
7. Mussolini abolished divorce and told women to say at home and
produce children and to promote that goal, he decreed a special tax on
bachelors in 1934 and in 1938 women were limited by law to a
maximum of 10 percent of the better-paying job in industry and
government (no change in attitude toward Italian women under fascism)
8. Mussolini’s government did not pass racial laws until 1938 and did not
persecute Jews savagely until late in the Second World War, when Italy
was under Nazi control
9. Nor did Mussolini establish a ruthless state police (never a totalitarian
government)
4. Hitler and Nazism in Germany
1. The Roots of Nazism
1. Nazism grew out of many complex developments: extreme nationalism
and racism; these two ideas captured the mind of the young Hitler who
dominated Nazism
1. Adolf Hitler was born in Austria but after dropping out of high school
following the death of his father he left for Vienna to become an
artist
2. Denied admission to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, the
dejected Hitler stayed in Vienna and found many beliefs that guided
his later life
3. In Vienna Hitler soaked up extreme German nationalism (AustroGerman nationalists believed Germans to be a superior people and
natural rulers of central Europe; advocated union with Germany
and expulsion of “inferior people”)
2. Hitler was deeply impressed by Vienna’s mayor, Karl Lueger (“Christian
socialist”)
1. With the help of the Catholic trade unions, he had succeeded in
winning the support of the little people of Vienna for an attack on
capitalism and liberalism
2. Lueger showed Hitler the potential of anti-capitalist and antiliberal
propaganda
3. From Lueger and others, Hitler absorbed virulent anti-Semitism,
racism, and hatred of the Slavs (particularly inspired by racism of
Lanz von Liebenfels)
4. Liebenfels stressed the superiority of Germanic races, the
inevitability of racial conflict, and the inferiority of the Jews
(anticipated policies of the Nazi state)
3. Anti-Semitism and racism became Hitler’s most passionate convictions;
the Jews, he claimed, directed an international conspiracy of finance
capitalism and Marxian socialism against German culture, German
unity, and the German race
4. After he moved to Munich in 1913 to avoid the draft, Hitler greeted the
outbreak of the First World War as salvation and the struggle and
discipline of war gave life meaning and Hitler served bravely as a
dispatch carrier on the western front
5. When Germany was suddenly defeated in 1918, Hitler’s world was
shattered as war was his reason for living; convinced that Jews and
Marxists had “stabbed Germany in the back,” he vowed to fight on and
his speeches began to attract attention
1. In later 1919 Hitler joined a tiny extremist group in Munich called
the German Workers’ party and in addition to denouncing Jews,
Marxists, and democrats, the German Workers’ party promised
unity under a German “national socialism” which would abolish
injustices of capitalism and create a “people’s community”
2. By 1921 Hitler had gained absolute control of this small but growing
party and Hitler was already a master of mass propaganda and
political showmanship
3. Hitler’s most effective tool was the mass rally, a kind of political
revival meeting and when he arrived he would work the audience
with attacks on the Versailles treaty, the Jews, the war profiteers,
and Germany’s Weimar Republic
6. Party membership multiplied tenfold after early 1922 and in late 1923
Hitler decided on an armed uprising in Munich; Hitler found an ally in
General Ludendorff
7. After Hitler had overthrown the Bavarian government, Ludendorff was
supposed to march on Berlin with Hitler’s support but the plot was
poorly organized and it was crushed by the police and back up by the
army, in less than a day
8. Hitler was arrested, tried, and sentenced to five years in prison
2. Hitler’s Road to Power
1. At his trial, Hitler violently denounced the Weimar Republic and skillfully
presented his own program and in doing so, gained enormous publicity
and attention; Hitler concluded that he had to undermine, rather than
overthrow, the government, that he had to used its democratic
framework to intimidate the opposition and come to power
1. Hitler forced his more violent supporters to accept his new strategy
and he used his brief prison term (released in less than a year) to
dictate Mein Kampf
2. There he expounded on his basic themes: “race,” with a stress on
anti-Semitism; “living space,” with a sweeping vision of war and
conquered territory; and the leader-dictator (Fuhrer) with unlimited,
arbitrary power
2. In the years of prosperity and relative stability between 1924 and 1929,
Hitler concentrated on building his National Socialist German Workers’
party, or Nazi party
1. By 1928 the party had 100,000 highly disciplined members under
Hitler’s absolute control and to appeal to the middle classes, Hitler
de-emphasized the anti-capitalist elements of national socialism
and vowed to fight Bolshevism
2. The Nazi were still a small group in 1928 and only received 2.6
percent of the vote in the general elections and twelve seats in the
Reichstag (parliament)
3. There the Nazi deputies pursued the legal strategy of using
democracy to destroy democracy (Hitler’s talented future minister of
propaganda, Joseph Goebbels)
3. In 1929 the Great Depression began striking down economic prosperity
as unemployment jumped from 1.3 million in 1929 to 5 million in 1930;
industrial production fell by ½ between 1929 and 1932 (by 1932, 43
percent unemployed); No factor contributed more to Hitler’s success
than the economic crisis (promises)
4. Hitler pitched his speeches especially to the middle and lower middle
class business people, office workers, artisans and peasants (left
conservative/moderate parties)
5. Simultaneously, Hitler worked hard to win the support of two key elite
groups
1. Hitler promised big business leaders that he would restore their
depression-shattered profits, by breaking Germany’s labor
movement even reducing wages
2. He reassured top army leaders that the Nazis would overturn the
Versailles settlement and rearm Germany (successfully followed
Mussolini’s fascist recipe)
3. Hitler won at least the tacit approval of powerful conservatives
6. The Nazis appealed strongly to German youth (mass movement of
young Germans)
1. Hitler and most of his top aides were much younger than other
leading German politicians (“National Socialism is the organized will
of the youth”)
2. National recovery, exciting and rapid change, and personal
advancement: these were the appeals of Nazism to the millions and
millions of German youth
7. In the election of 1930, the Nazis won 6.5 million votes and 107 seats,
which made them second in strength only to the Social Democrats, the
moderate socialists; as economic and political situation deteriorated,
Hitler and the Nazis kept promising that they would bring economy
recovery/national unity (largest party in Reichstag 1932)
8. Another reason Hitler came to power was breakdown of democratic
government as early as May 1930; unable to gain support of a majority
in the Reichstag, Chancellor Heinrich Bruning convinced the president
General Hindenburg, to authorize rule by decree (before, only used in
emergency but Bruning intended to use it indefinitely)
9. Bruning was determined to overcome the economic crisis by cutting
back government spending and forcing down prices and wages
(intensified economic collapse and convinced lower middle classes that
the republican country’s leaders were corrupt)
10. After President Hindenburg forced Bruning to resign in May 1932, the
new government, headed by Franz von Papen, continued to rule by
decree
11. The continuation of the struggle between the Social Democrats and
Communists was another aspect of the breakdown of democratic
government
1. The Communists refused to cooperate with the Social Democrats
even after the elections of 1932; German Communists were blinded
by the hatred of Socialists and by ideology: the Communists
believed that fascism was reactionary
2. Hitler’s rise represented the last agonies of monopoly capitalism
and that a communist revolution would soon follow his taking of
power
3. Socialist leaders pleaded for at least a temporary alliance with the
Communists to block Hitler but to no avail and perhaps the Weimar
Republic had gone too far
12. Finally, there was Hitler’s skill as a politician and as a master of mass
propaganda and psychology, he had written in Mein Kampf that the
masses were the “driving force of the most important changes in this
world” and were driven by fanaticism
13. To arouse such hysterical fanaticism, he believed that all propaganda
had to be limited to a few simple, endlessly repeated slogans
(passionate, irrational oratory)
14. At the same time, Hitler continued to excel at dirty, back-room politics
and in the complicated in-fighting in 1932, he succeeded in gaining
additional support from key people in army and big business (thought
they could use Hitler for own advantage)
15. There would be only two other National Socialists and nine solid
conservatives as ministers, and in such a coalition government, they
reasoned, Hitler could be used and controlled; on January 30, 1933,
Hitler was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg
3. The Nazi State and Society
1. Hitler moved rapidly and skillfully to establish an unshakable
dictatorship
1. His first step was to continue using terror and threats to gain more
power while maintaining legal appearances; he immediately called
for new elections and applied the enormous power of the
government to restrict his opponents
2. In the midst of a violent electoral campaign, the Reichstag building
was partly destroyed by fire and Hitler screamed that the
Communist party was responsible
3. On the strength of this accusation, he convinced President
Hinenburg to sign dictatorial emergency acts that practically
abolished the freedom of speech and assembly as well as most of
the basic personal liberties
4. When the Nazis won only 44 percent of the vote in the elections,
Hitler quickly outlawed the Communist party and arrested its
parliamentary representatives
2. On March 23, 1933, the Nazis pushed through the Reichstag the socalled Enabling Act, which gave Hitler absolute dictatorial power for four
years (only Social Democrats voted against this bill, for Hitler
blackmailed the Center Catholic party)
1. Hitler and the Nazis moved to smash or control all independent
organizations
2. Hitler and his propagandists constantly proclaimed that their
revolution was legal and constitutional and this stress on legality,
coupled with divide-and-conquer techniques, disarmed the
opposition until it was too late for effective resistance
3. The systematic subjugation of independent organizations and the
apparent creation of a totalitarian state had massive repercussions;
the Social Democratic and Center parties were soon dissolved and
Germany became a one-party state
4. Only the Nazi party was legal, elections were shams, Hitler and the
Nazis took over the government bureaucracy that was intact, and
created a series of overlapping Nazi part organizations responsible
solely to Hitler
5. The resulting system of dual government was riddled with rivalries,
contra-dictions, and inefficiencies; Nazi state lacked the allcompassing unity
3. The fractured system suited Hitler as he could play the established
bureaucracy against his personal “party government” and maintain his
freedom of action
4. In the economic sphere, on big decision outlawed strikes and abolished
independent labor unions, which were replaced by the Nazi Labor Front
1. Professional people—doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers—saw
their previously independent organizations swallowed up in Nazi
organizations; publishing houses were put under Nazi control, and
universities and writers were quickly controlled
2. Democratic, socialist, and Jewish literature was put on evergrowing blacklists
3. Modern art and architecture were prohibited and life became antiintellectual
5. Only the army retained independence, and Hitler moved brutally and
skillfully to establish his control there, too; he realized that the army as
well as big business was suspicious of the Nazi storm troops (SA), the
quasi-military band of three million toughs in brown shirts who had
fought communists and beaten up Jews
1. The storm troopers expected top positions in the army and even
talked of a “second revolution” against capitalism; Hitler decided
that the SA leaders had to be eliminated and on the night of June
30, 1934, Hitler’s elite personal guard (SS) arrested and shot
without trial a thousand SA leaders and political enemies
2. Army leaders and President Hindenburg responded to the purge
with congratulatory telegrams and shortly thereafter army leaders
whore a binding oath
3. The SS grew rapidly and under its methodical, inhuman leader,
Heinrich Himmler, the SS joined with the political police, the
Gestapo, to expand its network of special courts and concentration
camps; no one was safe
6. From the beginning, Jews were a special object of Nazi persecution and
by the end of 1934, most Jewish lawyers, doctors, professors, civil
servants, and musicians had lost their jobs and the right to practice their
professions; in 1935 the infamous Nuremberg Laws classified as Jewish
as anyone having at least one Jewish grandparent and deprived Jews
of all rights of citizenship (by 1938 ¼ of Germany’s Jews had left)
7. Following the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a young
Jewish boy trying desperately to strike out at persecution, the attack on
Jews accelerated
8. A well-organized wave of violence destroyed homes, synagogues, and
businesses, after which German Jews were rounded up and made to
pay for the damage
9. It became very difficult for Jews to leave Germany; many Germans went
along or looked the other way reflecting strong popular support Hitler’s
government enjoyed
4. Hitler’s Popularity
1. Hitler had promised the masses economic recovery—“work and
bread”—and he did
1. Breaking with Bruning’s do-nothing policies, Hitler immediately
launched a large public works program to pull Germany out of the
depression
2. Work began on superhighways, offices, gigantic sports stadiums,
and public housing; in 1936 Germany turned toward rearmament,
and government spending began to concentrate on the military
(unemployment dropped steadily)
3. By 1938 there was a shortage of workers, and women eventually
took many jobs previously denied them by the antifeminist Nazis
(everyone had to work and between 1932 and 1938 standard of
living for the worker increased moderately
4. The profits of business rose sharply and economic recovery was
tangible evidence in their daily lives that the excitement and
dynamism of Nazi rule was positive
2. For masses of ordinary German citizens, who were not Jews, Slavs,
Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, communists, or homosexuals, Hitler’s
government meant greater equality and more opportunities (position of
traditional German elites strong)
3. Barriers between classes were generally high and Hitler’s rule
introduced changes that lowered barriers (stiff educational requirements
favoring well-to-do relaxed)
4. The new Nazi elite included many young and poorly educated dropouts
and Nazis tolerated privilege and wealth only as long as they served the
needs of the party
5. Millions of modest middle-class and lower-middle-class people felt that
Germany was becoming more open and equal, as Nazi propagandists
constantly claimed
6. It is significant that the Nazis shared with the Italian fascists the
stereotypic view of women as housewives and mothers (pressure of war
mobilized German women)
7. Hitler’s rapid nationalism continued to appeal to Germans after 1933
and since the wars against Napoleon, many Germans had believed in a
special mission for them
8. When Hitler went from one foreign triumph to another and a great
German empire seemed within reach, the majority of the population was
delighted
9. Not all Germans supported Hitler, however, and a number of German
groups actively resisted him after 1933 (tens of thousands of political
enemies were imprisoned)
10. Opponents of the Nazis pursued various goals and under totalitarian
conditions they were never unified (communists and social democrats in
the trade unions); after 1935, a second group do opponents arose in the
Catholic and Protestant churches; finally in 1938, some high-ranking
army officers plotted against him, unsuccessfully
5. Nazi Expansion and the Second World War
1. Aggression and Appeasement, 1933-1939
1. When Hitler was weak, he righteously proclaimed that he intended to
overturn the “unjust system” established by the treaties of Versailles and
Locarno (legal means)
1. As Hitler grew stronger and as other leaders showed willingness to
compromise, he increased his demands and finally began attacking
his independent neighbors
2. Hitler realized that his aggressive policies had to be carefully
camouflaged at first, for Germany’s army was limited by the Treaty
of Versailles to only 100,00 men; conquest of living space in the
East and its ruthless Germanization” had dangers
3. To avoid such threats, Hitler loudly proclaimed his peaceful
intentions to all
4. Hitler still felt strong enough to walk out of a sixty-nation
disarmament conference and withdrawn from the League of
Nations in October of 1933
2. Following the action, met with widespread approval at home, Hitler
moved to incorporate independent Austria into a greater Germany;
Austrian Nazis climaxed an attempted overthrow by murdering the
Austrian chancellor in July 1934 but failed to take power because a
worried Mussolini mass his troops and threatened to fight
3. When in March 1935 Hitler established a general military draft and
declared the “unequal” disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles
null and void, other countries appeared to understand the danger
(France, Italy, Britain warned Germany)
1. The emerging united front against Hitler quickly collapsed and of
crucial importance, Britain adopted a policy of appeasement,
granting Hitler everything he could reasonable want (and more) in
order to avoid a war
2. The first step was an Anglo-German naval agreement in June 1935
that broke Germany’s isolation and the second step came in March
1936 when Hitler suddenly marched his armies into the
demilitarized Rhineland (violating treaties)
3. Hitler had ordered his troops to retreat if France resisted militarily
but an uncertain France would not move without British support and
the occupation of German soil by German armies seemed right to
Britain (psychological defeat)
4. British appeasement, which practically dictated French policy,
lasted far in 1939 and was motivated by British feelings of guilt
toward Germany and the pacifism of a population still horrified by
the memory of the First World War
5. Many powerful conservatives in Britain underestimated Hitler and
believed that Soviet communism was the real danger and that Hitler
could be used to stop it
4. The Soviet Union watched developments suspiciously as Hitler found
powerful allies
1. In 1935 Mussolini decided that imperial expansion was needed to
revitalize Italian fascism and attacked the independent African
kingdom of Ethiopia
2. Western powers and the League of Nations condemned Italian
aggression without saving Ethiopia from defeat and Hitler (secretly
supplied Ethiopia) supported Italy energetically and thereby
overcame Mussolini’s lingering doubts about the Nazis
3. The result in 1936 was an agreement on close cooperation
between Italy and Germany, the so-called Rome-Berlin Axis and
Japan soon joined the Axis alliance
4. Germany and Italy intervened in the long, complicated Spanish Civil
War, where their support eventually helped General Francisco
Franco’s fascist movement defeat republican Spain (Spain’s only
official aid came from the U.S.S.R)
5. In late 1937 while proclaiming peaceful intentions to the British and
gullible prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, Hitler told his generals his
real plans; his “unshakable decision” to crush Austria and
Czechoslovakia at the earliest possible moment as the first step in his
long-contemplated drive to the east for extra living space
1. By threatening Austria with invasion, Hitler forced the Austrian
chancellor in March 1938 to put local Nazis in control of the
government and Austria became two more provinces of Greater
Germany in March of 1938
2. Hitler began demanding that the pro-Nazi, German-speaking
minority of western Czechoslovakia—the Sudetenland—be turned
over to Germany (but Czechoslovakia was prepared to defend as
France had been it’s ally since 1924 and if France fought, the
Soviet Union was pledge to help)
3. In September 1938 negotiations to which the U.S.S.R. was not
invited, Chamberlain and the French agreed with Hitler that the
Sudetenland should be ceded to Germany and sold out by Western
powers, Czechoslovakia gave in
6. Confirmed once again in this opinion of the Western democracies as
weak and racially degenerate, Hitler accelerate his aggression and in a
violation of his assurances that Sudetenland was his last territorial
demand, Hitler’s armies occupied the Czech lands in March 1939, while
Slovakia became a puppet state
7. When Hitler used the question of German minorities in Danzig as a
pretext to confront Poland, a suddenly militant Chamberlain declared
that Britain and France would fight if Hitler attacked his eastern neighbor
(Hitler decided to press on)
8. Hitler and Stalin signed a ten-year Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact in
August 1939 whereby each dictator promised to remain neutral if the
other became involved in war; an attached protocol divided eastern
Europe into German and Soviet zones “in the event of a political
territorial reorganization” (total secret protocol)
9. Stalin had remained distrustful of Western intentions and on September
1, 1939, German armies and warplanes smashed into Poland from
three sides
10. Two days later, Britain and France, finally true to their word, declared
war on Germany; the Second World War had begun
2. Hitler’s Empire, 1939-1942
1. Hitler’s armies crushed Poland in four weeks using ablitzkrieg or
“lightning war”
1. While the Soviet Union took the eastern half of Poland and the
Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, French and British
armies dug in in the west
2. In Spring 1940 after occupying Denmark, Norway, and Holland,
German columns broke through southern Belgium, split the FrancoBritish forces, and trapped the entire British army on the beaches of
Dunkirk (lightning war struck again)
2. France was taken by the Nazis and the marshal Henri-Philippe Petain
formed a new French government (Vichy government) to accept the
defeat and German armies occupied most of France (By July 1940 Italy
was an ally and Soviet Union a neutral)
3. Only Britain led by the uncompromising Winston Churchill remained
unconquered and Churchill proved to be one of history’s greatest
wartime leaders, rallying the British with stirring speeches, infectious
confidence, and bulldog determination
1. Germany sought to gain control of the air and the Battle of Britain,
up to a thousand German planes attacked British airfields and key
factories in a single day, dueling with British defenders high in the
skies (heavy losses on both sides)
2. Hitler changed his strategy in September and turned from military
objectives to indiscriminate bombing of British cities in an attempt to
break British morale
3. British factories increased production of their excellent fighter
planes, anti-aircraft defense improved with the help of radar and in
September and October 1940, Britain was beating Germany three
to one in air war (no possibility of invasion)
4. The most reasonable German strategy would have been to attack
Britain through the eastern Mediterranean, taking Egypt and the Suez
Canal and pinching off Britain’s supply of oil and Mussolini’s defeats in
Greece had drawn Hitler into the Balkans where Germany had
conquered Greece and Yugoslavia while forcing Hungary, Rumania,
and Bulgaria into alliances with Germany by April 1941
1. By late 1940 Hitler decided on his next move and in June 1941
German armies suddenly attacked the Soviet Union along a vast
front and Hitler’s decision was a wild, irrational gamble epitomizing
the self-destructive ambitions of Nazism
2. Faithfully fulfilling all obligations under the Nazi-Soviet pact and
even ignoring warnings of impending invasion, Stalin was caught
off guard
3. By October 1941 Leningrad was practically surrounded but when a
severe winter struck German armies, the invaders stopped as they
wore summer uniforms
5. Engaged in a general but undeclared war against China since 1937,
Japan’s rulers had increasingly come into diplomatic conflict with the
United States
1. When the Japanese occupied French Indochina in July 1941, the
United States retaliated by cutting off sales of oil products and
tension mounted further and on December 7, 1941, Japan attacked
the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii
2. Hitler immediately declared war on the United State, without treaty
obligations
3. When Japanese forces advanced swiftly into Southeast Asia, Hitler
and his European allies continued the two-front war against the
Soviet Union and Great Britain and not until late 1942 did the Nazis
suffer their first major defeats
6. Hitler and the top Nazi leadership began building their “New Order” and
they continued their efforts until their final collapse in 1945
1. Hitler’s New Order was based on the guiding principle of Nazi
totalitarianism: racial imperialism and Nordic peoples (Dutch,
Norwegians, and Danes) received preferential treatment, for they
were racially related to the Germans
2. The French, an “inferior” Latin people, occupied the middle position
and were heavily taxed to support the Nazi war effort but were
tolerated as a race
3. Once Nazi reverses began to mount in late 1942, all the occupied
territories of western and northern Europe were exploited with
increasing intensity
4. Slavs in the conquered territories to the east were treated with
harsh hatred as “sub-humans” and at the height of success in 1941
to 1942, Hitler planned for the Poles, Ukrainians, and Russian to be
enslaved and forced to die out
5. Himmler and the SS in parts of Poland arrested and evacuated
Polish peasants to create a German “mass settlement space”; the
Polish workers and Soviet prisoners of war were transported to
Germany then systematically worked to death
6. The conditions of Soviet slave labor in German were so harsh that
four out of five Soviet prisoners did not survive the Second World
War
7. Jews were condemned to extermination, along with Gypsies, Jehovah’s
Witnesses, and captured communists (by 1939 German Jews had lost
all their civil rights)
1. In Poland, Jews from all over Europe were concentrated in ghettos,
compelled to swear the Jewish star, and turned into slave laborers
and by late 1941, Himmler’s SS began to carry out the final solution
of the Jewish question” (Jews murdered)
2. All over Hitler’s empire, Jews were systematically arrested, packed
onto freight trains, and dispatched to extermination camps
(concentration camps)
8. At camps, the victims were taken by force or deception to “shower
rooms,” which were actually gas chambers (first perfected in the
execution of seventy thousand mentally ill Germans between 1938 and
1941) permitted rapid, hideous, and thoroughly bureaucratized mass
murder (people choked to death on poison gas)
9. Body parts were used and at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most infamous of
the Nazi death factories, as many as twelve thousand humans were
slaughtered each day
10. The extermination of European Jews was the ultimate monstrosity of
Nazi racism and racial imperialism; by 1945, six million Jews had been
murdered
3. The Grand Alliance
1. While the Nazis built their savage empire, the Allies faced the hard fact
that change, rather than choice, had brought them together (only the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s immediate declaration of
war had overwhelmed the isolation)
1. The Allies overcame their mutual suspicions and built an
unshakable alliance on the quicksand of accident; by means of
three interrelated policies they succeeded
2. President Roosevelt accepted Churchill’s contention that the United
States should concentrate first on defeating Hitler and only after
victory in Europe would the United States turn toward the Pacific for
on all-out attack on Japan (lesser threat)
3. America’s policy of “Europe first” helped solidify the anti-Hitler
coalition
2. Second, within the European framework the Americans and the British
put immediate military needs first and avoided conflicts that might have
split the alliance until after
3. To further encourage mutual trust, the Allies adopted the principle of the
“unconditional surrender “ of Germany and Japan (cemented the Grand
Alliance because it denied Hitler any hope of dividing his foes; this also
meant that victorious allies would come together to divide all of
Germany, and most of the Continent
4. The United State geared up rapidly for all-out war production and drew
heavily on a generally cooperative Latin America for resources (50
billion dollars given total)
5. Too strong to lose and too weak to win standing alone, Britain continued
to make a great contribution and the economy was totally mobilized and
the sharing of burdens through rationing and heavy taxes on war profits
maintained social harmony
6. As for the Soviet Union, in the face of German advance, whole factories
an populations were successfully evacuated to eastern Russia and
Siberia, war production was reorganized and expanded, and the Red
Army was well supplied
7. The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union were aided by a
growing resistance movement against the Nazis throughout Europe,
even in Germany; after the U.S.S.R. was invaded in June 1941,
communists throughout Europe took the lead in the under-ground
resistance, joined by a growing number of patriots and Christians
4. The Tide of Battle
1. The Germans renewed their offensive against he Soviet Union in July
1942 and
1. They drove toward the southern city of Stalingrad in attempt to
cripple communications and seize crucial oil fields of Baku
(occupied the ruined city)
2. In November 1942, Soviet armies counterattacked, rolled over
Rumanian and Italian troops, and surrounding the entire German
Sixth Army of 300,000 men and by January 1943, only 123,000
soldiers were left to surrender (refused to retreat)
2. In late 1942 the tide also turned in the Pacific and in North Africa and by
late spring 1942, Japan had established a great empire in East Asia
(appeals to local nationalists using propaganda and many preferred
Japan’s Greater Asian Co-prosperity Sphere)
1. In the Battle of Coral Sea in May 1942, Allied naval and air power
stooped Japanese advance and also relived Australia from the
threat of invasion; this victory was followed by the Battle of Midway
island where American pilots sank all four attack aircraft carriers
establishing American naval superiority in Pacific
2. In August 1942 American marines attacked Guadalcanal in the
Solomon islands (only 15 percent of Allied resources going to first
war in Pacific) the Americans under General Douglas MacArthur
and Admiral Chester Nimitz, and the Australians began “island
hopping” toward Japan (Japanese forces on defensive)
3. In May 1942 combined German and Italian armies under General Erwin
Rommel attacked Egypt and the Suez Canal for the second time but
were finally defeated by British forces at the Battle of El Alamein (70
milers from Alexandria)
4. In October the British counterattacked in Egypt and an Anglo-American
force landed in Morocco and Algeria (French possessions went over to
the side of the Allies)
5. Having driven the Axis powers from North Africa by the spring of 1934,
Allied forces maintained initiative by invading Sicily and then mainland
Italy and Mussolini disposed, the new Italian government accepted
unconditional surrender in September
6. Germany applied itself to total war in 1942 (production tripled between
1942 and 1944) and British and American bomb raids killed many
German citizens (no effect)
7. After an unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944, thousands of
Germans were brutally liquidated by SS fanatics (Germans fought on
suicidal stoicism)
8. On June 6, 1944, American and British forces under General Dwight
Eisenhower landed on the beaches of Normandy in history’s greatest
naval invasion (tricked Germans into believing the attack would come
near the Belgian border)
9. In a hundred dramatic days, the 2.5 million men broke through German
lines and Eisenhower moved forward cautiously on a broad front; not
until March 1945 did American troops cross the Rhine River and enter
Germany
10. The Soviets reached the outskirts of Warsaw by August 1944 and in
January 1945 Red armies moved westward through Poland and on April
26 met on the Elbe River
11. As Soviet forces fought their way into Berlin, Hitler committed suicide in
his bunker and on May 7, the remaining German commanders
capitulated
12. Three months later, the United States dropped atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the Japanese surrendered, and WW
II ended (50 million deaths)
Chapter 30: Cold War Conflicts and Social
Transformations, 1945-1985
1. The Division of Europe
1. The Originsof the Cold War
1. The Soviet Union and the United States began to quarrel as soon as the
threat of Germany disappeared and hostility between the Eastern and
Western superpowers was a logical outgrowth of military developments,
wartime agreements, and long-standing differences
2. The Americans and British had made military victory their highest
priority and avoided discussion of Stalin’s war aims and shape of the
eventual peace settlement
1. The United States and Britain did not try to take advantage of the
Soviet Union’s position in 1942, because they feared that
bargaining would encourage Stalin to consider making separate
peace with Hitler (focused on unconditional surrender)
2. The conference that Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill held in the
Iranian capital of Teheran in November 1943 proved of crucial
importance in determining events; the Big Three had reaffirmed
determination to crush Germany and searched for military strategy
3. Churchill fearing military dangers of a direct attack, argued that
American and British forces should follow up their Italian campaign
with an indirect attack on Germany through the Balkans but
Roosevelt agreed with Stalin that an American-British frontal
assault through France would be better (Roosevelt decides to
appease Stalin)
4. This meant that the Soviet and the American-British armies would
come together in defeated Germany along a north-south line and
that only Soviet troops would liberate eastern Europe (basic shape
of postwar Europe was emerging already)
3. When the Big Three met again in February 1945 at Yalta on the Black
Sea in southern Russia, the Red Army had occupied Poland, Bulgaria,
Romania, Hungary, part of Yugoslavia, and much of Czechoslovakia
while the American-British forces had yet to cross the Rhine into
Germany; on the other hand, United States was far from defeating
Japan
1. After Yalta Germany was to be divided into zones of occupation
and pay big reparations to Soviet Union and at American
insistence, Stalin agreed to declare war on Japan
2. Eastern European governments were to be freely elected but proRussian
3. The Yalta compromise over eastern Europe broke down almost
immediately and before the Yalta Conference, Bulgaria and Poland
were controlled by communists
4. Elsewhere, pro-Soviet “coalition” governments of several parties
were formed, but the key ministerial posts were reserved for
Moscow-trained communists
4. At the postwar Potsdam Conference of July 1945, the differences over
eastern Europe finally appeared; Roosevelt had died and been
succeeded by the more determined President Truman, who demanded
free elections throughout eastern Europe; but Stalin refused point-blank
5. The key to the much-debated origins of the cold war was this conflict
between countries
1. American ideals, after uniting against Hitler, and American politics,
influenced by millions of votes from eastern Europe, demanded free
elections in the East
2. Stalin wanted absolute military security from Germany & potential
Eastern allies
3. Stalin believed that only communists states could be truly
dependable allies and realized elections would result in
independent governments on his western border
2. West Versus East
1. The American response to Stalin’s conception of security was the “get
tough”
1. In May 1945, Truman cut off all aid to the U.S.S.R. and in October
he declared that the United States would not recognize any
government established by force
2. In March 1946, former British prime minister Churchill ominously
informed an American audience that an “iron curtain” had fallen
across the continent
2. Emotional, moralistic denunciations of Stalin and communist Russia
emerged as part of American political life yet the United States also
responded to the popular desire to “bring the boys home” and
demobilized its troops with great speed
3. Stalin’s agents reheated the “ideological struggle against capitalist
imperialism”
4. The large, well-organized Communist parties of France and Italy started
to uncover “American plots” to take over Europe and challenged own
governments
1. The Soviet Union put pressure on Iran, Turkey, and Greece, while
civil war raged in China; by 1947, Stalin appeared to be exporting
communism by subversion
2. The United States responded to this challenge with the Truman
Doctrine, which was aimed at “containing” communism to areas
already occupied by the Red Army; to begin, Truman asked
Congress for military aid to Greece and Turkey, countries that
Britain could not protect
3. In June, Secretary of State George Marshall offered Europe
economic aid—the Marshall Plan—to help much of Europe rebuild
from the war to protect themselves from the U.S.S.R.
5. Stalin refused Marshall Plan assistance for all of eastern Europe and
purged the last remaining noncommunist elements from the coalition
governments of eastern Europe
1. The seizure of power in Czechoslovakia in February of 1948 was
antidemocratic and it greatly strengthened Western fears of
limitless communist expansion
2. When Stalin blocked all traffic through the Soviet zone of Germany
to Berlin, the former capital, divided into sectors at the end of the
war, the Western allies acted firmly Hundreds of planes began
flying over the Soviet roadblocks supplying provisions to the people
of West Berlin and thwarting Soviet efforts to swallow up the people
3. After 324 days, the Soviets backed down and in 1949, the United
States formed an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western
governments: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) while
Stalin united his hold on satellites in the Warsaw Pact
6. In 1949, the communists triumphed in China and frightened and
angered many Americans, who saw new evidence of a powerful
worldwide communist conspiracy
1. When the Russian-backed communist army of North Korea invaded
South Korea in 1950, President Truman acted swiftly and
American-led United Nations forces under General Douglas
MacArthur intervened and saved the South Koreans
2. China suddenly entered the war and bitter, bloody contest
seesawed and President Truman rejected General MacArthur’s call
to attack China and fired him
3. In 1953 a fragile truce was negotiated, and the fighting stopped and
thus the U.S. extended its policy of containment to Asia but drew
back from attack on China
7. The rapid descent from victorious Grand Alliance to bitter cold war was
directly connected to the tragic fate of eastern Europe (Started in 1933
under the Nazis)
1. When the eastern European power invited Nazi racist imperialism,
the appeasing Western democracies did nothing but still asked
themselves could they united with Stalin to stop Hitler without giving
Stalin great gains on his western borders (global confrontation)
2. After Hitler’s invasion of Soviet Union, the Western powers
preferred ignorance
8. But later when Stalin began to claim the spoils of victory, the US began
to protest and professed outrage; opposition possibly encouraged more
aggressive measures by Stalin
9. The Soviet-American confrontation became institutionalized and formed
bedrock of the long cold war era, which lasted until the mid-1980s
despite periods of relaxation
2. The Western Renaissance, 1945-1968
1. The Postwar Challenge
1. After the war, economic conditions in western Europe were terrible as
runaway inflation and black markets testified to sever shortages and
hardships
2. Suffering was most intense in defeated Germany and a major territorial
change occurred as Poland was compensated for this loss to the
Soviets with land taken
1. 13 million Germans were driven from their homes and forced to
resettle in a greatly reduced Germany; Russians were also seizing
factories and equipment as reparations in their zone, even tearing
up railroad tracks and sending the rails back
2. Conditions in 1945 and 1946 in the Western zones were not much
better as the Western allies also treated the German population
with severity at first
3. By spring of 1947, refugee-clogged, hungry, prostrate Germany
was on the verge of total collapse and threatening to drag down the
rest of Europe; all over Europe many people were willing to change
and experiment with the German issue
3. Progressive Catholics and revitalized Catholic political parties—the
Christian Democrats—were particularly influential (emerged as party
after the war in 1946)
1. In Italy the Christian Democrats emerged as the leading party in the
first postwar elections in 1946, and in early 1948 won an absolute
majority in the parliament; their first leader was Alcide De Gasperi,
an antifascist firmly committed to political democracy, economic
reconstruction, and moderate social reform
2. In France, the Catholic part also provided some of the best postwar
leaders after January 1946, when General Charles de Gaulle,
(wartime leader of the Free French) resigned after having reestablished free and democratic Fourth Republic
3. The purified Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) found
new and able leadership among its Catholics and in 1949, Konrad
Adenauer, the former mayor of Cologne and anti-Nazi, began his
long, highly successful democratic rule
4. The Christian Democrats were inspired and united by a common
Christian and European heritage and rejected authoritarianism and
narrow nationalism
4. The socialists and the communists, active in resistance against Hitler,
also emerged from the war with increased power and prestige,
especially in France and Italy
1. They provided fresh leadership and pushed for social change and
economic reform; welfare measures such as family allowances,
health insurance, and increased public housing were enacted
throughout continental Europe
2. Britain followed the same trend, as the newly elected socialist
Labour party established a “welfare state” (industries were
nationalized and government provided free medical service; social
reform accompanied political transformation
5. The United States supplied strong and creative leadership, proving
western Europe with both massive economic aid and ongoing military
protection; economic aid was channeled through Marshall Plan and
military security was provided through NATO, which featured American
troops stationed in Europe and American nuclear umbrella
6. As Marshall Plan aid poured in, the battered economies of western
Europe began to turn the corner in 1948 (period of rapid economic
progress lasting until late 1960s)
1. American aid helped the process of economic performance off to a
fast start
2. Economic growth became a basic objective of all western European
governments, for leaders and voters were determined to avoid a
return to the Great Depression
3. In postwar West Germany, Minister of Economy Ludwig Erhard
broke decisively with the straitjacketed Nazi economy and bet on
the free-market economy while maintaining the extensive social
welfare network inherited from the Hitler era
4. Erhard’s first step was to reform the currency and abolish rationing
and price controls in 1948; country’s success renewed respect for
free-market capitalism
7. The French innovation was a new kind of planning and under the
guidance of Jean Monnet, an economic pragmatist and apostle of
European unity, a planning commission set ambitious but flexible goals
for the French economy and used the nationalized banks to funnel
money into key industries (private economy)
8. In most countries, there were many people ready to work hard for low
wages and the hope of a better future; many consumer products had
been invented or perfected; finally, European nations abandoned
protectionism and gradually created a large unified market known as the
“Common Market” (stimulated economy)
2. Toward European Unity
1. Western Europe’s political recovery was spectacular in the generation
after 1945
1. Republics were re-established in France, West Germany, and Italy;
constitutional monarchs were restored in Belgium, Holland, and
Norway
2. Democratic governments, often within the framework of multiparty
politics and shifting parliamentary coalitions, took root again and
thrived; national self-determination was accompanied by civil
liberties and individual freedoms
2. A similarly extraordinary achievement was the march toward a united
Europe
1. The Christian Democrats, with their shared Catholic heritage, were
particularly committed to “building Europe,” and other groups
shared their dedication
2. Many Europeans believed that only unity in a new “European
nation” could reassert western Europe’s influence in world affairs
3. The close cooperation among European states required by the
Americans for Marshall Plan aid led to the creation of both the
Organization of European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) and the
Council of Europe in 1948; Britain consistently opposed giving any real
sovereignty to the council and as well as nationalists and communists
4. European federalists turned toward economics as a way of working
toward unity
1. Two French statesmen, the planner Jean Monnet and Foreign
Minister Robert Schuman, took the lead in 1950 and called for a
special international organization to control and integrate all
European steel and coal production
2. West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg
accepted the French idea in 1952 but the British would have no part
of the organization
3. The immediate economic goal—a single steel and coal market
without national tariffs or quotas—was rapidly realized and the
political goal was to bind the six member nations so closely
together economically that war among them would eventually
become impossible
5. In 1957 the six nations of the Coal and Steel Community signed the
Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community,
known as the Common Market
1. The first goal of the treaty was gradual reduction of all tariffs among
the six in order to create a single market almost as large as that of
the United States
2. Other goals included the free movement of capital and labor and
common economic policies and institutions (encouraged
companies/regions to specialize)
6. The development of the Common Market fired imaginations and
encouraged hopes of rapid progress toward political as well as
economic union but in the 1960s, these hopes were frustrated by a
resurgence of more traditional nationalism
1. Mired in a bitter colonial war in Algeria, the French turned in 1958
to General de Gaulle, who established the Fifth Republic and ruled
as its president until 1969
2. De Gaulle viewed the United States as the main threat to genuine
French and European independence; he withdrew all French
military forces from the “American-controlled” NATO, developed
France’s own nuclear weapons, and vetoed the scheduled advent
of majority rule within the Common Market
3. Decolonization
1. In the postwar era, Europe’s long-standing overseas expansion was
radically reversed
1. The most basic cause of imperial collapse, decolonization, was the
rising demand of Asian and African peoples for national selfdetermination, racial equality, and personal dignity (demand spread
from the intellectuals after the First World War)
2. Colonial empires had already been shaken by 1939, and the way
was prepared for the eventual triumph of independence movements
2. European empires had been based on an enormous power differential
between the rulers and the ruled, a difference that had greatly declined
by 1945
1. Imperial rulers had been driven from large parts of South Asia by
the Japanese and in those areas Europeans now faced strong
nationalist movements
2. Empire had rested on self-confidence and self-righteousness;
Europeans had believed their superiority to be not only technical
and military but also morally
3. The horrors of the Second World War gave opponents of
imperialism much greater influence in Europe and many Europeans
in 1945 had little taste for bloody colonial wars and wanted to
concentrate on rebuilding at home
3. India, Britain’s oldest, largest, and most lucrative nonwhite possession,
played a key role in decolonization; Nationalists opposition to British rule
united after WW I
1. Under the leadership of British-educated lawyer Mohandas
“Mahatma” Gandhi (1869-1948) one of the twentieth century’s most
influential figures
2. By the 1920s and 1930s Gandhi built a mass movement preaching
nonviolent “noncooperation” with the British and in 1935, Gandhi
wrested from the frustrated British a new constitution that was
almost an independence
3. When the Labour party came to power in Great Britain in 1945, it
was ready to relinquish sovereignty as India had become a large
financial burden to Britain
4. The obstacle to India’s independence posed by conflict between
India’s Hindu and Muslim populations were resolved in 1947
through the creation of two states, predominately Hindu India and
Muslim Pakistan
4. Chinese nationalism developed and triumphed in the framework of
Marxist-Leninist ideology and in early 1920s, a broad alliance of
nationalist forces within the Soviet-supported Kuomintang (National
People’s party) was dedicated to unifying China
1. In 1927 Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975), successor to Sun Yat-sen
and leader of the Kuomintang, broke with his more radically
communist allies headed by Mao Zedong and tried to destroy them
and in 1931, to escape Kuomintang armies, Mao led his followers
on an incredible 5000-mile march to remote northern China
2. War could not force Mao and Chiang to cooperate and by late
1945, it had erupted into civil war; Stalin gave Mao some aid, and
the Americans gave Chiang much more aid
3. Winning the support of the peasantry by promising to expropriate
the big landowners, better-organized communists forced the
Nationalists to withdraw to Taiwan in 1949
4. Mao and the communists united China’s 550 million inhabitants in a
strong centralized state, expelled foreigners, and began building a
new society along Soviet lines, with mass arrests, forced-labor
camps, and ceaseless propaganda
5. The peasantry was collectivized, and the inevitable five-year plans
concentrated successfully on the expansion of heavy industry
5. Most Asian countries followed the pattern of either India or China; in
1946 the Philippines achieved independence peacefully from the United
States, Britain quickly granted Sri Lanka and Burma independence in
1948, but Indonesian nationalists had to beat attempts by Dutch to
reconquer Dutch East Indies (sovereign state in 1949)
1. The French tried their best to re-establish colonial rule in Indochina,
but despite American aid, they were defeated in 1954 by forces
under the communist and nationalist guerrilla leader Ho Chi Minh,
supported by Soviet Union and China
2. But Indochina was not unified and two independent Vietnamese
states came into being, which led to civil war and subsequent
intervention by the United States
6. In Middle East, the movement toward political independence continued
after WW II
1. In 1944 the French gave up League of Nations mandates in Syria
and Lebanon
2. In the British-mandated Palestine, where after 1918 the British
government established a Jewish homeland alongside the Arab
population, violence and terrorism mounted on both sides (British
decided to leave Palestine in 1947)
3. Then United Nations voted in a nonbonding resolution to divide
Palestine into two states—one Arab and on Jewish, which became
Israel; the Jews accepted but Arabs did not and in 1948, they
attacked the Jewish state after it was proclaimed
4. The Israelis drove off the invaders and conquered more territory, as
roughly 900,00 Arabs fled or were expelled; Holocaust survivors
from Europe streamed into Israel, as Theodor Herzl’s Zionist dream
came true (four more wars)
7. The Arab defeat in 1948 triggered a powerful nationalist revolution in
Egypt in 1952, where an army officer named Gamal Abdel Nasser drove
out the pro-Western king
1. In 1956 Nasser abruptly nationalized the foreign-owned Suez Canal
Company, the last symbol and substance of Western power in the
Middle East and infuriated, the British and the French along with
the Israelis, invaded Egypt
2. Americans joined with the Soviets in Egypt’s triumph (anti-Western
nationalism)
3. The failure of Britain and France to unseat Nasser in 1956
encouraged Arab nationalists in Algeria; the country’s large French
population considered Algeria an integral part of France and
continued to stay dominating the Arab majority
4. In the end, General de Gaulle accepted the principle of Algerian
self deter-mination and in 1962, after more than a century of French
rule, Algeria was freed
8. In much of Africa sough of the Sahara, decolonization proceeded much
more smoothly and beginning in 1957, Britain’s colonies achieved
independence with little or no bloodshed and then entered the
association (British Commonwealth of Nations)
9. In 1958 the clever de Gaulle offered the leaders of French black Africa
the choice of a total break with France or immediate independence with
a kind of French commonwealth (identified with French culture and
wanted aid from France); many leaders saw Africa untapped markets
for their industrial goods, raw materials for their factories, outlets for
profitable investment, and good temporary jobs for people
10. Western European countries actually managed to increase their
economic and cultural ties with their former African colonies in the
1960s and 1970s (situation led many to charge that western Europe had
imposed a system of neocolonialism, a system designed to perpetuate
Western economic domination and undermine promise of political
independence, thereby extending to Africa the economic subordination)
4. America’s Civil Rights Revolution
1. The Second World War cured the depression in the United States and
brought about an economic boom and postwar America did experience
a genuine social revolution
1. After a long struggle, African Americans (and their white
supporters) threw off a deeply entrenched system of segregation,
discrimination, and repression
2. Lawyers challenged school segregation and in 1954 won a
landmark decision in the Supreme Court, which ruled in Brown v.
Board of Education that “separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal”
3. Blacks effectively challenged institutionalized inequality with bus
boycotts, sit-ins, and demonstrations (civil rights leader Martin
Luther King, Jr.)
2. In key northern states, African Americans used their growing political
power to gain the support of the liberal wing of the Democratic part and
a liberal landslide victory in 1964 elected Lyndon Johnson president in
1964
3. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in public services
and on job
4. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 guaranteed all blacks the right to vote
5. By the 1970s, substantial numbers of blacks had been elected to public
and private office throughout southern states, proof positive that
dramatic changes had occurred
6. President Johnson also declared “unconditional war on poverty,” and
Congress and the administration created a host of antipoverty programs
intended to aid all poor Americans and bring great economic equality to
America (welfare state)
3. Soviet Eastern Europe, 1945-1968
1. Stalin’s Last Years, 1945-1953
1. Americans were not the only ones who felt betrayed by Stalin’s postwar
actions; The “Great Patriotic War of the Fatherland” had fostered
Russian nationalism and a relaxation of dictatorial terror (rare unity
between Soviet rulers and Russian people)
2. Having made a heroic war effort, the vast majority of the Soviet people
hoped in 1945 that the government would grant greater freedom and
democracy; hopes were crushed
1. Even before the war ended, Stalin was moving his country back
toward rigid dictatorship and by early 1946, Stalin was publicly
singing the old tune that war was inevitable as long as capitalism
(enemy in West provided excuse for control)
2. Many returning soldiers and ordinary citizens were purged in 1945
and 1946, as Stalin revived the terrible forced-labor camps of the
1930s
3. Culture and art were also purged in violent campaigns that
reimposed rigid anti-Western ideological conformity; many artists
were denounced and in 1949, Stalin launched a verbal attack on
Soviet Jews accusing them of being pro-Western
3. In the political realm, Stalin reasserted the Communist party’s complete
control of the government and his absolute mastery of the party; fiveyear plans were reintroduced to cope with enormous task of economic
reconstruction (heavy industry and military were given top priority, and
consumer goods, housing, and agriculture neglected)
4. Stalin’s prime postwar innovation was to export Stalinist system to
countries of East Europe as the Communist parties ruled because of
help from Red Army/secret police
5. Rigid ideological indoctrination, attacks on religion, and a lack of civil
liberties were soon facts of life; industry was nationalized, the middle
class stripped of possessions
6. Industrialization lurched forward without regard for human costs
(collectivization)
7. Only Josip Broz Tito, the resistance leader and Communist chief of
Yugoslavia, was able to resist Soviet domination successfully (Tito
stood up to Stalin in 1948)
8. Yugoslavia prospered as a multiethnic state until it began to break apart
in the 1980s and Tito’s proclamation of independence infuriated Stalin;
popular Communists leaders who had led the resistance against
Germany were purged as Stalin sought to create absolutely obedient
instruments of domination in eastern Europe
2. Reform and De-Stalinization, 1953-1964
1. In 1953 Stalin finally died, and the dictatorship that he had built began to
change
1. Even as Stalin’s heirs struggled for power, they realized that
reforms were necessary because of the widespread fear and hatred
of Stalin’s political terrorism
2. The power of the secret police was curbed, and many of the forcedlabor camps were gradually closed; change was also necessary for
economic reasons
3. Moreover, Stalin’s belligerent foreign policy had directly led to a
strong Western alliance, which isolated the Soviet Union from the
rest of Western Europe
2. On the question of just how much change should be permitted in order
to preserve the system, the Communists leadership was badly split by
these views on this problem
1. Conservatives wanted to make as few changes as possible to the
government
2. Reformers, led by Nikita Khrushchev, argued for major innovations;
Khrushchev had joined the party as a coal miner in 1918 and
emerged as the new ruled in 1955
3. To strengthen his position, Khrushchev launched an all-out attack on
Stalin and his crimes at a closed session of the Twentieth Party
Congress in 1956; Khrushchev’s “secret speech” was read at
Communist party meetings throughout the country
4. The liberalization—or de-Stalinization, called in the West—of Soviet
Union was true
1. The Communist party maintained its monopoly on political power,
but Khrushchev shook up the party and brought in new members
2. Some resources were shifted from the heavy industries and the
military toward consumer goods and agriculture, and Stalinist
controls over workers was relaxed
3. The Soviet Union’s very low standard of living finally began to
improve and continued to rise substantially throughout the booming
1960s
5. De-Stalinization created writers and intellectuals who hungered for
cultural freedom
1. The poet Boris Pasternak finished Doctor Zhivago in 1956 which
was a master-piece and a powerful challenge to communism; a
pre-Revolutionary intellectual who triumphs in Stalinist years
because of his humanity and Christian spirit
2. Other talented writers followed Pasternak’s lead and editors let
sparks fly
3. The writer Aleksnadr Solzhenitsyn created a sensation when
his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published in the
Soviet Union in 1962; his novel portrays in detail life in a Stalinist
concentration camp (indictment of the past)
6. Khrushchev also de-Stalinized foreign policy (peaceful coexistence with
capitalism)
1. Khrushchev made concessions agreeing in 1955 to real
independence for a neutral Austria after ten long years of Allied
occupation of cold war tensions
2. Khrushchev began wooing the new nations of Asia and Africa
(communist or not)
3. De-Stalinization stimulated rebelliousness in the eastern European
satellites and communist reformers and the masses were quickly
emboldened to seek much great liberty and national independence
(Poland took the lead in 1956)
7. Hungary experienced a real and tragic revolution, led by students and
workers, the people of Budapest installed a liberal communist reformer
as their new chief in 1956; Soviet troops were forced to leave the
country but after the new governments promised free elections and
renounced Hungary’s military alliance with Moscow, the Russian
leaders ordered an invasion and crushed the national/democratic
revolution
8. The Hungarians hoped that the United States would come to their aid
but when this did nor occur, most people in eastern Europe concluded
that their only hope was to strive for small domestic gains while
following Russia obediently in foreign affairs
3. The End of Reform
1. By late 1962, opposition in party circles to Khrushchev’s policies was
strong and in 1964, Khrushchev fell in a bloodless palace revolution;
Under Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union began a period of stagnation
and limited “re-Stalinization”
2. The basic reason for this development was the Khrushchev’s
Communist colleagues saw de-Stalinization as a dangerous, two-sided
threat (dead dictator’s henchmen?)
1. The widening campaign of de-Stalinization posed a clear threat to
the dictatorial authority of the party (party had to tighten up
considerable in time)
2. Another reason for conservative opposition was that Khrushchev’s
policy toward the West was erratic and ultimately unsuccessful; in
1958 he ordered the Western allies to evacuate West Berlin within
six months, the allies reaffirmed their unity in West Berlin, and
Khrushchev eventually backed down
3. In 1961, as relations with communist China deteriorated
dramatically, Khrushchev ordered the East Germans to build a wall
between East and West Berlin, thereby sealing off West Berlin in
violation of existing access agreements
4. The U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, agreed to the construction of
the Berlin wall
5. Khrushchev ordered missiles with nuclear warheads installed in
Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba in 1962; President Kennedy
countered with a naval blockage against Cuba and Khrushchev
removed the missiles to protect Castro’s regime
3. Following the Cuban fiasco, Khrushchev’s influence declined rapidly
4. After Brezhnev and his supporters took over in 1964, they started
talking quietly of Stalin’s “good points” and ignoring his crimes
(liberalization could not be expected)
1. Soviet leaders also launched a massive arms buildup yet Brezhnev
and company proceed cautiously in the mid-1960s and avoided
direct confrontation with the US
2. The 1960s brought modest liberalization and more consumer goods
to eastern Europe, as well as somewhat greater national autonomy
(Poland and Romania)
5. In January 1968, the reform elements in the Czechoslovak Communist
party gained a majority and voted out the long-time Stalinist leader in
favor of Alexander Dubcek
1. Dubcek and his allies believed that they could reconcile genuine
socialism with personal freedom and internal party democracy and
thus local decision making by trade unions, managers, and
consumers replaced rigid bureaucratic planning, and censorship
was relaxed; reform program proved enormously popular
2. Although he proclaimed his loyalty to the Warsaw Pact, the
determination of the Czechoslovak reforms to build what they called
“socialism with a human face” frightened hard-line Communists
(strong in Poland and East Germany)
3. The Soviet Union feared that a liberalized Czechoslovakia would
eventually be drawn
6. The Eastern bloc countries launched a concerted campaign of
intimidation against he Czechoslovak leaders, and in August 1968,
500,000 Russian and allied eastern European troops suddenly occupied
Czechoslovakia; the Czechoslovaks made no attempt to resist militarily
and the arrested leaders surrendered to Soviet demands
7. The reform program was abandoned and shortly after the invasion,
Brezhnev declared the Brezhnev Doctrine, which according to which the
Soviet Union and its allies had the right to intervene in any socialist
country whenever they saw the need
8. The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia was the crucial even of the
Brezhnev era which really lasted until the emergence in 1985 of Mikhail
Gorbachev; the invasion demonstrated the determination of the ruling
elite to maintain the status quo in the Soviet bloc; in the U.S.S.R that
determination resulted in further repression
4. Postwar Social Transformations
1. Science and Technology
1. Science and technology proved so productive and influential after about
1940 because “pure theoretical” science and “practical” technology were
joined together on a massive scale
2. With the Second World War, pure science lost its impractical innocence
and most leading university scientists went to work on top-secret
projects to help their governments with war
1. The development by British scientists of radar to detect enemy
aircraft was a particularly important outcome of this new kind of
sharply focused research; a radically improved radar system played
a key role in Britain’s victory in the battle for air supremacy in 1940
2. The air war stimulated the development of jet aircraft and spurred
research on electronic computers, which calculated complex
mathematical relationships involving accuracy
3. The most spectacular result of directed scientific research during
the war was the atomic bomb and a letter from Einstein to
President FDR and ongoing experiments by nuclear physicists led
to the top-secret Manhattan Project, which ballooned into a crash
program
4. After three years of effort, the first atomic bomb was successfully
tested in July 1945 and in August 1945, two bombs were dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the war
3. The spectacular results of directed research during World War II
inspired a new model for science—Big Science; by combining
theoretical work with sophisticated engineering in a large organization,
Big Science could attack extremely difficult problems, from better
products for consumers to new and improved weapons for the military
1. Big Science was very expensive, requiring financing from
governments/corporations
2. Populous, victorious, and wealthy, the United States took the lead
in Big Science after World War II; between 1945 and 1965,
spending on scientific research and development in the U.S. grew
five times as fast as the national income, and by 1965 (3% of
income)
3. It was generally accepted that government should finance science
in both the “capitalist” United States and the “socialist” Soviet Union
(science was not demobilized after war)
4. Scientists remained a critical part of every major military
establishment and a large portion of all postwar scientific research
went for “defense”
5. After 1945 roughly one-quarter of all men and women trained in
science and engineering in the West were employed full-time in the
production of weapons to kill other humans
4. Sophisticated science, lavish government spending, and military needs
all came together in the space race of the 1960s (Started by the Soviet
Union in the late 1950s)
1. In 1957 the Soviets used long-range rockets developed in their
nuclear weapons program to put a satellite in orbit; in 1961 they
sent the world’s first cosmonaut circling the globe
2. President Kennedy made an all-out U.S. commitment to catch up
with the Soviets and land a crewed spacecraft on the moon “before
the decade was out”: using pure science, applied technology, and
up to $5 billion a year, the Apollo Program achieved its ambitious
objective in 1969 and four more moon landings followed by 1972
3. Thoughtful Europeans lamented this “brain drain” and feared that
Europe was falling hopelessly behind the United States in science
and technology but Europe was already responding with such Big
Science projects as the Concorde supersonic passenger airliner
5. The rise of Big Science and of close ties between science and
technology greatly altered the lives of scientists; there were four times
as many scientists in the West in 1975 as in 1945
6. One consequence of the growth of science was its high degree of
specialization, for no one could possibly master a broad field
(specializations rates of knowledge and applications)
7. Highly specialized modern scientists and technologists normally had to
work as members of a team, which completely changed the work and
lifestyle of modern scientists
1. Much of work went on in large bureaucratic organizations and
growth of large scientific bureaucracies in government/private
enterprise suggested how they permeated society
2. Modern science became highly, even brutally, competitive
3. This competitiveness is well depicted in Nobel Prize winner James
Watson’s book The Double Helix, which tells how in 1953 Watson
and an Englishman Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA,
the molecule of heredity
4. With so many thousands of linked-minded researchers in the
wealthy countries of the world, scientific and technical knowledge
rushed forward in the postwar era
2. The Changing Class Structure
1. Rapid economic growth went a long way toward creating a new society
in Europe after WW II and European society became more mobile and
more democratic (class distinctions)
1. Changes in the structure of the middle class were influential in the
general drift toward a less rigid class structure (ownership of
property and strong family ties had meant wealth)
2. After 1945 a new breed of managers and experts replaced
traditional property owners as the leaders of the middle class;
ability to serve the needs of a big organization largely replaced
inherited property and family connections in determining an
individual’s social position in the middle and upper middle classes
(middle class grew massively)
3. Rapid industrial and technological expansion created in large
corporations and government agencies a powerful demand for
technologists and managers
4. The old properties middle class lost control of many family-owned
businesses and many small businesses simply passed out of
existence as owners joined the salaried employees
2. Top managers and ranking civil servants therefore represented the
model for a new middle class or salaried specialists; they were well paid
and highly trained (engineering, accounting)
3. Managers and technocrats, of whom a small but growing number were
women, could pass on the opportunity for all-important advanced
education to their children (positions not passed); the new middle class
was based largely on specialized skills and high levels of education
4. The structure of the lower classes also became more flexible and open
as the industrial working class ceased to expand and job opportunities
for white-collar and service employees grew rapidly; such employees
bore resemblance to new middle class of salaried specialists
5. European governments were reducing class tensions with a series of
social security reforms; other programs were new, like comprehensive
national health system directed by the state and most countries
introduced family allowances (grants to parents to help raise children)
6. Reforms promoted greater equality because they were expensive and
were paid for in part by higher taxes on the rich; rising standard of living
and spread of standardized consumer goods also worked to level
Western society, as the percent of income spent on food/drink declined
7. Europeans took great pleasure in the products of the “gadget revolution”
as well
1. Like Americans, Europeans filled their homes with washing
machines, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, dishwashers, radios,
TVs, and stereos; the purchase of consumer goods was greatly
facilitated by installment purchasing, which allowed people to buy
on credit
2. The expansion of social security reduced the need to accumulate
savings for hard times and ordinary people were increasingly willing
to take on debt (growth of consumerism)
8. Leisure and recreation occupied an important place in consumer
societies and the most astonishing leisure-time development was the
blossoming of mass travel and tourism
3. New Roles for Women
1. A growing emancipation of women in the West was one of the most
significant trans-formations of the cold war era and development grew
out of long-term changes in patterns of motherhood and paid work
outside the home (altered women’s experiences and expectations)
2. This historic development prepared the way for the success of a new
generation of feminist thinkers and a militant women’s movement in the
1970s and 1980s
3. With the growth of industry, people began to marry earlier, death rates
fell, and population grew rapidly; by the late 19thcentury, improved diet,
higher incomes, and the use of contraception within marriage were
producing a transition to low birthrates and death rates
1. In the 1950s and 1960s, the typical woman in the West married
early and bore her children quickly; postwar baby boom did make
for a fairly rapid population growth
2. In the1960s the long-term decline in birthrates resumed, and from
the mid-1970s on in many European countries, the total population
stopped growing from natural increase
3. The postwar culmination of the trends toward early marriage, early
childbearing, and small family size in wealthy urban societies had
revolutionary implications for women
4. Pregnancy and child care occupied a much smaller portion of a
woman’s life than in earlier times; by the early 1970s, many
Western women were having their last baby by 27
4. In the postwar years, motherhood no longer absorbed the energies of a
lifetime, and more and more married women looked for new roles in the
world of work outside the family
5. With the growth of modern industry and much more rigid gender roles,
few middle-class women worked outside the home for wages (young
unmarried women were wage earners)
6. In the time especially after WW II, the complexity of the modern
economy meant that almost all women had to go outside the home to
find cash income; three forces helped women
1. The economy boom from about 1950 to 1973 and created a strong
demand for labor
2. The economy continued its gradual shift away from heavy
industries to the “white-collar” service industries, such as
government, education, trade, and health care
3. Young Western women shared fully in the postwar education
revolution and could take advantage of the growing need for officeworkers and well-trained professionals
4. The trend went the furthest in communist eastern Europe, where
women were one half of all employed persons; in noncommunist
countries, the married women workforce rose
7. Rising employment for married women went hand in hand with the
decline of the birthrate; women who worked outside the home had
significantly fewer children than other women
1. Married women entering the labor force faced widespread, longestablished discrimination in pay, advancement, and occupational
choice in comparison to men
2. As the divorce rate rose in the 1960s, part-time work meant poverty
for some families
3. Married working women still carried most of the child-raising and
housekeeping responsibilities – a reason for many to accept parttime employment
8. The injustices that married women encountered as wage earners
contributed greatly to the subsequent movement for women’s equality
and emancipation (employment as condition)
4. Youth and the Counterculture
1. Economic prosperity and democratic class structure had an impact on
the youth throughout the Western world as they became a “counterculture” that rebelled against the status quo
1. Young people in the United States took the lead; American college
students in the 1950s were called the “Silent Generation” but by the
late 1950s the “beat” movement was stoking fires of revolt in
selected urban enclaves, such as the Near North side of Chicago
2. The young fashioned a highly publicized subculture that blended
radical politics, unbridled personal experimentation and new artistic
styles (spread to western Europe)
3. The young Bob Dylan summed up the radical political and cultural
aspirations of the younger generation in lyrics that became a
rallying cry, “the times are a’ changing”
2. The sexual behavior of young people appeared to change dramatically
in 1960s and 1970s
1. More young people engaged in sexual intercourse, and they did so
at an earlier age, in part because of safe and effective
contraceptive pills could eliminate risk of pregnancy
2. Even more significant was the growing tendency of young
unmarried people to live together in a separate household on a
semi-permanent basis, with little thought of getting married or
having children (the young defied social customs of legitimate
sexual unions)
3. Several factors contributed to the emergence of the international youth
culture in the 1960s
1. Mass communications and youth travel linked countries and
continents together
2. The postwar baby boom mean that young people became an
unusually large part of the population and could therefore exercise
exception influence on society as a whole
3. Postwar prosperity and greater equality gave young people more
purchasing power which enabled them to set their own trends and
patterns of consumption (generational loyalty)
4. Prosperity meant that goods jobs were readily available (did not
fear punishment)
4. The youth culture fused with the counterculture in opposition to the
order in the late 1960s
1. Student protesters embraced romanticism and revolutionary
idealism, dreaming of complete freedom and simpler, purer
societies; many young radicals looked to newly independent
countries of Asia and Africa and their better societies that were
being built
2. About the Vietnam War, many politically active students believed
that the older generation was fighting an immoral and imperialistic
war against small and heroic people
3. Student protests in western Europe highlighted more general
problems of youth, education, and a society of specialists
(education limited to a small elite in Europe)
4. By 1960, at least three times as many students were going to some
kind of university as had attended before the war, and the number
continued to rise until the 1970s
5. Reflecting the development of a more democratic class structure
and a growing awareness that higher education was the key to
success, European universities gave more scholarships and
opened doors to more students from the lower middle and lower
classes
5. The rapid expansion of higher education meant that classes were badly
overcrowded and competition for grades became intense; many
students felt the education was inadequate
6. The many tensions within the exploding university population came to a
head in the late 1960s and early 1970s and European university
students rose to challenge their university administrations and even
their governments just as they had in the United States
1. The most far-reaching of these revolts occurred in France in 1968;
students occupied buildings and took over the University of Paris,
which led to violent clashes with police
2. Most students demanded both changes in the curriculum and a real
voice in running the university; rank-and-file workers ignored the
advice of their cautious union officials, and a more or less
spontaneous general strike spread across France in May 1968
7. Declaring that he was in favor of university reforms and higher minimum
wages, he moved troops toward Paris and called for new elections; the
masses of France voted overwhelmingly for de Gaulle’s part and a
return to law and order (shaken, within a year, de Gaulle resigned)
5. Conflict and Challenge in the Late Cold War, 1968-1985
1. The United States and Vietnam
1. Although student radicals believed that imperialism was the main cause,
American involve-ment in the Vietnam was more clearly a product of the
cold war and policy of containment
1. From the late 1940s on, most Americans and their leaders viewed
the world in terms of a constant struggled to stop the spread of
communism; as western European began to revive and China
established a communist government in 1949, focus shifted to Asia
2. The bloody Korean War ended in stalemate but the United States
did succeed in preventing a communist victory in South Korea; after
the defeat of the French in Vietnam in 1954, the Eisenhower
administration refused to sign Geneva Accords that temporarily
divided the country into two zones pending national unification by
means of free election
3. President Eisenhower then agreed in the refusal of the
anticommunist South Vietnamese government to accept the verdict
of elections and provided it with military aid
4. President Kennedy increased the number of American “military
advisers” to 16,000
2. After winning the 1964 election on a peace platform, President Johnson
greatly expanded the American role in the Vietnam conflict; American
strategy was to “escalate” the war sufficiently to break the will of the
North Vietnamese and their southern allies without resorting to “overkill,”
which might risk war with the entire Communist bloc
3. American forces in the South gradually grew to half a million men, and
the United States bombed North Vietnam with ever-greater intensity but
there was no invasion of the North or naval blockade (American people
grew weary and the American leadership cracked)
4. The undeclared war in Vietnam fought nightly on American television,
divided the nation
1. Initial support was strong as the politicians, the media, and the
population saw the war as part of a legitimate defense against
communist totalitarianism in all poor countries
2. An antiwar movement quickly emerged on college campuses
(prospect of being drafted) and in October 1965 student protesters
joined forces with socialists, New Left intellectuals, and pacifists in
antiwar demonstrations in fifty American cities
3. By 1967 a growing number of critics denounced the war as a
criminal intrusion into a complex and distant civil war (criticism
heightened after Vietcong Tet Offensive in 1968)
5. The Vietcong Tet Offensive was the communists’ first comprehensive
attack with conventional weapons on major cities in South Vietnam but
failed militarily
1. The Vietcong suffered heavy losses and the attack did not spark a
mass uprising but Washington had claimed that victory in South
Vietnam was in sight but the critics interpreted the bloody combat
as a decisive American defeat; American leaders lost heart
2. In 1968, after a narrow victory in the N.H. primary, President
Johnson called for negotiations with North Vietnam and announced
that he would not stand for re-election
6. Elected by a slim margin in 1968, President Richard Nixon sought to
gradually disengage America from Vietnam and the accompanying
national crisis in North and South Vietnam
1. Intensifying the continuous bombardment of the enemy while
simultaneously pursuing peace talks with the North Vietnamese,
Nixon suspended the draft, so hated on college campuses, and cut
American forces in Vietnam from 550,000 to 24,000 in four years
2. President Nixon launched a flank attack in diplomacy as he
journeyed to China in 1972 and reached a spectacular if limited
reconciliation with the People’s Republic of China; Nixon took
advantage of China’s fears of the Soviet Union and undermined
North Korea
3. President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger finally
reached a peace agree-ment with North Vietnam which allowed
remaining American forces to complete with-drawal and the United
States reserved right to resume bombing if accords were broken
7. While the storm of crisis in the United States seemed to have passed,
Watergate appeared
1. Nixon authorized spying activities that went beyond the law; he
allowed special unites to use carious illegal means to stop the
leaking of government documents to the press
2. One such group broke into the Democratic party headquarters in
Washington’s Watergate complex in June 1972 and was promptly
arrested (media and machinery of congressional investigation
eventually exposed the administration’s web of lies and
lawbreaking)
8. The consequences of political crisis flowing from the Watergate affair
were profound
1. Watergate resulted in a major shift of power away from presidency
toward Congress, especially in foreign affairs; American aid to
South Vietnam diminished in 1973, North Vietnam launched an
invasion in early 1974 but Congress refused to permit response
2. A second consequence of the US crisis was after more than thirtyfive years of battle, the Vietnamese communists unified their
country in 1975 as a harsh dictatorial state
3. The belated fall of South Vietnam in the wake of Watergate shook
America’s postwar confidence and left the US divided and uncertain
about its proper role in world affairs
2. Détente or Cold War?
1. On alternative to the badly damaged policy of containing communism
was the policy of détente, or the progressive piecemeal relaxation of
cold war tensions (West Germany)
2. West German chancellor Willy Brandt took the lead when in December
1970 he flew to Poland for the singing of a historic treaty of
reconciliation (dramatic moment)
1. Brandt laid a wreath at the tomb of the Polish unknown soldier and
another at the monument commemorating the armed uprising of
Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto against occupying Nazi armies; somber
Brandt fell to his knees and knelt as if in prayer
2. Brandt aimed at nothing less than a comprehensive peace
settlement for central Europe and the two German states
established after 1945 (reconciliation with eastern Europe)
3. The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) had claimed
that the communist German Democratic Republic lacked free
elections and hence any legal or moral basis
4. West Germany refused to accept loss of German territory taken by
Poland and the Soviet Union after 1945 but when the Berlin was
built in 1961, Brandt believed that the wall showed the painful
limitations of West Germany’s official hard line (new foreign policy)
3. Winning the chancellorship in 1969, Brandt negotiated treaties with
Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia that formally accepted
existing state boundaries in return for a mutual renunciation of force or
the threat of force; Brandt’s government entered into direct relations
with East Germany aiming for modest practical improvements rather
than reunification
4. The policy of détente reached its high point when all European nations
(except Albania), the United States, and Canada signed the Final Act of
the Helsinki Conference in 1975
1. The 35 nations agreed that Europe’s political frontiers could not be
changed by force
2. They also accepted numerous provisions guaranteeing the human
rights and political freedoms of their citizens (hopes of détente in
international relations faded in later 1970s)
5. Brezhnev’s Soviet Union ignored the human rights provisions of the
Helsinki agreement and East-West political competition remained very
much alive outside Europe
1. Many Americans became convinced that the Soviet Union was
taking advantage of détente, steadily building up its military might
and pushing for political gains and revolutions in Africa, Asia, and
Latin America (no détente in international relations)
2. The soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, which was
designed to save an increasingly unpopular Marxist regime, was
especially alarming
3. Many Americans feared that oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf
would be next, and again they looked to the Atlantic alliance and
military might to thwart communist expansion
6. President Jimmy Carter elected in 1976, tried to lead the Atlantic
alliance beyond verbal condemnation and urged economic sanctions
against Soviet Union (only Britain supported)
1. The alliance showed the same lack of concerted action when the
Solidarity movement rose in Poland (some observers concluded the
alliance had lost the will to think and act)
2. The US military buildup launched by Carter in his years in office
was greatly accelerated by President Ronald Reagan, who swept
into office in 1980 by wave of patriotism
3. The new American leadership acted as if the military balance had
tipped in the favor of the Soviet Union and increasing defense
spending enormously, the Regan administration concentrated on
nuclear arms and an expanded navy as keys to American power
7. A swing toward conservatism in the 1980s gave Reagan invaluable
allies in western Europe
1. In Great Britain Margaret Thatcher was an advocate for a
revitalized Atlantic alliance
2. After a pro-American Helmut Kohl came to power with the
conservative Christian Democrats in 1982, West Germany and the
US once again coordinated military and political policy toward the
Soviet bloc (in maintaining the alliance, the Western nations gave
indirect support to liberalize authoritarian communist eastern
Europe and probably helped convince the Soviet Union’s Mikhail
Gorbachev that cold war conflict was foolish
3. The Women’s Movement
1. The 1970s marked the birth of a board-based feminist movement
devoted to securing genuine gender equality and promoting the general
interests of women -- three basic reasons
1. Changes in patterns of motherhood and paid work created new
conditions/new demands
2. A precursor of feminist intellectuals articulated a powerful critique of
gender relations, which stimulated many women to rethink their
assumptions and challenge the status quo
3. Taking a lesion from the civil rights movement in the US and
worldwide student protest against the Vietnam War, dissatisfied
individuals recognized that they had to band together if they were to
influence politics and secure fundamental reforms
2. One of the most influential works produced by this new feminist wave
was The Second Sex (1949) by French philosopher Simone de
Beauvoir; she came to see her pious and submissive mother as
renouncing any self-expression outside of home and marriage and
showing Beauvoir the dangers of a life she did not want (Beauvoir
relationship with Jean Paul Sartre)
1. Beauvoir analyzed the position of women within the framework of
existential thought
2. She argued that women—like all human beings—were in essence
free but that they had almost always been trapped by particularly
inflexible and limiting conditions
3. Only by the means of courageous action and self-assertive
creativity could a woman become a completely free person and
escape the role that men had constructed for women
3. One such woman in a generation of women intellectuals was Betty
Friedan, who played a key role in reopening a serious discussion of
women’s issues in the United States
1. Friedan reflected the American faith in group action and political
solutions; Friedan became acutely away of the conflicting pressures
of career and family and concluded after research that many welleducated women shared her growing dissatisfaction
2. According to Friedan in The Feminine Mystique, the cause was a
crisis of identity; women were not permitted to become mature
adults and genuine human beings but were instead expected to
conform to a false pattern of femininity and live for family (sexism)
4. When long-standing proposals to treat sex discrimination as seriously
as race discrimination fell again on deaf ears, Friedan took the lead in
1966 in founding the National Organization of Women (NOW) to press
for women’s rights (forty thousand members in 1974)
1. Throughout the 1970s, a proliferation of publications, conferences,
and institutions devoted to women’s issues reinforced the emerging
international movement
2. This movement generally shared the common strategy of entering
the political arena and changing laws regarding women; advocates
of women’s rights pushed for new statutes in the workplace (equal
pay for equal work) and measures such as maternal leave + day
care
3. The movement concentrated on gender and family questions
including right of divorce, legalized abortion, the needs of single
mothers, and protection from rape and violence
4. The effort to decriminalize abortion served as a catalyst in
mobilizing an effective, self-conscious women’s movement (and in
creating an opposition to it, as in the US)
5. In the countries that had long placed women in subordinate positions,
the legal changes were revolutionary; for example, in Italy, new laws
abolished restrictions on divorce and abortion, which had been
supported by Mussolini and defended energetically by the Catholic
church; by 1988 divorce and abortion were common in Italy which had
the lowest birthrate in Europe
6. More generally, the sharply focused women’s movement of the 1970s
won new rights for women and the movement became more diffuse, a
victim of both its successes and the resurgence of antifeminist
opposition (movement encouraged mobilization of other groups)
7. Many subordinate groups challenged the dominant majorities, and the
expansion and redefinition of human liberty—a great theme of modern
Western history—continued
4. The Troubled Economy
1. For twenty years after 1945, most Europeans were preoccupied with the
possibilities of economic progress and consumerism (more democratic
class structure helped reduce social tension, and ideological conflict
went out of style; passing of postwar stability)
2. The reappearance of economic crisis in the early 1970s that brought the
most serious conflict
1. The postwar international monetary system was based on the
American dollar, valued in gold at $35 an ounce; giving foreign aid
and fighting foreign wars, the US sent billions
2. By early 1971 it had only $11 billion in gold left and Europe had
accumulated $50 billion and so foreigners than panicked and raced
to exchange their dollars for gold
3. President Richard Nixon responded by stopping the sale of
American gold, value of the dollar fell sharply, and inflation sped
worldwide (fixed rates of exchange were abandoned and great
uncertainty replaced postwar predictability in international trade and
finance)
3. Even more damaging was the dramatic reversal in the price and
availability of energy
1. The great postwar boom was fueled by cheap oil from the Middle
East, which permitted energy-intensive industries to expand rapidly
and lead other sectors of the economy
2. By 1971 the Arab-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) had watched the price of crude oil decline
consistently compared with the rising price of manufactured goods
and decided to reverse the trend by presenting a united front
3. In the fourth Arab-Israeli war in October 1973, when Egypt and
Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel. OPEC declared an
embargo on oil shipments to the United States, Israel’s ally, and
within a year crude oil prices quadrupled (oil shock to countries)
4. Following the upheaval in the international monetary system, the
revolution in energy prices plunged the world into its worst economic
decline since the 1930s (unemployment rose)
1. By 1976 a modest recovery was in progress when a fundamentalist
Islamic revolution struck Iran and oil production collapsed in that
country, the price of crude oil doubled in 1979 and the world
economy succumbed to its second oil shock
2. Unemployment and inflation rose before another recovery began in
1982 and in 1985 the unemployment rate in western Europe rose to
its highest level since the Great Depression
5. One telling measure of the troubled economy was the misery index,
which combined rates of inflation and unemployment in a single,
powerfully emotional number; “misery” increased in the West but the
increase was substantially greater in western Europe (called “the
crisis”); Japan did better than both Europe and the United States during
this time of crisis
6. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, anxious observers worried that the
common Market would disintegrate in the face of severe economic
dislocation and that economic nationalism would halt steps toward
European (now known as the European Economic Community)
7. In 1973, Denmark, Iceland and Britain joined, Greece joined in 1981,
and Portugal and Spain entered in 1986; nations cooperated more
closely in international undertakings and unity
5. Society in a Time of Economic Uncertainty
1. Optimism gave way to pessimism and romantic utopianism yielded to
sober realism; this drastic change in mood affected states, institutions,
and individuals in countless ways
2. The welfare system fashioned in the postwar era prevented mass
suffering and degradation through extended benefits from the
unemployed, pensions for the aged, free medical care and special
allowances for the needy, and a host of lesser supports (responsive,
socially concerned national state contributed to the preservation of
political stability and democracy)
3. The energetic response of governments to social needs helps explain
the sharp increase in total government spending in most countries
during the 1970s and early 1980s
1. The imbalance with governments increase spending than raised
taxes contributed to the rapid growth of budget deficits, national
debts, and inflation
2. By the late 1970s a powerful reaction against government’s everyincreasing role had set in, however, and Western governments
were gradually forced to introduce severe measures to slow the
growth of public spending and the welfare state
3. Part of a broad cultural shift toward greater conservatism, growing
voter dissatisfaction with government and government spending
helped bring Margaret Thatcher to power in Britain in 1979 (slowed
government spending and “privatized” industry)
4. Thatcher’s Conservative government also encouraged low- and
moderate-income renters to state-owned housing projects to buy
their apartments at rock-bottom prices; this privatization initiative
created a whole new class of property owners (private investors)
4. President Ronald Reagan’s success in the United State was more
limited and in 1981 he pushed through major cuts in income taxes but
Reagan and Congress failed to cut government spending, which
increased as a percentage of national income during presidency
1. The massive military buildup was responsible but spending on
social programs grew rapidly; harsh recession required spending
on welfare benefits and medical treatment
2. Reagan’s anti-welfare rhetoric mobilized the liberal opposition and
eventually turned many moderates against him (budget deficit
soared and US debt tripled in a decade)
5. The striking but temporary exception to the trend toward greater
frugality was François Mitterrand of France; after his election as
president in 1981, Mitterrand led his Socialist party to the left, launching
a vast program of nationalization and public investment
6. Mitterrand’s Socialist government, after this attempt had failed, was then
compelled to impose a wide variety of austerity measures and to
maintain those policies for the decade
7. When governments were forced to restrain spending, large scientific
projects were often signaled out for cuts (these reductions reinforced
the ongoing computer revolution)
1. This new scientific revolution thrived on the diffusion of evercheaper computational and informational capacity to small research
groups and private businesses, which were both cause and effect
of the revolution itself (big organizations lost advantage to smaller)
2. Individuals felt the impact of austerity at an early date, for unlike
governments, they could not pay their bills by printing money and
going ever further into debt
3. A growing number of experts and citizens concluded that the world
was running out of resources and decried wasteful industrial
practices and environmental pollution
4. The German Green movement elected national/local
representatives and similar parties developed throughout Europe
as environmentalism became a leading societal concern
8. Another consequence of austerity in Europe and North America was
leaner, tougher lifestyle in the 1970s and early 1980s, featuring more
attention to nutrition and a passion for exercise; there was less blind
reliance on medical science for good health and a growing awareness
that individuals had to accept a large portion of the responsibility for
illness and disease
9. Economic troubles also strengthened the new trends within the family;
men and women were encouraged to postpone marriage until they had
put their careers on a firm foundations, so the age of marriage rose
sharply for both sexes; the real threat of unemployment or underemployment seemed to shape the outlook of a whole generation (more
women worked)
Chapter 31: Revolution Rebuilding, and New
Challenges: 1985 to the Present
1. The Decline of Communism in Eastern Europe
1. The Soviet Union to 1985
1. The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia demonstrated the intense
conservatism of the Soviet Union’s ruling elite and its determination to
maintain the status quo in the Soviet bloc
2. There was a certain re-Stalinization of the U.S.S.R., but now
dictatorship was collective rather than personal and coercion replaced
terror; rising standard of living contributed to the apparent stability in the
Soviet Union (ambitious individuals had tremendous incentive)
3. Another source of stability was the enduring nationalism of
ordinary Great Russians
1. Party leaders successfully identified themselves with Russian
patriotism, stressing their role in saving the country during WW II
and protecting it now for foreign foes
2. The politically dominant Great Russians, who were concentrated in
central Russia and help through the Communist party the
commanding leadership positions in the non-Russian republics,
constituted less than half of the total Soviet Union population
3. The Great Russians generally feared that greater freedom might
result in demands for autonomy and even independence not only
by eastern European nationalitiesbuy also by the non-Russian
nationalities within the Soviet Union itself; liberalism and democracy
generally appeared to Great Russians as alien politics designed to
undermine the U.S.S.R.
4. The strength of the government was expressed in the re-Stalinization of
culture and art
1. Free expression disappeared and Brezhnev made certain that
Soviet intellectuals did not engage in public protest (acts of open
nonconformity and protest was severely punished)
2. Most frequently, dissidents were blacklisted and thus rendered
unable to find decent jobs since the government was the only
employer; more determined protesters were quietly imprisoned
while celebrated nonconformists were permanently expelled from
the country
3. By expelling nonconformists such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and
eliminating the worst aspects of Stalin’s dictatorship strengthened
the regime and the Soviet Union was solid
5. Beneath the immobility of political life in the Brezhnev era, the Soviet
Union was actually experiencing profound changes (three aspects of
this social revolution were significant)
1. The growth of the urban population continued rapidly in the 1960s
and 1970s; of the great significance, this expanding urban
population lost its old peasant ways, exchanging them for more
education, better job skills, and greater sophistication
2. The number of highly trained scientists, managers, and specialists
expanded prodigiously, increasing fourfold between 1960 and
1985; the class of well-educated, pragmatic, and self-confident
experts, which played an important role in restructuring industrial
societies after WW II, developed rapidly in the Soviet Union
(international “invisible colleges”)
3. Soviet scientists and technologists sought the intellectual freedom
necessary to do work, and often obtained it because their research
had practical (and military) value
4. Third, education and freedom for experts in their special areas
helped foster the growth of Soviet public opinion (educated people
read, discussed, and formed ideas about society)
5. Developing definite ideas, educated urban people increasingly saw
themselves as worthy of having a voice in society’s decisions, even
its political decisions
2. Solidarity in Poland
1. Gorbachev’s reforms interacted with a resurgence of popular protest in
the Soviet Union’s satellite empire and developments in Poland were
most striking and significant
1. The introduction of communism led to widespread riots in 1956 and
as a result, Polish Communists dropped their efforts to impose
Soviet-style collectivization on the peasants and to break the
Roman Catholic church (Communists failed to monopolize society)
2. The Communists failed to manage the economy and in 1970
Poland’s working class rose in angry protest; when a new
Communist leader came to power. He wagered that massive
inflows of Western capital and technology, could produce a Polish
“economic miracle”
3. Instead, bureaucratic incompetence and the first oil shock (1973)
put the economy down; workers, intellectuals and church became
increasingly restive then a real miracle occurred
2. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, archbishop of Cracow, was elected pope in
1978 and in June 1979, he returned from Rome, preaching love of
Christ and country and the “rights of man”; Pope John Paul II drew
enormous crowds and electrified the Polish nation (spiritual crisis as
well)
3. In August 1980, the sixteen thousand workers at the Lenin Shipyards in
Gdansk laid down their tools and occupied the plant; as other workers
joined “in solidarity,” the strikers advanced revolutionary demands,
including the right to form free trade unions, freedom of speech, release
of political prisoners, and economic reforms (18 days of shipyard
occupation)
1. The government gave in and accepted the workers’ demands in
the Gdansk Agreement
2. Led by Lenin Shipyards electrician and devout Catholic Lech
Walesa, the workers proceeded to organize their free and
democratic trade union and called it Solidarity; joined by
intellectuals and supported by the Catholic church it became a
union of a nation
3. By March 1981, a full-time staff of 40,000 linked 9.5 million union
members together as Solidarity published its own newspapers and
cultural/intellectual freedom blossomed
4. Solidarity leaders had tremendous support, and the ever-present
threat of calling a nationwide strike gave them real power in
ongoing negotiations with Communist bosses
4. But if Solidarity had power, it did not try to take the reins of government
in 1981; history, the Brezhnev Doctrine, and virulent attacks from
communist neighbors all seemed to guarantee the intervention of the
Red Army and terrible bloodbath if Polish Communists “lost control”
5. The Solidarity revolution remained a “self-limiting revolution” aimed at
defending the cultural and trade-union freedoms won in the Gdansk
Agreement (refused to use force to challenge directly the Communist
monopoly of political power -- threat of other communists)
6. Solidarity’s combination of strength and moderation postponed a
showdown, as the Soviet Union played a waiting game of threats and
pressure as Poland progressed
1. After a confrontation in March 1981, Walesa settled for minor
government concessions, and Solidarity dropped plans for a
massive general strike (criticism of Walesa’s moderate leaderships
grew, and the Solidarity lost its cohesiveness that had existed)
2. The worsening economic crisis also encouraged grassroots
radicalism, as the Polish Communist leadership denounced
Solidarity for promoting economic collapse and provoking Soviet
invasion (In December 1981, Communist leaders General Wojciech
Jaruzelski suddenly struck and proclaimed martial law, arresting
Solidarity’s leaders
7. Outlawed and driven underground, Solidarity fought successfully to
maintain its organization and to voice the aspirations of the Polish
masses after 1981 (government’s unwillingness and probably its
inability to impose full-scale terror allowed for the union’s survival)
8. Popular support for outlawed Solidarity remained strong under martial
law in the 1980s, preparing the way for the union’s rebirth toward the
end of the decade -- showed the desire of eastern Europeans for
greater political liberty and the enduring appeal of cultural freedom,
trade-union rights, patriotic nationalism, and religious feeling (fresh
thinking)
3. Gorbachev’s Reforms in the Soviet Union
1. Fundamental change in Russian history ahs often come in short,
intensive spurts, which contrast vividly with long periods of immobility -transformation era of Mikhail Gorbachev
2. The Soviet Union’s Communist part elite seemed secure in the early
1980s as far as any challenge from below was concerned the longestablished system of administrative controls continued to stretch
downward from the central ministries and state committees to provincial
cities, and from there to factories, neighborhoods, and villages (massive
state bureaucracy)
1. The system safeguarded the elite, but it promoted apathy in the
masse sand after Brezhnev died in 1982, his successor, the longtime chief of the secret police, Yuri Andropov tried to invigorate the
system (little came of these efforts but combined)
2. With a worsening economic situation, it set the stage for the
emergence in 19895 of Mikhail Gorbachev, the most vigorous
Soviet leader in a generation
3. Gorbachev believed in communism but he realized it was failing to keep
up with Western capitalism and technology and this was eroding the
Soviet Union’s status as a superpower
1. Gorbachev wanted to save the Soviet system by revitalizing it with
fundamental reforms
2. Gorbachev was also an idealist and wanted improve conditions for
ordinary citizens
3. Understanding that the endless waste and expense of the cold war
arms race had had a disastrous impact on living conditions in the
Soviet Union, he realized that improvement in Russia required
better relations with the West and such countries as the United
States
4. Gorbachev first attacked corruption and incompetence in the
bureaucracy and he consolidated his power; he also attacked
alcoholism and elaborated his reform program
1. The first set of reform policies was designed to transform and
restructure the economy, in order to provide for the real needs of
the Soviet population (economic restructuring)
2. To accomplish this perestroika, Gorbachev and his supporters
permitted an easing of government price controls on some goods,
more independence for state enterprises, and setting up profitseeking private cooperatives to provide personal services for
consumers
3. At first, it produced a few positive improvements, but shortages
then grew as economy stalled at an intermediate point between
central planning and free-market mechanisms
4. By late 1988, widespread consumer dissatisfaction posed a serious
threat to Gorbachev’s leadership and the entire reform program
(Gorbachev was soon to make major changes)
5. Gorbachev’s bold and far-reaching campaign “to tell it like it is” was
much more successful
1. The new found “openness,” or glasnost, of the government and the
media marked an astonishing break with the past of censorship,
dull uniformity, and outright lies
2. Long-banned and vilified émigré writers sold millions of copies of
their works, while denunciations of Stalin and his terror became
standard fare in plays and movies
3. Initial openness in government pronouncement quickly went much
further than Gorbachev intended and led to something approaching
free speech and free expression
6. Democratization was the third element of the large scale reform of
Gorbachev
1. Begging as an attack on corruption in the Communist party,
Gorbachev and the party remained in control, but a minority of
critical independents was elected in April 1989 to a revitalized
Congress of People’s Deputies (millions of Soviets watched the
new congress)
2. Millions of Soviet citizens took practical lessons in open discussion,
critical thinking, and representative government; the result was a
new political culture at odds with the party
3. Democratization ignited demands for greater autonomy and even
for national indepen-dence by non-Russian minorities, especially in
the Baltic region and in the Caucasus
4. In April 1989, troops charged into a rally of Georgian separatists in
Tbilisi but Gorbachev drew back from repression and nationalist
demands continued to grow in Soviet republics
7. Finally, the Soviet leader brought “new political thinking” to the field of
foreign affairs and acted on it; he withdrew Soviet troops from
Afghanistan sought to reduce East-West tensions
1. He sought to halt the arms race with the United States and
convinced President Ronald Reagan of his sincerity and in
December 1987, the two leaders agreed in a Washington summit to
eliminate all land-based intermediate-range missiles in Europe
(reduction)
2. Gorbachev encouraged reform movements in Poland and Hungary
and pledged to respect the political choices of the peoples of
eastern Europe, repudiating the Brezhnev Doctrine
8. By early 1989, it seemed that if Gorbachev held to his word, the tragic
Soviet occupation of eastern Europe might wither away, taking the long
cold war with it once and for all
2. The Revolutions of 1989
1. The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe
1. Solidarity and the Polish people led the way to revolution in eastern
Europe
1. In 1988 widespread labor unrest, raging inflation, and the outlawed
Solidarity’s refusal to cooperate w/ the military government had
brought Poland to brink of economic collapse
2. Thus Solidarity pressured Poland’s frustrated Communist leaders
into negotiations that might work out sharing of power to resolve
political stalemate and the economic crisis; subsequent agreement
in 1989 legalized Solidarity and declared that a large minority of
representatives to the Polish parliament would be chosen by free
elections in June 1989
3. The Communists believed that their rule was guaranteed for four
years and that the Solidarity would keep the workers of Poland in
line and under control
2. Lacking access to the state-run media, Solidarity succeeded
nonetheless in mobilizing the country and winning most of the contested
seats in an overwhelming victory
1. Solidarity members entered the Polish parliament and a dangerous
stalemate developed but Solidarity leader Lech Walesa obtained a
majority by securing the allegiance of two minor procommunist
parties that had been part of the coalition government after WW II
2. In August 1989, Walesa was sworn in as Poland’s new
noncommunist leader
3. In the first years, the new Solidarity government cautiously introduced
revolutionary changes
1. It eliminated the secret police, Communist ministers in the
government, and at the end, Jaruzelski but did so step by step to
avoid confrontation with the army or Soviet Union
2. In economic affairs, the Solidarity-led government was radical from
the beginning and applied shock therapydesigned to make a clean
break with state planning and move quickly to market mechanisms
and private property (abolished controls on many prices on January
1, 1990, and reformed the monetary system with a “big bang”)
4. Hungary’s communist boss, Janos Kadar, had permitted liberalization of
planned economy after a 1956 uprising in exchange for political
obedience and continued Communist control
1. In May 1988, in an effort to retain power by granting modest
political concessions, the party replaced Kadar with a reform
communist (opposition groups rejected progress)
2. In the summer of 1989 the Hungarian communist party agreed to
hold elections in 1990
3. Welcoming Western investment and moving rapidly toward
multiparty democracy, Hungary’s Communists now enjoyed
considerable popular support
4. They had believed that they could defeat the opposition in the
upcoming elections and in an effort to strengthen their support at
home and put pressure on East Germany’s Communist regime, the
Hungarians opened their border to East Germany (iron curtain)
5. Tens of thousands of dissatisfied East German “vacationers” began
pouring into Hungary, crossed into Austria as refugees, and continued
on to resettlement in thriving West Germany
1. The flight of East Germans led to the rapid growth of a homegrown
protest movement
2. Intellectuals, environmentalists, and Protestant ministers took the
lead, organizing huge candlelight demonstrations and arguing that
a democratic but still socialist East Germany was both possible and
desirable (“stayers” failed to convince the “leavers”)
3. In an attempt to stabilize the situation, the East Germany
government opened the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and people
danced atop that grim symbol of the prison state; East Germany’s
aging Communist leaders were swept aside, and a reform
government took power and schedule free elections in the following
months following the change
6. In Czechoslovakia, communism died in December 1989 in an outing of
Communist bosses in only ten days; the so-calledVelvet
Revolution grew out of popular demonstrations led by students,
intellectuals, and a dissident playwright turned moral revolutionary,
Vaclav Havel; protesters forced the Communist into a power-sharing
arrangement which quickly resulted in the resignation of the communist
government and the assembly elected Havel president
7. Only in Romania was revolution violent and bloody (Communist dictator
Nicolae Ceausescu
1. The dictator had long combined Stalinist brutality with stubborn
independence from Moscow; faced with mass protests in
December, Ceausescu, alone among eastern European bosses,
ordered his ruthless security forces to slaughter thousands
2. After Ceausescu’s forces were defeated, the tyrant and his wife
were captured and executed by a military court; a coalition
government emerged from the fighting
2. The Disintegration of the Soviet Union
1. As 1990 began, revolutionary changes had triumphed in all but two
eastern European states—tiny Albania and the vast Soviet Union
(question of Soviet Union persisted)
1. In early 1990, as competing Russian politicians presented their
programs, and nationalists in the non-Russian republics demanded
autonomy or independence from the Soviet Union, the Communist
part suffered a stunning defeat in local elections throughout
2. Democrats and anticommunists won clear majorities in the leading
cities of the Russian Federation and in Lithuania the people elected
an uncompromising nationalist as president and the newly chosen
parliament declared Lithuania an independent state
3. Gorbachev responded by placing an economic embargo on
Lithuania, but he refused to use the army to crush the separatist
government (tense political stalemate)
4. Separating himself further from Communist hard-liners, Gorbachev
asked Soviet citizens to ratify a new constitution, which formally
abolished the Communist party’s monopoly of political power and
expanded the power of the congress of People’s Deputies
5. Retaining his post as party secretary, Gorbachev was elected
president of Soviet Union
2. Gorbachev’s eroding power and unwilling ness to risk an all suffrage
election for the presidency strengthened his rival, Boris Yeltsin who had
been a radical reform communist that was purged, he was elected
leader of the Russian Federation’s parliament in May 1990
3. Yeltsin boldly announced that Russia would put its interests first and
declare its independence from the Soviet Union, broadening the base of
the anticommunist movement and joined the patriotism of ordinary
Russians with the democratic aspirations of intellectuals
4. Gorbachev tried to save the Soviet Union with a new treaty that would
link the member republics in a looser, freely accepted confederation but
was rejected; opposed by democrats and nationalists, Gorbachev was
also challenged again by the Communist old guard
5. Defeated at the Communist party congress in July 1990, a gang of hardliners kidnapped Gorbachev and family in Caucasus and tried to seize
the Soviet government in August 1991
6. But the attempted coup collapsed in the face of massive popular
resistance, which rallied around Yeltsin, recently elected president of
the Russian Federation by universal suffrage
7. Yeltsin defiantly denounced the rebels and declared the “Rebirth of
Russia”; the army supported Yeltsin and Gorbachev was rescued and
returned to power as head of Soviet Union
8. The leaders of the coup wanted to preserve Communist power, state
ownership, and the multinational Soviet Union, but only succeeded in
destroying all three
1. An anticommunist revolution swept the Russian Federation as
Yeltsin and his supporters outlawed the Communist party and
confiscated all its property holdings
2. Locked in a personal political duel with Gorbachev, Yeltsin and his
democratic allies declared Russia independent and withdrew from
the Soviet Union
3. All the other soviet republics also left and the Soviet Union ceased
to exist on December 25, 1991; the independent republics of the
old Soviet Union then established a loose confederation, the
Commonwealth of the states, which played a minor role in the
1990s
3. German Unification and the End of the Cold War
1. The sudden death of communism in East Germany in 1989 reopened
the “German question,” and raised the threat of renewed cold war
conflict over Germany in the Western world
1. Taking power in October 1989, East German reform communists,
enthusiastically supported b leading East German intellectuals and
former dissidents, wanted to preserve socialism by making it
genuinely democratic and responsive to the needs of the people
2. Arguing for a third way, which would go beyond failed Stalinism
they had experienced and the ruthless capitalism they saw in the
West; these reformers supported closer ties with West Germany,
but feared unification and wanted to preserve East Germany
identity
2. These efforts failed, and within a few months East Germany was
absorbed into an enlarged West Germany, much like a faltering
company is merged into a stronger rival and disappears
1. First, in the first week after the Berlin Wall was opened, almost 9
million East Germans (roughly ½ of the population) poured across
the border into West Germany and almost all returned to their
homes in the East, by the joy of warm welcomes from friends and
the experience of shopping in the much wealthier West aroused
long-dormant hopes of unity
2. West German chancellor Helmut Kohl and his closest advisers
skillfully exploited the historic opportunity on their doorstep; sure of
support from the United States, in November 1989 Kohl presented
a ten-point plan for a step-by-step unification in cooperation with
both East Germany and international community
3. Kohl then promised the struggling citizens of East Germany a onefor-one exchange of all East German marks in savings accounts
into much more valuable West German marks -- this generous offer
helped a well-financed conservative-liberal Alliance for Germany
4. Set in East Germany and tied to Kohl’s West German Christian
Democrats to overwhelm those who argued for the preservation of
some kind of independent socialist society in East Germany (in
March 1990, the Alliance outdistanced the Socialist party winning
almost 50 percent of the votes and negotiated an economic union
with Chancellor Kohl
3. Finally, in the summer of 1990, the crucial international aspect of
German unification was successfully resolved (unification would make
Germany the strongest state in central Europe)
1. Although it would directly affect the security of the Soviet Union,
Gorbachev negotiated the best deal he could (Western cartoonist
showed Stalin turning over in his grave)
2. In a historic agreement signed by Gorbachev and Kohl in July
1990, a uniting Germany solemnly affirmed its peaceful intentions
and pledged never to develop nuclear, bio-logical, or chemical
weapons (Germany also promised to make loans to the Soviet
Union)
3. In October 1990, East Germany merged into West Germany,
forming henceforth a single nation under the West German laws
and constitution (peaceful unification)
4. The reunification of Germany accelerated the pace of agreements to
liquidate the cold war
1. In November 1990, delegates from twenty-two European countries
joined those from the United States and the Soviet Union in Paris
and agreed to a scaling down of all their armed forces (the
delegates also solemnly affirmed that all existing borders in
Europe)
2. The Paris Accord was for all practical purposes a general peace
treaty, bringing an end to World War II and the cold war that soon
followed the end of the devastating war
3. Peace in Europe encouraged the United States and the Soviet
Union to scrap a significant portion of their nuclear weapons in a
series of agreements and in September 1991, a confident President
George H.W. Bush also canceled the around-the-clock alert status
for American bombs outfitted with atomic bombs and Gorbachev
quickly followed suit
5. As anticommunist revolutions swept eastern Europe and East-West
tensions rapidly disappeared, the Soviet Union lost both the will and the
means to be a global superpower; yet the US retained the strength and
the desire to influence political and economic developments on a global
scale and the United States emerged as the world’s only surviving
superpower
6. In 1991 the US used its military superiority in a quick war with Iraq in
western Asia
1. Emerging in 1988 from an eight-year war with neighboring Iran with
a big, tough army equipped by the Soviet bloc, western Europe,
and the United States, strongman Iraq’s Saddam Hussein set out to
make himself the leader of the entire Arab world
2. Eyeing the great oil wealth of his tiny southern neighbor, Saddam
Hussein’s forces suddenly invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and
proclaimed the annexation of Kuwait
3. Reacting to free Kuwait, the United States mobilized the U.N.
Security Council, which in August 1990 imposed a strict naval
blockade on Iraq and receiving the support of some Arab states, aw
well as of Great Britain and France, the United States also landed
500,000 American soldier in Audi Arabia near the border of Kuwait
4. When Saddam Hussein refused to withdraw from Kuwait, the
Security Council authorized the U.S.-led military coalition to attack
Iraq; the American army and air force then smashed Iraqi forces in
a lightning-quick desert campaign, although the United States
stopped short of toppling Saddam because it feared a sudden
disintegration of Iraq
7. The defeat of Iraqi armies in the Gulf War demonstrated the awesome
power of the U.S. military, rebuilt and revitalized by the spending and
patriotism of the 1980s; in the flush of yet another victory, the first
President Bush spoke of a “new world order,” an order that would
apparently feature the United States and a cooperative United Nations
working together to impose stability throughout the world
3. Building a New Europe in the 1990s
1. Common Patterns and Problems
1. The end of the cold war and the disintegration of the Soviet Union
ended the division of Europe into two opposing camps with two different
political and economic systems
2. In economic affairs European leaders embraced, or at least accepted, a
large part of the neoliberal, free-market vision of capitalist development
(common developments)
1. This was most strikingly the vase in eastern Europe, where states
such as Poland and Hungary implemented market reforms and
sought to create vibrant capitalist economies
2. Post-communist governments in eastern Europe freed prices,
turned state enterprises over to private owners, and sought to move
toward strong currencies and balanced budgets
3. Milder doses of this same free-market medicine were administered
by politicians and big business to lackluster economies of western
Europe (these initiatives/proposals for further changes marked a
considerable modification in western Europe’s still-dominant
welfare capitalism, which featured government intervention, high
taxes, and social benefits)
3. Two factors were particularly important in accounting for this ongoing
shift from welfare state activism to tough-minded capitalism that
occurred through much of eastern Europe
1. Europeans were only following practices and ideologies revived
and enshrined in the 1980s in the United States and Great Britain
and Western Europeans took American prescriptions more
seriously because U.S. prestige and power were so high after the
United States “won the cold war” and because its economy
continued to outperform
2. The deregulation of markets and the privatization of state-controlled
enterprises were an integral part of the powerful trend toward a
wide-open, wheeler-dealer global economy
3. The rules of the global economy, which were laid down by Western
governments, multinational corporations, and international financial
organization such as the International Monetary Fund, called for the
free movement of capital and goods and services, as well as low
inflation and limited government deficits (full participation)
4. The ongoing computer and electronics revolution strengthened the
move toward a global economy and that revolution thrived on the
diffusion of ever-cheaper computational and informational capacity to
small research groups and private businesses (cause and effect)
5. The computer revolution reduced the costs of distance, speeding up
communications and helping businesses tap cheaper labor overseas;
reducing friction held down wages at home
6. Globalization, the emergence of a freer global economy, probably did
speed up world economic growth as enthusiasts invariable claimed, but
it had negative social consequences
1. Millions of ordinary citizens in western Europe believed that global
capitalism and freer markets were undermining hard-won social
achievements; the public in other countries generally associated
globalization with unemployment, corporate downsizing, the efforts
to reduce the power of labor unions, and governments plans to
reduce social benefits
2. The reaction was particularly intense in France and Germany,
where unions remained strong and socialists championed a
minimum of change in social policies in society
7. The broad movement toward neoliberal global development sparked a
powerful counterattack as the 1990s ended as financial crisis in Asia’s
smaller economic threatened
1. Many critics and protesters argued that globalization damaged poor
countries as much as wealthy ones and insisted that globalization
hurt the world’s poor, because multinational corporations destroyed
local industries and paid pitiful wages, and because international
financial organization demanded harsh balanced budgets and
social programs
2. Political developments across Europe also were loosely unified by
common patterns and problems; the demise of European
communism brought the triumph of liberal democracy
3. All countries embraced genuine electoral competition, with elected
presidents and legislatures and the outward manifestations of
representative liberal governments
8. With some notable exceptions, such as discrimination against Gypsies,
countries guaranteed basic civil liberties; almost all of Europe followed
the same general political model
1. The triumph of the liberal democratic program led the American
scholar Francis Fukuyama to discern in 1992 the “end of history” in
his influential book by that title; according to Fukuyama, first
fascism and Nazism and then communism had been definitely
bested by liberal democratic politics and market economies
2. As James Cronin perceptively noted in 1996 in The World the Cold
War Made, the fall of communism also marked the return of
nationalism and national history
9. The resurgence of nationalism in the 1990s led to terrible tragedy and
bloodshed in parts of eastern Europe, as it did in several hot spots in
Africa and Asia
1. During the civil wars in Yugoslavia, many observers feared that
national and ethnic hatreds would spread throughout eastern
Europe and infect western Europe in the form of racial hostility
toward minorities and immigrants of the various countries and races
2. Yet if nationalist and racist incidents were a recurring European
theme, they remained limited in the extent of their damage and of
critical importance in this regard was the fact that all European
states wished to become or remain full-fledged members of
European society of nations and to join eventually an everexpanding European Union (1993)
10. States that embraced national hatred and ethnic warfare, most notably
Serbia, were branded as outlaws and boycotted and isolated by the
European Union and international community
2. Recasting Russia
1. Politics and economics were closely intertwined in Russia after the
attempted Communist coup in 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet
Union; President Boris Yeltsin, his democratic supports, and his
economic ministers wanted to create conditions that would prevent
forever a return to communism and would also right the faltering
economy of Russia
1. Following the example of some postcommunist governments in
eastern Europe and agreeing with those Western advisers who
argued that private economies were the best, the Russian
reformers opted in January 1992 for breakneck liberalization
2. Their “shock therapy” freed prices on 90 percent of all Russian
goods, with the exception of break, vodka, oil, and public
transportation; it also launched a rapid privatization of industry and
turned thousands of factories and mines over to new private
companies
3. Each citizen received a voucher worth 10,000 (about $22) to buy
stock in private companies, but control of the privatized companies
remained in the hands of the old bosses, the managers and
government officials from the communist era
2. President Yeltsin and his economic reformers believed that shock
therapy would revive production and bring prosperity after a brief period
of hardship (results quite different)
1. Prices increased 250 percent on the very first day, and they kept on
soaring, increasing twenty-six times in the course of 1992 and at
the same time, Russian production fell 20%
2. Throughout 1995 rapid buy gradually slowing inflation raged, and
output continued to fall; in 1996 the Russian economy produced a
staggering at least one-third and possible as much as one-half less
than they had produced in 1991; on in 1997 did the economy stop
declining, before crashing yet again in 1998 in the wake of Asia’s
financial crisis
3. Rapid economic liberalization worked poorly in Russia for several
reasons
1. Soviet industry had been highly monopolized and strongly tilted
toward military goods
2. Production of many items had been concentrated in one or two
gigantic factories or in interconnected combines that supplied the
entire economy and with the privatization these powerful state
monopolies became powerful private monopolies, which cut
production and raised prices to maximize their financial returns
from the economy
3. Powerful managers and bureaucrats forced Yeltsin’s government to
hand out enormous subsidies and credits to reinforce the positions
of big firms and to avoid bankruptcies and the discipline of a free
market (managers combined criminal element to intimidate rivals)
4. In the end, enterprise directors and politicians succeeded in
eliminating worker ownership and converted large portions of
previously state-owned industry into private property
4. Runaway inflation and poorly executed privatization brought a profound
social revolution
1. A new capitalist elite acquired great wealth and power, while large
numbers of people fell into abject poverty, and the majority
struggled in the midst of decline to make ends
2. Managers, former officials, and financiers who came out of the
privatization process with large shares of the old states monopolies
stood at the top of the reorganized elite
3. The richest plums were found in Russia’s enormous oil and natural
resources industries, where unscrupulous enterprise directors
pocketed enormous dishonest gains
4. The new elite was more highly concentrated than ever before (5%
of Russia’s population accounted for 35% of the country’s national
income and controlled 80% of the capital)
5. At the other extreme, the vast majority saw their savings become
practically worthless, pensions lost much of their value, whole
markets were devoted to people selling off their personal goods to
survive; decline in life expectancy of the average Russian male
from 69 in 1991 to only 58 years in 1996 shows the millions of
hardships and tragedies
5. Rapid economic decline in 1992 and 1993 and rising popular
dissatisfaction encouraged a majority of communists, nationalists, and
populists in the Russian parliament to oppose Yeltsin and his coalition
of democratic reformers and big-business interest
6. Winning in April 1993 the support of 58% of the population in a
referendum on his proposed constitution, Yeltsin then brought in tanks
to crush a parliamentary mutiny in October 1993
1. Yeltsin consolidated his power, and in 1996 he used his bigbusiness cronies in the media to win an impressive come-frombehind victory but effective representative government failed to
develop, and many Russian came to equate “democracy” with the
corruption, poverty, and national decline they experience
throughout the 1990s
2. The disillusionment set the stage for the “managed democracy” of
Vladimir Putin, first elected president as Yeltsin’s chosen successor
in 2000 and reelected in a landslide in March 2004 (he was an
officer in the secret police in the communist era)
3. Putin maintained free markets in the economic sphere but reestablished semi-authoritarian political rule; aided by high oil prices
for Russia’s most valuable export, this combination worked
remarkable well and seemed to suit most Russians satisfactory
4. In 2004, the Russian economy had been booming for five years,
the Russian middle class was expanding rapidly, and the elected
parliament supported Putin overwhelming
5. Proponents of liberal democracy were in retreat, while conservative
Russian intellectuals were on the offensive, arguing that free
markets and capitalism required strong political rule to control
corruption and prevent chaos (reassertion of Russia’s
authoritarianism)
7. Putin’s forceful, competent image in world affairs also soothed the
country’s injured pride and symbolized its national resurgence (the
government permitted no negative reports on the civil war in Chechnya,
the tiny republic of Muslims on Russia’s southern border, which in 1991
had declared its independence from the Russian Federation)
3. Progress and Tragedy in Eastern Europe
1. Developments in eastern Europe shared important similarities with
those in Russia, as many of the problems were the same; the
postcommunist states of the former satellite empire thus worked to
replace states planning and socialism with market mechanism and
private property
1. Western-style electoral politics also took hold, and as in Russia,
these politics were marked by intense battles between presidents
and parliaments and by political parties
2. The social consequences of these revolutionary changes were
similar to those in Russia; ordinary citizens and the elderly were
once again the big losers, while the young and the ex-Communists
were the big winners (inequalities between richer regions also
increased)
3. Capital cities such as Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest concentrated
wealth, power, and opportunity as never before, while provincial
centers stagnated and old industrial areas declined; crime and
gangsterism increased in the streets and in the executive suites
2. The 1990s saw more than a difficult transition, with high social costs, to
market economies and freely elected governments in eastern Europe;
many citizens had never fully accepted communism, which they
equated with Russian imperialism and the loss of national
independence and crowds believed they were liberating the nation as
well as the individual
3. A surge of nationalism in eastern Europe recalled a similar surge of
state creation after WW I, authoritarian multinational empires had come
crashing down in revolution and nationalities had drawn upon ideologies
of popular sovereignty and national self determination
1. The response to this opportunity in the former communist countries
was varied in the 1990s, and most agree Poland, the Czech
Republic, and Hungary were most successful
2. Each of these three countries met the critical challenge of economic
reconstruction more successfully than Russia -- each could claim to
be the economic leader in eastern Europe
3. The reasons for these successes included considerable experience
with limited market reforms before 1989, flexibility and lack of
dogmatism in government policy, and an enthusiastic embrace of
capitalism by a new entrepreneurial class that appeared
4. In the first five years of reform, Poland created twice as many new
businesses as Russia, with a total population only one-fourth as
large as the population in Russia
4. The three countries did better than Russia in creating new civic
institutions, legal systems, and independent broadcasting networks that
reinforced political freedom and national revival
1. Lech Walesa in Poland and Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia were
elected presidents of their countries and proved as remarkable in
power as in opposition to communism
2. After Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution” in 1989, Havel and the
parliament accepted a “velvet divorce” in 1993 when Slovakian
nationalists wanted to form their own state
3. All three northern countries managed to control national and ethnic
tensions that might have destroyed their postcommunist
reconstruction efforts in the state
4. In sharp contrast to Russia, the popular goal of “rejoining the West”
reinforced political moderation and compromise; seeing themselves
as heirs to Christendom and liberal democratic values, Poles,
Hungarians, and Czechs hoped to find security in NATO
membership and economic prosperity in western Europe’s evertighter nation
5. Membership required proofs of character and stability and providing
these proofs and endorsed by the Clinton administration, Poland,
Hungary, and the Czech Republic were accepted into the NATIO
alliance in 1997; gaining admission to the European Union proved
more difficult because they had to accept and apply all rules and
regulations
5. Romania and Bulgaria were the eastern European laggards in the
postcommunist transition because Western traditions were much
weaker there and both countries were much poorer; although Romania
and Bulgaria eventually made progress in the late 1990s, full
membership for both countries in either NATO or the EU still lay far in
the future
6. The great postcommunist tragedy was Yugoslavia, which under Josip
Tito had been a federation of republics and regions under strict
communist rule
1. After Tito’s death in 1980, power passed to the sister republics,
which encouraged a revival of regional and ethnic conflicts that
were worsened by charges of ethnically inspired massacres during
the WW II and a dramatic economic decline in the mid 1980s
2. The revolutions of 1989 accelerated the breakup of Yugoslavia;
Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic intended to grab land from
other republics and unite all Serbs
3. In 1989 Milosevic abolished self-rule in the Serbian province of
Kosovo, where Albanian-speaking people constituted the majority
and Milosevic’s moves strengthened the cause of separatism, and
in June 1991 Slovenia and Croatia declared independence
4. Slovenia repulsed a Serbian attack, but Milosevic’s armies
managed to take about 30% of Croatia; in 1992 civil war spread to
Bosnia-Herzegovina which had declare independence -- the Serbs
(about 30%) refused to live under the more numerous Bosnian
Muslims
5. Yugoslavia had once been a tolerant and largely successful
multiethnic state but the Bosnian civil war unleashed ruthless
brutality, with murder, rape, destruction, and the herding of
refugees into concentration camps (the scenes of horror shocked
the world)
7. The Western nations had difficulty formulating an effective response to
the civil war
1. The turning point came in July 1995, when Bosnian Serbs overran
Srebrenica (a Muslim city) killing several thousand civilians and
world outrage prompted NATO to bomb Bosnian Serb military
targets intensively, and the Croatian army drove away the Serbs
2. In November 1995, President Clinton helped the warring sides
hammer out a complicated accord that gave the Bosnian Serbs
about 49% of Bosnia and the Muslim-Croatian peoples the rest;
troops from NATO countries patrolled Bosnia to try to keep the
peace
3. The Albanian Muslims of Kosovo had hoped for a restoration of
self-rule but they gained nothing from the Bosnian agreement and
in early 1998, frustrated Kosovar militants formed the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) and began to fight for independence
4. Serbian repression of the Kosovars increased, and in 1998 Serbian
forces attacked both KLA guerrillas and unarmed villages
displacing 250,000 people within Kosovo
8. By January 1999, the Western powers, led by the United States, were
threatening Milosevic with heavy air raids if he did not withdraw Serbian
armies from Kosovo and accept self-government for Kosovo, Milosevic
refused, and in March 1999 NATO began bombing Yugoslavia; Serbian
paramilitary forces responded by driving about 780,000 into exile
9. NATO redoubled its highly destructive bombing campaign, which
eventually force Milosevic to withdraw and allowed the joyous Kosovars
to regain their homeland; the impoverished Serbs eventually voted the
Milosevic out of office and in July 2001 a new pro-Western Serbian
government turned him over to the war crimes tribunal in the
Netherlands
10. The civil wars in the former Yugoslavia were a monument to human
cruelty and evil in the worst tradition of the twentieth century (ongoing
efforts to preserve peace, repatriate refugees and try war criminals
testified to the regenerative power of liberal values and human rights)
4. Unity and Identity in Western Europe
1. The movement toward western European unity which had inspired
practical politicians seeking economic recovery and idealistic visionaries
imagining a European identity that transcended destructive national
rivalries, received a second wind in the mid 1980s
1. The Single European Act of 1986 laid down a detailed legal
framework for establishing a single market, which would add the
free movement of labor, capital, and services to the existing free
trade in goods (work proceeding vigorously toward the single
market)
2. The act went into effect in 1993 as the European Community
proudly rechristened itself the European Union and French
president Francois Mitterrand and German chancellor Helmut Kohl
took the lead in pushing for a monetary union of European Union
members
3. After long negotiations and compromises, designed especially to
overcome Britain’s long-standing reluctance to cede aspects of
sovereignty, in December 1991 the member states reached an
agreement in the Dutch town of Maastricht
4. The Maastricht treaty set strict financial criteria for joining the
proposed monetary union, with its single currency, and set 1999 as
the target date for its establishment
5. The treaty also anticipated the development of common policies on
defense and foreign affairs after achieving the monetary union
among the members of the European Union
2. Western European elites supported the decisive stop toward economic
integration embodied in the Maastricht treaty; they saw monetary union
as a means of solving Europe’s ongoing economic problems, imposing
financial discipline costs, and reducing high unemployment
1. European elites also viewed monetary union as historic, irreversible
step toward a basic political unity that would allow western Europe
as a whole to regain its rightful place in world politics and to deal
with the United States as an equal power economically
2. The Maastricht plan for monetary union encountered widespread
skepticism considerable opposition from ordinary people, leftist
political parties, and patriotic nationalists
3. Many people resented the unending flow of rules handed down by
the EU’s ever-growing bureaucracy in Brussels,. Which sought to
impose common standards on everything
4. Increased unity meant yielding still more power to distant
“Eureaucrats” and political insiders, by undermining popular
sovereignty and democratic control through politics
5. Above all, many ordinary citizens feared that the new Europe was
being w/ their expense
6. Joining the monetary union required national governments to meet
stringent fiscal standards and impose budget cuts (reductions in
health care and social benefits)
3. Events in France dramatically illustrated these developments with the
monetary union
1. Mitterrand’s Socialist government had been forced to adopt
conservative financial policies in the 1980s and more cuts followed
the Maastricht treaty
2. In early 1993, frustrated French votes elected Jacques Chirac
president and gave a coalition of conservatives and moderates an
overwhelming victory over the Socialists
3. Chirac had won by promising a vigorous attack on unemployment,
but the Maastricht criteria demanded that he continue the
unpopular retrenchment of the Socialists and after some hesitation,
Chirac’s government choose deficit-reducing cuts in health benefits
and transportation; France’s powerful unions and railroad workers,
seconded by the Socialist opposition, responded with massive
protest marches and a crippling national strike
4. Despite the enormous inconvenience and economic damage, the
public supported the strike as many people felt that the transport
workers were also fighting for them
5. The government had to back down, although it continued its
austerity program with less provocative measures until disgruntled
French voters again gave the Socialists control of the National
Assembly; the socialists quickly passed a new law to reduce the
legal work-week to 35 hours to reduce France’s 12 percent
unemployment rate without spending
6. More generally, much of the western European public increasingly
saw laws to cut the workweek and share the work as a way to
reconcile desires for social welfare and a human market economy
with financial discipline and global competition
4. Battles over budgets and high unemployment throughout the European
Union in the 1990s raised profound questions about the meaning of
European unity and identity
1. Would the European Union expand as promised to include
postcommunist nations of east Europe, and if it did, how could
Muslim Turkey’s long-standing application be ignored?
2. How could European Union of thirty countries have any cohesion
and common identity?
3. Would a large, cohesive Europe remain closely linked with the
United States in the NATO alliance and with an evolving Western
tradition that was changing?
5. The merging of East Germany into the German Federal Republic
suggested the difficulties of full East-West integration under the best
conditions; after 1991 Helmut Kohl’s Germany pumped massive
investments into its new eastern provinces, but Germans in the east still
saw factories closed and social dislocation (unemployment in Germany
soared while German’s social benefits cushioned the economic
difficulties, many ordinary citizens were hurt)
1. Eastern German women now faced expensive child care and
variety of pressures to stay at home and let men take the hard-tofind jobs (women helped vote Kohl out of office)
2. Instructed by the serious difficulties of unification in Germany,
western Europeans proceeded cautiously in considering new
requests for EU membership
3. Sweden, Finland, and Austria were admitted because they had
strong capitalist economies and because they no longer needed to
maintain the legal neutrality
4. At the same time the former communist states pressed toward
meeting the EU’s detailed criteria for membership; the smooth
establishment of the euro on January 1, 2002, a unified common
currency, built confidence and brought an acceleration of
negotiations
5. On May 1,2004, the European Union expanded to include more
than 455 million citizens in twenty-five different countries and the
largest newcomer by far was Poland
6. In June 2004, more than two years after charging a special commission
to write “a new constitution for European citizens,” the leaders of the EU
reached agreement on the final document; the new constitution
established a rulebook to replace the network of treaties concluded by
member states since the 1957 creation of the European Economic
Community
1. The EU constitution created a president, a foreign minister, and a
voting system weighted to reflect the number of people in different
states; the result of intense debate and many compromises, the
constitution moved toward a more centralized federal system in
several fields, but each state retained veto power in the most
sensitive areas (tax, social policy)
2. The constitution also omitted explicit reference to Europe’s
Christian heritage a reference that Poland and Italy had most
championed and that France had most strongly opposed
3. In ordered for the constitution to take effect, each and every EU
country needed to ratify it, and seven states planned to place the
document before the voters
7. Although these referendum campaigns promised to be noisy and
divisive, especially in Britain, where fears of surrendering sovereignty to
a central European government were must acute, the new constitution
was a great achievement (building of a united, peaceful Europe)
4. New Challenges in the Twenty-first Century
1. The Prospect of Population Decline
2. The Growth of Immigration
3. Promoting Human Rights
4. The al-Qaeda Attack of September 11, 2001
5. The West Divided and War in Iraq
5. The Future in Perspective