Transcript Chapter 24 - sbcsseport.org

Chapter 24
The Building of European Supremacy:
Society and Politics of WWI
Population Trends and Migration
• The number of Europeans had risen from about 266 million in 1850 to 447
in 1910
• Population after 1910 slowed in industrialized areas but rose in
undeveloped regions
• This helped relieve the social and population pressures on the Continent
and Europe a huge influence on the rest of the world not seen since the
16th century
The Second Industrial Revolution
• The basic heavy industries of Belgium, France, and Germany expanded
rapidly
• In particular, the growth of the German industry was stunning and its steel
production surpassed Britain’s in 1893
• This emergence of an industrial Germany was the major fact of European
economic and political life at the turn of the century
• The first Industrial Revolution was associated with textiles, steam, and
iron, and the second was associated w/ steel, chemicals, electricity, and oil
• Electricity was the most versatile and transportable source of power ever
discovered
• Despite the new industries, the second half of the 19th century was not a
period of uninterrupted smooth economic growth
• Bad weather and foreign competition put grave pressures on
European agriculture and caused many European peasants to emigrate
to other parts of the world
• These developments lowered the prices of consumer goods, but put
great pressure on European agriculture
• Several large banks failed in 1873, and the rate of capital investment
slowed
• However, the overall standard of living improved in the second half of
the 19th century
• The new industries produced consumer goods and these goods
brought the economy out of inactivity by the end of the century
The Middle Class in Ascendancy
• The sixty years before WWI were the age of the middle classes
• The London Great Exhibition of 1851 held in the Crystal Palace
displayed the products and the new material life they had forged
• After this, the middle classes became the negotiator of consumer
taste
• After the revolutions of 1848, the middle classes ceased to be a
revolutionary group
• Once the question of equality had been raised, large and small
property owners moved to protect what they possessed against
demands from socialist and other working-class groups
• The middles classes grew increasingly diverse and the most
prosperous
• Only a few hundred families gained such wealth and beneath them
were comfortable small entrepreneurs and professional people
• There was a wholly new element – “white-collar workers” who formed
the lower middle class, or petite bourgeoisie
• They included secretaries, retail clerks, and lower-level bureaucrats in
business and government
• They often had working class origins but had middle class aspirations
and consciously sought to distance themselves from a lower-class
lifestyle
Late 19th Urban Life
• Europe became more urbanized than ever in the 2nd half of the 19th
century
• Between 1850 and 1911, urban dwellers rose from 25 to 44% of the
population in France and from 30 to 60% in Germany
• The most famous and extensive transformation occurred in Paris
• Napoleon III determined to redesign Paris and he appointed George
Haussmann
• In 1889 the Eiffel Tower was built and it became a symbol of French
industrial strength
• Development of all kinds displaced many city dwellers and raised
urban land values and rent
• Consequently, both the middle classes and the working class began to
seek housing elsewhere
• Also, Concerns about health first appeared with the great cholera
epidemics of the 1830s and 1840s
• The government began to publicize the dangers of unsanitary
conditions and many reformers linked the issues of poor living
conditions with public health
• The proposed solution to the health hazard was cleanliness, to be
achieved through new water and sewer systems.
• The concern for public health led to an expansion of governmental power
on various levels
• Throughout Europe, issues related to health repeatedly opened the way
for the government to intervene in the lives of citizens
• Debates about health led to debates about housing
• Housing became a political issue because of the large number of people
migrating to the cities
Varieties of Late 19thCntury Women’s Experiences
• By 1914, the goal was to provide the working classes of Europe homes
that would allow them to enjoy a family life.
• Until the last quarter of the century, married women could not own
property in their own names
• Reforms came slowly but in some countries laws were passed to give
married women the right to own property
• In effect, women were legal minors in the eyes of the Napoleonic Code
and the remnants of Roman law
• Divorce was illegal in some countries and double standards existed, with
society tolerating more men’s vices than women’s
• The father usually received custody of the children in cases of divorce, no
matter how he had treated them previously
• Also, Women had much less access to education than men had and what
was available to them was inferior to that available to men
• Towards the end of the century, universities began admitting women and
women’s colleges began to form
• The growth of industry and retail stores opened many new employment
opportunities for women
• Women rarely occupied more prominent positions and still received low
wages since it was assumed she could have a husband
• Upon marriage, women withdrew from the labor force
• Employers in this time period often preferred young,
unmarried women whose family responsibilities normally wouldn’t
interfere with her work
• The real wages paid to male workers increased during
this period, so families had a somewhat reduced need
for a second income
• At this time period, major manufacturers would continue to employ many
women
• The manufacturer would purchase the material and then put it out for
tailoring (putting-out system)
• Women were exploited in this system as they were laid off in hard times,
although they were the ones doing the work
• A vast social gap separated poor working-class women from middle-class
counterparts
• As their fathers’ and husbands’ incomes permitted, middle-class women
participated in the vast consumerism that marked the late 19th and early
20th centuries
• They enjoyed electricity, new sanitation and also could employ numerous
servants
• More than any other women, middle-class women became limited to the
roles of wife and mother
• Magazines and books for women began to praise motherhood
• In this time period, women now symbolized first her father’s and then her
husband’s worldly success
• This close association between religion and domestic life for women a
reason for later tension between feminism and religion
• Also, middle-class women were responsible for charity
• These roles for middle-class women would dominate European life for
decades to come
• Many women themselves did not support feminist
• Also, many women did not want to associate with different social classes
so it was difficult to unite the women
• The most advanced women’s movement was in Britain where Millicent
Fawcett led the moderate National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies
• She believed Parliament would only grant women the vote if it were
convinced that they would be responsible in their political duties
• Emmeline Pankhurst and her followers of the Women’s Social and Political
Union lobbied publicity and privately for the extension of the vote of
women
• Women didn’t receive the right to vote until 1918 as a result of their
contribution to WWI
• Before WWI, only Norway allowed women to vote on political issues
• In France, the government did not allow women the vote until after WWII
• In Germany, women received the vote in 1919
Jewish Emancipation
• In 1782, Joseph II, the Habsburg emperor, issued a decree that placed the
Jews of his empire under more or less the same laws as Christians
• Jewish communities in Italy and Germany were usually allowed to mix on
an equal footing with the Christian population
• Also, in certain countries like Russia and Poland, prejudice and
discrimination continued until WWI
• After the revolutions of 1848, Jews in general saw an improvement in their
situation that lasted decades
• Many Jews in Western Europe were allowed to enter the professions and
other occupations once closed to them
• Jews intermarried freely with non-Jews since such laws prohibiting the
practice had been repealed
• However, anti-Semitism erupted throughout Western Europe and people
began to attack prosperous Jews
Labor, Socialism, and Politics to WWI
• Except for Russia, all the major European states adopted broad-based
electoral system in the late 19th century
• The political parties mobilized working class voters more than any other
group
• Socialism emerged as a political ideology that was supposed to unite the
working classes across national borders
• However, European socialists underestimated the power of nationalism
• In 1864, a group of British and French trade unionists founded the
International Working Men’s Association
• In the inaugural address, Karl Marx approved the trade unions’ efforts to
reform the conditions of labor within the existing political processes
• The organization held debates over socialist doctrine and through these
debates, Marxism emerged as the single most important strand of
socialism
• The Fabian Society, founded in 1884, was Britain’s most influential socialist
group
• Many Fabians sought to educate the country about the rational wisdom of
socialism and they were particularly interested in modes of collective
ownership on the municipal level
• The Second International had been founded in 1889 to unify various
national socialist parties
• French workers were uninterested in politics or socialism and believed
more in anarchism
• The organizational process of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD)
kept Marxist socialism alive during the late 19th and early 20th centuries
• The so-called Iron Chancellor (Otto Von Bismarck) believed socialism
would undermine German politics and society
• Count Sergei Witte led Russia into the industrial age by pursuing a policy
of planned economic development
• Many free peasants had to work on large estates owned by nobles or
more prosperous peasants called kulaks
• Between 1860 and 1914, Russia’s population rose from 50 million to
around 103 million people
• The leading Russian Marxist was Gregory Plekhanov and his chief Vladimir
Ilyich Ulyanov
• Lenin’s faction assumed the name Bolsheviks, meaning “majority,” and the
other more democratic revolutionary faction come to be known as the
Mensheviks
• Lenin believed a mass party functioning in a democratic fashion wouldn’t
completely reform Russia
• Between 1900 and WWI, Nicholas II was able to confront political
upheaval more or less successfully
• Russia lost in a war with the Japanese and lost Port Arthur, Russia’s naval
base on the coast of China in 1905
• On January 22, 1905, a Russian Orthodox priest led several hundred
workers to present a petition to the tsar for the improvements of
industrial conditions
• As they approached the Winter Palace, the troops opened fire, killing
about 40 people and wounding hundreds of others
• The final death toll was about 200 killed and 800 wounded and the day,
known as Bloody Sunday, marked a turning point
• In early October 1905, strikes broke out in Saint Petersburg, and for all
practical purposes, worker groups, called soviets, controlled the city
• Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, which promised Russia
constitutional government
• Early in 1906, Nicholas II announced the creation of a representative body,
the Duma, with two chambers