Chapter 14 and 15 Highlights

Economy, Politics, Society, and Culture

1871-1914

What is European

(Western) Civilization?

The Two “Zones” of CivilizationInner ZoneEurope of steam, wealth, liberalism, progress

Outer ZoneLess advanced, poorer, more agriculture

Industrial Growth Created Problems and Opportunities

Congested, Dirty, Unhealthy citiesNo parks or yards, open sewers, trash, inadequate

disposal of waste (dunghills)

Cities of 100,000 or More

British cities growing at a rate of 40-70% per decade

Diseases Spread Quickly

More people die prematurely in a

city than the countryside

Constant flow of newcomers kept populations high

dirt and filth simply a part of life

“Utilitarianism”Jeremy Bentham

(1748-1832)

public problems should be handled

rationally and scientifically

“Greatest good for the greatest number”

Edwin Chadwick“Sanitary Idea”Disease prevented

and $ saved by cleaning up environment

Louis Pasteur(1822-1895) French

Pasteurizationand

Germ Theory

specific organisms caused specific disease

Joseph Lister(1827-1912)

English Surgeon

Antiseptic Principle

Destroy airborne bacteria

Decline in Death

Rates

Why are the numbers like this?

Standard of living pretty equal

European Standard of living 25X

greater

Urban Planning (1860s Paris, etc.)

Victorian Era 1830s to early 1900s

Growing gap between rich and poor (poorest 80% shared less than 50% total wealth)

The Middle Classes

Upper Middle Class (5%)The new aristocracy - bankers, large industry

Middle Middle-ClassEngineers, industrialists, scientists, architects,

accountants, doctors, lawyers, etc.

Lower Middle Classwhite collar workers

Middle-Class Culture

Consumption HabitsFood and drink main expenseFashionable clothingQuality housingEmployed Servants

Morality – “Victorian”Hard work, education, Vice vs. Virtue

Victorian Era was an age of gluttony for the rich

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861) How to run a Victorian house

Filled with plagiarism, contradictions, and bad editing(The tomato's) flavour stimulates the

appetite, and is almost universally approved. The Tomato is a wholesome fruit, and digests easily... it has been found to contain a particular acid, a volatile oil, a brown, very fragrant

extracto-resinous matter, a vegeto-mineral matter, muco-saccharine,

some salts, and, in all probability, an alkaloid. The whole plant has a

disagreeable odour, and its juice, subjected to the action of the fire, emits a vapour so powerful as to

cause vertigo and vomiting.

Mangos were like “turpentine” Lobsters were “indigestible”Garlic was “offensive” Potatoes were “suspicious”

Working Classes

4 out 5 peoplePhysical labor

Not as value unified as middle classes

Labor Aristocracyforemen and artisans

Semi-Skilled Workerscarpenter, bricklayers, factories

Unskilled Workers – largest groupservants, teamsters, teenagers, street

vendors, dock workers, prostitutes, etc.

The Changing Family

• Middle classes still prized economic factors –many older men and younger women

• Working classes abandoned lengthy courtship

Marriage

Why are births

declining?More Children

survive

Families have less babies

Urban living

Victorians promoted discipline and a cold and

“moral” upbringing

Working class = more breast-feeding and less

abandonment

Heinrich Hoffman’s 1845 book Der Struwwelpeter showed consequences of misbehaving

The Second Industrial Revolutionc. 1750-1850 c. 1870-1914

TextilesSteam engineIronRailroadsGlassmakingChemicals

ElectricityCombustion Steel (Bessemer)

TelephoneFilmChemicals

World Market CapitalismVertical, Horizontal, and boom and bust cycles

Gold standard facilitated global commerce

Nations tried to balance imports and exports

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Britain excelled at “invisible exports”(shipping, interest, and insurance)

The Great Migration

Most immigrants from the British Isles and to the United States and Russia

Different degrees of repatriation and prejudice

How did governments use Nationalism?

• More political participation from the people = more loyalty to their nations

• Leaders more skilled at manipulating feelings

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

-Albert Einstein

French Third Republic1870-1940

1871 Socialist Paris Commune revolted Anti – German, clergy, bourgeois

Over 20,000 Communards killed in a violent class struggle

Prime Minister Leon Gambetta

(moderate republican) balanced upper

and lower classes

Promoted Free

compulsory education for girls and boys

Nationalist Public SchoolsRepublican, anti-German, and secular

Worlds Fairs promoted nationalism

1878 Exposition Universelle celebrated recovery from Franco-Prussian war

1889 Exposition Universelle100 anniversary of French Rev

The Dreyfus Affair 1898-1899

Jewish army Captain Alfred Dreyfus

falsely convicted of treason in 1894

Affair Deeply Divided France

Fighting allowed the anti-Catholic factions to come to power

Conservative, pro-Army,

mostly Catholic

Anti-Cath., pro-secular republicans

vs

British Constitutional Monarchy

3 Prime Ministers who shaped the UK

William Gladstone(1809-1898)

4 time British Liberal Party PM

on and off 1850s-1880s

Liberal economic changes

Conservative PM Benjamin DisraeliUK voting

expanded in 1832, 1867, 1884 to avoid revolts

Universal male suffrage in 1918

1906-1914 Liberal Party to power

1909 People’s Budget

taxed the rich for national health care,

unemployment benefits, pensions, etc.

Liberal Party PM David Lloyd

George

Why would this not have been possible before 1884?

Irish Nationalists pushed for Home

Rule(supported by Gladstone)

Catholic and Protestant divisions

WWI slowed conflict

Jewish EuropeansZionism and Modern Anti-Semitism

Civil Rights gained in France (1791) and Germany (1871)

Jewish citizens made many gains

in some areas

became prominent in journalism,

medicine, law, finance, railroads

Rothschildfamily

Stock market crash of 1873 increased

anti-Semitism

Extremist Con. and Nat. politicians used

anti-Semitism to mobilize support

AustrianKarl Lueger pushed fierce

Anti-SemitismAppealed to a young

Adolf Hitler

Hermann Ahlwardt’s1895 plea to the Reichstag to close

Germany’s borders to Jewish immigrants

1880s Russia used anti-Semitic Pogroms to channel anger away from the govt.

1930 Kishinev Pogrom

Report from a Zionist

newspaper

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

(1903)Fraudulent, anti-

Semitic text describing a Jewish

plot for global domination

Theodor Herzl

(1860-1904)Hungarian

ZionismCreation of a Jewish state

“We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve

the faith of our fathers. It is not permitted to us. In vain we are loyal

patriots, sometimes super-loyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in

vain do we strive to enhance the fame of our native lands in the arts and sciences, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In our native lands where we have lived for centuries we are still decried as aliens…

Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us. No nation on earth has endured such struggles and sufferings

as we have.”

Marxism and Socialism expanded France, Belgium, Austria, Russia

1864 Marx helped form the First International

Working Men’s Association

Late 1800s – Quality of life improvedUnions legalized and less revolutionary

Revisionist Socialists work for reforms within capitalism

Less capitalistvs.worker warfare

May 1 “May Day”

Late 1800ssocialism within each nation became different and more nationalistic

Economic inferiority led some women to organize for

equality and women’s rights

Victories For Women’s

Rights1882 Full property rights

in England1880s Small increase in white-collar employment

Some education improvements

Feminismeducation, property, representation

Emmeline Pankhurst(1858-1928)

Emily Davidson(1872-1913)

Women’s Suffrage (not comprehensive)New Zealand, 1893Finland, 1906Austria, Poland, Germany, Russia, 1918USA, 1920Britain, 1918, 1924, 1928France, 1945Canada, 1960Portugal, 1976

Triumph of Sciencesynonymous with truth and progress

Dmitri Mendeleev(1834-1907) RussianAtomic weights of

elements and periodic law

Michael Faraday(1791-1867) EnglandElectric Generator

(dynamo)

Social SciencesStudying data and statistics to understand human behavior and solve societal problems

Charles Darwin

(1809-1882)English

Naturalist

Natural Selection

1831-1836, HMS Beagle

Organisms struggle and compete to survival

1859 On the Origin of Species

published 16 years after completion

"like confessing to a murder"

Humans are a part of nature not above it

Darwin’s theories caused

different levels of

controversy

Herbert Spencer

(1820-1903) Social

Darwinismand

“Survival of the fittest”

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Austrian PsychiatristRepression of

childhood experiences and

sexual urges causes mental harm“Defense Mechanisms”

Idprimitive irrational unconscious

Egorationalizing conscious – what

you could do

Superegoingrained morals – what you

should do

Friedrich Nietzsche

(1844-1900)Western civilization in

declineÜbermensch needed to create new value

systems beyond traditional Christianity

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? …: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us

to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what

sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of

this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods

simply to appear worthy of it?”

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not

become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss

the abyss also gazes into you.”

The New Physics

Challenges to rational and

constant natural laws (Newtonian)

Albert Einstein(1879-1955)

German Physicist

time and spacematter and energyinfinite universe