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