In this course, as conducted by this writer at least, the following national states and empires will play the leading role, even though what we'll discuss will not always have to do with the concerns of national states and empires.
Know, then, something about the size, population and location of the following as your geographical background for the early sessions; i.e. those which deal with events after 1815: Great Britain (for which England is a convenient alternative, if we omit from consideration her appendages Wales and Scotland), the British empire (i.e., Great Britain and her overseas possessions), France (a dominant European power and cultural leader), Prussia (one of the two most powerful of the independent Germanic states in the heart of Europe), Austria (also known as the multi-ethnic Habsburg empire of Austrian Germans and subject Slavic and Hungarian peoples as well as the rival of Prussia for supremacy among the German states), tsarist Russia (largest, most populous and least democratic of the European nations), and the Ottoman empire (i.e., Muslim Turkey with territorial possessions in eastern Europe, the Middle east and North Africa). Later, as the doings of some of these impinge on the wider world, we shall encounter their influence in China, Japan and Africa. Notice that the U.S. will not figure as largely as those already mentioned. This is because U.S. history is available as separate courses at the college.
Your understanding of the material of the course can also be enhanced by reference to the many historical reference books and encyclopedias available in the college library; in such books as the Harper Encyclopedia of the Modern World, for example. Another useful publication for 'quick 'n easy' discovery of meanings and information on abstract concepts in the social sciences is the Gould & Kolb A Dictionary of the Social Sciences. For more extended treatment of specific historical events and periods, check out the multi-volume New Cambridge Modern History from about 1800 onward. And, obviously, your thirst for historical knowledge would be served even better by taking the time to read (in addition to assigned reading, of course) a book-length treatment of a topic of your choice . . . see me for recommendations or, for short extracts on syllabus topics, see the Recommended Reading document. Also included in what follows is a series of questions (of the kind that get asked in exams) that you will find answers to in the lectures and the reading.
So determined was Metternich to resist the forces of political change that not only did he send the Austrian army into Italy to put down popular rebellion there (in Naples and Piedmont, for example) but prevailed on France to act similarly in Spain. Apparently the enemy within (radicals and reformers) was a greater menace than the ambitions of neighboring states. But the success of an imposed conservatism was not entirely complete, as indicated by events in France in the late 1820s when the attempt of King Charles X to break the constitutional restraints on his royal prerogatives precipitated a revolution in 1830 that forced his abdication and set France on the road to a bourgeois ascendancy.
Metternich Edmund Burke's 'organic' society
Carlsbad Decrees Germanic Confederation
Zollverein Six Acts
But while the bourgeoisie advanced, the working classes languished in many ways. Even in liberal England, there was no concession to the workers' political aspirations in the 1832 Act and, though labor unions were legalized in 1824, many crippling barriers (most notably the illegality of strikes) remained. And when the workers joined together to promote the Great Charter for political democracy, the movement ended in failure in 1848 after a decade of agitation.
The economic aspects of liberal thought ("economic liberalism" or laissez faire ) also did little to bring the working classes into the mainstream of social advance. According to theorists, "government intervention in the market place merely restricted the play of economic forces that if left to themselves would increase productivity and prosperity." It was not always clear, however, how an unfettered business elite on the high road to production and profit might produce a promised "prosperity" for all when, in reality, exploitation and abuse in factory and mine was often the result. Nevertheless, as far as liberals were concerned, the "government that governed best, governed least." In this guise, liberalism often became the narrow, self-serving creed that inevitably generated alternative and less accommodating responses.
Yet outside the sphere of politics and economics, liberalism attracted reformers with a bent for the greater elaboration of social justice. The Englishman Jeremy Bentham, for example, was an influential exponent of what were called "utilitarian ideas" that sought to make it the task of government to distribute 'pleasure' (public education, for example) as well as 'pain' (due punishment of criminals, for example) in a manner appropriate to the "greatest good of the greatest number." Such ideas were taken up by those in the bureaucracy in Britain especially and notable gains were made in making government more rational and humane in its approach to administration, education, public health, the legal and penal systems, and so on. Liberalism could boast another exemplar in John Stuart Mill, English author of the famous essay On Liberty (1859) and " the most important liberal spokesman of the 19th century." The essay is an outstanding work of political theory for its comprehensive championing of the notion of individual freedom.
The culmination of these societal trends and tensions was reached in the watershed year of 1848 when revolution, fueled by economic distress among the lower classes, once more reared its head throughout Europe. The great example was shown by France where calls for greater liberalization of the monarchy resulted in the overthrow of King Louis Philippe and the establishment of a shortlived French republic. However, owing to differences between the middle classes (satisfied with republican order and committed to the sanctity of private property) and workers (still lacking the social gains that would have put meat on the table), the political situation degenerated into scenes of public rioting that were brutally put down by the military, thus ending the republican episode and inaugurating the authoritarian regime of Napoleon III. The middle class alone triumphed. More surprising was the change of circumstances in central Europe where the long established ascendancy of Metternich's repressive 'system' came crashing down with revolts in Vienna and Berlin and elsewhere. The king of Prussia, who had given short shrift to a Prussian landtag (parliament) in 1847, was forced to recall that body and allow elections for a constituent assembly (to write a constitution) in 1848. Indeed, a spontaneous movement of German reformers led to the convening of what was intended to be a united parliament for the then separate states of Germany, namely, the Frankfurt Assembly, in the following year. But all this heady activity came to nought in the face of recovered royal governments (and their armies) in both Prussia and Austria, as these benefited from the same mutual suspicions that separated the middle classes and the working classes elsewhere. Similar results obtained in the several other rebellions that disturbed smaller states in Italy and elsewhere, even if some of the gains of that year endured.
Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations Jeremy Bentham and Utilitarianism
J.S. Mill The Corn Laws Great Reform Act (1832)
Frankfurt parliament
The first question to be answered is why the growth of industry (i.e., the change from production by manual to mechanical means) originated in Britain. The answer ranges over such factors as : the economic underpinning supplied by a sound agricultural base, ease of transportation in the context of a small island, absence of barriers to trade, a spirit of innovative enterprise, existence of a pool of skilled workmen and cheap labor, facilities for credit and capital investment, experience of colonial trade, population increase, as well as the steady shift of population from countryside to town brought about by the so-called Enclosure movement in agriculture. Central to the whole process was the spate of inventions that made possible the gigantic increases in productivity, the hallmark of industrial advance. Without the steam engine and its application to moving machinery, the factory system of production would hardly have been possible. In the opening stages of the industrial revolution, when "Cotton was King," the most important inventions were those related to the production of cotton cloth which figured so greatly in the national economy of Britain as a lucrative item of export. Machines of simple construction (though revolutionary for their time) that recall this development are Kay's "flying shuttle" in the weaving process, Hargreaves' "spinning jenny" (for drawing thread), and Cartwright's power loom, again in the weaving process. Innovations that were to displace textiles as the pre-eminent measure of the economy's buoyancy also took place in the coal and iron industry, leading to the forging of high-quality iron and, eventually, the railway system covering most of Britain.
The congregation and increase of people in cities and towns were on a scale never before experienced--urbanization was in full swing. Social problems were thereby created that suggested the intervention of government for their amelioration, something new for an institution (i.e., government) that formerly concerned itself primarily with matters of national defense, trade policy, criminal justice, and road building. The most dramatic problem to be faced was the atrocious state of the housing of the poor in the crowded cities, a condition aggravated by appalling deficiencies in public health and water supplies. The nature of working-class life of the period was grim indeed, resting on the hostile cleavage between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' that precipitated the long struggle for the full recognition of unions as well as the right to strike. No less daunting were the excruciating circumstances in which the poorest of the working classes lived. Nor could their material condition be much improved before the advent of organized public health measures (after 1848) to combat disease and contagion, and, later in the century, the provision of affordable public housing.
Enclosure movement laissez faire
The New Poor Law The Combination Acts
The People's Charter Malthus' Essay on Population
The 'social novel' The Great Exhibition of 1851
The early proponents of socialism, the Frenchman Charles Fourier and the Britisher Robert Owen, turned their backs on the emerging industrial society of the opening decades of the nineteenth century and, instead, saw the redemption of mankind in the establishment of small communities with a shared social and economic environment, hardly a workable approach for coping with the unstoppable engine of industrial progress. Indeed, their reforming impulses were dubbed "utopian" by a more hard headed theorist of the mid nineteenth century, Karl Marx. As his engine of social and economic progress, Marx offered a dubious "scientific" socialism that while accepting the fact of industrialism as a given condition of the new society, sought to change the basis from which it proceeded. Not the bourgeois capitalists but rather the producing workers (namely, the proletariat) would steer society toward the emancipation of mankind in both mind and body. But to accomplish this the whole edifice of private enterprise would have to be swept away and a new socialist system take its place. This system would be based on the abolition of private property, governmental control of the means of production (factories, business, etc.) as well as centralized planning of an economy geared to the eventual creation of a classless society where, according to Marx (in his own utopian formulation), "everyone would give according to his abilities and get according to his needs."
socialism Communist Manifesto
Charles Fourier and Utopianism Robert Owen & New Harmony
Marx and Engels Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism
The Syllabus of Errors and Rerum Novarum
Our main interest in this regard is the realization of German national unity in 1871, the culmination of an ambition of German peoples that for decades foundered on the intense rivalry of the two great Germanic powers of Prussia and Austria. Here the influence of Otto von Bismarck becomes paramount in securing the prize for Prussia. For the Second Reich (Imperial Germany after 1870) was born out of a series of military conflicts, generated or manipulated by Bismarck's statecraft, that removed Austria from consideration and asserted the military and economic primacy of Prussia in German as well as in European affairs. Once Bismarck had achieved the dream of German nationality, he turned to more peaceful pursuits of statesmanship, such as the establishment of the new German state's security and prosperity. But given the lasting enmity of France (defeated by Prussia in the war of 1870), it could never entirely be plain sailing on the diplomatic front.
Neither was Bismarck free from domestic problems; some of his own making, as in his ill considered decision to wrestle with the Catholic Church (the so-called Kulturkampf) and through the laws passed to weaken the influence of the German socialist party as the representative of the working class. Neither campaign was ultimately successful and much harm was done to disturb the social harmony of the new Germany. Among his more positive achievements, however, was his institution of a broad program of social insurance benefits for German workers at a time(1880s) when none of the other great powers had considered such concessions to the working classes.
Nationalism North German Confederation
Slesvig-Holstein affair Battle of Sadowa
Hohenzollern candidacy Ems dispatch
annexation of Alsace-Lorraine Kulturkampf
Imperialism was not confined to the subjection or exploitation of non-European peoples; it also led to rivalry and tension between the industrial powers themselves, each anxious to prosper at the expense of the other, preferably without recourse to war. A case in point was the confrontation between Britain and France in 1898 along the River Nile (the Fashoda incident). A device to eliminate or lessen these dangerous rivalries and tensions had been devised at Berlin (via the Berlin Conference) in 1885 and the agreements made there generally worked to keep Britain, France, Germany and others from each other's throats while they engaged in the less dangerous and more lucrative process of exploiting their respective native peoples.
Although the 'high adventure' of imperialist activity in Africa grabbed the headlines, the continent of Asia was not immune to penetration either. Parts of Asia were already in the possession of Europeans for a century and more (for example, Britain in India). But as the insatiable desire for trade on the Europeans' terms grew ever more insistent, China itself, long protected by her national self- sufficiency and suspicion of overseas contacts, also fell victim through the extortion of trade concessions favorable to the West. Incidentally, imperialism in Asia is also notable for the expansionist activity in the late-19th century of the singularly successful non-European power, Japan. Nor should you have the notion that imperialism always connotes rule over 'overseas' territories. Perhaps the most successful imperialist power of all has been Russia whose eastward encroachments in the 18th and 19th c. were to add the gigantic land mass of Siberia and central Asia and its peoples to the European Russian homeland.
Suez Canal Col. 'Urabi the bombing of Alexandria(1882)
Berlin Conference (1885) Henry Stanley
King Leopold's Congo Free State
The Congo reform Association Morel & Casement
The Herero rebellion
The "white man's burden"
A special commisioner, Lin Zexu, was appointed by the emperor and given full powers to act. His peremptory demands and threats of violence after his arival in Canton early in 1839 forced the merchants to hand over thousands of casks of opium--some 6 to 9 million dollars worth--which Lin promptly dumped into the sea without compensation to the merchants. Whatever hesitation the British government may have had about retaliating against this Chinese action in halting what, after all, was an illegal trade under Chinese law, it was soon dispelled when influential commercial interests in England portrayed the episode as a wilful assault on the private property of British subjects. The counteraction of the British government--dispatch of warships and troops to ravage the defenseless Chinese coast--eventually forced the Chinese government to make humiliating concessions to Britain in trade and territory as well as pay a large indemnity both for the costs of the war and as compensaton to the merchants. These and other punitive terms are detailed in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking that brought the war to a close . Needless to say, the opium trade continued unchecked.
A second opium war broke out in 1856 over a "point of honor" when a British-registered vessel bearing the British flag was boarded by Chinese harbor police in search of a bandit who was thought to be on board. The refusal of the governor of Canton to apologise for the alleged affront to the British flag precipitated another round of hostilities. The inevitable result of superior British naval force led to another punitive treaty, the Treaty of Tientsin (1858) and more onerous concessions that included the tacit 'legalization' of opium: hardly an episode that did anything to dispel the Chinese prception of the uncivilized nature of the "Western barbarians."
The Canton System The Cohong Commissioner Lin
Capt. Elliot Treaty of Nanking
The "Arrow" incident(1856) Treaty of Tientsin Self-Strengthening
American interest in Japan developed in the second quarter of the 19th century when the crews of American whaling vessels were treated roughly any time they ventured close to Japanese shores. On occasion ships were fired upon and sailors imprisoned when they landed for fuel and provisions. Now (after 1840) that the U.S. had become a Pacific Ocean power, it became necessary to approach the Japanese government for a change in policy and to make clear that outrages against U.S. citizens would no longer be tolerated. Although the shogun (Japan's military ruler) had been warned of U.S. concerns by the Dutch monarch, the anti-Western policy continued to be maintained while little was done to prepare the country for the confrontation to come.
Commodore Mathew Perry arrived in Edo (now Tokyo) harbor in July 1853 bearing a letter from the U.S. president that broached the issue of humanitarian assistance as well as suggesting the mutual advantages that would accrue from the opening of trade. Though thoroughly alarmed by the astonishing sight of Perry's steam-driven men-o'-war, the stiff-necked and uncooperative Japanese officials prevaricated, leaving Perry no option but to promise to return in the following spring for a reply, though hinting that he would be accompanied by many more ships and leaving the Japanese in no doubt that there would be some reckoning.
The second expedition duly arrived in March 1854. After the usual uncooperativeness had merely served to sharpen Perry's impatience, the Japanese, realizing their utter military weakness , signed the treaty (Treaty of Kanagawa) that answered favorably the American request, thus initiating a new and progressive phase in the history of Japan as she opened herself to the West and accepted the challenge of modernization.
Tokugawa Shogun daimyo samurai Bakufu
Commodore Perry Treaty of Kanagawa
Harris treaty Meiji Restoration
Although these alliances and agreements were defensive in nature (i.e., promising each partner active military support only in retaliation to an attack on one or other partner), their worth was tested on several occasions, most notably in the two international crises over the political situation in Morocco and in the serious confrontation between Russia and Austria over the annexation to Austria of Serb-dominated Bosnia in 1908. Also, a continuing strain on the peace of Europe in the years after 1900 was the gradual embitterment of the relations between Britain and Germany over the latter's insistence on building a battle fleet, a policy interpreted by Britain as a challenge to her naval supremacy.
Weltpolitik The Balkans Russo-Japanese war
Entente Cordiale Dual Alliance Triple Entente
Moroccan crises (1905/11) Bosnian annexation
The inability of either side (the Allies--Great Britain, France, Russia; the Central Powers-- Germany, Austria-Hungary) to achieve an early decisive victory lay in the changed nature of warfare that came as an unpleasant surprise to military leader mired in outworn strategic thinking. This failure to appreciate (and inability to counter) the withering machine-gun fire and artillery of defensive positions resulted in enormous losses and casualties on both sides. Civilians, also, even though far from the fighting, felt the privation of war, especially in the food shortages and incessant demands of governments for greater sacrifices.
Archduke Ferdinand Gavrilo Princip Black Hand Society
Schlieffen Plan The July 23 ultimatum
The German "blank check" Fourteen Points
The most notable result of the peace with reference to Austria-Hungary was the breakup of that empire into its constituent national (ethnic) parts. Thus an independent Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia (combining Bosnia with Serbia and other Slavic territories) emerged alongside the new, reduced and weak republic of Austria.
The Fourteen Points League of Nations
Treaty of Versailles Polish Corridor
Note that there were two revolutions in 1917: a spontaneous liberal and social democratic one in February and the carefully planned Bolshevik (communist) coup by Lenin in October. One topic to be considered here is the set of circumstances that enabled Lenin, leader of a tiny and unknown group of conspiratorial, revolutionary socialists, to mount a successful attack on the post-tsarist provisional government of liberal reformers. The new communist state was a much reduced one in the wake of the stringent terms imposed on the new Bolshevik government by the victorious Germans (remember that the war was still on!) at the peace of Brest Litovsk in March 1918; though most of the lost territory was recovered after the German defeat later in the year.
Under Lenin, the political and economic transformation of Russia under Communism was immediate and harsh, but the task of reconstruction was also threatened by civil war between the Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik forces, a state of affairs rendered even more horrendous for ordinary Russians through the brutal exaction of food supplies from the Russian peasants. The communist government of Lenin and his Bolshevik followers won that war and thus remained firmly in power, with dire consequences for the Russian people.
Bloody Sunday (1905) October Manifesto (1905)
Provisional government Petrograd soviet
Kerensky Lenin Trotsky Kornilov
Bolsheviks Mensheviks Lenin's April Theses
Brest Litovsk treaty "war communism" NEP
Politburo Collectivization Five-Year Plan
N.K.V.D. The Great Purges kulaks
In Germany, however, democracy proved to be just an interlude before the heavy hand of totalitarian rule descended in the form of the Nazi juggernaut. Indeed, democracy was in retreat in most of the states of central Europe and by 1930 dictatorships of one sort or another were in place or on the way in all of them except Czechoslovakia. The greatest threat to democracy in the Weimar republic, of course, was the rise of Hitler's Nazi party in the wake of the 1929 depression with its massive economic dislocation and spiraling unemployment. The trend is clearly discerned in the series of elections, both national and local, held from 1930 to 1932. By 1932 the Nazis were the largest party in the German parliament (Reichstag), having converted millions of electors to a political program that preached racial hatred and intolerance while glorifying militarism and despising democracy.
Spartacist coup Kapp putsch Beer-Hall putsch
Mein Kampf Dawes Plan Young Plan
Locarno treaty Fascism Inflation crisis
The Nazi 25-point program
Of course, little of all this could have been done without the compliance or complaisance of millions of ordinary Germans, most of whom were doubtless glad (or, perhaps, resigned) to accept the loss of much of their freedom as the unemployment statistics improved after years of privation during the worst of the depression. Special measures were taken to combat unemployment as well as wean the workers into tolerating Nazi supervision of their workaday lives. The regime succeeded in conciliating even the Catholic church by concluding a formal agreement (Concordat) with the Pope for the protection of church observance and management of parochial schools, though not without exacting the Church's abject and shameful compliance in matters of politics and ideology.
Reichstag Fire Feb. 28 decree Enabling act
Concordat Gleichschaltung S.S. D.A.F.
Nuremberg Laws Strength through Joy Gestapo
Four Year Plan Labor service Night of the Long Knives
The progressive steps to be noted in Hitler's path to war are his secret rearmament in 1933- 34, the introduction of conscription (the draft) in 1935, and the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936--all in defiance of the treaty of Versailles. With Germany's former enemies (Britain and France) beset by their own domestic problems as well as being militarily unprepared, and the U.S.A. following a policy of isolation from involvement in European affairs, Hitler felt confident enough by 1938 to take the daring step of achieving a cherished goal, namely, political union with Austria, yet another violation of the treaty. This was shortly followed by intense pressure on Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland ( a region inhabited by ethnic Germans), an episode that brought great discredit on the democracies Britain and France for their timorous policy of appeasement in the face of Hitler's threats. The further attack on the integrity of Czechoslovakia--its dismemberment and annexation early in 1939--finally woke up the two democracies to the menace of Hitler's expansionism, whereupon Britain offered a guarantee of aid to Poland (Hitler's presumed next victim) and introduced conscription for the first time in peacetime. The final act before the long expected war broke out was also Hitler's--an astonishing diplomatic coup--a non-aggression pact with Stalin--that gave him the 'green light' for his surprise attack on Poland on Sep. 1, 1939, an act of aggression that unleashed World war II.
The Four-Year Plan The Anschluss Lebensraum
Chamberlain and appeasement The Sudetenland Munich pact
The Nazi-Soviet pact (1939)
The other (non-European) half of the war was fought in the Pacific between Japan and the U.S.--a pygmy challenging a giant. Despite well planned initial victories by Japan, the vastly superior U.S. armaments-producing capacity gradually decimated the enemy forces. Still both the Japanese and German armed forces fought a long-drawn-out and bitter resistance on all fronts, so that the Allied steamroller took another two years before the final victory in 1945.
In those areas of Europe conquered by the Nazis before the rollback of 1944-5, especially where S.S. troops disposed of the population, a particularly brutal and ultimately genocidal assault was made on various groups of people, including Jews from all the occupied countries. The war was unusual in that it was conducted by Germany and Japan in a manner that put those regimes and their armed forces beyond the pale of civilized conduct, even in a time of war.
Blitzkrieg The 'phoney war' Battle of Britain
Churchill President Roosevelt Charles de Gaulle
Battle of Stalingrad Auschwitz D-Day Atlantic Charter
Another notable consequence of WWII (following the inglorious defeat of the European colonial powers in Asia at the hands of the Japanese in 1941-42) was the process of decolonization, i.e., the conversion of formerly dependent territories in Africa and Asia to independent status. From 1957 onward, beginning with Ghana, the British liquidated their once mighty empire in Africa, while the French did the same, though with less grace as witnessed by the brutal and bloody war against nationalist Algerians in the 1960s.
Note, also, that the idea of international cooperation was never entirely set aside in these decades of the Cold War. The United Nations Organization, brainchild of Churchill and Roosevelt and the banner under which the anti-fascist countries fought, emerged at the end of the war with a Charter designed to maintain peace and security in the world and develop friendly relations between nations. Both the western capitalist countries and the eastern communist republics became members. Many of the specialized agencies that for long have kept international social and economic development on an even keel (with some disturbances, alas) are the direct result of U.N. action: for example, the IMF, UNESCO, WHO and others, not forgetting the U.N. forces that continue to mediate conflict where it occurs around the world.
The one inescapable fact of these post-war decades, of course, was the division of Europe into two blocs--capitalist West and communist East--and a larger world dominated by the competing interests of the superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. And, given the apparent strength of the latter, it appeared to many that this daunting state of affairs might have continued into the next century. It is gratifying to be able to conclude this survey, therefore, in the knowledge that some four decades of a "balance of terror" occasioned by ideological division has now been brought to an end. The expectation that history may be set to take a new and more hopeful turn for humanity in general may have to be postponed, however, given the sinister developments ushering in the third millennium.
Potsdam Agreement Nuremberg Trials N.A.T.O.
Warsaw Pact Iron Curtain U.N.
Truman doctrine The welfare state Marshall Plan
Khrushchev Mao Zedong Sputnik E.U.