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Nationalism and Imperialism Notes

1) Napoleon III in France

a) The Second Republic and Louis Napoleon

i) 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 middle-class

and peasant property owners in the face of the socialist challenge of urban

workers (classes wanted protection)

ii) 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

iii) 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

iv) 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


v) 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

vi) 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

b) Napoleon III’s Second Empire

i) Emperor Napoleon III experienced both success and failure between 1852

and 1870

ii) 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

iii) Napoleon III’s regulation of pawnshops and his support of credit 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)

iv) 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)

v) 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

vi) 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

vii)The middle-class liberals wanted a less authoritarian regime (denounced

his rule)

viii) 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

ix) 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

a) Italy to 1850

i) 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

ii) Sought after 1494, Italy was reorganized in the 1815 at the Congress of

Vienna

iii) 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

iv) 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

v) The constitution provided for a fair degree of civil liberties and real

parliamentary government complete with elections and parliamentary

control of taxes

vi) 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

vii)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

viii) The papacy opposed socialism, separation of church and state, and

religious liberty

b) Cavour and Garibaldi in Italy

i) Cavour was the dominant figure in the Sardinian government (1850-1861)

(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)


ii) 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

iii) 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)

iv) 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)

v) 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

vi) 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


vii)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

viii) Garibaldi then prepared to attack Rome and the pope but Cavour sent

Sardinian forces to occupy most of the Papal Sates (to intercept Garibaldi)

ix) 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

x) 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

xi) 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)

c) Germany Before Bismarck

i) 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

ii) 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)

iii) 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

iv) 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

d) Bismarck Takes Command

i) 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

ii) 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)

iii) 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

iv) 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

v) 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

e) The Austro-Prussian War, 1866

i) When the Danish king tried to incorporate Schleswig-Holstein, Prussia

joined Austria in a short and successful war against Denmark in 1864

ii) 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

iii) 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

iv) 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

v) 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


vi) The German Confederation dissolved; Austria agreed to leave from

German affairs

vii)The new North German Confederation was led by an expanded Prussia

f) The Taming of the Parliament

i) 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

ii) 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

iii) 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

iv) Bismarck had opened the door to popular participation (right over middle

class)

v) 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

vi) 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”

vii)The German middle class was bowing respectfully before Bismarck and

the monarchial authority and aristocratic superiority he represented

g) The Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871

i) Four south German states were added into the Zollverein (customs

parliament) 1867

ii) 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

iii) 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

iv) 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

v) By this time, the south German estates agreed to join a new German

empire and William was proclaimed the emperor of Germany in Versailles

vi) The Franco-Prussian War released a surge of patriotic feeling in Germany

vii)The weakest of the Great Powers in 1862, Prussia with fortification by the

other German states became the most powerful state in Europe

viii) 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

a) The “Great Reforms”


i) 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)

ii) 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)

iii) 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

iv) Russia needed railroads, better armaments, and reorganization of the army;

but war had caused hardship and raised the specter of massive peasant

rebellion

v) 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

b) The Industrialization of Russia

i) 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

ii) Industrial development strengthened Russia’s military forces and gave rise

to territorial expansion to the south and east (nationalists supported the

government)

iii) 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

iv) Political modernization remained frozen until 1905, but economic

modernization sped forward in the massive industrial surge of the 1890s

v) Nationalism under leader, Sergei Witte, minister of finance from 1892-

1903

(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

c) The Revolution of 1905

i) 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)

ii) 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

iii) The beginning of the revolution of 1905 pointed up incompetence of the

government


iv) 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

v) 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

vi) 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

vii)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)

viii) The disappointed, predominately middle-class liberals, the largest

group in the newly elected Duma, saw the Fundamental Laws as a step

backward


ix) 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

x) 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

xi) The government secured a loyal majority in 1907 and again in 1912

xii)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

a) The German Empire

i) 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

ii) 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)

iii) 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


iv) Catholics throughout the country generally voted for the Catholic Center

party and finally in 1878 Bismarck abandoned his attack and entered an

alliance (economic)

v) 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

vi) The 1880s and 1890s saw a widespread return to protectionism (led to

trade wars)

vii)Bismarck tried to stop socialism growth in Germany because he feared its

revolutionary language and allegiance to a movement transcending the

nation-state

viii) Bismarck used a national outcry to introduce and pass a law that

controlled socialist meetings and publications and outlawed the Social

Democratic party

ix) 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

x) 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

xi) 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

xii)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)

b) Republican France

i) 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

ii) 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

iii) 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)


iv) President Thiers showed the Third Republic might be moderate/socially

conservative

v) 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

vi) 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

vii)The government expanded the state system of public tax-supported

schools; free compulsory elementary education in France became secular

republican education

viii) 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


ix) French Catholics rallied to the republic in the 1890s after the educational

reforms

x) 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)

c) Great Britain and Ireland

i) 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

ii) 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)


iii) Extensive social welfare measures were passed in a rush between 1906 and

1914

iv) 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

v) 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

vi) Liberal prime minister William Gladstone introduced bills to give Ireland

self-government in 1886 and 1893 but both failed to pass

vii) 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

viii) 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

ix) The momentous Irish question had been overtaken by world war in August

1914

d) The Austro-Hungarian Empire


i) In 1849 Magyar nationalism had driven Hungarian patriots to declare an

independent Hungarian republic which was savagely crushed by Russian

and Austrian armies

ii) Throughout the 1850s, Hungary was ruled as a conquered territory and

Emperor Francis Joseph and his bureaucracy tried hard to centralize the

state

iii) 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)

iv) 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

v) 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

vi) 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)

vii) 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


viii) The parliament was the creature of the Magyar elite and laws

promoting use of the Hungarian language in schools and government were

bitterly resented

ix) 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

a) The Socialist International

i) Socialism appealed to working men and women in the late nineteenth

century

ii) By 1912, socialism was the largest party in the Reichstag (most successful,

Germany)

iii) 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

iv) 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)

v) 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

vi) Marx embraced patriotism of the Paris Commune, seeing it as step toward

socialist revolution, and more moderate British labor leaders left (First

International collapsed)

vii) In 1889, socialist leaders from many individual parties came together to

form the Second International, delegates met to interpret Marxian

doctrines (ended 1914)


viii) May 1st (May Day) was declared an annual international one-day strike

day

b) Unions and Revisionism

i) Socialist parties looked toward gradual change and steady improvement

for the working class and less and less toward revolution (workers won

tangible benefits)

ii) 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

iii) 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

iv) The growth of labor unions reinforced this trend toward moderation and in

the early states of industrialization, modern unions were generally

prohibited by law

v) Great Britain led the way in 1824 when unions won the right to exist, but

not to strike

vi) 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)

vii) 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)


viii) 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)

ix) Revisionism was an effort by various socialists to update Marxian

doctrines to reflect the realities of the time (Edward

Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism)

x) In France, socialist leader Jean Jaures formally repudiated revisionist

doctrines to establish a unified socialist party (socialist leaders supported

their governments)

Documents

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