AP European history readings
1815 – 1917
The Industrial Revolution: Part II
The first practical steam railway engine was constructed in 1829. By 1849 railroads were traveling at
average speeds of 50 miles an hour on some lines. Wherever it penetrated, the railroad broke down the
invisible walls protecting local markets from outside competition. In many instances it became cheaper to
buy products manufactured hundreds of miles away than those produced locally. One of the consequences
of this development was regional specialization, each area tending to concentrate on those goods it could
produce most cheaply. Although the steamship did not gain acceptance until the 1870s (its fuel
consumption was too high at first), once accepted, steamship transport had an immediate effect on bulky
and heavy items whose transportation costs had been prohibitive in the days of the sailing ship. It reduced
the price of a bushel of American wheat in Western Europe by 75%. The simultaneous development of
refrigerated trains and ships also permitted the transoceanic shipment of meat. Argentinean beef and
Australian mutton, which until the 1870s had practically no commercial value, suddenly acquired great
value and became the main source of wealth for these countries.
Most of the technological innovations, particularly the railroads, required large quantities of coal and iron.
By 1840 Britain produced ten times as much coal as any of its closest competitors and it was clear that a
country short of coal and iron, the two basic materials of industrialism, could aspire neither to economic or
political might. Other Western countries, aware of how greatly industrialism had increased British power
and wealth, soon emulated its example.
II. The Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution
Population increases became dramatic in the 19th century. In 1750 the European population was estimated
at 140 million; by 1850 it was 266 million. The key to the expansion of population was decline in death
rates (birth rates also declined, but not as much as death rates). There was a drop in the number of deaths
from famines, epidemics, and war. The death rate also declined as an increase in the food supply due to
scientific farming spread to more areas. Railroads and steamships facilitated the importation of food. The
use of mechanical power instead of horse power allowed a reduction in the number of horses and freed
much pasture land for food production. It is estimated that the steam engines operating in England in 1870
produced the equivalent power of 6 million horses. Famine largely disappeared from western Europe,
although there were dramatic exceptions, Ireland being the most significant.
Ireland was one of the most oppressed areas in western Europe. The predominantly Catholic peasant
population rented land from mostly absentee British Protestant landlords whose primary concern was
collecting their rents. Irish peasants lived in mud hovels in desperate poverty. The cultivation of the potato,
a nutritious and relatively easy food to grow that produced three times as much calories per acre as grain,
gave Irish peasants a basic staple that enabled them to survive and even expand in numbers. As only an
acre or two of potatoes was sufficient to feed a family, the Irish married earlier than elsewhere and started
having children earlier as well. This led to significant growth in the population. Between 1781-1845, the
Irish population doubled from 4 to 8 million. In the summer of 1845, the Irish potato crop was struck by a
blight. Between 1845 and 1851 over one million Irish died of starvation and disease, and almost two
million emigrated.
Between 1821 and 1850, the number of emigrants from Europe averaged about 110,000 a year. Most of
these emigrants came from places like Ireland and southern Germany, where peasant life had been reduced
to marginal existence. Times of agrarian crisis resulted in great waves of emigration. More often than
emigrating overseas, the rural masses sought a solution to their poverty by moving to urban areas to find
work. Since industrialization and urbanization go hand in hand, the first half of the 19th century was a
period of rapid urbanization.
The dramatic growth of cities produced miserable living conditions for many of the inhabitants. A report on
the British city of Birmingham in 1843 stated that: “most of the houses [of the working class] are three
stories high, and built back to back. There is a wash-house, an ash-pit, and a privy at the end, and not
infrequently one or more pigsties and heaps of manure. Generally speaking, the privies are in a most filthy
condition. Many were in a state which renders it impossible for us to conceive how they could be used;
they were without doors and overflowing with filth.”
Sanitary conditions in industrial towns were appalling. City streets were often used as sewers and open
drains. Unable to deal with human excrement, cities smelled horrible and were extraordinarily unhealthy.
Reformers began to advocate system of sewers and a supply of piped water. Many middle-class citizens
supported the public health reforms because of their fear of cholera. Outbreaks of cholera had ravaged
Europe in the early 1830s and late 1840s and were especially rampant in the overcrowded cities. As city
authorities and wealthier residents became convinced that filthy conditions helped to spread the disease,
they began to support the call for new public health measures.
The rise of industrial capitalism produced a new middle class group. The bourgeois or middle class was not
new; it had existed since the emergence of cities in the Middle Ages. Originally, the bourgeois was the
burgher or town dweller, whether active as a merchant, official, artisan, lawyer, or scholar, who enjoyed a
special set of rights from the charter of the town. As wealthy townspeople bought land, the original
meaning of the word bourgeois became lost, and the term came to include people involved in commerce,
industry, and banking as well as professionals, such as lawyers, teachers, physicians, and government
officials. At the lower end of the economic scale were master craftspeople and shopkeepers.
The early industrial entrepreneurs were called upon to superintend an enormous array of functions that are
handled today by teams of managers; they raised capital, determined markets, set company objectives,
organized the factory and its labor, and trained supervisors. The opportunities for making money were
great, but the risks were also tremendous. Only through constant expansion could one feel secure, so early
entrepreneurs reinvested most of their initial profits. Increasingly, the new industrial entrepreneurs came to
amass much wealth and play an important political role alongside the traditional landed elites of their
societies.
At the same time the members of the industrial middle class were seeking to reduce the barriers between
themselves and the landed elite, they also were trying to separate themselves from the laboring classes
below them. The working class was actually a mixture of different groups in the first half of the 19th
century. In 1851, in Britain, there were 1.8 million agricultural laborers and 1 million domestic servants,
but only 811,000 workers in the cotton and woolen industries. One-third of these were still working in
small workshops or in their own homes.
Within the cities, artisans or craftspeople remained the largest group of urban workers during the first half
of the 19th century. They worked in numerous small industries, such as shoemaking, glovemaking,
bookbinding, printing, and bricklaying. Craftspeople employed in luxury trades as coachbuilding and
clockmaking earned higher wages than other craftsmen. Industrialists welcomed the decline of skilled
craftspeople because they would rather produce their products with cheap unskilled labor. Many women
became servants and they were utterly dependent upon their upper-and middle-class employers.
Workers in the new industrial factories faced wretched working conditions. Work hours ranged from 12 to
16 hours a day, six days a week, with a half hour for lunch and dinner. There was no security of
employment and no minimum wage. The worst conditions were in the cotton mills. Mills were hot, dirty,
noisy, and unhealthy. Conditions in the coal mines were also harsh and dangerous. The cramped
conditions—tunnels often did not exceed three or four feet in height—and constant dampness in the mines
resulted in deformed bodies and ruined lungs.
Both children and women were employed in large numbers in early factories and mines. The owners of
cotton factories appreciated certain features of child labor. The smaller size of children made it easier for
them to crawl under machines to gather loose cotton. Moreover, children were more easily broken to
factory work. Above all, children represented a cheap supply of labor—they were paid only about one-sixth
or one-third of what a man was paid. In the cotton factories in 1838, children under 18 made up 29% of the
total workforce.
Especially terrible was the use of pauper apprentices. These were orphans or children abandoned by their
parents who were in the care of the local parishes. To save on their upkeep, parish officials apprenticed
them to factory owners. These children worked long hours under strict discipline and received inadequate
food and recreation; many became deformed from being kept too long in unusual positions. Contemporary
treatment of children in general was often brutal. Beatings, for example, had long been regarded as the best
way to discipline children.
As the number of children employed in the cotton factories declined because of governmental reform, their
places were taken by women, who came to dominate the labor forces of the early factories. Women made
up 50% of the labor force in textile factories before 1870. They were paid half or less what men received.
The employment of children and women in large part represents a continuation of a preindustrial kinship
pattern. Cottage industry had always involved the efforts of the entire family, and it seemed perfectly
natural to continue this pattern. The impetus for child labor often came from the family itself. Most female
factory workers were single. Few married women worked outside their homes. Over time men came to be
regarded as responsible for the primary work obligations as women assumed daily control of the family and
performed low paying jobs such as laundry work that could be done in the home.
It is difficult to know the impact that early industrialization had on the life of the masses of population.
How can we compare, for example, the loss of fresh air and a familiar environment with acquisition of
better clothing or more food, or the decline of economic security with the gain of material goods?
Industrialization created a widening gap between rich and poor. One estimate is that the wealthiest 1% of
the population of Britain increased its share of the national product from 25% in 1801 to 35% in 1848. The
real gainers in the early Industrial Revolution were members of the middle class. Industrial workers
themselves would have to wait until the second half of the 19th century to reap the benefits of
industrialization.
III. Marx, Darwin & Science
Factory owners were free to hire labor on their own terms based on market forces. Increased mechanization
of industry meant further displacement of skilled artisans by unskilled workers. The bourgeoisie
condemned labor organizations as criminal agencies that threatened private property through strikes and
picketing. Those trade unions that were able to form tended to represent only a small part of the industrial
working class, usually skilled workers.
In 1848 Karl Marx and his patron Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto. According to
Marx and Engels, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Throughout
history, oppressed and oppressor have “stood in constant opposition to one another.” Government reflected
and defended the interests of the ruling class, and by the 19th century this was the industrial middle class
and its allies. It was the proletariat that was now struggling against oppression. The struggle would be
fierce, but eventually the workers would overthrow their bourgeois masters—“The proletarians have
nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!” After their
victory, the proletariat would form a dictatorship to reorganize the means of production. Then, a classless
society would emerge, and the state—itself an instrument of the bourgeoisie—would wither away. Marx
believed that the emergence of a classless society would lead to progress in science, technology, and
industry and to greater wealth for all.
The concept of evolution was not new when Charles Darwin first postulated his theory in On the Origin of
the Species in 1859. Until the early 19th century, most European intellectuals still believed that a divine
power had created the world and its species. But, by the beginning of the century, people were questioning
the biblical account. Geologists had demonstrated that the earth underwent constant change and was far
older than had been believed. Despite the growth in evolutionary ideas, there was no widely accepted
theory of evolution.
In 1831, at the age of 22, Darwin accepted an appointment as a naturalist to study animals and plants on an
official Royal Navy scientific expedition aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. Its purpose was to survey and study
the landmasses of South America and the South Pacific. As a result of his observations Darwin came to
believe that animals evolved over time and in response to their environment. Darwin wrote that “many
more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive.” This results in a “struggle for
existence.” Those who succeeded in this struggle had adapted better to their environment. Chance
variations that occurred in the process of inheritance enabled some organisms to be more adaptable to the
environment than others, a process that Darwin called natural selection. Those that were naturally selected
for survival (“survival of the fit”) survived. The unfit did not and became extinct. Darwin was not able to
explain how variants first occurred and he did not arrive at the modern explanation of mutations.
Although Darwin’s ideas were eventually accepted, initially they were highly controversial. Some people
objected that his theory made humans ordinary products of nature rather than unique beings. Others were
disturbed by the implications of life as a struggle for survival. Was there a place in the Darwinian world for
moral values?
The major breakthrough toward a scientific medicines occurred with Louis Pasteur’s discovery of
microorganisms, or germs, as the agents causing disease. Pasteur’s examination of a disease threatening the
wine industry led to the development of pasteurization. In 1885 he developed a preventive vaccination
against rabies. In the 1890s, the principle of vaccination was extended to diphtheria, typhoid fever, cholera,
and the plague.
One major obstacle to successful surgery was the inevitable postoperative infection. Joseph Lister, who
developed the antiseptic principle, was one of the first people to deal with this problem. Following the work
of Pasteur, Lister perceived that bacteria might enter a wound and cause infection. His use of carbolic acid
proved remarkably effective in eliminating infections during surgery. The second barrier to large-scale
surgery stemmed from the inability to lessen the pain of the patient. Alcohol and opiates had been used for
centuries but their use did not allow unhurried operative maneuvers. By 1847 both ether and chloroform
were used as anesthetic agents and surgery became pain free.
Based on the principle of preventive, rather than curative, medicine, the urban public health movement of
the 1840s and 1850s was largely a response to the cholera epidemic. The prebacteriological hygiene
movement focused on providing clean water, adequate sewage disposal, and less crowded housing
conditions. Bacterial discoveries led to greater emphasis on the pasteurization of milk, improved
purification of water supplies, immunizations, and control of waterborne diseases.
The establishment of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1893, with its four-year graded
curriculum, clinical training for advanced students, and use of laboratories for teaching purposes, provided
a new model for medical training that finally became standard practice in the 20th century. During most of
the 19th century, medical schools in Europe and the U.S. were closed to female students. The unwillingness
of medical schools to open their doors to women led to the formation of separate medical schools for
women. The London School of Medicine for Women was founded in 1874. Even after graduation, many
women were denied licenses and hospitals often closed their doors to them. In Britain, Parliament finally
passed a bill in 1876 allowing women the right to take qualifying medical examinations. Women were not
given full membership in the American Medical Association until 1915.
Europe 1815-1871
I. The Conservative Order & Austria
The big four powers that defeated France—Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia—met in Vienna to
arrange a final peace settlement. The Congress of Vienna was dominated by the Austrian foreign minister,
Prince Klemens von Metternich. Metternich was guided by the principle of legitimacy. To reestablish peace
and stability in Europe, he considered it necessary to restore the legitimate monarchs who would preserve
traditional institutions. This had already been done in the restoration of the Bourbons in France and Spain,
as well as in the return of a number of rulers to their thrones in the Italian states. Elsewhere, however, the
principle of legitimacy was largely ignored by more practical considerations of power. The congress’s
treatments of Poland illustrates this approach. Prussia and Austria were allowed to keep some Polish
territory, and Poland’s foreign policy was under Russian control. Prussia was compensated for its loss of
Polish lands by receiving parts of Saxony, the Napoleonic German kingdom of Westphalia, and the left
bank of the Rhine. Austria was compensated for its loss of the Austrian Netherlands by being given control
of Lombardy and Venetia.
In making these territorial rearrangements, the powers at Vienna believed they were following the familiar
18th century practice of maintaining a balance of power among the great powers. Essentially, this meant a
balance of political and military forces that guaranteed the independence of the great powers by ensuring
that no one country could dominate Europe. France had not been overly weakened so that it could remain a
great power, but the great powers attempted to establish major defensive barriers against possible French
expansion. The Netherlands was enlarged by combining the former Dutch Republic and the Austrian
Netherlands (Belgium). The Belgians rose up against the Dutch in 1830, and succeeded in convincing the
major European powers to accept an independent, neutral Belgium under a constitutional monarch.
Piedmont was enlarged to the south. Prussia was strengthened by giving it control of the east bank of the
Rhine. France’s borders were returned to those of 1790, and it was forced to pay an indemnity and accept
an army of occupation for five years.
Metternich and his kind were representatives of the ideology known as conservatism. Conservatism dates
from 1790 when Edmund Burke wrote the Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke maintained that
society was a contract, but “the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership
agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, to be taken up for a temporary interest and to be dissolved by the
fancy of the parties.” The state was a partnership but one “not only between those who are living, but
between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born.” No one generation
therefore has the right to destroy this partnership; instead, each generation has the duty to preserve and
transmit it to the next. Burke advised against the violent overthrow of a government by revolution, but he
did not reject the possibility of gradual or evolutionary improvements.
Most conservatives favored obedience to political authority, believed that organized religion was crucial to
social order, hated revolutionary upheavals, and were unwilling to accept either the liberal demands for
civil liberties and representative governments or the nationalistic aspirations generated by the French
revolutionary era. The community took precedence over individual rights; society must be organized and
ordered, and tradition remained the best guide for order. After 1815, the political philosophy of
conservatism was supported by hereditary monarchs, government bureaucracies, landowning aristocracies,
and most churches.
The Austrian Empire—In 1848 the Hungarian liberal gentry under Louis Kossuth agitated for
“commonwealth” status; they were willing to keep the Habsburg monarch, but wanted their own
legislature. In March, demonstrations in Budapest, Prague, and Vienna led to Metternich’s dismissal. In
Vienna, revolutionary forces under the guidance of the educated and propertied classes, took control of the
capital and insisted that a constituent assembly be summoned to draw up a liberal constitution. Hungary
was granted its wish for its own legislature, a separate army, and control over its foreign policy and budget.
Allegiance to the Habsburg dynasty was now Hungary’s only tie to the Austrian Empire. In Bohemia, the
Czechs began to demand their own government as well.
Although Emperor Ferdinand I and Austrian officials had made concessions to appease the revolutionaries,
they awaited an opportunity to reestablish their firm control. The conservatives were increasingly
encouraged by the divisions between radical and moderate revolutionaries and played upon the middleclass fear of a working-class social revolution. In June 1848 the conservatives ruthlessly suppressed the
Czech rebels in Prague. In October the radical rebels in Vienna were crushed. In December the
feebleminded Ferdinand I abdicated in favor of his nephew, Francis Joseph I (1848-1916), who worked
vigorously to restore the imperial government in Hungary. The Hungarian revolution was finally crushed in
1849 with the aid of 140,000 Russian troops. The revolutions in Austria had failed. Autocratic government
was restored; emperor and propertied classes remained in control while the numerous nationalities were
still subject to the Austrian government. Divisions among nationalities also proved to be disastrous.
Though the Hungarians demanded autonomy from the Austrians, they refused the same to their
minorities—the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs. The Austrians’ efforts to recover the Hungarian provinces met
with little success until they began to play off Hungary’s minority nationalities against the Hungarians.
After the Habsburgs had crushed the revolutions of 1848-1849, they restored centralized, autocratic,
governments to the empire. After the defeat by Prussia in 1867, the Austrians were forced to deal with the
fiercely nationalistic Hungarians and the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary was created. Each part of the
empire now had its own constitution, its own legislature, its own governmental machinery for domestic
affairs, and its own capital. Holding the two states together were a single monarch, a common army,
foreign policy, and system of finances. In domestic affairs the Hungarians were an independent nation. The
dual monarch simply enabled the Austrians and Hungarians to dominate the other minorities in the empire,
especially the Slavic peoples.
II. Liberalism & Nationalism
Liberalism developed from the ideas of the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions.
Economic liberalism had as its primary tenet the concept of laissez-faire, or the belief that the state should
not interrupt the free play of natural economic forces, especially supply and demand. Government should
restrict itself to three primary functions: defense, police protection, and the construction and maintenance
of public works too expensive for individuals to undertake. If individuals were allowed economic liberty,
ultimately they would bring about the maximum good for the maximum number and benefit the general
welfare of society.
Thomas Malthus in his Essay on the Principles of Population argued that population, when unchecked,
increases in a geometric ratio while the food supply correspondingly increases only in an arithmetic ratio.
The result will be severe overpopulation and ultimately starvation if this growth is not held in check.
According to Malthus, nature imposes a major restraint: “Unwholesome occupations, severe labor and
exposure to the seasons, extreme poverty, bad nursing of children, great towns, excesses of all kinds, the
whole train of common disease, and epidemics, wars, plague and famine.” Misery and poverty were simply
the inevitable result of the law of nature—no government or individual should interfere with its operation.
David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy (1817) further developed the ideas of Malthus. Ricardo
argued that an increase in population means more workers; more workers in turn cause wages to fall below
the subsistence level. The result is misery and starvation, which then reduce the population. Consequently,
the number of workers declines, and wages rise above the subsistence level again, which in turn encourages
workers to have larger families as the cycle is repeated. According to Ricardo, violating this “iron law of
wages” by raising wages arbitrarily would be pointless since it would accomplish little but this vicious
cycle. Nature is harsh, but attempting to change the laws of nature through the charity of employers or
legislation by the state would merely make the situation worse.
Like economic liberalism, political liberalism stressed that people should be free from restraint. Political
liberals believed in the protection of civil liberties or the basic rights of all people, which included equality
before the law, freedom of assembly, speech, and press, and freedom from arbitrary arrest. In addition to
religious toleration, most liberals advocated separation of church and state. Many liberals believed in a
constitutional monarchy or a constitutional state with limits on the powers of government in order to
prevent despotism, and in written constitutions that would also help to guarantee these rights.
Liberals in the first half of the 19th century also believed in a limited suffrage. Although all people were
entitled to equal civil rights, they should not have equal political rights. The right to vote and hold office
would be open only to men who met certain property qualifications. Liberalism was mainly supported by
industrial middle-class men who favored the extension of voting rights so that they could share power with
the landowning classes. They had little desire to let the lower classes share that power.
Nationalism became tied to liberalism during this time-period. Nationalism is based on an awareness of
being part of a community that has common institutions, traditions, language, and customs. This
community is called a “nation,” and it, rather than a tribe, dynasty, city-state, or other political unit,
becomes the focus of the individual’s primary political loyalty. The French Revolution stimulated
nationalism. The belief developed that governments should coincide with nationalities. Thus, a divided
people such as the Germans wanted national unity in a German nation-state with one central government.
Subject peoples, such as the Hungarians, wanted national self-determination or the right to establish their
own autonomy rather than be subject to a German minority in a multinational empire.
Nationalism was fundamentally radical in that it threatened to upset the existing political order. A united
Germany or Italy would upset the balance of power established in 1815. An independent Hungary would
mean the breakup of the Austrian Empire. Conservatives tried so hard to repress nationalism because they
were acutely aware of its potential to bring about dramatic change. Nationalism and liberalism became
strong allies because most liberals believed that liberty could only be realized by peoples who ruled
themselves.
In 1821, the Greeks revolted against their Ottoman Turkish masters. The Greek revolt was soon
transformed into a noble cause by an outpouring of European sentiment for the Greeks’ struggle. Liberals
rallied to the cause of Greek freedom, arguing that Greek democracy was being reborn. Romantic poets and
artists also publicized the cause of Greek independence. In 1827 a combined British and French fleet
defeated a large Ottoman fleet. In 1828, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire. By the treaty of
Adrianople in 1829, Russia gained control over some Turkish territory and the Ottoman Empire agreed to
allow Russia, France, and Britain to decide the fate of Greece. In 1830, the three powers declared Greece
an independent kingdom. The Greek revolution was successful only because the great powers supported it.
Its success was due more to the desire of the great powers to weaken the Ottoman Empire than to liberal
ideals.
III. Great Britain
In 1830 the Whigs came to power. At the same time, the July Revolution in France served to catalyze
change in Britain. The Whigs, although members of the landed classes, realized that concessions to reform
were superior to revolution; the demands of the wealthy industrial middle class could no longer be ignored.
In 1832, after an intense struggle, the Reform Act was enacted. The act disfranchised 56 rotten boroughs
and enfranchised 42 new cities and reapportioned others. This gave the new industrial urban communities
some voice in government. A property qualification of --£10 annual rent for voting was retained so the
number of voters only increased from 478,000 to 814,000. The lower middle class, artisans, and industrial
workers still had no vote.
The 1830s and 1840s witnessed considerable reform legislation in Britain. Laws were passed that halted
some of the worst abuses in the industrial system. The Poor Law of 1834 was based on the liberal theory
that giving aid to the poor only encouraged laziness. The Poor Law tried to remedy this by crowding those
unable to support themselves into workhouses where living and working conditions were intentionally
miserable so that people would be encouraged to find profitable employment. High tariffs on grain (the
Corn Laws) were repealed. This helped workers by lowering bread prices, and it also aided the industrial
middle classes who, as economic liberals, favored the principles of free trade. These reforms enabled
Britain to avoid revolution in 1848.
One reason for British stability during this period was its continuing economic growth. Real wages for
laborers increased over 25% between 1850 and 1870. The Tory (Conservative) leader in Parliament,
Benjamin Disraeli believed that the uneducated classes would defer to their social superiors when they
voted. He knew that the Liberals would not dare to oppose a reform bill. The Reform Act of 1867 was an
important step toward the democratization of Britain. By lowering the monetary requirements for voting,
the number of voters increased from about one million to slightly over two million. The newly enfranchised
industrial workers helped produced a huge Liberal victory in 1868. The first Liberal administration of
William Gladstone from 1868 to1874 was responsible for a series of reforms. Civil service positions were
opened to competitive exams rather than patronage. Religious requirements for degrees at Oxford and
Cambridge were dropped. The secret ballot was introduced. The practice of purchasing military
commissions was abolished. The Education Act of 1870 attempted to make elementary schools available
for all children.
IV. France
In July 1830 king Charles X issued a set of edicts—the July Ordinances—that imposed a rigid censorship
on the press, dissolved the legislative assembly, and reduced the electorate. Charles’s actions produced the
July Revolution. Barricades went up in Paris as a provisional government led by a group of moderate,
propertied liberals was hastily formed and appealed to Louis-Philippe, the duke of Orléans, a cousin of
Charles X, to become the constitutional king of France. Charles X fled to Britain and a new monarchy was
born.
Louis-Philippe (1830-1848) was called the bourgeois monarch because his political support came from the
upper-middle class. Financial qualifications for voting were reduced, yet the numbers of voters only
increased from 100,000 to 200,000. The lesser bourgeoisie and the Parisian working class were severely
disappointed in the “reforms” of Louis-Philippe because they were still excluded from political power.
Worker riots broke out and were crushed by government troops.
The government’s unwillingness to change led to growing frustration that finally erupted in the Revolution
of 1848. A severe depression beginning in 1846 brought severe hardship and anger to the lower middle
class, workers, and peasants. Scandals, graft, and corruption were rife while the government’s persistent
refusal to extend the suffrage angered the disfranchised members of the middle class. In February 1848,
after Paris erupted in protest, Louis-Philip abdicated and fled to Britain. A provisional government was
established that ordered that representatives for a Constituent Assembly be selected by universal manhood
suffrage. The provisional government also established “national workshops” to provide unemployment
compensation for the unemployed.
From March to June 1848 the number of unemployed receiving government aid rose from 10,000 to almost
120,000, emptying the treasury and frightening the moderates who responded by closing the workshops on
June 21. The workers refused to accept this decision and in four days of bitter and bloody fighting,
government forces crushed the working-class revolt. Thousands were killed, and 11,000 prisoners were
deported to Algeria. These “June Days” left a legacy of hate. The propertied classes became convinced that
they had barely averted an attempt by the working class to destroy the social order. The new 1848
constitution established the Second Republic with a unicameral legislature of 750 and a president. Both
were elected by universal male suffrage. In the presidential elections, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte,
the nephew of napoleon Bonaparte, was elected. Within four years President Napoleon would become
Emperor Napoleon. The French had once again made a journey from republican hopes to authoritarian
order.
When the National Assembly rejected Louis Napoleon’s proposal to revise the constitution and allow him
to stand for reelection, he resorted to a coup d’etat. In December 1851, troops loyal to the president seized
power. In 1849 the Assembly, which was controlled by a conservative-monarchist majority, had deprived
three million men of the right to vote. After restoring universal male suffrage, Louis Napoleon asked the
French people to restructure the government by electing him president for 10 years. By 7.5 million votes to
640,000 they agreed. A year later (1852) Louis asked for the restoration of the Empire. This time 97%
responded affirmatively, and Louis assumed the title of Napoleon III (the first Napoleon had abdicated in
favor of his son, Napoleon II in 1814).
Napoleon III controlled the armed forces, police, and civil service. Only he could introduce legislation and
declare war. His ministers were answerable only to the emperor. The National Assembly could neither
initiate legislation nor affect the budget. The first 5 years of Louis Napoleon’s reign were a spectacular
success as he reaped the benefits of worldwide economic prosperity as well as some of his own economic
policies. Napoleon III realized the importance of diverting “the attention of the French from politics to
economics.” Government subsidies were used to foster the rapid construction of railroads, harbors, roads,
and canals. He provided hospitals and free medicine for the workers. The government undertook a vast
reconstruction of Paris. Broad boulevards, spacious buildings, circular plazas, public squares, an
underground sewage system, a new public water supply and gaslights were all built.
Freedom of speech was not permitted. Freedom of assembly was limited and newspapers were censored.
Napoleon’s attempt to move toward free trade by lowering tariffs on foreign goods angered French
manufactures. A financial crash in 1857, a silkworm disease, and the devastation of French vineyards by
plant lice cause severe damage to the French economy. Retrenchment in government spending proved
unpopular. To shore up his regime, Napoleon III reached out to the working class by legalizing trade unions
and granting them the right to strike.
V. The Crimean War & Russia
At the beginning of the 19th century the Ottoman Empire began to decline. Russia’s proximity to the
Ottoman Empire and the religious bonds between the Russians and the Greek Orthodox Christians in
Ottoman-dominated southeastern Europe gave it special opportunities to enlarge its sphere of influence.
Other European powers not only feared Russian ambitions but had ambitions of their own in the area.
Austria craved more land in the Balkans, a desire that inevitable meant conflict with Russia, and France and
Britain were interested in commercial opportunities and naval bases in the eastern Mediterranean.
In 1853 war broke out between Russia and Turkey. On march 28, 1854, Great Britain and France declared
war on Russia and the Crimean War began. Britain and France feared that Russia would seize the
Dardanelles and challenge their naval control of the eastern Mediterranean. Britain and France decided to
attack Russia’s Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea. After a long siege and large number of casualties on
both sides, the main Russian fortress of Sevastopel fell in September 1855, six months after the death of
Tsar Nicholas I. His successor, Alexander II, soon sued for peace. Russia lost some territory and accept the
neutrality of the Black Sea. More than 250,000 soldiers died in the war, 60% of the deaths coming from
disease. Even more would have died on the British side if it had not been for the efforts of Florence
Nightingale. Her insistence on strict sanitary conditions saved many lives and helped to make nursing a
profession of trained, middle class women.
The Crimean War broke up long-standing European power relationships. Austria and Russia were now
enemies because of Austria’s unwillingness to help Russia. Austria, paying the price for its neutrality, was
now without friends among the great powers. Great Britain and Russia, disillusioned by the war, withdrew
from European affairs. It was this new international situation that made possible the unification of Italy and
Germany.
Imperial Russia—The defeat in the Crimean War revealed the deficiencies behind the facade of absolute
power and made it clear that Russia was falling hopelessly behind the western European powers. Tsar
Alexander II (1855-1881), turned his energies to a serious overhaul of the Russian system.
Serfdom was the most burdensome problem in tsarist Russia. Reduced to antiquated methods of production
based on serf labor, Russian landowners were unable to compete with foreign agriculture. The serfs, who
formed the backbone of the Russian infantry, were uneducated and increasingly unable to deal with the
more complex machines and weapons of war. It was the failure of the serf-armies in the Crimean War that
created the need for change in the first place. In 1861 Alexander issued his emancipation edict—“It is
better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait until it is abolished from below.” Peasants could own
property, marry as they chose, and bring suits in courts. the government provided land for the peasants by
purchasing it from the landowners, but the landowners usually kept the best lands. The peasants were
expected to repay the state in long-term installments. To ensure that the payments were made, peasants
were subjected to the authority of their village commune. Since the village communes were responsible for
the payments, they were reluctant to allow the peasants to leave their land. Emancipation, then, led to an
unhappy, land-starved peasantry that largely followed the old ways of farming. After Alexander II’s
assassination, his son and successor, Alexander III (1881-1894), turned against reform and returned to the
traditional methods of repression.
VI. The Unification of Italy
In 1850, Austria was still the dominant power on the Italian peninsula. A growing number of advocates of
Italian unification now focused on the state of Piedmont as their best hope to achieve their goal. The royal
house of Savoy ruled the kingdom of Piedmont, which also included the island of Sardinia. SardiniaPiedmont was under the rule of king Victor Emmanuel II (1849-1878). His prime minister was Count
Camillo di Cavour.
Cavour was a liberal-minded noble. He admired the British parliamentary system, industrial techniques,
and economic liberalism. Cavour was a moderate who favored constitutional government. Cavour had no
illusions about Piedmont’s military strength and was well aware that he could not challenge Austria
directly. In 1858, Cavour came to an agreement with Napoleon III. The emperor agreed to ally with
Piedmont in driving the Austrians out of Italy. In compensation for its efforts, France would receive the
Piedmont provinces of Nice and Savoy. A kingdom of Central Italy would be created for Napoleon III’s
cousin, Prince Napoleon, who would be married to the younger daughter of King Emmanuel. This
agreement seemed to assure Napoleon III the opportunity to control Italy.
Cavour provoked the Austrians into invading Piedmont in April 1859. It was the French who were largely
responsible for defeating the Austrians. Fearing a wider war (Prussia was mobilizing in support of Austria)
the French made peace with Austria in July 1859 without informing their Italian ally. Piedmont received
only Lombardy; Venetia remained under Austrian control. Soon after the war with Austria had begun
nationalists took over Parma, Modena, Tuscany, and part of the Papal States. In 1860 these states joined
with Piedmont.
Giuseppe Garibaldi was a dedicated Italian patriot. While in exile in Latin America, he had gained
experience in guerrilla warfare. He was involved in the fighting against Austria. Cavour regarded Garibaldi
as a nuisance and encouraged him to move on to southern Italy where a revolt had broken out against the
Bourbon king of the Two Sicilies. With his 1,000 Red Shirts, as his volunteers were called, Garibaldi
landed in Sicily in May 1860. By September, Garibaldi’s forces controlled the kingdom. Aware that
Garibaldi planned to march on Rome, Cavour feared that such a move would bring war with France as the
defender of papal interests. Moreover, Garibaldi favored democratic republicanism; Cavour favored a
constitutional monarchy and he acted quickly to preempt Garibaldi. The Piedmontese army invaded the
Papal States and, bypassing Rome, moved into Garibaldi’s territory. Ever the patriot, Garibaldi chose to
yield to Cavour’s fait accompli rather than provoke a civil war. Plebiscites in the Papal States and the
kingdom of the Two Sicilies resulted in union with Piedmont, and in March 1861 a new kingdom of Italy
was proclaimed with Victor Emmanuel of the house of Savoy as king. Worn out by his efforts Cavour died
three months later. During the Austro-Prussian War Italy was an ally of Prussia and Prussia’s victory gave
Italy Venetia. In 1870, the Franco-Prussian War resulted in the withdrawal of French troops from Rome.
Italy annexed the city and Rome became the country’s new capital.
VII. The Unification of Germany
In 1862 King William I of Prussia appointed Count Otto von Bismarck as prime minister. Until 1890 he
would dominate both German and European politics. Bismarck was a conservative Junker (the traditional,
landowning aristocracy of Prussia). Bismarck has often been portrayed as the ultimate realist, the foremost
19th century practitioner of Realpolitik—the “politics of reality.” His ability to manipulate people and
power makes that claim justified, but Bismarck also recognized the limitations of power. When he
perceived that the advantages to be won from war “no longer justified the risks involved,” he could become
an ardent defender of peace.
Bismarck believed that “Germany does not look to Prussia’s liberalism but to her power. . . .Not by
speeches and majorities will the great questions of the day be decided—that was the mistake of 18481849—but by iron and blood.” From 1862 to 1866, Bismarck governed Prussia largely ignoring parliament.
Unwilling to revolt, parliament did nothing. Bismarck waged three wars to unify of Germany under
Prussian domination. The first war was the Danish War of 1864.
The Danish War arose over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Denmark moved to incorporate the
duchies into Denmark. German nationalists were outraged since both duchies had large German
populations and were regarded as German states. Bismarck persuaded the Austrians to join Prussia in
declaring war on Denmark. The Danes were quickly defeated. Austria took Holstein and Prussia took
Schleswig. Bismarck realized that for Prussia to expand its power by dominating the northern, largely
Protestant part of the Germanic confederation, Austria would have to be excluded from German affairs.
The joint administration of the two duchies offered plenty of opportunities to create friction with Austria
and provide a reason for war.
After isolating the Austrians diplomatically, Bismarck used the joint occupation of Schleswig-Holstein to
goad the Austrians into a war in June 1866. The Prussian breech-loading needle gun had a much faster rate
of fire than the Austrian muzzle-loader, and a superior network of railroads enabled the Prussians to mass
troops quickly. The Austrian army was decisively defeated. Bismarck refused to create a hostile enemy by
burdening Austria with a harsh peace. Austria lost no territory expect Venetia to Italy but was excluded
from German affairs. The German states north of the Main River were organized into a North German
Confederation controlled by Prussia. The south German states, largely Catholic, remained independent but
were coerced into signing military agreements with Prussia. In addition to Schleswig and Holstein, Prussia
annexed Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and the free city of Frankfurt because they had sided with Austria.
The Austrian War was a decisive turning point in Prussian domestic affairs. After the war, Bismarck asked
the Prussian parliament to pass a bill of indemnity, retroactively legalizing the taxes he had collected
illegally since 1862. Even most of the liberals voted for the bill because they had been won over by
Bismarck’s successful use of military power. In using nationalism to win support from liberals and prevent
governmental reform, Bismarck showed that liberalism and nationalism could be separated.
Prussia now dominated all of northern Germany, and Austria had been excluded from any significant role
in German affairs. Bismarck realized that France would never be content with a strong German state to its
east because of the potential threat to French security. At the same time, Napoleon III needed a diplomatic
triumph to offset his serious domestic problems. To complete the unification of Germany Bismarck needed
a victory over France. Such a victory would ensure that the Catholic states of southern Germany would
associate themselves with the North German Confederation.
In 1870 the Spanish offered their throne to a distant relative of the king of Prussia. France objected and
King William I of Prussia forced his relative to withdraw his candidacy. The French, not content with their
diplomatic victory, pushed William I to make a formal apology to France. When Bismarck received the
“Ems telegraph” from William I informing him of the French request, he edited it to make it sound as if the
Prussian king had treated the French ambassador in a demeaning manner. Its honor insulted, and looking
for an excuse to fight, France declared war on Prussia on July 15, 1870 (for Prussia to gain the support of
the southern German states, it was necessary for France to appear to be the aggressor).
The south German states honored their military alliances with Prussia and joined the war effort against the
French. The Prussian armies advanced into France, and at Sedan, on September 2, 1870, an entire French
army and Napoleon III were defeated and captured. After a bitter siege Paris finally capitulated in January
and an official peace treaty was signed in May 1871. France had to pay an indemnity of five billion francs
(about $1 billion). The French also had to give up the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the new German
state, a loss that angered the French and left them burning for revenge.
On January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, William I was proclaimed Kaiser or emperor of
the Second German Empire (the first was the Holy Roman Empire). In a real sense, Germany had been
merged into Prussia, not Prussia into Germany. The Prussian leadership of German unification meant the
triumph of authoritarian, militaristic values over liberal, constitutional sentiments in the development of the
new German state. With its industrial resources and military might, the new state had become the strongest
power on the Continent.
Europe 1871-1914
I. The Growth of Industrial Prosperity
The First Industrial Revolution gave rise to textiles, railroads, iron, and coal. In the Second Industrial
Revolution, steel, chemicals, electricity, and petroleum led the way to new industrial frontiers.
Whereas in the early 1870s Britain had produced twice as much steel as Germany, by 1910 German
production was double that of Britain. Both had been surpassed by the U.S. in 1890. Although most
electricity was initially used for lighting, it was eventually put to use in transportation. By the 1880s
streetcars and subways began to replace horse-drawn buses. In the First Industrial Revolution, coal had
been the major source of energy. Countries without adequate coal supplies lagged behind in
industrialization. Thanks to electricity, they could now enter the industrial age. The development of the
internal combustion engine gave rise to the automobile and airplane. The first airplane flight was made in
1903, but it took World War I to stimulate the aircraft industry. The first regular passenger air service was
not established until 1919.
As the prices of both food and manufactured goods declined due to lower transportation costs, Europeans
could spend more on consumer products. Businesses began using the new techniques of mass marketing to
sell consumer goods. The department store was created. Meanwhile, increased competition for foreign
markets and the growing importance of domestic demand led to a reaction against free trade. Cartels were
formed to decreased competition. In a cartel, independent enterprises work together to control prices and
fix production, thereby restraining the kind of competition that can lead to reduced prices. The development
of precision tools enabled manufacturers to produce interchangeable parts, which led to the creation of the
assembly line for production.
By 1900, Europe was divided into two economic zones. Great Britain, Belgium, France, the Netherlands,
Germany, the western part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and northern Italy constituted an advanced
industrialized core that had a high standard of living, decent systems of transportation, and relatively
healthy and educated peoples. The rest of Europe was still largely agricultural and relegated by the
industrial countries to the function of providing food and raw materials. The growth of an industrial
economy also led to new patterns for European agriculture. Machines were introduced in those countries
like Britain and Germany where labor was expensive. The slump in grain prices because of lower
transportation costs led some countries to specialize in other food production. Denmark, for example,
exported eggs, butter, and cheese.
The economic developments of the late 19th century, combined with the transportation revolution fostered
a true world economy. By 1900, Europeans were importing beef and wool from Argentina and Australia,
coffee from Brazil, nitrates from Chile, iron ore from Algeria, and sugar from Java. European capital was
also invested abroad, and foreign countries provided markets for the manufactured goods of Europe. With
its capital, industries, and military might, Europe dominated the world economy by the end of the 19th
century.
Women & Work—Throughout most of the 19th century, marriage was viewed as the only honorable and
available career for most women. For most women, marriage was a matter of economic necessity. Keeping
women out of the industrial workforce made it easy to exploit them. The desperate need to work at times
forced women to do marginal work at home or labor as pieceworkers in sweatshops. “Sweating” referred to
the subcontracting of piecework, usually, but not exclusively, in the tailoring trades. It was done at home
since it required few skills or equipment. The poorest paid jobs for the cheapest goods were called “slop
work.” In this description of the room of a London slopper, we see how precarious her position was:
“ I visited a poor woman who lived in an attic. . . .On the table was a quarter of an ounce of tea. Observing
my eye to rest upon it, she told me it was all she took. ‘Sugar,’ she said, ‘I broke myself of long ago; I
couldn’t afford it. A cup of tea, a piece of bread, and an onion is generally all I have for my dinner, and
sometimes I haven’t even an onion, and then I sops my bread.’”
Often excluded from factories and in need of income, many women had no choice but to work for the
pitiful wages of the sweated industries.
After 1870 new job opportunities for women became available. The development of larger industrial plants
and the expansion of government services created a large number of service jobs. The increased demand for
white-collar workers at low wages coupled with a shortage of male workers led employers to hire women.
Women began working as clerks, typists, secretaries, and telephone operators. Job opportunities for
teachers and nurses increased. The increase in white-collar jobs did not lead to a rise in the size of the
female labor force, but only to a shift from industrial jobs to the white-collar sector of the economy. Many
lower-class women were forced to become prostitutes to survive. One journalists estimated that there were
60,000 prostitutes in London in 1885. Most prostitutes were active for a short time, usually from late teens
through early twenties. Many eventually rejoined the regular workforce or married when they could.
Organizing the Working Classes—The desire to improve their working and living conditions led workers to
form political parties and labor unions. Socialist parties emerged in several European states. Workers also
formed trade unions to improve their working conditions. By 1914 about 20% of the total British workforce
belonged to trade unions. Trade unions were slower to develop on the continent, but by the beginning of
World War I, they had made considerable progress in bettering the living and working conditions of the
laboring classes.
Despite their revolutionary rhetoric, socialist parties and trade unions gradually became less radical in
pursuing their goals. This lack of revolutionary fervor drove some people from Marxian socialism into
anarchism. This movement was especially prominent in less industrialized and less democratic countries.
The growth of universal male suffrage in Great Britain, France, and Germany led workers there to believe
that they could acquire tangible benefits by elections, not by revolutions. These democratic channels were
not open in other countries where revolution seemed the only alternative. Anarchists began to believe that
that small groups of well-trained, fanatical revolutionaries could perpetrate so much violence that the state
and all its institutions would disintegrate, and usher in the anarchist golden age where “weapons will cease
to be a measure of strength and gold a measure of wealth.” Anarchists began to use assassinations as their
primary instrument of terror. The list of victims of anarchist assassins include a Russian tsar (1881), a
president of France (1894), the king of Italy (1900), and a president of the United States (1901).
II. The National State
Great Britain—The Reform Act of 1884 gave the vote to all men who paid regular rents or taxes, thus
largely enfranchising the agricultural workers, a group previously excluded. The following year, the
Redistribution Act eliminated historic boroughs and counties and established constituencies with
approximately equal populations. The payment of salaries to members of the House of Commons beginning
in 1911 further democratized that institution by opening the door to people other than the wealthy.
In 1900 representatives of the democratic socialists organizations and the trade unions joined together to
form the Labor Party. By 1906 they elected 29 members to the House of Commons. The Liberals realized
that they would have to enact a program of social welfare or lose the support of the workers. Under the
leadership of David Lloyd George, the Liberals abandoned the classical principles of lassez-fair and voted
for a series of social reforms. The National Insurance Act of 1911 provided benefits for workers in case of
sickness and unemployment. Additional legislation provided a small pension for those over 70 and
compensation for those injured in accidents while at work. To pay for the programs, the Liberals increased
the taxes on the wealthy.
France—The defeat of France by Prussia in 1870 brought the downfall of Louis Napoleon’s government.
Vicious fighting broke out in April 1871 between the monarchists who controlled the new National
Assembly and the working-class people of the Paris Commune. In the last week of May, government troops
massacred an estimated 20,000 workers; another 10,000 were shipped overseas to the French penal colony
of New Caledonia. The brutal repression of the Commune bequeathed a legacy of hatred that continued to
plague French politics for decades. The inability to agree on who should be king caused the National
Assembly to establish a republican form of government. The position of the Third Republic remained
precarious because monarchists, Catholic clergy, and professional army officers were still its enemies.
Germany—Despite unification, important divisions remained in German society. The Bundesrat, or upper
house, represented the 25 states that made up Germany. Individual states, kept their own kings, their own
post offices, and even their own armies in peacetime. The lower house, the Reichstag, was elected by
universal male suffrage, but it did not have ministerial responsibility. Ministers of government, the most
important of which was the chancellor, were responsible to the emperor. The emperor also commanded the
armed forces and controlled foreign policy.
The policies of Bismarck, who served as chancellor until 1890, often served to prevent the growth of more
democratic institutions. In 1878, a antisocialist law outlawed the Social Democratic Party and limited
socialist meetings and publications. Bismarck attempted to woo workers away from socialism by enacting
social welfare legislation. Between 1883 and 1889, the Reichstag passed laws that created sickness,
accident, and disability benefits as well as old age pensions financed by compulsory contributions from
workers, employers and the state. This social security system was the most progressive in the world at this
time, but a full pension was payable only at age 70 after 48 years of contributions. In the event of a male
worker’s death, no benefits were paid to his widow or children.
Russia—Starting in the 1890s, Russia experienced a massive surge of state-sponsored industrialism. By
1900 Russia had built 35,000 miles of railroad track and was the world’s forth largest producer of steel
behind the United States, Germany, and Great Britain.
Russia and Japan both wanted hegemony over Manchuria and Korea and tensions between the two
countries led to a Japanese surprise attack on the Russian eastern fleet at Port Arthur in February 1904.
Russia sent its Baltic fleet to the East, only to be defeated by the Japanese navy. The Russians admitted
defeat and sued for peace in 1905. President Teddy Roosevelt helped negotiate the Treaty of Portsmouth
ending the war.
In the midst of the war, the growing discontent of increased numbers of Russians led to a revolution.
Middle class and professional people longed for liberal institutions and a liberal political system.
Nationalities were dissatisfied with their domination by an ethnic Russian population that constituted only
45% of the empire’s total population. Peasants suffered from a lack of land, and laborers felt oppressed.
The war caused the transportation system to breakdown and led to food shortages in the major cities. On
January 9, 1905, a massive procession of workers went to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to present a
petition of grievances to the tsar. Troops opened fire on the peaceful demonstration, killing hundreds and
launching a revolution. This “Bloody Sunday” incited workers to call strikes and form unions. Liberals
demanded the formation of parliamentary government, ethnic groups revolted, and peasants burned the
houses of landowners.
Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, in which he granted civil liberties and agreed to a Duma, or
legislative assembly, elected directly by a broad franchise. This satisfied the middle-class who now
supported the government’s repression of the workers’ uprising. Nicholas II was no friend of reform. By
1907, the tsar had curtailed the power of the Duma and he fell back on the army and bureaucracy to rule
Russia.
Jews Within the European Nation-State—Near the end of the 19th century, a revival of racism combined
with extreme nationalism to produce a new right-wing politics aimed primarily at the Jews. Since the
Middle Ages, Jews had been portrayed as the murders of Jesus and subjected to mob violence; their rights
had been restricted, and they had been forced to live in ghettos. After the revolutions of 1848 many
restrictions were lifted. They could leave the ghetto and Jews entered what had been the closed worlds of
parliaments and universities. In 1880, for example, Jews made up 10% of the population of Vienna, but
39% of its medical students and 23% of its law students. Benjamin Disraeli became prime minister of Great
Britain.
These achievements represent only one side of the picture, as evident from the Dreyfus affair in France.
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, was a captain in the French general staff. In 1895 a secret military court found him
guilty of selling army secrets to Germany and condemned him to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island.
During his trial mobs yelled “Death to the Jews.” Soon after the trial, evidence emerged that pointed to
Dreyfus’s innocence. After years of dragging its feet, the government finally pardoned Dreyfus in 1899. In
1906 he was fully exonerated.
In Austrian politics the Christian Socialists combined agitation for workers with a virulent anti-Semitism.
Imperial Vienna was a brilliant center of European culture, but it was also the home of an insidious German
nationalism that blamed Jews for the corruption of German culture. It was in Vienna between 1907-1913
that Adolf Hitler later claimed to have found his worldview. In Germany, political parties used antiSemitism to win the votes of traditional lower-middle-class groups who felt threatened by the new
economic forces of the times. To modern racial anti-Semites, Jews were racially stained; this could not be
altered by conversion to Christianity. One could not be both German and Jew.
The worst treatment of Jews in the last two decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th
century occurred in eastern Europe where 72% of the entire world Jewish population lived. Persecutions
and pogroms were widespread. Hundreds of thousands of Jews decided to emigrate to escape the
persecution. Between 1881 and 1899, an average of 23,000 Jews left Russia each year.
III. The Race for Colonies
As European affairs grew tense, heightened competition led European states to acquire colonies that
provided ports and coaling stations for their navies and merchant marine. Colonies provided raw materials
for industrial production, and markets for European manufactured goods. Acquiring a region as a colony
also ensured that a country’s competitors could not. Colonies were also a source of international prestige.
Late 19th century imperialism was closely tied to nationalism. After the unification of Italy and Germany
nationalism entered a new stage. In the first half of the 19th century, nationalism had been closely
identified with liberals. Liberal nationalists maintained that unified, independent nation-states could best
preserve individual rights. The new nationalism of the late 19th century was tied to conservatism. As one
exponent expressed: “A true nationalist places his country above everything”; he believes in the “exclusive
pursuit of national policies” and “the steady increase in national power—for a nation declines when it loses
military might.”
Imperialism was also tied to Social Darwinism and racism. Social Darwinists believed that in the struggle
between nations, the fit are victorious and survive. Superior races must dominate inferior races by military
force to show how strong and virile they are. A more religious-humanitarian approach of this view was that
Europeans had a moral responsibility to “civilize” ignorant people. This notion of the “white man’s
burden” helped many Europeans rationalize the racist aspects of imperialism.
Africa—Europeans controlled little of Africa before 1880. Medical advances which enabled Europeans to
be less susceptible to tropical diseases changed that. During the Napoleonic wars, the British had
established themselves in South Africa by taking control of Capetown, originally founded by the Dutch.
British abolition of slavery disgusted the Boers or Afrikaners, and led them in 1835 to migrate north on the
Great Trek to the region between the Orange and Vaal Rivers (later known as the Orange Free State) and
north of the Vaal river (the Transvaal). In 1877, the British governor of Cape Colony seized the Transvaal,
but a Boer revolt led the British government to recognize it as the independent South African Republic.
In the 1880s, British policy in South Africa was largely determined by Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes founded both
diamond and gold monopolies. The wealth from these companies enabled him to gain control of a territory
north of Transvaal that he named Rhodesia. One of Rhodes’ goals was to create a series of British colonies
“from the Cape to Cairo”—all linked by a railroad. Britain forced Rhodes to resign as the prime minister of
Cape Colony after he conspired to overthrow the Boer governments without British approval. Although the
British government had hoped to avoid war, extremists on both sides precipitated the Boer War (18991902). In 1910 a Union of South Africa was created that combined the Cape Colony and the ex-Boer states.
Like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, it became a fully self-governing dominion within the British
Empire.
Before 1880, the only other European settlements in Africa had been made by the French and Portuguese.
The Portuguese controlled Angola and Mozambique, and the French controlled Algeria. Between 1880 and
1914, most of the rest of Africa was carved up by the European powers. Only Liberia, founded by blacks
from America, and Ethiopia remained free states. Any peoples who dared to resist (with the exception of
the Ethiopians, who defeated the Italians in 1896) were devastated by superior military force.
Although Asia had been open to Western influence since the 16th century, little of its territory had fallen
under direct European control. The Dutch were established in Indonesia, the Spanish controlled the
Philippines, and the French and Portuguese had trading posts on the Indian coasts. China, Japan, Korea, and
Southeast Asia had largely managed to exclude Westerners. The situation changed in the 19th century.
Between 1768 and 1771 Captain James Cook explored Australia. The availability of land for grazing sheep
and the discovery of gold in Australia led to an influx of settlers who slaughtered many of the aborigines.
In 1850, the British government granted the various Australian colonies self-government, and on January 1,
1901, all the colonies were unified into a Commonwealth of Australia. New Zealand, which the British had
declared a colony in 1840, was granted dominion status in 1907.
The British East India Company had been responsible for subjugating much of India. In 1858 after a revolt
of the sepoys, or Indian troops of the Company’s army had been crushed, the British Parliament transferred
the Company’s powers directly to the British government. In 1876, the title Empress of India was bestowed
upon Queen Victoria; Indians were now her colonial subjects. In 1907, the Russians and British made
Afghanistan a buffer state between Russian Turkestan and British India.
By the 19th century the Manchu dynasty in China was in decline. In 1842, the British obtained through war
the island of Hong Kong and trading rights in a number of Chinese cities. Other Western nations soon
rushed in to gain similar trading privileges. Only great power rivalries kept China from complete
dismemberment.
In Southeast Asia, Britain established control over Burma and the Malay States. In the 1880s, the French
organized Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam into French Indochina. Only Siam (Thailand) remained free as a
buffer state. The Pacific islands were also the scene of great power competition. Germany gained control of
the Marianas and Caroline Islands. The United States took the Samoan Islands. With the defeat of Spain in
the Spanish-American War (1898), the United States took the Spanish colonies of the Philippines, Guam,
and Wake. Hawaii was also annexed as a “war measure.”
World War I
I. International Rivalry and the Coming of War
The conflict between Russia and Austria over the control of the Balkan peninsula, the struggle between
Germany and France over domination of the Continent itself, and the race for colonies in Africa all helped
create tensions that led to war in 1914.
Russia's primary interest centered on the Balkan peninsula and the Dardanelle straits. Russia was concerned
because she wanted a warm-water port and because of cultural factors. Russians felt close kinship to the
Balkan Christians, most of them Orthodox and Slavic. Many Russians envisioned a supranational state
embracing all Slavs under the Russian tsar. Until the mid-1870s the Ottoman Empire controlled most of the
Balkan peninsula except for Greece, independent since 1829. In 1875 an anti-Turkish uprising broke out
among Balkan Christians. The Turks reacted to the revolt with brutal massacres, which outraged people
throughout Europe. In April, 1877, claiming that he was coming to the aid of the persecuted Balkan
Christians, the Russian tsar declared war on Turkey. Russia won the war and in the Treaty of San Stefano
(March, 1878) Turkey was expelled from most of the Balkan peninsula. Several independent states were
created. The new Balkan states were in theory constitutional monarchies, but the usual method of settling
political disputes was by violence. Dissatisfied groups frequently resorted to assassination and kidnapping.
The treaty assured Russia undisputed influence in the Balkans.
Until the war of 1877, Russian expansion into the Balkans had run mainly into British opposition. From
then on it met increasingly with the resistance of Austria. Austria had only consented to the Russian attack
on Turkey in return for receiving the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Austria's interest in the
Balkans grew out of the unification of Italy and Germany. The emergence of strong national states south
and north worried Austria and it sought to increase its strength and influence in the Balkans. The conflict
over the Balkans led to a deterioration in relations between Russia and Austria.
The tension in the Balkans presented less of a threat to the general peace than did the post-1870 antagonism
between Germany and France. At stake, fundamentally, was hegemony over Europe. France had aspired to
this hegemony since the 17th century, and under Napoleon, had actually attained it. Except for distant
Russia, France had been traditionally the largest, the most populous, the richest, and therefore the mightiest
state on the Continent. By 1870, it had ceased to be all these things. The German Empire equaled its
territory, vastly surpassed its population (64 million to France's 39 million in 1911) and industrial
productivity, and, as the Franco-Prussian War had demonstrated, excelled it in military power.
France and Germany leaders became convinced that only war could truly solve their disagreements. The
French wanted revenge for their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. They wanted to recover Alsace and
Lorraine. Germany wanted to protect itself from a French attack. Both sides sought allies--Germany with
Austria, France with Russia and Britain.
Russia allied with France because the Germans supported the Austrians in the Balkans. The critical event in
the rupture between Britain and Germany was the naval race between the two countries. In 1900 Germany
began spending huge sums of money on the construction of a high-seas naval fleet. The purpose of this
fleet was to create an offensive navy of sufficient strength to menace the British Isles, in the expectation
that such a threat would force Britain either to withdraw a good part of its navy to home waters and thereby
endanger its empire, or yield to German demands for territory and commercial advantages. The navy, in
other words, was to serve as an instrument of diplomatic blackmail.
For Britain naval superiority was a matter of survival. Since the early nineteenth century the British Isles
imported a majority of their basic necessities. Four-fifths of the wheat consumed in Britain came from
abroad. By obtaining control of the high seas, a hostile power could force Britain into submission without
an invasion. It was to prevent this from happening that Britain in 1889 proclaimed the "two-power
standard," a formula committing it to maintain a naval force superior to that of the two next most powerful
navies combined. Any country that challenged this rule invited the enmity of Britain.
The naval race convinced British leaders that nothing short of acknowledging German superiority on the
Continent and on the high seas would satisfy the Germans, and that it was essential for Britain to safeguard
its vital interests by extending full support to the Franco-Russian bloc. In 1902 Britain signed a defensive
alliance with Japan, and in 1904 it entered into a loose act of friendship with France. In 1907 Britain
entered into an agreement with Russia. The agreement did not call for automatic military assistance, but it
left no doubt with whom Britain would side in the event that the Austro-German and Franco-Russian blocs
went to war.
By the second half of the 19th century it was widely believed that imperial expansion could permit the
absorption of excess goods made possible by modern technology. In addition, colonies gave countries
access to raw materials, ports for their merchant ships and navies, and the opportunity to prevent their
enemies from acquiring the same.
The rush for Africa began with the completion in 1869 of the Suez Canal. The canal cut the route from
Europe to Asia in half and immediately acquired great commercial and military value, especially for Britain
which, along with France, controlled the canal. The canal gave Britain a base from which to establish
hegemony over northeast Africa. By 1914 the African continent was so carved up by the great powers that
only two countries, Ethiopia (in 1896 Italy had been soundly defeated by the Ethiopians in an attempt to
colonize the country) and Liberia (founded in 1822 as a colony for emancipated American slaves and
virtually a protectorate of the United States) retained their independence.
The immediate cause of World War I was the conflict between Austria and Serbia. Serbia, small but
vigorous and highly nationalistic, stood in the path of Austrian expansion into the Balkans, competing with
it for the legacy of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. Gradually, the Austrian government concluded that
Austrian interests required Serbia to be crushed and it looked for an opportunity to open hostilities. The
occasion presented itself in June, 1914, when an Austrian-Serb terrorist assassinated Austrian Crown Prince
Francis Ferdinand and his wife during a visit to Sarajevo. Although the assassin was an Austrian subject,
and Sarajevo, located in Bosnia, was Austrian territory, Vienna charged Serbia with the responsibility for
the crime. The dispute initially appeared to be leading to yet another Balkan crisis of the kind the world had
learned to take in stride. But this time the outcome was different because the intricate chain of alliances
forged in the preceding 35 years was brought into play.
Before attacking Serbia, Austria requested German assurances of support against Russia should Russia
come to Serbia's aid. The request placed the Germans in a quandary. They did not want war with Russia
and its ally France, yet Austria was the only ally on whom they could count. The Germans could not let
Austria down without risking complete diplomatic isolation. On July 5 William II yielded to Austrian
pressures and gave them the desired assurance--the so-called "blank check"--of unconditional support
against Serbia. The Germans counted on this assurance to intimidate Russia and forestall its intervention.
But if this device did not work they were prepared to fight. Many German generals believed that time was
working against Germany because the Russians were making great strides in modernizing their armed
forces, and that the sooner war came, the better.
The Russians could not accept the destruction of Serbia, for to have done so would have meant forfeiting
all influenced in the Balkans. But they too did not want to act without consulting their ally. The French,
like the Germans, felt that they risked isolation if they failed to honor their treaty obligations, and on July
25 pledged to the Russians support against Austria. On July 28 Austria declared war on Serbia. The next
day Austrian artillery shelled Belgrade. Austria's haste was due to its desire to destroy Serbia before the
other powers had a chance to arbitrate and settle the dispute.
At this point events got out of control. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia, and that very night,
without a formal declaration of war, Germany sent its troops into Belgium and Luxembourg on their way to
Paris. Europe, in the midst of the summer holidays, was not aware of what these events portended. The
Germans knew that the violation of Belgian neutrality would bring Britain into the war, but he Germans
were not much perturbed by this prospect. Britain had only 160,000 men under arms--a minuscule force
compared to Germany's 5 million or France's 4 million. The British navy could make its weight felt only in
a protracted war, and the Germans felt certain that by crossing Belgium they could finish the war in two or
three months. The outbreak of war caught the Continent by surprise.
World War I differed fundamentally from all other wars that had preceded it. It was the first industrial war-the first in which the manpower and technology of the industrial era were applied to the slaughter of
human beings. Within a few weeks after the outbreak of war 6 million men stood poised to fight. Behind
them were many millions who could be drawn upon as the need arose. Such masses of soldiers could not be
equipped and armed by conventional arsenals; they required the services of the nation's entire industrial
plant. Countries like Russia, Italy, and Austria-Hungary which lacked an industrial base found themselves
at a great disadvantage. By contrast, the superior industrial capacity of Great Britain and the United States
allowed them to quickly mount strong fighting forces. The application of industrial methods to warfare
accounted for the unprecedented destructiveness of World War I. Warfare acquired a new dimension: it
became total, calling for the full commitment of human and economic resources.
II. The War
Europeans went to war in 1914 with remarkable enthusiasm. Government propaganda had been successful
in stirring up national antagonisms before the war. Almost everyone in August 1914 believed that the war
would be over in a few weeks. People were reminded that all European wars since 1815 had ended in a
matter of weeks, conveniently overlooking the American Civil War (1861-1865), which was the real
prototype for World War I. To some people war was seen as an exhilarating release from the humdrum of
everyday life. Other young men looked upon war as a glorious adventure. All of these illusions about war
died painful deaths on the battlefield.
German hopes for a quick end to the war rested upon the Schlieffen Plan which called for the German army
to make a vast encircling movement through Belgium into northern France that would sweep around Paris
and encircle most of the French army. German troops crossed into Belgium on August 4 and by the first
week of September they were only 20 miles from Paris. An unexpected counterattack by British and French
forces (the First Battle of the Marne) stopped the Germans. The German troops fell back, but the exhausted
Allied army was unable to pursue its advantage. The war quickly turned into a stalemate.
In contrast to the west, the war in the east was marked by much more mobility. At the beginning of the war,
the Russian army moved into eastern Germany but was decisively defeated. After September 1914 the
Russians were no longer a threat to German territory. In 1914, the Austrians were defeated by the Russians
and thrown out of Serbia. To make matters worse, the Italians betrayed the Germans and Austrians. They
terminated their 1882 alliance with the two countries and entered the war on the Allied side by attacking
Austria in May 1915. By this time, the Germans were able to come to the aid of the Austrians. A GermanAustrian army routed the Russians and pushed the Russian army 300 miles back into their own territory.
Russian casualties stood at 2.5 million; the Russians had almost been knocked out of the war. Buoyed by
their success over the Russians, the Germans and Austrians, joined by the Bulgarians in September 1915,
attacked and eliminated Serbia from the war.
1916-1917: The Great Slaughter—The unexpected development of trench warfare baffled military leaders
who had been trained to fight wars of maneuver. But public outcries for action put them under heavy
pressure. The only plan generals could devise was to attempt a breakthrough by throwing masses of men
against enemy lines. The attacks rarely worked. In 1916 and 1917, millions of young men were sacrificed
in the search for the elusive breakthrough. In 10 months at Verdun, 700,000 men lost their lives over a few
miles of terrain. Warfare in the trenches was horrible. Many soldiers remembered the stench of
decomposing bodies and the swarms of rats that grew fat in the trenches. The introduction of poison gas in
1915 produced new forms of injuries. An infantryman spent one week out of every month in the front-line
trenches, one week in the reserve lines, and the remaining two weeks somewhere behind the lines.
The forces of the British Empire attempted to knock the Germany ally Turkey out of the war, and open a
Balkan front by landing forces at Gallipoli. In April 1915, the entry of Bulgaria into the war on the side of
the Central Powers, and a disastrous campaign at Gallipoli caused them to withdraw. By 1917, the war had
spread beyond Europe. In the Middle East, a British officer who came to be known as Lawrence of Arabia
incited Arab princes to revolt against their Ottoman overlords In 1918, British Commonwealth forces from
Egypt destroyed the rest of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. The Allies also seized German
colonies.
German unrestricted submarine warfare brought the United States into the war on April 6, 1917. Although
American troops did not arrive in large numbers in Europe until 1918, the entry of the U.S. into the war
gave the Allied powers a psychological boost when they needed it. By 1916, there were numerous signs
that civilian morale was beginning to crack under the pressure of total war. In Ireland, on Easter Sunday
1916, members of the Irish Republican Army occupied government buildings in Dublin in an attempt to
gain Irish independence. British forces crushed the Easter Rebellion and then condemned its leaders to
death. In 1917 mutinies in the Italian and French armies were put down with difficulty. Czech leaders in the
Austrian Empire openly called for secession from the Austrian Empire. In April 1917, 200,000 workers in
Berlin struck for a week to protest the reduction of bread rations. Only the threat of military force and
prison brought them back to their jobs.
War governments fought back against the growing opposition to the war with increasing repression. In both
Britain and France, laws were passed that made political dissent a criminal activity. The editor of an
antiwar French newspaper was even executed on a charge of treason. The French president Clemenceau
also punished journalists who wrote negative war reports by having them drafted. Wartime governments
made active use of propaganda to arouse enthusiasm for the war. The British and French, for example,
exaggerated German atrocities in Belgium and found that their citizens (and citizens of the U.S.) were only
too willing to believe these accounts.
In one sense, World War I was a great social leveler. Death in battle did not distinguish between classes.
Two groups were especially hard-hit. Junior officers who led the charges across the “no man’s land”
experienced death rates that were three times higher than regular casualty rates. Many of these junior
officers were members of the aristocracy. The unskilled workers and peasants who made up the masses of
soldiers also suffered heavy casualties. The fortunate ones were the skilled laborers who gained exemptions
from military service. Growing inflation caused inequities. The combination of full employment and high
demand for scarce consumer goods caused prices to climb. Many skilled workers were able to keep up with
inflation, but this was not true for unskilled workers. Many middle-class people were especially hard-hit by
inflation and by the end of the war many were actually doing less well economically than skilled workers.
III. The Russian Revolution
Russia was unprepared both militarily and technologically for the total war of World War I. Competent
military leadership was lacking. Even worse, Tsar Nicholas II, alone of all European monarchs, insisted
upon taking personal charge of the armed forces despite his obvious lack of ability and training. Ill-led and
ill-armed, Russian armies suffered huge losses. Between 1914 and 1916, two million soldiers were killed
while another four to six million were wounded or captured. By 1917, the Russian will to fight had
vanished.
Nicholas was increasingly insulated from events by his German-born wife Alexandra. Alexandra was a
stubborn, willful, and ignorant woman who had fallen under the influence of Rasputin, a Siberian peasant
who belonged to a religious sect that indulged in sexual orgies. To the tsarina, Rasputin was a holy man for
he alone seemed able to stop the bleeding of her hemophiliac son Alexis. Rasputin was an important power
behind the throne, and he often interfered in government affairs. Conservative aristocrats assassinated
Rasputin in December 1916, but by then it was too late to save the monarchy.
At the beginning of March 1917 a series of strikes broke out in the capital city of Petrograd (formerly St.
Petersburg) that shut down all the factories in the city. Nicholas, who was at the battlefront, ordered the
troops to disperse the crowds by shooting them if necessary. Initially, the troops did so, but soon significant
numbers of the soldiers joined the demonstrators. The Duma, which the tsar had tried to dissolve, met
anyway and on March 12 established a Provisional Government that urged the tsar to abdicated. He did so
on March 15. In just one week, the tsarist regime had fallen apart. It was not really overthrown since there
had been no deliberate revolution.
The moderate Constitutional Democrats were responsible for establishing the Provisional Government.
They represented primarily a middle-class and liberal aristocratic minority. Their program consisted of a
19th century liberal agenda: freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and civil liberties. Their determination
to carry on the war was a major blunder since it satisfied neither the workers nor the peasants who above all
wanted an end to the war. The Allies put tremendous pressure on the Provisional Government not to leave
the war, promising to withhold all post-war aid if Russia did not continue to fight. They also promised the
Russians a warm water port on the Mediterranean at the end of the war.
The Provisional Government was also faced with another authority, the soviets, or councils of peasants’,
workers’ and soldiers’ deputies. The soviets represented the more radical interests of the lower classes. The
socialists of Russia were divided into two factions known as the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. The
Mensheviks wanted the socialists to be a mass electoral party based on a Western model. They were willing
to cooperate temporarily in a parliamentary democracy while working toward the ultimate achievement of
the socialist state.
The Bolsheviks were a small faction under the leadership of Vladimir Ulianov, know to the world by his
pseudonym V. I. Lenin. In 1887 Lenin turned into a dedicated enemy of tsarist Russia when his older
brother was executed for planning to assassinate the tsar. Arrested for organizing workers into a socialist
union, Lenin was shipped to Siberia. After his release, he chose to go into exile in Switzerland. Under
Lenin’s leadership the Bolsheviks were a party dedicated to violent revolution. When the Provisional
Government was formed, Lenin believed that an opportunity for the Bolsheviks to seize power had come.
In April 1917, with the connivance of the German High Command, who hoped to create disorder in Russia,
Lenin and a small group of his followers went to Russia across Germany in a “sealed train” by way of
Finland.
Lenin realized that the soviets were ready-made instruments of power. He had the Bolsheviks gain control
of these groups and then used them to overthrow the Provisional Government. Bolshevik propaganda
emphasized the party’s program: an immediate end to the war; the redistribution of all land to the peasants;
the transfer of factories and industries from capitalists to committees of workers; and the control of the
government by the soviets. Lenin summed up the Bolshevik program: “Peace, Land, Bread,” “Worker
control of Production,” and “All Power to the Soviets.”
The Provisional Government promised that by the fall of 1917 royal and monastic lands would be
redistributed. The offer was meaningless since many peasants had already starting seizing lands on their
own in March. The Petrograd soviet issued Army Order No. 1 in March encouraging soldiers to remove
their officers and replace them with committees composed of “the elected representatives of the lower
ranks.” This order led to the collapse of discipline and created military chaos. When the Provisional
Government attempted to initiate a new military offensive in July, the army simply dissolved as masses of
soldiers deserted.
Lenin was especially fortunate to have the close cooperation of Leon Trotsky, a former Menshevik turned
revolutionary. Lenin and Trotsky organized a Military Revolution Committee within the Petrograd soviet.
On the night of November 6-7, 1917 Bolshevik forces seized the Winter Palace, seat of the Provisional
Government. The government collapsed quickly with little bloodshed.
Lenin realized the importance of winning mass support as quickly as possible. In his first law, Lenin
declared the land nationalized and turned it over to local rural soviets. In effect, this action ratified the
peasants’ seizure of the land and assured the Communists (as the Bolsheviks were soon renamed) of
peasant support. Lenin also turned control of the factories to committees of workers. In March 1918, the
new Communist government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and gave up eastern Poland,
Ukraine, Finland, and the Baltic provinces.
There was great opposition to the Communist regime, not only from groups loyal to the tsar but also from
bourgeois and aristocratic liberals and anti-Leninist socialists. In addition, in the summer of 1918 thousands
of Allied soldiers (including 7,000 Americans—2,000 of which became casualties) landed in Archangel
and Vladivostok. Their stated purpose was to safeguard the enormous stores of that had been dispatched by
the Allies to the Russian armies but for lack of transport had remained stockpiled in the ports. In reality, the
Allies hoped that a Communist defeat would bring Russia back into the war.
The opponents of the Communist Red Army were known as the White Army. The war was fought with
incredible savagery. There was no stable front, and some areas changed hands dozens of times, each time
being followed by bloody repressions. Murder of prisoners and hostages, torture, rape, and mutilation were
daily occurrences.
By 1920, the major White forces were defeated, and Ukraine retaken. The next year, the Communists
regime regained control of Georgia, Armenia, and Azaerbaijan. There were several reasons for the
Communist triumph. The Red Army was a well-disciplined fighting force, largely due to the organizational
genius of Trotsky. Trotsky reinstated the draft and had soldiers shot who deserted or refused to obey orders.
The Red Army also had the advantage of interior lines of defense and was able to move its troops rapidly
from one battlefront to the other.
The disunity of the Whites seriously weakened their efforts. Some Whites insisted on restoring the tsarist
regime, while others wanted a liberal-democratic program. In contrast to the White’s disunity, the
Communists were single-minded in their sense of purpose. Using a new Red secret police (the Cheka), the
Communists used terror against anyone who opposed the new regime. The Red Terror added an element of
fear to the Bolshevik regime and significantly reduced dissent.
Finally, the intervention of foreign armies enabled the Communists to appeal to Russian patriotism. At one
point, over 100,000 foreign troops, mostly Japanese, British, American, and French, were stationed on
Russian soil. Allied interference was never substantial enough to make a military difference in the civil
war, but it did serve indirectly to help the Bolshevik cause and to exacerbate Russian distrust of the West.
IV. The Last Year of the War
The withdrawal of Russia from the war offered renewed hope to Germany for a victory. The Germans
made their final attempt at victory in March 1918. The Germans hoped to knock France out of the war
before American might could be decisive. The German forces succeeded in advancing 40 miles to within
35 miles of Paris. But an Allied counterattack, supported by 140,000 fresh American troops, defeated the
Germans at the Second Battle of the Marne in July. With the arrival of two million more American troops
on the Continent Allied forces began making a steady advance toward Germany. German Military units
began to mutiny, workers and peasants began forming soviets, and on November 9 William II fled to the
Netherlands. On November 11, 1918 an armistice went into effect. German Communists attempted to gain
control of the government but they failed. The attempt by the Communists to gain power, and the bloody
suppression of the attempt by the republican government, created a deep fear of communism among the
German middle classes. This fear would be cleverly manipulated by Adolf Hitler.
V. The Peace Settlement
The principal peace terms concluding World War I were drawn up at a conference held at Paris beginning
in January 1919, and signed in June. The Treaty of Versailles set the surrender conditions for Germany and
at the same time provided for the establishment of the League of Nations. Supplementary treaties with the
other Central Powers were signed later.
After the takeover of the Russian government, Lenin had publicly revealed the contents of secret wartime
treaties found in the archives of the Russian foreign ministry. The documents made it clear that European
nations had gone to war primarily to achieve territorial gains. But Woodrow Wilson attempted to shift the
discussion of war aims to a higher ground. Wilson outlined “Fourteen Points” that he believed justified the
sacrifices of the war. Wilson’s proposals included “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at” instead of
secret diplomacy; the reduction of arms to a “point consistent with domestic safety”; and the selfdetermination of people. Wilson characterized World War I as a people’s war against “absolutism and
militarism,” two enemies of liberty that could only be eliminated by creating democratic governments and a
“general association of nations” that would guarantee the “political independence and territorial integrity to
great and small states alike.” Wilson soon found that other states at Paris Peace Conference were guided by
more pragmatic motives. The secret treaties and agreements, for example, that had been made before and
during the war could not be totally ignored.
Although the representatives of 32 governments participated in the deliberations and were consulted in
cases involving their interests, the terms of the treaty were in large measure set by the major powers, the socalled Council of Four, composed of President Woodrow Wilson and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain
(David Lloyd George), France (Georges Clemenceau), and Italy (Vittorio Orlando). Japan constituted a
fifth great power on issues directly involving the Far East. The defeated powers did not participated in the
negotiations and had to sign a treaty in which they had taken no part. The Soviet Union was also not
allowed to attend.
The Council of Four intended to lay the groundwork of a lasting peace, but they differed greatly on how to
go about it. Two general approaches were discernible: the "hard" line espoused by the French, and the
"soft" line, advanced by the U.S. The Italians sided with France, while the British vacillated between the
two positions.
Clemenceau saw German aggressiveness as the major cause of international instability. He considered it
essential to weaken Germany to the point where it no longer would be able to wage effective war. This goal
meant a demilitarized Germany with reduced territory. It was on his insistence that the British maintained
their naval blockade of Germany, preventing the flow of food into a country on the verge of starvation, so
as to soften it and force it to accept onerous peace terms.
President Wilson, by contrast, did not regard Germany as the principal source of instability or as the
country responsible for the outbreak of the Great War. To him the cause of the war lay in fundamental
flaws of the system regulating relations between states: in secret diplomacy, thwarted aspirations to
national statehood, and, above all, the absence of institutions capable of peacefully resolving international
disputes. Wilson saw himself as a reformer—someone that would take the middle-way between the
conservatism of Clemenceau and the radicalism of Lenin.
Each of the Council of Four, in addition to serving as a diplomat, also headed a political party dependent on
a democratic electorate. This electorate, in general, had little understanding of the broader issues of
international relations, and responded readily to simplistic slogans made by demagogic politicians and
irresponsible journalists. Public opinion and partisan domestic politics thus exerted an invisible but
ever‑ present influence on the negotiations.
The Germans had originally agreed to an armistice on the basis of Wilson's "Fourteen Points." The French,
British, and Italians did not much care for the proposal, but they went along for fear that unless they did,
the U.S. would sign a separate peace treaty. The Fourteen Points were promptly lost sight of during the
peace negotiations and later on, the Germans and Austrians could claim with some justice that they had
been tricked into signing an armistice.
The Germans protested these terms loudly but to no avail. They were told that if they refused to sign, Allied
troops would occupy Germany and the British would maintain indefinitely their naval blockade. During the
1920s the Versailles treaty was widely regarded as a harsh and punitive peace. The bad conscience over
Versailles weakened the will of Europeans later to resist Hitler, who rode to power on slogans pledging to
rectify the treaty's real and alleged injustices.
Recent scholarship has taken a more tolerant view of the treaty. If Germany had won the war it would have
almost certainly imposed harsh terms on the Allies (the Treaty of Brest Litovsk illustrates German
territorial ambitions). It had been a custom of long standing in Europe for the loser to pay for a war.
Napoleon imposed an indemnity on Prussia, and the Germans in turn, collected from France after the war
of 1870. After Hitler came to power, Germany easily raised the money for rearmament that it had allegedly
been unable to pay in reparations.
The terms for the four other Central Powers essentially involved territorial changes. Austria-Hungary was
broken up. Serbia, united with several Austrian provinces inhabited by Slavs, to become Yugoslavia ("the
country of southern Slavs"). The Czechs and Slovaks merged to form Czechoslovakia. Poland regained its
independence lost in the 18th century. Its territory consisted of lands partly ceded by Germany and Austria,
and partly won from Soviet Russia in the war of 1920. Romania enlarged at the expense of Hungary,
acquiring the province of Transylvania. Hungary separated from Austria and became fully independent.
The Italians gained several Austrian regions, including the port city of Trieste. As a result of these losses
Austria, which in 1914 had been the second largest state in Europe, was reduced to the status of an
insignificant power. The peace treaty forbade Austria from uniting with Germany. The Ottoman Empire
lost all of its non-Turkish territory, including Palestine, Syria, and Iraq, which came under British or French
control.
Woodrow Wilson made many concessions to the other Allied countries on questions of territory and
reparations in order to secure what mattered to him most: the League of Nations, on which he pinned his
hopes for a lasting peace. Clemenceau realized this fact and exploited it to wring concessions from the
President.
The League, as created by the peace treaty, was conceived not as a super-government but as an association
of free sovereign states. Its members merely undertook to help each other to repel aggression and pledged
to submit to arbitration their own disputes. The League was intended to act as an organ of collective
security, obviating the need for military alliances, considered one of the main causes of the war.
The League of Nations consisted of two chambers: a General Assembly, composed of representatives of
member states; and a Council with executive functions made up of representatives of the U.S., Britain,
France, Italy, and Japan, as well as those of four additional states, elected by the Assembly. The
headquarters of the League was Geneva. Operating under the League's auspices were numerous
international offices (labor bureau, economic bureau, etc.). Its day‑ to‑ day business was carried out by a
Secretariat. Among the important responsibilities imposed on the League were trusteeships of the colonies
taken away from the Central Powers (the so-called mandates).
Successful enforcement of the peace necessitated the active involvement of its principal architects,
especially in assisting the new German state to develop a peaceful and democratic republic. The failure of
the American Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, however, meant that the United States never joined
the League of nations. In addition, the American Senate also rejected Wilson’s defensive alliance with
Great Britain and France. The failure to ratify the treaties had dire consequences. American withdrawal
from the defensive alliance with Britain and France led Britain to withdraw as well. By removing itself
from European affairs, the United States forced France to stand alone facing Germany, leading France to
take strong actions against Germany that only intensified German resentment.
World War I shattered the liberal and rational assumptions of European society. The incredible destruction
and the death of almost 10 million people undermined the whole idea of progress. New propaganda
techniques had manipulated entire populations into sustaining their involvement in a meaningless slaughter.
World War I was a total war and involved a mobilization of resources and populations and increased
government centralization of power. Civil liberties, such as freedom of the press, speech, assembly, and
movement, were circumscribed in the name of national security. Governments’ need to plan the production
and distribution of goods and to ration consumer goods restricted economic freedom. World War I made
the practice of strong central authority a way of European life.
Finally, World War I ended the age of European hegemony over world affairs. In 1917, the Russian
Revolution laid the foundation for the creation of a new Soviet power, and the United States entered the
war. The termination of the European age was not immediately evident for it was clouded by American
isolationism and the withdrawal of the Soviets from world affairs. Although these developments were only
temporary, they created a political vacuum in Europe that was filled by the revival of German power.