CHAPTER 23
The Age of Optimism, 1850–1880
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, students will be able to:
1.
Describe factors distinguishing the “second industrial revolution.”
2.
Assess the effects of economic expansion on various social classes in urban and rural areas.
3.
Discuss the rise and spread of industrial middle-class values.
4.
Explain public, private, and religious initiative to improve the quality of modern life.
5.
Describe how Europeans dealt with urbanization’s challenges and changes.
6.
Describe the main trends in education, the sciences, and the social sciences in the second
half of the nineteenth century.
7.
Analyze how Charles Darwin both reflected and shaped intellectual trends of his era.
8.
Discuss the impact of science and secularism on Western cultural development.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Industrial Growth and Acceleration
Technological and economic advances fueled industrial development, accelerating the rapid
pace of social change.
A. The “Second Industrial Revolution”
1. Interrelated economic changes included new sources of energy, new
manufacturing processes, and new products
2. Improvements in steel production
3. Expansion of credit and world trade
4. Science became a partner in industrial innovation
B. Transportation and Communications
1. Dramatic expansion of rail systems and improvements in ocean transportation
reduced global distances
2. Refrigeration revolutionized food transport
3. Postal systems, the telegraph, and the telephone accelerated communications
II. Social Impacts of Economic Growth
Industrialization elevated the social and political influence of the middle class and generally
improved the lot of workers, but at the expense of traditional rural elites. Disparities in
wealth continued.
A. The Adapting Aristocracy
1. Small social class with varied incomes
2. Gradual blurring of lines between aristocracy and middle class
3. Surprising durability of aristocratic power
B. The Expanding Middle Classes
1. The “bourgeois century”
2. Rapid growth of middle and lower bourgeoisie
3. Growing social mobility and professionalization
4. Expanding, trained state bureaucracies
C. Middle-Class Lifestyles
1. Improvements in lifestyle of the middle class
a) Abundance of new goods
b) Importance of domestic service
2. Travel and tourism
3. The development of “Victorian morality”
4. The idea of “separate spheres” for men and women
5. New opportunities for women
D. Improving Conditions among Workers and the Poor
1. Rising earning power and standards of living
2. Persistent structural poverty
3. Extensive social legislation and government initiatives to improve working class
conditions
a) The threat of working class agitation
b) Concern about population decline
c) The Factory Acts in Britain
4. Private initiatives and the role of middle- and upper-class women
5. Pope Leo XIII and the social Catholic movement
E. The Transformation of the Countryside
1. Higher agricultural yields and declining rural population
2. Integration of the countryside with national markets and lifestyles
3. Withering of rural cottage industries
4. Agricultural backwardness in Russia and the Balkans
III. Urban Problems and Solutions
Explosive urban growth required advances in public health, urban planning, and services.
A. City Planning and Urban Renovation
1. Cramped medieval towns became congested industrial centers
2. The ambitious redevelopment of Paris by Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann
served as a model
B. The Introduction of Public Services
1. Government action significantly improved public health
2. Improvements in hygiene, street lighting, city transportation, and policing
transformed urban populations and urban living
IV. Culture in an Age of Optimism
Confidence in scientific and technological progress manifested itself in secular, realistic
culture and thought.
A. Educational and Cultural Opportunities
1. Expanding public education in Britain, France, Germany and other European
nations
2. Educational emphasis on basic skills, discipline, respect for authority, and
patriotism
3. Persistent social limitations on secondary and higher education
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
4. Establishment of public libraries, galleries, and museums
5. Dramatic rise in literacy and cultural modernization
Darwin and Evolution
1. Auguste Comte, positivism, and the idea that scientific knowledge drove human
progress
2. Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution through natural selection
3. Notion of human evolution put humanity’s uniqueness into question
4. Social Darwinism applied natural selection to society
Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine
1. Advances, especially in physics and chemistry, enhanced science’s prestige
2. Professionalization of the sciences
3. Improvements in surgery and the contributions of Pasteur and Lister
Birth of the Social Sciences
1. Leopold von Ranke, the focus on objectivity in modern historical writing, and
standards of evidence
2. Anthropology and the “scientific” justification for European superiority
3. Auguste Comte coins the term “sociology” and Emile Durkheim defined it as a
verifiable science
4. Professionalization of the social sciences
The Challenge to Religion
1. Favored position of the Catholic Church in post-1848 France, Spain, and Austria
2. Papal opposition to liberalism
3. Challenges to Catholicism in unified Italy, Bismarck’s Germany and republican
France
4. Growing religious tolerance and indifference
5. Jewish rights achieved in western Europe but denied in eastern Europe
Culture in the Age of Material Change
1. Modernism and the artistic embrace of new forms
2. Louis Daguerre and the development of photography
3. Realism and the pre-Raphaelites
4. Impressionism attempted to capture immediate, unprocessed sensory perception
5. Realism in literature developed into positivist naturalism
6. Some intellectuals reacted against the optimistic materialism of the age