La Belle Époque
[1871-1914]:
“The Beautiful
Era”
Characteristics of
La Belle Epoch
• Advances in technology, democratic reform and
creativity in arts
• Everything solved by the new ideas
• Mass Politics, Mass Society and Mass
Production overwhelms individualism and
nationality
• Outsiders use violence to be more included
• Intellectual trends stress struggle and violence
• Art movement changed
La Belle Epoch
Mass Society
• Middle Class-Age of the Middle Class
• They created the ‘status quo’ and are the
‘arbiter of taste’
• Not homogenous ‘white collar’ workers
• Paris, Vienna and Manchester urbanize better
La Belle Epoch
1. Second Industrial Revolution (1850-WWI)
 Steam  electricity & Petroleum
 Internal combustion & diesel engines
 Britain  “The World’s Industrial Workshop”
 Germany & U.S.-> surpasses Britain (1900)
 Corporations  limited liability of
investments.
 Cartels to control prices
2. Development “zones”
Inner Zone  Britain, France, Germany, Belgium,
N Italy ,W Austria
Outer Zone  Ireland, Iberia, Italy, Eastern
Europe
Underdeveloped Zone  Africa & Asia
New Inventions
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Larger factories
Bessemer Steel
Skyscrapers
Chemicals
Lighted cities
Refrigeration
TNT
X-Rays
****ASSEMBLY
LINES***
• Cars
• Steamships
• Suez Canal (1869)
• Panama Canal
(1914)
• Airplanes (1903)
• Subways
• Suburbs
• Transatlantic
Telegraph cable laid
• Marconi’s Radio
(1880)
La Belle Epoch
3. Free Trade & Protectionism
4. Economy ->World Markets -> Booms & Bust cycle
5. Advance of Democracy
Extension of the vote to the working class.
Creating a “welfare state.”
6. Materialism…Consumerism (consumer economy)
Higher standard of living
Department Stores created 1870
7. Migration from Europe
1850-1940  60 million left Europe
Emigrate to  US, Argentina, Brazil,
Canada, Australia
La Belle Epoch
8. Increased European Population
 1/5th of worlds population ( 260-450 million
from 1850-1914)
 Smaller families, improved health, living
conditions & industrialization
 Rural people crowded cities Americas,
Australia & South Africa
9. Growth of Cities & Urban Life
• More leisure time
• parks, dance and concert halls created
10. Medicine•Louis Pasteur•Joseph Lister•Medical schools developed
Mass Politics
• Governments used republicanism, public opinion,
and mass communication
• Mass Communication influences public opinion
• Most countries controlled by a ruling elite
• Conflicts arise (social and ethnic)…outsiders bad!
• Mass politics  Large Groups  manipulation of
public opinion  generally against minority groups
and ‘outsiders’
La Belle Epoch
10. 11. Education– Most of western Europeans became literate
– Maria Montessori (1870-1952)
– Nationalism and xenophobia spread
12. Family and Childhood– Distinct gender roles
– Use of Enlightened ideas to raise kids
13. Jews• Most have been liberated due to Enlightenment
• Marx, Freud, and Einstein famous Jews of this
time…led to anti Semitism (accidentally)
•
Anti-Semitism
 Darwinism…Pogroms…Dreyfus Affair
 Led to…Theodore Herzl  1896… “Father of
Modern Zionism”
La Belle Epoch
Women’s Movement- ‘Feminism’
– They can work white collar jobs, but still raise
the kids
– 1850-1914 Women gained rights such in legal
system, property ownership, divorce and
custody of kids
– Obscenity Laws- prohibited publications on
birth control
– Right to vote occurs after WWI for most
western countries
• Emmeline Pankhurst created (Women’s Social
and Political Union)
• Florence Nightingale
• Maria Montessori
La Belle Epoch
•
Faith in Science Alone
– Science at the core of industrialization.
– “New Wonders” of daily life.
– Positivism – Auguste Comte
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Father of sociology…3 Stages of history
Charles Darwin - Darwinism
• Origin of Species [1859]
• “survival of the fittest”
“Social Darwinism”  Herbert Spenser
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Promote racism
La Belle Epoch
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Physics• Newtonian Science turned on its head
• Einstein  “Theory of Relativity”
• Marie Curie -> discovered radium & said
atoms emitted radioactivity
• William Roentgen -> x-rays

“New” sciences ->anthropology, archaeology,
sociology, psychology, etc.
La Belle Epoch
•
Psychology

Ivan Pavlov  conditioned responses

Sigmund Freud  psychoanalysis
o The Interpretation of Dreams [1900]
o The role of the unconscious [id, ego, super
ego].
o Friedrich Nietzsche ->Übermensch  “Super
Man”->Morality is personal
o Internal Religious Struggles
modernists vs. fundamentalists
La Belle Epoch
Realism and Naturalism
• Literature movement that is opposite of
Romanticism
• Attention to good and bad aspects of
industrial states
• Charles Dickens
• Emile Zola
• George Bernard Shaw
• Leo Tolstoy- War and Peace
ART- Reflects economic, political and social problems
Impressionism- ‘Capture what the eye sees’
Use of lights and shadows, visible
brushstrokes and backgrounds
Claude Monet
Pierre August Renoir
Edgar Degas
Edmond Manet
Monet
<- Degas
Renoir ^
Manet
Postimpressionism
Moving away from lights and
shadow use
Van Gogh George Seurat
Expressionism
•Distortion of color and
use of color to capture
problems in Europe
Cubism / Futurism
• Glorified the influence of technology
Picasso