Political Challenges
Overview
Political Changes
Liberalism and Nationalism continued to impact European culture and society in the late 19th century. As a result of the French Revolution and the subsequent revolutions of the first half of the 19th century, most European states enjoyed a Liberal form of government (Liberalism - written constitution, elected representative government, equal rights for all citizens under the law, and personal, individual freedoms such as freedom of religion and speech). Across Western and Central Europe, the right to vote was extended to include all adult males (universal male suffrage). New political parties arose in these areas to woo these voters and win seats in the elected legislatures. Elected political leaders claimed to be advancing the national interests of the voters. Rising national rivalries set the stage for the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
Learning Objectives
- Analyze and identify the role of the MAIN (Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, and Nationalism) causes of World War I.
- Identify the political changes in Europe in the late 19th century.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Eugenics: a set of beliefs and practices that seeks to “improve the quality of the human race,” historically by excluding people and groups identified as inferior and promoting those designated to be superior
Victorian Era: in British history, the era between 1820 and 1914, which corresponds to the period of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837 – 1901)
Progressive Era: a period in United States History between approximately 1890 – 1918 when reformers aimed to address social, economic, and political problems impacting American society
Trusts: the term “trusts” in a historical sense refer to monopolies or near-monopolies in the United States in the 19th century and early 20th century. A monopoly is a business with little or no competition in the sale of certain goods or services
Anarchists: followers of a political philosophy that rejects authority and social classes; seeks the destruction of government, which it considers harmful
Europe in the Late 19th Century
Many Europeans in the late 19th century were brimming with hope and optimism regarding the supposed bright and wonderful future of the human race. However, from the perspective of the early 21st century, historians can see that Europe was heading for a catastrophic Great War (1914 – 1918) that would cast a long shadow and result in continual wars and conflicts around the world for the next century. The causes of this Great War are many, and no one nation started this war, even though many Europeans came to blame Germany. The outbreak of this war came at the end of a long process that began with rapid economic growth worldwide. This economic expansion, however, resulted in destructive social and ethnic tensions that threatened to tear European states apart. To counter these dividing forces, the peoples of Europe embraced nationalism as a means to maintain social order and unity. This same nationalism that promoted internal unity within each nation, also stirred up intense rivalries between different nations. To advance their national interests against rival nations, national leaders embraced militarism—the idea that nations could maintain national security and advance their national interests through their military and with quick, decisive wars. The Great European powers also sought to achieve national security through imperialism—the conquest and annexation of overseas territory, primarily in Africa and Asia. By the early 20th century, the European powers had formed competing military alliances against one another due to their national and imperialist rivalries. After Europe had become divided into rival military alliances— the Triple Entente (United Kingdom, France, Russia) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austro-Hungary), a series of international crises in the beginning of the 20th century led to the outbreak of war in 1914.
Social Tensions
In this period leading to this conflict, the different social classes across Europe looked upon each other with increasing suspicion and distrust due to their different economic experiences. In Europe the elite aristocracy still enjoyed great wealth and high status due to their large, landed estates. In rural areas especially, the local peasants continued to show these aristocrats customary deference and respect. The aristocracy, however, was quite alarmed by the ever-increasing wealth and influence of the middle class, who were steadily improving their socio-economic status, because Liberalism and the Market Revolution had enabled the middle class to challenge the aristocracy for the leadership of European society. To maintain their social and political influence, aristocrats often pursued a military career due to the traditional association of the aristocracy with medieval knighthood. The officer corps of European countries, and Germany in particular, was dominated by aristocrats. Some aristocrats boosted their incomes by marrying wealthy heiresses from middle class families. For example, the mother of the aristocratic, British statesman, Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965), was Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a wealthy American, Leonard Jerome, who was the so-called "King of Wall Street."
The middle class was especially confident, even arrogant, in this era, viewing both the aristocracy and the working class with disdain and contempt for their alleged laziness and immorality. The middle class included not only the owners of businesses, but also the rising number of professionals, such as accountants and engineers that were employed by large companies. Members of the middle class tended to attribute their financial success to their own hard work and abilities, as well as personal piety. Members of this class, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, at least publicly, closely followed the moral teachings of Christianity. Young men and women, for example, were expected to remain chaste until marriage, and any divorce was scandalous. Middle class men also were proud that their wives didn't need to work outside the home, unlike working class women, and could devote their time to raising and educating their children. But everyone was expected to be productive with their time, which may be owing to the “The Protestant Work-ethic,” with which came the idea that “idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.”
In this period, not all members of the middle class embraced the Christian faith, but instead some found inspiration in ideas that emerged from the Enlightenment. The French philosopher, Auguste Compte (1798 – 1857) had put forth the philosophical notion of Positivism. According to Compte, scientists could not only employ the scientific method to research the natural world but also to examine social problems, such as poverty and crime. Compte was confident that humanity could end all of societies' ills through the advancement of science and reason. Another influential thinker was the English philosopher, Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) with his philosophy of Utilitarianism. According to Bentham, society was morally obligated to promote material happiness to the most people in society. Bentham's ideas inspired prison reform in the United Kingdom in the 19th century. Bentham maintained that prisoners should not simply be punished in prison, but reformed, so that they could return to society and contribute their talents for the common good. Another influential thinker in this period was the English social scientist Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903). Spencer took inspiration from the scientific research of the English scientist, Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882). In his monumental work, The Origin of Species (1859), Darwin maintained that complex species of living beings evolve over time from more simple species through the process of natural selection. Spencer maintained that advanced human societies, likewise, evolve over time from primitive societies. According to Spencer's Social Darwinism, the most talented and "fit" members of society have pushed forward social evolution. Some followers of Spencer's ideas even embraced eugenics and maintained that the poor and criminal members of society were "unfit" and should be prevented from having children because they were holding back social evolution.
Middle class women often played a critical role in these reform efforts. Educated middle class women couldn't enter politics or work outside the home as a professional, but these women could perform charitable work for churches and reform organizations. In Great Britain in the Victorian Era, women were supposedly more compassionate and nurturing than men due to their role as mothers, so they were best suited to help the poor and suffering in society. In England, for example, Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910), inspired by her Christian faith, worked tirelessly to improve public hospitals for the poor and to train women to become nurses. In the United States, Florence Kelley (1859 –1932), inspired by her commitment to Socialism, organized the Consumers League, which lobbied the state and federal governments to end child labor and establish an 8-hour day and minimum wage.
The Rise of the Working Class
The size of the working class continued to swell during this period, as millions of people left rural areas to find work in cities and towns for wages in mines, factories, and other businesses. Working class families faced many challenges. Many of these workers came directly from rural villages, where they worked closely and informally as agricultural laborers with friends and family. In their new jobs in the cities, however, workers labored for long hours (often 10 to 12 hours a day) under the constant supervision of an overseer in a very regimented environment. Workers also lived in fear that they could see their wages reduced or their jobs eliminated because of an economic downturn or even getting ill for a short period. They often resented that their affluent, middle-class employers paid them too little for their labor and treated them inhumanely.
In this period, workers sought to increase their wages and improve their working conditions by joining labor unions. Unions negotiated with employers on behalf of union members for higher wages and set hours. Unions pressured employers to agree to their demands by going on strike and organizing boycotts against employers, which sometimes led to violence. In 1894, for example, in the United States, the American Railway Union organized a massive strike of railroad workers in the Chicago area to protest wage cuts by the Pullman Company, which manufactured railway cars. When the railroad companies hired new workers ("scabs") to replace the striking workers, violence erupted between the strikers and the "scabs."
The Politics of the Working Class
The working class also hoped to improve their standard of living though political action. By the late nineteenth century, workers in western and central Europe could vote due to Liberal reform and universal male suffrage. Across Europe, labor unions organized new political parties to represent the interests of the working class. In Germany labor unions founded the Social Democratic Party in 1875, which quickly became the largest political party in Germany. In 1893 union workers in the United Kingdom established the Labour Party, which replaced the Liberal (Whig) Party as the main opposition to the Conservative (Tory) Party after World War I. In France (1880), Italy (1882), and Belgium (1885) the working-class political party was simply known as the Workers Party. In Russia, workers in 1898 organized the Social Democratic Labor Party, even though they could not vote, and Russia didn't even have a Liberal constitution. All these parties embraced Socialism as their ideology. According to this system of thought, the Capitalist Bourgeoisie (middle class) oppressed and exploited the working class to amass their private fortunes. Socialists envisioned a day when the "means of production" (i.e., land, tools, machinery) would be publicly owned rather than the private property of these capitalists. In the United States, the Populist Party arose in 1890 to challenge the political domination of the two main political parties—the Democratic and Republican Parties. The Populists claimed to represent the interests of the majority of Americans who were small, landowning farmers, tenant farmers, and labor union members. The Populists were not Socialists, but they wanted the government to rein in "Big Business" and the "Trusts" through government regulation of large corporations, such as railroads, and higher taxes on wealthy Americans. After 1896 when the Democratic Party merged with the Populist Party, a Socialist Party did arise in 1901 in the United States and even won elections at the state and local level in the first two decades of the 20th century.
In the late 19th century Socialists were deeply divided regarding the best tactics to achieve their objectives. In England, the Fabian Socialists maintained that a Socialist society would eventually evolve peacefully in England over time through the democratic process. In Germany, the philosopher and statesman Ferdinand Lassalle (1825 – 1864) maintained that the working class could improve its social and economic standing over time through government reform, even if that government was the government of the Prussian, Hohenzollern monarchy. The German Social Democratic Party, inspired by the ideas of Lasalle, worked with Chancellor Bismarck in the German Reichstag (Parliament) in 1884 to create accident insurance for German workers. This new law required German employers for the first time to be responsible for the healthcare costs of their employees who were injured on the job. Likewise, in 1897 in the United Kingdom, the Socialist Labour Party urged Parliament to create "workman's compensation" law, which required employers to pay for the medical treatment of injured employees.
Not all Socialists, however, embraced the peaceful, democratic tactics of the Labour Party and the Social Democratic Party. Karl Marx, the author of the Communist Manifesto in 1848, maintained that Socialism would only succeed through social revolution by the working class (the Proletariat). In the late 19th century, radical Anarchists asserted that only violent revolution would overthrow bourgeois capitalists. Anarchists targeted prominent statesmen and government officials for assassination. Anarchists hoped that such violent acts would lead to further repression by capitalist governments, which would ultimately lead to a widespread proletariat revolution. Anarchists in this era successfully assassinated Czar Alexander II of Russia in 1881, the Empress Elizabeth of Austria in 1898, the President Sadi Carnot of France in 1894, and President William McKinley of the United States in 1901. In 1886 a bomb killed policemen during a labor union rally in Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois; the following year leading anarchists in the area suspected of this crime were executed by hanging. Fear of anarchist violence and the threat of social revolution prompted leading "Progressives" in the US in the Progressive Era, such as President Theodore Roosevelt (1901 – 1908), to push for legislation to rein in "Big Business" as the "Trust Buster" and improve the lot of the working class, in order to siphon off popular support for such a revolution.
Ethnic Tensions
As class tensions surged in this period, European states were also in turmoil due to internal cultural and ethnic rivalries and conflict.
In the United Kingdom, Ireland was predominantly Roman Catholic except for Northern Ireland, whereas the rest of the United Kingdom was Protestant; Ireland was also much more rural with less industry than other regions of the country. In Ireland the Fenians—Irish Nationalists—desired an independent Irish Republic.
In France the Bretons of Brittany in rural northwest France spoke their own distinct language and were staunchly Roman Catholic; they were also highly suspicious of the inhabitants of Paris, the French capital, who had a reputation for their cosmopolitan and secular attitudes. Conservative Roman Catholics in France also were distrustful of the country's religious minorities, Protestants and Jews. France was rocked by the Dreyfus Affair in 1894. Alfred Dreyfus, a French military officer, who was a Jew, was put on trial and found guilty of treason for spying for Germany. Even though a military commission later in 1906 exonerated Dreyfus, this affair stirred up much antisemitism across France among many Roman Catholics who maintained that France was in fact a Roman Catholic nation. In France one divisive issue involved public education. Conservative Roman Catholics supported Roman Catholic parochial schools, whereas more Liberal French citizens supported secular public schools.
In Spain, ethnic conflict erupted into civil war. In Catalonia around the city of Barcelona especially, the region was more industrialized than the rest of Spain. In 1873, the king of Spain Amadeo I (r. 1870 – 1873) abdicated the throne in the face of popular unrest, and Spain briefly became a republic. This radical republic had strong support among the working class in Catalonia. However, the Basques in rural, northern Spain were staunch Roman Catholics, who spoke their own language. Along with some Catalans, they supported Don Carlos (1848 – 1909), a Conservative member of the former Bourbon Dynasty in Spain, as the true king of Spain in the Carlist War (1872 – 1876). In the face of this civil war, the Spanish army, dominated by Conservative, aristocratic officers from Castile in central Spain, overthrew the short-lived republic in 1874, restored order, and installed Alfonso XII as king, who was the son of the former Spanish queen Isabella II.
In Germany the mutual antagonism between Protestants and Roman Catholics became known as the Kulturkampf ("Cultural Struggle"), which fortunately for Germany did not lead to armed conflict. Southern Germany was predominantly Roman Catholic and less industrialized, and consequently less wealthy, than Protestant northern Germany. In Germany, as in France, a very divisive issue was public education. Protestant leaders in northern Germany desired to shut down Roman Catholic parochial schools and force children in these schools to attend secular public schools. Instead of armed resistance, Roman Catholics in Germany in 1870 organized their own political party, the German Centre (Zentrum) Party, to represent their interests in the Reichstag, the German parliament. This party and the German Social Democratic Party were the two largest political parties in Germany in this period.
Ethnic tensions were much more intense in eastern Europe. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ethnic Germans and Hungarians with property could vote after 1867, but Slavic ethnic groups such as Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Poles, Slovenes, and Ruthenians were all denied the right to vote, along with ethnic Romanians, Italians, and Bosnians. The Russian Empire was also a multi-ethnic empire. However, the peoples of Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine all spoke closely related Slavic languages and shared a common Orthodox faith. The Russian Empire also included large number of Poles, who were Slavs, like the Russians, but Roman Catholic. The Poles were very nationalistic and maintained a memory of their nation's independence prior to the partition of Poland in the late 18th century. The Poles revolted against Russian rule in 1830 and 1863 without success and after a great loss of life. In the late 19th century Poles organized illegal, secret organizations to seek Polish independence from Russia, such as the Polish Socialist Party in 1892 and the National Democratic Party in 1897. Russia also possessed a large Jewish population, whose ancestors had lived in the former Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom. Russia's Jews faced much persecution and repression. Jewish villages in Russia were subject to violent pogroms, which were massacres of Jews by angry mobs. In 1881 the pogroms in the Russian Empire targeting Jews were especially vicious when many orthodox Christians blamed the Jews for the assassination of Czar Alexander II. The persecution of Jews in Russia along with widespread antisemitism across Europe inspired a Jewish movement, Zionism, which sought to create an independent Jewish homeland in Palestine, where ancient Israel once existed. A Jew from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Theodore Herzl (1860 -1904) helped organize the First Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland. This international Jewish movement would lead eventually to the creation of the modern nation of Israel in 1948.
Competing Military Alliances
In the face of internal ethnic turmoil and class tensions and strife, fervent nationalism provided European states with a way to find unity and strength. In the late 19th century, European powers each sought to advance their own national interests through building up their armed forces and forming military alliances with other nations against common enemies. In this period Otto Von Bismarck, the German Chancellor played a decisive role in the diplomatic efforts to build such alliances, so much so, that historians have referred to this era as the "Age of Bismarck". Following the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, Bismarck knew that France would seek national revenge against Germany for this humiliating defeat and seek to recover the region of Alsace-Lorraine. Bismarck therefore set out to form military alliances with other European powers to keep France in check and to maintain peace in Europe. Austria-Hungary with its many ethnic groups maintained a strong alliance with Germany aimed against Russia, who claimed to be the champion of all Slavic peoples, some of whom were subject peoples of Austria-Hungary. For all European nations, nationalism and the formation of military alliances was a force for internal unity as political, social, social, and cultural tensions threatened to tear these nations apart.
Marxism Reaction to Capitalism
In the late 18th century, Adam Smith wrote Captialism, an Enlightenment approach to markets and understanding how to provide the best economy for the future. This approach talked about supply and demand for products as the basis for prices. Smith also discussed the ideas of having the market as independent from control of governments. The goal that Smith had was a change for the better towards a more open economy. The idea of capitalism was revolutionary for the late 18th century, where many businesses started to gravitate towards these ideas and policies. The market transformation would have dramatic effects on the origins of the Industrial Revolution, where businesses incorporated many of the Enlightenment ideas into their systems.
Learning Objectives
- Evaluate the differences between Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, and Anarchy.
- Analyze the impact of these philosophy on the world in the late 19th century.
Capitalism in the 19th century
The Industrial Revolution brought many changes to Europe in the 19th century. Many of these changes had direct impact on the quality of life for individuals. The rise of industrialization saw massive products manufactured quickly and had a direct impact on the price of goods. This would mean more products made, caused a drop in the price of those products. This would further the problems for individuals, because employers would pay smaller amounts to those workers, making their lives harder. Compounding the issue of working conditions was the movement of people to cities looking for work. The more supply of labor meant that the demand was steady to lessening. This would cause workers lives to be harder because they saw their wages dropping.
It is important to remember that there was another perspective that has to be understood in this time, that of the factory owner. The factory owner was interested in making money at this time and not hurting individuals. Business owners were constrained by their money that they earned at the market for goods and their inability to generate high revenue. Workers wages were directly tied to the revenue of the materials that they sold. This meant that as the goods were not able to generate higher profits, the factory owner was not able to pay the worker higher wages. This was a constraint of the market.
The system of early Industrial Revolution capitalism was very difficult because of the many constrains on the individuals and the businesses. It is important to note that this is neither right or wrong, but simply the outcomes of market interactions. Yet, these problems of the work place were compounded by other factors, such as individuals moving from the country to the city in search of jobs. This meant that the pool of labor was increasing in supply, but not in demand, meaning that wages for workers went down. People of the time saw these challenges and began to wrote and discussed how these problems affected individuals.
Karl Marx
In the 19th century there was a German philosopher/sociologist that began writing about the problems of capitalism on the worker. Marx was born in Germany and acquired an education as a lawyer. Marx was a writer and journalist in his early adulthood, working on many works that would explore ideas of justice in his eyes. Marx would explore Hegel’s ideas about relationships and utopian philosophy. In 1844, Marx met and began working with Friedrich Engles, another writer and philosopher/sociologist. Engles had written a work about the working class in England. These two leaders were a part of liberal movements of the time that were interested in challenging the system that was in place. These two philosophers began exploring the problems that the working class saw, specifically the problems of markets and labor relationships with businesses. The question they started to raise was how did capitalism work with the individual?
Marx began to think about the relationship of work, business, the individual, and how society should work together. The problem of the worker and how workers had limited rights in the system bothered Marx. In 1867, Marx published the first volume of Das Kapital, or Capital as it is known in English, that explored the ideas that the owner of the means of production is able to control the system. In the work, Marx began to critique capitalism, noting that the lower classes had limited rights in this system. To change this, Marx advocated for unions of workers to band together to stand up to owners. Think about it in a different way, that the individual person can easily be replaced if they say something is wrong, but if everyone stands up that they can challenge this system. This idea was modeled after the guild system that had been in place in Europe since the Middle Ages. The idea was if workers would come together, they could tell factory owners that they were unhappy with this work and push against the repression. That workers together could get better wages. That there was a natural class tension between what Marx called the bourgeoisie (factory owners) and the proletariat (the worker).. These two classes were in constant battle for money and power. Eventually Marx would take these theories further, that the only way to have a true revolution was to remove capitalism by removing private property, that individuals could not own things, and instead a system of sharing as a community would emerge as the next phase of economics. Other writers would take Marx and Engel’s ideas further that would be known as Marxist thought.
Marx and Engles worked with other groups that were interested in exploring these ideas and how they could cause a social revolution. While many at the time viewed Marx and Engels as against capitalism, they were noting how many problems there were with capitalism. These ideas would become the basis of new social and cultural movements such as socialism and communism.
To understand the impact of Marxist thought in the 19th century, it is important to understand the different forms of Marxism: socialism, communism, and anarchy. These different forms are very important because social movements in the 19th century around the world would use these as a way to try to challenge the 19th century world.
Capitalism
To understand the differences between Marxist thought, it is important to start with capitalism and understand their relationships between relationship between the worker, businesses, and governments. In pure Adam Smith capitalism, government and businesses were not to work together. This idea is known as Lassie Faire, where government and businesses were to have a hands off approach. This meant things like minimum wage was not something that a government was to worry about. That businesses were free to pay workers what they thought was fair. If the worker did not like this, they could find work somewhere else. That the worker had all the freedom that they could in the system. That any system of workers coming together to advocate for changes, this would be seen as antagonistic to capitalism.
Socialism
This is the first step towards a Marxist revolutionary overthrow. In classical socialism, the government and businesses are to work together to get the best outcomes for society. For example, providing high quality education by the government would benefit both governments and businesses. The business would have higher skilled laborers, and the government could earn more taxes by providing this service. Or businesses could give to schools and fund road projects. This would mean that businesses offered a solution that both governments and the business would benefit from. The worker, on the other hand, was to be able to join together and collectively ask for changes to both the business and government. This was to ensure that worker’s rights were listened too and give guidance to the government or business policies. The work between businesses and governments was very important for socialism.
Communism
This was an ideology that took the ideas of socialism and expanded the role of the relationship between businesses, governments, and workers. The idea was that local government by local institutions was the most important to communism. The goal was that all businesses and government was controlled by local unions. The idea was that workers knowing their needs at a local level could come together and provide bigger guidance for governments and businesses. In communism, the power of this society was in the hands of local workers and unions. The control of businesses and governments with unions meant that these institutions bowed to the will of the people.
Anarchy
In recent years, anarchy has become a very important topic of political conversation in movies and televisions shows. Many view anarchy as the absence of government, which is not necessarily the case in the 19th century. The idea of anarchy in the 19th century was that any government bigger than a local government was too big and was not sustainable to the individual. That a big government took advantage of individuals. An example an anarchist would give of a government that was too big would be the state of Georgia, where in the southern part of the state there would be no need for salt in the winter time for roads because it rarely freezes. The individuals in southern Georgia are being robed by the state when they pay taxes to purchase salt. An anarchist would say that the state of Georgia is too big because it is not able to respond to the needs of the individual. In an anarchist state, that government would be incredibly local, because governments would be responsible at the local level. The goal of anarchy was that individuals had the most power through unions.
Consequences of the Reactions to Capitalism
The reactions to capitalism had direct consequences in the late 19th century. These ideas began to spread and many began to advocate for changes in the social and political organizations of the Industrial Revolution. There was a rise in unions in the late 19th century, many saw that this was a reaction to capitalism. The rise of unions advocated for many changes, such as having weekends off, breaks in the day, regulations on hours of work per day, and end of child labor. Unions played a large role in the relationships of labor in the late 19th century.
In the 21st century, it is difficult to understand the importance of socialism, communism, and anarchy because of the rise of socialist and anarchist states in the 20th century. Yet, the most radical of these philosophies was not socialism or communism, but instead anarchy. Anarchist in the late 19th century were active in destruction of property and assassinations.
Nationalism and Militarism
In the decades prior to the outbreak of World War I in1914, nationalism reached a fevered pitch, as European nations all aspired to protect and advance their national interests. To achieve this goal, the “Great Powers” of Europe embraced militarism and vastly increased their military might.
Learning Objectives
- Analyze and identify the role of the MAIN (Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, and Nationalism) causes of World War I.
- Examine the origins of nationalism and militarism in Europe.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
constitutive theory of statehood: a 19th century theory that defines a state as a person in international law if, and only if, it is recognized as sovereign by other states
declarative theory of statehood: a theory that defines a state as a person in international law if it meets the following criteria: 1) a defined territory; 2) a permanent population; 3) a government; and 4) a capacity to enter into relations with other states; determines that an entity’s statehood is independent of its recognition by other states
conscription: the compulsory enlistment of people in a national service, most often military service
jingoism: a form of nationalism characterized by aggressive foreign policy; refers to a country’s advocacy for the use of threats or actual force as opposed to peaceful relations to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests
militarism: the belief or the desire of a government or people for a country to maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests; the glorification of the military; the ideals of a professional military class; the “predominance of the armed forces in the administration or policy of the state”.
Introduction to Nation-States
The concept of a nation-state is notoriously difficult to define. Anthony Smith, one of the most influential scholars of nation-states and nationalism, argued that a state is a nation-state only if and when a single ethnic and cultural population inhabits the boundaries of a state, and the boundaries of that state are coextensive with the boundaries of that ethnic and cultural population. This is a very narrow definition that presumes the existence of the “one nation, one state” model. Consequently, less than 10% of states in the world meet its criteria.
The most obvious deviation from this largely ideal model is the presence of minorities, especially ethnic minorities, which are excluded from the majority nation by ethnic and cultural nationalists. The most illustrative historical examples of groups that have been specifically singled out as outsiders by nationalists are the Roma and Jews in Europe.
In legal terms, many nation-states today accept specific minorities as being part of the nation, which generally implies that members of minorities are citizens of a given nation-state and enjoy the same rights and liberties as members of the majority nation. However, nationalists and, consequently, symbolic narratives of the origins and history of nation-states often continue to exclude minorities from the nation-state and the nation.
According to a wider working definition, a nation-state is a type of state that conjoins the political entity of a state to the cultural entity of a nation, from which it aims to derive its political legitimacy to rule and potentially its status as a sovereign state, if one accepts the declarative theory of statehood as opposed to the constitutive theory of statehood. A state is specifically a political and geopolitical entity, while a nation is a cultural and ethnic one. The term “nation-state” implies that the two coincide, in that a state has chosen to adopt and endorse a specific cultural group as associated with it. The concept of a nation-state can be compared and contrasted with that of the multinational state, city-state, empire, and confederation, as well as other state formations with which it may overlap. The key distinction is the identification of a people with a polity in the nation-state.
Characteristics of Nation-States
Nation-states have their own characteristics that today may be taken-for-granted factors shaping a modern state, but that all developed in contrast to pre-national states. Their territory is considered semi-sacred and nontransferable. Nation-states use the state as an instrument of national unity, in economic, social, and cultural life. Nation-states typically have a more centralized and uniform public administration than their imperial predecessors because they are smaller and less diverse. After the 19th-century triumph of the nation-state in Europe, regional identity was usually subordinate to national identity. In many cases, the regional administration was also subordinate to central (national) government. This process has been partially reversed from the 1970s onward, with the introduction of various forms of regional autonomy in formerly centralized states (e.g., France).
The most obvious impact of the nation-state, as compared to its non-national predecessors, is the creation of a uniform national culture through state policy. The model of the nation-state implies that its population constitutes a nation, united by a common descent, a common language, and many forms of shared culture. When the implied unity was absent, the nation-state often tried to create it. The creation of national systems of compulsory primary education is usually linked with the popularization of nationalist narratives. Even today, primary and secondary schools around the world often teach a mythologized version of national history.
Nationalism
Romantic nationalism was an integral part of actual nationalist political movements, which emerged in earnest in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. Those movements would ultimately succeed in seeing their goals realized almost without exception, although that process took over a century in some cases (like that of Poland and Ireland). Central to nationalist movements was the concept that the state should correspond to the identity of a “people,” although who or what defines the identity of “the people” proved a vexing issue on many occasions.
The discussion of nationalism starts with the French Revolution, because more than any other event, it provided the model for all subsequent nationalisms. The French revolutionaries declared from the outset that they represented the whole "nation," not just a certain part of it. They erased the legal privileges of some (the nobles), made religion subservient to a secular government, and, when threatened by the conservative powers of Europe, called the whole "nation" to arms. The revolutionary armies sang a national anthem. the Marseillaise, whose lyrics are as warlike as the American equivalent. Central to French national identity in the revolutionary period was fighting for la patrie—the fatherland—in place of the old allegiance to king and church.
The irony of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, however, was that the countries invaded by the French eventually adopted their own nationalist beliefs. The invaded countries turned the democratic French principle of self-determination into a sacred right to defend their own national identities, shaped by their own particular histories, against the universalist pretensions of the French. This was reflected in the Spanish revolt that began in 1808, the revival of Austria and Prussia and their struggles of "liberation" against Napoleon, Russia's leadership of the anti-Napoleonic coalition that followed, and fierce British pride in their defiance to French military pretensions.
As the Napoleonic wars drew to a close for the first time in 1814, the great powers of Europe convened a gathering of monarchs and diplomats known as the Congress of Vienna to deal with the aftermath. That meeting lasted months, thanks in part to Napoleon’s inconvenient return from Elba and last stand at Waterloo, but in 1815 it concluded, having rewarded the victorious kingdoms with territorial gains and restored conservative monarchs to the thrones of states like Spain and France. Nothing could have mattered less to the diplomatic representatives present at the Congress of Vienna than the “national identity” of the people who lived in the territories that were carved up and distributed like pieces of cake to the victors. The Congress of Vienna thus redrew the map of Europe without taking into consideration the ethnic identity of the different regions of Europe. For example, the inhabitants of northeastern Italy were now subjects of the Austrian king, the entirety of Poland was divided between Russia and Prussia, and Great Britain remained secure not only in its growing global empire, but in its possession of the entirety of Ireland.
Thus, many of Europe's peoples found themselves without states of their own or in states squeezed between the dominant powers of the time. Among the notable examples are the Italians and the Poles. Italy had suffered from the domination of one great power or another since the Renaissance; after 1815 it was the Austrians who were in control of much of northern Italy. Poland had been partitioned among the Austrians, the Prussians, and the Russians in the eighteenth century, simply vanishing from the map in the process. Germany, of course, was not united; instead, it emerged from the Congress of Vienna as a confederation of dozens of independent states. Prussia and Austria vied with each other for dominance of this German confederation, but both were fundamentally conservative powers uninterested in “German” unification until later in the century.
The language of nationalism and the idea of national identity had come into its own by the late Napoleonic period. For example, German nationalism was powerful and popular after the Napoleonic wars; in 1817, just two years after the end of the Congress of Vienna, German nationalists gathered in Wartburg—where Martin Luther had first translated the Bible into German—waving the black, red, and gold tricolor flag that would (over a century later) become the official flag of the German nation. Two years later, a nationalist poet murdered a conservative one, and the Austrian Empire passed laws that severely limited freedom of speech, specifically to contain and restrict the spread of nationalism. Despite this effort, and the Austrian secret police, German nationalism continued to spread, culminating in a large and self-consciously nationalistic movement seeking German unity.
The 1830s were a pivotal decade in the spread of nationalism. The Italian nationalist leader Giuseppe Mazzini founded Young Italy in 1831, calling for a “springtime of peoples” in which the people of each “nation” of Europe would topple conservative monarchs and assert their sovereignty and independence. That movement would quickly spread beyond Italy, and "young" became the rallying word and idea of nationalism. In addition to Young Italy, there was a Young Germany and a Young Ireland, among others, accompanied by the idea that all people should and would eventually inhabit nations, and that this new "youthful" manner of politics would lead to peace and prosperity for everyone. The idea was that with the old, outdated borders abandoned, everyone would live where they were supposed to: in nations governed by their own people. Nationalists argued that war itself could be rendered obsolete. After all, if each “people” lived in “their” nation, what would be the purpose of territorial conflict? To the nationalists at the time, the emergence of nations was synonymous with a more perfect future for all.
Central to the very concept of nationalism in this early, optimistic phase was the identity of “the people,” a term with powerful political resonance in just about every European language: das Volk, le peuple, il popolo, etc. In every case, "the people" was thought to be something more important than just "those people who happen to live here." Instead, the people were those tied to the soil, with roots reaching back centuries, and who deserve their own government. This was a profoundly romantic idea because it spoke to an essentially emotional sense of national identity: a sense of camaraderie and solidarity with individuals with whom a given person might not actually share much in common.
When scrutinized, the “real” identity of a given “people” became more difficult to discern. The growing concept spurred many questions. For example, were the Germans people who speak German, or who lived in Central Europe, or who were Lutheran, or Catholic, or who think that their ancestors were from the same area in which they themselves were born? If united in a German nation, who would lead it - were the Prussians or the Austrians more authentically German? What of those “Germans” who lived in places like Bohemia (i.e. the Czech lands) and Poland, with their own growing senses of national identity? The nationalist movements of the first half of the nineteenth century did not need to concern themselves much with these conundrums because their goals of liberation and unification were not yet achievable. When national revolutions of various kinds did occur, however, these questions proved difficult to answer.
Nationalism and the Background to World War I
The nature of nationalism had changed significantly over the course of the nineteenth century as well. Not only had conservative elites appropriated nationalism to shore up their own power (as in Italy and Germany), but nationalistic patriotism came to be identified with rivalry and resentment among many citizens of various political persuasions. To be a good Englishman was to resent and fear the growth of Germany. Many Germans came to despise the Russians, in part thanks to the growth of anti-Slavic racism. The lesser powers of Europe, like Italy, resented their own status and wanted to somehow seize enough power to join the ranks of the great powers. Nationalism by 1914 was nothing like the optimistic, utopian movements of the nineteenth century; it was hostile, fearful, and aggressive.
Likewise, public opinion mattered in a way it had never mattered earlier for the simple fact that every one of the great powers had at least a limited electorate and parliaments with at least some real power to make law. Even Russia, after a semi-successful revolution in 1905, saw the creation of an elected parliament, the Duma, and an open press. The fact that all of the powers had representative governments mattered, because public opinion helped fan the flames of conflict. Newspapers in this era tended to deliberately inflame jingoistic passions rather than encourage rational calculation. A very recognizably modern kind of connection was made in the press between patriotic loyalty and a willingness to fight, kill, and die for one’s country. Since all of the great powers were now significantly (or somewhat, in the case of Russia) democratic, the opinions of the average citizen mattered in a way they never had before. Journalism whipped up those opinions and passions by stoking hatred, fear, and resentment, which led to a more widespread willingness to go to war. Thanks to the nationalistic rivalry described above, the great powers sought to shore up their security and power through alliances.
The single most significant background factor to the war was the rivalry that existed between Europe’s “great powers” by the beginning of the twentieth century. The term “great power” meant something specific in this period of history: the great powers were those able to command large armies, to maintain significant economies and industrial bases, and to conquer and hold global empires. Their respective leaders, and many of their regular citizens, were fundamentally suspicious of one another, and the biggest worry of their political leadership was that one country would come to dominate the others. Long gone was the notion of the balance of power as a guarantor of peace. Now, the balance of power was a fragile thing, with each of the great powers seeking to supplant its rivals in the name of security and prosperity. As a result, there was an ongoing, elaborate diplomatic dance as each power tried to shore up alliances, seize territory around the globe, and outpace the others.
While no great power deliberately sought out war, all were willing to risk war in 1914. That was at least in part because no politician had an accurate idea of what a new war would actually be like. The only wars that had occurred in Europe between the great powers since the Napoleonic period were the Crimean War of the 1850s and the wars that resulted in the formation of Italy and Germany in the 1850s, 1860s, and early 1870s. While the Crimean War was quite bloody, it was limited to the Crimean region itself and it did not involve all of the great powers. Likewise, the wars of national unification were relatively short and did not involve a great deal of bloodshed (relative to other wars). Violence in the colonies was almost always directed at the native peoples in those colonies, and there the balance of power was squarely on the side of Europeans. Thus, even European soldiers overseas had no experience of facing foes armed with comparable weapons. In other words, it had been over forty years since the great powers had any experience of a war on European soil, and as they learned all too soon, much had changed with the nature of warfare in the meantime.
In the summer of 1914, each of the great powers reached the conclusion that war was inevitable, and that trying to stay out of the immanent conflict would lead to national decline. Germany was surrounded by potential enemies in France and Russia. France had cultivated a desire for revenge against Germany ever since the Franco-Prussian War. Russia feared German power and resented Austria for threatening the interests of Slavs in the Balkans. Great Britain alone had no vested interest in war, but it was unable to stay out of the conflict once it began.
In turn, the thing that inflamed jingoism and resentment among the great powers had been imperialism. The British were determined to maintain their enormous empire at any cost, and the Germans now posed a threat to the empire since Germany had lavished attention on a naval arms race since the 1880s. There was constant bickering on the world stage between the great powers over their colonies, especially since those colonies butted up against each other in Africa and Asia.
Alliances were firmly in place by 1914, each of which obligated military action if any one power should be attacked. Each great power needed the support of its allies and was thus willing to intercede even if its own interests were not directly threatened. That willingness to go to war for the sake of alliance meant that even a relatively minor event might spark the outbreak of total war. And that is precisely what happened.
In 1914, two major sets of alliances set the stage for the war. German politicians, fearing the possibility of a two-front war against France and Russia simultaneously, concluded an alliance with the Austrian Empire in 1879, only a little over a decade after the Prusso-Austrian War. In turn, France and Russia created a strong alliance in 1892 in large part to contain the ambitions of Germany, whose territory lay between them. Great Britain was generally more friendly to France than Germany but had not entered into a formal alliance with any other power. It was, however, the traditional ally and protector of Belgium, which British politicians considered a kind of toehold on the continent. Finally, Russia grew increasingly close to the new nation of Serbia, populated as it was by a Slavic people who were part of the Eastern Orthodox branch of Christianity. The relationships between Great Britain and Russia with Belgium and Serbia, respectively, would not have mattered but for the alliance obligations that tied the great powers together.
Those alliances were now poised to mobilize armies of an unprecedented size. All of the great powers now fielded forces of a million men or more due to a reliance or development of militarism. Coordinating that many troops required detailed advanced planning and a permanent staff of high-ranking officers, normally referred to as the "general staff" of a given army. In the past, political leaders had often either led troops themselves or at least had significant influence in planning and tactics. By the early twentieth century, however, war plans and tactics were entirely in the hands of the general staffs, meaning political leaders would be obliged to choose from a limited set of "pre-packaged" options given to them by their generals.
When WWI started, the leaders of the great powers were taken by surprise when they received ultimatums from their own generals—from the Kaiser in Germany to the Tsar in Russia. Militarism—the belief or the desire of a government or people for a country to maintain a strong military capability—had led to a power shift in battle plans. And according to the general staffs, it was all or nothing: either commit all forces to a swift and decisive victory or suffer certain defeat. There could be no small incremental build ups or tentative skirmishes; this was about a total commitment to a massive war. An old adage has it that “generals fight the last war,” which means they base their tactics on what worked in previous conflicts, and in the “last war,” which was the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia had won through swift, decisive action and immediate overwhelming force.
Militarism and Jingoism
The main causes of World War I, which broke out unexpectedly in central Europe in summer 1914, comprised all the conflicts and hostility of the four decades leading up to the war. Militarism, alliances, imperialism, and ethnic nationalism played major roles.
During the 1870s and 1880s, all major world powers were preparing for a large-scale war, as a result of assuming a militaristic society. Britain focused on building up its Royal Navy, already stronger than the next two navies combined. Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Russia, and some smaller countries set up conscription systems whereby young men would serve from one to three years in the army, then spend the next 20 years or so in the reserves with annual summer training. Men from higher social classes became officers. Each country devised a mobilization system so the reserves could be called up quickly and sent to key points by rail. Every year the plans were updated and expanded in terms of complexity. Each country stockpiled arms and supplies for an army that ran into the millions.
Germany in 1874 had a regular professional army of 420,000 with an additional 1.3 million reserves. By 1897 the regular army was 545,000 strong and the reserves numbered 3.4 million. The French in 1897 had 3.4 million reservists, Austria 2.6 million, and Russia 4.0 million. The various national war plans had been perfected by 1914, albeit with Russia and Austria trailing in effectiveness. Recent wars (since 1865) had typically been short—a matter of months. All the war plans called for a decisive opening and assumed victory would come after a short war; however, no one planned for or was ready for the food and munitions needs of a long stalemate, like that actually happened in 1914 – 18.
As David Stevenson has put it, “A self-reinforcing cycle of heightened military preparedness… was an essential element in the conjuncture that led to disaster… The armaments race… was a necessary precondition for the outbreak of hostilities.” If Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated in 1904 or even in 1911, Herrmann speculates, there might have been no war. It was “the armaments race… and the speculation about imminent or preventive wars” that made his death in 1914 the trigger for war.
Despite the expansion of standing armies and military stockpiles in this period, the Great Powers still publicly called for the reduction of armed forces. One of the aims of the First Hague Conference of 1899, held at the suggestion of Emperor Nicholas II, was to discuss disarmament. The Second Hague Conference was held in 1907. All signatories except for Germany supported disarmament. Germany also did not want to agree to binding arbitration and mediation. The Kaiser was concerned that the United States would propose disarmament measures, which he opposed. All parties tried to revise international law to their own advantage instead of seeking actual disarmament.
This increase in militarism coincided with the rise of jingoism, a term for nationalism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. Jingoism also refers to a country’s advocacy for the use of threats or actual force to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests, as opposed to peaceful relations. Colloquially, it refers to excessive bias in judging one’s own country as superior to others—an extreme type of nationalism. The term originated in reference to the United Kingdom’s pugnacious attitude toward Russia in the 1870s; and it appeared in the American press by 1893.
Probably the first uses of the term jingoism appeared in the U.S. press in connection with the proposed annexation of Hawaii in 1893. A coup led by foreign residents, mostly Americans, and assisted by the United States minister in Hawaii, overthrew the Hawaiian constitutional monarchy and declared a Republic. Republican president Benjamin Harrison and Republicans in the Senate were frequently accused of jingoism in the Democratic press for supporting annexation of Hawaii.
The term was also used in connection with the foreign policy of Theodore Roosevelt. In an October 1895 New York Times article, Roosevelt stated, “There is much talk about ‘jingoism’. If by ‘jingoism’ they mean a policy in pursuance of which Americans will with resolution and common sense insist upon our rights being respected by foreign powers, then we are ‘jingoes’.”
Anglo-German Naval Race
British concerns with the emergence of Germany as a rival naval power was a factor in the British decision to enter World War I. Historians have debated the role of the German naval build-up as the principal cause of deteriorating Anglo-German relations. In any case, Germany never came close to catching up with Britain. Supported by Wilhelm II’s enthusiasm for an expanded German navy, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz championed four Fleet Acts from 1898 to 1912, and from 1902 to 1910, while the Royal Navy embarked on its own massive expansion to keep ahead of the Germans. This competition came to focus on the revolutionary new ships based on the Dreadnought, launched in 1906, which gave Britain a battleship that far outclassed any other in Europe. The overwhelming British response proved to Germany that its efforts were unlikely to equal those of the Royal Navy. In 1900, the British had a 3.7:1 tonnage advantage over Germany; in 1910 the ratio was 2.3:1 and in 1914, 2.1:1. The German Navy had thus narrowed the gap by nearly half. Meanwhile, in early to mid-1914, Germany adopted a policy of building submarines instead of new dreadnoughts and destroyers, effectively abandoning the race. They kept this new policy secret, however, to delay other powers following suit. The Germans thus abandoned the naval race before the war broke out. The extent to which the naval race was one of the chief factors in Britain’s decision to join the Triple Entente remains a key controversy. Historians such as Christopher Clark believe it was not significant, with Margaret Moran taking the opposite view.
Attributions
Title Image
Jules Després, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Section 3 adapted from:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/nation-states-and-sovereignty/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/the-coming-of-war/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/