CHAPTER 22 The Coming of Mass Politics: Industrialization, Emancipation, and Instability, 1870-1914 CHAPTER OUTLINE I. Introduction In the Spring of 1881, Sofiia Perovskaia was executed for her role in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Perovskaia was a member of the revolutionary movement People s Will, which had hoped to undermine the Russian monarchy by murdering the tsar. Despite the assassination of the tsar, the regime did not collapse. A. Economic Transformation 1. Introduction Europe s political life in the period 1870-1914 was transformed by several economic developments. Among these economic developments was the economic depression of 1873, the industrialization of new regions, new patterns of production and rapid urbanization. 2. Economic Depression The Great Depression in Trade and Agriculture lasted from 1873-1890s in Europe. Despite continual rise in production and investment, interest rates, prices and profits fell. The Depression was caused by the appearance of steamships and the expansion of the railroad network, which reduced the costs of transporting foodstuffs from other parts of the world. The agricultural sector was the hardest hit. Business was also hit hard by as much as a 50% decline in prices for finished goods while labor costs remained high. 3. Industrial Expansion The start of the economic depression was closely linked to expansion of industrialization to new regions. While in 1870 many people in the periphery of Europe continued to live barely touched by industrialization, by 1914 their isolation was disappearing because of the expansion of the railroad network. For example, in the 1890s Russia underwent rapid industrialization under the leadership of Sergei Witte. His greatest achievement was doubling the size of the railroad network. By 1914, Russia was the fourth industrial power in the world. It supplied 50% of the oil used in the world. 92
4. The Second Industrial Revolution The 1870s also witnessed the introduction of new techniques and technologies which historians label the Second Industrial Revolution. New innovations in steel production ensured that inexpensive, high quality steel was widely available to expand the railroad networks. In construction, the introduction of steel, cement, plate glass and the mechanical crane permitted the building of the first skyscrapers. The development of electric power and the light bulb created a new energy-producing industry to provide power to shops and homes. A number of new features distinguish the second industrial revolution from the first. In the Second Industrial Revolution, the state played a greater role in developing and operating the railroad networks, and providing financial assistance and tariff protection to industry. Another innovation was the much larger business organizations. The new technique of vertical integration allowed owners to buy up the companies that produced the raw materials and those who distributed the finished products. Another business method was horizontal integration, which linked up companies in the same industry to control prices. The result was huge multinational companies. Another new change was the introduction of the department store, which began replacing the small retailer as the distributor of goods. 5. On the Move: Emigration and Urbanization As the great depression hit agricultural regions hard, it increased immigration from the village to the industrialized city. In the 1890s, most of the immigrants came from the surrounding countryside and eventually returned to the village. By 1910, large percentages of immigrants were coming from the industrially underdeveloped regions of Europe to the more developed ones, and many were leaving Europe altogether heading to North and South America. 6. Growing Social Unrest The rapid economic changes brought by the depression and urbanization increased social tensions. As business owners attempted to protect their profits by cutting labor costs, the workers became increasingly hostile. Also the new lower middleclass found it harder to maintain their class status and became very hostile toward the working class. The dramatic increase in population through immigration also increased social and ethnic tensions. B. Defining the Political Nation 1. Introduction The hostile encounters between rival social groups changed the nature of European politics. The period saw the introduction of mass politics as men from outside the upper and middleclass sought to participate in the political process. 93
2. Making Nations After the 1870s most European government concluded that they needed to create a sense of national identity to overcome regional, social and political divisions. One of the key institutions in creating this new identity was the school system. Schools taught the children to read and write in the national language and taught history lessons that increased the sense of national superiority. Schools also ensured that the children participated in nationalistic rituals. Many of these rituals were based on newly invented traditions that celebrated the greatness of the country. 3. Russia: Revolution and Reaction In Russia the tsarist regime continued to be absolutist and failed to develop a national identity to build a sense of loyalty to it. In the late nineteenth century, Russia underwent rapid industrialization, and social tensions increased as the growing middleclass began to demand some participation in the political process. The government responded to their demands with repression. Since Russia lacked a large urban working class, it did not fit the model of Karl Marx. Russian revolutionaries called Populists developed their own brand of socialism, based on the peasantry. They went into the countryside to educate the peasants and attempted to undermine the regime by assassinating its leaders. In both methods, they failed to achieve their goals since the peasants did not rally to them; nor did the regime crumble when its leaders were killed. In the factories the workers endured terrible conditions. In 1905 a group of workers attempted to present a reform petition to the tsar, but instead were fired upon by the troops. The massacre resulted in a revolution, which forced Tsar Nicholas II to introduce limited representative government. By 1910, the tsar had recovered from the Revolution of 1905 and refused to carry out many of the promised reforms. 4. Germany: Identifying the Enemy Germany as one of the new states in Europe made an effort to shape the national identity. Germany was a politically authoritarian state. Although all males had the right to vote for the lower house (Reichstag) of parliament, real power remained in the hands of the chancellor who served at the pleasure of the emperor. The drive to construct a German identity was undertaken, by attacking a perceived enemy. In the early 1870s, Bismarck initiated a cultural struggle (Kulturkupmf) against the Roman Catholic Church, which was seen as the enemy of the German state because it competed with the state for the loyalty of German Catholics. To oppose the government attack, German Catholics organized the Center Party, which won 25% of the seats in Parliament. By 1878 Bismarck perceived that the battle against the church had been lost. Bismarck found a new enemy in the German Socialist Party (SPD), which he banned in 1878. In the course of the 1880s, Bismarck enacted social welfare legislation such as sickness benefits, accident insurance and old age pensions. Despite the legislation and the attacks, the SPD continued to grow. In 1890 Bismarck was dismissed from office and anti-socialist legislation was 94
allowed to lapse. Emperor William II proceeded to create a sense of national identity through aggressive militarism and imperial expansion. 5. Italy: the Illusion of Transformation The creation of a national identity in Italy was slowed because of the presence of the papacy and poverty. When Italy took the Papal States, the pope became a prisoner in the Vatican, refused to recognize the Italian state and prohibited Catholics from participating in Italian politics. Although most Catholics ignored the prohibition, the lack of recognition undermined the legitimacy of the state. An even greater problem was the high levels of poverty. The agricultural crisis produced social unrest. In parliament no party could gain a majority, so a system of coalition government called tranformismo was developed whereby enemies were transformed into allies through bribery. An attempt by Prime Minister Crispi to unify Italy through militarism failed when Italy was defeated by Ethiopia in 1896. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Premier Giolitti legalized trade unions and introduced social welfare legislation in an attempt to decrease the threat of revolution. When it failed, he to turned to expansionism, annexing Libya in 1912. 6. France Although France had been unified for centuries, the Third Republic lacked legitimacy because it was born of defeat. The revolutions of the nineteenth century made a unified political consensus impossible as each faction had a different vision of the type of France it wanted. The split became most visible in the Dreyfus Affair. Captain Dreyfus was convicted of treason based on hearsay evidence. For over a decade political battles were fought on the issue of Captain Dreyfus s guilt. The Pro-Dreyfusards supported a vision of a secular, egalitarian France. The Anti-Dreyfusards favored a traditional, Catholic identity for France. In 1906 Dreyfus was declared not guilty. Soon after the Radical party seized the offensive, putting the army under civilian control and prohibiting the Catholic religious orders from teaching in schools. The Radical party drew its support from the lower middleclass and so failed to establish social welfare programs to benefit the working class. 7. Britain In Britain, the ruling classes faced the demands of the working class for political participation. Beginning in the 1880s the Conservative party legalized unions and increased government inspections of factories. Between 1906-1912, the Liberal Party introduced social welfare measures to help the working class. Both parties failed to deal with the problem of Ireland. The Irish remained poor peasants, but had a strong sense of political and religious repression at the hands of the British. The Fenian Movement in the 1860s began to agitate for political independence. The Liberal party s proposals to introduce limited autonomy, called Home Rule, were defeated by the opposition of the Protestants in Ulster (Northern Ireland). 95
II. Broadening the Political Nation 1. Introduction At the end of the nineteenth century many European states gave the working class the right to vote. Mass suffrage did not always mean radical political change. 2. The Politics of the Working Class The period that extended the vote to the working class saw an increase in class conflict and an expansion of the socialist parties. The economic crisis and industrial expansion created large working class communities in the cities. At the same time the new technologies such as the electric tram allowed the middle classes to move to the suburbs. The result was that the classes became increasingly separated and hostile. The growing hostility led to the growth of the socialist parties. Marxist theories and the responses of the owners to the depression assured workers that they were engaged in a struggle against their boss. The workers turned to the socialist parties in large numbers. The German SPD became the largest socialist party in Europe numbering 2.5 million members by 1913. The introduction of social welfare legislation produced a debate with the socialist parties. On the one hand were those who favored revolutionary action and on the other the socialist revisionists who advocated working within the existing political system to bring benefits to the working classes. Although the revisionist position was condemned by the party congresses, the Socialist s parliamentary leadership focused its efforts in making the political system more responsive to the needs of the working class. Many workers at the end of the nineteenth century turned to radical trade unions that unionized industrial workers and not just the skilled as earlier unions had done. The radical trade unions used large-scale strike and violence. Frequently, governments responded to their activities with violence. Another movement that attracted workers was the syndicalist movement. It sought to overturn the existing social and political order by using general strikes and violent revolutionary means. The syndicalist movement was influenced by the Anarchist movement based on the ideas of Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876). The Anarchist movement sought to destroy the entire state. 3. Nationalist Mass Politics The rise of the socialist parties and the radical labor movement fostered fear in the middle and upper classes. In response, right wing movements emerged that used nationalism, racism and anti-semitism to attract the lower classes. Nationalism was a major force in the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire. The dominant German and Magyar nationalism ignited conflicts over language. Germans and Magyars pushed the use of their respective languages at the expense of the languages of the minority ethnic groups. The struggle over language produced great resentment among the ethnic groups. 96
Anti-Semitism also played a major role in nationalist politics. Nationalists saw race as determining who belonged in the state. The nationalistic climate caused Jewishness to be seen as a race, and consequently Jews came to be seen as outsiders. The Jews had been emancipated in the early nineteenth century and began to move into the new economic areas, professions and regions. In Germany, Jews owned almost all of the department stores. Politicians quickly realized that anti-semitism was a powerful weapon in attracting popular support. In Vienna, where the Jewish population increased rapidly, Karl Lueger was able to use anti-semitism and promises of social reform to unite workers, middle classes and conservatives in a coalition that elected him mayor. As a reaction to the growing anti-semitism, Jews under the leadership of Theodor Herzl developed their own brand of nationalism called Zionism. The movement called for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine Race limited the emancipation of the lower classes in United States. The end of the Civil War brought emancipation, citizenship and voting rights to the black population. After the end of reconstruction in 1877, Southern legislators passed Black codes and used intimidation to keep Blacks from voting. At the same time Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation. B. Outside the Political Nation? The Experience of Women 1. Introduction The extension of voting rights to the working classes led middle- and upper-class women to also demand voting rights. The Feminist movement also demanded a radical change in the role of women, demanding that they be allowed to enter the public sphere. The feminist movement remained mostly middleclass, as the working class women remained preoccupied with the struggle for survival. 2. Changes in the Position of Middle-Class Women The role of middle-class women became more public in the late nineteenth century. Middle-class women began to raise smaller families and acquire a public role as consumers whom the new department stores sought to entice. Unmarried middle-class women gained new opportunities such as jobs as telephone operators and typists as a result of the second industrial revolution. They assumed government roles in the areas of social reform. 3. Women and the Law Law codes in the early nineteenth century had made the wife and children dependent on the husband. In the second half of the nineteenth century the feminist movement sought to improve the legal position of women. In the 1880s, English women won the right to own property and control their income. 4. Finding a Place: Employment and Education 97
The Feminist movement also worked to improve the education of women. The push to educate women struggled against the popular notion that women s brains were too delicate to withstand the strain of an intellectual education. France introduced state-funded secondary education for girls in the 1880s. But only a few women were allowed to enter French Universities. In 1906, Marie Curie became the first woman to hold a university faculty position in France. Women were allowed to enter German universities in 1901. In the U.S., women accounted for one-third of university students in the 1880s. 5. No More Angels The campaign to win women s rights and expand opportunities helped women move into the public sphere. However, ending the double standard of sexual conduct proved much harder. Attempts to eradicate the double standard took several forms. One attack on the double standard was to attack legislation regulating prostitution. By 1914 regulations on prostitution had been abolished in most western countries. Another attack on the double standard was to push for legislation attacking the problem of heavy male drinking. In the U.S. prohibition was enforced from 1919 to 1933. 6. The Fight for Women s Suffrage The slow progress in attaining change in the social and moral position of women convinced feminists that they needed the right to vote. In Britain, the National Society for Women s Suffrage was founded in 1867. Before 1914 only Finland and Norway gave women the right to vote. The dramatic changes caused by World War I brought the right to vote for women in Russia, the U.S., Germany and Austria. French and Italian women had to wait until after World War II. Several obstacles made progress slow. In Eastern Europe, economically underdeveloped meant that the middle class base of feminism was too small. In Catholic countries, the possibility of religious vocation as nuns allowed women opportunities for intellectual satisfaction, which made the feminist agenda less appealing. In contrast to these examples stood England, which had a large middleclass and as a result developed the strongest women s suffrage movement in Europe. However, the slow results led English feminists to begin using radical tactics. Suffragettes interrupted political meetings, chained themselves to the steps of parliament, broke windows, and burned churches. Once in jail they engaged in hunger strikes. 98
III. TIMELINE Insert the following events into the timeline. This should help you to compare important historical events chronologically. Italian defeat in Ethiopia Third Republic established in France beginning of Dreyfus trial End of Kulturkompf Great Depression in Trade and Agriculture begins Formation of Suffragette Movement 1871 1873 1878 1894 1896 1903 TERMS, PEOPLE, EVENTS The following terms, people, and events are important to your understanding of the chapter. Define each one. anarchism Mikhail Bakunin Kulturkampf Marie Curie feminists Dreyfus Affair anti-semitism Emmeline Pankhurst Theodor Herzl Gustave Eiffel Zionism vertical integration horizontal integration Alexander II Russo-Japanese War transformismo Fenian Rising Giovanni Giolitti anarchism socialist revisionism syndicalism feminist movement Karl Lueger Jim Crow Magyarization George Sorel Great Depression in Trade and Agriculture Second Industrial Revolution socialist revisionism suffragettes 99
MAP EXERCISE The following exercise is intended to clarify the geophysical environment and the spatial relationships among the important objects and places mentioned in the chapter. 1. Locate the following places on the map. Austria-Hungary Italy German Empire Ireland Russia Netherlands 100
MAKING CONNECTIONS The following questions are intended to emphasize important ideas within the chapter. 1. How did the Great Depression in Trade and Agriculture change Europe? 2. What was the relationship between nationalism and mass politics? In what ways did mass politics affect Britain, Germany, Austria, and France? 3. Define Zionism. What were its aims? How did it advance during the nineteenth century? 4. What was syndicalism? What were its goals? 5. What was anarchism? What were its aims? 6. What were the goals of the Feminist Movement? What gains were made during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century? DOCUMENT QUESTIONS The following questions test your ability to interpret the primary source documents in the textbook. 1. What were the major differences between the home village and America according to Goodstein? 2. What were the elements of the socialist agenda as expressed in the song by Ernst Klaar? 3. According to the suffragette pamphlet, why should women be given the right to vote? PUTTING LARGER CONCEPTS TOGETHER 1. How did the ruling classes of the Western European powers respond to the new threats and opportunities provided by mass political participation? 2. Why did so many peoples turn to Anti-Semitism in Europe during the late nineteenth century? 101
SELF-TEST OF FACTUAL INFORMATION 1. During the Great Depression in Trade and Agriculture all of the following economic trends were present EXCEPT a. decline in prices and profits. b. landowners and laborers found it difficult to remain on the land. c. rise in production and introduction of new technologies. d. decline in the levels of investment and production. 2. During the period 1871-1914, Europe witnessed tremendous growth in a. agricultural development and the agricultural prices. b. industrial profits and workers salaries. c. cultural and economic isolation. d. heavy industry and urbanization of European populations. 3. Which of the following was NOT a characteristic of the Second Industrial Revolution? a. introduction of the department stores b. the organizing of multinational corporations c. complete government absence from economic life d. introduction of cheaper steel and electromagnetic generator 4. Schools were a key element in creating a national identity because a. they taught proper hygiene and manners. b. they used local dialects in instruction. c. they kept children out of the industrial labor force. d. they taught the national language and history. 5. What year did Bismarck introduce old-age pensions and disability insurance in Germany? a. 1884 b. 1889 c. 1848 d. 1883 102
6. The Dreyfus affairs illustrated a. the need for social legislation in France. b. the greater efficiency of democracy in France. c. the failure of the French to achieve a consensus on a national identity. d. the innate tendency of the French government toward militarism. 7. Which group opposed Irish Home Rule? a. the Fenian Movement b. the Ulster Protestants c. the Liberal party d. the Anarchists 8. The founder of Zionism in its political form was a. Theodor Herzl. b. Karl Lueger. c. Clara Zetkin. d. August Babel. 9. Anarchists called for a. gradual evolution to gain benefits for the working class. b. unionization of industrial workers and general strikes. c. direct violent action to destroy the state. d. proletarian revolution. 10. Which of the following people was a British suffragette? a. Emmeline Pankhurst b. Marie Curie c. Clara Zetkin d. Seline Cooper 103