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Fin de’ Siècle Europe and the beginning of the Great War

I. Recap: When we left Europe last:

A. They had pretty much conquered the entire globe through a process

known as IMPERIALISM that established strong, local control over a countries

political and economic systems and exploited that control for the benefit of

the imperializers.

1. This led to widespread suppression of native economy—which was

exploited by the imperializers to provide:

a) Raw materials: Cheap sources of raw materials obtained from

colonies allowed manufactured goods to sell cheaply even though the

workers at home demanded and received higher wages

b) Markets: Selling goods to colonies allowed full employment in

the home company and also created more agricultural workers that

further lowered the cost of doing business in the colony.

2. This also led to the creation of political apparatuses in the colonies

that placed colonial governments above multi-ethnic and multi-confessional

nations that had previously not existed

a) As a tool of colonization, religion and education played a huge

role in inculcating the natives with the appropriate sense of loyalty to

the uber nation and also assuring that the colonial culture became the

dominant culture.

b) The nations were abjectly unable to govern themselves, being

made up of randomly selected groups of people with widely varying

cultures, however, this weakness would not be exposed until the 1960s

B. Europeans were enjoying a period of unrivaled prosperity brought

about by:

1. Easy availability of investment opportunities, money and goods from

the colonial economic ‘ballast’ This led to the rise of a more thoroughly

bourgeoisie society in many nations of Europe where wealth and

respectability became major obsessions of generations of citizens

2. New sources of energy and rapidly expanding industrial technology

efficiency that allowed a wide panoply of new goods to be made and

distributed quickly and cheaply that noticeably raised the standard of living

for even the most poor among the imperial nations.

3. New science that propelled Human understanding into vastly new

fields of understanding and, again, improved the quality of life for most

people noticeably.

II. Ideas in Fin de Siècle Europe- the term itself refers to the end of the century, or

the decadence (1890s-1900’s) this period saw some general trends in Europe and America

that we discuss generally under this term. Remember back in the Middle Ages and I said

that the Renaissance extends almost up to the First World War, well this is the point when

the ‘modern’ era takes over from the renaissance mindset, with large-scale changes in how

people approached life.

A. Progress: The idea of progress obsessed the people of Europe, things were

getting better, noticeably every day. There was more food, better food, more

medicine and better medicine and more technology and better technology almost

daily. These rapid advances led people to believe that the world was reaching some

sort of apex within which Humanity was becoming perfected.

B. Darwin- The progressive spirit drew on Darwin’s theory of the origin of the

species—published in 1859 and gaining a wider and wider audience ever since. The

book made people re-think the ideas of human fate: as Darwin said, “those

individuals with any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best

chance of surviving and passing on these traits to their offspring” taken as a whole,

then, the human race was therefore improving slowly.

1. Some people took this message to mean that the human race

represented a spectrum of development, arguing that the ‘primitive’ races

were so backward because of their lesser evolution.

a) This was convenient, of course, because these were the same

people whom the nations of Europe were exploiting for their own

economic and political needs—thus, social Darwinism became a self

fulfilling prophecy

b) This also led to a series of anti-miscegenation laws in many

countries that forbade unions that were disadvantageous to the survival

of the species—many countries defined ‘races’ of man and then ranked

them, forbidding marriage that would pollute the higher of the two

2. Furthermore, people felt that the force of natural selection should be

‘helped’ along by a science called EUGENICS. That is, attempting to improve

the Human race by selective breeding. The theory was made scientifically

respectable by Sir Francis Galton, an otherwise inoffensive statistician who

published a work on social statistics in 1869.

a) Led to movements in several countries that tried to improve

humanity:

(1) USA: Margret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood in

the US in 1916 to provide cheap birth control to poor

(therefore, weak and bad) people so as to avoid having them

overrun the rich (and therefore good and strong) people with

their high birth rates. She built on the popularity of laws

forbidding anyone with a congenital defect like epilepsy or

mental retardation from marrying in several states

(Connecticut first, 1920) And also upon the laws that allowed

states to fore sterilize anyone who stayed in a mental

institution for a length of time (first Indiana 1907)

(2) Germany: Hitler was able to write from Prison that the

American eugenics program was to be envied… ‘nuff said.

(3) Australia—tried to exterminate the aborigines by taking

their children and having them raised by white families.

C. Frederich Nietzsche- German philosopher (1844-1900) whose writing

spoke directly to the modern world being born around him. Famous for saying that

“God is dead and that we have killed him (can you not smell the rotting of god’s

corpse)” This argument advanced the idea that religion, by the 19th century, had lost

its reality to most Europeans, and, as such, we were in danger of slipping into a

dangerous NIHLISM, where there was no value at all.

1. He announced the coming of the Uber mensch, or superman, who has

overcome all history and self to become a truly original and creative human

being, no longer playing in the ashes of the past. This uberman was a totally

new creature, extraordinary in world controlled by a stupid mob.

2. Was nationalistic and argued that the violent struggle between

nations represent the highest form of creativity that a nation can engage in,

in that it purges the nation of the weak and useless like a fire purges steel of

weakness.

3. Advocated the will to power, that is the idea that everyone has the will

and right to step beyond their position… if they can evict the person

occupying that higher position. This took over the position that morality had

occupied before the untimely death of god.

4. And, lastly, replaced heaven and hell with the eternal recurrence. The

idea that the afterlife was an eternal repeat of your life as you have so far

lived it. This is not a hopeful view designed to make you more likely to

volunteer your time to at the ASPCA.

D. Sigmund Freud- Austrian father of psychology (1856-1939) whose theories

explored the ways in which human nature worked—not as it was supposed to work.

Freud felt that all humans were destined to be unhappy, as we all have dark,

atavistic urges that we must suppress in order to live in society.

1. These urges guaranteed that man could be a happy brute or a neurotic

civilized man.

2. Posited a three part construction of Human nature- an ID, EGO and

SUPEREGO. This made a goodly portion of human being unknowable,

irrational and potentially destructive. No longer were we created in god’s

image, or rational, enlightened factors of our own fate, but instead driven by

twisted urges to behave in ways that defied explanation

3. His student Carl Jung (1875-1961) took things a step farther—arguing

that the unconscious was collective among all humans and populated by

ARCHETYPES that we sought to recreate in the living, day to day world.

Therefore, not only were individuals irrational, but the societies they created

were bound to be irrational and inexplicable since they sought to recreate

the archetypes

E. Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) - Italian criminologist who discovered and

popularized the idea of DEGENERATION, that is the possibility of backsliding from

all of the wonderful progress that Europeans had been making for the past century,

by comparing the bodies of criminals and also their faces in these creepy multi-

exposure photos that showed common traits among many criminals

1. (If you took a multi exposure pic of criminals executed in MS in 1930,

would it be black or white. SO all black people are criminal?)

a) Large jaws, forward projection of jaw, low sloping foreheads b) High cheekbones, flattened or upturned nose c) Handle-shaped ears d) Large chins, very prominent in appearance e) Hawk-like noses or fleshy lips f) Hard shifty eyes, scanty beard or baldness g) Insensitivity to pain, long arms

2. Taken with the Eugenics movement, this possibility of degeneration

made the struggle to improve human stock seem like a necessity.

F. Common Themes:

1. Anxiety over man’s position

2. Belief in the irrationality of man’s drives and desires

III. Culture in the Fin De Siècle-

A. Art: Romanticism begins to give way to REALISM—that is art that shows life

as it is, not as it is supposed to be. This lead to an art that was sometimes

unpleasant to look at, read or listen to.

1. Because of this, the idea that art needs have no reason for being other

than itself—Ars grata arsis—comes into popularity.

2. The target audience, not the critics, becomes the arbiter of good taste

and propriety—this reliance on uneducated taste leads to several lighting

fast trends in art

3. All art must be original and new, and should not lean on or recreate

earlier ideas or works.

4. Impressionism- Monet and van Gogh, also Munch and Matisse arose in

response to the ultra realism that was practiced by Courbet and Manet

5. Realism foundered in the arts on the rocky shoal of photography-

which created images more real than could be painted.

B. Literature: Realism gains popularity hear as well—leading to an exploration

of the lives of ‘everyday people’ this realism occasionally took the form of

symbolism, where symbols (cf archetypes) could stand in for controversial topics of

the day

1. Also, emphasized language and word play even to the point of their

language being unintelligible (Jas. Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake)

2. Pioneered the stream of consciousness—a psychological idea that

Freud and others argued for, was applied to literature by authors who

removed all mediation between the reader and the character and wrote only

the character’s thoughts and reactions into the book—no narration or

explanation as to what was going on at all.

3. Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and W. B. Yeats

C. Lively Arts-

1. Theatre- interbred with the novelists, was deeply skeptical and

pessimistic. Presented realist works that explored the lives of everyday

people in everyday situations, and was thus a huge change from the 19th

century style.

2. Opera- Ditto.

3. Dance- Ditto with the addition of folk themes and dances into the

previously existing formal dances

4. Music- challenged 19th century ideals of emotional and progressive

music, instead embraced new and novel instruments, scales and forms of

music that intended to provoke a visceral reaction rather than an intellectual

one.

D. Common factors-

1. The new art favored an elite clique over the populism inherent in

romanticism which was easily understandable

2. The new art challenged the traditions of art (duh) and replaced them

with things that were new for being new’s sake

3. Emotion is more valuable a reaction from a piece than is intellect

IV. Politics in the Fin de Siècle—we are drawing near to the toppling point of the

balance of power set up by Metternich nearly 60 years ago, stresses in Europe and their

colonies had reached a boiling point that would only be relieved by an explosive conflict

that would put all other wars the earth had seen to shame.

A. Resurgence of ANTI SEMITISM- the term is commonly used to denote

prejudice against Jews, however should by definition define prejudice against any of

the people in the Semitic language group. AS had been a facet of European life since

the diaspora in 73 CE. However, the economic uncertainty that accompanied the

boom and bust economic cycle of the late 19th century, the popularity of theories of

race and also of eugenics programs and finally an effective press led to a resurgence

of the practice.

1. Anti Semitism reared its head in many European countries-

a) France: with the Dreyfus affair, 1894, had a promising young

French Capitan accused of treason and sentenced to life in solitary

confinement—largely on the basis of his being Jewish. He was

reinstated in 1906 after the crimes were seen to be the fault of someone

else. However, the discussion served to isolate Jews from mainstream

French society

b) America and Germany—Jews were seen as eugenic risks, who

had to be limited in immigrating.

c) Russia—a series of POGROMS against Jews killed many

thousands with effective government complicity

2. Reaction: The Jews of the nations of Europe lacked an effective voice,

instead attempting to blend into their respective cultures—French, rather

than Jewish. However, THEODORE HERZL (1860 – 1904), raised a

sometimes lone voice to defend the interests of the Jews arguing that the

Jews would never fully incorporate into the European nations, and should

therefore have a separate homeland. This idea was called ZIONISM

a) Unfortunately, although predictably, he couched his argument in

the same racial/eugenic terms that the anti-Semites were marshalling

against the Jews—condemning the current inhabitants of Palestine as

barbarians.

B. Instability- the period saw great instability throughout Europe on a number

of fronts:

1. Violent clashes between workers and business and government-

partially spawned by the socialist movement and fed by the increasing

disparity in how the societal rewards of an increasingly effective capitalism

were divided, the workers often revolted against business—and in so doing

often came into conflict with the governments that were nearly synonymous

with them

2. Conflicts between church and state in France, Germany and Italy

3. Nationalist conflict in England and in the British isles and the AH

4. War then revolution in Russia (1905)

5. The massive upswing of the women’s suffrage movement—especially

in America and England.

a) In America this movement was tied to the antislavery movement

and later equal rights movement—much of the anger in American

women was occasioned by the fact that the 15th amendment gave black

men the right to vote, but not white women, the racist 19th century all

over again.

b) In England the movement was began peacefully, but ended up in

much more violent form led by women such as EMMELINE PARKHURST

who chained herself to the house of commons, smashed store windows

and burnt down the houses of MPs who were anti-suffrage

V. World War One- Beginnings and precedents

A. Balance of Power-

1. Ever since the Metternich plan had been enacted, nations had been

jockeying for a position in which they would be invulnerable from attack

from all the other nations—or have a position so much stronger that war was

possible

a) This struggle was abetted by the forging of modern nations with

fast communications and unified presses that could quickly turn the

politics of war into mass politics and mobilize the entire nation rather

than an elite and the army—leading to unheard of levels of economic

participation in warfare

2. Bismarck, as elder statesman of Germany, had realized that there

were exactly five major nations in Europe with first class military power.

Therefore, it was always in Germany’s interest to be a part of the larger half,

than part of the smaller.

a) Kaiser Wilhelm II however, did not see it this way, instead seeing

the massive military of Germany as being a world beater—thus he could

stand to be on the smaller side and still win.

3. German policies at the outset of the war and also directly previously

to it had alienated Britain, The USA and also Japan thus turning what would

have been another little European war into a world-wide conflict of many

nations

B. Age of crisis- from 1905-14 there were a series of political crisis that could

have been used as a pretext for war—however, these were all settled one way or

another short of war.

1. However, in 1914 the feeling in much of Europe was il faut finir, the

waiting for a war must end—and the feeling in Germany was that they would

never be more powerful vs. the brits than they were at the moment—thus

the time to strike was now and no time was to be wasted.

2. On 28th of July, therefore the Germans initiated their Von Schlieffen

Plan and began the war that would redraw the map of Europe.