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AHistoryofEuropeintheModernWorld11thedition.pdf
A HISTORY OF EUROPE
IN THE MODERN WORLD
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E L E V E N T H E D I T I O N
A HISTORY OF EUROPE IN THE MODERN WORLD
R.R. Palmer Joel Colton Lloyd Kramer
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A HISTORY OF EUROPE IN THE MODERN WORLD, ELEVENTH EDITION
Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121. Copyright © 2014 by
McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Previous editions
© 2007, 2002, and 1995. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Palmer, R. R. (Robert Roswell), 1909-2002.
[History of the modern world]
A history of Europe in the modern world / R.R. Palmer, Joel Colton, Lloyd Kramer. —
Eleventh edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-07-338554-9 (acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-07-759960-7 (acid-free paper)
— ISBN 978-0-07-759958-4 (acid-free paper) 1. History, Modern.
2. Europe—History—1492- I. Colton, Joel, 1918-2011. II. Kramer, Lloyd S.
III. Title.
D209.P26 2014
090.08—dc23
2013018526
The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication. The inclusion of a website
does not indicate an endorsement by the authors or McGraw-Hill Education, and McGraw-Hill Education
does not guarantee the accuracy of the information presented at these sites.
www.mhhe.com
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v
R.R. PALMER was born in Chicago. After graduating from the University of Chicago he received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1934. From 1936 to 1963 he taught at Princeton University, taking
leave during World War II to work on historical projects in Washington, D.C. In 1963 he moved
to Washington University in St. Louis to serve as dean of arts and sciences but in 1969 resumed
his career in teaching and research, this time at Yale. After his retirement he lived in Princeton,
where he was affi liated with the Institute for Advanced Study, and then in a retirement community
in Newtown Pennsylvania. Of the numerous books he wrote, translated, and edited, three of the most
important have been his Catholics and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-Century France (1939); Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution (1941, 1989); and his two-volume Age of the Democratic Revolution (1959, 1964), the fi rst volume of which won the Bancroft Prize. He served as president of the American Historical Association in 1970, received honorary degrees from
universities in the United States and abroad, and was awarded the Antonio Feltrinelli International
Prize for History in Rome in 1990. He was a long-time fellow of the American Philosophical Society
and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died in 2002, widely recognized as one of
the preeminent historians of his generation.
JOEL COLTON was born in New York City. A graduate of the City College of New York, he served as a military intelligence offi cer in Europe in World War II, and received his Ph.D. from Columbia
University in 1950. He served on the faculty of Duke University for more than four decades, chairing
the History Department from 1967 to1974 and chairing the university’s academic council from 1971
to 1973. On leave from Duke, he served from 1974 to 1981 with the Rockefeller Foundation in New
York as director of its research and fellowship program in the humanities. In 1986 Duke voted him
a Distinguished Teaching Award. He received Guggenheim, Rockefeller Foundation, and National
Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. He served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Modern History, French Historical Studies and Historical Abstracts, and was co-president of the International Commission on the History of Social Movements and Social Structures. In 1979 he was
elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His writings include Compulsory Labor Arbitration in France, 1936–1939 (1951); Léon Blum: Humanist in Politics (1966, 1987), for which he received a Mayfl ower Award; Twentieth Century (1968,1980) in The Time-Life Great Ages of Man Series; and numerous contributions to journals, encyclopedias, and collaborative volumes. He died in 2011, having served as the distinguished co-author of A History of the Modern World for every revision after the fi rst edition.
LLOYD KRAMER was born in Maryville, Tennessee, and graduated from Maryville College. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1983. Before entering Cornell, he was a teacher in
Hong Kong and he traveled widely in Asia. After completing his graduate studies, he taught at
Stanford University and Northwestern University. Since 1986 he has been a member of the faculty
at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he is currently a professor of History. He has
served two terms as chair of his Department and received two awards for distinguished undergradu-
ate teaching. His writings include Threshold of a New World: Intellectuals and the Exile Experience in Paris, 1830–1848 (1988); Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions (1996), which won the Gilbert Chinard Prize from the Society for French His- torical Studies and the Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-
Century Studies; and Nationalism in Europe and America: Politics, Cultures, and Identities since 1775 (2011). He has also co-edited several books, including a collection of essays on historical edu- cation in America and A Companion to Western Historical Thought (2002). He has been a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study and a Fellow at the National
Humanities Center; and he served as president of the Society for French Historical Studies.
A b o u t t h e A u t h o r s
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vi
List of Chapter Illustrations xiv
List of Chronologies, Historical Interpretations and Debates, Maps, Charts,
and Tables xxii
Preface xxv
Geography and History 1
Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe 9
Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–1560 49
Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648 99
Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715 147
Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740 195
Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World 233
Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire 267
Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment 309
Chapter 9 The French Revolution 363
Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe 411
Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848 449
Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870 501
Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871 535
Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics 569
Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Cultur e 611
Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914 643
Chapter 17 The First World War 689
Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union 735
Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War 779
Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s 811
Chapter 21 The Second World War 843
Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War 883
Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires 925
Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy 959
B r i e f C o n t e n t s
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viiBrief Contents
Chapter 25 The International Revolt against Soviet Communism 987
Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World 1019
Appendix Rulers and Regimes A1
Index I1 Suggestions for Further Reading Online at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e
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viii
List of Chapter Illustrations xiv
List of Chronologies, Historical Interpretations and Debates, Maps, Charts,
and Tables xxii
Preface xxv
Geography and History 1
Chapter 1 THE RISE OF EUROPE 9
1. Ancient Times: Greece, Rome, and Christianity 11 2. The Early Middle Ages: The Formation of Europe 19 3. The High Middle Ages: Secular Civilization 29 4. The High Middle Ages: The Church 38
Chapter 2 THE UPHEAVAL IN WESTERN CHRISTENDOM, 1300–1560 49
5. Disasters of the Fourteenth Century 50 6. The Renaissance in Italy 56 7. The Renaissance Outside Italy 70 8. The New Monarchies 74 9. The Protestant Reformation 77 10. Catholicism Reformed and Reorganized 93
Chapter 3 THE ATLANTIC WORLD, COMMERCE, AND WARS OF RELIGION, 1560–1648 99
11. The Opening of the Atlantic 100 12. The Commercial Revolution 108 13. Changing Social Structures 117 14. The Wars of Catholic Spain: The Netherlands and England 124 15. The Disintegration and Reconstruction of France 133 16. The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648: The Disintegration
of Germany 138
Chapter 4 THE GROWING POWER OF WESTERN EUROPE, 1640–1715 147
17. The Grand Monarque and the Balance of Power 148 18. The Dutch Republic 151
C o n t e n t s
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Contents ix
19. Britain: The Civil War 158 20. Britain: The Triumph of Parliament 165 21. The France of Louis XIV, 1643–1715: The Triumph
of Absolutism 173
22. The Wars of Louis XIV: The Peace of Utrecht, 1713 186
Chapter 5 THE TRANSFORMATION OF EASTERN EUROPE, 1648–1740 195
23. Three Aging Empires 196 24. The Formation of an Austrian Monarchy 206 25. The Formation of Prussia 210 26. The Transformation of Russia 218
Chapter 6 THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF THE WORLD 233
27. The Emergence of a Scientifi c Culture: Bacon and Descartes 234 28. The Road to Newton: The Law of Universal Gravitation 240 29. New Knowledge of Human Beings and Society 251 30. Political Theory: The School of Natural Law 260
Chapter 7 THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH AND EMPIRE 267
31. Elite and Popular Cultures 268 32. The Global Economy of the Eighteenth Century 275 33. Western Europe after the Peace of Utrecht, 1713–1740 285 34. The Great War of the Mid-Eighteenth Century: The Peace
of Paris, 1763 294
Chapter 8 THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT 309
35. The Philosophes—and Others 310 36. Enlightened Despotism: France, Austria, Prussia 324 37. Enlightened Despotism: Russia 333 38. The Partitions of Poland 339 39. New Stirrings: The British Reform Movement 343 40. The American Revolution 352
Chapter 9 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 363
41. Social and Cultural Backgrounds 364 42. The Revolution and the Reorganization of France 369
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Contentsx
43. The Revolution and Europe: The War and the “Second” Revolution, 1792 385
44. The Emergency Republic, 1792–1795: The Terror 389 45. The Constitutional Republic: The Directory, 1795–1799 400 46. The Authoritarian Republic: The Consulate, 1799–1804 405
Chapter 10 NAPOLEONIC EUROPE 411
47. The Formation of the French Imperial System 412 48. The Grand Empire: Spread of the Revolution 420 49. The Continental System: Britain and Europe 425 50. The National Movements and New Nationalist Cultures 431 51. The Overthrow of Napoleon: The Congress of Vienna 437
Chapter 11 INDUSTRIES, IDEAS, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORM, 1815–1848 449
52. The Industrial Revolution in Britain 451 53. The Advent of the “ISMS” 460 54. The Leaking Dam and the Flood: Domestic 475 55. The Leaking Dam and the Flood: International 479 56. The Breakthrough of Liberalism in the West:
Revolutions of 1830–1832 487
57. Triumph of the West European Bourgeoisie 495
Chapter 12 REVOLUTIONS AND THE REIMPOSITION OF ORDER, 1848–1870 501
58. Paris: The Specter of Social Revolution in the West 502 59. Vienna: The Nationalist Revolutions in Central Europe
and Italy 508
60. Frankfurt and Berlin: The Question of a Liberal Germany 515 61. The New European “ISMS”: Realism, Positivism,
Marxism 520
62. Bonapartism: The Second French Empire, 1852–1870 530
Chapter 13 THE CONSOLIDATION OF LARGE NATION-STATES, 1859–1871 535
63. Backgrounds: The Idea of the Nation-State 536 64. Cavour and the Italian War of 1859: The Unifi cation
of Italy 539
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Contents xi
65. The Founding of a German Empire and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary 544
66. Tsarist Russia: Social Change and the Limits of Political Reform 555
67. Nation-Building in the Wider Atlantic World: The United States and Canada 563
Chapter 14 EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION, 1871–1914: ECONOMY AND POLITICS 569
68. The Modern “Civilized World” 570 69. Basic Demography: The Increase of Europe’s Population 573 70. The World Economy of the Nineteenth Century 583 71. The Advance of Democracy: Third French Republic, United
Kingdom, German Empire 593
Chapter 15 EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION, 1871–1914: SOCIETY AND CULTURE 611
72. The Advance of Democracy: Socialism, Labor Unions, and Feminism 612
73. Science, Philosophy, the Arts, and Religion 620 74. The Waning of Classical Liberalism 636
Chapter 16 EUROPE’S WORLD SUPREMACY, 1871–1914 643
75. Imperialism: Its Nature and Causes 645 76. The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire 653 77. The Partition of Africa 662 78. Imperialism in Asia: The Dutch, the British, and the Russians 671 79. Imperialism in Asia: China and Europe 678 80. The Russo-Japanese War and Its Consequences 685
Chapter 17 THE FIRST WORLD WAR 689
81. The International Anarchy 689 82. The Armed Stalemate 699 83. The Collapse of Russia and the Intervention
of the United States 709
84. The Collapse of the Austrian and German Empires 714 85. The Economic, Social, and Cultural Impact of the War 716 86. The Peace of Paris, 1919 724
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Contentsxii
Chapter 18 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION 735
87. Backgrounds 737 88. The Revolution of 1905 744 89. The Revolution of 1917 749 90. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 758 91. Stalin: The Five-Year Plans and the Purges 765 92. The International Impact of Communism, 1919–1939 774
Chapter 19 DEMOCRACY, ANTI-IMPERIALISM, AND THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR 779
93. The Advance of Democracy after 1919 779 94. The German Republic and the Spirit of Locarno 784 95. Anti-Imperialist Movements in Asia 790 96. The Great Depression: Collapse of the World Economy 802
Chapter 20 DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP IN THE 1930S 811
97. Trials and Adjustments of Democracy in Britain and France 812 98. Italian Fascism 821 99. Totalitarianism: Germany’s Third Reich 827
Chapter 21 THE SECOND WORLD WAR 843
100. The Weakness of the Democracies: Again to War 844 101. The Years of Axis Triumph 853 102. The Western-Soviet Victory 861 103. The Foundations of the Peace 876
Chapter 22 THE COLD WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR 883
104. The Cold War: The Opening Decade, 1945–1955 884 105. Western Europe: Economic Reconstruction 897 106. Western Europe: Political Reconstruction 901 107. Europe and the Global Economy 912 108. Communist Societies in the U.S.S.R.
and Eastern Europe 918
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Contents xiii
Chapter 23 DECOLONIZATION AND THE BREAKUP OF THE EUROPEAN EMPIRES 925
109. The Emergence of Independent Nations in South Asia and Southeast Asia 927
110. The African Revolution 936 111. Europe and the Modern Middle East 947
Chapter 24 COEXISTENCE, CONFRONTATION, AND THE NEW EUROPEAN ECONOMY 959
112. Confrontation and Détente, 1955–1975 960 113. Collapse and Recovery of the European and Global Economy:
The 1970s and 1980s 970
114. The Cold War Rekindled and Defused 981
Chapter 25 THE INTERNATIONAL REVOLT AGAINST SOVIET COMMUNISM 987
115. The Crisis in the Soviet Union 988 116. The Collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern
Europe 992
117. The Collapse of the Soviet Union 1000 118. After Communism 1005
Chapter 26 EUROPE AND THE CHANGING MODERN WORLD 1019
119. Western Europe after the Cold War 1020 120. Nation-States and Economies in the Age of Globalization 1024 121. Intellectual and Social Transitions in Modern Cultures 1036 122. Europe and International Confl icts in the Early Twenty-First
Century 1058
123. Social and Environmental Challenges in the Twenty-First Century 1067
Appendix RULERS AND REGIMES A1
Index I1
Suggestions for Further Reading Online at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e
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xiv
The Parthenon 12
Ruins of the Roman Forum 14
Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus 15
St. Augustine 18
Hagia Sophia 22
Medieval Spanish Monastery 27
Medieval Peasant 31
Symbol of Florentine Wool Guild 35
The Meeting of St. Anthony and St. Paul by Sassetta 43
Thomas Aquinas by Fra Bartelemo 44
European Crusaders at Antioch 47
Religious Procession of Medieval Flagellants 54
Renaissance Italian Bankers 57
Renaissance Italian Wool Merchants 58
Procession of the Three Kings to Bethlehem by Benozzo Gozzoli 59
Lorenzo de’ Medici Examining a Model of His Villa 60
Portrait of a Condottiere by Giovanni Bellini 62
Detail from Zacharias in the Temple by Domenico Ghirlandaio 64
Portrait of a Family by Lavinia Fontana 66
Florentine Council Debating on War with Pisa by Giorgio Vasari 68
Niccoló Machiavelli 69
Erasmus of Rotterdam by Hans Holbein, the Younger 73
Interrogation of the Jews 78
Martin Luther and His Wife Catherine by Lucas Cranach, the Elder 81
Siege of Munster, Germany, in 1534 83
John Calvin 87
Queen Elizabeth I 90
Pierre de Moucheron and Family 92
St. Ignatius Loyola by Peter Paul Rubens 96
Detail from An Episode in the Conquest of America by Jan Mostaert 103
European Meeting with an African Council in Guinea 106
Slaves Processing Diamonds in Brazil 106
The Aztec Language in the Latin Alphabet 109
The Silver Mines at Potosí 110
Jakob Fugger by Albrecht Dürer 111
Study of Two Black Heads by Rembrandt van Rijn 112
The Four Estates of Society: Work by Jean Bourdichon 114
L i s t o f C h a p t e r I l l u s t r a t i o n s
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List of Chapter Illustrations xv
The Dutch East India Company Headquarters 117
Old Woman Cooking Eggs by Diego Valázquez 120
Monk Teaching Students at the University of Salamanca 122
King Philip II of Spain by Titian 126
The Spanish Armada 130
St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre by François Dubois 136
“The Hanging Tree” [from] The Great Miseries of War by Jacques Callot 141
Masters of the Cloth Guild by Rembrandt Van Rijn 152
Portrait of the Artist with Isabelle Brandt by Peter Paul Rubens 153
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window by Jan Vermeer 154
The Geographer by Jan Vermeer 156
William Shakespeare 159
The Execution of King Charles I 164
Woman Speaking at a Quaker Meeting 165
Molière Performing in “The School for Wives” by François Delpech 175
Inspiration of the Epic Poet by Nicolas Poussin 177
Louis XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud 180
The Building of Versailles by Adam François van der Mueleh 182
View of the Château of Versailles by Pierre Denis Martin 182
Persecution of the Huguenots 186
The Battle of Blenheim 190
Peasant Family in a Room by Louis Le Nain 191
Count Stanislas Potocki by Jacques-Louis David 201
Suleiman the Magnifi cent 204
Turkish Siege of Vienna in 1683 208
Frederick William, the Great Elector 213
Prussian Army Uniforms 219
Stephen Razin as Painted by Surikov 223
Peter the Great 225
The Construction of St. Petersburg 228
Execution for Witchcraft in the Seventeenth Century 236
René Descartes by Frans Hals 239
A Scholar Holding a Thesis on Botany by Willem Moreelse 241
The Copernican Conception of the Solar System 243
Galileo and His Telescope 244
Founding of the Academy of Sciences and the Observatory in 1666 by Henri Testelin 249
Isaac Newton 250
Ambassadors from Siam at Versailles 253
Seventeenth-Century Library 256
Baruch Spinoza by Samuel Van Hoogstraten 260
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List of Chapter Illustrationsxvi
John Locke by John Greenhill 265
Gin Lane by William Hogarth 271
Café Frascati by Philibert-Louis Debucourt 271
A Carnival on the Feast Day of Saint George by Pieter Bruegel, the Younger 274
Women at Work in an Irish Cottage 276
Enslaved Workers on a Plantation in Barbados 282
The Duet by Arthur Devis 284
John Law, Wind Monopolist 289
M. Bachelier, Director of the Lyons Farms by Jean-Baptiste Oudry 292
Frederick the Great of Prussia as a Young Man 296
Maria Theresa and Her Family by Martin van Meytens 298
Schönbrunn Palace 300
The Battle of Quebec 304
A British Army Offi cer’s Wife in India 306
Reading at the Salon of Mme. de Geoffrin by Anicet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier 315
Voltaire by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour 316
Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Allan Ramsay 321
The Parlement of Paris 330
Catherine the Great by Alexander Roslin 336
Emelian Pugachev in an Iron Cage 337
The Hon. Mrs. Graham by Thomas Gainsborough 347
Edmund Burke 349
Mrs. Isaac Smith by John Singleton Copley 354
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense 357
Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull 360
Eighteenth-Century French Peasants Working in Fields 365
Meeting of the French Estates General 372
The Tennis Court Oath by Jacques-Louis David 374
The Capture of the Bastille 376
Olympe de Gouges 377
A Woman of the Revolution by Jacques-Louis David 378
Frenchmen Creating a New Constitution 380
French Paper Money, the “Assignats” 382
The Festival of the Federation, 1790 384
Parisians Pulling Down a Statue of Louis XIV 392
The Battle of Fleurus 397
The Execution of Robespierre 398
Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David 407
Toussaint L’Ouverture 413
Napoleon and Alexander I Meeting on the Niemen River 417
The Third of May 1808 by Francisco de Goya 419
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List of Chapter Illustrations xvii
Germaine de Staël by François Gérard 426
The Arch of Triumph in Paris 429
The Madeleine Church in Paris 430
Blowing Up the Corsican Bottle Conjurer 433
The French Army’s Retreat from Russia 440
The Congress of Vienna 443
English Cotton Mill 453
Early Train in Nineteenth-Century England 456
The British Houses of Parliament 464
Mary Wollstonecraft 467
Saint-Simonian Feminist by Malreuve 469
Caricature of George Sand by Alcide Lorentz 471
Coronation of Charles X in Reims 477
German Students at a Festival in 1817 479
The “Peterloo Massacre” by Cruikshank 480
Simón Bolívar 485
Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix 490
Big Investments by Honoré Daumier 497
The London Police 500
Parisian Crowd in the Revolution of 1848 504
Crowds in the Streets of Vienna in 1848 510
Joseph Mazzini 515
The Frankfurt Assembly in 1848 519
A Burial at Ornans by Gustave Courbet 524
Workers in Manchester during the 1840s 525
Karl Marx 528
Construction Workers and the Rebuilding of Paris 533
Florence Nightingale at a Military Hospital in Crimea 539
Giuseppe Garibaldi 544
Otto von Bismarck 547
Battle of Sedan in 1870 551
Proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles by Anton von Werner 553
The Arrival of the Bride by Miklos Barabas 555
Russian Peasants in the Late Nineteenth Century 561
Emancipated Ex-Slaves in the American South during the Civil War 564
Train in the Snow by Claude Monet 572
The Gleaners by Jean-François Millet 577
Victorian-Era English Family 578
Immigrant Family Arriving in New York 582
Steel Factory in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain 585
Classic Landscape by Charles Sheeler 587
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List of Chapter Illustrationsxviii
Workers Transporting Tea in India 592
The Bon Marché Department Store in Paris 595
Supporters of the Paris Commune in 1871 597
Captain Alfred Dreyfus in the 1890s 598
Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat 603
British Coal Miners in the Early Twentieth Century 604
Cartoon Portrayal of Kaiser William II’s Removal of Bismarck by John Tenniel 608
Illustration of British Miners Voting to Strike 614
Emmeline Pankhurst 619
Women Demanding Equal Voting Rights in Britain 619
Charles Darwin 621
Sigmund Freud 625
Albert Einstein 626
Ia Orana Maria by Paul Gauguin 628
Cathedral at Rouen by Claude Monet 629
Young Girl Boating by Berthe Morisot 630
The Boating Party by Mary Cassatt 631
Self-Portrait with Beret by Paul Cezanne 632
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Pablo Picasso 633
Theodor Herzl 636
John Stuart Mill 637
Coal Miners in France 641
Railroad Locomotive Arriving in Central India 647
British Missionary and Africans Making Bread 649
British Offi cials with Indian Servants in India 652
Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II 657
British Ship in the Suez Canal 660
Workers in the Congo Harvesting Rubber for Export 665
Workers Building a Gold Mine in Southern Africa 668
British Soldiers in South Africa during the Boer War 671
The Sepoy Rebellion in India 674
Jawaharlal Nehru 675
The Boxer Uprising in China 684
Japanese Troops at Battle of Mukden in Russo-Japanese War of 1905 686
Kaiser William II in Morocco in 1905 694
Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria with Catholic Leaders in Sarajevo 697
German Soldiers at the Berlin Railway Station in 1914 701
French Departure Trench on the Western Front 702
Soldiers on the Battlefi eld at Passchendaele in 1917 703
British Front in Flanders in 1917 704
T. E. Lawrence with Prince Faisal at Versailles 707
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List of Chapter Illustrations xix
American Soldiers in France in 1917 714
German Women Working in an Armaments Factory during the First World War 718
Austrian and French Wartime Propaganda Posters 720
Wilfred Owen 721
Leaders of the Allied Powers at the Versailles Peace Conference 729
Russian Peasants Harvesting Hay 740
Lenin Addressing a Crowd 743
Protest March in St. Petersburg in 1905 746
Tsar Nicholas II and His Family 750
Rasputin 750
Demonstration in St. Petersburg in 1917 752
Leon Trotsky 756
Red Army Artillery Battalion 757
Soviet Political Poster 759
Farmers in the Soviet Union Using New Tractors 768
Soviet Automobile Factory with Portrait of Stalin 772
Soviet Propaganda Poster of Stalin by Konstantin Ivanov 773
Lenin at Meeting of Third International in 1920 776
Poster Urging American Women to Use Their New Right to Vote 781
Outdoor Cafe and Park in Vienna 783
Crowd Burning Spartacist Publications in Berlin 786
German Merchants Calculating Daily Sales 789
Greek Muslim Refugees in Turkey in 1923 794
Mustapha Kemal Atatürk Dancing at His Daughter’s Wedding 796
Mohandas Gandhi and Other Indian Nationalists at a Protest March 799
Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai on the “Long March” 802
Crowd at a London Cinema 804
British “Hunger March” in 1935 807
Autour d’Elle by Marc Chagall 809
British Marchers in General Strike of 1926 in London 813
British Army Troops in Dublin 817
French Workers at a Subway Construction Site 818
French Premier Léon Blum Addressing Supporters of the Popular Front 819
Fascists in “March on Rome” in October 1922 823
Benito Mussolini Speaking at an Italian Fascist Rally 824
Italian Woman at a Fascist Rally 826
Hitler with Supporters at the Time of the “Beer Hall Putsch ” 828
Nazi Military Parade in Nuremburg 830
Damage to Jewish Shops after Kristallnacht in Berlin 832
Nazi Image of the “New People” 838
Saluting Adolf Hitler at a Nazi Rally in Nuremberg 839
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Hitler Entering Vienna in 1938 after the Anschluss 846
Anti-Fascist Rally in Spain 848
Guernica by Pablo Picasso 849
Sudetens Welcoming Arrival of German Troops in 1938 851
German Troops Entering a Polish Village in 1939 854
German Soldiers Marching through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris 857
Russian Casualties on Eastern Front in Early 1942 860
British Women in the Auxiliary Territorial Service 863
Urban Desolation during the Battle of Stalingrad 865
Survivors Liberated from the Concentration Camp at Buchenwald 871
A Nazi Concentration Camp in 1945 874
Hiroshima, Devastation after the Atomic Bomb 875
Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin at Yalta 879
The Survivor by George Grosz 880
Filipino Representative Pedro Lopez Addressing the United Nations 886
Churchill Giving a Speech Describing the New Iron Curtain across Eastern
Europe 888
The Berlin Airlift 891
Children Near a Tank during the Korean War 896
Women at Work in a British Television Factory 900
French Kindergarten in 1950 904
Students and Police Clash in Paris in May 1968 907
Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer 910
High-Speed Train in Japan 913
The London Stock Exchange 917
Nikita Khrushchev with President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon 920
Protesters in Budapest Burn Pictures of Joseph Stalin in 1956 924
Presentation of Flag on India Independence Day 927
Refugees Fleeing from West Pakistan in 1947 930
British High Commissioner MacGillivray leaving Kuala Lumpur in 1957 932
Independence Day Parade in Kuala Lumpur 932
Indonesian President Sukarno at Bandung in 1955 934
French Soldiers after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 935
French Soldiers in the Streets of Oran, Algeria 940
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana 941
Refugees from Uganda Arriving in London in 1972 943
David Ben-Gurion, the First Prime Minister of Israel 949
Palestinians in a Refugee Camp in 1956 950
British Soldiers in Suez in 1956 952
Iranian Women Wielding Guns after the Iranian Revolution 956
Construction of the Berlin Wall 964
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Protest against the Vietnam War in Britain 966
Citizens of Prague Destroy a Soviet Tank 968
Protest by French Newspaper Workers 971
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher 973
French Workers Protesting Conditions at an Auto Factory 976
Helmut Kohl in Strasbourg 978
French Voter at the Time of the Referendum on Maastricht Treaty 980
German Protest against New Missile Deployments 985
Mikhail Gorbachev Meets with Potato Farmers Near Moscow 991
Supporters of the Solidarity Movement in Warsaw 995
Alexander Dubcek, Vaclav Havel, and Marta Kubisova 997
Destruction of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 998
Boris Yeltsin Waves to Supporters outside the Parliament Building in Moscow 1004
People Forced to Flee Violence in Chechen City of Grozny 1009
Muslims Mourning the Victims of “Ethnic Cleansing” in Sarajevo Cemetery 1014
People in Belgrade Demand the Resignation of President Slobodan Milosevic 1017
Multicultural School in Contemporary London 1022
Ségolène Royal and Angela Merkel 1026
Dutch Soccer Team at Euro Cup Competition in 2008 1032
President of European Commission Addressing European Parliament in Brussels 1033
Students at University Computer Center Working in “Virtual Library” 1035
French and Russian Astronauts 1041
Jean-Paul Sartre 1042
Fabulous Race-Track of Death by Matta 1045
Family Life by Jean Dubuffet 1046
Mother and Child by Henry Moore 1047
Pope John Paul II in Poland 1050
Mosque in Duisburg, Germany 1053
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones in Los Angeles 1054
Simone de Beauvoir 1056
Supporters of Same-Sex Marriage in Spain 1057
Wheel Man by Ernest Trova 1061
Barack Obama in Prague 1063
World Trade Center Towers after Crash of Second Aircraft 1064
German Soldiers in Afghanistan 1068
British Troops in Iraq 1069
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xxii
Chronologies Notable Events, 500 B.C.E.–1300 C.E. 39
Notable Events, 1309–1555 84
Notable Events, 1492–1648 131
Notable Events, 1642–1713 172
Notable Events, 1640–1740 221
Notable Events, 1543–1697 258
Notable Events, 1619–1763 301
Notable Events, 1733–1795 350
Notable Events, 1789–1804 403
Notable Events, 1799–1815 436
Notable Events, 1780–1869 494
Notable Events, 1848–1857 521
Notable Events, 1854–1871 563
Notable Events, 1850–1914 605
Notable Events, 1859–1920 639
Notable Events, 1850–1906 682
Notable Events, 1879–1920 725
Notable Events, 1894–1937 770
Notable Events, 1911–1935 803
Notable Events, 1922–1938 837
Notable Events, 1935–1945 876
Notable Events, 1945–1962 919
Notable Events, 1946–1979 948
Notable Events, 1957–1995 979
Notable Events, 1980–2012 1011
Notable Events, 1949–2011 1060
Historical Interpretations and Debates Europe and the Americas 107
The Meaning of the English Revolution 169
Continuity and Discontinuity in the Scientifi c Revolution 246
Social Institutions and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment 322
The Political and Social Signifi cance of the French Revolution 399
Women and the Industrial Revolution 459
The Roots of Modern Nationalism 540
The Rationales and Paradoxes of Modern European Imperialism 654
L i s t o f C h r o n o l o g i e s ,
H i s t o r i c a l I n t e r p r e t a t i o n s a n d
D e b a t e s , M a p s , C h a r t s , a n d T a b l e s
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List of Chronologies, Historical Interpretations and Debates, Maps, Charts, and Tables xxiii
Cultural Responses to the First World War 722
Women in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany 834
The Nature and Legacy of the Cold War 982
Maps, Charts, and Tables Europe: Physical 4–5
The Mediterranean World about 400, 800, and 1250 C.E. 25
Crusading Activity, 1100–1259 45
Estimated Population of Europe, 1200–1550 51
Europe, 1526 79
State Religions in Europe about 1560 89
European Discoveries, 1450–1600 101
The Low Countries, 1648 129
Europe, 1648 144–145
The Expansion of France, 1661–1713 149
England in the Seventeenth Century 170
France from the Last Years of Louis XIV to the Revolution of 1789 184
The Atlantic World after the Peace of Utrecht, 1713 192
Central and Eastern Europe, 1660–1795 199
Aging Empires and New Powers 200
The Growth of the Austrian Monarchy, 1521–1772 209
The Growth of Prussia, 1415–1918 214–215
The Growth of Russia in the West 230–231
The Growth of Geographical Knowledge 255
The World in 1763 307
Europe, 1740 327
Poland since the Eighteenth Century 342
The French Republic and Its Satellites, 1798–1799 404
Napoleonic Europe, 1810 423
Napoleonic Germany 425
Europe, 1815 446
Britain before and after the Industrial Revolution 457
The Industrial Revolution in Britain (as Shown by Sources of Income) 462
Languages of Europe 473
European Revolutions, 1848 512
Nation-Building, 1859–1867 543
The German Question, 1815–1871 549
Europe, 1871 558–559
Estimated Population of the World by Continental Areas 574
Emigration from Europe, 1850–1940 579
Immigration into Various Countries, 1850–1940 580
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List of Chronologies, Historical Interpretations and Debates, Maps, Charts, and Tablesxxiv
Migration from Europe, 1850–1940 581
Export of European Capital to 1914 590
The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, 1699–1914 661
Precolonial Africa: Sites and Peoples 667
Africa, 1914 670
Imperialism in Asia, 1840–1914 676–677
“The British Lake,” 1918 679
Northeast China and Adjoining Regions in the Era of Imperialism 683
Anglo-German Industrial Competition, 1898 and 1913 693
The Balkans, 1878 and 1914 698
The First World War 700
Europe, 1923 730–731
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1922–1991 762–763
Europe, 1942 864
The Second World War 868–869
The Holocaust 870
Deportation and Settlement, 1939–1950 892–893
Germany and Its Borders, 1919–1990 909
The Indian Subcontinent, 2000 931
Contemporary Africa 938
The Modern Arab World 946
Israel and Adjoining Regions after the Era of the British Mandate 954–955
The World about 1970 962–963
Vietnam and Its Neighbors after the Era of French Colonialism, Showing Boundaries
in 1970 967
Russian Federation in 2000 1008
Nationalities in Central and Eastern Europe at the End of the Twentieth Century 1013
The Global Population Explosion 1070
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xxv
Dramatic events in the contemporary world—wars, revolutions, political upheavals, ter- rorist attacks, catastrophic natural disasters, economic crises, and the endless stream of
daily news—often obscure the long-developing historical processes that have created the
societies in which we live and the current problems with which we have to cope. The mass
media pay little attention to the broader historical patterns and contexts that shape the
deeper meaning of swiftly moving public events and private lives. This new edition of this
book, which has been retitled A History of Europe in the Modern World, may therefore be seen as the newest version of an ongoing search for historical perspectives on the complex,
often bewildering, events of our own era. The book’s new title, which adds the words
“Europe in” to the concise phrase that has entitled every previous edition, acknowledges
the fact that even a long book cannot adequately describe historical events in the entire
“modern world.” At the same time, however, this slight change in a familiar title refl ects
other revisions in a new edition that focuses more specifi cally on the history of Europe,
while also emphasizing that modern European history has always evolved through interac-
tions and exchanges with the wider world.
It is impossible to understand European history without placing it “in the modern
world, ” just as it is impossible to understand the modern world without knowing the his- tory of Europe. This book thus carries the guiding assumption that events and ideas in
modern European societies have often infl uenced people in every part of the world, but
that Europeans have also been constantly infl uenced by their encounters with other peoples
and cultures. More generally, the themes of this book build on the presupposition that con-
temporary events and confl icts are deeply connected to the diverse cultures, institutions,
social systems, economic exchanges, power struggles, empires, and ideas of earlier eras in
human history. Nobody can truly understand present times, in short, without studying the
past; and in modern times the history of Europe has often entered (for better or for worse)
into the history of almost the whole world.
The multiple levels of human history and cross-cultural exchanges have created
modern societies that both resemble and differ from the “modernity” that has evolved in
Europe since about the fi fteenth century. This book thus describes the main features of this
dynamic modern history by examining specifi c nations and landmark events, such as great
revolutions, economic transitions, and changing cultural beliefs; but it also emphasizes
broad historical and social trends that have developed beneath the most prominent events,
gradually creating what we now call “the modern world.” Although the following narra-
tive explores the rise of nation-states and the confl icts that have reshaped modern societies
over the last several centuries, it links such public events to the wider historical infl uence
of the global economy, the development of science, technology, and new forms of knowl-
edge, the rise of industry, the signifi cance of religious and philosophical beliefs, the origin
and diffusion of new political ideas, the changing mores of family and social life, the
evolving views of human rights, and the complex relations between European cultures and
other cultures around the world.
The term modern, as it is used in this book, refers to a phase of human history that began about fi ve or six centuries ago and steadily transformed both the material conditions
P r e f a c e
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Prefacexxvi
of human societies and the meaning of individual identities or selfhood. “Modern” ways of
life have developed in diverse historical contexts, and they are now evolving more rapidly
and in more places than ever before. This book affi rms that every culture and historical era
have made important contributions to the collective history of human beings, but it focuses
primarily on developments in Europe, even as it traces the growing European involve-
ments with other peoples, economies, and political systems far beyond the relatively small
continent of Europe itself. The narrative stresses the infl uence of European societies on the
emergence of “modern” institutions and social practices, yet it also notes the worldwide
exchanges that have contributed to the increasingly global culture of the contemporary
era. Europeans were never the only infl uential “actors” in the global creation of moder-
nity, but they were often present wherever the transitions to modernity were taking place.
These historical transitions generated violence and oppression and political confl icts as
well as social, cultural, and economic progress; and it is the combined effects of these
modern developments on all human lives (and the natural environment) that provide the
essential rationale for historical studies and for this new edition of A History of Europe in the Modern World.
ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK: CHANGES AND CONTINUITIES
As in the past, the book is organized in chapters that carry the narrative across specifi c
chronological eras, moving steadily toward the present. Yet the clearly defi ned and num-
bered sections within each chapter often deal with themes, events, or issues that do not
develop in simple chronological order. Each chapter focuses on a specifi c time frame
but also on themes and problems of continuing historical importance. The chronological
organization gives readers a broad historical framework and provides opportunities for
further analysis and discussion of specifi c historical themes or problems— discussions
that can draw, for example, on the Suggestions for Further Reading and other materials
that can be found on the companion Online Learning Center Web site ( www.mhhe.com/
palmerhistory11e ), which includes an Interactive Glossary.
Although the history of political systems, state power, revolutions, and international
confl icts remains important, some details of national political history have been reduced
in this new edition, and whole sections on China, Japan, Africa, and the Americas have
been removed. These changes provide a sharper analytical focus on Europe, shorten the
text, and align the book more closely with contemporary survey courses. This book goes
beyond a “textbook summary” of information by providing analytical themes to engage
both nonacademic readers and students who seek broad perspectives on more specifi c
kinds of historical scholarship. The narrative therefore explains major events and also
draws on the work of recent social, cultural, and intellectual historians who have con-
tributed important new insights to modern historical studies. There are discussions of the
evolving roles of women in various historical contexts; descriptions of cultural movements
and intellectual debates from the early modern to the contemporary period; and new analy-
sis of the political, economic, and cultural interactions that took place in European empires
and in the anticolonial movements that ultimately brought about the dissolution of imperial
systems. Chapters on the breakup of European empires, however, have been shortened and
consolidated to emphasize the interactions between Europeans and other peoples around
the world.
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Preface xxvii
Another important new feature in this edition appears in a series of brief excerpts from
the writings of historians who have helped to shape the modern interpretations of notable
historical events. Historical knowledge is never simply fi xed or fi nal, because historians
constantly fi nd new sources to analyze; or they develop new perspectives to explain long-
known persons and confl icts; or they draw new comparisons between events and problems
in different cultures and historical eras. This new edition thus includes an introduction to
exemplary “Historical Interpretations and Debates,” thereby giving readers concise sum-
maries and comparisons of diverse perspectives on past cultures and events. The excerpts
that express key themes in these debates come from a wide range of works, including
both “classic” historical studies and recent reinterpretations. The purpose of the excerpts
is to introduce readers to infl uential debates about key issues and to show how historians
develop or revise their analytical themes. Well-informed historical thinking requires both
knowledge about past events and the critical evaluation of divergent historical interpreta-
tions. The themes of the various debates therefore provide an additional “entry” into the
multiple spheres of historical thought and into the constant expansion and revision of his-
torical knowledge.
This book describes major events such as the religious wars of earlier centuries, the
Scientifi c Revolution, the French and Russian Revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, the
development of European imperialism, the twentieth-century world wars and globaliz-
ing economy, the spread of democracy and the challenges it has faced, the collapse of
European-dominated empires, the continuing search for an international order, and the
emergence of the European Union. All of these broad developments are analyzed with
references to specifi c examples or people, and there are transnational comparisons in the
discussion of every historical era.
The visual components have been revised to include new images and illustrations,
especially in the later chapters on contemporary European history. Like other kinds of
sources, the images and artwork from past cultures provide important historical informa-
tion. Knowing how to “read” and critically evaluate illustrations, paintings, and photo-
graphs is essential for analytical thought and for cross-cultural comparisons. The brief
captions that accompany the illustrations thus connect the visual themes to the book’s
historical narrative and interpretations. Other key features of the new edition include new,
easier-to-read maps, which are presented in new colors. The maps and charts show the
changing boundaries, populations, and economies of different regions or nations as they
have changed across the centuries; and each chapter includes a chronological timeline that
summarizes the most notable events. The revised entries in the comprehensive Sugges-
tions for Further Reading, long a valued feature of this book, provide up-to-date listings of
useful Web sites as well as the titles of signifi cant new scholarly publications on specifi c
national histories and the themes of transnational historical research. For this edition, the
Suggestions for Further Reading can be found on the Online Learning Center at www. mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
The changes in A History of Europe in the Modern World have been introduced to make this new edition more accessible and to tighten its analytical focus, but not to weaken
the prose style, content, or analytical qualities that have long appealed to both teachers
and students of European history. Readers will therefore fi nd that the book reaffi rms a
strong belief in the value of historical knowledge and historical perspectives for anyone
who wishes to live a well-informed and engaged life in the changing modern world. It
achieves its purpose whenever it gives readers new insights into the meanings of European
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Prefacexxviii
or modern history and whenever it helps readers gain new perspectives on their own lives,
cultures, and social experiences.
SUPPLEMENTS FOR THE INSTRUCTOR
Instructor’s Manual/Test Bank The fi rst half of this unique manual offers a chapter- by-chapter guide to some of the best documentaries, educational and feature fi lms, videos,
and audio recordings to enhance classroom discussion. Brief overviews help instructors
select the fi lms best suited to each course topic. The manual also provides instructors with
chapter objectives and points for discussion for each chapter, followed by a test bank con-
taining multiple-choice, essay, and identifi cation test questions.
Instructor Online Learning Center Web Site ( www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e ) At the home page for this text-specifi c Web site, instructors will fi nd a downloadable ver-
sion of the Instructor’s Manual. Instructors can also create an interactive course syllabus
using McGraw-Hill’s PageOut site. Suggestions for Further Reading are also included in
the Online Learning Center for this edition. PageOut ( www.mhhe.com/pageout ) On the PageOut Web site instructors can cre-
ate their own course Web sites. PageOut requires no prior knowledge of HTML, no long
hours of coding, and no design skills on the instructor’s part. Instructors need simply to
plug the course information into a template and click on one of the 16 designs. The process
takes little time and creates a professionally designed Web site. Powerful features include
an interactive course syllabus that lets instructors post content and links, an online grade-
book, lecture notes, bookmarks, and a discussion board where instructors and students can
discuss course-related topics.
Videos A wide range of videos on classic and contemporary topics in history is available through the Films for the Humanities and Sciences collection. Instructors can
illustrate and enhance lectures by selecting from a series of videos correlated to the course.
Contact your local McGraw-Hill sales representative for further information.
SUPPLEMENTS FOR THE STUDENT
Student Online Learning Center Web Site ( www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e ) At this text-specifi c Web site, students can link to an Interactive Glossary, an important learning
tool for students that complements the terms and topics highlighted in the margins of the
textbook. A number of other resources are also available, including Suggestions for Fur-
ther Reading and useful Web sites.
PowerWeb PowerWeb for World History gives students password-protected, course- specifi c articles with assessments from current research journals and popular press articles,
refereed and selected by World History instructors, and especially useful for materials that
go beyond the scope of this book.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the contributions and assistance of the many people who
have worked on the production of this book. Special appreciation goes to the editors
and staff of McGraw-Hill, Inc., which has published this book since its seventh edi-
tion. Publishing expertise and essential support at McGraw-Hill have been provided by
numerous talented people, including Penina Braffman, Erin Melloy, Lisa Brufl odt, Lisa
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Preface xxix
Pinto, Alexandra Schultz, Adina Lonn, and Matthew Busbridge. Erin Guendelsberger
and Kala Ramachandran managed editorial details with effi ciency and wide-ranging
skills; and Mickey Cox brought valuable insights to each phase of the planning for this
revised edition. David Tietz helped to collect new illustrations, and Rachel Olsen and
Diana Chase assisted in organizing manuscript materials. Equally important, Maximil-
ian Owre, an historian of modern Europe and the associate director of the Program in
the Humanities and Human Values at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,
contributed his knowledge and careful research to the updated Suggestions for Further
Reading and the summaries of useful Web sites, which appear for this edition in the
Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e. This new edition has also benefi ted from the expert advice of reviewers who offered
ideas for revisions and for new features to improve the book. Insightful comments came
from Marc Baer, Hope College; Catherine Graney, Bergen Community College; Mary
R. O’Neil, University of Washington; David J. Proctor, Tufts University; Leonard N.
Rosenband, Utah State University; Barbara Syrrakos, The City College, City University
of New York; and Brian Weiser, Metropolitan State University of Denver. None of these
individuals are responsible for any of the book’s shortcomings, but all have added to its
strengths. Other colleagues, teachers, and family members provided valuable assistance
and advice in numerous discussions about the book; and a particular “thank you” goes to
Gwynne Pomeroy for her exceptional role in facilitating the work on every aspect of this
new edition.
Finally, I deeply regret that the revisions for the latest edition of this book have
been developed without the insights of my two deceased colleagues and co-authors,
R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton. The distinguished historical works of both Professor Palmer
(who died in 2002) and Professor Colton (who died in 2011) have long attracted wide
attention on both sides of the Atlantic, partly because of their remarkable knowledge of
modern events and partly because of their exceptional ability to write clear, analytical
prose about the diverse historical issues that they examined. Their long collaboration on
this narrative, which until this edition was always entitled A History of the Modern World, became an outstanding example of how intellectual partnerships can enhance historical
knowledge, expand historical perspectives, and connect the history of specifi c confl icts or
people with the broadest historical developments of modern times. In revising this new edi-
tion of a book that has often been known as simply Palmer-Colton, I have sought always to
build on the high quality of their previous work, even as I changed the structure or content
of various chapters and also introduced new perspectives, sources, and images. I learned
from each of these historians about the nature of intellectual work, academic friendships,
and human communities; and my many conversations with Joel Colton in recent years
deeply enriched my personal life as well as my understanding of the past. This book thus
continues to convey the far-reaching intellect and insights of Professors Palmer and Colton
in a narrative that has been updated to include changing themes in modern historical schol-
arship and changing perspectives on modern European history.
Lloyd Kramer
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1
History is the experience of human beings in time, but that experience takes place also in geographic space. Geography describes and maps the earth, but geographers also study the
cultural practices that shape human interactions with the environments in which they live.
The universe, of which our planet earth and our solar system form but a small part,
is now thought to be at least 12 billion years old. Most scientists believe the earth is about
4.6 billion years old. Yet the entire history (and prehistory) of humankind goes back only
3.5 to 5 million years, or perhaps only 2 million years, depending on how humans are
defi ned. What we call history—the recorded cultures and actions of human beings—began
with the invention of early forms of writing only about 5,500 years ago.
Oceans and continents have moved about over time, changing in size, shape, and loca-
tion. The continents as we know them took on their distinctive forms less than 100 million
years ago. Dinosaurs, which became extinct some 60 million years before the fi rst humans
even emerged, could walk from North America to Europe (as we now call
these continents) on solid land in a warm climate. It is only a few thousand
years since the end of the most recent glacial age. That Ice Age, which
began about 2 million years ago and reached its coldest point only 20,000
years ago, was caused by a slight shift in the earth’s orbit around the sun. Water froze into
ice 1–2 inches thick and covered the northern parts of the planet (in North America as far
south as present-day Chicago and in Europe across large parts of the British Isles and the
nearby mainland). The melting of this ice produced the coastlines, offshore islands, inland
seas, straits, bays, and harbors that we know today, as well as some of the large river sys-
tems and lakes. The process of change in the earth’s surface continues. Niagara Falls, on
the border between the United States and Canada, has been receding because the ongoing
cascade of water erodes the underlying rock. The ocean’s tides and human construction
erode our shorelines as well, and most scientists believe current patterns of global warm-
ing will gradually change the oceans and coasts in much of the world.
Oceans presently cover more than two-thirds of the earth’s surface, and many
large land areas in the remaining third are poorly suited for habitation by human beings or
most other animal and plant organisms. One-tenth of the land remains under ice, as in
Antarctica and Greenland; much is tundra; much is desert, as in the Sahara; and much land
lies along the windswept ridges of high mountains. Like the oceans, these regions have
been important in human history, often acting as barriers to movement and settlement.
Human history has therefore evolved in relatively small, scattered sections of the earth’s
total surface.
Researchers have found persuasive material evidence to show that
human beings originated in Africa. Humans belonging to the species Homo erectus, the Latin term used by anthropologists and others to denote the upright, walking predecessors of modern humans, seem to have migrated
from Africa about 1.8 million years ago, perhaps because of environmental pressures or
perhaps because of simple curiosity. Our own species Homo sapiens, the Latin term con- noting increased cognitive and judgmental abilities, emerged about 150,000 years ago.
When humans went beyond merely utilitarian accomplishments and demonstrated aesthetic
and artistic interests as well as advanced toolmaking (about 35,000 years ago), we refer to
Ice Age
Origins of human
beings
G e o g r a p h y a n d H i s t o r y
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Geography and History2
them as the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. They were the remaining survivors of a very complex human family tree.
The great Ice Age lowered the seas by hundreds of feet and froze huge quantities of
water. The English Channel became dry. Land bridges opened up between Siberia and
North America over what we now call the Bering Strait. Hunters seeking game walked
from one continent to the other. When the glaciers melted, forests sprang up, and many of
the open areas in which humans had hunted disappeared, providing added motivation for
movement.
Our human ancestors spread eventually to every continent except Antarctica. In doing
so, human groups became isolated from each other for millennia, separated by oceans,
deserts, or mountains. Wherever they wandered, they evolved slightly over time, develop-
ing superfi cial physical differences that modern cultures have defi ned as the
characteristics of various racial groups. But “race” is a cultural idea rather
than a mark of biologically signifi cant differences. All human beings
belong to the Homo sapiens species, all derive from the same biological ancestry, and all are mutually fertile. Only a very few human genes are
responsible for physical differences such as skin pigmentation, in comparison to the vast
number of genes that are shared by all members of the human species.
The basic anatomy and genetic makeup of modern humans has not
changed over the last 100,000 years. Geographic separation accounts for
the emergence over shorter time periods of distinctive cultures, which can
be seen, for example, in the different historical and cultural development
of the pre-Columbian Americas, Africa, China, India, the Middle East, and
Europe. On a still smaller time scale, geographic separation also explains differences in
languages and dialects.
Geographic distances and diversity of climate have also produced differences in fl ora
and fauna, and hence in the plants and animals upon which humans depend. Wheat became
the most common cereal in the Middle East and Europe, millet and rice in East Asia, sor-
ghum in tropical Africa, maize in pre-Columbian America. The horse, fi rst domesticated in
north-central Asia about 4,500 years ago, was for centuries a mainstay of Europe and Asia
for muscle power, transportation, and fi ghting. The somewhat less versatile camel was
adopted later and more slowly in the Middle East, and the Americans long had no beasts
of burden except the llama. Such differences did not begin to diminish until early modern
travelers crossed the oceans, taking plants and animals with them and bringing others back
to environments where they had never lived before.
Although much remains obscure about the origins of life, and new discoveries and
calculations are always displacing older hypotheses, paleontologists studying plant and
animal fossils (including human ones) have used techniques such as radiocarbon dating
to transform our knowledge of the earth and of the earliest human beings. In geography,
aerial and satellite photography and computer technology have enabled us to refi ne older
conceptions of continents and oceans. And astrophysicists are now studying vast amounts
of new data about the universe, which have been sent to them from powerful telescopes
mounted on unmanned spaceships.
Cartography, the art and science of mapmaking, has evolved rapidly, but we tend to
forget how our maps often remain conventional and even parochial. It was Europeans and
descendants of Europeans who designed our most commonly used maps, which are oriented
North-South and West-East from fi xed points in their horizons, and which therefore refl ect
their own European cultural assumptions. Similar biases can be found in the maps of other
Race: a cultural
concept
Geography and
culture
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Geography and History 3
cultures too. The Chinese for centuries defi ned and visualized their country as the “Middle
Kingdom.” In the early modern centuries maps drawn in India typically represented South
Asia as forming the major part of the world. One such map depicted the European continent
as a few marginal areas labeled England, France, and “other hat-wearing islands.”
Changing conceptualizations of the globe continue in our day. A map drawn and
published in contemporary Australia, demonstrating the Australian perspective from
“down under,” shows South Africa at the top of the map and Capetown at the very tip, the
large expanse of contemporary African nations in the middle, and the various European
countries crowded at the bottom, the latter appearing quite insignifi cant. The European-
invented term “Middle East” has been called into question, and this region of the world is
perhaps better designated as Western Asia. Even the traditional concept of Europe as one
of the seven continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Australia,
and Antarctica) is now questioned. Why, for example, should the Indian peninsula be a
“subcontinent” when it roughly matches the size and exceeds the population and diversity
of the European “continent” (at least that part of the “continent” that lies west of the for-
mer Soviet Union)? Europe itself is, of course, actually a peninsula, in a way that the other
continents are not. Some geographers ask us to consider it more properly as part of Asia,
the western part of a great “Eurasian landmass.” Defi ned in these terms, Europe becomes
more of a cultural conception, arising out of perceived differences from Asia and Africa,
than a continent in a strictly geographical sense.
Europe’s Infl uence on Modern History
However we defi ne its place on the globe, Europe has undoubtedly shaped much of mod-
ern world history—partly because of its overseas expansion, partly because of what it
borrowed from other parts of the world, and partly because of its deci-
sive economic and cultural infl uence on the emergence of an increasingly
global civilization. Europe is of course only one of many important cultural
spheres in human history. Its economy, political systems, religious tradi-
tions, and social institutions are not the sole historical path to modernity; indeed, people in
other regions of the world have often challenged or rejected European forms of “modern-
ization” as they have built their own modern societies. Yet even the critique or rejection
of European institutions has usually required historical analysis of Europe’s development
and role in the world. Much of the modern global economy, for example, emerged in
the international trade that Europe’s imperial powers controlled and expanded after the
sixteenth century. European political ideas, science, philosophy, cultural mores, and people
also spread widely across the world, contributing to both the constructive and destructive
patterns of modern political, social, and cultural life. Ideas and people have meanwhile
fl owed constantly into Europe from other parts of the world, so that European societies
remain a vital center for cross-cultural exchanges and confl icts.
It is possible to narrate a “history of the modern world” from widely diverging per-
spectives and with an emphasis on quite different historical themes. This book, however,
begins with the recognition that Europe developed and promoted many of the distinc-
tive “modern” ideas and institutions that have now evolved in various forms throughout
the contemporary world. Historical understanding of modernity must therefore include a
comprehensive analysis of Europe—though an accurate history of the modern world must
also insist that Europe represents only one of the diverse, complex cultures that continue
to shape modern global history. The title of this book’s new edition has thus been changed
Europe and history
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Geography and History4
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Geography and History 5
0 100 200 300 miles
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Geography and History6
to convey the historical themes and limits of Europe’s role in the modern world. Europe
has long developed distinctive cultural traditions and institutions, but its modern identity
as a specifi c civilization has always evolved through interactions with people and cultures
in other places around the globe.
Europe exemplifi es the perennial interactions between human activity and the natural
environment, and the study of its historical evolution should begin with some attention to its
geography. The accompanying topographical map shows the main physical features of
Europe and its surrounding geographical space. This topography has remained virtually
unchanged over historic time, despite the constant political and cultural transformations in
European societies. Europe is not large. Even with European Russia, it contains hardly more
than 6 percent of the earth’s land surface, occupying about the same area as the United
States mainland plus Alaska. It is only a little larger than Australia. It is physically separated
from Africa by the Mediterranean Sea, although the Mediterranean historically has been as
much a passageway as a barrier. A truer barrier emerged when the Sahara Desert dried up
only a few thousand years ago, which suggests why northern Africa has often been as con-
nected to southern Europe, or culturally to the Middle East, as to sub-Saharan Africa. The
physical separation of Europe from Asia is even less clear. The conventional boundary has
been the Ural Mountains in Russia, but they are a low and wide chain that does not stretch
far enough to make an adequate boundary. The Russians themselves do not recognize any
offi cial distinction between European and Asian Russia.
Europe is indeed one of several peninsulas jutting off from Asia, like
the Arabian and Indian peninsulas. But there are differences. For one thing,
the Mediterranean Sea is unique among the world’s bodies of water. Closed
in by the Strait of Gibraltar, which is only 8 miles wide, it is more shielded
than other seas from the open ocean and is protected from the most violent
ocean storms. Though over 2,000 miles long, it is subdivided by islands and peninsulas
into lesser seas with identities of their own, such as the Aegean and the Adriatic, and it
provides access also to the Black Sea. Because it is possible to travel great distances with-
out being far from land, navigation developed on the Mediterranean from early times, and
one of the fi rst civilizations appeared on the island of Crete. It is possible also to cross
between Europe and Asia at the Bosporus and between Europe and Africa at Gibraltar.
Populations and cultures became mixed by migration, and various historic empires—the
Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Arabic, Spanish, Venetian, and Ottoman—have effec-
tively used the Mediterranean to govern their component parts. After the Suez Canal was
built in the nineteenth century, the Mediterranean became an important segment in the
“lifeline of empire” for the British Empire in its heyday.
In southern Europe, north of the Mediterranean and running for its
whole length, is a series of mountains, produced over the geological ages
by the pushing of the gigantic mass of Africa against the small Eurasian
peninsula. The Pyrenees close off Spain from the north, as the Alps do
Italy; the Balkan Mountains are diffi cult to penetrate. The only place where one can travel
at water level from the Mediterranean to the north is by the valley of the Rhone River, so
that France is the only country that belongs both to the Mediterranean and northern Europe.
North of the mountains is a great plain extending from western France all the way into
Russia and on into Asia, passing south of the Urals. If one were to draw a straight line from
Amsterdam east through what is called the Caspian Gate, north of the Caspian Sea, as far
as western China, one would never in traveling these 3,500 miles be higher than 2,000 feet
above sea level. This plain has at various times opened Europe to Mongol and other
The Mediterranean
Sea
Mountains
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Geography and History 7
invasions, enabled the Russians to move east and create a huge empire, and made Poland a
troubled battleground.
The European rivers are worth particular attention. Most are navigable,
and they also give access to the sea. With their valleys, they provided areas
where intensive local development could take place. Thus the most impor-
tant older cities of Europe are on rivers—London on the Thames, Paris on the Seine,
Vienna and Budapest on the Danube, Warsaw on the Vistula. In northern Europe it was
often possible to move goods from one river to another, and then in the eighteenth century
to connect them by canals. The importance of water is shown again by the location of
Copenhagen, Stockholm, and St. Petersburg on the Baltic and of Amsterdam and Lisbon,
which grew rapidly after Europeans began traversing the Atlantic Ocean.
There are important geographical conditions such as climate that a
topographical map cannot show. Climate depends on latitude, ocean cur-
rents, and winds that bring or withhold rainfall. Europe lies as far north as
the northern United States and southern Canada, but the parts of Europe near the sea have
less extreme temperatures than the corresponding northerly regions of North America. The
Mediterranean countries have more sunshine and less severe winters than either northern
Europe or the northern United States. Everywhere the winters are cold enough to suppress
infectious pathogens and pests and keep out certain diseases that affl ict warmer countries.
The warm summers with their growing seasons have produced an annual cycle of agricul-
ture, and rainfall has been adequate but not excessive. Europe is the only continent that has
no actual desert. It is also for the most part a region of fertile soil. In short, since the end of
the Ice Age, or since humans learned to survive winters, Europe has been one of the most
favored places on the globe for human habitation.
If we say that climate and the environment not only set limits but also
provide opportunities for what human beings can do, then there is no such
thing as geographical determinism. Geography is not destiny. What hap-
pens depends on the application of knowledge and abilities in any particular
time and place and in any particular culture. What constitutes a natural resource varies
with the state of technology and the possibilities of economic exchange. Even the disad-
vantages of distance can be overcome by developing new means of transportation. The
oceans that long divided human beings became a highway for the Portuguese, Spanish,
Dutch, French, and English, and later for others. Chinese and Arab sailors also used the
oceans for trade across Asia and East Africa. For most of human history, however, neither
persons, information, nor commands could travel much more than 30 miles a day. Local-
ism prevailed, and large-scale commercial or governmental organizations were hard to
create and maintain. Like most other regions of the world, therefore, Europe was long
made up of small local units, pockets of territory each with its own customs, way of life,
and manner of speech, largely unknown to or ignorant of others, and looking inward upon
itself. A “foreigner” might come from a thousand miles away, or from only ten.
Agriculture, like commerce and industry, depends on human inven-
tion and decision making. The state of agriculture obviously depends on
natural conditions, but it has also depended historically on the invention of
the plow, the planting of appropriate crops, the rotation of fi elds to prevent soil exhaus-
tion, and the availability of livestock from which manure could be obtained as fertilizer.
It benefi ts from stability and is affected by demographic changes. If population grows, new
and less fertile or more distant areas must be brought under cultivation. Nor can agricul-
ture be improved without the building of roads and a division of labor between town and
Rivers
Climate
Geographical
determinism
Agriculture
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Geography and History8
country, in which agrarian workers produce surpluses for those not engaged in agriculture.
And for agriculture, as for other productive enterprises, elementary security is essential.
Farming cannot proceed, nor food be stored over the winter, unless the men and women
who work the fi elds can be protected from attack.
The maps in the present volume cannot show in detail all of the waterways, moun-
tains, and geographical barriers that have helped to shape the course of human history, but
they do point to the role of geography in the evolution of political and economic power, or
what has become known as geopolitics. Human beings have always developed their insti-
tutions and cultures through a complex relation with the natural world, and maps remind
us that all human activities take place in geographical space. Readers can also use their
imaginations and the scale of maps to convert space into time, remembering that until the
invention of the railroad both people and news traveled far more slowly than today. At a
rate of 30 miles a day it would take three weeks to travel from London to Venice, and at
least six weeks for an exchange of letters. Communication to places outside Europe took
even longer. In our own day, when we travel at supersonic speeds and measure electronic
communication in nanoseconds, or one-billionth of a second, the barriers of geographic
space have virtually disappeared. Yet human beings remain profoundly dependent on their
natural environments, and human history remains fi rmly embedded in the geography of the
planet earth.
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9
C h a p t e r 1 THE RISE OF EUROPE
It may seem strange for a history of Europe in the modern world to begin with the European Middle
Ages, for the Middle Ages were not modern. But
much of what is now meant by “modern” made its
fi rst appearance in Europe, and to understand both
modern Europe and its role in the wider modern
world it is necessary to reach fairly far back in time.
Over the centuries between roughly 1500 and
1900, Europe created the most powerful combina-
tion of political, military, economic, technological,
and scientifi c apparatus that the world had ever
seen. In doing so, Europe radically transformed
itself, and also profoundly affected other societies and cultures in America, Africa, and
Asia—sometimes destroying them, sometimes stimulating or enlivening them, and always
presenting them with problems of resistance or adaptation. This European ascendancy
became apparent about 300 years ago. It reached its zenith with the European colonial
empires at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since then, the position of Europe has
relatively declined, partly because of confl icts within Europe itself, but mainly because the
apparatus that had made Europe so dominant can now be found in other countries. Some,
like the United States, are in many ways cultural and political offshoots of Europe. Others
have very different and ancient backgrounds. But whatever their backgrounds, and will-
ingly or not, all peoples in the contemporary world have been caught up in processes of
“modernization” or “development,” which often means acquiring or adapting some of the
technical skills and powers fi rst exhibited by Europeans.
There is thus in our time a kind of global modern civilization that overlies or pen-
etrates the diverse, regional cultures of the world. This civilization is an interlocking
global system, in that conditions on one side of the globe have repercussions on the other.
Communications are almost instantaneous and news travels everywhere. If the air is pol-
luted in one country, neighboring countries are affected; if oil ceases to fl ow from the
Middle East, the life of Europe, North America, and Japan may become very diffi cult.
The modern world depends on elaborate means of transportation; on science, industry, and
1. Ancient Times: Greece,
Rome, and Christianity
2. The Early Middle Ages:
The Formation of Europe
3. The High Middle Ages:
Secular Civilization
4. The High Middle Ages:
The Church
Chapter emblem: A medieval representation of Saint Augustine. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe10
machines; on new sources of energy to meet insatiable demands; on scientifi c medicine,
public hygiene, and methods of raising food. States and nations fi ght wars by advanced
methods, and negotiate or maintain peace by diplomacy. There is an earth-encompassing
network of fi nance and trade, loans and debts, investments and bank accounts, with result-
ing fl uctuations in monetary exchanges and balances of payments. More than 190 very
unequal and disunited members compose the United Nations and represent every region of
the world, but the very concept of the modern nation, as represented in that body, is derived
largely from Europe.
In most modern countries there have been pressures for increased democracy, and all
modern governments, democratic or not, seek to arouse the energies and support of their
populations. In a modern society old customs loosen, and ancestral religions are often
questioned or transformed. There are usually demands for individual liberation, and an
expectation of a higher standard of living. Modern societies typically move toward more
equality between sexes and races, between adherents of different religions, or between
different parts of the same country; and most modern governments provide social and eco-
nomic assistance for people with low incomes. Movements for social change may be slow
and gradual, or revolutionary and catastrophic, but movement of some kind is universal.
Such are a few of the historical trends of modernity. New “modernizing” forms of
technology, culture, or economic organization now emerge in many different regions of
the world, but most of the early patterns of modernity appeared fi rst in Europe or in the
extension of European societies (including the United States). The present book thus deals
mainly with the historical growth of European societies and civilization, with increasing
attention in later chapters to Europe’s colonizing expansion into other parts of the world.
European encounters with diverse peoples and civilizations provoked a wide range of
cross-cultural interactions, including movements that criticized or rejected many aspects
of “modernity” itself. Such movements have also been part of modern world history, and
when they have occurred in Asia or Africa they have often been called anti-European or
anti-Western, as if to show that Europe and the “West” embody most of the key problems
of modern history. Even those movements that most vigorously challenge Western social
and cultural systems, however, must confront the institutions, ideas, and legacies of mod-
ern European history.
If “modern” refers especially to a certain complicated way of living, it has also
another sense, meaning merely what is recent or current. As a time span the word “mod-
ern” is purely relative. It depends on what we are talking about. A modern kitchen may
be as much as 5 years old, modern physics is more than 100 years old, modern science
is now over 350 years old, and the modern European languages began to emerge about
1,000 years ago. Modern civilization, the current civilization in which we are living, and
which is always changing, is in one sense a product of the last two or three centuries,
but in other senses it is much older. Roughly speaking, it may be said that modern times
began in Europe about 1500. Modern times were preceded by a period of 1,000 years
called the Middle Ages, which set in about 500 c.e., and which were in turn preceded by
about another 1,000 years of classical Greek and Roman civilization. Before that reached
the long histories of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and, further east, of the Indus Valley and
China. All times prior to the European Middle Ages are commonly called “ancient.” But
the whole framework—ancient, medieval, and modern—is largely a matter of words and
convention, whose meaning developed mainly with reference to Europe. We shall begin
our history with a running start, and slow down the pace, surveying the scene more fully as
the times grow more modern.
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1. ANCIENT TIMES: GREECE, ROME, AND CHRISTIANITY
Europeans were by no means the pioneers of human civilization. Half of recorded history
had passed before anyone in Europe could read or write. The priests of Egypt began to
keep written records between 4000 and 3000 b.c.e., but 2,000 years later the poems of
Homer were still being circulated in the Greek city-states by word of mouth—a form of
oral history that has sustained collective memories in many human cultures. Shortly after
3000 b.c.e., while the pharaohs were building the pyramids, Europeans were laboriously
setting up the huge, unwrought stones called megaliths, of which Stonehenge is the best-
known example. In a word, until after 2000 b.c.e., Europe was in the Neolithic or New
Stone Age. This was in truth a great age in human history, the age in which human beings
learned to make and use sharp tools, weave cloth, build living quarters, domesticate ani-
mals, plant seeds, harvest crops, and sense the returning cycles of the months and years.
But the Middle East—Egypt, the Euphrates and Tigris valley, the island of Crete, and the
shores of the Aegean Sea (which belonged more to Asia than to Europe)—had reached its
Neolithic Age 2,000 years before Europe. By about 4000 b.c.e. the Middle East was
already moving into the Bronze Age.
After about 2000 b.c.e., in the dim, dark continent that Europe then was, great changes
began that are now diffi cult to trace. Europeans, too, learned how to smelt and forge metals,
with the Bronze Age setting in about 2000 b.c.e. and the Iron Age about 1000 b.c.e. There
was also a steady infusion of new peoples into Europe. They spoke languages related to
languages now spoken in India and Iran, to which similar peoples migrated
at about the same time. All these languages (whose interconnection was not
known until the nineteenth century) are now referred to as Indo-European,
and the people who spoke them became the ancestors both of the classical
Greeks and Romans and of the Europeans of modern times. All European languages today
are Indo-European with the exceptions of Basque, which is thought to be a survival from
before the Indo-European invasion, and of Finnish and Hungarian, which were brought
into Europe from Asia some centuries later. It was these invading Indo-Europeans who
diffused over Europe the kind of speech from which the Latin, Greek, Germanic, Slavic,
Celtic, and Baltic languages were later derived.
The Greek World
The fi rst Indo-Europeans to emerge into the clear light of history, in what is now Europe,
were the Greeks. They fi ltered down through the Balkan peninsula to the shores of the
Aegean Sea about 1900 b.c.e., undermining the older Cretan civilization and occupying
most of what has since been called Greece by 1300 b.c.e. Beginning about 1150 b.c.e., other
Greek-speaking tribes invaded from the north in successive waves. The newcomers included
many restless and warlike tribes, and their coming ushered in several centuries of chaos and
unrest before a gradual stabilization and revival began in the ninth century. The Iliad and the Odyssey, written down about 800 b.c.e., but composed and recited much earlier, probably refer to wars between the Greeks and other centers of civilization, of which one was at Troy
in Asia Minor. The siege of Troy is thought to have occurred about 1200 b.c.e.
The ancient Greeks proved to be an exceptionally gifted people, achieving supreme
heights in thought and letters. They absorbed the knowledge of earlier east-
ern cultures, the mathematical lore of the ancient Chaldeans, and the arts
and crafts that they found in Asia Minor and on voyages to Egypt. They
Indo-Europeans
Greek cultural
accomplishments
1. Ancient Times: Greece, Rome, and Christianity
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe12
added immediately to everything that they learned. It was the Greeks of the fi fth and fourth
centuries b.c.e. who formulated what the Western world long meant by the beautiful, and
who fi rst speculated on political freedom.
As they settled down, the Greeks formed tiny city-states, all independent and often
at war with one another, each only a few miles across, and typically including a coastal
city and its adjoining farmlands. Athens, Corinth, and Sparta were such city-states. Many
were democratic, which meant that all male citizens could congregate in the marketplace
to elect offi cials and discuss their public business. They were not democratic in a modern
sense in that slaves, resident noncitizens (called “metics”), and women were excluded from
political life.
Politics was turbulent in the small Greek states. Democracy alternated with aristoc-
racy, oligarchy, despotism, and tyranny. From this rich fund of experience was born
systematic political science as set forth in the unwritten speculations of Socrates and in
the Republic of Plato and the Politics of Aristotle in the fourth century b.c.e. The Greeks also were the fi rst to write history as a subject distinct from myth and legend. Herodotus,
“the Father of History,” traveled throughout the Greek world and far beyond, ferreting
out all he could learn of the past; and Thucydides, in his account of the wars between
Athens and Sparta, presented history as a guide to enlightened citizenship and construc-
tive statecraft.
Perhaps because they were a restless and vehement people, the Greeks
came to prize the “classical” virtues, which they were the fi rst to defi ne and
which would have great infl uence in the subsequent history of European
societies. For them, the ideal lay in moderation, or a golden mean. They
Classical Greek virtues
The Parthenon, constructed in ancient Athens during the fi fth century b.c.e. to honor the god- dess Athena, gave architectural form to the Greek respect for balance, order, and symmetry. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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13
valued order, balance, symmetry, clarity, and control. Their statues of idealized males
revealed their conception of what humans ought to be—noble creatures, dignifi ed, poised,
unterrifi ed by life or death, masters of themselves and their feelings. Their architecture, as
in the Parthenon, made use of exactly measured angles and rows of columns. The classical
“order,” or set of carefully wrought pillars placed in a straight line at specifi ed intervals,
represented the fi rm impress of human reason on the brute materials of nature. The same
sense of form and order was thrown over the torrent of human words. Written language
became carefully planned and organized for effect. The epic poem, the lyric, the drama,
the oration, along with history and the philosophical dialogue, each with its own rules and
principles of composition, became the “forms” within which, in Western civilization, writ-
ers long expressed their thoughts.
Refl ecting on the world about them, Greek philosophers concluded that something
more enduring existed beyond the world of appearances, that true reality was not what met
the eye. With other peoples, and with the Greeks themselves in earlier times, this same
realization had led to the formation of myths, dealing with invisible but mighty beings
known as gods and with faraway places on the tops of mountains, beneath the earth, or in
a world that followed death. Greek thinkers set to criticizing the web of myth. They looked
for rational or natural explanations behind the variety and confusion that they saw. Some,
observing human sickness, said that disease was not a demonic possession, but a natural
sequence of conditions in the body, which could be identifi ed, understood, and even treated
in a natural way. Others, turning to physical nature, said that all matter was in reality com-
posed of a very few things—made up of atoms or elements—which they usually desig-
nated as fi re, water, earth, and air. Some said that change was a kind of illusion, all basic
reality being uniform; some, that only change was real, and that the world was in fl ux.
Some, like Pythagoras, found the enduring reality in “number,” or mathematics. The
Greeks, in short, laid the foundations for science. Studying also the way in which the mind
worked, or ought to work, if it was to reach truthful conclusions, they developed the sci-
ence of logic. The great codifi er of Greek thought on almost all subjects in the classical
period was Aristotle, who lived in Athens from 384 to 322 b.c.e.
Greek infl uence spread widely and rapidly. Hardly were some of
the city-states founded when their people, crowded within their narrow
bounds, sent off some of their number with equipment and provisions to
establish colonies. In this way Greek cities were very early established
in south Italy, in Sicily, and even in the western Mediterranean, where Marseilles was
founded about 600 b.c.e. Later the Greek city-states, unable to unite, succumbed to con-
quest by Philip of Macedon, who came from the relatively crude northern part of the
Greek world, and whose son, Alexander the Great (356–323 b.c.e.), led a phenomenal,
conquering march into Asia, across Persia, and on as far as India itself. Alexander’s
empire did not hold together, but Greek civilization, after having penetrated the western
Mediterranean, now began to infl uence the ancient peoples of Egypt and the Middle East.
Greek thought, Greek art, and the Greek language spread far and wide, drawing at the
same time on the knowledge and creativity of other ancient cultures. The most famous
“Greeks” after the fourth century b.c.e. and on into the early centuries of the Christian era
usually did not come from Greece but from the Hellenized Middle East, and especially
from Alexandria in Egypt. Among these later Greeks were the great summarizers or writ-
ers of encyclopedias in which ancient science was passed on to later generations—Strabo
in geography, Galen in medicine, Ptolemy in astronomy. All three lived in the fi rst and
second centuries c.e.
Spread of Greek
civilization
1. Ancient Times: Greece, Rome, and Christianity
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe14
The Roman World
In 146 b.c.e. the Greeks who lived within Greece were conquered by the military forces of
Rome, the expanding power that had already taken control of the western Mediterranean.
The Romans kept their own Latin language but rapidly absorbed what they could of the
intellectual and artistic culture of the Greeks. Over a period of two or three centuries they
assembled an empire in which the whole world of ancient civilization (west of Persia) was
included. Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria all became Roman provinces, but in them the
Romans had hardly any deep infl uence except in a political sense. In the West—in what
are now Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and
England—the Romans, though ruthless in their methods of conquest, in the long run acted
as civilizing agents, transmitting to these hitherto isolated countries the age-old achieve-
ments of the East and the more recent culture of Greece and of Rome itself. So thorough
was the Romanization that in the West Latin even became the commonly spoken language.
It was later displaced by Arabic in Africa but survives to this day, transformed by time, in
the Romance languages of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Romania.
In the Roman Empire, which lasted with many vicissitudes from about
31 b.c.e. to the latter part of the fi fth century c.e., virtually the entire civi-
lized world of the ancient West was politically united and enjoyed genera-
tions of internal peace. Rome was the center, around which in all directions
lay the “circle of lands,” the orbis terrarum, the known world—that is, as known in the West, for the Han Empire at the same time in China (202 b.c.e. to 220 c.e.) was also a
The Roman Empire
The Forum was the vital center of Roman public life and a symbol of imperial power. Rome’s sense of grandeur and social order can still be discerned in the Forum’s ruins, which are pic- tured here with the famous coliseum in the background. (Corbis)
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15
highly organized cultural and political entity. The Roman Empire consisted essentially of
the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, which provided the great artery of transport and com-
munication, and from which no part of the empire, except northern Gaul (France), Britain,
and the Rhineland, was more than a couple of hundred miles away. Civilization among
the elites in this vast empire was remarkably uniform; there were no distinct nationalities,
and the most signifi cant cultural difference was linguistic. East of Italy the predominant
language was Greek, whereas in Italy and to the west the predominant language was Latin.
Cities grew up everywhere, engaged in a busy commercial life, exchanged ideas with one
another, and, like the cities in other ancient cultures, relied on the labor of slaves. There
were always more cities in the East, where most of the manufacturing crafts and the dens-
est population were still concentrated, but they sprang up now in the West—indeed, most
of the older cities of France, Spain, England, and western and southern Germany boast of
some kind of origin under the Romans.
The distinctive aptitude of the Romans lay in organization, administration, govern-
ment, and law. Never before had armies been so systematically formed, maintained over
such long periods, dispatched at a word of command over such distances, or maneuvered
so effectively on the fi eld of battle. Never had so many peoples been governed from a sin-
gle center. The Romans had at fi rst possessed self-governing and republican institutions,
but they lost them in the process of conquest, and the governing talents that
they displayed in the days of the empire were of an authoritarian character—
talents, not for self-government, but for managing, coordinating, and ruling
the manifold and scattered parts of one enormous system. Locally, cities
and city-states enjoyed a good deal of autonomy. But above them all rose a pyramid of
imperial offi cials and provincial governors, culminating in the emperor at the top. The
empire kept peace, the pax Romana, and even provided a certain justice for its many peo- ples. Lawyers worked on the body of principles known ever afterward as Roman law.
The pax Romana
1. Ancient Times: Greece, Rome, and Christianity
Caesar Augustus became the fi rst emperor of the Roman Empire after a protracted struggle for power in the fi rst century b.c.e. He reor- ganized the earlier Roman republican govern- ment into a new imperial system during his long reign (31 b.c.e.–14 c.e.); and, as this statue suggests, Augustus was often portrayed as a powerful symbol of the pax Romana. (Paolo Gaetano Rocco/Getty Images)
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe16
Roman judges had somehow to settle disputes between persons of different regions,
or between persons with confl icting local customs, for example, two merchants of Spain
and Egypt. The Roman law came therefore to hold that no custom is necessarily right,
that there is a higher or universal law by which fair decisions may be made, and that this
higher, universal, or “natural” law, or “law of nature,” will be understandable or accept-
able to everyone, since it arises from human nature and reason. Here the lawyers drew
on Greek philosophy for support. They held also that law derives its force from being
enacted by a proper authority (not merely from custom, usage, or former legal cases);
this authority to make law they called majestas, or sovereign power, and they attributed it to the emperor. Thus the Romans emancipated the idea of law from mere custom on the
one hand and mere caprice on the other; they regarded it as something to be formed by
enlightened intelligence, consistent with reason and the nature of things; and they associ-
ated it with the solemn action of offi cial power. It must be added that Roman law favored
the state, or the public interest as seen by the government, rather than the interests or liber-
ties of individual persons, and it generally provided men with more legal privileges than
women. These principles, together with more specifi c ideas on such matters as property,
debt, marriage, and wills were in later centuries to have a great effect in Europe.
The Coming of Christianity
The thousand years during which Greco-Roman civilization arose and fl ourished were
notable in another way even more momentous for all later human history. It was in this
period that the great world religions came into being. Within the time bracket 800 b.c.e.
to 700 c.e. the lives of Confucius and Buddha, of the major Jewish prophets, and of
Muhammad are all included. At the very midpoint (probably about 4 b.c.e.), in Palestine
in the Roman Empire, a man named Jesus was born, believed by his followers to be the
Son of God. Jesus became a popular religious teacher who urged his disciples to assist the
poor, alleviate suffering, and help all those in need, including strangers. A Roman gover-
nor, fearing social disruption, ordered Jesus’s crucifi xion, but his followers affi rmed that
Jesus arose from death and later appeared to some who had known him. The new Chris-
tian religion thus began to develop in Palestine, and, like Jesus, the fi rst Christians were
Jews. But under the impulse of its own doctrine, which held that all people were alike in
spirit, and under the strong early leadership of Paul, a man of Jewish birth, Roman citizen-
ship, and Greek culture, Christianity began to make converts. The new religion, as
described in the canonical gospel writings of the Christian Bible and the commentaries of
early Christian thinkers, gradually fused the monotheism of Judaism and its ethical teach-
ings with various themes in Greek philosophy, creating a new synthesis of Judeo-Greek
thought that would shape much of the later history of ideas in Western cultures. Christian-
ity gained adherents across most of the Roman Empire, and there were certainly a few
Christians in Rome by the middle of the fi rst century. Both Paul and the elder apostle,
Peter, according to church tradition, died as martyrs at Rome in the time of Emperor Nero
about 67 c.e.
The Christian teaching spread at fi rst among the poor, the people at the
bottom of society, those whom Greek glories and Roman splendors had
passed over or enslaved, and who had the least to delight in or to hope for in
the existing world. Women were also drawn to the new religion, perhaps in
part because early Christianity offered them more autonomy and more opportunities for
leadership than they found in the traditional patriarchal order of Roman law and families.
Emergence and spread
of Christianity
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17
Gradually Christian ideas reached the upper classes; a few classically educated and well-
to-do people became Christians; in the second century Christian bishops and writers were
at work publicly in various parts of the empire. In the third century the Roman government,
with the empire falling into turmoil, and blaming the social troubles on the Christians, sub-
jected them to wholesale persecution. In the fourth century (possibly in 312 c.e.) the
Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity. By the fi fth century the entire Roman world
was formally Christian; no other religion was offi cially tolerated; and the deepest thinkers
were Christians who combined Christian beliefs with the now thousand-year-old tradition
of Greco-Roman thought, philosophy, and social institutions.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the coming of
Christianity. It brought with it, for one thing, an altogether new sense of
human life. Where the Greeks had demonstrated the powers of the mind,
the Christians explored the soul, and they taught that in the sight of God all
souls were equal, that every human life was sacrosanct and inviolate, and that all worldly
distinctions of greatness, beauty, and brilliancy were in the last analysis superfi cial. Where
the Greeks had linked the beautiful with the good, thought ugliness to be bad, shrunk from
disease as an imperfection, and viewed everything misshapen as horrible and repulsive, the
Christians resolutely saw a spiritual beauty even in the plainest or most unpleasant exterior
and sought out the diseased, the crippled, and the mutilated to give them help. Love, for
the ancients, was never quite distinguished from Venus; for the Christians, who held that
God was love, it took on deep overtones of sacrifi ce and compassion. Suffering itself was
in a way divine, since God had also suffered on the Cross in human form. A new dignity
was thus found for suffering that the world could not cure. At the same time the Christians
worked to relieve suffering as none had worked before. They protested against the mas-
sacre of prisoners of war, against the mistreatment and degradation of slaves, against the
sending of gladiators to kill each other in the arena for another’s pleasure. In place of the
Greek and pagan self-satisfaction with human accomplishments they taught humility in
the face of an almighty Providence, and in place of proud distinctions between high and
low, slave and free, civilized and barbarian, they held that all men and women were alike
because all were children of the same God.
On an intellectual level Christianity also marked a revolution. It was Christianity, not
rational philosophy, that dispelled the ancient beliefs in greater and lesser gods and god-
desses; the blood sacrifi ces and self-immolation; or the frantic resort to magic, fortune-
telling, and divination. The Christians taught that there was only one God. The pagan
conception of local, tribal, or national gods disappeared. For all the world there was only
one plan of Salvation and one Providence, and all human beings took their origin from one
source. The idea of the world as one thing, a “universe,” was thus affi rmed with a new
depth of meaning. The very intolerance of Christianity (which was new to the ancient
world) came from this new sense of human unity, in which it was thought that all people
should have, and deserved to have, the one true and saving religion.
The Christians were often denounced and persecuted for their political
ideas. The Roman Empire was a world state, and the Romans accepted no
rival to its power; no living human being except the emperor was sover-
eign; no one anywhere on earth was his equal. Between gods and human
beings, in the pagan view, there was moreover no clear distinction. Some gods behaved
very humanly, and some human creatures were more like gods than others. The emperor
was held to be veritably a god. A cult of Caesar was established, regarded as necessary
to maintain the state, which was the world itself. All this the Christians fi rmly refused to
Christian beliefs
Persecution of
Christians
1. Ancient Times: Greece, Rome, and Christianity
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe18
St. Augustine’s infl uence on Christian theology was honored throughout the Middle Ages; he appears here in a medi- eval illustration, dispensing truths from a celestial throne. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
accept. It was because they would not worship Caesar that the Roman offi cials regarded
them as social incendiaries who must be persecuted and stamped out.
The Christian doctrine on this point went back to the saying gathered from Jesus, that
one should render to Caesar the things that were Caesar’s, and to God those that were
God’s. The same dualism was presented more systematically by St. Augustine about
420 c.e. in his City of God. Few books have been more infl uential in shaping the later development of Western civilization.
The “world,” the world of Caesar, in the time of St. Augustine, was
going to ruin. Rome itself was plundered in 410 c.e. by heathen barbarians.
Augustine wrote the City of God with this event obsessing his imagination. St. Augustine
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He wrote to show that though the material world could perish there was yet another world
that was more enduring and more important.
There were, he said, really two “cities,” the earthly and the heavenly, the temporal and
the eternal, the city of man and the City of God. The earthly city was the domain of state
and empire, of political authority and political obedience. It was a good thing, as part of
God’s providential scheme for human life, but it had no inherently divine character of its
own. The emperor was human. The state was not absolute; it could be judged, criticized, or
corrected from sources outside itself. It was, for all its majesty and splendor, really subor-
dinate in some way to a higher and spiritual power. This power lay in the City of God. By
the City of God Augustine meant many things, and readers found all sorts of meanings in
later ages. The heavenly city might mean heaven itself, the abode of God and of blessed
spirits enjoying life after death. It might mean certain elect spirits of this world, the good
people as opposed to the bad. It might, more theoretically, be a system of ideal values or
ideal justice, as opposed to the crude approximations of the actual world.
In any case, this Christian dualism gave the later European and Western
world a theoretical escape from what is called Caesaropapism, a political
system in which one person holds the powers of ruler and of pontiff.
Instead, the spiritual power and the political power were held to be sepa-
rate and independent. In later times popes and kings often quarreled with each other; the
clergy often struggled for political power, and governments often attempted to dictate what
people should believe, or love, or hope for. But speaking in general of European history
neither side has ever won out, and in the sharp distinction between the spiritual and the
temporal has lain the germ of many liberties in later societies. At the same time the idea
that no ruler, no government, and no institution is too mighty to rise above moral criticism
eventually opened the way to dynamic and progressive changes in European social and
political systems.
2. THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES: THE FORMATION OF EUROPE
There was really no Europe in ancient times. In the Roman Empire we may see a Mediter-
ranean world, or even a kind of early West and East in the Latin- and Greek-speaking por-
tions. But the West included parts of Africa as well as of Europe, and Europe as we know it
was divided by the Rhine-Danube frontier, south and west of which lay the civilized prov-
inces of the empire, and north and east the “barbarians” of whom the Roman world knew
almost nothing. To the Romans, “Africa” meant lands that are now called Tunisia and
Algeria; “Asia” meant the Asia Minor peninsula; and the word “Europe,” since it meant
little, was scarcely used by them at all. It was in the half-millennium from the fi fth to the
tenth centuries that Europe as such for the fi rst time emerged with its peoples brought
together in a life of their own, clearly set off from Asia or Africa and beginning to create a
culture that would become “Western.”
The Disintegration of the Roman Empire
The Roman Empire began to fall apart, especially in the West, and the Christianizing of
the empire did nothing to impede its decline. The Emperor Constantine, who in embracing
Christianity undoubtedly hoped to strengthen the imperial system, also took
one other signifi cant step. In 330 c.e. he founded a new capital at the old
Greek city of Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. (It is now
Istanbul.) Thereafter the Roman Empire had two capitals, Rome and
Caesaropapism
Founding of
Constantinople
2. The Early Middle Ages: The Formation of Europe
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe20
Constantinople, and was administered in two halves. Increasingly the center of gravity
moved eastward, as if returning to the more ancient centers in the Middle East, as if the
experiment of civilizing the West were to be given up as a failure.
Throughout its long life the empire had been surrounded on almost all sides by people
whom the Romans called “barbarians”—wild Celts in Wales and Scotland, Germans in the
heart of Europe, Persians or Parthians in the East (barbarian only in the ancient sense of
speaking neither Greek nor Latin), and, in the southeast, the Arabs. These diverse peoples,
with the exception of some Persians, had never been brought within the control of ancient
Greek or Roman civilization. Somewhat like the Chinese, who about 200 b.c.e. built sev-
eral walls to solve the same problem, the Romans simply drew a line beyond which they
themselves rarely ventured and would not allow the barbarians to pass. Nevertheless out-
siders fi ltered into the empire. As early as the third century c.e., emperors and generals
recruited bands of them to serve in the Roman armies. Their service over, they would
receive farmlands, settle down, marry, and mingle with the population. By the fourth and
fi fth centuries a good many such individuals were even reaching high positions of state.
At the same time, in the West, for reasons that are not fully understood,
the activity of the Roman cities began to falter, commerce began to decay,
local governments became paralyzed, taxes became more ruinous, and free
farmers were bound to the soil. The army seated and unseated emperors.
Rival generals fought with each other. Gradually the West fell into decrepitude, and the old
line between the Roman provinces and the barbarian world made less and less difference.
After some centuries of relative stability, the barbarians themselves,
pressed by more distant peoples from Asia, rather suddenly began to move.
Sometimes they fi rst sought peaceable access to the empire, attracted by
the warmer Mediterranean climate, or desiring to share in the advantages
of Roman civilization. More often, Germanic tribes moved swiftly and by force, plunder-
ing, fi ghting, and killing as they went. In 476 a barbarian chieftain deposed the last Roman
emperor in the West. Sometimes in the general upheaval peoples from Asia rapidly intermixed
with other populations in the old Roman Empire. The most famous of these invaders were
the Huns, who cut through central Europe and France about 450 under their leader Attila, the
“scourge of God”—and then disappeared. There were also other invasions. Two centuries later
new irruptions burst upon the Greco-Roman world from the southeast, where hitherto outlying
peoples poured in from the Arabian deserts. The Arabs, mobilized by the new faith of Islam
(Muhammad died in 632), fell as conquerors upon Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia; occupied
Egypt about 640 and the old Roman Africa about 700; and in 711 they reached Spain.
Beneath these blows the old unity of the Greco-Roman or Mediterranean world was
broken. The “circle of lands” divided into three segments. Three types of civilization now
confronted each other across the inland sea.
The Byzantine World, the Arabic World, and the West about 700
The Eastern Roman, Later Roman, Greek, or Byzantine Empire (all names
for the same empire) with its capital at Constantinople, and now including
only the Asia Minor peninsula, the Balkan peninsula, and parts of Italy,
made up one segment of the circle of lands. It represented the most direct
continuation of the ancient civilizations of the Middle East. It was Christian in religion and
Greek in culture and language. Its people viewed themselves as the truest heirs both of
early Christianity and of earlier cultures in Greece. Art and architecture, trades and crafts,
Decline in the West
Barbarian invasions
Byzantine Empire
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21
commerce and navigation, thought and writing, government and law, while not so creative
or fl exible as in the classical age, were still carried on actively in the eastern empire, on
much the same level as in the closing centuries of ancient times. For all Christians, and for
heathen barbarians in Europe, the emperor of the East stood out as the world’s supreme
ruler, and Constantinople as the world’s preeminent and most fabulous city.
The second segment of the Mediterranean world was the Arabic and
Islamic. It became the most dynamic culture in the lands of the old Roman
Empire, reaching from the neighborhood of the Pyrenees through Spain and
all North Africa into Arabia, Syria, and the East. Arabic was its language;
it became, and still remains, the common speech from Morocco to the Persian Gulf. Islam
was its religion, and it looked to the prophet Muhammad (c. 570–632) and the Qur’an (or
Koran) for its religious truths. Muhammad had spent his early adult years as a merchant
in Mecca on the Arabian peninsula, but he began to have a series of intense religious rev-
elations when he was about 40 years old. These revelations led Muhammad to a devout
and uncompromising monotheism, which stressed the great power of God—or Allah
in Arabic—and the human duty to adhere to God’s will. Muhammad saw himself as a
prophet in the Jewish and Christian tradition, but he soon came to defi ne his revelations
and teachings as the beginning of a new religion. The messages that came to Muhammad
through revelation were written down in the sacred book of Islam, the Qur’an, which was
organized into 114 chapters (called suras ). Emphasizing submission to God, the impor- tance of prayer, and an ethical obligation to help others, the Qur’an provided directions for
the affairs of daily life as well as a powerful, poetic vision of the grandeur of God.
Muhammad’s revelations attracted little early support in Mecca. Indeed, the hostil-
ity there forced him to move north in 622 to the city of Medina. This famous fl ight (the
Hegira ) brought him to a more receptive community, where his teachings quickly gained numerous adherents and from where the fi rst Muslims set out to spread the new faith across
all of Arabia, including Mecca. Muhammad died in 632, but the new religion continued
to expand rapidly in all directions. Leadership passed to a series of caliphs who were
initially relatives of Muhammad himself. As Muslims conquered new territories and won
new converts throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the lands of Islam came under
the control of these caliphs. All Muslims were included in the caliphate. The ruling caliph
exercised both spiritual and political authority, and he was regarded as the true religious
and military successor of Muhammad himself.
Confl icts and lasting divisions nevertheless developed during the era of the third
Caliph, Uthman—one of the sons-in-law of Muhammad and a leader of the Umayyad
family. Supporters of Ali, a rival leader and also a son-in-law of Muhammad, killed
Uthman in 656, and Ali came to power as the fourth caliph. This violence did not resolve
the confl ict, however, and Ali himself was soon murdered. Ali’s followers refused to
accept the legitimacy of the Umayyad family, which now regained control of the caliphate.
A minority faction, called Shiites, continued to honor Ali and to claim that all true lead-
ers of Islam must descend from him. Although most Muslims supported the Umayyad
caliphs, the Shiite minority remained a permanent presence within Islam, sustaining the
memory of Ali and challenging the religious legitimacy of the dominant Sunnis (a term
that emerged later). Meanwhile, the Umayyad dynasty set up its capital in Damascus, and
some members of the family eventually extended their power as far west as Spain. Meeting
at such places on the European continent and in other Mediterranean lands, Muslims and
Christians began a long-developing pattern of exchanges and confl icts that would help to
shape both of these religious cultures through all later centuries.
Arabic world
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe22
The Arabic world, like the Byzantine, built upon the heritage of the Greco-Romans. In
religion, the early Muslims regarded themselves as successors to the Jewish and Christian
traditions. They considered the line of Jewish prophets since Abraham to be spokesmen
of the true God, and they put Jesus in this line. But they added that Muhammad was the
last and greatest of the prophets, that the Qur’an set forth a revelation replacing that of the
Jewish Bible, that the Christian New Testament was mistaken because Christ was not
divine, and that the Christian belief in a Trinity was erroneous because there was in the
strictest sense only One True God. To the Muslim Arabs, therefore, all Christians were
dangerous or misguided infi dels.
In mundane matters, the Arabs speedily took over the civilization of the lands they
conquered. In the caliphate, as in the Byzantine Empire, the civilization of the ancient
world went its way without serious interruption. Huge buildings and magnifi cent palaces
were constructed; ships plied the Mediterranean; Arab merchants ventured over the des-
erts and traversed the Indian Ocean; holy or learned men corresponded over thousands of
miles. The government developed effi cient systems to collect taxes, enforce the laws, and
keep the provinces in order. In the sciences the Arabs not only learned from but also went
beyond the Greeks. They translated Greek scientifi c literature: we know some of it today
only through these medieval Arabic versions. Arab geographers had a wider knowledge
of the world than anyone had possessed up to their time. Arab mathematicians developed
algebra so far beyond the Greeks as almost to be its creator (“algebra” is an Arabic word),
and in introducing the “Arabic” numerals (through their contacts with India) they made
arithmetic, which in Roman numerals had been formidably diffi cult into something that
every schoolchild could be taught.
The sixth-century emperor Justinian built the great Hagia Sophia to display his commit- ment to the Christian religion and the power of his capi- tal city, Constantinople. The church became a mosque after the Byzantine Empire fell to Muslim invaders in the fi f- teenth century, but it remains the most famous achievement of Byzantine architecture. (David Madison/Getty Images)
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23
The third segment of the ancient Greco-Roman world was Latin Christendom, which
about 700 c.e. did not look very promising. It was what was left over from the other two—
what the Byzantines were unable to hold and the Arabs were unable to con-
quer. It included only Italy (shared in part with the Byzantines), France,
Belgium, the Rhineland, and Britain. Barbarian kings were doing their best
to rule small kingdoms, but in truth all government had fallen to pieces.
Usually the invading barbarians remained a minority, eventually to be absorbed. Only in
England, and in the region immediately west of the Rhine, did the Germanic element
supersede the older Celtic and Latin. But the presence of violent invaders amid peasants
and city dwellers reduced to passivity by Roman rule, together with the disintegration of
Roman institutions that had gone on even before the invasions, left this region in chaos.
The Western barbarians, as noted, were Germanic; and the Germanic
infl uence became another distinctive contribution to the making of Europe.
Some Germans were Christian by the fourth century, but most were still
heathen when they burst into the Roman Empire. Their languages had not
been written down, but they possessed an intricate folklore and religion in which fi ghting
and heroic valor were much esteemed. Though now in a migratory phase, they were an
agricultural people who knew how to work iron, and they had a rudimentary knowledge
of the crafts of the Romans. They were organized in small tribes and had a strong sense of
tribal kinship, which (as with many similar peoples) dominated their ideas of leadership
and law. They enjoyed more freedom in their affairs than did the citizens of the Roman
Empire. Many of the tribes were roughly self-governing in that all free men, those entitled
to bear arms, met in open fi elds to hold council; and often the tribe itself elected its leader
or king. They had a strong sense of loyalty to persons, of fealty to the acknowledged king or
chief; but they had no sense of loyalty to large or general institutions. They had no sense of
the state—of any distant, impersonal, and continuing source of law and rule. Law they
regarded as the infl exible custom of each tribe. In the absence of abstract jurisprudence
or trained judges, they settled disputes by rough and ready methods. In the ordeal, for
example, a person who obstinately fl oated when thrown into water was adjudged guilty. In
trial by battle, the winner of a kind of ritualistic duel was regarded as innocent. The gods,
it was thought, would not allow wrong to prevail.
The Germans who overran the old Roman provinces found it diffi cult to maintain any
political organization at more than a local level. Security and civil order all but disappeared.
Peasant communities were at the mercy of wandering bands of habitual fi ghters. Fighters
often captured peasant villages, took them under their protection, guarded them from fur-
ther marauders, and lived off their produce. Sometimes the same great fi ghting man came
to possess many such villages, moving with his retinue of horsemen from one village to
another to support himself throughout the year. Thus originated a new distinction between
lord and servant, noble and commoner, martial and menial class. Life became local and
self-suffi cient. People ate, wore, used, and dwelled in only what they themselves and their
neighbors could produce. In contrast to the economies of the Byzantine and Islamic worlds,
Western trade died down, the cities became depopulated, money went out of circulation,
and almost nothing was bought or sold. The Roman roads fell into neglect; people often
used them as quarries for ready-cut building blocks for their own crude purposes. Western
Europe not only broke up into localized villages but also ceased to have habitual exchanges
across the Mediterranean. It lost contact with the eastern centers from which its former
civilization had always been drawn. From roughly 500 c.e. on, most of Europe fell into
what some later historians would call the “Dark Ages.”
Latin Christendom
Germanic customs
2. The Early Middle Ages: The Formation of Europe
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe24
The Church and the Rise of the Papacy
Only one organized institution maintained a tie with ancient civilization. Only one institu-
tion, reaching over the whole West, could receive news or dispatch its agents over the
whole area. This institution was the Christian church. Its framework still stood; its network
of bishoprics, as built up in late Roman times, remained intact except in places such as
England, where the barbarian conquest was complete.
In addition, a new type of religious institution spread rapidly with the
growth of monasteries. The serious and the sensitive, both men and women
(though not together, to be sure), rejected the savagery about them and
retired into communities of their own. Usually they were left unmolested
by rough neighbors who held them in religious awe. In a world of violence they formed
islands of quiet, peace, and contemplation. Their prayers, it was believed, were of use to
all the world, and their example might at the least arouse pangs of shame in more worldly
people. The monastic houses generally adopted the rule of St. Benedict (c. 480–543) and
were governed by an abbot. Dedicated to the same ideals, they formed unifying fi laments
throughout the chaos of the Latin West.
Bishops, abbots, and monks looked with veneration to Rome as the spot where St. Peter,
the fi rst apostle, had been martyred. The bishop of Rome corresponded with other bishops,
sent out missionaries, gave advice on doctrine when he could, and attempted to oversee the
situation throughout the Latin world as a whole. Moreover, with no emperor any longer in
Rome, the bishop took over the government and public affairs of the city. Thus the bishop of
Rome, while claiming a primacy over all Christians, was not dominated by any secular
power. In the East the great church functionaries, the patriarchs, fell under the infl uence of
the emperor who continued to rule at Constantinople. A tradition of Caesaropapism grew up
in the East; but in the West the independence of the bishop of Rome now confi rmed in prac-
tice a principle always maintained by the great churchmen of the West—the independence
of the spiritual power from the political or temporal.
The growing authority of the popes was fortifi ed by various arguments.
St. Peter, it was held, had imparted the spiritual authority given to him by
Christ himself to the Roman bishops who were his successors. This doc-
trine of the “Petrine supremacy” was based on two verses in the Bible (Mat-
thew xvi, 18–19), according to which Christ designated Peter as the head of the church,
giving him the “power of the keys” to open and close the doors of eternal salvation. As
for the pope’s temporal rule in Rome, it was affi rmed that the Emperor Constantine had
endowed the bishop with the government of the city. This “Donation of Constantine” was
accepted as historical fact from the eighth century to the fi fteenth, when it was proved to
be a forgery.
Growth of monasteries
Papal authority
THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD about 400, 800, and 1250 c.e. Greco-Roman civilization, centered about the Mediterranean, was offi cially Christian and politically unifi ed under the Roman Empire in 400 c.e., but it broke apart into three segments in the early Middle Ages. Each segment developed its own type of life. Each segment also expanded beyond the limits of the ancient Mediterranean culture. By 1250 Latin Christendom reached to the Baltic and beyond. Greek Christendom penetrated north of the Black Sea to include the Russians. The Muslim world spread into inner Asia and Africa. In 1250, and until 1492, the Muslims, or Moors, still held the southern tip of Spain. Jews lived in varying num- bers throughout the Mediterranean world, and Jewish communities were important within each of the religious spheres on these maps.
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252. The Early Middle Ages: The Formation of Europe
About 800 C.E.
Latin Christians
Greek Christians
Muslims
About 1250 C.E.
Latin Christians
Greek Christians
Muslims
About 400 C.E.
The Roman Empire
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe26
It was the church that incorporated the barbarians into new forms of
social life, and when such groups embraced a more settled, civilized way of
living, it was the church that they entered. As early as about 340 c.e., the
church sent out Ulfi las to convert the Goths; his translation of the Bible
represents the fi rst writing down of any Germanic language. About 496 the king of the
Franks, Clovis, was converted to Christianity. A hundred years later, in 597, the king of
Kent in southeast England yielded to the persuasions of Augustine of Canterbury, a mis-
sionary dispatched from Rome, and the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons gradually
followed. Missionaries from Ireland also, to which Christians of the Roman Empire had
fl ed to escape the heathen barbarians, now returned to both Britain and the Continent to
spread the gospel. By 700, after three centuries of turmoil, the borders of Christianity in
the West were again roughly what they had been in late Roman times. Then in 711, as we
have seen, the Arabs entered Spain. They crossed the Pyrenees and moved on toward cen-
tral Europe, but were stopped by a Christian and Frankish army in 732 near Tours on the
river Loire. Islam was turned back into Spain, thereby allowing the people of Western
Europe to expand their emerging Latin Christian culture.
The Empire of Charlemagne, 800–814
Among the Franks, in what is now northern France and the German Rhineland, there had
arisen a line of capable rulers of whom the greatest was Charlemagne. The Frankish kings
made it their policy to cooperate with the pope. The pope needed a protector against dep-
redations by his barbarian neighbors and against the political claims of the Byzantine
Empire upon the city of Rome. The Frankish kings, in return for protection thus offered,
won papal support to their side. This made it easier for them to control their own bishops,
who were more often seen on horseback than in the episcopal chair; and the papal alliance
helped the kings pacify their own domains and wage wars of conquest against the heathen.
In the year 800, in Rome, the pope crowned Charlemagne as emperor of the West. Frankish
king and Roman bishop both believed that if only the Roman Empire could be restored
peace and order might once more reign. Church and empire, religion and the state, were to
be as two mighty swords employed in the same holy cause.
Charlemagne crossed the Pyrenees and won back the northeastern cor-
ner of Spain to Christian rule. He overthrew and subordinated the barbarian
kings who had set themselves up in northern Italy. He sent forces down the
Danube, penetrated into Bohemia, and proceeded against some of the still
heathen Germans (the Saxons) who lived along the river Elbe, and whom he either massa-
cred or converted to Christianity. All these regions he brought within his new empire.
Except for England and Ireland, which remained outside, the borders of his empire were
coextensive with those of the Latin Christian world.
Once more, to a degree, the peoples of Western Europe were united
under an empire. But a momentous change had occurred. Its capital did not
lie in the ancient world of the Mediterranean. Its capital was now in north-
ern Europe at Aix-la-Chapelle, or Aachen, near the mouth of the Rhine. Its
ruler, Charlemagne, was a German of an ethnic group that had remained outside ancient
civilization. Its people were Germans, French, and Italians, or, more precisely, the ances-
tors from whom these nationalities would later emerge. In the Greco-Roman world the
north had always been at best provincial. Now the north became a center in its own right.
Charlemagne dispatched embassies to the Byzantine emperor at Constantinople and to
Conversion of the
barbarians
Charlemagne
Revival of learning
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27
Harun al-Rashid, the great Muslim caliph at Baghdad. In intellectual matters, too, the
north now became a capital. Centuries of violence and confusion had virtually destroyed
education and systematic learning, even for the most powerful families in Europe.
Charlemagne himself, though he understood Latin, could barely read and never learned to
write. He used his authority, however, to revive the all but forgotten ancient learning and to
spread education at least among the clergy. To his palace school came scholars from Eng-
land, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. They wrote and spoke in Latin, the only Western
language in which complicated ideas could at the time be expressed. Disintegrating ancient
manuscripts were copied and recopied to assure a more abundant supply for study—always
by hand, but in a more rapid script than had before been used. This so-called Carolingian
minuscule evolved into the small letters of the modern Western alphabet, only the capital
letters being Roman. Meanwhile, Charlemagne sought to foster commerce by creating a
new and more reliable coinage, which was based on silver, the gold coins of the Roman
Empire having long since vanished.
Ninth-Century Invasions; Europe by 1000
In Charlemagne’s empire we fi rst see the shape of Europe as a unit of society
and culture distinct from the Mediterranean world of antiquity. The empire
did not last. New waves of invaders assailed Western Christendom in the
ninth century. The Magyars (called in Latin “Hungarians”) terrifi ed various
parts of Europe until they settled down on the middle Danube about the year 900. New Ger-
manic tribes uprooted themselves, coming this time from Scandinavia, and variously known
as Norse, Vikings, or Danes. Bursting out in all directions, they reached Kiev in Russia in
Second wave of
invaders
This image of a monastery in a medieval Spanish manuscript shows how early Christian monks became known for their learning as well as their religious contemplation and disciplined labor. (Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource, NY)
2. The Early Middle Ages: The Formation of Europe
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe28
864, discovered Iceland in 874, and even touched America in 1000. In the Christian world
they assaulted the coasts and pushed up the rivers but settled in considerable numbers only
in the Danelaw in England and in Normandy in France. Meanwhile the Arabs raided the
shores of France and Italy and occupied Sicily. Nowhere was the power of government
strong enough to ward off such attacks. Everywhere the harassed local population found its
own means of defense or, that failing, was slaughtered, robbed, or carried off into slavery.
Gradually the second wave of invaders was incorporated as the fi rst had been, by the
same process of conversion to Christianity. By the year 1000 this process was nearly com-
plete. In 1001 the pope sent a golden crown to the Magyars to crown St. Stephen as their
fi rst king, thus bringing Hungary within the orbit of the Latin West. Poland, Bohemia, and
the Scandinavian homelands of the Norse were Christianized during the same era. In older
Christian countries, such as France, the last remote and isolated rustics—the “heathen”
who lived in the “heath”—were fi nally ferreted out by missionaries and brought within the
Christian fold. In Christian countries Christianity now permeated every corner, and (despite
the local differences that existed everywhere) the historic peoples of western Europe had
come together within the spreading religious and cultural system of the Latin church.
Meanwhile East and West continued to drift apart. The refusal of
Greek patriarchs at Constantinople to recognize the claims to primacy of
the bishop of Rome, whom they regarded as a kind of Western barbarian,
and the refusal of the Roman pontiff to acknowledge the political preten-
sions of the Byzantine Empire, led to the Great Schism of East and West.
This schism, after developing for three centuries, became defi nite in 1054. It divided the
Christian world into the Latin or Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches. It was
from Constantinople that Christianity reached the peoples of Russia. The Russians, like the
Balkan peoples, remained out of contact with most of Europe during the centuries when
spiritual and intellectual contacts were carried through the clergy. They believed, indeed,
that the Latin West was evil, heretical, and unholy. The Latin West, at the same time, by
the schism, cut one more of its ties with antiquity and emerged more clearly as an indepen-
dent center of its own civilization.
By the year 1000, or soon thereafter, the entity that we call Europe had come into
existence. From the turbulence that followed the collapse of the Greco-Roman civilization
had issued the peoples and the countries that would evolve into modern
Europe. A kingdom of France had emerged, adjoining the great ill-defi ned
bulk of Germany to the east. There were small Christian kingdoms in north-
ern Spain and a number of city-states in the Italian peninsula. In the north
there were now a kingdom of England and a kingdom of Scotland; Denmark, Norway, and
Sweden had also taken form. In the east rose the three great kingdoms of Poland, Bohemia,
and Hungary, the fi rst two predominantly Slavic, Hungary predominantly Magyar, but all
were Latin and Catholic in culture and religion, and Western in orientation. The east Slavs,
or Russians, and the Slavs and other peoples of the Balkan peninsula also formed king-
doms of their own. Their languages and religion were diverging from the cultures of
western Europe. Christianized by Byzantine missionaries, they were Greek and Orthodox
in culture and religion, and oriented toward Constantinople.
The civilization of western Europeans in the year 1000 was still unimpressive in com-
parison to the more polished circles of Byzantium or Baghdad. It might still seem that the
West would suffer more than the East from their separation. But the West began at this
time to experience new social and economic activity, ushering in the European civilization
of the High Middle Ages.
“Great Schism of East
and West”
Emerging Europe
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29
3. THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES: SECULAR CIVILIZATION
Agriculture and the Feudal System after 1000
Some historical periods are so dynamic that a person who lives to a mature age can remem-
ber sweeping changes that have come in one’s own lifetime. Such a time began in Europe
in the eleventh century. People could see new towns rise and grow before their eyes. They
could observe new undertakings in commerce or government. Most of the cities that
Europe was to know before the modern industrial era sprang up between about 1050 and
1200. The population of western Europe, which had been sparse even in Roman days,
and which was even sparser after 500, suddenly began to grow denser about the year 1000,
and it expanded steadily for two or three hundred years. The people of the High Middle
Ages did not develop a new conception of progress because their minds were set upon
timeless values and personal salvation in another world, but the period was nevertheless
one of rapid progress in nonreligious or “secular” matters. Much was created that remained
fundamental for European cultures far into modern times.
The new era was made possible by a growth in population that went
along with agricultural changes. After the Norse and Magyar inroads had
stopped, Europe was spared the assaults of other invaders. There came to be
more security of life and limb. Farmers could plant with more confi dence
that they would reap, and people could build houses with the expectation of passing them
on to their children. Hence there was more planting and building. Sometime before the
year 1000 a heavier plow was invented, which cut a deeper furrow. Better methods of
harnessing horses had been found than the ancients had ever known. The Romans had con-
tinued simply to throw a yoke over a horse’s neck, so that the animal in pulling a weight
easily choked. Europeans, before the year 1000, began to use a horse collar that rested
on the animal’s shoulders. The single horse could pull a greater load, or several horses
could now for the fi rst time be hitched in tandem. The amount of available animal power
was thus multiplied, at a time when animals were the main source of power other than
human muscle. Windmills, unknown to the ancients, were developed in the Low Countries
about this time. They too offered a new source of power. Thus at the very beginning of a
specifi cally “European” history, one may detect characteristics of subsequent European
civilization—a search for technological invention, a quest for new sources of energy.
With such labor-saving devices people continued to work very hard, but they obtained
more results by their efforts. Probably the use of such inventions, together with the infl u-
ence of the Christian clergy, accounts for the gradual disappearance of slavery from Europe
and its replacement by the less-abject and less-degrading status of serfdom. It is true that
medieval Christians, when they could, continued to enslave whites as they were later to do
with blacks. Usually such slaves were captives in war, taken from tribes not yet converted
to Christianity, and sometimes exported as a form of merchandise to the Byzantine and
Muslim worlds. As the successive European peoples became Christianized, the supply of
non-Christian slaves dried up. Medieval Christians did not enslave each other, nor was
slavery essential to any important form of production.
Not only did population increase, and work become more productive, but also groups of
people became less isolated from one another. Communications improved. The roads
remained poor or nonexistent, but bridges were built across European rivers, and settlers
fi lled in the wildernesses that had formerly separated the inhabited areas. Trees were felled,
land was cleared, and the rural population clustered in village communities. The “nucleated”
Agriculture and
population growth
3. The High Middle Ages: Secular Civilization
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe30
village gave more security, more contact between families, and readier access to the black-
smith or the priest. It also made possible a communally organized agriculture.
Better ways of using land were introduced in the “three-fi eld” system,
which spread to almost every region where cereal crops were the staple. In
this system the peasant village divided its arable fi elds into three parts. The
fi rst part was then sown with one crop, such as wheat; a second part with
another, such as barley; and the third was left to lie fallow. The three parts were rotated
from year to year. Thus soil exhaustion was avoided at a time when fertilizers were
unknown. Formerly, half or less of the available fi elds had been cultivated at any one time.
With the three-fi eld system two-thirds of the land came into annual use. This change, rein-
forced by better plowing and more effective employment of animals, led to a huge increase
in the supply of food.
The peace and personal security necessary to agriculture were also
advanced, in the absence of effective public authority, by the growth of
institutions that we know as “feudalism.” Feudalism was intricate and
diverse, but in essence it was a means of carrying on some kind of govern-
ment on a local basis where no organized state existed. After the collapse of Charlemagne’s
empire the real authority fell into the hands of persons who were most often called “counts.”
The count was the most important man of a region covering a few hundred square miles.
To build up his own position, and strengthen himself for war against other counts, he tried
to keep the peace and maintain control over the lesser lords in his county, those whose pos-
sessions extended over a few hundred or a few thousand acres. These lesser lords accepted
or were forced to accept his protection. They became his vassals, and he became their
“lord.” The lord and vassal relation was one of reciprocal duties. The lord protected the
vassal and assured him justice and fi rm tenure of his land. If two vassals of the same lord
disputed the possession of the same village, the lord decided the case, sitting in council (or
“court”) with all his vassals assembled and judging according to the common memory or
customary law of the district. If a vassal died young, leaving only small children, the lord
took the family under his “wardship” or guardianship, guaranteeing that the rightful heirs
would inherit in due time. Correspondingly the vassal agreed to serve the lord as a fi ghting
man for a certain number of days in the year. The vassal also had to advise and serve the
lord in other ways, including service in his court for the judging of disputes. Usually he
owed no money or material payment; but if the lord had to be ransomed from captivity, or
when the lord’s children married, the vassal paid a fee. The vassal also paid a fee on inher-
iting an estate, and the income of estates under wardship went to the lord. Thus the lord
collected sporadic revenues with which to fi nance his somewhat primitive government.
This feudal scheme gradually spread across northern Europe. Lords at
the level of counts became in turn the vassals of dukes. In the year 987 the
great lords of France chose Hugh Capet as their king and became his vas-
sals. The kings of France enjoyed little real power for another 200 years,
but the descendants of Hugh occupied their throne for eight centuries, until the French
Revolution. Similarly the magnates of Germany elected a king in 911; in 962 the German
king was crowned emperor, as Charlemagne had been before him; thus originated the Holy
Roman Empire, of which much will be heard in the following chapters.
England in these formative centuries did not choose a king by election.
England was conquered in 1066 by the Duke of Normandy, William. The
Normans (the Norse reshaped by a century of Christian and French infl u-
ences) imposed upon England a centralized and effi cient type of feudalism
Three-fi eld system
Feudalism
Capetian kings
The Normans in
England
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31
that they had developed in Normandy. In England, from an early date, the king and his
offi cials therefore had considerable power, which led to more civil peace and personal
security than on the Continent. Within the framework of a strong monarchy self-governing
institutions could eventually develop with a minimum of disorder.
The notable feature of feudalism was its mutual or reciprocal character. In this it dif-
fered from the old Roman imperial principle, by which the emperor had been a majestic
and all-powerful sovereign. Under feudalism no one was sovereign. King and people, lord
and vassal, were joined in a kind of contract. Each owed something to the other. If one
defaulted, the obligation ceased. If a vassal refused his due services, the king had the right
to enforce compliance. If the king violated the rights of the vassal, the vassals could join
together against him. The king was supposed to act with the advice of the vassals, who
formed his council or court. If the vassals believed the king to be exceeding his lawful
powers, they could impose terms upon him. Although feudalism was always a hierarchical
system of lords and vassals, its mutual or contractual character contributed to later
European ideas of constitutional government.
Feudalism applied in the strict sense only to the military or noble class.
Below the feudal world lay the vast mass of the peasantry. In the village, the
lowliest vassal of a higher noble was lord over his own subjects. The village,
with its people and surrounding farmlands, constituted a “manor,” the estate
of a lord. In the eleventh century most people of the manor were serfs. They were “bound to
the soil” in that they could not leave the manor without the lord’s permission. Few wanted
to leave anyway, at a time when the world beyond the village was unknown and dangerous,
The manor and serfs
Most people in the Middle Ages worked in the fi elds, coping like the peasant in this late medieval illustration with the seasons, soil, seeds, and animals that shaped agricultural life. (British Library Board/The Bridgeman Art Library)
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe32
when food supplies were precarious, and when other lands were fi lled at best only with other
similar manors. The lord, for his part, could not expropriate the villagers or drive them away.
He owed them protection and the administration of justice. They in turn worked his fi elds
and gave him part of the produce of their own. No money changed hands, because there was
virtually no money in circulation. The manorial system was the agricultural base on which a
ruling class was supported. It supported also the clergy, for the church held much land in the
form of manors. It gave the protection from physical violence and the framework of com-
munal living without which the peasants could not grow crops or tend livestock.
With the rise of agricultural productivity, lords and even a few peasants began to
produce a surplus, which they might sell if only they could fi nd a market. The country was
thus able to produce enough food to support a town population. And since population grew
with the increase of the food supply, a surplus rural population also began to exist. Restless
spirits among the peasants now wanted to get away from the manor. And many went off
to the new towns.
The Rise of Towns and Commerce
We have seen how the ancient cities had decayed. In the ninth and tenth centuries, with
few exceptions, there were none left in western Europe. Here and there one would fi nd a
cluster of population around the headquarters of a bishop, a great count, or a king.
But there were no commercial centers. There was no merchant class. The simple crafts—
weaving, metalworking, harness making—were carried on locally on the manors. Rarely,
an itinerant trader might appear with such semiprecious goods as he could carry for long
distances on donkeys—Eastern silks, or a few spices for the wealthy. Among these early
traders Jews were often important, because Judaism, part of the Byzantine and Arabic
worlds as well as the Western, offered one of the few channels of communication among
the different Mediterranean cultures; and many Jewish traders were connected through
long-distance commercial networks.
Long-distance trading was in fact the fi rst economic activity to revive
and develop. The city of Venice was founded about 570 when refugees
fl ed from invaders and settled in its islands. The Venetians, as time went
on, brought Eastern goods up the Adriatic and sold them to traders com-
ing down from central Europe. In Flanders in the north, in what is now Belgium, manu-
facturers of woolen cloth emerged. Flemish woolens were of a unique quality, owing to
peculiarities of the atmosphere and the skill of the weavers. They could not be duplicated
elsewhere. Nor could Eastern goods be procured except through the Venetians—or the
Genoese or Pisans. Such goods could not possibly be produced locally, yet they were in
demand wherever they became known. Merchants traveled in increasing numbers to sell
them. Money came back into more general circulation; where it came from is not quite
clear, since there was little mining of gold or silver until the end of the Middle Ages.
Merchants began to establish permanent headquarters, settling within the deserted walls of
ghostly Roman towns or near the seat of a lord or ecclesiastic, whose numerous retainers
might become customers. Craftsmen moved from the overpopulated manors to these same
growing centers, where they might produce wares that the lords or merchants would wish
to buy. The process, once started, tended to snowball: the more people settled in such an
agglomeration, the more they needed food brought to them from the country; and the more
craftsmen left the villages, the more the country people, lords and serfs had to obtain cloth-
ing and simple tools and utensils from the towns. Hence a busy local trade developed also.
Long-distance trade
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By 1100, or not long thereafter, such centers existed all over Europe, from the Baltic
to Italy, from England as far east as Bohemia. Usually there was one about every 20 or
30 miles. The smallest towns had only a few hundred inhabitants; the larger
ones had two or three thousand, or sometimes more. Each carried on a local
exchange with its immediate countryside and purveyed goods of more dis-
tant origin to local consumers. But their importance was by no means
merely economic. What made them “towns” in the full sense of the word was their acquisi-
tion of political rights.
The merchants and craftsmen who lived in the towns did not wish to remain, like the
country people, subject to neighboring feudal lords. At worst, the feudal lords regarded
merchants as a convenient source of ready money; they might hold them up on the road,
plunder their mule trains, collect tolls at river crossings, or extort cash by offering “protec-
tion.” At best, the most well-meaning feudal lord could not supervise the affairs of mer-
chants, for the feudal and customary law knew nothing of commercial problems. The
traders in the course of their business developed a “law merchant” of their own, having to
do with money and moneychanging, debt and bankruptcy, contracts, invoices, and bills of
lading. They wished to have their own means of apprehending thieves, runaway debtors,
or sellers of fraudulent goods. They strove, therefore, to get recognition for their own law,
their own courts, their own judges and magistrates. They wished, too, to govern their
towns themselves and to avoid payment of fees or taxes to nearby nobles.
Everywhere in Latin Christendom, along about 1100, the new towns struggled to free
themselves from the encircling feudalism and to set themselves up as self-governing little
republics. Where the towns were largest and closest together—along the highly urban-
ized arteries of the trade routes, in north Italy, on the upper Danube and Rhine rivers, in
Flanders, or on the Baltic coast—they emancipated themselves the most fully. Venice,
Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Milan became virtually independent city-states, each governing a
substantial tract of its surrounding country. In Flanders also, towns like Bruges and Ghent
dominated their localities. Along the upper Danube, the Rhine, the North Sea, the Baltic,
many towns became imperial free cities within the Holy Roman Empire,
each a kind of small republic owing allegiance to no one except the dis-
tant and usually ineffectual emperor. Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Augsburg,
Strasbourg, Hamburg, and Lübeck were free cities of this kind. In France
and England, where the towns in the twelfth century were somewhat less powerful, they
obtained less independence but received charters of liberties from the king. By these
charters they were assured the right to have their own town governments and offi cials,
their own courts and law, and to pay their own kind of taxes to the king in lieu of ordinary
feudal obligations.
Often towns formed leagues or urban federations, joining forces to repress banditry
or piracy or to deal with ambitious monarchs or predatory nobles. The most famous such
league was the Hanse; it was formed mainly of German towns, fought wars under its own
banner, and dominated the commerce of the North Sea and the Baltic until after 1300.
Similar tendencies of the towns to form political leagues, or to act independently in war
and diplomacy, were suppressed by the kings in England, France, and Spain.
The fact that Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands were commercially more advanced
than the Atlantic countries in the Middle Ages, and so had a more intensive town life, was
to be one cause (out of many) preventing political unifi cation in the early modern era. Not
until 1860 or 1870 were nationwide states created in this region. In the west, where more
of a balance was kept between town and country, the towns were absorbed into larger
Growth of towns
Town charters
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe34
territorial governments that were arising under the kings. This early difference between
central and western Europe would later shape much of Europe’s history in modern times.
The liberties won by the towns were corporate liberties. Each town was
a collective entity. The people in towns did not possess individual rights,
but only the rights that followed from being a resident of a particular town.
Among these were personal liberty; no townsman could be a serf, and fugi-
tive serfs who lived over a year in a town were generally deemed to be free. But townspeo-
ple did not seek individual liberty in the modern sense. The world was still too unsettled
for the individual to act alone. Townspeople wanted to join together in a compact body and
to protect themselves by all sorts of regulations and controls. The most obvious evidence
of this communal solidarity was the wall within which most towns were enclosed. The
citizens in time of trouble looked to their own defense. As the towns grew, they built new
walls farther out. In many European cities today one may still see remains of walls that
were in use from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries.
Economic solidarity was of more day-to-day importance. The towns required neigh-
boring peasants to sell foodstuffs only in the town marketplace. They thus protected their
food supply against competition from other towns. Or they forbade the practice of certain
trades in the country; this was to oblige peasants to make purchases in town and to protect
the jobs and livelihood of the town craftsmen. They put up tariffs and tolls on the goods of
other towns brought within their own walls. Or they levied special fees on merchants from
outside who did business in the town. In Italy and Germany they often coined their own
money; and the typical town fi xed the rates at which various moneys should be exchanged.
The medieval towns, in short, at the time of their greatest liberty, followed in a local way
the same policies of protectionism and exclusiveness that national governments were often
to follow in modern times.
Within each town merchants and craftsmen formed associations called
“guilds,” whose “masters” supervised the affairs of a specifi c trade or craft.
Merchants formed a merchant guild. Stonemasons, carpenters, barbers,
dyers, goldsmiths, coppersmiths, weavers, hatters, tailors, shoemakers,
grocers, and apothecaries formed craft guilds of their own. The guilds served a public
purpose. They provided that work should be done by reliable and experienced persons,
thereby protecting people from the pitfalls of shoddy garments, clumsy barbers, poison-
ous drugs, or defective and poorly built houses. They also provided a means of vocational
education and marked out a career for young men. Women also worked in many trades
and could belong to guilds; they were particularly numerous in certain guilds of the cloth-
ing trades. Women were nevertheless excluded from some of the guilds’ social activities,
and they were not granted the political privileges that men received as they moved up
through the ranks of the guild hierarchy. Typically a boy became an apprentice to some
master, learned the trade, and lived with and was supported by the master’s family for a
term of years, such as seven. Then he became a journeyman, a qualifi ed and recognized
worker, who might work for any master at a stated wage. Most workers remained journey-
men throughout their lives, especially in the later Middle Ages. The guild system enabled
some workers to improve their social position, however; and a lucky young man might
eventually become a master, open his own shop, hire journeymen, and take apprentices.
So long as the towns were growing, a boy had some chance to become a master; but as
early as 1300 many guilds were becoming frozen, and the masters were increasingly chary
of admitting new persons to their own status. Although widows often continued to work
in the trades or artisanal crafts of their husbands, women almost never became masters.
Corporate liberties
Guilds
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35
From the beginning, in any case, it was an important function of the guilds to protect their
own members. The masters, assembled together, preserved their reputation by regulating
the quality of their product. They divided work among themselves and fi xed the terms of
apprenticeship, the wages to be paid to journeymen, and the prices at which their goods
must be sold. Or they took collective steps to meet or keep out the competition of the same
trade in nearby towns.
Whether among individuals within the town itself, or as between town and country, or
between town and town, the spirit of the medieval economy was to prevent competition.
Risk, adventure, and speculation were not wanted. Almost no one thought it proper to
work for monetary profi t. The few who did, big merchants trading over large areas, met
with suspicion and disapproval wherever they went.
The towns tried in many ways to subject the peasants’ interests to their
own but nevertheless had an emancipating infl uence on the country. Some
peasants were able to escape from serfdom by settling in a town. But the
town infl uence was more widespread and far out of proportion to the rela-
tively small number of people who could become town dwellers. The growth of towns
increased the demand for food. Lords began to clear new lands, and western Europeans set
about developing a kind of internal frontier. Formerly villages had been separated by dark
tracts of roadless woods, in which wolves roamed freely, shadowed by the gnomes, elves,
and fairies of popular folklore. Now pioneers with axes cleared farmlands and built vil-
lages. The lords who usually supervised such operations (since their serfs were not slaves,
and could not be moved at will) offered freer terms to entice peasants to settle on the new
lands. It was less easy for the lord of an old village to hold his people in serfdom when in
an adjacent village, within a few hours’ walk, the people were free.
The peasants, moreover, were now able to obtain a little money by selling produce
in town. The lords wanted money because the towns were producing more articles that
money could buy. It became common for peasants to obtain personal freedom, holding
their own lands, in return for an annual money payment to the lord for an indefi nite period
into the future. As early as the twelfth century serfdom began to disappear in northern
France and southern England, and by the fi fteenth century it had disappeared from most
Towns and the decline
of serfdom
The crafts and trade in medieval towns were dominated by the guilds, whose symbols conveyed the nature of their work. The sheep on this emblem represents the wool guild in Florence. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe36
of western Europe. The peasant could now, in law, move freely about. But the manorial
organization remained; the peasant owed dues and fees to the lord and was still under his
legal jurisdiction.
The Growth of Monarchies and Government Institutions
Meanwhile the kings were busy, each trying to build his kingdom into an
organized monarchy that would outlast his life. Monarchy became heredi-
tary; the king inherited his position like any other feudal lord or possessor
of an estate. Inheritance of the crown made for peace and order, for elec-
tions under conditions of the time were usually turbulent and disputed, and where the older
Germanic principle of elective monarchy remained alive, as in the Holy Roman Empire,
there was periodic commotion. The kings sent out executive offi cers to supervise their
interests throughout their kingdoms. The kings of England, adopting an old Anglo-Saxon
practice, had a sheriff in each of the 40 shires; the kings of France created similar offi cers
who were called bailiffs. The kings likewise instituted royal courts, under royal justices, to
decide property disputes and repress crime. This assertion of legal jurisdiction, together
with the military might necessary to enforce judgments upon obstinate nobles, became a
main pillar of the royal power. In England especially, and in lesser degree elsewhere, the
kings required local inhabitants to assist royal judges in the discovery of relevant facts in
particular cases. They put them on oath to declare what they knew of events in their own
neighborhood. It is from this enforced association of private persons with royal offi cers
that the court jury developed.
The kings needed money to pay for their governmental machinery or
to carry on war with other kings. Taxation, as known in the Roman Empire,
was quite unknown to the Germanic and feudal tradition. In the feudal
scheme each person was responsible only for the customary fees that arose on stated occa-
sions. The king, like other lords, was supposed to live on his own income—on the revenue
of manors that he owned himself, the proceeds of estates temporarily under his wardship,
or the occasional fees paid to him by his vassals. No king, even for the best of reasons,
could simply decree a new tax and collect it. At the same time, as the use of money became
more common, the kings had to assure themselves of a money income. As the towns grew
up, with a new kind of wealth and a new source of money income, they agreed to make
stipulated payments in return for their royal charters.
The royal demands for money and the claims to exercise legal jurisdiction were
regarded as innovations. They were constantly growing and sometimes were a source of
abuse. They met with frequent resistance in all countries. A famous case historically
(though somewhat commonplace in its own day) was that of Magna Carta in England in
1215, when a group of English lords and high churchmen, joined by representatives of the
city of London, required King John to confi rm and guarantee their historic liberties.
The king, as has been said, like any lord, was supposed to act in
council or court with his vassals. The royal council became the egg out
of which departments of government were hatched—such as the royal
judiciary, exchequer, and military command. From it also was hatched the
institution of parliaments. The kings had always, in a way, held great parleys or “talks”
(the Latin parliamentum meant simply a “talking”) with their chief retainers. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the growth of towns added a new element to European life. To the
lords and bishops was now added a burgher class, which, if of far inferior dignity, was too
Changes in
monarchical rule
Taxation
Origins of
parliaments
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37
stubborn, free-spirited, and well furnished with money to be overlooked. When representa-
tives of the towns began to be summoned to the king’s great talks, along with lords and
clergy, parliaments may be said to have come into being.
Parliaments, in this sense, sprouted all over Europe in the thirteenth century. Nothing
shows better the similarity of institutions in Latin Christendom, or the inadequacy of trac-
ing the history of any one country by itself. The new assemblies were called cortes in Spain, diets in Germany, Estates General or provincial estates in France, parliaments in the British
Isles. Usually they are referred to generically as “estates,” the word “parliament” being
reserved for Britain, but in origin they were all essentially the same.
The kings called these assemblies as a means of publicizing and strengthening the
royal rule. They found it more convenient to explain their policies, or to ask for money, to
a large gathering brought together for that purpose than to have a hundred offi cials make
local explanations and strike local bargains in a hundred different places. The kings did not
recognize, nor did the assemblies claim, any right of the parliament to dictate to the king
and his government. But usually the king invited the parliament to state grievances; his
action upon them was the beginning of parliamentary legislation.
The parliaments represented neither the “nation” nor the “people” nor
yet the individual citizen, but they embodied the “estates of the realm,” the
great collective interests of the country. The fi rst and highest estate was the
clergy; the second was the landed or noble class; to these older ruling
groups were added, as a “third estate,” the burghers of the chartered towns. Quite com-
monly these three types of people sat separately as three distinct chambers. But the pattern
varied from country to country. In England, Poland, and Hungary the clergy as a whole
ceased to be represented; only the bishops came, sitting with lay magnates in an upper
house. Eventually the burghers dropped out in Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, leaving the
landed aristocracy in triumph in eastern Europe. In Castile and Württemberg, on the other
hand, the noble estate eventually refused to attend parliament, leaving the townspeople and
clergy in the assemblies. In some countries—in Scandinavia, Switzerland, and in the
French Estates General—even peasants were allowed to have delegates.
In England the Parliament developed eventually in a distinctive way.
After a long period of uncertainty there came to be two houses, known as
the Lords and the Commons. The Lords, as in Hungary or Poland, included
both great prelates and lay magnates. The House of Commons developed
features not found on the Continent. Lesser landholders, the people who elsewhere counted
as small nobles, sat in the same House of Commons with representatives of the towns. This
mingling of classes in England, the willingness of townsmen to follow the leadership of
the gentry, and of the gentry to respect the interests of townsmen, helped to root represen-
tative institutions in England more deeply than in other countries during the medieval era.
Moreover, England was a small country in the Middle Ages. There were no provincial or
local parliamentary bodies (as in France, the Holy Roman Empire, or Poland) which might
jealously cut into the powers of the central body or with which the king could make local
arrangements without violating the principle of representative government. And fi nally,
as a reason for the growing strength of Parliament in England, the elected members of the
House of Commons very early obtained the power to commit their constituents. If they voted a tax, those who elected them had to pay it. The king, in order to get matters decided,
insisted that the votes be binding. Constituents were not allowed to repudiate the vote of
their deputies, nor to punish or harass them when they came home, as often happened in
other countries. Parliament thus exercised power as well as rights.
The three estates
England’s Parliament
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe38
In summary, the three centuries of the High Middle Ages laid foundations both for
order and for freedom. Slavery was defunct and serfdom was expiring. Politically, the
multitude of free chartered towns, the growth of juries in some places, and the rise of
parliaments everywhere provided means by which peoples could take some part in their
governments. The ancient civilizations had never created a free political unit larger than
the city-state. The Greeks had never carried democracy beyond the confi nes within which
people could meet in person, nor had the Romans devised means by which, in a large
state, the governed could share any responsibilities with an offi cial bureaucracy. The
ancients had never developed the idea of representative government, or of government
by duly elected and authorized representatives acting at a distance from home. The idea is
by no means as obvious or simple as it looks. It fi rst appeared in the realms of medieval
European monarchies, and, after much subsequent development, it would become a funda-
mental principle for political systems in most of the modern world.
4. THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES: THE CHURCH
So far in our account of the High Middle Ages we have told the story of Hamlet without
speaking of the Prince of Denmark, for we have left aside the church, except, indeed, when
some mention of it could not be avoided. In the real life of the time the church was omni-
present. Religion permeated every sphere of political, social, and cultural life. In feudalism
the mutual duties of lord and vassal were confi rmed by religious oaths, and bishops and
abbots, as holders of lands, became feudal personages themselves. In the monarchies, the
king was crowned by the chief churchman of his kingdom, adjured to rule with justice
and piety, and anointed with holy oils. In the towns, guilds served as lay religious brother-
hoods; each guild chose a patron saint and marched in the streets on holy days. For amuse-
ment the townspeople watched religious dramas, the morality and miracle plays in which
religious themes were enacted. The rising town, if it harbored a bishop, took special care
to erect a new cathedral. Years of effort and of religious fervor produced the Gothic cathe-
drals that still stand as the best-known memorials of medieval civilization. Intellectual life
was also closely tied to the church, so that religious thinkers shaped the main philosophical
debates of the era, and the most infl uential writers were clergymen.
The Development of the Medieval Church and Papacy
If, however, we turn back to the tenth century, the troubled years before
1000, we fi nd the church in as dubious a condition as everything else. It
was fragmented and localized. Every bishop went his own way. Though
the clergy was the only literate class, many of the clergy themselves could
not read and write. Christian belief was mixed with the old pagan magic and superstition,
and most Christians knew nothing about the theology that had shaped the traditions of the
Catholic church. The monasteries were in decay. Priests often lived in a concubinage that
was generally condoned. It was customary for them to marry, so that they had recognized
children, to whom they intrigued to pass on their churchly position. Powerful laymen
often dominated their ecclesiastical neighbors, with the big lords appointing the bishops
and the little ones appointing the parish priests. When people thought about Rome at
all, they could barely imagine a place that was legendary and far away; but the bishop
of Rome, or pope, had no infl uence and was treated in unseemly fashion by nobles in
his own city.
The church in crisis
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39
The Roman Catholic church is in fact unrecognizable in the jumble of the tenth cen-
tury. So far at least as human effort was concerned, it was virtually created in the eleventh
century along with the other institutions of the High Middle Ages.
The impulse to reform came from many quarters. Sometimes a secular
ruler undertook to correct conditions in his own domains. For this purpose
he asserted a strict control over his clergy. In 962 the Holy Roman Empire
was proclaimed. This empire, like the Carolingian and Roman empires that it was sup-
posed to continue, was in theory coterminous with Latin Christendom itself and endowed
with a special mission to preserve and extend the Christian faith. Neither in France nor in
England (nor, when they became Christian states, in Spain, Hungary, Poland, or Scandi-
navia) was this claim of the Holy Roman Empire ever acknowledged. But the empire did
for a time embrace Italy as well as Germany. The fi rst emperors, in the tenth and elev-
enth centuries, denouncing the conditions of the church in Rome, strove to make the pope
their appointee.
At the same time a reform movement arose from spiritual sources. Serious Christians
took matters into their own hands. They founded a new monastery at Cluny in France,
which soon had many affi liated houses. It was their purpose to purify monastic life and
to set a higher Christian ideal to which all clergy and laity might aspire. To rid them-
selves of immediate local pressures, the greed, narrowness, ignorance, family ambition,
Reform efforts
500–300 B.C.E. Creative era of Classical Greek Civilization: Plato, Aristotle
46 B.C.E. Roman Republic conquers Greece
45–31 B.C.E. Roman Republic evolves into the Roman Empire
c. 26–29 C.E. Jesus is active in Palestine; beginnings of Christianity
306–337 Roman Emperor Constantine: toleration of Christianity
c. 420 St. Augustine writes City of God
476 End of Roman Empire in the West
450–750 Roman Catholic Church gains converts and infl uence in Western Europe
610–632 Prophet Muhammad teaches the new religion of Islam
635–750 Islam spreads across Middle East, North Africa, and Spain
800 Coronation of Emperor Charlemagne; the Carolingian Empire
1000–1200 Improvements in European agriculture and rise of towns
1054 Schism of Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Eastern Church
1095–1099 First Christian Crusade in Palestine
1100–1200 Arabic and Greek science enters European Culture
1147–1221 Second-Fifth Christian Crusades
1198–1216 Pope Innocent III: height of Medieval Papacy
1100–1300 Development of Universities and Scholasticism
1267–1273 Thomas Aquinas writes the Summa Theologica
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 500 B.C.E.–1300 C.E.
4. The High Middle Ages: The Church
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe40
and self-satisfi ed inertia that were the main causes of corruption, the Cluniacs refused to
recognize any authority except that of Rome itself. Thus, at the very time when conditions
in Rome were at their worst, Christians throughout Europe built up the prestige of Rome,
of the idea of Rome, as a means to raise all Latin Christendom from its depths.
As for the popes in Rome, those who preserved any independence of judgment or
respect for their own offi ce, it was their general plan to free themselves from the Roman
mobs and aristocrats without falling into dependence upon the Holy Roman Emperor. In
1059 Pope Nicholas II issued a decree providing that future popes should be elected by the
cardinals, who at that time, were the priests of churches in the city of Rome or bishops of
neighboring dioceses. By entrusting the choice of future popes to them, Pope Nicholas
hoped to exclude all infl uence from outside the clergy itself. Popes have been elected by
cardinals ever since, though not always without infl uence from outside.
One of the fi rst popes so elected was Gregory VII, known also as
Hildebrand, a dynamic and strong-willed man who was pope from 1073 to
1085. He had been in touch with the Cluniac reformers, and dreamed of a
reformed and reinvigorated Europe under the universal guidance of the
Roman pontiff. Gregory believed that the church should stand apart from worldly society,
that it should judge and guide all human actions, and that a pope had the supreme power to
judge and punish kings and emperors if he deemed them sinful. His ideal was a world
church offi cered by a single-minded and disciplined clergy, centralized under a single
authority. He began by insisting that the clergy free itself of worldly involvements.
He required married priests to put aside their wives and families. Celibacy of the clergy,
never generally established in the Greek Orthodox church, and later rejected by Protes-
tants in the West, became the rule for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Gregory insisted
also that no ecclesiastic might receive offi ce through appointment by a layman. In his
view only clergy might institute or infl uence clergy, for the clergy must be independent
and self-contained.
Gregory soon faced a battle with that other aspirant to universal suprem-
acy and a sacred mission, the Holy Roman Emperor, who at this time was
Henry IV. In Germany the bishops and abbots possessed a great deal of the
land, which they held and governed under the emperor as feudal magnates
in their own right. To the emperor it was vitally important to have his own men, as reliable
vassals, in these great positions. Hence in Germany “lay investiture” had become very
common. Lay investiture meant the practice by which a layman, the emperor, conferred
upon the new bishop the signs of his spiritual authority, the ring and the staff. Gregory pro-
hibited lay investiture. He supported the German bishops and nobles when they rebelled
against Henry, but the emperor remained obstinate. Gregory then excommunicated him,
that is, outlawed him from Christian society by forbidding any priest to give him the sac-
raments. Henry, baffl ed, sought out the pope at Canossa in Italy to do penance. “To go to
Canossa” in later times became a byword for submission to the will of Rome.
In 1122, after both original contenders had died, a compromise on the matter of lay
investiture was effected by which bishops recognized the emperor as their feudal head but
looked to Rome for spiritual authority. But the struggle between popes and emperors went
on unabated. The magnates of Germany, lay lords as well as bishops, often allied with the
pope to preserve their own feudal liberties from the emperor. The emperor in Germany
was never able to consolidate his domains as did the kings in England and France. The
unwillingness of lords and churchmen (and of towns also, as we have seen) to let the
emperors build up an effective government left its mark permanently upon Europe in two
Gregory VII
Lay investiture
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41
ways. It contributed to the centralization of Latin Christendom under Rome, while it
blocked the development of a more unifi ed monarchical state in central Europe.
The height of the medieval papacy came with Innocent III, whose
pontifi cate lasted from 1198 to 1216. Innocent virtually realized Gregory’s
dream of a unifi ed Christian world. He intervened in politics everywhere.
He was recognized as a supreme arbiter. At his word, a king of France took a wife, a king
of England accepted an unwanted archbishop, a king of León put aside the cousin whom
he had married, and a claimant to the crown of Hungary deferred to his rival. The kings of
England, Aragon, and Portugal acknowledged him as feudal overlord within their realms.
Huge revenues now fl owed to Rome from all over Latin Christendom, and an enormous
bureaucracy worked there to dispatch the voluminous business of the papal court. As kings
struggled to repress civil rebellion, so Innocent and his successors struggled to repress her-
esy, which, defi ned as doctrine at variance with that of the church at large, was becoming
alarmingly common among the Albigensians of southern France.
In 1215 Innocent called a great church council, the greatest since antiquity, attended
by 500 bishops and even by the patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem. The council
labored at the perplexing task of keeping the clergy from worldly temptations. By forbid-
ding priests to offi ciate at ordeals or trials by battle, it virtually ended these survivals of
pre-Christian judgments and punishments. It attempted to regularize belief in the super-
natural by controlling the superstitious traffi c in relics. It declared the sacraments to be the
channel of God’s saving grace and defi ned them authoritatively. 1 In the chief sacrament,
the Eucharist or Mass, it promulgated the dogma of transubstantiation, which held that, in
the Mass, the priest converts the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s
body and blood. Except for heretics, who were suppressed, the reforms and doctrines of
Innocent’s council were accepted with satisfaction throughout Latin Europe.
Intellectual Life: The Universities, Scholasticism
Under the auspices of the church, as rising governments gave more civil security, and as
the economy of town and country became able to support people devoted to a life of
thought, the intellectual horizon of Europeans began to open. The twelfth and thirteenth
centuries saw the founding of the fi rst universities. These originated in the
natural and spontaneous coming together of teachers and students that had
never wholly disappeared even in the most chaotic era of the early Middle
Ages. By 1200 there was a center of medical studies at Salerno in south
Italy, of legal studies at Bologna in north Italy, of theological studies at
Paris. Oxford was founded about 1200 by a secession of disgruntled students and profes-
sors from Paris; Cambridge, shortly thereafter. By 1300 there were a dozen such universi-
ties in Latin Europe; by 1500 there were almost a hundred.
As the early agglomerations of traders developed into organized towns and guilds, so
the informal concourses of students and teachers developed into organized institutions of
learning, receiving the sharp corporate stamp that was characteristic of the High Middle
Innocent III
The founding of
universities
1 A sacrament is understood to be the outward sign of an inward grace. In Catholic doctrine the sacraments were
and are seven in number: baptism, confi rmation, penance, the Eucharist, extreme unction, marriage, and holy
orders. Except for baptism, a sacrament may be administered only by a priest. A dogma is the common belief of
the church, in which all the faithful share and must share so long as they are members of the church. Dogmas are
regarded as implicitly the same in all ages; they cannot be invented or developed, but may from time to time be
clarifi ed, defi ned, promulgated, or proclaimed.
4. The High Middle Ages: The Church
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe42
Ages. It was in having this corporate identity that medieval universities resembled our own
and differed from the schools of Athens or Alexandria in ancient times. A university, the
University of Paris, for example, was a body of individuals, young and old, interested in
learning and endowed by law with a communal name and existence. It possessed defi nite
liberties under some kind of charter, regulated its own affairs through its own offi cials, and
kept its own order among its often boisterous population. It gave, and even advertised,
courses and lectures, and it decided collectively which professors were the best qualifi ed to
teach. It might consist of distinct schools or “faculties”—the combination of theology,
law, and medicine, as at Paris, was the most usual. It held examinations and awarded
degrees, whose meaning and value were recognized throughout the Latin West. The
degree, which originated as a license to teach, admitted its holder to certain honors or
privileges in the same way that members of other guilds were authorized to practice a spe-
cifi c craft. With such degrees, professors might readily move from one university to
another. Students moved easily also because all universities used the Latin language and
offered a similar curriculum. The university, moreover, though typically beginning in pov-
erty, was a corporate body capable of holding property; and the benefactions of pious
donors often built up substantial endowments in lands and manors. So organized, free from
outside control, and enjoying an income from property, the university lived on as a perma-
nent institution, through good times and bad.
The queen of the sciences was theology, the intellectual study of reli-
gion. Many in Europe, by the eleventh century, were beginning to refl ect
upon their beliefs. They continued to believe in God but could no longer
believe with unthinking acceptance. It was accepted as a fact, for example,
that the Son of God had been incarnated as a man in Jesus Christ. But in the eleventh cen-
tury an Italian named Anselm, who became archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a treatise
called Cur Deus Homo? —“Why Did God Become Man?”—giving reasoned explanations to show why God had taken human form to save sinful human beings. Anselm argued that
reason strongly supported the Christian faith in God. Soon afterward Abelard, who taught
at Paris, wrote his Sic et Non —“Yes and No” or “Pro and Con”—a collection of inconsis- tent statements made by St. Augustine and other Fathers of the Church. Abelard’s purpose
was to apply logic to the inherited mass of patristic writings, show wherein the truth of
Christian doctrine really lay, and so make the faith consistent with reason and refl ection.
Meanwhile, in the twelfth century a great stream of new knowledge
poured into Europe, bringing about a veritable intellectual revolution. It
was derived from the Arabs, with whom Christians were in contact in Sicily
and Spain. The Arabs, as has been seen, had taken over the ancient Greek
science, translated Greek writings into Arabic, and in many ways added
further refi nements of their own. Bilingual Christians (assisted by numerous learned Jews
who traveled readily between the Christian and Muslim worlds) translated these works
into Latin. Above all, they translated Aristotle, the great codifi er of Greek knowledge who
had lived and written in the fourth century b.c.e. The Europeans, drawing on the com-
mentaries of Muslim scholars such as Averroës (1126–1198), were overwhelmed by this
sudden disclosure of an undreamed universe of knowledge. Aristotle became The Philoso-
pher, the unparalleled authority on all branches of knowledge other than religious.
The great problem for Europeans was how to digest the gigantic bulk of Aristotle,
or, in more general terms, how to assimilate or reconcile the body of Greek and Arabic
learning to the Christian faith. The universities, with their “scholastic” philosophers or
“schoolmen,” performed this function. Most eminent of scholastics was Thomas Aquinas
(1225–1274), the Angelic Doctor, known also to his own contemporaries as the Dumb Ox
Theology
Arabic and Greek
learning
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43
THE MEETING OF ST. ANTHONY AND ST. PAUL by Sassetta (Italian, 1392–1450)
This picture conveys the abstractness of medieval thought in which “realism” meant a belief in the reality of permanent ideas (a belief that might now be called “idealism”). There is no attempt to portray the fi gures as unique individuals; they are typical saints with the halos designating sacred persons. St. Anthony appears in three places—walking alone, converting a centaur, and embracing St. Paul. The forest and hills represent the general idea of trees or mounds of earth, but there is no physical specifi city in these representations of nature. ( National Gallery of Art)
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe44
THOMAS AQUINAS by Fra Bartelemo (Italian, 1472–1517)
Thomas Aquinas combined Aristotelian knowledge with Christian faith in his scholastic theology, thus gaining perma- nent respect (and sainthood) from the Catholic Church and artistic recognition from painters such as Fra Bartelemo. (Nicolo Orsi Battaglini/Art Resource, NY)
from the slow deliberation of his speech. His chief work, appropriately called the Summa Theologica, was a survey of all knowledge.
The chief accomplishment of Thomas Aquinas was his demonstration
that faith and reason could not be in confl ict. By reason he meant a severely
logical method, with exact defi nition of words and concepts, deducing step
by step what follows and must follow if certain premises are accepted. His
philosophy is classifi ed as a form of moderate “realism,” a term whose medieval meaning
differed from its common usage today. For medieval philosophers realism meant that the
general idea or abstraction is more “real” than the particular—that “man” or “woman” is
more real than this or that man or woman, that “law” as such is more real and binding than
this or that particular law. He derived his philosophy from what he took to be the enduring,
transcendent nature of God, of law, of reason, of human life, and of beings in general.
Thomas taught a hierarchic view of the universe and of society, of which God was the
apex. All things and all people were subordinated to God in a descending order, each
bound to fulfi ll the role set by its own place and nature. It was the emphasis on the superior
reality of abstractions that enabled people in the Middle Ages to believe steadfastly in the
church while freely attacking individual churchmen, to have faith in the papacy while
denouncing the popes as scoundrels—or to accept without diffi culty the mystery of tran-
substantiation, which declared that what admittedly looked and tasted like bread and wine
was, in real inner substance, the body of Christ.
The scholastic philosophy, as perfected by Thomas Aquinas, was not
very favorable to the growth of natural science, because its emphasis on an
inner reality drew attention away from the actual details and behavior of
Thomas Aquinas
Scholasticism
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45
concrete things. On the other hand, the scholastic philosophy laid foundations on which
later European thought was to be reared. It habituated Europeans to great exactness, to care-
ful distinctions, even to the splitting of hairs. It called for disciplined thinking. And it made
the world safe for reason. If any historical generalization may be made safely, it may be
said that any society that believes reason to threaten its foundations will suppress reason. In
Thomas’s time, there were some who said that Aristotle and the Arabs were infi dels, dan-
gerous infl uences that must be silenced. Any reasoning about the faith, they warned, was a
form of weakness. Thomas’s doctrine that faith could not be endangered by reason gave a
freedom to thinkers to go on thinking.
The Crusades; New Invasions; Europe by 1300
Meanwhile, the West was beginning to expand. Europe in the eleventh century launched
a military offensive against Islam, and most of Latin Christendom went on the Crusades.
War itself was subordinated to the purposes of religion.
CRUSADING ACTIVITY, 1100–1250 Medieval Christendom expanded geographically until about 1250. Darker regions are those christianized shortly before and after 1000. Arrows indicate organized military-religious expe- ditions, which by 1250 had ended the Muslim control in most of Spain but had failed to do so in the Holy Land. Dates are rounded and very rough.
B A L T
I C S E
A
0 200 400 miles
Regions Christianized after about 900 C.E.
Muslims in Granada, North Africa, and the Holy Land
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
CASTILLE AND LEÓN
GRANADA
VALENCIA
ARAGON
NAVARRE
HOLY LAND
Ea st
er n
Li m
it o
f La
ti n
C h
ri st
ia n
it y
LIVONIA
PRUSSIA POMERANIA
PORTUGAL
SPAIN
ALBIGENSIANS
Finns Converted by Swedes c. 1150
c. 1250
1000–125
1070– 1100
1000– 1250
c. 1250
Teuton ic K
nig ht
s 1
10 0–
12 5
Paris
Byzantium (Constantinople)
London
Rome
Venice
Antioch
Jerusalem
Tripoli Tyre
Acre Jaffa
Damascus
4. The High Middle Ages: The Church
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe46
The most ambitious, best remembered, and least successful of such expeditions were
the Crusades to win back the Holy Land. The First Crusade was preached in 1095 by Pope
Urban II, who hoped thereby to advance the peace of God by draining off
bellicose nobles to fi ght the infi dels and to build up the pope’s leadership in
Europe. Crusades to the Holy Land, with varying success, and sometimes
departing woefully from their religious aims, went on intermittently for
200 years. It was the growth of Italian shipping in the Mediterranean, the
rise of more orderly feudal monarchies, and the increasing sense of a Europe-wide com-
mon purpose that made possible the assembly and transport of considerable forces over a
great distance. But the motivation for such Crusades, especially in the beginning, came
mostly from a wave of religious fervor that brought nobles and commoners alike into the
Crusader armies. This fervor contributed to brutal, deadly attacks on Jewish communities
within Europe as well as to the extraordinary violence against entire Muslim populations
in cities such as Antioch and Jerusalem. At the same time, however, the Crusades gave
Europeans a new awareness of the world beyond their own local realms of religion and
small-town economies. Historians have argued that the Crusaders’ contacts with Arab
societies in the Middle East stimulated subsequent European economic development and a
new cultural identity among “Western” peoples. Although this argument points to impor-
tant consequences of the Crusades, it is also true that the campaigns against Islam grew out
of Europe’s own growing political and military strength. For a century the Latin Christians
occupied parts of Palestine and Syria. But military defeats forced them to withdraw in the
thirteenth century, and the Muslims remained in possession.
Other crusades (for such they were) had more lasting results. A party
of Normans won Sicily from the Arabs about 1100. Iberian Christians,
descending from the mountains of northern Spain, carried on a recon- quista of two centuries against the Moors. By 1250 they had staked out
the Christian kingdoms of Portugal, León, Castile, Aragon, and Valencia, leaving the
Muslims only Granada in the extreme south, which was conquered much later, in 1492.
In southern France, a crusade against the Albigensians in the thirteenth century put down
the heretics, those born in the Christian faith but erring from the church’s reigning inter-
pretations of it. The Albigensians, for example, believed that the moral corruption of
the clergy betrayed the spiritual essence of Christianity—a claim that church offi cials
could never accept. Crusading expeditions were also launched against a few remaining
“heathen” populations in northeastern Europe. The Teutonic Order, a military-religious
society of knights founded originally to fi ght in the Holy Land, transferred its operations
to the north. Christianity was thus brought by the sword to eastern Prussia and the east
Baltic regions.
About the year 1250 there developed a new threat of invasion from Asia. As the Huns
had burst out of Asia in the fi fth century, and the Magyars in the ninth, so now the Tartars
appeared in the thirteenth century, to be followed in the fourteenth by the Ottoman Turks.
We shall see how the Turks long continued to press upon central Europe. But, on the whole,
by the thirteenth century, Europe was capable of resistance. Always until then it had been
vulnerable as an outlying, backward, thinly populated protuberance from the Eurasian land
mass. It had lain open in the remote past to wandering Indo-Europeans, then to Roman
imperial conquerors, to Germanic barbarians, to Huns, Magyars, and, in part, the Arabs. All
these were gradually assimilated by the Roman church, the Latin language, the common
institutions of feudalism, monarchy, a free town life, parliamentary assemblies, and scho-
lastic learning. An increasingly connected and coherent culture ran from England to Sicily
and from Portugal to Poland.
Crusades to the Holy
Land
Other crusades
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47
By 1300 the “rise of Europe” was an accomplished fact. The third of the three seg-
ments into which the Greco-Roman world had divided, the one that in 700 c.e. had been
the most isolated and fragmented, now some 600 years later had a civiliza-
tion of its own. It was still only one among the several great cultures of the
world, such as the Islamic, Byzantine, Indian, and Chinese. It enjoyed no
preeminence. The Chinese Empire, for example, in the thirteenth century,
had cities whose population reached into millions. It had an affl uent merchant class, great
textile manufacturers, and an iron industry that produced over 100,000 tons a year. The arts
and sciences were assiduously pursued. Government was centralized and complex; it
issued paper money and employed a civil service recruited by competitive examinations.
Books on religious, technical, and agricultural subjects, including whole multivolume
encyclopedias, were printed in enormous numbers, even though the lack of an alphabet and
the thousands of Chinese characters made it diffi cult for literacy to become widespread.
The Venetian Marco Polo was dazzled by the China that he lived in from 1275 to 1292.
Many have asked why China did not generate, as Europe did in these centuries, the
main forces that ultimately led to the modern scientifi c and industrial world. One answer is
suggested by the fact that it was Europeans such as Marco Polo who went to China, not
The “rise of Europe”
Europeans took pride in their crusading armies, represented here in a medieval image of the conquest of Antioch in 1098 during the First Crusade. (Bibliotheque Municipale, Lyon, France/Art Resource, NY)
4. The High Middle Ages: The Church
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Chapter 1 The Rise of Europe48
Chinese who went to Europe. In the fi fteenth century, over the years 1405 to 1433, a Ming
emperor launched a large-scale series of long-range naval expeditions, seven in all, headed
by his admiral Zheng He (also known in English as Cheng Ho). The expeditions sailed to
ports in Southeast Asia, India, the Persian Gulf, and East Africa, exchanging gifts in trans-
actions that recognized the emperor’s power and prestige. But the emperor and his advis-
ers ultimately terminated the entire venture. China turned away from distant overseas
commercial opportunities in this period, and the Chinese government turned inward to the
protection and expansion of its land frontiers. It was the Europeans who later pursued the
development of trade in India and also crossed the Atlantic to discover America. Europe-
ans gradually became more interested in exploring other lands and developing new kinds
of trade, perhaps because in Europe there was no all-embracing empire as in China, but
kings, lords, and towns that competed with each other. With religion and the church kept
distinct from the state, the search for what one should do with one’s life became less
dependent on the power of a unifying imperial or religious system. Europe was disorderly
and full of confl ict—rivalries and wars between kings, quarrels between kings and their
barons, disputes between church and state, clashes between lords and their peasant work-
ers. Much of this confl ict was destructive, yet there was also a kind of opportunity or free-
dom in such disorder and a dynamism that promoted change.
European civilization in 1300 was by no means a modern society, yet
the ancient and medieval cultures on European lands had created institu-
tions and traditions that have remained infl uential even in the most recent
eras of modern world history. By 1300 people in Europe had developed
separate (at times contending) institutions of church and state to control a growing popula-
tion, economic institutions to promote urban commerce and long-distance trade, judicial
and parliamentary councils to codify or revise the law, and universities to teach or rede-
fi ne their intellectual traditions. These traditions included a pervasive faith in Christianity,
but the ancient Christian beliefs were challenged, revised, and extended by other ancient
traditions of rhetoric, philosophy, and rational inquiry—all of which contributed to the
emergence of what is now called early modern history.
European civilization
in 1300
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
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49
C h a p t e r 2 THE UPHEAVAL IN WESTERN CHRISTENDOM, 1300–1560
In the transition from traditional to more mod- ern forms of society, people in all the old civiliza-
tions have reexamined their religious base. Today
we can observe this process at work everywhere:
the Chinese reconsider the age-old teachings of
Confucius, the Muslims enter into wider activities
than those known to the Qur’an, and the peoples of
India are rapidly expanding an economy in which
historic Hindu practices no longer form the domi-
nant pattern. People in modern societies do not nec-
essarily reject their ancestral religion. In fact, they
may strongly reaffi rm it, but they usually try also
to adapt it to modern economic and political condi-
tions and to make room for new and non religious
interests. The process of developing various activities outside the sphere of religion is
called “secularization.”
Latin Christendom was the fi rst of the world’s major religious cultures to become
“secularized.” In the very long run it was those aspects of European civilization that were
least associated with Christianity, such as natural science and industrial technology, or
military and economic power, that the non-European world proved to be most willing to
adopt. If in our own time there has come to be such a thing as a global civilization, it is
because all the world’s great traditional cultures have been increasingly secularized. This
secularization of human cultures, although often challenged by popular religious move-
ments in the contemporary world, remains one of the decisive trends in modern world his-
tory, and it is a trend that began to appear in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages.
The Europe that had become both expansive and more prosperous by the thirteenth
century soon entered upon a series of disasters. The Mongols after about 1240 held
Russia in subjugation for 200 years. The Ottoman Turks, who had originated in central
Asia, penetrated the Byzantine Empire, crushed the medieval Serbian kingdom at the battle
of Kosovo in 1389, and spread over the Balkans. They took Constantinople itself in 1453.
5. Disasters of the Fourteenth
Century
6. The Renaissance in Italy
7. The Renaissance outside
Italy
8. The New Monarchies
9. The Protestant Reformation
10. Catholicism Reformed
and Reorganized
Chapter emblem: Detail from A Portrait of a Family by Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614). (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156050
Eastern Christianity continued to exist, but under alien political domination. Latin
Christianity, reaching from Poland and Hungary to the Atlantic, remained independent but
was beset with troubles. The authority of the papacy and of the Roman Catholic church was
called into question. Eventually the Protestant churches emerged, and the religious unity
of medieval civilization disappeared. Yet new forces also asserted themselves alongside
or outside the religious tradition. Government, law, philosophy, science, the arts, material
and economic activities were pursued with less regard for Christian values. Power, order,
beauty, wealth, knowledge, and control of nature were regarded as desirable in themselves.
In this mixture of decline and revival, of religious revolution and secularization,
medieval Christendom evolved into the social, political, and cultural world of early mod-
ern Europe.
5. DISASTERS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
The Black Death and Its Consequences
During the fourteenth century, and quite abruptly, about a third of the population of Europe
was wiped out. Although it is impossible to know exactly how many people lived in medi-
eval Europe, modern demographic historians have estimated that the total population fell
from more than 80 million in the early 1300s to roughly 60 million in 1400;
and Europe’s population did not return to pre-plague levels until the six-
teenth century (see the graph on p. 51). Some died in sporadic local famines
that began to appear after 1300. The great killer, however, was the plague,
or Black Death, which fi rst struck Europe in 1348. The precise medical cause of the plague
is still debated. Most modern historians believe that the disease was carried by rats, but this
theory may not explain how the contagion moved so quickly across Europe or why so
many humans became vulnerable to a bacillus that normally lives in rodents. Despite the
uncertainty about its physiological origins, historians agree that the plague had decisive
effects on European social life. Since the plague returned at irregular and unpredictable
intervals, and killed off the young as well as the old, it disrupted marriage and family life
and made it impossible for many years for Europe to regain the former level of population.
In some places whole villages disappeared. Cultivated fi elds were abandoned for want of
able-bodied men and women to work them. The towns were especially vulnerable, because
the contagion spread quickly through populations crowded within town walls. Trade and
exchange were obstructed; prices, wages, and incomes moved erratically; famine made its
victims more susceptible to disease; and deaths from the plague contributed to famine. The
living were preoccupied with the burial of the dead and with fears for their own future.
There were immediate social and political repercussions. In some cases, survivors
benefi ted because the scarcity of labor led to higher wages. On the other hand, in the gen-
eral disorganization, and with landowners and urban employers decimated also, many of
the poor could fi nd no work or took to vagabondage and begging. The upper classes, acting
through governments, attempted to control wages and prices. Rebellions
of workers broke out in various towns, especially in Flanders, and there
were massive insurrections of peasants in many parts of Europe. In France
these were called “jacqueries” (from “Jacques,” a nickname for a peas-
ant), of which the fi rst was in 1358. In England a similar large-scale uprising in 1381 came
to be known as Wat Tyler’s rebellion. Sometimes the spokesmen for these movements
went beyond their immediate grievances to raise broader social questions about why some
The Black Death
Revolts and repression
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515. Disasters of the Fourteenth Century
should be rich and others poor. Governments and the upper classes replied to this menace
with ferocious repression. The peasants generally returned to their usual labors. Yet some-
thing was gained for the rural workers, at least in the long run, as underlying economic
and demographic forces continued to assert themselves. The landowners, or feudal class,
in order to get the work done on their manors and assure their own incomes, had to offer
more favorable terms. These included, for example, the giving of lifetime tenures to peas-
ant families, in return for fi xed payment of sums of money. Over the years many of these
peasant holdings became hereditary and the value of money decreased, so that payment of
a shilling, for example, which in 1400 represented a signifi cant amount, became much less
burdensome for the rural worker by 1600. In effect, a class of small peasant property owners
began to emerge in much of Europe.
The kings also, who had been building up their position against the church and the
feudal lords since the eleventh century, found their problems complicated by the disasters
of the fourteenth. They still had their governments to maintain, and their ambitions to sat-
isfy, even if death removed large fractions of their subjects. They even had to increase their
incomes, as it became usual for kings to employ royal armies of foot soldiers against the
recurring possibility of feudal resistance. Various means of increasing the royal spending
power were devised. Currency was debased; that is, the king ordered a given weight of gold
or silver to represent a larger number of monetary units. Thus he temporarily had more
money, but the result was infl ation and higher prices, that is, the declining value of money
already mentioned. New taxes were introduced. About 1300 the kings of both England and
France undertook to tax the landowning clergy of their respective kingdoms. The kings
made increasing demands as well on great noble landholders and urban merchants. These
demands were resisted, or made subject to bargains by the representative bodies whose
origin was described in the last chapter, so that the fourteenth century, and still more the
fi fteenth, has been called the “golden age” of the medieval parliaments.
This graph shows the growth of Europe’s population after 1200, the far-reaching demographic impact of the Black Death in the fourteenth century, and the gradual revival of the European population during the fi fteenth century. Source: Massimo Livi-Bacci, A Concise History of World Population, 5th ed. (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2012).
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110 Estimated Population of Europe, 1200 –1600
1200 1340 1400 1500 1600
M il li o
n s
o f
p e rs
o n
s
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156052
In 1337 the Hundred Years’ War began between England and France. The battles all
took place in France, which was internally divided, some parts, like Aquitaine, having long
belonged to the English crown. France was ravaged by marauding bands of English sol-
diers and their French adherents, until French forces began to achieve mili-
tary victories under the inspired leadership of Joan of Arc, the young
woman whom the English burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431 after she
was convicted by the church of heresy and witchcraft. The war eventually
ended in 1453, when the English lost a fi nal, decisive battle and gave up
their long campaign for territories on the continent, but the French suffered the greatest
human and material losses during the many decades of fi ghting and social disruption. The
costly century of warfare also had important consequences in England, however, and a
kind of early patriotism arose among the English as their soldiers used longbows to defeat
the mounted French knights at places such as Agincourt. Parliament widened its powers as
the kings needed money for their campaigns. But the great English barons also became
more unruly, and internal disorders fractured England throughout the fi fteenth century.
Dukes and earls and their followers formed private armies and fought with each other; they
defi ed the royal law courts and intimidated juries, used Parliament and government for
their own purposes, and exploited their peasants. From about 1450 until 1485 England was
beset by upper-class turmoil that came to be called the Wars of the Roses, because the
opposing noble factions adopted red and white roses as their symbols.
Troubles of the Medieval Church
Meanwhile similar calamities affl icted the church. In 1300, the church of the High Middle
Ages, centralized in the papacy, stood at its zenith. But the church was weakened by its
very successes. It faced the danger that besets every successful institution—a form of gov-
ernment or a university, to choose modern examples—the danger of believing that the
institution exists for the benefi t of those who conduct its affairs. The papacy, being at the
top, was the most liable to this danger. It became “corrupt,” set in its ways, out of touch
with public opinion, and controlled by a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. It was unable to
reform itself, and unwilling to let anyone else reform it.
Both Edward I of England and Philip the Fair of France, in the 1290s, assessed taxes
on the landed estates belonging to the great abbeys, bishoprics, and other components of the
church. The pope, Boniface VIII, prohibited the taxation of clergy by the civil ruler. In the
ensuing altercation, in 1302, he issued the famous bull, Unam Sanctam, the most extreme of all assertions of papal supremacy, which declared that outside the Roman
church there was no salvation, and that “every human creature” was “subject
to the Roman pontiff.” 1 The French king sent soldiers to arrest Boniface,
who soon died. French infl uence in the College of Cardinals brought about
the election of a pope who was expected to be subservient to King Philip,
and who took up his residence, with his court and offi cials, at Avignon on the lower Rhone
River, on what were then the borders of France. Thus began the “Babylonian Captivity” of
the church. The rest of Europe regarded the popes at Avignon throughout the century as tools
of the French monarchy, and the papacy lost much of its prestige as a universal institution.
The Hundred Years’
War
The “Babylonian
Captivity”
1 Bulls, so-called from the Latin word for their seal, are known by their fi rst one or two Latin words, which in this
case mean “one holy (church)”; a “bull,” while the most solemn form of papal edict, does not as such embody a
dogma; and it is not Catholic practice today to affi rm this policy of Boniface VIII.
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53
Attempts to correct the situation made matters worse. In 1378 the College of Cardinals,
torn by French and anti-French factions within it, elected two popes. Both were equally
legitimate, being chosen by cardinals, but one lived at Rome, one at Avignon, and neither
would resign. The French and their supporters recognized the Avignon pope; England and
most of Germany, the Roman. For forty years both lines were perpetuated. There were now
two papacies, estranged by the Great Schism of the West.
Never had the papacy been so externally magnifi cent as in the days of
the Captivity and the Schism. The papal court at Avignon surpassed the
courts of kings in splendor. The papal offi cialdom grew in numbers, ignor-
ing the deeper problems while busily transacting each day’s business. Papal
revenues mounted, and new papal taxes were devised. In the continuing movement of
funds from all over Europe to the papal court, from the thirteenth century on, a new class
of international bankers rose and prospered.
But the papacy, never so sumptuous, had never since the tenth century rested on such
shaky foundations. People pay willingly for institutions in which they believe, and admire
magnifi cence in leaders whom they respect. But before 1378, with the pope submissive to
France, and after 1378, with two popes and two papacies to support, there was growing
complaint at the extravagance and worldliness of papal rule. It must be remembered that
all this happened in a Europe traumatized by the plague, and with a declining number of
people expected to bear increasing fi nancial burdens. The most pious Christians were the
most shocked. They recognized the vital necessity of obtaining God’s grace, but with two
churches under two popes, each claiming to hold the keys of Peter, how could they be cer-
tain that their church gave true salvation? In a society that was still primarily a religious
community, this sense of religious insecurity was a source of uneasiness and dread.
The old moorings were weakened, the wrath of God seemed to be raining upon the
earth, and no one had the slightest notion of how to escape from the crisis. Symptoms of
mass neurosis appeared. Some people sought refuge in a hectic merriment
or luxury and self-indulgence. Others became preoccupied with grisly sub-
jects. Some frantically performed the Dance of Death in the cemeteries,
while others furtively celebrated the Black Mass, parodying religion in a
mad desire to appease the devil. The Order of Flagellants grew up; its members went
through the streets, two by two, beating each other with chains and whips. Religious anxi-
eties and fearful religious rumors contributed also to waves of anti-Jewish violence, mur-
der, and expulsion that spread across parts of France and Germany in the fourteenth
century. And it was at this time that people fi rst became obsessed with the fear of witches,
a delusion that would ultimately cause thousands of persons (often older women) to be
tortured and executed over the following three centuries.
Disaffection with the church, or the thought that it might not be the true or the only
way to salvation, spread in all ranks of society. It was not only kings who disputed the
claims of the clergy but also obscure parish priests, close to the distress of ordinary people,
who began to doubt the powers of their ecclesiastical superiors. One of
these humble clerics was William Langland, who in his Piers Plowman, in the 1360s, contrasted the sufferings of the honest poor with the hypocrisy
and corruption in high places. Such unsettling ideas spread very widely;
in England those who held them were known as Lollards. Since the actual poor left no
records, it is hard to say exactly what they thought, but some of their ideas were probably
expressed by John Wyclif, who taught at Oxford. About 1380, Wyclif was saying that the
true church could do without elaborate possessions, and even that an organized church
The Great Schism
Responses to crisis
Lollards and Hussites
5. Disasters of the Fourteenth Century
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156054
might not be necessary for salvation, since ordinary, devout persons could do without
priests and obtain salvation by reading the Bible, which he translated into English. Similar
ideas appeared in Bohemia in central Europe, with John Huss as their spokesman. Here
they became a national movement, for the Hussites were both a religious party and at the
same time a Slavic or Czech party protesting against the supremacy of the Germans who
lived in Bohemia. The Hussite wars ravaged central Europe for decades in the fi fteenth
century. The ideas of the Lollards and of Huss and Wyclif were branded as heresy, or
unacceptable deviations from the true doctrine of the church.
Infl uential and established persons did not yet turn to heresy, and still less to witch-
craft or fl agellation. Their answer to the needs of the day was to assemble a great Europe-
wide or general council of the church, in which reforms could be pressed by the whole
body of Christians upon the reluctant and rival popes.
The Conciliar Movement
In 1409 such a church council met at Pisa. All parts of the Latin West were represented.
The council declared both reigning popes deposed and obtained the due election of another,
but since the fi rst two refused to resign there were now three. In 1414 an even greater and
more fully attended council met at Constance. Its aims were three: to end the now threefold
Extreme expressions of religious anxiety appeared in the later Middle Ages among the fl agellants who wandered through towns beating themselves to appease the wrath of God. They are portrayed here in a later sixteenth-century engraving of their processions. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
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55
schism, to extirpate heresy, and to reform the church “in head and members,” or from top
to bottom. Not much was accomplished in reform. To discourage heresy, John Huss was
interrogated, condemned, and burned at the stake. The schism was ended. All three popes
were at last persuaded or compelled to withdraw, and another, Martin V, was elected. The
unity of the church, under the papacy, was at last restored.
The majority of the Council of Constance wished to make general
councils part of the permanent apparatus of the church. Martin V, however,
soon reaffi rmed the prerogatives of the papal offi ce, dissolved the Council
of Constance, and repudiated its decrees. The next 30 years saw a continu-
ing contest of wills between successive popes and successive councils.
In this battle for jurisdiction few reforms could be adopted, and fewer still could be
enforced. Increasingly the life of the church was corrupted by money. No one believed
in bribery, but everyone knew that many high churchmen (like many high civil offi cials
of the day) could be bribed. To buy or sell a church offi ce was a crime in
the canon law known as “simony,” but it was a crime that in the fi fteenth
century could not be suppressed. For churchmen to live with mistresses was
considered understandable, if unseemly; the standards of laymen in such
matters were not high; but for a bishop or other ecclesiastic to give lucrative
church positions to his own children (or other relatives) was the abuse known as nepotism,
and it, too, could not be eradicated. To sell divine grace for money, all agreed, was not
only wrong but also impossible. But in 1300 Boniface VIII had given encouragement to
the practice of “indulgences.” A person, if properly confessed, absolved, and truly repen-
tant, might, by obtaining an indulgence, be spared certain of the temporal punishments of
purgatory. One usually obtained such an indulgence in return for a donation of money. The
practice proved to be a fatally easy method of fundraising, despite complaints against the
sale of indulgences simply for money.
Gradually the popes prevailed over the councils. The conciliar movement was greatly
weakened for Christendom as a whole when the powerful French element secured its aims
by a local national arrangement. In the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, in 1438, the Gallican
(or French) church affi rmed the supremacy of councils over popes, declared its administra-
tive independence from the Holy See, suppressed the payment of some church taxes to
Rome, and forbade papal intervention in the appointment of French prelates. The papacy
thus lost infl uence in France, but the popes remained preeminent in Europe as a whole. In
1449, with the dissolution of the Council of Basel, the conciliar movement came to an end.
In 1450 a great Jubilee was held to celebrate the papal triumph.
The papacy, its prestige and freedom of action thus secured, now passed into the
hands of a series of cultivated gentlemen, men of the world, men of “modern” outlook
in tune with their times—the famous popes of the Renaissance. Some, like Nicholas V
(1447–1455) or Pius II (1458–1464), were accomplished scholars and con-
noisseurs of books. Some were like Innocent VIII (1484–1492), a pleas-
ant man who was the fi rst pope to dine in public with ladies. Alexander
VI (1492–1503), of the Spanish Borgia family, exploited his offi ce for the
benefi t of his relatives, trying to make his son Cesare Borgia the ruler of all
Italy, while his daughter, Lucretia Borgia, became duchess of Ferrara and gathered liter-
ary men and artists at her famous Renaissance court. Alexander VI’s successor, Julius II
(1503–1513), was a capable general, and Leo X (1513–1521) was a superb patron of archi-
tects and painters. But we must now describe the Italian Renaissance, in which worthies of
this kind were elevated to the Holy See.
General councils
Church corruption
and indulgences
The Renaissance
popes
5. Disasters of the Fourteenth Century
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156056
6. THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
In Italy in the fi fteenth century, and especially at Florence, we observe not merely a decay
of medieval certainties but the appearance of a new and invigorating attitude toward the
world. The Renaissance, a French word meaning “rebirth,” fi rst received its name from
those who thought of the Middle Ages as a dark time from which the human spirit had to
be awakened. It was called a re birth in the belief that people now, after a long interruption, had taken up and resumed a civilization like that of the Greco-Romans. Medieval people
had thought of the times of Aristotle or Cicero as not sharply distinct from their own. In the
Renaissance, with a new historical sense, arose the conception of “modern” and “ancient”
times, separated by a long period with a different lifestyle and appropriately called the
Middle Ages.
The basic institutions of Europe, the distinctive languages and national cultures, the
great frameworks of collective action in law, government, and economic production—all
originated in the Middle Ages. But the Renaissance marked a new era in thought and
feeling, by which Europe and its institutions were in the long run to be transformed. The
origins of modern natural science can be traced more to the medieval universities than to
the Renaissance thinkers. But it was in the Italy of the Quattrocento (as Italians call the
fi fteenth century) that other fi elds of thought and expression were fi rst cul-
tivated. The Italian infl uence in other countries, in these respects, remained
very strong for at least 200 years. It pertained to high culture, and hence to
a limited number of persons, but extended over the whole area represented
by literature and the arts—literature meaning all kinds of writing and the arts including
all products of human skill. The effects of the Italian Renaissance, though much modi-
fi ed with the passage of time, were evident in the books and art galleries of Europe and
America, and in the architecture of their cities, even after the revolution of modern art
in the early twentieth century. They involved the whole area of culture that was neither
theological nor scientifi c but concerned with moral and civic questions about what human
beings ought to be or ought to do, with the answers refl ected in matters of taste, style,
propriety, decorum, personal character, and education. In particular, it was in Renaissance
Italy that an almost purely secular attitude fi rst appeared, in which life was no longer seen
by leading thinkers as a brief preparation for the hereafter.
The Italian Cities and the New Conception of Life
The towns of Italy, so long as trade converged in the Mediterranean, were the biggest and
most bustling of all the towns that rose in Europe during the Middle Ages. The crafts of
Italy included many refi ned trades such as those of the goldsmith or stonecarver, which
were so zealously pursued that artisanship turned into art, and a delight in the beautiful
became common among all classes. Merchants made fortunes in commerce: they lent their
money to popes or princes and so made further fortunes as bankers. They bought the wares
of the craftsmen-artists. They rejoiced, not so much in money or the making of money, as
in the beautiful things and psychological satisfactions that money could buy; and if they
forgot the things that money could not buy, this is only to say again that their outlook was
becoming more “secular.”
The Italian towns were independent city-states. There was no king to
build up a government for Italy as a whole, and for several generations the
popes were either absent at Avignon or engaged in disputes arising from the
The Italian infl uence
The Italian city-states
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576. The Renaissance in Italy
Great Schism, so that the infl uence of Rome was unimportant. The merchant oligarchies,
each in its own city, enjoyed an unhampered stage on which to pursue interests other than
those of business. In some, as at Milan, they succumbed to or worked with a local prince or
despot. In others, as at Florence, Venice, and Genoa, they continued to govern themselves
as republics. They had the experience of contending for public offi ce, of suppressing popu-
lar revolt or winning popular favor, of producing works of public munifi cence, of making
alliances, hiring armies, outwitting rivals, and conducting affairs of state. In short, Italy
offered an environment in which human personalities could develop in many secular
directions.
All this was especially true in Florence, the chief city of Tuscany, which had grown
wealthy in the later Middle Ages from the production of woolens. In the fi fteenth century it
had a population of about 60,000, which made it only moderately large as
Italian cities went. Yet, like ancient Athens, Florence produced an extraordi-
nary sequence of gifted individuals. From the years of Dante, Petrarch, and
Boccaccio, who all died before 1375, to those of Machiavelli, who lived
until 1527, an amazing number of the leading fi gures of the Italian Renais-
sance were Florentines. Like Athens also, Florence lost its republican liberty as well as its
creative powers. Its history can be summarized in that of the Medici family. The founder of
the family fortunes was Giovanni (1360–1429), a merchant and banker of Florence. His
son, Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464), allying himself with the popular element against
The Medici family
The wealthiest persons in Ital- ian towns were often bankers who made money from the kind of fi nancial exchange that is portrayed in this fi fteenth- century illustration. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156058
some of the leading families of the republic, soon became unoffi cial ruler himself. Cosimo’s
grandson, Lorenzo the Magnifi cent (1449–1492), also used his great wealth to govern but is
chiefl y remembered as a poet, connoisseur, and lavish benefactor of art and learning. In the
next century Tuscany became a grand duchy, of which the Medici were hereditary grand
dukes until the family died out in 1737. Thus established, they furnished numerous cardi-
nals and two popes to the church, and two Medici women became queens of France.
What arose in Italy, in these surroundings, was no less than a new secular conception of
life. It seemed very doubtful whether a quiet, cloistered, or celibate life was on a higher plane
than an active gregarious life, or family life, or even a life of promiscuity and
adventure. It was hard to believe that clergy were any better than laity or that
life led to a stern divine judgment in the end. That human will and intelligence
might prove misleading seemed a gloomy doctrine. The belief that human
beings were frail creatures, in need of God’s grace and salvation, though per-
haps said aloud and in public places, seemed to evoke less feeling in the heart. Instead, what
captivated the Italians of the Renaissance was a sense of the vast range of human powers.
Formerly, the ideal behavior had been seen in renunciation, in a certain disdain for the
concerns of this world. Now a life of involvement was also prized. Formerly, poverty had
been greatly respected, at least in Christian doctrine. Now there was more praise for a
proper enjoyment of wealth. Medieval Europeans had admired a life of contemplation, or
meditative withdrawal. Now the humanist Leonardo Bruni could write, in 1433, “The
whole glory of man lies in activity.” Often, to be sure, the two attitudes existed in the same
person. Sometimes they divided different groups within the same city. As always, the old
persisted along with the new. The result might be psychological stress and civil confl ict.
The new esteem for human activity took both a social and an individu-
alistic turn. In cities maintaining their republican forms, as at Florence in
the early fi fteenth century, a new civic consciousness or sense of public
A secular conception
of life
Individualism
Two wool merchants display their goods and bags of wool. This illustration, which is from a 1492 book on arithmetic, shows the use of both Arabic and Roman numerals. (Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence/Art Resource, NY)
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59
duty was expressed. For this purpose the writings of Cicero and other ancients were found
to be highly relevant, since they provided an ethics independent of the Christian and medi-
eval tradition. There was also a kind of cult of the great individual, hardly known to the
ancients, which gave little attention to collective responsibility. Renaissance individualism
emphasized the outstanding attainments of extraordinary men (women, by contrast, were
usually expected to pursue the ordinary tasks of domestic life). The great man shaped his
own destiny in a world governed by fortune. He had virtù, the quality of being a man ( vir, “man”), and although a few women might also exhibit virtù, it was a quality that in the society of the day was more to be expected in the most aggressive adult males. It meant the
successful demonstration of human powers. A man of virtù, in the arts, in war, or in state- craft, was a man who knew what he was doing, who, from resources within himself, made
the best use of his opportunities, hewing his way through the world and excelling in all that
he did. For the arts, such a spirit is preserved in the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini.
The growing preoccupation with human actions can be traced in new forms of paint-
ing, sculpture, and architecture that arose in Italy at this time. These arts likewise refl ected
This procession is part of a fresco that Benozzo Gozzoli executed in 1469 for a Medici chapel. Although its title refers to the three kings on their way to Bethlehem, it actually represents important personages in fi fteenth-century Florence. Cosimo de’ Medici is on a white horse, followed by a throng of supporters. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
6. The Renaissance in Italy
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156060
an increasing this-worldliness—a new sense of reality and a new sense of space—that was
different from that of the Middle Ages and would underlie much European thought until
the early twentieth century. Space was no longer indeterminate, unknowable, or divine;
it was a zone occupied by physical human beings, or one in which human beings might
at least imagine themselves moving about. Reality meant visible and tangible persons or
objects in this space, “objective” in the sense that they looked or felt the same to all normal
persons who perceived them. It was a function of the arts to convey this reality, however
idealized or suffused by the artist’s individual feeling, in such a way that observers could
recognize in the image the identity of the subject portrayed. Despite the growing emphasis
on individual achievements, knowledge itself was understood to be more than a subjective
perception or the unique vision of a creative genius.
Architecture refl ected the new tendencies. Although the Gothic cathedral at Milan was
built as late as 1386, at Florence and elsewhere architects preferred to adapt Greco-Roman
principles of design, such as symmetrical arrangements of doors and windows, the classi-
cal column, the arch and the dome. More public buildings of a nonreligious character were
built, and more substantial town houses were put up by wealthy merchants, in styles meant
to represent grandeur, or civic importance, or availability and convenience for human use.
Gardens and terraces were added to many such buildings.
Sculpture, confi ned in the Middle Ages to the niches and portals of
cathedrals, now emerged as an independent and free-standing art. Its
favored subjects were human beings, now presented so that the viewer
could walk around the object and see it from all directions. The difference
from the religious fi gures carved on medieval churches was very great. Like the architects,
the sculptors in parting from the immediate past found much in the Greek and Roman
Realism in sculpture
and painting
Lorenzo de’ Medici, known as the Magnifi cent, examines a model for a villa that was built for him about 1480 on the out- skirts of Florence. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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tradition that was modern and useful to their purpose. They produced portrait busts of
eminent contemporaries, or fi gures of great leaders, sometimes on horse-back, or statues
depicting characters from Greco-Roman history and mythology. The use of the nude, in
mythological or allegorical subjects, likewise showed a conception of humanity that was
more in keeping with the Greek than with the Christian tradition.
Painting was less infl uenced by the ancients, since the little of ancient painting that
had survived was unknown during the Renaissance. The invention of painting in oils
opened new pathways for the art. Merchants, ecclesiastics, and princes provided a mount-
ing demand. In subject matter painting remained conservative, dealing most often with
religious themes. It was the conception and presentation that were new. The new feeling
for space became evident. With the discovery of the mathematics of perspective, space
was presented in exact relation to the beholder’s eye. The viewer, in a sense, entered into
the world of the painting. A three-dimensional effect was achieved, with careful repre-
sentation of distance through variation of size, and techniques of shading or chiaroscuro
added to the illusion of physical volume. Human fi gures were often placed in a setting of
painted architecture, or against a background of landscape or scenery, showing castles
or hills, which though supposedly far away yet framed the composition with a knowable
boundary. In such a painting everything was localized in place and time; a part of the real
world was caught and put in the picture. The artistic aspiration was not to suggest eternity
or transcendent ideas, as in earlier religious painting, nor yet to express private fantasy or
the workings of the unconscious, as in much modern art, but to present a familiar theme in
an understandable setting, often with a narrative content, that is, by the telling of a story.
Like the sculptors, painters studied human anatomy and also portrayed people in dis-
tinctive and living attitudes. Faces took on more expression as artists sought to depict
individual personalities. Painting became less symbolic, less an intimation of general or
abstract truths, more a portrayal of concrete realities as they met the eye. In Bellini’s por-
trait of a condottiere (p. 62), for example, the reader can see how a strong, real, and vivid personality looks out from the canvas. Similarly, the great religious paintings were peo-
pled with human beings. In Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper Christ and his disciples are seen as a group of men each with his own characteristics. Raphael’s Madonnas seem to be
young Italian women, and in the mighty fi gures of Michelangelo the attributes of humanity
invade heaven itself.
Humanism: The Birth of “Literature”
The literary movement in Renaissance Italy is called humanism because of the rising inter-
est in humane letters, litterae humaniores. There had indeed been much writing in the later Middle Ages. Much of it had been of a technical character, as in theology, philosophy, or
law; some of it had been meant to convey information, as in chronicles, histories, and
descriptions of the physical world. Great hymns had been composed, lively student songs
had been sung at the universities, plays had been performed in cathedrals, and the old leg-
ends of King Arthur and Roland had been written down. Troubadours had praised the
wonders of true love, and occasionally a monk would try his hand at a long narrative
poem. Yet a new kind of literature and literary culture began to appear in the fourteenth
and fi fteenth centuries in Italy. A new class of writers looked upon literature as their main
life’s work, wrote for each other and for a somewhat larger public, and used writing to deal
with general questions, or to examine their own states of mind, or to resolve their own dif-
fi culties; or they used words to achieve artistic effects, or simply to please and amuse their
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156062
readers. Almost all of the writers were men, but a few women also entered the new literary
culture and contributed to the era’s expanding literary themes. The writings of Christine de
Pisan, for example, helped to spread humanist ideas in France during the early fi fteenth
century (her family had moved to France from Italy) and also demonstrated that women
could participate in the debates of European intellectual life.
The Italian humanists, like their predecessors, wrote a good deal in Latin. They dif-
fered from earlier literate persons, however, in that they were usually not members of the
clergy. They complained that Latin had become monkish, barbaric, and “scholastic,” a
jargon of the schools and universities, and they greatly preferred the classic
style of a Cicero or a Livy. Medieval Latin was a vigorous living language
that used words in new senses, many of which have passed into English and
the Romance languages as perfectly normal expressions. Yet in the ancient
writers the humanists found qualities that medieval writing did not have. They discovered
a new range of interests, a new sensibility, a complex discussion of political and civic
questions, a world presented without the overarching framework of religious belief. In
addition, the Greeks and Romans unquestionably had style—a sense of form, a taste for
the elegant and the epigrammatic. They had often also written for practical ends, in dia-
logues, orations, or treatises that were designed for purposes of persuasion.
Humanists and Latin
PORTRAIT OF A CONDOTTIERE by Giovanni Bellini (Italian, 1430–1516)
This portrait provides an emphatic statement of Renais- sance individualism. The art- ist represents here a concrete, strong-willed human being rather than an abstract type, stressing his subject’s indepen- dence and self-suffi ciency by placing him against a dark and entirely vacant background. ( National Gallery of Art)
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63
If the humanists therefore made a cult of antiquity, it was because they saw kindred
spirits in ancient cultures. They sensed a relevancy for their own time. The classical infl u-
ence, never wholly absent in the Middle Ages, now reentered as a main force in the higher
civilization of Europe. The humanists polished their Latin, and increasingly they learned
Greek. They searched assiduously for classical texts hitherto unknown. Many were found;
they had of course been copied and preserved by the monks of an earlier era.
But while a special dignity attached to writing in Latin, known throughout Europe,
most of the humanists wrote in Italian also. Or rather, they used the mode of speech current
in Florence. This had also been the language of Dante in the Divine Comedy. To this vast poem the humanists now added many writings in Florentine or Tuscan
prose. The result was that Florentine became the standard form of modern
Italian. It was the fi rst time that a European vernacular—that is, the com-
mon spoken tongue as opposed to Latin—became thus standardized amid
the variety of its dialects and adapted in structure and vocabulary to the more formal
requirements of a written language. French and English soon followed, and most of the
other European languages somewhat later.
The Florentine exile, Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch, has been called
the fi rst man of letters. The son of a merchant who had moved to the papal
city of Avignon, Petrarch spent his life in travel throughout France and
Italy. Although he trained for the law, and was ordained as a clergyman, he
became a somewhat rootless critic of these two esteemed professions, which he denounced
for their “scholasticism.” He lived in the generation after Dante, dying in 1374, and he
anticipated the more fully developed humanism that was to come. His voluminous writ-
ings show the complex, contradictory attitudes of early Renaissance thought. Attracted by
life, love, beauty, travel, and connections with people of importance in church and state, he
could also spurn all these things as ephemeral and deceptive. He loved Cicero for his com-
mon sense and his commitment to political liberty; indeed, he discovered a manuscript of
Cicero’s letters in 1345. He loved St. Augustine for his otherworldly vision of the City of
God. But in Cicero’s writings he also found a deep religious concern, and in St. Augustine
he esteemed the active man who had been a bishop, a writer heavily engaged in the contro-
versies of his time, and one who taught that for true Christians the world is not evil.
Petrarch wrote sonnets in Italian, an epic in Latin, an introspective study of himself, and
a great many letters that he clearly meant to be literary productions. He aspired to literary
fame. In all this we see a new kind of writer, who uses language not merely as a practical
tool but as a medium of more subtle expression, to commune with himself, to convey moods
of discouragement or satisfaction, to clarify doubts, to improve his own understanding of
the choices and options that life affords. With Petrarch, in short, literature became a kind of
calling, and also a consideration of moral philosophy, still related but no longer subordinate
to religion. It was moral philosophy in the widest sense, raising questions of how human
beings should adjust to the world, what a good life ought to be, and where the ultimate
rewards of living were to be found.
Petrarch was an indication of things to come. Boccaccio, his contemporary and also a
Florentine, wrote the Decameron in Italian, a series of tales designed both to entertain and to impart a certain wisdom about human character and behavior. They were followed by the
main group of humanists, far more numerous but less well remembered. Men of letters
began to take part in public life, to gather students and found schools, to
serve as secretaries to governing bodies or princes, and even to occupy
offi ce themselves. Thus the humanist Coluccio Salutati became chancellor
The vernacular
Petrarch
The humanists
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156064
of Florence in 1375. During the following decades Florence was threatened by the expan-
sive ambitions of Milan, where the princely despotism of the Visconti family controlled the
city-state. Against such dangers a new and intense Florentine civic consciousness asserted
itself. Salutati, in addition to the usual duties of chancellor, served the state with his pen,
glorifying Florentine liberty and identifying it with the liberties of ancient republican Rome
before they were undermined by the Caesars. Two other humanists, Bruni and Poggio, suc-
ceeded him as chancellor. Bruni wrote a history of Florence that marked a new achievement
in historical writing, when compared with the annals and chronicles of the Middle Ages. He
saw the past as clearly past, different from but relevant to the present; and he introduced a
new division of historical periods. On the model of such ancient writers as Livy, he adopted
a fl owing narrative form. And he used history for a practical political purpose, to show that
Florence had a long tradition of liberty and possessed values and attainments worth fi ghting
for against menacing neighbors. History became a new kind of useful knowledge. It took on
a public value that it had once had for the Greeks and Romans and that it would retain in the
future in Europe and eventually in other parts of the world: the function of heightening a
sentiment, not yet of nationalism, but of collective civic consciousness or group identity. It
was meant to arouse its readers to a life of commitment and participation.
All this literary activity was of a scholarly type, in which authors broadened their
understanding as much by reading as by personal experience of the world. And schol-
arly activity, the habit of attending closely to what a page really said, had
consequences that went beyond either pure literature or local patriotism. A
new critical attitude developed. Bruni, in his history, showed a new analyti-
cal sense of the need for authentic sources. Lorenzo Valla became one of
the founders of textual criticism. Studying the Latin language historically, he observed
that its characteristic words and expressions varied from one time to another. He put this
Modern critical
methods
The three men in this paint- ing were Florentine humanists around 1490. They appear in a larger work that the artist Domenico Ghirlandaio painted for a chapel. Ghirlandaio fol- lowed the typical Renaissance practice of using religious sto- ries or events to convey secular subjects and ideas. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
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65
knowledge to the service of the king of Naples in a dispute with the pope. Valla showed,
by analysis of the language used in the document, that the Donation of Constantine, on
which the papacy then based its temporal claims, could not have been written in Constan-
tine’s time in the fourth century, and so was a forgery. Such scholarship helped establish
modern methods for assessing the truth of written texts, and it contributed also to human-
ist optimism about the range and utility of human knowledge. Pico della Mirandola and
others looked for aspects of truth not revealed in the Christian scriptures. In 1486, the
enthusiastic and very learned Pico, for example, claimed at the age of 23 that he could
summarize all human knowledge in 900 theses, which he had drawn from “the Chaldaic,
Arabic, Hebrew, Grecian, Egyptian, and Latin sages.”
Schooling, Manners, and Family Life
While Italian humanism thus contributed much to literature and scholarship, to classical
learning, and to the formation of modern national languages, it also had tangible and last-
ing effects in education. Here its impact persisted in all regions of European civilization
down to the present. The medieval universities were essentially places for professional
training in theology, medicine, and law. Except in England this continued to be their pri-
mary function. What came to be known as secondary education, the preparation of young
men either for the universities or for “life,” owes more to the Renaissance. The organized
education of women came much later; some girls learned to read at home or in one of the
few female primary schools, but young women were excluded from humanist academies
and Renaissance universities.
Medieval schooling had been chaotic and repetitious. Youngsters of all ages sat
together with a teacher, each absorbing from the confusion whatever could be understood
of Latin rules and vocabulary. The Renaissance launched the idea of put-
ting different age groups or levels of accomplishment into separate classes,
in separate rooms, each with its own teacher, with periodic promotion of
the pupil from one level to the next. Latin remained the principal subject,
with Greek now added. But many new purposes were seen in the study of Latin. It was
intended to give skill in the use of language, including the pupil’s native tongue. Rhetoric
was the art of using language to infl uence others. It heightened communication. Knowl-
edge alone was not enough, said the historian and chancellor Bruni, who also wrote a short
work on education—“to make effectual use of what we know we must add the power of
expression.” Nor was Latin merely the necessary professional tool for the priest, the phy-
sician, the lawyer, or the government servant. The student learned Latin (and Greek) in
order to read the ancient writings—epics, lyrics, orations, letters, histories, dialogues, and
philosophical treatises—and it was assumed that such writings offered practical lessons
for the educated elites of every generation. Readers therefore learned how to fi nd relevant
historical models or failures in the rise and decline of the Roman republic and the troubles
of the Greek city-states. The classics were meant also to have a moral impact, to produce
a balanced personality, and to form character. Not everyone could be important or gifted,
said the humanist Vittorino, but we all face a life of “social duty” and are responsible for
our “personal infl uence” on others. These aims became permanent themes in the educa-
tional systems that trained the young men of early modern Europe.
Young people were trained also for a more civilized deportment in everyday social liv-
ing. Personal style in the upper classes became somewhat more studied. Hitherto Europeans
had generally acted like big children; they spat, belched, and blew their noses without
Renaissance
education
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156066
inhibition, snatched at food with their fi ngers, bawled at each other when they were
unhappy, or sulked when their feelings were offended. It was Italians of the Renaissance
who fi rst taught more polite habits. Books of etiquette began to appear, of which the most
successful was Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (1528). The “courtier” was ancestor to the “gentleman”; “courtesy” was originally the kind of behavior suited to princely courts.
The “courtier,” according to Castiglione, should be a man of good birth but is chiefl y
the product of training. His education in youth, and his efforts in mature years, should be
directed toward mixing agreeably in the company of his equals. His clothes
should be neat, his movements graceful, his approach to other people perfectly
poised. He must converse with facility, be profi cient in sports and arms, and
know how to dance and appreciate music. He should know Latin and Greek.
With literary and other subjects he should show a certain familiarity but never become too
engrossed. For the well-bred man speaks with “a certain carelessness, to hide his art, and
show that what he says or does comes from him without effort or deliberation.” Pedantry and
heaviness must yield to an air of effortless superiority, so that even when the courtier knows
or does something seriously, he must treat it lightly as one of many accomplishments. At its
The “courtier”
This painting by the Italian artist Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614) portrays an appreciation for the generations and social roles that constituted late Renaissance family life. Entitled simply Portrait of a Family, it arranges people by age and gender, thus suggesting a different identity and destiny for each person and each group. Fontana was one of the most prolifi c and success- ful women artists of the early modern era; and she conveyed her own knowledge of family life (having 11 children of her own) through her detailed artistic representations of specifi c indi- viduals and their social relationships. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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67
best, the code taught a consideration for the feelings of others and incorporated some of the
moral ideas of the humanists, aiming at a creditable life in active society. Castiglione’s book
was translated into numerous languages, and a hundred editions were printed before 1600.
Castiglione’s ideal court also included women, whose civilizing infl uence was sup-
posed to encourage the good manners, polite conversation, and cultural graces that rough-
edged men might otherwise ignore. Expressing views of men and women that shaped
much of Renaissance culture, Castiglione expected men to cultivate a “robust and sturdy
manliness,” which would be balanced in court society by the “soft and delicate tenderness”
of women. Such distinctions suggested also the gender divisions in Renaissance families
and households, including those that were far removed from the courts of princes.
The marriages that created Renaissance households grew out of careful negotiations
in which the families of prospective brides and grooms sought to enhance their respective
social positions. In Florence, for example, parents typically arranged for
their daughters to be married by age 18 to older men whose economic or
political connections would be advantageous to the young woman’s own
family. Florentine husbands, who had usually reached age 30 before their
fi rst marriage, were well advanced in trades or professions before they
established their new households, which depended also on the dowries that they received
through their marriage contracts. The different ages of husbands and wives reinforced the
gender divisions in Renaissance families; men pursued their public careers with their pro-
fessional peers while their much younger wives raised children in the home. The high
mortality rates in Renaissance cities, however, meant that women often outlived their older
husbands, and, as young widows, they were forced to raise the children and manage the
household. The young men who attended the new Renaissance schools therefore came
from families in which mothers usually provided the most important training during their
early years. Renaissance education and manners, as taught in the new schools and acad-
emies of the era, thus developed within the distinctive patterns of Italian family life and
extended the other “lessons” that women were also teaching at home.
Politics and the Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance, for all its accomplishments, produced no institution or great idea
by which masses of people living in society could be held together. Indeed, the greatest
of Europe’s institutions, the Roman church, in which Europeans had lived for centuries,
and without which they did not see how they could live at all, fell into neglect under
the Renaissance popes. Nor did Italy as a whole develop any effective political institu-
tions. Florence during the fi fteenth century passed from a high-spirited republicanism to
acceptance of one-man rule. Throughout the peninsula the merchants, bankers, connois-
seurs, and courtly classes who controlled the city-states could not fi ght for themselves,
nor arouse their citizens to fi ght for them. They therefore hired professional fi ghting men,
condottieri, private leaders of armed bands, who contracted with the various city-states to carry on warfare and often raised their price or changed sides during hostilities. Italian
politics became a tangled web, a labyrinth of subterfuge and conspiracy, a platform on
which powerful individuals might exhibit their virtù. “Italian cunning” became a byword throughout Europe. Dictators rose and fell. The Medici became dukes in Florence, the
Sforza in Milan, while in Venice and Genoa, where the republics survived, narrow oligar-
chies held tight control. These states, along with the states of the church, jockeyed about
like pugilists in a ring, held within an intricate, shifting, and purely local balance of power.
Renaissance
marriages
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156068
Italy was the despair of its patriots, or of such few as remained. One of these was
Niccolò Machiavelli, who, in The Prince (1513), wrote the most lasting work of the Italian Renaissance. He dreamed of the day when the citizens of his native Florence, or indeed of all
The governing council in Florence deliberates on going to war against Pisa during a brief period of republican revival after the Medici were expelled in 1494. A nemesis, or omen of fail- ure and retribution, fl oats over the councilors’ heads and represents the challenge of making political decisions in a Renaissance Italian state. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
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69
Italy, should behave like early Romans—show virility in their politics, fi ght in citizen armies
for patriotic causes, and uphold their dignity before Europe. It was outside Italy, in kings
Ferdinand of Aragon, Louis XI of France, and Henry VII of England, that Machiavelli
was obliged to fi nd his heroes. He admired them because they knew how to
exercise power and how to build strong states. In The Prince he produced a handbook of statecraft that he hoped Italy might fi nd useful. He produced
also the fi rst purely secular treatise on politics.
Medieval writings on politics, those of Thomas Aquinas or Marsiglio of Padua, for
example, had always talked of God’s will for the government of people, with such accom-
panying matters as justice and right, or divine and natural law. All this Machiavelli put
aside. He “emancipated” politics from theology and moral philosophy. He
undertook to describe simply what rulers actually did. What really happens,
said Machiavelli, is that effective rulers and governments use their power to
act only in their own political interest. They keep faith or break it, observe
treaties or repudiate them, are merciful or ruthless, forthright or sly, peace-
able or aggressive, according to their estimates of their political needs. Machiavelli was pre-
pared to admit that such behavior was bad; he only insisted that it was in this way, however
regrettably, that successful rulers behaved. He was thought unduly cynical even in an age
that lacked political delicacy. He had nevertheless diagnosed the new era with considerable
insight. It was an age when politics was in fact breaking off from religion, with the building
up of state power and authority emerging as goals that required no other justifi cation.
But the most successful states of the time, as Machiavelli saw, were not in Italy. They
were what history knows as the New Monarchies, and they owed their strength to some-
thing more than princely craft, for they enjoyed a measure of loyalty from the people they
governed. The city-states in Renaissance Italy failed to sustain even this limited sense of
Machiavelli
Uses of political
power
NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI by Cristofano dell’Altissimo (Italian, c. 1525–1605)
Machiavelli’s famous book, The Prince, developed a new, secular account of how political rulers gained and consolidated their control of state power. Although his writings were criticized for ignoring Christian ethical values, Machiavelli’s ideas marked a key starting point for modern European political thought. (Corbis)
6. The Renaissance in Italy
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156070
loyalty between governments and their people. Italian politics became an affair of indi-
vidual or elite virtù; and, as outsiders began to realize, the people of Italy lost interest in both the politics and the wars of their own city-states.
So Italy, the sunny land of balmy Mediterranean skies, rich in the busy life of its cities,
its moneyed wealth, its gorgeous works of art, became vulnerable to the depredations of less
easygoing peoples, from Spain and the north, who possessed political and military institu-
tions in which men could act together in large numbers. In a new age of
rising national monarchies the city-states of Italy were too small to compete.
In 1494 a French army crossed the Alps. Italy became a bone of contention
between France and Spain. In 1527, during a later phase of this long confl ict,
an army of undisciplined Spanish and German mercenaries, joined by footloose Italians, fell
upon Rome itself. Never, not even from the barbarian Goths of the fi fth century, had Rome
experienced anything so horrible and degrading. The city was sacked, thousands were
killed, soldiers milled about in an orgy of rape and loot, the pope was imprisoned, and car-
dinals were mockingly paraded through the streets facing backward on the backs of mules.
After the sack of Rome the Italian Renaissance faded away. Politically, for over three
hundred years, Italy remained divided, the passive object of the ambitions of outside powers.
Meanwhile its culture permeated the rest of Europe.
7. THE RENAISSANCE OUTSIDE ITALY
Outside Italy people were much less conscious of any sudden break with the Middle Ages.
Developments north of the Alps, and in Spain, were more an outgrowth of what had gone
before. There was indeed a cultural Renaissance in the Italian sense, and some Flemish
masters introduced artistic innovations even before the new techniques were used by
painters in Italy. In the north also, as in Italy, writers favored a revival of classical Latin,
but the modern written languages also began to develop.
The northern Renaissance resembled the earlier southern Renaissance in blending the
old and the new, but the religious element was much stronger than in Italy. The most
important northern humanists were writers like Thomas More in England and Erasmus in
Holland. The French humanism that produced the earthy François Rabelais also produced
the austere John Calvin.
Religious Scholarship and Science
Historians like to distinguish between the “pagan” humanism of Italy and
the Christian humanism of the north. In the north, Christian humanists stud-
ied the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible and read the Church Fathers,
both Latin and Greek, in order to deepen their understanding of Christianity
and to restore its moral vitality. Among people without pretense to humanistic learning,
religion also remained a force. Medieval intellectual interests persisted. This is apparent
from the continuing foundation of universities. The humanists generally regarded uni-
versities as centers of a pedantic, monkish, and scholastic learning. Concentrating upon
theology, or upon medicine and law, the universities gave little encouragement to experi-
mental science and still less to purely literary studies. In Italy in the fi fteenth century no
new universities were established. But in Spain, in France, in Scotland, in Scandinavia,
and above all in Germany, new universities continued to develop. Between 1386 and 1506
no less than 14 universities were established in Germany. At one of the newest, Witten-
berg, founded in 1502, Martin Luther was to launch the Protestant Reformation.
Italian vulnerability
Christian humanists
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717. The Renaissance outside Italy
Germany at this time, on the eve of the great religious upheaval, and before the shift
of the principal commercial arteries from central Europe to the Atlantic seaboard, was a
main center of European life. Politically, the German-speaking world was an ill-defi ned
and ill-organized region, composed of many diverse parts, from which the Netherlands and
Switzerland were not yet differentiated. Economically, nevertheless, western and southern
Germany enjoyed a lead over most of Western Europe; the towns traded busily, and
German banking families, like the famous Fugger, controlled more capital than any others
in Europe. Technical inventiveness was alive; mining was developing; and it was in the
Rhineland, at Mainz, that Gutenberg, about 1450, produced the fi rst European books
printed with movable type. In painting, the western fringe of the Germanic world produced
the Flemish masters, and south Germany gave birth to imaginative artists such as Albrecht
Dürer and the Holbeins.
Intellectually, Germany shared in the Latin culture of Europe, a fact often obscured
by the Latin names that German authors used in the early modern era. Regiomontanus (the
Latin name of Johann Müller) laid the foundations during his short lifetime (1436–1476)
for a mathematical conception of the universe. He was probably the most infl u-
ential scientifi c worker of the fi fteenth century, especially since Leonardo da
Vinci’s scientifi c labors remained unknown. Nicholas of Cusa (1401?–1464),
a Rhinelander, was a churchman whose mystical philosophy entered into the
later development of mathematics and science. From such a background of
mathematical interests came Copernicus (Niklas Koppernigk, 1473–1543), who believed
that the earth moved about the sun; he was indeed a Pole, but he came from the mixed
German-Polish region of East Prussia. Fortifi ed by the same mathematical interests, Europe’s
best-known cartographers were also Germans, such as Behaim and Schöner, whose world
maps represented the most advanced geographical knowledge of the time. Paracelsus (Latin
for Hohenheim) undertook to revolutionize medicine at the University of Basel. His wild
prophecies made him a mixture of scientist and charlatan; but, in truth, science was not
yet clearly distinguished from the occult, with which it shared the idea of control over
natural forces. A similar fi gure, remembered in literature and the arts, was the celebrated
Dr. Faustus. In real life, Faust, or Faustus, was perhaps a learned German of the fi rst part of
the sixteenth century. He was rumored to have sold his soul to the devil in return for knowl-
edge and power, The Faust story was dramatized in England as early as 1593 by Christopher
Marlowe, and, much later, by Goethe in German poetry. In the legend of Faust later genera-
tions were to see a symbol of the inordinate ambitions of modern people.
The idea that human powers could understand and control physical nature developed
especially north of the Alps, but this idea also corresponded in many ways to the more
purely Italian and humanistic emphasis on the infi nite richness of human personalities.
Together, these ideas constituted the new Renaissance spirit, for both stressed the eman-
cipation of humanity’s limitless potentialities. The two ideas constantly interacted; in
fact, most of the scientifi c workers just mentioned—Regiomontanus, Nicholas of Cusa,
Copernicus—spent many years in Italy, receiving the stimulus of Italian thought.
Mysticism and Lay Religion
In the north a genuine religious impulse went beyond the religious humanistic scholarship
and sustained a stronger interest in Christian mysticism. Where in Italy the religious sense,
if not extinct, seemed to pass into a joyous and public cult in which God was glorifi ed by
works of art, in the north it took on a more spiritual and moral tone. Germany in the
German contributions
to early modern science
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156072
fourteenth century produced a series of mystics. The mystic tendencies of Nicholas of
Cusa have been mentioned. More typical mystics were Meister Eckhart (d. 1327) and
Thomas à Kempis (d. 1471), author of the Imitation of Christ. The essence of mysticism lay in the belief, or experience, that the individual soul could
in perfect solitude commune directly with God. The mystic had no need of
reason, nor of words, nor of joining with other people in open worship, nor
of the sacraments administered by the priests—nor even of the church. The mystics did not
rebel against the church; they accepted its pattern of salvation; but they also offered, to
those who could follow, a deeper religious experience in which the church as a social insti-
tution had no place. All social institutions, in fact, were transcended in mysticism by the
individual soul; and on this doctrine, both profound and socially disruptive, Martin Luther
was later to draw.
For the church, it was signifi cant also that religion was felt deeply outside the clergy.
Persons stirred by religion, who in the Middle Ages would have taken holy orders, now
frequently remained laymen. In the past the church had often needed reform. But in the
past, in the bad times of the tenth century, for example, the clergy had found reformers
within their own ranks. The church had thus been repeatedly reformed and renewed with-
out revolution. Now, in the fi fteenth and early sixteenth centuries an ominous line seemed
to be increasingly drawn: between the clergy as an established interest, inert and set in its
ways, merely living, and living well, off the church; and groups of people outside the
clergy—religious laypersons, religiously inclined humanists and writers, impatient and
headstrong rulers—who were more infl uential than ever before and more critical of eccle-
siastical abuses.
Lay religion was especially active in the Netherlands. A lay preacher, Gerard Groote,
attracted followers there by calling for spiritual regeneration. In 1374 he founded a reli-
gious sisterhood, which was followed by establishments for religiously minded men. They
called themselves, respectively, the Sisters and the Brothers of the Com-
mon Life, and they eventually received papal approval. They lived com-
munally, but not as monks and nuns, for they took no vows, wore ordinary
clothing, and were free to leave at will. They worked at relieving the poor
and in teaching. The schools of the Brothers, since some of them came to
have as many as a thousand boys, were the fi rst to be organized in separate
classes, each with its own room and its own teacher, according to the pupil’s age or level
of advancement. The Sisters maintained similar though less elaborate schools for girls.
Students learned to read and write, but the emphasis was on a Christian ideal of character
and conduct, and the goal was to instill such qualities as humility, tolerance, reverence, love
of one’s neighbor, and the conscientious performance of duty. This Modern Devotion,
as it was called, spread widely in the Netherlands and adjoining parts of Germany.
Erasmus of Rotterdam
In this atmosphere grew up the greatest of all the northern humanists, and
indeed the most notable fi gure of the entire humanist movement, Erasmus of
Rotterdam (1466–1536). Like all the humanists, Erasmus chose to write in
a “purifi ed” and usually intricate Latin style. He regarded the Middle Ages
as benighted, ridiculed the scholastic philosophers, and studied deeply the classical writers
of antiquity. He had the strength and the limitations of the pure man of letters. To the hard
questions of serious philosophy he was largely indifferent; he feared the unenlightened
Mysticism and the
individual soul
The Sisters and
Brothers of the
Common Life
Erasmus of Rotterdam
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73
excitability of the common people, and he was almost wholly unpolitical in his outlook. He
rarely thought in terms of worldly power or advantage and made too little allowance for
those who did. An exact contemporary to the most worldly Renaissance popes, Erasmus
was keenly aware of the need for reform of the clergy. He put his faith in education,
enlightened discussion, and gradual moral improvement. He led no burning crusade and
counseled against all violence or fanaticism. He prepared new Greek and Latin editions of
the New Testament. Urging people to read the New Testament in the vernacular languages,
he hoped that a better understanding of Christ’s teaching might turn them from their evil
ways. In his Praise of Folly he satirized all worldly pretensions and ambitions, those of the clergy most emphatically. In his Handbook of a Christian Knight he showed how a man might take part in the affairs of the world while remaining a devout Christian, and in his
infl uential treatise On Civility in Children he offered guidance for proper behavior in the social situations of daily life. Tolerance, restraint, good manners, scholarly understanding,
a love of peace, a critical and reforming zeal, and a reasonable tone from which shouting
and bad temper were always excluded—such were the Erasmian virtues.
Erasmus achieved an international eminence such as no one of purely intellectual
attainments had ever enjoyed. He corresponded with the most powerful people in Europe.
He lectured at Cambridge and edited books for a publisher at Basel. The king of Spain
named him a councilor, the king of France called him to Paris, and Pope Leo X assisted
him when he was in trouble. Theologians found fault with Erasmus’s ideas (in which,
indeed, the supernatural had little importance), but among the leaders of the church, the
popes and prelates, he had many admirers. Erasmus, it must be noted, attacked only the
abuses in the church, the ignorance or sloth of the clergy, and the moral or fi nancial cor-
ruption of their lives. The essence and principle of the Roman Catholic church he never
called into question. Whether the Erasmian spirit, so widely diffused about 1520, would
have suffi ced to restore the church without the revolutionary impact of Protestantism is
one of the many unanswerable questions of history.
ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM by Hans Holbein, the Younger (German, 1497–1543)
This portrait was painted in 1523, when Erasmus was 56, and the Lutheran Reformation had begun in Germany. A classic portrayal of humanism at its best, the painting captures the life of thought and emphasizes the only weapon that Erasmus could use—the pen. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
7. The Renaissance outside Italy
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156074
8. THE NEW MONARCHIES
Meanwhile, in Europe outside Italy, kings were actively building the institutions of the
modern state. It was these states, more than any other single factor, that were to determine
the course of the sixteenth-century religious revolution. Whether a country turned Protes-
tant, remained Catholic, or divided into separate religious communities would depend very
largely upon political considerations.
War, civil war, class war, feudal rebellion, and plain banditry affl icted a good deal
of Europe in the middle of the fi fteenth century. In this formless violence central govern-
ments had become very weak. Various rulers now tried to impose a kind of civil peace.
They have been conveniently called the New Monarchs, but they were not really very new
because they resumed the interrupted labors of kings in the High Middle Ages. They thus
laid foundations for later national, or at least territorial, states.
The New Monarchs offered the institution of monarchy as a guarantee of law and
order. Arousing latent sentiments of loyalty to the reigning dynasty, they proclaimed that
hereditary monarchy was the only legitimate form of public power. They especially enlisted
the support of middle-class people in the towns, who were tired of the private wars and
marauding habits of the feudal nobles. Townspeople were willing to let parliaments be
dominated or even ignored by the king, for parliaments had proved too often to be strong-
holds of unruly barons, or had merely accentuated class confl ict. The king, receiving money
in taxes, was able to organize armies with which to control the nobles. The use of the pike
and the longbow, which enabled the foot soldier to stand against the horseman, was here
of great potential value. The king, if only he could get his monarchy suffi ciently organized
and his fi nances into reliable order, could hire large numbers of foot soldiers, who generally
came from the growing population of commoners, unlike the knightly horsemen. But to
organize his monarchy, the king had to break down the mass of feudal, inherited, custom-
ary, or “common” law in which the rights of the feudal classes were entrenched. For this
purpose, at least on the Continent, the New Monarch made use of Roman law, which was
now actively studied in the universities. He called himself a “sovereign”—it was at this
time that kings began to be addressed as “majesty.” The king, said the experts in Roman
law, incorporated the will and welfare of the people in his own person. He could therefore
make law by his own authority, regardless of previous custom or even of historic liberties— and they quoted Latin phrases to argue that “what pleases the prince has the force of law.”
The New Monarchy in England, France, and Spain
The New Monarchy came to England with the dynasty of the Tudors
(1485–1603), whose fi rst king, Henry VII (1485–1509), after gaining the
throne by force, put an end to the civil turbulence of the Wars of the Roses.
In these wars the great English baronial families had seriously weakened each other, to the
great convenience of the king and the bulk of the citizenry. Henry VII passed laws against
“livery and maintenance,” the practice by which great lords maintained private armies
wearing their own livery or insignia, and he used his royal council as a new court to deal
with property disputes and infractions of the public peace. It met in a room decorated with
stars, whence its name, the Star Chamber. It represented the authority of the king and his
council, and it operated without a jury. Later denounced as an instrument of despotism, it
was popular enough at fi rst, because it preserved order and rendered substantial justice.
Henry VII, though miserly and unpleasant in person, was accepted as a good ruler. National
feeling in England consolidated around the house of Tudor.
The Tudors
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75
In France the New Monarchy was represented by Louis XI (1461–1483), of the Valois
line, and his successors. In the fi ve centuries since the fi rst French king had been crowned,
the royal domain had steadily expanded from its original small nucleus
around Paris through a combination of inheritance, marriage, war, intrigue,
and conquest. Louis XI continued to round out the French borders. Inter-
nally, he built up a royal army, suppressed brigands, and subdued rebellious
nobles. He acquired far greater powers than the English Tudors to raise taxation without
parliamentary consent. The French monarchy also enlarged its powers over the clergy. We
have seen how, by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438, the Gallican church had won consider-
able independence to manage its own administrative affairs. In 1516 King Francis I reached
an agreement with Pope Leo X in the Concordat of Bologna, which rescinded the Prag-
matic Sanction. The pope henceforth received fi nancial income from French ecclesiastics,
but the king appointed the French bishops and abbots. The fact that, after 1516, the kings
of France already controlled their own national clergy was one reason why, in later years,
they were never tempted to turn Protestant.
Strictly speaking, there was no kingdom of Spain. Various Spanish king-
doms had combined into two, Aragon and Castile. To Aragon, which lay
along the Mediterranean side of the peninsula, belonged the Balearic Islands,
Sardinia, Sicily, and the south Italian kingdom of Naples. To Castile, after 1492, belonged
the newly discovered Americas. The two were joined in a personal union by the marriage of
Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469. The union was personal only; that is,
both kingdoms recognized the two monarchs, but they had no common political, judicial,
or administrative institutions. There was little or no Spanish national feeling; indeed, the
Catalans in northern Aragon spoke a language quite different from Castilian Spanish. The
most signifi cant common feeling throughout Spain came from the sense of belonging to
the Spanish Catholic church. The common memory was that of the Christian crusade against
the Moors. The one common institution, whose offi cials had equal authority and equal access
to all the kingdoms, was a church court, the Inquisition. Meanwhile, the reconquista was at last completed when the southern tip of Spain, Granada, was conquered from the Moors in
1492. Its annexation added to the heterogeneous character of the Spanish dominions.
In these circumstances the New Monarchy in Spain followed a religious bent.
Unifi cation took place around the church. The rulers, though they made efforts at political
centralization, worked largely through facilities offered by the church, and the early sense
of “Spanishness” was linked to a sense of Catholicity. Formerly the Spanish had been
among the most tolerant of Europeans; Christians, Muslims, and Jews had managed to
live together. But in the wave of religious excitement that accompanied the conquest of
Granada both the Jews and the Moors were expelled. The expulsion of the Jews by a
decree of 1492 was actually a sign of former toleration in Spain, for the Jews had been ear-
lier expelled from England in 1290 and from France in 1306. They were not again legally
allowed in England until the mid-seventeenth century, nor in France (with some excep-
tions) until the French Revolution. In Spain, as in the history of many European peoples, the
emergence of an early “national” consciousness seemed to express or produce an anti-
Semitism that defi ned Jews as “outsiders.” 2
The Valois
Aragon and Castile
2 The Jews who left Spain (the Sephardic Jews) went to North Africa and the Middle East, and in smaller numbers
to the Dutch Netherlands and even to southwestern France (one of the exceptions noted above). Those who left
England two centuries earlier generally went to Germany, the great center of Ashkenazic Jewry in the Middle
Ages. Driven from Germany in the fourteenth century they concentrated in Poland, which remained a great center
of European Jews until the Nazi massacres of the 1940s.
8. The New Monarchies
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156076
All persons in Spain were now supposed to be Christians. In fact, however, Spain was
one of the places in Europe where a person’s Christianity could not be taken for granted,
because many Spanish families had been Jewish or Muslim for centuries and had only
accepted Christianity to avoid expulsion. Hence arose a fear of false Chris-
tians, of an unassimilated element secretly hostile to the foundations of
Spanish life. It was feared that Moriscos (Christians of Moorish back-
ground) and Marranos (Christians of Jewish background) retained a clan-
destine sympathy for the religion of their forebears. Thousands of such
persons were brought before the Inquisition, where, as in the civil courts under Roman
procedure, torture could be employed to extort confessions. It was thus safest to be profuse
in one’s external religious devotions because adherence to the Catholic Church became the
way of proving oneself to be a good Spaniard.
The life of Spain carried forward some of the long-existing commitment to a crusade—
which had now evolved into a campaign within Spain against Moriscos and Marranos, and
a new campaign against the Moors in Africa itself, which the Spanish invaded immedi-
ately after the conquest of Granada. The Spanish also extended their religious energies into
the Americas, where the Spanish church set about gathering the Indians into the Christian
fold. And Spain’s strong religious identity would soon contribute to its growing role in the
wider political and religious confl icts of sixteenth-century Europe. The Spanish history of
crusades against Muslims had prepared the country (before Protestantism ever appeared) to
become a leading defender of Roman Catholic traditions as well as an advocate for Catholic
renewal and internal reforms.
The Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Supremacy
Ideas of the New Monarchy were at work even in Germany, which is to say, in the Holy
Roman Empire. There were three kinds of states in the empire. There were the princely states
such as Saxony, Brandenburg, or Bavaria, each of which was a small hereditary dynastic
monarchy in itself. There were also ecclesiastical states—bishoprics, abbacies, etc.—in
which the bishop or abbot, whose rule was of course not hereditary, conducted the govern-
ment. A large portion of the area of the empire consisted of these church-states. Third, there
were the imperial free cities, some 50 in number; their collective area was not large, but they
dominated the commercial and fi nancial life of the country.
The German states, over the centuries, had prevented the emperor from infringing
upon their local liberties. They had taken care to keep the emperorship an elective offi ce,
so that with each election local liberties could be reaffi rmed. After 1356 the right of elect-
ing an emperor was vested in seven electors: four of the princely lords—the
Count Palatine, Duke of Saxony, Margrave of Brandenburg, and King of
Bohemia—and three of the ecclesiastical lords—the archbishops of Mainz,
Trier, and Cologne. In 1452 the electors chose the Archduke of Austria to
be emperor. His family name was Habsburg. The Habsburgs, by using the resources of their
hereditary possessions in Austria (and later elsewhere) and by delicately balancing and brib-
ing the numerous political forces within Germany, managed to get themselves consistently
reelected to the Holy Roman emperorship in every generation, with one exception, from 1452
until 1806. The Habsburg emperors also tried to introduce the centralizing principles of the
New Monarchy into an empire that lacked institutions for the exercise of centralized power.
Under Maximilian I (1493–1519) there seemed to be progress in that direction: the
empire was divided into administrative “circles,” and an Imperial Chamber and Council were
Fusing the national
and the Catholic
The Habsburgs
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779. The Protestant Reformation
created, but they were all doomed to failure before the immovable obstacle of states’ rights.
Maximilian was also the author of the Habsburg family fortunes through his strategic use of
royal marriages, which brought the Habsburgs into control of a vast empire. Maximilian’s
grandson, Charles, thus inherited from his four grandparents the lands of Austria, the Nether-
lands, and part of Burgundy; Castile and Aragon in Spain; the whole of Spanish America; and
scattered possessions in Italy and the Mediterranean. In addition, in 1519, Charles was elected
Holy Roman Emperor and so became the symbolic head of all Germany.
Charles V of the empire (he was known as Charles I in Spain) was thus beyond all
comparison the most powerful ruler of his day. But still other fortunes awaited the house of
Habsburg. The Turks, who had occupied Constantinople in 1453, were at this time push-
ing through Hungary and menacing central Europe. In 1526 they defeated
the Hungarians at the battle of Mohacs. The parliaments of Hungary, and
of the adjoining kingdom of Bohemia, hoping to gain allies in the face of
the Turkish threat, thereupon elected Charles V’s brother Ferdinand as their
king. Ferdinand soon lost much of Hungary to the Turkish Sultan, Suleiman I, but he
retained his royal crown and gradually expanded Habsburg infl uence in central Europe.
No royal family since Charlemagne had stood so far above all rivals. Contemporaries cried
that Europe was threatened with “universal monarchy,” with a kind of imperial system in
which no people could preserve its independence from the Habsburgs.
The reader who wishes to understand the early modern European religious revolution
and the consequent emergence of Protestantism must bear in mind the intricate interplay
of the factors that have now been outlined: the decline of the church; the growth of secular
and humanistic feeling; the spread of lay religion outside the offi cial clergy; the rise of
monarchs who wished to control everything in their kingdoms, including the church; the
resistance of feudal elements to these same monarchs; the lassitude of the popes and their
fear of church councils; the division of Germany; the Turkish entry into central Europe;
the crusading traditions in Spain; the preeminence of Charles V; and the fears felt in other
countries, especially in France, of absorption by the amazing empire of the Habsburgs.
9. THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION
Three streams contributed to the religious upheaval in sixteenth-century Europe. First,
among common people, or the laboring poor, who might fi nd their spokesmen among local
priests, there was an endemic dissatisfaction with all the grand apparatus of the church, or
a belief that its bishops and abbots were part of a wealthy and oppressive
ruling class. For such people, religious ideas became mixed with a protest
against the whole social order. They found expression in the great peasant
rebellion in Germany in the 1520s. The sects that emerged from these social
groups are known historically as Anabaptists, and the modern Baptists, Mennonites, and
Moravian Brothers are among their descendants. Second, and forming a group generally
more educated and with broader views of the world, were the middle classes of various
European cities, especially of cities that were almost autonomous little republics, as in
Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. They might wish to manage their own reli-
gious affairs as they did their other business, believing that the church hierarchy was too
much embedded in a feudal, baronial, and monarchical system with which they had little in
common. The modern churches of Calvinist origin came in large part from this stream.
Third, there were the ruling sovereigns and princes, who had long disputed with the church
on matters of property, taxes, legal jurisdiction, and political infl uence. All such rulers
Charles V
Political and social
discontents
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156078
wanted to be masters in their own territory. In the end it was the power of such rulers that
determined which form of religion should offi cially prevail. The Lutheran and Anglican
churches were in this tradition, and to some extent the Gallican church, as
the French branch of the Roman Catholic church was called. As it turned
out, by 1600, the second and third streams had won many successes, but the
fi rst was suppressed. Socio-religious radicalism was reduced to an under-
current in countries where Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist, or Roman Catholic churches
were established during the sixteenth century.
Since northern Europe became Protestant while the south remained Catholic, it may
look as if the north had broken off in a body from a once solid Roman church. The reality
was not so simple. Let us for a moment put aside the term “Protestant,” and think of the
adherents of the new religion as religious revolutionaries. 3 Their ideas were revolutionary
Strands of
Protestantism
This painting entitled Interrogation of the Jews, by an unknown artist in the 1480s, suggests the dangers that non-Christian people faced in late fi fteenth-century Spain. Infl uential, wealthy interrogators ques- tioned the beliefs or behavior of persons whose religion made them “suspicious” and vulnerable to the powerful people who distrusted them. (The Granger Collection, NYC)
3 The word “Protestant” arose as an incident in the struggle, at fi rst denoting certain Lutherans who drew up a
formal protest against an action of the diet of the empire in 1529. Only very gradually did the various groups of
anti-Roman reformers think of themselves as collectively Protestant.
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79
EUROPE, 1526 The main feature of the political map of Europe about 1526 is the predominance of the house of Habsburg. Much of Europe was ruled by the Habsburg Emperor Charles V, who was at the same time King Charles I of Spain. Charles left his possessions in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia to his brother and those in Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, and America to his son, thereby establish- ing the Austrian and Spanish branches of the Habsburg dynasty. France was nearly encircled by Habsburg dominions and habitually formed alliances to oppose the Habsburg kings.
Habsburg Dominions
Church Lands
Boundary of Holy Roman Empire
0 100 200 300 miles
Aegean Sea
B l a c k S e a
A d r i a t i c S e a
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PAPAL STATES
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DENMARK
M O
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Dublin
Edinburgh
York
London Canterbury
Calais (England)
St. Malo Paris
Rouen
Orléans
Angoulême
Bordeaux
Bourges
Bayonne
Avignon
Marseille
Barcelona
Santiago
Burgos
Valladolid
Escorial
Oporto
Lisbon
Toledo
Madrid
Seville Granada Cadiz
Valencia
Melilla (Spain) Algiers
Tunis
Rome
Naples
Florence
Venice
Parma Milan
Worms
Sofia
Mohacs
Belgrade
Salonica
Palermo Lepanto
Bucharest
Adrianople
Constantinople
Smyrna
Munich
Augsburg
Ratisbon
Hamburg
Berlin Wittenberg
Prague
Danzig
Copenhagen
Warsaw
Helsingfors
Stockholm
Riga
Novgorod
Moscow
Vilna
Kiev
Genoa
Geneva
Strasbourg Vienna
Budapest
Trent
Basel
Metz
Brussels Antwerp
Münster
Cologne
Breslau Cracow
Schmalkalden
Trier Lemberg
Bergen Oslo
because they held, not merely that “abuses” in the church must be corrected, but also that
the Roman church itself was wrong in principle. Even so, there were many who hoped,
for years, that old and new ideas of the church might be combined. Many deplored the
extremes but gradually in the heat of struggle had to choose one side or the other. The
issues became drawn, and each side aspired to destroy its adversary. For over a century
the revolutionaries maintained the hope that “popery” would everywhere fall. For over a
9. The Protestant Reformation
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156080
century the upholders of the old order worked to annihilate or reconvert “heretics.” Only
slowly did Catholics and Protestants come to accept each other’s existence as an estab-
lished fact of European society. Though the religious frontier that was to prove permanent
appeared as early as 1560, it was not generally accepted until after the Thirty Years’ War,
which ended in 1648.
Luther and Lutheranism
The fi rst who successfully defi ed the older church authorities was Martin Luther. He was a
monk, and an earnest one, until he was almost 40 years old. A vehement and spiritually
uneasy man, with many dark and introspective recesses in his personality, Luther was
terrifi ed by the thought of the awful omnipotence of God, distressed by his
own sense of inadequacy, apprehensive of the devil, and suffering from the
chronic conviction that he was damned. The means offered by the church to
allay such spiritual anguish—the sacraments, prayer, attendance at Mass—
gave him no satisfaction. From a reading and pondering of St. Paul
(Romans i, 17)—“the just shall live by faith”—there dawned upon him a new realization
and sense of peace. He developed the doctrine of justifi cation by faith alone. This held that
what “justifi es” a person is not what the church knew as “works” (prayer, alms, the sacra-
ments, holy living) but “faith alone,” an inward bent of spirit given to each soul directly by
God. Good works, Luther thought, were the consequence and external evidence of this
inner grace, but in no way its cause. People did not “earn” grace by doing good; they did the
good because they possessed the grace of God. With this idea Luther for some years lived
content. Even years later some high-placed churchmen believed that in Luther’s doctrine of
justifi cation by faith there was nothing contrary to the teachings of the Catholic church.
Luther, now a professor at Wittenberg, was brought out of seclusion by an incident
of 1517. A friar named Tetzel was traveling through Germany distributing indulgences,
authorized by the pope to fi nance the building of St. Peter’s in Rome. Tetzel claimed that
indulgences would free people from some of the punishments of purgatory,
and in return for the indulgences the faithful paid certain stipulated sums of
money. Luther thought that people were being deluded, that no one could
obtain grace in this way, or ease the pains of relatives in purgatory, as was
offi cially claimed. In the usual academic manner of the day, he posted 95 theses on the
door of the castle church at Wittenberg. Reviewing the Catholic sacrament of penance,
Luther held in these theses that, after confession, the sinner is freed of sinful burdens
not by the priest’s absolution but by inner grace and faith alone. Increasingly, as Luther
described his view of Christian faith, it seemed that the priesthood performed no necessary
function in the spiritual relation between human beings and God.
Luther at fi rst appealed to the pope, Leo X, to correct the abuse of indulgences in
Germany. When the pope refused action Luther (like many before him) urged the assembly
of a general church council as a religious authority above the pope. He was obliged, how-
ever, to admit in public debate that even the decision of a general council might be mistaken.
The Council of Constance, he said, had in fact erred in its condemnation of John Huss. But
if neither the pope, nor yet a council, had authority to defi ne true Christian belief, where was
such authority to be found? Luther’s answer was, in effect: there is no such authority. He
held that individuals might read the Bible and freely make their own interpretations accord-
ing to their own conscience. This idea was as revolutionary for the church as would be the
assertion today that neither the Supreme Court nor any other body may authoritatively
Luther’s “justifi cation
by faith”
Indulgences
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interpret or enforce the Constitution of the United States, since each citizen may interpret the
Constitution in his or her own way.
From his fi rst public appearance Luther won ardent supporters, for there was a good
deal of resentment in Germany against Rome. In 1519 and 1520 he rallied public opin-
ion in a series of tracts, setting forth his main beliefs. He declared that the claim of the
clergy to be different from the laity was an imposture. He urged people
to fi nd Christian truth in the Bible for themselves, and in the Bible only.
He denounced the reliance on fasts, pilgrimages, saints, and Masses. He
rejected the belief in purgatory. He reduced the seven sacraments to two—
baptism and the communion, as he called the Mass. In the latter he repudi-
ated the new and “modern” doctrine of transubstantiation, while affi rming that God was
still somehow mysteriously present in the bread and wine. He declared that the clergy
should marry, upbraided the prelates for their luxury, and demanded that monasticism be
eliminated. To drive through such reforms, while depriving the clergy of their pretensions,
he called upon the temporal power, the princes of Germany. He thus issued an invitation
to the state to assume control over religion, an invitation which, in the days of the New
Monarchy, a good many rulers were enthusiastically willing to accept.
Threatened by a papal bull with excommunication unless he recanted, Luther solemnly
and publicly burned the bull. Excommunication followed. To the emperor, Charles V,
Luther’s criticisms of
the Church
Martin Luther and his wife Catherine, portrayed here by the artist Lucas Cranach, the Elder, represent the acceptance of marriage among the clergy and religious leaders of the new Prot- estant churches. Catherine had lived in a convent before she married Luther and took on the new tasks of a religious wife in a Protestant minister’s household. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
9. The Protestant Reformation
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156082
now fell the duty of apprehending the heretic and repressing the heresy. Luther was sum-
moned to appear before a diet of the empire, held at Worms in the Rhineland. He declared
that he could be convinced only by Scripture or right reason; otherwise “I neither can nor
will recant anything, since it is neither right nor safe to act against conscience. God help
me! Amen.” He was placed under the ban of the empire. But the Elector of Saxony and
other north German princes took him under their protection. In safe seclusion, he began to
translate the Bible into German.
Lutheranism quickly swept over Germany, assuming the proportions of
a national upheaval. It became mixed with all kinds of political and social
revolution. A league of imperial knights, adopting Lutheranism, attacked
their neighbors, the church-states of the Rhineland, hoping by annexations to enlarge their
own meager territories. In 1524 the peasants of a large part of Germany revolted. They
were stirred by new religious ideas, worked upon by preachers who went beyond Luther
in asserting that each individual could readily understand what was right or wrong. Their
aims, however, were social and economic; they demanded a regulation of rents and secu-
rity of common village rights and complained of exorbitant exactions and oppressive rule
by their manorial overlords. Luther repudiated all connection with the peasants, called
them fi lthy swine, and urged the princes to suppress them by the sword. The peasants were
unmercifully put down, but popular unrest continued to stir the country, expressing itself,
in a religious age, in various forms of extreme religious frenzy.
Various religious leaders attracted devout followers, who came to be known collec-
tively as Anabaptists. Some said that all the world needed was love, some that Christ would
soon come again, some that they were saints and could do no wrong, and some that infant
baptism was useless, immersion of full-grown adults being required, as described in the
Bible. The roads of Germany were alive with religious radicals, of whom some tens of
thousands converged in 1534 on the city of Münster. There they proclaimed the reign of the
saints, abolished property, and introduced polygamy as sanctioned in the Old Testament.
A Dutch tailor, John of Leyden, claimed that authority came to him directly from God.
Hemmed in by besieging armies, he ruled Münster by a revolutionary terror. Luther advised
his followers to join even with Catholics to repress such a dangerous religious and social
menace. After a full year Münster fell to the forces of its former rulers. The “saints” were
pitilessly rooted out; John of Leyden died in torture.
Luther, horrifi ed at the way in which religious revolution became confused with social
revolution, defi ned his own position more conservatively. He restricted, while never deny-
ing, the right of private judgment in matters of conscience, and he made a larger place
for an established clergy, Lutheranized, to be sure, but still established as
teachers over the laity. Always well disposed to temporal rulers, having
called upon the princes to act as religious reformers, he was thrown by the
peasant and Anabaptist uprisings into an even closer alliance with them.
Lutheranism became more submissive to the state. Christian liberty, Luther insisted, was
an internal freedom, purely spiritual, known only to God. In worldly matters, he said, the
good Christian owed obedience to established authority. Lutheranism thus came to view
the state with more deference and respect than governments usually received from either
Roman Catholicism or the Calvinism that soon arose.
In the revolution that was rocking Germany it was not the uprising of imperial knights,
nor that of peasants or tailors and journeymen, that was successful, but the rebellion of
the higher orders of the Empire against the emperor. Charles V, as Holy Roman Emperor,
was bound to uphold Catholicism because only in a Catholic world did the Holy Empire
Social revolution
Luther’s reaction
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83
have any meaning. The states of the empire, always fearing the loss of local liberty, saw in
Charles’s efforts to repress Luther a threat to their own freedom. Many imperial free cities,
and most of the dynastic states of north Germany, now insisted on adding
to their other rights and liberties the right, or liberty, to determine their
own religion. The right or power to reform, they said, belonged to member
states, not to the empire itself. They became Lutheran, locally, introduc-
ing Lutheran bishops, doctrines, and forms of worship. Where a state turned Lutheran it
usually confi scated the church properties within its borders, a process that consider-
ably enriched some of the Lutheran princes and gave them a strong material interest in
the success of the Lutheran movement. In most of the church-states, since the Catholic
archbishop or bishop was himself the government, Catholicism prevailed. But a few
church-states turned Lutheran. A good example of the secularization of a church-
state was afforded in East Prussia, just outside the empire. This territory belonged to
the Teutonic Order, a Catholic organization of which the grand commander, an elective
offi cial, was at this time Albert of Brandenburg. In 1525 Albert declared for Luther and
converted East Prussia into a secular duchy, of which he and his descendants became
hereditary dukes.
The radical Anabaptist move- ment in Münster was severely repressed after the city’s former rulers regained control in early 1536. This illustration depicts the public torture and death of John of Leyden, whose punishment served as a vivid warning to other revolutionary Protestants throughout Germany. (akg-images/Newscom)
9. The Protestant Reformation
Political rebellion
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156084
Against the emperor, a group of Lutheran princes and free cities formed the League of
Schmalkald. The king of France, Francis I, though a Catholic in good standing, allied with
and supported the League. Political interests overrode religious ones. Against the “univer-
sal monarchy” of the swollen Habsburgs the French found alliances where they could,
allying with the Turks as with the Lutherans, building up a balance of power against their
mighty foe. It became the studied policy of Catholic France to maintain the religious divi-
sion of Germany.
Threatened by French and Turkish armies and challenged by the resistance of German
princes within his own empire, Charles appealed to the pope, urging him to assemble a
Europe-wide council in which all disputed matters could be considered, the Protestants
could be heard, compromises could be effected, and church unity and
German unity (such as it was) could be restored. The king of France
schemed at Rome to prevent the pope from calling any such council. The
kings of both France and England urged national councils instead, in which
religious questions could be settled on a national basis. Pope after pope
delayed. The papacy feared that a council of all Latin Christendom might get out of con-
trol, since Catholics as much as Protestants demanded reform. To the papacy, remembering
the Council of Constance, nothing was more upsetting than the thought of a council, not
even the Protestants, not even the Turks. So the popes procrastinated, no council met, years
passed, and a new generation grew up in Lutheranism. Meanwhile the Schmalkaldic
League, allied with France, actually went to war with the emperor in 1546. Germany fell
into an anarchy of civil struggle between Catholic and Protestant states, the latter aided by
France. The war was ended by the Peace of Augsburg of 1555.
The terms set at Augsburg signifi ed a complete victory for the cause of Lutheranism
and states’ rights. Each state of the empire received the liberty to be either Lutheran or
Catholic as it chose. No individual freedom of religion was permitted; if
a ruler or a free city decided for Lutheranism, then all persons had to be
Lutheran. Similarly in Catholic states all had to be Catholic. The Peace of
Augsburg provided also, by the so-called Ecclesiastical Reservation, that
Charles’s appeals to
the papacy
The Peace of
Augsburg
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1309–1555
1309–1378 “Babylonian Captivity”: Papacy in Avignon
1337–1453 Hundred Years’ War between England and France
1348–1350 Black Death decimates European population
c. 1350–1500 Renaissance Humanism and Art
1378–1417 Schism of Roman Catholic Church: Popes in Avignon and Rome
1454 Johann Gutenberg begins printing books with movable type
1494 French invasion of Italy destroys independence of city-states
1513 Niccolò Machiavelli writes The Prince
1517 Martin Luther posts his “95 theses”; beginning of Protestant Reformation
1545–1563 Roman Catholic Council meets at Trent; promotes Catholic reforms
1555 Peace of Augsburg recognizes Protestant and Catholic states in Germany
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85
any Catholic bishop or other churchman who turned Lutheran in the future (or who had
turned Lutheran as recently as 1552) should not carry his territory with him, but should turn
Lutheran as an individual and move away, leaving his land and its inhabitants Catholic.
Since the issues in Germany were still far from stabilized, this proviso was often disre-
garded in later years.
The Peace of Augsburg was thus, in religion, a great victory for Protestantism, and at
the same time, in German politics and constitutional matters, a step in the disintegration
of Germany into a mosaic of increasingly separate states. Lutheranism prevailed in the
north and in the south in the duchy of Württemberg and various detached islands formed
by Lutheranized free cities. Catholicism prevailed in the south (except in Württemberg and
certain cities), in the Rhine valley, and in the direct possessions of the house of Habsburg,
which in 1555 reached as far north as the Netherlands. The Germans, because of condi-
tions in the Holy Roman Empire, were the one large European people to emerge from the
religious confl ict almost evenly divided between Catholic and Protestant.
No rights were granted by the Peace of Augsburg to another group of religious revo-
lutionaries which neither Lutherans nor Catholics were willing to tolerate, namely, the
followers of John Calvin.
Lutheranism was also adopted by the kings of Denmark and Sweden as early as the
1520s. Since Denmark controlled Norway, and Sweden ruled Finland and the eastern
Baltic, all Scandinavia and the Baltic regions became, like north Germany, Lutheran.
Beyond this area Lutheranism failed to take root. Like Anglicanism in England (to be
described shortly), Lutheranism was too closely associated with established states to
spread easily as an international movement. The most successful international form of the
Protestant movement was Calvinism.
Calvin and Calvinism
John Calvin was a Frenchman, born Jean Cauvin, who called himself Calvinus in Latin.
Born in 1509, he was a full generation younger than Luther. He was trained both as a priest
and as a lawyer and had a humanist’s knowledge of Latin and Greek, as well as Hebrew.
At the age of 24, experiencing a sudden conversion, or fresh insight into the
meaning of Christianity, he joined forces with the religious revolutionar-
ies of whom the best known was then Luther. Three years later, in 1536,
he published, in the international language, Latin, his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Where Luther had aimed much of his writing either at the existing rulers of Germany, or at the German national feeling against Rome, Calvin addressed his
Institutes to all the world. He seemed to appeal to human reason itself; he wrote in the severe, logical style of the trained lawyer; he dealt fi rmly, lucidly, and convincingly with
the most basic theological issues. In the Institutes people in all countries, if dissatisfi ed with the existing Roman church, could fi nd cogent expression of universal propositions,
which they could apply to their own local circumstances as they required.
With Luther’s criticisms of the Roman church, and with most of Luther’s fundamental
religious ideas, such as justifi cation by faith and not by works, Calvin agreed. In what they
retained of the Catholic Mass, the communion or Lord’s Supper as they called it, Luther
and Calvin developed certain doctrinal differences. Both rejected transubstantiation, but
where Luther insisted that God was somehow actually present in the bread and wine used
in the service (“consubstantiation”), Calvin and his followers tended more to regard it as a
pious act of symbolic or commemorative character.
Calvin’s Doctrines
9. The Protestant Reformation
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156086
There were two chief differences between Calvin and Luther. Calvin made far more of
the idea of predestination. Both, drawing heavily on St. Augustine, held that human beings
could never earn salvation by their own actions, that any grace that anyone possessed came
from the free action of God alone. God, being Almighty, knew and willed
in advance all things that happened, including the way in which every life
would turn out. God thus knew and willed that some were saved and some
were damned. Calvin, a severe critic of human nature, felt that those who
had grace were relatively few. They were the “elect,” the “godly,” the small group chosen
without merit of their own for salvation. People could feel in their own minds that they
were among the saved, God’s chosen few, if throughout all trials and temptations they
persisted in pursuing a saintly life. Thus the idea of predestination, of God’s omnipotence,
instead of turning to fatalism and resignation, became a challenge to unrelenting effort, a
sense of burning conviction, a conviction of being on the side of that Almighty Power
which must in the end be everlastingly triumphant. It was the most resolute spirits that
were attracted to Calvinism. Calvinists, in all countries, were militant, uncompromising,
perfectionist—or Puritan, as they were called fi rst in England and later in America.
The second way in which Calvinism differed from Lutheranism was in its attitude to
society and to the state. Calvinists refused to recognize the subordination of church to
state, or the right of any government to lay down laws for religion. On the contrary, they
insisted that true Christians, the elect or godly, should Christianize the state. They wished
to remake society itself into the image of a religious community. They rejected the institu-
tion of bishops (which both the Lutheran and Anglican churches retained) and provided
instead that the church should be governed by presbyteries, elected bodies made up of
ministers and devout laymen. By thus bringing an element of lay control into church
affairs, they broke the monopoly of priestly power and so promoted secularization. On the
other hand, they were the reverse of secular, for they wished to Christianize all society.
Calvin, called in by earlier reformers who had driven out their bishop, was able to set
up his model Christian community at Geneva in Switzerland. A body of ministers ruled the
church; a consistory of ministers and elders ruled the town. The rule was strict; all loose,
light, or frivolous living was suppressed; disaffected persons were driven
into exile. The form of worship was severe and favored the intellectual
rather than the emotional or the aesthetic. The service was devoted largely
to long sermons elucidating Christian doctrine, and all appeals to the
senses—color, music, incense—were rigidly subdued. The black gown of Geneva replaced
brighter clerical vestments. Images, representing the saints, Mary, or Christ, were taken
down and destroyed. Candles went the way of incense. Chanting was replaced by the sing-
ing of hymns. Instrumental music was frowned upon, and many Calvinists thought even
bells to be a survival of “popery.” In all things Calvin undertook to regulate his church by
the Bible. Nor was he more willing than Luther to countenance any doctrine more radical
than his own. When a Spanish refugee, Michael Servetus, who rejected the doctrine of the
Trinity and thus denied the divinity of Christ, sought asylum at Geneva, Calvin pronounced
him a heretic and had him burned at the stake.
Reformers of all nationalities fl ocked to Geneva to see and study a true scriptural com-
munity so that they might reproduce it in their own countries. Geneva became the Protestant
Rome, the one great international center of Reformed doctrine. Everywhere
Calvinists made their teachings heard (even in Spain and Italy in isolated
cases), and everywhere, or almost everywhere, little groups that had locally
and spontaneously broken with the old church found in Calvin’s Institutes
Predestination
Calvin’s Geneva
The spread of
Calvinism
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87
a reasoned statement of doctrine and a suggested method of organization. Thus Calvinism
spread very widely. In Hungary and Bohemia large elements turned Protestant, and usually
Calvinist, partly as a way of opposing the Habsburg rule. In Poland there were many
Calvinists, along with less-organized Anabaptists and Unitarians, or Socinians, as those
who denied the Trinity were then called. Calvinists spread in Germany, where, opposing
both Lutheran and Catholic churches as ungodly impositions of worldly power, they were
disliked equally by both. In France the Huguenots were Calvinist, as were the Protestants
of the Netherlands. John Knox in the 1550s brought Calvinism to Scotland, where Presby-
terianism became and remained the established religion. At the same time Calvinism began
to penetrate England, from which it was later to reach British America, giving birth to the
Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches of the United States.
Calvinism was far from democratic in any modern sense. It carried an almost aris-
tocratic outlook, in that those who sensed themselves to be God’s chosen few felt free to
dictate to the wider population of lost souls. Yet in many ways Calvinism
entered into the development of what became democracy. For one thing,
Calvinists never venerated the state; they always held that the sphere of
the state and of public life was subject to moral judgment. For another,
the Calvinist doctrine of the “calling” taught that a person’s labor had a
religious dignity and that any form of honest work was pleasing in the sight of God. In the
conduct of their own affairs Calvinists developed a type of self-government. They formed
“covenants” with one another and devised machinery for the election of presbyteries. They
refused to believe that authority was transmitted downward through bishops or through
kings. They were inclined also to a democratic outlook, because in most countries they
remained an unoffi cial minority. Only at Geneva, in the Dutch Netherlands, in Scotland,
Calvinism and
democracy
This image of John Calvin suggests that his infl uence among Protestants came from his intellectual rigor as well as his disciplined leadership of the religious reformers in Geneva. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
9. The Protestant Reformation
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156088
and in New England (and for a few years in England in the seventeenth century) were
Calvinists ever able to prescribe the mode of life and religion of a whole country. In England,
France, and Germany, Calvinists remained in opposition to the established authorities of
church and state and hence were disposed to favor limitations upon established power.
In Poland and Hungary many Calvinists were nobles who disliked royal authority.
The Reformation in England
England was peculiar in that its government broke with the Roman church before adopting
any Protestant principles. Henry VIII (1509–1547) in fact prided himself on his orthodoxy.
When a few obscure persons, about 1520, began to whisper Luther’s ideas in England,
Henry himself wrote a Defense of the Seven Sacraments in refutation, for which a grateful pope conferred upon him the title “Defender of the Faith.”
But the king had no male heir. Recalling the violent anarchy from which
the Tudor dynasty had extricated England, and determined as a New Mon-
arch to build up a durable monarchy, he decided that he must remarry in order to have a
son. He therefore requested the pope, Clement VII, to annul his existing marriage to Cath-
erine of Aragon. Popes in the past had obliged monarchs in similar situations. The pope
now, however, was embarrassed by the fact that Catherine, who objected, was the aunt of
the Habsburg emperor, Charles V, whom the pope was in no position to offend. Henry, not
a patient man, pushed matters forward. He appointed a new archbishop of Canterbury,
repudiated the Roman connection, secured the annulment of his earlier marriage, and mar-
ried the youthful Anne Boleyn. The fact that only three years later he put to death the
unfortunate Anne, and thereafter in quick succession married four more wives, for a total
of six, threw considerable doubt on the original character of his motives.
Henry acted through Parliament, believing, as he said, that a king was never stronger
than when united with representatives of his kingdom. In 1534 Parliament passed the Act of
Supremacy, which declared the English king to be the “Protector and Only Supreme Head of
the Church and Clergy of England.” All subjects were required, if asked, to
take the oath of supremacy acknowledging the religious headship of Henry
and rejecting that of the pope. For refusing this oath Sir Thomas More, a
statesman and humanist best known as the author of Utopia, was executed for treason. The Roman Catholic Church, in the twentieth century, would pro-
nounce More to be a saint, but Henry won English support for most of his policies. He closed
all the monasteries in England, seized the extensive monastic lands, and passed them out to
numerous followers. He thus strengthened and reconstituted a landed aristocracy that had
been seriously weakened in the Wars of the Roses. This new landed gentry remained fi rm
supporters of the house of Tudor and the English national church, whatever its doctrines.
It was Henry’s intent not to change the doctrines at all. He simply wished to be the
supreme head of an English Catholic church. On the one hand, in 1536, he forcibly sup-
pressed a predominantly Catholic rebellion, and, on the other, in 1539, through the Six
Articles, required everybody to believe in transubstantiation, the celibacy of the clergy, the
need of confession, and a few other aspects of Catholic faith and practice. But it proved
impossible to maintain this position, for a great many people in England began to favor
one or another of the ideas of Continental Reformers, and a small minority were willing to
accept the entire Protestant position.
For three decades the government veered about. Henry died in 1547 and was suc-
ceeded by his 10-year-old son, Edward VI, the child of his third wife, Jane Seymour.
Henry VIII
The Act of
Supremacy
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89
The Protestant party now came to the fore. But Edward died in 1553 and was succeeded by
his much older half-sister, Mary, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon and a devout Roman
Catholic whose whole life had been embittered by the English break with Rome. Mary tried
to re-Catholicize England, but she actually made Catholicism more unpopular among the
English people. In 1554 she married Philip of Spain, who became king of England, though
STATE RELIGIONS IN EUROPE ABOUT 1560 This map shows the legally authorized, established churches about 1560, but it does not show the precise distributions of religious communities. Many Catholics lived north of the heavy line, and many Protestants south of it. Most widely dispersed were the Calvinists and the more radi- cal Protestants or Anabaptists. In Germany, under the Holy Roman Empire, each principality and free city chose its own religion; hence, the Germans were the only large European popula- tion to emerge from the Reformation almost evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants.
Lutheran
Anglican
Calvinist
Roman Catholics
A,C, and RC designate Anabaptists, Calvinists, and Roman Catholics in countries where theirs was not the dominant religion.
Border between Protestant State Churches and Roman Catholic Church Approximate Eastern Border of Western Christianity
0 100 200 miles
C
C
C
C C
C C
C C
C C
C
C
C C
CC
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
A A
A
A
A
A
A
A A
A A
A
R C
R C
R C
R C
NORWAY
DENMARKIRELAND
S W E D E N
SCOTLAND
ENGLAND
FRANCE
SPAIN
NETHER- LANDS
POLAND
HUNGARY AUSTRIA
ITALY
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TRANSYLVANIA
MORAVIA WÜRTTEMBERG
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Rome
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WittenbergCanterbury
9. The Protestant Reformation
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156090
Queen Elizabeth I wanted her portraits to convey her power and royal grandeur. This paint- ing, probably from the 1580s, uses her clothing and jewels to show her wealth and also to affi rm her political stature. (The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty
Images)
only in name. The English did not like Philip, nor the Spanish, nor the intense Spanish
Catholicism that Philip represented. Under Mary, moreover, some 300 persons were burned
at the stake, as heretics, in public mass executions. It was the fi rst (and last) time that such
a thing had happened in England, and it set up a wave of horror. In any event, Mary did not
live long. She was succeeded in 1558 by Henry’s younger daughter, Elizabeth, the child of
Anne Boleyn. Whatever Elizabeth’s real views in religion might be (she concealed them
successfully and was rumored to have none), she could not be a Roman Catholic. For Cath-
olics she was illegitimate and so unable to be queen.
Under Elizabeth the English became Protestant, gradually and in their own way. The
Church of England took on a form of its own. Organizationally, it resembled a Lutheran
church. It was a state church, for its existence and doctrines were deter-
mined by the monarch acting through Parliament. All English subjects were
obliged to belong to it, and laws were passed against “recusants,” a term
used to cover both the Roman Catholics and the more advanced Calvinists
who refused to acknowledge it. With the exception of monasteries and certain other church
foundations, the Church of England retained the physical possessions, buildings, and inter-
nal organization of the medieval church—the bishops and the archbishops, who continued
to sit in the House of Lords, the episcopal courts with their jurisdiction over marriage and
wills, the tithes or church taxes paid by all landowners, the parish structure, the universities
of Oxford and Cambridge.
In religious practice, the Church of England was defi nitely Protestant: English replaced
Latin as the language of the liturgy, there was no cult of the saints, and the clergy married,
though Elizabeth confessed to some embarrassment at the thought of an archbishop having
The Church of
England
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91
a wife. In doctrine, it was Elizabeth’s policy to make the dogmas broad and ambiguous, so
that persons of all shades of belief could be more readily accommodated. The Thirty-nine
Articles (1563), composed by a committee of bishops, defi ned the Protestant creed of the
Anglican church. All but one of the Anglican bishops had been newly appointed by Elizabeth
at her accession; many had lived in exile among Continental Protestants in the reign of
Mary Tudor; and except on the matter of church government through bishops (known as
episcopacy) a strong Calvinist impress was set upon Anglican belief in the time of Elizabeth.
The same ecclesiastical settlement was prescribed for Ireland, where English or rather
Anglo-Norman conquerors had settled since the twelfth century, shortly after the Norman
conquest of England. A replica of the Church of England was now established, called the
Church of Ireland, which took over the properties and position of the Roman church. The
native Irish, however, remained almost solidly Roman Catholic. As in Hungary or Bohemia
people who resented the Habsburgs were likely to turn Protestant rather than share in the
ruler’s religion, so in Ireland the fact that the ruling English were Protestant only confi rmed
the Irish in their attachment to the Roman church. The Catholic priests, deprived of status,
income, and church buildings, and often in hiding, became national leaders of a discon-
tented people.
The Consolidation of Protestantism by 1560
Neither in England, nor in Germany, nor in international Calvinism were the religious
issues regarded as settled in 1560. Nor had the Roman church accepted the new situation.
But by 1560 the chief Protestant doctrines had been affi rmed, and geographically Protes-
tantism had made many conquests. The institutional unity of Latin Christendom had been
broken. A world of separate churches, states, and nations was taking its place.
Protestants differed with one another, yet there was much that all had in common. All
rejected the papal authority. None participated in any effective international organization;
the ascendancy of Geneva was spiritual only and proved to be temporary. All Protestants
rejected the special, sacerdotal, or supernatural character of the priesthood;
indeed, the movement was perhaps most fundamentally a revolt against the
medieval position of the clergy. Protestants generally called their clergy
ministers, not priests. All Protestant clergy could marry. There were no
Protestant monks, nuns, or friars. All Protestant churches replaced Latin with the vernacu-
lar in religious services—English, French, German, Czech, as the case might be. All Prot-
estants reduced the number of sacraments, usually to two or three; such sacraments as
they retained they regarded more as symbols than as actual carriers of divine grace; all
believed, in one way or another, in justifi cation by faith. All denied transubstantiation,
or the miracle of the Mass. All gave up the obligatory confessional, and with it priestly
absolution. All gave up the idea of purgatory as a kind of temporal zone between heaven
and hell and hence abandoned the practice of saying prayers and Masses for the dead.
It need hardly be added that nothing like indulgences remained. All gave up the cult of
the saints and of the Virgin Mary, whose intercession in heaven was no longer expected.
All declared that the one true source of Christian belief was the Holy Scripture. And while
all established Protestant churches in the sixteenth century insisted on conformity to their
own doctrines, allowing no individual freedom, Protestants never fl atly repudiated the
right of private judgment in matters of conscience.
It has sometimes been maintained that one of the motivations for the spread of Protes-
tantism was economic—that a new acquisitive, dynamic, capitalistic impulse shook off the
What Protestants
held in common
9. The Protestant Reformation
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156092
restrictions imposed by medieval religion. The fact that Protestant England and Holland
soon underwent a rapid capitalistic development gives added credibility to this idea. The
alacrity with which Protestant governments confi scated church lands shows a keen material
interest; but in truth, both before and after the Reformation, governments confi scated church
properties without breaking with the Roman church. That profound economic changes were
occurring at the time will become apparent in Chapter 3. Yet it seems that economic
conditions were far less decisive than religious convictions and political circumstances.
Calvinism won followers not only in cities but also in agrarian countries such as Scotland,
Poland, and Hungary. Lutheranism spread more successfully in the less economically
active regions of north Germany than in the busy south. The English were for years no more
inclined to Protestantism than the French, and in France, while many lords and peasants
turned Protestant, Paris and many other towns remained as steadfastly Catholic. It is possi-
ble that Protestantism, by casting a glow of religious righteousness over a person’s daily
business and material prosperity, later contributed to the economic success of Protestant
peoples and to new cultural assumptions about the moral failings of poor people, but it does
not seem that a Protestant work ethic or other economic factors were of any distinctive
importance in shaping the fi rst stages of Protestantism.
The new religious movements had a more immediate infl uence on attitudes about
marriage and the family. In contrast to medieval Catholicism, which had praised sexual
abstinence and celibacy as key traits of the most exalted religious persons,
Protestantism strongly promoted marriage as the ideal social institution
for clergy and lay people alike. Parenthood became honorable for even the
most pious Protestant leaders. Although women sometimes wrote hymns
Protestants and
family life
The ideal Protestant household is represented by an unknown artist in this sixteenth-century Dutch painting of the family of a successful merchant. There are clear divisions between the men, women, and children, but everyone expresses the sobriety, wealth, and social appearance of a prosperous Calvinist community. (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
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9310. Catholicism Reformed and Reorganized
or preached in the more radical Protestant churches, the model Protestant woman was the
conscientious mother in a devout, religious household. The opportunities, even if limited,
that some women had found in medieval convents and religious communities disappeared
in Protestant societies, which may explain why nuns in Protestant territories were often
among the last persons to accept the new religious ideas.
Apart from the new emphasis on marriage, however, Protestants did little to change the
role of women in Christian churches or in the wider social order. The pastors in Protestant
communities were all men, and though more women may have become literate in order to
read the Bible, they became less visible in Protestant rituals as the long venerated female
saints vanished from prayers, religious writings, and charitable institutions. Meanwhile,
women in the convents of Catholic countries were more strictly cloistered and controlled
as Catholicism developed its own powerful movements for reform and reorganization.
10. CATHOLICISM REFORMED AND REORGANIZED
The Catholic movement corresponding to the rise of Protestantism is known as the Catholic
Reformation or the Counter Reformation. Catholics have usually preferred the former term
and Protestants have preferred the latter, but both are applicable. On the one hand the
Catholic church underwent a genuine reform, which might have worked itself out in one
way or another even if the stimulus of revolutionary Protestantism had been absent. On the
other hand the character of the reform, the measures adopted, and the new sense of urgency
became an explicit response to the Protestant challenge; and certainly, also, there was a
good deal of purely “counter” activity aimed at the elimination of Protestantism as such.
The demand for reform was as old as the abuses against which it was directed. Charac-
teristically, it had expressed itself in the demand for a general or ecumenical church council.
The conciliar movement, defeated by the popes about 1450, showed signs
of revival after 1500. The Lutheran upheaval thus provoked new calls
for a general council of the church, and we have seen how Charles V, in
the interests of German unity, sought to persuade the pope to assemble an
adequately empowered council, which might remove some of the abuses in the church
and take away the grounds upon which many Germans were turning to Lutheranism. But
meanwhile the king of France found reason to favor the pope and to oppose the emperor.
The French king, Francis I (1515–1547), could support the pope because he had obtained
from the papacy what he wanted, namely, control over the Gallican church, as acquired in
the Concordat of Bologna of 1516. And he had reason to oppose Charles V, because the
Habsburgs ruled not only in Germany but also in the Netherlands, Spain, and much of Italy,
thus encircling France and threatening Europe with what contemporaries called “universal
monarchy.” Francis I therefore actively encouraged the Protestants of Germany, as a means
of maintaining dissension there, and used his infl uence at Rome against the calling of a
council by which the troubles of the Catholic world might be relieved.
Gradually there arose a party of reforming cardinals who concluded that the need for
reform was so urgent that all dangers of a council must be risked. Pope Paul III summoned
a council to meet in 1537, but the wars between France and the empire forced its abandon-
ment. Finally, in 1545, a council assembled and began deliberations. It met at Trent, on
the Alpine borders of Germany and Italy. The Council of Trent, which shaped the destiny
of modern Catholicism, sat at irregular intervals for almost 20 years. It was not until the
Second Vatican Council in the 1960s that some of the main decisions made at Trent were
substantially modifi ed.
The call for reform
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156094
The Council of Trent
The council was beset by pressing political diffi culties, which seemed to show that under
troubled conditions an international council was no longer a suitable means of regulating
Catholic affairs. Signifi cantly, it was not well attended. Whereas earlier councils of the
church had assembled as many as 500 prelates, the attendance at Trent was never nearly so
great; it sometimes fell as low as 20 or 30, and the important decree on “justifi cation,” the
prime issue raised by Luther, and one on which some good Catholics had until then
believed a compromise to be possible, was passed at a session where only 60 prelates were
present. Even with the small attendance, the old conciliar issue was raised. A party of bish-
ops believed that the bishops of the Catholic church, when assembled in council from all
parts of the Catholic world, collectively constituted an authority superior to that of the
pope. To stave off this “episcopal” movement was one of the chief duties of the cardinal
legates deputed by the pope to preside over the sessions.
The popes managed successfully to resist the idea of limiting the papal power. In the
end they triumphed, through a fi nal ruling voted by the council, that no act of the council
should be valid unless accepted by the Holy See. It is possible that had the conciliar theory
won out, the Catholic church might have become as disunited in modern
times as the Protestant. It was clear, at Trent, that the various bishops tended
to see matters in a national way, in the light of their own problems at home,
and to be frequently under strong infl uence from their respective secular
monarchs. In any case, the papal party prevailed, which is to say that the
centralizing element, not the national, triumphed. The Council of Trent thus preserved the
papacy as a unifying center for the Catholic church and helped prevent the very real threat
of its dissolution into state churches. Even so, the council’s success was not immediate, for
in every important country the secular rulers at fi rst accepted only what they chose of its
work, and only gradually did its infl uence prevail.
Questions of national politics and of church politics apart, the Council of Trent
addressed itself to two kinds of labors—to a statement of Catholic doctrine and to a reform
of abuses in the church. When the council began to meet in 1545, the Prot-
estant movement had already gone so far that any reconciliation was prob-
ably impossible: Protestants, especially Calvinists, simply did not wish to
belong to the church of Rome under any conditions. In any case, the Council
of Trent made no concessions.
It declared that justifi cation or salvation by God’s grace came to humans through their
works and faith combined. It enumerated and defi ned the seven sacraments, which were
held to be vehicles of grace independent of the spiritual state of those who received them.
The priesthood was declared to be a special estate set apart from the laity by the sacra-
ment of holy orders. The procedures of the confessional and of absolution were clarifi ed.
Transubstantiation was reaffi rmed. As sources of Catholic faith, the council put Scripture
and tradition on an equal footing. It thus rejected the Protestant claim to fi nd true faith in
the Bible alone and reasserted the validity of church development since New Testament
times. The Vulgate, a translation of the Bible into Latin by St. Jerome in the fourth cen-
tury, was declared to be the only version on which authoritative teaching could be based.
The right of individuals to believe that their own interpretation of Scripture was more true
than that of church authorities (private judgment) was denied. Latin, as against the national
languages, was prescribed as the language of religious worship—a requirement that would
continue to shape Catholic liturgy until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Celibacy
of the clergy was maintained, and monasticism was upheld. The existence of purgatory
Preserving papal
authority
The Council of Trent:
defi ning Catholic
doctrine
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95
was reaffi rmed. The theory and correct practice of indulgences were restated. The venera-
tion of saints, the cult of the Virgin, and the use of images, relics, and pilgrimages were
approved as spiritually useful and pious actions.
It was easier for a council to defi ne doctrines than to reform abuses, since the latter
consisted in the rooted habits of people’s lives. The Council of Trent decreed, however,
a drastic reform of the monastic orders. It acted against the abuse of indulgences while
upholding the principle. It ruled that bishops should reside habitually in their dioceses,
attend more carefully to their proper duties, and exercise more administrative control over
clergy in their own dioceses. The abuse by which one man had held numerous church
offi ces at the same time (pluralism) was checked, and steps were taken to assure that
church offi cials should be competent. To provide an educated clergy, the council ordered
that a seminary should be set up in each diocese for the training of priests.
The New Catholicism
As laws in general have little force unless sustained by shared opinions, so the reform
decrees of the Council of Trent would have remained ineffectual had not a renewed sense
of religious seriousness been growing at the same time. Herein lay the inner force of the
Catholic Reform. In Italy, as the Renaissance became more undeniably
pagan, and as the sack of Rome in 1527 showed that even many Catholics
had lost respect for the Roman clergy, the voices of moralists began to be
heeded. The line of Renaissance popes was succeeded by a line of reform-
ing popes, of whom the fi rst was Paul III (1534–1549). The reforming
popes insisted on the primacy of the papal offi ce, but they regarded this offi ce, unlike their
predecessors, as a moral and religious force. In many dioceses the bishops began on their
own initiative to be stricter. The new Catholic religious sense, more than the Protestant,
centered in a reverence for the sacraments and a mystical awe for the church itself as a
divine institution. Both men and women founded many new religious orders, of which the
Jesuits became the most famous. Others were the Oratorians for men and the Ursulines for
women. The new orders dedicated themselves to a variety of educational and philanthropic
activities. Missionary fervor for a long time was more characteristic of Catholics than of
Protestants. It reached into Asia and the Americas, and in Europe expressed itself as an
intense desire for the reconversion of Protestants. It showed itself, too, in missions among
the poor, as in the work of St. Vincent de Paul among the human wreckage of Paris, for
which the established Protestant churches failed to produce anything comparable. In
America, as colonies developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Protestant
clergy tended to take the layman’s view of the Indians, while Catholic clergy labored to
convert and protect them; and the Catholic church generally worked to mitigate the brutal
treatment of enslaved Africans, to which the pastors in English and Dutch colonies, per-
haps because they were more dependent upon the laity, remained largely indifferent.
We have seen how in Spain, where the Renaissance had never taken much hold, the
very life of the country was connected to a kind of ongoing Christian crusade. It was in Spain
that much of the new Catholic feeling fi rst developed; and it was Spain that now generated
a new surge of Catholic missionary activity. Spanish writers provided the
most infl uential sixteenth-century accounts of Catholic mysticism, including
Teresa of Avila’s famous descriptions of her encounters with Christ. Spain
was also the home country of St. Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556). A soldier
in youth, he too, like Luther and Calvin, had a religious “experience” or “conversion,”
which occurred in 1521, before he had heard of Luther and while Calvin was still a boy.
Catholic religious
renewal
The Jesuits
10. Catholicism Reformed and Reorganized
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156096
Loyola resolved to become a soldier of the church, a militant crusader for the pope and the
Holy See. On this principle he established the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the
Jesuits. Authorized by Pope Paul III in 1540, the Jesuits constituted a monastic order of
a new type, less attached to the cloister, more directed toward active participation in the
affairs of the world. Only men of proven strength of character and intellectual force were
admitted. Each Jesuit had to undergo an arduous mystical training, set forth by Loyola in his
Spiritual Exercises. The order was ruled by an iron discipline, which required each member to see in his immediate superior the infallibility of the Holy Church. As Loyola explained in
his Spiritual Exercises, if the church teaches to see something as black even when the eye sees it as white the mind must believe it to be black.
For 200 years the Jesuits were the most famous schoolmasters of Catholic Europe,
eventually conducting some 500 schools for boys of the upper and middle classes. These
schools taught the Catholic faith, but they also taught the principles of gentlemanly deport-
ment (their teaching of dancing and dramatics became a scandal to more puritanical Catho-
lics), and they carried over the Renaissance and humanist idea of the Latin classics as the
main substance of adolescent education. The Jesuits made a specialty of work among the
ruling classes. They became confessors to kings and hence involved in political intrigue.
In an age when Protestants subordinated an organized church either to the state or to an
St. Ignatius Loyola’s religious inspiration is portrayed in this painting by Peter Paul Rubens, whose work often represented the religious and political leaders of Catholic countries. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
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97
individual conscience, and when even Catholics frequently thought of the church within
a national framework, the Jesuits seemed almost to worship the church itself as a divine
institution that must remain internationally organized and governed by the Roman pontiff.
All full-fl edged Jesuits took a special vow of obedience to the pope. Jesuits in the later ses-
sions of the Council of Trent fought obstinately, and successfully, to uphold the position of
Rome against that of the national bishops.
By 1560 the Catholic church, renewed by a deepening of its religious life and by an
uncompromising restatement of its dogmas and discipline, had devised also the practical
machinery for a counteroffensive against Protestantism. The Jesuits acted as an interna-
tional missionary force. They recruited members from all countries, including those in
which the governments had turned Protestant. English Catholics, for example, trained as
Jesuits on the Continent, returned to England to attempt to overthrow the heretic usurper,
Elizabeth, seeing in the universal church a higher cause than national independence in
religion. Jesuits poured also into the most hotly disputed regions where the religious
issue still swayed in the balance—France, Germany, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary. As after
every great revolution, many people moved from an initial burst of Protestantism toward
a revived interest in the old religious order, especially as the more crying evils within the
Catholic church were corrected. The Jesuits reconverted many who thus hesitated.
For the more recalcitrant other machinery was provided. All countries censored books;
Protestant authorities labored to keep “papist” works from the eyes of the faithful, and
Catholic authorities took the same pains to suppress all knowledge of “heretics.” All
bishops, Anglican, Lutheran, and Catholic, regulated reading matter within their dioceses.
In the Catholic world, with the trend toward centralization under the pope, a special impor-
tance attached to the list published by the bishop of Rome, the papal Index of Prohibited
Books. Only with special permission, granted to reliable persons for special study, could
Catholics read books listed on the Index, which was not abandoned until the 1960s.
All countries, Protestant and Catholic, also set up judicial and police machinery to
enforce conformity to the accepted church. In England, for example, Elizabeth established
the High Commission to bring “recusants” into the Church of England. All bishops, Prot-
estant and Catholic, likewise possessed machinery of enforcement in their
episcopal courts. But no court made itself so dreaded as the Inquisition.
In reality two distinct organizations went under this name, the word itself
being simply an old term of the Roman law, signifying a court of inquest
or inquiry. One was the Spanish Inquisition, established originally, about
1480, to ferret out Jewish and Muslim survivals in Spain. It was then introduced into all
countries ruled by the Spanish crown and employed against Protestantism, particularly in
the Spanish Netherlands, which was an important center of Calvinism. The other was the
Roman or papal Inquisition, established at Rome in 1542 under a permanent committee of
cardinals called the Holy Offi ce; it was in a sense a revival of the famous medieval tribu-
nal established in the thirteenth century for the detection and repression of heresy. Both
the Spanish and the Roman Inquisitions employed torture, for heresy was regarded as the
supreme crime, and all persons charged with crime could be tortured, in civil as well as
ecclesiastical courts, under the existing laws. In the use of torture, as in the imposition of
the harshest sentence, burning alive, the Roman Inquisition was less severe than the Span-
ish. The Roman Inquisition in principle offered a court to protect purity of faith in all parts
of the Catholic world. But the national resistance of Catholic countries proved too strong;
few Catholics wished the agents of Rome inquiring locally into their opinions; and the
Roman Inquisition never functioned for any length of time outside of Italy.
Enforcing religious
conformity
10. Catholicism Reformed and Reorganized
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Chapter 2 The Upheaval in Western Christendom, 1300–156098
In the “machinery” of enforcing religious belief, however, no engine was to be so
powerful as the apparatus of state. Where Protestants won control of government, people
became Protestant. Where Catholics retained control of governments, Protestants became
in time small minorities. And it was in the clash of governments, which is to say in war,
for about a century after 1560, that the fate of European religion was worked out. In 1560
the strongest powers of Europe—Spain, France, Austria—were all offi cially Catholic. The
Protestant states were all small or at most middle-sized. The Lutheran states of Germany,
like all German states, were individually of little weight. The Scandinavian monarchies
were far away. England, the most considerable of Protestant kingdoms, was a country of
only 4 million people, with an independent and hostile Scotland to the north, and with no
sign of colonial empire yet in existence. In the precedence of monarchs, as arranged in the
earlier part of the century, the king of England ranked just below the king of Portugal, and
next above the king of Sicily. Clearly, had a great combined Catholic crusade ever devel-
oped, Protestantism could have been wiped out. Yet such a crusade, partially launched on
various fronts by the king of Spain, never succeeded. Religious divisions became a per-
manent reality in European culture, contributing eventually, like Renaissance humanism
and the new European monarchies, to a gradual secularization of modern societies. And in
later, more secular times, the idea and practice of religious tolerance would develop as a
stabilizing solution for the intractable confl icts that long threatened the lives of individual
believers as well as the survival of entire religious communities.
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e .
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99
C h a p t e r 3 THE ATLANTIC WORLD, COMMERCE, AND WARS OF RELIGION, 1560–1648
European history in the period following 1560 is often described as the age of the Wars of Religion,
which may be said to have ended with the Peace of
Westphalia in 1648. France, England, the Nether-
lands, and the Holy Roman Empire fell into internal
and international struggles in which religion was
often the most burning issue, but in which political,
constitutional, economic, and social questions were
also involved. This time of long, drawn-out confl icts
between Catholics and Protestants, however, was
also a time of important economic transitions. From
the beginning of the sixteenth century European
society was transformed by contacts with a newly
discovered overseas world, which contributed deci-
sively to the expansion of global trade routes, the
emergence of a new commercial capitalism, and the
formation of new social classes.
This was the era in which the modern global
economic system began to develop and in which
new exchanges with people in Asia, Africa, and the Americas began to reshape social,
economic, and political power within Europe itself. The effects of these profound changes,
however, were obscured and delayed by the politico-religious struggles. In the present
chapter we must fi rst examine the geographical discoveries, then survey the broad new
economic and social developments under way, and fi nally trace the impact of the religious
wars on various parts of Europe. The wars, as we shall see, left Spain and Germany very
much weakened, and opened the way for the English, Dutch, and French to profi t from the
global economic changes and to play leading roles in the transnational confl icts of early
modern times.
11. The Opening of
the Atlantic
12. The Commercial
Revolution
13. Changing Social Structures
14. The Wars of Catholic
Spain: The Netherlands
and England
15. The Disintegration and
Reconstruction of France
16. The Thirty Years’ War,
1618–1648:
The Disintegration
of Germany
Chapter emblem: Detail from Jean Bourdichon (1457–1521), The Four Estates of Society: Work, which shows a carpenter working with the tools of his craft. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648100
11. THE OPENING OF THE ATLANTIC
Always until about 1500 the Atlantic Ocean had been a barrier, an end. About 1500 it
became a bridge and a starting place for new cross-cultural communications and confl icts.
The consequences were enormous for all concerned. In general, they were favorable for
Europeans but devastating for peoples elsewhere—in America through massive depopula-
tion by diseases such as smallpox brought from Europe, in Africa through the transatlantic
slave trade, and ultimately in places as far away as Australia through the destruction of
long-existing cultures or languages. Older, celebratory accounts of Europe’s “overseas
discoveries” have therefore been widely challenged in recent decades as historians have
revised the story of European expansion from the perspective of Native Americans or
African Americans. Viewed from these perspectives, Columbus’s fi rst voyage to America
in 1492 launched a history of terrible losses rather than an era of heroic European explora-
tions and conquests.
But few would deny that the new, complex association of the Old and New Worlds,
as Europeans called them, became a momentous event in human history. The endless
migration of people, the worldwide movement of trade, and the disorient-
ing experiences of cross-cultural encounters marked the true beginning of
modern global history. Europeans transformed or even destroyed numer-
ous other cultures, but their own culture was also transformed through
steadily expanding contacts with other peoples, social traditions, and reli-
gions in every part of the world. A new wealthy commercial class grew up in cities along
Europe’s Atlantic coast. Naval power became decisive. European populations grew with
the adoption of the American potato, and people in Europe became dependent on imported
commodities such as sugar and tobacco. European writers took increasing pride in their
understanding of the world and in what they regarded as the superiority of their own cul-
tural or religious traditions. There was also much speculation on the diversity of the human
races and cultures, which sometimes led to a new kind of race consciousness on the part of
Europeans and sometimes to a cultural relativism in which European customs were seen
as only one variant of human behavior as a whole. Meanwhile, people in the Americas
and Africa struggled to defend their own evolving cultures and institutions as European
soldiers, traders, and missionaries entered the various civilizations of an increasingly inter-
connected transatlantic economic system.
The Portuguese in the East
Europeans had skirted their Atlantic coast since prehistoric times. Vikings had settled in
Iceland in the ninth century and had even reached North America soon thereafter. In 1317
Venetians had established the Flanders galleys, commercial fl otillas that regularly made
the passage between the Adriatic and North seas. In the fi fteenth century, improvements
in shipbuilding, the rigging of sails, and the adoption of the mariner’s compass made it
feasible to sail on the open ocean out of sight of land. When the Portuguese about 1450
settled in the Azores Islands, in the mid-Atlantic, they found steady westerly winds to
assure a safe return to Europe. It seemed that the ocean might even lead to Asia.
For centuries Asia had been a source for Europe of many highly valued commodities,
partly manufactures in which Europe could not compete, such as silk and cotton fabrics,
rugs, jewelry, porcelains, and fi ne steel, and partly raw or semimanufactured drugs and
foodstuffs, such as sugar and, above all, spices. Europeans had never themselves gone to the
Cultural
transformation and
destruction
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10111. The Opening of the Atlantic
sources of supply of Eastern goods. Somewhere, east of Suez, barely known to Europeans,
was another world of other merchants who moved the wares of China, India, and the East
Indies Spice Islands by caravan over land and by boat through the Red Sea or Persian Gulf
to the markets of the eastern Mediterranean. Traders of the two worlds met and did business
at such thriving centers as Alexandria or Beirut or Constantinople.
In 1498 the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama, having rounded Africa in the wake
of other intrepid explorers, found himself in the midst of the unknown world of Arab
commerce. He landed on the Malabar Coast (the southwest coast of India), where he
found a busy commercial population of heterogeneous religious background. These
people knew at least as much about Europe as Europeans did about India (one Jew was
able to act as da Gama’s interpreter), and they realized that the coming of the Portuguese
would disturb their established channels of commerce. Da Gama, playing upon local
rivalries, was able to load his ships with the coveted wares, but on his second voyage, in
1502, he came better prepared, bringing a fi ghting fl eet of no less than 21 vessels. A fero-
cious war broke out between the Portuguese and Arab merchants, the latter supported in
one way or another by the Egyptians, the Turks, and even the distant Venetians, all of
EUROPEAN DISCOVERIES, 1450–1600 Discovery means the bringing of newly found countries within the habitual knowledge or per- manent commercial activity of the society from which the discoverer comes. Although sailors and travelers from Asia had long made voyages to distant places and engaged in trade across the Indian Ocean or South Pacifi c, it was the Europeans who discovered much of the Atlantic world in the sense indicated here. They did so in the period between 1450 and 1600, using maritime skills and geographical knowledge developed in the Mediterranean and off the Atlantic coast. Dates on the map show the years of fi rst signifi cant European arrival at the points indicated.
I N D I A N O C E A N P A C I F I C O C E A N
PA C I F I C O C E A N A T L A N T I C
O C E A N
A R C T I C O C E A N
Cabral 1500
1418 Columbu
s 1492
da Ga
ma 14
98
Dias 1488
da G am
a 1498
1472
1485
1485
Re tu
rn of
M ag
ell an
's Ex
pe dit
ion
1527
Magellan 1521
1595
1511
1517
1520 St. Francis Xavier
1549
Barentz 1596
1600
1598
1588
Chancellor 1553
1515
15061446
Davis 1585
1575
Cabot 1497Cartier
1533
Verrazano 1523
Vespucci 1499
1515
1520
1560 1535
Pizarro 1528
Balboa 1513
Magellan 1521
Cortés 1519
DeSoto 1539
Coronado 1540
1542
Drake 1578
1505
M a g
e ll a n
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648102
whom had an interest in maintaining the old routes of trade. For the Portuguese, trained
like the Spaniards in long wars against the Moors at home, no atrocities were too horrible
to commit against the “infi dels” whom they found as competitors at the end of their long
commercial quest. Cities were devastated along the Malabar Coast, ships were burned at
their docks, prisoners were butchered, and their dismembered hands, noses, and ears were
sent back as derisive trophies. One Brahmin, mutilated in this way, was left alive to bear
them to his people. Such, unfortunately, was India’s introduction to the highly assertive
“methods” of early modern Europe’s transoceanic trade.
In the following years the Portuguese built permanent fortifi ed stations at Goa on the
Malabar Coast, at Aden near the mouth of the Red Sea, at Hormuz near the mouth of the
Persian Gulf, and in East Africa. In 1509 they reached Malacca, near modern Singapore,
from which they passed northward into China itself and eastward to Amboina,
the heart of the Spice Islands, just west of New Guinea. Thus an empire was
created, the fi rst of Europe’s commercial-colonial empires, maintained by
superiority of fi rearms and sea power and by forceful economic interven-
tions that combined trade with war and plunder. The early European traders
were soon followed by bold Jesuits, including St. Francis Xavier, who, by 1550, had bap-
tized thousands of souls in India, Indonesia, and even Japan.
By the new sea route the European cost of Asian goods was much reduced, for the
old route had involved many transshipments, unloadings, and reloadings, movements by
sea and by land, through the hands of many merchants. In 1504 spices could be bought
in Lisbon for only a fi fth of the price demanded in Venice. The Venetians (who in their
desperation even talked of digging a Suez canal) were hopelessly undersold in western
European markets: their trade thereafter was confi ned to products of the Middle East.
As for the Portuguese, never was a commercial monopoly built so fast. The lower prices
added enormously to European demand and consumption. Beginning in 1504, only fi ve
years after da Gama’s fi rst return, an average of 12 ships a year left Lisbon for the expand-
ing Asian trade.
The Discovery of America
Meanwhile, the same quest for a route to the East had led to the somewhat disappointing
discovery of America. Like most such discoveries, this was no chance hit of an isolated
genius. Behaim’s globe, constructed in 1492, the very year of Columbus’s fi rst voyage,
suggested that China could be reached by crossing the Atlantic and thus supported the idea
of sailing westward to arrive in the East. Nevertheless, it was Christopher Columbus who
had the persistence and daring to undertake the unprecedented westward voyage. Before the
invention of suffi ciently accurate clocks (in the eighteenth century) mariners had no way
of determining longitude, that is, their east-west position, and learned geographers greatly
underestimated the probable distance from Europe westward to Asia. When Columbus
struck land, he naturally supposed it to be an outlying part of the Indies. The people were
soon called Indians, and the islands where Columbus landed, the West Indies.
Columbus had sailed with the backing of Queen Isabella of Castile, and the new lands
became part of the composite dominions of the crown of Spain. The Spaniards, hoping to
fi nd a sea route that would enable them to beat the Portuguese to the East (which da Gama
had not yet reached), received Columbus’s fi rst reports with enthusiasm. For his second
voyage they gave him 17 ships, fi lled with 1,500 workmen and artisans. Columbus him-
self, until his death in 1506, kept probing about in the Caribbean, baffl ed and frustrated,
Portuguese trading
empire
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103
still believing he had discovered a route to Asia and hoping to fi nd something that looked
like the fabulous East. Other Europeans were more willing to see the new lands as a previ-
ously unknown place in which they could pursue new wealth and power. Indeed, the lands
were soon given a new European name—America—after the Italian explorer Amerigo
Vespucci reported that neither the islands nor the mainland seemed to be connected with
Asia. Spanish churchmen began to view America as a new fi eld for crusading and conver-
sion. The Spanish government saw it as a source of gold and silver for the
royal exchequer. Footloose gentry of warlike habits, left idle by the end
of war with the Moors in Iberia, turned to America to make their fortunes.
The conquistadores fell upon the new lands. Hernando Cortés led a small Spanish army that conquered the Aztecs in Mexico between 1519 and 1521.
Taking advantage of divisions among peoples within Aztec territories, the conquistadores used massacres and sieges to complete a conquest that brought “New Spain” into a grow-
ing Spanish Empire. Francisco Pizarro’s later expedition into the Inca Empire in Peru also
resorted to brutal tactics of deception and murder to remove the Inca emperor, Atahualpa,
and thereby expand Spain’s imperial control across the Andes during the 1530s. The colo-
nizing Spanish forces quickly despoiled the native empires in both Mexico and Peru.
Mines for precious metals were opened almost immediately. The Indians were put to
Conquest begins in the
Americas
An Episode in the Conquest of America was painted by the Dutch artist Jan Mostaert about 1545. In this detail from an early European visualization of the New World, the American Indians are seen as naked, helpless, confused, and very different from Europeans. (The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)
11. The Opening of the Atlantic
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648104
forced labor, in which many died. The rapid decline in the Indian population, the attempts
of the church to protect its Indian converts, and the restrictions set by royal authorities on
their exploitation soon led to the importation of African slaves. More than 120,000
enslaved Africans were brought to America by 1575, and another 500,000 arrived over the
next 50 years. This massive, forced migration of Africans continued for more than two
centuries via a far-reaching European-managed slave trade that would carry 12.5 million
enslaved Africans to the Americas by the middle of the nineteenth century. The great
majority would be transported to Portuguese-controlled Brazil and to the various West
Indian sugar islands, but many also went to the Spanish Empire and to the later British
Empire in North America. Indeed, the number of enslaved Africans reaching America,
including the two continents and the West Indies, was far greater than the number of
Europeans who settled there before 1800; and some enslaved persons were also taken from
Africa into Portugal, Spain, England, and other parts of Europe.
Meanwhile, explorers began to make their way along the vast
American continent that barred them from Asia. A Spanish expedition, led
by Ferdinand Magellan, found a southwestern passage in 1520, sailed from
the Atlantic into the Pacifi c, crossed the Pacifi c, reached the Philippine Islands, and fought
its way through hostile Portuguese across the Indian Ocean back to Spain. The globe was
thus circumnavigated for the fi rst time, and new ideas about the true size and intercon-
nection of the oceans were brought back to Europe. Geographical experts immediately
incorporated the new knowledge. Europeans still knew little about the vast, newly dis-
covered continents, however, and other explorers sailing for Spain, the Cabots sailing for
England, Jacques Cartier for France, began the long and fruitless search for a northwest
passage to the Pacifi c. An English expedition, looking for a northeast passage, discovered
the White Sea in 1553. English merchants immediately began to take the ocean route to
Russia. Archangel became an ocean port.
For a century it was only the Spanish and Portuguese who followed up the new ocean
routes to America and the East. The monarchs of these two peoples, in a treaty of 1494,
asserted that the globe should be divided between them by an imaginary north-and-south
line that ran from a point in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean through the north
pole and across eastern Asia. Spain claimed all the Americas by this treaty, and Portugal,
all rights of trade in Africa, Asia, and the East Indies. But when the Portuguese explorer
Pedro Cabral discovered Brazil in 1500, it was found to be far enough east to lie within the
Portuguese area, and after Magellan landed on the Philippine Islands in 1521, they were
claimed to be in the Spanish zone.
In the populous, long-established civilizations of the East the Portuguese were never
more than a handful of outsiders who could not impose their language, their religion, or
their way of life. It was otherwise in the Americas, where previously unknown diseases
such as smallpox decimated the native populations, and where Spanish invaders set about
imposing European culture on the weakened and demoralized survivors.
The Spanish Empire in America
In South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean, after the fi rst ferocity of the conquista, the Spanish established their own civilization. In Protestant countries, and also in France,
as the years went on there arose an extremely unfavorable idea of the
Spanish regime in America, where, it was noted, the Inquisition was pres-
ently established and the native peoples were reduced to servitude by
Further explorations
Spanish colonial rule
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105
the conquerors. The Spanish themselves came to dismiss this grim picture as a false
legend concocted by their rivals. The true character of the Spanish Empire in America is
not easy to portray. The Spanish government (like the home governments of all colonial
empires) regarded its empire as existing primarily for the benefi t of the mother country.
The Indians were put into servitude, to work in mines or in agriculture. They also died
in large numbers from infections brought by Europeans to which Europeans over past
centuries had developed immunities but against which the native American peoples had
no such protection. The same was true farther north in what later became the United
States. Religious critics of Spanish brutality, including, most notably, Bartolomé de las
Casas, condemned the pervasive abuse of the native populations, and the Spanish govern-
ment made efforts to moderate the exploitation of Indian labor. It attempted to regulate
the encomienda, a labor and land system in which Indians were required to work for an
owner a certain number of days in the week, while retaining parcels of land on which to
work for themselves. How much the royal regulations were enforced on remote enco-
miendas is another question, to which answers vary. Black African slavery became some-
what less important in most of the Spanish American economy than it later became in the
Dutch, French, and English colonies or in Portuguese Brazil. But the white population
remained relatively small. Castilian Spaniards looked down on American-born whites,
called Creoles. Since fewer women than men emigrated from Spain, there arose a large
class of mestizos, of mixed white and Indian descent.
The mestizos, along with many Indians, adopted to a considerable degree the Spanish
language and the faith of the Spanish church. The Indians, while unfree, had usually lacked
freedom under their own tribal chiefs. The sufferings of Indians, however, took new forms.
They faced the harsh conditions of the Spanish labor system, but they were now spared
from the violence of recurring tribal wars; they also fell under the strict religious controls
of the Spanish Inquisition, but they were no longer threatened by traditional Aztec or Inca
rituals of human sacrifi ce. Meanwhile, new forms of education began to develop within the
Spanish Empire. The printing press was brought to Mexico in 1544. By the middle of the
sixteenth century Spanish America consisted of two great viceroyal ties, those of Mexico
and Peru, with 22 bishoprics, and with a university in each viceroyalty; the University of
Lima was established in 1551, that of Mexico in 1553. When Harvard College was founded
in New England (in 1636), there were fi ve universities on the European model in Spanish
America.
In 1545 a great discovery was made, the prodigiously rich silver depos-
its at Potosí in Peru. (It is now in Bolivia.) Almost simultaneously, better
methods of extracting silver from the ore by the use of mercury were devel-
oped. American production of precious metals shot up suddenly and portent-
ously. For years, after the midcentury, 500,000 pounds of silver and 10,000 pounds of gold
fl owed annually from America to Spain. The riches of Potosí fi nanced the European projects
of the king of Spain. Peruvian ores, Indian labor, and Spanish management combined to
make possible the militant, anti-Protestant phase of the Counter Reformation.
But the Spanish also found American natural resources that would become more valu-
able in Europe than all of the gold and silver in colonial mines, because the Indians intro-
duced Europeans to new plants such as beans, potatoes, maize, tomatoes, and squash. These
nutritious foods were taken back to Europe, where, in the long run, they became much more
useful than any precious metal in the daily lives and meals of everyone in Europe. American
food plants eventually transformed European agriculture, changed the cuisine in every
European country, and improved the diets of people in even the poorest social classes.
The Potosí silver
mines
11. The Opening of the Atlantic
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648106
Europeans negotiate with an African chief and his council on the Guinea coast, perhaps for the purchase of slaves who will be transported to America. The Europeans have guns while the Africans have only spears, but in contrast to early European images of American Indians the Africans are fully clothed and seated in a dignifi ed manner. (The New York Public Library/Art
Resource, NY)
Black slaves are stooped over in a diamond-processing operation in Brazil, while white overseers watch with whips. (The New York Public Library/Art
Resource, NY)
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107
Historical Interpretations and Debates
Europe and the Americas
Historians have long argued that the European encounter with the New World transformed Old World societies as well as cultures in the Americas. As these two infl uential historians explain in their accounts of cross-cultural exchanges and perceptions, the discovery of previ- ously unknown lands and peoples profoundly altered both the material lives and the intellectual perspectives of early modern Europeans. Note the contrasting themes of social and cultural history that Alfred Crosby Jr. and J. H. Elliott develop in their interpretations of how European contacts with American Indians changed the history of Europe.
Alfred W. Crosby Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (1972, 2003) The [American] Indian produced some of the
most important of all food plants. He also gave
humanity such nonfoods as tobacco, rubber,
and certain cottons, but let us restrict ourselves
to . . . his most valuable food crops. . . .
American plants [enabled the European]
farmer to produce food from soils that, prior
to 1492, were rated as useless because of
their sandiness, altitude, aridity, and other
factors. . . .
The American crops of primary
importance in Europe have been beans,
maize, and, above all, potatoes. . . . String
beans and lima beans were among the chief
products of seventeenth-century Spain. . . .
The bean spread to almost all the latitudes
of Europe, but the impact of maize was . . .
restricted almost entirely to the southern half
of that continent. . . .
Maize has had an important infl uence
on population growth in southern Europe. . . .
[But] another factor . . . has been Europe’s
love affair with the common American
potato. . . . It was the Irish, of course, who
fi rst wholeheartedly adopted the potato. . . .
As the crop spread in Ireland, the population
grew, which made further spread of the tuber
almost compulsory, for no other plant could
feed so many Irishmen on such small plots
of land. One-and-a-half acres, planted with
potatoes, would provide enough food, with
the addition of a bit of milk, to keep a family
hearty for a year.
J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New 1492–1650 (1970) The temptation was almost overpoweringly
strong [for Europeans] to see the newly-
discovered lands in terms of the enchanted
isles of medieval fantasy. . . . [And] the
Christian and the classical tradition were
likely to prove the obvious points of
departure for any evaluation of the New
World and its inhabitants. . . .
The reverence . . . for their Christian and
classical traditions had salutary consequences
for their approach to the New World, in that
it enabled them to set it into some kind of
perspective in relation to themselves. . . .
Christendom’s own sense of self-dissatisfaction
found expression in the longing for a return to a
better state of things. The return might be to the
lost Christian paradise, or to the Golden Age of
the ancients, or to some elusive combination of
both these imagined worlds. With the discovery
of the Indies . . . it was all too easy to transpose
the ideal world from a world remote in time to
a world remote in space. . . .
It was an idyllic picture, and the humanists
made the most of it, for it enabled them to
express their dissatisfaction with European
society, and to criticize it by implication.
America and Europe became antitheses—the
antitheses of innocence and corruption. . . .
But by treating the New World in this
way, the humanists were closing the door to
understanding an alien civilization. America
was not as they imagined it. . . . But the
dream was a European dream, which had
little to do with the American reality.
Sources: Alfred W. Crosby Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), pp. 170, 176–78, 181–83; J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New 1492–1650 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970, 1992), pp. 24–27.
11. The Opening of the Atlantic
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648108
Meanwhile, beginning in 1565, the Spanish also established a lucrative trade route
between their colonies in Mexico and the Philippines. Large ships called the “Manila
Galleons” carried vast cargoes of silver from Acapulco to Manila, where the silver was traded
for Chinese luxury goods—spices, porcelain, silks, and ivory—all of which were transported
back to Mexico and on to Europe. This valuable trade continued until the early nineteenth
century. It carried perhaps a third of all the silver extracted from Spain’s American colonies
off to Asia; and it helped to create the fi rst modern global network for commercial exchange,
in part because it brought Chinese consumers the only commodity that they wanted to buy
from Europeans during this era. Silver from New World mines therefore sustained the whole
Asian-American-European trading system and enabled Spain to control much of the bur-
geoning global market for Chinese products.
The opening of the Atlantic thus reoriented Europe. In an age of oceanic communica-
tions Europe became a center from which America, Africa, and Asia could all be reached.
In Europe itself, the Atlantic coast now enjoyed great advantages over the older Mediter-
ranean ports and the towns in central Europe. No sooner did the Portuguese begin to bring
spices from the East Indies than Antwerp began to fl ourish as the point of redistribution for
northern Europe. But for a century after the Spanish and Portuguese began to build their
empires, the northern peoples did not take to the oceans. French corsairs did indeed put out
from Bayonne or Saint-Malo, and Dutch prowlers and English “sea dogs” followed at the
close of the century, all bent upon plundering the Iberian treasure ships. Still the Spanish
and Portuguese kept their monopoly. No organized effort, backed by governments, came
from the north until about 1600. For it is by no means geography alone that determines
economic development; the English, Dutch, and French could not make use of the new
Atlantic opportunities until they had cleared up their domestic troubles and survived the
perils and hazards of the Wars of Religion.
12. THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION
In the great economic readjustment that was taking place in Europe, the
opening of ocean trade routes was important, but it was by no means the
only factor in shaping what historians call the early modern “Commercial
Revolution.” Two other key factors were the growth of population and a long, gradual rise
in prices, or a slow infl ation.
European population again grew rapidly, as in the High Middle Ages, reaching about
108 million in 1600, of which more than 20 million represented the growth during the
sixteenth century. The increase took place in all countries, though the distribution was quite
different from the population increases in more recent times. England in 1600 had less than
5 million inhabitants. France had four times as many, and the German states altogether almost
as many as France. Italy and Spain had fewer than France, and distant Russia, within its then
boundaries, may have had no more than 10 million people. Some cities grew substantially,
with London and Paris approaching 200,000; Antwerp, Lisbon, and Seville, thanks to the
ocean trade, jumped to 100,000 by 1600. But smaller towns remained much the same; Europe
as a whole was probably no more urbanized than in the later Middle Ages. Most of the popu-
lation growth represented an increasing density in the rural regions.
The steady rise in prices, which is to say the steady decline in value of
a given unit of money (such as a shilling), constituted a gradual infl ation.
It has been called a “price revolution,” but it was so slow as to be hardly
comparable to the kinds of infl ation known in some modern societies.
Population growth
The price revolution
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10912. The Commercial Revolution
One cause seems to have emerged from the growth of population itself, which set up an
increasing demand for food. This meant that new land was brought under cultivation, land
that was less fertile, more inaccessible or more diffi cult to work than the fi elds that had
been cultivated previously. With increasing costs of production, agricultural prices rose; in
England, for example, they about quadrupled during the sixteenth century. Prices were also
pushed upward by the increase in the volume of money. The royal habit of debasing the
currency brought a larger amount of money into circulation, since larger numbers of fl orins,
reals, or livres were obtained from the same amount of bullion. The fl ow of gold and silver from America also made money more plentiful, but the impact of Peruvian and Mexican
mines can easily be exaggerated. Even before the discovery of America, the development
of gold and silver mines had augmented the European money supply. Although the expan-
sion of both population and commerce checked the infl ationary forces, the long trend of
prices was upward. It affected all prices, including rents and other payments that were set in
money values, but the price of hired labor, that is, wages, rose the least. The price changes
thus had different effects on the well-being of different social classes.
The rising prices and growing population enhanced the economic opportunities for
commercial enterprises. Merchants could count on increasing numbers of customers, new
people could enter trade with hope of success, stocks of goods rose in value with the
passage of time, and borrowed money could more easily be repaid. Governments benefi ted
also, insofar as kings could count on having more taxpayers and more soldiers.
The Spaniards stamped out much of the Indian religion, which they viewed as idolatrous. Yet it is to Spanish priests that we owe the preservation of much of our knowledge of the pre-Conquest culture. This page is from a book in which a Spaniard wrote down the Aztec language in the Latin alphabet. A human sacrifi ce is also depicted. (Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art
Resource, NY)
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648110
The economic changes in Europe in the early modern period thus led to the
“Commercial Revolution,” a broad term signifying the rise of a capitalistic economy and the
transition from a town-centered to a nation-centered economic system. This “revolution”
was an exceptionally slow and protracted one; it began at least as early as the fourteenth
century and lasted until machine industry began to overshadow commerce in the early nine-
teenth century.
Changes in Commerce and Production
In the Middle Ages the town and its adjoining country formed an economic unit. Craftsmen,
organized in guilds, produced common articles for local use. Peasants and lords sold their
agricultural products to the local town, from which they bought what the craftsmen pro-
duced. The town protected itself by its own tariffs and regulations. In the workshop the
master both owned his “capital”—his house, workbench, tools, and materials—and acted as
a workman himself along with half a dozen journeymen and apprentices. The masters
owned a modest capital, but they were hardly capitalists. They produced only upon order, or
at least for customers whose tastes and number were known in advance. There was little
profi t, little risk of loss, and not much innovation.
All this changed with the widening of the trading area, or commercial market. Even
in the Middle Ages, as we have seen, there was a certain amount of long-distance trading
in articles that could not be produced as well in one place as in another. Gradually more
articles came within this category. Where goods were produced to be sold at some time
in the future, in faraway places, to persons unknown, the local guildmaster
could not manage the operation. He lacked the money (or “capital”) to
tie up in stocks of unsold wares; he lacked the knowledge of what distant
customers wanted, or where, in what quantities, and at what price people
would buy. In this new type of long-distance business, new kinds of entrepreneurs became
prominent in European commercial life. They usually started out as merchants working
in an extensive market and ended up as bankers. The Italian Medici family has been
mentioned as important in Renaissance banking and culture. Equally typical were the
German Fuggers.
New entrepreneurs
The silver mines at Potosí, por- trayed here in a late sixteenth- century illustration, sent over 500,000 pounds of silver to Spain every year. American precious metals and the labor of American Indians enabled the Spanish government to wage its costly European wars and to maintain a lucrative trade with Chinese merchants in Asia. (The Granger Collection, NYC)
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111
The fi rst of this family, Johann Fugger, a small-town weaver, came to Augsburg in
1368. He established a business in a new kind of cloth, called fustian, in which cotton was
mixed with other fabrics to produce clothing that was thicker or heavier than the woolens
and linens in which people then clothed themselves. Fugger thus enjoyed a more than local
market. Gradually the family began to deal also in spices, silks, and other Eastern goods
obtained at Venice. Later generations invested their large profi ts in other enterprises, nota-
bly mining. They lent money to the Renaissance popes. They lent Charles V the money he
needed to obtain election as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519. They became bankers to the
Habsburgs in both Germany and Spain. Together with other German and Flemish bankers,
the Fuggers fi nanced the Portuguese trade with Asia, either by outright loans or by provid-
ing in advance, on credit, the cargoes that the Portuguese traded for spices. The wealth of
the Fuggers became proverbial and declined only through repeated Habsburg bankruptcies
and with the general economic decline that beset Germany in the sixteenth century. By that
time, however, the family had become a kind of model for the transnational, commercial
practices that were reshaping the sixteenth-century European economy.
Other dealers in cloth, less spectacular than the fi rst Fugger, broke away from the town-
and-guild framework in other ways. England until the fi fteenth century was an exporter
of raw wool and an importer of fi nished woolens from Flanders. In the fi fteenth century
certain English entrepreneurs began to develop the spinning, weaving, and
dyeing of wool in England. To avoid the restrictive practices of the towns
and guilds they “put out” the work to people in the country, providing them
with looms and other equipment for the purpose, of which they generally
retained the ownership themselves. This “putting out” or “domestic” system spread very
widely outside the guild system, and, by the early modern period, typically depended on
a gendered division of labor. Women usually did the work of spinning wool into thread
The “putting out”
system
JAKOB FUGGER, “THE RICH” by Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528)
This portrait of the German merchant and banker Jakob Fugger (1459–1525) suggests that the wealth of early modern commercial families attracted the interest of prominent artists as well as the attention of powerful monarchs. Dürer’s painting conveys both the status and sense of purpose that char- acterized Fugger’s wide-ranging economic career. (De Agostini/Getty Images)
12. The Commercial Revolution
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648112
STUDY OF TWO BLACK HEADS by Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669)
One major component of the new international trade was the transportation of enslaved black Africans to the Americas. Some Africans arrived also in Europe, where their presence con- tributed to the growing speculation on the diversity of the human races. Rembrandt, though he never traveled more than 20 miles from his native Leyden, painted all types of people who streamed into the Netherlands, including these two men who had to cope with the social and racial hierarchies of the strange European world into which they were cast. (The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images)
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(hence the later English term for an unmarried woman, “spinster”); men usually wove the
thread into cloth. In France the cloth dealers of Rouen, feeling the competition of the new
silk trade, developed a lighter, cheaper, and more simply made type of woolen cloth. Vari-
ous guild regulations in Rouen, to protect the workers there, prohibited the manufacture of
this cheaper cloth. The Rouen dealers, in 1496, took the industry into the country, installed
looms in peasant cottages, and farmed out the work to the peasants. The new commercial
enterprises therefore weakened the guilds’ economic infl uence and created new processes
for both the production of goods and the accumulation of capital.
Capital and Labor
The system of rural household industry remained typical of production in many lines
(cloth, hardware, etc.) in western Europe until the introduction of factories in the late eigh-
teenth century. It signifi ed a new divergence between capital and labor. On
the one hand were the workers, men and women who worked as the
employer needed them, received wages for what they did, and had little
interest in or knowledge of more than their own task. Living both by agri-
culture and by cottage industry, they formed an expansible labor force,
available when labor was needed, left to live by farming or local charity when times were
bad. On the other hand was the manager or entrepreneur (almost always a man) who
directed the whole affair. He had little or no personal acquaintance with the workers. Esti-
mating how much of his product, let us say woolens, he could sell in a national or even
international market, he purchased the needed raw materials, passed out wool to be spun
by one group of peasants, took the yarn to another group for weaving, collected the cloth
and took it still elsewhere to be dyed, paying wages on all sides for services rendered,
while retaining ownership of the materials and the equipment and keeping the coordination
and management of the whole enterprise in his own head. Much larger business enterprises
could be established in this way than within the municipal framework of guild and town.
Indeed, the very master weavers of the guilds often sank to the status of subcontractors,
hardly different from wage employees, of the great “clothiers” and “drapers” by whom the
business was dominated. The latter, with the widening market, became personages of
national or even international repute. And, of course, the bigger the business the more of a
capital investment it represented.
Certain other industries, new or virtually new in the fi fteenth and six-
teenth centuries, could by their nature never fi t into a town-centered system
and were capitalistic from the start, in that they required a large initial out-
lay before any income could be received. Mining was one such industry, and another was
printing and the book trade. Books had a national and even international market, being
mainly in Latin; and no ordinary craftsman could afford the outlay required for a printing
press, for fonts of type, supplies of paper, and stocks of books on hand. Printers therefore
borrowed from capitalists or shared with them an interest in business. Shipbuilding was so
stimulated by the shift to the oceans as almost to be a new industry, and still another was
the manufacture of cannons and muskets. For the latter the chief demand came from the
state, from the New Monarchies that were organizing national armies. In the rise of capital-
ism the needs of the military were in fact fundamentally important. Armies, which started
out by requiring thousands of weapons, in the seventeenth century required thousands of
uniforms, and in the eighteenth century many new barracks and fortifi cations. These heavy
demands were the fi rst to require mass production. Where governments themselves did
Divergence between
capital and labor
New industries
12. The Commercial Revolution
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648114
not take the initiative, private middlemen stepped in as links to the many small handicraft
workers and families who before the industrial age still manufactured the actual product.
The new sea route to the East and the discovery of America brought a vast increase in
trade not only of luxury items but of imported commodities like rice, sugar, tea, and other
consumer goods. Older commercial activities within Europe were also transformed by the
widening of markets. Spain increasingly drew cereals from Sicily. The Netherlands were
fed from Poland; the French wine districts lived on food brought from northern France.
With the growth of shipping, the timber, tar, pitch, and other “naval stores” of Russia and
the Baltic entered the commercial scene. There was thus an ever-growing movement of
heavy staple commodities, in which again only persons controlling large funds of capital
could normally take part.
Not all capital was invested; some was simply lent to the church, to governments, to
impecunious nobles, or, though perhaps this was the least common type of
lending in the sixteenth century, to persons engaged in trade and commerce.
Bankers and others who lent money expected to receive back, after a time,
a larger sum than that of the loan. They expected “interest”; and they some-
times received as much as 30 percent a year. In the Middle Ages the taking of interest had
been frowned upon as usury, denounced as avarice, and forbidden in the canon law. It was
still frowned upon in the sixteenth century by almost all but the lenders themselves. The
Catholic Church maintained its prohibitions. The theologians of the University of Paris
New banking
practices
The growing production of cloth in early modern Europe depended on the labor of fami- lies in rural cottage industries. Spinning thread became an important economic activity for many women, as Jean Bourdi- chon (1457–1521) demonstrates in this illustration of a family at work. The man is apparently a skilled woodworker, and the child is gathering wood chips that can be used for cooking food or heating the house. The solid walls and ceiling show that this is a prosperous, hard- working family. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource,
NY)
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115
also ruled against it in 1530. Luther, who hated bankers like the Fuggers, continued to
preach against usury. Calvin made allowances, but as late as 1640, in capitalist Holland
itself, the stricter Calvinist ministers still denounced lending at interest.
Religious interventions, however, could never stop the practice. Borrowers com-
pounded with lenders to evade prohibitions, and theologians of all churches began to dis-
tinguish between “usury” and a “legitimate return.” Gradually, as interest rates fell, as
banking became more established, and as loans were made for economically productive
uses rather than to sustain ecclesiastics, princes, and nobles in their personal habits, the
feeling against a “reasonable” interest died down and interest became an accepted feature
of capitalism. The Bank of Amsterdam, for example, attracted depositors because they
knew their money was safe, would earn interest, and could be withdrawn at will. Deposits
thus fl owed into the bank from all countries and enabled it to make low-interest loans that
fi nanced new commercial activities.
The net effect of all these developments was a “commercialization of
industry.” The dynamic, entrepreneurial persons in commercial life were the
merchants. Industry, the actual processes of production, still in an essentially
handicraft stage, was subordinate to the buyers and sellers. Producers—
spinners, weavers, hatters, metalworkers, gunsmiths, glassworkers—worked to fi ll the
orders of the merchants, and often with capital that the merchants supplied and owned.
The entrepreneur who knew where the article could be sold prevailed over the person who
simply knew how to produce it. This commercial capitalism remained the typical form of
capitalism until after 1800, when, with the introduction of power machinery, it yielded to
industrial capitalism, and merchants became dependent on industrialists who owned, under-
stood, and organized the machines.
Mercantilism
There was still another aspect of the Commercial Revolution, namely, the various govern-
ment policies that go historically under the name of “mercantilism.” Rulers, as we have seen,
were hard pressed for money and needed more of it as their coins fell in value. The desire of
kings and their advisers to force gold and silver to fl ow into their own kingdoms was one of
the fi rst impulses leading to mercantilist regulation. Gradually this “bullionist” idea was
replaced by the more general idea of building up a strong and self-suffi cient economy. The
means adopted, in either case, was to “set the poor on work,” as they said in England, to turn
the country into a hive of industry, to discourage idleness, begging, vagabondage, and unem-
ployment. New crafts and manufactures were introduced, and favors were given to
merchants who provided work for “the poor” and who sold the country’s products abroad. It
was thought desirable to raise the export of fi nished goods and reduce the export of unpro-
cessed raw materials, to curtail all imports except of needed raw materials, and thus obtain a
“favorable” balance of trade so that other countries would have to pay their debts in bullion.
Since all this was done by a royal or nationwide system of regulations, mercantilism became
in the economic sphere what the state building of the New Monarchies was in the political,
signifying the transition from town to national units of social living.
Mercantilists frowned upon the localistic and conservative outlook of
the guilds. In England the guilds ceased to have importance. Parliament,
in the time of Elizabeth, did on a national scale what guilds had once done
locally when it enacted the Statute of Artifi cers of 1563, regulating the admission to appren-
ticeship and the level of wages in various trades. In France the royal government maintained
Commercial
capitalism
Opposition to guilds
12. The Commercial Revolution
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648116
the legal existence of the guilds, because they were convenient bodies to tax, but it deprived
them of most of their old independence and used them as organizations through which royal
control of industry could be enforced. In both countries the government assisted merchants
who wished to set up domestic or cottage industry in the country, against the protests of the
town guilds, which in their heyday had forbidden rural people to engage in crafts. Govern-
ments generally tried to suppress idleness. The famous English Poor Law of 1601 (which
remained in effect, with amendments, until 1834) was designed to force able-bodied people
to work and to relieve the absolute destitution of those who could not.
Governments likewise took steps to introduce new industries. The silk industry was
brought from Italy to France under royal protection, to the dismay of French woolen and
linen interests. The English government assisted in turning England from a producer of
raw wool into a producer of fi nished woolens, supervising the immigration of skilled
Flemish weavers and even fetching from faraway Turkey, about 1582, two youths who
understood the more advanced dyeing arts of the Middle East. Generally, under mercantil-
ism, governments fought to steal skilled workers from each other while prohibiting or
discouraging the emigration of their own skilled workers, who might take
their trade secrets and “mysteries” to foreign parts.
By such means governments helped to create a national market and an
industrious nationwide labor supply for their great merchants. Without such
government support the great merchants, such as the drapers or clothiers,
could never have risen and prospered. The same help was given to merchants operating
in foreign markets. Henry VII of England in 1496 negotiated a commercial treaty with
Flanders; and in the next century the kings of France signed treaties with the Ottoman
Empire by which French merchants obtained privileges in the Middle East. A merchant
backed by a national monarchy was in a much stronger position than one backed merely by
a city, such as Augsburg or Venice. This backing on a national scale was again given when
national governments subsidized exports, paying bounties for goods whose production
they wished to encourage, or when they erected tariff barriers against imports to protect
their own producers from competition. Thus a national tariff system was superimposed
on the old network of provincial and municipal tariffs. These latter were now thought of as
“internal tariffs,” and mercantilists usually wished to abolish them to create an area of free
trade within the state as a whole. But local interests were so strong that for centuries the
European monarchies were unable to get rid of local tariffs except in England. Meanwhile,
however, the new commercial capitalism developed everywhere with the support of
government protections, subsidies, and economic interventions.
In distant parts of the world, or in less accessible regions nearer home, such as the
Muslim lands or Russia, it was not possible for individual European merchants to act by
merely private initiative. Merchants trading with such countries needed a good deal of capi-
tal, they often had to obtain special privileges and protection from native rulers, and they
had to arm their ships against Barbary or Malay pirates or against hostile
Europeans. Merchants and their respective governments came together to
found offi cial companies for the transocean trade. In England, soon after the
English discovery of the White Sea in 1553, a Russia Company was estab-
lished. A Turkey Company soon followed. Shortly after 1600 a great many
such companies were operating out of England, Holland, and France. The most famous of
all were the East India Companies, which the English founded in 1600, the Dutch in 1602,
the French not until 1664. In 1672 the English also chartered the Royal African Company,
which for a time controlled the English slave trade and the gold imports from west Africa.
National markets
Chartered trading
companies
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117
Each of these companies was a state-supported organization with special rights. Each was
a monopoly in that only merchants who belonged to the company could legally engage in
trade in the region for which the company had a charter. Each was expected to fi nd markets
for the national products, and most of them were expected to bring home gold or silver.
With these companies the northern European peoples began to encroach on the Spanish and
Portuguese monopoly in America, Africa, and the East. With them new commercial-colonial
empires would be launched and expanded. But, as we have already observed, before this
could happen it was necessary for certain domestic and transnational European confl icts and
controversies to be settled.
13. CHANGING SOCIAL STRUCTURES
Social structure, for present purposes, refers to the composition, functions, and interrelation-
ships of social classes. Because changes in social structure are slow, they are hard to iden-
tify in specifi c decades or particular periods of time. In general, however, with the effects of
the Commercial Revolution, population growth, and the falling value of money, the classes
of Europe, broadly defi ned, took on forms that were to last until the industrializing era of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These classes were the landed aristocracy, the peasantry
or mass of agricultural workers, the miscellaneous middle classes, and the urban poor.
The headquarters of the Dutch East India Company in Bengal in 1665, long before the British gained predominance there. It is wholly walled off from the Indian life around it, with offi ces, living quarters, and spacious gardens for employees of the company. (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
13. Changing Social Structures
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648118
While all prices rose in the sixteenth century, it was agricultural prices that rose the
most. Anyone who had agricultural products to sell was likely to benefi t. Among such ben-
efi ciaries were peasants who held small plots of land in return for fi xed payments to a
manorial lord. Many such payments were set in unchangeable sums of money, in the old
values of the fourteenth or even thirteenth century, so the price infl ation of the sixteenth
century enabled some peasants in effect to pay much less to the lord than in the past. Other
rural workers, however, either held no land of their own or produced only at a subsistence
level with nothing to sell in the market. Such peasants, and hired hands dependent
on wages, found their situation worsened. Village life became less egalitar-
ian than it had been in the Middle Ages. In England a class of small free-
holders (the “yeomanry”) developed between the landed gentry and the
rural poor. On the Continent, at least in France, western Germany, and the
Netherlands, an increasingly prosperous class of peasants acquired more secure property
rights, resembling those of small freeholders in England. But both in England and on the
Continent a large class of unpropertied rural workers remained in poverty and excluded
from the emerging international markets for agricultural products.
Land rents went up as agricultural prices rose, and infl ation and population growth drove
up rentals for housing in the towns. Owners of real property (that is, land and buildings)
were favored by such changes, but within the former class of feudal lords the effects were
mixed. If one’s great-grandfather had let out land in earlier times in exchange for fi xed sums
of money, the value of the income received had actually declined. But those landowners who
received payments in kind from their tenants, for example, in bushels of wheat or barley, or
who managed their large estates themselves, could sell their actual agricultural products at
current prices and so increase their money income.
Social Classes
The former feudal class, or nobles, thus turned into a more modern kind of aristocracy.
If income from their estates declined, they sought paid service in the king’s army or govern-
ment or appointment to the more prestigious offi ces in the church. If landed income
increased, they were more wealthy. In either case, and even if they served as military com-
manders, they became more concerned with civilian pursuits; and they were likely to develop
more refi ned tastes and pay more attention to the education of their children. Like the peas-
ants, the landowning class became more heterogeneous, ranging from the
small gentry to the great peers of England and from small or impoverished
nobles to the grands seigneurs of France. Some led a life of leisure; others were eager to work in the higher reaches of organized government. The most
impoverished nobles sometimes had the longest pedigrees. As their social functions changed,
and as persons of more recent family background competed for education, government
employment, and even military service, there came to be an increasing importance set upon
ancestry as a badge of status. Among the upper class, there was more insistence on high birth
and distinguished forebears in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than there had been
before. But many nobles also claimed that they deserved special privileges because they
contributed meritorious service to kings or the expanding national governments.
Below the aristocracy were the “middle classes,” or “bourgeoisie.”
Bourgeois was a French word, which, like the English “burgher,” originally meant a person living in a chartered town or borough and enjoying its liberties.
The bourgeoisie was the whole social class made up of individual bourgeois. In a much later
sense of the word, derived from Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, the term “bourgeoisie”
Small freeholders
The nobility
The bourgeoisie
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119
was applied to the class of owners of capital. This Marxist concept of the bourgeoisie must be
kept distinct from the meaning of the word in an earlier era. “Bourgeoisie” referred in prein-
dustrial times to the middle levels of society between the aristocracy, which drew its income
from land, and the laboring poor, who depended on wages or charity, or who often went hun-
gry. Class lines tended to blur as aristocratic families formed the habit of living in towns and
middle-class burghers began to buy land in the country. Some bourgeois thus came to live on
landed rents, while some of the gentry and aristocracy, most notably in England, bought shares
in the great overseas trading companies or engaged in other forms of business enterprise. Aris-
tocrats possessing large agricultural estates, timberlands, or mines increasingly brought their
products to market to be sold at a profi t. But even when aristocrat and bourgeois became eco-
nomically more alike, a consciousness of social difference between them remained.
The middle class became more numerous in the sixteenth century, and
increasingly so thereafter. It was an indefi nite category, since the countries
of Europe were very different in the size and importance of their middle
classes, in the kinds of persons who belonged to them, and in the types of
occupations that bourgeois people pursued. Near the top were the urban elites who gov-
erned the towns; they might draw their incomes from rural property, from commerce, or
from the emoluments of government itself, and they sometimes intermarried with persons
of noble status. Especially where the towns were strong or royal government was weak,
as in the Netherlands, the German free cities, or north Italy, such urban patriciates formed
virtual aristocracies in themselves. But in a larger social perspective, or in the context of
the more powerful monarchical states, the families of merchants, bankers, and shipowners
were middle class, as were those of the traditional learned professions, law and medicine.
So, in general, were judges, tax offi cials, and other employees of governments, except in
the highest ranks. In the professions and in government service the younger sons of the
aristocracy might be found alongside the offspring of the middle classes, most commonly
in England, less so in France, and even less as one moved into Germany or Spain.
The clergy was drawn from all classes. There were poor parish priests, who might be
the sons of peasants, and there were bishops and abbots from the most prominent noble
families; but the bulk of the clergy was recruited from middle-class families. In Protestant
countries, where the clergy married, their sons and daughters became an important element
in the middle class. Members of trade guilds were middle class, though the guilds differed
widely in social status, from those of the great wholesale merchants or the goldsmiths,
down through the guilds of such humble occupations as the tanners and barrel makers. At
the bottom the middle class faded into the social world of small retail shopkeepers, inn-
keepers, owners of workshops in which ordinary articles were manufactured by hand, the
lesser skilled tradespeople, and their employees, journeymen, and apprentices.
The mass of the population in all countries was composed of the work-
ing poor. These included not only the unskilled wage laborers but the
unemployed, unemployable, and paupers, with a large fringe that turned
to vagabondage and begging. They were unable to read or write and were
often given to irregular habits that distressed both middle-class persons and government
offi cials. Poverty was increasingly viewed as an example or outcome of immorality. The
efforts of mercantilist governments to put the poor to work, or to make them contribute to
the wealth of the country, have already been mentioned. Charitable relief also developed
toward the end of the sixteenth century, as shown in the English Poor Law of 1601 and
in similar efforts on the Continent. The idea gained ground that begging was a public
nuisance and that the poor should thus be segregated in workhouses or hospices from the
rest of society. Most of the poor were of course not recipients of such relief. They were
Middle-class growth
and diversity
The working class
poor
13. Changing Social Structures
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648120
the working men and women who tilled the fi elds, wove the cloth, tended the livestock,
dug in the mines, or went to sea as fi shermen and common sailors. They also found work
in the towns as casual laborers, porters, water carriers, or removers of excrement; or they
entered the domestic service of noble and upper middle-class families, whose rising stan-
dard of living required a growing number of chambermaids, cooks, washerwomen, foot-
men, lackeys, coachmen, and stable boys. Domestic service was in fact the most common
job for women during the entire period of early modern history, and the pay for such work
remained extremely low. Wages rose less than prices in the sixteenth century. The poor,
if not positively worse off than in former times, gained the least from the great commer-
cial developments with which economic history is usually concerned. The very growth of
social differentiation, the fact that the middle and upper classes made such advances, left
the condition of the poor correspondingly worse.
OLD WOMAN COOKING EGGS by Diego Velázquez (Spanish, 1599–1660)
Velázquez was best known for his portraits of people at the Spanish royal court, but he also portrayed the lives and character of the lower classes—as in this painting of an unknown woman preparing food for a child. (DeA Picture Library/The Granger Collection, NYC)
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121
Social Roles of Education and Government
Education in the latter part of the sixteenth century took on an altogether new importance
for the social system. One consequence of the Reformation, in both Protestant and Catholic
countries, was the attempt to put a serious and effective pastor in each parish. This set up a
demand for a more educated clergy. The growth of commerce made it necessary to have
literate clerks and agents. Governments wanted men from both the noble and middle classes
who could cooperate in large organizations, be reliable, understand fi nance, keep records,
and draft proposals. There was also a widespread need for lawyers. Every profession,
commercial enterprise, and government institution, in short, was seeking better-educated
persons to manage and advance their interests.
The new demand for education was met by an outburst of philanthropy,
which reached a high point in both England and France between about 1580
and 1640. Many endowed scholarships were established. At what would
now be called a secondary level, hundreds of “grammar schools” were
founded at this time in England. In France the collèges combined the work of the English grammar school with what corresponded to the fi rst year or two of university work at
Oxford or Cambridge. Of the 167 most important French colleges still existing at the time
of the Revolution in 1789, only 36 had been founded in the centuries before 1560, and
92 were established in the years between 1560 and 1650. Provision for girls’ schools was
more sporadic, but the Ursuline sisters, for example, founded in Italy in 1535, had estab-
lished about 350 convents by the year 1700 in Catholic Europe and even in Canada, in
most of which the education of girls was a principal purpose and occupation of the sisters.
Dutch and Swiss Protestants founded the universities of Leyden and Geneva. New
universities, both Protestant and Catholic, appeared in Germany. In Spain the multiplica-
tion of universities was phenomenal. Castile, with only 2 universities dating from the Mid-
dle Ages, had 20 by the early seventeenth century; Salamanca was enrolling over 5,000
students a year. Five universities also existed in Spanish America by 1600. In England,
new colleges were founded at Oxford and Cambridge, and it was especially in these years
that some of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges became very wealthy. Annual freshman
admissions at Oxford, barely 100 in 1550, rose to over 500 in the 1630s, a fi gure not
exceeded, or even equaled, during the following 200 years.
The schools, colleges, and universities drew their students from a wide
range of social classes. There was less organized schooling for girls than
for boys, but an intelligent and lucky boy of poor family had perhaps a
better chance for education than at any time in Europe until very recently.
In Spain most of the students seem to have been lesser nobles, or “hidalgos,” aspiring to
positions in the church or government; but hidalgos were very numerous in Spain, over-
lapping with what might be called the middle class in other countries. The French col-
leges, including those operated by the Jesuits, recruited their students very widely, taking
in the sons of nobles, merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and even, more rarely, of peas-
ants. English grammar schools did likewise; it was in later times that a few of them, like
Eton and Harrow, became more exclusive public schools. As for universities, we have
detailed knowledge for Oxford, which recorded the status of its students at matriculation,
classifying them as “esquires,” “gentlemen,” “clergy,” and “plebeians.” From 1560 to 1660
about half of the Oxford students were plebeians, which in the language of that time could
embrace the whole middle class from big merchants down to quite modest social levels. It
seems certain that Oxford and Cambridge were more widely representative of the English
people in 1660 than in 1900.
New schools and
universities
Wider access to
education
13. Changing Social Structures
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648122
Social classes were formed not only by economic forces, and not only by education,
but also by the actions of governments. Government could inhibit economic growth, as in
Spain, or promote it, as in England. We have noted how kings contributed
to the rise of commercial capitalism and a new business class by granting
monopolies, borrowing from bankers, and issuing charters to trading com-
panies. In many countries, and notably in France, many families owed their
middle-class position to the holding of government offi ces, some of which might become
a form of inheritable property. It might also be the action of governments, as much as eco-
nomic conditions, that defi ned or promoted distinctions between nobles and commoners,
or “privileged” and “unprivileged” classes. Where peasants suffered heavily from royal
taxes, it was more from political than from economic causes. The king, by “making”
nobles—that is, by conferring titles of nobility on persons who did not inherit them—
could raise a few in the middle class to higher status. Tax exemption could also be a sign
of high social standing. The king exercised political power, but he was simultaneously the
fountain of social honor at the top of “society.” The royal court formed the apex of a pyra-
mid of social rank, in which each class looked up to or down upon the others. Those
favored with the royal presence disdained the plain country nobility, who sniffed at
the middle classes, who patronized or disparaged the hired servants, day laborers, and the
poor. Looking upward in the social hierarchy, people were expected to show deference
toward those with higher social status.
Government and
social classes
A seventeenth-century monk is teaching in Spain at the Uni- versity of Salamanca, one of the largest European universities of the time and an example of how such institutions expanded in both Catholic and Protestant countries during the century after the Protestant Reforma- tion. Many students are more interested in their friends or other distractions than in the instructor’s lecture–which sug- gests the continuities of class- room experiences across the centuries. (Index/The Bridgeman Art Library)
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123
Eastern and Western Europe
One other remark may be made on social structure. It was in the sixteenth century that
important social differences developed between eastern and western Europe. In the west,
the Commercial Revolution and the gradual emergence of global trading systems brought
advantageous changes to the middle class and even to many of the peasants for whom the
old burdens of the manorial system were lightened. In eastern Europe, it was the lords who
benefi ted from rising prices and the growing market for grain and forest products. Here too
the institution of the manor existed; but the peasants’ land tenures were more precarious
than in the west and more dependent on accidents of death or on the wishes of the lord. The
lords in eastern Europe also tended to work a larger part of their manors with their own
workforces for their own use or profi t.
The rise of prices and expansion of Baltic shipping gave the lords a strong incentive
to increase their output. In northeast Germany (where such lords were called Junkers), in
Poland, and as time went on in Russia, Bohemia, and Hungary, beginning in the sixteenth
century and continuing into the eighteenth, a vast process set in by which most of the
peasantry sank into more restrictive forms of serfdom. This process was
hastened in many regions by the violence and insecurity engendered by the
religious wars. Typically, peasants lost their individual parcels of land or
received them back on the condition that they render unpaid labor services
to the lord. Usually peasants owed three or four days a week of such forced
labor (called robot in Bohemia and adjoining territories), remaining free to work during the remainder of the week on their own parcels. Often the number of days of robot exacted by the lord was greater, since in eastern Europe, where central monarchy was weak and
centralized legal systems were almost unknown, the lord himself was the fi nal court of
appeal for his people. His people were in fact his “subjects.”
Serfdom in Germany was not called serfdom, but “hereditary subjection.” By what-
ever name they were known throughout eastern Europe, serfs, or hereditary subjects of the
manorial lord, could not leave the manor, marry, or learn a trade without the lord’s express
permission. The lord, drawing on this large reserve of compulsory labor, using most of it
for agriculture but teaching some quick-minded youths the various handicrafts that were
needed on the estate, worked the land as his own venture, sold the produce, and retained
the profi t.
Thus, in eastern Europe at the beginning of modern times, the rural masses lost per-
sonal freedoms and lived in a poverty that was mostly unknown among the peasants to the
west, poor as the latter were. In western Europe there were peasants who were already on
the way to becoming small proprietors. They were free people under the law. They could
migrate, marry, and learn trades as opportunity offered. Those who held land could defend
it in the royal courts and raise crops and take part in the market economy on their own
account. They owed the lord no forced labor—or virtually none, for the 10 days a year of
corvée still found in parts of France hardly compared with the almost full-time robot of the peasant in eastern Europe.
The landlord in the east, from the sixteenth century onward, was solidly entrenched
in his own domain, monarch of all he surveyed, with no troublesome bourgeoisie to annoy
him (for towns were few), and with kings and territorial rulers solicitous of his wishes.
Travelers from the west were impressed with the wealth of great Polish and Lithuanian
magnates, with their palatial homes, private art galleries, well-stocked libraries, collections
of jewels, gargantuan dinners, and lavish hospitality. The Junkers of northeast Germany
lived more modestly, but enjoyed the same kind of independence and social superiority.
Serfdom in eastern
Europe
13. Changing Social Structures
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648124
The growing power of wealthy landlords and the weakening position of impoverished
peasants would have decisive social and political consequences for the later history of
Prussia, Poland, Russia, and the Austrian world. But meanwhile, amidst all the economic
growth, social development, and overseas conquests that have been described in the
preceding pages, Europe was torn by the destructive ferocity of the Wars of Religion.
14. THE WARS OF CATHOLIC SPAIN: THE NETHERLANDS AND ENGLAND
The Ambitions of Philip II
Charles V, having tried in vain for 35 years to preserve religious unity in Germany, abdi-
cated his many crowns and retired to a monastery in 1556, the year after the Peace of
Augsburg had given the ruler of each German state the right to choose its own religion. He
left Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary (or the small part of it not occupied by the Turks) to
his brother Ferdinand, who was soon elected Holy Roman Emperor (see map, p. 79).
All his other possessions Charles left to his son Philip, who became Philip II of Spain. The
Habsburg dynasty remained thereafter divided into two branches, the Austrian and the
Spanish. The two cooperated in European affairs. The Spanish branch for a century was
the more important. Philip II (1556–1598) not only possessed the Spanish kingdoms but in
1580 inherited Portugal, so that the whole Iberian peninsula was brought under his rule. He
possessed the 17 provinces of the Netherlands and the Free County of Burgundy, which
were member states of the Holy Roman Empire, lying on its western border, adjacent to
France. Milan in north Italy and Naples in the south belonged to Philip, and since he also
held the chief islands, as well as Tunis, he enjoyed a naval ascendancy in the western
Mediterranean that was threatened only by the Turks. For fi ve years, until the death of
Queen Mary in 1558, he was titular king of England, and in 1589, in the name of his
daughter, he laid claim to the throne of France. Almost all of Central and South America
belonged to Philip II, and after 1580 all the Portuguese Empire as well, so that except for a
few nautical daredevils all ships plying the open ocean were the Spanish king’s.
Philip II therefore naturally regarded himself as an international fi gure, and even more
so because he combined the organizing methods of a new monarchy with a profound inter-
est in the political and religious issues that were dividing post-Reformation Europe. He
saw Spain as a leader of European Catholicism, and he believed that the advance of Span-
ish power in Europe served the cause of the universal church as well as the interests of his
own monarchy and the people of Spain. Yet his attempts to protect and enhance Spanish
power in Italy sometimes led to confl icts with the popes, and much of his
foreign policy was directed against the Ottoman Empire in a continuing
struggle for control of the Mediterranean Sea. European Protestantism was
thus only one of Philip’s many international concerns.
Philip’s active participation in Europe’s religious wars should therefore be seen as part
of his wider military and political campaigns to protect Spanish and Habsburg interests
rather than a single-minded crusade for Catholicism. In his personal life, he was serious,
devout, and hardworking. He gave the most detailed attention to the management of his
far-fl ung territories. The wealth that fl owed to his country from Potosí and other mines
in South America enabled Philip to pursue his goals throughout Europe and the Mediter-
ranean. Meanwhile, Spain also entered upon the Golden Age of its early modern culture.
In this period, the siglo de oro, running in round dates from 1550 to 1650, Cervantes wrote his Don Quixote (in two parts, 1605, 1615) and Lope de Vega wrote his 200 dramas,
Philip’s goals
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125
while El Greco, Murillo, and Velázquez painted their pictures, and the Jesuit Suarez
composed works on philosophy and law that were read even in Protestant countries. As
Cervantes showed in Don Quixote, many Spaniards were highly aware of the enduring ten- sions between high ideals and the diffi cult realities of social, political, and religious life.
But Catholic traditions and the Catholic church remained a powerful force in Spanish cul-
ture. The church was vitally present at every social level, from the archbishop of Toledo,
who ranked above grandees and could address the king as an equal, down to a host of
penniless and mendicant friars, who mixed with the poorest people in Spain.
Philip II built himself a new royal residence, the Escorial, which well
expressed in solid stone its creator’s political and religious determination.
Madrid itself was a new town, merely a government center, far from the
worldly distractions of Toledo or Valladolid. But it was 30 miles from Madrid, on the
bleak arid plateau of central Castile, overlooked by the jagged Sierra, that Philip chose
to erect the Escorial. He built it in honor of St. Lawrence, on whose feast day he had
won a battle against the French. The connecting buildings were laid out in the shape of a
grill, since, according to martyrologists, St. Lawrence, in the year 258, had been burned
alive on a grill over burning coals. Somber and vast, made of blocks of granite meant to
last forever, and with its highest spire rising 300 feet from the ground, the Escorial was
designed not only as a palace but as a center for religious life and the effi cient management
of a vast empire. Working constantly in this somber setting, Philip II dispatched his couri-
ers to Mexico, to Manila, to Vienna, and to Milan. He sent his troops off to Italy and the
Netherlands, his diplomats to all the royal courts of Europe, and his spies wherever they
were needed—seeking to extend the infl uence of his powerful state and (when possible) to
promote the Catholicism in which he devoutly believed.
The fi rst years of Philip’s reign were also the fi rst years of Elizabeth’s reign in
England, where the religious issue was still in fl ux; they were years in which Calvinism
agitated the Netherlands, and when France, ruled by teenaged boys, fell into implacable
civil war. Religious loyalties that knew no frontiers overlapped all political boundaries.
Everywhere there were people who looked for guidance outside their own countries.
Fervent Calvinists in England, France, and the Netherlands felt closer to one another than
to their own monarchs or their own neighbors. Fervent Catholics, in all three countries,
welcomed the support of international Catholic forces—the Jesuits, the king of Spain, the
pope. National unity threatened to dissolve or was not yet formed. The sense of mutual
trust between people who lived side by side was eaten away; and people who lived not
only in the same country, but in the same town, on the same street, or even in the same
house, turned against each other in the name of a higher religious cause.
For about fi ve years, beginning in 1567, it seemed that a resurgent
Catholicism might prevail throughout Europe. Catholic forces took the
offensive on all fronts. In 1567 Philip sent a new and fi rmer governor gen-
eral to the Netherlands, the Duke of Alva, with 20,000 Spanish soldiers; the
duke proceeded to suppress religious and political dissidents by establishing a Council of
Troubles. In 1569 Philip, who was preparing for a new war with the Ottoman Turks, put
down a revolt of the Moriscos (converted Muslims) in Spain. In the same year the Catho-
lics of northern England, led by the Duke of Norfolk and sewing the cross of crusaders on
their garments, rose in armed rebellion against their heretic queen. In the next year, 1570,
the pope excommunicated Elizabeth and absolved her subjects from allegiance to her,
so that English Catholics, if they wished, could henceforth in good conscience conspire
to overthrow her. In 1571 the Spanish joined with the Venetians and others to win a great
naval battle against the Turks, at Lepanto off the coast of Greece. Although this battle was
The Escorial
The Catholic
offensive
14. The Wars of Catholic Spain: The Netherlands and England
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648126
part of the ongoing military struggle for political and economic control of the Mediter-
ranean, some Spanish sailors wove a cross on their sails and portrayed their war with the
Ottomans as a new Christian resistance to Islam. In the next year, 1572, the Catholic lead-
ers of France, with the advice of the pope and of Philip II, decided to make an end of the
Huguenots, or French Protestants. Over 3,000 were seized and put to death on the eve of
St. Bartholomew’s Day in Paris alone; and this massacre was followed by other violence
and lesser liquidations throughout the provinces.
But none of these victories proved enduring. The Turks soon recovered from their
defeat at Lepanto and built a new fl eet. In fact, they took Tunis from Philip two years later.
The Moriscos were not assimilated (they would be expelled from Spain in 1609). The
English Catholic rebellion was stamped out; 800 persons were put to death by Elizabeth’s
government. The revolt in the Netherlands remained very much alive, as did the French
Huguenots. Twenty years later England was Protestant, the Dutch were winning indepen-
dence, a Huguenot had become king of France, and the Spanish fl eet had gone to ruin in
northern waters. Despite the global power and wealth of the vast Spanish Empire, Spain’s
armies and naval forces would fi nally abandon their long campaign to drive the Muslims
from the Mediterranean and the Protestants from northern Europe.
KING PHILIP II OF SPAIN by Titian (Italian, 1488–1576)
This portrait of the Spanish king suggests the highly focused political, religious, and military purpose in this devout Catholic monarch. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
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127
The Revolt of the Netherlands
The Netherlands, or Low Countries, roughly comprised the area of the
modern kingdoms of the Netherlands and Belgium and the grand duchy
of Luxembourg. They consisted of 17 provinces, which in the fi fteenth
century, one by one, had been inherited, purchased, or conquered by the
dukes of Burgundy, from whom they were inherited by Charles V and his son, Philip II. In the
mid-sixteenth century neither a Dutch nor a Belgian nationality yet existed. In the northern
provinces the people spoke German dialects; in the southern provinces they spoke dialects
of French; but neither here, nor elsewhere in Europe, was it felt that language boundaries
had anything to do with political borders. The southern provinces had for centuries been
busy commercial centers, and we have seen how Antwerp, having once fl ourished in trade
with Venice, now fl ourished in trade with Lisbon. The northern provinces that were most
open to the sea, the counties of Holland and Zeeland, had developed rapidly in the fi fteenth
century. They had a popular literature of their own, written in their own kind of German,
which came to be called Dutch. The wealth of the northern provinces was drawn from
deep-sea fi shing. Amsterdam was said to be built on herring bones, and the Dutch, when
they added trading to fi shing, still lived by the sea.
The northern provinces felt no tie with each other and no sense of difference from the
southern provinces. Each of the 17 provinces was a small state or country in itself, and each
enjoyed typical medieval liberties and privileges. The only common bond of all 17 provinces
was simply that beginning with the dukes of Burgundy they had the same ruler; but since
they had the same ruler, they were called upon from time to time to send delegates to an
estates general, and so developed an embryonic sense of federal collaboration. The feeling of
Netherlandish identity was heightened with the accession of Philip II, for Philip, unlike his
father, was thought of as foreign, a Spaniard who lived in Spain; and after 1560 Spanish
governors general, Spanish offi cials, and Spanish troops were seen more frequently in the
Netherlands. Moreover, since the Netherlands was the crossroads of Europe, with a tradition
of earnestness in religion, Protestant ideas took root very early, and after 1560, when reli-
gious wars began in France, a great many French Calvinists fl ed across the borders. At fi rst,
there were probably more Calvinists in the southern provinces than in the northern, more
among the people whom we now call Belgians than among those whom we now call Dutch.
The Dutch revolt against Philip II was inextricably political and
religious at the same time, and it became increasingly an economic struggle
as the years went by. It began in 1566, when some 200 nobles of the vari-
ous provinces founded a league to check the “foreign” or Spanish infl uence
in the Netherlands. The league, to which both Catholic and Protestant nobles belonged,
petitioned Philip II not to employ the Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands. They feared
the trouble it would stir up; they feared it as a foreign court; they feared that in the enforce-
ment of its rulings the liberties of their provinces would be crushed. Philip’s agents in the
Netherlands refused the petition. A mass revolt now broke out. Within a week fanatical
Calvinists pillaged 400 churches, pulling down images, breaking stained-glass windows,
defacing paintings and tapestries, making off with gold chalices, destroying with a fi erce
contempt the symbols of “popery”—and “idolatry.” The rank and fi le for these anti-
Catholic and anti-Spanish demonstrations consisted chiefl y of journeymen wage earners,
whose fury was driven by social and economic grievances as well as religious belief. Before
such vandalism the more moderate petitioning nobles recoiled; the Catholics among them,
as well as less militant Protestants, unable to control their revolutionary followers, began
to look upon the Spanish authorities with less disfavor.
The Netherlands
provinces
Revolt of the
Netherlands
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648128
Philip II, appalled at the sacrilege, forthwith sent in the Inquisition, the Duke of Alva,
and reinforcements of Spanish troops. Alva’s Council of Troubles, nicknamed the Council
of Blood, sentenced some thousands to death, levied new taxes, and confi scated the estates
of a number of important nobles. These measures united people of all classes in opposi-
tion. What might otherwise have been primarily a confl ict between social classes now took
on the character of a national opposition. At its head emerged one of the noblemen whose
estates had been confi scated by Spanish forces, William of Orange (called William the
Silent), Philip II’s “stadholder” or lieutenant in the County of Holland. Beginning to claim
the authority of a sovereign, William authorized ship captains to make war at sea. Fishing
crews, “sea dogs,” and downright pirates began to raid the small port towns of the Nether-
lands and France, descending upon them without warning, desecrating the churches, loot-
ing, torturing, and killing, in a wild combination of religious rage, political hatred, and lust
for booty. The Spanish reciprocated by renewing their land confi scations, their inquisitorial
tortures, and their burnings and hangings. The Netherlands was torn by anarchy, revolu-
tion, and civil war. No lines were clear, either political or religious. But in 1576 the anti-
Spanish feeling prevailed over religious difference. Representatives of all 17 provinces,
putting aside the religious question, formed a union to drive out the Spanish at any cost.
The Involvement of England
But the Netherlands revolution, though it was becoming a national revolution with politi-
cal independence as its fi rst aim, was only part of the international politico-religious strug-
gle. All sorts of other interests became involved in it. Queen Elizabeth of
England lent aid to the Netherlands, though for many years surreptitiously,
not wishing to provoke a war with Spain, in which it was feared that English
Catholics might side with the Spaniards. Elizabeth was troubled by having
on her hands an unwanted guest, Mary Queen of Scots. Mary had remained a Catholic and
had been queen of France until her husband’s premature death, and queen of Scotland until
driven out by irate Calvinist lords, and who—if the pope, the king of Spain, the Jesuits,
and many English Catholics were to have their way—would also be queen of England
instead of the usurper Elizabeth. 1 Elizabeth under these circumstances kept Mary Stuart
imprisoned. Many intrigues were afoot to put Mary on the English throne, some with and
some without Mary’s knowledge.
In 1576 Don Juan, hero of the Spanish naval victory at Lepanto and half-brother of
Philip II, became governor general of the embattled Netherlands. He developed a grandi-
ose plan to subdue the Netherlands and then to use that country as a base for an invasion
of England. After overthrowing Elizabeth with Spanish troops, he would put Mary Stuart
on the throne, marry her himself, and so become king of a re-Catholicized England. Thus
the security of Elizabethan and Protestant England was coming to depend on the outcome
of fi ghting in the Netherlands. Elizabeth signed an alliance with the Netherlands patriots.
Don Juan died in 1578 and was succeeded as governor general of the Netherlands by
the prince of Parma. A diplomat as well as a soldier, Parma broke the solid front of the 17
provinces by a mixture of force and persuasion. He promised that the historic liberties of
the provinces would be respected, and he appealed not only to the more zealous Catholics
but also to moderates who were wearying of the struggle and repelled by mob violence and
England lends support
to the Dutch
1 Mary Stuart, a great-granddaughter of Henry VII, was the next lawful heir to the English throne after Elizabeth,
since Elizabeth had no children.
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129
religious vandalism. On this basis he rallied the southernmost provinces to his side. The
seven northern provinces, led by Holland and Zeeland, responded by forming the Union of
Utrecht in 1579. In 1581 they formally declared their independence from
the king of Spain, calling themselves the United Provinces of the Nether-
lands. Thus originated what was more commonly called the Dutch Repub-
lic, or simply “Holland” in view of the predominance of that county among the seven. The
great Flemish towns—Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges—at fi rst sided with the “Dutch” Union.
Where formerly all had been turmoil, a geographical line was now drawn. The south
rallying to Philip II now faced a still rebellious north. But neither side accepted any such
partition. Parma still fought to reconquer the north, and the Dutch, led by William the
Silent, still struggled to clear the Spanish out of all 17 provinces. Meanwhile the two sides
fought to capture the intermediate Flemish cities. When Parma moved upon Antwerp, still
the leading port of the North Sea, and one from which an invasion of England could best
be mounted, Elizabeth at last openly entered the war on the side of the rebels, sending
6,000 English troops to the Netherlands in 1585.
The Union of Utrecht
THE LOW COUNTRIES, 1648 This group of towns and provinces, along the lower reaches of the Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt rivers, originated in the Middle Ages as part of the Holy Roman Empire. The northern or Dutch provinces were recognized as independent of the empire in 1648. Early in the seventeenth century a political frontier emerged between the “Dutch” and “Belgian” parts, but the word “Belgium” was not used until much later, the southern or Habsburg provinces being called the Spanish Netherlands in the seventeenth century and the Austrian Netherlands in the eighteenth. The large bishopric of Liège remained a separate church-state until the French Revolution. The language frontier, then as now, ran roughly east and west somewhat south of Brussels, with French to the south and Flemish (a form of Dutch, and hence Germanic) to the north of the line.
0 10 20 30 40 50 miles
Spanish (Belgian) Netherlands
United Provinces, Independent, 1572, 1609, 1648
Church Lands
Boundary of Holy Roman Empire
Ijssel Meer
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Utrecht The Hague
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Brussels
Liège Aix-la-Chapelle
Cologne
Antwerp
Trier
14. The Wars of Catholic Spain: The Netherlands and England
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648130
England was now clearly emerging as the chief bulwark of Protestantism and of anti-
Spanish feeling in northwestern Europe. In England itself, the popular fears of Spain, the
popular resentment against Catholic plots revolving about Mary Stuart, and
the popular indignation at “foreign” and “outside” meddling in English
matters produced an unprecedented sense of national solidarity. The country
rallied to Protestantism and to Elizabeth, and even the Catholic minority for
the most part disowned the conspiracies against her. The English were now openly and defi -
antly allied with the Protestant Dutch. Not only were they fi ghting together in the Nether-
lands, but both English and Dutch sea raiders also fell upon Spanish shipping, captured the
treasure ships, and even pillaged the mainland coast of northern South America. Elizabeth
was negotiating with Scotland, with German Calvinists, and with French Huguenots. At the
Escorial it was said that the Netherlands could only be rewon by an invasion of England,
that the queen of the heretics must be dethroned, that it was cheaper to launch a gigantic
attack upon England than to pay the cost of protecting Spanish galleons year after year
against the depredations of piratical sea dogs.
Philip II therefore prepared to invade England. The English retorted with vigor. Mary
Stuart, after almost 20 years of imprisonment, was executed in 1587; an aroused Parlia-
ment, more than Elizabeth herself, demanded her life on the eve of foreign attack. Sir
Francis Drake, most spectacular of the sea dogs, sailed into the port of Cádiz and burnt the
very ships assembling there to join the Armada. This was jocosely described as singeing
the beard of the king of Spain.
The great Armada, the armada católica, was ready early in 1588. With crosses on the sails and banners bearing the image of the Holy Virgin, it
went forth as to a new Lepanto against the Turks of the north. It consisted
of 130 ships, weighing 58,000 tons, carrying 30,000 men and 2,400 pieces of artillery—
the most prodigious assemblage of naval power that the world had ever seen. The plan was
for the fl eet to sail to the Netherlands, from which it was to escort the prince of Parma’s
army across the straits to the English coast.
But the Armada never reached the Spanish army. It was met in the English Channel
by some 200 English vessels, which encircled the Spanish fl eet near Calais. The English
craft—lighter, smaller, and faster, though well furnished with guns—harried the lumbering
mass of the Armada, broke up its formations, and attacked its great vessels one by one.
England as bulwark
of Protestantism
The Spanish Armada
The vast size of the Spanish naval armada and the English opposition to it are suggested in this illustration by an unknown artist. Both navies had crosses on the fl ags of their ships, thereby claiming divine support for their cause and indicating the reli- gious and national stakes in this epic confl ict. (Universal History Archive/
Getty Images)
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131
It found no refuge at Calais, and English fi reships drove it out again to sea. Then arose
a great storm, which the English would later call the “Protestant wind.” The storm blew
the broken Armada northward around the tip of Scotland, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and
northern Ireland—forbidding coasts that the Spaniards had to skirt without charts or pilots
or adequate provisions, and which they strewed with their wreckage and their bones.
The Results of the Struggle
The war for control of the Netherlands went on for several years, even after Philip died in
1598. In the wars with Spain the English had, above all else, assured their national inde-
pendence. They had acquired an intense national spirit, a love of “this other Eden, demi-
paradise,” “this precious stone set in the silver sea,” as Shakespeare wrote; and they had
become more solidly Protestant, almost unanimously set against “popery.” With the ruin
of the Armada, they were more free to take to the sea; we have seen how the English East
India Company was founded in 1600.
In the Netherlands, the battle lines swayed back and forth until 1609,
when the two sides agreed to a Twelve Years’ Truce. By this truce the Neth-
erlands were partitioned. The line of partition ran somewhat farther north
than it had in Parma’s time, for the Spaniards had retaken Antwerp and
other cities in the middle zone. The 7 provinces north of the line, those that had formed
the Union of Utrecht in 1579, were henceforth known as Dutch. The 10 provinces south
of the line were known as the Spanish Netherlands. Protestants in the south either became
Catholics or fl ed to the north, so that the south (the modern Belgium) became solidly
Catholic, while the number of Protestants in the north was increased. Even so, the Dutch
were not a completely Protestant people, for probably as many as a third of them remained
Catholic. Calvinism was the religion of most Dutch burghers and the religion favored by
the state; but in the face of an exceptionally large religious minority the Dutch Netherlands
adopted a policy of toleration.
Partition of the
Netherlands
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1492–1648
1492 Christopher Columbus reaches America
1519–1522 Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigates the globe
1519–1533 Spanish conquests of Native American empires in the Americas
1556–1598 Reign of King Philip II in Spain
1562–1598 Religious and civil wars in France
1565 “Manila Galleons” open Spanish trade route between Asia and America
1566 Revolt against Spanish control begins in the Netherlands
1588 Spanish Armada is destroyed off the coast of England and Scotland
1598 King Henry IV issues Edict of Nantes; grants religious rights to French
Protestants
1618–1648 The Thirty Years’ War in Germany
1648 Peace of Westphalia recognizes system of sovereign European states
14. The Wars of Catholic Spain: The Netherlands and England
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648132
The southern Netherlands were ruined by almost 40 years of war. The Dutch, more-
over, occupied the mouth of the Scheldt River and refused to allow oceangoing vessels to
proceed upstream to Antwerp or to Ghent. The Scheldt remained “closed” for two centu-
ries, and the Flemish cities never recovered their old position. Amsterdam became the com-
mercial and fi nancial center of northern Europe; it retained its commercial supremacy for a
century and its fi nancial supremacy for two centuries. For the Dutch, as for the English,
the weakening of Spanish naval power opened the way to the sea. The Dutch East India
Company was organized in 1602. Both the Dutch and the English began to found overseas
colonies. The English established a colony in Virginia in 1607, the Dutch launched the
colonization of New York in 1612.
As for Spain, while it remained the most formidable military power of
Europe for another half-century, its political and economic decline had
already begun. At the death of Philip II the monarchy was living from hand
to mouth, habitually depending on the next arrival of treasure from the
Indies. The productive forces of the country were weakened by infl ation, taxation, emigra-
tion, and depopulation. At Seville, for example, only 400 looms were in operation in 1621,
where there had been 16,000 a century earlier. Spain suffered from the very circumstances
that made it great. Qualities that developed in the centuries of religious war and in the reli-
ance upon imported gold or silver from America were not those on which a more modern
economy and society could easily be built. The long history of campaigns against infi dels
and heretics had produced an exceptionally large number of minor aristocrats who often
saw their class status as a reason to avoid various forms of mundane work. Their relative
indifference to the newer, expanding institutions of European commercial activity may
have infl uenced the country as a whole. In any case, many of the ablest Spaniards continued
to enter the church, and there were few innovations in Spain’s political and economic life.
The very unity accomplished under Ferdinand and Isabella threatened to dissolve.
After more than a century of the Inquisition people were still afraid of false Christians
and crypto-Muslims. The lingering hostility for the Moriscos thus rose
again after 1600. The Moriscos included some of the best farmers and most
skilled artisans in the country. They lived in almost all parts of Spain and
were in no sense a “foreign” element, since they were simply the descen-
dants of those Spaniards who, in the Muslim period, which had begun 900 years before,
had adopted the Muslim religion and Arabic language and culture. They had later con-
verted to Christianity, but the true and pure Christians accused them of hiding their anti-
Christian beliefs, of preserving in secret the rites of Islam, and of sympathizing with the
North African Barbary pirates. They were thought to be clannish, marrying among them-
selves; and they were so effi cient, sober, and hardworking that they outdistanced other
Spaniards in competition. In 1609 some 150,000 Moriscos were driven out of Valencia; in
1610 some 64,000 were driven from Aragon; and in 1611 there were also mass expulsions
from Castile. About 300,000 people were expelled from the whole of Spain. They were
men, women, and children of every age and social level, but all were simply put on boats
and sent off with what they could carry. A few Moriscos went to other parts of southern
Europe, but most settled in North Africa. Spain, whose total population was rapidly falling
in any case, thus passed through another phase of abrupt religious expulsions in which the
country lost one of its most productive and socially valuable minorities.
Nor could the Christian kingdoms hold peaceably together, despite the centralizing
projects of the main government minister, the Count of Olivares. Coming to power under
King Philip IV in 1621, Olivares sought to curb the independence of the church, increase the
king’s revenues, control the aristocracy, and send the Spanish army into both the Netherlands
The beginnings of
Spanish decline
The Moriscos
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133
and the religious wars in Germany. His policies provoked strong opposition throughout
Spain. In 1640 Portugal, which had been joined to the Spanish crown since 1580 when its
own ruling line had run out, reestablished its independence. That same year Catalonia rose in
an armed rebellion that would continue (with French support) for almost 20 years. Catalonia
was at last reconquered, but it managed to preserve its old privileges and separate identity.
Castile and Catalonia were now almost as disunited, in spirit and in institutions, as in the
days of Isabella and Ferdinand. They suffered, too, during the seventeenth century from a
line of kings whose mental peculiarities reached the point of positive imbecility. Meanwhile,
however, the might of Spain could still be felt in both Germany and France.
15. THE DISINTEGRATION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF FRANCE
Both France and Germany, in the so-called Wars of Religion, fell into an advanced state
of decomposition. France was torn apart by almost 40 years of civil war between 1562 and
1598, while Germany entered a long period of civil troubles that culminated in the Thirty
Years’ War between 1618 and 1648. From this decomposition France recovered in the
seventeenth century, but Germany did not.
Political and Religious Disunity
The Wars of Religion in France, despite the religious savagery shown by partisans of both
sides, were also the sixteenth-century recurrence of a long French political struggle. They
were essentially a new form of the old phenomenon of feudal rebellion against a higher
central authority. “Feudal,” in this postmedieval sense, generally refers not to nobles only,
but to all sorts of groups having rights within the state, and so includes towns and prov-
inces, and even craft guilds and courts of law, in addition to the church and the noble class.
It remained to be seen whether all these elements could be welded into one body politic.
In France the New Monarchy, resuming the work of medieval kings, had imposed a
certain unity on the country. Normally the country acted as a unit in foreign affairs. The
king alone made treaties, and in war his subjects all fought on his side, if
they fought at all. Internally, the royal centralization was largely admin-
istrative; that is, the king and those who worked for him dealt with sub-
ordinate bodies of all kinds, while these subordinate bodies remained in
existence with their own functions and personnel. France by the ideas of the
time was a very large country. It was three times as large as England and more than four
times as populous—roughly 18 million in the sixteenth century. At a time when the trav-
eler could move hardly 30 miles a day, it took three weeks of steady plodding to cross the
kingdom. Local infl uence was therefore very strong. Beneath the platform of royalty there
was almost as little substantial unity in France as in the Holy Roman Empire. When
the empire had 300 “states,” France had some 300 areas with their own legal systems.
Where the empire had free cities, France had bonnes villes, the king’s “good towns,” each with its stubbornly defended corporate rights. Where the empire had middle-sized
states like Bavaria, France had provinces as great as some European kingdoms—Brittany,
Burgundy, Provence, Languedoc—each ruled by the French king, to be sure, but each with
its own identity, autonomy, laws, courts, tariffs, taxes, and parliament or provincial estates.
To all this diversity, in France as in Germany, was now added diversity of religion. Calvin
himself was by birth and upbringing a Frenchman; and Calvinism spread very rapidly in
France during the 1550s.
Centralization vs.
localism
15. The Disintegration and Reconstruction of France
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648134
Nor was France much attached to a papal or international Catholicism. The French
clergy had long struggled for its national or Gallican liberties; the French kings had dealt
rudely with popes, ignored the Council of Trent, and allied for political reasons with both
the Lutherans and the Turks. Since 1516 the king of France had the right to nominate the
French bishops. The fact that both the French monarchy and clergy already felt indepen-
dent of Rome held them back from the revolutionary solutions of Protestantism. The Prot-
estantism that did spread in France therefore developed without government support and
embraced the most radical theological wing of the Reformation, namely Calvinism, which
preached at kings, attacked bishops, smashed religious images, and desecrated Catholic
churches. Within the main countries that became Protestant—England, north Germany,
even the Netherlands—this extreme Protestantism was the doctrine of a minority. In France
there was no middle-of-the-road Protestantism, no broad and comfortable Anglicanism, no
halfway Lutheranism inspired by governments; and in the long run, as will be seen, the
middle of the road was occupied by Catholics.
At fi rst, however, the Huguenots, as the French Calvinists were called,
though always a minority, were neither a small group nor modest in their
demands. In a class analysis, it is clear that it was chiefl y the nobility that
was attracted to Protestantism, though of course it does not follow that most French Protes-
tants were nobles, since the nobility was a small class. More than a third, and possibly
almost a half, of the French nobility was Protestant in the 1560s or 1570s. Frequently the
seigneur, or lord of one or more manors, believed that he should have the right to regulate
religion on his own estates, as the princes of Germany decided the religion of their own ter-
ritories. It thus happened that a lord might defy the local bishop, put a Calvinist minister in
his village church, throw out the images, simplify the sacraments, and have the service con-
ducted in French. In this way peasants also became Huguenots. Occasionally peasants
turned Huguenot without encouragement by the lord. It was chiefl y in southwestern France
that Protestantism spread as a general movement affecting whole areas. But in all parts of
the country, north as well as south, many towns converted to Protestantism. Usually this
meant that the bourgeois oligarchy, into whose hands town government had generally fallen,
went over to Calvinism and thereupon banned Catholic services. The journeymen wage
earners might follow along; or estranged by class differences arising from within the local
economy, they might remain attached to their old priests. In general, the unskilled laboring
population probably remained the least touched of all classes by Calvinist doctrine.
Both Francis I and Henry II opposed the spread of Calvinism—as did
Lutheran and Anglican rulers—for Calvinism, a kind of grassroots move-
ment in religion, rising spontaneously among laity and reforming ministers,
seemed to threaten not only the powers of monarchy but also the very idea of
a nationally established church. The fact that in France the nobility, a traditionally ungov-
ernable class, fi gured prominently in the movement only made it look more like political or
feudal rebellion. Persecution of Huguenots, with burnings at the stake, began in the 1550s.
Then in 1559 King Henry II was accidentally killed in a tournament. He left three sons,
of whom the eldest in 1559 was only 15. Their mother, Henry’s widow, was Catherine de’
Medici, an Italian woman who brought to France some of the polish of Renaissance Italy,
along with some of its taste for political intrigue, with which she attempted to govern the coun-
try for her royal sons. (Their names were Francis II, who died in 1560, Charles IX, who died in
1574, and Henry III, who lasted until 1589.) With no fi rm hand in control of the monarchy, the
country fell apart; and in the ensuing chaos both Catholic and Huguenot factions tried to get
control of the youthful monarchs for their own purposes. The Huguenots, under persecution,
The Huguenots
Opposition to
Calvinism
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135
were too strong a minority to go into hiding. Counting among their number a third or more of
the professional warrior class, the nobles, they took naturally and aggressively to arms.
The Civil and Religious Wars
The civil wars in sixteenth-century France were not wars in which one region of a country
takes up arms against another, each retaining some apparatus of government, as in the
American Civil War or the civil wars of the seventeenth century in England. They were
civil wars of the kind fought in the absence of government. Roving bands of armed men,
without territorial base or regular means of subsistence, wandered about the country, fi ght-
ing and plundering, and joining or separating from other similar bands that were quickly
formed or quickly dissolved. The changing economic and social conditions of the era
detached many people from their old routines and threw them into a life of adventure. The
more prominent leaders could thus easily obtain followers, and at the coming of such
cohorts the peasants usually took to the woods, while bourgeois townspeople would lock
the gates of their cities. Peasants would form protective leagues, like vigilantes; and even
small towns maintained diminutive armies.
The Huguenots were led by various personages of rank, such as Admiral de Coligny
and Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, a small independent kingdom at the foot of the
Pyrenees between Spain and France. A pronounced Catholic party arose under the Guise
family, headed by the Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorraine. Catherine de’ Medici
was left in the middle, opposed like all monarchs to Calvinism but unwilling to fall under
the domination of the Guises. While the Guises wished to extirpate heresy, they wished
even more to govern France. Among the Huguenots some fought for local liberties in
religion, while the more ardent spirits hoped to drive “idolatry” and “popery” out of all
France, and indeed out of the world itself. Catherine de’ Medici for a time tried to play
the two parties against each other. But in 1572, fearing the growing infl uence of Coligny
over the king, and taking advantage of a great concourse of infl uential Huguenots in Paris
to celebrate the marriage of Henry of Navarre, she decided to rid herself
of the Huguenot leaders at a single blow. In the resulting massacre of
St. Bartholomew’s Day some thousands of Huguenots were dragged from
their beds after midnight and unceremoniously murdered. Coligny was
killed; Henry of Navarre escaped by temporarily changing his religion.
This outrage only aroused Huguenot fury and led to a renewal of civil war throughout
the country, with mounting atrocities committed by both sides. The armed bands slaugh-
tered each other and terrorized noncombatants. Both parties hired companies of mercenary
soldiers, mainly from Germany. Spanish troops invaded France at the invitation of the
Guises. Protestant towns, such as Rouen and La Rochelle, appealed for armed support
from Elizabeth of England, reminding her that kings of England had once reigned over
their parts of France; but Elizabeth was too preoccupied with her own problems to give
more than very sporadic and insignifi cant assistance. Neither side could subdue the other,
and hence there were numerous truces, during which fi ghting still fl ared up, since no one
had the power to impose peace.
Gradually, mainly among the more perfunctory Catholics, but also
among moderate Protestants, there developed still another group who
thought of themselves as the “politicals” or politiques. The politiques con- cluded that too much was being made of religion, that no doctrine was important enough to
justify everlasting war, that perhaps after all there might be room for two churches, and that
St. Bartholomew’s
Day massacre
The Politiques
15. The Disintegration and Reconstruction of France
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648136
what the country needed above all else was civil order. Theirs was a secular rather than a
religious view. They believed that people lived primarily in the state, not in the church. They
were willing to overlook the religious ideas of people in different churches if such persons
would simply obey the king and go peaceably about their business. To escape anarchy they
put their hopes in the institution of monarchy. Henry of Navarre, now again a Protestant,
was at heart a politique. Another was the political philosopher Jean Bodin (1530–1596), the fi rst thinker to develop the modern theory of sovereignty. He held that in every society
there must be one power strong enough to give law to all others, with their consent if pos-
sible, without their consent if necessary. Thus from the disorders of the religious wars in
France was germinated the idea of royal absolutism and of the sovereign state.
The End of the Wars: Reconstruction under Henry IV
In 1589 both Henry III, the reigning king, and Henry of Guise, the Catholic party chief
who was trying to depose him, were assassinated by a partisan of the other. The throne
now came by legal inheritance to the third of the three Henrys, Henry of Navarre, the
Huguenot chieftain. He reigned as Henry IV. Most popular and most amiably remembered
of all French kings, except for medieval St. Louis, he was the fi rst of the Bourbon dynasty,
which was to last until the French Revolution.
The civil wars did not end with the accession of Henry IV. The Catholic party refused
to recognize him, set up a pretender against him, and called in the Spaniards. Henry, the
politique, sensed that the majority of the French people were still Catholic and that the
THE ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S DAY MASSACRE by François Dubois (French, 1529–1584)
This massacre of Protestants in Paris in 1572 sparked further atrocities and massacres by both sides in France’s religious wars. As the Huguenot painter François Dubois suggested in this portrayal of the killings, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre also became an enduring symbol of the brutal confl icts that divided the nation throughout the late sixteenth century. (De Agostini/Getty Images)
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137
Huguenots were not only a minority but, after 30 years of civil strife, an increasingly unpop-
ular minority. Paris especially, Catholic throughout the wars, refused to admit the heretic
king within its gates. Supposedly remarking that “Paris is well worth a
Mass,” Henry IV in 1593 abjured the Calvinist faith, and subjected himself
to the elaborate processes of papal absolution. Thereupon the politiques and less excitable Catholics consented to work with him. The Huguenots, at fi rst
elated that their leader should become king, were now not only outraged by Henry’s abjura-
tion but also alarmed for their own safety. They demanded positive guarantees for their
personal security as well as protection of their religious liberty.
Henry IV in 1598 responded by issuing the Edict of Nantes. The Edict
granted to every seigneur, or noble who was also a manorial lord, the right
to hold Protestant services in his own household. It allowed Protestant-
ism in towns where it was in fact the prevailing form of worship, and in any case in one
town of each bailliage (a unit corresponding somewhat to the English shire) throughout the country; but it barred Protestant churches from Catholic episcopal towns and from a
zone surrounding and including the city of Paris. It promised that Protestants should enjoy
the same civil rights as Catholics, the same chance for public offi ce, and access to the
Catholic universities. In certain of the superior law courts it created “mixed chambers” of
both Protestants and Catholics—somewhat as if a stated minority representation were to be
legally required in United States federal courts today. The Edict also gave Protestants their
own means of defense, granting them about 100 fortifi ed towns to be held by Protestant
garrisons under Protestant command.
The Huguenot minority, reassured by the Edict of Nantes, became less of a rebellious
element within the state. The majority of the French people, however, viewed the Edict
with suspicion. The parlements, or supreme law courts, of Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Aix,
and Rennes all refused to recognize it as the law of the land. It was the king who forced
toleration upon the country. He silenced the parlements and subdued Catholic opposition
by doing favors for the Jesuits. France’s chief minority was thus protected by the central
government, not by popular wishes. Where in England the Catholic minority had no rights
at all, and in Germany the religious question was settled only by cutting the country into
small and hostile fragments, in France a compromise was effected, by which the Protestant
minority had both individual and territorial rights. A considerable number of French states-
men, generals, and other important persons in the seventeenth century were Protestants.
Henry IV, having appeased the religious controversy, did everything that he could to
let the country gradually recover from its decades of civil war. His ideal, as he breezily put
it, was a “chicken in the pot” for every Frenchman. He worked also to restore the ruined
government, to collect taxes, pay offi cials, discipline the army, and supervise the adminis-
tration of justice. Roads and bridges were repaired and new manufactures were introduced
under mercantilist principles. Never throughout his reign of 21 years did he summon the
Estates General. A country that had just hacked itself to pieces in civil war was scarcely
able to govern itself, and so, under Henry IV, the foundations of the later royal absolutism
of the Bourbons were laid down.
Henry IV was assassinated in 1610 by a crazed fanatic who believed
him a menace to the Catholic church. Under his widow, Marie de’ Medici,
the nobility and upper Catholic clergy again grew restless and forced
the summoning of the Estates General, in which so many confl icting and
mutually distrustful interests were represented that no program could be adopted. Marie
dismissed them in 1615 to the general relief of all concerned. No Estates General of the
kingdom as a whole thereafter met until the French Revolution. Remembering the violent
Henry IV accepts
Catholicism
The Edict of Nantes
The foundations of
absolutism
15. The Disintegration and Reconstruction of France
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648138
chaos of the previous century, most people in France, even many nobles, became more
willing to accept a national government that would be conducted by and through the king.
Cardinal Richelieu
In the name of Marie de’ Medici and her young son, Louis XIII, the control of affairs gradu-
ally came into the hands of an ecclesiastic, Cardinal Richelieu. In the preceding generation
Richelieu might have been called a politique. It was the state, not the church, whose inter- ests he worked to further. He tried to strengthen the state economically by mercantilist
edicts. He attempted to draw impoverished gentlemen into trade by allowing them to engage
in maritime commerce without loss of noble status. For wholesale merchants, as an incen-
tive, he made it possible to become nobles, in return for payments into the royal exchequer.
He founded and supported many commercial companies on the Anglo-Dutch model.
For a time, however, it seemed that civil war might break out again.
Nobles still feuded with each other and evaded the royal jurisdiction.
Richelieu prohibited private warfare and ordered the destruction of all forti-
fi ed castles not manned and needed by the king himself. He even prohibited
dueling, a custom much favored by the nobles of the day, but regarded by Richelieu as
a mere remnant of private war. The Huguenots, too, with their own towns and their own
armed forces under the Edict of Nantes, had become something of a state within the state.
In 1627 the Duke of Rohan led a Huguenot rebellion, based in the city of La Rochelle,
which received military support from the English. Richelieu after a year suppressed
the rebellion and in 1629, by the Peace of Alais, amended the Edict of Nantes. For this
highly secularized cardinal of the Catholic church it was agreeable for the Protestants to
keep their religion but not for them to share in the instruments of political power. The
Huguenots lost, in 1629, their fortifi ed cities, their Protestant armies, and all their military
and territorial rights, but in their religious and civil rights they were not offi cially disturbed
for another 50 years.
The French monarchy, having reestablished its centralizing powers and aspirations
after the civil wars, now began to revive the old foreign policy of Francis I, who had
opposed on every front the European supremacy of the house of Habsburg. The Spanish
power still encircled France at the Pyrenees, in the Mediterranean, in the Free County of
Burgundy (the Franche-Comté), and in Belgium. The Austrian branch had pretensions to
supremacy in Germany and all central Europe. Richelieu found his opportunity to assail
the Habsburgs in the civil and religious struggles that now began to affl ict Germany.
16. THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR, 1618–1648: THE DISINTEGRATION OF GERMANY
The Holy Roman Empire extended from France on the west to Poland and Hungary on the
east. It included the Czechs of Bohemia and sizable French-speaking populations in what
are now Belgium, Lorraine, eastern Burgundy, and western Switzerland; but with these
exceptions the empire consisted of people who spoke various dialects of the German
language (see maps, pp. 79, 144–145). For most people at this time, however, language
was far less important than religion as the uniting or shared identity of a community; and
in religion the empire was almost evenly divided. Where in England, after stabilization set
in, Roman Catholics sank to a minority of some 3 percent, and in France the Huguenots
fell to not much over 5 percent, in Germany there was no true minority, and hence no
Renewed threat of
civil war
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139
majority, and religion gave no foundation for German or imperial unity. Possibly there
were more Protestants than Catholics in the empire in 1600, for not only was Protestantism
the state religion in many of the 300 states, but individual Protestants were also numerous
in the legally Catholic states of the Austrian Habsburgs. Bohemia had a Protestant major-
ity, rooted in the Czech people. Farther east, outside the Holy Roman Empire, the Hungar-
ian nobles were mainly Protestant, and Transylvania, in the elbow of the Carpathian
Mountains, was an active center of Calvinism.
In 1500 Germany had led in many aspects of European life, but by
1600 it had lost much of its former cultural creativity and leadership. Where
both Catholics and Calvinists recognized international affi liations, Luther-
ans were suspicious of the world outside the Lutheran states of Germany and Scandinavia,
and hence suffered from a cultural isolation. The German universities, both Lutheran and
Catholic, attracted fewer students than formerly, and their intellectual effort was consumed
in combative dogmatics, each side demonstrating the truth of its own ideas. Many of the
most deadly, large-scale campaigns against witchcraft took place in the small German
states, and more women were burned as witches in Germany than in other countries in
western Europe. The commerce of south Germany and the Rhineland was in decay, both
because of the shift of trade to the Atlantic and because the Dutch controlled the mouth
of the Rhine in their own interests. German bankers, such as the Fuggers, were of slight
importance after 1600. Capital was now being formed in the centers of maritime trade.
Background of the Thirty Years’ War
The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 had provided that in each state the government could pre-
scribe the religion of its subjects. In general, over the following decades, the Lutherans made
considerable gains, putting Lutheran administrators into the church states, or “secularizing”
them and converting them into lay principalities. In addition, Calvinism
spread into Germany. Though Calvinists had no rights under the Peace of
Augsburg, a number of states became Calvinist. One of these was the Palati-
nate, important because it was strategically placed across the middle Rhine, and because
its ruler, the Elector Palatine, was one of the seven persons who elected the Holy Roman
Emperor. In 1608 the Protestant states, urged on by the Elector Palatine, formed a Protestant
union to defend their gains. To obtain support, they negotiated with the Dutch, with the
English, and with Henry IV of France. In 1609 a league of Catholic German states was orga-
nized by Bavaria. It looked for help from Spain.
The Germans were thus falling apart, or rather coming together, into two parties in
anticipation of religious confl icts, and each party solicited foreign assistance against the
other. Other issues were also maturing. The Twelve Years’ Truce between Spain and the
Dutch, signed in 1609, was due to expire in 1621. The Spanish (whose international military
power was still unaffected by internal decline) were again preparing to crush the Dutch
Republic. Since the Dutch insisted on independence, a renewal of the Dutch-Spanish war
appeared to be inevitable. The Spanish also wished to consolidate the Habsburg position
in central Europe and enhance their access to the Netherlands by gaining control of new
territories along the Rhine River and in various Swiss cantons (see map, pp. 144–145).
These Spanish designs in the Rhineland and Switzerland naturally aroused the opposi-
tion of France. Moreover, the Austrian branch of the Habsburg family was slowly bestir-
ring itself to eradicate Protestantism in its own domains and to turn the Holy Roman
Empire into a more modern type of state. The idea of a strong power in Germany was
German decline
Lutheran gains
16. The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648: The Disintegration of Germany
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648140
abhorrent to the French. Through opposition to the Habsburgs, France was again put in the
position of chief protector of Protestantism. France was a giant of Europe, over four times
as populous as England, over 10 times as populous as Sweden or the Dutch Republic,
incomparably more populous than any single German state. And France after 1600 was at
last relatively unifi ed within.
The Thirty Years’ War, resulting from all these pressures, was therefore
exceedingly complex. It was a German civil war fought over the Catholic-
Protestant issue. It was also a German civil war fought over constitutional
issues, between the emperor striving to build up the central power of the
empire and the member states struggling to maintain independence. These two civil wars
by no means coincided, for Catholic and Protestant states were alike in objecting to impe-
rial control. It was also an international war, between France and the Habsburgs, between
Spain and the Dutch, with the kings of Denmark and Sweden and the prince of Transyl-
vania becoming involved, and with all these outsiders fi nding allies within Germany, on
whose soil most of the battles were fought. The wars were further complicated by the fact
that many of the generals were soldiers of fortune who aspired to create principalities of
their own and who fought or refused to fi ght whenever it suited their own convenience.
The Four Phases of the War
The fi ghting began in Bohemia. It is in fact customary to divide the war
into four phases, the Bohemian (1618–1625), the Danish (1625–1629), the
Swedish (1630–1635), and the Swedish-French (1635–1648).
In 1618 the Bohemians, or Czechs, fearing the loss of their Protestant liberties, dealt
with two emissaries from the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Matthias (who was also
their king), by a method occasionally used in that country—throwing them out of the
window. After this “defenestration of Prague” the king-emperor sent troops to restore his
authority, whereupon the Bohemians deposed him and elected a new king. In order to
obtain Protestant assistance, they chose the Calvinist Elector Palatine, the head of the Prot-
estant Union, who assumed the title of Frederick V. He brought aid to the Bohemians from
the Protestant Union, the Dutch, and the Protestant prince of Transylvania (who was at this
time supported by the Ottoman Empire). The Emperor Ferdinand, Matthias’s successor,
assisted by money from the pope, by Spanish troops sent from Milan, and by the forces of
Catholic Bavaria, managed to overwhelm the Bohemians at the battle of the White Moun-
tain in 1620. Frederick fl ed, jeered or pitied as the “winter king.” His ancestral domains in
the Palatinate were overrun by the Spaniards.
The Habsburgs now set out to reconquer and revolutionize Bohemia. The Emperor
Ferdinand got himself elected as king of Bohemia and soon confi scated the estates of
almost half the Bohemian nobles. He granted these lands as endowments for Catholic
churches and monasteries or as gifts to adventurers of all nationalities who had entered his
service and who became the new landed aristocracy of Bohemia.
With Protestant fortunes at a low ebb, and the Protestant Union itself dissolved in
1621, the lead in Protestant affairs was now taken by the king of Denmark, who was also
Duke of Holstein, a state of the Holy Roman Empire. With a little aid from the Dutch and
English, and with promises from Richelieu, he entered the fray. Against him the Emperor
Ferdinand raised another army, or, rather, commissioned Albert of Wallenstein to raise
one on his own private initiative. Wallenstein assembled a force of professional fi ghters,
of all nationalities, who lived by pillage rather than by pay. His army was his personal
The complexity of the
Thirty Years’ War
The Bohemian war
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141
instrument, not the emperor’s, and he therefore followed a policy of his own, which was so
tortuous and well concealed that the name of Wallenstein has always remained an enigma.
Wallenstein and other imperial generals soon defeated the king of Denmark, reached the
Baltic coast, and even invaded the Danish peninsula.
The full tide of the Counter Reformation now fl owed over Germany. Not only was
Catholicism again seeping into the Palatinate, and again fl ooding Bohemia, but it also
rolled northward into the inner recesses of the Lutheran states. By the Edict of Restitution,
in 1629, the emperor declared all church territories secularized since 1552 automatically
restored to the Catholic church. Some of these territories had been Protestant since the old-
est person could remember. Terror swept over Protestant Germany. It seemed that the
whole Protestant Reformation, now a century old, might be undone.
The Habsburg-Catholic advance raised alarms across northern Europe,
especially in France and Sweden. Richelieu, however, was still putting
down fractious nobles and Huguenots. He had not yet consolidated France to
his satisfaction and believed that France, without fi ghting itself, could coun-
ter the Habsburg ambitions through the use of allies. He sent diplomats to help extricate the
king of Sweden from a war with Poland, and he promised him fi nancial assistance, which
soon rose to a million livres a year in return for the maintenance in Germany of 40,000
Swedish troops. The Dutch subsidized the Swedes with some 50,000 fl orins a month.
The king of Sweden was Gustavus Adolphus, a ruler of superlative
ability, who had conciliated all parties in Sweden and had extended Swed-
ish holdings on the east shore of the Baltic. Using Dutch and other military
experts, he had created the most modern army of the time, noted for its fi rm
French and Swedish
alarm
Gustavus Adolphus
The violence of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, depicted here in a vivid illustration by Jacques Callot entitled simply The Hanging Tree (1633), produced terror, bitter memories, and political divisions in central Europe that lasted long after the fi ghting fi nally ended in 1648. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
16. The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648: The Disintegration of Germany
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648142
discipline, high courage, and mobile cannon. Himself a religious man, he had his troops
march to battle singing Lutheran hymns. He was ideally suited to be the Protestant cham-
pion, a role he now willingly took up, landing in Germany in 1630. Richelieu, besides
giving fi nancial help, negotiated with the Catholic states of Germany, playing on their
fears of imperial centralization and seeking to isolate the emperor, against whom the well-
disciplined Swedish army was now hurled.
The Swedes, with military aid from Saxony, won a number of spectacular victories, at
Breitenfeld in 1631 and Lützen in 1632, where, however, Gustavus Adolphus was killed.
His chancellor, Oxenstierna, carried on. The Swedish army penetrated into Bohemia and as
far south as the Danube. But the brilliant Swedish victories came to little. Both sides were
weakened by disagreement. Wallenstein, who disliked the Spanish infl uence in Germany,
virtually ceased to fi ght the Swedes and Saxons, with whom he even entered into private
talks hoping to create an independent position for himself. He was fi nally disgraced by the
emperor and assassinated by one of his own staff. On the Swedish-Saxon side, the Saxons
decided to make a separate peace. Saxony therefore signed with the emperor the Peace of
Prague of 1635. The other German Protestant states concurred in it and withdrew their sup-
port from the Swedes. The emperor, by largely annulling the Edict of Restitution, allayed
Protestant apprehensions. The Swedes were left isolated in Germany. It seemed that the
German states were coming together, that the religious wars might be nearing an end. But,
in fact, in 1635, the Thirty Years’ War was still evolving into a protracted fi nal phase.
Neither France nor Spain wished peace or reconciliation in Germany.
Richelieu renewed his assurances to the Swedes, paid subsidies even to the wealthy
Dutch, hired a German princeling, Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, to maintain an army of
Germans in the French service, and at last brought Catholic France into open support of the
German Protestants.
So the French fi nally moved toward the Rhine, though not at fi rst with
the success for which the French or Protestants had hoped. The Spanish,
from their bases in Belgium and Franche-Comté, drove instead deep into
France. Champagne and Burgundy were ravaged, and Paris itself was seized with panic.
The Spanish also raided the south. The French had a taste of the plunder, murder, burnings,
and stealing of cattle by which Germany had been affl icted. But the French soon turned the
tables. When Portugal and Catalonia rebelled against Philip IV in 1640, France immedi-
ately recognized the independence of Portugal under the new royal house of Braganza—
as did England, Holland, and Sweden with equal alacrity. French troops streamed over
the Pyrenees into Catalonia, spreading the usual devastation. Richelieu even recognized a
Catalan republic.
In Germany the last or Swedish-French phase of the war was not so much a civil
war among Germans as an international struggle on German soil. Few German states now
sided with the French and Swedes. A feeling of national resentment against foreign inva-
sion even seemed to develop.
The Peace of Westphalia, 1648
Peace talks began in 1644 in Westphalia, at the two towns of Münster and Osnabrück. The
German states were crying for peace, for a fi nal religious settlement, and for “reform” of
the Holy Roman Empire. France and Sweden insisted that the German states should indi-
vidually take part in the negotiations, a disintegrating principle that the German princes
eagerly welcomed and which the emperor vainly resisted. To Westphalia, therefore,
European involvement
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143
hundreds of diplomats and negotiators now repaired, representing the empire, its member
states, Spain, France, Sweden, the Dutch, the Swiss, the Portuguese, the Venetians,
numerous other Italians, and the pope. There had been no such European congress since
the Council of Constance, and the fact that a European assemblage had in 1415 dealt with
affairs of the church, and now in the 1640s dealt with affairs of the state, war, and power,
was a measure of the secularization that had come over Europe.
The negotiations dragged on, because the armies were still fi ghting,
and after each battle one side or the other raised its terms. France and Spain
refused to make peace with each other at all and in fact remained at war
until 1659. But for the Holy Roman Empire a settlement was reached in
1648 in the two treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, which became commonly known as
the Peace of Westphalia.
The Peace of Westphalia represented a general checkmate to the Catholic Counter
Reformation in Germany. It not only renewed the terms of the Peace of Augsburg, grant-
ing each German state the right to determine its own religion, but it also added Calvinism
to Lutheranism and Catholicism as an acceptable faith. On the controversial issue of
church territories secularized after 1552 the Protestants won a complete victory; Catholic
claims to the territories were abandoned.
The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, which had been advanced
by the drawing of internal religious frontiers in the days of Luther, was now
confi rmed in politics and international law. Borderlands of the empire fell
away. The Dutch and Swiss ceased to belong to it, and both the United
Provinces and Swiss cantons (or Helvetic Body) were recognized as sovereign and inde-
pendent. From the disintegrating western frontier of the Holy Roman Empire the French
cut off small pieces, receiving sovereignty over three Lorraine bishoprics, which they had
occupied for a century, and certain rights in Alsace that were so confused that they later led
to trouble. The king of Sweden received new territories in northern Germany, thus adding
to Sweden’s trans-Baltic possessions.
It was in the new constitution of the empire itself, not in territorial
changes, that the greatest victory of the French and their Swedish and
Dutch allies was to be found. The German states, over 300 in number,
became virtually sovereign. Each received the right to conduct diplomacy and make trea-
ties with foreign powers. The Peace of Westphalia further stipulated that no laws could be
made by the empire, no taxes could be raised, no soldiers could be recruited, no war could
be declared or peace terms ratifi ed except with the consent of the imperial estates—the
300-odd princes, ecclesiastics, and free cities in the Reichstag assembled. Since it was
well known that agreement on any such matters was impossible, the principle of self-
government, or of medieval constitutional liberties, was used to destroy the empire itself
as an effective political entity. While most other European countries were consolidating
under royal absolutism, Germany sank back toward fragmentation and localism.
The Peace of Westphalia blocked the Counter Reformation, frustrated the Austrian
Habsburgs, and forestalled for almost two centuries any movement toward German national
unifi cation. Within Europe as a whole, however, it marked the advent in international law
of the modern system of sovereign states. The diplomats who assembled
at Westphalia represented independent powers that recognized no superior
or common tie. No one any longer pretended that Europe had any signifi -
cant religious or political unity. Statesmen delighted in the absence of any
such unity, in which they sensed the menace of “universal monarchy.”
Lengthy peace
negotiations
Dissolution of the
Holy Roman Empire
Germany fragmented
System of sovereign
states
16. The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648: The Disintegration of Germany
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648144
Austrian Habsburgs
Spanish Habsburgs
Swedish Dominions
Brandenburg-Prussia
Church Lands
Ottoman Empire controlled lands
Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire
0 100 200 300 miles
A d r i a t i c S e a
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
N o r t h S e a
B a l t i
c
S e a
E N G L I S H C H A N N E L
M e d i t e r r a n
e a
n
S e
a
Vist u la R.
C A T A
L O N I
A
NAVARRE
A R A
G O
N
P O R T U G A L ( T O S P A I N
1 5 8 0 – 1 6 4 0 )
C A S T I L E
ALGERIA TUNISIA
SA V
O Y
CORSICA (Genoa)
SARDINIA
SICILY
MALTA (Knights of St. John)
IONIAN I. (Venice)
NAPLES
PAPAL STATES
A LB
A N
IA
MONT
BOSNIA
MORAVIA BOHEMIA
SILESIA
A U
ST RI
A
BRAN DENB
URG
SAXONY
BAVARIA
SWISS CANTONS FR
AN CH
E-
CO M
TÉ
SPANISH NETH.
PALATINATE
DENMARK
KINGDOM OF THE TWO SICILIES
TUSCANY
P IE
D M
O N
T
GREAT POLAND
PO M
ER A
LI ABR
A ND EN
BU RG-
PRUS SIA
(TO SWEDEN, 1658)
SCHLESWIG
HOLSTEIN
HANOVER
MINOR
GERMAN STATES LO
RR A
IN E
A LS
A CE
KI N
G D
O M
O F
H U
N GA
RY
SLAVONIA
SER
SWEDISH POMERANIA
REPU BLIC
O F
VENICE
MINORCA
MAJORCA
C
DUC OF
PRUS
LITTLE POLAND
P Y R E N E E S
B A L E
A R I C I
.
S W E D E N
NORWAY
SCOTLAND
IRELAND
B A R B A R Y S T A T E S
FEZ AND MOROCCO
KINGDOM OF DENMARK AND NORWAY
ENGLAND
(COMMONWEALTH 1649–1660 UNITED KINGDOM 1707)
F R A N C E
S P A I N
H U N G A
SHETLAND I.
ORKNEY I.
UNITED PROVINCES
Dublin
Edinburgh
Liverpool
London
Rennes Paris
Rouen
Orléans
Bordeaux
Montauban
Avignon
Marseille
Barcelona
La Coruña
Valladolid
Escorial
Oporto
Lisbon Toledo
Madrid
Seville MalagaCadiz
Valencia
Oran (Spain)
Algiers
Tunis
Rome
Naples
Florence
Venice
Parma Milan
Belgrade
Murcia
Ceuta(Spain) Tangier
Bari
Aquila
Bristol Ryswick Amsterdam
Utrecht
Bremen
Verden Osnabrück
Lübeck Stralsund
Stettin
Leipzig
Dresden
Belfast
Zara
Nantes
Lyon
Saragossa
Mérida
León
Helsi
Stockholm
Danzig
Palermo
Genoa
Strasbourg
Vienna Budap
Augsburg
Brussels
Cologne Breslau
CracoPrague ManzTrier
Metz
Münster
Hamburg
Berlin Magdeburg
Copenhagen
Warsaw
Bergen
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145
EUROPE, 1648 This map shows the European states at the time of the Peace of Westphalia. A plurality of inde- pendent sovereign states was henceforth consid- ered normal. The plurality of religions was also henceforth taken for granted within Europe as a whole, though each state continued to require or favor religious uniformity within its borders. By weakening the Habsburgs and furthering the dis- integration of Germany, the Peace of Westphalia opened the way for a (short-term) seventeenth- century expansion of the Ottoman Empire in southeastern Europe and the later political ascen- dancy of France.
16. The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648: The Disintegration of Germany
Aegean Sea
B l a c k S e a
L I T H U A N I A
GREECE
CRETE (Venice)
RHODES (Turkish)
CYPRUS (Venice)
O T
T O
M A
N
E M
P I R E
CRIMEA
TENEGRO
WALLACHIA
TRANSYLVANIA BESSARABIA
DOBRUJA
RBIA
BULGARIA
MELLIA
FINLAND
ESTONIA
LIVONIA
COURLAND
HY F SIA
YEDISAN
GALICIA PODOLIA
MOLDAVIA
INGRIA
C A R
P A
T H
I A N
S
R U S S I A
P O L A N D
R Y
ngfors
Riga
Minsk
Salonica
Constantinople
Smyrna
est
ow Lemberg
Bucharest
Kiev
Moscow
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Chapter 3 The Atlantic World, Commerce, and Wars of Religion, 1560–1648146
Europe was understood to consist of a large number of unconnected sovereignties, free and
detached atoms, or states, which acted according to their own laws, following their own
political interests, forming and dissolving alliances, exchanging embassies and legations,
alternating between war and peace, shifting position with a shifting balance of power.
Physically Germany was wrecked by the Thirty Years’ War. Cities were sacked
by mercenary soldiers with a rapacity that their commanders could not control; or the
commanders themselves, drawing no supplies from their home governments, systematically
looted whole areas to maintain their armies. Magdeburg was besieged ten times; Leipzig,
fi ve. In one woolen town of Bohemia, with a population of 6,000 before the wars, the
citizens fl ed and disappeared, the houses collapsed, and eight years after the peace only
850 persons were found there. The peasants, murdered, put to fl ight, or tortured by soldiers
to reveal their few valuables, ceased to farm; agriculture was ruined; starvation followed,
and with it came pestilence. Even revised modern estimates allow that in many extensive
parts of Germany as much as a third of the population may have perished. The effects of
fi re, disease, undernourishment, homelessness, and exposure in the seventeenth century
were terrible because of the lack of means to combat them. The horrors that civilians have
suffered in modern wars are thus not wholly different from horrors that men and women
experienced in the past.
Germany as such, physically wrecked and politically cut into small pieces, ceased for
a long time to play any signifi cant part in European affairs. A kind of political and cultural
vacuum existed in central Europe. On the one hand, the western or Atlantic peoples—
French, English, Dutch—began in the seventeenth century to take the lead in European
politics, trade, and culture. On the other hand, in eastern Germany, around Berlin and
Vienna, new and only half-German centers of power began to form. These themes will be
traced in the two following chapters.
With the close of the Thirty Years’ War the Wars of Religion came to an end. While
religion remained an issue in some later confl icts and within some countries, it was never
again an important cause of confl icts in the transnational political affairs of Europe as a
whole. In general, by the close of the seventeenth century, the division between Protestant
and Catholic had become stabilized. Neither side any longer expected to make territorial gains
at the expense of the other. Both the Protestant and the Catholic reformations were accom-
plished facts. The political struggle for territory, wealth, and strategic alliances had become
secularized in that “reasons of state” now prevailed over religious allegiances in shaping both
the foreign policies of governments and the military confl icts of sovereign powers.
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
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147
C h a p t e r 4 THE GROWING POWER
OF WESTERN EUROPE,
1640–1715
If the reader were to take a map of Europe, set a compass on the city of Paris, and draw a circle
with a radius of 500 miles, a zone would be marked
out from which much of modern European and
“Western” civilization radiated after about 1640. It
was within this zone that a secular society, modern
natural science, a developed capitalism, the modern
state, parliamentary government, democratic ideas,
machine industry, and much else either originated
or received their fi rst full expression. The extreme
western parts of Europe—Ireland, Portugal, and
Spain—were somewhat outside the zone in which
the most rapid changes occurred. But within it
were England, southern Scotland, France, the
Low Countries, Switzerland, western and central
Germany, and northern Italy. This area, for over
200 years beginning in the seventeenth century,
was the earth’s principal center of what anthropolo-
gists might call cultural diffusion. Although the economy and culture of western Europe
were deeply infl uenced by the expanding trade and contacts with people outside Europe,
the growing power of western European states, trading companies, science, and cultural
institutions had a profound and spreading impact on the rest of Europe, the Americas, and
ultimately the whole world.
This western European infl uence grew steadily in the half-century following the Peace
of Westphalia. The fading out of the Italian Renaissance, the subsiding of religious wars,
the ruin of the Holy Roman Empire, and the decline of Spain all cleared the stage on which
the Dutch, English, and French were to become the principal political, economic, and
cultural actors. But the Dutch were few in number, and the English during most of the sev-
enteenth century were weakened by domestic discord. It was France that for a time played
the most imposing role. The whole half-century of European history following the Peace
of Westphalia is in fact often called the Age of Louis XIV.
17. The Grand Monarque
and the Balance
of Power
18. The Dutch Republic
19. Britain: The Civil War
20. Britain: The Triumph
of Parliament
21. The France of Louis XIV,
1643–1715: The Triumph
of Absolutism
22. The Wars of Louis XIV:
The Peace of Utrecht,
1713
Chapter emblem: Detail from a portrait of King Louis XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743).
(Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715148
17. THE GRAND MONARQUE AND THE BALANCE OF POWER
This king of France inherited his throne in 1643 at the age of 5, assumed the personal
direction of affairs in 1661 at the age of 23, and reigned for 72 years until his death in
1715. No one else in modern history has held so powerful a position for so long a time.
Louis XIV was more than a fi gurehead. For over half a century, during his whole adult life,
he was the actual and working head of the French government. Inheriting the state institu-
tions that Richelieu had developed earlier in the seventeenth century, he made France the
strongest country in Europe. Using French money, by bribes or other inducements, he built
up a pro-French interest in virtually every country from England to Turkey. His policies
and the counterpolicies that others adopted against him set the pace of public events, and
his methods of government and administration, war and diplomacy, became a model for
other rulers to copy. During this time the French language, French thought and literature,
French architecture and landscape gardens, and French styles in clothes, cooking, and eti-
quette became the accepted standard for Europe. Louis XIV was called by his fascinated
admirers Louis the Great, the Grand Monarque, and the Sun King. Internationally, the consuming political question of the last decades of the seventeenth
century (at least in western Europe—eastern Europe we reserve for the next chapter) was
the fate of the still vast possessions of the Spanish crown. Spain was drifting
into a condition that nineteenth-century Europeans would later ascribe to
Turkey, “the sick man of Europe.” To its social and economic decline was
added hereditary physical deterioration of its rulers. In 1665 the Spanish
throne was inherited by Charles II, an incompetent ruler affl icted by many
ills of mind and body, impotent, mentally defi cient, the pitiable product of generations of
intermarriage among various branches of the extended Habsburg family. His rule was
irresolute and feeble. It was known from the moment of his accession that he could have no
children and that the Spanish branch of the Habsburg family would die out with his death.
The whole future not only of Spain but also of the Spanish Netherlands, the Spanish hold-
ings in Italy, and all Spanish America was therefore in question. Charles II dragged out his
miserable days until 1700, the object of jealousy and outright assault during his lifetime,
and precipitating a new European war by his death.
Louis XIV, who in his youth married a sister of Charles II, intended
to benefi t from the debility of his royal brother-in-law. His expansion-
ist policies followed two main lines. One was to push the French borders
eastward to the Rhine, annexing the Spanish Netherlands (or Belgium)
and the Franche-Comté or Free County of Burgundy, a French-speaking
region lying between ducal Burgundy and Switzerland (see maps, pp. 144–145, 149). Such
policies along France’s eastern frontier involved the further dismemberment of the Holy
Roman Empire. The other line of Louis XIV’s ambitions, increasingly clear as time went
on, was his hope of obtaining the entire Spanish inheritance for himself. By combining the
resources of France and Spain he would make France supreme in Europe, in America, and
on the sea. To promote these ends Louis XIV intrigued with the smaller and middle-sized
powers of Europe and also contacted dissidents (i.e., potential allies) in all the countries
whose governments opposed him.
If Louis XIV had achieved his aims, he would have created the “universal monar-
chy” dreaded by diplomats, that is to say, a political situation in which one state might
subordinate all others to its will. The technique used against universal monarchy was the
The weakness of
Spain
The ambitions of
Louis XIV
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14917. The Grand Monarque and the Balance of Power
THE EXPANSION OF FRANCE, 1661–1713 The map shows how the for- eign policy and wars of King Louis XIV gradually extended France’s borders toward the east and northeast, bringing the Franche-Comté and new lands in both Alsace and Lorraine under French control. Louis also gained other territories in the Spanish Netherlands and expanded French holdings in the south along the frontier with Savoy. In addition to the expan- sion shown here, Louis XIV’s other great ambition was to obtain control of Spain and the Spanish Empire in the Americas.
French Boundary in 1661
Boundary of the Greatest Gains of Louis XIV
France in 1713
0 100 miles50
Rh on
e R
.
Sein e R
.
R h
in e R.
North Sea
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
SPA NISH NETH ER L A N D S
FRANCHE- COMTÉ
ALSACE
LO RR
AI NE
BADEN
SAVOY THE
MILANESE
UNITED PROVINCES
SWISS CONFEDERATION
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
Paris
Strasbourg
Metz
Geneva
Dijon
Verdun
Antwerp Cologne
balance of power. Universal monarchy had formerly been almost achieved in Europe by
the Austro-Spanish Habsburgs. The Habsburg supremacy had been blocked mainly by
a balance of power headed by France, of which the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of
Westphalia were the outstanding triumphs. Now, in the seventeenth century, the danger of
universal monarchy came from France, and it was against France that the balance of power
was directed.
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715150
The Idea of the Balance of Power
The aim of statesmen pursuing policies of balance of power in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries was generally to preserve their own inde-
pendence of action to the utmost. Hence the basic rule was to ally against
any powerful state threatening domination. If one state seemed to dictate too much, others
would shun alliance with it unless they were willing (from ideological sympathy or other
reasons) to become its puppets. They would seek alliance with the other weaker states
instead. They would thus create a balance or counterweight, or “restore the balance,”
against the state whose ascendancy they feared. Another more subtle reason for preferring
alliance with the weak rather than with the strong was that in such an alliance the leaders
of each state could believe their own contribution to be necessary and valued, and by
threatening to withdraw their support could win consideration of their own policies.
Indeed, the balance of power may be defi ned as a system in which each state tends to throw
its weight where it is most needed, so that its own importance may be
enhanced.
The purpose of balance-of-power politics was not to preserve peace
but to preserve the sovereignty and independence of the states of Europe,
or the “liberties of Europe,” as they were called, against potential aggres-
sors. The system was effective as a means to protect most sovereign governments in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Combinations were intricate, and alliances were
readily made and unmade to deal with emerging situations. One reason for the effective-
ness of the system lay in the great number of states capable of pursuing an independent
foreign policy. These included not only the greater and middle-sized states of Austria,
Spain, France, England, Holland, Sweden, and Bavaria, but a great number of small inde-
pendent states, such as Denmark, the German principalities, Portugal after 1640, and
Savoy, Venice, Genoa, and Tuscany. States moved easily from one alliance to another
or from one side of the balance to another. They were held back by no ideologies or
historic sympathies, especially after the religious wars subsided, but could freely choose or
reject allies, aiming only to protect their own independence or enlarge their own interests.
Moreover, owing to the military technology of the day, small states might count as impor-
tant military partners in an alliance. By controlling a strategic location, like the king of
Denmark, or by making a contribution of ships or money, like the Dutch Republic, they
might add just enough strength to an alliance to balance and overbalance the opposing
great power and its allies.
As the ambitions of Louis XIV became bolder, and as the capacity of Spain to resist
them withered away, the prevention of a French universal monarchy depended increas-
ingly on combining the states of Europe into a balance of power that could effectively
block France’s expansionist policies. The balance against Louis XIV was engineered
mainly by the Dutch. The most tireless of his enemies, and the one who did more than any
other to checkmate him, was the Dutchman William III, the prince of Orange, who in his
later years was king of England and Scotland as well.
Let us, after fi rst surveying the Dutch in the seventeenth century, turn to the British
Isles, where a momentous confl ict occurred between Parliament and king. We shall then
examine the French absolute monarchy under Louis XIV and conclude the present chap-
ter with the wars of Louis XIV, particularly the War of the Spanish Succession, in which
the collective resistance to French ambitions ultimately restored the European balance
of power.
Motives for alliances
Balance-of-power
politics
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15118. The Dutch Republic
18. THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
Dutch Culture and Government
The ambassadors of kings, strolling beside a canal at The Hague, might on occasion observe
a number of burghers in plain black garments step out of a boat and proceed to make a meal
of cheese and herring on the lawn, and they would recognize in these portly fi gures the
provincial delegates of the Estates General of the United Provinces, as the Dutch govern-
ment was known in the diplomatic language of the day. Though noblemen lived in the
country, the Dutch were the most bourgeois of all peoples. They were not the only republi-
cans in Europe, because the Swiss cantons, Venice, Genoa, and even England for a few
years were republics, but of all republics the United Provinces was by far the most wealthy,
the most fl ourishing, and the most important in international diplomacy and culture.
The Dutch acquired a nationality of their own in the long struggle against Spain, and
the memories of that war contributed to a pride in their own freedom and independence.
In the later phases of the war with Spain, notably during the Thirty Years’ War, they were
able to rely more on their wealth and diplomacy than on actual fi ghting, so that during the
whole seventeenth century they enjoyed a degree of comfort, and of intel-
lectual, artistic, and commercial achievement unexcelled in Europe. The
classic Dutch poets and dramatists wrote at this time, making a literary lan-
guage of what had formerly been a dialect of Low German. Hugo Grotius
produced, in his Law of War and Peace, a pioneering treatise on international law. Baruch Spinoza, of a family of refugee Portuguese Jews, quietly turned out works of philosophy,
examining the nature of reality, of human conduct, and of church and state. Spinoza made
his living by grinding lenses; there were many other lens grinders in Holland; some of them
developed the microscope, and some of these, in turn—Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam, and
others—peering through their microscopes and beholding for the fi rst time the world of
microscopic life, became founders of modern biological science. The greatest Dutch scien-
tist was Christian Huyghens (1629–1695), who worked mainly in physics and mathemat-
ics; he improved the telescope (a Dutch invention), made clocks move with pendulums,
discovered the rings of Saturn, and launched the wave theory of light. A less famous writer,
Balthasar Bekker, in his World Bewitched (1691) delivered a decisive blow against the expiring superstition of witchcraft. Meanwhile, the extraordinarily learned scholar and art-
ist Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678) developed an important seventeenth-century
argument for the education of women in her infl uential treatise The Learned Maid or Whether a Maid May Be Called a Scholar (1638).
But the most eternally fresh of the Dutch creations, suffering from no barrier of time
or language, were the superb canvases of the painters. Frans Hals produced bluff portraits
of the common people. Jan Vermeer threw a spell of magic and quiet dignity over men, and
especially women, of the burgher class, many of whom he portrayed in typical domestic
scenes. Rembrandt conveyed the mystery of human consciousness itself. In Rembrandt’s
Masters of the Cloth Guild (see p. 152) we face a group of six men who seem about to speak from the canvas, inclined slightly forward, as intent on their business as judges on the pro-
ceedings in a courtroom. Such men conducted the affairs of Holland, in both commerce and
government; intelligent, calculating, and honest but determined to drive a hard bargain; the
sober black cloaks, with the clean white collars, set against the carved woodwork and rich
table covering of the Cloth Hall, seem to suggest that personal vanity must yield to collec-
tive undertakings and that personal simplicity must be maintained in the midst of material
Dutch achievements
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715152
opulence. And in Vermeer’s Geographer (see p. 156), painted in 1669, there appears not only an immaculately scrubbed and dusted Dutch interior, but something of a symbol of the
modern world in its youth—the pale northern sunlight streaming through the window, the
globe and the map, the dividers in the scholar’s right hand, instrument of science and math-
ematics, the tapestry fl ung over the table (or is it a new rug brought from Asia?), the head
lifted in thought, and eyes resting on an invisible world of fresh discoveries and opening
horizons. The same interest in the complexities of human character and the details of house-
hold objects appears in many of Vermeer’s paintings, including G irl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (see p. 154), which he painted in the late 1650s, The Milkmaid (c. 1660), and The Artist’s Studio (c. 1665). Like other Dutch artists in this era, Vermeer discovered and portrayed the aesthetic pleasures in the common experiences of daily life.
Dutch paintings also showed certain characteristics of the wider seventeenth-century
artistic style that came to be known as Baroque. The fascination with lighting, the represen-
tation of interior spaces, the use of distinctive colors or subtle hues, and a more naturalistic
image of human beings often shaped the distinctive appearance of Baroque paintings.
In contrast to most Dutch artists, however, many of the best-known Baroque painters
identifi ed with the Catholic Church or the Counter Reformation. The Flemish painter Peter
Paul Rubens was one prominent example of this identifi cation with Catholicism in the
Low Countries (see his Portrait of the Artist with Isabelle Brant on p. 153). Rubens often
THE MASTERS OF THE CLOTH GUILD by Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669)
This painting was done on commission for the guild of “clothiers” in Amsterdam. These men were the prosperous leaders of the guild; and they were members of a dynamic merchant class that supported both a fl ourishing community of creative artists and the expanding Dutch role in global commercial systems. (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam/Art Resource, NY)
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153
painted infl uential Catholic political fi gures as well as dramatic biblical scenes, but art in
the Netherlands tended to emphasize the quotidian scenes of urban life rather than the pas-
sions of religious ecstasy or the grandeur of royal families.
In religion, after initial disputes, the Dutch Republic adopted toleration. Early in the
seventeenth century the Dutch Calvinists divided. One group favored a modifi cation of
Calvinism, with a toning down of the doctrine of absolute predestination. This more moder-
ate Calvinism drew its main support from the comfortable burghers and its doctrines from a
theologian of Leyden named Arminius, whose ideas were condemned at an
international Calvinist synod in 1618. But beginning in 1632 the Arminians
were tolerated. Rights were granted to the large Catholic minority. Jews had Religious toleration
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST WITH ISABELLE BRANT by Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640)
Isabelle Brant married Rubens about the time he painted this dual portrait (c. 1610), which conveys the affection in an early seventeenth-century marriage. This painting suggests the importance of family relationships for an artist whose best-known works often portrayed famous public fi gures or Catholic religious themes. (Staatsgemaeldesammlungen, Munich/Art Resource, NY)
18. The Dutch Republic
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715154
GIRL READING A LETTER AT AN OPEN WINDOW by Jan Vermeer (Dutch, 1632–1675)
Vermeer’s characteristic interest in the mysteries of human character, the subtle shades of light, and the complex folds of a curtain appear in this painting of a young woman who seems to have received a disconcerting message or perhaps long anticipated news from afar. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
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155
long been welcomed in the republic; and Christian sects despised everywhere else, such as
the Mennonites, found a refuge in Dutch towns. Although none of these people had as many
political or economic rights as the Calvinists, the resulting mixture stimulated both the
intellectual life and the commercial enterprise of the country.
The Dutch as early as 1600 had 10,000 ships, and throughout the seventeenth century
they owned most of the shipping of northern Europe. They were the carriers between Spain,
France, England, and the Baltic. They also settled in Bordeaux to buy wines,
lent money to vintners, and soon owned many vineyards in France itself.
They sailed on every sea. They entered the Pacifi c by way of South America,
where they rounded Cape Horn and named it after Hoorn in Holland.
Organized in the East India Company of 1602, their merchants increasingly replaced the
Portuguese in India and the Far East. In Java, in 1619, they founded the city of Batavia—the
Latin name for Holland. (The city is now called Jakarta.)
Not long after 1600 the Dutch reached Japan. But the Japanese, fearing the political
consequences of Christian penetration, in 1641 expelled all other Europeans and confi ned
the Dutch to limited operations on an island near Nagasaki. The Dutch remained for over
two centuries the sole link of the West with Japan. In 1612 the Dutch founded their fi rst
settlement on Manhattan Island, and in 1621 they established a Dutch West India Com-
pany to exploit the loosely held riches of Spanish and Portuguese America. The new West
India company also entered the expanding Atlantic slave trade and transported enslaved
Africans to recently founded Dutch colonies at Pernambuco and Bahia in Brazil (lost soon
thereafter) and at Curaçao and Guiana in the Caribbean. In 1652 the Dutch captured the
Cape of Good Hope in South Africa from the Portuguese. Dutch settlers soon appeared.
Moving inland, they occupied the territory of the Khoikhoi and displaced or enslaved the
people whose ancestors had lived there for centuries. These Dutch settlers mixed with
French Huguenots and others in southern Africa and gradually became the Afrikaner peo-
ple, whose modern language and religion still refl ect their mainly Dutch origins.
In 1609 the Dutch founded the Bank of Amsterdam. European money
was a chaos; coins were minted not only by great monarchs but also by
small states and cities in Germany and Italy, and even by private persons. In
addition, under infl ationary pressures, kings and others habitually debased
their coins by adding more alloy, while leaving the old coins in circulation along with the
new. Anyone handling money thus accumulated a miscellany of uncertain value. The Bank
of Amsterdam accepted deposits of such mixed money from all persons and from all coun-
tries, assessed the gold and silver content, and, at rates of exchange fi xed by itself, allowed
depositors to withdraw equivalent values in gold fl orins minted by the Bank of Amsterdam.
These were of known and unchanging weight and purity. They thus became an internation-
ally sought money, an international measure of value, acceptable everywhere. Depositors
were also allowed to draw checks against their accounts. These conveniences, plus a safety
of deposits guaranteed by the Dutch government, attracted capital from all quarters and
made possible loans for a wide range of purposes. Amsterdam remained the fi nancial cen-
ter of Europe until the French Revolution.
Under their republican government the Dutch enjoyed great freedom, but it can hardly
be said that their form of government met all the requirements of a modern state. The
seven provinces that sent representatives to the Estates General of the United Provinces
were all jealous of their own independence. Each province had, as its executive, an elected
stadholder, but there was no stadholder for the United Provinces as a whole. This diffi culty
was overcome by the fact that most of the various provinces usually elected the head of
Dutch explorations
and settlements
The Bank of
Amsterdam
18. The Dutch Republic
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715156
the house of Orange as their own stadholder. This family had enjoyed exceptional prestige
in the republic since the days of William the Silent and the wars for independence, but the
prince of Orange, apart from being stadholder, was simply one of the feudal noblemen of
the country. In general, however, the commercial class had more wealth than the older
noble families, and affairs were usually managed by the burghers.
THE GEOGRAPHER by Jan Vermeer (Dutch, 1632–1675)
The impact on Europe of the opening of the Atlantic may be seen in this painting. For the fi rst time in human history it had become possible to understand with some accuracy the relation- ships of the oceans and continents around the globe. The Dutch built up a large ocean-going trade, and many of the leading cartographers lived in the Netherlands. (Album/Art Resource, NY)
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157
Politics in the Dutch Republic was a seesaw between the burghers, pacifi stic and
absorbed with business, and the princes of Orange, to whom the country owed most of
its military security. When foreigners threatened invasion, the power of the stadholder
increased. When all was calm, the stadholder could do little. The Peace of Westphalia
produced a mood of confi dence in the burghers, followed by a constitutional crisis, in the
course of which the stadholder William II died, in 1650. No new stadholder was elected
for 22 years. The burgher, civilian, and decentralizing tendencies prevailed.
In 1650, eight days after his father’s death, the third William was born in the house of
Orange, seemingly fated never to be stadholder and to pass his life as a private nobleman
on his own estates. William III grew up to be a grave and reserved young
man, small and rather stocky, with thin, compressed lips and a determined
spirit. He learned to speak Dutch, German, English, and French with equal
facility and to understand Italian, Spanish, and Latin. He observed the
requirements of his religion, which was Dutch Calvinism, with sober regularity. He had a
strong dislike for everything magnifi cent or pompous; he lived plainly, hated fl attery, and
took no pleasure in social conversation. In these respects he was the opposite of his life-
long enemy the Sun King, whom he resembled only in his diligent preoccupation with
affairs. In 1677 William married the king of England’s niece, Mary Stuart.
Foreign Affairs: Confl ict with the English and French
Meanwhile matters were not going favorably for the Dutch Republic. In 1651 the revolu-
tionary government then ruling England passed a Navigation Act. This act may be con-
sidered the fi rst of a long series of political measures by which the British began to build
their colonial empire. It was aimed against the Dutch carrying trade. It provided that goods
imported into England and its dependencies must be transported on English ships or on
ships belonging to the country exporting the goods. Because the Dutch were
too small a people to be great producers and exporters themselves, and lived
largely by carrying the goods of others, they saw in the new English policy a
threat to their economic existence. The Dutch and English soon entered into
a series of three wars, running with interruptions from 1652 to 1674 and generally inde-
cisive, though in 1664 the English annexed New Amsterdam and renamed it New York.
While thus assaulted at sea by the English, the Dutch were menaced on land by the
French. Louis XIV made his fi rst aggressive move in 1667, claiming the Spanish Netherlands
and Franche-Comté by alleging certain rights of his Spanish wife, and overrunning the
Spanish Netherlands with his army. The Dutch, to whom the Spanish Netherlands were a
buffer against France, set into motion the mechanism of the balance of power. Dropping tem-
porarily their disputes with the English, they allied with them instead; and because they were
able also to secure the adherence of Sweden, the resulting Triple Alliance was suffi cient to
give pause to Louis XIV, who withdrew from the Spanish Netherlands. But in 1672 Louis
XIV again rapidly crossed the Spanish Netherlands, attacked with forces fi ve times as large
as the Dutch, and occupied three of the seven Dutch provinces.
A popular clamor now arose among the Dutch for William of Orange,
demanding that the young prince, who was 22 years of age, be installed
in the old offi ce of stadholder, in which his ancestors had defended them
against Spain. He was duly elected stadholder in six provinces. In 1673
these six provinces voted to make the stadholderate hereditary in the house
of Orange. William, during his whole “reign” in the Netherlands, attempted to centralize
William of Orange
Threats by sea
and land
The election of
William as
stadholder
18. The Dutch Republic
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715158
and consolidate his government, put down the traditional liberties of the provinces, and
free himself from constitutional checks, moving generally in the direction of absolute
monarchy. He was unable, however, to go far in this course, and the United Provinces
remained a decentralized patrician republic until 1795.
Meanwhile, to stave off the immediate menace of Louis XIV, William resorted to a
new manipulation of the balance of power. He formed an alliance this time with the minor
powers of Denmark and Brandenburg (the small German state around Berlin) and with the
Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs. Nothing could indicate more clearly the new European
concern about the balance of power than this coming over of the Dutch to the Habsburg
side. This alliance presented a forceful new challenge to Louis XIV and pushed him into
negotiations that ended this phase of his expansionist wars. Peace was signed in 1678 (by
the treaty of Nimwegen), but only at the expense of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire,
from which Louis XIV took the long coveted Franche-Comté, together with another batch
of towns in Flanders (see map, p. 149). The Dutch preserved their territory
intact.
In the next ten years came the great windfall of William’s life. In 1689
he became king of England. He was now able to bring the British Isles
into his perpetual combinations against France. Because the real impact of
France was yet to be felt, and the real bid of Louis XIV for universal monarchy was yet to
be made, and because the English at this time were rapidly gaining in strength, the entrance
of England was a decisive addition to the balance formed against French expansion. In this
way the constitutional upheavals in England, by bringing a determined Dutchman to the
English throne, entered into the general stream of European affairs and helped to assure
that western Europe and its overseas offshoots should not be dominated totally by France.
19. BRITAIN: THE CIVIL WAR
After the defeat of the Spanish Armada and recession of the Spanish threat the English
were for a time less closely involved with the affairs of the Continent. They played no
signifi cant part in the Thirty Years’ War and were almost the only European people west
of Poland who were not represented at the Congress of Westphalia. At the time of the
Westphalia negotiations in the 1640s they were in fact engaged in a civil war of their own.
This English civil war was a milder variant of the Wars of Religion that desolated France,
Germany, and the Netherlands. It was fought not between Protestants and Catholics as
on the Continent, but between the more extreme or Calvinistic Protestants called Puritans
and the more moderate Protestants, who adhered to the established Church of England.
As in the wars on the Continent, religious differences were mixed indistinguishably with
political and constitutional issues. As the Huguenots represented to some extent feudal
rebelliousness against the French monarchy, as German Protestants fought for states’ rights
against imperial centralization, and the Calvinists of the Netherlands for provincial liber-
ties against the king of Spain, so the Puritans asserted the rights of Parliament against the
mounting claims of royalty in England.
The civil war in England took many lives, but was less destructive than most such wars
on the Continent; and England escaped the worst horrors of the Wars of Religion. The same
was not true of the British Isles as a whole. After 1603 the kingdoms of England and Scotland,
while otherwise separate, were ruled by the same king; the kingdom of Ireland remained, as
before, a dependency of the English crown. Between England and Presbyterian Scotland
there was constant friction, but the worst trouble was between England and Catholic Ireland,
which was the scene of religious warfare as savage as that on the Continent.
William comes to the
English throne
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15919. Britain: The Civil War
England in the Seventeenth Century
For the English the seventeenth century was an age of great achievement, during which
they made their debut as one of the chief peoples of modern Europe. In 1600 only 4 or
5 million persons, in England and Lowland Scotland, spoke the English language. The
number did not rise rapidly for another century and a half. But the population began to
spread. Religious discontents, reinforced by economic pressures, led to considerable emi-
gration. Twenty thousand Puritans settled in New England between 1630 and 1640, and a
similar number went to Barbados and other West India islands during these same years. A
third stream, again roughly of the same size, but made up mainly of Scottish Presbyterians,
settled in northern Ireland under government auspices, driving away or
expropriating the native Celts. English Catholics were allowed by the home
government to settle in Maryland. A great many members of the Church of
England went to Virginia during and after the midcentury civil war, adding
to the small settlement made at Jamestown in 1607. Except for the move-
ment to northern Ireland, called the “plantation of Ulster,” these migrations took place
without much attention on the part of the government, through private initiative organized
in commercial companies. After the middle of the century the government began deliber-
ately to build an empire. New York was conquered from the Dutch, Jamaica from the Span-
ish, and Pennsylvania and the Carolinas were established. All the thirteen colonies except
Georgia were founded before 1700, but there were at that time still less than half a million
Europeans and Africans in British North America.
The English also, like the Dutch, French, and Spanish at the time, were creating their
national culture. Throughout western Europe the national languages, encroaching upon
international Latin on the one hand and local dialects on the other, were becoming new
linguistic vehicles for the expression of thought and feeling. William Shakespeare helped
to shape the evolving English language through the enduring infl uence of his great plays,
including the famous tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear —all of which were fi rst
English emigration to
North America
The English playwright William Shake- speare helped to shape the modern English language as well as much of the later history of English theater and lit- erature. This image of the famous author appeared on an early seventeenth-century edition of his collected works. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715160
performed and published in the early years of the seventeenth century. John Milton pub-
lished his infl uential epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained later in this same century, after the bitter confl icts of the English Civil War. Shakespeare and Milton pro-
jected their complex conceptions of human experience, aspirations, and tragedy with the
imaginative power of both new and old words. The English classical literature, rugged in
form but deep in content, vigorous yet subtle in insight, majestic, abundant, and sonorous
in expression, was almost the reverse of French classical writing, with its virtues of order,
economy, propriety, and graceful precision. Proud of their literary culture and their own
great writers, the English could never thereafter quite yield to French standards, nor be
dazzled or dumbfounded, as some peoples were, by the cultural glories of the Age of Louis
XIV. There were no seventeenth-century painters comparable to those on the Continent,
but in music it was the age of Thomas Campion and Henry Purcell, and in architecture the
century closed with the great buildings of Christopher Wren.
Economically the English were enterprising and affl uent, though in
1600 far outdistanced by the Dutch. They had a larger and more produc-
tive country than the Dutch, and were therefore not as limited to purely
mercantile and seafaring occupations. Coal was mined around Newcastle, but it was not
yet a leading source of English wealth. The great industry was the growing of sheep and
manufacture of woolens, which were the main export. Spinning and weaving were done
mostly by workers in the country, under the putting-out system, and organized by mer-
chants according to the methods of commercial capitalism. Since 1553 the English had
traded with Russia by way of the White Sea; they were increasingly active in the Baltic
and eastern Mediterranean; and with the founding of the East India Company, in 1600,
they competed with the Dutch in assaulting the old Portuguese monopoly in India and
East Asia. But profi table as such overseas operations were becoming, the main wealth of
England was still in the land. The richest men were not merchants but landlords, and the
landed aristocracy formed the richest class.
Background to the Civil War: Parliament and the Stuart Kings
In England, as elsewhere in the seventeenth century, the kings clashed with their old medi-
eval representative institutions. In England the old institution, Parliament, won out against
the king. But this was not the unique feature in the English development. In Germany the
estates of the Holy Roman Empire triumphed against the emperor, and much the same
thing, as will be seen, occurred in Poland. But on the Continent the triumph of the old
representative institutions generally meant political dissolution or even anarchy. Suc-
cessful governments were generally those in which kingly powers increased; this was the
strong tendency of the time, evident even in the Dutch Republic after 1672 under William
of Orange. The unique thing about England was that Parliament, in defeating the king,
arrived at a workable form of government. Government remained strong but came under
parliamentary control. This determined the character of modern England and launched
into the history of Europe and of the world the great movement of liberalism and repre-
sentative institutions.
The violent struggles that ultimately produced England’s new political order emerged
from the confl icting ambitions of the Stuart kings and the most powerful social groups in
the English Parliament. In 1603, on the death of Queen Elizabeth, the Eng-
lish crown was inherited by the son of Mary Stuart, James VI of Scotland.
As a descendant of Henry VII he became king of England also, taking there
the title of James I. James was a philosopher of royal absolutism. He had
Economic activity
The Stuarts and
Parliament
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161
even written a book on the subject, The True Law of Free Monarchy. By a “free” monar- chy James meant a monarchy free from control by Parliament, churchmen, or laws and
customs of the past. It was a monarchy in which the king, as father to his people, looked
after their welfare as he saw fi t, standing above all parties, private interests, and pressure
groups. He even declared that kings drew their authority from God and were responsible to
God alone, a doctrine known as the divine right of kings.
Any ruler succeeding Elizabeth would probably have had trouble with Parliament,
which had shown signs of restlessness in the last years of her reign but had deferred to her
as an aging woman and a national symbol. She had maintained peace within the country
and fought off the Spaniards, but these very accomplishments persuaded many people that
they could safely bring their grievances into the open. James I was a foreigner, a Scot, who
lacked the touch for dealing with the English and who was moreover a royal pedant, the
“wisest fool in Christendom,” as he was uncharitably called. Not content with the actual
or implicit methods of political control, as Elizabeth had been, he read the Parliament tire-
some lectures on the royal rights. He also was in constant need of money because the wars
against Spain had left a considerable debt. James was far from economical, and, in any
case, in an age of rising prices, he could not live within the fi xed and customary revenues
of the English crown. These were of medieval character, increasingly quaint under the new
national and international conditions.
Neither to James I nor to his son Charles I, who succeeded him in 1625, would Parlia-
ment grant adequate revenue. It distrusted them both, partly for fi nancial reasons and partly
on religious grounds. Many members of Parliament were Puritans, whose Calvinist beliefs
made them dissatisfi ed with the organization and doctrine of the Church of England.
Elizabeth had tried to hush up religious troubles, but James threatened to “harry the Puritans
out of the land,” and Charles supported the Church hierarchy, which under Archbishop Laud
sought to enforce religious conformity. Many members of Parliament were also lawyers,
who feared that the common law of England, the historic or customary law, was in danger.
They disliked the prerogative courts—the Star Chamber set up by Henry VII to settle
disputes without the deliberations of a jury and the High Commission set up by Elizabeth to
ensure conformity to the theology of the Church of England. They heard with trepidation the
new doctrine that the sovereign king could make laws and decide cases at his own discretion.
Last but not least, practically all members of Parliament were property owners. Landowners,
supported by the merchants, feared that if the king succeeded in raising taxes on his own
authority, their wealth would be insecure. Hence there were multiple causes for a growing
parliamentary resistance.
In England the Parliament was so organized as to make resistance
effective. There was only one Parliament for the whole country. There
were no provincial or local estates, as in the Dutch Republic, Spain, France,
Germany, and Poland. All parliamentary opposition was therefore concen-
trated in one place. In this one Parliament, there were only two houses, the House of Lords
and the House of Commons. The landed interest dominated in both houses, the noblemen
in the Lords and the gentry in the Commons. In the Commons the gentry, who formed the
bulk of the aristocracy, mixed with representatives of the merchants and the towns. Indeed
the towns frequently chose country gentlemen to represent them. These connections sug-
gest why the houses of Parliament (especially the Commons) did not accentuate, as did the
estates on the Continent, the class division within the country.
Nor was the church present in Parliament as a separate force. Before Henry VIII’s
break with Rome the bishops and abbots together had formed a large majority in the House
of Lords. Now there were no abbots left, for there were no monasteries. The House of
Parliamentary
resistance
19. Britain: The Civil War
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715162
Lords was now predominantly secular; in the fi rst Parliament of James I there were 82 lay
peers and 26 bishops. The great landowners had captured the House of Lords. The smaller
landowners of the Commons had been enriched by receiving former monastic lands and
had prospered by raising wool. The merchants had likewise grown up under mercantilistic
protection. Parliament was strong not only in organization but also in the social interests
and wealth that it represented. No king could long govern against its will.
In 1629 king and Parliament came to a deadlock. Charles I attempted to rule without
Parliament, which could legally meet only at the royal summons. He intended to give
England a good and effi cient government. Had he succeeded, the course of English consti-
tutional development would have paralleled that of France. But by certain reforms in
Ireland he antagonized the English landlords who had interests in that country. By support-
ing the leadership and theology of the Church of England he made enemies of the Puritans.
And by attempting to modernize the navy with funds raised without parliamentary consent
(called “ship money”) he alarmed all property owners, who feared that they would be
forced to pay for policies they opposed.
The ship-money dispute illustrates the best arguments of both sides. It
was the old custom in England for coastal towns to provide ships for the
king’s service in time of war. More recently, these coastal towns had pro-
vided money instead. Charles I wished to maintain a navy in time of peace
and to have ship money paid by the country as a whole, including the inland counties. In
the old or medieval view it was the function of the towns that were directly affected to
maintain a fl eet. In the new view, sponsored by the king, the whole nation was the unit on
which a navy should be based. The country gentlemen whom Parliament mainly repre-
sented, and most of whom lived in inland counties, had less interest in the navy, and in any
case were unwilling to pay for it unless they could control the foreign policies for which a
navy might be used. The parliamentary class represented the idea, derived from the Middle
Ages, that taxes should be authorized by Parliament. The king represented the newer ideas
of monarchy that were developing on the Continent, which included a belief in the king’s
right to collect revenues that were needed by the state. The politically signifi cant classes in
England would not accept such ideas. Until the king could govern with the confi dence of
Parliament, or until Parliament itself was willing, not merely to keep down taxes but to
assume the fi nancial responsibilities of government under modern conditions, neither a
navy nor any effectual government could be maintained.
The Scots were the fi rst to rebel. In 1637 they rioted in Edinburgh against attempts
to impose the Church of England’s prayer book and episcopal organization in Scotland.
Charles, to raise funds to put down the Scottish rebellion, convoked the English Parliament
in 1640, for the fi rst time in 11 years. When it proved hostile to him, he dissolved it and
called for new elections. The same men were returned. The resulting body,
because it sat theoretically for 20 years without new elections, from 1640
to 1660, is known historically as the Long Parliament. Its principal leaders
were small or moderately well-to-do landowning gentry. The merchant class, while fur-
nishing no leaders, lent its support.
The Long Parliament, far from assisting the king against the Scots, used the Scottish
rebellion as a means of pressing its own demands. These were revolutionary from the
outset. Parliament insisted that the chief royal advisers be not merely removed but
impeached and put to death. It abolished the Star Chamber and the High Commission. The
most extreme Calvinist element, the “root and branch” men or “radicals,” drove through
a bill for the abolition of bishops, revolutionizing the Church of England. In 1642 Parlia-
ment and king came to open war: the king drawing followers mainly from the north and
The ship-money
dispute
The Long Parliament
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163
west; the Parliament, from the commercially and agriculturally more advanced counties
of the south and east (see map, p. 170). A series of bloody battles steadily weakened the
king’s position, and his army dissolved in 1646. During the war, as the price of support
from the Scottish army, Parliament also transformed the government’s offi cial Protestant-
ism by adopting the Solemn League and Covenant, which made Presbyterianism the estab-
lished legal religion of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
The Emergence of Cromwell
The parliamentary forces, called Roundheads from the close haircuts favored by Puritans,
gained their major military victories with an effi cient new army, the New Model Army,
and a highly competent commander, Thomas Fairfax. The wars also brought a hitherto
unknown gentleman named Oliver Cromwell to the foreground. A devout Protestant, he
organized an especially effective regiment in the New Model Army, the Ironsides, in
which extreme Protestant exaltation provided the basis for morale, discipline, and the will
to fi ght. By the late 1640s Cromwell had become the most powerful political and military
leader of the parliamentary forces. The army, in which a more popular class was repre-
sented than in the Parliament, became the center of advanced democratic ideas. Many of
the soldiers objected to Presbyterianism as much as to the Church of England. They
favored a free toleration for all “godly” forms of religion, with no superior church organi-
zation above local groups of like-minded spirits.
Cromwell concluded that the defeated king, Charles I, could not be trusted, that
“ungodly” persons of all kinds put their hopes in him (what later ages would call counter-
revolution), and that he must be put to death. Because Parliament hesitated, Cromwell with
the support of the army moved against Parliament. The Long Parliament, having started
in 1640 with some 500 members, had sunk by 1649 to about 150 (for this revolution, like
others, was pushed through by a minority); of these Cromwell now drove
out almost 100, leaving a Rump of 50 or 60. This operation was called
Pride’s Purge, after Colonel Pride who commanded the armed force that
intimidated Parliament; and in subsequent revolutions such forced removals
have been commonly known as purges, and the residues, sometimes, as rumps. The Rump
condemned King Charles for “treason” and sent him to death on the scaffold in 1649.
England, or rather the whole British Isles, was now declared a republic. It was named
the Commonwealth. Cromwell tried to govern as best he could. Religious toleration was
decreed except for Unitarians and atheists on the one hand, and except for Roman Catholics
and the most obstinate supporters of the Church of England on the other. Cromwell had to
subdue both Scotland and Ireland by force. In Scotland the execution of the king, violating
the ancient national Scottish monarchy of the Stuarts, had swung the country back into the
royalist camp. Cromwell crushed the Scots in 1650.
Meanwhile the Protestant and Calvinist fury swept over Ireland. A
massacre of newly settled Protestants in Ulster in 1641 had left bitter mem-
ories that were now avenged. The Irish garrisons of Drogheda and Wexford
were defeated and massacred. Thousands of Catholics were killed; priests
were put to the sword, and women and small children were dispatched in cold blood. Where
formerly, in the “plantation” of Ulster, a whole Protestant population had been settled in
northern Ireland, bodily replacing the native Irish, now Protestant landlords were scattered
over the country as a whole, replacing the Catholic landlords and retaining the Catholic
peasantry as their tenants. Ireland’s native religion and clergy were driven underground,
a foreign and detested church was established, and a new and foreign landed aristocracy,
Pride’s Purge
Religious violence in
the Commonwealth
19. Britain: The Civil War
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715164
originally recruited in large measure from military adventurers, was settled upon the coun-
try, in which it ceased to reside as soon as it assured the payment of its rents.
In England itself Cromwell ruled with great diffi culty. His regime was more successful
in pursuing English commercial and colonial interests abroad, for he not only completed
the violent subjugation of Ireland, but in the Navigation Act of 1651, which barred Dutch
ships from carrying goods between other countries and England or its colonies, he also
opened the previously noted English attack on the Dutch maritime supremacy. He further
waged a war with Spain in which England acquired Jamaica, thereby expanding England’s
involvement in the new slave-based sugar production system in the Caribbean and launch-
ing an English campaign for some of the vast inheritance of the Spanish Habsburgs. But he
failed to gain the support of a majority of the English. The Puritan Revolution, like others,
produced its extremists. It failed to satisfy the most ardent and could not win over the truly
conservative, so that Cromwell found himself reluctantly more autocratic, and more alone.
A party arose called the Levellers, who were in fact what later
times would call radical political democrats. They were numerous in the
Puritan army, though their chief spokesman, John Lilburne, was a civilian.
Appealing to natural rights and to the rights of Englishmen, they asked for
a nearly universal manhood suffrage, equality of representation, a written
constitution, and subordination of Parliament to a reformed body of voters. The Levellers
thus anticipated many ideas of the American and French revolutions over a century later,
but they were at this time repressed and expelled from the army. There were others in
whom religious and social radicalism were indistinguishably mixed. George Fox, going
Religious and social
radicalism
The execution of King Charles I marked the dramatic triumph of the radical, parliamentary forces in 1649, but the king’s death—portrayed here in a seventeenth-century engraving— raised unprecedented questions about the proper limits for political authority and religious radicalism in English society. (The Granger Collection, NYC)
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16520. Britain: The Triumph of Parliament
beyond Calvinism or Presbyterianism, led a new movement of radical religious dissenters
who became known as the Society of Friends, or “Quakers.” The Quakers were condemned
by the established Protestant clergy and many were imprisoned, but the movement contin-
ued to attract inspired adherents by insisting that all believers could have new revelations
of spiritual truth, by rejecting various social and religious hierarchies, and by allowing or
even encouraging women to preach at their meetings. A more ephemeral group, the “Dig-
gers,” proceeded to occupy and cultivate common lands, or lands privately owned, in a
general repudiation of property. The Fifth Monarchy Men were a millennial group who
felt that the end of the world was at hand. They were so called from their belief, as they
read the Bible, that history has seen four empires, those of Assyria, Persia, Alexander, and
Caesar; and that the existing world was still “Caesar’s” but would soon give way to the
fi fth monarchy, of Christ, in which justice would fi nally prevail.
Among the many religious groups that emerged during the era of the English Revolution, the Quakers became especially notorious for their critique of religious hierarchies and their will- ingness to let women speak at their meetings. The novelty of the group is suggested in this seventeenth-century French illustration of a woman addressing a Quaker assembly. (Fotomas Index/Bridgeman Art Library)
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715166
Cromwell opposed all such radical movements, which threatened both well-established
persons and long-established social and religious hierarchies. As a regicide and a Puritan,
however, he could not seek support from the royalists or the former leaders of the Church of
England. Unable to agree even with the Rump, he abolished it also in 1653, and thereafter
vainly attempted to govern, as Lord Protector, through representative bodies devised by
himself and his followers, under a written constitution, the Instrument of Government.
Actually, he was driven to place England under military rule, the regime of the “major gen-
erals.” These offi cials, each in his district, repressed malcontents, vagabonds, and “bandits,”
closed ale houses, and prohibited cockfi ghting, in a mixture of moral puritanism and politi-
cal dictatorship. Cromwell died in 1658; and his son was unable to maintain the Protector-
ate. Two years later, with all but universal assent, royalty was restored. Charles II, son of the
recently executed Charles I, became king of England and of Scotland.
Cromwell, by beheading a king and keeping his successor off the throne for 11 years,
left a lesson that was not forgotten. Though he favored constitutional and parliamentary
government and had granted a measure of religious toleration, he had in fact ruled as a
dictator in behalf of a stern Puritan minority. The English people now began to blot from
their memories the fact that they had ever had a real revolution. The fervid
dream of a “godly” England was dissipated forever. What was remembered
was a nightmare of standing armies and major generals, of grim Puritans
and overwrought religious enthusiasts. The English lower classes ceased to
have any political role or consciousness for over a century, except in spo-
radic rioting over food shortages or outbursts against the dangers of “popery.” Democratic
ideas were rejected as “levelling.” They were generally abandoned in England after 1660
or were cherished by obscure individuals and religious radicals who could not make them-
selves heard. Such ideas, indeed, had a more continuous history in the English colonies in
America, where some leaders of the discredited revolution took refuge.
20. BRITAIN: THE TRIUMPH OF PARLIAMENT
The Restoration, 1660–1688: The Later Stuarts
What was restored in 1660 was not only the monarchy, in the person of Charles II, but also
the Church of England and the Parliament. Everything, legally, was supposed to be as it
had been in 1640. The difference was that Charles II, knowing the fate of his father, was
careful not to provoke Parliament to extremes and that the classes represented in Parlia-
ment, frightened by the disturbances of the past 20 years, were now more warmly loyal to
the king and more willing to uphold the established Church of England.
Parliament during the Restoration enacted some far-reaching legisla-
tion. It changed the legal basis of land tenure, abolishing certain old feudal
payments owed by landholders to the king. The possession of land thus
came to resemble modern private property, and the landowning class
became more defi nitely a propertied aristocracy. In place of the feudal dues to the king,
which had been automatically payable, Parliament arranged for the king to receive income
in the form of taxation, which Parliament could raise or reduce in amount. This gave a new
power to Parliament and a new fl exibility to government. The aristocracy thus cleared their
property of customary restrictions and obligations, and at the same time undertook to sup-
port the state by imposing taxes on themselves. The English aristocracy proved more will-
ing than the corresponding classes on the Continent to pay a large share of the expenses of
government. Its reward for this taxation was that, for a century and a half, it virtually ran
the government to the exclusion of everyone else. Landowners in this period directed not
Legacy of the
revolution
New legislation
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167
only national affairs through Parliament but also local affairs as justices of the peace. The
justices, drawn from the gentry of each county, decided small lawsuits, punished misde-
meanors, and supervised the parish offi cials charged with poor relief and care of the roads.
The regime of the landlord-justices came to be called the “squirearchy.”
Other classes drew less immediate advantage from the Restoration. The Navigation Act
of 1651 was extended, so that commercial, shipping, and manufacturing interests were well
protected. But in other ways the landed classes now in power showed themselves unsym-
pathetic to the business classes of the towns. Many people in the towns were Dissenters,
of the element formerly called Puritan and now refusing to accept the
restored Church of England. Parliament excluded Dissenters from the town
“corporations,” or governing bodies, forbade any dissenting clergymen
to teach school or come within fi ve miles of an incorporated town, and
prohibited all religious meetings, called “conventicles,” not held accord-
ing to the forms and by the authority of the Church of England. The effect was that many
middle-class townspeople found it diffi cult or impossible to follow their preferred religion,
to obtain an education for their children, either elementary or advanced (for Oxford and
Cambridge were a part of the established church), to take part in local affairs through the
town corporations, or to sit in the House of Commons. The lowest classes, the very poor,
were discouraged by the same laws from following sectarian and visionary preachers.
Another enactment fell upon them alone, the Act of Settlement of 1662, which decentral-
ized the administration of the Poor Law, making each parish responsible only for its own
paupers. Poor people, who were very numerous, were condemned to remain in the parishes
where they lived. A large section of the English population was immobilized.
But it was not long after the Restoration that Parliament and king were again at odds.
The main issue was again religion. Many Protestants throughout Europe at this time
were returning voluntarily to Roman Catholicism, a tendency naturally dreaded by the
Protestant churches. This kind of conversion was most conspicuously illustrated when
the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus himself, Queen Christina of Sweden, abdicated her
throne and was received into the Roman church. In England the national feeling was excit-
edly anti-Catholic. No measures were more popular than those against “popery”; and the
squires in Parliament, stiffl y loyal to the Church of England, dreaded papists even more
than Dissenters. The king, Charles II, was personally inclined to Catholicism. He admired
the magnifi cent monarchy of Louis XIV, which he would have liked to duplicate, insofar
as possible, in England. At odds with his Parliament, Charles II made overtures to Louis
XIV. The secret treaty of Dover of 1670 was the outcome. Charles thereby agreed to join
Louis XIV in his expected war against the Dutch; and Louis agreed to pay the king of
England 3 million livres a year during the war. He hoped also that Charles II would soon
fi nd it opportune to rejoin the Roman church.
While these arrangements were unknown in detail in England, it was known that
Charles II was well disposed to the French and to Roman Catholicism. England went to
war again with the Dutch. The king’s brother and heir, James, Duke of York, publicly
announced his conversion to Rome. Charles II, in a “declaration of indulgence,” announced
the nonenforcement of laws against Dissenters. The king declared that he favored general
toleration, but it was rightly feared that his real aim was to promote Roman Catholicism in
England. Parliament retorted in 1673 by passing the Test Act, which
required all offi ceholders to take communion in the Church of England.
The Test Act renewed the legislation against Dissenters and also made it
impossible for Catholics to serve in the government or in the army and
navy. The Test Act remained on the statute books until 1828.
Exclusion of
Dissenters
Charles II and the
Test Act
20. Britain: The Triumph of Parliament
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715168
Although Charles’s pro-French and pro-Catholic policies were extremely unpopular,
the situation might not have come to a head except for the avowed Catholicism and French
orientation of Charles’s brother James, due to be the next king because Charles had no
legitimate children. A strong movement developed in Parliament to exclude James by law
from the throne. The exclusionists—and those generally who were most suspicious of the
king, Catholics, and the French—received the nickname of Whigs. The king’s supporters
were popularly called Tories. The Whigs, while backed by the middle class and merchants
of London, drew their main strength from the upper aristocracy, especially certain great
noblemen who might expect, if the king’s power were weakened, to play a prominent part
in ruling the country themselves. The Tories were the party of the lesser aristocracy and
gentry, those who were suspicious of the “moneyed interest” of London, and felt a strong
loyalty to church and king. These two parties, or at least their names, became permanently
established in English public life. But all the Whigs and Tories together, at this time, did
not number more than a few thousand persons.
The Revolution of 1688
James II, despite Whig vexation, became king in 1685. He soon antagonized even the
Tories, who strongly supported the Church of England. As landowners they appointed
most of the parish clergy, who imparted Tory sentiments to the rural population; and mem-
bers of landowning Tory families frequently became bishops, archdeacons, university
functionaries, and other high personnel of the church. The laws keeping Dissenters and
Catholics from offi ce had given Anglicans (i.e., members of the Church of England) a
monopoly in local and national government and in the army and navy. James II acted as if
there were no Test Act, claiming the right to suspend its operation in individual cases, and
appointed a good many Catholics to infl uential and lucrative positions. He offered a pro-
gram, as his brother had done, of general religious toleration, to allow Protestant Dissent-
ers as well as Roman Catholics to participate in public life.
Such a program, whether frankly meant as a secularizing of politics or indirectly
intended as favoritism to Catholics, was repugnant to the Church of England. Seven bish-
ops refused to endorse it. They were prosecuted for disobedience to the king but were
acquitted by the jury. James, by these actions, violated the liberties of the established
church, threatened the Anglican monopoly of church and state, and aroused
the popular terrors of “popery.” He was also forced to take the position
philosophically set forth by his grandfather James I, that a king of England
could make and unmake the law by his own will. The Tories joined the
Whigs in opposition. In 1688, a son was born to James II and baptized into
the Catholic faith. The prospect now opened up of an indefi nite line of
Catholic rulers in England. The leaders of both parties thereupon aban-
doned James II and offered the throne to his grown daughter Mary, who was brought up a
Protestant before her father’s conversion to Rome.
Mary was the wife of William of Orange. William, it will be recalled, had spent his
adult life blocking the ambitions of the king of France, who had threatened Europe with
a “universal monarchy” by absorbing or inheriting the global territories of Spain. To
William III it would be a mere distraction to be husband to a queen of England, or even
to be king in his own name, unless England could be brought to serve his
own purposes. He was immutably Dutch; his purpose was to save Holland
and hence to ruin Louis XIV. His chief interest in England was to bring the
English into his balance of power against France. Because the English were
Whigs and Tories
in opposition to the
crown
William invades
England
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16920. Britain: The Triumph of Parliament
Sources: H. R. Trevor-Roper, “The Social Causes of the Great Rebellion,” in Men and Events: Historical Essays (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), pp. 200, 204–205; Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 4–5.
Historical Interpretations and Debates
The Meaning of the English Revolution
Debates about the signifi cance of the mid-seventeenth-century English Revolution often focus on how the Revolution transformed the political or economic infl uence of various social groups. Although many historians have argued that landed, aristocratic elites emerged from the seventeenth-century upheavals as the dominant power in English society, there is much disagreement about whether the revolutionary events also enhanced or weakened the political position of other people in the multiple layers of English social life. Such differences appear in the writings of Hugh R. Trevor-Roper and Phyllis Mack, who seek to explain the Revolution’s historical meaning for some of its diverse social groups and participants.
Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, “The Social Causes of the Great Rebellion” (1957) The Great Rebellion . . . [was] not the
clear-headed self-assertion of the rising
bourgeoisie and gentry, but rather the blind
protest of the depressed gentry. . . .
It was the blind revolt of the gentry
against the Court, of the provinces against
the capital; the backwash against a century of
administrative and economic centralization.
Since they were animated by passion, not by
positive political ideas, . . . the radical gentry,
when they were in power, found themselves
without a policy. Ultimately, after a period
of fumbling experiments, they gave up the
effort, accepted back the old political system,
and sank into political quietism. . . .
The rebellion itself . . . took place
because a failure of political ability coincided
with a general economic crisis. . . . Perhaps
indirectly the rebellion may have forwarded the undoubted change of mentality between
the early and the late seventeenth century
in England. . . . But, equally, it may have
impeded that progress for a generation. . . .
What we can say. . . is that it was not, in
itself, a successful stage in the rise of the
bourgeoisie.
Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth- Century England (1992) The [religious] prophets of the Civil War
period, many of them laborers, farmers, or
artisans, understood their condemnation of
an engorged clergy and aristocracy as both a
spiritual and social protest. And since women
were commonly identifi ed with the poor and
deprived, . . . one would expect that those
radical movements that championed the
poor and deprived would also champion the
increased authority of women. Yet . . . those
sects that were most radical in challenging
traditional social and economic relationships
were least likely to be attentive to the needs and
rights of oppressed people who were female.
Conversely, those women who were most
conscious of their authority as females, Quaker
and non-Quaker, were also those middle and
upper class women who had the least affi nity
with the plight of the laboring classes. . . .
Women as [religious] prophets enjoyed
virtually the only taste of public authority they
would ever know. Some of them used that author-
ity to write and publish their own works, to
organize separate women’s meetings, or to chal-
lenge the greater authority of the male leaders. . . .
The historian’s attentiveness to the issue
of gender is likely to raise more questions
than it answers. . . . [But] it suggests . . . that
the private actions of ordinary individuals
have affected larger social and political
movements as profoundly as the deeds of
great and famous men, forcing us to broaden
our defi nition of the term “politics.”
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715170
generally anti-French, and had chafed under the pro-French tendencies of their kings, Wil-
liam quickly reached an understanding with the discontented Whigs and Tories. Protected
by a written invitation from prominent Englishmen, he invaded England with a consider-
able army. James II fl ed, and William was proclaimed co-ruler with Mary over England
and Scotland. In the next year, 1690, at the Boyne River in Ireland, a motley army of
Dutchmen, Germans, Scots, and French Huguenots under William III defeated a French
and Irish force led by James II. Thus the constitutional power of the English Parliament
was reaffi rmed, and Anglican Protestantism remained the offi cial religion of the English
nation. James II fl ed to France.
ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY The maps show the principal seventeenth-century English towns and the rough division of the country into royalist and parliamentary regions during the English Civil War. King Charles I drew his strongest support from the north and west; Parliament drew its strongest support from the southeast and from London. Similar regional political patterns emerged in later con- fl icts between the Royalist “Tories” and the Parliamentary “Whigs.” The Whigs were gener- ally supported by the upper aristocracy and the commercial classes of London, who opposed the pro-French, pro-Catholic policies of the Stuart kings Charles II and James II.
Controlled by the King
Conquered by the King
Controlled by Parliament
Conquered by Parliament
ENGLISH CIVIL WAR, 1642–43
Controlled by the King
Conquered by the King
Controlled by Parliament
Conquered by Parliament
ENGLISH CIVIL WAR, 1644–45
0 100 miles50
S C O T L A N D
E N G L A N D
W A L E S
S C O T L A N D
E N G L A N D
W A L E S
Nottingham
Liverpool
Cardigan
Stratton
Gloucester
London
Norwich
Coventry
Nottingham
Hull
Lancaster
Glasgow Edinburgh
Liverpool
Cardigan
Stratton
Gloucester
London
Norwich
Coventry
Hull
Lancaster
Glasgow Edinburgh
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171
Louis XIV of course refused to recognize his inveterate enemy as ruler of England. He
maintained James at the French court with all the honors due the English king. It was
thereafter one of his principal war aims to restore the Catholic and Stuart dynasty across
the Channel. The English now had new reasons to fi ght the French. A French victory
would mean counterrevolution and royal absolutism in England. The whole Revolution of
1688 was at stake in the French wars.
In 1689, Parliament enacted a Bill of Rights, stipulating that no law
could be suspended by the king (as the Test Act had been), no taxes could
be raised or army maintained except by parliamentary consent, and no sub-
ject (however poor) could be arrested and detained without legal process.
William III accepted these articles as conditions to receiving the crown. Thereafter the
relation between king and people was a kind of contract. It was further provided, by the
Act of Settlement of 1701, that no Catholic could be king of England; this excluded the
descendants of James II, known in the following century as the Pretenders. Parliament also
passed the Toleration Act of 1689, which allowed Protestant Dissenters to practice their
religion but still excluded them from political life and public service. Because ways of
evading these restrictions were soon found, and because even Catholics were not molested
unless they supported the Pretenders, there was thereafter no serious trouble over religion
in England and Lowland Scotland.
The English Parliament could make no laws for Scotland, however, and it was feared
that James II might someday be restored in his northern kingdom. The securing of the
parliamentary revolution in England, and of the island’s defenses against France, required
that the two kingdoms be organically joined; but there was little sentiment in Scotland, for
a merger with the English. The English tempted Scottish political leaders with economic
advantages. The Scots still had no rights in the English East India Company, nor in the
English colonies, nor within the English system of mercantilism and Navigation Acts. They
obtained such rights by consenting to a union. Although anti-merger sentiment remained
strong in much of Scotland, the United Kingdom of Great Britain was created in 1707.
The Scots retained their own legal system and established Presbyterian church, but their
government and parliament were merged with those of England. The term “British” came
into use to refer to both English and Scots.
As for Ireland, it was now feared as a center of Stuart and French intrigue. The Revolu-
tion of 1688 marked the climax of a long record of trouble. Ireland had never been simply
“conquered” by England, though certain English or rather Anglo-Norman families had
carved out estates there since the twelfth century. By the end of the Middle Ages Ireland was
organized as a separate kingdom with its own parliament, subordinate to the English crown.
During the Reformation the Irish remained Catholic while England turned
Protestant, but the monasteries were dissolved in Ireland as in England; and
the organized church as such, the established Church of Ireland, with its
apparatus of bishoprics, parishes, and tithes, became an Anglican commu-
nion in which the mass of native Irish had no interest. Next came the planta-
tion of Ulster, already mentioned, in which a mass of newcomers, mainly Scottish and
Presbyterian, settled in the northern part of the island. Then in Cromwell’s time, as just
noted, English landlords spread through the rest of the country; or rather, a new Anglo-Irish
upper class developed, in which English landowning families, residing most often in
England, added the income from Irish estates to their miscellaneous revenues.
Ireland therefore by the close of the seventeenth century was a very mixed country.
Probably two-thirds of its population was Catholic, of generally Celtic ethnic background;
perhaps a fi fth was Presbyterian, with recent Scottish connections; the small remainder
Bill of Rights and the
Toleration Act
The Irish threat to the
Revolution of 1688
20. Britain: The Triumph of Parliament
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715172
was made up of Anglicans, largely Anglo-Irish of recent or distant origin in England, who
controlled most of the land, manned the offi cial church, and were infl uential in the Irish
parliament. It was essentially a landlord and peasant society, in which the Presbyterian and
Catholic populations were overwhelmingly agricultural and poor, towns were small, and
the middle class scarcely developed.
After the Revolution of 1688, in which the fi nal overthrow of James II took place in
Ireland at the Boyne River, the English feared Ireland as a source of danger to the postrevo-
lutionary arrangements in England and as a likely site for anti-English resistance to develop
among subjugated Catholics. English elites who were defending their own liberties at home
thus set about destroying the religious, political, and social liberties of Irish
Catholics. In addition to the burden of an alien church and absentee land-
lordism, the Irish were now subjected to a new “penal code.” Catholic clergy
were banished, and Catholics were forbidden to vote or to sit in the Irish
parliament. Catholic teachers were forbidden to teach, and Catholic parents
were forbidden to send children overseas to be educated in Catholic schools. No Catholic
could take a degree at Trinity College (Dublin University), an Anglican institution. Catholics
in Ireland were forbidden to purchase land, to lease it for more than 31 years, to inherit it
from a Protestant, or even to own a horse worth more than £5. Catholics were forbidden to
be attorneys, to serve as constables, or, in most trades, to have more than two apprentices.
Some disabilities fell on the Protestant Irish also. Thus Irish shipping was excluded from
the British colonies, nor could the Irish import colonial goods except through England.
Export of Irish woolens and glass manufactures was prohibited. No import tariff on English
manufactures could be levied by the Irish parliament. About all that was left to the Irish,
in international trade, was the export of agricultural produce; and the foreign exchange
acquired in this way went very largely to pay the rents to absentee landlords.
The purpose of the penal code was in part strategic, to weaken Ireland as a potentially
hostile country during a long period of English wars with France. In part it was commer-
cial, to favor English manufactures by removing Irish competition. And in part it was
social, to confi rm the position of the Anglican interest, or “ascendancy” as it came to be
called. Parts of the code were removed piecemeal in the following decades, and a Catholic
merchant class grew up in the eighteenth century; but much remained in effect for a long
Restrictions for
Catholics
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1642–1713
1642–1648 Civil War in England
1649 Execution of King Charles I in London
1649–1658 Oliver Cromwell leads the English “Commonwealth” and “Protectorate”
1660 Restoration of English Monarchy, King Charles II
1661 King Louis XIV takes personal control of French government; reign continues
to 1715
1685 Revocation of Edict of Nantes; persecution of French Protestants
1688 “Glorious Revolution” brings William and Mary to English throne and strength-
ens power of Parliament
1702–1713 War of Spanish Succession; “balance of power” limits French expansion
1713 Peace of Utrecht
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17321. The France of Louis XIV, 1643–1715: The Triumph of Absolutism
time, so that, for example, a Catholic could not vote for members of the Irish parliament
until 1793, and even then could not be elected to it. In general, the Irish emerged from the
seventeenth century as the most repressed people of western Europe.
England, immediately after the expulsion of James II, joined William
III’s coalition against France. To the alliance England brought a highly
competent naval force, together with very considerable wealth. William’s
government, to fi nance the war, borrowed £1,200,000 from a syndicate of
private lenders, who in return for holding government bonds were given the privilege of
operating a bank. Thus originated, in 1694, both the Bank of England and the British
national debt. Owners of liquid assets, merchants of London and Whig aristocrats, having
lent their money to the new regime, had a compelling reason to defend it against the French
and James II. And having at last a government whose policies they could control, they
were willing to entrust it with money in large amounts. The national debt rapidly rose,
while the credit of the government held consistently good; and for many years people on
the Continent were astonished at the wealth that the British government could tap at will
and the quantities of money that it could pour into the wars of Europe.
The events of 1688 came to be known to the English as the Glori-
ous Revolution. The Revolution was portrayed as vindicating the principles
of parliamentary government, the rule of law, and even the right of rebel-
lion against tyranny (though, as noted above, England’s governing classes
denied all such rights in Ireland). The overthrow of James II and the enactment of new
parliamentary restrictions on the power of English kings have often been depicted as the
climax in the growth of English constitutional self-government. Political writers like John
Locke, shortly after the events, helped to give wide currency to these ideas. There was
in truth some justifi cation for these views even though in more recent times some writ-
ers have “deglorifi ed” the Revolution of 1688. They point out that it was an upper-class
movement, promoted and maintained by an exclusionary landed aristocracy. The Parlia-
ment that boldly asserted itself against the king was at the same time closing itself to
large segments of the English people. Where in the Middle Ages members of the House
of Commons had usually received pay for their services, this custom disappeared in the
seventeenth century, so that thereafter only men with independent incomes could sit. After
the parliamentary triumph of 1688 this tendency became a matter of law. An act of 1710
required members of the House of Commons to possess private incomes at such a level
that only a few thousand persons could legally qualify. This income had to come from the
ownership of land. England from 1688 to 1832 was the best example in modern times of a
true aristocracy, that is, of a country in which the men of an aristocratic landowning class
not only enjoyed privileges but also conducted the government. But the landowning inter-
est was then the only social group that was suffi ciently wealthy, numerous, educated, and
self-conscious to stand politically on its own feet. Although it depended on the labor and
trade of men and women who could never vote or hold offi ce, the rule of the “gentlemen of
England” was, within its strict social limits, an evolving, early regime of political liberty.
21. THE FRANCE OF LOUIS XIV, 1643–1715: THE TRIUMPH OF ABSOLUTISM
French Culture in the Seventeenth Century
Having traveled in the outer orbits of the seventeenth-century European political system,
we come now to its radiant and mighty center, the domain of the Sun King himself, the
Coalition against
France
The Glorious
Revolution
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715174
France against which the rest of Europe felt obliged to combine because its power threat-
ened the interests of so many other countries—the future of the Spanish possessions, the
independence of Holland, the maintenance in England of the parliamentary revolution.
The France of Louis XIV owed much of its ascendancy to the quantity and quality of its
people. Population was stabilized or possibly even falling in the seventeenth century, the
last century in which France was seriously disturbed by famines and peasant rebellions.
With 19 million inhabitants in 1700 France was still over three times as populous as
England and twice as populous as Spain. Its fertile soil, in an agricultural age, made it a
wealthy country, though the wealth was very unevenly distributed.
France was big enough to harbor many contradictions. Millions of its
people lived in poverty, yet the number in comfortable or even luxurious
circumstances was very large. There were both modest country nobles and
cosmopolitan grands seigneurs. The middle class included an inordinate number of lawyers, offi ceholders, and bureaucrats. The country was less commercial than
Holland or England, yet in sheer numbers there may have been more merchants in France
than in either of the other two countries. Protestants were a declining minority, yet in the
mid-seventeenth century there were still more French Huguenots than Dutch Calvinists.
It was a self-suffi cient country, yet the French in this century began trading in India and
Madagascar, founded colonial settlements in Canada, penetrated the Great Lakes and the
Mississippi Valley, set up sugar plantations in the West Indies, expanded their ancient
commerce with the Levant, enlarged their mercantile marine, and for a time had the lead-
ing navy of Europe. France, in short, became a highly active participant in the widening
networks of global trade and European colonization.
The dominance of France meant the dominance not merely of power but of a people
whom most Europeans viewed as the forefront of seventeenth-century civilization. They
carried over the versatility of the Italy of the Renaissance. In Nicholas Poussin and Claude
Lorrain they produced a notable school of painters, their architecture was emulated
throughout Europe, and they excelled in military fortifi cation and engineering. Much of
their literature, though often written by bourgeois writers, was designed for an aristocratic
and courtly audience, which had put aside the uncouth manners of an earlier day and prided
itself on the refi nement of its tastes and perceptions. Corneille and Racine wrote austere
tragedies on the personal confl icts and social relations of human life. Molière, in his com-
edies, ridiculed bumbling doctors, new-rich bourgeois, and foppish aristocrats, making the
word “marquis” almost a joke in the French language. La Fontaine gave the world his
animal fables, and La Rochefoucauld, in his witty and sardonic maxims, a nobleman’s
candid judgment on human nature. In Descartes the French produced a great mathemati-
cian and scientifi c thinker; in Pascal, a scientist who was also a profound spokesman for
Christianity; in Bayle, the father of modern skeptics. It was French thought and the French
language, not merely the armies of Louis XIV, which in the seventeenth century were
sweeping the European world.
Louis XIV understood that France’s dominant position in Europe required more than
large armies and that a fl ourishing cultural life greatly enhanced the interna-
tional prestige of even the wealthiest or most powerful sovereign state. He
therefore gave generous fi nancial support to his favorite writers and artists,
especially those who produced works for his new palace at Versailles. He
also brought the arts and sciences into the state’s administrative system by
establishing royal academies in which various theorists taught the correct principles for
art, literature, music, dance, and scientifi c knowledge. The favored or offi cial aesthetic
The contradictions of
French society
Patronage of the arts
by Louis XIV
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175
theory in these academies was called classicism, a theory that emphasized order, harmony,
and the artistic achievements of antiquity. Following the example of painters such as Pous-
sin, young artists learned to portray scenes from classical Roman history or mythology
with harmonious and almost geometric precision. The great literary theorist of the day,
Nicolas Boileau, urged writers to emulate the poetic works of ancient writers who had
shown how literature addresses the timeless themes of human knowledge and transcendent
truths rather than the frivolities of daily life. The classicism of French artists and writers
thus fi t comfortably with the Sun King’s appreciation for order, harmony, and hierarchy in
every sphere of social, political, and cultural life.
Yet neither the king nor his offi cial academies could control all of France’s artistic and
intellectual activity. Some literary critics, soon known as the “Moderns,” began to argue
that modern literature and knowledge had in fact surpassed the achievements of antiquity
and that Boileau’s academic writers, soon called the “Ancients,” deferred much too rigidly
to ancient authorities. Meanwhile, other centers of intellectual life emerged
outside the royal academies in the new salons of Paris. Developing rapidly
in the second half of the seventeenth century, the salons became the unoffi -
cial gathering places for Parisian nobles, wealthy professional persons, and
creative writers or artists. They were organized by upper-class women who invited people
into their homes to discuss philosophy, literature, and art—all of which could be debated
Salons
The French playwright Molière often performed in his own plays, including some that were staged at the court of Louis XIV. He is portrayed here as a character in The School for Wives, a popular comedy about confl icts and deceptions in the relations between women and men. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art
Resource, NY)
21. The France of Louis XIV, 1643–1715: The Triumph of Absolutism
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715176
without the formal constraints and solemnity of the academies. The salons attracted criti-
cism and even ridicule from some people in the government and academies, partly because
they were created by energetic women and partly because they fl ourished outside the offi -
cial cultural institutions of the state. But the Parisian salons, like the royal academies,
became an enduring, distinctive institution in French cultural life. They also welcomed
distinguished foreign visitors, thus contributing to the spread of French ideas and social
mores throughout Europe. Parisian-style salons eventually appeared in other European
cities, along with French fashion, French manners, and the French language.
The Development of Absolutism in France
This ascendancy of French culture went along with a regime in which political liberties
were at a discount. The culture embellished what historians have often called the “absolute
monarchy” of Louis XIV, though the king’s power was never as far-reaching as the term
“absolutism” suggests. The Sun King had to secure the cooperation of the nobility and
other social classes; and his power was constrained in various ways by regional institutions,
French legal traditions, and a fragmented system of local economies. Like other European
countries, France had a tradition of political rights and liberties that were associated with
older, even feudal, political and legal institutions. It had an Estates General, which had
not met since 1615 but was not legally abolished. In some regions Provin-
cial Estates, still meeting frequently, retained a measure of self-government
and of power over taxation. There were about a dozen bodies known as
parlements, 1 which, unlike the English Parliament, had developed as courts
of law, each being the supreme court for a certain area of the country. The parlements
upheld certain “fundamental laws” that they said the king could not overstep, and they often
refused to enforce royal edicts that they declared to be unconstitutional. France, beneath
the surface, was almost as diverse as Germany (see map, p. 184). French towns had won
charters of acknowledged rights, and many of the great provinces enjoyed liberties written
into old agreements with the crown. These local liberties created institutional complications
for a would-be “absolute” monarch. There were some 300 “customs” or regional systems of
law; it was observed that travelers sometimes changed laws more often than they changed
horses. Internal tariffs ran along the old provincial borders. Tolls were levied by manorial
lords. The king’s taxes fell less heavily on some regions than on others. Neither coinage
nor weights and measures were uniform throughout the country. France was a bundle of
territories held together by allegiance to the king.
This older kind of feudal freedom discredited itself in France at the very time when in
Germany a neo-feudal localism was pulling the Holy Roman Empire to pieces, and when
in England the older feudal liberties were making a transition to a more modern form of
political liberty, embodied in the parliamentary though aristocratic state. In France the old
medieval or local type of liberty became associated with disorder. It has already been
related how after the disorders of the sixteenth-century religious wars people had turned
with relief to the monarchy and how Henry IV and then Richelieu had begun to make the
monarchy strong. The troubles of the Fronde, beginning in 1648, provided
additional incentive for the centralization of political power in France.
The Fronde broke out immediately after the Peace of Westphalia, while
Louis XIV was still a child, and was directed against Cardinal Mazarin, who
The “parlements”
The Fronde
1 Spelled parlements in French, to distinguish from the English Parliament.
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177
was governing in his name. It was an abortive revolution, led by the same elements, the
parlements and the nobility, which were to initiate the great French Revolution in 1789. The
parlements, especially the Parlement of Paris, insisted in 1648 on their right to pronounce
certain royal edicts unconstitutional. Barricades were thrown up and street fi ghting broke
out in Paris. The nobility rebelled, as it had often in the past. Leadership was assumed
by certain prominent noblemen who had enough wealth and infl uence to believe that, if
the king’s power were contained, they might govern the country themselves. The nobility
demanded a calling of the Estates General, expecting to dominate over the bourgeoisie and
the clergy in that body. Armed bands of soldiers, unemployed since the Peace of Westphalia
and led by nobles, roamed about the country terrorizing the peasants. If the nobles had their
way, it was probable that the manorial system would fall on the peasants more heavily, as
in eastern Europe, where triumphant lords were at this very time exacting increased labor
services from the peasants. Finally the rebellious nobles called in Spanish troops to bol-
ster their uprising, though France was still at war with Spain. By this time the bourgeoisie,
INSPIRATION OF THE EPIC POET by Nicolas Poussin (French, 1594–1665)
Poussin’s interest in both the themes and forms of classicism appear in this image of a poet who yearns for the honor of a laurel crown as he meditates on the Greek god Apollo (with his lyre) and Calliope, the muse of epic poetry. The painting shows the careful symmetry and bal- ance of much seventeenth-century French art. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
21. The France of Louis XIV, 1643–1715: The Triumph of Absolutism
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715178
together with the parlements, had withdrawn support from the rebellious nobles. The agi-
tation subsided in total failure. Bourgeoisie and aristocracy could not work together; the
nobles outraged people throughout France by bringing Spanish soldiers into their rebellion;
and the frondeurs, especially after the parlements deserted them, had no base of popular support and no systematic or constructive program, aiming only at the overthrow of the
unpopular Cardinal Mazarin and at obtaining offi ces and favors for themselves.
After the Fronde, as after the religious wars, the bourgeoisie and peasantry of France,
to protect themselves against the claims of the aristocracy, were in a mood to welcome the
exercise of strong power by the kings. And in the young Louis XIV they had a man more
than willing to grasp all the power he could get. Louis, at age 23, on Mazarin’s death in
1661, announced that he would govern the country himself. He was the third king of the
Bourbon line. It was the Bourbon tradition, established by Henry IV and by Richelieu, to
draw the teeth from independent aristocrats, and this was a tradition that Louis XIV now
followed. He was not a man of any transcendent abilities, though he had the capacity, often
found among successful executives, of learning a good deal from conversation with
experts. His education was somewhat limited, having been made purposely easy; but he
had the ability to see and stick to defi nite lines of policy, and he was extremely methodical
and industrious in his daily habits, scrupulously loading himself with administrative
business throughout his reign. He was extremely fond of himself and his position of king-
ship, with an insatiable appetite for admiration and fl attery; he loved magnifi cent display
and elaborate etiquette, though to some extent he simply adopted them as instruments of
policy rather than as a personal whim.
With the reign of Louis XIV the “state” in its modern form took a long step forward.
The state in the abstract has always seemed somewhat theoretical to the English-speaking
world. Let us say, for simplicity, that the state represents a fusion of justice and power. A
sovereign state possesses, within its territory, a monopoly over the administration of justice
and the use of force. Private persons neither pass legal judgments on others nor control pri-
vate armies of their own. For private and unauthorized persons to do so, in an orderly state,
constitutes rebellion. This was in contrast to the older feudal practice, by which feudal lords
maintained manorial courts and led their own followers into battle. Against these feudal
practices Louis XIV energetically worked, though not with complete suc-
cess, claiming to possess in his own person, the sovereign ruler, a monopoly
over the lawmaking processes and the armed forces of the kingdom. This
is the deeper meaning of his reputed boast, L’état, c’est moi— “the state is myself.” In the France of the seventeenth century, divided by classes and by regions, there
was in fact no practical means of consolidating the powers of state except in a shared defer-
ence to one individual.
The state, however, while representing law and order within its borders, has gener-
ally stood in a lawless and disorderly relation to other states, because no higher monopoly
of law and force has existed. Louis XIV, personifying the French state, had no particular
regard for the claims of other states or rulers. He was constantly either at war or preparing
for war with his neighbors. The modern state, indeed, was created by the needs of peace
at home and war abroad. Machinery of government, as devised by Louis XIV and others,
was a means of giving order and security within the territory of the state, and of raising,
supporting, and controlling armies for use against other states.
The idea that law and force within a country should be monopolized by the lawful king
was the essence of the seventeenth-century doctrine of absolutism. Its principal theorist in
the time of Louis XIV was the French bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, who advanced the
“L’etat, c’est moi”
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179
old Christian teaching that all power comes from God and that all who hold power are
responsible to God for the way they use it. He held that kings were God’s representatives in
the political affairs of earth. Royal power, according to Bossuet, was absolute but not arbi-
trary. The use of power could not be arbitrary because it must be reasonable and just, like the
will of God that it refl ected; but it was absolute in that it was free from dictation by parle-
ments, estates, or other subordinate elements within the country. Law, therefore, was the will
of the sovereign king, so long as it conformed to the higher law that was the will of God.
This doctrine, affi rming the divine right of kings, was popularly held in
France at the time and was taught in the churches. Absolutism and absolute
monarchy became the prevailing concepts of government on much of the
European continent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It must be
remembered, however, that these terms referred more to legal theories than to facts. A
ruler, in theory, could be absolute because he was not legally bound by any other persons
or institutions in the country. In reality he became dependent upon a host of advisers and
bureaucrats; he often had to compromise with vested interests; and he could be thwarted
by the sheer weight of local custom or meet resistance from lawyers, ecclesiastics, nobles,
grandees, hereditary offi ceholders, and miscellaneous dignitaries. And the slow pace of
both transportation and communication prevented early modern “absolutist” rulers from
controlling their subjects as quickly or as effi ciently as governments have controlled their
people in modern nation-states.
Government and Administration
Louis XIV’s early and perhaps most important administrative steps assured his tight control
of the army. Armed forces in Europe had long been almost a private enterprise. Specialists
in fi ghting, leading their own troops, worked for governments more or less as they chose,
either in return for money or to pursue political aims of their own. This was especially
common in central Europe, but even in France great noblemen had strong private infl u-
ence over the troops, and in times of disorder nobles led armed retainers about the country.
Colonels were virtually on their own. Provided with a general commission
and with funds by some government, they recruited, trained, and equipped
their own regiments, and likewise fed and supplied them, often by preying
upon bourgeois and peasants in the vicinity. In these circumstances it was
often diffi cult to say on whose side soldiers were fi ghting. It was hard for governments
to set armies into motion and equally hard to make them stop fi ghting, for commanders
fought for their own interests and on their own momentum. War was not a “continuation
of policy”; it was not an act of the state; it easily degenerated, as in the Thirty Years’ War,
into a kind of aimless and perpetual violence.
Louis XIV made war an activity of state. He saw to it that all armed persons in France
fought only for him. This produced peace and order within France, while strengthening the
fi ghting power of France against other states. Under the older conditions there was also
little integration among different units and branches of the army. Infantry regiments and
cavalry went largely their own way, and the artillery was supplied by civilian technicians
under contract. Louis XIV created a stronger unity of control, put the artillery organically
into the army, systematized the military ranks and grades, and clarifi ed the chain of com-
mand, placing himself at the top. The government supervised recruiting, required colonels
to prove that they were maintaining the proper number of soldiers, and assumed most of
the responsibility for equipping, provisioning, clothing, and housing the troops. Higher
Absolutism
War: a state activity
21. The France of Louis XIV, 1643–1715: The Triumph of Absolutism
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715180
offi cers, thus becoming dependent on the government, could be subjected to discipline.
The soldiers were put into uniforms, taught to march in step, and housed in barracks; thus
they too became more susceptible to discipline and control.
Armed forces became less of a terror to their own people and a more effective weapon
in the hands of government. They were employed usually against other governments but
sometimes to suppress rebellion at home. Louis XIV also increased the French army in
size, raising it from about 100,000 to about 400,000. These changes, both in size and in
degree of government control, were made possible by the growth of a large civilian admin-
istration, the heads of which were also civilians under the control of Louis XIV. They were
in effect the fi rst ministers of war, and their assistants, offi cials, inspectors, and clerks
constituted the fi rst organized war ministry.
Louis XIV was a vain man, but he connected his vanity to a broader political strategy
to overawe the country with his own grandeur. He built himself a whole new city at the
old village of Versailles about 10 miles southwest of Paris. Where the Escorial in Spain
had the atmosphere of a monastery, Versailles was a monument to worldly
splendor. Tremendous in size, fi tted out with polished mirrors, gleaming
chandeliers, and magnifi cent tapestries, opening on to a formal park with
fountains and shaded walks, the palace of Versailles became the marvel of
Europe and the envy of lesser kings. It was virtually a public building,
much of it used for government offi ces, with nobles, churchmen, notable bourgeois, and
servants milling about on the king’s affairs. The more exclusive honors of the château
were reserved for the higher nobles. The king surrounded his daily routine of rising, eat-
ing, and going to bed (known as the lever, dîner, and coucher ) with an infi nite series of ceremonial acts, so minute and so formalized that there were, for example, six different
The splendor of
Versailles
LOUIS XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud (French, 1659–1743)
The grandeur of the Sun King is con- veyed in this portrait by Rigaud. He uses the king’s clothing, stance, and royal emblems to express the power of the French monarchy. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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181
entries of persons at the lever, and a certain gentleman at a specifi ed moment held the right sleeve of the king’s nightshirt as he took it off. The most exalted persons thought
themselves the greater for thus waiting on so august a being. With such honors, and by
more material favors, many great nobles were induced to live habitually at court. Here,
under the royal eye, they might engage in palace intrigue but were kept away
from real political agitation in the provinces. Versailles had a debilitating effect on the
French aristocracy.
For most positions in the government, as distinguished from his personal entourage,
Louis XIV preferred to use men whose upper-class status was recent. Such men, unlike
hereditary nobles, could aspire to no independent political infl uence of their own. He never
called the Estates General, which in any case no one except some of the nobility wanted.
Some of the Provincial Estates, because of local and aristocratic pressures, were allowed
to remain functioning. He temporarily destroyed the independence of the parlements,
commanding them to accept his orders, as Henry IV had commanded them to accept the
Edict of Nantes. He developed a strong system of administrative coordination, centering
in a number of councils of state, which he attended in person, and in “intendants” who
represented these councils throughout the country. Councilors of state and the intendants
in provincial districts were generally of bourgeois origin or newly ennobled. Each inten-
dant, within his district, embodied all aspects of the royal government—
supervising the fl ow of taxes and recruiting of soldiers, keeping an eye on
the local nobility, dealing with towns and guilds, controlling the more or
less hereditary offi ceholders, policing the marketplaces, relieving famine,
watching and often participating in the local law courts. A fi rm and uniform
administration was superimposed upon the heterogeneous mass of the old France. In con-
trast to England, many local questions were handled by agents of the central government,
usually honest and often effi cient, but essentially bureaucrats constantly instructed by, and
reporting back to, their superiors at Versailles.
Economic and Financial Policies: Colbert
To support the reorganized and enlarged army, the panoply of Versailles, and the grow-
ing civil administration, the king needed a good deal of money. Finance was always the
weak spot in the French monarchy. Methods of collecting taxes were costly
and ineffi cient. Direct taxes passed through the hands of many intermedi-
ate offi cials; indirect taxes were collected by private concessionaries called
tax farmers, who made a substantial profi t. The state always received far
less than what French taxpayers actually paid. But the main weakness arose from an old
bargain between the French crown and nobility; the king might raise taxes without consent
only if he refrained from taxing the nobles. Only the “unprivileged” classes paid direct
taxes, and these came almost to mean the peasants only, because many bourgeois in one
way or another obtained exemptions. The system was outrageously unjust in throwing a
heavy tax burden on the poor and helpless. Louis XIV was willing enough to tax the nobles
but was unwilling to fall under their control, and only toward the close of his reign, under
extreme stress of war, was he able, for the fi rst time in French history, to impose direct
taxes on the aristocratic elements of the population. This was a step toward equality before
the law and toward sound public fi nance, but the nobles and wealthiest bourgeois taxpayers
received numerous concessions and exemptions that greatly reduced the fi nancial value of
the reforms.
Administrative tactics
of Louis XIV
Taxation
21. The France of Louis XIV, 1643–1715: The Triumph of Absolutism
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183
Like his predecessors, Louis resorted to all manner of expedients to increase his rev-
enues. He raised the tax rates, always with disappointing results. He devalued the cur-
rency. He sold patents of nobility to ambitious bourgeois. He sold government offi ces,
judgeships, and commissions in the army and navy. For both fi nancial and political reasons
the king used his sovereign authority to annul the town charters, then sold back reduced
rights at a price; this produced a little income but demoralized local government and civic
spirit. The need for money arose from the fundamental inability to tax the wealthy. This
problem refl ected the weakness and limitations of absolutism because the government’s
refusal to share its rule with the propertied classes corrupted much of French public life
and undermined the political aptitude of the French people.
Louis XIV wished, if only for his own purposes, to make France economically power-
ful. His great fi nance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert worked for 20 years to do so. Colbert
went beyond Richelieu in the application of mercantilism, aiming to make France a self-
suffi cing economic unit, to expand the export of French goods, and to increase the wealth
from which government income was drawn. There was not much that he could do for
agriculture, the principal industry of the kingdom, which remained less developed than in
England and the Netherlands. But he managed to reduce internal tariffs in a large part of
central France, where he set up a tariff union oddly entitled the Five Great Farms (because
the remaining tolls were collected by tax farmers); and although vested
interests and provincial liberties remained too strong for him to do away
with all internal tariffs, the area of the Five Great Farms was in itself one of
the largest free-trade areas in Europe, being about the size of England.
For the convenience of business Colbert promulgated a Commercial
Code, replacing much of the local customary law with a new model of busi-
ness practice and regulation. He improved communications by building roads
and canals. Working through the guilds, he required the handicraft manufac-
turers to produce goods of specifi ed kind and quality, believing that foreigners, if assured of
quality by the government, would purchase French products. He gave subsidies, tax exemp-
tions, and monopolies to expand the manufacture of silks, tapestries, glassware, and woolens.
Colbert also helped to found colonies, built up the navy, and established the French
East India Company, which soon expanded the French presence in India. During this same
era, the East India Company occupied and began to develop a new Caribbean colony in
Saint-Domingue, a territory on the western side of the island of Hispaniola that Spain
would offi cially cede to France in 1697. Enslaved Africans were taken to Saint-Domingue,
where they became the labor force in a colonial plantation economy that would later pro-
duce very large and profi table shipments of sugar, coffee, and indigo for European mar-
kets. Within France itself, export of some goods, notably foodstuffs, was forbidden, for
the government wished to keep the populace quiet by holding down the price of bread.
The Five Great Farms
Colbert’s Commercial
Code
Thirty thousand workers were employed at one time in the building of the great royal château at Versailles. The seventeenth-century painting by Adam François van der Mueleh (upper) illustrates the complex labor and planning that were required during the process of construc- tion; the lower painting by Pierre Denis Martin dates from the early eighteenth century, and it shows the activity that surrounded Versailles when the king, government ministers, and nobles were assembled in the vast buildings and gardens. The grandeur and scale of these buildings were designed to symbolize the king’s power and to create a sense of awe in the foreign visitors who came to meet Louis XIV or his advisers. (Royal Collection, London) (RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY)
21. The France of Louis XIV, 1643–1715: The Triumph of Absolutism
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715184
Export of other goods, mainly manufactures, was encouraged, partly as a means of bring-
ing money into the country, where it could be funneled into the royal treasury. The growth
of the army, and the fact that under Louis XIV the government placed unprecedentedly
large orders for military uniforms, overcoats, weapons, and ammunition, greatly stimu-
lated the employment of weavers, tailors, and gunsmiths and advanced the commercial
capitalism by which such labors were organized. Trade and manufacture thus developed in
France under more direct government guidance than in England; and the French gave the
English an extremely brisk competition throughout the early modern era. Not until the age
of iron and coal did France begin economically to lag.
In general, the system elaborated in the two centuries of Bourbon rule, known in retro-
spect as the Old Regime, was a society in which groups of many kinds could identify their
own special interests with those of the absolute monarchy. But it rested on a precarious incon-
sistency. On the one hand, the royal government, through its intendants and bureaucracy,
FRANCE FROM THE LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XIV TO THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 The map gives an idea of the diversity of law and administration before the Revolution. Dark areas are “pays d’etats,” provinces in which representative bodies (“estates”) continued to meet. Cities named are the seats of what the French called parlements (see p. 176). The key indicates Colbert’s tariff union, the Five Great Farms. The area marked with hatching remained outside the French tariff system entirely; it continued to trade with the states of the Holy Roman Empire (from which it had been annexed) without interference by the French government. Numerals indicate the price of salt, i.e., the varying burden of the salt tax, in vari- ous regions. In general, regions farthest from Paris enjoyed the most “privileges” or “liber- ties,” preserving their legal and judicial identity, Provincial Estates, local tariffs, and a favored position in national taxation.
0 50 100 miles
Pays d'États
Colbert's Tariff Union
Area Remaining Entirely Outside the French Tariff System
Seats of Parlements or Supreme Courts of Law
Numerals indicate the Price of Salt, i.e., the Amount of Salt Tax
8 58
60 27
61 15 61
10
30
25
20
3
7
10
9 7
60
3 60
2
9 30
7
13
AUSTRIAN NETHERLANDS
GERMAN STATES
SWITZER- LAND
ITALY
TO THE POPE
Arras
Metz
Nancy
Colmar
Dijon Besançon
Grenoble
AixToulouse
Perpignan
Pau
Bordeaux
Rennes
Paris
Rouen
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185
worked to restrict the privileges of provinces, nobles, and others. On the other hand, it multi-
plied and protected these and other privileges in its perpetual need for money. The inconsis-
tency was not resolved until the Revolution of 1789, when the principle of equality of rights
would replace the regime of privilege.
Religion: The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685
The consolidation of France under Louis XIV reached its high point in his policies toward
religion. For the Catholics, Louis backed the old claims of the Gallican church to enjoy
a certain national independence from Rome. He repressed the movement known as
Jansenism, a kind of theological Calvinism within the Catholic church, which persisted for
almost two centuries. Jansenists criticized moral laxity in high places as well as the reli-
gious infl uence of the Jesuits, so there was wide support at Versailles when the king moved
against all the main centers of Jansenist theology. But it was the Protestants who suffered
most in a new wave of religious persecutions.
France, in the early years of Louis XIV’s reign, still allowed more religious toleration
than any other large state in Europe. The Huguenots had lost their separate political status
under Richelieu, but they continued to live in relative security, protected by the Edict of
Nantes of 1598. From the beginning, however, toleration had been a royal rather than a
popular policy, and under Louis XIV the royal policy changed. The fate of Catholics at the
hands of a triumphant Parliament in England suggests that the Protestants in France would
have been no better off under more popular institutions.
Bending all other institutions to his will, Louis XIV resented the presence of heretics
among his subjects. He considered religious unity necessary to the strength and dignity of
his rule. He fell under the infl uence of certain Catholic advisers, who, not
content with the attrition by which some Protestants were turning back to
Catholicism in any case, wished to hasten the process to the greater glory
of themselves. Systematic conversion of Huguenots was begun. Life for
Protestant families was gradually made unbearable. Finally they were literally “dragooned,”
mounted infantrymen being quartered in Huguenot homes to reinforce the persuasions of
missionaries. In 1685 Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes. During the persecutions hundreds
of thousands of Protestants left France, migrating to Holland, Germany, and America. Their
loss was a severe blow to French economic life, for although Protestants were found in all
levels of French society, those of the commercial and industrial classes were the most
mobile. With the revocation of the Edict of Nantes France embarked on a century of offi cial
intolerance (slowly mitigated in practice), under which Protestants in France were in much
the same position as Catholics in the British Isles. The fact that 100 years later, when Prot-
estants were again tolerated, many of them were found to be both commercially prosperous
and politically loyal suggests that they actually fared far better than the Catholic Irish.
All things considered, the reign of Louis XIV brought considerable
advantages to the French middle and lower classes. His most bitter critics,
with the natural exception of Protestants, were disgruntled nobles such as the
duke of Saint-Simon, who thought that he showed too many favors to per-
sons of inferior social rank. Because Protestants were an unpopular minority, his repression
of them won much approval. Colbert’s system of economic regulation, and perpetuation of
the guilds, meant that innovation and private enterprise developed less fully than in England,
but France was economically stronger in 1700 than in 1650. Peasants were heavily taxed to
pay for Louis XIV’s wars, and they suffered through devastating famines after 1690 (also
caused partly by the wars). But they did not sink into the serfdom that was rising in eastern
Louis XIV seeks
religious unity
Accomplishments of
Louis XIV
21. The France of Louis XIV, 1643–1715: The Triumph of Absolutism
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715186
Europe. Compared to later times, France was still a hodgepodge of competing jurisdic-
tions, special privilege, and bureaucratic ineptitude. The king was in truth far from absolute
but France was nevertheless the best organized of the large monarchies on the Continent.
Louis XIV, in turning both high and low into dutiful subjects, may even have advanced the
cause of abstract civil equality. For a long time he was generally popular. What fi nally turned
his people against him in his last years was the strain of his incessant wars.
22. THE WARS OF LOUIS XIV: THE PEACE OF UTRECHT, 1713
Before 1700
From the outset of his reign Louis pursued a vigorous foreign policy. The quarrel between
the house of France and the house of Habsburg had gone on for more than a century. When
Louis XIV assumed his personal rule in 1661, Spanish territories still faced France on
three sides (northeast, east, and south), but Spain was so weakened that this fact was no
longer a menace to France; indeed, the surrounding Spanish territories were now a tempta-
tion to French expansion. Louis XIV could count on popular support in France, for the
dream of a frontier on the Rhine and the Alps was captivating to Frenchmen. He struck fi rst
in 1667 by sending a large army into the Spanish Netherlands. He was blocked, as noted
The systematic repression of French Huguenots after 1685 was widely condemned in Protes- tant countries. Images such as this gruesome depiction of torture contributed to the interna- tional hostility for Louis XIV and to the foreign acceptance of French refugees who scattered into Protestant states throughout Europe and North America. (De Agostini/Getty Images)
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18722. The Wars of Louis XIV: The Peace of Utrecht, 1713
earlier, by the Triple Alliance of the Dutch, the English, and the Swedes. With strength
renewed by reforms at home, and in alliance now with Charles II of England, he struck
again in 1672 (the “Dutch War”), invading the Dutch provinces on the lower Rhine, and
this time raising up against him his great adversary, the prince of Orange. William III,
bringing the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs, Brandenburg, and Denmark into alliance
with the Dutch Republic, forced Louis to sign the treaty of Nimwegen in 1678. The French
gave up their ambitions against Holland but took from Spain the rich prov-
ince of Franche-Comté, which outfl anked Alsace on the south and brought
French power to the borders of Switzerland (see map, p. 149).
In the very next year, Louis further infi ltrated the dissolving frontier of
the Holy Roman Empire, this time in Lorraine and Alsace. By the Peace of
Westphalia the French king had rights in this region, but the terms of that
treaty were so ambiguous, and the local feudal law so confusing, that claims could be made
in contrary directions. In 1681 French troops occupied the city of Strasbourg, which, as a
free city of the Holy Roman Empire, regarded itself as an independent little republic. A
protest went up throughout Germany against this undeclared invasion. But Germany was
not a political unity. Since 1648 each German state conducted its own foreign policy, and at
this very moment, in 1681, Louis XIV had an ally in the Elector of Brandenburg (forerun-
ner of the kings of Prussia). The diet of the Holy Roman Empire was divided between an
anti-French and a pro-French party. The emperor, Leopold I, was distracted by develop-
ments in the East. The Hungarians, incited and fi nanced by Louis XIV, were again rebelling
against the Habsburgs. They appealed to the Ottoman Turks, and Ottoman forces in 1683
moved up the Danube and besieged Vienna. Louis XIV, if he did not on this occasion posi-
tively assist the Turks, ostentatiously declined to join the proposed crusade against them.
The emperor, with Polish assistance, was able to push the Ottoman army out of Austria.
Returning to his western problems and observing the western border of the empire crum-
bling, Franche-Comté already lost, the Spanish Netherlands threatened, and Lorraine and
Alsace absorbed bit by bit, the Emperor Leopold gathered the Catholic powers into a com-
bination against the French. The Protestant states at the same time, aroused by the French
revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and by Huguenot émigrés who called down the
wrath of God on the perfi dious Sun King, began to ally the more readily with William of
Orange. Catholic and Protestant enemies of Louis XIV thus came together in 1686 in the
League of Augsburg, which comprised the Holy Roman Emperor, the kings of Spain and of
Sweden, the electors of Bavaria, Saxony, and the Palatinate, and the Dutch Republic. In
1686 the king of England was still a protégé of France, but three years later, when William
became king in England, that country too joined the League.
The War of the League of Augsburg began in 1688. The French armies
won battles but could not drive so many enemies from the fi eld. The French
navy could not overpower the combined fl eets of the Dutch and English.
Louis XIV found himself badly strained (it was at this time that he fi rst
imposed direct taxes on the French nobles) and fi nally made peace at
Ryswick in the Netherlands in 1697, leaving matters about where they had been when the
war began.
In all the warring and negotiating the question had not been merely the fate of this or
that piece of territory, nor even the French thrust to the east, but the eventual disposition of
the whole empire of Spain. The Spanish king, Charles II, prematurely senile, momentarily
expected to die, yet lived on year after year. He was still alive at the time of the Peace of
Ryswick. The greatest diplomatic issue of the day was still unsettled.
French incursions
into the Holy Roman
Empire
The War of the
League of Augsburg
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715188
The War of the Spanish Succession
The War of the Spanish Succession lasted 11 years, from 1702 to 1713. It was less destruc-
tive than the Thirty Years’ War, for armies were now supplied in more orderly fashion,
subject to more orderly discipline and command, and could be stopped from fi ghting at the
will of their governments. Except for the effects of civil war in Spain and of deadly famines
in France, the civilian populations were generally spared from violence and destruction. In
this respect the war foreshadowed the typical warfare of the eighteenth century, fought by
professional armies rather than by whole peoples. Among wars of the largest scale, the War
of the Spanish Succession was the fi rst in which religion counted for little, the fi rst in which
commerce and sea power were the principal stakes, and the fi rst in which English money
was liberally used in Continental politics. It was also the fi rst that can be called a “world
war,” because it involved the overseas world together with the leading powers of Europe.
Wars within Europe were becoming linked to the global competition for colonies and trade.
The struggle had long been foreseen. The two main aspirants to the Spanish inheri-
tance were the king of France and the Holy Roman Emperor. Each had married a sister of
the perpetually moribund Charles II, and each could hope to place a younger member of his
family on the throne of Spain. During the last decades of the seventeenth century the pow-
ers had made various treaties agreeing to “partition” the Spanish possessions. The idea
was, by dividing the Spanish heritage between the two claimants, to preserve the balance of
power in Europe. But when Charles II fi nally died in 1700, it was found that he had made a
will, which stipulated that the empire of Spain should be kept intact, that all Spanish terri-
tories throughout the world should go to the grandson of Louis XIV, and that if Louis XIV
refused to accept in the name of his 17-year-old grandson, the entire inheritance should
pass to the son of the Habsburg emperor in Vienna. Louis XIV decided to
accept. With Bourbons reigning in Versailles and Madrid, even if the two
thrones were never united, French infl uence would now run from Belgium
to the Straits of Gibraltar, and from Milan to Mexico and Manila. At Ver-
sailles the word went out: “The Pyrenees exist no longer.”
Never, at least in almost two centuries, had the political balance within
Europe been so threatened. Never had the other states faced such a pros-
pect of relegation to the sidelines. William III acted at once; he gathered
the stunned or hesitant diplomats into the last of his coalitions, the Grand
Alliance of 1701. Although he died the next year, before hostilities began, and with Louis
XIV at the seeming apex of his grandeur, William had in fact launched the engine that was
to crush the Sun King. The Grand Alliance included England, Holland, and the Austrian
emperor, supported by Brandenburg and eventually by Portugal and the Italian duchy of
Savoy. Louis XIV could count on Spain, which was generally loyal to the late king’s will.
Otherwise his only ally was Bavaria, whose rivalry with Austria made it a habitual satel-
lite of France. The Bavarian alliance gave the French armies an advanced position toward
Vienna and maintained that internal division within Germany that was fundamental to the
politics of the time, and of a long time to come.
The war was long, mainly because each side no sooner gained a temporary advantage
than it raised its demands on the other. The English, though they sent relatively few troops
to the Continent, produced in John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, a preeminent military
commander for the Allied forces. The Austrians were led by Prince Eugene of Savoy. The
Allies won notable battles at Blenheim in Bavaria (1704), and at Ramillies (1706), Oude-
narde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709) in the Spanish Netherlands. The French were routed;
“The Pyrenees exist
no longer”
Threats to political
balance
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189
Louis XIV asked for peace but then would not agree to a treaty because the Allied terms
were so enormous. Louis fought to hold the two crowns, to conquer Belgium, to get French
merchants into Spanish America, and at the worst in self-defense. After minor successes in
1710 he again insisted on controlling the crown of Spain. The Spanish fought to uphold
the will of the deceased king, the unity of the Spanish possessions, and even the integrity
of Spain itself—for the English moved in at Gibraltar and made a menacing treaty with
Portugal. Meanwhile, the Austrians landed at Barcelona and invaded Catalonia, which (as
in 1640) again rose in rebellion, recognizing the Austrian claimant, so that
all Spain fell into civil war.
The Austrians fought to keep Spain in the Habsburg family, to
crush Bavaria, and to carry Austrian infl uence across the Alps into Italy.
The Dutch fought as always for their security, to keep the French out of
Belgium, and to control access to the river Scheldt. The English fought for these same rea-
sons and also to keep the French-supported Catholic Stuarts out of England and preserve
the Revolution of 1688. It was to be expected that the Stuarts, if they returned, would ruin
the Bank of England and repudiate the national debt. Both maritime powers, England and
Holland, fought to keep French merchants out of Spanish America and to advance their
own commercial position in America and the Mediterranean. These war aims made the
Whigs the implacable war party in England, whereas the vaguely pro-Stuart and anticom-
mercial Tories were quite willing to make peace at an early date. As for the minor allies,
Brandenburg and Savoy, their rulers had simply entered the alliance to gain such advan-
tages as might turn up.
The Peace of Utrecht
Peace was fi nally made at the treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt of 1713 and
1714. The treaty of Utrecht, with its allied instruments, in fact partitioned
the world of Spain. But it did not divide it between the two legal claimants
only. The British remained at Gibraltar, to the great irritation of the Span-
iards, and likewise annexed the island of Minorca. The Duke of Savoy eventually gained
the former Spanish island of Sardinia in return for his contribution to the Allied cause.
The rest of the Spanish Mediterranean holdings—Milan, Naples, and Sicily—passed to the
Austrian Habsburgs, as did the Spanish Netherlands (or Belgium), subsequently referred to
as the Austrian Netherlands. In Spain itself, shorn of its European possessions but retain-
ing America, the grandson of Louis XIV was confi rmed as king (Philip V of Spain), on the
understanding that the French and Spanish thrones should never be inherited by the same
person. The Bourbons reigned in Spain, with interruptions, from Philip V to the republican
revolution of 1931. French infl uence was strong in the eighteenth century, for a good many
French courtiers, advisers, administrators, and merchants crossed the Pyrenees with Philip
V. They helped somewhat to revive the Spanish monarchy by applying the methods of
Louis XIV, and they passed a swelling volume of French manufactures through Seville
into Spanish America.
The old objective of William III, to prevent domination by France, was
realized at last. The war itself was the main cause of French loss of strength.
It produced poverty, misery, and depopulation, and it exposed Louis XIV
to severe criticism at home. Recurring famines and tax increases provoked
peasant uprisings, which were brutally repressed. Dissatisfaction with the war led also to
a revival of aristocratic and parliamentary opposition. By the peace treaties the French
Motives of the
warring states
The partition of
Spain’s holdings
Consequences of the
war for France
22. The Wars of Louis XIV: The Peace of Utrecht, 1713
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715190
abandoned, for the time being, their efforts to conquer Belgium. They ceased to recog-
nize the Stuart pretender as king of Great Britain. They surrendered to the British two
of their colonies, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (called Acadia), and recognized British
sovereignty in the disputed American Northwest, known as the Hudson Bay territory. But
the French were only checked, not downed. They retained the conquests of Louis XIV in
Alsace and the Franche-Comté. Their infl uence was strong in Spain. Their deeper strength
and capacity for recovery were soon evident in renewed economic expansion. Their
language and civilization continued to spread throughout Europe.
The Dutch received guarantees of their security. They were granted the right to garri-
son the “Dutch Barrier,” a string of forts in Belgium on the side toward France. But the
Dutch, strained by the war and outdistanced by England, never again played a primary role
in European political affairs. Two other small states ascended over the diplomatic horizon,
Savoy (or Piedmont) and Brandenburg. The rulers of both, for having sided with the
The battle of Blenheim, fought in Bavaria in 1704, was a great victory for the English and the Allied forces that joined to oppose the French in the War of the Spanish Succession. Blenheim brought fame and honors to the British commander, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough; for the French, it was the fi rst in a series of devastating military defeats that steadily weakened the power of Louis XIV. (Fotomas Index/Bridgeman Art Library)
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191
victors, were recognized as “kings” by the treaty of Utrecht. Savoy came to be known as
“Sardinia,” and Brandenburg as “Prussia.” More will be said of Prussia in the next
chapter.
The greatest winners were the British. Great Britain made its appear-
ance as a great power. The union of England and Scotland had taken place
during the war. Based at Gibraltar and Minorca, Britain was now a power
in the Mediterranean. Belgium, the “pistol pointed at the heart of England,”
was in the innocuous hands of the Austrians. The British added to their American hold-
ings, but far more valuable than Newfoundland and Nova Scotia was the asiento extorted from Spain. The asiento granted the lucrative privilege (which the French had sought) of providing Spanish America with African slaves. Much of the wealth of Bristol and
Liverpool in the following decades was to be built upon the slave trade. The asiento, by permitting one shipload of British goods to be brought each year to Porto Bello in Panama,
also provided opportunities for illicit trade in nonhuman cargoes.
The Spanish Empire was pried open, and British merchants entered on an era of
wholesale smuggling into Spanish America, competing strenuously with the French, who
because of their favored position in Spain were usually able to go through more legal
channels. Moreover, the British, by defeating France, assured themselves of a line of
Protestant kings and of the maintenance of constitutional and parliamentary government.
Britain becomes a
great power
PEASANT FAMILY IN A ROOM by Louis Le Nain (French, 1593–1648)
Although Le Nain portrayed a family in the fi rst half of the seventeenth century, the people in this painting do not differ much from the peasants who later suffered through wars, famines, and tax increases in the last decades of the long reign of Louis XIV. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
22. The Wars of Louis XIV: The Peace of Utrecht, 1713
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Chapter 4 The Growing Power of Western Europe, 1640–1715192
THE ATLANTIC WORLD AFTER THE PEACE OF UTRECHT, 1713 The map shows the partitioning of the Spanish Empire and the rise of the British. Spain and its American possessions went to the Bourbon Philip V; the European possessions of Spain—the Netherlands, Milan, Naples, and Sicily—went to the Austrian Habsburgs. Britain meanwhile was strengthened by the union of England and Scotland, the acquisition of Minorca, Gibraltar, and the commercial privilege of the “asiento” from Spain, and of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia from France. The French, for their part, had taken control of rich, Caribbean lands in Saint-Domingue (Santo Domingo) through an earlier treaty with Spain.
Britain
France
Portugal
Spain
Colonial Powers
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
HUDSON’S BAY
N E W F R A N C E
PORTUGAL
GUIANA
SPAIN
FRANCE
GREAT BRITAIN Formed in 1707 by union of England and Scotland
FLORIDA (Spain)
PRUSSIA
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
GUELDERLAND (Prussia 1714)
RUSSIA
SWEDEN
TO AUSTRIAN HABSBURGS 1714–1720
Spanish Netherlands, Sicily, Naples & Milan
MEXICO
LOUISIANA
NEW GRANADA
A F R I C A
ANGOLA
GUINEA
SP. NETH.
NAPLES
MILAN
SICILY
CANARY I. (Spain)
CAPE VERDE I. (Port.)
AZORES (Port.)
PERU B R A Z I L
CUBA
SANTO DOMINGO (France 1697)
NEWFOUNDLAND (France to Britain, 1713)
NOVA SCOTIA (Acadia) (France to Britain, 1713)
JAMAICA (Britain
1670) LESSER ANTILLES (British and French since about 1630)
(Dutch)
(Dutch)
(French)
AS IEN
TO
(Sp . to
Br. 171
3)
S L A V
E S
SARDINIA (Savoy, 1714, 1720)
M
INORCA (Spain to Britain, 1713)
GIBRALTAR (Spain to Britain, 1713)
Porto Bello
(Dutch)
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193
The ratifi cation of the Peace of Utrecht actually marked a further step in the evolution
of English constitutional history. The Whigs, who were the main supporters of the war
with France, thought the treaty insuffi ciently favorable to England. The Tories, pledged
to peace, had won the House of Commons in 1710, but the Whigs continued to control
the House of Lords. Queen Anne, at the request of Tory leaders and in the interests of
peace, raised 12 Tory commoners to the peerage in order to create a Tory majority in the
Lords and hence to obtain ratifi cation of the treaty. This established itself as a precedent;
it became an unwritten article of the British constitution that when the Lords blocked the
Commons on an important issue, the monarch could create enough new lords to make a
new majority in that House. After 1713, the Lords never again allowed themselves to be
swamped by newcomers and thus acceded in all future disputes to the will of the Com-
mons. The landed aristocracy and their merchant allies could now govern as they saw fi t.
The result was a rapid increase of wealth in England, precipitating within a few genera-
tions a veritable Industrial Revolution.
Except for the addition of England, the same powers were parties to the treaty of
Utrecht in 1713 as to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and they now confi rmed the system
of international relations established by Westphalia. The powers accepted each other as
members of the European system; recognized each other as sovereign states
connected only by free negotiation, war, and treaty; and adjusted their dif-
ferences through rather facile exchanges of territory, made in the interests
of a balance of power, and without regard to the nationality or presumed
wishes of the peoples affected. With Germany still in its “feudal chaos,”
Italy divided into minor states or controlled by foreign kings, and Spain subordinated to
France, the treaty of Utrecht left France and Great Britain as the two most vigorous impe-
rial powers of Europe. These countries soon became the two principal carriers and export-
ers of the European civilization that would spread its empires, institutions, and ideas
throughout much of the modern world. In the next chapter we look at how the societies of
central and eastern Europe, developed along lines of their own, even when they were
strongly infl uenced by the growing power and wealth of the western European states.
Confi rmation of the
European system
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
22. The Wars of Louis XIV: The Peace of Utrecht, 1713
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195
C h a p t e r 5 THE
TRANSFORMATION
OF EASTERN EUROPE,
1648–1740
In eastern Europe, in the century after the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, it became apparent that political
systems that failed to become more “modern” might
be in danger of going out of existence. In the mid-
seventeenth century most parts of eastern Europe
belonged to one or another of three older, decen-
tralized political organizations—the Holy Roman
Empire, the Republic of Poland, and the empire of
the Ottoman Turks (see maps, pp. 199, 200). All three
were loosely organized and increasingly ineffective.
They were challenged and gradually superseded by
three new and stronger powers—Prussia, Austria, and Russia. These three, by overrunning
the intermediate ground of Poland, came to adjoin one another and cover all eastern Europe
except the Balkans, which remained within the Ottoman Empire. It was in this same period
that Russia expanded territorially, adopted some of the technical and administrative apparatus
of western Europe, and became an active participant in European affairs.
East and West are of course relative terms. For the Russians Germany and even Poland
were “western.” But for Europe as a whole a signifi cant though indefi nite social and
economic line ran roughly along the Elbe and the Bohemian Mountains to the head of the
Adriatic Sea. East of this line towns were fewer than in the West, human labor was less
productive, and the middle classes were less strong. Above all, the peasants were governed
by their landlords. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, in eastern Europe in
contrast to what happened in the West, the peasants increasingly lost many of their older,
feudal-type rights and freedoms. The commercial revolution and widening of the market
created a strong merchant class in western Europe and tended to turn working people into a
legally free and mobile labor force. In eastern Europe these changes strengthened the great
landlords who produced for export and who secured their labor force by the institutions of
23. Three Aging Empires
24. The Formation of an
Austrian Monarchy
25. The Formation
of Prussia
26. The Transformation
of Russia
Chapter emblem: Russian workers building the new city of St. Petersburg during the reign of Tsar Peter I (1689–1725).
(Bettmann/Corbis)
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740196
serfdom and “hereditary subjection.” The main social unit was the agricultural estate. The
lord exploited his estate with uncompensated compulsory labor (or robot ) furnished by his people, who could neither migrate, marry, nor learn a trade except as he permitted, and
who, until the eighteenth century, had no legal protector or court of appeal other than him-
self. In the East, therefore, the landlords were exceedingly powerful. They were the only
signifi cant political class. And the three new states that grew up during this era—Prussia,
Austria, Russia—were alike in being landlord states.
23. THREE AGING EMPIRES
In 1648 the whole mainland of Europe from the French border almost to Moscow was
occupied by the three large and loosely built structures that have been mentioned—the
Holy Roman Empire, the Republic of Poland, and the empire of the Ottoman Turks. The
Ottoman power reached deeply into Europe, to about 50 miles from Vienna, and it extended
over what is now Romania and over the Tartars on the north shore of the Black Sea. Even
so, its European holdings were but a projection from the main mass of the Ottoman Empire
in Asia and Africa. Poland extended from roughly 100 miles east of Berlin to a hundred
miles west of Moscow and virtually from “sea to sea” in the old phrase of its patriots, from
the Baltic around Riga almost to the Black Sea coast. The Holy Roman Empire extended
from Poland and Hungary to the North Sea.
These three empires were by no means alike. The Holy Roman Empire bore some
of the oldest traditions of Christendom. Poland too had old connections with western
Europe and Christian religious institutions. Ottoman Turkey was a Muslim power, closely
connected to the Islamic civilization of the Middle East and fi lled with
peoples who generally lived outside European cultural traditions (despite a
long history of Mediterranean trade and commerce). Yet in some ways the
three resembled each other. In all of them central authority had become weak,
consisting largely of understandings between a nominal head and outlying
dignitaries or potentates. All lacked effi cient systems of administration and government.
All faced challenges from the newer, centralizing states that were now developing in coun-
tries such as France. All, but especially Poland and the Ottoman Empire, were made up of
diverse ethnic or language groups. The whole immense area was therefore politically weak.
It was malleable in the hands of kings or ruling elites who might become a little stronger
than their neighbors. We must try to see in what this weakness consisted, and how newer,
stronger state forms were created.
The Holy Roman Empire after 1648
The Holy Roman Empire, especially after the Peace of Westphalia, lacked almost all the
resources of a functioning imperial system. It possessed no real army, revenues, or working
organs of a central government; and as Voltaire later observed, it was neither holy, nor
Roman, nor an empire. Created in the Middle Ages, it was Roman in that it was believed to
continue the imperial sway of ancient Rome, and it was holy in being the secular counter-
part to the spiritual empire of the pope. It had been ruined by the Reformation, which left
the Germans divided almost evenly between Protestant and Catholic, with each side there-
after demanding special safeguards against the other. The empire continued, however, to be
universal in principle, having no relation to nationality and theoretically being a form of
government suitable to all peoples, although it had never lived up to this theoretical claim
Weaknesses of the
empires
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19723. Three Aging Empires
and had shown no expansionist tendency since the Middle Ages. In actuality, the empire
was roughly coterminous with the German states and the region of the German language,
except that it excluded after 1648 the Dutch and Swiss, who no longer considered them-
selves German; and it likewise excluded those Germans who since the fourteenth century
had settled along the eastern shores of the Baltic.
Large parts of the empire had suffered repeatedly from the Thirty Years’
War. Yet the war, and the peace terms that followed it, only accentuated an
economic situation that had already become unfavorable. Postwar revival
was diffi cult; the breakup of commercial connections and the wartime losses
of savings and capital were hard to overcome. Germany fell increasingly out
of step with the economic expansion and cultural changes in western Europe. The burgher
class, its ambitions blocked, lost much of its old vitality. No overseas colonies could be
founded, for want of strong enough government backing, as was shown when a colonial
venture of Brandenburg came to nothing. There were no stock exchanges in German cities
until one was established at Vienna in 1771, half a century after those of London, Paris, and
Amsterdam. Laws, tariffs, tolls, and coinage were more diverse than in France. Even the
calendar varied. It varied, indeed, throughout Europe as a whole, because Protestant states
long declined to accept the corrected calendar issued by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582; in parts
of divided Germany the holidays, the date of the month, and the day of the week changed
every few miles. The arts and letters, fl ourishing in western Europe as never before, were
at a low ebb in Germany during the seventeenth century. In science the Germans during
and after the Thirty Years’ War accomplished less than the English, Dutch, French, or
Italians, despite the great mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, one
of the infl uential intellectual leaders of the age. Only in music, in the work of performers
and composers such as the Bach family, did the Germans at this time excel. But music was
not then much heard beyond the place of its origin. Germany was thus mostly a byway in
the new creative arts and culture of seventeenth-century Europe.
After the Thirty Years’ War each German state had sovereign rights. These “states”
numbered some 300 or 2,000, depending on how they were counted. The higher fi gure
included the “knights of the empire,” found in south Germany and the Rhineland. They
were persons who acknowledged no overlordship except that of the emperor himself. The
knights had tiny estates of their own, averaging not over 100 acres apiece, consisting of an
“independent” castle and a manor or two, completely enclosed by the territory of a larger
surrounding state. But even without the knights there were about 300 states capable of
some independence of action—free cities, abbots without subjects, archbishops and bish-
ops ruling with temporal power, landgraves, margraves and dukes, and one king, the king
of Bohemia.
All these states were intent on preserving what were called the
“Germanic liberties.” They were gladly assisted by outside powers, notably
but not exclusively France. The Germanic liberties meant freedom of the
member states from control by emperor or empire. The rulers of the most
important states within the empire elected the emperor (there were nine electors by the end
of the seventeenth century), and they always required the successful candidate to accept
certain “capitulations,” in which he promised to safeguard all the privileges and immuni-
ties of the states. The Habsburgs, though consistently elected after 1438, had none of the
advantages of hereditary rulers, each having to bargain away in turn any gains made by his
predecessor. The elective principle meant that imperial power could not be accumulated and
transmitted from one generation to the next. It opened the doors to foreign intrigue, because
Effects of the Thirty
Year’s War
The “Germanic
liberties”
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740198
the electors were willing to consider whichever candidate would promise them most. The
French repeatedly supported a rival candidate to the Habsburgs. After 1648 they had sup-
porters in the electoral college, Bavaria and Cologne being the most consistently pro-French.
In 1742 the French obtained the elevation of their Bavarian ally to the imperial throne. The
offi ce of emperor became a political football for Germans and non-Germans alike.
Nor would the German states, after the Thirty Years’ War, allow any authority to the
imperial diet. The diet possessed the power to raise troops and taxes for the whole empire,
but the power remained unused because the various states feared that any such action would
diminish their own authority and independence. Meanwhile, the states that insisted with
such obstinacy on their liberties from the empire gave few liberties to their subjects. The
free cities were closed urban oligarchies, as indeed were most cities in other countries, but in
Germany the burgher oligarchs controlled free cities that were almost like sovereign states.
Most of the other European countries, large or small, developed in the direction of a central-
izing absolutism. Such absolutism was checked for Germany as a whole, only to reappear in
miniature in hundreds of different places. Each ruler thought himself a little Louis XIV, each
court a small Versailles. Subjects became attached by ties of sentiment to their rulers, who
almost always lived in the neighborhood and could be readily seen by passers-by. People
liked the small courts, the small armies, the gossipy politics, and the familiar offi cials of
their tiny states; and despite all its fl aws, the empire had the merit of holding this conglom-
eration of states in a lawful relation to one another. For a century and a half after the Peace of
Westphalia small states existed alongside larger ones, or often totally enclosed within them,
without serious fear for their security and without losing their independence.
Yet there were many ambitious rulers in Germany after the Peace of Westphalia. They
had won recognition of their sovereignty in 1648. They were busily building absolutist
monarchies, and they aspired also to expand their dominions. There were other ways of
doing this than by devouring their smaller neighbors outright. One was by marriage and
inheritance. The empire in this respect was a paradise for fortune hunters; the variety of
possible marriages was enormous because of the great number of ruling families. Another
outlet for ambition lay in the high politics of the empire. The Wittelsbach family, which
ruled in Bavaria, managed to win an electorate in the Thirty Years’War. Using this political
infl uence, they consistently placed family members in prominent ecclesiastical posts
throughout the Rhineland and attracted support from France, which in turn backed them
against the Habsburgs. The Guelph family, ruling in Hanover, schemed for years to obtain
an electorate, which they fi nally extorted from the emperor in 1692; in 1714 they inherited
the throne of Great Britain with King George I, preferred by the British as Protestants
to their Catholic Stuart cousins. The Hohenzollerns, electors of Brandenburg, inherited
territories as far apart as the Rhine and Vistula rivers.
CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE, 1660–1795 The upper panel of this map indicates boundaries as of 1660; the lower panel those of 1795, by which time the Ottoman Empire had been pushed back toward the Balkans and the Republic of Poland had been destroyed by Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Both panels show the evolving social border between the eastern and western agrarian zones, running from the mouth of the Elbe River into central Germany and down to Trieste. East of this line, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the peasants sank toward a new kind of serfdom in which they rendered forced labor to their lords on large farms. West of the line the peasants owed little or no forced labor and tilled small farms that they owned or rented. This line marks a somewhat imprecise but signifi cant social boundary that would also have an important infl uence on the political and economic history of modern Europe. This complex area is also shown in simplifi ed form on p. 200.
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199
B a l t i
c S e
a
Vistu la
R.
Da n u be R.
Elbe R.
R h
in e
R .
A d
ria tic
Sea
B l a c k S e a
DENMARK
SWISS CONFED.
VENICE
PI ED
M O
N T
BAVARIA
BOHEMIA
SAXONY SILESIA
SWEDEN
GALICIA
H U N G A R Y
TRANSYLVANIA
TUSCANY PAPAL STATES
BOSNIA
SERBIA
OTTOMAN EMPIRE BULGARIA
MOLDAVIA
HANOVER
AUSTRIA
AUSTRIAN MONARCHY
RUSSIAN EMPIRE
P R U S S I A
FRANCE
Riga
Moscow
Minsk
Kiev
Lemberg
Warsaw
Budapest
Prague
Vienna
Berlin
Trieste
Rome
Cologne
0 100 200 miles
Boundary of Holy Roman Empire
Boundary between Agrarian Zones
Church Lands
1795
0 100 200 miles
Boundary of Holy Roman Empire
Boundary between Agrarian Zones
Church Lands
1660
B a l t i
c S e
a
Da n u be R.
Elbe R.
R h
in e
R .
A d
ria tic
Sea
B l a c k S e a
V istula R.
DENMARK
SWISS CONFED.
VENICE
PI ED
M O
N T
FR A
N C
E
BAVARIA
BOHEMIA
SAXONY SILESIA
BR AN
DE NB
URG-PRUSSIA
SWEDEN
REPUBLIC OF POLAND
TUSCANY PAPAL STATES
K IN
G D
O M
O
F HU
NG AR
Y
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
AUS TRIA
MORAV IA
R U
S S
I A
GALICIA
HUNGARY
TRANSYLVANIASLAVONIA BOSNIA
SERBIA
BULGARIA
MOLDAVIA
Riga Moscow
Minsk
Kiev
Lemberg
Warsaw
Budapest
Prague
Vienna
Berlin
Trieste
Cologne
Rome
23. Three Aging Empires
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740200
AGING EMPIRES AND NEW POWERS The left panel shows the “three aging empires” that occupied much of central and eastern Europe in the seventeenth century. Though maintaining themselves with growing diffi culty under modern conditions, the Polish Republic lasted until 1795, the Holy Roman Empire until 1806, and the Ottoman Empire until 1923. Meanwhile, beginning in the seventeenth century, the political leadership in this area was assumed by three rising monarchical states that were developing new institutions such as standing armies and professional bureaucracies. These reorganizing states were the Austrian Empire of the Habsburgs, the Hohenzollern kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire of the Romanovs. They are shown in the right panel. All three fi gured prominently in the affairs of Europe for over 200 years; and all would perish in the First World War, 1914–1918.
B a l t
i c
S e a
A d ri a t i c
S e a
B l a c k S e a
N o r t h S e a
Mediterranean Sea
REPUBLIC OF POLAND
K . O
F H
U N
GA RY
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
O T
T O
M A
N
E M P I R E
Moscow
Warsaw
Budapest Vienna
Berlin
Constantinople
0 100 200 300 miles
1660
B a l t
i c S
e a
A
d r i atic Sea
Black Sea
N o r t h S e a
Mediterranean Sea
AUSTRIAN
MONARCHY
RUSSIAN EMPIRE PRUSSIA
O T T O
M A N
E M P I R E
Moscow
Warsaw
Budapest Vienna
Berlin
Constantinople
0 100 200 300 miles
Boundary of Holy Roman Empire
1795
The half-century after the Peace of Westphalia was thus a highly critical period in cen-
tral Europe. The situation in Germany was fl uid. No one could tell which, if any, of the half-
dozen chief German states would emerge in the lead. Nothing was crystallized; anything
might happen. Two states defi nitely came forward after 1700, built by the
skill and persistence of their rulers—Austria and Prussia. It is a curious and
revealing fact that neither really had a political or cultural name of its own.
They were for a long time known most commonly as “houses”—the house of Austria or
Habsburg and the house of Brandenburg or Hohenzollern. Each house put together a certain
combination of territories. Each would have been as willing to possess any other territorial
combination had the course of events been different. By extension of meaning, one came
to be called “Austria,” which for centuries had been simply an archduchy on the upper
Danube. The other, “Prussia,” for centuries had meant only a certain stretch of the Baltic
coast. To these two states we shall shortly turn.
The Republic of Poland about 1650
Running almost 1,000 miles eastward from the Holy Roman Empire in the middle of the
seventeenth century lay the vast tract of the Republic of Poland, called a republic because
its king was elected and because the political classes took pride in their constitutional
Austria and Prussia
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201
liberties. Its vast size was one cause of its internal peculiarities. No administrative system
could have kept up with the expansion of its frontiers, so that a large degree of freedom
had always been left to outlying lords. In addition, this geographical expansion had given
the Republic of Poland a heterogeneous population with diverse cultures, languages, and
religions.
The Polish state was a far more recent and less substantial creation than
the Holy Roman Empire. It was made up of two main parts, Poland proper
(the Kingdom of Poland) in the west and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
in the east. They had been joined by a union of their crowns (see maps,
pp. 199, 200). Only in the west was there a large Polish population. The Duchy of Prussia,
a fi ef of the Polish crown, was peopled mainly by Germans. Further east a Byelorussian
Poland and
Lithuania
COUNT STANISLAS POTOCKI by Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748–1825)
This portrait of a well-known eighteenth-century Polish nobleman—painted by David in 1781—expresses the sense of independent grandeur that characterized the Polish aristocracy for several centuries in the early modern era. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
23. Three Aging Empires
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740202
and Ukrainian peasantry was subject to a scattering of Polish and Lithuanian landlords.
Even in Poland itself the town population was not generally “Polish” in its language or
culture. Most townspeople were Germans and Jews. The Jews spoke Yiddish, derived from
German, and were very numerous because a king of Poland in the later Middle Ages had
welcomed Jewish refugees fl eeing from anti-Jewish violence in Germany. They lived in
separate communities with their own law, language, and religion, forming large vibrant
islands of Orthodox Jewish life in the Gentile ocean. The Germans too held aloof, resist-
ing assimilation to the cultures and communities that surrounded them. An unsurpassable
barrier thus existed between town and country. There was no national middle class. The
offi cial and political language was Latin. Roman Catholicism was the leading religion.
Poland is interesting as the region in which the landed aristocracy prevailed over all
other groups in the country, neither allowing the consolidation of the state on absolutist
lines, nor yet creating an effective constitutional or parliamentary government. The Polish
aristocracy, or szlachta, made up some 8 percent of the population, a far higher proportion than the aristocracy of any country in western Europe. On this ground the old Polish king-
dom has sometimes been considered, especially by later Polish nationalists, as the pos-
sessor of an early form of democracy. The aristocracy were sticklers for their liberties,
called the “Polish liberties,” which resembled the German liberties in that they consisted
largely of a fi erce suspicion of central authority and were a perpetual invitation to foreign
interference. As in the Holy Roman Empire, the monarchy was elective, and the king
upon election had to accept certain contractual agreements, which, like the German
“capitulations,” prevented the accumulation of monarchical authority. The Poles were too
politically divided to accept one of their own number as king, so from 1572 to the extinc-
tion of Poland over two centuries later there were only two native Polish kings who
reigned for any length of time. One of these kings was the national hero John Sobieski,
who led a decisive campaign against the army of the Ottoman Empire
during the 1680s.
As in Germany, the central diet was ineffective, so the centers of politi-
cal action were local. The aristocracy met in 50 or 60 regional diets, turbu-
lent assemblages of warlike gentry, in which the great lords used the lesser
lords for their own purposes. The central diet, from which the towns were excluded, was a
periodic meeting of emissaries, under binding instructions from the regional diets. It came
to be recognized, as one of the liberties of the country, that the central diet could take no
action to which any member objected. Any member, by stating his unalterable opposition,
could oblige a diet to disband. This was the famous liberum veto, the free veto, and to use it to break up a diet was called “exploding” the diet. The fi rst diet was exploded in 1652.
Of 55 diets held from that year to 1764, 48 were exploded.
Government under these conditions became a paralyzing stalemate. The monopoly of
law and force, characteristic of the modern state, failed to develop in Poland. The king of
Poland had practically no army, no law courts, no offi cials, and no income. The nobility
paid no taxes, and no institution had the authority or power to make reforms. By 1750 the
revenues of the king of Poland were about one-thirteenth those of the tsar of Russia and
one seventy-fi fth those of the king of France. Armed force was in the hands of a dozen or
so aristocratic leaders, who also conducted their individual foreign policies, pursuing their
own adventures against the Turks, or bringing in Russians, French, or Swedes to help them
against other Poles. The landlords became local monarchs on their manorial estates. The
mass of the rural population fell deeper into a serfdom scarcely different from slavery,
bound to compulsory labor on estates resembling plantations, with police and disciplinary
Weakness of central
government
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203
powers in the hands of the lords and with no outside legal or administrative system to set
the limits of exploitation.
The huge expanse comprised under the name of Poland was, in short, a political
vacuum; and as more powerful centers developed, notably around Berlin and
Moscow, the push against the Polish frontiers became steadily stronger. It
was facilitated by the Poles themselves. As early as 1660 the East Prussian
fi ef became independent of the Polish crown. As early as 1667 the Musco-
vites reconquered Smolensk and Kiev. Already there was confi dential talk of partitioning
Poland, which, however, was deferred for a century. Much of the history of modern Europe
would have been different had the seventeenth-century Republic of Poland held together or
built a more powerful, centralized state. There may have been no kingdom of Prussia and no
Prussian infl uence in Germany; nor would Russia have become the chief Slavic power or
reached so far into central Europe.
The Ottoman Empire about 1650
The Ottoman state, the third of the three multicultural empires that together spread over
so much of central and eastern Europe, was larger than either of the others, and in the
seventeenth century it was much more solidly organized and powerful. In 1529 the Turks
had attacked Vienna and seemed about to move into Germany, where the bitter confl icts
of the Lutheran Reformation were then dividing and distracting the German princes. To
most people in Europe the Turks were a mystery as well as a commercial rival or a looming
military threat. We have seen, for example, how Philip II of Spain sent his navy to wage
war against Ottoman forces in the Mediterranean during the sixteenth century. But Turkish
culture and institutions were still not well known in Europe. The Turks had lived orig-
inally in central Asia, from where they migrated into Anatolia during the Middle Ages
and eventually conquered Constantinople in 1453. They were Muslims who drew much of
their Islamic civilization from the Arabs and Persians, whom they had also conquered and
with whom they had developed extensive cultural and economic exchanges over several
centuries. Turkish armies had entered the Balkans even before their conquest of Constan-
tinople, and they steadily gained control of new Balkan territories after military victories,
such as the Battle of Kosovo (1389). The Ottoman Empire later expanded deeper into
Europe under the skillful leadership of Suleiman the Magnifi cent, who introduced impor-
tant legal reforms and also led the army that was turned back from Vienna in 1529.
The Ottoman Empire remained the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean and
southeastern Europe throughout the seventeenth century, and their dominions extended,
about 1650, from the Hungarian plain and the south Russian steppes as far as Algeria,
the upper Nile, and the Persian Gulf. The empire was based to a large degree on military
profi ciency.
Long before the European states had established permanent military forces, the Turks
already had a standing army, of which the well-disciplined janissaries were the main strik-
ing force. The janissaries were originally recruited from Christian children taken from
their families in early childhood, brought up as Muslims, reared in military surround-
ings, and forbidden to marry (this restriction was gradually dropped in the late sixteenth
century). Without social ties, interests, or ambitions outside the military organization to which
they belonged, the janissaries were an ideal professional fi ghting force under the control
of political leaders. The Turkish forces were long as well equipped as the Christian,
being especially strong in heavy artillery. But by the mid-seventeenth century they were
Pressures on Poland
23. Three Aging Empires
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740204
beginning to fall behind. Their armies had changed little, or for the worse, since the days
of Suleiman the Magnifi cent a century before, whereas in the better-organized Christian
states discipline and military administration had been improved, and fi rearms, land mines,
and siegecraft had become more effective.
The Turks cared little about assimilating subject peoples to their language or institu-
tions. Local populations within the empire thus retained most of their cultural traditions
and autonomy. Law was based on religious law derived from the Qur’an. Law courts and
judges were hard to distinguish from religious authorities, for there was no separation
between religious and secular spheres. The sultan was also the caliph, the commander of
the faithful; while on the one hand there was no clergy in the European sense, on the other
hand religious infl uences affected all aspects of life. The Turks, for the most part, applied
the Muslim law only to Muslims; and the overall administration of imperial policies was
controlled by a powerful government offi cial called the grand vizier.
The Ottoman government left its non-Muslim subjects to settle their
own affairs in their own way, not according to nationality, which was gen-
erally indistinguishable, but according to religious groupings. The Greek
Orthodox church, to which most Christians in the empire belonged, thus
became an almost autonomous intermediary between the sultan and a large fraction of its
subjects. Armenian Christians and Jews formed other separate bodies. Except in the west-
ern Balkans (Albania and Bosnia) there was no general conversion of Christians to Islam
Tolerance of non-
Muslim subjects
De Agostini/Getty Images
Suleiman the Magnifi cent was the most important sultan in the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire. During his long reign (1520–1566) Suleiman introduced numerous imperial reforms and expanded Ottoman power deep into the Balkans and central Europe, where his forces came into repeated confl ict with the Austrian Habsburgs. This Turkish miniature shows Suleiman in his exalted position as he receives a visiting emissary. (De Agostini/Getty Images)
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205
during the Turkish rule, although there were many individual cases of Christians turning
Muslim to obtain the privileges of the ruling faith. North of the Danube the Christian
princes of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia (later combined into modern Romania)
continued to rule over Christian subjects. They were kept in offi ce for that purpose by the
sultan, to whom they paid tribute. In general, because their subjects were more profi table
to them as Christians, the Turks were not eager to proselytize for Islam.
The Ottoman Empire was therefore a relatively tolerant empire, far more so than the
states of Europe. Christians in the Ottoman Empire fared better than Muslims would have
fared in Christendom or than the Moors and Jews had in fact fared in Spain. Christians
were less disturbed in Turkey than were Protestants in France, after 1685, or Catholics in
Ireland. The empire was tolerant because it was composite, an aggregation of peoples,
religions, and laws, having no drive, as did the Western states, toward internal unity and
complete legal sovereignty. The same tolerance was evident in the attitude toward foreign
merchants, who were active throughout most of the empire.
The king of France had had treaty arrangements with Turkey since 1535, and many
traders from Marseilles had spread over the port towns of the Middle East. They were
exempted by treaty from the laws of the Ottoman Empire and were liable to trial only by
their own judges, who though residing in Turkey were appointed by the king of France.
They were free to exercise their Roman Catholic religion, and if disputes with Muslims
arose, they appeared in special courts where the word of an infi del received equal weight
with that of a follower of the prophet. Similar rights in Turkey were obtained
by other European states. Thus began “extraterritorial” privileges of the
kind obtained by Europeans in later centuries in China and elsewhere, wher-
ever the local laws were regarded as “backward,” or hostile to Europeans.
To the Turks of the seventeenth century there was nothing exceptional
about such arrangements. Only much later, under Western infl uence and the rise of modern
nationalism, did the Turks come to resent these “capitulations” as impairments of their own
sovereignty.
Yet the Turkish rule was often oppressive, and the “terrible Turk” was the recurring
religious and military nightmare of eastern Europe. Ottoman rule was oppressive to
Christians if only because it relegated them to a secondary position and because everything
they held holy was viewed by the Turks with little respect and even (at times) with
contempt. But Ottoman rule could be oppressive also in that it was often arbitrary and brutal
even by the none too sensitive standards of Europeans. It was worse in these respects in the
seventeenth century than formerly, for the central authority of the sultans gradually became
corrupt, and the outlying governors, or pashas, had a virtual free hand with their subjects.
Those parts of the Ottoman Empire that adjoined the Christian states were among
the least fi rmly attached to Constantinople. The Tartar Khans of south
Russia, like the Christian princes of the Danubian principalities, were sim-
ply protégés who paid tribute. Hungary was occupied by the Ottomans, but
it was more a battlefi eld than a province. These regions were disputed by
Germans, Poles, and Russians. It seemed in the middle of the seventeenth century as if the
grip of the Turks might be relaxing. But a series of capable grand viziers, of the Köprülü
family, came to power and retained it contrary to Turkish customs for 50 years. Under
them the empire again launched a military campaign to expand into the Habsburg lands in
central Europe. By 1663 the janissaries were again mobilizing in Hungary. Tartar horse-
men were on the move. Central Europe again felt the old terror. The pope feared that the
dreaded Ottoman enemy might break into Italy. Throughout Germany by the emperor’s
“Extraterritorial”
privileges
Disputed regions
23. Three Aging Empires
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740206
order special “Turk bells” sounded the alarm. The states of the empire voted to raise a
small imperial army. The Holy Roman Empire thus bestirred itself temporarily against the
historic enemy of European Christians. However, it was not under the auspices of the Holy
Roman Empire, but by the house of Austria that the Turks were repelled.
24. THE FORMATION OF AN AUSTRIAN MONARCHY
The Recovery and Growth of Habsburg Power, 1648–1740
The Austria that was gaining international infl uence by 1700 was actually a new creation,
though not as obviously so as the two other rising states in Prussia and Russia. The Austrian
Habsburgs had long enjoyed an eminent role. Formerly their position had rested on their
headship of the Holy Roman Empire and on their family connection with the wealthy
Habsburgs of Spain. In the seventeenth century these two supports collapsed. The hope
for an effective Habsburg Empire in Germany disappeared in the Thirty Years’ War. The
connection with Spain lost its value as Spain declined, and it vanished when in 1700 Spain
passed to the Bourbon family of France. The Austrian royal family in the latter half of the
seventeenth century stood at the great turning point of its fortunes. It successfully made a
diffi cult transition, emerging from the husk of the Holy Roman Empire and building an
empire of its own. At the same time the Habsburgs continued to be Holy Roman Emperors
and remained active in German affairs, using resources drawn from outside Germany to
maintain their infl uence over the German princes. The relation of Austria to the rest of
Germany remained a political conundrum down to the twentieth century.
The Austrian Habsburgs held direct control over three main
geographical regions of Europe. Their oldest territories were the “hereditary
provinces”—Upper and Lower Austria, with the adjoining Tyrol, Styria,
Carinthia, and Carniola. Second, they controlled the kingdom of Bohemia—Bohemia,
Moravia, and Silesia joined under the crown of St. Wenceslas. Third, there was the kingdom
of Hungary—Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia joined under the crown of St. Stephen.
Nothing held all these regions together except the fact that the Austrian Habsburg dynasty,
in the seventeenth century, reaffi rmed its political grip upon them all. During the Thirty
Years’ War the dynasty rooted Protestantism and feudal rebelliousness out of Austria and
the hereditary provinces. It also reconquered and re-Catholicized Bohemia, and in the
following decades it was able to conquer Hungary.
Since 1526 most of Hungary had been occupied by the Turks. For generations the Hun-
garian plain was a theater of intermittent warfare between the armies of Vienna and Constan-
tinople. The struggle had fl ared up again in 1663, when, as noted earlier, the armies of the
Ottoman Empire began to move up the Danube. A mixed force, assembled from the empire
and its various European allies, stopped this advance and obliged the Turks in 1664 to accept
a 20-year truce. But Louis XIV, who in these years was busily dismembering the western
frontier of the Holy Roman Empire, stood to profi t greatly from an Ottoman diversion on the
Danube. He incited the Turks (old allies of France through common hostility to the Habsburgs)
to resume their assaults, which they did as the 20-year truce came to a close.
In 1683 a large Turkish army reached Vienna and set up an extended
siege of the city. The Turks again, as in 1529, threatened to break through to
the main centers of German culture and political power. The garrison and
people of Vienna, greatly outnumbered, held off the besiegers for two months,
enough time for a defending force to arrive from other parts of eastern Europe.
Dominions of Austria
Vienna besieged by
the Turks
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20724. The Formation of an Austrian Monarchy
Both sides showed the “international” character of the confl ict. The Turkish army included
Christians—Romanian and Hungarian—the latter in rebellion against Habsburg rule in
Hungary. The anti-Turkish force was composed mainly of Poles, Austrian dynastic troops,
and Germans from various states of the Holy Roman Empire. It was fi nanced largely by
Pope Innocent XI; it was commanded in the fi eld by the Habsburg general, Duke Charles
of Lorraine, who hoped to protect his inheritance on the eastern borders of France from
annexation by Louis XIV, and its higher command was entrusted to John Sobieski, king of
Poland. Sobieski contributed greatly to the victory of the Habsburg allies at the battle of
Vienna, which broke the Ottoman siege and also was the last great military effort of the
moribund Republic of Poland. After the Turks abandoned their siege, a general anti-
Turkish counteroffensive developed across southeastern Europe. Armed forces of the
pope, Poland, Russia, and the republic of Venice joined with the Habsburgs in new cam-
paigns. It was in this war, in fi ghting between Turks and Venetians, that the Parthenon at
Athens, which had survived for 2,000 years but which the Turks now used as a citadel for
storing ammunition, was severely damaged when a Venetian bombardment set off an
explosion of the Turkish munitions.
The Habsburgs had the good fortune to obtain the services of a man of remarkable
talent, Prince Eugene of Savoy. Eugene, like many other servants of the
Austrian house, was not Austrian at all; he was in fact French by origin and
education but like many aristocrats of the time he was an international per-
sonage. More than anyone else he was the founder of the modern Austrian
state. Distinguished both as a military administrator and as a commander
in the fi eld, he reformed the supply, equipment, training, and command of the Habsburg
forces, along lines laid out by Louis XIV; and in 1697 he won the battle of Zenta, driving
the Ottoman forces out of Hungary. At the Peace of Karlowitz (1699) the Turks yielded
most of Hungary, together with Transylvania and Croatia, to the Habsburg house; and the
Ottoman Empire was pushed back permanently into Romania and the Balkans.
The Habsburgs were now free to pursue their ambitions in the west. They entered
the War of the Spanish Succession to win the Spanish crown, but they had to content
themselves by the treaty of Rastatt in 1714 with the annexation of the old Spanish
Netherlands and with Milan and Naples. Prince Eugene, freed now in the west, again turned
eastward. Never before or afterward were the Austrians so brilliantly successful. Eugene
captured Belgrade and pushed through the Iron Gate into Wallachia. But the Ottoman
Empire was by no means helpless, and Turkish armies later drove the Austrians from much
of the Balkan territory they had recently occupied. The Peace of Belgrade (1739) drew
a new frontier that on the Austrian side remained unchanged until the twentieth century.
The Turks continued to hold Romania and the whole Balkan peninsula except Catholic
Croatia, which was incorporated into the Habsburg Empire. The Habsburg government,
to open a window on the Mediterranean, developed a seaport at Trieste. Meanwhile the
Ottoman Empire remained an important contributor to the cross-cultural exchanges,
contacts, and confl icts that constantly infl uenced the political and economic life of every
European country in the Mediterranean world.
The Austrian Monarchy by 1740
Thus the royal house of Austria, in two or three generations after its humiliation at the Peace
of Westphalia, acquired a new empire of considerable proportions. Though installed in
Belgium and Italy, it was essentially an empire of the middle Danube, with its headquarters
Prince Eugene of
Savoy
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740208
The Austrian Habsburgs mobilized a large force of military alllies, including Polish troops under King John Sobieski, to repel the Turkish army that besieged Vienna in 1683. This painting by Franz Geffels (1635–c. 1699) portrays the fi nal, decisive clash that forced the Turks to abandon their siege of the city. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
at Vienna in Austria proper, but possessing also the sizable kingdoms of Hungary and
Bohemia. Though German infl uence was strong, the empire was international—or nonna-
tional. At the Habsburg court, and in the Habsburg government and army, the names of
Czech, Hungarian, Croatian, and Italian noblemen were common. When nationalist move-
ments later swept over Europe in the nineteenth century, the empire was denounced as
tyrannical by Hungarians, Croats, Serbs, Romanians, Czechs, Poles, Italians, and even by
some Germans, whose national ambitions were blocked by its existence. In more recent
times, disillusioned by nationalism in central and eastern Europe, some historians tended
to romanticize unduly the old Habsburg monarchy, noting that it had at least the merit of
holding many discordant peoples together.
The empire was based on a cosmopolitan aristocracy of landowners
who felt closer to each other, despite differences of language, than to the
laboring masses who worked on their estates. Not for many years, until after
1848, did the Habsburg government really touch these rural masses; it dealt
with the landed class and with the relatively few cities, but it left the land-
lords to control the peasants. The old diets, or assemblies, survived in Bohemia, Hungary,
and the Austrian provinces. No diet was created for the empire as a whole. The regional
diets were essentially assemblages of landlords; and though they no longer enjoyed their
medieval freedoms, they retained powers over taxation and administration and a sense of
constitutional liberty against the crown. So long as they produced taxes and soldiers as
needed, and accepted the wars and foreign policy of the ruling house, no questions were
An international
empire
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209
asked at Vienna. Religion was a different matter, however, for the Habsburgs forcefully
repressed the Protestantism that had spread widely across both Bohemia and Hungary.
Many of the estates of Protestant nobles and rebels were confi scated, giving the Habsburgs
valuable lands with which to reward soldiers and supporters from all parts of Europe. An
increasingly heterogeneous population of Germans, Croats, and Serbs settled in Habsburg
territories, especially in Hungary. Meanwhile, the peasants remained in, or reverted to,
serfdom.
Despite the concerted political, religious, and military policies of the Habsburg rulers,
the Austrian Empire was still a collection of territories held together by a political allegiance
to the same Habsburg monarch. Inhabitants of Austria proper considered their ruler as arch-
duke, Bohemians saw in him the king of Bohemia; Magyars, the apostolic king of Hungary.
Each country retained its own law, diet, and political life, all of which made it diffi cult or
THE GROWTH OF THE AUSTRIAN MONARCHY, 1521–1772 The map shows the main body of the Austrian monarchy as it evolved in the eighteenth century and endured until the collapse of the empire in 1918. There were three main parts: (1) a nucleus, composed of Austria and adjoining duchies, often called the “hereditary provinces”; (2) the lands of the Bohemian crown, which became Habsburg in 1526 and where the Habsburgs reas- serted their power during the Thirty Years’ War; and (3) the lands of the Hungarian crown, where at fi rst the Habsburgs held only the segment called Imperial Hungary, the rest remaining within the Ottoman Empire until the Habsburgs gained almost full control in 1699. In the fi rst partition of Poland (1772) the Habsburgs annexed Galicia. Silesia was lost to Prussia in 1740.
Danube R.
Da nu
be R .
Vistu la
R .
AUSTRIA
TYROL STYRIA
CARNIOLA
CR O AT
IA
CARINTHIA
MORAVIA BOHEMIA
SILESIA (TO PRUSSIA 1740)
HUNGARY
SLAVONIA
TRANSYLVANIA
GALICIA
Belgrade
Mohacs
Budapest
Lemberg
Pressburg
Cracow Prague
Vienna
0 50 100 miles
Austria in 1521
Crown of Bohemia 1526
Imperial Hungary 1526
Galicia (From First Partition of Poland 1772)
Crown of Hungary 1526–1699
From Ottoman Empire
24. The Formation of an Austrian Monarchy
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740210
impossible for the Habsburgs to establish laws and institutions that would be accepted in all
the territories they ruled. No shared “national” feeling in the people held these regions
together, and even the several aristocracies were joined only by common service to the
Habsburgs. For the empire to exist, all crowns had to be inherited by the same person.
As the Habsburgs consolidated their control of Hungary, the king-archduke, Charles VI
(1711–1740), devised a form of insurance to guarantee such an undivided succession. This
took the form of a document called the Pragmatic Sanction, fi rst issued
in 1713. By it every diet in the empire and the various archdukes of the
Habsburg family were to agree to regard the Habsburg territories as indivis-
ible and to recognize only the Habsburg line of heirs. The matter became
urgent when it developed that Charles would have no male heir. The direct
male line of the Austrian Habsburgs, as of the Spanish a few years before, was about to
become extinct. But Charles did have a daughter, Maria Theresa, and he gradually won
acceptance of the “Pragmatic Sanction” by all parts of his empire and all members of
his family. Women had never inherited the Habsburg monarchy, and, by law, a woman
could not rule Austria; but the Pragmatic Sanction recognized Maria Theresa’s right to
the Habsburg throne and to the inheritance of all Habsburg territories. Charles set about
having foreign powers guarantee the agreement, knowing that Bavaria, Prussia, or others
might well put in claims for this or that part of the inheritance. This process took years, and
was accomplished at the cost of many damaging concessions. Finally all powers signed the
agreement. Charles VI died in 1740, having done all that could be done, by domestic law
and international treaty, to assure the continuation of the Austrian Empire.
Like all such plans, however, the legal agreements could not be forcefully defended
from a tomb, and Charles was scarcely dead when armed “heirs” presented themselves.
A great war broke out to partition the Austrian Empire, as the Spanish Empire had been
partitioned shortly before. Bohemia threw off its allegiance. Hungary almost did the
same. But these events became connected to wider European confl icts during “The War
of the Austrian Succession,” which will be discussed in a later chapter. At the moment it
is enough to know that by 1740 a populous empire of great military strength existed on
the Danube.
25. THE FORMATION OF PRUSSIA
It was characteristic of the seventeenth century that very small states were able to play an
infl uential part in European affairs, seemingly out of all proportion to their size. The main
reason why small states could act as great powers was that armies were small and weapons
were simple. Diffi culties of supply and communications, the poor condition of the roads,
the lack of maps, the absence of general staffs, together with many other administrative
and technical diffi culties, reduced the number of soldiers who could be successfully man-
aged in a campaign. The battles of the Thirty Years’ War, on the average, were fought by
armies of less than 20,000 men. And while Louis XIV, by the last years of his reign, built
up a military establishment aggregating some 400,000, the actual fi eld armies in the wars
of Louis XIV did not exceed, on the average, 40,000. Armies of this size were well within
the reach of smaller powers. If especially well trained, disciplined, and equipped, and if
ably commanded, the armies of smaller states could defeat those of much larger neighbors.
On this fact, fundamentally, the German state of Prussia would be built. But Sweden was
actually the fi rst such smaller power to exploit this kind of military opportunity with spec-
tacular consequences.
Charles VI and the
Pragmatic Sanction
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21125. The Formation of Prussia
Sweden’s Short-Lived Empire
Sweden almost, but not quite, formed an empire in central and eastern Europe in the
seventeenth century. The population of Sweden at the time was not over a million; it was
smaller than that of the Dutch Republic. But the Swedes produced a line of extraordinary
rulers, ranging from genius in Gustavus Adolphus (1611–1632) through the brilliantly
erratic Queen Christina (1632–1654) to the amazing military exploits of Charles XII
(1697–1718). The elective Swedish kingship was made hereditary, so that the royal power
was freed from control by the estates. Craftsmen and experts were brought from the west,
notably Holland; war industries were subsidized by the government; and an army was
created with many novel features in weapons, organization, and tactics.
With this army Gustavus Adolphus crossed the Baltic in the Thirty
Years’ War, made alliances with Protestant German princes, cut through
the Holy Roman Empire, and helped to ward off the Habsburg unifi cation
of Germany. The Swedish crown, by the Peace of Westphalia, received
certain coastal regions of Germany. Subsequently, in a complex series of wars, the Swedes
won control of virtually all the shores and cities of the Baltic. Only Denmark at the mouth
of that sea and the territories of the house of Brandenburg, which had almost no ports,
remained independent. For a time the Baltic was a Swedish lake. The Russians were shut
off from it, and the Poles and even the Germans, who lived on its shores, could use the
Baltic only on Swedish terms.
The fi nal Swedish campaign for imperial expansion took place during
the meteoric reign of Charles XII. As a young man he found his dominions
attacked by Denmark, Poland, and Russia; he won remarkable victories over
them but would not make peace; he then led an army back and forth across
the eastern European plain, only to be crushed by the Russians. He fl ed to the Ottoman
Empire and spent several years as a guest and protégé of the Turks before he eventually
returned to Sweden. By the time Charles died in 1718 the Swedish sphere had contracted
to Sweden itself, except that Finland and reduced holdings in northern Germany remained
Swedish for a century more. The Swedes in time proved themselves exceptional among
European peoples in not harping on their former greatness. They successfully and peace-
ably made the transition from the role of an important military state to that of a small power.
The Territorial Growth of Brandenburg-Prussia
In the long run it was to be Prussia that dominated the northern part of central Europe.
Prussia became famous for its “militarism,” which may be said to exist when military
needs and military values permeate all other spheres of life. Through its infl uence on
Germany over a period of two centuries Prussia played a momentous part in modern
European and world history. The south coast of the Baltic, where Prussia was to arise, was
an unpromising site for the creation of a strong political power. It was an uninviting coun-
try, thinly populated, with poor soil and without mineral resources, more backward than
Saxony or Bohemia, not to mention the busy centers of south Germany and western
Europe. It was a fl at open plain, merging imperceptibly into Poland, without prominent
physical features or natural frontiers (see maps, pp. 4–5, 195, 200, 214–215). The coastal
region directly south from Sweden was known as Pomerania. Inland from it, shut off from
the sea, was Brandenburg, centering about Berlin. Brandenburg had been founded in the
Middle Ages as a border state, a “mark” or “march” of the Holy Roman Empire, to fi ght
Swedish territorial
victories
Charles XII
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740212
the battles of the empire against the then heathen Slavs. Its ruler, the margrave, was one of
the seven princes who, after 1356, elected the Holy Roman Emperor. Hence he was com-
monly called the Elector of Brandenburg. After 1415 the electors were always of the
Hohenzollern family.
All Germany east of the Elbe, including Brandenburg, represented a
medieval conquest by German-speaking peoples—the German Drang nach Osten, or drive to the East. From the Elbe to Poland, German conquerors and settlers had replaced the Slavs, eliminating them or absorbing them by inter-
marriage. Eastward from Brandenburg, and outside the Holy Roman Empire, stretched a
region inhabited by Slavic peoples. Next to the east came “Prussia,” which eventually was to
give its name to all territories of the Hohenzollern monarchy. This original Prussia formed
part of the lands of the Teutonic Knights, a military crusading order that had conquered and
Christianized the native peoples in the thirteenth century. Except for its seacoast along the
Baltic, the duchy of Prussia was totally enclosed by the Polish kingdom. To the north, along
the Baltic, as far as the Gulf of Finland, German minorities lived among Lithuanians, Latvians
(or Letts), and Estonians. The towns were German, founded as German commercial colonies
in the Middle Ages, and many of the landlords were German also, descendants of the
Teutonic Knights, and later known as the “Baltic barons.”
Modern Prussia began to emerge in the seventeenth century when a num-
ber of territories came into the hands of the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg.
In 1618 the Elector of Brandenburg inherited the duchy of Prussia. Another
important development occurred when the old ruling line in Pomerania
expired during the Thirty Years’ War. Although the Swedes succeeded in taking the better
part of Pomerania, including the city of Stettin, the Elector of Brandenburg received at the
Peace of Westphalia eastern Pomerania. Barren, rural, and harborless though it was, it at least
had the advantage of connecting Brandenburg with the Baltic. The Hohenzollerns no sooner
obtained it than they began to dream of joining it with their duchy of Prussia to the east, a task
that required the absorption of an intermediate and predominantly Slavic area, which was part
of Poland, a task not accomplished until 1772.
Had the duchy of Prussia and eastern Pomerania been the only acquisitions of the
Hohenzollerns, their state would have been oriented almost exclusively toward eastern
Europe. But at the Peace of Westphalia they received, in addition to eastern Pomerania,
new territories on the west bank of the Elbe. Moreover, through the play of family inheri-
tances common in the Holy Roman Empire, the Hohenzollerns had earlier, in 1614, come
to control the small state of Cleves on the Rhine at the Dutch border and a few other small
territories also in western Germany. These were separated from the main Hohenzollern
lands around Brandenburg by many intermediate German principalities, but the western
territories provided direct contact with the more advanced regions of western Europe and a
base from which larger holdings in the Rhineland were eventually to be built up.
In the seventeenth century the dominions of the house of Brandenburg were therefore
developing in three disconnected territories. The main one was Brandenburg, with adjoin-
ing Pomerania and territories along the Elbe. There was also a detached eastern territory in
the duchy of Prussia and another small detached western territory on and near the Rhine.
To connect and unify these three territorial possessions became the long-range policy of
the Brandenburg house.
In the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, in 1640, a young man of 20,
named Frederick William, succeeded to these diverse possessions. Known
later as the Great Elector, he was the fi rst of the several infl uential leaders
Germans expand
eastward
Territorial
acquisitions of the
Hohenzollerns
The Great Elector
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213
who shaped modern Prussia. He had grown up under trying conditions. Brandenburg was
one of the parts of Germany to suffer most heavily from the war. Its location made it the
stamping ground of Swedish and Habsburg armies. In 1640, in the 22 years since the
beginning of the war, the population of Berlin had fallen from about 14,000 to about 6,000.
Hundreds of villages had been completely wiped out.
Frederick William concluded that in his position, ruling a small and open territory,
without natural frontiers or the strategic possibility of defense in depth, he must put his
main reliance on a competent army. With an effective army, even if small, he could force
the stronger states to take him into their calculations and thereby enter with some hope of
advantage into the politics of the balance of power. This long remained the program of the
Brandenburgers—to have an army but not to use it, to conserve it with loving and even
miserly care, to keep an “army in being,” and to gain their ends by diplomatic maneuver.
They did so by siding with France against the Habsburgs, or with Sweden against Poland.
They aspired also to the title not merely of margrave or elector, but to the rank of king. The
opportunity came in 1701, when the Habsburg emperor was preparing to enter the War of
the Spanish Succession. The emperor requested the elector of Brandenburg, who was then
Frederick III, to support him with 8,000 troops. The elector named his price: recognition
of himself, by the emperor, as king “in Prussia.” The emperor yielded; the title, at fi rst
explicitly limited to the less honorable king in Prussia, soon became king of Prussia. The elector Frederick III of Brandenburg became King Frederick I of Prussia. Another thread
was torn from the fraying fabric of the Holy Roman Empire; and there was now a German
king above all the other German princes.
The Prussian Military State
The preoccupation of Prussia with its army was unquestionably defensive in origin, arising
from the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War. But it outlasted its cause and shaped the evolving
character of the country. Prussia was not unique in the attention it paid to its armed forces.
The unique thing about Prussia was the disproportion between the size of the army and
the size of the resources on which the army was based. The government, to maintain
Frederick William, who became known as the Great Elector, governed Prussia for almost 50 years (1640–1688) and set his country on a course toward new power and military infl uence in central Europe. (Foto Marburg/Art Resource, NY)
25. The Formation of Prussia
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740214
North Sea Baltic Sea
North Sea Baltic Sea
North Sea Baltic Sea
North Sea Baltic Sea
R h
in e R
.
Elbe R.
Oder R.
Vistula R.
Nieman R.
R h
in e R
.
Elbe R.
Oder R.
Vistula R.
Nieman R.
Elbe R.
Oder R.
Vistula R.
Nieman R.
R h
in e R
.
Elbe R.
Oder R.
Vistula R.
Nieman R.
Rh in
e R
.
KROSSEN 1482
BEUTHEN 1603–1607
EAST FRIESLAND
1744
GUELDERS 1715
SILESIA FROM AUSTRIA 1740
RAVENSBURG 1614
MARK 1614
MAGDEBURG 1648
FARTHER POMERANIA 1648
DUCHY OF PRUSSIA
1618
CLEVES 1614
MANSFIELD 1780
SOUTH PRUSSIA 1793
WEST PRUSSIA
1772 NEW EAST PRUSSIA
1772
DANZIG 1793
Berlin Berlin
BerlinBerlin
0 50 100 150 200 miles
Brandenburg 1415
Acquisitions 1462–1614
Brandenburg 1614
Brandenburg-Prussia 1648
THE NUCLEUS 1415–1614
1
AT THE DEATH OF THE GREAT ELECTOR BY 1688
POLISH ACQUISITIONS 1772–1807
THE CONQUEST OF SILESIA BY 1748
Prussia 1688
Acquisitions 1715–1748
Prussia 1748
Acquisitions 1748–1772
Temporary Acquisitions 1793–1795, to 1807
2
3 4
THE GROWTH OF PRUSSIA, 1415–1918 The maps shown here, going well beyond the scope of this chapter, give a conspectus of Prus- sian history from the time when Brandenburg began to expand in the seventeenth century. One may see, by looking at all the panels together, how Prussia was really an east-European state until 1815; its center of gravity shifted westward, in signifi cant degree, only in the nine- teenth century. Panel 2 shows the early formation of three unconnected territories; Panel 3, the huge bulk of Silesia relative to the small kingdom that annexed it; Panel 4, the fruits of the partitions of Poland; Panel 5, Napoleon pared Prussia down. The main crisis at the Congress of Vienna, and its resolution, are shown in Panels 6 and 7. Bismarck’s enlargement of Prussia appears in Panel 8. The boundaries established by Bismarck remained unchanged until the fall of the monarchy in 1918.
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215
the army, had to direct and plan the life of the country for this purpose. Nor was Prussia the
originator of the “standing” army, kept active in time of peace and always preparing for
war. Most governments adopted the methods of Louis XIV in establishing standing armies,
not merely to promote foreign ambitions but to keep armed forces out of the hands of
nobles or military adventurers and under control by the state.
But Prussia was unique in that, more than in any other country, the
army developed a life of its own, almost independent of the life of the state.
It was older than the Prussian state itself. In 1657 the Great Elector fought a
great battle at Warsaw with soldiers from all parts of his dominions. It was the fi rst time
that men from Cleves, Brandenburg, and ducal Prussia had ever done anything together.
The army was the fi rst “all Prussian” institution. Institutions of civilian government devel-
oped later and largely to meet the needs of the army. And in later generations the army
proved more durable than the state. When Prussia collapsed during the Napoleonic wars in
1806, the spirit and morale of the Prussian army carried on; and when the Hohenzollern
Empire fi nally crashed in 1918, the Prussian-shaped army still maintained its life and tradi-
tions within the Weimar Republic, which again it survived. Not until the defeat of Adolf
The Prussian army
R h
in e
R .
Elbe R.
Oder R.
Vistula R.
Nieman R.
R h
in e R
.
Elbe R.
Oder R.
Vistula R.
Nieman R.
Rhine R.
Elbe R.
Oder R.
Vistula R.
Nieman R.
R h
in e R
.
Elbe R.
Oder R.
Vistula R.
Nieman R.
North Sea Baltic Sea
North Sea Baltic Sea
North Sea Baltic Sea
North Sea Baltic Sea
LOST TO GRAND DUCHY OF WARSAW
AND TO RUSSIA 1807 LOST TO
RHINE CONFEDERATION STATES AND TO FRANCE 1807 SAXONY
(TO PRUSSIA)
POLAND (TO RUSSIA)
HESSE
SCHLESWIG
HOLSTEIN
HANOVER
SWEDISH POMERANIA
PART OF SAXONY
RHINELAND
POSEN
Berlin Berlin
BerlinBerlin
0 50 100 150 200 miles
Prussia 1807–1814
Territory Lost in 1807
Prussia 1814
Proposed Territorial Changes 1814
CUT DOWN BY NAPOLEON 1807–1814
RUSSO-PRUSSIAN PROPOSALS 1814
BISMARCK’S CONQUESTS 1866
AGREED AT CONGRESS OF VIENNA 1815
Prussia 1814
Recovered or Acquired 1815
Prussia 1863
Acquisitions 1866
5 6
7 8
25. The Formation of Prussia
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740216
Hitler in the Second World War and the establishment of a new republican regime was the
army and its military traditions totally subordinated to civilian authority.
In all countries, to some extent, the machinery of the modern state
developed as a means of supporting armed forces, but in Prussia the process
was exceptionally clear and simple. In Prussia the rulers drew roughly half
their income from the crown domain and only about half from taxes. The
crown domain, consisting of manors and other productive enterprises owned directly by
the ruler as a traditional lord, was in effect a kind of government property, for the Prussian
rulers used their income almost entirely for state purposes, being personally simple and
even Spartan in their habits. The rulers of Prussia, until a century after the accession of the
Great Elector, were able to pay the whole cost of their civil government from their own
income, the proceeds of the crown domain. To develop the domain and transfer the funds
into government expenditures, they created a large body of civilian offi cials. The domain
bulked so large that much of the economy of the country was not in private hands but con-
sisted of enterprises owned and administered by the state. For additional income the Great
Elector introduced taxes of the kind used in France, such as excise taxes on consumers’
goods and a government monopoly on the sale of salt. All taxes, for a century after the
accession of the Great Elector, were levied for the use of the army.
Economic life grew up under government sponsorship, rather than through the enter-
prise of a venturesome business class. This was because, for a rural country to maintain an
organized army, productive and technical skills had to be imported, mainly from the West.
The Great Elector in his youth spent a number of years in Holland, where he was impressed
by the wealth and prosperity that he saw. After becoming elector he settled Swiss and
Frisians in Brandenburg (the Frisians were akin to the Dutch); he welcomed Jews from
Poland; and when Louis XIV began to persecute the French Protestants, he provided funds
and special offi cials to assist the immigration of 20,000 Huguenots to Brandenburg. French
immigrants for a time formed a sixth of the population of Berlin and were the most
advanced commercial element of that comparatively undeveloped city. The government, as
in France under Colbert, initiated and helped to fi nance various industries; but the impor-
tance of such government participation was greater than in France, because the amount of
privately owned capital available for investment was incomparably less. Military needs,
more than elsewhere, dominated the market for goods, because civilian demand in so poor
a country was relatively low; the army, in its requirements for food, uniforms, and weapons
became a strong force in shaping the early modern economic growth of the country.
The army had a profound effect also on the social development and
class structure of Prussia. The civilian middle class remained generally
submissive to the military priorities, and it became the policy of the rulers
to absorb practically the whole landed aristocracy, the Junkers, into mili-
tary service. They used the army, with conscious purpose, as a means of
implementing an “all Prussian” psychology in the landed families of Cleves, Brandenburg,
Pomerania, and the former dominions of the Teutonic Knights. The fact that Prussia was
a very recent and artifi cial combination of territories, so that identifi cation with it was not
a natural sentiment, made it all the more necessary to instill loyalty by martial means.
Emphasis fell on duty, obedience, service, and sacrifi ce. That military virtues became
characteristic of the whole male Prussian aristocracy was also due, like so much else, to
the small size of the population. In France, for example, with perhaps 50,000 male adult
nobles, only a small minority served as army offi cers. In Prussia there were few Junker
families that did not have some of their members in uniform.
Maintaining the
army
The army and
Prussian society
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217
The Great Elector and his successors, like all absolutist rulers of the era, repressed
the estates or parliamentary assemblages in which the landed aristocracy was the main
element. To mollify the squires, the rulers promised commissions in the army to men of
their class. They promised them also a free hand over their peasants. The Prussian monarchy
was largely based on an understanding between the ruler and the landlord gentry—the
latter agreed to accept the ruler’s government and to serve in his army, in return for hold-
ing their own peasants in hereditary subjection. Serfdom spread in Prussia as elsewhere in
eastern Europe. In East Prussia the peasants fell into conditions that were as deplorable as
the agricultural conditions in Poland.
The Prussian rulers believed that the Junkers made better army offi cers because they
were accustomed to the habit of commanding their own peasants. To preserve the offi cer
class, legislation forbade the sale of “noble” lands, that is, manors, to persons not noble.
In France, again by way of contrast, where manorial rights had become simply a form of
property, bourgeois persons and even peasants could legally acquire man-
ors and enjoy a lordly or “seigneurial” income. In Prussia this was not
possible; classes were frozen by owning nonexchangeable forms of prop-
erty. It was thus harder for middle-class people to enter the aristocracy by
setting up as landed gentry. The bourgeois class in any case had little
spirit of independence. Few of the old towns of Germany were in Prussia. The Prussian
middle class was not wealthy, and it had not gained much infl uence through the posses-
sion of private property. The typical middle-class man was an offi cial who worked for
the government as an employee of the large crown domain or in an enterprise subsidized
by the state. The civil service in Prussia, from the days of the Great Elector, became
notable for its honesty and effi ciency. But the middle class, more than elsewhere,
deferred to the nobles, served the state, and accepted the pervasive public role of
the army.
These distinctive features of Prussia developed especially under
Frederick William I, who was king from 1713 to 1740. He was an earthy,
uncouth man, who disdained whatever savored of “culture,” to which his
father, his grandfather (the Great Elector), and also his son (Frederick the Great) were all
strongly attracted. He begrudged every penny not spent on the army. He cut the expense
of the royal household by three-fourths. On his coronation journey to Königsberg he spent
2,547 thalers, where his father had spent 5 million. He ruled the country in a fatherly
German way, supervising it like a private estate, prowling the streets of Berlin in an
old seedy uniform, and disciplining negligent citizens with blows of his walking stick.
He worked all the time and expected everyone else to do likewise.
He loved the army, which all his policies were designed to serve. He was the fi rst
Prussian king to appear always in uniform. He rearranged the order of courtly precedence,
moving army offi cers up and civilians down. His love of tall soldiers is famous; he col-
lected a special unit, men between 6 and 7 feet tall, from all over Europe, and indeed the
Russian Tsar Peter the Great sent him some from Asia. He devised new forms of discipline
and maneuver, founded a cadet corps to train the sons of the Junkers, and invented a new
system of recruiting (the canton system, long the most effective in Europe), by which each
regiment had a particular district or canton assigned to it as a source of soldiers. He raised
the size of the army from 40,000 at his accession to 83,000 at his death. During his reign
Berlin grew to be a city of 100,000, of whom 20,000 were soldiers, a proportion probably
matched in no other city of Europe. He likewise left to his successor (for he fought practi-
cally no wars himself) a war chest of 7,000,000 thalers.
Limited social
mobility
Frederick William I
25. The Formation of Prussia
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740218
With this army and war chest Frederick II, later called the Great, who became king in
1740, startled Europe. Charles VI of Austria had just died. His daughter Maria Theresa
entered upon her manifold inheritance, which depended on the long-
negotiated guarantees of the Pragmatic Sanction. While others waited,
Frederick struck. Serving no notice, he quickly moved his military forces
into Silesia, which was a part of the kingdom of Bohemia on the side toward
Poland, lying in the upper valley of the Oder River and adjoining Brandenburg on the
north. The addition of Silesia to the kingdom of Prussia almost doubled the population and
added valuable industries, so that Prussia now, with 6 million people and an army that
Frederick raised to 200,000, at last established itself as a great power. It must be added
that, judged simply as a human accomplishment, Prussia was a remarkable political and
military creation, a state made on a shoestring, a triumph of work and duty.
26. THE TRANSFORMATION OF RUSSIA
The affairs of central and eastern Europe, from Sweden to Turkey and from Germany to the
Caspian Sea, were profoundly interconnected. The underlying theme of the present chapter,
it may be recalled, is that this whole great area was fl uid, occupied by the weakening political
bodies of the Holy Roman Empire, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire and that in this fl uid
area three new powers gradually developed—the modern Austrian monarchy, the kingdom
of Prussia, and the Russian Empire. All, too, in varying degree, became modern eighteenth-
century states by borrowing various ideas and administrative systems from western Europe,
though each of these new eastern states also retained its own distinctive political, social, and
cultural characteristics.
In the century after 1650 the old tsardom of Muscovy evolved into modern Russia.
Moving out from the region around Moscow, the Russians not only established them-
selves across northern Asia, reaching the Bering Sea about 1700, but also
entered into closer relations with Europe, undergoing especially in the
time of Tsar Peter the Great (1682–1725) a rapid process of Europeaniza-
tion. To what extent Russia became truly European has always been an
open question, disputed both by western Europeans and by Russians themselves. In some
ways the Russians had been European from as far back as Europe itself can be said to
have existed, that is, from the early Middle Ages. Ancient Russia had been colonized by
Vikings, and the Russians had become Christian long before the Swedes, the Lithuanians,
or the Finns.
Yet Russia had not been part of the general development of medieval and early
modern Europe for a number of reasons. Russia had been converted to the Greek Orthodox
branch of Christianity; therefore, the religious and cultural infl uence of Constantinople,
not of Rome, had predominated. Second, the Mongol invasions and conquest about 1240
had kept Russia under Asian domination for about 250 years, until 1480 when a grand
duke of Muscovy, Ivan III (1462–1505), was able to throw off the Mongol overlordship
and cease payment of tribute. Last, Russian geography, especially the lack of warm-water
or ice-free seaports, had made commerce and communication with western Europe diffi -
cult. Russia had therefore not shared in the general European economic development after
about 1100, and the changes that took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
may accurately be called a kind of “Europeanization.” There was in this era a wholesale
Russian borrowing of the new knowledge and institutions that had developed in the early
The advances of
Frederick the Great
Europeanization
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21926. The Transformation of Russia
modern European states; and this Europeanizing of many Russian institutions was by no
means a unique thing. It was a step in the expansion of modern European forms of social
organization and hence in the formation of the modern world as we have known it in recent
centuries. Developing strategies for reform that other societies would also follow in later
historical eras, the Russians began to introduce western European methods of state and
economic organization while also seeking to protect their own interests and distinctive
cultural traditions.
In some ways the new Russian Empire resembled the new kingdom of
Prussia. Both took form in the great plain that runs uninterruptedly from the
North Sea into inner Asia. Both lacked natural frontiers and grew by addi-
tion of territories to an original nucleus. In both countries the state arose
primarily as a means of supporting a modern army. In both the government
developed autocratically, in conjunction with a landlord class that was brought into state
service and which in turn held the peasantry in serfdom. Neither Russia nor Prussia had a
strong commercial class or an urban banking system that could exert political infl uence.
In neither country could the modern state and army have been created without the impor-
tation of new skills from western Europe. Yet Prussia, with its German connections, its
Protestant religion, its universities, and its proximity to the busy commercial artery of the
Parallels with
Prussia
The uniforms of these Prussian soldiers in the era of King Frederick II (1740–1786) represent the status and importance of the military class in Prussian society during the eighteenth century. (akg-images/Newscom)
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740220
Baltic, was far more European than Russia, and the Europeanization of Russia may per-
haps better be compared with the later “westernization” of Japan. In the Russia of 1700, as
in the Japan of 1870, the main purpose of the administrative and social reformers was to
obtain scientifi c, technical, and military knowledge from the West, in part with a view to
strengthening their own countries against penetration or conquest by Europeans. Yet here
too the parallel must not be pushed too far. In time, the Russian upper classes intermar-
ried with Europeans and entered more widely than the later Japanese elites into European
cultural life. Russian music and literature eventually became well known and infl uential
among modern European intellectuals, and Russia itself developed a unique blend of Euro-
pean and central Asian cultural traits.
Russia before Peter the Great
The Russians in the seventeenth century, as today, were a medley of peoples distinguished
by their language, which was of the Slavic family, of the great Indo-European language
group. The Great Russians or Muscovites lived around Moscow. Moving out from that
area, they had penetrated the northern forests and had also settled in the southern steppes
and along the Volga, where they had assimilated various Asian peoples known as Tartars.
After two centuries of expansion, from roughly 1450 to 1650, the Russians had almost but
not quite reached the Baltic and the Black seas. The Baltic shore was held by Sweden. The
Black Sea coast was still held by Tartar Khans under the protection of Ottoman Turkey. In
the rough borderlands between Tartar and Russia lived the semi-independent cowboy-like
Cossacks, largely recruited from migratory Russians. West of Muscovy were the White
Russians (or Byelorussians) and southwest of Muscovy the Little Russians (Ruthenians or
Ukrainians), both in the seventeenth century under the rule of Poland, which was then the
leading Slavic power.
The energies of the Great Russians were directed principally eastward.
They conquered the Volga Tartars in the sixteenth century and reached the
Ural Mountains, which they immediately crossed. Muscovite pioneers, set-
tlers, and townbuilders streamed along the river systems of Siberia, felling
timber and trading in furs as they went. In the 1630s, while the English were building
Boston and the Dutch New York, the Russians were establishing towns in the vast Asian
stretches of Siberia, reaching to the Pacifi c itself. A whole string of settlements, remote,
small, and isolated—Tomsk and Tobolsk, Irkutsk and Yakutsk—extended for 5,000 miles
across northern Asia.
It was toward the vast heartland of central Asia that Muscovy really faced, looking out
upon Persia and China across the deserts. The bazaars of Moscow and Astrakhan were fre-
quented by Persians, Afghans, Indians, and Chinese. The Caspian Sea, into which fl owed
the Volga, the greatest of Russian rivers, was better known than was the Baltic. Europe
as viewed from Moscow was more distant and less accessible than other busy trading
centers to the south and east. During most of the seventeenth century even Smolensk and
Kiev belonged to Poland. Yet the Russians were not totally shut off from Europe. In 1552,
when Ivan the Terrible conquered Kazan from the Tartars, he had a German engineer in
his army. In the next year, 1553, Richard Chancellor arrived in Moscow from England by
the roundabout way of Archangel on the White Sea. Thereafter trade between England and
Muscovy was continuous. The tsars valued Archangel as their only inlet from the West
through which military materials could be imported. The English valued it as a means of
reaching the wares of Persia.
Russian expansion to
the east
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221
Russia in the seventeenth century refl ected its long estrangement from
the culture and social mores that had been developing in Europe. Women
of the upper classes were secluded and often wore veils. Men wore beards
and skirted garments that seemed exotic to Europeans. Customs also seemed
crude to European visitors; wild drunkenness and revelry alternated with mysterious rituals
of repentance and religious prostration. Traditional superstitions remained infl uential among
the highest classes of church and state; and murder, kidnapping, torture, and elaborate
physical cruelty were common forms of social control. The Russian church did not support
the kinds of educational or charitable institutions that the Catholic and Protestant churches
had established in western Europe. Churchmen feared the incipient European infl uences.
“Abhorred of God,” declared a Russian bishop, “is any who loves geometry; it is a spiritual
sin.” Even arithmetic was hardly understood in Russia. Arabic numerals were not used, and
merchants computed with the abacus. The calendar was dated from the creation of the world.
Ability to predict an eclipse seemed a form of magic. Clocks, brought in by Europeans,
seemed as wonderful in Russia as they did in China, where they were brought in by Jesuits
at about the same time.
Yet this great, non-European Russia, which fronted on inner Asia, was European in
some of its fundamental social institutions. It possessed a variant of the manorial and feu-
dal systems. It experienced the same wave of constitutional crises that was sweeping over
Europe at the same time. Russia had a duma or council of retainers and advisers to the tsar,
and the rudiments of a national assembly corresponding to meetings of the estates in west-
ern Europe. In Russia as in Europe the question was whether power should remain in the
hands of these bodies or become concentrated in the hands of the ruler. Ivan the Terrible,
who ruled from 1533 to 1584 and was the fi rst grand duke of Muscovy to assume the title
of tsar, 1 was a shrewd observer of contemporary events in Poland. He saw the dissolution
that was overtaking the Polish state and was determined to avoid it in Muscovy. His feroc-
ity toward those who opposed him made him literally terrible, but though his methods
differed from the methods commonly used in Europe, his aims were the aims of his
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1640–1740
1640–1688 Frederick William, the Great Elector, develops state and military power in
Prussia
1663 Ottoman Empire begins new phase of expansion in Central Europe
1667–1671 Stephen Razin leads rebellion of rural population in Russia
1683 Ottoman imperial army is forced to abandon siege of Vienna
1698–1725 Tsar Peter the Great introduces European reforms in Russia
1711–1740 Habsburg King-Archduke Charles VI builds the Austrian Empire
1713–1740 King Frederick William I expands the army and wealth of the Prussian state
1 The Slavic word tsar, like the German Kaiser, derives from Caesar, a title used as a synonym for emperor in the Roman, the Holy Roman, and the Byzantine (or eastern Roman) Empires. The spelling czar, also common in English, reveals the etymology and the current English-language pronunciation, zar.
Russian estrangement
from Europe
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740222
European contemporaries. Not long after his death Russia passed into a period known as
the Time of Troubles (1604–1613), during which the Russian nobles elected a series of
tsars and demanded certain assurances of their own liberties. But the country was racked
by contending factions and a civil war in which the violence resembled the religious wars
in France or the Thirty Years’ War in central Europe.
In 1613 a national assembly, hoping to settle the troubles, elected a
17-year-old boy as tsar, or emperor, believing him young enough to have
no connection with any of the warring factions. The new boy tsar was
Michael Romanov, of a gentry family, related by marriage to the old line of
Ivan the Terrible. Thus was established, by vote of the political classes of the day, the
Romanov dynasty that ruled in Russia until 1917. The early Romanovs, aware of the fate
of elective monarchy in Poland and elsewhere, soon began to repress the representative
institutions of Russia and set up as absolute monarchs. Here again, though they were often
more lawless and violent than any European king, the Russian monarchs followed the gen-
eral pattern of contemporary Europe.
Nor can it be said that the main social development of the seventeenth
century in Russia, the sinking of the peasantry into an abyss of helpless
serfdom, was exclusively a Russian phenomenon. The same process gener-
ally took place in eastern Europe. Serfdom had long been overtaking the older free peas-
antry of Russia. In Russia, as in the American colonies, land was abundant and labor was
scarce. Labor therefore tended to migrate over the great Russian plain. In the Time of
Troubles, especially, there was a good deal of movement. The landlords, wishing to assure
themselves of their labor force, obtained the support of the Romanov tsars.
The manor, or what corresponded to it in Russia, came to resemble the slave planta-
tion of the New World. Laws against fugitive serfs were strengthened; lords won the right
to recover fugitives up to 15 years after their fl ight, and fi nally the time limit was abolished
altogether. Peasants came to be so little regarded that a law of 1625 authorized anyone kill-
ing another man’s peasant simply to give him another peasant in return. Lords exercised
police and judicial powers. By a law of 1646 landowners were required to enter the names
of all their peasants in government registers; peasants once so entered, together with their
descendants, were regarded as attached to the estate on which they were registered. Thus
the peasants lost the freedom to move at their own will. For a time they were supposed
to have secure tenure of their land; but a law of 1675 allowed the lords to sell peasants
without the land, and thus to move peasants like chattels at the will of the owner. This
sale of serfs without land, which made their condition more like slavery as then practiced
in America, became indeed a distinctive feature of serfdom in Russia, because in Poland,
Prussia, Bohemia, and other regions of serfdom, the serf was generally regarded as “bound
to the soil,” inseparable from the land.
Against the loss of their freedom the rural population of Russia protested as best it
could, murdering landlords, fl eeing to the Cossacks, taking refuge in a vagrant existence,
countered by wholesale government-organized manhunts and by renewed and more strin-
gent legislation. A tremendous uprising was led in 1667 by Stephen Razin, who gath-
ered a host of fugitive serfs, Cossacks, and adventurers, outfi tted a fl eet on the Caspian
Sea, plundered Russian vessels, defeated a Persian squadron, and invaded Persia itself. He
then turned back, ascended the Volga, killing and burning as he went and proclaiming a
war against landlords, nobles, and priests. Cities opened their gates to him; an army sent
against him went over to his side. He was fi nally captured and put to death in 1671. The
consequence of the rebellion, for over a century, was that serfdom was clamped on the
Russian peasants more fi rmly than ever.
The Romanovs
Serfdom in Russia
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223
Even from the church the increasingly wretched rural people drew
little comfort. The Russian Orthodox church at this time went through a
great internal crisis, and ended up as hardly more than a department of the
tsardom, useful to the government in instilling a pervasive, unquestioning
reverence for Holy Russia. The Russian church had historically looked
to the Patriarch of Constantinople as its head. But the conquest of Constantinople by
the Turks made the head of the Greek Orthodox church a merely tolerated inferior to the
Muslim sultan-caliph, so that the Russians in 1589 set up an independent Russian patriarch
of their own. In the following generations the Russian patriarchate fi rst became dependent
on, then was abolished by, the tsarist government.
In the 1650s the Russian patriarch undertook certain church reforms, mainly to correct
mistranslations in Russian versions of the Bible and other sacred writings. The changes
aroused the horror and indignation of the general body of believers. Deeply attached to the
mere form of the written word and believing the faith itself to depend on the customary spell-
ing of the name of Jesus, the malcontents saw in the reformers a band of cunning Greek
scholars perpetrating the work of Antichrist and the devil. The patriarch and higher church
offi cials forced through the reforms but only with the help of the government
and the army. Those who rejected the reforms came to be called Old Believers,
and they vehemently denounced every change in the texts and rituals of the
established church. More fanatical than the reform-minded clergy, agitated by
visionary preachers and dividing into innumerable sects, the Old Believers became very
numerous, especially among the peasants. Old Believers were active in Stephen Razin’s rebel-
lion and in all the sporadic peasant uprisings that followed. The peasants, already placed by
serfdom outside the protection of law, were now also estranged from the established religion.
A distrust of all organized authority settled over the Russian masses, to whom both church and
government seemed to serve as mere engines of repression.
Old Believers
Stephen Razin became an almost mythic fi gure in Russian popular memory after leading a vast peasant rebellion in the late 1660s. This painting by Vasily Ivanovich Surikov (1848–1916) suggests Razin’s later prominence in Russian culture and his symbolic status in modern social and political movements. (akg-images/Newscom)
The Russian
Orthodox church
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740224
But while willing enough to modernize sacred texts by correcting mistranslations from
the Greek, the Russian church offi cials resisted the kind of modernization that was coming
in from western Europe. They therefore opposed Peter the Great at the end of the century.
After 1700 no new patriarch was appointed. Peter put the church under a committee of
bishops called the Holy Synod, and to the Synod he attached a civil offi cial called the
Procurator of the Holy Synod. The Procurator was not a churchman but head of a govern-
ment bureau whose task was to see that the church did nothing displeasing to the tsar. Peter
thus secularized the church, making himself in effect its head. But while the consequences
were more extreme in Russia than elsewhere, it must again be noted that Peter’s control
of the church followed the general pattern of early modern Europe. Secular supervision of
religion had become the rule almost everywhere, especially in Protestant countries. Indeed
an Englishman of the time thought that Peter the Great, in doing away with the patriarchate
and putting the church under his own control, was wisely imitating England, which he had
visited in his youth.
Peter the Great: Foreign Affairs and Territorial Expansion
The Russia in which Peter the Great became tsar in 1682 was thus already European in
some ways and had in any case been in contact with western Europeans for over a century.
Without Peter, Russia would have developed its European connections more gradually.
Peter, by his tempo and methods, made the process a social revolution.
Peter obtained his fi rst knowledge of western Europe in Moscow itself,
where a part of the city known as the German quarter was inhabited by
Europeans of various nationalities, whom Peter often visited as a boy. Peter
also in his early years mixed with western travelers at Archangel, still Rus-
sia’s only port, for he was fascinated by the sea and took lessons in navigation on the White
Sea from Dutch and English ship captains. Like the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Peter as
a young man spent over a year in western Europe, especially Holland and England, where
he became profoundly aware of the commercial and technical backwardness of his own
country. He had considerable talents as a mechanic and organizer. He labored with his
own hands as a ship’s carpenter in Amsterdam and talked with political and business lead-
ers about the means for introducing the newer European organization and technology into
Russia. He visited workshops, mines, commercial offi ces, art galleries, hospitals, and forts.
Europeans saw him as a kind of alien genius, a giant of a man standing a head above most
others, bursting with physical vitality and plying all he met with interminable questions on
their manner of working and living. He had neither the refi nement nor the pretension of
Western monarchs; he mixed easily with workmen and technical people, dressed cheaply
and carelessly, loved horseplay and crude practical jokes, and dismayed his hosts by the
squalid disorder in which he and his companions left the rooms put at their disposal. A
man of acute practical mind, he was as little troubled by appearances as by moral scruples.
Peter on his visit to Europe in 1697–1698 recruited almost 1,000 experts for service
in Russia, and many more followed later. He cared nothing for the civilization of Europe
except as a means to an end, and this end was to create an army and a state that could stand
against the most powerful European states. His aim from the beginning was in part defen-
sive, to ward off the Poles, Swedes, and Turks who had long pushed against Russia; and
in part expansionist, to obtain warm-water seaports on the Baltic and Black seas, which
would offer year-round access to trade with Europe. For all but two years of his four-
decade reign Peter was at war.
Exposure to the West
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225
The Poles were a receding threat to Peter’s ambitions. A Polish prince
had indeed been elected tsar of Muscovy during the Time of Troubles, and
for a while the Poles aspired to conquer and Catholicize the Great
Russians. But in 1667 the Russians had regained Smolensk and Kiev, and the growing
anarchy in Poland made that country no longer a menace, except as the Swedes or others
might install themselves in Polish territories. The Ottoman Turks and their Tartar depen-
dencies, though no longer expanding, were still obstinate foes. Peter before going to
Europe managed in 1696 to capture Azov at the mouth of the Don, but he was unable to
hold any of the Black Sea coast; and he came to recognize the inferiority of the Russian
army during these campaigns. The Swedes were at this time the main enemy of Russia.
Their army, for its size, was still probably the best in Europe. They controlled the whole
eastern shore of the Baltic including the Gulf of Finland. In 1697, the Swedish king having
died, Peter entered into an alliance with Poland and Denmark to partition the overseas
possessions of the Swedish house.
The new king of Sweden, the youthful Charles XII, was in some ways
as crude as Peter (as an adolescent he had sheep driven into his rooms in
the palace in order to enjoy the warlike pleasure of killing them), but he
proved also to have remarkable aptitude as a general. In 1700, at the battle of Narva, with
an army of 8,000 men, he routed Peter’s 40,000 Russians. The tsar thus learned another
lesson on the need to reform and westernize his state and army. Fortunately for the
Russians Charles XII, instead of immediately pressing his advantage in Russia, spent the
following years in furthering Swedish interests in Poland, where he forced the Poles to
The Swedes
The aspirations of Peter the Great are suggested in this formal portrait of a monarch whose clothing and appearance resemble the style of western European elites in the early eighteenth century. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
Polish threat recedes
26. The Transformation of Russia
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740226
elect the Swedish candidate as their king. Peter meanwhile, with his imported offi cers and
technicians, reformed the training, discipline, and weapons of the Russian army.
Eventually, Charles XII invaded Russia with a large and well-prepared force. Peter
used against him the strategy later used by the Russians against Napoleon and Adolf
Hitler; he drew the Swedes into the endless plains, exposing them to the Russian winter,
which happened to be an exceptionally severe one, and in 1709, at Poltava in south Russia,
he met and overwhelmed the demoralized remainder. The entire Swedish army was
destroyed at Poltava, only the king and a few hundred fugitives managing to escape across
the Turkish frontier. Peter in the next years was thus able to conquer Livonia and part of
eastern Finland. He landed troops near Stockholm itself. He campaigned in Pomerania
almost as far west as the Elbe. Never before had Russian infl uence reached so deeply into
Europe. The imperial day of Sweden was now over, terminated by Russia. Peter had won
for Russia a piece of the Baltic shore and with it warm-water outlets. These signifi cant
developments were confi rmed in the treaty of Nystadt, which ended the Great Northern
War (1700–1721) and opened the eastern Baltic to the ascending power of Russia.
War is surely not the father of all things, as has been sometimes
claimed, but these wars did a good deal to shape imperial Russia. The
undisciplined, poorly organized Russian army was transformed into a pro-
fessional force of the kind maintained by Sweden, France, or Prussia. The
elite of the old army had been the streltsi, a kind of Moscow guard, composed of nobles and constantly active in politics. A rebellion of the streltsi in 1698 had cut short Peter’s tour of Europe; he had returned and quelled the mutiny by ferocious use of torture and
execution, killing fi ve of the rebels with his own hands. The streltsi were liquidated only two years before the great Russian defeat at Narva. Peter then rebuilt the army from the
ground up. He employed European offi cers of many nationalities, paying them half again
as much as native Russians of the same grades. He fi lled his ranks with soldiers supplied
by districts on a territorial basis, somewhat as in Prussia. He put the troops into uniforms
resembling those of the western European armies, and he organized them in regiments of
standardized composition. He armed them with muskets and artillery of the kind used in
Europe and tried to develop a new service of supply.
With this army he not only drove the Swedes back into Sweden but also dominated
Russia itself. At the very time of the Swedish invasion large parts of the country were in
rebellion, as in the days of Stephen Razin, for the whole middle and lower Volga, together
with the Cossacks of the Don and Dnieper, rose against the tsar and rallied behind slogans
of class resentment and hatred of the tsar’s foreign experts. Peter crushed these distur-
bances with the usual ruthlessness. The Russian Empire, loose and heterogeneous, was
held together by military might.
While the Swedish war was still in progress, even before the decisive
battle of Poltava, Peter laid the foundations of a wholly new city in territory
conquered from the Swedes and inhabited not by Russians but by various
Baltic peoples. Peter named it St. Petersburg after himself and his patron
saint. From the beginning it was more truly a city than Louis’s spectacular
creation at Versailles established at almost the same time. Standing at the head of the Gulf
of Finland, it was Peter’s chief window on the West. Here he established the offi ces of
government, required noblemen to build town houses, and gave favorable terms to foreign
merchants and craftsmen to settle. Peter meant to make St. Petersburg a symbol of the new
Russia. It was a new city facing toward Europe and drawing the minds of the Russians west-
ward, replacing the old capital, Moscow, which faced toward Asia and was the stronghold
War and imperial
Russia
The founding of
St. Petersburg
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of opposition to his westernizing program. St. Petersburg soon became one of the leading
cities of northern Europe. It remained the capital of Russia (renamed Petrograd in 1914)
until the Revolution of 1917, when Moscow resumed its old role. After the Revolution
Petrograd became Leningrad. Its name reverted to St. Petersburg on the eve of the dissolu-
tion of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Internal Changes under Peter the Great
The new army, the new city, the new and expanding government offi ces all required
money, which in Russia was very scarce. Taxes were imposed on an inconceivable variety
of objects—on heads, as poll taxes; on land; on inns, mills, hats, leather, cellars, and coffi ns;
on the right to marry, sell meat, wear a beard, or be an Old Believer. The tax burden fell
mainly on the peasants; and to assure the payment of taxes the mobility of peasants was
further restricted. Borderline individuals were classifi ed as peasants in the government
records, so that serfdom became both more onerous and more nearly
universal. To raise government revenues and to stimulate production, Peter
adopted the mercantilist policies that Colbert had promoted in France. He
encouraged exports, built a fl eet on the Baltic, and developed mining, metal-
lurgy, and textiles, which were indispensable to the army. He organized
mixed groups of Russians and foreigners into commercial companies, provided them with
capital from government funds (little private capital being available), and gave them a labor
supply by assigning them the use of serfs in a given locality.
Serfdom, in origin mainly an agricultural institution, began to spread in
Russia as an industrial institution also. Serf owners obtained the right to sell
serfs without land, or to move them from landed estates into mines or
towns, which made it easier for industry in Russia to develop on the basis of unfree labor.
Nor were the employers of serfs, in these government enterprises, free to modify or aban-
don their projects at will. They too were simply in the tsar’s service. The economic system
rested largely on impressment of both management and labor, not on private profi t and
wages as in the increasingly capitalistic economies of western Europe. In this way Peter’s
efforts to force Russia to a European level of material productivity widened the social
differences between Russia and western Europe.
To oversee and operate this system of tax collecting, recruiting, eco-
nomic controls, serf hunting, and repression of internal rebellion Peter cre-
ated a new administrative system. The old organs of local self-government
wasted away. The duma and the national assembly, ineffective in that they
could not function without disorder, now disappeared. In their place Peter put a “senate”
dependent on himself, and 10 territorial areas called “governments,” or gubernii. The church he ruled through his Procurator of the Holy Synod. At the top of the whole structure was the
tsar himself, an absolute ruler and autocrat of “All the Russias.” Before his death, dissatisfi ed
with his son, he abolished the rule of hereditary succession to the tsardom, claiming the right
for each tsar to name his own successor. Transmission of supreme power was thus put out-
side the domain of law, and in the following century the accession of tsars and tsarinas was
marked by strife, conspiracy, and assassination. The whole system of centralized absolutism,
while in form resembling that of the absolutist European monarchies, notably France, was in
fact signifi cantly different, for it lacked legal regularity, was handicapped by the poor educa-
tion of many offi cials, and was imposed on a turbulent and largely unwilling population. The
empire of the Romanovs has been called a state without a people.
Mercantilism
encouraged
Serfs in industry
New administrative
system
26. The Transformation of Russia
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740228
Peter sought to assure the success of his reforms by developing what was called “state
service,” which his predecessors had already begun. Virtually all landowning and serf-
owning aristocrats were required to serve in the army or civil administration. Offi ces were
multiplied to provide places for all. In the state service birth counted for nothing. Peter
used men of all classes; Prince Dolgoruky was of the most ancient nobility, Prince Menshi-
kov had been a cook, the tax administrator Kurbatov was an ex-serf, and many others were
foreigners of unknown background. Status in Peter’s Russia depended not on inherited
rank, which Peter could not control, but on rank in his state service. “History,” wrote a
Scot serving in Peter’s army, “scarcely affords an example where so many people of low
birth have been raised to such dignities as in tsar Peter’s reign, or where so many of the
highest birth and fortune have been leveled to the lowest ranks of life.”
In this respect especially, Peter’s program resembled a true social rev-
olution. It created a new governing element in place of the old, almost what
in modern terms would be called a party, a body of radical reformers work-
ing zealously for the new system with a personal interest in its preservation.
These men, during Peter’s lifetime and after his death, were the bulwarks against an anti-
reform reaction; and they became the main agents in making Peter’s revolution stick. In
time the new families evolved into hereditary positions themselves. The priority of state
service over personal position was abandoned a generation after Peter’s death. Offi ces in
the army and government were fi lled by men of property and birth. After Peter’s revolu-
tion, as after some others, the new upper class became merged with the old.
Peter’s social
revolution
The construction of the city of St. Petersburg became the most important architectural proj- ect in Peter the Great’s long-term campaign to westernize Russian society. This new city was designed to be a western-looking capital and a new center for commercial contacts with west- ern Europe; like the construction of the French palace at Versailles, the Russian tsar’s archi- tectural goals required the labor of thousands of poor workers and peasants. (Bettmann/Corbis)
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229
Revolutionary also, suggesting the great French Revolution or the Russian Revolu-
tion of 1917, were Peter’s unconcealed contempt for everything reminiscent of the old
Russia and his zeal to reeducate his people in the new ways. He required all gentry to put
their sons in school. He sent many abroad to study. He simplifi ed the Russian alphabet.
He edited the fi rst newspaper to appear in Russia. He ordered the preparation of the fi rst
Russian book of etiquette, teaching his subjects not to spit on the fl oor, scratch them-
selves, or gnaw bones at dinner, to mix socially with women, take off their hats, converse
pleasantly, and look at people while talking. The beard he took as a symbol of Muscovite
backwardness; he forbade it in Russia, and himself shaved a number of men at his court.
He forced people to attend evening parties to teach them manners. He had no respect for
hereditary aristocracy, torturing or executing the highborn as readily as the peasants. As
for religion, Peter was described as a pious man who enjoyed singing in church, but he
was contemptuous of ecclesiastical dignity, and in one wild revel paraded publicly with
drunken companions clothed in religious vestments and mocking the priests. Like many
revolutionists since his time, he was aggressively secular.
The Results of Peter’s Revolution
Peter’s tactics provoked a strong reaction. Some adhered strictly to the old ways; oth-
ers simply thought that Peter was moving too fast and too indiscriminately toward the
new. Many Russians resented the inescapable presence of foreigners, who
often looked down on Russians and who enjoyed special privileges such as
the right of free exit from Russia and higher pay for similar employment.
One center around which malcontents rallied was the church. Another was
Peter’s son Alexis, who declared that when he became tsar he would put a stop to the
innovations and restore respect for the customs of old Russia. Peter, fearing his own son’s
collaboration with anti-reform conspirators, had Alexis tortured to death. He then ruled
that each tsar should choose his own successor. He would stop at nothing to remake Russia
in his own fashion.
Peter died in 1725, proclaimed “the Great” in his own lifetime by his admiring Senate.
Few persons in all history have exerted so strong an individual infl uence, which indirectly
became more far-reaching as the stature of Russia itself grew in later centuries. Though the
years after Peter’s death were years of turmoil and vacillation, his revolutionary changes
held fi rm against those who would undo them. It is not simply that he Europeanized Russia
and conquered a place on the Baltic; these developments might have come about in any
case. It is by the methods he used, his impatient forcing of a new culture on Russia, that he
set the future character of his empire. His harsh methods fastened autocracy, serfdom, and
bureaucracy more fi rmly upon the country. Yet he was able to reach only the upper classes.
Many of these became more Europeanized than he could dream, habitually speaking French
and living spiritually in France or in Italy. But as time went on many upper-class Russians,
because of their very knowledge of Europe, became impatient of the stolid immovability
of the peasants around them, felt estranged from their own country, or were troubled by
a guilty feeling that their position rested on the degradation and enslavement of human
beings. Russian psychology, often mysterious to later generations in western Europe could
perhaps be explained in part by the violent paradoxes set up by rapid Europeanization.
As for the peasant masses, they remained outside the new system, egregiously exploited,
separated from their rulers and their social superiors, regarded by them as brutes or
children, never sharing in any comparable way in their increasingly Europeanized
Resistance to reforms
26. The Transformation of Russia
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Chapter 5 The Transformation of Eastern Europe, 1648–1740230
civilization. Much of this worked itself out in the social confl icts of later
times. As for Peter’s own time, Russia by his efforts came clearly out of
its isolation, its social elites and government reorganized to play a part
in international affairs; and its history thenceforward was a part of the history of Europe
and increasingly of the world. Russia, like Prussia and the Austrian monarchy, was to be
counted among the powers of Europe.
The rising infl uence of these three monarchies depended in part on their ability to acquire
modern weaponry, organize more effi cient bureaucracies, and bring new forms of European
knowledge into their government institutions. By the beginning of the eighteenth century,
European science and technologies often gave European states a comparative advantage in
their economic, political, and military encounters with other peoples or governments—as
the ruling elites in Austria, Prussia, and Russia had learned from their own struggles for
THE GROWTH OF RUSSIA IN THE WEST At the accession of Peter the Great in 1682 the Russian Empire, expanding from the old grand duchy of Muscovy, had almost reached the Black and Baltic seas. Most of Peter’s conquests were in the Baltic region where he pushed back the Swedes and built St. Petersburg. Under Catherine the Great (1762–1796) Russia took part in the three partitions of Poland and also reached the Black Sea. Tsar Alexander I (1801–1825), thanks largely to the Napoleonic wars, was able to acquire still more of Poland and annex Finland and Bessarabia; he also made con- quests in the Caucasus. In the nineteenth century the western boundary of Russia remained stabilized, but additional gains were made in the Caucasus. Russia also spread over northern Asia in the seventeenth century, fi rst reaching the Pacifi c as early as 1630.
V o
lg a
R.
White Sea
Black Sea
C aspian
Sea
ARCTIC OCEAN
Ba lti
c Se
a
SWEDEN
POLAND
O T T O M A N E M P I R E
Archangel
Moscow
Warsaw
Constantinople
Kiev
Azov Astrakhan
Smolensk
Muscovy in 1462
Acquisitions 1462–1682
V o
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Black Sea
C aspian
Sea ARCTIC OCEAN
Ba ltic
Se a
SWEDEN
POLAND
O T T O M A N E M P I R E
INGRIA AND LIVONIA, 1720
C A U C A S U S
Archangel
Moscow
Warsaw
Constantinople
Kiev
Azov Astrakhan
Smolensk
St. Petersburg
Russia in 1682
Acquisitions of Peter the Great, 1682–1725
Exclusion of peasants
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231
V o
lg a
R.
White Sea
Black Sea
C aspian
Sea
ARCTIC OCEAN
Bal tic
Se a
SWEDEN
POLAND
O T T O M A N E M P I R E
FINLAND 1808
1772
179317951815
BESSARABIA 1812
YEDISAN 1792 KRIM
TARTARS 1783
MINGRELIA 1803
GEORGIA 1801
DAGHESTAN 1813
Archangel
Moscow
Warsaw
Constantinople
Kiev
Azov Astrakhan
Smolensk
St. Petersburg
Russia in 1725
Acquisitions 1725–1815
V o
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White Sea
Black Sea
C a sp
ian Sea
ARCTIC OCEAN
Bal tic
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SWEDEN
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O T T O M A N E M P I R E
FINLAND
C A U C A S U S
CIRCASSIA 1829
KARS 1878
Archangel
Moscow
Warsaw
Constantinople
Kiev
Azov Astrakhan
Smolensk
St. Petersburg
Russia in 1815
Acquisitions 1815–1914
power in central Europe. Indeed, the new science would ultimately become one of the most
distinctive and signifi cant forces in modern world history. Science helped to transform eco-
nomic production, military strategies, and traditional cultures as well as imperial confl icts
in Europe and around the world. We must therefore look more closely at the ways in which
the development of modern scientifi c thought increasingly infl uenced the knowledge and
control of both nature and human beings.
26. The Transformation of Russia
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e .
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233
C h a p t e r 6 THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW
OF THE WORLD
The seventeenth century has been called the cen- tury of genius, in part because it was the age when
science became “modern.” It was the great age of
Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton, whose combined life-
times spanned the century, with Galileo dying and
Newton being born in the same year, 1642. When
Galileo was young, those who studied the natural
world still labored largely in the dark, isolated from
one another and from the general public, working
oftentimes by methods of trial and error, not alto-
gether clear on what they were trying to do, with
their thinking still complicated by ideas not nowa-
days considered scientifi c. They had nevertheless
accomplished a good deal, without which the intel-
lectual revolution of the seventeenth century would not have occurred. But in a way all sci-
entifi c investigators before Galileo seem to be precursors, patient workers destined never to
enter into the world toward which they labored. By 1727, when Newton died, a new interna-
tional scientifi c community had emerged. Scientists, or “natural philosophers” as they were
then called, communicated regularly with one another, and science was recognized as one of
the principal enterprises of European society. Although the word “scientist” was not used
until the early nineteenth century, scientifi c methods of inquiry had been defi ned. The store
of factual knowledge had become very large. The fi rst modern scientifi c synthesis, or coher-
ent theory of the physical universe, had been presented by Newton. Scientifi c knowledge
was applied increasingly to navigation, mining, agriculture, and many branches of manufac-
ture. Science and invention were joining hands. Science was accepted as the main force in
the advancement of civilization and progress. And science was becoming popularized; many
people who were not themselves scientists “believed” in science and attempted to apply
scientifi c habits of thought to diverse problems of social and political life.
The history of science is too complex a story to be told in this book,
but there are a few ideas about it that even a book of this kind must attempt
to make clear. First, science, purely as a form of thought, is one of the Science
27. The Emergence of a
Scientifi c Culture: Bacon
and Descartes
28. The Road to Newton:
The Law of Universal
Gravitation
29. New Knowledge of Human
Beings and Society
30. Political Theory:
The School of Natural Law
Chapter emblem: Scholar Holding a Thesis on Botany, by the seventeenth-century artist Willem Moreelse.
(Toledo Museum of Art)
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World234
supreme achievements of the human mind, and to have a historical understanding of human
intellectual powers one must sense the importance of science, as of philosophy, literature,
or the arts. Second, science has increasingly affected practical affairs, entering into the
health, wealth, and happiness of humankind. It has changed the size of populations and the
use of raw materials, revolutionized methods of production, transport, business, and war,
and so helped to relieve some human problems while aggravating others. This is especially
true of modern civilization since the seventeenth century. Third, in the modern world ideas
have had a way of passing over from science into other domains of thought. Many peo-
ple today, for example, in their notions of themselves, their neighbors, or the meaning of
life, are infl uenced by ideas that they believe to be those of Freud or Einstein—they talk
of repressions or relativity without necessarily knowing much about them. Ideas derived
from biology and from Darwin—such as evolution and the struggle for existence—have
likewise spread far and wide. Similarly the scientifi c revolution of the seventeenth century
had repercussions far beyond the realm of pure science. It changed many European ideas
about religion, God, nature, and human beings. It helped to shape and spread infl uential
new beliefs, such as that the physical universe is essentially orderly and harmonious, that
human reason is capable of understanding and using it for social purposes, and that human
affairs can be conducted by methods of peaceable exchange of ideas and rational discus-
sion. Thus was laid a foundation for belief in free and democratic institutions.
The historical infl uence of modern science therefore extended far beyond the specifi c
knowledge that transformed the human understanding and use of nature. Scientifi c methods
for establishing truth or defi ning progress shaped a wide range of modern social institu-
tions, including armies, hospitals, universities, trading companies, government bureaucra-
cies, law courts, and even literary journals. The meaning of the word “modern” became
linked to the intellectual prestige of science, and scientifi c knowledge became the most
distinctive and important new intellectual force in modern Europe and the wider modern
world. The purpose of this chapter is to sketch the rise of modern science in the seventeenth
century and the emergence of the scientifi c view of the world and of human affairs. The
chapters that follow will describe the increasing application of this new knowledge in the
expanding global economy and the infl uence of scientifi c thought in eighteenth-century
European culture, which is generally known as the Age of Enlightenment.
27. THE EMERGENCE OF A SCIENTIFIC CULTURE: BACON AND DESCARTES
Science before the Seventeenth Century
The scientifi c view became characteristic of elite European society about the middle of the
seventeenth century. There had, indeed, been a few in earlier times who caught glimpses
of a whole civilization reared upon science. To us today the most famous of
these earlier scientifi c thinkers is Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), the uni-
versal genius of the Italian Renaissance, who had been artist, engineer, and
scientifi c theorist all in one. Leonardo, by actual dissection of dead bodies,
had obtained an accurate knowledge of human anatomy; he had conceived of the circula-
tion of the blood and the movement of the earth about the sun; and he had drawn designs
for submarines and airplanes and speculated on the use of parachutes and poison gases. But
Leonardo had not published his scientifi c ideas. He was known almost exclusively as an
artist. His work in science remained outside the stream of scientifi c thought, without infl uence
Leonardo da Vinci
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23527. The Emergence of a Scientifi c Culture: Bacon and Descartes
on its course. It was not even known until the discovery of his private notebooks in the
twentieth century. Leonardo thus fi gures in the history of science as an isolated genius,
a man of brilliant insights and audacious theories, which died with their author’s death,
whereas science depends on a transmission of ideas in which investigators build upon one
another’s discoveries, test one another’s experiments, and fi ll in the gaps in one another’s
knowledge. Modern science evolved as a kind of new cultural system, more dependent on
communications and widely shared cultural beliefs than on the brilliance of isolated think-
ers. Leonardo’s scientifi c work, remaining unpublished, never entered the cultural institu-
tions in which new scientifi c knowledge would be produced, challenged, and revised.
A century after the death of Leonardo da Vinci educated Europeans were by no
means scientifi cally minded. Among thoughtful persons many currents were stirring. On
the one hand there was a great deal of skepticism, a constantly doubting frame of mind,
which held that no certain knowledge is possible for human beings at all, that all beliefs
are essentially only customs, that some people believe one thing and some another, and
that there is no sound way of choosing between them. This attitude was best expressed by
the French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), whose thought distilled itself
into an eternal question, Que sais-je? “What do I know?” with the always implied answer, “Nothing.” Montaigne’s philosophy led to a tolerant, humane, and broad-minded out-
look, but as a system of thought it was not otherwise very constructive. On the other
hand, there was also a tendency to overbelieve in mysterious, supernatural powers, aris-
ing from the same inability to distinguish between true and false. There was no accepted
line between chemistry and alchemy or between astronomy and astrology; all alike were
regarded as ways of penetrating the “secrets” of nature. The sixteenth century had been a
great age of charlatans, such as Nostradamus and Paracelsus, some of whom, notably
Paracelsus, mixed magic and valid science in a way hardly understandable to modern
scientists. As late as the seventeenth century, especially in central Europe where the
Thirty Years’ War produced chaos and terror, kings and generals kept private astrologers
to divine the future.
The two centuries from about 1450 to about 1650 were also the period
when fear of witches was at its height. The great campaign against witches
thus coincided with Europe’s brutal religious wars and also with the early
development of the new scientifi c culture among members of Europe’s educated elite, but
even highly educated persons often believed that witches actually existed. Witches were
blamed for all kinds of natural disasters and personal tragedies—bad harvests, epidemics,
the mysterious deaths of children. Although most of the persons prosecuted for witchcraft
were women, men were also imprisoned or executed for various crimes of “sorcery.” The
witchcraft panic lasted longest in Germany and central Europe, probably kept alive by the
insecurities engendered by the Thirty Years’ War. But about 20 persons were hanged as
witches in Massachusetts as late as 1692, for the English colonies, as a remote and outly-
ing part of the European world, were among the last to feel the newer intellectual currents
that were spreading across Europe. The last known execution for witchcraft took place in
1722 in Scotland.
It was by no means clear, in the early part of the seventeenth century, how Euro-
pean societies were going to develop. Europe might conceivably have fallen into a kind
of pervasive political chaos. We have seen how much of Europe was racked by chronic
and marauding violence, which was gradually ended by the consolidation of the modern
state and the conversion of armed bands into organized and disciplined armies; but this
more orderly political outcome was by no means apparent during the decades of the Thirty
Witchcraft panic
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World236
Years’ War and the revolutionary upheavals in England. Similarly, in matters of the mind,
there was no settled order. Doubt went with superstition, indifference with persecution.
Science in time provided Europe with a new faith in itself. The rise of science in the seven-
teenth century possibly saved European civilization from drifting into a long postmedieval
afterglow or from wandering off into the diverse, dead-end paths of endless skepticism,
ineffectual philosophizing, desultory magic, or mad fear of the unknown.
Bacon and Descartes
Two men stand out as prophets of an intellectual world reconstructed by science. One was
the Englishman Francis Bacon (1561–1626); the other was the Frenchman René Descartes
(1596–1650). Both published their most infl uential books between 1620 and 1640. Both
addressed themselves to the problem of knowledge. Both asked themselves how it is pos-
sible for human beings to know anything with certainty or to have a reliable, truthful, and
usable knowledge of the world of nature. Both shared in the doubts of their day. They
branded virtually all beliefs of preceding generations (outside religion) as worthless. Both
ridiculed the tendency to put faith in ancient books, to cite the writings of Aristotle or oth-
ers, on questions having to do with the workings of nature. Both attacked earlier methods
of seeking knowledge; they rejected the methods of the “schoolmen” or “scholastics,” the
thinkers in the academic tradition of the universities founded in the Middle Ages. On the
Women were executed on charges of witchcraft from the later Middle Ages down through the seventeenth century, when a new fear of witches happened to coincide with the early modern scientifi c revolution. This mid-seventeenth-century English illustration shows a typical pattern of persecution in which several women were put to death at the same time for the alleged crime of “sorcery” or conspiring with “witches.” (Topham/The Image Works)
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237
whole, medieval philosophy had been deductive. That is, its characteristic procedure was
to start with defi nitions and general propositions and then discover what further knowl-
edge could be logically deduced from the broad defi nitions thus accepted. Or it proceeded
by affi rming the inherent nature of an object (e.g., “man is a political animal”) and then
describing how objects of such a nature do or should behave. These methods, which owed
much to Aristotle and other ancient codifi ers of human thought, had generally ceased to be
fruitful in producing new knowledge of nature. Bacon and Descartes held that the medi-
eval (or Aristotelian) methods approached truth from the wrong direction. They held that
truth is not something that we postulate at the beginning and then explore in all its rami-
fi cations, but that it is something that we fi nd at the end, after a long process of specifi c
investigation, experiment, and intermediate thought.
Bacon and Descartes therefore went beyond mere doubt and proposed a new analyti-
cal method to challenge the cultural drift toward skepticism. They offered a constructive
program, and though their programs were different, they both became advocates for a sci-
entifi c conception of objective truth. They maintained that there was a true and reliable
method of knowledge. And they maintained in addition that once this true method was
known and practiced, once the real workings of nature were understood, people would be
able to use this knowledge for their own purposes, control nature in their own interests,
make useful inventions, improve their mechanical arts, and add generally to human wealth
and comfort. Bacon and Descartes thus argued that science provided a new
foundation for human progress as well as objective knowledge about the
natural world.
Francis Bacon planned a great work in many volumes, to be known
as the Instauratio Magna or “Great Renewal,” calling for a complete new start in science and civilization. He completed only two parts. One, pub-
lished in 1620, was the Novum Organum or new method of acquiring knowledge. Here he insisted on the inductive method. In the inductive method we proceed from the particular to the general, from the concrete to the abstract. For example, in the study of leaves, if we
examine millions of actual leaves of all sizes and shapes and if we assemble, observe, and
compare them with minute scrutiny, we are using an inductive method in the sense meant by Bacon; if successful, we may arrive at a knowledge, based on observed facts, of the
general nature of a leaf as such. If, on the other hand, we begin with a general idea of what
we think all leaves are like, that is, all leaves have stems, and then proceed to describe
an individual leaf on that basis, we are following the deductive method; we draw logical implications from what we already know, but we learn no more of the nature of a leaf than
what we knew or thought we knew at the beginning.
Bacon advised his readers to put aside all traditional ideas, to rid themselves of preju-
dices and preconceptions, to look at the world with fresh eyes, to observe and study the
innumerable things that are actually perceived by the senses. Thinkers before Bacon used
the inductive method, but he formalized it as a method and became a leading philoso-
pher of empiricism, which asserted that reliable knowledge must be based on observation
and experience. This philosophy has always proved a useful safeguard against fi tting facts
into preconceived or purely abstract patterns. It demands that we let our ideas and actions
be shaped by actual facts as we observe them. The new scientifi c knowledge thus linked
particular facts to general principles and typically combined inductive method with the
broader claims of deductive thought. The knowledge that developed from such empiri-
cal and analytical methods came to be viewed as stable truths that did not simply express
the subjective beliefs of a particular person or cultural tradition; indeed, such knowledge
Francis Bacon and
empiricism
27. The Emergence of a Scientifi c Culture: Bacon and Descartes
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World238
seemed to offer truths that all people could accept, no matter how they might otherwise
differ in their religious beliefs, cultural traditions, or social ranks.
The other completed part of Bacon’s great work, published in 1623, was called in its
English translation The Advancement of Learning. Here Bacon developed the same ideas and insisted also that true knowledge was useful knowledge. In The New Atlantis (1627), he portrayed a scientifi c utopia whose inhabitants enjoyed a perfect society through their
knowledge and command of nature. This emphasis on the usefulness of knowledge became
the other main element in the Baconian tradition. In this view there was no sharp differ-
ence between pure science and applied science or between the work of the purely scientifi c
investigators and that of the inventors who in their own way probed into nature and devised
instruments or machines for putting natural forces to work. The fact that knowledge could
be used for practical purposes became a sign or proof that it was true knowledge. For
example, the fact that soldiers could aim their cannon and hit their targets more accurately
in the seventeenth century became a proof of the theory of ballistics that scientists had
worked out in research that was far removed from a battlefi eld. Enthusiastic Baconians
believed that knowledge was power. True knowledge could be put to work, if not immedi-
ately at least in the long run, after more knowledge was discovered. It was useful to man-
kind, unlike the “delicate learning” of the misguided scholastics. In this coming together
of knowledge and power arose the far-reaching modern idea of progress. And in it arose
many modern problems, because the power given by scientifi c knowledge can be used for
either good or evil.
But Bacon, though a force in redirecting the European mind, never had much infl u-
ence on the development of actual science. Kept busy as Lord Chancellor of England and
in other government duties, he was not even fully abreast of the most advanced scientifi c
thought of his day. Bacon’s greatest intellectual weakness was his failure to understand the
role of mathematics. Mathematics, dealing with pure abstractions and proceeding deduc-
tively from axioms to theorems, was not an empirical or inductive method of thought such
as Bacon demanded. Yet science in the seventeenth century went forward most success-
fully in subjects where mathematics could be applied. Even today the degree to which a
subject is truly scientifi c depends on the degree to which it can be made mathematical. We
have pure science where we have formulas and equations, and the scientifi c method itself
is both inductive and deductive.
Descartes was a great mathematician in his own right. He is considered
the inventor of coordinate geometry. He showed that by use of coordinates
(or graph paper, in simple language) any algebraic formula could be plotted
as a curve in space, and contrariwise that any curve in space, however complex, could be
converted into algebraic terms and thus dealt with by methods of calculation. His general
philosophy therefore contributed to the growing scientifi c belief that the vast world of
nature could be reduced to mathematical form.
Descartes set forth his ideas in his Discourse on Method in 1637 and in many more technical writings. He advanced the principle of systematic doubt. He began by trying
to doubt everything that could reasonably be doubted, thus sweeping away past ideas
and clearing the ground for his own “great renewal,” to use Bacon’s phrase. Despite this
far-reaching skepticism, however, he held that he could not doubt his own existence as
a thinking and doubting being ( cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I exist”). He then deduced, by systematic reasoning, the existence of God and much else. He arrived at a phi-
losophy of dualism, the famous “Cartesian dualism,” which held that God has created two
kinds of fundamental reality in the universe. One was “thinking substance”—mind, spirit,
René Descartes
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239
consciousness, subjective experience. The other was “extended substance”—everything
outside the mind and hence a material reality that could be understood through objective
knowledge. Of everything except the mind itself the most fundamental and universal qual-
ity was that it occupied a portion of space, minute or vast. Space itself was conceived as
infi nite and everywhere geometric.
This philosophy had profound and long-lasting effects. For one thing, the seemingly
most real elements in human experience, color and sound, joy and grief, seemed somehow
to be shadowy and unreal, or perhaps illusory, with no objective existence outside the mind
itself. But all else was quantitative, measurable, reducible to formulas or equations. Over
all else, over the whole universe or half-universe of extended substance, the most powerful
instrument available to the human understanding, namely, mathematics, reigned supreme.
“Give me motion and extension,” said Descartes, “and I will build you the world.”
Descartes also shared Bacon’s belief in empirical research, useful knowledge, and
human progress. Instead of the “speculative philosophy of the schools,” he wrote in the
Discourse on Method, one might discover a “practical philosophy by which, understanding the forces and action of fi re, water, air, the stars and heavens and all other bodies that sur-
round us, . . . we can use these forces . . . and so make ourselves the masters and possessors
of nature. And this is desirable not only for the invention of innumerable devices . . . , but
mainly also for the preservation of health, which is undoubtedly the principal good and
foundation of all other good things in this life.” Science, in short, opened the way to a bet-
ter life than philosophy alone could ever produce.
RENÉ DESCARTES by Frans Hals (1584–1666)
Descartes worked for many years in Amsterdam, where he developed his work in math- ematics, described his philo- sophical methods of systematic doubt, and sat for this famous portrait by Frans Hals. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
27. The Emergence of a Scientifi c Culture: Bacon and Descartes
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World240
28. THE ROAD TO NEWTON: THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION
Scientifi c Advances
Meanwhile actual scientifi c discovery was advancing on many fronts as
new “natural philosophers” shared information in the emerging networks of
scientifi c communication. The new knowledge did not advance on all fronts
with equal speed. Some of the sciences were, and long remained, depen-
dent mainly on the collection of specimens. Botany was one of these; Europe’s knowl-
edge of plants expanded enormously with the explorations overseas. New edible plants
were brought from the Americas, and the botanical gardens and herb collections in Europe
also became far more extensive than ever before, bringing important enlargements in the
stock of medicinal drugs as well as new foods. Other sciences drew their impetus from
intensive and open-minded observation. In 1543 the Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius
published The Structure of the Human Body, an infl uential book that renewed and mod- ernized the study of anatomy. Formerly anatomists had generally held that the writings of
Galen, dating from the second century c.e., contained an authoritative description of all
human muscles and tissues. They had indeed dissected cadavers but had dismissed those
not conforming to Galen’s description as somehow abnormal or not typical. Vesalius, by
contrast, decided on the basis of his own careful dissections that Galen’s descriptions of
the human body were often wrong. Developing comprehensive accounts of the human
skeleton, organs, and circulatory system with detailed references to the actual bodies he
examined, Vesalius constructed what historians of science would describe as a new “para-
digm” for the later study of human anatomy.
In physiology also, dealing with the functioning rather than the structure of living
bodies, there was considerable progress. Here the method of laboratory experiments could
be profi tably used. William Harvey, after years of laboratory work in England (which
included the vivisection of animals), published in 1628 a book On the Movement of the Heart and Blood, which set forth the doctrine of the continual circulation of the blood through arteries and veins. The Italian Marcello Malpighi, using the newly invented micro-
scope, confi rmed Harvey’s fi ndings by the discovery of capillaries in 1661. The Dutch
scientist Antoine van Leeuwenhoek, also by use of the microscope, provided new informa-
tion about blood corpuscles, spermatozoa, and bacteria, of which he left published draw-
ings. Another seventeenth-century Dutch scientist, Régnier de Graaf, published the fi rst
description of the female ovaries, thus challenging Galen’s ancient theories of human
sexuality and the long-accepted idea that women contributed less than men to the biologi-
cal processes of reproduction.
These sciences, and also chemistry, although work in them went for-
ward continually, did not come fully into their own until after 1800. They
were long overshadowed by astronomy and physics. Here mathematics
could be most fully applied, and mathematics underwent a rapid develop-
ment in the seventeenth century. Decimals came into use to express fractions, the symbols
used in algebra were improved and standardized, and in 1614 logarithms were invented by
the Scot John Napier. Coordinate geometry was mapped out by Descartes, the theory of
probabilities was developed by Blaise Pascal, and calculus was invented simultaneously
in England by Newton and in Germany by Leibniz. These advances made it more gener-
ally possible to think about nature in purely quantitative terms, to measure with greater
Botany, anatomy,
and physiology
Astronomy and
physics
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24128. The Road to Newton: The Law of Universal Gravitation
precision, and to perform complex and laborious computations. Physics and astronomy
were remarkably stimulated, and it was in this fi eld that the most infl uential scientifi c revo-
lution of the seventeenth century took place.
The Scientifi c Revolution: Copernicus to Galileo
Ever since Ptolemy had codifi ed ancient astronomy in the second century c.e., educated
Europeans had held a conception of the cosmos that we call Ptolemaic. The cosmos in this
ancient Greek view was a group of concentric spheres, a series of balls within
balls each having the same center. The innermost ball was the earth, made
up of hard, solid, earthy substance such as people were familiar with under-
foot. The other spheres, encompassing the earth in series of closer or more
distant geometric circles, were all transparent. They were the “crystalline spheres” made
known to us by the poets; their harmony was the “music of the spheres.” These spheres all
revolved about the earth, each sphere containing, set in it as a jewel, a luminous heavenly
body or orb that moved about the earth with the movement of its transparent sphere. Near-
est to the earth was the sphere of the moon; then, in turn, the spheres of Mercury and Venus,
then the sphere of the sun, then those of the outer planets. Last came the outermost sphere
containing all the fi xed stars studded in it, all moving majestically about the earth in daily
motion, but motionless with respect to each other because they were held fi rmly in the same
sphere. Beyond the sphere of the fi xed stars, in general belief, lay the “empyrean,” the home
of angels and immortal spirits; but this was not a matter of natural science.
The Ptolemaic system
A SCHOLAR HOLDING A THESIS ON BOTANY by Willem Moreelse (Dutch, before 1630–1666)
This scholar may be a new doc- tor of the University of Utrecht, where the little-known painter Willem Moreelse worked in the seventeenth century. Crowned with the laurel, the success- ful candidate proudly displays his thesis, on which the Latin words announce “any plant shows the presence of God”— an example of the growing scientifi c interest in hitherto unknown plants that reached Europe from other parts of the world in this era. (Toledo Museum of Art)
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World242
Persons standing on the earth and looking up into the sky thus felt themselves to be
enclosed by a dome in which their own position was the center. In the blue sky of day
they could literally see the crystalline spheres; in the stars at night they could behold the
orbs that these spheres carried with them. All revolved about the observer, presumably at
no very alarming distance. The celestial bodies were commonly supposed to be of differ-
ent material and quality from the earth. The earth was of heavy dross; the stars and planets
and the sun and moon seemed made of pure and gleaming light, or at least of a bright ethe-
real substance almost as tenuous as the crystal spheres in which they moved. The cosmos
was a hierarchy of ascending perfection. The heavens were purer than the earth.
This Ptolemaic or geocentric system corresponded to actual appearances, and except
for scientifi c knowledge would be highly believable today. It was formulated also in rigor-
ous mathematical terms. Ever since the Greeks, and becoming increasingly intricate in the
Middle Ages, a complex geometry had grown up to explain the observed motion of the
heavenly bodies. The Ptolemaic system was a mathematical system. And it was for purely
mathematical reasons rather than from empirical observations that it fi rst came to be recon-
sidered. There was a marked revival of mathematical interest at the close of the Middle
Ages, in the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries, a renewed concentration on the philosophi-
cal traditions of Pythagoras and Plato. In these philosophies could be found the doctrine
that numbers might be the fi nal key to the mysteries of nature. With them went a meta-
physical belief that simplicity was more likely to be a sign of truth than complexity and
that a simpler mathematical formulation was better than a more complicated one.
These ideas motivated Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543), born in
Poland of German and Polish background, who, after study in Italy, wrote
his epochal work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs. In this book, published in 1543 after his death, he held the sun to be the center of the solar system and of
the whole universe; the earth, he argued, was one of the planets revolving in space around
it. This view had been entertained by a few isolated thinkers before. Copernicus gave a
mathematical demonstration. To him it was a purely mathematical problem. With increas-
ingly detailed knowledge of the actual movement of the heavenly bodies it had become
necessary, as the years passed, to make the Ptolemaic system more intricate by the addition
of new “cycles” and “epicycles,” until, as John Milton expressed it later, the cosmos was
With Centric and Concentric scribbled o’er, Cycle and Epicycle, Orb in Orb.
Copernicus needed fewer such hypothetical constructions to explain the known move-
ments of the heavenly bodies. The heliocentric or sun-centered theory was mathematically
simpler than the geocentric or earth-centered theory that it would gradually displace.
The Copernican doctrine long remained a hypothesis known only to experts. Most
astronomers for a time hesitated to accept it, seeing no need, from the evidence yet pro-
duced, to make such a radical readjustment of the older Ptolemaic paradigm. Tycho Brahe
(1546–1601), the greatest authority on the actual positions and movements of the heavenly
bodies in the generations immediately after Copernicus, never accepted the Copernican
system in full. But his assistant and follower, Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), building on
Tycho’s exact observations, not only accepted the Copernican theory but
carried it further.
Kepler, a German, was a kind of mathematical mystic, part-time
astrologer, and scientifi c genius. Copernicus had believed the orbits of the
planets about the sun to be perfect circles. Tycho showed that this belief did not fi t the
observable facts. It was Kepler who discovered that the orbits of the planets were ellipses.
Nicholas Copernicus
Johannes Kepler
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243
The ellipse, like the circle, is an abstract mathematical fi gure with knowable properties.
Kepler demonstrated that the closer a planet is to the sun in its elliptical orbit, the faster it
moves; and he showed that the length of time in which the several planets revolve about
the sun varies proportionately with their distance from the sun.
It is not possible for most people to understand the mathematics involved, but it is
possible to realize the astounding implications of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.
Kepler showed that the actual world of stubborn facts, as observed by Tycho, and the
purely rational world of mathematical harmony, as surmised by Copernicus, were not
really in any contradiction to each other—that they really corresponded exactly. Why they
should he did not know; it was the mystery of numbers. He digested an overwhelming
amount of hitherto unexplained information into a few brief statements. He showed a cos-
mic mathematical relationship between space and time. And he described the movement of
the planets in explicit formulas, which any competent person or scientifi c community
could verify at will.
The international character of early modern scientifi c culture can be
seen in the next important contributions of the Italian Galileo (1564–1642). Galileo
The Copernican conception of a solar system revolving around the sun was long unknown out- side a small circle of experts, and few persons understood the mathematics upon which it was based. But the meaning of the Copernican theories later spread in visual images that depicted the new astronomical view of the sun, earth, and other planets. (Enzo & Paolo Ragazzini/Corbis)
28. The Road to Newton: The Law of Universal Gravitation
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World244
So far the question of the substance of the heavenly bodies had hardly been reconsidered.
Indeed, they were not thought of as bodies at all, but rather as orbs. Only the sun and
moon had any dimension; stars and planets were only points of light; and the theories of
Copernicus and Kepler, like those of Ptolemy, might apply to insubstantial luminous
objects in motion. In 1609 Galileo built a telescope. Turning it to the sky, he perceived that
the moon had a rough and apparently mountainous surface, as if made of the same kind of
material as the earth. Seeing clearly the dark part of the moon in its various phases, and not-
ing that in every position it only refl ected the light of the sun, he concluded that the moon
was not itself a luminous object, another indication that it might be made of earthlike sub-
stance. He saw spots on the sun, as if the sun were not pure and perfect. He found that the
planets had visible breadth when seen in the telescope but that the fi xed stars remained only
points of light, as if incalculably further away. He discovered also that Jupiter had satel-
lites, moons moving around it like the moon around the earth. These discoveries reassured
him of the validity of the Copernican theory, which he had in any case already accepted.
They suggested also that the heavenly bodies might be of the same substance as the earth,
masses of matter moving in space; and if the heavenly bodies consisted of matter, it became
easier to think of the earth itself as simply another heavenly body revolving about the sun.
The difference between the earth and the heavens was disappearing. This struck a terrifying
blow at all earlier philosophy and theology. Some professors were afraid to look through
the telescope, and Galileo was condemned for heresy and forced by his church to renounce
his description of the solar system; but he never really changed his scientifi c views.
Moreover, where Kepler had found mathematical laws describing the movement of
planets, Galileo now found mathematical laws describing the movement of bodies on the
earth. Formerly it had been thought that some bodies were by nature heavier than others
and that heavier bodies fell to the ground faster than light ones. Galileo in 1591, according
to the traditional story, dropped a 10-pound and a 1-pound weight simultaneously from
Popperfoto/Getty Images
Galileo’s scientifi c research, which included the use of a telescope and led to a clash with church authorities, gave him an enduring stature in European intellectual history. This later image of Galileo portrays him as the idealized early modern “man of science,” working alone to dis- cover and describe new knowledge. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
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245
the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The truth of this story has been questioned, but in
any case Galileo showed that despite all previous speculation on the subject two bodies of
different weights, when allowance was made for differences in air resistance due to differ-
ences of size or shape, struck the ground at the same time. His further work in dynamics,
or the science of motion of bodies, took many years to accomplish. He had to devise more
refi ned means for measuring small intervals of time, fi nd means of estimating the air resis-
tance, friction, and other impediments that always occur in nature, and conceive of pure or
absolute motion, and of force and velocity, in abstract mathematical terms. He made use of
a new conception of inertia, in which only change in motion, not the origination of motion, had to be explained. This dispensed with the need of an Unmoved Mover felt in the older
philosophy; and yet Galileo could still not answer certain questions about the motion of
objects—questions that would soon be examined again by Isaac Newton.
The Achievement of Newton: The Promise of Science
Historians of science now tend to stress the collective and cultural components of scien-
tifi c advances rather than “Great Man” accounts of the lone scientifi c genius, but it was
the supreme creative achievement of Isaac Newton (1642–1727) that brought Kepler and
Galileo together in a new explanation of universal motion. Connecting the breakthroughs
of his infl uential predecessors, Newton was able to show that Kepler’s
laws of planetary motion and Galileo’s laws of terrestrial motion were two
aspects of the same laws. Galileo’s discovery that moving bodies move
uniformly in a straight line unless defl ected by a defi nite force made it nec-
essary to explain why the planets, instead of fl ying off in straight lines, tend to fall toward
the sun, the result being their elliptical orbits—and why the moon, similarly, tends to fall
toward the earth. Newton seems early to have suspected that the explanation would be
related to Galileo’s laws of falling bodies and that the pull of the earth upon objects on
earth might resemble a pull characterizing all bodies in the solar system. Great technical
diffi culties stood in the way, but fi nally, after inventing calculus, and using a new measure-
ment of the size of the earth made by a Frenchman and experiments with circular motion
made by the Dutch Huyghens on the pendulum, Newton was able to bring his calculations
to fruition. He soon published, in Latin, his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philoso- phy (1687), a book that would bring the “law of universal gravitation” into both the science and the wider intellectual debates of early modern Europe.
This stupendous book showed that all motion that could be timed and measured,
whether on the earth or in the solar system, could be described by the same mathematical
formulas. All matter moved as if every particle attracted every other particle with a force
proportionate to the product of the two masses and inversely proportionate to the square
of the distance between them. This “force” was universal gravitation. What it was New-
ton did not pretend to explain. For 200 years the law stood unshaken, always verifi ed by
every new relevant discovery. Only in the past century were its limitations found; it does
not hold good in the infi nitesimal world of subatomic structure or in the macrocosm of the
whole physical universe as now conceived.
It was in Newton’s time that the pursuit of natural knowledge became institutionalized,
and Newton himself fi rst presented his theories at London’s Royal Society for Improving
Natural Knowledge. Such institutions, possessing equipment and funds, were engaged in
scientifi c study, most notably at the Royal Society of London, founded in 1662, and the
Royal Academy of Sciences in France, founded in 1666. Both originated when earlier and
Universal gravitation
28. The Road to Newton: The Law of Universal Gravitation
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World246
Historical Interpretations and Debates
Continuity and Discontinuity in the Scientifi c Revolution
Historians have waged spirited debates about the ways in which early modern scientists both reaffi rmed traditional religious beliefs and launched a “modern” method for understanding the natural world. Such discussions therefore focus on broad questions about the nature of historical continuity and change and about the relation between deep structures of belief and revolutions in thought. A contrasting emphasis on continuity and change thus becomes one of the themes in the interpretations of B. J. T. Dobbs and Richard Westfall as they analyze the signifi cance of Isaac Newton and the Scientifi c Revolution.
Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, “Newton as Final Cause and First Mover” (2000) I intend to undermine one of our most
hallowed explanatory frameworks, that of
the Scientifi c Revolution. . . .
No matter what one chooses to
emphasize from the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, . . . one must, it seems, bring the
action to a dramatic climax in the work of
Isaac Newton. The narrative has assumed
all the characteristics of an inevitable
progression; we have the sense that Newton
must appear on the scene to pull the disparate
strands of development into a
grand synthesis. . . .
We choose for praise the thinkers that
seem to us to have contributed to modernity,
but we unconsciously assume that their
thought patterns are fundamentally just like
ours. Then we look at them . . . and discover
. . . that our intellectual ancestors are not
like us at all. . . . They have metaphysical
and religious commitments that they should
have known were unnecessary for a study
of nature; . . . they take seriously such
misbegotten ideas as astrology, alchemy,
[and] magic. . . .
[So] how could Newton . . . have
pursued alchemy as he did . . . ? What
Newton hoped to gain from alchemy was
a precise knowledge of the Deity. . . . If
he, Newton, could but demonstrate the
laws of divine activity in nature . . . then he
could demonstrate in an irrefutable fashion
the existence and providential care of the
Deity—a grand goal, though hardly a
modern one. . . .
Richard S. Westfall, “The Scientifi c Revolution Reasserted” (2000) Dobbs announces her intention to undermine
the concept of the Scientifi c Revolution.
In contrast, I intend to defend it. . . .
Before the Scientifi c Revolution,
theology was queen of all the sciences. As
a result of the Scientifi c Revolution, we have
redefi ned the word “science,” and today
other disciplines . . . strive to expand their
self-esteem by appropriating the word in its
new meaning to themselves. . . . The focus of
the change, the hinge on which it turned,
was the Scientifi c Revolution of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. . . . I am convinced
that there has been no more fundamental
change in the history of European
Civilization. . . .
In its most general terms, the Scientifi c
Revolution was the replacement of Aristotelian
natural philosophy, which . . . had completely
dominated thought about nature in
western Europe during the previous four
centuries. . . .
For those who accepted the new
astronomy and the new mechanics,
Aristotelian natural philosophy had
become untenable. If the transformation of
scientifi c thought were to proceed, a new
natural philosophy had become a necessity.
What fi lled this need came to be called the
mechanical philosophy. . . .
With Newton the new science and
the new philosophy of nature found their
defi nitive form in which they shaped the
scientifi c tradition in the West for the
coming two centuries. The very nature of the
new enterprise that the Scientifi c Revolution
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247
Sources: Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, “Newton as Final Cause and First Mover,” in Rethinking the Scientifi c Revolu- tion, edited by Margaret J. Osler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 25, 29, 34, 36, 38–39; Richard S. Westfall, “The Scientifi c Revolution Reasserted,” in ibid. , pp. 41, 43, 45, 47–48.
Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs . . . (contd . . .) I would like to suggest that [we
evaluate] . . . Newton in a different way: not
as one of history’s all-time winners, not as
the First Mover of modern science, not as the
Final Cause of the Scientifi c Revolution, but as one of history’s great losers, a loser in a
titanic battle between the forces of religion
and the forces of irreligion.
Richard S. Westfall . . . (contd . . .) inaugurated insured that the Newtonian
system would be modifi ed. . . . As long as we
remember those modifi cations, it does appear
to me that the system, in a broad sense that
emphasizes its fundamental features in their
contrast with earlier ones, continues to reign,
and I see no prospect whatever that the reign
will terminate.
informal groups, usually gentlemen of the landed class, received offi cial charters from their
governments to pursue scientifi c interests. Scientifi c periodicals began to be published. Sci-
entifi c societies provided the medium for prompt interchange of ideas indispensable to the
growth of scientifi c knowledge. They held meetings, proposed projects for research, and
published articles not only on the natural sciences and mathematics, but also on paleogra-
phy, numismatics, chronology, legal history, and natural law. The work of the learned had
not yet evolved into modern academic specializations.
In all these activities the promise of science seemed fulfi lled. Even
in practical affairs conveniences followed, as anticipated by the Baconi-
ans. The tides could now be understood and predicted by the gravitational
interplay of earth, moon, and sun. Exact mathematical knowledge of the
celestial bodies, together with the invention of more accurate timepieces, was of great
help to navigation and mapmaking. Measures of latitude, or of north-south distances on
the spherical earth, had been known to the ancient Greeks. But longitude, or east-west
distances, could not be measured until the eighteenth century, when it became possible to
determine it by use of a chronometer and observation of heavenly bodies at a known time.
Merchant ships and naval squadrons could thus operate with more assurance about where
they were sailing. Places on land could be located and mapped more exactly. Eighteenth-
century Europeans were the fi rst human beings to have a fairly accurate idea of the shapes
and sizes of all the continents and oceans. Better local and regional maps of places in
Europe also became available.
Mathematical advance, including the development of calculus, which allowed an exact
treatment of curves and trajectories, reinforced by technical discoveries in the working of
metals, led to an increased use of artillery. Armies in 1750 used twice as many cannons per
soldier as in 1650. Naval ordnance also improved. These items made armed forces more
expensive to maintain, requiring governments to increase their taxes, and hence producing
constitutional crises. Improved fi rearms heightened the advantage of armies over insur-
rectionists or private fi ghting bands, thus strengthening the sovereignty of the state. They
also gave Europeans the military advantage over other peoples, in America, India, or else-
where, on which the world ascendancy of Europe was built in the eighteenth century. The
new scientifi c knowledge thus contributed to the expansion of Europe’s colonial empires
as well as the growing internal power of European governments.
Scientifi c
improvements
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World248
The signifi cance of the steam engine may also be cited. Steam power would eventu-
ally almost literally move the world. In 1700 it was only in its earliest stages, but it was in
sight on the horizon. A Frenchman, Denis Papin, in 1681 invented a device in which steam
moved a piston, but it produced so little power that it was used only in cooking. British
scientists also turned their minds to the possible uses of steam. Robert Boyle, discoverer
of “Boyle’s Law” on the pressure of gases, studied the problem; scientists, mechanics, and
instrument makers collaborated. In 1702 Thomas Newcomen, a man without scientifi c
training who associated with scientists, produced the steam engine known thereafter as
Newcomen’s engine, from which, as will be seen, James Watt developed the steam engine
as we know it. Newcomen’s engine was primitive according to later ideas. It burned so
much fuel that it could be used only in coal mines. But it began to be used, and not long
after 1700 it was widely employed to pump water from the coal pits. It saved labor, cheap-
ened production, and opened hitherto unusable deposits to exploitation. It was the fi rst
application of steam to an economic purpose.
No distinction was yet felt between pure and applied science. The modern sense of the
word hardly existed, even in the early eighteenth century; what we call “science” was still
called natural philosophy or “useful knowledge.” Traveling public lecturers, in explaining
the laws of force and motion, showed their application in devices such as pulleys, scales,
levers, cogwheels, waterwheels, and pumps. Such lectures were attended, especially in
England, by a mixed audience of philosophers, experimenters, inventors, artisans, landed
gentlemen who wished to develop their estates, and small businessmen wishing to enlarge
their markets. The scientifi c movement thus opened the way to agricultural and industrial
improvements in Great Britain and other places where the new knowledge was brought
into economic activities.
The Scientifi c Revolution and the World of Thought
The infl uence of the Scientifi c Revolution extended far beyond the era’s new technologies,
and the changing scientifi c knowledge soon began to challenge or revise some of the oldest
religious and intellectual traditions of European culture. The new astronomy and physics
led to what has been called the greatest spiritual readjustment that human beings have
been required to make. The old heavens were exploded. Humans were no longer the center
of creation. The luminaries of the sky no longer shone to light their way or to give them
beauty. The sky itself was an illusion, its color a thing in the mind only, for anyone looking
upward was really looking only into the darkness of endless space. The old cosmos, com-
fortably enclosed and ranked in an ascending order of purity, gave way to a new cosmos
that seemed to consist of an infi nite emptiness through which particles of matter were dis-
tributed. Humans were the puny denizens of a material object moving through space along
with other very distant material objects of the same kind. About the physical universe
there was nothing especially Christian, nothing that the God portrayed in the Hebrew or
the Christian Bible would be likely to have made. The gap between religious and scientifi c
explanations for the natural world, always present yet always bridged in the Middle Ages,
now began to produce new public confl icts and new personal struggles to reconcile faith
and reason. Such tensions were felt with growing anguish by some seventeenth-century
writers. The Frenchman Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), for example, was an accomplished
scientist, a preeminent mathematician, and a deep but often troubled Christian believer.
He left a record of his religious beliefs, anxieties, and fears in his Pensées, or Thoughts, jottings and personal refl ections from which he hoped some day to write a great book on
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249
the Christian faith. “I am terrifi ed,” he said in one of these jottings, “by the eternal silence
of these infi nite spaces.”
But on the whole the cultural reaction was more optimistic. Man might be merely a
reed, as Pascal said, but Pascal added, he was “a thinking reed.” Human beings might be
no longer the physical center of the universe. But it was the human mind
that had penetrated the universal laws by which the planets and the earth
itself were put in motion. The Newtonian system, as it became popularized,
a process that took about 50 years, led to a great intellectual confi dence.
Never had there been so much optimism about the intellectual powers of
human beings. As the English poet Alexander Pope put it,
Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said, “Let Newton be,” and all was light.
The Newtonian
system
FOUNDING OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND THE OBSERVATORY IN 1666 by Henri Testelin (1616–1695)
Testelin was an instructor at the Royal Academy of Painting and a strong defender of the aca- demic traditions in French art. He portrayed King Louis XIV visiting the new Royal Academy of Sciences in this painting, which expresses his respect for both the king and the new scientifi c knowledge. But Testelin’s life also exemplifi ed another side of late seventeenth-century French culture. He was a Protestant who eventually had to give up his academic position and move to the Netherlands to practice his religion. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
28. The Road to Newton: The Law of Universal Gravitation
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World250
Or, according to another epigram on the subject, there was only one universe to discover,
and this universe had been discovered by Newton. Everything seemed possible to human
reason. Although Newton and most other scientists continued to believe in the existence of
God, the old feeling of dependency on divine powers and judgments lost much of its force
or became something to be discussed by clergymen in church on Sunday. Human beings
were not really little creatures, spiritual wayfarers in an alien natural world, yearning for
a reunion with God that would bring peace. They were creatures of great capacity in their
own right, living in a natural world that was understandable and manageable. These ideas
contributed greatly to the secularizing of European society, gradually pushing religion and
churches to the sidelines of European political power and many of the era’s new intellec-
tual debates.
The scientifi c discoveries also reinforced the old philosophy of natural law. This phi-
losophy, developed by the Greeks and renewed in the Middle Ages, held that the universe
is fundamentally orderly and that there is a natural rightness or justice, universally the
same for all people and knowable by reason. It was very important in political theory,
where it stood out against arbitrariness and the merely random claims of self-interested
power. The laws of nature as discovered by science were somewhat different, but they
taught the same lesson, namely, the orderliness and minute regularity of the world. It was
reassuring to feel that everywhere throughout an infi nite space every particle of matter
was quietly attracting every other particle by a force proportionate to the product of the
masses and inversely proportionate to the square of the distance. The physical universe laid
bare by science—orderly, rational, balanced, smoothly running, without strife or rivalry or
Isaac Newton became the famous public symbol of the new scientifi c knowledge and the new scientifi c researcher. This portrait by an anony- mous artist emphasizes the focused brilliance that made Newton an icon in the expand- ing institutions of scientifi c culture and in the wider devel- opment of eighteenth-century intellectual life. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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25129. New Knowledge of Human Beings and Society
contention—became a model on which many thinkers, as time went on, hoped to refashion
human society. They hoped to make society also fulfi ll the rational rule of law, much like
scientists had shown how material objects adhere to the laws of nature.
In some ways it would be possible to exaggerate the impact of pure science. Scien-
tists themselves did not usually apply their scientifi c ideas to religion and society. Few
suffered the spiritual torment of Pascal. Both Descartes and Newton wrote carefully
argued tracts that asserted the truth of certain religious doctrines. Bacon and Harvey were
conservative politically, upholders of king against Parliament. The Englishman Joseph
Glanvill, in the 1660s, used Cartesian dualism to demonstrate the probable existence of
witches. Descartes, despite his systematic doubt, held that the customs of one’s country
should usually be accepted without question. Natural science, in the pure sense, was not
inherently revolutionary or even upsetting. If Europeans in the seventeenth century began
to waver in many old beliefs, it was not only because of the stimulus of pure science but
also because of an increasing knowledge and study of humanity itself.
29. NEW KNOWLEDGE OF HUMAN BEINGS AND SOCIETY
The discovery and exploration of the world overseas became a decisive new infl uence on
European views of human cultures and the nature of human beings. Europe was already
becoming part of the world as a whole and could henceforth understand itself only by
comparison with non-European regions. Great reciprocal infl uences were at work, and
the cultural exchanges fl owed in both directions. The infl uences of European expansion
on other parts of the world are easily seen: the Indian societies of America were modifi ed
or sometimes almost extinguished; the indigenous societies of Africa were dislocated and
many of their members were enslaved and transported; in the long run even the ancient
societies of Asia were to be disrupted or undermined. European ideas and institutions
altered the ways in which other peoples described their own cultures, and the exchanges
or confl icts with Europe reshaped identities wherever such interactions occurred. From the
beginning, however, the counterinfl uence of the rest of the world upon Europe was equally
great. It took the form of new medicines, new diseases, new foods, new and exotic manu-
factures brought to Europe, and the growth of material wealth in western European coun-
tries, but it also affected European thinking. New questions were raised about the diversity
of religious traditions, the history of languages, and the origins of human civilizations.
The growing involvement with other cultures undermined the old Europe and its ideas,
just as Europe was undermining the old cultures beyond the oceans. Vast new hori-
zons opened before Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Europeans of
this period were the fi rst people to know the globe as a whole, to establish colonial out-
posts around most of the world, or to realize the variety of the human race and its multi-
farious manners and customs.
The Current of Skepticism
This encounter with the diversity of human cultures was very unsettling. The realization of
human differences had the effect, in Europe, of breaking what has been called the “cake of
custom.” A new sense of the relative nature of social institutions developed. It became
harder to believe in any absolute rightness of one’s own ways. Montaigne, already men-
tioned, expressed the relativist outlook clearly, and nowhere more clearly than in his
famous essay on cannibals. The cannibals, he said humorously, did in fact eat human fl esh;
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World252
that was their custom, and they have their customs as Europeans also have theirs; they
would think some European ways odd or inhuman; peoples differ, and who are we to
judge? The cannibals cooked human bodies after the people were dead, but Europeans
burned human beings when they were still alive. Travelers’ books spread the same mes-
sage increasingly through the seventeenth century. As one of them observed
(whether or not rightly), in Turkey it was the custom to shave the hair and
wear the beard, in Europe to shave the beard and wear the hair; what differ-
ence does it really make?
That the ways of non-Europeans might be good ways was emphasized by Jesuit mis-
sionaries. Writing from the depths of the Mississippi Valley or from China, the Jesuit
fathers often dwelt on the natural goodness and mental alertness of native peoples they
encountered, perhaps hoping in this way to gain support in Europe for their missionary
labors. Meanwhile, people coming from the American wilderness or from Asia sometimes
appeared in Europe itself. In 1684 a delegation of aristocratic Siamese arrived in Paris,
followed by another in 1686. The Parisians went through a fad for Siam (now Thailand);
they recounted how the king of Siam, when asked by a missionary to turn Christian,
replied that divine Providence, had it wished a single religion to prevail in the world, could
easily have so arranged it. The philosophical Siamese seemed civilized and wise; they
allowed Christians to preach in their own country, whereas it was well known what would
happen to a Siamese missionary who undertook to preach in Paris. China also was seen at
this time as a civilized center of learning, tolerance, and wise ethical traditions. By 1700
there were even professors of Arabic, at Paris, Oxford, and Utrecht, who said that Islam
was a religion to be respected, as good for Muslims as Christianity was
for Christians.
Thus was created a strong current of skepticism, holding that all beliefs
are relative, varying with the time, place, and culture in which they develop.
The greatest spokesman for this kind of relativism or skepticism at the end of the century
was Pierre Bayle (1647–1706). Bayle was infl uenced by the scientifi c discoveries also;
not exactly that he understood them, for he was an almost purely literary scholar, but he
realized that many popular beliefs were without scientifi c foundation. Between 1680 and
1682 a number of comets were seen. The one of 1682 was studied by a friend of Newton’s,
Edmond Halley, the fi rst man to predict the return of a comet. He identifi ed the comet of
1682 with the one observed in 1302, 1456, 1531, and 1607, and predicted its reappear-
ance in 1757 (it appeared in 1759); it was seen again in 1910 and 1986 and is still called
Halley’s Comet. In the 1680s people were talking excitedly about the signifi cance of comets.
Some said that comets emitted poisonous exhalations; others, that they were supernatural
omens of future events.
Bayle, in his Thoughts on the Comet, argued that there was no basis for any such beliefs except human credulity. In 1697 he published his Historical and Critical Diction- ary, a tremendous repository of miscellaneous lore, conveying the message that what is called truth is often mere opinion, that most people are amazingly gullible, that many
things fi rmly believed are really ridiculous, and that it is very foolish to hold too strongly
to one’s own views. Bayle’s Dictionary remained a reservoir on which skeptical writers continued to draw for generations. Bayle himself, having no fi rm basis in his own mind
for settled judgment, mixed skepticism with an impulse to faith. Born a Protestant, he was
converted to Roman Catholicism, then returned to his Calvinist background. In any case
his views made for toleration in religion. For Bayle, as for Montaigne, no opinion could
justify burning your neighbor at the stake.
Travelers’ tales
Skepticism
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253
The New Sense of Evidence
But in the study of humankind, as in the study of physical nature, Europeans of the sev-
enteenth century were not generally content with skepticism. They usually sought to go
beyond a doubting mood, important and salutary as such an attitude was. In the sub-
jects collectively called the humanities, as in pure science, they were looking for a more
advanced understanding of human behavior. They wanted new means of telling the true
from the false, a new method for arriving at some degree of certainty of conviction. And
here, too, a kind of scientifi c view of the world arose, if that term is understood in a general
sense. The new human sciences took the form of a new interest in observable evidence.
Evidence is that which allows one to believe a thing to be true, or at least truer than some-
thing else for which the evidence is weaker. And if to believe without evidence is the sign
of nonscientifi c or irrational thinking, to require evidence before believing is in a way to be
scientifi c, or at least to trust and use the power of human intelligence.
The arrival of ambassadors from Siam at Versailles in 1684 made a vivid impression on a French generation that was fascinated by reports on distant lands and peoples. Although the bowing ambassadors show the requisite respect for the Sun King, their presence in France contributed to the growing speculation on cultural differences and the relativism of cultural customs. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
29. New Knowledge of Human Beings and Society
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World254
The new belief in the need for evidence revealed itself in many ways. One of the
clearest was in the law. The English law of evidence, for example, began to
take on its modern form at the close of the seventeenth century. It was long
believed that less evidence should be necessary in arriving at a verdict of
guilty in trials for the most atrocious crimes; this was thought necessary to
protect society from the more hideous offenses. From the end of the seven-
teenth century, in English law, the judge lost his power of discretion in deciding what
should constitute evidence, and the same rules of evidence were applied in all forms of
accusation, the essential legal question becoming always the same—did such-and-such a
fact (however outrageous) occur or did it not? After 1650 mere hearsay evidence, long
vaguely distrusted, was ruled defi nitely out of court. After 1696 even persons charged with
felony were allowed legal counsel.
The new emphasis on empirical evidence was probably the main force
in putting an end to the delusionary charges of witchcraft. What made witch-
craft so credible and so fearsome was that many persons confessed them-
selves to be witches, admitting to supernatural powers and to evil designs
upon their neighbors. Many or most such confessions were extracted under torture. Reform-
ers urged that confessions obtained under torture were not evidence, that people would say
anything to escape unbearable pain, so that no such confessions offered the slightest ground
for believing in witches. As for the voluntary confessions, and even the boastings of some
people of their diabolical powers, it was noted that such statements often came from persons
who would today be called hysterical or psychotic. Witches came to be regarded as self-
deluded. Their ideas of themselves were no longer accepted as reliable or objective evidence.
But it must be added that, except in England, the use of legal torture lasted through most of
the eighteenth century in criminal cases in which the judge believed the accused to be guilty.
History and Historical Scholarship
The systematic study of past human societies, which would come to be called the his-
torical sciences, also developed rapidly at this time. History, like the law, depends on the
discovery and use of evidence. The historian and the judge must answer the same kind of
question—did such-and-such a fact really occur? All knowledge of history, insofar as it
disengages itself from legend, propaganda, or wishful thinking, rests ultimately on pieces
of evidence, written records, and other material objects created in the past and surviving in
some form or other in the present. On this mass of material the vast picture of the past is
built, and without it people would be ignorant of their own antecedents or would have only
folktales and unconfi rmed oral traditions. Oral history often shapes personal and collec-
tive memories, and it provides important information; but judges and historians know that
people remember past events with very different facts and perspectives.
There was thus much skepticism about history in the seventeenth century. Some said
that history was not a form of true knowledge because it was not mathematical. Others said
that it was useless because Adam, the perfect man, neither had nor needed any history.
Many felt that what passed for history was only a mass of fables. History was distrusted
also because historians were often pretentious, claiming to be high-fl ying men of letters,
writing for rhetorical or inspirational appeal or for argumentative reasons, disdaining the
hard labor of empirical study. History was losing the confi dence of thinking people who
came to view science as the model for reliable knowledge. How was it possible, they
asked, to feel even a modicum of certainty about alleged events that had happened long
before any living person had been born?
English law of
evidence
Evidence and
witchcraft
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255
This doubting attitude itself arose from a stricter sense of evidence, or from a realiza-
tion that there was really no proof for much of what was said about the past. But scholars
set to work to assemble what evidence they could fi nd. They hoped to create a new history,
one that should contain only reliable statements. Europe was littered with old papers and
parchments. Abbeys, manor houses, and royal archives were full of written documents,
many of them of unknown age or unknown origin, often written in a handwriting that
people could no longer read. Learned and laborious enthusiasts set to work to explore this
accumulation. They added so much to the efforts of their predecessors as
virtually to create modern critical scholarship and erudition. The French
Benedictine monk Jean Mabillon, in 1681, in his book On Diplomatics (referring to ancient charters and “diplomas”) established the science of
paleography, which deals with the deciphering, reading, dating, and authentication of man-
uscripts. The Frenchman DuCange in 1678 published a dictionary of medieval Latin that is
New historical
scholarship
THE GROWTH OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE The four maps show the best scientifi c knowledge at their respective dates. Behaim has no inkling of the existence of America and has fi lled in the hemisphere opposite to Europe with a mass of islands, representing what he has heard of the East Indies and Japan. He knows pretty well the limits of Africa. Schöner in 1523 fi lls in America and even distinguishes two American continents. He knows of the Gulf of Mexico but fails to realize the narrowness of the Isthmus of Panama. He knows of the Straits of Magellan (but not Cape Horn) and hopefully fi lls in a corresponding Northwest Passage in the north. His conception of the Indian Ocean is quite accurate. To Homan, two centuries later, the size and shapes of oceans and continents are well known, but he believes New Guinea is joined to Australia and is frankly ignorant of the northwest coast of North America, representing it by a straight line. The Great Lakes and the interior of North America have become known to Europe. D’Anville in 1761 has no island of Tasmania, does not understand that Alaska is a peninsula, and believes the American polar regions to be impassable by sea. Otherwise his map is indistinguishable from one on the same scale today—though the cultural interpretations or meanings of geographical spaces have con- tinued to evolve.
BEHAIM 1492 SCHÖNER 1523
HOMAN 1716 D'ANVILLE 1761
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World256
still used. Other historians spent whole lifetimes exploring archives, collecting, editing, or
publishing masses of documents, comparing manuscript copies of the same text and trying
to discover what the author had really written, rejecting some texts as fabrications or forg-
eries, pronouncing others to be genuine pieces of historical evidence. Others made them-
selves experts in ancient coins, many of which were far more ancient than the oldest
manuscripts; they founded the science of numismatics. Still others, or indeed the same
persons, turned to a critical examination of the inscriptions on old buildings and ruins,
looking for the earliest possible information about specifi c people or events.
Another important but little-known historical “science,” namely, chronology, was
also pursued with new attention to precise evidence and dates. Chronology deals with
the age of the world and with fi nding a common denominator between the dating sys-
tems of various peoples. Probably it is not natural for the human mind to think in terms
of dates at all. For nonhistorically minded people, or for people who are little concerned
with verifi able evidence, it is enough to know that some things happened “long ago.” In
the seventeenth century the new interest in numbers, evident in physical science, turned
also to the human past. Archbishop James Ussher, an Anglican prelate of Ireland, after
much study of the Bible, announced the date of 4004 b.c.e. as the year in which the world
was created. His chronological system was later printed in the margins of the Authorized
The early modern interest in the preservation and study of historical materials led to a systematic organization of the libraries and sources that careful scholarship would require. This seventeenth- century engraving of a library in Leiden shows the subjects that scholars studied and the tables at which they stood to read the books. Although women were not present in this scholarly meeting place, the engraving shows that dogs apparently had free access to the library’s main reading room. (Corbis)
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257
Version of the English Bible and some fundamentalists still adhere to it as if it were part
of the Bible itself. But Ussher’s system was not accepted by scholars even in his own time.
New geographical knowledge was revealing China and its dynasties to Europe; historical
knowledge was beginning to discover ancient Egypt. The Chinese and Egyptian records
claimed a greater antiquity for their countries than the Old Testament seemed to allow
for the human race. There was much erudite conjecture; one scholar about 1700 counted
70 estimates of the age of the world, ranging as high as 170,000 years, a fi gure that then
seemed fantastic and appalling.
The diffi culty was not only in the language of the Old Testament. It was in fi nding the
correspondence between the chronological systems of different peoples. A Chinese system
of dating by dynasties might be coherent within itself, but how could it be equated with the
European system of dating from the birth of Christ, a date as little known to the Chinese as
the date of Wu Wang was to Europeans? Even European records presented the same diffi -
culty; the Romans counted by consulships, or from the supposed year of the founding of
Rome; many medieval documents told only the year of an obscure ruler’s reign. Only
infi nite patience, interminable research, and endless calculation could reduce such a jum-
ble to the simple system of modern textbooks. This is of more importance than may be at
fi rst recognized. A common system of dating is a great aid to thinking of human history as
an interconnected whole. An overall conception of the human race is made easier by the
dating of all events according to what Europeans called the Christian era. This itself, it
may be pointed out, is an arbitrary and conventional scale, because Christ is
now thought to have been born not in 1 c.e., but in 4 b.c.e.
Common dating was increasingly important for practical affairs as well
as for historical knowledge. Europe was disunited even on the Christian
calendar. Protestant and some Orthodox countries followed the old or Julian
calendar; Catholic countries, the corrected or Gregorian calendar issued in the sixteenth
century under authority of Pope Gregory XIII. The two calendars varied in the seventeenth
century by 10 days. Only gradually was the Gregorian calendar accepted, by England in
1752, by Russia in 1918. Most other peoples today, in China, India, the Arabic world, and
elsewhere, use or recognize the Gregorian calendar as a shared calendar for modern global
life. Without a uniform way of specifying days and years it would be diffi cult to trans-
act international affairs, hold international conferences, make plans, or pay and receive
money; a global system for defi ning time and dates thus became essential for global eco-
nomic exchanges and communications. This common dating, easily taken for granted, was
a consequence of the expanding global infl uence of Europe in modern times; and it became
both a symbolic and a practical expression of the exchanges between different cultures in
the modern world.
The Questioning of Traditional Beliefs
The historical sciences provided a foundation on which a knowledge of human activities
in the past could be built, and the growing geographical knowledge provided a panorama
of human diversity in the present. This new knowledge shared with natural science the
view that many traditional ideas were erroneous but that much could now be known by a
more disciplined use of the human mind. The humanities and the sciences were alike in
demanding evidence for belief and in trusting the power of reason. In their impact on the
traditional certainties of European life, the studies of human cultures exerted possibly a
greater direct force than those of nature. Pascal, in his defense of the Christian faith, feared
the spirit of Montaigne, the mood of skepticism and denial, which he felt himself, more
than he feared the fi ndings of mathematical and physical science. And the movement of
A common system of
dating
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World258
historical thought, with its insistence on textual criticism and verifi able evidence, threw
doubt on much of the Christian religion, or at least on the sacred history and miracles
related in the Bible, which was considered to be part and parcel of
religion itself.
In 1678 a French priest, Richard Simon, published a pioneering work
in Biblical criticism, his Critical History of the Old Testament. Although his book was condemned both by the church and by the government of
Louis XIV, Simon always felt himself to be an orthodox Christian; Catholic faith, he
insisted, depended more on church tradition than on the literal statements of the Bible. He
simply applied to the Old Testament the methods of textual criticism that others were
applying to secular documents. He concluded that the Old Testament, as known, rested on
medieval manuscripts, many of which were of unknown or doubtful origin, that monkish
copyists had introduced errors and corruptions, and that the books thought to have been
written by Moses could not have been written by him, because they contained obvious
contradictions and matter clearly inserted after his death. Others went further, questioning
not merely the evidence of the Biblical text, but the very possibility of some events that it
related. From the scientifi c idea of the absolute regularity of nature on the one hand, and
from a strong sense of human credulity on the other, they denied that miracles could have
ever occurred; and they looked upon oracles and prophecies among either the Greeks or
the Hebrews with a dubious eye.
The most profoundly disturbing of all thinkers of the time was Baruch
Spinoza (1632–1677), the lens grinder of Amsterdam, a Jew whose ances-
tral family had emigrated from Portugal to escape the repression of Jewish
communities in Iberia. Spinoza became an independent-minded, skeptical
philosopher who was excommunicated by his own synagogue and who refused a profes-
sorship at the University of Heidelberg, craving only the quiet to think in peace. He drew
on both the scientifi c and humanistic thought of his day to develop a philosophy holding
that God had no existence apart from the world, that everything was itself an aspect of
Biblical scholarship
and criticism
Baruch Spinoza
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1543–1697
1543 Publication of Copernicus’s On the Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs and Vesalius’s The Structure of the Human Body
1609 Galileo builds a telescope
1620–1627 Francis Bacon argues for empirical method to advance knowledge
1637 René Descartes publishes Discourse on Method
1651 Thomas Hobbes publishes Leviathan
1662 Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge is chartered in London
1666 Royal Academy of Sciences is founded in Paris
1687 Isaac Newton publishes Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
1690 John Locke publishes Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government
1697 Pierre Bayle publishes Historical Critical Dictionary
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259
God—a philosophy technically called pantheism but considered by many to be really
atheistic. Spinoza therefore rejected Cartesian dualism, but he also denied the inspira-
tion of the Bible, disbelieved in miracles and the supernatural, rejected all revelation and
revealed religion, Jewish or Christian, and held that few if any governments of the day
were really just. He taught a pure, stern, and intellectual ethical code, and one that had
few consolations for the average person. His name became a byword for impiety and hor-
rendous unbelief. People were literally afraid to read his works, even when they could
fi nd them, which was not often because of the censorship. His infl uence spread slowly,
through the mediation of other writers, contributing to the later development of rationalist
philosophy.
More widely read, less abstruse, were the writings of the Englishman John Locke
(1632–1704), who summarized many of the intellectual trends of his lifetime and exerted
a strong infl uence for the following hundred years. He combined practical experience and
theoretical interests in a philosophy that dwelled on the merits of common sense. Educated
in medicine, he kept in touch with the sciences and was acquainted with Newton. He was
associated with the great Whig noblemen who were the main authors of the English revo-
lution in 1688. For political reasons he spent several years in the 1680s in the Netherlands,
where he became familiar with new philosophical work on the Continent. He wrote on
many subjects—fi nance, economics, education, religious policy, political theory, general
philosophy—always with an engaging directness and the sober air of a sensible man of
the world. In his Letter on Toleration (1689) he advocated an established church but with toleration of all except Roman Catholics and atheists; these he held to be dangerous to
society: the former because of a foreign allegiance; the latter because they lacked a basis
of moral responsibility. In his Reasonableness of Christianity he argued that Christian- ity, rightly considered, is after all a reasonable form of religion; this softened the friction
between religion and natural knowledge but tended to shut out the supernatural and merge
religious feeling into an unruffl ed common sense.
Locke’s deepest book was his Essay Concerning the Human Understanding (1690). Here he faced the great problem of the day, the problem of knowledge and skepticism; he
asked if it was possible to know anything with certainty, and how certain knowledge was
arrived at. His answer was that true or certain knowledge is derived from experience—
from perceptions by the sense organs and refl ection of the mind on these perceptions.
Locke at the end of the century thus echoes Bacon at the beginning; they became the two
great pillars of empirical philosophy, insisting on experience and observation as the source
of truth. Locke denied Descartes’s doctrine of innate ideas, or inevitable disposition of the
human mind to think in certain ways. He held that the mind at birth is a blank tablet or
tabula rasa and that the social environment shapes what people think or believe. Locke’s environmentalist philosophy became fundamental to liberal and reforming thought in later
years. It seemed that false ideas or superstitions were the result of bad environment and
bad education. It seemed that the evil in human actions was due to bad social institutions
and that an improvement in human society would improve human behavior. This philoso-
phy, whether or not wholly true in the fi nal analysis, was largely true with respect to many
practical conditions. A better education, for example, seemed to offer better opportunities
for personal advancement and social well-being. Locke’s philosophy thus gave confi dence
in the possibility of social progress and turned attention to a sphere in which planned and
constructive action was possible, namely, the sphere of government, public policy, and
legislation. Here we touch on political theory, to which Locke contributed Two Treatises of Government (these works are discussed later in this chapter).
29. New Knowledge of Human Beings and Society
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World260
30. POLITICAL THEORY: THE SCHOOL OF NATURAL LAW
Political theory can never be strictly scientifi c. Science deals with what currently exists or
has existed. It does not tell what ought to exist. To describe what society and government
ought to be like, in view of human nature and the capacity to be miserable or contented, is
a main purpose of political theory. Political theory is in a sense more practical than sci-
ence. It is the scientists and scholars who are most content to observe facts as they are; and
even when they seek to improve material conditions, they do not seek (or expect) to change
the basic structures of the natural world. Practical people, however, and those scientists
and scholars who have practical interests, must always ask themselves what ought to be
done, what institutional structures ought to be changed, what policies ought to be adopted,
what measures ought to be taken, what state of affairs ought to be maintained or brought
about. Conservatives and radicals, traditionalists and innovators, are alike in this respect. It
is impossible in human affairs to escape the word “ought,” or to stop thinking about pos-
sible changes in social and political systems.
But political theory was affected by the scientifi c view. The Renaissance
Italian, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), whom we have discussed earlier,
had opened the way in this direction. Machiavelli too had his “ought”; he
preferred a republican form of government in which citizens felt a patriotic
attachment to their state. But in his book The Prince he disregarded the question of the best form of government, a favorite question of Christian and scholastic philosophers of
the Middle Ages. He separated the study of politics from theology and moral philosophy.
He undertook to describe how governments and rulers actually behaved. He observed that
successful rulers behaved as if holding or increasing power were their only object, that they
regarded all else as means to this end. Princes, said Machiavelli, kept their promises or
Niccolò Machiavelli
The Dutch, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), portrayed here in a painting by Samuel Van Hoogstraten, developed a materialist or pantheistic philosophy that provoked strong opposi- tion from many of his contemporaries; but Spinoza became an infl uential thinker for later writers who expressed skepticism about traditional religious beliefs. (Bettmann/Corbis)
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26130. Political Theory: The School of Natural Law
broke them, told the truth or distorted it, sought popularity or ignored it, advanced public
welfare or disrupted it, conciliated their neighbors or destroyed them—depending merely
on which course of action seemed the best means of advancing their political interests. All
this was bad, said Machiavelli; but that was not the question, for the question was to fi nd
out what rulers really did. Drawing his conclusions from the observable evidence of history,
Machiavelli chose to be nonmoral in order to produce what might be called a “scientifi c”
account of political power. To most readers he seemed to be simply immoral. Nor was it
possible to draw the line between The Prince as a scientifi c description of fact and The Prince as a book of maxims of conduct. In telling how successful rulers obtained their successes, Machiavelli also suggested how rulers ought to proceed. And though govern- ments did in fact continue to behave for the most part as Machiavelli said, most people
refused to admit that they ought to.
Natural Right and Natural Law
Political theory in the seventeenth century did not generally embrace the cynicism attrib-
uted to Machiavelli. Nor did it fall into the skepticism of those who said that the customs
of one’s country should be passively accepted or that one form of government was about
as good as another. It directly faced the question, What is right? The seventeenth century
was the classic age of the philosophy of natural right or of natural law.
The idea of natural law underlies a good deal of modern democratic
development, and its decline over the last century has been closely con-
nected with many of the troubles of recent times. It is not easy to say in
what the philosophy of natural law essentially consisted. It held that there
is, somehow, in the structure of the world, a law that distinguishes right from wrong. It
held that right is “natural,” not a mere human invention or cultural construction. This right
is not determined, for any country, by its heritage, tradition, or customs, nor yet by its
actual laws (called “positive” laws) of the kind that are enforced in the law courts. All
these may be unfair or unjust. We detect unfairness or injustice in them by comparing
them with natural law as we understand it; thus we have a basis for saying that cannibalism
is bad or that a law requiring forced labor from orphan children is unjust. Nor is natural
law, or the enduring rightness of something, determined by the authority of any person or
people. No king can make right that which is wrong. No people, by its will as a people,
can make just that which is unjust. Right and law, in the ultimate sense, exist outside and
above all peoples. They are universal, the same for all. No one can make them up to suit
themselves. A good king or a just people is a king or people whose actions correspond to
the objective standard. But how, if we cannot trust our own positive laws or customs, or
our leaders, or even our collective selves, can we know what is naturally right? How do we
discover natural law?
The answer, in the natural law philosophy, is that we discover it by reason. Philosophers
of natural law said that human beings are rational animals. And they assumed that all human
beings have, at least potentially and when better enlightened, the same powers of reason and
understanding—Germans or English, Asians, Africans or Europeans. This view favored a
cosmopolitan outlook and made international agreement and general world progress seem
realizable goals. As time went on, the premises of this philosophy came to be questioned. By
the twentieth century it was widely thought that the human mind was not especially rational
but was motivated by unconscious drives or urges or instincts and that human cultural dif-
ferences were so fundamental that people of different nationalities or classes could never
expect to see things in the same way. Challenged by such theories of human irrationality and
“Natural law” and
“natural right”
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World262
cultural difference (which could be promoted with much ancient and modern evidence), the
older philosophy of a universal natural law lost its hold on many minds.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, it was generally accepted.
Some, carrying over the philosophy of the Middle Ages, thought of natural law as an
aspect of the law of God. Others, more secular in spirit, held that the natural law stood of
itself. These included even some churchmen; a group of theologians, mainly Jesuits, were
condemned by the pope in 1690 for holding that universal right and wrong might exist by
reason only, whether God existed or not. The idea of natural law and the faith in human
reason went side by side, and both were fundamental in the thought of the time. They were
to be found everywhere in Europe, in their religious or their secular form.
On the basis of natural law some thinkers tried to create an international law or “law
of nations,” to bring order into the maze of sovereign territorial states, great and small, that
was developing in Europe. Hugo Grotius, in 1625, published the fi rst great
book devoted exclusively to this subject, his Law of War and Peace. Samuel Pufendorf followed with his Law of Nature and of Nations in 1672. Both held that sovereign states, though bound by no positive law or authority,
should work together for the common good, that there was a community of nations as of
individuals, and that in the absence of a higher international sovereignty they were all still
subordinate to natural reason and justice. Certain concrete doctrines, such as the freedom
of the seas or the immunity of ambassadors, were put forward. The principles of interna-
tional law were seen as an extension of natural law. The content came to include specifi c
agreements between governments, certain kinds of admiralty and maritime law, and the
terms of treaties such as the treaties of Westphalia, Utrecht, and others. Such laws and trea-
ties expressed transnational principles or agreements, even though the means for enforcing
such principles remained weak or nonexistent in the era’s endless political confl icts and
wars. They could nevertheless be viewed historically as the fi rst halting steps toward a
more legally coherent, international, and secular management of political affairs among the
emerging, modern European states.
Hobbes and Locke
In domestic affairs the philosophy of natural law, though it rather favored constitutional-
ism, was used to justify both constitutional and absolutist governments. Right itself was
held to be in the nature of things, beyond human power to change. But forms of govern-
ment were held to be the means to an end. No philosopher at the time thought the state
could have an absolute value in itself. The state had to be “justifi ed,” made acceptable to
the moral consciousness or to reason. There were, indeed, important competing philoso-
phies. On the side of absolutism was the doctrine of the divine right of kings. On the side
of constitutionalism were arguments based on heritage or custom, emphasizing the char-
ters or compacts of former times and the historic powers of towns, parliaments, and estates.
But neither the supernatural argument of the divine right of kings nor the historical argu-
ment pointing back to liberties of the Middle Ages was entirely satisfactory in the scien-
tifi c atmosphere of the seventeenth century. Neither argument could be completely justifi ed
within the frameworks of reason or morality that now shaped the ideas of the most acute
European thinkers. Both the absolutist and the constitutional views of government were
therefore reinforced in the seventeenth century by the concept of natural law; and two
English political theorists showed most clearly how both sides in this debate built their
opposing arguments on similar foundations of natural law. Absolutism was philosophi-
cally justifi ed by Thomas Hobbes; constitutionalism, by John Locke.
“Law of nations”
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263
Hobbes (1588–1679) followed the scientifi c and mathematical discov-
eries of his time with more than an amateur interest. In philosophy he held
to a materialistic and even atheistic system. In English politics he sided
with the king against Parliament; he disliked the disorder and violence of
the civil war of the 1640s and the unstable conditions of the English republic of the 1650s.
He concluded that humans have no capacity for self-government. His opinion of human
nature was low; he held that people in the state of nature, or as they could be imagined to
exist without government, were quarrelsome and turbulent, forever locked in a war of all
against all. In his famous phrase, life in the state of nature was “solitary, poor, nasty, brut-
ish and short.” Acting on their fear of each other and seeking to obtain order or enjoy the
advantages of law and right, people came to a kind of agreement or “contract” by which
they surrendered their freedom of action into the hands of a ruler. It was necessary for this
ruler to have unrestricted authority, because order could be maintained only by the exer-
cise of absolute government powers. It was intolerably dangerous, according to Hobbes,
for anyone to question the actions of government, for such questioning might reopen the
way to chaos. Government must therefore be a kind of Leviathan (the monster mentioned
in the Bible, Job 41); and Hobbes in fact used the word Leviathan for the title of his princi- pal book, published in 1651, two years after the execution of King Charles I.
By this book Hobbes became the leading secular exponent of absolutism and one of the
principal theorists of the unlimited sovereignty of the state. His infl uence on later thinkers
was very great. He accustomed political theorists to the use of purely natural arguments. He
quoted freely from the Bible, but the Bible had no infl uence on his thought. After Hobbes,
all advanced political theorists regarded government as a device created by human purpose.
It was no longer considered, except popularly and except by professional theologians, as
part of God’s divine dispensation to human history. Hobbes also affected later theorists by
his arguments for a sovereign authority, which obliged them to refute his idea of an unlim-
ited personal sovereign. But he was never a popular writer. In England the cause that he
favored lost infl uence in the course of the seventeenth-century revolutions. In those conti-
nental countries where royal absolutism prevailed his arguments were received with secret
gratifi cation, but his irreligion was too dangerous to make public, and the absolutist argu-
ment, on the popular level, remained that of the divine right of kings. In any case Hobbes’s
arguments were in some ways insuffi cient for real monarchs. Hobbes abhorred struggle and
violence. He believed that absolutism would produce civil peace, individual security, and a
rule of law. He also held that absolute power depended on, or had at least originated in, a
free and rational agreement by which people accepted it. An absolute monarchy that fl a-
grantly violated these conditions could with diffi culty be justifi ed even by the doctrines of
Hobbes. It is in these respects that Hobbes differs from totalitarian theorists of more recent
times. For Hobbes, in the fi nal analysis, absolute power was an expedient to promote indi-
vidual welfare. It was a means to advance or protect the realization of natural law.
John Locke (1632–1704), as has been seen, also stood in the main cur-
rent of scientifi c thought and discovery. But in his political philosophy he
carried over many ideas of the Middle Ages, as formulated in the thirteenth
century by St. Thomas Aquinas and kept alive in England by successive
thinkers of the Anglican church. Medieval philosophy had never favored an absolute power.
With Hobbes, Locke shared the idea that good government is an expedient of human pur-
pose, neither provided by divine Providence nor inherited by a national tradition. He held,
too, like Hobbes and the whole school of natural law, that government was based on a kind
of contract, or rational and conscious agreement upon which authority was based. In contrast
to Hobbes, he sided with Parliament against the king in the practical struggles of politics.
John Locke
Absolutism and
Thomas Hobbes
30. Political Theory: The School of Natural Law
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World264
About 1680, in the course of these disputes, he wrote Two Treatises of Government, which, however, were not published until shortly after the parliamentary revolution of 1688–1689.
Locke took a more genial view of human nature than Hobbes. As he showed in his
other books, he believed that a moderate religion was a good thing and above all that
people could learn from experience and hence could be educated to an enlightened way of
life. These ideas favored a belief in self-government. Locke declared (in contradiction to
Hobbes) that people in the “state of nature” were reasonable and well disposed, willing to
get along with one another though handicapped by the absence of public authority. They
likewise had a moral sense, quite independently of government; and they also possessed
by nature certain individual rights, quite apart from the state. These rights were the rights
to life, liberty, and property.
Locke placed heavy emphasis on the right of property, by which he usually meant the
possession of land. His philosophy can in fact be regarded as an expression of the landed
classes of England, who challenged the power of kings by defending the political and social
rights of private property. Individuals in the state of nature are not altogether able, accord-
ing to Locke, to win general respect for their individual natural rights. They cannot by their
own efforts protect what is “proper” to them, that is, their property. They agree to set up
government to enforce observance of the rights of all. Government is thus created by a con-
tract, but the contract is not unconditional, as claimed by Hobbes. It imposes mutual obliga-
tions. The people must be reasonable; only rational beings can be politically free. Liberty is
not an anarchy of undisciplined will; it is the freedom to act without compulsion by another.
Only rational and responsible creatures can exercise true freedom; but adult human beings,
according to Locke, are or can be educated to be rational and responsible. They therefore
can and should be free. Locke never really explained how these political rights, obligations,
and freedoms might apply to women as well as to men, so there has been much modern
debate about Locke’s theoretical contributions to later campaigns for women’s rights. In
his own early modern context, however, Locke’s writings explicitly supported the political
rights and obligations of men who were claiming an active role in government affairs.
On government, also, as Locke described it, certain conditions and obligations are
imposed. If a government breaks the contract, if it threatens the natural rights that it is the
sole purpose of government to protect, if, for example, it takes away a man’s property with-
out his consent, then the governed have a right to reconsider what they have done in creating
the government and may even in the last extremity rebel against it. The right to resist gov-
ernment, Locke admits, is very dangerous, but it is less dangerous than its opposite, which
would lead to the loss of all liberty; and in any case Locke assumes that those who might
resist the government in such situations would still be reasonable and responsible people.
If Locke’s ideas seem familiar, especially to Americans, it is because of the wide popu-
larizing of his philosophy in the century after his death. Nowhere was his infl uence greater
than in the British colonies. The authors of the American Declaration of
Independence and of the Constitution of the United States knew the writ-
ings of Locke very thoroughly. Some phrases of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence echo his very language. In Great Britain also, and in France and
elsewhere, in the course of time, Locke’s infl uence was immense. But it should be noted
that his ideas did not always mean the same thing for all people or in all places. Locke
did not extend his ideas of human liberty to enslaved Africans, apparently because he
viewed slavery as a legitimate form of private property. Locke himself invested in the slave-
trading Royal African Company and endorsed the development of slavery in the American
colonies. The growing infl uence of Locke’s political theories may also have contributed
Locke’s infl uence
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265
indirectly to the emergence of new racist ideas in the eighteenth century. New justifi cations
for slavery became necessary when the political classes of England and America began
to believe that human beings possessed natural rights to life, liberty, and property. How
could slavery be reconciled with such beliefs? The answer appeared in new forms of rac-
ism, which justifi ed the enslavement of Africans by arguing that the African “race” lacked
certain rational human traits of the European “race” and that black people could be denied
fundamental human rights because they differed from other human beings.
In general, however, Locke’s ideas of natural rights and human liberty were later used
to challenge absolutist or repressive institutions, including also the slave trade and the legal
systems that supported slavery. The right to human liberty, including the liberty of enslaved
persons, would eventually be viewed as more universal, or more natural, than certain “prop-
erty rights” of slaveholders—though slavery would not be abolished in most European
colonies or postcolonial nations until the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, Locke’s theories
of contractual government gained international infl uence in the evolving debates about
monarchical power. What Locke did was to convert an episode in English history into an
event of universal political meaning. In England, in 1688, certain great lords, winning the
support of the established church, gentry, and merchants, deposed one king and brought in
another. On the new king they imposed certain obligations—specifi ed in the Bill of Rights
of 1689 and all dealing with legal or technical interpretations of the English constitution.
The Revolution of 1688 was a very English affair. England in 1688 was still little known to
the rest of Europe. The proceedings in England, in so far as they were known to most Euro-
peans, might seem no different from a rebellion of the magnates of Hungary. Locke, in
JOHN LOCKE by John Greenhill (English, 1642–1676)
Locke’s writings on govern- ment and natural rights sum- marized the arguments against royal power in England and also won adherents wherever political theorists challenged monarchical absolutism. (Snark/Art Resource, NY)
30. Political Theory: The School of Natural Law
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Chapter 6 The Scientifi c View of the World266
arguing that Parliament had been right to eject James II, put the whole affair on a level of
reason, natural right, and human nature. It thus came to have meaning for people who had
no connection with the specifi c problems of English political history.
At the same time, Locke made the English revolution a sign of progress
rather than reaction. The new and modern form of government in 1690 was
royal absolutism, with its professional bureaucracy and corps of paid offi -
cials. Almost everywhere there was resistance to the kings, led by landed
interests and harking back to earlier freedoms. Such resistance seemed to many Europeans
to be feudal and medieval. Locke made the resistance in England, namely, the Revolution
of 1688 against James II, into a modern and forward-looking movement. He checked the
prestige of absolutism. He gave new prestige to constitutional principles. He carried over,
in modifi ed form, many ideas from the scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages, who
had generally maintained that kings had only a relative and restricted power and were
responsible to their peoples. To these ideas he added the force of the newer scientifi c view
of the world. He did not rest his case on supernatural or providential arguments. He did not
say that constitutional government was the will of God. He said that it rested on experience
and observation of human nature, on recognition of certain individual rights and especially
the right of property, and on the existence of a purely natural law of reason and justice.
He was an almost entirely secular thinker, and, as such, he developed ideas that could be
drawn into the political and social confl icts of most modern nations.
One must not claim too much for Locke, or for any writer. England was in fact, in
1688, more modern in many ways than other countries in Europe. The Glorious Revolu-
tion was in fact not exactly like uprisings of the landed and propertied classes elsewhere.
England in the following century did in fact create a form of parliamentary government
that was unique. But facts go together with the theories that give them an understandable
meaning. Events in England, as explained by Locke, and as seen in other countries and
even in England and its colonies through Locke’s eyes, launched into the mainstream of
modern history the superb tradition of constitutional government, which has been one of
the principal themes in the history of the modern world ever since.
By 1700, at the close of the “century of genius,” some beliefs that were to become
characteristic of modern times had clearly taken form, notably a faith in science, in human
reason, in natural human rights, and in progress. The new scientifi c knowledge was begin-
ning to transform the global economy, the culture of European elites, and the confl icts
within or among European empires. Meanwhile, the cultural institutions of modern sci-
ence were spreading across Europe, and new scientifi c theories in physics, astronomy, and
physiology were challenging both the theology and thought systems of earlier generations.
The following period, generally known as the Age of Enlightenment, was to be a time of
clarifying and popularizing ideas that the more creative seventeenth century had produced.
These ideas were eventually to revolutionize Europe, America, and the world. They were
also in subsequent years to be modifi ed, amended, challenged, and even denied. But they
are still very much alive today.
Locke on the English
revolution
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e .
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267
C h a p t e r 7 THE GLOBAL
STRUGGLE FOR
WEALTH AND EMPIRE
In earlier chapters we have seen how western Europe, and especially England and France, by
about the year 1700 came to occupy a position of
power and infl uence in Europe as a whole. We
have traced the political history of western Europe
through the War of the Spanish Succession, termi-
nated in 1713–1714 by the treaties of Utrecht and
Rastatt. Affairs of central Europe and Germany
have been described for the period up to 1740. In
that year a new kingdom of Prussia and a new or
renovated Austrian monarchy, each passing into the
hands of a new ruler, stood on the eve of a struggle
for ascendancy in central Europe. As for eastern
Europe, we have observed the Europeanizing and
expansion of the Russian Empire.
More important in the long run than these political events, and continuing throughout
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was the cumulative expansion of all forms of
knowledge, which we saw in the rapid development of seventeenth-century science and to
which we return in the next chapter. Equally important was the growing wealth of Europe,
or at least of the Atlantic region north of Spain. The new wealth, in the widest sense,
meaning conveniences of every kind, resulted partly from the new technical and scientifi c
knowledge, which in turn it helped to produce; and the two together, more wealth and
more knowledge, helped to form one of the most far-reaching ideas of modern times, the
idea of progress. This idea challenged the traditional deference to ancient authorities and
fostered critical inquiry, creative innovations, and remarkable optimism in most spheres
of social and intellectual life. “Progress” could include changes in the economy, in sci-
ence and intellectual life, in education, in political institutions, and in most other forms of
human activity, but in every context a belief in the progressive direction of human history
encouraged Europeans to assume that the future would be better than the past. Although
the world wars and environmental problems of more recent times would eventually
31. Elite and Popular Cultures
32. The Global Economy
of the Eighteenth Century
33. Western Europe after
the Peace of Utrecht,
1713–1740
34. The Great War
of the Mid–Eighteenth
Century: The Peace of
Paris, 1763
Chapter emblem: Detail from an Indian miniature (c. 1785), showing an Englishwoman and one of her servants
in India. (Werner Forman Archive/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire268
provoke widespread anxieties about the historical consequences of new technologies, a
belief in progress, even if somewhat chastened, remains a powerful cultural force in all
modern societies.
The new wealth of Europe was not like the age-old wealth of the great empires in
the East, said by Milton to “shower on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.” It consisted
of gold, to be sure, but even more of bank deposits and facilities for credit, of more and
better devices for mining coal, casting iron, and spinning thread, more productive agricul-
ture, better and more comfortable houses, a wider variety of diet on the table, more and
improved sailing ships, warehouses, and docks; more books, more newspapers, more med-
ical instruments, more scientifi c equipment; greater government revenues, larger armies,
and more numerous government employees. The new wealth also fl owed from the labor of
enslaved workers and the commodities they produced in the Americas, but in the wealthier
European countries, and because of the growing accumulation of capital, more people were
freed from the necessity of toiling for food, clothing, and shelter. Drawing on the profi ts
of an increasingly global economy, more Europeans were able to devote themselves to all
sorts of specialized callings in government, management, fi nance, war, teaching, writing,
inventing, exploring, and researching, and in producing the amenities rather than the bar-
est necessities of life. These new forms of mechanical production, social organization, and
specialized knowledge also began to spread to European colonies around the world, thus
contributing to the expanding systems of transoceanic trade and to the growing belief in
human progress.
31. ELITE AND POPULAR CULTURES
The accumulation of wealth and knowledge was not evenly distributed among the various
social classes. There had always been differences between rich and poor, with many gra-
dations between the extremes, but at the time we are now considering, as the seventeenth
century turned into the eighteenth, there came to be a more obvious distinction between
elite and popular cultures. The terms are hard to defi ne. The elite culture was not exactly
the culture of the rich and well-to-do, nor was the popular culture limited to the poor and
lower economic classes. The word “elite” suggests a minority within a given range of
interests; thus there are elites not only of wealth, but of social position and of power; elites
of fashion, of patronage and connoisseurship in the arts, and of artists themselves; elites
of education, of special training as in medicine and law, and of discovery and accomplish-
ment in technology and the sciences. In general, persons taking part in an elite culture
could share at will in the popular culture by attending public amusements or simply by
talking familiarly with their servants. But the relation was asymmetric. Those born in pop-
ular culture could not easily share in the intellectual or social culture of the elites, at least
not without transforming themselves, through education or marriage, which could occur
only in exceptional cases.
A main difference was simply one of language. At the popular level people generally
used a local form of speech, varying from one place to another, with a distinctive accent,
and with words that had become obsolete elsewhere or that might not be understood even
a few miles away. In the Middle Ages the use of Latin helped to overcome this linguistic
diversity, but Latin was becoming less common in even the most elite cultural groups by
the late seventeenth century. Since the invention of printing and the rise of national litera-
tures, and with the spreading infl uence of schools, of which we have seen that many were
founded between 1550 and 1650, there came to be standard forms of English, French,
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26931. Elite and Popular Cultures
Italian, and other languages that all educated persons could speak and read. Grammar and
spelling became regularized. Virtually all printing was in a national language when it was
not in Latin. Because only a minority were able to get the necessary educa-
tion, however, the mass of the people continued to speak as they did before.
Their way of talking was now considered a dialect, a peasant language, or
what was called patois in French or Volkssprache in German. And while it may be true, as some scientifi c philologists have long argued, that no form of speech is
inherently “better” than another, it is also true that facility in the national language was a
sign of elite culture until the spread of universal elementary schooling in the nineteenth
century. It gave access to at least certain segments of the elite culture, as it continues to do
today, and it enabled educated persons to participate in the elite institutions of government,
commerce, and the professions.
The elite culture was transmitted largely by way of books, but it could also be acquired
by word of mouth within favored families and social circles. The popular
culture, by contrast, was predominantly oral, although it was also expressed
in cheaply printed almanacs, chapbooks, woodcuts, and broadsides.
Because it was so largely oral, and left so few written records, popular
culture is often diffi cult for historians to reconstruct, but it made up the daily lives, inter-
ests, and activities of the great majority in all countries. It must always be remembered that
what we read as history, in this as in most other books, is mostly an account of the actions
of small minorities, either of power-wielders, decision-makers, and innovators whose pub-
lic actions affected whole peoples, or of writers and thinkers whose ideas appealed to a
limited audience. Persons who were illiterate or barely literate changed their ideas more
slowly than the more mobile and more informed members of the elite. Cultural changes
initiated by such elites spread slowly, generation after generation, to wider social classes, so
that what was characteristic of popular culture at a given moment, such as a belief in magic,
had often been common to all classes a century or two before. All people and social classes
make history and participate in the processes of historical change, but the new knowledge,
education, and wealth in early modern societies also created new social distinctions and
new hierarchies of cultural power.
The humanism of the Renaissance, being transmitted so largely through books and the
study of Greek and Latin, remained limited to persons who were educated in the elite
culture. The strength of the Protestant Reformation lay in combining the efforts of highly
educated leaders, such as Luther and Calvin, with the anger, distress, disillusionment, and
hopes of many very ordinary people. The new science and the ensuing eighteenth-century
Enlightenment emerged in the work of small numbers of researchers and writers, but their
ideas slowly reshaped the thinking of others. The process of diffusion might be slow and
uncertain. Astrology, for example, was in the Middle Ages a branch of scientifi c inquiry;
in the seventeenth century astrologers were still consulted by emperors and kings; then
both the clergy and secular thinkers denounced divination by the stars as a superstition,
and astrology was expelled from astronomy, but horoscopes still appear today in American
and European newspapers.
The differences of wealth, if not wholly decisive, were of great importance. Culture in
the broader or anthropological sense of the word includes material circumstances of food,
drink, and shelter. In some respects the lot of the poor in the seventeenth
century was worse than in the Middle Ages. Less meat was eaten in Europe,
because as population grew there was less land available for the raising of
livestock. With the growth of a market economy many peasants raised
National languages
Oral vs. print culture
Living standards
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire270
wheat, but ate bread made of rye, barley, or oats, or even looked for acorns and roots in
times of famine. The consumption of bread by working people in France in the eighteenth
century was about a pound per day per person, because little else except cabbages and
beans was eaten on ordinary days; after 1750 the use of white bread became more usual.
Meanwhile the rich, or the merely affl uent, developed more delicate menus prepared by
well-trained professional cooks, one of whom is said to have committed suicide when his
souffl é fell before it was served.
In the towns the poor lived in crowded, unsanitary buildings, and in the country they
lived in dark and shabby cabins where stoves only gradually replaced holes in the roof for
the escape of smoke. The poor had no glass in their windows, the middle
classes usually had a few glass windows, and the rich displayed their wealth,
in part, by installing glass windows and mirrors throughout both their urban
apartments and their country estates. In humble homes the dishes were
wooden bowls, slowly replaced by pewter, while china plates began to appear on the tables
of the more well-to-do. Table forks, with one for each diner, originating in Italy, were
brought to France in the sixteenth century by Catherine de Medici along with other items of
Italian culture, and soon spread among those able to afford them, though Louis XIV still
preferred to use his fi ngers. Silver bowls and pitchers were ancient but became more elabo-
rate and more often seen in upper-class circles. The poor had no furniture, or only a few
benches and a mat to sleep on; the middle classes had chairs and beds; the rich not only had
substantial furniture but were becoming more conscious of style. Among higher-income
families it became usual to have houses with specialized rooms, such as separate
bedrooms, and a dining room. New ideas about privacy, the meaning or autonomy of child-
hood, and the health of the human body began to infl uence eighteenth-century architecture,
so that well-to-do people wanted more private spaces for themselves and their children.
The prominent and the fashionable also fi tted out larger rooms for social receptions and
public entertainments, called salons in France, with walls of wood paneling, lighted by
chandeliers refl ected in mirrors, and provided with sofas and armchairs, which the inven-
tion of upholstery made more comfortable. The poor, after dark, huddled on chests or still
sat together on the fl oor by a single candle.
In the use of beverages the seventeenth century saw a different kind of progress, if that
is the right word. Coffee and tea, along with sugar and tobacco, all imported from overseas,
were exotic rarities in 1600, more widely enjoyed in 1700, and available to all but the very
destitute by the late eighteenth century. Coffee shops developed and taverns multiplied.
Cheap wines became more plentiful in southern Europe, as did beer in the
north. The distillation of alcohol had been developed in the Middle Ages,
when brandy, a distilled wine, was used as a medicine; by the seventeenth
century it was a familiar drink. Whisky and gin also came into use at about
this time. The taverns and coffee shops offered a place for neighborly gatherings for the mid-
dling and lower social classes; and writers began meeting in coffeehouses to discuss their
work, share gossip, or argue about public events. During this same era, drunkenness became
a more visible problem in European cities, especially among workers who could not drink in
domestic privacy and who were therefore often seen in the streets, as shown by Hogarth’s
pictures of “Gin Lane” in London about 1750. The migrations of displaced rural workers
and the poverty in large cities also contributed to an increase in out-of-wedlock births and
the abandonment of children. It was calculated that in Paris in 1780 there were 7,000 aban-
doned children for 30,000 births, but many of these infants were brought from the country to
be deposited in the foundling hospitals of the city, which were overwhelmed.
Housing conditions
Coffee and alcohol
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271
Despite the growing differences in wealth, housing, and education,
there was much that persons of all classes and cultures still shared. Most
important, in principle, was religion. The refi ned and the rude, the learned
and the untutored, heard the same sermons in church, were baptized,
married, and buried by the same sacraments, often by the same priest, and were subject to
religious and moral obligations that transcended the boundaries of social class. Such was
most likely to be the case in small communities of unmixed religion or where the lord and
Religion
31. Elite and Popular Cultures
GIN LANE by William Hogarth (English, 1697–1764)
Hogarth showed both the pop- ularity and dangers of alcohol in the lives of Britain’s working classes, as in this illustration of drunkenness in the streets of London. (Universal Images Group/Getty
Images)
The increasing import of coffee and tea made the eighteenth- century coffeehouse a popular meeting place in large cities such as London and Paris. The establishment portrayed here attracted a fashionable, wealthy clientele, but coffee was becom- ing less expensive and many coffeehouses also catered to the lower classes. (Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive
at Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire272
lady of the manor attended the same church as the villagers. Where different churches
existed in fact, whether or not offi cially tolerated, religion played less of a role in social
cohesion. In England, for example, the Nonconformists, who succeeded the old Puritans
after the Stuart Restoration, developed a kind of middle-class culture that was noticeably
different from the culture of the Anglican gentry. Rich people in both Protestant and Catho-
lic countries sometimes had their own private chaplains or built their own family chapels.
In towns that were big enough for neighborhood diversifi cation some churches became
fashionable and others merely popular. In any case some people in the seventeenth century
were not very religious at all; these less religious persons included those in inaccessible
rural areas as well as some of the poorest in the larger towns, who were often uprooted and
homeless migrants from an overcrowded countryside. Reforming bishops, especially in
France, undertook to ameliorate the situation, so that the seventeenth century was a great
age of internal missionary work, and it may be that in the following century, as skepticism
began to pervade the elite culture, the popular culture became more Christianized than it
had been in the past.
Rich and poor were subject to the same diseases, the same dangers of
tainted food and polluted water, and the same smells and fi lth in noisy
streets littered with horse droppings, puddles, and garbage. But here too, of
course, there were many social differences. In the elite culture people
depended on the daily assistance of servants and called on the medical advice of doctors,
who had been trained in the universities, while ordinary sufferers sought out popular heal-
ers, who were often women and whose remedies consisted of strange herbs or mysterious
potions (women did not become doctors because they could not attend universities). It also
made a difference whether one rode through the streets in a coach, as the affl uent did, or
picked one’s way on foot with the common people. Congestion was worst in rapidly grow-
ing cities, such as London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Naples, where the differences between
wealth and poverty were both more extreme and more shockingly visible. There were
recurrent fears of food shortages, as crop failure and local famine struck this or that region,
in which case some starved and some ate less, while those able to do so simply paid higher
prices. In some towns charitable organizations developed, often on the initiative of upper-
class women, to fi nance and assist religious sisters in relief of the poor. Hunger and the
fear of hunger sometimes produced riots, which however had little political signifi cance
except insofar as upper-class people tried to make use of them for their own purposes.
It was also in less material aspects that the elite and popular cultures increasingly
diverged. The upper strata set a new importance on polite manners, in
which the French now set the tone, with much bowing, doffi ng of hats, and
exchange of compliments, beside which the manners of ordinary people
now seemed uncouth. The etiquette of princely courts became more formal,
the court fools and jesters disappeared, and royalty surrounded itself not
with rough retainers but with ladies and gentlemen. About 1600 the plays of Shakespeare
were staged in public theaters where all classes mixed and enjoyed the same perfor-
mance, but in the following century it became usual for the upper classes to have private
theaters. People of higher social position took to stylish dancing, which their children had
to learn from dancing teachers, while plain people continued to cavort more spontaneously
in country dances and jigs. For evening parties, the polite world met in salons to engage
in the art of cultured conversation, while working people, especially in the country, met in
a neighbor’s house after the day’s labors were over. Conversation was as important for
the rural poor as for the educated elites; and while some of the men and women repaired
Health
Politeness, etiquette,
entertainment
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273
their tools or mended their clothes, the gathered families engaged in local gossip, listened
to storytellers, or learned something about the wider world when a literate person read
aloud from one of the cheaply printed books that were now circulating in even the smallest
villages. The traveling peddlers who sold such books became a kind of early precursor to
modern Internet communications as they carried new information and practical advice to
widely scattered communities across the European countryside.
Enough of these books have survived, along with popular almanacs, to make it pos-
sible to form some ideas of the mental horizons of the nonliterate and inarticulate classes.
They were often written by printers or their employees or by others who were in effect
intermediaries between the elite and popular cultures and who purposely addressed them-
selves to what they knew of popular interests. The almanacs purveyed astrological observa-
tions, advice on the weather, proverbs, and scraps of what had once been science but was
now offered as occult wisdom. Other little books undertook to teach the ABCs or told how
to behave in church; how to approach persons of the other sex; how to show respect for
superiors; or how to compose a proper letter of love, thanks, or condolence, or have such a
letter written by the professional letter writers to whose services illiterate persons resorted.
Still others put into print the stories that had long circulated in the oral tradition, fairy
tales, saints’ lives, or accounts of outlaws such as Robin Hood. Miracles, prodigies, witches,
ogres, angels, and the devil fi gured prominently in such narratives.
It is a curious fact that where educated persons were now schooled in Greek mythol-
ogy and admired the heroes of ancient Rome, the plain people were still engrossed by tales
of medieval chivalry, knights errant, and holy hermits that had once been told in baronial
halls. Memories of the times of King Arthur and Charlemagne lingered in the popular con-
sciousness. There were many long and complex tales of the exploits of Roland and other
paladins who had fought for Christianity against the infi dels, all set in a world of faraway
adventure without defi nite location in time or place. Saracens, Moors, Turks, and Muslims,
and at times Jews, were generally portrayed in such stories as menacing fi gures.
Belief in witchcraft and magic was to be found in 1600 in all social
classes. The witches in Macbeth were perfectly believable to Shakespeare’s audience. Learned books were still written on these subjects, and indeed
it may be that learned writers and the judges in law courts had stirred up
more anxiety about witches and magicians than ordinary people would
otherwise have felt. By 1700, however, a great change was evident: witches, magicians,
and miscellaneous enchantments were disappearing from the elite culture, but they still
fi gured in the popular mind. Unaffected as yet by either science or doubt, most ordinary
people inclined to think that there was something true about magic, which they distin-
guished as good and bad. Good magic unlocked the “secrets” of nature; popular writings
on alchemy told of famous sages of the past who knew how to turn base metals into gold;
there were special formulas that added to the effi cacy of prayer. Some older women had
a secret knowledge of medicinal herbs, in which indeed there might be some pragmatic
value but which was blended with the mysterious and the occult. Bad magic was used to
cause harm; it taught the black arts; it gave force to curses; it often involved a compact
with the devil; it was what made witches so fearsome. By 1700 such ideas were subsid-
ing. Judges who were trained to evaluate empirical evidence no longer believed that such
powers existed, and so would no longer preside at witchcraft trials. The same may be said
of belief in prophecies and oracles: in the elite culture only those recorded in the Bible
retained any credibility, but there was still a popular acceptance of recent prophecies and
foretellings of the future.
Witchcraft and
magic
31. Elite and Popular Cultures
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire274
Popular culture continued to express itself also in fairs and carnivals. For men and
women who rarely traveled and lived limited lives, these were exciting events that occurred
only at certain times of the year and to which people fl ocked from miles around. At the
fairs one could buy things that local shops and the wandering peddlers could not supply.
There would be puppet shows, jugglers, and acrobats. There were conjurers who refused
to admit like modern magicians that they were using merely natural means. A mountebank
was someone who mounted a platform ( banco in Italian) where he sold questionable remedies for various ills while keeping up a patter of jokes and stories, often accompanied
by a clown. Blind singers and traveling musicians entertained the throngs, and for the
tougher minded there were cockfi ghts and bear baiting. In such a hubbub itinerant preach-
ers might denounce the vanities of this world or throw doubt on the wisdom of bishops
and lawyers.
A CARNIVAL ON THE FEAST DAY OF SAINT GEORGE by Pieter Bruegel, the Younger (Flemish, 1564–1638)
Carnivals broke the normal patterns of daily life in towns and villages throughout the early modern era. This painting shows an early seventeenth-century carnival near the Flemish city of Antwerp, but the games, eating, drinking, dancing, and banners were typical of the carni- vals in almost every European village during this era. (Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Art Library)
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27532. The Global Economy of the Eighteenth Century
Carnival went on for several weeks preceding Lent. The word itself, from the Italian
carne vale, meant “farewell to meat,” from which good Christians were to abstain during the 40-day Lenten fast; in France it climaxed in the Mardi Gras (“fat Tuesday”). It persisted in
Protestant countries also. It was a time for big eating and heavy drinking, for general merry-
making and foolery, and for playful inversions of the normal social hierarchies and cultural
solemnities. Comical processions marched through the streets. Farces were performed and
mock sermons were delivered. Young men showed their strength in tugs-of-war, footraces,
and a rough-and-tumble kind of football. A common theme was what was called in England
“the world turned upside down.” Men and women put on each other’s clothing. Horses
were made to move backward with the rider facing the tail. Little street dramas showed the
servant giving orders to the master, the judge sitting in the stocks, the pupil beating the
teacher, or the husband holding the baby while the wife clutched a gun. In general, the car-
nival was a time for defying custom and ridiculing authority. It is hard to know how much
such outbursts were expressions of genuine resentments and how much they were only a
form of play. They could, indeed, be both.
In 1600 people of all classes took part in these festive activities. In the following
century, as both the Protestant and the Catholic Reformations extended their infl uences,
the clergy undertook to purge such public events of what they considered excesses, and
with the growth of the state the civil authorities began to frown on them as incitements
to subversion. By 1700 the people of elite culture, the wealthy, the fashionable, and
the educated, were more inclined to stay away; or they attended only as spectators to
be amused at the simple pleasures of the common people. In the eighteenth century, as
the various elites took to more formal manners and to neoclassicism in literature and the
arts, the gulf between the elite and popular cultures widened. The clergy campaigned
against the belief in magic and tried to restrain the faithful in the matter of pilgrimages
and veneration of dubious local saints. As the medical profession developed, the popu-
lar healers and venders of mysterious nostrums were seen as charlatans and quacks. As
scientifi c and other knowledge increased among educated elites, those who lacked such
knowledge appeared to be simply superstitious or ignorant. It may be said both that the
elites withdrew from the popular culture and that the people as a whole had not yet been
brought into the education and science of an evolving elite culture. In any case, class
distinctions became sharper than ever. But nothing ever stands still, and before the year
1800 there were persons in the elite culture who were beginning to “rediscover” the people,
to collect ballads and fairy tales, and to lay a foundation for what in the nineteenth cen-
tury was called “folklore.”
32. THE GLOBAL ECONOMY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The opening of the Atlantic in the sixteenth century, it will be recalled, had reoriented
Europe. In an age of oceanic communications western Europe became a center from which
America, Asia, and Africa could all be reached. A global economy had been created. The
fi rst to profi t from it had been the Portuguese and Spanish, and they retained their monop-
oly through most of the sixteenth century; but the gradual decline of the Portuguese and
Spanish paved the way for the triumph of the British, the French, and the Dutch. In the
eighteenth century the most important economic development was the expansion of the
global economy and the fact that Europe became incomparably wealthier than any other
part of the world.
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire276
Commerce and Industry in the Eighteenth Century
The increase of wealth was brought about by the methods of commercial capitalism and
handicraft industry. Though the Industrial Revolution in England is usually dated from
1760 or 1780, it was not until the nineteenth century that the use of steam engines and
power-driven machinery, and the growth of large factories and great manufacturing cities,
brought about the conditions of modern industrialism. The economic system of the eigh-
teenth century, while it contained within itself the seeds of later industrialism, represented
the fl owering of the older merchant capitalism, domestic industry, and mercantilist govern-
ment policies that had grown up since the sixteenth century.
Most people in the eighteenth century lived in the country. Agriculture
was still the greatest single industry and source of wealth. Cities remained
small. London and Paris, the largest of Europe, each had a population of
600,000 or 700,000, but the next largest cities did not much exceed 200,000, and in all
Europe at the time of the French Revolution in 1789 there were only 50 cities with as
many as 50,000 people. Urbanization, however, was in itself no sign of economic advance-
ment. Spain, Italy, and even the Balkan peninsula, according to an estimate made in the
1780s, each had more large cities (over 50,000) than did Great Britain. Urbanization did
not equate with industry because most industry was carried on in the country, by peasants
Rural industry
Most people who were “engaged in manufactures” in eighteenth-century Europe still worked in their own rural homes. This engraving from the early 1780s shows three women at work on cloth in an Irish cottage, where they are spinning and winding thread while another woman contributes to the domestic production by preparing a meal and watching a child. (SSPL/The Image Works)
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277
and part-time agricultural workers who worked for the merchant capitalists of the towns.
Thus, while it is true to say that most people still lived in the country, it would be false to
say that their lives and labors were devoted exclusively to agriculture. One English esti-
mate, made in 1739, held that there were 4,250,000 persons “engaged in manufactures” in
the British Isles, a fi gure that included women and children and comprised almost half the
entire population. These people worked characteristically in their own cottages, employed
as wage earners by merchant capitalists under the “domestic” system. Almost half of them
were engaged in the weaving and processing of woolens. Others were in the copper, iron,
lead, and tin manufactures; others in leather goods; much smaller were the paper, glass,
porcelain, silk, and linen trades; and smallest of all, in 1739, was the manufacture of cotton
cloth, which accounted for only about 100,000 workers. The list suggests that nonagricul-
tural occupations were already important in the preindustrial age.
Even with half its population engaged at least part of the time in manufactures, how-
ever, England was not yet the unrivaled manufacturing country that it was to become after
1800. England in the eighteenth century produced no more iron than Russia and no more
manufactures than France. The population of England was still small; it began to grow
rapidly about 1760, but as late as 1800 France was still twice as populous as England and
Scotland together. France, though less intensively developed than England, with probably
far less than half its people engaged in manufactures, nevertheless, because of its greater
size, remained the chief industrial center of Europe.
Although foreign and colonial trade grew rapidly in the eighteenth century, it is prob-
able that, in both Great Britain and France, the domestic or internal trade was greater in
volume and occupied more people. Great Britain, with no internal tariffs, with an insignifi -
cant guild system, and with no monopolies allowed within the country except to inventors,
was the largest area of internal free trade in Europe. France, or at least Colbert’s Five Great
Farms, offered an almost equal-sized free-trading internal market. A great deal of economic
activity was therefore domestic, consisting of exchange between town and town or between
region and region. The proportions between domestic and international trade cannot be
known. But foreign trade was increasingly important for the largest business enterprises.
International trade created the greatest commercial fortunes and the main accumulations of
new capital. And it was the foreign trade that led to international rivalry and war.
The World Economy: The Dutch, British, and French
On the international economic scene a great part was still played by the
Dutch. After the Peace of Utrecht the Dutch ceased to be a great political
power; but their role in commerce, shipping, and fi nance remained undi-
minished, or diminished only when compared to the continuing commercial growth of
France and Great Britain. They were still the middlemen and common carriers for other
peoples. Their freight rates remained the lowest of Europe. They continued to grow rich
on imports from the East Indies. To a large extent also, in the eighteenth century, the
Dutch lived on their investments. The capital they had accumulated over 200 years they
now lent out to French or British or other entrepreneurs. Dutch capital was to be found
in every large commercial venture of Europe and was lent to governments far and wide.
A third of the capital of the Bank of England in the mid-eighteenth century belonged
to Dutch shareholders. The Bank of Amsterdam remained the chief clearinghouse and
fi nancial center of Europe. Its supremacy did not end until a French Revolutionary army
invaded Holland in 1795.
Trade
32. The Global Economy of the Eighteenth Century
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire278
The Atlantic trade routes, leading to America, to Africa, and to Asia,
attracted the merchants of many nationalities in Europe. A great many East
India companies were established—usually to do business in America as
well as the East, for the “Indies” at the beginning of the eighteenth century
was still a general term for the vast regions overseas. Both the English and the French East
India companies were reorganized, with an increased investment of capital, shortly after
1700. A number of others were established—by the Scots, the Swedes, the Danes, the
imperial free city of Hamburg, the republic of Venice, Prussia, and the Austrian monarchy.
But, with the exception of the Danish company that lasted some 60 years, they all failed
after only a few years, either for insuffi ciency of capital or because they lacked strong
diplomatic, military, and naval support. Their failure showed that, in the transoceanic
trade, unassisted business enterprise was not enough. Merchants needed strong national
backing to succeed in this sphere. Neither free city, nor small kingdom, nor tiny republic,
nor the amorphous Austrian Empire provided a fi rm enough base to sustain a global
trading company.
It was the British and French who won out in the commercial rivalry
of the eighteenth century. Britain and France were alike in having, besides
a high level of industrial production at home, governments organized on a
national scale and able to protect and advance, under mercantilist principles, the interests
of their merchants in distant countries. For both peoples the eighteenth century—or the
three-quarters of a century between the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713
and the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789—was an age of spectacular enrich-
ment and commercial expansion.
Although the trade fi gures are diffi cult to defi ne precisely, French foreign and colonial
trade may well have grown even more rapidly than the British in the years between the
1720s and the 1780s. In any event, by the 1780s, the two countries were about equal in their
total foreign and colonial trade. The British in the 1780s enjoyed proportionately more of
the trade with America and Asia; the French, more of the trade with the rest of Europe and
the Middle East. The contest for global markets played an important part in the colonial
and commercial wars between Britain and France all through the eighteenth century and
on into the fi nal and climactic struggle, and British triumph, in the time of Napoleon.
Asia, America, and Africa in the Global Economy
In the expanding global economy of the eighteenth century each continent played its spe-
cial part. The European trade with Asia was subject to an ancient limitation. Asia was
almost useless as a market for European manufactures. There was much that Europeans
wanted from Asia but almost nothing that Asians wanted from Europe. The peoples of
Chinese, Indian, and Malay culture had elaborate civilizations with which they were con-
tent; Asian elites in this era lacked the dynamic restlessness of European entrepreneurs, and
the masses were so impoverished (more so even than in Europe) that they could buy noth-
ing anyway. Europeans found that they could send little to Asia except gold. The trade of
gold from Europe to Asia had gone on since ancient times, and even more gold and silver
fl owed to east Asia from European colonies in the Americas after the sixteenth century.
Accumulating over time, the wealth from this trade became one source of the fabulous
treasures of Eastern princes. To fi nance the swelling demand for Asian products it was
necessary for Europeans constantly to replenish their stocks of gold. The British found an
important new supply in Africa along the Gulf of Guinea, where the Royal African
Commercial rivalry
East India companies
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279
Company began to export gold from a region (the present Ghana) that was long called the
Gold Coast. The word “guinea” became the name of a gold coin minted in England from
1663 to 1813 and long remained a fashionable way of saying 21 shillings.
What Europeans sought from Asia was still in part spices—pepper and
ginger, cinnamon and cloves—now brought in mainly by the Dutch from
their East India islands. But they wanted manufactured goods also. Asia was
still in some lines superior to Europe in technical skill. It is enough to men-
tion rugs, chinaware, and cotton cloth. The very names by which cotton fabrics are known
in English and other European languages reveal the places from which they were thought
to come. “Madras” and “calico” refer to the Indian cities of Madras and Calicut; “muslin,”
to the Arabic city of Mosul. “Gingham” comes from a Malay word meaning “striped”;
“chintz,” from a Hindustani word meaning “spotted.” Most of the Eastern manufactures
were increasingly imitated in the eighteenth century in Europe. Axminster and Aubusson
carpets competed with Oriental rugs. In 1709 a German named Boettcher discovered a
formula for making a vitreous and translucent substance comparable to the porcelain of
China; this European “china,” made at Sèvres, Dresden, and in England, soon competed
successfully with the imported original.
Cotton fabrics were never produced in Europe at a price to compete with fabrics from
India until after the introduction of power machinery, which began in England about 1780.
Before that date the European demand for Indian cotton goods was so heavy that the
woolen, linen, and silk interests became alarmed. They could produce nothing like the
sheer muslins and bright calico prints that caught the public fancy, and many governments,
to protect the jobs and capital involved in the old European textile industries, simply for-
bade the import of Indian cottons altogether. But it was a time of many laws and little
enforcement. The forbidden fabrics continued to come in, and the English writer Daniel
Defoe observed in 1708 that, despite the laws, cottons were not only sought as clothing by
all classes, but “crept into our houses, our closets and bedchambers; curtains, cushions,
chairs and at last beds themselves were nothing but calicoes or Indian stuffs.” Gradually,
in the face of tariff protection for “infant industries” in Europe, and the rapid growth of
European cotton manufactures, import of cottons and other manufactures from Asia
declined. After about 1770 most of the imports of the British East India Company con-
sisted of tea, which was brought from China.
The Americas, including the West Indies, bulked larger than Asia in the eighteenth-
century trade of western Europe. The American trade was based mainly on sugar—a
popular commodity that generated enormous profi ts for European traders throughout the
eighteenth century. Sugar had long been known in the East, and in the European Middle
Ages little bits of it had trickled through to delight the palates of lords and
prelates. About 1650 sugar cane was brought in quantities from the East
and planted in the West Indies by Europeans. A whole new economic sys-
tem arose over the next few decades. It was based on the “plantation.” A
plantation was an economic unit consisting of a considerable tract of land,
a sizable investment of capital, often owned by absentees in France or England, and a
force of impressed labor, supplied by enslaved black workers brought from Africa. Sugar,
produced in quantity with cheap labor at low cost, proved to have an inexhaustible market.
The eighteenth century was the golden age, economically speaking, of the West
Indies. From its own islands alone, during the 80 years from 1713 to 1792, Great Britain
imported a total of £162,000,000 worth of goods, almost all sugar; imports from India
and China, in the same 80 years, amounted to only £104,000,000. The little islands of
Spices and Eastern
manufactures
Sugar and the
plantation system
32. The Global Economy of the Eighteenth Century
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire280
Jamaica, Barbados, St. Kitts, and others, as suppliers of Europe, not only dwarfed the
whole mainland of British America but the whole mainland of Asia as well. For France,
less well established than Britain on the American mainland and in Asia, the same eco-
nomic pattern holds with greater force. France controlled the richest of all the Caribbean
sugar colonies, Saint-Domingue, on the island that the English called Santo Domingo
(which is now divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
The plantation economy, fi rst established in sugar and later in cotton
(after 1800), brought Africa into the foreground. Slaves had been obtained
in Black Africa from time immemorial, by the Roman Empire and later by
the Muslim world, both of which, however, enslaved blacks and whites indiscriminately.
After the European discovery of America, blacks were taken across the Atlantic by the
Spanish and Portuguese to provide labor in places where disease and abuse had deci-
mated the Native American populations. Dutch slavetraders also took enslaved Africans to
Virginia in 1619, a year before the arrival of the fi rst English Pilgrims in Massachusetts.
But slavery in the Americas before 1650 may be described as less systematic. With the rise
of the plantation economy after 1650, and especially after 1700, it became a fundamental
economic institution. Slavery now formed the labor supply of a very substantial and heav-
ily capitalized branch of world production. About 920,000 blacks were landed from Africa
on the island of Jamaica alone between 1700 and 1800; and roughly 800,000 enslaved
people were brought to the French colony of Saint-Domingue. The eighteenth century
thus became the most active era in the long history of the Atlantic slave trade. Seeking
the steady fl ow of profi ts that came mostly from an insatiable demand for slave labor on
Caribbean and Brazilian plantations, European slave traders moved more than 5 million
enslaved Africans to the Americas during the 100 years after 1700. It is certain that, until
well after 1800, far more Africans than Europeans made the voyage to the Americas; and
these manacled, disoriented, vulnerable human beings were transported everywhere in the
most dehumanizing conditions of overcrowded slave ships.
The transatlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century was conducted mainly by
English-speaking interests, principally in England but also in New England, followed as
closely as they could manage it by the French. Yearly export of merchandise from Great
Britain to Africa, used chiefl y in exchange for slaves, increased tenfold between 1713 and
1792. As for merchandise coming into Britain from the British West Indies, virtually all
produced by slaves, in 1790 it constituted almost a fourth of all British imports. If we add
British imports from the American mainland, including what after 1776 became the United
States, the importance of black slave labor to the British economic system will appear still
greater, because a great part of exports from the mainland consisted of agricultural prod-
ucts, such as tobacco and indigo, produced in most places by slaves. The rapid growth of
trade within the British Empire and the phenomenal rise of British capital-
ism in the eighteenth century were therefore based to a considerable extent
on the enslavement of Africans. The town of Liverpool, an insignifi cant
place on the Irish Sea in 1700, built itself up by the slave trade and the trade
in slave-produced commodities to a busy transatlantic commercial center,
which in turn, as will be seen later, stimulated the “industrial revolution” in Manchester
and other neighboring towns.
The western European merchants, British, French, and Dutch, sold the products of
America and Asia to their own peoples and to those of central and eastern Europe. Trade
with Germany and Italy was fairly stable. With Russia it enormously increased. To cite the
British record only, Britain imported 15 times as much from Russia in 1790 as in 1700, and
Slave trade
Slavery and British
capitalism
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sold the Russians 6 times as much. The Russian landlords, as they became Europeanized,
desired Western manufactures and the colonial products such as sugar, tobacco, and tea
that could be purchased only from western Europeans. They had grain, timber, and naval
stores to offer in return. Similarly, landlords of Poland and north Germany, in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries, found themselves increasingly able to move their agricul-
tural products out through the Baltic and hence increasingly able to buy the products of
western Europe, America, and Asia in return. Eastern European landlords now had another
incentive to make their estates more productive. The early modern global trading system
therefore began to affect all parts of Europe, including also the landlords and peasants in
central and eastern Europe. The large landowners who sought more profi ts with which to
purchase commodities and other goods coming from the Americas and western Europe
helped to spread “big” agriculture into new areas, developing in eastern Europe a system
not unlike the plantation economy of the New World. This expanding system of European
trade and agriculture had many effects. It contributed, along with political causes, to reduc-
ing the bulk of the eastern European population to serfdom. It helped to bring western
European culture to the upper classes of eastern Europe. And it helped to enrich the cities
and merchants of western Europe.
The Wealth of Western Europe: Social Consequences
The wealth that accumulated along the Atlantic seaboard of Europe was, in short, by no
means produced only by the efforts of western Europeans. All the world contributed to its
formation. The natural resources of the Americas, the gold and people of Africa, the labor
of enslaved workers on Caribbean islands, the resources and manufacturing skills of Asia,
all alike went into producing the vastly increased volume of goods moving in world com-
merce. Europeans directed the movement. They supplied capital; they contributed techni-
cal and organizing abilities; and it was the demand of Europeans, at home in Europe and as
traders abroad, that set increasing numbers of Indians to spinning cotton, Chinese to rais-
ing tea, Malays to gathering spices, and Africans to the tending of sugar cane. A few non-
Europeans might benefi t in the process—Indian or Chinese merchants “subsidized” by the
East Indian companies, African chiefs who captured slaves from neighboring tribes and
sold them to Europeans. But the profi ts of the world economy and the far-fl ung colonial
empires really went to Europe. The new wealth, over and above what was necessary to
keep the widely dispersed and polyglot labor force in being, and to pay other expenses,
piled up in Britain, Holland, and France.
The new wealth was owned and managed by private persons. It accu-
mulated within the system of private property and as part of the institutions
of private enterprise or private capitalism. Governments were increasingly
dependent on these private owners of property, for governments, in western Europe, had
no important sources of revenue except loans and taxes derived from their peoples. When
the owners of wealth gave their support, the government was strong and successful, as
in England. When they withdrew support, the government collapsed, as it was to collapse
in France in the Revolution of 1789.
In a technical sense there were many “capitalists” in western Europe, persons who
had a little savings which they used to buy a parcel of land or a loom or entrusted to some
other person to invest at interest. And in a general sense the new wealth was widely distrib-
uted; the standard of living rose in western Europe in the eighteenth century, in part
because the declining price of popular commodities made such goods more accessible for
Private property
32. The Global Economy of the Eighteenth Century
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire282
most European consumers. Tea, for example, which cost as much as £10 a pound when
introduced into England about 1650, was an article of common consumption a hundred
years later. But wealth used to produce more wealth, that is, capital, was owned or con-
trolled in signifi cant amounts by relatively few persons. In the eighteenth century some
people became unprecedentedly rich (including some who started quite poor, for it was a
time of open opportunity); the great intermediate layers of society became noticeably
more comfortable; and the people at the bottom, such as the serfs of eastern Europe, the
Irish peasantry, the dispossessed farm workers in England, and the poorest peasants and
workers of France, were worse off than they had been before. The poor continued to live
in hovels. The prosperous created for themselves that pleasant, comfortable world of
the eighteenth century that connoisseurs still admire, a world of well-ordered Georgian
homes, closely cropped lawns and shrubs, furniture by Chippendale or à la Louis XV,
coach-and-four, family portraits, high chandeliers, books bound in morocco, and a staff of
servants “below stairs.”
European traders and merchants gained much of their new wealth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from commodities produced on plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean. This plantation economy depended on the labor of enslaved African workers such as the people in this seventeenth century illustration, who are preparing tobacco for export from one of the Caribbean islands. (The Granger Collection, NYC)
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283
Families enriched by commerce, and especially the daughters, mixed
and intermarried with the old families who owned land. Women thus played
an essential economic role in the carefully arranged marriages that both
protected and increased the wealth of upper-class families. Landowners
needed the capital that could be acquired through marriages with the daugh-
ters of wealthy traders; prosperous entrepreneurs sought the landed properties that might
come into their families through marriages with women of the old aristocracy. But mar-
riage was only one of the ways in which the old and new wealth of Europe came together.
The merchant in England or France no sooner became prosperous than he bought himself
a landed estate. In France he might also purchase a government offi ce or patent of nobil-
ity. Contrariwise, the landowning gentleman, especially in England, no sooner increased
his landed income than he invested the proceeds in commercial enterprise or government
bonds. The two forms of property, bourgeois commerce and aristocratic land, tended to
merge. The various propertied interests usually worked harmoniously together, and the
unpropertied classes, the vast majority, could infl uence the government only by riot and
tumult. The eighteenth century, though an era of rapid commercial expansion, was on the
whole an age of considerable social stability in western Europe. It was the upheavals of
the French Revolution that would eventually disrupt and transform much of the social and
political order that had developed since the late seventeenth century through the fusion of
commercial and landed wealth.
The foregoing might be illustrated from the lives of thousands of men and women.
Two examples are enough, one English and one French. They show the working of the
world economic system, the rise of the commercial class in western Europe, and the role of
that class in the political life of the Western countries.
Thomas Pitt, called “Diamond” Pitt, was born in 1653, the son of a
parish clergyman in the Church of England. He went to India in 1674. Here
he operated as an “interloper,” trading in defi ance of the legal monopoly of
the East India Company. Returning to England, he was prosecuted by the company and
fi ned £400 but was rich enough to buy the manor of Stratford and with it the borough of
Old Sarum, a rotten borough that gave him a seat in the House of Commons without the
trouble of an election. He soon returned to India, again as an interloper, where he com-
peted so successfully with the company that it fi nally took him into its own employment.
He traded on his own account, as well as for the company, and he defended the position of
the company in Chennai (a city then called Madras) against the local ruler of the Carnatic,
the coastal area around Chennai, buying him off with money. In 1702, though his salary
was only £300 a year, he purchased a 410-carat uncut diamond for £20,400. He bought it
from an Indian merchant who had himself bought it from an English skipper, who in turn
had stolen it from the slave who had found it in the mines and who had concealed it in a
wound in his leg. Back in Europe, Pitt had his diamond cut at Amsterdam and sold it in
1717 to the regent of France for £135,000. The regent put it in the French crown; it was
appraised at the time of the French Revolution at £480,000. “Diamond” Pitt died in 1726.
One of his daughters became the Countess of Stanhope and one of his sons became the
Earl of Londonderry. Another son became father to the William Pitt who guided Britain
through the Seven Years’ War with France and who was raised to the peerage as the Earl
of Chatham. The city of Pittsburgh was named for this Pitt, so that a fortune gained by
unconventional or illicit means in India later gave its name to a frontier settlement in the
interior of America. Chatham’s younger son, the second William Pitt, became prime min-
ister at 24. The younger Pitt guided Britain through its wars with revolutionary France and
Napoleon, until his death in 1806 during the high tide of the Napoleonic Empire.
Thomas Pitt
The merging of
bourgeois and
aristocratic wealth
32. The Global Economy of the Eighteenth Century
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire284
Jean-Joseph Laborde was born in 1724, of a bourgeois family in
southern France, but his career showed how commercial wealth could
transform a person’s social position. He went to work for an uncle who
had a business at Bayonne trading with Spain and the East. From the prof-
its he built up vast plantations and slaveholdings in the colony of Saint-Domingue. His
ships brought sugar to Europe and returned with prefabricated building materials, each
piece carefully numbered, for his plantations and refi neries in the West Indies. Wealth
from the sugar trade enabled him to become one of the leading bankers in Paris. His
daughter became the Countess de Noailles. He himself received the title of marquis,
which he did not use. He bought manors and châteaux near Paris. As a real estate opera-
tor he developed that part of Paris, then suburban, now called the Chaussée d’Antin. By
1760 he was directing the king’s tax collection system; and during the Seven Years’ War
he was sent by the French government to borrow money in Spain, where he was told that
Spain would lend nothing to Louis XV but would gladly lend him personally 20,000,000
reals. In the War of American Independence Laborde raised 12,000,000 livres in gold for
the government to help pay the French army and navy, thus contributing to the success of
the American Revolution. He acted as investment agent for Voltaire, gave 24,000 livres
a year to charity, and subscribed 400,000 livres in 1788 toward building new hospitals
in Paris. In July 1789 he helped to fi nance the insurrection that led to the fall of the
Bastille and the Revolution. His son, in June 1789, took the Oath of the Tennis Court,
swearing to write a constitution for France. Despite his early support for the Revolu-
tion, Laborde himself was guillotined in 1794. His children later turned to scholarship
and the arts.
THE DUET by Arthur Devis (English, 1711–1787)
The prosperity of the upper classes in eighteenth-century England supported the cul- ture and comforts that are represented in this painting. Expanding global trade pro- vided a pleasant, comfortable life for increasingly wealthy European elites and a new market for good furniture, fi ne art, and talented gardeners. (Victoria & Albert Museum/Art
Resource, NY)
Jean-Joseph Laborde
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28533. Western Europe after the Peace of Utrecht, 1713–1740
33. WESTERN EUROPE AFTER THE PEACE OF UTRECHT, 1713–1740
Amid the social and economic transitions that were transforming early modern Europe’s
relations with the wider world, the major European states continued their struggles for
international power and political infl uence within Europe itself. The evolving competition
for global trade and profi table colonies, however, became an increasingly important factor
in most European confl icts, even when such confl icts extended the now-traditional efforts
to maintain a stable balance of power among the various continental monarchies. The
Peace of Utrecht, it will be recalled, had registered the defeat of French ambitions in the
wars of Louis XIV. The French move toward “universal monarchy” had been blocked.
The European state system had been preserved. Europe was to consist of independent and
sovereign states, all legally free and equal, continuously entering or leaving alliances along
the principles of the balance of power. The peace settlement of 1713–1714 placed the
Bourbon Philip V on the Spanish throne but gave most of Spain’s European possessions,
outside Spain itself, to the Austrian Habsburgs (see maps, pp. 192, 327). Great Britain,
which had been consolidated during the wars as a combined kingdom of England and
Scotland, took Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay region from France and,
taking Gibraltar and Minorca from Spain, became a naval power in the Mediterranean. The
British also received trading rights in Spanish America, thus expanding their role in the
Atlantic slave trade and enhancing their position as the most dynamic power in the rapidly
developing transatlantic economic system.
Governments now turned to repairing the damages of war. Spain was
somewhat rejuvenated by the French infl uence under its new Bourbon
monarchy. The drift and decadence that had set in under the last Habsburgs
were at least halted. The Spanish state was administratively strengthened.
Its offi cials followed the absolutist government of Louis XIV as a model. The estates of
the east-Spanish kingdoms, Aragon and Valencia, ceased to meet, going like the Estates
General of France into the limbo of obsolete institutions. On the whole the French infl u-
ence in eighteenth-century Spain was intangible. Nothing was changed in substance, but
the old machinery functioned with more precision. Administrators were better trained
and took a more constructive attitude toward government work; they became more aware
of the world north of the Pyrenees and recovered confi dence in their country’s future. They
tried also to tighten up the administration of their American Empire. More revenue offi cers
and coast guards were introduced in the Caribbean, whose zeal led to repeated clashes with
smugglers, mainly British. Friction along the Spanish-controlled coasts of the American
mainland, reinforced by Spanish dislike for British occupation of Gibraltar, kept Spain and
Britain in a continual ferment of potential hostility.
The Dutch after Utrecht receded from the international political stage, though their
alliance was always sought because of the huge shipping and fi nancial resources they con-
trolled. The Swiss also became important in banking and fi nancial circles. The Belgians
founded an overseas trading company in 1723 on the authority of their new Austrian ruler;
this “Ostend Company” sent out six voyages to China, which were highly profi table, but
the commercial jealousy of the Dutch and British obliged the Austrian emperor to with-
draw his support as a price for British recognition of his daughter’s right to inherit the
Austrian throne. The Ostend enterprise thus came to an end. The Scots began at about this
time to play their remarkable role of energizing business affairs in many countries. Union
with England gave them access to the British Empire and to the numerous commercial
Repairing the
damages of war
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire286
advantages won by the English. John Law, the fi nancial wizard of France, was a Scot, as
was William Paterson, one of the chief founders of the Bank of England.
France and Britain after 1713
Our main attention falls on Britain and France. Though one was the victor and the other
the vanquished in the wars that ended in 1713, and though one stood for royal absolut-
ism and the other for parliamentary constitutionalism in government, their development
in the years after Utrecht was in some ways surprisingly parallel. In both countries for
some years the king was personally ineffective, and in both the various propertied interests
therefore gained many advantages. Both pursued the commercial and colonial expansion
described above. Both went through a short period of fi nancial experimentation and frantic
speculation in stocks, the fi nancial bubble bursting in each case in 1720. Each was there-
after governed by a statesman, Cardinal Fleury in France and Robert Walpole in England,
whose policy was to keep peace abroad and conciliate all interests at home. Fleury and
Walpole held offi ce for about two decades, toward the end of which the two countries
again went to war. But the differences are at least as instructive as the parallels.
In France the new king was a child, Louis XV, the great-grandson of Louis XIV, and
only fi ve years old when his reign began in 1715. The government was entrusted to a
regent, the Duke of Orleans, an elder cousin of the young king. Orleans, lacking the author-
ity of a monarch, had to admit the aristocracy to a greater share of the power that nobles
had lost during the long reign of Louis XIV. Most of the nobles had never liked the abso-
lutist policies of Louis XIV, and there was much dissatisfaction with absolutism among all
classes, because of the ruin and suffering brought by Louis XIV’s wars.
The higher nobles, ousted by Louis XIV, now reappeared in the gov-
ernment. For a time Orleans worked through committees of noblemen,
roughly corresponding to ministries, a system lauded by its backers as a
revival of political freedom; but the committees proved so incompetent that
they were soon abandoned. The old parlements of France, and especially
the Parlement of Paris, which Louis XIV had reduced to silence, vigorously reasserted
themselves after his death. The parlements were primarily law courts, originally composed
of bourgeois judges. But Louis XIV and his predecessors, to raise money, had made the
judgeships into offi ces to be sold; and they attached titles of nobility to increase the price.
Hence in the time of the Regency the judges of the parlements had bought or inherited
their seats and were almost all nobles. Because they owned their offi ces as a kind of private
property, they could not be removed by the king. The Regent conceded much infl uence to
the Parlement of Paris, utilizing it to modify the will of Louis XIV. The parlements thus
broadened their position, claiming the right to assent to legislation and taxes, through
refusing to enforce government measures that they considered contrary to the unwritten
constitution or fundamental laws of France. They managed to exercise this right, off and
on, from the days of the Regency until the great Revolution of 1789. The eighteenth cen-
tury, for France, was a period of absolutism checked and balanced by organized privileged
groups. It was an age of aristocratic resurgence, in which the nobles won back many of the
powers that Louis XIV had taken from them in the seventeenth century.
In Great Britain the Parliament was very different from the French par-
lements, and the British aristocracy was more politically competent than
the noblesse of France. Parliament proved an effective machine for the con- duct of public business. The House of Lords was hereditary, with the large
Aristocratic
resurgence
The English
Parliament
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287
exception of the bishops, who were appointed by the government and made up about a
quarter of the active members of the upper house. The House of Commons was not at
all representative of the country according to modern ideas. Only the wealthy, or those
patronized by the wealthy, could sit in it, and they were chosen by diverse and eccentric
methods, in counties and towns, almost without regard to the size or wishes of the popu-
lation. Some boroughs were owned outright, like the Old Sarum of the Pitt family. But
through the machinations of bosses, or purchase of seats, all kinds of interests managed
to get representatives into the Commons. Some members spoke for the “landed interest”;
others for the “funded interest” (mainly government creditors); others for the “London
interest,” the “West India interest,” the “East India interest,” and others. All of the leading
economic groups and politically signifi cant social classes could expect to have their desires
heeded in Parliament, and all therefore were willing to go through parliamentary channels.
Parliament was corrupt, slow, and expensive, but it was effective. For Parliament was not
only a roughly representative body; it had also acquired, in practice, the power to legislate.
Queen Anne, the last reigning Stuart, died in 1714. She was succeeded by George I,
Elector of Hanover, as provided for by Parliament in the Act of Settlement of 1701.
George I was the nearest relative of the Stuarts who was also a Protestant. A heavy middle-
aged German who spoke no English, he continued to spend much of his time in Germany,
and he brought with him to England a retinue of German ministers and mistresses. He
was never popular in England, where he was regarded as at best a political convenience.
He was in no position to play a strong hand in English public life, and during his reign
Parliament gained considerable independence from the crown.
The main problem was still whether the principles of the Revolution of 1688 should
be maintained. The Whigs, who considered the revolution as their work, long remained a
minority made up of a few great landowning noblemen, wealthy London merchants, lesser
businesspeople, and nonconformists in religion. The Whigs generally controlled the House
of Lords, but the House of Commons was more uncertain; at the time of the Peace of
Utrecht its majority was Tory. We have already noted the signifi cance for English consti-
tutional development of the confl ict at that time between the prowar Whig majority in the
House of Lords and the Tory majority in Commons and how the confl ict was resolved to
help establish the enduring primacy of the House of Commons.
After 1714 the two parties tended to dissolve, and the terms “Whig”
and “Tory” ceased to have much defi nite meaning. In general the gov-
ernment, and the Anglican bishops who were close to the government,
remained “Whig.” Men who were remote from the central government, or
suspicious of its activities, formed a kind of country party quite different from the earlier
Tories. Gentry and yeomen of the shires and byways were easily aroused against the great
noblemen and men of money who led the Whigs. In the established church the lesser
clergy were sometimes critical of the Whig bishops. Outside the offi cial church were a
group of Anglican clergy who refused the oath of loyalty after 1688 and were called Non-
Jurors; they kept alive a shadow church until 1805. In Scotland also, the ancestral home of
the Stuarts, many were disaffected with the new regime.
Tories, Non-Jurors, and Scots made up a milieu after 1688 in which what would now
be called counterrevolution might develop. Never enthusiastic for the “Whig wars” against
France, critical of the mounting national debt that the wars created, distrustful of the busi-
ness and moneyed interests, they began to look wistfully to the exiled Stuarts. After 1701,
when James died in France, the Stuart claims devolved upon his son, who lived until 1766,
scheming time and again to make himself king of England. His partisans were known as
Whigs and Tories
33. Western Europe after the Peace of Utrecht, 1713–1740
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire288
Jacobites, from Jacobus, the Latin for James. They claimed that he had a divine right to the monarchy and regarded him as “James III,” whereas others called him the Pretender. The
Jacobites felt that if he would give up his Catholic religion, he should
be accepted as Britain’s rightful king.
The Whigs could not tolerate a return of the Stuarts. The restoration of
“James III” and his divine-right partisans would undo the principles of the
Glorious Revolution—limited monarchy, constitutionalism, parliamentary supremacy, the
rule of law, the toleration of dissenting Protestants, in short all that was summarized and
defended in the political writings of John Locke. Moreover, those who held stock in the
Bank of England or who had lent their money to the government would be ruined, because
“James III” would surely repudiate a debt contracted by his foes. The Whigs were bound
to support the Hanoverian George I. And George I was bound to look for support in a
strange country among the Whigs.
George lacked personal appeal even for his English friends. To his enemies he was
ridiculous and repulsive. The successful establishment of his dynasty would ruin the hopes
of Tories and Jacobites. In 1715 the Pretender landed in Scotland, gathered followers from
the Highlands, and proclaimed a rebellion against George I. Civil war seemed to threaten.
But the Jacobite leaders bungled, and many of their followers proved to be
undecided. They were willing enough to toast the “king over the water” in
protest against the Whigs but not willing in a showdown to see the Stuarts,
and all that went with them, again in possession of the crown of England.
The Fifteen, as the revolt came to be called, petered out. But 30 years later came the
Forty-fi ve. In 1745, during war with France, the Pretender’s son, “Bonnie Prince Charlie”
or the “Young Pretender,” again landed in Scotland and again proclaimed rebellion. This
time, though almost no one in England rallied, the uprising was more successful. A Scot-
tish force penetrated to within 80 miles of London and was driven back and crushed with
the help of Hanoverian regiments rushed over from Germany. The government set out
to destroy Jacobitism in the Scottish Highlands. The social system of the Highlands was
wiped out, the clans were broken up, and their lands were forcibly reorganized according
to modern notions of property and of landlord and tenant.
The Jacobite uprisings confi rmed the old reputation of England in the eyes of Europe,
namely, as Voltaire said, that its government was as stormy as the seas that surrounded
it. To partisans of monarchy on the Continent the uprisings showed the weaknesses of
parliamentary government. But their ignominious collapse actually strengthened the
parliamentary regime in England. They left little permanent mark and soon passed into
romantic legend.
The “Bubbles”
Meanwhile, immediately after the Peace of Utrecht, the problem of dealing with a large
postwar government debt had to be faced in both England and France. Organized perma-
nent public debt was new at the time. The possibilities and limitations of large-scale bank-
ing, paper money, and credit were not clearly seen. In France there was much amazement
at the way in which England and Holland, though smaller and less wealthy than France,
had been able to maximize their resources through banking and credit and even to fi nance
the alliance that had eclipsed the Sun King. In addition there was much private demand for
both lending and borrowing money. Private persons all over western Europe were looking
for enterprises in which to invest their savings. And promoters and organizers, anticipating
“James III”
Threats of civil war
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289
a profi t in this or that line of business, were looking for capital with which to work. Out of
this whole situation grew the “South Sea bubble” in England and the “Mississippi bubble”
in France. Both bubbles broke in 1720, and both had important long-range effects.
A close tie between government fi nance and private enterprise was
usual at the time, under mercantilist ideas of government guidance of trade.
In England, for example, a good deal of the government debt was held by
trading companies organized for that purpose. The government would char-
ter a company, strengthen it with a monopoly in a given line of business,
and then receive from the company, after the stockholders had bought up the shares, a
large sum of cash as a loan. Much of the British debt, contracted in the wars from 1689 to
1713, was held in this way by the Bank of England, founded in 1694; by the East India
Company, reorganized in 1708 in such a way as to provide funds for the government; and
Ties between
government and
private enterprise
33. Western Europe after the Peace of Utrecht, 1713–1740
Critics of John Law ridiculed the Scottish fi nancier’s plan to pay off the French government’s debt with profi ts from the sale of shares in the “Mississippi Company.” This early eighteenth- century Dutch cartoon, for example, described Law as a “wind monopolist” and mocked him for selling nothing more than strong breezes to naïve investors. (Bettmann/Corbis)
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire290
by the South Sea Company, founded in 1711. The Bank enjoyed a legal monopoly over
certain banking operations in London, the East India Company over trade with the East,
the South Sea Company for exploiting the asiento and other commercial privileges extorted from Spain. The companies were owned by private investors. Savings drawn from trade
and agriculture, put into shares in these companies, became available both for economic
reinvestment and for use by the government in defraying the costs of war.
In 1716 the Prince Regent of France was attracted to a Scottish fi nan-
cier, John Law, reputedly because Law had a remarkable mathematical
system for gambling at cards. Law founded a much-needed French cen-
tral bank. In the next year, 1717, he organized a Compagnie d’Occident, popularly called the Mississippi Company, which obtained a monopoly of trade with Louisiana, where it
founded New Orleans in 1718. This company, under Law’s management, soon absorbed
the French East India, China, Senegal, and African companies. It now enjoyed a legal
monopoly of all French colonial trade. Seeing this trade as a means to solve France’s
fi nancial problems, the Regent authorized Law to assume the entire government debt. The
Mississippi Company received from individuals their certifi cates of royal indebtedness or
“bonds” and gave them shares of company stock in return. It proposed to pay dividends on
these shares and to extinguish the debt from profi ts in the colonial trade and from a monop-
oly over the collection of all indirect taxes in France. The project carried with it a plan for
drastic reform of the whole taxation system, to make taxes both more fair to the taxpayer
and more lucrative to the government. Shares in the Mississippi Company were gobbled
up by the public. There was a frenzy of speculation, a wild fear of not buying soon enough.
Quotations rose to 18,000 livres a share. But the company rested only on unrealized proj-
ects. Shareholders began to fear for their money. They began to unload. The market broke
sharply. Many found their life savings gone. Others lost ancestral estates on which they
had borrowed in the hope of getting rich. Those, however, who had owned shares in the
company before the rise, and who had resisted the speculative fever, lost nothing by the
bursting of infl ated prices and later enjoyed a gilt-edged commercial investment.
Much the same thing happened in England, where many believed that Law was about
to provide a panacea for France. The South Sea Company, outbidding the Bank of England,
took over a large fraction of the public debt by receiving government “bonds” from their
owners in return for shares of its stock. The size and speed of profi ts to be made in Spanish
America were greatly exaggerated, and the market value of South Sea shares rose rapidly
for a time, reaching £1,050 for a share of £100 par value. Other schemes abounded in the
passion for easy money. Promoters organized mining and textile companies, as well as
others of more fanciful or bolder design—a company to bring live fi sh to market in tanks,
an insurance company to insure female chastity, even a company “for an undertaking which
shall in due time be revealed.” Shares in such enterprises were snatched at mounting prices.
But in September 1720 the South Sea stockholders began to sell, doubting whether opera-
tions would pay dividends commensurate to £1,000 a share. They dragged down the whole
unstable structure. As in France, many people found that their savings or their inheritances
had disappeared in the fi nancial implosion of a speculative bubble.
Indignation in both countries was extreme. Both governments were implicated in the
scandal. John Law fl ed to Brussels. The Regent was discredited; he resigned in 1723,
and French affairs were afterward conducted by Cardinal Fleury. In England there was a
change of ministers. Robert Walpole, a country gentleman of Whig persuasion who had
long sat in the Commons and who had warned against the South Sea scheme from the
beginning, became the principal minister to George I.
John Law
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291
Britain recovered from the crisis more successfully than France. Law’s bank, a useful
institution, was dissolved in the reaction against him, and France lacked an adequate bank-
ing and credit system during the rest of the century. French investors developed a morbid
fear of paper securities and a marked preference for putting their savings
into land. In England the same fears were felt. Parliament passed the
“Bubble Act,” forbidding all companies except those specifi cally chartered
by the government to raise capital by the sale of stock. In both countries the
development of joint-stock fi nancing along the lines of the modern corporation was slowed
down for over a century. Business enterprises continued to be typically owned by individ-
uals and partnerships, which expanded by reinvestment of their own profi ts and so had
another reason to keep profi ts up and wages down. But in England Walpole managed to
save the South Sea Company, the East India Company, and the Bank, all of which were
temporarily discredited in the eyes of the public. England continued to perfect its fi nancial
machinery.
The credit of the two governments was also shaken by the “bubbles.” Much of the
French war debt was repudiated in one way or another. Repudiation was in many cases
morally justifi able, for many government creditors were unscrupulous war profi teers, but
fi nancially it was disastrous, for it discouraged honest people from lending their money to
the state. Nor was much accomplished toward reform of the taxes. The nobles continued
to evade taxes imposed on them by Louis XIV, John Law’s plans for taxation evaporated
with the rest of his project, and when in 1726 a fi nance minister tried to levy a 2 percent
tax on all property, the vested interests, led by the Parlement of Paris, demolished this pro-
posal also. Lacking an adequate revenue, and repudiating its debts, the French monarchy
had little credit. The conception of the public or national debt hardly devel-
oped in France in the eighteenth century. The debt was considered to be the
king’s debt, for which no one except a few ministers felt any responsibility.
The Bourbon government in fact often borrowed through the church, the
Provincial Estates, or the city of Paris, which lenders considered to be bet-
ter fi nancial risks than the king himself. The government was severely handicapped in its
foreign policy and its wars. It could not fully tap the wealth of its own subjects or expand-
ing global commerce.
In England none of the government debt was repudiated. Walpole managed to launch
and keep going the system of the sinking fund, by which the government regularly set
aside the wherewithal to pay interest and principal on its obligations. The credit of the
British government became absolutely fi rm. The debt was considered a national debt, for
which the British people themselves assumed the responsibility. Parliamentary govern-
ment made this development possible. In France no one could tell what the king or his
ministers might do, and hence the French were reluctant to trust them with their money.
In England the people who had the money could also, through Parliament, determine the
policies of state, decide what the money should be spent for, and levy enough taxes to
maintain confi dence in the debt. England’s social elites nevertheless shared the common
French aversion to taxes that would most affect their own interests, and the landowners
who controlled the British Parliament, like those who controlled the Parlement of Paris,
resisted direct taxation. The British government therefore drew two-thirds or more of its
revenues from indirect taxes paid by the mass of the population. Yet British landowners,
even dukes, did pay signifi cant amounts of taxes. There were no exemptions by class or
rank, as in France. All propertied interests had a stake in the government. The wealth of the
country stood behind the national debt. The national credit seemed inexhaustible. This was
The “Bubble Act”
Credit and the
National Debt
33. Western Europe after the Peace of Utrecht, 1713–1740
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire292
M. BACHELIER, DIRECTOR OF THE LYONS FARMS by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (French, 1686–1755)
The “farms” of which M. Bachelier was a director were the semiprivate syndicates to which the French monarchy delegated or farmed out the collection of its indirect taxes. Tax farmers were generally hated, and many became very rich. Nothing is known of the man in this picture, but with his huge wig, his lace cuffs, and his left hand politely extended, he typifi es the ruling elite in early eighteenth-century France. (University of Michigan Museum of Art)
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293
the supreme trump card of the British in their wars with France from the founding of the
Bank of England in 1694 to the fall of Napoleon 120 years later. And it was the political
freedom and power of Parliament that gave Britain’s government its economic strength.
Fleury in France; Walpole in England
Fleury was 73 years old when he took offi ce in 1726 and 90 when he left it. He was thus not
inclined to initiate programs for the distant future. Louis XV, as he came of age, proved to be
indolent and selfi sh. Public affairs drifted, while France grew privately more wealthy, espe-
cially the commercial and bourgeois classes. Walpole likewise kept out of controversies. His
motto was quieta non movere, “let sleeping dogs lie.” He sought to win over the Tory squires to the Hanoverian and Whig regime by keeping the land taxes low. This policy was success-
ful, and Jacobitism quieted down. Walpole supported the Bank, the trading companies, and
the fi nancial interests, and they in turn supported him. It was a time of political calm, in
which the lower classes were quiet and the upper classes were not quarreling; and it was
therefore a favorable time for the development of parliamentary institutions.
Walpole has been called the fi rst prime minister and the architect of
cabinet government, a system in which the prime minister and the ministers
who head the cabinet departments are also members of the legislative body.
He saw to it, by careful rigging, that a majority in the Commons always
supported him. He avoided issues on which his majority might be lost. He thus began to
acknowledge the principle of cabinet responsibility to a majority in Parliament, which was
to become an important characteristic of cabinet government. And by selecting colleagues
who agreed with him, and getting rid of those who did not, he advanced the idea of the
cabinet as a body of ministers bound to each other and to the prime minister, obligated to
follow the same policies and to stand or fall as a group. Thus Parliament was not only a rep-
resentative or deliberative body, but also one that developed an effective executive power,
without which neither representative government nor any government could survive.
To assure peace and quiet in domestic politics the best means was to avoid raising
taxes. And the best way to avoid taxes was to avoid war. Fleury and Walpole both tried to
keep at peace. They were not in the long run successful. Fleury was drawn into the War of
the Polish Succession in 1733. Walpole kept England out of war until 1739. He always had
a war party to contend with, and the most bellicose were those interested in the American
trade—the slave trade, the sugar plantations, and the illicit sale of goods in the Spanish
Empire. The British offi cial fi gures show that while trade with Europe in the eighteenth
century was always less in war than in peace, trade with America always increased during
war, except, indeed, during the War of American Independence.
In the 1730s there were constant complaints of indignities suffered by Britons on the
coasts of Spain’s American colonies. The war party produced a Captain Jenkins, who car-
ried with him a small box containing a withered ear, which he said had been cut from his
head by the outrageous Spaniards. Testifying in the House of Commons, where he “com-
mended his soul to God and his cause to his country,” he stirred up a commotion that led
to war. So in 1739, after 25 years of peace, England plunged with wild enthusiasm into the
War of Jenkins’s Ear. “They are ringing the bells now,” said Walpole; “they will soon be
wringing their hands.” The war soon merged into a confl ict involving Europeans and oth-
ers in all parts of the world. European wars could no longer be contained within Europe.
The global economic and colonial systems that produced the expanding global trade also
produced a series of global wars in which the European powers extended their confl icts
across all of the distant territories and seas they sought to control.
Cabinet government
33. Western Europe after the Peace of Utrecht, 1713–1740
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire294
34. THE GREAT WAR OF THE MID-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: THE PEACE OF PARIS, 1763
The fi ghting lasted until 1763, with an uneasy interlude between 1748 and 1756. It went
by many names. The opening hostilities between England and Spain were called, by the
English, the War of Jenkins’s Ear. The struggle on the Continent in the 1740s over the
Habsburg inheritance of the Austrian Empire was often known as the War of the Pragmatic
Sanction. The Prussians spoke of the three “Silesian” wars. British colonials in America
called the fi ghting of the 1740s King George’s War, or used the term “French and Indian
Wars,” for the whole sporadic confl ict. Disorganized and nameless struggles at the same
time shook the peoples of India. Eventually these widely scattered confl icts came to be
called by two names: the War of the Austrian Succession (for hostilities between 1740 and
1748) and the Seven Years’ War (for the confl icts between 1756 and 1763). The two wars
were really one. They involved the same two principal issues: the global duel of Britain
and France for colonies, trade, and sea power, and the European duel of Prussia and
Austria for territory and military power in central Europe.
Eighteenth-Century Warfare
Warfare at the time was in a kind of classical phase, which strongly affected the develop-
ment of events. It was somewhat slow, formal, elaborate, and indecisive. The enlisted ranks
of armies and navies were fi lled with men considered economically useless, picked up by
recruiting offi cers among unwary loungers in taverns or on the wharves. All governments
protected their productive population, peasants, mechanics, and bourgeois, preferring to
keep them at home, at work, and paying taxes. Soldiers became a class apart, enrolled for
long terms, paid wages, professional in their outlook, and highly trained. They lived in
barracks or great forts and were dressed in bright uniforms (like the British “redcoats”),
which, because camoufl age was unnecessary, they wore even in battle. Weapons were not
powerful; infantry was predominant and was armed in this era with the smooth-bore
musket to which the bayonet could be attached. In war the troops depended on great supply
depots built up beforehand, which were practically immovable with the transportation
available, so that armies, at least in central and western Europe, rarely operated more than
a few days’ march from their bases. Soldiers fought methodically for pay. Generals hesi-
tated to risk their troops, which took years to train and equip and were very expensive.
Strategy took the form not of seeking out the enemy’s main force to destroy it in battle but
of maneuvering for advantages of position, applying a cumulative and sub-
tle pressure somewhat as in a game of chess.
There was little religious or national feeling in such wars, though new
kinds of “patriotic” thought and identity began to emerge by the 1760s in
England and France. The Prussian army recruited half or more of its enlisted personnel
outside Prussia; the British army was largely made up of Hanoverian or other German
regiments; even the French army had German units incorporated in it. Deserters from one
side were enlisted by the other. War was between governments, or between the oligarchies
and aristocracies that governments represented, not between whole peoples. It was fought
for power, prestige, or calculated practical interests, not for ideologies, moral principles,
world conquest, national survival, or ways of life. Popular nationalism had developed far-
thest in England, where “Rule Britannia” and “God Save the King,” both breathing a low
opinion of foreigners, became popular songs during these mid-eighteenth-century wars.
Little national feeling
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29534. The Great War of the Mid-Eighteenth Century: The Peace of Paris, 1763
Civilians were little affected, except in India or the American wilderness where
European conditions did not prevail. In Europe, a government aspiring to conquer a neigh-
boring province did not wish to ruin or antagonize it beforehand. The fact that the western
European struggle was largely naval kept it well outside civilian experience. Never had war
been so contained within such parameters, certainly not in the religious wars of earlier times
or in the national and “total” wars initiated later. This was one reason why governments went
to war so easily. On the other hand governments also withdrew from war much more readily
than in later times. Their treasuries might be exhausted, their trained soldiers used up; only
practical or strategic questions were at stake; there was no war hysteria or pressure of mass
opinion; the enemy of today might be the ally of tomorrow. Peace was almost as easy to make
as war. Peace treaties were negotiated, not imposed. So the eighteenth century saw a series of
wars and treaties and rearrangements of alliances, all arising over much the same issues and
with exactly the same powers present at the end as at the beginning.
The War of the Austrian Succession, 1740–1748
The War of the Austrian Succession was started by the king of Prussia.
Frederick II, or the “Great,” was a young man of 28 when he became king
in 1740. His youth had not been happy; he was temperamentally incompat-
ible with his father. His tastes as a prince had run to playing the fl ute, corresponding with
French authors, and writing prose and verse in the French language. His father, the sober,
military-minded Frederick William I, thought him frivolous and dealt with him so clumsily
that at the age of 18 he tried to escape from the kingdom. Caught and brought back, he was
forced to witness the execution, by his father’s order, of the friend and companion who had
shared in his attempted fl ight. Frederick changed as the years passed from a jaunty youth
to an aged cynic, equally undeceived by himself, his friends, or his enemies, and seeing
no reason to expect much from human nature. Though his greatest reputation was made
as a soldier, he retained his literary interests all his life, became a historian of merit, and
is perhaps of all modern monarchs the only one who would have a respectable standing
if considered only as a writer. An unabashed freethinker, like many others of his day, he
considered all religions ridiculous and laughed at the divine right of kings; but he would
have no nonsense about the rights of the house of Brandenburg, and he took a solemn view
of the majesty of the state.
Frederick lost no time in showing a boldness that his father would have surely dreaded.
He decided to conquer Silesia, and in December 1740, he invaded that province, a region
adjoining Prussia, lying in the upper valley of the Oder, and belonging to the kingdom of
Bohemia and hence to the Danubian Empire of the Habsburgs (see map, p. 214, panel 3).
Frederick’s invasion thus violated the Pragmatic Sanction that the Austrian emperor
Charles VI had methodically negotiated throughout his long reign. The Pragmatic Sanc-
tion was the general agreement signed by the European powers, including Prussia, that
had stipulated that all domains of the Austrian Habsburgs should be inherited integrally by
the daughter of Charles VI, Maria Theresa. The issue was between negotiated agreements
and force; and Frederick, in attacking Silesia, could invoke nothing better than “reason of
state,” the welfare and expansion of the state of which he was ruler.
The Pragmatic Sanction was now universally disregarded. All turned against Maria
Theresa. Bavaria and Saxony put in claims. Spain, still hoping to revise the Peace of
Utrecht, saw another chance to win back former Spanish holdings in Italy. The decisive
intervention was that of France, which was torn between ambitions on the European
Frederick II
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire296
continent and ambitions on the sea and beyond the seas. Economic and commercial advan-
tage might dictate concentration on the transoceanic struggle with Britain. But the French
nobles were less interested than the British aristocrats in commercial considerations. They
were infl uential because they furnished practically all the army offi cers and diplomats.
They saw in Austria the traditional enemy, in Europe the traditional fi eld of valor, and in
Belgium, which now belonged to the Austrians, the traditional object for annexation to
France. Cardinal Fleury, much against his will and judgment, found himself forced into
war against the Habsburgs.
Maria Theresa was at this time a young woman of 23. She proved to
be one of the most capable rulers ever produced by the house of Habsburg.
She bore 16 children, and set a model of conscientious family living at a
time of much indifference to such matters among the upper classes. She was as devout and
as earnest as Frederick of Prussia was irreligious and seemingly fl ip. She dominated her
husband and her grown sons as she did her kingdoms and her duchies. With practical sense
and political talents, she reconstructed her empire without having any doctrinaire program,
and she accomplished more in her methodical way than other rulers who pursued more
spectacular projects of reform.
Soon after Frederick invaded Silesia, she gave birth to her fi rst son, the future emperor
Joseph II, in March 1741. She was preoccupied at the same time by the widening political
crisis. Her dominions were assailed by half a dozen outside powers and her two kingdoms
of Hungary and Bohemia (both of which had accepted the Pragmatic Sanction) were wait-
ing to see which way their advantage lay. Facing these dangers from all directions, she
traveled to Hungary, where she would be crowned with the crown of St. Stephen and rally
essential support. She made a carefully arranged and dramatic appearance before the
Maria Theresa
The young Frederick II of Prussia, who would later be called Frederick the Great, was more interested in music and lit- erature than in the military and political tasks of a monarch—which he neverthe- less pursued boldly after becoming king in 1740. This painting by Antoine Pesne portrays the “Crown Prince” in the year before he inherited the Prussian throne. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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297
Hungarian political elite, implored them to defend her, and swore to uphold the liberties
of the Hungarian nobles and the separate constitution of the kingdom of Hungary. All
Europe told how the young queen, by raising aloft the infant Joseph, who was to be heir to
the throne, at a session of the Hungarian parliament, had thrown the dour Magyars into
paroxysms of chivalrous resolve. The story was not quite true, but it is true that she made
an eloquent address to the Magyars and that she took her baby with her and proudly
exhibited him. The Hungarian magnates pledged their “blood and life” and delivered
100,000 soldiers.
The war, as it worked out in Europe, was reminiscent of the struggles in
the time of Louis XIV, or even of the Thirty Years’ War now a century in the
past. It was, again, a kind of civil struggle within the Holy Roman Empire,
in which a league of German princes banded together against the monarchy
of Vienna. This time the anti-Habsburg forces included the new kingdom of
Prussia. It was, again, a collision of Bourbons and Habsburgs, in which the French pursued
their old policy of maintaining division in Germany by supporting the German princes
against the Habsburgs. The basic aim of French policy, according to instructions given
by the French foreign offi ce to its ambassador in Vienna in 1725, was to keep the empire
divided, preventing the union of German powers into “one and the same body, which would
in fact become formidable to all the other powers of Europe.” This time France had Spain
on its side. Maria Theresa was supported only by Britain and Holland, which subsidized
her fi nancially but had inadequate land forces. The Franco-German-Spanish combination
was highly successful. In 1742 Maria Theresa, hard pressed, accepted the proposals of
Frederick for a separate peace. She temporarily granted him Silesia, and he temporarily
slipped out of the war that he had been the fi rst to enter. In 1745 the French won the battle
of Fontenoy in Belgium, the greatest battle of the war; they dominated Belgium, which nei-
ther the Dutch nor British were able to defend. In the same year they fomented the Jacobite
rebellion in Scotland to weaken or overthrow the British monarch.
But the situation overseas offset the situation in Europe. It was America that tilted the
balance. The French fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island was captured by an expe-
dition of New Englanders in conjunction with the British navy. British warships drove
French and Spanish shipping from the seas. The French West Indies were blockaded. The
French government, in danger of losing the wealth and taxes drawn from
the sugar and slave trades, announced its willingness to negotiate.
Peace was made at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. It was based on an Anglo-
French agreement in which Maria Theresa was obliged to concur. Britain
and France arranged their differences by a return to the prewar status quo.
The British returned Louisburg despite the protests of the Americans and relaxed their
stranglehold on the Caribbean. The French returned Madras, which they had captured, and
gave up their hold on Belgium. The Atlantic powers recognized Frederick’s annexation
of Silesia, and Belgium was returned to Maria Theresa at the insistence of Britain and the
Dutch. She and her ministers were very dissatisfi ed. They would infi nitely have preferred
to lose Belgium and keep Silesia. They were required, in the interest of a European or even
intercontinental balance of power, to give up Silesia and to hold Belgium for the benefi t of
the Dutch against the French.
The war had been more decisive than the few readjustments of the map seemed to
show. It proved the weakness of the French position, straddled as it was between Europe
and the overseas world. Maintaining a huge army for use in Europe, the French could not,
like Britain, concentrate upon the sea. On the other hand, because they were vulnerable
Parallels with past
wars
Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle
34. The Great War of the Mid-Eighteenth Century: The Peace of Paris, 1763
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire298
on the sea, they could not hold their gains in Europe or control Belgium. The Austrians,
though bitter, had reason for satisfaction. The war had been waged as a campaign to parti-
tion the Habsburg Empire. The Habsburg Empire still stood. Hungary had thrown in its lot
with Vienna, a fact of much subsequent importance. Bohemia, which was almost lost,
remained under Austrian control. In 1745 Maria Theresa got her husband elected Holy
MARIA THERESA AND HER FAMILY by Martin van Meytens (Austrian, 1695–1770)
Maria Theresa had an imposing public image in her dual roles as Queen in the Austrian house of Habsburg and mother in a large household of 16 children. This portrait of the Queen with her husband and many of her children shows her devotion to family life as well as the power she exercised in governing her empire. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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299
Roman Emperor as Francis I, a position for which, as a woman, she could not qualify. But
the loss of Silesia was momentous. Silesia was as populous as the Dutch Republic, heavily
German, and industrially the most advanced region east of the Elbe. Prussia by acquiring it
doubled its population and more than doubled its resources. Prussia with Silesia was
unquestionably a great power. Because Austria was still a great power, there were hence-
forth two great powers in the vague world known as “Germany,” a situation that came to
be known as the German dualism. But the transfer of Silesia, which doubled the number of
Germans ruled by the king of Prussia, made the Habsburg Empire less German, more
Slavic and Hungarian, more Danubian and international. Silesia was the keystone of
Germany. Frederick was determined to hold it; Maria Theresa was determined to win it
back. A new war was therefore foreseeable in central Europe. As for Britain and France,
the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was clearly only a truce.
The next years passed in a busy diplomacy, leading to what is known
as the “reversal of alliances” and the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756. The
Austrians set themselves to checking the growth of Prussia. Maria Theresa’s
foreign minister, Count Kaunitz, perhaps the most artful diplomat of the
century, concluded that the rise of Prussia had revolutionized the balance
of power. Kaunitz, dramatically reversing traditional policy, proposed an alliance between
Austria and France—between the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. He encouraged the long-
standing French aspirations for Belgium in return for French support in the destruction
of Prussia. The overtures between Austria and France obliged Britain, Austria’s former
ally, to reconsider its position in Europe; the British had Hanover to protect and were
favorably impressed by the Prussian army. An alliance of Great Britain and Prussia was
concluded in January 1756. Meanwhile Kaunitz consummated his alliance with France.
One consequence was to marry the future Louis XVI to one of Maria Theresa’s daughters,
Marie Antoinette, the “Austrian woman” of French Revolutionary fame. The Austrian alli-
ance was never popular in France. Some French thought that the ruin of Prussia would
only enhance the Austrian control of Germany and so undo the fundamental “Westphalia
system.” The French progressive thinkers, known as “philosophes,” believed Austria to be
priest-ridden and backward and were for ideological reasons admirers of the freethinking
Frederick II. Dissatisfaction with its foreign policy was one reason for the growth of inter-
nal opposition to the Bourbon government.
In any case, when the Seven Years’ War broke out in 1756, though it was a continu-
ation of the preceding war in that Prussia fought Austria, and Britain fought France, the
belligerents had all changed partners. Great Britain and Prussia were now allies, as were,
more remarkably, the Bourbons and the Habsburgs. In addition, Austria had concluded a
treaty with the Russian Empire for the annihilation of Prussia.
The Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763: In Europe and America
Although the Seven Years’ War began in America, let us turn fi rst to Europe, where the war
was another war of territorial “partition.” As a league of powers had but recently attempted
to partition the empire of Maria Theresa, and a generation before had in fact partitioned the
empires of Sweden and Spain, so now Austria, Russia, and France set out to partition the
newly created kingdom of Prussia. Their aim was to relegate the Hohenzollerns to the ter-
ritory of Brandenburg. Even with Silesia, Prussia had less than 6,000,000 people; each of
its three principal enemies had 20,000,000 or more. But war was less an affair of peoples
than of states and standing armies, and the Prussian state and Prussian army were the most
The Diplomatic
Revolution of 1756
34. The Great War of the Mid-Eighteenth Century: The Peace of Paris, 1763
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire300
effi cient in Europe. Frederick fought brilliant campaigns, moved rapidly
along interior lines, and eluded, surprised, and reattacked the badly coordi-
nated armies opposed to him. He proved himself the great military genius
of his day. But genius was scarcely enough. Against three such powers,
reinforced by Sweden and the German states, and with no ally except Great
Britain (and Hanover) whose aid was almost entirely fi nancial, the kingdom of Prussia
by any reasonable estimate had no chance of survival. There were times when Frederick
believed all to be lost, yet he went on fi ghting, and his strength of character in these years
of adversity, as much as his ultimate triumph, later made him a hero and symbol for the
Germans. His subjects, Junkers and even serfs, advanced in patriotic spirit under exter-
nal pressure. The coalition tended to fall apart. The French lacked enthusiasm; they were
fi ghting Britain, the Austrian alliance was unpopular, and Kaunitz would never plainly
promise them Belgium. The Russians found that the more they moved westward the more
they alarmed their Austrian allies. Frederick was left to deal only with the implacable
Austrians, for whom he was more than a match. By the peace of Hubertusburg in 1763 not
only did he lose nothing but he also retained Silesia.
Schönbrunn Palace, near Vienna, was the great palace of the Austrian Habsburgs. It was planned to compete with the vast palace of their French Bourbon rivals, but the plan was never completed because Maria Theresa (1740–1780) thought that the building seen here was adequate for her needs. (De Agostini/Getty Images)
Frederick’s military
triumphs
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301
For the rest, the Seven Years’ War was a phase in the long dispute
between France and Great Britain. Its stakes were supremacy in the grow-
ing world economy, control of colonies, and command of the sea. The two
empires had been left unchanged in 1748 by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Both held possessions in India, in the West Indies, and on the American
mainland (see maps, pp. 192, 307). In India both British and French possessed only discon-
nected commercial establishments on the coast, infi nitesimal specks on the giant body of
India. Both also traded with the Chinese along the Pearl River Delta in South China. Both
occupied colonial way stations on the route to Asia—the British in St. Helena and Ascen-
sion Island in the south Atlantic, the French in the more valuable islands of Mauritius and
Reunion in the Indian Ocean. The French were active also on the coasts of Madagascar.
The greatest way station, the Cape of Good Hope, belonged to the Dutch. In the West
Indies the British plantations were mainly in Jamaica, Barbados, and some of the Leeward
Islands; the French, in Saint-Domingue, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. All were supported
by the booming Atlantic slave trade that was transporting millions of enslaved people
from Africa.
On the American mainland the French had more territory and the British had more
people. In the British colonies from Georgia to Nova Scotia lived perhaps 2 million
Europeans, predominantly English but with strong infusions of Scots-Irish, Dutch, Germans,
French, and Swedes. Philadelphia, with some 40,000 people, was as large as any city in
England except London. Native Americans were decimated by disease or driven out of most
Atlantic coastal lands. But the population in these areas continued to grow, in part because
of the expanding slave trade. About 275,000 enslaved Africans arrived in Britain’s North
American colonies before 1775, and by the late eighteenth century the African American
population in these mainland territories had increased to more than 700,000 people. Mean-
while, the number of Europeans grew to be almost a quarter as large as the population in the
mother country. The European Americans, however, were provincial, locally minded, and
incapable of concerted action. In 1754 the British government called a congress at Albany
in New York, hoping that the colonies would assume some collective responsibility for
the coming war. The congress adopted an “Albany plan of union” drawn up by Benjamin
Franklin, but the colonial legislatures declined to accept it, through fear of losing their sepa-
rate identity. The colonials were willing, in a politically immature way, to rely on Britain for
military action against France.
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1619–1763
1619 First enslaved Africans arrive in Virginia
1700–1780 Expansion of European plantation system in Caribbean “Sugar Islands”
1720 The “Mississippi Bubble” in France and “South Sea Bubble” in Britain
1740–1748 War of Austrian Succession in Europe
1740–1780 Queen Maria Theresa rules and expands the Austrian Empire
1740–1786 Frederick II (the Great) rules and expands the kingdom of Prussia
1756–1763 The Seven Years’ War; expansion of British power in India and America
34. The Great War of the Mid-Eighteenth Century: The Peace of Paris, 1763
British and French
colonial interests
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire302
The French were still in possession of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island, a northern
stronghold established by Louis XIV, located in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It was designed
for naval domination of the north Atlantic and to control access to the St. Lawrence River,
the Great Lakes, and the vast region now called the Middle West. Through all this tract of
country the French constantly came and went, but there were sizable French settlements
only around New Orleans in the south and Quebec in the north. One source of French
strength was that the French were more successful than the British in gaining the support
of the Indians. This was probably because the French, being few in numbers, did not
threaten to expropriate their lands and also because Catholics at this time were incompara-
bly more active than Protestants in Christian missions among non-European peoples. The
French were also active in the fur trade with Native Americans, an economic exchange that
added important commercial components to French-Indian relations.
Both empires, French and British, were held together by mercantilist
regulations framed mainly in the interest of the home countries. In some
ways the British Empire was more liberal than the French; it allowed local
self-government and permitted immigration from all parts of Europe. In
other ways the British system was stricter. British subjects, for example,
were required by the Navigation Acts to use British ships and seamen—English, Scottish,
or colonial—whereas the French were freer to use the transport services of other nations.
British sugar planters had to ship raw sugar to the home country, there to be refi ned and sold
to Europe, whereas French planters were free to refi ne their sugar in the Caribbean islands.
The mainland British colonials were forbidden to manufacture ironware and numerous
other articles for sale; they were expected to buy such objects from England. Because the
British sold little to the West Indies, where the slave population had no income with which
to buy, the mainland colonies, though less valued as a source of wealth, were a far more
important market for British goods. The North American colonials had prospered under
the restrictive system, but they were beginning to fi nd much of it irksome at the time of the
Seven Years’ War, and indeed evaded it when they could.
Fighting was endemic in the empires, even during years of peace in Europe. Nova
Scotia was a trouble spot. French in population, it had been annexed by Britain at the Peace
of Utrecht. Its proximity to Louisburg made it a scene of perpetual agitation. The British
government in 1755, foreseeing war with France, bodily removed about 7,000 of the mostly
French-speaking inhabitants of Acadia, originally a French colony and part of Nova Scotia.
Although they were dispersed throughout Britain’s North American colonies, some of these
displaced people eventually migrated to Louisiana and preserved a distinctive identity in the
French Cajun culture that developed there. But the great disputed area was the Alleghenies.
British colonials were beginning to fi nd their way westward through the mountains. French
traders, soldiers, and empire builders were moving eastward toward the same mountains
from points on the Mississippi and the Great Lakes. In 1749, at the request of Virginia and
London capitalists, the British government chartered a land-exploitation company, the Ohio
Company, to operate in territory claimed also by the French. The French built a fort at the
point where the Ohio River is formed by the junction of two smaller rivers—Fort Duquesne,
later called Pittsburgh. A force of colonials and British regular troops, commanded by Gen-
eral Braddock and colonial offi cers such as the young George Washington, started through
the wilderness to dislodge the French. It was defeated in July 1755, but this frontier confron-
tation soon led to wider confl icts. A year later France and Britain declared war.
The British were brilliantly led by William Pitt, subsequently the Earl of Chatham,
a man of wide vision and exceptional confi dence. “I know that I can save the country,”
Mercantilist
regulations
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303
he said, “and I know that no one else can.” He concentrated British effort on the navy and
colonies, while subsidizing Frederick of Prussia to fi ght in Europe, so that England, as he
put it, might win an empire on the plains of Germany. Only the enormous fi nancial credit of
the British government made such a policy feasible. In 1758 British forces fi nally took Fort
Duquesne, and Louisburg fell again in the same year. Gaining entry to the St. Lawrence,
the British moved upstream to Quebec, and in 1759 a force under General Wolfe, stealth-
ily scaling the heights, appeared by surprise on the Plains of Abraham outside the fortress,
forcing the garrison to accept a battle, which the British won. With the fall of Quebec no
further French resistance was possible on the American mainland. The British also, with
superior naval power, occupied Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean and French
slavetrading outposts in Africa.
The Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763: In India
Both British and French interests meanwhile profi ted from disturbed conditions in India. As
large as Europe without Russia, India was a congested country of impoverished masses,
speaking hundreds of languages and following many religions and subreligions, the two
greatest being the Hindu and the Muslim. Waves of invasion through the northwest frontier
since 1001 C.E. had produced a Muslim Empire, whose capital was at Delhi and which for
a time held jurisdiction over most of the country. These Muslim emperors were known as
Great Moguls. The greatest was Akbar, who ruled from 1556 to 1605, built roads, reformed
the taxes, patronized the arts, and attempted to minimize religious differences among his
peoples. The Muslim artistic culture fl ourished for a time after Akbar. One of his succes-
sors, Shah Jehan (1628–1658), built the beautiful Taj Mahal near Agra and at Delhi built the
delicately carved alabaster palace of the Moguls, in which he placed the Pea-
cock Throne made of solid gold and studded with gems.
But meanwhile there was restlessness among the Hindus. The Sikhs,
who had originated in the fi fteenth century as a reform movement in Hin-
duism, went to war with the Mogul emperor in the seventeenth century.
They became one of the most ferociously warlike of Indian peoples. Hindu
princes in central India meanwhile formed a “Mahratta confederacy”
against the Muslim emperor at Delhi. Matters were made worse when Aurungzeb, the last
signifi cant Mogul emperor (1658–1707), adopted repressive measures against the Hindus.
After Aurungzeb, India fell into a political dissolution that made the country vulnerable to
both internal rebellions and new interventions from the increasingly assertive Europeans.
Many of the modern princely states originated or became autonomous at this time. Hindu
princes rebelled against the Mogul. Muslims, beginning as governors or commanders
under the Mogul, set up as rulers in their own right. Thus originated Hyderabad, which
included the fabulous diamond mines of Golconda and whose ruler long was called the
wealthiest man in the world. Princes and would-be princes fought with each other and with
the emperor.
The situation in India resembled, on a larger and more multicultural scale, what had
happened in Europe in the Holy Roman Empire, where irreconcilable religious differences
(of Catholics and Protestants) had also torn the country asunder, ambitious princes and
city-states had won a chaotic independence, and foreign armies appeared repeatedly as
invaders. India, like central Europe, suffered chronically from war, intrigue, and rival pre-
tensions to territory; and in India, as in the Holy Roman Empire, outsiders and ambitious
insiders benefi ted together.
Religious and
political upheaval in
India
34. The Great War of the Mid-Eighteenth Century: The Peace of Paris, 1763
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire304
The instability and violence in the interior had signifi cant repercussions on the Indian
coasts. Here handfuls of Europeans were established in the coastal cities. By the troubles
in the interior the Indian authorities along the coasts were reduced, so to speak, to a size
and power with which the Europeans could deal. The Europeans—British and French—
were agents of their respective East India companies. These companies built forts, main-
tained soldiers, coined money, and entered into treaties with surrounding Indian powers,
under charter of their home governments and with no one to deny them the exercise of
such sovereign rights or political autonomy. Agents of the companies, like Indians them-
selves, ignored or respected the Mogul emperor as suited their own purpose. They were, at
fi rst, only one of the many contending forces in the fl ux and refl ux of Indian affairs. Their
presence in India showed the international reach of European companies, the worldwide
competition between British and French interests, and the growing importance of India in
the global economic system.
Neither the British nor the French government, during the Seven Years’
War, had any intention of territorial conquest in India, their policy in this
respect differing radically from their colonial ambitions in America. Nor
were the two trading companies pushing their agents toward imperialistic
Intentions of the
British and the
French
The battle of Quebec, depicted here in an English illustration of the British army’s surprise approach to the Plains of Abraham, allowed Britain to gain control over most of North America and to increase its power in the expanding, global system of eighteenth-century trade. (The Bridgeman Art Library)
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305
political interventions in South Asia. The company directors in London and Paris disap-
proved of fantastic schemes to intervene in Indian politics, insisted that their agents should
attend to business only, and resented every penny and every sou not spent to bring in
commercial profi t. But it took a year or more to exchange messages between Europe and
India, and company representatives in India, caught up in the Indian power struggles and
overcome by the chance to make personal fortunes or by dreams of empire, acted very
much on their own, committing their home offi ces without compunction. Involvement in
Indian affairs was not exactly new. We have seen how “Diamond” Pitt, in 1702, purchased
the goodwill of the local ruler of the Carnatic when he had threatened by military force to
reduce the English traders at Madras to submission.
The fi rst European to exploit the possibilities of the changing situation in mid-eighteenth-
century India was the Frenchman Joseph-François Dupleix, who believed that the funds
sent out by the company in Paris to fi nance the Indian trade were insuffi cient. His idea seems
to have been not empire-building but to make the company into a local territorial power in
order that, from taxes and other political revenues, it might have more capital for its commer-
cial operations. In any case, during the years of peace in Europe after 1748, Dupleix found
himself with about 2,000 French troops in the Carnatic. He lent them out to neighboring local
rulers in return for territorial concessions. He also began to drill Indian soldiers by European
methods, thereby creating the fi rst regiments of “sepoys”—Indian troops who served in the
military forces of the European companies. Following a program of backing claimants to
various Indian thrones, he built up a clientele of local rulers who now had specifi c obligations
to Dupleix himself. He was very successful, for a small number of well-armed European
troops or sepoys could overcome much larger, poorly armed Indian forces in pitched battle.
But he was recalled to France in 1754, after his company became apprehensive of war with
Britain and other trouble; and he died in disgrace.
When war came in 1756, British interests in India were advanced
chiefl y by Robert Clive. He had come to India many years before as a clerk
for the East India Company but had shown military talents and an ability
to comprehend Indian politics. He had maneuvered, with little success, against Dupleix
in the Carnatic during the 1740s. In 1756, on hearing the news of war in Europe, Clive
shifted his attention to Bengal, hoping to drive the French from their trading stations there.
The French were favored in Bengal by the local Muslim ruler, Suraja Dowla, who pro-
ceeded to anticipate Clive’s arrival by expelling the British from Calcutta (the city now
called Kolkata). Capturing the city, he shut up 146 Englishmen in a small room without
windows—soon known in England as the “Black Hole of Calcutta”—and kept them there
all night, during which most of them died of suffocation. Clive, soon arriving with a small
force of British and sepoys, routed Suraja Dowla at the battle of Plassey in 1757. He put his
own puppet on the Bengal throne and extorted huge reparations both for the company and
for himself. Returning to England, he was received with mixed feelings; but he was given
a new title (Baron Clive of Passy) and appointed the “governor” of Bengal. He strove in
India to reduce the almost incredible corruption of company employees there, individuals
who abandoned virtually all moral scruples to pursue irresistible chances for easy riches.
Finally he committed suicide in 1774.
It was British sea power, more fundamentally than Clive’s tactics, that assured the
triumph of British over French ambitions in South Asia. The British government still had
no intention of conquest in India, but it could not see its East India Company forced out
by agents of the French company in collaboration with Indian princes. Naval forces were
therefore dispatched to the Indian Ocean; and it was the British navy that made it possible
Robert Clive
34. The Great War of the Mid-Eighteenth Century: The Peace of Paris, 1763
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire306
for Clive to move quickly from Chennai to Kolkata. British ships also cut off the French
posts in India from Europe and from each other. By the end of the war all the French estab-
lishments in India, as in Africa and America, were at the mercy of the British. The French
overseas colonies lay prostrate, and France itself was again detached from the transoceanic
trade on which much of its commercial economy rested. In 1761 France made an alliance
with Spain, which was alarmed for the safety of its own American Empire after the British
victories at Quebec and in the Caribbean. But the British also defeated Spain.
The Peace Settlement of 1763
The British armed forces had been spectacularly successful. Yet the peace treaty, signed at
Paris in February 1763, fi ve days before the Austro-Prussian peace of Hubertusburg, was
by no means unfavorable to the defeated. The French Duke of Choiseul was a skillful and
single-minded negotiator. The British, Pitt having fallen from offi ce in 1761, were represented
Britain’s imperial role in late eighteenth-century India is represented in this Indian miniature of a British offi cer’s wife surrounded by Indian servants. The social hierarchies within the growing empire appear in this scene of domestic order and wealth, which dates from about 1785. (Werner Forman Archive/Art Resource, NY)
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307
by a confused group of parliamentary favorites of the new king, George III.
France ceded to Britain all French territory on the North American mainland
east of the Mississippi. Canada thereby became British, and the colonials
of the thirteen colonies were relieved of the French presence beyond the Alleghenies. To
Spain, in return for aid in the last days of the war, France ceded all holdings west of the
Mississippi and at its mouth, including New Orleans. France thereby virtually abandoned
the North American continent. But these regions were still of minor commercial importance
for European trading companies, and the French, in return for surrendering them, retained
many economically more valuable establishments elsewhere. In the West Indies the British
planters, and in England the powerful “West India interest,” feared competition from the
French sugar islands and wanted to exclude them from the protected economic system of
the British Empire. France therefore received back Guadeloupe and Martinique, as well as
French concessions
THE WORLD IN 1763 At the Peace of Paris of 1763 the British overseas empire trimphed over the French. The French ceded their holdings on the North American mainland east of the Mississippi to Britain, those west of the Mississippi to Spain. Britain also took Florida from Spain in 1763, but lost it, returning it to Spain in 1783, at the close of the War of American Independence. The French retained their sugar islands in the West Indies and their trading stations in India; they were stopped from empire-building but did not greatly suffer commercially from the Seven Years’ War. The British proceeded to build their empire in India.
Spanish Empire
Portuguese Empire
French Empire
British Empire
Dutch Empire
Ottoman Empire
Russian Empire
ATLANTIC OCEAN
PACIFIC OCEAN
Hudson Bay
PACIFIC OCEAN
INDIAN OCEAN
NORTH AMERICA
SOUTH AMERICA
A F R I C A
A S I A
PHILIPPINES (Spain)
CHINA
PERU
PORTUGAL SPAIN
FRANCE
GREAT BRITAIN
SWEDEN
R U S S I A
INDIA
ICELAND
DUTCH EAST INDIES
ALASKA
GUIANA (Dutch & French)
FLORIDA (Britain, 1763–1783)
GREENLAND
GUINEAEU
ROPEAN SLAVE TR
A D
IN G
ST A
TIO N
S
ASCENSION (Britain)
ST. HELENA (Britain)
REU NIO
N
(Fra nc
e)
BENGAL (Britain)
CEYLON (Dutch)
PERSIA
AUST. HUN.
POLANDH.R.E.
DEN.
NETHERLANDS
MEXICO
MAURITIUS (France)
J A P A
N
Canton
Ft. Duquesne
Louisburg
Dakar (France)
Cape Town (Dutch)
Tobolsk Tomsk
Irkutsk
Yakutsk
EAST INDIA
British Sphere, 1763
CEYLON (Dutch)
INDIA
Brahmaputra R.Ganges R.
H I M A L A Y A S
Bay of Bengal
Su tle
j R .
Arabian Sea CA R
N A
TI C
Delhi
Bombay (Britain)
Goa (Portugal)
Pondicherry (France) Madras (Britain)
Hyderabad
Calcutta (Britain)
Chandernagor (France)
Agra Plassey
CUBA (Spain)
JAMAICA (Britain)
SA NT
O D OM
ING O (F
rance )
HIS PA
NIO LA (
Spain )
PU ERT
O R ICO
(Spain )
GUADALOUPE (France) MARTINIQUE
(France)
BARBADOS (Britain)
TRINIDAD (Britain)
CURACAO (Dutch)
CARIBBEAN SEA
VENEZUELA (Spain)
WEST INDIA
34. The Great War of the Mid-Eighteenth Century: The Peace of Paris, 1763
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Chapter 7 The Global Struggle for Wealth and Empire308
most of its slavetrading stations in Africa; and the French still controlled the highly lucrative
sugar plantations in Saint-Domingue (Santo Domingo). In India, the French remained
in possession of their commercial installations—offi ces, warehouses, and docks—at
Pondicherry (now Puducherry) and other cities. They were forbidden to erect fortifi cations
or pursue political ambitions among Indian princes—a practice which neither the French
nor the British government had hitherto much favored in any case.
The treaties of Paris and Hubertusburg, closing the prolonged war of the midcentury,
made the year 1763 a memorable turning point. Prussia confi rmed its status as an emerg-
ing major power, which meant that the dualism of Germany would continue. Austria and
Prussia eyed each other as rivals. Frederick’s aggressive occupation of Silesia in 1740
was legalized and even given a new moral status in Prussia by the heroic defense that had
proved necessary to retain the plunder. Frederick himself, from 1763 until his death in
1786, was a man of peace, philosophical and even benign. But the German crucible had
boiled, and out of it had come a Prussia even more disposed by its escape from annihilation
to glorify its army as the steel framework of its life.
The Anglo-French settlement was far-reaching and rather curious. Although the
British won decisive victories everywhere in the global war, it resulted in no commercial
calamity for France. French trade with America and the East grew as rapidly after the Seven
Years’ War as before it, and by 1785 it was double what it had been in 1755. For England
the war also opened up new commercial channels. British trade with America and the East
probably tripled between 1755 and 1785. But the outstanding British gains were imperial
and strategic. The European balance of power was preserved, the French had been kept out
of Belgium, British colonial subjects in North America seemed secure, and Britain had
again vindicated its command of the sea. British sea power implied, in turn, that British sea-
borne commerce was safe in peace or war, while the seaborne commerce for the French, or
of any others, depended ultimately on the political requirements of the British. But the
French still had a few cards to play, and they would soon play them in the American
and French revolutions.
For America and India the peace of 1763 was decisive in pushing the peoples of these
two vast territories toward closer connections with the political and commercial institu-
tions of the British Empire. America north of Mexico was to become part
of an English-speaking world. In India the British government was drawn
increasingly into a policy of territorial occupation; a British “paramount
power” eventually emerged in place of the empire of the Moguls. British
political rule in India stimulated and protected British business there, until
in the greatest days of British prosperity India was one of the main pillars of the British
economic system, and the road to India became in a real sense the lifeline of the British
empire. But in 1763 this state of affairs was still in the future and was to be reached by
many intermediate steps.
Repercussions of the
settlement
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
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309
C h a p t e r 8 THE AGE
OF ENLIGHTENMENT
The eighteenth century, or at least the years of that century preceding the French Revolution of
1789, is commonly known in European history as
the Age of Enlightenment. This broad term may sim-
plify or distort the era’s complex currents of cultural
and political change, but no other name describes so
many features of the time so well. People strongly
felt that theirs was an enlightened age, and it is from
their own evaluation of themselves that our term Age
of Enlightenment is derived. Everywhere there was
a feeling that Europeans had at last emerged from a
long twilight. The past was generally regarded as a
time of barbarism or darkness in which people knew
much less about the laws of nature and the value of
rational analysis. The sense of progress was all but
universal among the educated classes. It was the belief both of the forward-looking thinkers
and writers known as the philosophes and of the forward-looking monarchs, the “enlight-
ened despots,” together with their ministers and offi cials.
The leading ideas of the Enlightenment—optimistic beliefs in the historical advance
of reason, science, education, social reform, tolerance, and enlightened government—
have been constant themes in the modern world. The Enlightenment, in short, remains
a dynamic tradition in cultural and political life. Intellectual debates since the eighteenth
century have almost always returned, explicitly or implicitly, to questions about the valid-
ity and legacy of Enlightenment conceptions of truth, knowledge, and progress. The
Enlightenment has often been challenged or condemned by infl uential cultural movements
(for example, romanticism, postmodernism, religious revivals) and by modern political
ideologies (for example, fascism, ethnic nationalisms). Yet the vehemence of its modern
critics confi rms the Enlightenment’s exceptional, enduring importance in the cultures and
politics of modern societies.
35. The Philosophes—
and Others
36. Enlightened Despotism:
France, Austria, Prussia
37. Enlightened Despotism:
Russia
38. The Partitions of Poland
39. New Stirrings: The British
Reform Movement
40. The American Revolution
Chapter emblem: Detail from a portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Allan Ramsay (1713–1784).
(Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment310
Eighteenth-century critiques of existing regimes and cultural traditions drew increas-
ingly on the ideas of the Enlightenment; indeed, such ideas were contributing by the end
of the century to explosive political revolutions in America and Europe. In later centuries,
Enlightenment ideas continued to generate opposition to unpopular governments or domi-
nant cultural ideologies or hierarchical social systems, but the Enlightenment was also
condemned in many cultures. For its advocates and critics alike, however, the “Age of
Enlightenment” has always represented a decisive historical moment and cultural force in
the development of “modernity.”
35. THE PHILOSOPHES—AND OTHERS
The Spirit of Progress and Improvement
The spirit of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment was drawn from the scientifi c and intel-
lectual revolution of the seventeenth century. The Enlightenment carried over and popular-
ized the ideas of Bacon and Descartes, of Bayle and Spinoza, and, above all, of Locke and
Newton. It carried over the philosophy of natural law and of natural right. There had never
been an age in which Europeans were so skeptical toward tradition, so confi dent in the
powers of human reason and of science, so fi rmly convinced of the regularity and harmony
of nature, and so deeply imbued with the sense of civilization’s advance
and progress.
The idea of progress has often been described as the dominant or char-
acteristic idea of European civilization in the modern era, or since the late
seventeenth century. It is a belief, a kind of nonreligious faith, that the conditions of human
life become better as time goes on, that in general each generation is better off than its pre-
decessors and will contribute by its labor to an even better life for generations to come,
and that in the long run all humankind will share in the same advance. All the elements of
this belief had been present by 1700. It was after 1700, however, that the idea of progress
became explicit. In the seventeenth century it had shown itself in a more rudimentary way
in the sporadic intellectual dispute in England and France known as the quarrel of Ancients
and Moderns (which, as noted earlier, also became part of the challenge to offi cial the-
orists in Louis XIV’s academies). The Ancients held that the works of the Greeks and
Romans had never been surpassed. The Moderns, pointing to science, art, literature, and
invention, declared that their own time was the best, that it was natural for people of their
time to do better than the ancients because they came later and built upon their predeces-
sors’ achievements. The quarrel was never exactly settled, but a great many people in 1700
were Moderns.
Far-reaching also was the faith of the age in the natural faculties of the human mind.
Extreme skepticism, but not a skeptical outlook, was rejected. Educated persons in the
eighteenth century were less likely to be superstitious, terrifi ed by the unknown, or addicted
to magic. The witchcraft mania abruptly died. Indeed all sense of the supernatural became
dim for many Europeans. “Modern” people not only ceased to fear the devil but also to fear
God. They thought of God less as a Father than as a First Cause of the physical universe.
There was less sense of a personal God, or of the inscrutable imminence of divine Provi-
dence, or of the human need for saving grace. God was less the God of Love than the
inconceivably intelligent Being who had made the amazing universe now discovered by
human reason. The great symbol of the Christian God was the Cross, on which a divine
being had suffered in human form. The symbol of divinity that occurred to people of
Faith in progress
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31135. The Philosophes—and Others
scientifi c view was the Watchmaker. The intricacies of the physical universe were com-
pared to the intricacies of a watch, and it was argued that just as a watch could not exist
without a watchmaker, so the universe as discovered by Newton could not exist without a
God who created it and set it moving by its mathematical laws. It was almighty intelli-
gence that was thought divine.
Of course not everyone was primarily moved by such ideas. The fi rst
half of the eighteenth century was in fact also a time of continuing religious
fervor, and new religious movements attracted deeply committed adherents
throughout the whole century. Isaac Watts wrote many hymns that are still
familiar in English-speaking churches; the great church music of J. S. Bach was composed
mainly in the 1720s; Handel’s oratorio, The Messiah, was fi rst performed in 1741; and it was at about this time that congregations fi rst sang the Adeste fi deles (“O Come, All Ye Faithful”), originally Catholic in inspiration but soon adopted by Protestants also. The
Lutherans of Germany were stirred by the movement known as Pietism, which stressed the
inner spiritual experience of ordinary persons as distinct from the doctrines taught and
debated in theological faculties. The quest for an “inner light,” or illumination of the soul
rather than of the reason, was somewhat contrary to the main thrust of the Age of Enlight-
enment, and a religious urge for improvement of the individual rather than of social institu-
tions was hardly central to the ideas of the age, but such ideas were by no means merely
conservative, for they were in general highly critical of the existing order.
Within the Church of England John Wesley, while a student at Oxford,
joined a group of like-minded young men for prayer and meditation. They
engaged in good works to relieve the sufferings of prisoners and the poor, to
whom they distributed food and clothing, while also teaching them how to
read. Going outside the restrictive system of parishes, Wesley and others took to “itinerant”
preaching, often to immense crowds in open fi elds. Wesley is said to have traveled
250,000 miles within Great Britain over a period of 50 years. He and George Whitfi eld,
who shared his views, preached also in the English American colonies, where they helped
to arouse the Great Awakening of the 1740s. Such movements had a democratizing effect
in stressing individual worth and spiritual consciousness independently of the established
religious authorities. Indeed, the spokesmen for older churches dismissed such movements
as “enthusiasm,” which was then a word of reproach. By the time he died in 1791, Wesley
had about half a million followers in what were called Methodist societies. Wesley himself
tried to keep them within the Church of England, but separate Methodist churches were
already founded in England and the United States.
In a way these expressions of religious feeling refl ected differences between the popu-
lar and elite cultures that have already been described. While some of the elite joined in
the new movements, it was on the whole the less comfortable social classes who did so.
The offi cial churches, Anglican, Lutheran, Catholic, did not wish to be disturbed by reli-
gious revivalism. Bishops were cultivated gentlemen of the age. But the most vehement
intellectual leaders pushed churches and theological traditions aside as they promoted the
progressive uses of human reason.
The science and new learning in this “age of reason,” however, did not end the popular
interest in magic or mystifi cation. A Swiss pastor, J. C. Lavater, attracted attention with his
supposed science of “physiognomy,” by which a person’s character could be read in the
play of the facial features. An Austrian physician, F. A. Mesmer, created a stir in Paris by
arranging séances where people were touched by a wand, or sat in tubs, to receive “animal
magnetism” in the hope of curing various ills. His “mesmerism” was an early stage in the
Religious fervor and
Pietism
John Wesley and
Methodism
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment312
discovery of hypnosis, but it is signifi cant that a committee of the Royal Academy of
Sciences, after investigation, concluded that Mesmer’s own theories to explain these strange
phenomena were without foundation.
More in the mainstream of the new intellectual culture was Freema-
sonry, which took form in England and soon spread to the Continent. The
Masons were generally persons who held typical Enlightenment views, well
disposed toward reason, progress, toleration, and humane reforms, and respectful toward
God as architect of the universe; but they met secretly in lodges, in an atmosphere of mys-
terious rituals and occult knowledge. Men of all walks of life, nobles, clergy, and middle
classes, belonged to the lodges (a few also allowed women to join). Freemasonry thus had
the effect of bringing persons of different social classes together, somewhat harmlessly for
self-improvement and the improvement of others. It aroused suspicion, however, because
of its secrecy; and a small deviant offshoot, the Illuminati of south Germany, was consid-
ered so dangerous that the Bavarian government suppressed it in 1786. There were later
some who insisted that the French Revolution had been caused by a conspiracy of Illuminati,
philosophes, and other clandestine plotters, but this idea was never any more than the belief
of a few frightened conservative critics. The word Illuminati meant “the enlightened ones,” but the notion of secrecy was foreign to the Enlightenment, which relied above all else on
publicity and the reading public.
The Philosophes
Philosophe is simply French for philosopher, but to be “philosophical” in the eighteenth century meant to approach any subject in a critical and inquiring spirit. The French word
is used in English to denote a group of writers who were not philosophers in the sense of
treating ultimate questions of knowledge or existence. They were social or literary crit-
ics, popularizers, and publicists. Most philosophes were men, but many women also
participated in Enlightenment culture. The French writer Emilie du Châtelet, for exam-
ple, translated Newton and explained the signifi cance of the new theories in her scientifi c
essays. Though often learned, the philosophes wrote to gain attention, and it was through
the philosophes that the ideas of the Enlightenment spread. Formerly authors had gener-
ally been persons of leisure, or talented protégés of aristocratic or royal patrons, or pro-
fessors or clerics supported by the income from religious foundations. In the Age of
Enlightenment a great many were freelancers, grub-streeters, or journalists. They wrote
for “the publick.”
The reading public had greatly expanded; by the 1780s in France, liter-
acy rates had risen to 47 percent among men and 27 percent among women.
The educated middle class, commercial and professional, was much larger
than ever before. Women readers formed a growing audience for novels and literary jour-
nals, country gentlemen sought new scientifi c advice on agriculture, and even noblemen
wished to keep informed. Newspapers and magazines multiplied, and people who could
not read them at home could read them in coffeehouses or in reading rooms organized for
that purpose. There was a great demand also for dictionaries, encyclopedias, and surveys of
all fi elds of knowledge. The new readers wanted matters made interesting and clear. They
appreciated wit and lightness of touch. From such a public, literature itself greatly benefi ted.
The style of the eighteenth century became admirably fl uent, clear, and exact, neither
ponderous on the one hand nor frothy on the other. Such writings attracted new readers in
every country, from the interior of Europe to the America of Benjamin Franklin. People
Freemasonry
The reading public
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313
began to talk of “public opinion” as a kind of critical tribunal that judged the signifi cance
of new books and established or destroyed the reputations of ambitious authors. This new
public opinion, the French writer Malesherbes explained, was an independent social force
“that all powers respect, that appreciates all talents, that pronounces on all people of merit.”
Critical reviews of literature, art, and music provoked debates in newspapers, journals, and
coffeehouses, all of which contributed to an expanding public sphere beyond the personal
world of private households and outside the offi cial world of government institutions. The
bourgeois middle class was becoming not only educated but also thoughtful and critical.
But the expanding public sphere was not limited to the ideas or cultural preoccupations of
a single social class.
The writings of the day were nevertheless affected by social conditions
and by the cultural context that constrained their publication. They were all
written under censorship. The theory of censorship was to protect people
from harmful ideas as they were protected from shoddy merchandise or
dishonest weights and measures. In England the censorship was so mild as to have little
effect. Other countries, such as Spain, had a powerful censorship. France, the center of the
Enlightenment, had both a complicated censorship and a large reading and writing public.
The church, the Parlement of Paris, the royal offi cials, and the printers’ guilds all had a
hand in the censoring of books. French censorship, however, was loosely administered,
and after 1750 writers were little disturbed by it. It cannot be compared to the repressive
censorship of more recent authoritarian governments. Yet in one way it had an unfavorable
effect on French thought and letters. It discouraged writers from openly or explicitly
addressing concrete public questions. Legally forbidden to criticize church or state, they
threw their criticisms on a more abstract level. Barred from attacking matters in particular,
they tended to attack matters in general. Or they talked of the customs of the Persians and
the Iroquois but not the French. Their works became full of double meanings, sly digs,
innuendoes, and jokes by which authors, if questioned, could declare that they did not
mean what all the world knew they did mean. As for readers, they developed a taste for
forbidden books, which were always easy enough to obtain through illicit channels and
foreign booksellers.
Paris was the heart of the movement. Here, in the town houses of the
well-to-do, literary and social celebrities gathered for literate conversation.
It might occasionally happen that a notable philosophe was also wealthy;
such was the case of Helvétius, who not only wrote books On the Mind and On Man but also gave grand entertainments at which such matters were discussed. Mainly, however, this mingling of people and ideas went on in salons conducted by women who
became famous as hostesses, or salonnières, and who played a crucial mediating role in
what came to be called the “Republic of Letters.” Madame de Geoffrin, for example, for
a period of 25 years beginning about 1750, organized conversations of artists and writers
at dinner, sometimes helped them fi nancially, and introduced them to persons of infl u-
ence in high society or in government. She welcomed visiting foreigners also, such as
Horace Walpole and David Hume from England and young Stanislas Poniatowski before
he became king of Poland. Because other women held similar salons, philosophes and
other writers had frequent opportunity to meet and exchange ideas.
Salons became well-organized meeting places at which authors introduced new works
to critical readers, salonnières read letters from travelers or distant correspondents, and
lively conversation spread the reputations of aspiring philosophes. The leading salonnières
gave careful attention to the intellectual themes and social continuities of their salons.
Censorship
Paris: the heart of the
Enlightenment
35. The Philosophes—and Others
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment314
Suzanne Necker, whose salon met on Friday afternoons during the 1770s and 1780s,
prepared for her weekly conversations by listing in her journal the ideas and books that she
wanted to discuss. Julie de Lespinasse provided opportunities for almost constant discus-
sion at her Parisian home, where she received visitors every evening of the week for
12 years. “Her great art,” wrote one admirer, “was to show to advantage the minds of oth-
ers, and she enjoyed doing that more than revealing her own.” Salons and salonnières pro-
moted the ideals of a cosmopolitan Republic of Letters in which talent and creativity
counted for more than noble lineage; and though women lost much of their cultural infl u-
ence after the 1780s, some salons of this kind survived the Revolution. In 1795, after the
Terror, the widows of two eminent philosophes, Helvétius and Condorcet, opened or
reopened their salons in Paris for people of moderate republican or liberal sentiments. Sophie
Condorcet became a writer herself and a translator of Adam Smith. Her salon remained a
center of liberal opposition during the years of Napoleon. More short-lived was the salon of
the even more famous Germaine de Staël, who also wrote widely read books and who,
among her many other ideas, deplored the subordination of women that the Revolution had
done little to change. These post-Revolutionary salons became social-cultural meeting
places in which much of France’s nineteenth-century liberalism would begin to emerge.
In Paris also, in the mid-eighteenth century, the most serious of all
philosophe enterprises, the Encyclopédie, was published in 17 large volumes and completed over the years 1751 to 1772. Edited by Denis Diderot, it was
a great compendium of scientifi c, technical, and historical knowledge, car-
rying a strong undertone of criticism of existing society and institutions and
epitomizing the skeptical, rational, and scientifi c spirit of the age. It was not the fi rst encyclo-
pedia, but it was the fi rst to have a distinguished list of contributors or to be conceived as a
positive force for social progress. Virtually all the French philosophes contributed—Voltaire,
Montesquieu, Rousseau, d’Alembert (who assisted in the editing), Buffon, Turgot, Quesnay,
and many others, all sometimes collectively called the Encyclopedists. Although edited in
Paris, the Encyclopédie became very widely known and read. About 25,000 multivolumed sets were sold before the Revolution, about half of them outside France, because French had
become an international language understood by educated persons all over Europe. Within
France itself the Encyclopédie was read in all parts of the country and in the most infl uential ranks of society. At Besançon, for example, a city of about 28,000 inhabitants, 137 sets were
sold to local residents, of whom 15 were members of the clergy, 53 were of the nobility, and
69 were lawyers, doctors, merchants, government offi cials, or others of what was called the
Third Estate. The privileged groups whom the Encyclopedists most often criticized, that is,
the clergy and the nobility, read the Encyclopédie or at least purchased it far out of propor- tion to their numbers in the population as a whole.
Men and women who considered themselves philosophes, or close to the philosophes in
spirit, were found all over Europe. Frederick the Great was an eminent philosophe; not only
was he the friend of Voltaire and host to a circle of literary and scientifi c men at Potsdam,
but he also wrote epigrams, satires, dissertations, and histories, as well as works on military
science; and he had a gift of wit, a sharp tongue, and a certain impishness toward the tradi-
tional and the pompous. Catherine the Great, empress of Russia, was also a philosophe for
much the same reason. Maria Theresa, of Austria, was not a philosophe; she was too reli-
gious and too little concerned with general ideas. Her son Joseph, on the other hand, as we
shall see, proved to be virtually a philosophe enthroned. In England Bishop Warburton was
considered by some of his friends as a philosophe; he held that the Church of England of his
day, as a social institution, was exactly what pure reason would have invented. The Scottish
Diderot’s
Encyclopédie
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315
skeptical philosopher David Hume also counted as a philosophe, as did Edward Gibbon,
who shocked the pious by his attacks on Christianity in his famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Dr. Samuel Johnson was not a philosophe, though he was best known for a typical eighteenth-century project—the compilation of a new dictionary of the English
language. Johnson worried over the supernatural, adhered to the established church, defl ated
pretentious authors, and even declared that Voltaire and Rousseau were evil men who should
be sent “to the plantations.” There were also Italian and German philosophes, like the
Marquis di Beccaria, who condemned torture and sought to humanize the criminal law, or
Baron Grimm, who sent a literary newsletter from Paris to his many subscribers.
Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau
Most famous of all philosophes were the French trio, Montesquieu (1689–1755), Voltaire
(1694–1778), and Rousseau (1712–1778). They differed vehemently with each other, but
all were hailed as literary geniuses in their own day. All turned from pure literature to
works of political commentary and social analysis. All thought that the existing state of
society could be improved.
The salon of Madame de Geoffrin, depicted here by the artist Lemonnier, became one of the best-known meeting places for writers and artists in mid-eighteenth-century Paris. This imag- ined scene of an author reading from his work was painted early in the following century, but it shows the enduring cultural reputation of famous salons and salonnières. (RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY)
35. The Philosophes—and Others
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment316
Montesquieu, twice a baron, was a landed aristocrat, a seigneur or manorial lord in
southwestern France. He inherited from his uncle a seat in the Parlement of Bordeaux and
sat actively in that parlement after the death of Louis XIV. He was part of the noble resur-
gence that began about 1715 and continued on through the eighteenth century. Although he
shared many of the ideas in the stream of aristocratic and antiabsolutist thought, he went
beyond a mere self-centered class philosophy. In his great work, The Spirit of Laws, published in 1748, he developed two principal ideas. One was that forms of
government varied according to climate and circumstances, for example,
that despotism was suited to large empires in hot climates, and that democ-
racy would work only in small city-states. His other great doctrine, aimed
against royal absolutism in France (which he called “despotism”), was the
separation and balance of powers. In France he believed that power should be divided
between the king and a great many “intermediate bodies”—parlements, provincial estates,
organized nobility, chartered towns, and even the church. His position as a judge in
parlement, a provincial, and a nobleman gave him good reasons to favor the fi rst three, and
his work in Bordeaux helped him to recognize the importance of the bourgeoisie in French
towns; as for the church, he observed that, while he took no stock in its teachings, he
thought it useful as a barrier to undue centralization of government. He greatly admired the
English constitution as he understood it, believing that England carried over, more success-
fully than any other country, the feudal liberties of the early Middle Ages. He thought that
in England the necessary separation and balance of powers was obtained by an ingenious
mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy (king, lords, and commons) and by a
separation of the functions of the executive, legislature, and judiciary. This doctrine had a
wide infl uence in Europe and was also well known to the Americans who in 1787 wrote the
Constitution of the United States. Montesquieu’s own philosophe friends thought him too
conservative and even tried to dissuade him from publishing his ideas. He was, indeed,
technically a reactionary, favoring a scheme of things that antedated Louis XIV, and he
was unusual among contemporaries in his admiration of the “barbarous” Middle Ages.
Montesquieu’s The
Spirit of Laws
This portrait of Voltaire (c. 1736) by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour suggests the playful, ironic style that made his works accessible and popular, even when he was attacking religious persecutions or the suppression of controversial ideas. (Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art
Resource, NY)
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317
Voltaire was born in 1694 into a comfortable bourgeois family and
christened François-Marie Arouet; “Voltaire,” an invented name, is simply
the most famous of all eighteenth-century pen names. Until he was over 40
he was known only as a clever writer of epigrams, tragedies in verse, and an epic. There-
after he turned increasingly to philosophical and public questions. His strength throughout
lay in the facility of his pen. He is the easiest of all great writers to read. He was always
trenchant, logical, and incisive, sometimes scurrilous; mocking and sarcastic when he
wished to be, equally a master of deft irony and of withering ridicule. However serious in
his purpose, he achieved it by getting his readers to laugh.
In his youth Voltaire spent 11 months in the Bastille for what was considered to be
impertinence to the Regent, who, however, in the next year rewarded him with a pension
for one of his dramas. He was again arrested after a fracas with a nobleman, the Chevalier
de Rohan, but he moved to England to avoid another imprisonment. He remained an incor-
rigible bourgeois, while never deeply objecting to the aristocracy on principle. Through
his admirer Mme. de Pompadour (another bourgeois, though the king’s favorite) he later
became a gentleman of the bedchamber and royal historian to Louis XV. These functions
he fulfi lled in absentia, when at all, for Paris and Versailles were too unsafe for him. He was the personal friend of Frederick the Great, in whose household he lived for about two
years at Potsdam. The two fi nally quarreled, for no stage was big enough to hold two such
prima donnas for long. Voltaire made a fortune from his writings, pensions, speculations,
and practical business sense. In his later years he purchased a manor at Ferney near the
Swiss frontier. Here he became, as he said, the “hotel keeper of Europe,” receiving the
streams of distinguished admirers, favor hunters, and distressed persons who came to seek
him out. He died at Paris in 1778, at the age of 84, by far the most famous man of letters in
Europe. His collected writings fi ll over 70 volumes.
Voltaire was mainly interested in the freedom of thought. Like Montesquieu, he was
an admirer of England. He spent three years in that country, where, in 1727, he witnessed
the state funeral accorded to Sir Isaac Newton and his burial in Westminster Abbey.
Voltaire’s Philosophical Letters on the English (1733) and Elements of the Philosophy of Newton (1738) not only brought England increasingly before the consciousness of the rest of Europe but also popularized the new scientifi c ideas—the inductive philosophy of
Bacon, the physics of Newton, and the psychology of Locke, whose doctrine that all true
ideas arose from sense experience undercut the authority of religious belief. What Voltaire
mainly admired in England was its religious liberty, its tolerance for diverse ideas and
scientifi c inquiry, its relative freedom of the press, and its respect for men of letters like
himself. Political liberty concerned him much less than it did Montesquieu. Louis XIV, a
villain for Montesquieu and the neoaristocratic school, was a hero for Voltaire, who wrote
a laudatory Age of Louis XIV (1751) praising the Sun King for the splendor of art and lit- erature in his reign. Voltaire likewise continued to esteem Frederick the Great, though he
quarreled with him personally. Frederick was in fact almost his ideal of the enlightened
ruler, a man who sponsored the arts and sciences, recognized no religious authority, and
granted toleration to all creeds, welcoming Protestants and Catholics on equal terms if
only they would be socially useful.
After about 1740 Voltaire became more defi nitely the crusader, preaching the cause
of religious toleration. He fought to clear the memory of Jean Calas, a Protestant who was
tortured and put to death on the false charge of murdering a son to prevent his conver-
sion to Catholicism. He wrote also to exonerate a youth named La Barre, who had been
executed for defi ling a wayside cross. Écrasez l’infâme! became the famous Voltairean war cry—“crush the infamous thing!” The infâme for him was bigotry, intolerance, and
Voltaire
35. The Philosophes—and Others
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment318
superstition and behind these the power of an organized clergy. He assaulted not only the
Catholic Church but the whole traditional Christian view of the world as well. He argued
for “natural religion” and “natural morality,” holding that belief in God and the difference
between good and evil arose from reason itself. This doctrine had in fact long been taught
by the Catholic Church. But Voltaire insisted that no supernatural revelation in addition to
reason was desirable or necessary; belief in a special supernatural revelation, he argued,
made people intolerant, stupid, and cruel.
Voltaire was also the fi rst to present a purely secular conception of world history. In
his Essai sur les moeurs, or “Universal History,” he began with ancient China and surveyed the great civilizations in turn. Earlier writers of world history had put human events within
a Christian framework. Following the Bible, they began with the Creation, proceeded to the
Fall, recounted the rise of Israel, and so on. Voltaire put Judeo-Christian history within a
much broader world history and placed religious thought in a sociological framework. He
represented Christianity and all other organized religions as social phenomena or mere
human inventions. Spinoza had said as much; Voltaire’s engaging literary
style helped to spread these ideas through Europe.
In matters of politics and self-government Voltaire was neither a lib-
eral nor a democrat. His opinion of the human race was about as low as his
friend Frederick’s. If only a government was enlightened, he did not care how powerful it
was. By an enlightened government he meant one that fought against sloth and stupidity,
kept the clergy in a subordinate place, allowed freedom of thought and religion, encour-
aged the development of reason and science, and advanced the cause of material and
technical progress. He had no developed political theory, but his ideal for large civilized
countries approached that of enlightened or rational despotism. Believing that only a few
could be enlightened, he thought that rational elites and kings should have the power
to carry out their program against all opposition. To overcome ignorance, credulity, and
priestcraft it was necessary for the state to be strong. What Voltaire most
desired was liberty for the enlightened, or for people like himself.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was very different. Born in Geneva in 1712, he
was a Swiss, a Protestant, and almost of lower-class origin. He never felt
at ease in France or in Parisian society. His mother died a few days after
his birth, and he was neglected as a child. Running away from Geneva at age 16, he lived
for years by odd jobs, such as copying music, and not until the age of 40 did he have any
success as a writer. He was intellectually ambitious, but he viewed himself always as a
social outsider. In addition, his personal relations with women were diffi cult and unstable;
he fi nally settled down with an uneducated woman named Thérèse Levasseur and with
her mother, who kept interfering in his affairs. By Thérèse he had fi ve children, all of
whom he deposited at an orphanage. He had no social status, no money, and no sense of
money, and after he became famous he lived largely by the generosity of his friends. He
was pathetically and painfully maladjusted. He came to feel that he could trust no one,
that those who tried to befriend him were deriding or betraying him behind his back. He
condemned the cultural infl uence of French women, criticizing especially their prominent
role in Parisian salons (“they do not know anything, although they judge everything”).
He suffered from what would now be termed psychological complexes; possibly he was
paranoid. He talked endlessly of his own virtue and innocence and complained bitterly that
he was misunderstood.
But unbalanced though he was, he was possibly the most profound writer of the age
and was certainly the most permanently infl uential. Rousseau felt, from his own experi-
ence, that in society as it existed a good person could not be happy. He therefore attacked
Voltaire on politics
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
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319
society, declaring that it was artifi cial and corrupt. He even attacked reason, calling it a
false guide when followed without feelings or emotions. He felt doubts about the social
and cultural progress that gave satisfaction to his contemporaries. In two
“discourses,” one on the Arts and Sciences (1750), the other on the Origin of Inequality among Men (1753), he argued that civilization was the source of much evil and that life in a “state of nature,” were it only possible, would
be much freer; and all people in such conditions would be far more equal.
As Voltaire said, when Rousseau sent him a copy of his second discourse (Voltaire
who relished civilization in every form), it made him “feel like going on all fours.” To
Rousseau the best traits of human character, such as kindness, unselfi shness, honesty, and
true understanding between different persons, were products of nature rather than the
social progress of modern civilizations. Deep below reason, he sensed the presence of
feeling. He delighted in the warmth of sympathy, the quick fl ash of intuition, the clear
message of conscience. He was religious by temperament, for though he believed in no
church, no clergy, and no revelation, he had a respect for the Bible, a reverent awe toward
the cosmos, a love of solitary meditation, and a belief in a God who was not merely a “fi rst
cause” but also a God of love and beauty. Rousseau thus made it easier for serious-minded
people to slip away from orthodoxy and all forms of churchly discipline. He was feared by
the churches as the most dangerous of all “infi dels” and was condemned both in Catholic
France and Protestant Geneva.
In general, in most of his books, Rousseau, unlike so many of his contemporaries,
gave the impression that impulse is more reliable than considered judgment, spontaneous
feeling more to be trusted than critical thought. Mystical insights were for him more truth-
ful than rational or clear ideas. He became the “man of feeling,” the “child of nature,” the
forerunner of the coming age of romanticism, and an important source of all modern
emphasis on the nonrational and the subconscious. He thus became an early, infl uential
critic of the Enlightenment, even as he resembled other philosophes in his desire to change
the existing social order.
In the Social Contract (1762), however, Rousseau seemed to contra- dict much of his famous sentiment for nature. In this book he held, some-
what like Hobbes, that the state of nature was a brutish condition without
law or morality. In other works he had held that human evil was due to the evils of society.
He now held that good people could be produced only by an improved society. Earlier
thinkers, such as John Locke, for example, had thought of the “contract” as an agreement
between a ruler and a people. Rousseau thought of it as an agreement among the people
themselves. It was a social, not merely a political, contract. Organized civil society, that
is, the community, rested upon it. The social contract was an understanding by which all
individuals surrendered their natural liberty to each other, fused their individual wills into
a combined General Will, and agreed to accept the rulings of this General Will as fi nal.
This General Will was the sovereign; and true sovereign power, rightly understood, was
“absolute,” “sacred,” and “inviolable.” Government was secondary; kings, offi cials, or
elected representatives were only delegates of a sovereign people. Rousseau devoted
many diffi cult pages to explaining how the real General Will could be known. It was not necessarily determined by vote of a majority. “What generalizes the will,” he said, “is
not the number of voices but the common interest that unites them.” He said little of the
mechanism of government and had no admiration for parliamentary institutions. He was
concerned with something deeper. Maladjusted outsider that he was, he craved a com-
monwealth in which every person could feel that he or she belonged. He wished a state in
which all persons had a sense of membership and participation.
Rousseau’s
“discourses”
The Social Contract
35. The Philosophes—and Others
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment320
By these ideas Rousseau made himself the prophet of both democracy and nationalism.
Indeed, in his Considerations on Poland, written at the request of Poles who were fi ghting against the partitions of their nation’s territories by foreign powers, Rousseau applied the
ideas of the Social Contract in more concrete form and became the fi rst systematic theorist of a conscious and calculated nationalism. In writing the Social Contract he had in mind a small city-state like his native Geneva. But what he did, in effect, was to generalize and make
applicable to large territories the psychology of small city republics—the sense of member-
ship, of community and fellowship, of responsible citizenship and intimate participation in
public affairs—in short, of a common and collective will. All modern states, democratic or
undemocratic, strive to impart this sense of moral solidarity to their peoples. Whereas in
democratic states the General Will can in some way be identifi ed with the sovereignty of the
people, in dictatorships it becomes possible for individuals (or parties) to arrogate to them-
selves the right to serve as spokesmen and interpreters of the General Will. Both totalitarians
and democrats have regarded Rousseau as one of their prophets.
Rousseau’s infl uence on his contemporaries was spread also by his other writings
and especially his novels, Émile (1762) and Julie, or the New Héloïse (1760). The novels were widely read in all literate classes of society, by men and especially by women, who
found an emotional resonance in characters such as the ill-fated Julie, and who made a
kind of cult of Jean-Jacques. He was a literary master, able to evoke shades of thought
and feeling that few writers had touched before, and by his literary writings he spread in
the highest circles a new respect for the common person, a love of common things, an
impulse of human pity and compassion, a sense of artifi ce and superfi ciality in aristocratic
life. Women took to nursing their own babies, as Rousseau said they should. Men began
describing the delicacy of their sentiments. Tears became the fashion. The queen, Marie
Antoinette, built herself a village in the gardens at Versailles, where she pretended to be a
simple milkmaid. In all this there was much that was shallow or contrived or completely
disconnected from the lives of people in a real peasant village. Yet this new interest in the
lives of lower-class persons became the wellspring of modern humanitarianism, the force
leading to a new sense of human equality. Rousseau estranged the French upper classes
from their own mode of life. He made many of them lose faith in their own superiority.
That was his main direct contribution to the French Revolution.
Political Economists
In France, somewhat apart from the philosophes, were the Physiocrats,
whom their critics called “economists,” a word originally thought to be
mildly insulting. Many of the Physiocrats, unlike the philosophes, were
close to the government as administrators or advisers. Quesnay was phy-
sician to Louis XV, Turgot was an experienced offi cial who became minister to Louis
XVI, and Dupont de Nemours, an associate of Turgot’s, became the founder of the indus-
trial family of the Du Ponts in the United States. Such men concerned themselves with
fi scal and tax reform and with measures to increase the national wealth of France. They
argued that agriculture, grain production, and effi cient uses of the land provided essential
economic foundations for an expanding national commerce. Moving away from earlier
mercantilist strategies for government control of trade, they opposed guild regulations and
price controls as impediments to the production and circulation of goods. The Physiocrats
were the fi rst to use the term laissez-faire (“let them do as they see fi t”) as a principle of
economic activity; and some proposed that even the grain trade should operate without
government interventions—a politically risky proposal that no French king would ever
Physiocrats
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321
accept. They favored strong government, however, relying on it to overcome traditional
obstacles and to provide inducements for the establishment of new industries.
Economics, or what was long called political economy, arose from these activities of
the Physiocrats, from the somewhat similar work of “cameralists” in the German states,
and from the collection and analysis of quantitative data, that is, the birth of statistics.
Political economy thus became another example of the belief that scientifi c methods
should be used to understand human societies as well as nature. Economic thinking fl our-
ished especially in Great Britain, and notably in Scotland, where Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations appeared in 1776. By 1800 the Wealth of Nations had been translated into every western European language except Portuguese.
Adam Smith’s purpose, like that of the French Physiocrats, was to
increase the national wealth by the reduction of barriers that hindered its
growth. He undercut the premises of what we have called “the struggle for
wealth and empire,” because he argued that to build up a nation’s wealth it was unneces-
sary to have an empire. He attacked most of the program of mercantilism that had evolved
since the sixteenth century, and he expected that Britain’s American colonies would soon
become independent without loss to British trade. Where others looked to planning by
an enlightened government, Adam Smith preferred to limit the functions of government
to defense, internal security, and the provision of reasonable laws and fair law courts by
which private differences could be adjudicated. For innovation and enterprise he counted
more on private persons than on the state. He became the philosopher of the free mar-
ket, the prophet of free trade. If there was a shortage of a given commodity, its price
would rise and so stimulate producers to produce more, while also attracting new persons
into that line of production. If there was an excess, if more was produced than purchasers
would buy, both capital and labor would withdraw and gradually move into another area
Adam Smith
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU by Allan Ramsay (Scottish, 1713–1784)
Some hints of the complexities of Rousseau’s personality and thought appear in this por- trait by a Scottish artist who admired the famous writers of the French Enlightenment. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art
Resource, NY)
35. The Philosophes—and Others
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment322
Historical Interpretations and Debates
Social Institutions and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment
Historians have increasingly moved beyond the analysis of Enlightenment-era intellectual debates to examine the social and institutional contexts in which writers exchanged ideas or tried to build a literary reputation. The Parisian salons, which were organized and led by women called “salonnières,” became a key meeting place for the philosophes, but historians disagree about the salons’ openness and political infl uence. Many poor writers, for example, lived precariously in the marginal social world of “Grub Street” and never went to salons. Dena Goodman and Robert Darnton thus represent some of the different historical arguments that interpret the role of salons in Enlightenment-era literary culture.
Dena Goodman, “Enlightenment Salons: The Convergence of Female and Philosophic Ambitions” (1989) Why did [eighteenth-century French] women
form salons? . . . In an age when women
did not have or aspire to careers, the salon
was just that: a career based on a long
apprenticeship and careful study, resulting
in the independence of a mastership. . . .
Unlike the men who shaped themselves and
made their mark in the world through careers,
the salonnière reaped no material rewards from her labor. . . .
The salon offered the philosophes a
social space that valued ideas and fostered
discussion. . . . [Salons] were to be useful to
those who directed and attended them, and,
eventually, to the society at large beyond
them. . . .
In addition to sponsoring serious and
productive intellectual activity, the salons were
crucial in establishing an undifferentiated
social space in which such activity could take
place. What distinguished salons from courts
and the dominant society they represented
was . . . the mixing of ranks and orders, [and]
the absence of hierarchy and marks of social
distinction [in the debates] that took place in
them. The kind of conversation fostered in the
salons depended upon a recognized equality
among the speakers. . . .
For a collective project of Enlightenment,
the salons were not simply diversions; nor
were the women who ran them simply an
audience whose social demands undermined
the seriousness of male work. What the salons
provided the philosophes was a serious social
environment that established a structure for
Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (1982) Perhaps the literary world has always divided
into a hierarchy whose extremes might be
labeled a monde [society] of mandarins on the one hand and Grub Street on the other. . . .
But the social and economic conditions of the
High Enlightenment opened up an unusual
gulf between the two groups during the last
twenty-fi ve years of the Old Regime. . . .
Literacy probably doubled in the course
of the [eighteenth] century, and the general
upward swing of the economy, combined
with improvements in the educational system,
very likely produced a larger, wealthier, and
more leisured reading public. Certainly book
production soared. . . . But there is little
evidence that writers benefi ted from any
publishing boom. On the contrary, everything
indicates that while the mandarins fattened
themselves on pensions, most authors sank
into a sort of literary proletariat. . . .
The most salient fact is that the
marketplace could not support many more
writers. . . . [And] once he had fallen into
Grub Street, the provincial youth who had
dreamt of storming Parnassus never extricated
himself. . . .
Seen from the perspective of Grub
Street, the republic of letters was a lie. . . .
Grub Street had no principles, and it had no
institutions of a formal kind. . . .
Despite the democratic play of wit, the
salon remained a rather formal institution.
It did not allow any putting of elbows on
the table or any admission to those without
introductions. During the last decades of the
Old Regime, the salon became increasingly a
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323
where demand was stronger. Demand would increase with lower prices, which depended
on lower costs, which in turn depended on the specialization or division of labor. His most
famous example was that of the pin factory of his time, where each of a dozen workers
engaged in only one part of the process of manufacture, so that together they produced far
more pins than if each worker produced whole pins; the price of pins then fell, and more
pins could be used by more people. The same principle held in international trade; some
countries or climates could produce an article more cheaply than others, so that if each
specialized and then exchanged with the others, all would have more. Each nation could
use its comparative advantage in certain spheres of production or trade to compensate for
economic weaknesses in other spheres and also to increase its national wealth.
The motivation for all such production and exchange was to be the self-interest of
the participants. As he said, we rely for our meat not on the goodwill of the butcher but
on his concern for his own income. To those who might object that this was a system of
selfi shness Adam Smith would reply (being a professor of moral philosophy at the Uni-
versity of Glasgow) that a free market system was at least realistic, describing how people
really behaved, and that a free market system was morally justifi ed because it ultimately
produced a maximum both of freedom and of abundance. The mutual interaction of the
enlightened self-interest of millions of persons would in the end, as if by an “invisible
hand,” he said, result in the highest welfare of all. Among problems that Smith minimized,
or accepted as lesser evils, were the economic insecurity of individuals, the destabiliz-
ing political consequences of extreme differences in wealth, and the dangers of excessive
dependence of a whole country on imports of essentials, such as food. If the visible hand
of government continued to regulate the price of bread, for example, such actions showed
how economic policies still had to fi t within the broader political goals of governments that
wanted to prevent rioting, ensure social peace, and retain popular support.
Main Currents of Enlightenment Thought
It is clear that the main currents of eighteenth-century thought in France and Europe were
divergent and inconsistent. There was a general belief in progress, reason, science, and
civilization. Rousseau had his doubts and praised the imagined conditions in a precivi-
lized state of nature. Montesquieu thought the church useful but did not believe in reli-
gion; Rousseau believed in religion but saw no need for any church. Montesquieu was
Sources: Dena Goodman, “Enlightenment Salons: The Convergence of Female and Philosophic Ambitions,” in Eighteenth-Century Studies 22 (Spring 1989), pp. 332–333, 337–339; Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 16, 18, 19–20, 23.
Dena Goodman . . . (contd. . . .) their discourse: a structure that, although it did
have limits, was highly elastic and allowed
for the growth of speakers and of speech. . . .
[The] composition of salon society, and
especially the inclusion of women in it, made
it a model for that general public that was to
be enlightened even as it was created.
Robert Darnton . . . (contd. . . .) preserve for the high philosophes, who
generally abandoned the cafés to the lower
species of littérateur. The café functioned
as the antithesis of the salon. It was open to
everyone, just one step from the street.
35. The Philosophes—and Others
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment324
concerned about practical political liberty; Voltaire would surrender political liberty in
return for guarantees of intellectual freedom; Rousseau wanted emancipation from the
restraints of society and sought the freedom that consists in merging with nature and with
one’s fellows. Most philosophes were closest to Voltaire. They favored more tolerance for
intellectual differences and more legal equality in European societies. It was not a very
far-reaching equality, but it meant equality of rights for persons of different religions, a
reduction of privileges enjoyed by nobles but not by commoners, greater equality of status
in law courts and in the payment of taxes, and more opportunity for middle-class persons
to rise to positions of social or political importance.
France was the main center of the Enlightenment. French philosophes traveled all over
Europe. Frederick II and Catherine II invited French thinkers to their courts. French was the
language of the academies of St. Petersburg and Berlin. Frederick wrote his philosophical
works in the French language. The upper classes of Europe shared a uniform cosmopolitan
culture, and this culture was predominantly French. But Britain was important also. Hitherto
somewhat on the fringes of the European consciousness, Britain now moved closer to the
center. Montesquieu and Voltaire may be said to have “discovered” Britain for Europe.
Through them the ideas of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, and the whole theory of British liberty
and parliamentary government became matters for general discussion and comment. We have
seen, too, how Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was soon translated into many languages. Although the Physiocrats and others had begun to advocate “laissez-faire” economic
theories, the state was widely viewed as the main agent of social progress. Whether in the
form of limited monarchy on the British model favored by Montesquieu, or of enlightened
despotism preferred by Voltaire, or of the idealized republican commonwealth portrayed
by Rousseau, the rightly ordered government was considered the best guarantee of social
welfare. Even the political economists needed the state to shake people out of the habits of
ages, sweep away a mass of local regulation, preserve law and order and the enforcement
of contracts, and so assure the existence of a free market. But if they relied
on the state, they were not nationalists in any later sense of the word. As
“universalists,” they believed in the unity of humankind under a natural law
of right and reason and thus they carried over the classical and Christian
outlook in a secular way. They supposed that all peoples would participate
eventually in the same progress. No nation was thought to have a distinctive message or
unique path to progress. French ideas enjoyed a wide currency, but no one thought of them
as peculiarly French, arising from a French “national character.” It was simply thought
that the French at the time were in the vanguard of civilized thinking. Such was the idea of
Condorcet, one of the later philosophes, a leading spokesman of the Enlightenment who
became an active fi gure in the French Revolution, and also one of its victims, and who in
1794, while in hiding from his radical political enemies, wrote the great testament to the
Enlightenment, his Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind.
36. ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM: FRANCE, AUSTRIA, PRUSSIA
The Meaning of Enlightened Despotism
Enlightened despotism is hard to defi ne, because it grew out of earlier forms of absolutism
that Louis XIV and Peter the Great had established in France and Russia. Characteristi-
cally, the enlightened despots drained marshes, built roads and bridges, codifi ed the laws,
Belief in the unity of
humankind
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32536. Enlightened Despotism: France, Austria, Prussia
repressed provincial autonomy and localism, curtailed the independence of church and
nobles, and developed a trained and salaried offi cialdom. Kings had done all these things
before. Enlightened despots differed from their “unenlightened” predecessors mainly in
attitude and tempo. They said little of a divine right to the throne. They might even not
emphasize hereditary or dynastic family rights. They justifi ed their authority on grounds
of usefulness to society, calling themselves, as Frederick the Great did, the “fi rst servant
of the state.”
Enlightened despotism was secular; it claimed no mandate from
heaven and recognized no special responsibility to God or church. The typi-
cal enlightened despot consequently favored toleration in religion, and this
was an important new emphasis after about 1740; but here again there was precedent in
the older absolutism, for the rulers of Prussia had been inclined toward toleration before
Frederick, and even the French Bourbons had recognized a degree of religious liberty
for almost a century following the Edict of Nantes in 1598. The secular outlook of the
enlightened governments also shaped the common front they adopted against the Jesuits.
High papalists, affi rming the authority of a universal church in Rome and asserting them-
selves in other ways as the strongest religious order in the Catholic world, the Jesuits were
distasteful to the enlightened monarchs. In the 1760s the order was banned in almost
all Catholic countries. In 1773 the pope was persuaded to dissolve the Society of Jesus
entirely. Governments in France, Austria, Spain, Portugal, and Naples confi scated Jesuit
property and took over the Jesuit schools. Not until 1814 was the order reconstituted.
Enlightened despots wanted to be rational and reformist. The typical enlightened mon-
arch set out to reconstruct the state by the use of reason. Sharing the widespread eighteenth-
century view of the past as benighted, the new monarchs were impatient of custom and of
all that was imbedded in custom or claimed as a heritage from the past, such as systems of
customary law and the rights and privileges of church, nobles, towns, guilds, provinces,
assemblies of estates, or, in France, the judicial bodies called parlements. The complex
network of such institutions was disparagingly referred to as “feudalism.” Monarchs had
long struggled against feudalism in this sense, but in the past they had usually compro-
mised. The enlightened despot was less willing to compromise, and herein lay a difference
in tempo. The new monarchs acted abruptly, desiring quicker results.
Enlightened despotism, in short, was an acceleration of the old central-
izing institution of monarchy, which now put aside its quasi-sacred mantle
and undertook to justify itself in the cold light of reason and secular use-
fulness. In theory even the dynastic claim was awkward, for it also rested
on inheritance from the past. Under enlightened despotism the idea of the state itself was
changing, from the older notion of an entity that belonged by a kind of sanctifi ed property
right to its ruler, to a newer notion of an abstract and impersonal authority that public offi -
cials exercised to promote or protect the interests of a whole country. The king was simply
the highest public offi cial or embodiment of the state’s authority.
The trend to enlightened despotism after 1740 owed a great deal to writers and
philosophes, but it arose also out of a very practical situation, namely, the great wars of
the mid-eighteenth century. War, in modern history, has usually led to concentration and
rationalizing of government power, and the wars of 1740–1748 and 1756–1763 were no
exception. Under their impact even those governments that were not considered enlight-
ened, notably those of Louis XV and Maria Theresa, and even the government of Great
Britain, which was certainly not despotic, embarked on programs that all exemplifi ed
common centralizing patterns. They attempted to augment their revenues, devise new
The secular outlook
The roots of
enlightened despotism
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment326
taxes, tax persons or regions hitherto more or less tax exempt, limit the autonomy of out-
lying political bodies, and centralize and renovate their respective political systems. The
workings of enlightened despotism might be seen in many states, but the new policies had
the most far-reaching infl uence in the larger Continental countries—France and Austria,
Prussia and Russia—and in the rather different, yet not wholly different, course of events
in the British Empire.
The Failure of Enlightened Despotism in France
It was in France that enlightened despotism had the least success. Louis XV, who had
inherited the throne as a child in 1715 and lived until 1774, was by no means stupid; but he
was indifferent to most serious questions, absorbed in the daily rounds at Versailles, disin-
clined to make trouble for people with whom he had personal contact, and interested in
government only by fi ts and starts. His reputed remark, après moi le déluge, whether or not he really said it, suffi ciently characterizes his personal attitude to conditions in France. Yet
the French government was not unenlightened, and many capable offi cials carried on its
affairs all through the century. These offi cials generally understood the government’s
basic problem. Most of the practical diffi culties of the French monarchy could be traced to
its methods of raising revenue. It derived some income from the sale of offi ces and privi-
leges, which had the perverse effect of building up vested interests in the
existing system. Among the government’s actual taxes the most important
was the taille, a kind of land tax, generally paid only by peasants. Nobles were exempt from it on principle, and offi ceholders and bourgeois, for one
reason or another, were generally exempt also. In addition, the church, which owned
between 5 and 10 percent of the land of the country, insisted that its property was not tax-
able by the state; it granted to the king a periodic “free gift” that, though sizable, was less
than the government might have received from direct taxation. The consequence of the tax
exemptions was that, although France itself was wealthy and prosperous, the government
was chronically poor, because the social classes that enjoyed most of the wealth and pros-
perity did not pay taxes corresponding to their incomes.
Louis XIV, under pressure of war, had tried to tax everybody alike by creating new
levies—the capitation or poll tax and the dixième or tenth, both of which were assessed in proportion to income; but these taxes had been widely evaded. A similar effort to tax
higher incomes was made in 1726, but it too had failed. The propertied classes resisted
taxation because they thought it degrading. France had succumbed to the appalling prin-
ciple that to pay direct taxes was the sure mark of inferior status. Nobles, churchmen, and
bourgeois also resisted taxation because they were kept out of the policymaking functions
of government, and so they had no sense of political responsibility or control.
Tax collection
EUROPE, 1740 Boundaries show how territories were controlled by the various European states in 1740. There were now three Bourbon monarchies (France, Spain, and the Two Sicilies), while the Austrian monarchy possessed most of what is now Belgium, and in Italy the duchy of Milan and grand duchy of Tuscany, where the Medici family had recently died out. Prussia expanded by acquir- ing Silesia in the war of the 1740s. The fi rst partition of Poland in 1772 enlarged Prussia, Austria, and Russia. France acquired Lorraine in 1766 and Corsica in 1768. Otherwise there were no changes until the Revolutionary-Napoleonic wars of 1792–1814.
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327
N o r t h S e a
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AUSTRIAN NETHERLANDS
UNITED PROVINCES
PALATI- NATE
PAR- MA
MILAN VENETIA
KINGDOM OF THE TWO SICILIES
MALTA (Knights of St. John)
DALMATIA (Venice)
CR OA
TIA
BOSNIA
MONTENEGRO
A U S T R I A N M O N A R C H Y KINGDOM
OF HUNGARY
TYROL
AU ST
RIA MORAVIA
BAVARIA
BOHEMIA
SILESIA SAXONY
MINOR GERMAN STATES
HANOVER (Britain)
NORWAY
LITHUANIA
EAST PRUSSIA
P O L A N D
P
R U
S S I A
PODOLIA
TRANSYLVANIA
BANAT
WALLACHIA
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
MOREA
IONIAN I. (Venice)
TUNISIA (Turkish)
ALGERIA (Turkish)MOROCCO
(Independent)
BRANDENBURG
A LBA
N IA
Paris
Lisbon Madrid
Gibraltar (Britain)
London
Rome
Venice
Berlin Warsaw
Budapest
St. Petersburg
Riga
Stockholm
Vienna
Granada Seville
Cadiz
Toledo
Almanza
Santiago
León
Burgos Pamplona
Barcelona
Tangier
Cagliari
Genoa Toulouse
Toulon Marseille
Avignon
Bordeaux Lyons Geneva
Besançon
Limoges
Tours
Quiberon Orléans
Metz ReimsRouen
Malplaquet
LiverpoolDublin
Edinburgh
Amsterdam
Utrecht
AntwerpOudenarde
Ramilles
Strasbourg
Turin
Bologna
Bari
Naples
Benevento
Palermo
Belgrade
Pressburg Munich
Blenheim
Frankfurt Dresden
Prague
Cologne Leipzig
Magdeburg
Hamburg
Copenhagen Memel
Danzig
Thorn
Breslau
Lublin
Cracow Lemberg
Munkacz
Sofia
Salonica
Athens
Tunis
Algiers
Brennen
Minsk
0 200 400 miles
Bourbon Dominions
Habsburg Dominions
Boundary of Holy Roman Empire
36. Enlightened Despotism: France, Austria, Prussia
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment328
In the 1740s, under pressure of heavy war costs, a new tax was introduced, the
vingtième or twentieth, which imposed a 5 percent tax on income from all forms of property and was to be paid irrespective of class status, provincial liberties, or previous exemptions
of any kind. In practice, the vingtième amounted to less than 5 percent and fell only upon land, but it was paid by nobles and bourgeois alike and lasted until the Revolution. During
the Seven Years’ War the government tried to increase it, without success. A clamor arose
from the Parlement of Paris, the provincial parlements, the estates of Brittany, and the
church. All these institutions were now stronger than in the days of Louis XIV, and they
could now cite Montesquieu to justify their opposition to the crown. The parlements ruled
the tax increase to be incompatible with the laws of France, that is, unconstitutional; and
the pays d’états, or provinces having assemblies of estates, declared that their historic lib- erties were being violated. After several years of wrangling, Louis XV decided to push the
matter no further.
But after the Seven Years’ War, burdened with war debts, the government sought to
win effective central control by eliminating the parlements as a political force. In 1768
Louis XV called to the chancellorship a man named Maupeou, who simply abrogated the
old parlements and set up new ones in their place. Maupeou had the sympa-
thy of Voltaire and most of the philosophes. In the “Maupeou parlements”
the judges had no property rights in their seats but became salaried offi cials
appointed by the crown with assurances of secure tenure; and they were
forbidden to reject government edicts or to pass on their constitutionality,
being confi ned to purely judicial functions. Maupeou proposed to make the laws and
judicial procedure more uniform throughout the whole country. Meanwhile, with the old
parlements out of the way, the government tried again to tax the privileged
and exempted groups.
But Louis XV died in 1774. His grandson and successor, Louis XVI,
though more conscientious than his grandfather and possessed by a genu-
ine desire to govern well, resembled Louis XV in that he lacked sustained will power
and could not bear to offend the people who could get to see him personally. In any case
he was only 20 in 1774. The kingdom resounded with outcries against Maupeou and his
colleagues as minions of despotism and with demands for the immediate restoration of
the old Parlement of Paris and all the others. Louis XVI, fearful of beginning his reign
as a “despot,” therefore recalled the old parlements and abolished those that Maupeou
had established. The abortive Maupeou parlements represented the farthest step taken by
enlightened despotism in France. It was arbitrary, high-handed, and despotic for Louis XV
to destroy the old parlements, but it was certainly “enlightened” in the sense then connoted
by the word, for the old parlements were strongholds of aristocracy and privilege and had
for decades blocked programs of legal and fi nancial reform.
Louis XVI, in recalling the old parlements in 1774, began his reign by pacifying the
privileged classes. At the same time he appointed a reforming ministry. At its head was
Turgot, a philosophe and a Physiocrat and a widely experienced government administra-
tor. Turgot undertook to suppress the guilds and their privileged municipal monopolies
in their several trades. He allowed greater freedom to the internal commerce in grain. He
planned to abolish the royal corvée (a requirement that certain peasants labor on the roads a few days each year), replacing it by a money tax that would fall on all classes. He began
to review the whole system of taxation and in religious matters was known even to favor
the legal toleration of Protestants. The Parlement of Paris, supported by the Provincial
Estates and the church, vociferously opposed him, and in 1776 he resigned. Louis XVI, by
The “Maupeou
parlements”
Louis XVI
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329
recalling the parlements, had made reform impossible. In 1778 France again went to war
with Britain. The same cycle was repeated: war costs, debt, defi cit, new projects of taxa-
tion, resistance to tax reform from the parlements and other semiautonomous bodies. In the
1780s the clashes led to revolution.
Austria: The Reforms of Maria Theresa (1740–1780) and of Joseph II (1780–1790)
For Maria Theresa the European war of the 1740s proved the extraordinary fl imsiness of
her empire and the Austrian monarchy. Her subjects did not show much inclination to
remain united under her rule, even when threatened by invading armies. The empire was
only a loose bundle of territories without common purpose or common will. The Prag-
matic Sanction devised by Charles VI, it should be recalled, had been meant not only to
guarantee the Habsburg inheritance against foreign attack but also to secure the assent of
the several parts of the empire to remain united under the woman who became the reigning
Habsburg monarch.
The war of the 1740s led to internal consolidation. The reign of Maria
Theresa set the course of all later development of the Austrian Empire and
hence of the many peoples who lived within its borders. She was aided by a
notable team of ministers, whose origin illustrated the nonnational character
of the Habsburg system. Her most trusted adviser in foreign relations, the astute Kaunitz,
was a Moravian; her main assistants in domestic affairs were a Silesian and a Bohemian-
Czech. They worked smoothly with the German archduchess-queen and with German offi -
cials in Vienna. Their aim was to prevent dissolution of the monarchy by enlarging and
guaranteeing the fl ow of taxes and soldiers. This involved breaking the local control of
territorial nobles in their diets. Hungary, profoundly separatist, was left alone. But the
Bohemian and Austrian provinces were welded together, and a unifi ed state bureaucracy
took the place of local self-government. Offi cials (following the form of mercantilist doc-
trine called “cameralism” in central Europe) planned to augment the economic strength of
the empire by increasing production. They reduced the infl uence of the local guild monop-
olies; suppressed brigandage on the roads; and in 1775 created a tariff union of Bohemia,
Moravia, and the Austrian duchies. This region became the largest area of free trade on the
European continent, because even France was still divided by internal tariffs. Bohemia,
industrially the most advanced part of the empire, benefi ted substantially; one of its cotton
manufacturing plants, at the end of Maria Theresa’s reign, employed 4,000 persons.
The great social fact, both in the Habsburg lands and in all eastern Europe, was the
serfdom into which the rural masses had progressively fallen during the past 200 years.
Serfdom meant that the peasant owed more to the landlord than to the state. The serf
owed labor to the lord, often unspecifi ed in amount or kind. The tendency, so long as the
landlords ruled locally through their diets, was for the serf to do forced labor for six days
a week on the lord’s land. Maria Theresa, from humane motives and also from a desire to
control the manpower from which her armies were recruited, launched a systematic attack
on the institutions of serfdom, which meant also an attack on the landed
aristocracy of the empire. With the diets reduced in power, the protests of
the nobles were less effective; still, the whole agricultural labor system of
her territories was involved, and Maria Theresa proceeded with caution.
Laws were passed against abuse of peasants by lords or their overseers. Other laws regu-
larized the labor obligations, requiring that they be publicly registered and usually limit-
ing them to three days a week. The laws were often evaded. But the peasant was to some
Internal consolidation
of the empire
Attacks on serfdom
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment330
extent freed from arbitrary exactions of the lord. Maria Theresa accomplished more to
alleviate serfdom than any other ruler of the eighteenth century in eastern Europe, with the
single exception of her own son, Joseph II.
The great archduchess-queen died in 1780, having reigned for 40 years. Her son, who
had been co-regent with his mother since 1765, had little patience with her methods. Maria
Theresa, though steady enough in aim, had always been content with partial measures.
Instead of advertising her purposes by philosophical pronouncements, she disguised or
understated them, never carrying matters to the point of arousing an unmanageable reaction
The restoration of the traditional parlements at the beginning of the reign of Louis XVI was an important political victory for the privileged classes in French society, whose power had been challenged by the Maupeou ministry in the early 1770s. This illustration of the young king at the fi rst session of the restored Parlement of Paris (he occupies the elevated seat on the upper left side of the assembly) offers an early example of his lifelong tendency to align himself with older elites and to oppose reformers who wanted to reduce the power or privileges of the old nobility. The caption lists the royal offi cials and dignitaries who accompanied the king at this meeting of the Parlement in November 1774. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
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331
or of uniting against her the vested interests that she undermined. She watched and waited.
Joseph II was more impatient. Though he thought the French philosophes frivolous, and
Frederick of Prussia a clever cynic, he was himself a pure representative of
the Age of Enlightenment, and it is in his brief reign of 10 years that the
character and the limitations of enlightened despotism can best be seen. He
was a solemn, earnest, good man, who sensed the misery and hopelessness
of the lowest classes. He believed existing conditions to be bad, and he
would not regulate or improve them; he would end them. Right and reason,
in his mind, lay with the views which he himself adopted; upholders of the old order were
self-seeking or mistaken and to yield to them would be to compromise with evil.
“The state,” said Joseph, anticipating the later Philosophical Radicals in England,
meant “the greatest good for the greatest number.” He acted accordingly. His 10 years of
rule passed in a quick succession of decrees. Maria Theresa had regulated serfdom. Joseph
abolished it. His mother had collected taxes from nobles as well as peasants, though not
equally. Joseph decreed absolute equality of taxation. He insisted on equal punishment for
equal crimes whatever the class status of the offender; an aristocratic army offi cer, who
had stolen 97,000 gulden, was exhibited in the pillory, and Count Podstacky, a forger, was
made to sweep the streets of Vienna chained to common convicts. At the same time many
legal punishments were made less physically cruel. Joseph granted complete liberty of the
press. He ordered toleration of all religions, except for a few popular sects that he thought
too ignorant to allow. He granted equal civil rights to the Jews, and equal duties, making
Jews liable, for the fi rst time in Europe, to service in the army. He even created Jewish
nobles, an amazing phenomenon to those of aristocratic “blood.”
Joseph clashed openly and rudely with the pope. He demanded increased powers in
the appointment and supervision of Catholic bishops, and he suppressed a good many
monasteries, using their property to fi nance secular hospitals in Vienna, and thus laying the
foundations for Viennese excellence as a medical center. He attempted also to develop the
empire economically and built up the port of Trieste, where he even established an East
India Company, which soon failed because neither capital nor naval support was forth-
coming from central Europe. His attempts to reach the sea commercially through Belgium,
like those of his grandfather at the time of the Ostend Company, were blocked by Dutch
and British interests.
To force through his program Joseph had to centralize his state, like earlier rulers,
except that he went further. Regional diets and aristocratic self-government fared even
worse than under his mother. Where she had always sagaciously let Hungary go its own
way, he applied most of his measures to Hungary also—what was right must be right
everywhere. His ideal was a perfectly uniform and rational empire, with all irregularities
smoothed out as if under a modern steamroller. He thought it reasonable to have a single
language for administration and naturally chose German; this led to a program of German-
izing the Czechs, Poles, Magyars, and others, which in turn aroused their strong linguistic
resistance. Using the German language, and pushing the emperor’s program against
regional and class opposition, was a hard-pressed, constantly growing, and increasingly
disciplined body of offi cials. Bureaucracy became recognizably modern, with training
courses, promotion schedules, retirement pensions, effi ciency reports, and visits by inspec-
tors. The clergy likewise were employed as representatives of the state to explain new laws
to their parishioners and teach due respect for the government. To watch over the whole
structure Joseph created a secret police, whose agents, soliciting the confi dential aid of
spies and informers, reported on the performance of government employees or on the ideas
Joseph II: the
“revolutionary
emperor”
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment332
and actions of nobles, clergy, or others from whom trouble might be expected. The police
state, so infamous to the liberal world, was fi rst systematically built up under Joseph as an
instrument of enlightenment and reform.
Joseph II, the “revolutionary emperor,” anticipated much that was soon done in France
by the Revolution and under Napoleon. He could not abide “feudalism” or “medievalism”;
he personally detested the nobility and the church. But few of his reforms
proved lasting. He died prematurely in 1790, at the age of 49, disillusioned
and broken-hearted. Joseph was a revolutionist without a party or support-
ing political movement. He failed because he could not be everywhere and
do everything himself, and because he was opposed by the most powerful
social groups in his empire. His reign demonstrated the limitations of a merely despotic
enlightenment. It showed that a legally absolute ruler could not really do as he pleased. It
suggested that drastic and abrupt reform could perhaps come only with a true revolution,
on a wave of public opinion, and under the leadership of persons who shared in a coherent
body of ideas.
Joseph was succeeded by his brother Leopold, one of the ablest rulers of the century,
who for many years as grand duke of Tuscany had given that country the best government
known in Italy for generations. Now, in 1790, Leopold was plagued by outcries from his
sister, Marie Antoinette, caught in the turmoil of a real revolution in France. He refused to
interfere in French affairs; in any case, he was busy dealing with the uproar left by Joseph.
He abrogated most of Joseph’s edicts, but he did not yield entirely. The nobles did not
win back full powers in their diets. The peasants were not wholly consigned to the old
serfdom; Joseph’s efforts to provide them with land and to rid them of forced labor had
to be given up, but they remained legally free to migrate, marry, or choose an occupation
at will. Leopold died in 1792 and was followed by his son Francis II. Under Francis the
aristocratic and clerical reaction gathered strength, terrifi ed by the memory of Joseph II
and by the spectacle of revolutionary France, with which Austria went to war soon after
Leopold’s death.
Prussia under Frederick the Great (1740–1786)
In Prussia, Frederick the Great continued to reign for 23 years after the close of the Seven
Years’ War in 1763. “Old Fritz,” as he was called, spent the time peaceably, writing mem-
oirs and histories, rehabilitating his shattered country, promoting agriculture and industry,
replenishing his treasury, drilling his army, and assimilating his huge conquest of Silesia,
and, after 1772, the Polish lands that fell to him in the fi rst partition of Poland. Frederick’s
fame as one of the most eminent of enlightened despots rests, however, not so much on his
actual innovations as on his own intellectual gifts, which were considerable, and on the
admiring publicity that he received from such literary friends as Voltaire. “My chief occu-
pation,” he wrote to Voltaire, “is to fi ght ignorance and prejudices in this country. . . .
I must enlighten my people, cultivate their manners and morals, and make them as happy
as human beings can be, or as happy as the means at my disposal permit.” He did not con-
ceive that sweeping changes were needed for happiness in Prussia. The country was doc-
ile; its Lutheran church had long been subordinate to the state, its relatively few burghers
were largely dependents of the crown, and the independence of the Junker landlords, as
expressed in provincial diets, had been curtailed by Frederick’s predecessors. Frederick
simplifi ed and codifi ed the many laws of the kingdom and made the law courts cheaper,
more expeditious, and more honest. He kept up a wholesome and energetic tone in his civil
Limitations of
Joseph’s reforms
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33337. Enlightened Despotism: Russia
service. He protected religious freedom, and he decreed, though he did not achieve, a
modicum of elementary education for all children of all classes. Prussia under Frederick
was attractive enough for some 300,000 immigrants to seek it out.
But society remained stratifi ed in a way hardly known in the more western parts
of Europe. Nobles, peasants, and burghers lived side by side in a kind of
segregation. Each group paid different taxes and owed different duties
to the state, and no person could buy property of the type owned by one
of the other two groups. Property was legally classifi ed, as well as persons;
there was little movement from one social group to another. These policies
served a specifi c military purpose. They preserved a distinct peasant class from which to
draw soldiers and a distinct aristocratic class from which to draw offi cers. The peasants,
except in the western extremities of the kingdom, were serfs holding patches of land on
precarious terms with obligations to labor on the estates of the lords. They were consid-
ered the lord’s “hereditary subjects” and were not free to leave the lord’s estate, to marry,
or to learn a trade except with his permission. Frederick in his early years considered
steps to relieve the burden of serfdom. He did relieve it on his own manors, those belong-
ing to the Prussian crown domain, which comprised a quarter of the area of the kingdom.
But he did nothing for serfs belonging to the private landlords or Junkers. No king of
Prussia could antagonize the Junker class, which commanded the army. On the other
hand, even in Prussia, the existence of a monarchical state was of some advantage for the
common person; the serf in Prussia was not so badly off as in adjoining areas—Poland,
Livonia, Mecklenburg, or Swedish Pomerania—where the will of the landlords was the
law of the land, and which therefore have been called Junker republics. In these countries
cases came to light in which owners sold their serfs as movable property or gambled or
gave them away, breaking up families in the process, as Russian landlords might do with
their serfs or American plantation owners with their slaves. Such abuses were unknown
in Prussia.
Frederick’s system was centralized not merely at Potsdam but in his own head.
He himself attended to all business and made all important decisions. None of his ministers
or generals ever achieved an independent reputation. As he said of his army, “no one rea-
sons, everyone executes”—that is, no one reasoned except the king himself. Or again, as
Frederick put it, if Newton had had to consult with Descartes he would never have discov-
ered the law of universal gravitation. To have to take into account other people’s ideas, or
to entrust responsibilities to people less capable than himself, seemed to Frederick waste-
ful and anarchic. He died in 1786, after ruling 46 years and having trained no successors.
Twenty years later Prussia was all but destroyed by Napoleon. It was not surprising that
Napoleon should defeat Prussia, but Europe was amazed, in 1806, to see Prussia collapse
so totally and abruptly. It was then concluded in Prussia and elsewhere that government by
a mastermind working in lofty and isolated superiority did not offer a viable state system
under modern conditions.
37. ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM: RUSSIA
The Russian Empire has long been out of sight in the preceding pages. There are reasons
for its absence, for it played no part in the intellectual revolution of the seventeenth cen-
tury, and its role in the early modern struggle for wealth and empire, which reached a cli-
max in the Seven Years’ War, was somewhat incidental. In the Age of Enlightenment the
role of Russia was passive. No Russian thinker was known to western Europe, but western
Social stratifi cation
in Prussia
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment334
European thinkers were well known in Russia. The French-dominated cosmopolitan cul-
ture of the European upper classes spread to the upper classes of Russia. The Russian court
and aristocracy took over French as their common conversational language.
With French (German was also known, and sometimes English, for the
Russian aristocrats were remarkable linguists) all the ideas boiling up in
western Europe streamed into Russia. The Enlightenment, if it did not
affect Russia profoundly, affected it signifi cantly. It extended the European
infl uence so forcibly pushed forward by Peter and carried further the estrangement of the
Russian upper classes from their own people and their own native scene.
Russia after Peter the Great
Peter the Great died in 1725. To secure his revolution he had decreed that each tsar should
name his successor, but he himself had named none and had put to death his own son
Alexis to prevent social reaction. Peter’s long reign was therefore followed by a period of
political instability. Rival factions at court—a German party and a native Russian party—
struggled for control over successive tsars, tsarinas, and short-lived governments until a
palace revolution in 1741 brought to the throne Peter the Great’s daughter, Elizabeth, who
managed to hold power until her death 21 years later. Russian military power expanded
during her reign; and she entered into European diplomacy and joined in the Seven Years’
War against Prussia, fearing that the continued growth of Prussia would endanger the new
Russian position on the Baltic. Her nephew, Peter III, was almost immediately dethroned,
and probably assassinated, by a group acting in the name of his young wife Catherine. The
victorious coterie claimed that Peter III had been almost a half-wit, who at the age of 24
still played with paper soldiers. Using such rumors to justify her rise to power, Catherine
was proclaimed the Empress Catherine II and later came to be called “the Great.” She
enjoyed a long reign from 1762 to 1796, during which she acquired a somewhat exagger-
ated reputation as an enlightened despot.
The names of the tsars and tsarinas between Peter I and Catherine II are of slight
importance, but their violent and rapid sequence tells a story. With no principle of suc-
cession, dynastic or other, the empire fell into a lawless struggle of parties, in which plots
against ruling tsars alternated with palace revolutions upon their death. In all the confu-
sion an underlying issue was always how Peter’s European reform program would turn
out. Although Russia’s social elites were becoming more “European,” most people in
western Europe still viewed Russia as an alien and remote place on the distant frontier of
European culture.
Catherine the Great (1762–1796): Domestic Program
Catherine the Great was a German woman of a small princely house of the Holy Roman
Empire. She had gone to Russia at the age of 15 to be married. She had immediately culti-
vated the goodwill of the Russians, learned the language, and embraced the Orthodox
church. Early in her married life, disgusted with her husband, she foresaw the chance of
becoming empress herself. Like the other prominent woman ruler of this era in Europe,
Maria Theresa, she approached political issues with a strong practical sense and great
energy (though she did not share Maria Theresa’s devotion to family life). Catherine’s
intellectual powers were as remarkable as her physical vigor; even after becoming empress
she often got up at fi ve in the morning, lit her own fi re, and turned to her books, making a
Russia absorbs
French culture
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335
digest, for example, of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in 1765. She corresponded with Voltaire and invited Diderot, editor of the Encyclopédie, to visit her at St. Petersburg, where, she reported, he thumped her so hard on the knee in the
energy of his conversation that she had to put a table between them. She bought Diderot’s
library, allowing him to keep it during his lifetime, and in other ways won international
renown by her benefactions to the philosophes, whom she regarded as useful press agents
for Russia.
When she fi rst came to power, she publicized an intention to introduce
certain enlightened reforms. She summoned a great consultative assembly,
called a Legislative Commission, which met in 1767. From its numerous
proposals Catherine obtained a good deal of information on conditions in the country and
concluded, from the profuse loyalty exhibited by the deputies, that though a usurper and a
foreigner she possessed a strong hold upon Russia. She subsequently enacted reforms that
included a new legal codifi cation, restrictions on the use of torture, and a certain support of
religious toleration, though she would not allow Old Believers to build their own chapels.
Such innovations were enough to raise an admiring chorus from the philosophes, who saw
in her, as they saw retrospectively in Peter the Great, the standard-bearer of an enlightened
civilization among a backward people.
Whatever ideas Catherine may conceivably have had at fi rst, as a thoughtful and pro-
gressive young woman, on the fundamental subject of reforming serfdom in Russia, did
not last long after she became empress; and there was no consideration of reform after the
great peasant insurrection of 1773, known as Pugachev’s rebellion. The condition of the
Russian serfs was deteriorating. Serf owners were increasingly selling them apart from
the land, breaking up families, using them in mines or manufactures, disciplining and pun-
ishing them at will, or exiling them to Siberia. The serf population was restless, worked
upon by the religious warnings of Old Believers and cherishing distorted popular memo-
ries of the mighty hero, Stephen Razin, who a century before had led an uprising against
the landlords. Class antagonism, though latent, was profound, and it may have grown
when the rough muzhik, in some places, heard the lord and his family talking French so as
not to be understood by the servants or saw them wearing European clothes, reading Euro-
pean books, and adopting the manners of a foreign way of life.
In 1773 a Don Cossack, Emelian Pugachev, a former soldier, appeared
at the head of an insurrection in the Urals. Following an old Russian cus-
tom, he announced himself as the true tsar, Peter III (Catherine’s deceased
husband), now returned after long travels in Egypt and the Holy Land. He surrounded
himself with his own imperial family, courtiers, and even a secretary of state, He issued an
imperial manifesto proclaiming the end of serfdom, taxes, and military conscription. Tens
of hundreds of thousands, in the Urals and Volga regions, Tartars, Kirghiz, Cossacks, agri-
cultural serfs, servile workers in the Ural mines, fi shermen in the rivers and in the Caspian
Sea, fl ocked to Pugachev’s banner. The great host surged through eastern Russia, burning
and pillaging, killing priests and landlords. The upper classes in Moscow were terrifi ed;
100,000 serfs lived in the city as domestic servants or industrial workers and their sym-
pathies went out to Pugachev and his militant supporters. Armies sent against him were
at fi rst unsuccessful. But famine along the Volga in 1774 dispersed the rebels. Pugachev,
betrayed by some of his own followers, was brought to Moscow in an iron cage. Catherine
forbade the use of torture at his trial, but he was executed by the drawing and quartering of
his body, a punishment, it should perhaps be noted, used at the time in western Europe in
cases of fl agrant treason.
Catherine’s reforms
Pugachev’s rebellion
37. Enlightened Despotism: Russia
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Pugachev’s rebellion was the most violent peasant uprising in the history of Russia,
and the most formidable mass upheaval in Europe in the century before 1789. Catherine
replied to it by repression. She conceded more powers to the landlords. The nobles shook
off the last vestiges of the compulsory state service to which Peter had bound them. The
peasants were henceforth the only bound or unfree class. As in Prussia, the state came
more than ever to rest on an understanding between ruler and gentry, by which the gentry
accepted the monarchy, with its laws, offi cials, army, and foreign policy, and received
from it, in return, the assurance of full authority over the rural masses. Government reached
down through the aristocracy and the scattered towns, but it stopped short at the manor;
there the lord took over and was himself a kind of government in his own person. Under
these conditions the number of serfs increased, and the load on each became heavier.
Catherine’s reign saw the culmination of Russian serfdom, which now ceased to differ
in any important respect from the chattel slavery that controlled the lives of enslaved
blacks in the Americas. One might read in the Moscow Gazette such advertisements as the following: “For sale, two plump coachmen; two girls 18 and 15 years, quick at manual
work. Two barbers; one, 21, knows how to read and write and play a musical instrument;
the other can do ladies’ and gentlemen’s hair.”
Catherine the Great: Foreign Affairs
Territorially Catherine was one of the main builders of modern Russia. When she became
tsarina in 1762, the empire reached to the Pacifi c and into central Asia, and it touched upon
the Gulf of Riga and the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic, but westward from Moscow one
CATHERINE THE GREAT by Alexander Roslin (Swedish, 1718–1793)
Catherine’s forceful character and slightly whimsical smile are represented in this portrait, which was painted shortly after the powerful tsarina sup- pressed the great peasant rebellion of 1773–1774. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
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337
could go only 200 miles before reaching Poland, and no one standing on Russian soil could
see the waters of the Black Sea (see maps, pp. 230–231). Russia was separated from cen-
tral Europe by a wide band of loosely organized domains, extending from the Baltic to the
Black Sea and the Mediterranean and nominally belonging to the Polish and Turkish states.
Poland was an old enemy, which had once threatened Muscovy, and in both Poland and the
Ottoman Empire there were many Greek Orthodox Christians with whom Russians felt an
ideological tie.
Catherine’s supreme plan was to penetrate the entire area, Polish and
Ottoman territories alike. In a war with the Ottoman Empire in 1772 she
developed her “Greek project,” in which “Greeks,” that is, members of the
Greek Orthodox Church, would replace Muslims as the dominant element throughout the
Middle East. She defeated the Ottoman forces in the war, but was herself checked by the
diplomatic pressures of the European balance of power. The result was the fi rst partition
of Poland—a seizure of land and people in which the monarchs of Prussia, Russia, and
Austria began to divide up Polish territory between them. Frederick took Pomerelia,
which he renamed West Prussia; Catherine took parts of Byelorussia; Maria Theresa
occupied Galicia. Frederick digested his portion with relish, realizing an old dream of the
Brandenburg house; Catherine swallowed hers with somewhat less appetite, because she
had satisfactorily controlled the whole of Poland before; to Maria Theresa the dish was
distasteful, and even shocking, but she could not see her neighbors go ahead without her,
and she shared in the feast by suppressing her moral scruples. “She wept,” said Frederick
cynically, “but she kept on taking.” Catherine, in 1774, signed a peace treaty with the
defeated Turks. This treaty opened opportunities for Russian expansion around the Black
Sea, where the Ottoman sultan ceded control of Tartar principalities on the north coast and
where the Russians soon founded the seaport of Odessa.
Territorial expansion
Emelian Pugachev, leader of the most violent, widespread peasant uprising in Russian history, was held in an iron cage before his trial and execution for treason. (Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France/
Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library)
37. Enlightened Despotism: Russia
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment338
Catherine had only delayed, not altered, her plans with respect to Ottoman Turkey.
She decided to neutralize the opposition of Austria. She invited Joseph II to visit her in
Russia, and the two sovereigns proceeded together on a tour of her newly won Black Sea
provinces. Her long-time adviser and lover, Grigory Potemkin, accompanied Catherine
on this tour, which included visits to numerous towns and fortresses that Potemkin had
established in the Crimea. Although the Russians had actually made signifi cant progress in
developing the region, Potemkin’s enemies claimed that the new towns were nothing but a
facade—thus creating the famous phrase “Potemkin villages” to mean bogus evidence of
a nonexistent prosperity. But Catherine achieved her main goal when Joseph II agreed to
bring Austria into a war of conquest against the Ottoman Empire.
This war was interrupted by the French Revolution, however, and both governments
reduced their commitments in the Balkans to await developments in western Europe. It
became Catherine’s policy to incite Austria and Prussia into a war with revolutionary
France, in the name of monarchy and civilization, in order that she might have a free hand
in the Polish-Turkish sphere. Meanwhile she contributed to a collective assault on the
nationalist and reforming movement among the Poles. In 1793 she arranged with Prussia
for the second partition, and in 1795, with both Prussia and Austria, for the third. She was
the only ruler who lived to take part in all three partitions of Poland (which
are described later in this chapter).
Her protestations of enlightenment tempt one to an ironic judgment
of her career. Her foreign policy was purely expansionist and unscrupu-
lous, and the net effect of her domestic policy, aside from a few reforms of
detail, was to favor the half-Europeanized aristocracy and to extend serfdom among the
people. In her defense it may be observed that unscrupulous expansion was the accepted
practice of the time, and that, domestically, probably no ruler could have corrected the
social evils from which Russia suffered. If there was to be a Russian Empire, it had to be
with the consent of the serf-owning gentry, which was the only articulate and politically
signifi cant class. As Catherine observed to Diderot on the subject of reforms: “You write
only on paper, but I have to write on human skin, which is incomparably more irritable
and ticklish.” She had reason to know how easily tsars and tsarinas could be unseated and
even murdered and that the danger for tsars came not from the peasants but from cliques of
army offi cers and landlords.
Yet she remained attuned to western Europe. She never thought that Russian insti-
tutions should become a model for others. She continued to recognize the standards of
the Enlightenment. In her later years she gave careful attention to her favorite grandson,
Alexander, closely supervising his education, which she planned on the western European
model. She gave him as a tutor the Swiss philosophe La Harpe, who fi lled his mind with
humane and liberal sentiments on the duties of princes. Trained by Catherine as a kind of
ideal ruler, Alexander I was destined to cut a wide circle in the affairs of Europe, to help
defeat Napoleon Bonaparte, to preach peace and freedom, and to suffer from the same
internal cultural divisions and frustrations by which European-educated Russians were
often affl icted.
The Limitations of Enlightened Despotism
Enlightened despotism, seen in retrospect, foreshadowed an age of revolutionary changes
and even signifi ed a preliminary effort to revolutionize society by authoritative action from
above. People were told by their own governments that reforms were needed, that many
Catherine’s reign
evaluated
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33938. The Partitions of Poland
privileges, special liberties, or tax exemptions were bad, that the past was a source of
confusion, injustice, or ineffi ciency in the present. The state rose up as more completely
sovereign, whether acting frankly in its own interest or claiming to act in the interest of its
people. All old and established rights were brought into question—rights of kingdoms and
provinces, orders and classes, legal bodies and corporate groups. Enlightened despotism
overrode or exterminated the Society of Jesus, the Parlement of Paris, the autonomy of
Bohemia, and the independence of Poland. Customary and common law was pushed aside
by authoritative legal codes. Governments, by opposing the special powers of the church
and the nobility tended to make all persons into uniform and equal subjects. To this extent
enlightened despotism favored equality before the law. But it could go only a certain dis-
tance in this direction. The king was after all a hereditary aristocrat himself, and no gov-
ernment can be revolutionary to the point of breaking up its own foundations.
Even before the French Revolution enlightened despotism had run its course. Every-
where the “despots,” for reasons of politics if not of principle, had reached a point beyond
which they could not go. In France Louis XVI had appeased the privileged classes; in the
Austrian Empire Joseph’s failure to appease them threw them into open revolt; in Prussia
and in Russia the brilliant reigns of Frederick and Catherine actually increased the power
of landlordism for most people in the countryside. Almost everywhere there was an aris-
tocratic and even feudal resurgence. Religion also was renewing itself in many places.
Many were again saying that kingship was in a sense divine, and a new alliance was
forming between “the throne and the altar.” The French Revolution, by terrifying the old
vested interests, was to accelerate and embitter an aristocratic and monarchical reaction
that had already begun. Monarchy in Europe, ever since the Middle Ages, had generally
been a centralizing but progressive institution that set itself against the feudal and eccle-
siastical powers. Enlightened despotism was the culmination of the historic development
of European monarchies. After the enlightened despots, and after the French Revolution,
monarchy became on the whole nostalgic and backward-looking, supported most ardently
by the churches and aristocracies that it had once tried to subdue and least of all by those
who felt in themselves the surge of the future.
38. THE PARTITIONS OF POLAND
The fate of eighteenth-century Poland has been mentioned as a consequence of the growing
power of the newer Central European monarchies, but the partitions of Polish territories
also illustrate the assumptions and practices of the so-called enlightened despots. Apart
from the still somewhat non-European state of Russia, Poland in the eighteenth century
was by far the largest state in Europe. It reached at the beginning of the century from
the Baltic almost to the Black Sea and extended eastward for 800 miles across the north-
European plain. But it was the classic example, along with the Holy Roman Empire, of an
older political structure that failed to develop modern, centralizing government institutions
(see maps, pp. 199, 200). It fell into ever deeper anarchy and confusion. Without army,
revenues, or administration and internally divided among parties forever at cross-purposes,
the country was a perpetual theater for foreign diplomatic maneuvering and was fi nally
absorbed into the territories of its growing neighbors.
The Polish kings were chosen in elections that became an object of regular interna-
tional interference. A movement for reform therefore began to gather strength after the
1730s, and Polish patriots sought to do away with the liberum veto and other elements in the constitution that made government impossible. The reformers were repeatedly frustrated,
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment340
however, by the infl uence of Catherine the Great and other foreign rulers
who preferred a Poland in which they could intervene at will. Catherine’s
candidate for the Polish throne, Stanislas Poniatowski, won an election in
1763, thereby giving her new infl uence over Poland’s domestic affairs. She
declared herself protector of the Polish liberties. It was to the Russian advantage to maintain
the existing state of affairs in Poland rather than to divide the country with neighbors who
might exclude Russian infl uence from their own spheres. The Prussian government, which
was eager to join the old duchy of Prussia with its other territories in the east, developed a
greater interest in dividing Poland as a means to enhance its own strategic position.
The opportunity for Prussia presented itself in 1772, when Russia’s war with Ottoman
Turkey destabilized the situation in eastern Europe. The Russian victories in this war were
so overwhelming that both Austrians and Prussians feared an enduring Russian disruption
of the balance of power. The Prussians therefore came forward with a proposal to prevent
an Austro-Russian war and to preserve the balance in eastern Europe by leaving the Otto-
man Empire more or less intact. Looking for an alternative to Russian expansion into
Ottoman lands, the Prussians proposed that all three European powers should annex terri-
tory from Poland instead. The proposition was accepted by all three parties.
Poland was thus sacrifi ced. By the fi rst partition in 1772, its outer territories were
cut away. Russia took an eastern slice around the city of Vitebsk. Austria took a southern
slice, the region known as Galicia. Prussia realized its territorial ambitions by taking the
Pomerelian borderland in West Prussia and creating a solid Prussian block from the Elbe
to the borders of Lithuania (see map, p. 214, panel 4). The partition sobered the Poles, who
renewed their efforts at a national revival, hoping to create an effective sovereignty that
could secure the country against outsiders. But the Polish movement lacked deep popular
strength, for it was confi ned mainly to nobles, whose confl icts had brought the country to
ruin. The mass of the serf population and the numerous Jews did not much care at this time
whether they were governed by Poles, Russians, or Germans.
Nevertheless, beginning in 1788, a reform party gathered strength. One of its mem-
bers was King Stanislas Poniatowski himself, who had begun his reign as a protégé of
the Russian empress. The reformers produced a new constitution in 1791. It made the
Polish kingship hereditary, thus strengthening the executive government, and it reduced
the powers of the great magnates while giving political rights to many burghers in the
towns. By this time, however, the governments of eastern Europe were afraid of the French
Revolution. Denouncing the Polish reformers as French-inspired Jacobins, Catherine the
Great said she would “fi ght Jacobinism and beat it in Poland.” In collusion with a few
disgruntled Polish noblemen she sent an army into Poland and destroyed the constitution
of 1791. In agreement with Prussia she then carried out the Second Partition in 1793. In
1794 Thaddeus Kosciusko led a more revolutionary political movement, which included
even a proposed abolition of serfdom. Although it received no aid from the revolutionaries
then governing France, it was crushed in the general European counterrevolution when
Russian and Prussian armies again invaded Poland, defeated Kosciusko, and in a Third
Partition in 1795 divided what remained of the country among themselves and Austria.
Poland as a political entity ceased to exist.
Many advanced thinkers of the day praised the partitions of Poland as a triumph of
enlightened rulers, putting an end to an old nuisance. The three partitioning powers justifi ed
their conduct on various grounds and even took pride in it as an enlightened diplomatic
achievement by which they had prevented war among themselves. It was argued also that
the partitions of Poland put an end to an old cause of international rivalry and war, replacing
anarchy with more stable governments in a large area of eastern Europe. It is a fact that
Interference in Polish
elections
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341
Poland had been scarcely more independent before the partitions than after. It is to be noted
also, though nationalist arguments were not used at the time, that on national grounds the
Poles themselves had no claim to large parts of the old Poland. The regions taken by Russia
were inhabited overwhelmingly by Byelorussians and Ukrainians, among
whom the Poles were mainly a landlord class. Russia, even after the third
partition, reached only to the true ethnic border of Poland. But later, after the
fall of Napoleon, by general international agreement, the Russian sphere
was extended deep into the territory inhabited by Poles.
The partitions of Poland, however extenuated, were nevertheless a great shock to the
old system of Europe. Edmund Burke, in England, prophetically saw in the fi rst partition
the crumbling of the old international order. His diagnosis was a shrewd one. The prin-
ciple of the balance of power had been historically invoked to preserve the independence
of European states and to secure weak or small ones against universal monarchy. It was
now used to destroy the independence of a weak but ancient kingdom. Poland was not the
fi rst European kingdom to be “partitioned,” but it was the fi rst to be partitioned without
war and the fi rst to disappear totally. That Poland was partitioned without war, a source of
great satisfaction to the partitioning powers, was still a very unsettling fact. It was alarm-
ing for a huge state to vanish simply by cold diplomatic calculation. It seemed that no
established rights were safe even in peacetime. The partitions of Poland showed that in a
world where great powers had arisen through control of a modern state apparatus it was
dangerous not to be strong. They suggested that any area failing to develop a sovereign
state capable of keeping out foreign infi ltration, and so situated as to be within the reach of
the great powers of Europe, was unlikely to retain its independence. In this way the history
of eighteenth-century Poland anticipated, for example, the partitions of Africa a century
later, when Africa too, lacking strong governments, was almost totally divided, without
war, among half a dozen states of Europe.
Moreover the partitions of Poland, while maintaining a balance of power in eastern
Europe, profoundly changed the balance of Europe as a whole. The disappearance of
Poland was a blow to France, which had long used Poland, as it had used Hungary and
Turkey, as an outpost of French infl uence in eastern Europe. The three eastern powers
expanded their territory, while France enjoyed henceforth no permanent growth. Eastern
Europe bulked larger than ever before in the affairs of Europe. Prussia, Russia, and the
Austrian Empire became contiguous. Although they had drawn somewhat differently on
western European methods of statecraft and military organization to build their power, they
had a common interest and objective in eastern Europe: the repression of Polish resistance
to their rule. Polish resistance, dating from before the partitions and continuing thereafter,
became the earliest example of modern revolutionary nationalism in Europe.
The independence of Poland, and of other submerged nationalities, later attracted wide
support in western Europe, while the three great monarchies of eastern Europe were drawn
together in common opposition to national liberation; this fact, plus the fact that the eastern
monarchies were primarily landlord states, accentuated the political and social division of
Europe in the nineteenth century between a western Europe that inclined to be liberal and an
eastern Europe that inclined to be reactionary. The subsequent political divergence of west-
ern and eastern Europe might therefore be compared to the earlier north–south religious
divergence of Protestant and Catholic states, in that both the political and the religious dif-
ferences contributed to the fragmentation of Europe and to the emerging nationalisms that
would later shape the major, modern European confl icts. The fi rst great political assault on
the older social order and political system in eighteenth-century Europe, however, came
from the enlightened despots who destroyed the kingdom of Poland.
Debate over the
partitions
38. The Partitions of Poland
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment342
POLAND SINCE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY The top panel shows, in simpli- fi ed form, the ethnic compo- sition of the area included in the Poland of 1772. In addition to languages shown, Yiddish was spoken by the large scat- tered Jewish population. The line set in 1795 as the western boundary of Russia persists through later changes. It reap- pears as the eastern border of Napoleon’s Grand Duchy and of Congress Poland. After the First World War the victori- ous Allies contemplated much this same line as Poland’s east- ern frontier (the dotted line in the fourth panel, known as the Curzon Line); but the Poles in 1920–1921 conquered territory farther east. After the Second World War the Russians pushed the Poles back to the same basic line, but com- pensated Poland with territory taken from Germany, as far west as the river Oder and its tributary, the Neisse. The posi- tion of Warsaw in each panel shows how Poland has been shoved westward.
Baltic Sea Smolensk
Stettin
Warsaw
Polish
Lithuanian
Latvian
Byelorussian
Ukrainian
German
Languages
Baltic Sea EAST
PRUSSIA
RUSSIA
AUSTRIA
PRUSSIA
Smolensk
Stettin
WarsawTo Russia
To Prussia
To Austria
1660 Boundary
The Three Partitions
1772 1793 1795
Baltic Sea
PR US
SIA
RUSSIA
AUSTRIA
Smolensk
Stettin
Warsaw
Grand Duchy of Warsaw, 1808–1814
Congress Poland, 1815–1831
1772 Boundary
During and After the Napoleonic Era
1808–1831
Baltic Sea
SOVIET UNIONGERMANY
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Smolensk
Stettin
Warsaw
Poland, 1922–1939
Curzon Line, 1919
1772 Boundary
Poland After World War I
Baltic Sea
SOVIET UNION
EAST GERMANY
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Smolensk
Stettin
Warsaw
Poland After World War II
1772 Boundary
Poland After World War II
0 100 200 300 miles
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34339. New Stirrings: The British Reform Movement
39. NEW STIRRINGS: THE BRITISH REFORM MOVEMENT
It was not only by monarchs and their ministers that the older privileged, feudal, and eccle-
siastical interests were threatened. Beginning about 1760 they were challenged also by
broader-based political and social groups. Growing out of the Enlightenment, and out of
the failure of governments to cope with grave social and fi scal problems, a new era of
revolutionary disturbance was about to open. It was marked above all by the great French
Revolution of 1789, but the American Revolution of 1776 was also of international impor-
tance. In Great Britain, too, the long-drawn-out movement for parliamentary reform that
began in the 1760s was in effect revolutionary in character, though nonviolent, because it
questioned the foundations of traditional English government and society. In addition, in
the last third of the eighteenth century, there was revolutionary agitation in Switzerland,
Belgium, and Holland, in Ireland, Poland, Hungary, Italy, and in lesser degree elsewhere.
After 1800 revolutionary ferment was increasingly evident in Germany, Spain, and Latin
America. This general wave of revolution in Europe and the Atlantic world may be said
not to have ended until the revolutions of 1848 or even until the later consolidation of
modern national states around 1870.
Onset of an Age of “Democratic Revolution”
For the whole period the term “Atlantic Revolution” has sometimes been used, because
countries on both sides of the Atlantic were affected. It has been called also
an age of “Democratic Revolution,” because in all the diversity of these
upheavals, from the American Revolution to those of the mid-nineteenth
century, certain principles of the modern democratic society were in one
way or another affi rmed. In this view, the particular revolutions, attempted
revolutions, or basic reform movements are seen as aspects of one great revolutionary wave
by which virtually the whole area of Western civilization was transformed. There is also
another view of this revolutionary age, namely, that each country presented a special case,
which can be misunderstood if specifi c national events are described only as part of a vague
general international turmoil. Thus the American Revolution, it is argued, was essentially
a movement for independence, conservative in its objectives, and entirely different from
the French Revolution, in which a thorough renovation of all society and ideas was con-
templated; and both were utterly different from what happened in England, where there was
no revolution at all. It need only be stressed here, however, that the American revolutionar-
ies, the French Jacobins, the United Irish, the Dutch Patriots, and similar groups, though
differing from each other, shared much in common that can only be characterized as revo-
lutionary and as contributing to a revolutionary age in the Atlantic world.
It is important to see in what ways the movement that began about 1760 was and was
not “democratic.” It did not generally demand universal suffrage, though a handful of per-
sons in England made such demands as early as the 1770s and some of the American states
practiced an almost universal male suffrage after 1776, as did the more militant French
revolutionaries in 1792. It did not aim at a welfare state, nor question the right of property,
though there were signs pointing in these directions in the most extreme wing of the French
Revolution. It was not especially directed against monarchy as such. The quarrel of the
colonial Americans was primarily with the British Parliament, not the king; the French
proclaimed a republic by default in 1792, three years after their revolution began; the
“Age of Democratic
Revolution”
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment344
revolutionary Poles after 1788 tried to strengthen their king’s position, not weaken it; and
revolutionary groups could come into action where no monarchy existed at all, as in the
Dutch provinces before the French Revolution, and the Swiss cantons, the Venetian
Republic, or again in Holland, under French infl uence after 1795. Indeed the fi rst revolu-
tionary outbreak of the period occurred in 1768 at Geneva, a very nonmonarchical small
city-republic, ruled by a close-knit circle of hereditary patricians. Royal power, where it
existed, became the victim of revolutionaries only where it was used to support various
privileged social groups.
The revolutionary movement announced itself everywhere as a demand
for “liberty and equality.” It favored declarations of rights and explicit writ-
ten constitutions. It proclaimed the sovereignty of the people, or “nation,”
and it formulated the idea of national citizenship. In this context the
“people” were essentially classless; it was a legal term, signifying not government but the
community over which public authority was exercised and from which government itself
was in principle derived. To say that citizens were equal meant originally that there was no
difference between noble and commoner—a radical idea in societies that had always made
legal distinctions between persons in different social categories. To say that the people were
sovereign meant that neither the king, nor the British Parliament, nor any group of nobles,
patricians, regents, or other elite possessed power of government in their own right; that all
public offi cers were removable and exercised a delegated authority within limits defi ned
by the constitution. There must be no “magistrate” above the people, no self-perpetuation
in offi ce, no rank derived from birth and acknowledged in the law. Social distinctions, as
the French said in their Declaration of Rights of 1789, were to be based only “on common
utility.” Elites of talent or function there might be, but none of birth, privilege, or estate.
“Aristocracy” in every form must be shunned. In representative bodies, there could be no
special representation for special groups; representatives should be elected by frequent
elections, not indeed by universal suffrage, but by a body of voters, however defi ned, in
which each voter should count for one in a system of equal representation. Representation
by numbers, with majority rule, replaced the older idea of representation of social classes,
privileged towns, or other corporate groups.
In short, everything associated with absolutism, feudalism, or inherited rights (except
the right of property) was repudiated. Likewise rejected was any connection between reli-
gion and citizenship, or civil rights. The Democratic Revolution undermined the special
position of the Catholic Church in France, the Anglican in England and Ireland, and the
Dutch Reformed in the United Provinces. This was also the great period of what has been
called Jewish “emancipation,” which gave Jews political and social rights that had been
denied to them throughout the Middle Ages and early modern era. The whole idea that
government, or any human authority, was somehow willed by God and protected by reli-
gion faded away. A general liberty of opinion on all subjects was countenanced, in the
belief that it was necessary to progress. Here again the secularism of the Enlightenment
was carried from science and philosophy into many of the new political and cultural insti-
tutions that emerged during this era of revolutionary change.
On the whole, the Democratic Revolution was a middle-class movement, and indeed
the term “bourgeois revolution” was later invented to describe it. Many of its leaders in
Europe, however, were in fact nobles who were willing to forgo the historic privileges of
nobility; and many of its active supporters were of the poorer classes, especially in the
great French Revolution. But the middle classes were the great benefi ciaries, and new
middle-class or bourgeois societies generally emerged from the revolutionary upheavals.
Liberty and equality
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345
Persons of noble ancestry continued to exist after the storm was over, but the social and
political world of noble hierarchies was gone. Nobles henceforth either took part in vari-
ous activities on much the same terms as others or retreated into exclusive drawing rooms
to enjoy their aristocratic distinctions in private. The main drive of the working classes was
still to come.
The English-Speaking Countries: Parliament and Reform
If the American Revolution was the fi rst act of a larger social and political drama, it must
be understood also in connection with the broader British world of which the American
colonies formed a part. The British Empire in the middle of the century was decentralized
and composite. Thirty-one governments were directly subordinate to Westminster, rang-
ing from the separate kingdom of Ireland through all the crown and charter colonies to
the various political establishments maintained in Asia by the East India Company. The
whole empire, with about 15,000,000 people of all colors in 1750, was less populous than
France or the Austrian monarchy. The whole tract of the American mainland from Georgia
to Nova Scotia compared in the number of its European or white population with Ireland
or Scotland—or with Brittany or Bohemia—a fi gure of about 2,000,000 being roughly
applicable in each case.
Britain had its own way of passing through the Age of Enlightenment. There was
general contentment with the arrangements that followed the English Revolution of
1688—it has often been remarked that nothing is so conservative as a successful revolu-
tion. British thought generally lacked the asperity of thought on the Continent. The writers
who most resembled French philosophes, such as the Scottish philosopher David Hume
and the English historian Edward Gibbon, were moderate in their political ideas. The
prevailing mood, however, was one of complacency, a self-satisfaction in the glories of
the unwritten British constitution by which Englishmen enjoyed liberties unknown on
the Continent.
In Britain, Parliament was as supreme as the monarchs in most Conti-
nental countries. The British Parliament was indeed more sovereign than
any European ruler, because less that could be called “feudalism” remained
in England than on the Continent. Nor was there any political “despotism”
in England, enlightened or otherwise. The young George III, who inherited the throne in
1760, did feel himself to be a “patriot king.” He did wish to heighten the infl uence of the
crown and to overcome the factionalism of parties. But it was through Parliament that he
had to work. He had to descend into the political arena himself, buy up or otherwise con-
trol votes in the Commons, grant pensions and favors, and make promises and deals with
other parliamentary politicians. What he did in effect was to create a new faction, the
“king’s friends.” This faction was in power during the ministry of Lord North from 1770
to 1782. It is worth noting that all factions were factions of Whigs, that the Tory Party was
practically defunct, that Britain did not yet have a two-party system, and that the word
“Tory,” as it came to be used by American revolutionaries, was little more than a term
of abuse.
While Parliament was supreme, and constitutional questions appar-
ently settled, there were nevertheless numerous undercurrents of discon-
tent. These were expressed, because the press was freer in England than
elsewhere, in many books and pamphlets that were read in the American colonies and
helped to form the psychology of the American Revolution. There was, for example, a
The monarchy in
Great Britain
English discontent
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment346
school of Anglo-Irish Protestant writers who argued that because Ireland was in any case a
separate kingdom, with its own parliament, it ought to be less dependent on the central
government at Westminster. The possibility of a similar separate state remaining within the
British Empire, was one of the alternatives considered by Americans before they settled on
independence. In England there was the considerable body of Dissenters, or Protestants
not accepting the Church of England, who had enjoyed religious toleration since 1689 but
continued to labor (until 1828) under various forms of political exclusion. They overlapped
with two other amorphous groups, a small number of “commonwealthmen” and a larger
and growing number of parliamentary reformers. The commonwealthmen, increasingly
eccentric and largely ignored, looked back nostalgically to the Puritan Revolution and the
republican era of Oliver Cromwell. They kept alive memories of the Levellers and ideals of
equality, well mixed with a pseudo-history of a simple Anglo-Saxon England that had been
crushed by the despotism of the Norman Conquest. They had less infl uence in England
than in the American colonies and especially New England, whose origins were closely
connected to the Puritan Revolution. The parliamentary reformers were a more diverse and
infl uential group. They were condemned in the eighteenth century to repeated frustration;
not until the First Reform Bill of 1832 did they begin to accomplish
their goals.
The very power of Parliament meant that political leaders had to take
strong measures to assure its votes—measures that were generally
denounced by their critics as “corruption.” Control of Parliament, and espe-
cially of the House of Commons, was sustained by various devices, such as patronage or
the giving of government jobs (called “places”), or awarding contracts, or having infre-
quent general elections (every seven years after 1716); or the fact that in many constituen-
cies there were no real elections at all. The distribution of seats in the Commons bore no
relation to numbers of inhabitants. A town having the right to send members to Parliament
was called a “borough,” but no new borough was created after 1688 (or until 1832). Thus
localities that had been important in the medieval or Tudor periods were represented, but
towns that had grown up recently, such as Manchester and Birmingham, were not. A few
boroughs were populous and democratic, but many had few inhabitants or none, so that
infl uential “borough mongers” decided who should represent them in Parliament.
The reform movement began in England before the American Revo-
lution, with which it was closely associated. Because complaints were
diverse, it attracted people of different kinds. The fi rst agitation centered
about John Wilkes, a journalist and member of Parliament who vehemently
attacked the policies of King George III. He was vindicated when the courts pronounced
the arrest of his publisher illegal, but the king’s supporters expelled him from the House
of Commons. Wilkes became a political hero, however, and was later reelected three times
to the House, which refused to seat him. A whirl of protests, public meetings, and peti-
tions supported him against the exclusionary actions of Parliament. His followers in 1769
founded the Supporters of the Bill of Rights, the fi rst of many societies dedicated to parlia-
mentary reform. His case raised the question of whether the House of Commons should be
dependent on the electorate and on the propriety of public agitation “out of doors” on polit-
ical questions. It was in this connection, also, that debates in Parliament for the fi rst time
came to be reported in the London press. Parliament stood on the eve of a long transition,
by which it was to be converted from a select body meeting in private to a modern repre-
sentative institution answerable to the public and its constituents. Wilkes himself fi nally
regained his parliamentary seat in 1774 and soon introduced the fi rst of many reform bills,
none of which passed for over half a century.
Parliamentary
politics
The reform movement
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THE HON. MRS. GRAHAM by Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788)
High social status is very evident in this portrayal of a young English gentlewoman. The wealth of her social class is apparent in the brooch, the plumes, the silks, bows and ruffl es, and in the strings of pearls. Her delicate hands and the classical colonnade suggest a life of leisure and cultural importance. This is the way that English aristocrats of the eighteenth century liked to imagine themselves and to be portrayed for posterity. (Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh/The Bridgeman Art Library)
347
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment348
Meanwhile, the important Whig leaders, who had previously managed Parliament by
manipulating elections in lightly populated boroughs, began to sense corruption in such
methods after control passed to George III and his “friends.” Their most eloquent spokes-
man was Edmund Burke (1729–1797), who would become an infl uential
founder of philosophical conservatism. Other reformers called for more
frequent elections, “annual parliaments,” a wider and more equal or even
universal male suffrage, with dissolution of some boroughs in which no one
was really represented. Burke favored none of these things; in fact he came strenuously to
oppose them. He was more concerned that the House of Commons should be independent
and responsible than that it should be mathematically representative. He thought that the
landowning interest should govern. But he supported parliamentary reform by pleading for
a strong sense of party in opposition to royal encroachments, and he argued that members of
Parliament should follow their own best judgment of the country’s interests, bound neither
by the king on the one hand nor by their own constituents on the other. Like other reformers,
he objected to “placemen,” or jobholders dependent on their ministerial patrons, and he
objected to the use made, for political purposes, of a bewildering array of pensions, sine-
cures, honorifi c appointments, and ornamental offi ces, ranks, and titles. In his Economical
Reform of 1782, which curtailed crown patronage, he got many of these abolished.
The reform movement evolved and took on new strength at the time of the French
Revolution, spreading then to more popular levels, as members of the skilled artisan class
responded to events in France by demanding a more adequate “representation of the peo-
ple” in England. They then had upper-class support from Charles James Fox and a minority
of the Whigs. But conservatism (as described in Burke’s critiques of the French Revolu-
tion), satisfaction with the British constitution, and a new patriotism that arose during the
wars against revolutionary France all raised an impassable barrier. Reform was delayed for
another generation.
After the American Revolution, which was a kind of political civil war within the
English-speaking world, the English reformers generally blamed the trouble with America
on King George III. This was less than fair, because Parliament on the American question
was never dragooned by the king. The most ardent reformers later argued that if Parlia-
ment had been truly representative of the British people, the Americans would not have
been driven to independence. This seems unlikely. In any case, reformers of various kinds,
from Wilkes to Burke, were sympathetic to the complaints of the American colonials after
1763. There was much busy correspondence across the Atlantic. Wilkes was a hero in
Boston as well as London. Burke pleaded for conciliation with the colonies in a famous
speech of 1775. His very insistence on the powers and dignity of Parliament, however,
made it hard for him to fi nd a workable solution; and after the colonies became inde-
pendent, he showed no interest in the political ideas of the new American
states. It was the more radical reformers in England, as in Scotland and
Ireland, who most consistently favored the Americans, both before and after
independence. They of course had no power. On the American side, for a
decade before independence, the increasingly discontented colonials, read-
ing English books and pamphlets and reports of speeches, heard George III denounced for
despotism and Parliament accused of incorrigible corruption. All this seemed to confi rm
what Americans had long been reading in the works of English Dissenters or old com-
monwealthmen, now on the fringes of English society but sure of a receptive audience in
the American colonies. The result was to make Americans suspicious of all actions by the
British government, to sense tyranny everywhere, to magnify such things as the Stamp Act
into a kind of plot against American liberties.
Edmund Burke
Reformers’ infl uence
in American colonies
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349
The real drift in England in the eighteenth century, however, despite the chronic criti-
cism of Parliament, was for Parliament to extend its powers in a general centralization of
the empire. The British government faced somewhat the same problems as
centralizing governments on the Continent. All had to deal with the issues
raised by the great war of the midcentury, in its two phases of the Austrian
Succession and Seven Years’ War. Governments everywhere responded to
the fi nancial and military costs of these wars by trying to increase their own central power.
We have seen how the French government, in attempting to tap new sources of revenue,
tried to encroach on the liberties of Brittany and other provinces and to subordinate the
bodies that in France were called parlements. We have likewise seen how the Habsburg
government, also in an effort to raise more taxes, repressed local self-government in the
empire and consolidated power in a more centralized bureaucracy. The same tendency
showed itself in the British system. The Habsburg revocation of a constitutional charter in
Bohemia in 1749 had its parallel in the revocation of the charter of Massachusetts in 1774.
The disputes of the French king with the estates of Brittany or Languedoc had their parallel
in the disputes of the British Parliament with the provincial assemblies of Virginia or New
York. And the French government’s unsuccessful attempts to collect more taxes from
recalcitrant provincial nobles resembled the stymied British attempts to collect more
revenue from their colonial subjects in North America.
Scotland, Ireland, India
The British also faced problems nearer home. Scotland proved a source of
weakness in the War of the Austrian Succession. The Lowlanders were
loyal enough, but the Highlanders revolted with French assistance in the
Jacobite rising of 1745 and by invading England threatened to attack
British centralization
British rule in
Scotland
Edmund Burke’s insistence on the politi- cal and social value of inherited traditions made him a key fi gure in the emergence of modern conservatism. Although he favored an independent Parliament in Britain, he wrote a famous critique of the revolution that abolished traditional royal prerogatives in France. He appears here in an engraving from the 1770s, after a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment350
the British government in the rear as it was locked in the struggle with France. The High-
lands had never really been under any government, even under the old Scottish monarchy
before the union of 1707 with England. Men in the Highlands looked to their chiefs, the
heads of the clans, to tell them whom and when to fi ght. A few leaders could throw the
whole region to the Stuarts or the French. The British government, after 1745, proceeded to
make its sovereignty effective in the Highlands. Troops were quartered there for years.
Roads were pushed across the moors and through the glens. Law courts enforced the law of
the Scottish Lowlands. Revenue offi cers collected funds for the treasury of Great Britain.
The chiefs lost their old quasi-feudal jurisdiction. The old system of land tenure was bro-
ken up, and the holding of land from clannish chiefs was ended. Fighting Highlanders were
incorporated into newly formed Highland regiments of the British army, under the usual
discipline imposed by the modern state on its fi ghting forces. For 30 years the Scots were
forbidden to wear the kilt or play the bagpipes.
In Ireland the process of centralization worked itself out more slowly.
How Ireland was subjected after the battle of the Boyne has already been
described. It was a French army that had landed in Ireland, supported
James II, and been defeated in 1690. The new English constitutional arrangements, the
Hanoverian succession, the Protestant ascendancy, the church and the land settlement in
Ireland, together with the prosperity of British commerce, were all secured by the subor-
dination of the smaller island. The native or Catholic Irish remained generally pro-French.
The Presbyterian Irish disliked both the French and popery, but they were alienated from
England also; many in fact emigrated to America in the generation before the American
The British in Ireland
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1733–1795
1733 Voltaire publishes Philosophical Letters on the English
1741 Montesquieu publishes The Spirit of Laws
1751–1772 Publication of the Encyclopedia in Paris
1753 Jean-Jacques Rousseau publishes Origin of Inequality among Men
1762 Rousseau publishes The Social Contract and Émile
1762–1796 Tsarina Catherine the Great reigns as enlightened despot in Russia
1769 Emergence of Reform Movement in British Parliament
1772 Prussia, Austria, and Russia impose the First Partition of Poland
1773 Emelian Pugachev leads a rebellion of the lower classes in Russia
1774–1792 King Louis XVI reigns in France
1776 Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations
1776–1783 Revolutionary War leads to American independence from Britain
1780–1790 Emperor Joseph II introduces “enlightened” reforms in Austria
1784 Britain creates the India Offi ce to manage British interests in India
1787 Written Constitution establishes new government in the United States
1793, 1795 Second and Third Partitions of Poland destroy the Polish state
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351
Revolution. Ireland remained quiet in the midcentury wars. When the trouble began between
the British Parliament and the American colonies, the Presbyterian Irish generally took
the American side. They were greatly stirred by the example of American independence.
Thousands formed themselves into Volunteer Companies; they wore uniforms, armed, and
drilled; they demanded both internal reform of the Irish parliament (which was even less
representative than the British) and greater autonomy for the Irish parliament as against the
central government at Westminster.
Faced with these demands, and fearing a French invasion of Ireland during the War of
American Independence, the British government made concessions. It allowed an increase
of power to the Irish parliament at Dublin. But from the English parliament Catholics
were still excluded. In the next war between France and Great Britain, which began in
1793, many Irish felt a warm sympathy for the French Revolution. Catholics and Presby-
terians, at last combining, formed a network of United Irish societies throughout the
whole island. They sought French aid, and the French barely failed to land a sizable army.
Even without French military support, the United Irish rose in 1798 to drive out the
English and establish an independent republic. The British, suppressing the rebellion,
now turned to centralization. The separate kingdom of Ireland, and the Irish parliament,
ceased to exist. The Irish were thereafter represented in the imperial Parliament at West-
minster. These provisions were incorporated in the Act of Union of 1801, creating the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which Irish nationalists vehemently
disliked but which lasted until 1922.
British establishments in India also faced new interventions from the
centralizing imperial policies of Parliament. At the close of the Seven Years’
War the various British posts in and around Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata
(cities long known to the English as Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta) were unconnected
with each other and subordinate only to the board of directors of the East India Company
in London. Company employees interfered at will in the wars and politics of the Indian
states and enriched themselves by such means as they could, not excluding graft, trickery,
intimidation, rapine, and extortion. In 1773 the ministry of Lord North passed a Regulat-
ing Act, of which the main purpose was to regulate the British subjects in India, whom no
Indian government could control. The company was left with its trading activities, but its
political activities were brought under parliamentary supervision. The act gathered all the
British establishments under a single governor general, set up a new supreme court with
British judges at Kolkata, and required the company to submit its correspondence on polit-
ical matters for review by the ministers of His Majesty’s Government. Warren Hastings
became the fi rst British governor general in India. He was so high-handed with some of the
Indian princes, and made so many enemies among jealous English residents in Bengal, that
he was denounced at home, impeached, and subjected to a trial that dragged on for seven
years in the House of Lords. He was fi nally acquitted. After Clive, whose interventions had
rapidly expanded British power there during the 1750s, Hastings was the main author of
British supremacy in India. Meanwhile, in 1784 an India offi ce was created in the British
ministry at home. The governor general henceforth ruled the growing British sphere in
India almost as an absolute monarch but only as the agent of the ministry and Parliament
of Great Britain.
Thus the trend in the British world was to centralization. Despite the fl utter of royal-
ism under George III, it was to a centralization of all British territories under the authority
of Parliament. What was happening in empire affairs, as in domestic politics in England,
was a continuing application of the principles of 1689. The parliamentary sovereignty
Intervention in India
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment352
established in 1689 was now, after the middle of the eighteenth century, being applied to
regions where it had heretofore had little effect. And it was against the centralizing author-
ity of the British Parliament that the Americans primarily rebelled.
40. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Background to the Revolution
The behavior of the Americans in the Seven Years’ War, as viewed by the British govern-
ment, left much to be desired. The several colonial legislatures rejected the Albany Plan
of Union drafted by Franklin and commended to them by British offi cials. During the war
it was the British regular army and navy, fi nanced by taxes and loans in Great Britain, that
drove the French out of America. The war effort of the Anglo-Americans was desultory
at best. After the defeat of the French the colonials had still to reckon with the Indians of
the interior, who preferred French rule to that of their new British and British-colonial
masters. Many tribes joined in an uprising led by Pontiac, a western chief, and they car-
ried their attacks on colonial and British outposts as far eastward as the Pennsylvania and
Virginia frontiers. Again, the colonials proved unable to deal with a problem vital to their
own future, and peace was brought about by offi cials and army units taking their orders
from Great Britain.
The British government now tried to make the colonials pay a larger share toward the
expenses of the empire. The colonials had hitherto paid only local taxes. They were liable
to customs duties, of which the proceeds went in principle to Great Britain; but these duties
were levied to enforce the Acts of Trade and Navigation and to direct the fl ow of com-
merce, not to raise revenue; and they were seldom paid, because the Acts of Trade and
Navigation were persistently ignored. American merchants, for example, commonly
imported sugar from the French West Indies, contrary to law, and even shipped in return the
iron wares that it was against the law for Americans to manufacture for export. The colo-
nials in practice paid only such taxes as were approved by their own local legislature for
local purposes. The Americans in effect enjoyed a degree of tax exemption within the
empire, and it was against this form of provincial privilege that Parliament began to move.
By the Revenue Act of 1764 (the “Sugar” Act), the British ministry, while reducing and
liberalizing the customs duties payable in America, entered upon a program of actual and
systematic collection. In the following year the ministry attempted to extend to British sub-
jects in America a tax peaceably accepted by those in Great Britain and commonplace in
most of Europe. This imposed on all uses of paper, as in newspapers and commercial and
legal documents, the payment of a fee that was certifi ed by the affi xing of a
stamp. The Stamp Act aroused violent and concerted resistance in the colo-
nies, especially among the businessmen, lawyers, and editors who were the
most articulate class. It therefore was repealed in 1766. In 1767 Parliament,
clumsily casting about to fi nd a tax acceptable to the Americans, hit upon the
“Townshend duties,” which taxed colonial imports of paper, paint, lead, and tea. Another
outcry went up, and the Townshend duties were repealed, except the one on tea, which was
kept as a token of the sovereign power of Parliament to tax all persons in the empire.
The colonials had proved stubborn; and they had argued that Parlia-
ment had no authority to tax them because they were not represented in it.
The British replied that Parliament represented America as much as it rep-
resented Great Britain. If Philadelphia sent no actually elected deputies to
Colonial resistance to
new taxes
Debate over
representation
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35340. The American Revolution
the Commons, so this argument ran, neither did Manchester in England. Both places
enjoyed a kind of “virtual representation,” because members of the Commons did not
merely speak for local constituencies but made themselves responsible for imperial inter-
ests as a whole. To this many Americans retorted that if Manchester was not “really” rep-
resented it ought to be, which was of course also the belief of the English reformers.
Meanwhile the strictly Anglo-American question subsided after the repeal of the Stamp
Act and the Townshend program. There had been no clarifi cation of principle on either
side. But in practice the Americans had resisted signifi cant taxation, and Parliament had
refrained from making any drastic use of its sovereign power.
The calm was shattered in 1773 by an event that proved, to the more
dissatisfi ed Americans, the disadvantages of belonging to a global eco-
nomic system in which the main policies were made on the other side of the
ocean. The East India Company was in diffi culties. It had a great surplus of
Chinese tea, and in any case it wanted new commercial privileges in return for the political
privileges that it was losing in India by the Regulating Act of 1773. In the past the com-
pany had been required to sell its wares at public auction in London; other merchants had
handled distribution from that point on. Now, in 1773, Parliament granted the company the
exclusive right to sell tea through its own agents in America to American local dealers. Tea
was a large item of business in the commercial capitalism of the time. The colonial con-
sumer might pay less for it, but the intermediary American merchant would be shut out.
The company’s tea was boycotted in all American ports. In Boston, to prevent its forcible
landing, a party of disguised men invaded the tea ships and dumped the chests into the
harbor. To this act of vandalism the British government replied by measures far out of
proportion to the offense. It “closed” the port of Boston, thus threatening the city with
economic ruin. It virtually rescinded the charter of Massachusetts, forbidding certain local
elections and the holding of town meetings.
And at the same time, in 1774, apparently by coincidence, Parliament
enacted the Quebec Act. The wisest piece of British legislation in these
troubled years, the Quebec Act provided a government for the newly con-
quered Canadian French, granting them security in their French civil law
and Catholic religion and laying foundations for the British Empire that was to come. But
the act defi ned the boundaries of Quebec somewhat as the French themselves would have
defi ned them, including in them all territory north of the Ohio River—the present states
of Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. In the view of British legislators
these boundaries were perfectly reasonable, because the few Europeans in the area were
French, and since, in the age before canals or railways, the obvious means of reaching the
whole region was by way of the St. Lawrence valley and the Lakes. But to the Americans
the Quebec Act was a pro-French and pro-Catholic outrage, and at a time when the pow-
ers of juries and assemblies in the old colonies were threatened, it was disquieting that
the Quebec Act made no mention of such representative institutions for the new northern
province. It was lumped with the closing of an American port and the destruction of the
Massachusetts government as one of the “Intolerable Acts” to be resisted.
And indeed the implications of parliamentary sovereignty and centralized planning
were now apparent. It was no longer merely an affair of taxation. A government that had to
take account of the East India Company, the French Canadians, and the British taxpayers,
even if more prudent and enlightened than Lord North’s ministry of 1774, could not possi-
bly at the same time have satisfi ed the Americans of the thirteen seaboard colonies. These
Americans, since 1763 no longer afraid of the French Empire, were less inclined to forgo
The Boston Tea
Party
The Quebec Act
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment354
MRS. ISAAC SMITH by John Singleton Copley (American, then English, 1737–1815)
The wife of a Boston merchant, Mrs. Smith represents the bourgeois family background of many leaders in the American and French revolutions. In general, it was a background of sub- stance, comfort, and hard work. Mrs. Smith’s costume and surroundings (though less elegant than those portrayed in the painting of Mrs. Graham on p. 347) suggest her high station in New England society. Copley disliked the rising revolutionary agitation in America and emi- grated permanently to England in 1774. (Yale University Art Gallery/Art Resource, NY)
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355
their own interests in order to remain under British protection or control. British poli-
cies had aroused antagonism in the coastal towns and in the backwoods, among wealthy
land speculators and poor squatter frontiersmen, among merchants and the workers who
depended on the business of merchants. The freedom of Americans to determine their own
political life was in question. Yet there were few in 1774, or even later, prepared to face
the thought of independence from the British Empire.
The War of American Independence
After the “Intolerable Acts,” self-authorized groups met in the several colonies and sent
delegates to a “continental congress” in Philadelphia. This body adopted a boycott of British
goods, to be enforced on unwilling Americans by local organizers of resistance. Fighting
began in the next year, 1775, when the British commander at Boston sent a detachment to
seize unauthorized stores of weapons at Concord. On the way, at Lexing-
ton, in a brush between soldiers and partisans, or “minutemen,” someone
fi red the “shot heard round the world.” The Second Continental Congress,
meeting a few weeks later, proceeded to raise an American army, appointed
George Washington as the commanding general of its troops, dispatched an expedition to
force Quebec into the revolutionary union, and entered into overtures with Bourbon France.
The Congress was still reluctant to repudiate the tie with Britain. But passions grew
fi erce in consequence of the fi ghting. Radicals convinced moderates that the choice now
lay between independence and enslavement. It appeared that the French, naturally uninter-
ested in a reconciliation of British subjects, would give help if the avowed aim of
American rebels was to dismember the British Empire. In January 1776 Thomas Paine, in
his pamphlet Common Sense, made his debut as a kind of international revolutionary; he was to fi gure in the French Revolution and to work for revolution in England. He had
come from England less than two years before, and he detested English society for its
injustices. Eloquent and vitriolic, Common Sense identifi ed the independence of the American colonies with the cause of liberty for all humankind. It pitted freedom against
tyranny in the person of “the royal brute of Great Britain.” It was “repugnant to reason,”
said Paine, “to suppose that this Continent can long remain subject to any external
power. . . . There is something absurd in supposing a Continent to be perpetually governed
by an island.” Common Sense was read everywhere in the colonies, and its slashing argu- ments unquestionably spread a sense of proud isolation from the Old World. Such ideas
also gained wide support in the Continental Congress, where Thomas Jefferson and other
members of a special committee began drafting a theoretical and historical justifi cation for
America’s separation from Britain. Like Paine, the authors linked their specifi c grievances
to broad Enlightenment claims for universal human rights, thus giving the widest possible
signifi cance to the armed rebellion of some sparsely settled colonies in Britain’s far-fl ung
eighteenth-century empire. On July 4, 1776, the Congress adopted the Declaration of
Independence, by which the United States assumed its separate and equal
station among the powers of the earth.
The War of American Independence thereupon turned into another
European struggle for empire. For two years more the French government
remained ostensibly noninterventionist but meanwhile poured munitions
into the colonies through an especially rigged-up commercial concern. Nine-tenths of the
arms used by the Americans at the battle of Saratoga came from France. After the American
The “shot heard
round the world”
Role of the European
powers
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment356
victory in this battle the French government concluded, in 1778, that the insurgents were
a good political risk, recognized them, signed an alliance with them, and declared war on
Great Britain. Spain soon followed, hoping to drive the British from Gibraltar and deciding
that its overseas empire was more threatened by a restoration of British supremacy in North
America than by the disturbing example of an independent American republic. The Dutch
were drawn into hostilities through their trade with the Americans, which fl owed mostly by
way of the Dutch West Indies. Other powers—Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, Portu-
gal, and Turkey—irked at British employment of blockade and sea power in time of war,
formed an “Armed Neutrality” to protect their commerce from dictation by the British fl eet.
The French, in a brief revival of their own sea power, landed an expeditionary force of 6,000
men in Rhode Island. The Americans suffered from the internal differences inseparable
from all revolutions and were in any case still unable to govern themselves to any effect,
meeting with the old diffi culties in raising both troops and money. It was therefore the
participation of regiments of the French army, in conjunction with squadrons of the French
fl eet, that made possible the defeat of the armed forces of the British Empire and so per-
suaded the British government to recognize the independence of the United States. By the
peace treaty of 1783, though the British were still in possession of New York and Savannah
and though the governments befriending the Americans would just as soon have confi ned
them east of the mountains, the new republic obtained territory as far west as the Missis-
sippi. Canada remained British. It now received an English-speaking population of more
than 60,000 refugee American “loyalists” who wanted to remain in the British Empire.
Signifi cance of the Revolution
The upheaval in America was a revolution in the Atlantic world as well as a war of inde-
pendence. The Declaration of Independence was more than an announcement of secession
from the empire; it was a justifi cation of rebellion against established
authority. Curiously, although the American quarrel had been with the Par-
liament, the Declaration arraigned no one but the British king. One reason
was that the Congress, not recognizing the authority of Parliament, could
separate from Great Britain only by a denunciation of the British crown;
another reason was that the cry of “tyrant” made a more popular and fl aming issue. Boldly
voicing the natural right philosophy of the age, the Declaration held as “self-evident”—
that is, as evident to all reasonable people—that “all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.” These electrifying words leaped inward into America and
outward to the world.
In the new states democratic equality made many advances. It was sub-
ject, however, to a great limitation, in that it long applied only to white
males of European origin. It was more than a century before women
received the vote. American Indians were relatively few in number and
most had already been pushed out of the coastal colonies; but the black
population at the time of the Revolution comprised about a fi fth of the emerging nation’s
whole population. Many American whites of the revolutionary generation were indeed
troubled by the institution of slavery. It was abolished outright in Massachusetts, and all
states north of Maryland took steps toward its gradual extinction. But application of the
principles of liberty and equality without regard to race or gender went far beyond
the political and cultural assumptions of even the most enlightened white Americans at the
The Declaration of
Independence
Equality advances
and limitations
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357
time. In the South, all censuses from 1790 to 1850 showed a third of the population to be
slaves. For enslaved African Americans, the “self-evident” and “unalienable rights” would
be blocked by a kind of internal political truce until slavery was fi nally abolished in the
American Civil War—a social upheaval that might well be described as the fi nal, violent
phase of a long revolutionary struggle that was fi rst announced, in 1776, in America’s
Declaration of Independence. Meanwhile, in the North, free blacks found that in fact, and
often in law, they were debarred from voting, from adequate schooling, and from the wid-
ening opportunities in which white Americans saw the essence of their national life and
their superiority to Europe.
For the white male population, however, the Revolution had a democra-
tizing effect in many ways. Lawyers, landowners, and businessmen who led
the movement against Britain needed popular support, and to obtain it they
were willing to make promises and concessions to the lower classes. Or the
Democratization
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) lived in England until he arrived in Philadelphia in 1774. He pub- lished his Common Sense anon- ymously two years later, after the armed confl ict had begun. Widely read, it helped persuade Americans to fi ght for complete independence from Britain. (Library of Congress
[LC-USZ62-50794])
40. The American Revolution
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment358
popular elements, workmen and mechanics, farmers and frontiersmen, often dissidents in
religion, extorted concessions by force or threats. There was a good deal of violence, as in
all revolutions; the new states confi scated property from the counterrevolutionaries, called
Tories, some of whom were tarred and feathered by infuriated mobs. The dissolution of the
old colonial governments threw open all political questions. In some states more men
became qualifi ed to vote. In some, governors and senators were now popularly elected, in
addition to the lower houses of the legislatures as in colonial times. The principle was
adopted, still unknown to the parliamentary bodies of Europe, that each member of a legis-
lative assembly should represent about the same number of citizens. Primogeniture and
entail, which landed families aspiring to an aristocratic mode of life sometimes favored,
went down before the demands of democrats and small property owners. Tithes were done
away with, and the established churches—Anglican in the South, Congregationalist in New
England—lost their privileged position in varying degree. But the Revolution was not
socially as profound as the revolution soon to come in France, or as the revolution in Russia
in 1917. Property changed hands, but the law of property was modifi ed only in detail. There
had been no such thing in British America as a native nobleman or even a bishop; clergy
and aristocracy had been incomparably less ingrained in American than in European soci-
ety, and the rebellion against them was thus less devastating in its effect.
The main importance of the American Revolution remained political and even con-
stitutional in a strict sense. The American leaders were themselves part of the wider Age
of Enlightenment, sharing fully in its humane and secular spirit. But Mon-
tesquieu was the only non-British thinker who signifi cantly infl uenced
America’s political elite, and Montesquieu owed his popularity to his phi-
losophizing upon English institutions. The Americans drew heavily on the
writings of John Locke, but their cast of mind went back before Locke to
the English Puritan movement of the fi rst half of the seventeenth century.
Their thought was formed not only by Locke’s ideas of human nature and government, but,
as already noted, by the dissenting literature and the neorepublican writings that had never
quite died out in England. The realities of life for fi ve generations in America had sharpened
the old insistence upon personal liberty and equality. When the dispute with Britain came to
a head, the Americans found themselves arguing for the historic and chartered rights of the
English as well as the timeless and universal rights of man, both of which were invoked in
the colonies to challenge the British imposition of parliamentary sovereignty. The Ameri-
cans came to believe, more than any other people, that government should possess limited
powers and operate only within the terms of a fi xed and written constitutional document.
All of the 13 new states quickly produced or reaffi rmed written constitutions, and each
enshrined virtually the same principles. All asserted the central idea in the great Declara-
tion, that it was to protect “unalienable” rights that governments were instituted among
men and that whenever government became destructive to this end the people had a right
to “institute new government” for their safety and happiness. All the constitutions under-
took to limit government by a separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers.
Most appended a bill of rights, stating the natural rights of the citizens and the actions that
no government might justly take. None of the constitutions were as yet fully democratic;
even the most liberal gave some advantage in public affairs to the owners of property.
Federalism, or the allocation of power between central and outlying
governments, went along with the idea of written constitutions as a prin-
cipal offering of the Americans to the wider world history of political
theories and institutions. Like constitutionalism, federalism developed in
Infl uence of
Enlightenment
thinkers
Constitutionalism and
federalism
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359
the atmosphere of protest against a centralized sovereign power. It was a hard idea for
Americans to work out, and until 1789 the states maintained only a loose affi liation in
the Articles of Confederation. The United States was a union of 13 independent repub-
lics. Disadvantages in this scheme becoming apparent, a constitutional convention met at
Philadelphia in 1787 and drew up the constitution that is today the world’s oldest written
instrument of government still in operation. In it the United States was conceived not
merely as a league of states but as a union in which individuals were citizens of the United
States of America for some purposes and of their particular states for others. Persons, not
states, composed the federal republic, and the laws of the United States fell not merely on
the states but on the people.
The international consequences of the American Revolution can hardly be overstated.
By overburdening the French treasury, the American war became a direct cause of the
French Revolution. Beyond that, it ushered in the age of predominantly liberal or demo-
cratic revolution that lasted through the European revolutions of 1848 and even into later
struggles for national independence or unity. The American doctrine, like most thought in
the Age of Enlightenment, was expressed in universal terms of “man” and “nature.” All
peoples regardless of their own history could apply it to themselves, because, as Alexander
Hamilton once put it in his youth, “the sacred rights of man are not to be rummaged for
among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole
volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured
by mortal power.” The Americans, in freeing themselves, had done what all peoples ought
to do to affi rm the “rights of man.”
The revolt in America offered a dramatic judgment on the old colonial
system, convincing some, in England and elsewhere, that the empires for
which they had long been struggling were hardly worth acquiring, because
colonies in time, in the words of Turgot, fell away from the mother country
“like ripe fruit.” The idea spread, because trade between Britain and America continued
to prosper, that one could do business with a country without exerting political infl uence
or control, and this idea became fundamental to the coming movement of economic lib-
eralism and free trade. By coincidence, the book that became the gospel of the free trade
movement, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, was published in England in the year 1776. The American example was pointed to by other peoples wishing to throw off colonial
status—fi rst by the Latin Americans, then by the peoples of the older British dominions,
and, fi nally, in the twentieth century, by those of Asia and Africa also. In Europe, the
American example encouraged the type of nationalism in which subjugated nations aspired
to be free. And at home the Revolution did much to determine the spirit and method by
which the new nation spread across the North American continent and the ideas by which
the United States, when it became a leading power a century and a half later, would explain
and justify its national actions in the modern world.
More immediately, the American example was not lost on the many Europeans who
sojourned in the new states during and after the war. Of these the French Marquis de
Lafayette was the most famous, but there were many others: Thomas Paine, who returned
to Europe in 1787; the future French revolutionist Brissot; the future Polish national leader
Kosciusko; the future marshals of Napoleon, Jourdan and Berthier; the future reformer
of the Prussian army Gneisenau. Numerous Americans also went to Europe, notably
the aging Benjamin Franklin, who in the 1780s was incredibly lionized in the fashion-
able and literary world of Paris. People and ideas thus fl owed in both directions across
the Atlantic.
Signifi cance of
American Revolution
40. The American Revolution
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Chapter 8 The Age of Enlightenment360
The establishment of the United States was taken in Europe to prove
that many ideas of the Enlightenment were practicable. Rationalists
declared that here was a people, free of past errors and superstitions, who
showed how enlightened beings could plan their own affairs. Rousseauists
saw in America the very paradise of natural equality, unspoiled innocence, and patriotic
virtue. But nothing so much impressed Europeans, and especially the French, as the spec-
tacle of the Americans meeting in solemn conclave to draft their state constitutions. These,
along with the Declaration of Independence, were translated and published in 1778 by a
French nobleman, the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. They were endlessly and excitedly dis-
cussed as Europeans projected their own ideas or traditions onto a place that they did not
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE by John Trumbull (American, 1756–1843)
Trumbull’s painting shows the committee that presented America’s Declaration of Inde- pendence to the Continental Congress in 1776. Although Franklin and Adams are standing with the committee, Thomas Jefferson is presenting the document. Trumbull met often with Jefferson in Paris when he was at work on this painting in the late 1780s, and the picture conveys a Jeffersonian view of the event it portrays. (Library of Congress [LC-DIG-pga-02322])
Vindication of
Enlightenment ideas
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361
really know. Constitutionalism, federalism, and limited government were not new ideas in
Europe. They came out of the Middle Ages and were currently set forth in many quarters,
for example, in Hungary, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Parlement of Paris. But in
their prevailing form, and even in the philosophy of Montesquieu, they were associated
with feudalism and aristocracy. The American Revolution made such ideas progressive.
The American infl uence, added to the force of developments in Europe, made the thought
of the later Enlightenment more democratic. The United States replaced England as the
model country of advanced thinkers. On the Continent there was less passive trust in the
enlightened despotism of the offi cial state and more confi dence in the idea of enlightened
self-government.
The American constitutions seemed to offer a practical demonstration of the social
contract. They offered a picture of men in a state of nature, having cast off their old govern-
ment, deliberately sitting down to contrive a new one, weighing and judging each branch
of government on its merits, assigning due powers to legislature, executive, and judiciary,
declaring that all government was created by the people and in possession of a merely
delegated authority, and listing specifi cally the inalienable human rights—inalienable in
that they could not conceivably be taken away, because all persons possessed them even
if denied them by force. And these rights were the very same rights that many eighteenth-
century Europeans wanted for themselves—freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom
of assembly, freedom from arbitrary arrest at the discretion of offi cials. And they were all
based on the rigorous principle of equality before the law. The American example crystal-
lized and made tangible the ideas that were strongly blowing in Europe, and the American
example was one reason why the French, in 1789, began their revolution with a declaration
of human rights and with the drafting of a written constitution.
And more deeply still, America became a kind of mirage or ideal vision for Europe,
land of open opportunity and of new beginnings, free from the load of history and of the
past, wistfully addressed by Goethe:
America, thou hast it better Than has our Continent, the old one.
It is evident that this was only part of the picture. The United States, as its later history was
to show, bore a heavy load of inherited burdens and unsolved problems, especially slavery
and pervasive racial discrimination. The new American nation had emerged from the com-
plex cross-cultural encounters of the previous two centuries and from the wider history
of the early modern Atlantic World—to which it remained deeply connected through its
religions and politics, its international trade, and its diverse African, Indian, and European
populations. But in a general way, until new revolutionary and radical social movements
set in a century later, America stood for many Europeans as a kind of utopian opportu-
nity for common people, a “new world” not only for the millions who emigrated to it but
for other millions who stayed at home, who often wished that their own countries might
become more like it, and many of whom might even have agreed with Abraham Lincoln in
calling it the last best hope of earth.
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
40. The American Revolution
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363
C h a p t e r 9 THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION
In 1789 France fell into revolution, and the world has never since been the same. The
French Revolution was by far the most momen-
tous upheaval of the whole revolutionary age. It
replaced the “old regime” with “modern society,”
and at its extreme phase it became very radical, so
much so that later revolutionary movements often
looked back to it as a predecessor. The ideas of the
French Revolution, spreading far beyond France
itself, decisively infl uenced the subsequent devel-
opment of political parties and ideological confl icts
throughout much of Europe and elsewhere; indeed,
the Revolution still provokes highly charged
debates about the characteristics or consequences
of social reform, political radicalism, and revolu-
tionary violence.
At the time, in the age of the Democratic or
Atlantic Revolution from the 1760s to the 1860s, the
role of France was decisive. Even the Americans,
without French military intervention, would
hardly have won such a clear settlement from England or been so free to set up the new
states and new constitutions that have just been described. And while revolutionary
disturbances in Ireland and Poland, or among the Dutch, Italians, and others, were by
no means caused by the French example, it was the presence or absence of French aid
that usually determined whatever successes they achieved. The Revolution in France also
contributed to other revolutions in the wider Atlantic world. The great slave uprising in
the French colony at Saint-Domingue, which began in 1791 and led eventually to the
creation of the independent Republic of Haiti, was inspired in part by reports of the recently
declared “rights of man” in France; and later French military interventions in Spain and
41. Social and Cultural
Backgrounds
42. The Revolution and the
Reorganization of France
43. The Revolution and
Europe: The War and the
“Second” Revolution, 1792
44. The Emergency Republic,
1792–1795: The Terror
45. The Constitutional
Republic: The Directory,
1795–1799
46. The Authoritarian
Republic: The Consulate,
1799–1804
Chapter emblem: Detail from The Tennis Court Oath by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825). (RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution364
Portugal set off, somewhat indirectly, the revolutionary movements that swept across Latin
America after 1808. Few revolutions, in short, have ever generated such far-reaching
historical upheavals.
The French Revolution, unlike the Russian or Chinese revolutions of the twentieth
century, occurred in what was in many ways the most advanced country of the day.
France was the center of the intellectual movement of the Enlightenment. French science
then led the world. French books were read everywhere, and the newspapers and politi-
cal journals that became very numerous after 1789 carried a message that hardly needed
translation. French was an international language for educated and aristocratic people
in most European countries. France was also, potentially before 1789 and actually after
1793, the most powerful country in Europe. It may have been the wealthiest, though not
per capita. With a population of 24,000,000 the French were the most numerous of all
European peoples under a single government. Even Russia was hardly more populous until
after the partitions of Poland. The Germans were divided, the subjects of the Habsburgs
were of diverse nationalities, and the English and Scots together numbered at this time
only 10,000,000. Paris, though smaller than London, was over twice as large as Vienna
or Amsterdam. French exports to Europe were larger than those of Great Britain. It is
said that half the goldpieces circulating in Europe were French. Europeans in the eigh-
teenth century were in the habit of taking ideas from France; they were therefore, depend-
ing on their social position, the more excited, encouraged, alarmed, or horrifi ed when
revolution broke out in that country.
41. SOCIAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUNDS
The Old Regime: The Three Estates
Some remarks have already been made about the social and political institutions of the Old
Regime, as the prerevolutionary society came to be called after it disappeared, and about
the failure of enlightened despotism in France to alter these institutions in any fundamental
way. The essential fact about the Old Regime was that it was still legally aristocratic and
in some ways feudal. Everyone belonged legally to an “estate” or “order” of society. The
First Estate was the clergy, the Second Estate was the nobility, and the Third Estate
included everyone else—from the wealthiest business and professional classes to the poor-
est peasants and city workers. These categories were important in that the individual’s
legal rights and personal prestige depended on the category to which he or she belonged.
Politically, the estates were obsolescent; not since 1614 had they assembled in an Estates
General of the whole kingdom, though in some provinces they had continued to meet as
provincial bodies. Socially, they were obsolescent also, for the threefold division no longer
corresponded to the real distribution of interest, infl uence, property, or productive activity
among the French people.
Conditions in the church and the position of the clergy have sometimes
been much exaggerated as a cause of the French Revolution. The church
in France levied a tithe on all agricultural products, but so did the church in
England; the French bishops often played a part in government affairs, but
so did bishops in England through the House of Lords. The French bishoprics of 1789 were
no wealthier than those of the Church of England were found to be when investigated 40
years later. In actual numbers, in the secular atmosphere of the Age of Enlightenment, the
clergy, especially the monastic orders, had greatly declined, so that by 1789 there were
The church
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36541. Social and Cultural Backgrounds
probably not more than 100,000 Catholic clergy of all types in the entire population. But if
the importance of the clergy has in the past been overemphasized, still it must be said that
the church was deeply involved in the prevailing social system. For one thing, church
bodies—bishoprics, abbeys, convents, schools, and other religious foundations—owned
between 5 and 10 percent of the land of the country, which meant that collectively the
church was the greatest of all landowners. Moreover, the income from church properties,
like all income, was divided very unequally, and much of it found its way into the hands of
the aristocratic occupants of the higher ecclesiastical offi ces.
The noble order, which in 1789 comprised about 400,000 persons,
including women and children, had enjoyed a great resurgence since the
death of Louis XIV in 1715. Distinguished government service, higher
church offi ces, army, parlements, and most other public and semipublic honors were
almost monopolized by the nobility in the time of Louis XVI, who, it will be recalled, had
mounted the throne in 1774 and had abandoned recent attempts to break the nobility’s
power in the traditional parlements. Repeatedly, through parlements, Provincial Estates, or
the assembly of the clergy dominated by the noble bishops, the aristocracy had blocked
royal plans for taxation and shown a desire to control the policies of state. At the same time
the bourgeoisie, or upper crust of the Third Estate, had never been so infl uential. Although
the “bourgeoisie” was an amorphous social category (indeed, some historians argue that
“bourgeois” refers to a class that never had a real social identity), the number of French
The nobility
This image of French peasants shows how farmers prepared their fi elds and planted seeds dur- ing the 1760s, when the picture was published in a French book. The agrarian system shaped property rights and social hierar- chies as well as the supply of food in French cities—all of which created resentments or fears that contributed to the coming of the French Revolution. (Art Media/Heritage/The Image
Works)
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution366
merchants, lawyers, and other professional groups clearly grew over the course of the
eighteenth century. The fi vefold increase of French foreign trade between 1713 and 1789
suggests the growth of the merchant class and of the legal and governmental classes asso-
ciated with it. As members of the bourgeoisie became stronger, more widely read, and
more self-confi dent, they resented the distinctions and privileges that enhanced the status
of nobles. Some of these were fi nancial: nobles were exempt on principle from the most
important direct tax, the taille, whereas bourgeois persons obtained exemption with more
effort; but so many bourgeois enjoyed tax privileges that purely monetary self-interest was
not primary in their psychology. The bourgeois resented the nobleman for his sense of
superiority and his arrogance. What had formerly been customary respect was now felt as
humiliation. Many otherwise successful and wealthy people felt that they were being shut
out from offi ce and honors and that the nobles were seeking more power in government as
a class. The Revolution thus began in the social and political collision of two moving
objects, a rising aristocracy and a rising bourgeoisie.
The common people, below the commercial and professional families
in the Third Estate, were probably as well off as in most countries. But
they were not well off compared with the upper classes. Wage earners had
by no means shared in the eighteenth-century wave of business prosperity.
Between the 1730s and the 1780s the prices of consumers’ goods rose about 65 percent,
whereas wages rose only 22 percent. Persons dependent on wages were therefore badly
pinched, but they were less numerous than today, for in the country there were many small
farmers and in the towns many small craftsmen who made a living not by wages but by sell-
ing the product of their own labor at market prices. Yet in both town and country there was
a signifi cant wage-earning population, which was to play a decisive part in the Revolution.
The Agrarian System of the Old Regime
Over four-fi fths of the people were rural. The agrarian system had developed so that there
was no serfdom in France as it was known in eastern Europe. The peasant owed no labor
to the lord—except a few token services in some cases. The peasants worked for them-
selves, either on their own land or on rented land; or they worked as sharecroppers; or they
hired themselves out to the lord or to another peasant.
The manor, however, still retained certain surviving features of the
feudal age. The noble owner of a manor enjoyed “hunting rights,” or
the privilege of keeping game preserves and of hunting on his own and the
peasants’ land. He usually had a monopoly over the village mill, bakeshop,
or wine press, for the use of which he collected fees called banalités. He possessed certain vestigial powers of jurisdiction in the manorial court and certain local
police powers, from which fees and fi nes were collected. These seigneurial privileges were
of course the survivals of a day when the local manor had been a unit of government and
the noble had performed the functions of government, an age that had long passed with the
development of the centralized modern state.
There was another special feature to the property system of the Old Regime. Every
owner of a manor (there were some bourgeois and even wealthy peasants who had pur-
chased manors) possessed what was called a right of “eminent property” with respect to all
land located in the manorial village. This meant that lesser landowners within the manor
“owned” their land in that they could freely buy, sell, lease, and inherit or bequeath it;
but they owed to the owner of the manor, in recognition of his “eminent property” rights,
The Third Estate
Survival of feudal
privileges
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367
certain rents, payable annually, as well as transfer fees that were payable whenever the land
changed owners by sale or death. Subject to these “eminent property” rights, landowner-
ship was fairly widespread. Peasants directly owned about two-fi fths of the soil of the
country; bourgeois, a little under a fi fth. The nobility owned perhaps a little over a fi fth and
the church owned somewhat under a tenth, the remainder being crown lands, wastelands,
or commons. Finally, all property rights were subject also to certain “collective” rights by
which villagers might cut fi rewood, run their pigs in the commons, or pasture cattle on land
belonging to other owners after the crops were in, which they could easily do because there
were usually no fences or enclosures.
All this may seem rather complex, but it is important to realize that property is a
changing institution. Even today, in industrialized countries, a high proportion of all prop-
erty is in land, including natural resources in and below the soil. In the eighteenth century
property meant land even more than it does today. The bourgeois class, whose wealth was
so largely in ships, merchandise, or commercial paper, also invested heavily in land, and in
1789 they owned almost as much land in France as the nobility and more than the church.
The Revolution was to revolutionize the law of property by freeing the private ownership
of land from all the traditional and indirect encumbrances described—manorial fees, “emi-
nent property” rights, communal village agricultural practices, and church tithes. It also
was to abolish other older forms of property, such as property in public offi ce or in master-
ships in the guilds, which had worked to the advantage mainly of closed and privileged
groups. In fi nal effect the Revolution defi ned and established the institutions of private
property in the modern sense and therefore brought the greatest economic benefi ts to the
landowning peasants and the bourgeoisie.
The peasants not only owned two-fi fths of the soil but also worked almost all of it
on their own initiative and risk. In effect, the land owned by the nobility, the church, the
bourgeoisie, and the crown was divided up and leased to peasants in small parcels. France
was thus already mainly a country of small farmers. There was no “big agriculture” as
in England, eastern Europe, or the plantations of America. The manorial lord performed
no economic function. He lived (there were of course exceptions) not by managing an
estate and selling his own crops and cattle but by receiving innumerable dues and fees.
During the eighteenth century, in connection with the general aristocratic
resurgence, there took place a phenomenon often called the “feudal reac-
tion.” Manorial lords, faced with rising living costs and acquiring higher
living standards because of the general material progress, collected their
dues more rigorously or revived old ones that had fallen into disuse. Leases and sharecrop-
ping arrangements also became less favorable to the peasants. The farmers, like the wage
earners, were under a steadily increasing pressure. At the same time the peasants resented
the “feudal dues” more than ever because they often regarded themselves as the real own-
ers of the land and viewed the lord as a gentleman of the neighborhood who for no reason
enjoyed a special income and a status different from their own. Resentments arose because
many of the fees and obligations in the property system no longer bore any relation to real
economic usefulness or activity.
The political unity of France, achieved over the centuries by the monarchy, was like-
wise a fundamental prerequisite, and even a cause, of the Revolution. Whatever social
conditions might have existed, they could give rise to nationwide public opinion, nation-
wide agitation, nationwide policies, and nationwide legislation only in a country already
politically unifi ed as a nation. These conditions were lacking in central Europe. In France
a centralized French state existed. Reformers did not have to create it but only capture and
The “feudal reaction”
41. Social and Cultural Backgrounds
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution368
remodel it. The French in the eighteenth century already had the sense of membership in
a political entity called France. The Revolution saw a tremendous stirring or expansion of
this sense of membership and of fraternity, turning it into a passion for citizenship, civic
rights, voting powers, and the use of the state and its sovereignty for the public advantage;
but at the very outbreak of the Revolution people could salute each other as citoyen or citoyenne and shout vive la nation!
Political Culture and Public Opinion after 1770
The social and economic resentments that existed among ambitious people in French cit-
ies and among peasants in the French countryside could fi nally explode in a revolution-
ary upheaval because eighteenth-century writers had created a culture that
encouraged political and social criticism. Educated persons in the Third
Estate could draw on Enlightenment conceptions of reason, natural rights,
and historical progress to complain about the irrationality of ancient privi-
leges or the injustice of noble prerogatives. Enlightenment thought provided
a language in which people could now describe their dissatisfactions with the obstacles
that stymied professional or economic ambitions.
It has been argued that the famous works of the French philosophes led directly to the
revolutionary events of 1789; it was the “fault” of Voltaire, critics explained; it was the
“fault” of Rousseau. Many who supported the Revolution also made such claims for its
intellectual origins, so that the history of the French Revolution has always been linked in
complex ways with the legacy of the Enlightenment. Yet most historians now argue that
the connections between the philosophes and the Revolution were by no means as direct as
people once imagined. The philosophes themselves favored enlightened social reforms,
but they were not revolutionaries and, except perhaps for Rousseau, they rarely promoted
the political rights of the lower classes. Their most important publications, including the
famous Encyclopédie, often attracted more readers among the nobility than among the middle classes. Political theory was far less popular than novels or social satires; there was
an enormous audience for Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Héloise, for example, but few persons read the Social Contract. The notion that great Enlightenment writers caused the French Revolution is therefore an inadequate explanation for what happened (much as
claims that bourgeois economic interests caused the Revolution are also inadequate). It is
nevertheless true that the Enlightenment contributed widely to new forms of criticism,
public debate, and “public opinion,” most of which challenged the traditional authority of
the French king and nobles.
The last two decades of the Old Regime were fi lled with intense political controversy
as the monarchy sought unsuccessfully to suppress the traditional French parlements, as
successive ministries sought to raise new revenues, as French journals reported on the new
American state constitutions, and as pamphleteers increasingly attacked the offi cials and
courtiers at Versailles. The critical spirit that had developed in salons, cof-
feehouses, and literary arguments spread rapidly into a developing public
sphere of political debate. The new political pamphlets were scarcely con-
cerned with the subtle nuances of political theory; in fact, many consisted
of little more than scandalous rumors of sexual misconduct or fi nancial corruption in the
affairs of the royal family and government ministries. Stories of corruption in high places
stripped away the once sacred image of the monarchy, the church, and the social hierarchy.
At the same time, the reading public developed an interest in scandalous legal cases that
The Revolution and
the Enlightenment
Critical spirit
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36942. The Revolution and the Reorganization of France
pitted members of the aristocracy against aggrieved persons of the Third Estate or that
revealed immorality and decadence among ancient noble families. Lawyers could publish
their legal briefs without securing the approval of government censors, and, using this
freedom, they bolstered their legal arguments with appeals to popular sentiment or natural
rights. The injustice of inherited privilege thus became a recurring theme in the scandalous
stories of social and personal disputes that French lawyers carried from French courtrooms
to the tribunal of public opinion.
By 1789, in France, educated persons in all social classes were coming to believe what
Voltaire had said after the famous Calas Affair in the 1760s: “Opinion governs the world.”
Campaigns to infl uence public opinion became a powerful political force in French society
during the last decades of the Old Regime, and most such campaigns appealed for pub-
lic support in the name of reason, rights, or justice. In these ways, the critical thought of
Enlightenment culture entered into bitter political confl icts that led fi nally and unexpect-
edly to the Revolution.
42. THE REVOLUTION AND THE REORGANIZATION OF FRANCE
The Financial Crisis
The Revolution was precipitated by a fi nancial collapse of the government. What over-
burdened the government was by no means the costly magnifi cence of the court of Ver-
sailles. Only 5 percent of public expenditures in 1788 was devoted to the upkeep of the
entire royal establishment. What overburdened all governments was war costs, both current
upkeep of armies and navies and the burden of public debt, which in all countries was due
almost totally to the high costs of past wars. In 1788 the French government devoted about
a quarter of its annual expenditure to maintenance of the armed forces and about half to the
payment of its debts. British expenditures showed almost the same distribution. The French
debt stood at almost 4 billion livres. It had been greatly swollen by the War of American
Independence. Yet it was only half as great as the national debt of Great Britain, and less
than a fi fth as heavy per capita. It was less than the debt of the Dutch Republic. It was
apparently no greater than the debt left by Louis XIV three-quarters of a century before. At
that time the debt had been lightened by repudiation. No responsible French offi cial in the
1780s even considered repudiation, a sure sign of the late eighteenth-century expansion
and public infl uence of the well-to-do classes, who were the main government creditors.
Yet the debt could not be carried, for the simple reason that revenues fell
short of necessary expenditures. This in turn was not due to national poverty
but to the tax exemptions and tax evasions of privileged elements and to
complications in the fi scal system, or lack of system, by which much of
what taxpayers paid never came into the hands of the Treasury. We have already described
how the most important tax, the taille, was generally paid only by the peasants—the nobles
being exempt by virtue of their class privilege, and offi ceholders and other wealthy persons
obtaining exemption in various ways. The church too insisted that its property was not
taxable by the state; and its periodic “free gift” to the king, though substantial, was less
than might have been obtained from direct taxation of the church’s land. Thus, although
the country itself was prosperous, the government treasury was empty. The social classes
that enjoyed most of the wealth of the country did not pay taxes corresponding to their
income—and, even worse, they resisted taxation as a sign of inferior status.
Problems of taxation
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution370
A long series of responsible persons—Louis XIV himself, John Law, Maupeou,
Turgot—had seen the need for taxing the privileged classes. Jacques Necker, a Swiss banker
who became director of the fi nances in 1777, made moves in the same direction and, like
his predecessors, was dismissed. His successor, Calonne, as the crisis mounted, came to
even more revolutionary conclusions. In 1786 he produced a program in which enlightened
despotism was tempered by a modest resort to representative institutions. He proposed, in
place of the taille, a general tax to fall on all landowners without exemption, a lightening of
indirect taxes and abolition of internal tariffs to stimulate economic production, and a con-
fi scation of some properties of the church. He also sought to give the propertied elements a
greater interest in the government by proposing the establishment of provincial assemblies
in which all landowners should be represented without regard to estate or order.
Calonne’s program, if carried out, might have solved the fi scal problem and averted
the Revolution. But it struck not only at noble privileges in taxation but also at the three-
fold hierarchic organization of society. Knowing from experience that the
Parlement of Paris would never accept it, Calonne in 1787 convened an
“assembly of notables,” hoping to win its endorsement of his ideas. The
notables insisted on concessions in return, for they wished to share in con-
trol of the government. A deadlock followed; the king dismissed Calonne
and appointed as his successor Loménie de Brienne, the exceedingly worldly-wise arch-
bishop of Toulouse. Brienne tried to push the same program through the Parlement of
Paris. The Parlement rejected it, declaring that only the three estates of the realm, assem-
bled in an Estates General, had authority to consent to new taxes. Brienne and Louis XVI
at fi rst refused, believing that the Estates General, if convened, would be dominated by the
nobility. Like Maupeou and Louis XV, Brienne and Louis XVI tried to break the parle-
ments, replacing them with a modernized judicial system in which the law courts should
have no infl uence over fi nancial policies. This led to a veritable revolt of the nobles. All
the parlements and Provincial Estates resisted; army offi cers refused to serve; the inten-
dants hesitated to act; and noblemen began to organize political clubs and committees of
correspondence. With his government brought to a standstill, and unable to borrow money
or collect taxes, Louis XVI on July 5, 1788, promised to call the Estates General for the
following May. The various classes were invited to elect representatives and also to draw
up lists of their grievances.
From Estates General to National Assembly
Because no Estates General had met in over a century and a half, the king asked for propos-
als on how such an assembly should be organized under modern conditions. This led to an
outburst of public discussion, which soon expanded far beyond all previous campaigns to
infl uence public opinion. Hundreds of political pamphlets appeared, many of them demand-
ing a change in the old system by which the three estates sat in separate chambers, each
chamber voting as a unit. This voting system was widely criticized because it meant, in
practice, that the chamber of the Third Estate was always outnumbered. But in September
1788 the Parlement of Paris, restored to its functions, ruled that the Estates General should
meet and vote as in 1614, in three separate orders.
The nobility, through the Parlement, thus revealed its aim. It had
forced the summoning of the Estates General to protect and enhance its
own political infl uence, and in this way the French nobility initiated the
Revolution. The Revolution began as another victory in the aristocratic resurgence against
the earlier absolutism of the king. The nobles actually had a liberal program: they
Resistance of the
nobles
The aims of the
nobility
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371
demanded constitutional government, guarantees of personal liberty for all, freedom of
speech and press, freedom from arbitrary arrest and confi nement. Many now were even
prepared to give up special privileges in taxation; this might have worked itself out in
time. But in return they hoped to become the preponderant political element in the state. It
was their idea not merely to have the Estates General meet in 1789 but for France to be
henceforth governed through the Estates General, a supreme body in three chambers—
one for nobles, one for a clergy in which the higher offi cers were also nobles, and one for
the Third Estate.
This was precisely what the Third Estate wished to avoid. Lawyers, bankers, business
owners, government creditors, shopkeepers, artisans, working people, and peasants had no
desire to be governed by lords temporal and spiritual. Their hopes for a new, more equi-
table political and legal system formed by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, stirred by
the revolution in America, rose to the utmost excitement when “good king Louis” called
the Estates General. The ruling of the Parlement of Paris in September 1788 thus came to
them as a slap in the face—an unprovoked class insult. The whole Third
Estate turned on the nobility with detestation and distrust. The Abbé Sieyès
in January 1789 published his famous pamphlet What Is the Third Estate?, declaring that the nobility was a useless caste that could be abolished
without loss, that the Third Estate was the one necessary element of society,
that it was identical with the nation, and that the people of the Third Estate thus embodied
(or should embody) the sovereignty of the French nation. Through Sieyès the ideas of
Rousseau’s Social Contract entered the thought of the Revolution. At the same time, even before the Estates General actually met, and not from the books of philosophes so much
as from actual events and conditions, nobles and commoners viewed each other with
fear and suspicion. The Third Estate, which had at fi rst supported the nobles against the
“despotism” of the king’s ministers, now ascribed to the former the worst possible motives.
Bourgeois critics vehemently rejected the political program and ambitions of the nobility.
Class antagonism poisoned the Revolution at the outset and threw many articulate members
of the Third Estate into a radical and destructive mood.
The Estates General met as planned in May 1789 at Versailles. The Third Estate, most
of whose representatives were lawyers, would not accept the division of the orders into
three separate chambers. It insisted that deputies of all three orders should sit as a single
house and vote as individuals; this procedure would give an advantage to the Third Estate,
because the king had granted it as many deputies as the other two orders combined. For
six weeks a deadlock was maintained. On June 13 a few priests, leaving the chamber of
the First Estate, came over and sat with the Third. They were greeted with jubilation. On
June 17 the Third Estate declared itself the “National Assembly.” Louis XVI, under pressure
from the nobles, closed the hall in which it met. The members found a neighboring indoor
tennis court and there, milling about in a babel of confusion and apprehension, swore and
signed the Oath of the Tennis Court on June 20, 1789, affi rming that wherever they gath-
ered, they were the actually existing National Assembly and that they would not disband
until they had drafted a constitution. This was a revolutionary step, for it assumed virtually
sovereign power for a body that had no legal authority. The king ordered members of the
three estates to sit in their separate houses, though he now presented a reforming program
of his own, too late to win the confi dence of the disaffected and in any case continuing the
organization of French society in legal classes. The self-entitled National Assembly refused
to back down. The king faltered, failed to enforce his commands promptly, and allowed the
Assembly to remain in being. In the following days, at the end of June, he summoned about
18,000 soldiers to Versailles.
The Third Estate
reacts
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution372
What had happened was that the king of France, in the dispute raging between nobles
and commoners, chose the nobles. It was traditional in France for the king to oppose and
reduce the autonomous powers of the nobility. For centuries the French monarchy had
drawn strength from urban or bourgeois social groups. All through the eighteenth century
the royal ministers had carried on the struggle against the privileged interests. Only a year
before, Louis XVI had been almost at war with his rebellious aristocracy. In 1789 he failed
to assert himself. He lost control over the Estates General, exerted no leadership, offered no
program until it was too late, and provided no symbol behind which parties could rally. He
failed to make use of the profound loyalty to himself felt by the bourgeoisie
and common people, who yearned for nothing so much as a king who would
stand up for them, as in days of yore, against an aristocracy of birth and sta-
tus. He tried instead, at fi rst, to compromise and postpone a crisis; then
he found himself in the position of having issued orders that the Third Estate
boldly defi ed; and in this complex political predicament he yielded to his wife Marie
Antoinette, to his brothers, and to the court nobles, all of whom told him that his dignity and
authority were outraged and undermined. At the end of June Louis XVI undoubtedly
intended to dissolve the Estates General by military force. But what the Third Estate most
feared was a future in which the king would support the nobles as they sought to control the
Failure of royal
leadership
Convoked for the fi rst time in 175 years, the Estates General met in a large hall at Versailles in May 1789. This picture shows Louis XVI seated on his throne, with deputies of the clergy seated on his right, those of the nobility on his left, and those of the Third Estate facing him at the other end of the hall. (akg-images/Newscom)
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373
government of the country. There was now no going back; the revolt of the Third Estate had
allied Louis XVI with the nobles, and the Third Estate now feared the nobles more than
ever, believing with good reason that they now had the king in their hands.
The Lower Classes in Action
The country meanwhile was falling into social dissolution, as the lower classes, below the
bourgeoisie, moved into open rebellion against their economic and social conditions. For
them too the convocation of the Estates General had seemed to herald a new era. The
grievances of ages, and those that existed equally in other countries than France, rose to
the surface. Short-run conditions were bad. The harvest of 1788 had been poor; the price of
bread, by July 1789, was higher than at any time since the death of Louis XIV. It was also
a time of widening economic depression; the rapid growth of trade since the American war
had suddenly halted, so that wages fell and unemployment spread while scarcity drove
food prices up. The government, paralyzed at the center, could not take its customary
action to relieve the problem of food shortages. The masses were restless everywhere.
Labor trouble broke out; in April a riot of workers devastated a wallpaper factory in Paris.
In the rural districts there was much disorder. Peasants declared that they would pay no
more manorial dues and were refusing to pay taxes. In the best of times the countryside
was troubled by vagrants, beggars, and smugglers who fl ourished along the many tariff
frontiers. Now the business depression reduced the income of honest peasants who engaged
in weaving or other domestic industries in their homes; unemployment and indigence
spread in the country; people were uprooted; and the result was to raise the number of
vagrants to terrifying proportions. It was believed, because nothing was too bad to believe
of the aristocrats (though it was not true), that they were secretly recruiting these
“brigands” for their own purposes to intimidate the Third Estate. The economic and social
crises thus became acutely political.
People in the towns feared that they would be swamped by beggars and desperadoes.
This was true even of Paris, the largest city in Europe except London. The Parisians were
also alarmed by the concentration of troops about Versailles. They began to arm in self-
defense. All classes of the Third Estate took part. Crowds roamed the city, looking for
weapons in arsenals and public buildings. On July 14 they came to the
Bastille, a stronghold built in the Middle Ages to overawe the city, like the
Tower of London in England. It was used as a place of detention for per-
sons with enough infl uence to escape the common jails but was otherwise
in normal times considered harmless; in fact there were few prisoners in
the fortress, and there had been talk, some years before, of tearing it down to make room
for a public park. Now, in the general turbulence, the governor had placed cannons in the
embrasures. The crowd requested him to remove his cannons and to furnish them with
arms. He refused. Through a series of misunderstandings, reinforced by the vehemence
of a few fi rebrands, the crowd turned into a mob, which violently assaulted the fortress
and which, when helped by a few trained soldiers and artillery pieces, persuaded the gov-
ernor to surrender. The mob, enraged by the death of 98 of its members, streamed in and
murdered 6 soldiers of the garrison in cold blood. The governor was also murdered while
under escort to the Town Hall. A few other offi cials met the same fate. Their heads were
cut off, stuck on the ends of pikes, and paraded about the city. While all this happened, the
regular army units on the outskirts of Paris did not stir; their reliability was open to ques-
tion and the authorities were in any case unaccustomed to fi ring on the people.
The storming of the
Bastille
42. The Revolution and the Reorganization of France
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution374
The capture of the Bastille, though not so intended, had the effect of saving the Assem-
bly at Versailles. The king, not knowing what to do, accepted the new situation in Paris. He
recognized a citizens’ committee, which had formed there, as the new municipal govern-
ment. He sent away the troops that he had summoned and commanded the recalcitrants
among nobles and clergy to join in the National Assembly. In Paris and other cities a new
national guard was established to keep order. The Assembly appointed the Marquis de
Lafayette, “the hero of two worlds,” to command the guard in Paris. For insignia Lafayette
combined the colors of the city of Paris, red and blue, with the white of the house of
Bourbon. The French tricolor, emblem of the Revolution and the new sovereign nation,
thus originated in this symbolic fusion of the old and new.
In the rural districts matters went from bad to worse. Vague insecurity
rose to the proportions of a general panic in the Great Fear of 1789, which
spread over the country late in July in the wake of travelers, postal couriers,
and others. The cry was relayed from point to point that “the brigands were
coming.” Peasants, armed to protect their homes and crops and gathered together and work-
ing upon each other’s feelings, turned their attention to the manor houses, burning them in
some cases and in others simply destroying the manorial archives in which fees and dues
The Great Fear of
1789
THE TENNIS COURT OATH by Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748–1825)
This famous picture portrays the momentous decision by members of the Third Estate to con- tinue meeting as the National Assembly of France until they had written a new constitution. The deputies swore their oath at an indoor tennis court because the king had closed the hall in which they had been holding their sessions. (RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY)
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375
were recorded. The Great Fear became part of a general agrarian insurrection, in which
peasants, far from being motivated by wild alarms, knew perfectly well what they were
doing. They intended to destroy the manorial regime by force.
The Initial Reforms of the National Assembly
The Assembly at Versailles could restore social order only by meeting the demands of the
peasants, but to wipe out all manorial payments would deprive the landed aristocracy of
much of its income; and many bourgeois also owned manors. There was therefore much
perplexity. A small group of deputies prepared a surprise move in the Assembly, choosing
an evening session from which many would be absent. Hence came the “night of August 4.”
A few liberal noblemen, by prearrangement, arose and surrendered their hunting rights,
their banalités, their rights in manorial courts, and feudal and seigneurial privileges gen- erally. What was left of serfdom and all personal servitude was declared ended. Tithes
were abolished. Other deputies repudiated the special privileges of their provinces. All
personal tax privileges were given up. On the main matter, the dues arising from “eminent
property” in the manors, a compromise was adopted. These dues were all abolished but
compensation was to be paid by the peasants to the former owners. The compensation was
in most cases never paid. Eventually, in 1793, in the radical phase of the Revolution, the
provision for compensation was repealed. In the end French peasant landowners rid them-
selves of their manorial obligations without cost to themselves. This was in contrast to
what later happened in most other countries, where peasants, when liberated from mano-
rial obligations, either lost part of their land or were burdened with installment payments
lasting many years.
In a decree summarizing the resolutions of August 4 the Assembly declared fl atly that
“feudalism is abolished.” With legal privilege replaced by legal equality, it proceeded to
map the principles of the new order. On August 26, 1789, it issued the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and Citizen.
The Declaration of 1789 consisted of 17 articles that affi rmed the gen-
eral principles of the new state, which were essentially the rule of law, the
equality of individual citizenship, and the collective national sovereignty
of the people. “Men are born and remain,” declared Article I, “free and
equal in rights.” Man’s natural rights were held to be “liberty, property,
security, and resistance to oppression.” Freedom of thought and religion was guaranteed;
no one might be arrested or punished except by process of law; all persons were declared
eligible for any public offi ce for which they met the requirements. Liberty was defi ned as
the freedom to do anything not injurious to others, which in turn was to be determined
only by law. Law must fall equally upon all persons. Law was the expression of the gen-
eral will, to be made by all citizens or their representatives. The only sovereign was the
nation itself, and all public offi cials and armed forces acted only in its name. Taxes might
be raised only by common consent, all public servants were accountable for their conduct
in offi ce, and the powers of government were to be separated among different branches.
Finally, the state might for public purposes, and under law, confi scate the property of pri-
vate persons, but only with fair compensation. The Declaration, printed in thousands of
leafl ets, pamphlets, and books, read aloud in public places, or framed and hung on walls,
became the catechism of the Revolution in France. When translated into other languages it
soon carried the same message to all of Europe. Thomas Paine’s book The Rights of Man, published in 1791 to defend the French Revolution, gave the phrase a powerful impact
in English.
The Declaration of
the Rights of Man
and Citizen
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution376
The “rights of man” had become a motto or watchword for potentially revolutionary
ideas well before 1789. The thinkers of the Enlightenment had used it, and during the
American Revolution even Alexander Hamilton had spoken of “the sacred rights of man”
with enthusiasm. “Man” in this sense was meant to apply abstractly to the rights of all
people, regardless of nationality, race, or sex. In French as in English the word “man” was
used to designate all human beings, and the Declaration of 1789 was not intended to refer
to males alone. In German, for example, where a distinction is made between Mensch as a human being and Mann as an adult male, the “rights of man” was always translated as Menschenrechte. Similarly the word “citizen” in its general sense applied to women, as is shown by the frequency of the feminine citoyenne during the Revolution, in which a great many women were very active. But when it came to the exercise of specifi c legal rights the
Revolutionaries went no farther than contemporary opinion. Thus they assigned the right
to vote and hold offi ce only to men, and in most matters of property, family law, and edu-
cation it was the boys and men who benefi ted most. Very few persons at the
time argued for full legal and political equality between the sexes.
One of them, however, was Olympe de Gouges, a woman who had
gained prominence as a writer for the theater and who in 1791 published
The Rights of
Woman
The capture of the Bastille—the prison-fortress that became a symbol of Old Regime repression—marked the dramatic entry of the Parisian crowd into the rapidly evolving Revolution. Violence in the streets of Paris in July 1789 saved the National Assembly from the king’s intention to dissolve it. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
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377
The Rights of Woman. Following the offi cial Declaration in each of its 17 articles, she applied them to women explicitly in each case, and she asserted also, in addition, the right
of women to divorce under certain conditions, to the control of property in marriage, and
for equal access with men to higher education and to civilian careers and public employ-
ment. Mary Wollstonecraft in England published a similar Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. In France some of the secondary fi gures in the Revolution, and some of the teachers in boys’ schools, thought that women should have greater opportunities at
least in education. And there were in fact a few reforms that improved the social rights of
women. The revolutionary government redefi ned marriage as a civil contract and legalized
divorce in 1792, thereby enabling women to leave abusive or unhappy marriages (until
divorce was banned again in 1816). Inheritance laws were also changed in ways that gave
women the legal right to equal inheritance of their family’s property.
But among the leaders of the Revolution, only Condorcet argued for
legal equality of the sexes. Intent on political change, the revolutionaries
thought that politics, government, law, and war were a masculine business,
for which only boys and young men needed to be educated or prepared. The Revolu-
tion generally reduced or restricted the cultural and political infl uence that some women
had exercised in the elite circles of Old Regime society. The new political order, as most
revolutionaries defi ned it, was to develop through “manly” opposition to the “feminine”
corruptions of the Old Regime court and social hierarchies. “Women are disposed . . . to an
over-excitation which would be deadly in public affairs,” one revolutionary deputy argued
in a typical justifi cation for excluding women from government institutions. Such assump-
tions led to restrictions on the rights of women to petition or gather in political meetings;
fi nally, in 1793, the revolutionary government closed all women’s political clubs—even
though many women had been among the Revolution’s earliest and most active supporters.
Shortly after adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of Man the Revolutionary
leadership fell into multiple factions. In September 1789 the Assembly began the actual
planning of the new government. Some wanted a strong veto power for the king and a leg-
islative body in two houses, as in England. Others, the “patriots,” wanted only a delaying
veto for the king and a legislative body of one chamber. Here again, it was suspicion of the
nobles that proved decisive. The “patriots” were afraid that an upper chamber would bring
Exclusion of women
Although women gained some new rights during the French Revolution, they were denied the right to vote or to hold public offi ce; and women’s political clubs were eventually disbanded. Olympe de Gouges, who is portrayed here in a later engraving, challenged such exclusions in her Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791) and other writings, thereby provoking strong opposition from revolutionary leaders. She was charged with sedition and put to death during the Terror in 1793. (Kean Collection/Getty Images)
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution378
back the nobility as a collective force, and they were afraid to make the king constitution-
ally strong by giving him a full veto, because they believed him to be in sympathy with
the nobles. His brother, the Count of Artois, followed by many aristocrats, had already
emigrated to foreign parts and, along with these other émigrés, was preparing to agitate
against the Revolution with all the governments of Europe. The patriot party would con-
cede nothing; the more conservative party could gain nothing. The debate was interrupted
again, as in July, by insurrection and violence. On October 4, a crowd of market women
and revolutionary militants, followed by the revolutionary Paris national guard, took the
A WOMAN OF THE REVOLUTION by Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748–1825)
David’s portrait of a lower-class French woman in 1795 suggests the determination of the women who joined the revolutionary Parisian crowds and clubs during the French Revolution; and the painting affi rms in a more general way the revolutionary challenge to traditional social and legal privileges. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
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379
road from Paris to Versailles. Besieging and invading the château, they forced Louis XVI
and his family to take up residence in Paris, where he could be watched. The National
Assembly also moved to Paris, where it too soon fell under the infl uence of radical ele-
ments in the city. The champions of a one-chamber legislative body and of a suspensive
veto for the king won out.
The more conservative revolutionaries, if such they may be called, disillusioned at see-
ing constitutional questions settled by mobs, began to drop out of the Assembly. Men who
on June 20 had bravely sworn the Oath of the Tennis Court now felt that the Revolution was
falling into unworthy hands. Some even emigrated, forming a second wave of émigrés that
would have nothing to do with the fi rst. The counterrevolution gathered strength.
But those who wanted still to go forward, and they were many, began
to organize in clubs. Most important of all was the Society of Friends of the
Constitution, called the Jacobin club for short, since it met in an old Jacobin
monastery in Paris. The dues were at fi rst so high that only wealthier persons could belong;
the dues were later lowered but never enough to include people of the poorest classes, who
therefore formed clubs of their own. The most advanced members of the Assembly were
Jacobins, who used the club as a caucus in which to discuss their policies and develop their
plans. They remained a middle-class group even during the later and more radical phase
of the Revolution, and numerous women participated in their meetings. Madame Rosalie
Jullien, for example, who was as dedicated a revolutionary as her husband and son,
attended a meeting of the Paris Jacobin club on August 5, 1792. Tell your friends in the
provinces, she wrote to her husband, that these Jacobins are “the fl ower of the Paris bour-
geoisie, to judge by the fancy jackets they wear. There were also two or three hundred
women present, dressed as if for the theater, who made an impression by their proud atti-
tude and forceful speech.”
Constitutional Changes
In the two years from October 1789 to September 1791 the National Assembly (or the
Constituent Assembly, as it had come to be called because it was preparing a constitution)
continued its work of simultaneously governing the country, devising a written constitu-
tion, and destroying in detail the institutions of the Old Regime. The Assembly soon
discarded most of the political and legal institutions that had governed French affairs for
centuries—the old monarchical ministries, the organization of government bureaus, the
taxes and tax exemptions, the private ownership of government positions, the titles of
nobility, the parlements, the hundreds of regional systems of law, the internal tariffs, the
provinces, and the urban municipalities. Contemporaries such as Edmund Burke were
appalled at the thoroughness with which the French seemed determined to eradicate their
national institutions. Why, asked Burke, should the French fanatics cut to pieces the living
body of Normandy or Provence? The truth is that the provinces, like everything else,
formed part of the whole system of special privilege and unequal rights. All had to disap-
pear if the hope of equal citizenship under national sovereignty was to be attained. In place
of the provinces the Constituent Assembly divided France into 83 equal “departments.” In
place of the old towns, with their quaint old magistrates, it introduced a uniform municipal
organization, all towns henceforth having the same form of government, varying only
according to size. All local offi cials, even prosecuting attorneys and tax collectors, were
elected locally. Administratively the country was decentralized in reaction against the
bureaucracy of the Old Regime. No one outside Paris now really acted for the central
The Jacobins
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution380
government, and local communities enforced the national legislation, or declined to enforce
it, as they chose. This proved ruinous when war came, and although the “departments” cre-
ated by the Constituent Assembly still exist, it became common in France after the Revolu-
tion, as it was before, to keep local offi cials under strong control by ministers in Paris.
Under the constitution that was prepared, sometimes called the Constitution of 1791
because it went into effect at that date, the sovereign power of the nation was to be exer-
cised by a unicameral elected assembly called the Legislative Assembly.
The king was given only a suspensive veto power by which legislation
desired by the Assembly could be postponed. In general, the executive
branch, that is, king and ministers, was kept weak, partly in reaction against
“ministerial despotism,” partly from a well-founded distrust of Louis XVI.
In June 1791 Louis attempted to escape from the kingdom, join with émigré noblemen
abroad, and seek help from foreign powers. He left behind him a written message in which
he explicitly repudiated the Revolution. Arrested at Varennes in eastern France, he was
brought back to Paris and forced to accept his status as a constitutional monarch. The hos-
tile attitude of Louis XVI greatly disoriented the Revolution, for it made impossible the
creation of a strong executive power and left the country to be ruled by a debating society,
which under revolutionary conditions contained more than the usual number of hotheads.
Not all this machinery of state was democratic. As noted above, women did not
receive the right to vote or hold public offi ce; and in the granting of political rights to
men the abstract principles of the great Declaration were seriously modifi ed for practi-
cal reasons. Because most people were illiterate, it was thought that they could have no
reasonable political views; and it was assumed that persons such as domestic servants
or shop assistants would merely follow the political views of their employers. The Con-
stituent Assembly therefore distinguished in the new constitution between “active” and
“passive” citizens. Both had the same civil rights, but only active citizens had the right to
vote. These active citizens chose “electors” on the basis of one elector for every hundred
The Constitution of
1791
The three men at an anvil are a noble, a cleric, and a commoner hammering out a new constitu- tion together. At the beginning of the Revolution, most people expected the three estates to frat- ernize in the redefi ned French nation. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
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381
active citizens. The electors convened in the chief town of their new “department” and
there chose deputies to the national legislature as well as certain local offi cials. Males
over 25 years of age, and wealthy enough to pay a small direct tax, qualifi ed as “active”
citizens; well over half the adult male population could so qualify. Of these, men paying a
somewhat higher tax qualifi ed as “electors”; even so, almost half the adult males qualifi ed
for this role. In practice, what limited the number of available electors was that, to function
as such, a man had to have enough education, interest, and leisure to attend an electoral
assembly at a distance from home and remain in attendance for several days. In any case,
only about 50,000 persons served as electors in 1790–1791 because a proportion of one for
every hundred active citizens yielded that fi gure.
Economic and Cultural Policies
Economic policies favored the middle rather than the lowest classes. The public debt had
precipitated the Revolution, but the revolutionary leaders, even the most extreme Jacobins,
never disowned the debt of the Old Regime. The reason is that the bourgeois class, on
the whole, were the people to whom the money was owed. To secure the debt, and to pay
current expenses of government, because tax collections had become very sporadic, the
Constituent Assembly as early as November 1789 resorted to a device by no means new
in Europe, though never before used on so extensive a scale. It confi scated all the property
of the church. Against this property, it issued negotiable instruments called assignats, fi rst regarded as bonds and issued only in large denominations, later regarded
as currency and issued in small bills. Holders of assignats could use them, or any money, to buy parcels of the former church lands. None of the con-
fi scated land was given away; all was in fact sold, because the interest of the government
was fi scal rather than social. The peasants, even when they had the money, could not easily
buy land because the lands were sold at distant auctions or in large undivided blocks. The
peasants were disgruntled, though they did acquire a good deal of the former church lands
through middlemen. Peasant landowners were likewise expected, until 1793, to pay com-
pensation for many of their old manorial fees. And the landless peasants actively opposed
some of the revolutionary changes when the government, with its modern ideas, encour-
aged the dividing up of the village commons and extinction of various collective village
rights in the interest of individual private property.
The revolutionary leadership favored free economic individualism. It had had enough,
under the Old Regime, of government regulation over the sale or quality of goods and of
privileged companies and other economic monopolies. Reforming economic thought at the
time in France and in Britain, where Adam Smith had published his epoch-making Wealth of Nations in 1776, held that organized special interests were bad for society and that all prices and wages should be determined by free arrangement between the individuals con-
cerned. The more prominent leaders of the French Revolution believed fi rmly in this free-
dom from control. The Constituent Assembly thus abolished the guilds, which were mainly
monopolistic organizations of small businessmen or master craftsmen, interested in keep-
ing up prices for certain goods or services and averse to new machinery or new methods.
There was also in France what we would now call an organized labor movement.
Because the masterships in the guilds were practically hereditary (as a form of property and
privilege), the journeymen had formed their own associations, or trade unions, called
compagnonnages, outside the guilds. Many trades were so organized—the carpenters, plas- terers, paper workers, hatters, saddlers, cutlers, nail makers, carters, tanners, locksmiths,
Assignats
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution382
and glassworkers. Some were organized nationally; some, only locally. All these journey-
men’s unions had been illegal under the Old Regime, but they had fl ourished nevertheless.
They collected dues and maintained offi cers. They often dealt collectively with the guild
masters or other employers, requiring the payment of a stipulated wage or change of work-
ing conditions. Sometimes they even imposed closed shops. Organized strikes were quite
common. The labor troubles of 1789 continued on into the Revolution. Business fell off in
the atmosphere of disorder. In 1791 there was another wave of strikes. The
Assembly, in the Le Chapelier law of that year, renewed the old prohibitions
of the compagnonnages. The same law restated the abolition of the guilds and forbade the organization of special economic interests of any kind. All
trades, it declared, were free for all to enter. All persons, without belonging
to any organization, had the right to work at any occupation or business they might choose.
All wages were to be settled privately by the worker and his or her employer. This was not
at all what the workers, at that time or any other, really wanted. Nevertheless the provisions
of the Le Chapelier law remained a part of French law for three-quarters of a century. The
embryonic trade unions continued to exist secretly, though with more diffi culty than under
the hit-and-miss law enforcement of the Old Regime.
Meanwhile, revolutionary activists set about transforming the symbols, rituals, dress,
and holidays of Old Regime society. Seeking to break from the hierarchies and privileges of
the past, they developed a new political culture that would be symbolized by a new tricolor
fl ag, new forms of democratic language, new clothing, new festivals, and new public monu-
ments. The art and imagery of the traditional monarchy and church rapidly disappeared
from public life. Great festivals of national unity were organized, beginning with the famous
“Festival of the Federation,” which brought together a vast crowd in Paris to
mark the fi rst anniversary of the assault on the Bastille (July 14, 1790), to
celebrate the new liberties of the French people and to create new rituals for
what would eventually become the French national holiday.
Banning labor
organizations
A revolutionary
political culture
The revolutionary government used paper money to fi nance its policies. The notes were called assignats because they were assigned to, or secured by, real estate confi scated during the Revolution, mostly from the church. Infl ation rose rapidly after 1794, so that even notes with denominations as high as 10,000 livres, as shown in this picture, became worthless. The assignats were therefore abolished, and a new, more stable French currency came into use in 1796. (Gianni Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art
Resource, NY)
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383
Supporters of the Revolution planted “liberty trees” in towns throughout France, and
they began to wear “liberty caps” and tricolor cockades to show their political allegiances.
Later revolutionary governments encouraged new artwork in which the nation came to be
represented by a female symbol of liberty, Marianne. Statues of Marianne offered alter-
natives to traditional Catholic icons of the Virgin Mary and gave illiterate persons new
visual images by which they could understand that national sovereignty and liberty had
replaced the king and church at the symbolic center of French political life. A profusion of
revolutionary plays, novels, and songs conveyed the same message. By promoting the new
political ideas and symbols in every sphere of daily life, the French Revolution created a
new national identity and “nationalized” the French people through the use of cultural ritu-
als that would later become common in other national movements of the modern world.
The Quarrel with the Church
Most fatefully of all, the Constituent Assembly quarreled with the Catholic Church. The
confi scation of church properties came as a shock to the clergy. The village priests, whose
support had made possible the revolt of the Third Estate, now found that the very buildings
in which they worshipped with their parishioners on Sunday belonged to the “nation.” The
loss of income-producing properties undercut the religious orders and ruined the schools,
in which thousands of boys had received free education before the Revolution. Yet it was
not on the question of material wealth that the church and the Revolution came to blows.
Members of the Constituent Assembly took the view of the church that the great monar-
chies had taken before them. The idea of separation of church and state was far from their
minds. They regarded the church as a form of public authority and as such subordinate to
the sovereign power. They frankly argued that the poor needed religion if they were to
respect the property of the more wealthy. In any case, having deprived the church of its
own income, they had to provide for its maintenance. For the schools many generous and
democratic projects of state-sponsored education were drawn up, though under the trou-
bled conditions of the times little was accomplished. For the clergy the new
program was mapped out in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790.
This document went far toward setting up a French national church.
Under its provisions the parish priests and bishops were elected, the latter
by the same 50,000 electors who chose other important public offi cials.
Protestants, Jews, and agnostics could legally take part in the elections, purely on the
ground of citizenship and property qualifi cations. Archbishoprics were abolished, and all
the borders of existing bishoprics were redrawn. The number of dioceses was reduced
from over 130 to 83, so that one would be coterminous with each department. Bishops
were allowed merely to notify the pope of their elevation; they were forbidden to acknowl-
edge any papal authority on their assumption of offi ce, and no papal letter or decree was
to be published or enforced in France except with government permission. All clergy
received salaries from the state; the average income of bishops was somewhat reduced and
that of parish clergymen was raised. Sinecures, plural holdings, and other abuses by which
the church had supported noble families were done away with. The Constituent Assembly
(independently of the Civil Constitution) also prohibited the taking of religious vows and
dissolved all monastic houses.
Some of these church reforms were not in principle alarmingly new, because before
the Revolution the civil authority of the king had designated the French bishops and passed
judgement on the admission of papal documents into France. French bishops, in the old
The Civil
Constitution of the
Clergy
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution384
spirit of the “Gallican liberties,” had traditionally resisted papal power in France. Many
were now willing to accept something like the Civil Constitution if allowed to produce
it on their own authority. The Assembly refused to concede so much jurisdiction to the
Gallican Church and applied instead to the pope, hoping to force its plans upon the French
clergy by invoking the authority of the Vatican. But the Vatican pronounced the Civil
Constitution a wanton usurpation of power over the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, the
pope also went further, condemning the whole Revolution and all its works. The Constitu-
ent Assembly retorted by requiring all French clergy to swear an oath of loyalty to the
constitution, including the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Half took the oath and half
refused it, the latter half including all but seven of the bishops. One of the seven willing
to accept the new arrangements was Talleyrand, soon to be famous as foreign minister of
numerous French governments.
There were now two churches in France, one clandestine, the other offi cial, one main-
tained by voluntary offerings or by funds smuggled in from abroad, the other fi nanced and
sponsored by the government. The former, comprising the nonjuring, unsworn, or “refrac-
tory” clergy, turned violently counterrevolutionary. To protect themselves from the Revolu-
tion they insisted, with an emphasis quite new in France, on the universal religious supremacy
of the Roman pontiff. They denounced the “constitutional” clergy as schismatics who
spurned the pope and as mere careerists willing to hold jobs on the government’s terms. The
constitutional clergy, those taking the oath and upholding the Civil Constitution, considered
themselves to be patriots and defenders of the universal rights of man; and they insisted that
the Gallican Church had always enjoyed a degree of liberty from Rome. The Catholic laity
were terrifi ed and puzzled. Many were suffi ciently attached to the Revolution to prefer the
constitutional clergy but to do so meant to defy the pope, and Catholics who persisted in
defying the pope were on the whole those least zealous in their religion. The constitutional
clergy therefore stood on shaky foundations. Many of their followers, under stress of the
times, eventually turned against Christianity itself.
Good Catholics tended to favor the “refractory” clergy. The outstand-
ing example was the king himself. He personally used the services of refrac-
tory priests, and thus gave a new reason for the revolutionaries to distrust
him. Whatever chance there was that Louis XVI might go along with the
“Constitutional” and
“refractory” clergy
The revolutionaries created rituals and symbols to celebrate the new nation they were trying to establish. The great festival of the Federation in Paris on July 14, 1790, assembled the king, the National Guard, and a huge crowd in a symbolic expression of the national unity and national liberties that the new political institutions were supposed to protect. (Bridgeman- Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
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38543. The Revolution and Europe: The War and the “Second” Revolution, 1792
Revolution now disappeared, for he concluded that he could do so only by endangering his
immortal soul. Former aristocrats also naturally preferred the refractory clergy. They now
put aside the Voltairean levities of the Age of Enlightenment, and the “best people” began
to exhibit a new piety in religious matters. The peasants, who found little in the Revolu-
tion to interest them after their own insurrection of 1789 and the consequent abolition of
the manorial regime, also favored the old-fashioned or refractory clergy. Much the same
was true of the urban working-class families, in which both men and women might shout
against priests and yet want to be sure that their marriages were valid and their children
were properly baptized. The Constituent Assembly, and its successors, could never fi nally
decide what to do. Sometimes they shut their eyes at the intrigues of refractory clergy, in
which case the constitutional clergy then became fearful. Sometimes they hunted out and
persecuted the refractories; in that case they only stirred the passions of the most devoutly
religious persons and social groups.
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy has been called the greatest tactical blunder of the
Revolution. Certainly its consequences were unfortunate in the extreme, and they spread
to much of Europe. In the nineteenth century the Catholic Church became offi cially anti-
democratic and antiliberal; and democrats and liberals in most cases became outspokenly
anticlerical. The main benefi ciary was the papacy. The French Catholic Church, which
had clung for ages to its Gallican liberties, was thrown by the Revolution into the arms of
the pope. Even Napoleon, when he healed the religious schism a decade later, acknowl-
edged powers in the papacy that had never been acknowledged by the French kings. These
were steps in the process, leading through the proclamation of papal infallibility in 1870,
by which the affairs of the modern Catholic Church became increasingly centralized at
the Vatican.
With the proclamation of the constitution in September 1791, the Constituent Assem-
bly disbanded. Before dissolving, it ruled that none of its members might sit in the forth-
coming Legislative Assembly. This body was therefore made up of men who still wished
to make their mark in the Revolution. The new regime went into effect in October 1791.
It was a constitutional monarchy in which a unicameral Legislative Assembly confronted
a king unconverted to the new order. Designed as a permanent system for the modern
governance of France and for the protection of the rights of man, it was to collapse in
10 months, in August 1792, as a result of popular insurrection four months after France
became involved in war. A group of Jacobins, known as Girondins, for a time became
the left or advanced party of the Revolution and in the Legislative Assembly they led
France into war.
43. THE REVOLUTION AND EUROPE: THE WAR AND THE “SECOND” REVOLUTION, 1792
The International Impact of the Revolution
The European governments were long reluctant to become involved with France. They
were under considerable pressure. On the one hand, pro-French and pro-revolutionary
groups appeared immediately in many quarters. The doctrines of the French Revolution, as
of the American, were highly exportable: they took the form of a universal philosophy,
proclaiming the rights of man regardless of time or place, race or nation. Moreover,
depending on what one was looking for, one might see in the fi rst disturbances in France a
revolt of either the nobility, the bourgeoisie, the common people, or the entire nation. In
Poland those who were trying to reorganize the country against further partition hailed the
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution386
French example. The Hungarian landlords pointed to it in their reaction against Joseph II.
In England, for a time, those who controlled Parliament complacently believed that the
French were attempting to imitate them.
But it was the excluded classes of European society who were most
inspired. The hard-pressed Silesian weavers were said to hope that “the
French would come.” Strikes broke out at Hamburg, and peasants rebelled
elsewhere. One English diplomat found that even the Prussian army had “a
strong taint of democracy among offi cers and men.” In England the newly
developing “radicals,” men like Thomas Paine and Dr. Richard Price, who wished a thor-
ough overhauling of Parliament and the established church, entered into correspondence
with the Assembly in Paris. Business leaders of importance, including Watt and Boulton, the
pioneers of the steam engine, were likewise pro-French because they had no representation
in the House of Commons. The Irish too were excited and presently revolted. Everywhere
the young were aroused, the young Hegel in Germany or in England the young Wordsworth,
who later recalled the sense of a new era that had captivated so many spirits in 1789:
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!
On the other hand the anti-Revolutionary movement gathered strength.
Edmund Burke, frightened by the French proclivities of English radicals,
published as early as 1790 his Refl ections on the Revolution in France. For France, he predicted anarchy and dictatorship. For England, he sternly
advised the English to accept a slow adaptation of their own English liber-
ties. For all the world, he denounced a political philosophy that rested on abstract prin-
ciples of right and wrong, declaring that every people must be shaped by its own national
circumstances, national history, and national character. He drew an eloquent reply and
a defense of France from Thomas Paine in the Rights of Man—an infl uential book that argued for the universality of inalienable human rights. Burke soon began to preach the
necessity of war, urging a kind of ideological struggle against French barbarism and vio-
lence. His Refl ections was translated and read throughout Europe, becoming in the long run an important work in the emergence of modern conservative thought. In the short
run it fell on willing ears. The king of Sweden, Gustavus III, offered to lead a monarchist
crusade. In Russia Empress Catherine was appalled; she forbade further translations of
her erstwhile friend Voltaire, she called the French “vile riffraff” and “brutish cannibals,”
and she packed off to Siberia a Russian named Radischev, who in his Voyage from St. Petersburg to Moscow pointed out the evils of serfdom. The terrors were heightened by plaintive messages from Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and by the angry émigrés who
were constantly leaving France and who were led as early as July 1789 by the king’s own
brother, the Count of Artois. The fi rst émigrés were almost all nobles, and they settled in
various parts of Europe where they could use their international aristocratic connections
to preach a kind of holy war against the evils of revolution. They bemoaned the sad plight
of the king, but what they most wanted was to get back their manorial incomes and other
rights. Extremists among the émigrés even hinted that Louis XVI himself was a dangerous
revolutionary and much preferred his brother, the unyielding Count of Artois.
In short, Europe was soon split by a division that overran all frontiers. The same was
true also in the wider Atlantic world. In the United States the rising party of Jefferson
was branded as Jacobin and pro-French, that of Hamilton as aristocratic and pro-British,
while pro-revolutionary and anti-revolutionary groups fell into violent confl icts within the
French Caribbean colony at Saint-Domingue. A new interest in independence began to
Inspiration of the
Revolution
Anti-Revolutionary
sentiment
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387
spread among some Latin Americans, including the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda,
who became a general in the French army. In all countries of the European world, though
least of all in eastern and southern Europe, there were revolutionary or pro-French ele-
ments that were feared by their own governments. In all countries, including France, there
were implacable enemies of the French Revolution. In all countries there were people
whose political ideas and local confl icts increasingly expressed their strong support or
deep hostility for the revolutionary changes in France. There had been no such situa-
tion since the Protestant Reformation, nor was there anything like it again until after the
Russian Revolution of the twentieth century.
The Coming of the War, April 1792
Yet the European governments were slow to move. Catherine had no intention of becom-
ing involved in western Europe. She only wished to involve her neighbors. William Pitt,
the British prime minister, resisted the war cries of Burke. Pitt had failed to carry a plan
for reform of Parliament and was now concentrating on a policy of orderly fi nance and
systematic economy. His domestic program would be ruined by war. He insisted that the
internal affairs of France were of no concern to the British government. The key position
was occupied by the Habsburg emperor, Leopold II, brother to the French queen. Leopold
at fi rst answered Marie Antoinette’s pleas for help by telling her to adjust herself to con-
ditions in France. He resisted the furious demands of the émigrés, whom he understood
perfectly, having inherited from Joseph II a fractious aristocracy himself.
Still, the new French government was a disturbing phenomenon. It openly encouraged
malcontents all over Europe. It showed a tendency to settle international affairs by unilat-
eral action. For example, it annexed Avignon at the request of local revolutionaries but
without the consent of its historic sovereign, the pope. Or again, in Alsace there had been
much overlapping jurisdiction between France and Germany ever since the Peace of
Westphalia in 1648 (see maps, pp. 144–145, 184, 327). The Constituent Assembly abol-
ished traditional manorial dues in Alsace as elsewhere in France. To German princes who
had long held rights to these payments in Alsace the Assembly offered compensation, but
it did not ask their consent. Moreover, after the arrest of Louis XVI at Varennes, after his
attempted fl ight in June 1791, it became impossible to deny that the French
king and queen were prisoners of the revolutionaries.
In August 1791 Leopold met with the king of Prussia at Pillnitz in
Saxony. The resulting Declaration of Pillnitz rested on a famous if: Leopold would take military steps to restore order in France if all the other powers
would join him. Knowing the attitude of Pitt, he believed that such an agreement could
never materialize. His aim was mainly to rid himself of the French émigrés, but the
émigrés perversely received the Declaration with delight. They used it as an open threat
to their enemies in France, announcing that they would soon return alongside the forces
of civilized Europe to punish the guilty and right the wrongs that had been done to them.
In France the upholders of the Revolution were alarmed. They were ignorant of what
Leopold really meant and took the dire menaces of the émigrés at their face value.
The Declaration of Pillnitz, far from cowing the French, enraged them against all the
crowned heads of Europe. It gave a political advantage to the then dominant faction of
Jacobins, known to history as the Girondins. These included the philosophe Condorcet, the
humanitarian lawyer Brissot, and the civil servant Roland and his more famous wife,
Madame Roland, whose house became a kind of headquarters for the group. They attracted
many foreigners also, such as Thomas Paine and the German Anacharsis Cloots, the
The Declaration of
Pillnitz
43. The Revolution and Europe: The War and the “Second” Revolution, 1792
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution388
“representative of the human race.” In December 1791 a deputation of English radicals, led
by James Watt, son of the inventor of the steam engine, received a wild ovation at the Paris
Jacobin club.
The Girondins became the party of international revolution. They declared that the
Revolution could never be secure in France until it spread to the world. In their view, once
war had come, the peoples of states at war with France would not support
their own governments. There was reason for this belief, because revolu-
tionary elements antedating the French Revolution already existed in both
the Dutch and the Austrian Netherlands, and to a lesser degree in parts of
Switzerland, Poland, and elsewhere. Some Girondins therefore contemplated a war in
which French armies should enter neighboring countries, unite with local revolutionaries,
overthrow the established governments, and set up a federation of republics. War was also
favored by a very different group, led by Lafayette, which wished to curb the Revolution
by holding it at the moderate political limits of constitutional monarchy. This group mis-
takenly believed that war might restore the much damaged popularity of Louis XVI, unite
the country under the new government, and make it possible to put down the continuing
Jacobin agitation. As the war spirit boiled up in France, the Emperor Leopold II died.
He was succeeded by Francis II, a man much more inclined than Leopold to yield to the
clamors of the old aristocracy. Francis resumed negotiations with Prussia. In France all
who dreaded a return of the Old Regime listened more readily to the Girondins. Among
the Jacobins as a whole, only a few, generally a handful of radical democrats, opposed the
war. On April 20, 1792, without serious opposition, the Assembly declared war on “the
king of Hungary and Bohemia,” that is, the Austrian monarchy.
The “Second” Revolution: August 10, 1792
The war intensifi ed the existing unrest and dissatisfaction of the unpropertied classes. Both
peasants and urban workers felt that the Constituent and the Legislative Assembly had
served the propertied interests and had done little for them. Peasants were dissatisfi ed with
the inadequate measures taken to facilitate land distribution; workers felt especially the
pinch of soaring prices, which by 1792 had greatly risen. Gold had been taken out of the
country by the émigrés; paper money, the assignats, was almost the sole currency, and the future of the government was so uncertain that it steadily lost value.
Peasants concealed their food products rather than sell them for depreciat-
ing paper. Actual scarcity combined with the falling value of money to drive
up the cost of living. The lowest income groups suffered the most. But dis-
satisfi ed though they were, when the war began they were threatened with a
return of the émigrés and a vindictive restoration of the Old Regime, which at least for the
peasants would be the worst of all possible eventualities. The working classes—peasants,
artisans, mechanics, shopkeepers, wage workers—rallied to the Revolution but not to the
revolutionary government in power. The Legislative Assembly and the constitutional mon-
archy lacked the confi dence of large elements of the population.
In addition, the war at fi rst went very unfavorably for the French. Prussia joined imme-
diately with Austria, and by the summer of 1792 the two powers were on the point of invad-
ing France. They issued a proclamation to the French people, the Brunswick Manifesto of
July 25 declaring that if any harm befell the French king and queen the Austro-Prussian
forces, upon their arrival in Paris, would exact the most severe retribution from the inhabit-
ants of that city. Such menaces, compounding the military emergency, only played into the
France goes to war
Economic
dissatisfaction
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38944. The Emergency Republic, 1792–1795: The Terror
hands of the most violent activists. Masses of the French people, roused and guided by a
more radical faction of Jacobin leaders, notably Robespierre, Danton, and the vitriolic jour-
nalist Marat, burst out in a passion of patriotic excitement. They turned against the king
because he was identifi ed with the foreign powers at war with France and also because, in
France itself, those who still supported him were using the monarchy as defense against the
lower classes. Republicanism in France was partly a rather sudden historical accident, in
that France was at war under a king who could not be trusted, and partly a kind of popular
lower-class movement against the traditional nobility, in which, however, many bourgeois
revolutionaries shared.
Feeling ran high during the summer of 1792. Recruits streamed into Paris from all
quarters on their way to the frontiers. One detachment, from Marseilles, brought with
them a new marching song, known ever since as the Marseillaise, a fi erce call to war upon tyranny. The transient provincials stirred up the agitation
in Paris. On August 10, 1792, the working-class quarters of the city rose
in revolt, supported by the recruits from Marseilles and elsewhere. They
stormed the Tuileries against resistance by the Swiss Guard, many of whom
were massacred, and seized and imprisoned the king and the royal family. A revolution-
ary municipal government, or “Commune,” was set up in Paris. Usurping the powers of
the Legislative Assembly, it forced the abrogation of the constitution and the election, by
universal male suffrage, of a Constitutional Convention that was to govern France and
prepare a new and more democratic constitution. The very word Convention was used
in recollection of the American Constitutional Convention in 1787. Meanwhile hysteria,
anarchy, and terror reigned in Paris; mobs of insurrectionary volunteers, declaring that
they would not fi ght enemies on the frontiers until they had disposed of enemies in Paris,
dragged about 1,100 persons—common criminals, refractory priests, and other alleged
counterrevolutionaries—from the prisons of the city and killed them after drumhead trials,
in brutal executions known as the “September massacres.”
For nearly three years, since October 1789, there had been an abatement of popular
violence. Now the coming of the war and the dissatisfaction of the lower classes with
the recent course of events had led to new explosions. The insurrection of August 10,
1792, the “second” French Revolution, initiated the most radical and violent phase of the
Revolution.
44. THE EMERGENCY REPUBLIC, 1792–1795: THE TERROR
The National Convention
The National Convention met on September 20, 1792; it was to sit for three years. It imme-
diately proclaimed the beginning of a new era: Year I of the French Republic. The disor-
ganized French armies, also on September 20, won a great moral victory in
the “cannonade of Valmy,” a battle that was hardly more than an artillery
duel, but which induced the Prussian commander to give up his march on
Paris. The French soon occupied Belgium (the Austrian Netherlands), the
Savoy region near the Swiss-Italian border (which belonged to the king of
Sardinia, who had joined with the Austrians), and Mainz and other cities on the German
Left Bank of the Rhine. Revolutionary sympathizers in these places appealed for French
aid. The National Convention decreed assistance to “all peoples wishing to recover their
Agitation and
violence in Paris
Spread of the
Revolution
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution390
liberty.” It also ordered that French generals, in the occupied areas, should dissolve the old
governments; confi scate government and church property; abolish tithes, hunting rights,
and seigneurial dues; and set up provisional administrations. Thus revolution spread in the
wake of the successful French armies.
The British and Dutch now prepared to resist. Pitt, still insisting that the French might
have any domestic regime that they chose, declared that Great Britain could not tolerate the
French occupation of Belgium. The British and Dutch began conversations with Prussia
and Austria, and the French declared war on them on February 1, 1793. Within a few
weeks the Republic had annexed Savoy and Nice, as well as Belgium, and had much of the
German Rhineland under its military government (see map, p. 404). Meanwhile, in eastern
Europe, while denouncing the rapacity of the French Jacobins, the rulers of Russia and
Prussia, as we have seen, came to an arrangement of their own, each appropriating a por-
tion of Poland in the second partition in January 1793. The Austrians, excluded from this
second partition, became anxious about their interests in eastern Europe. The infant French
Republic, now at war with all Europe, was saved by the weakness of the Coalition, for
Britain and Holland had no land forces of consequence and Prussia and Austria were too
jealous of each other, and too preoccupied with Poland, to commit the bulk of their armies
against France.
In the Convention all the leaders were Jacobins, but the Jacobins were
again splitting. The Girondins were no longer the most advanced revolu-
tionary group as they had been in the Legislative Assembly. Beside the
Girondins appeared a new group, whose members preferred to sit in the
highest seats in the hall, and therefore were dubbed the “Mountain” in the political lan-
guage of the day. The leading Girondins came from the great provincial cities; the leading
Montagnards, though mostly of provincial birth, represented Paris and owed most of their
political strength to the radical and popular elements in that city.
These popular revolutionists, outside the Convention, proudly called themselves
“sans-culottes,” because they wore the workingman’s long trousers, not the knee breeches
or culottes of the middle and upper classes. They were the working class of a preindustrial age, shopkeepers and shop assistants, skilled artisans in various trades, including some
who were owners of small manufacturing or handicraft enterprises. For two years their
militancy and their activism pressed the Revolution forward. They demanded a broader
equality that would be meaningful for people like themselves, they called for a mighty
effort against foreign powers that presumed to intervene in the French Revolution, and they
denounced the now deposed king and queen (correctly enough) for collusion with the
Austrian enemy. The sans-culottes feared that the Convention might be too moderate. They
favored direct democracy in their neighborhood clubs and assemblies, together with a
mass rising if necessary against the Convention itself. The Girondins in the Convention
began to dismiss these popular militants as anarchists. The group known as the Mountain
was more willing to work with them, so long at least as the emergency lasted.
The Convention put Louis XVI on trial for treason in December 1792.
On January 15 it unanimously pronounced him guilty, but on the next
day, out of 721 deputies present, only 361 voted for immediate execution,
a majority of one. Louis XVI died on the guillotine forthwith. The 361
deputies were henceforth branded for life as regicides; never could they
allow, in safety to themselves, a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in
France. The other 360 deputies were not similarly compromised; their rivals called them
Girondins, “moderatists,” or counterrevolutionaries. All who still wanted more from the
The Jacobins split
The execution of the
king
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391
Revolution, or who feared that the slightest wavering would bring the Allies and the émi-
grés into France, now looked to the Mountain wing of the Jacobins.
Background to the Terror
In April 1793 the most prominent French general, Dumouriez, who had won the victo-
ries in Belgium fi ve months before, defected to Austria. The Allied armies now drove the
French from Belgium and again threatened to invade France. Counterrevolutionaries in
France exulted. From the revolutionaries went up the cry, “We are betrayed!” Prices con-
tinued to rise, the currency fell, food was harder to obtain, and the working classes were
increasingly restless. The sans-culottes demanded price controls, currency controls, ration-
ing, legislation against the hoarding of food, and requisitioning to enforce the circulation
of goods. They denounced bourgeois traders as profi teers and exploiters of the people.
While the Girondins resisted, the Mountain went along with the sans-culottes, partly from
sympathy with their ideas, partly to win mass support for the war, and partly as a maneu-
ver against the Girondins. On May 31, 1793, the Commune of Paris, under pressure from
the sans-culottes assembled a host of demonstrators and insurrectionists who invaded the
Convention and forced the arrest of the Girondin leaders. Other Girondins fl ed into hiding,
including Condorcet, who wrote his famous book, Progress of the Human Mind, before he was captured and put in prison, where he soon died.
The Mountain now ruled in the Convention, but the Convention itself ruled very little.
Not only were the foreign armies and the émigrés bent on destroying the Convention as a
band of regicides and social incendiaries, but the authority of the Convention was also
widely repudiated within France itself. In the west, in the Vendée, the peasants had revolted
against military conscription; they were worked upon by refractory priests, British agents,
and royalist emissaries of the Count of Artois. The great provincial cities, Lyons,
Bordeaux, Marseilles, and others, had also rebelled, especially after the fugitive Girondins
reached them. These “federalist” rebels demanded a more “federal” or decentralized
republic. Like the Vendéans, with whom they had no connection, they objected to the
ascendancy of Paris, having been accustomed to more regional independence under the
Old Regime. These rebellions became counterrevolutionary, because all sorts of foreign-
ers, royalists, émigrés, and clericals streamed in to assist them.
The Convention had to defend itself against extremists of the Left as
well. To the genuine mass action of the sans-culottes were now added the
voices of even more excited militants called enragés. Various organizers, enthusiasts, agitators, and neighborhood politicians declared that parlia-
mentary methods were useless. Generally they were men outside the Convention—and
also women, for women were particularly sensitive to the crisis of food shortage and soar-
ing prices, and an organization of Revolutionary Republican Women helped to mobilize
the sans-culottes in 1793 (until the suppression of women’s political clubs). All such activ-
ists worked through units of local government in Paris and elsewhere as well as in thou-
sands of “popular societies” and provincial clubs throughout the whole country. They also
formed “revolutionary armies,” semimilitary bands that scoured the rural areas for food,
denounced suspects, and preached revolution.
As for the Convention, while it cannot be said to have had any commanding leaders,
the program it followed for about a year was on the whole that of Maximil-
ien Robespierre, himself a Jacobin but not one to go along forever with
popular revolution or anarchy. Robespierre is one of the most argued about
The Convention
under attack
Robespierre
44. The Emergency Republic, 1792–1795: The Terror
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution392
and least understood fi gures in history. Persons accustomed to stable conditions dismiss
him with a shudder as a bloodthirsty fanatic, dictator, and demagogue. Others have consid-
ered him an idealist, a visionary, and an ardent patriot whose goals and ideals were at least
avowedly democratic. All agree on his personal honesty and integrity and on his revolu-
tionary zeal. He was by origin a lawyer from northern France, educated with the aid of
scholarships in Paris. He had been elected in 1789 to sit for the Third Estate in the Estates
General, and in the ensuing Constituent Assembly played a minor role, though calling
attention to himself by his views against capital punishment and in favor of universal suf-
frage. During the time of the Legislative Assembly, in 1791–1792, he continued to agitate
for democracy and vainly pleaded against the declaration of war. In the Convention,
elected in September 1792, he sat for a Paris constituency. He became a prominent mem-
ber of the Mountain and welcomed the purge of the Girondins. He had always kept free of
the bribery and graft in which some others became involved and for this reason was known
as the Incorruptible. He was a great believer in the importance of “virtue,” a term that the
philosophes had used in a specialized way. Both Montesquieu and Rousseau, for example,
A wave of popular violence in Paris in 1792 led to the fall of the monarchy and the procla- mation of a new French republic. Angry crowds pulled down the symbols of the old regime, including this statue of Louis XIV. (akg-images/Newscom)
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393
had held that republics depended upon virtue, or unselfi sh public spirit and civic zeal,
to which was added, under Rousseauist infl uence, a somewhat sentimentalized idea of
personal uprightness and purity of life. Robespierre was determined, in 1793 and 1794, to
bring about a democratic republic made up of good, virtuous, and honest citizens.
The P rogram of the Convention, 1793–1794: The Terror
The program of the Convention, which Robespierre helped to form, was to repress anar-
chy, civil strife, and counterrevolution at home and to win the war by a great national
mobilization of the country’s people and resources. It would prepare a democratic consti-
tution and initiate legislation for the lower classes, but it would not yield to the Paris Com-
mune and other agencies of direct revolutionary action. To conduct the government, the
Convention granted wide powers to a Committee of Public Safety, a group of 12 members
of the Convention who were reelected every month. Robespierre was an infl uential mem-
ber; others were the youthful St. Just, the militant lawyer Couthon, and the army offi cer
Carnot, “organizer of victory.”
To repress the “counterrevolution,” the Convention and the Committee
of Public Safety set up what is popularly known as the “Reign of Terror.”
Revolutionary courts were instituted as an alternative to the lynch law of
the September massacres. A Committee of General Security was created as a kind of
supreme political police. Designed to protect the Revolutionary Republic from its internal
enemies, the Terror struck at those who were in league against the Republic and at those
who were merely suspected of hostile activities. Its victims ranged from Marie Antoinette
and other royalists to numerous early supporters of the Revolution, including the Girondin
leaders and women such as Olympe de Gouges. Before the year 1793–1794 was over,
some of the old Jacobins of the Mountain who had helped inaugurate the Terror also went
to the guillotine.
Many thousands of people died in France at the height of the Revolution. Most deaths
were in places that had openly revolted against the Convention, as in the Vendée in western
France. Some resulted from acts of private vengeance. But if the Terror is understood to
mean the offi cial program of the government, which at one time decreed “terror the order
of the day,” the number who died in it was not large by the brutal standards of the twentieth
century, in which dictatorial governments attempted to wipe out not only their political
opponents but whole social classes or ethnic groups. About 40,000 persons perished in the
Terror thus defi ned, and many others were temporarily imprisoned. About 8 percent of the
victims of the “offi cial” Terror were nobles, but nobles as a class were not
molested unless suspected of political agitation; 14 percent of the victims
were classifi able as bourgeois, mainly of the rebellious southern cities; 6
percent were clergy, while no less than 70 percent were of the peasant and
laboring classes. A democratic republic, founded on the Declaration of the
Rights of Man, was in principle to follow the Terror after the war and the national emer-
gency were over. Meanwhile, however, in 1793–1794, the Terror evolved into a kind of self-
perpetuating revolutionary violence that was inhumane, expansive, irrational, and in some
places a method for mass killings, as at Nantes, where 2,000 persons were loaded on barges
and deliberately drowned. The Terror left long memories in France and created much of
the enduring antipathy to the Revolution and to republicanism.
To conduct the government in the midst of the war emergency the
Committee of Public Safety operated as a joint dictatorship and war cabinet.
It prepared and guided legislation through the Convention. It gained control
The “Reign of Terror”
Victims of the
“Terror”
The Committee of
Public Safety
44. The Emergency Republic, 1792–1795: The Terror
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution394
over the “representatives on mission,” who were members of the Convention on duty with
the armies and in the insurgent areas of France. It established the Bulletin des loix, so that all persons might know what laws they were supposed to enforce or to obey. It central-
ized the administration, converting the swarm of locally elected offi cials left over from the
Constituent Assembly (who were royalists in some places, wild extremists, in others) into
centrally appointed “national agents” named by the Committee of Public Safety.
To win the war the Committee proclaimed the levée en masse, calling on all able- bodied men to join the army and all other French citizens to serve the revolutionary nation
in whatever ways they could. It recruited scientists to work on armaments and muni-
tions. The most prominent French scientists of the day, including Lagrange and Lamarck,
worked for or were protected by the government of the Terror, though one, Lavoisier,
“father of modern chemistry,” was guillotined in 1794 because he had been involved in
tax farming before 1789. For military reasons also the Committee instituted economic
controls, which at the same time met the demands of the enragés and other working-class spokesmen. The value of the assignats ceased to fall during the year of the Terror. Thus the government protected both its own purchasing power and that of the masses. It did
so by controlling the export of gold, by confi scating specie and foreign currency from
French citizens, to whom it paid assignats in return, and by legislation against hoarding
or the withholding of goods from the market. Food and supplies for the armies, and for
civilians in the towns, were raised and allocated by a system of requisitions, centralized in
a Subsistence Commission under the Committee of Public Safety. A “general maximum”
set ceilings for prices and wages. It helped to check infl ation during the crisis, but it did
not work very well; the Committee believed, in principle, in a free market economy and
lacked the technical and administrative machinery to enforce thorough controls. By 1794
it was giving freer rein to private enterprise and to the peasants to encourage production.
It tried also to hold down wages and in that respect lost the adherence of many working-
class leaders.
In June 1793 the Committee produced, and the Convention adopted, a republican con-
stitution that provided for universal male suffrage. But the new constitution was suspended
indefi nitely, and the government was declared “revolutionary until the peace,” “revolution-
ary” meaning extraconstitutional or of an emergency character. In other ways the Com-
mittee showed intentions of legislating on behalf of the lower economic classes. The price
controls and other economic regulations answered the demands of the sans-culottes. The
last of the manorial regime was done away with; the peasants were relieved of having
to pay compensation for the obligations that had been abolished at the opening of the
Revolution. The Committee busied itself also with social services and measures of public
improvement. It issued pamphlets to teach farmers to improve their crops, selected prom-
ising youths to receive instruction in useful trades, opened a military school for boys of
all classes, even the humblest, and certainly intended to introduce universal elementary
education.
It was also at this time, in 1794, that the National C onvention decreed the abolition of
slavery in the French colonies, meaning chiefl y Saint-Domingue, the modern Haiti, the
richest of all the sugar islands in the Caribbean. Free blacks in the colonies
had already received civic rights earlier in the Revolution; and the enslaved
black plantation workers had in fact already liberated themselves in a mas-
sive rebellion that spread across Saint-Domingue in 1791. The revolution-
ary government in Paris sent new representatives to manage affairs in the
colony, but these commissioners needed the support of emancipated black fi ghters to
Slavery abolished in
French colonies
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395
suppress both the counterrevolutionary white colonists and the English forces that invaded
the island in the fall of 1793. The Jacobin commissioners therefore abolished slavery in
Saint-Domingue even before the National Convention acted to abolish slavery in the wider
French Empire. The revolution in Saint-Domingue and the expulsion of foreign armies
thus depended on increasingly autonomous black military commanders, one of whom was
the once-enslaved Toussaint Louverture. In the months after the revolutionary govern-
ment’s offi cial abolition of slavery, Louverture became a general in the French army that
drove the Spanish and British from Saint-Domingue.
Amid the ensuing political and military confl icts Louverture became France’s
governor-general in the colony, but his new government soon broke away from all
French control. Under pressure from the slave-owning and commercial interests (and the
European demand for sugar) the government of Napoleon in 1802 reestablished slav-
ery in the French colonies and sent about 40,000 troops to reassert French authority in
Saint-Domingue. The French captured Louverture and took him to France, where he died
in prison. Other military leaders launched a new campaign for independence, however, and
the French army was unable to defeat the armed rebellion of the mobilized black popula-
tion. Most of the French troops on the island died in the fi ghting or perished of yellow
fever, and the few survivors abandoned their operations late in 1803—becoming the fi rst
Napoleonic army to suffer a decisive military defeat after Bonaparte had seized political
power. Haitian leaders, in 1804, established an independent Republic of Haiti, which also
became the Atlantic world’s fi rst postcolonial nation to abolish slavery. An unexpected
consequence of the French defeat in Haiti was that Napoleon sold the remaining French
possessions on the North American mainland (“Louisiana”) to the United States in 1803.
Slavery was not effectively abolished in the French colonies until a later revolution
in 1848.
At the climax of the Revolution within France itself, in 1793–1794, the Committee
of Public Safety was determined to concentrate revolutionary initiative in itself. It had no
patience with unauthorized revolutionary violence. With its own plan for a democratic
program, it disapproved of the turbulent democracy of popular clubs and local assem-
blies. In the fall of 1793, at the time of its prohibition of revolutionary women’s organiza-
tions, the Committee arrested the leading enragés. Extreme revolutionary demands were expressed by Jacques Hébert, a journalist and offi cer of the Paris Commune. Robespierre
called such people “ultra revolutionaries.” They were a large and indefi nable group and
included many radical members of the Convention. They indiscriminately denounced
merchants and bourgeoisie. They were the party of extreme Terror; an Hébertist brought
about the mass drownings at Nantes. Believing all religion to be counterrevolutionary,
they launched the movement of Dechristianization and strongly supported the creation of a
new republican calendar. The Convention adopted this calendar as part of its campaign to
strengthen popular allegiance to the republic and to establish a new national organization
of daily life that would replace the Christian cycle of Sundays, saints’ days, and holidays
such as Christmas and Easter. The new calendar thus counted years from the founding of
the French Republic, divided each year into new months of 30 days each, and even abol-
ished the week, which it replaced with the 10-day décade. 1
1 Though not adopted until October 1793, the revolutionary calendar dated the Year I of the French Republic
from September 22, 1792. The names of the months, in order and corresponding to the seasons of the year, were
Vendémiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire (autumn); Nivôse, Pluviôse, Ventôse (winter); Germinal, Floréal, Prairial
(spring); Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor (summer).
44. The Emergency Republic, 1792–1795: The Terror
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution396
Dechristianization also c ontributed to the development of the cult of
reason, which sprang up all over France at the end of 1793. In Paris the
Commune put on ceremonies in the cathedral of Notre Dame, in which Rea-
son was impersonated by an actress who was the wife of one of the city offi -
cials. But Dechristianization was severely frowned upon by Robespierre. He believed that
it would alienate the masses from the Republic and ruin such sympathy as was still felt for
the Revolution abroad. The Committee of Public Safety, therefore, ordered the toleration
of peaceable Catholics, and in June 1794 Robespierre introduced the cult of the Supreme
Being, a deistic natural religion, in which the Republic was declared to recognize the exis-
tence of God and the immortality of the soul. Robespierre hoped that both Catholics and
agnostic anticlericals could become reconciled on this ground. But Catholics were now
beyond reconciliation, and the freethinkers, appealing to the tradition of Voltaire, regarded
Robespierre as a reactionary mystery monger and would become instrumental in bringing
about his fall.
Meanwhile the Committee proceeded relentlessly against the Hébertists, whose main
champions it sent to the guillotine in March 1794. The paramilitary “revolutionary armies”
were suppressed. The extreme Terrorists were recalled from the provinces. The revolution-
ary Paris Commune was destroyed. Robespierre fi lled the municipal offi ces of Paris with
his own appointees. This Robespierrist commune disapproved of strikes and tried to hold
down wages, on the plea of military necessity; it failed to win over the ex-Hébertists and
working-class leaders, who became disillusioned with the Revolution and dismissed it as a
movement that no longer served their interests. Probably to prevent just such a conclusion,
and to avoid the appearance of deviation to the Right, Robespierre and the Committee,
after liquidating the left-wing Hébertists, also liquidated certain right-wing members of the
Mountain who were known as Dantonists. Danton and his followers were accused of
fi nancial dishonesty and of dealing with counterrevolutionaries; the charges contained
some truth but were not the main reason for the executions.
By the spring of 1794 the French Republic possessed an army of 800,000 men, the
largest ever raised up to that time by a European power. It was a national army represent-
ing a people in arms, commanded by offi cers who had been promoted rapidly on grounds
of merit and composed of troops who felt themselves to be citizens fi ghting for their own
cause. Its intense political-mindedness made it the more formidable and contrasted strongly
with the indifference of the opposing troops, some of whom were in fact serfs and none of
whom had any sense of membership in their own political systems. The Allied govern-
ments, each pursuing its own ends and still distracted by their ambitions in Poland, where
the third partition was impending, could not combine their forces against
France. In June 1794 the French won the battle of Fleurus in Belgium. The
Republican hosts again streamed into the Low Countries; in six months
their calvary rode into Amsterdam on the ice. A revolutionary Batavian
Republic soon replaced the old Dutch provinces; but the opposite was
occurring at this time in eastern Europe, where Russian and Prussian armies stamped out
the attempted revolution that Kosciusko led in Poland. All Polish lands and people were
fi nally merged into the eastern European empires in 1795.
Military success made the French less willing to put up with the dictatorial rule and
economic regimentation of the Terror. Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety
had antagonized all signifi cant parties. The working-class radicals of Paris would no lon-
ger support him, and after the death of Danton the National Convention was
afraid of its own ruling committee. A group in the Convention obtained
the “outlawing” of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794); he was
Revolutionary
military victories
Fall of Robespierre
The Revolution and
religion
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397
guillotined with some of his associates on the following day. Many who turned against
Robespierre believed they were pushing the Revolution farther forward, as in destroying
the Girondins the year before. Others thought, or said, that they were stopping a dictator
and a tyrant. All agreed, to absolve themselves, in heaping all blame for the recent revolu-
tionary excesses upon Robespierre. The idea that Robespierre was an ogre originated more
with his former colleagues than with conservatives of the time.
The Thermidorian Reaction
The fall of Robespierre stunned the country, but its effects manifested themselves during
the following months as the “Thermidorian reaction.” The Terror subsided. The Conven-
tion reduced the powers of the Committee of Public Safety, and it closed the Jacobin club.
The French army won a great victory at the battle of Fleurus in June 1794, thus opening the way for republican troops to enter the Low Countries and easing the external threats that had pushed the Revolution toward internal repression and the Terror. This picture shows how the French used a balloon to observe enemy forces during the battle, but the results must have been disappointing, because balloons were not thereafter used by either side. (The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY)
44. The Emergency Republic, 1792–1795: The Terror
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution398
Price controls and other regulations were removed. Infl ation resumed its course, prices
again rose, and the disoriented and leaderless working classes suffered more than ever.
Sporadic uprisings broke out, of which the greatest was the insurrection of Prairial in the
Year III (May 1795), when a mob all but dispersed the Convention by force. Troops were
called to Paris for the fi rst time since 1789. Insurrectionists in the working-class quarters
threw up barricades in the streets. The army prevailed without much bloodshed, but the
Convention arrested, imprisoned, or deported 10,000 of the insurgents. A few organizers
were guillotined. The affair of Prairial gave a foretaste of modern social revolution.
The triumphant element after 1794 consisted mostly of the bourgeois
or professional classes of the former Third Estate, which had guided the
Revolution since the Constituent Assembly and had not been really
unseated even during the Terror. It was not mainly a bourgeoisie of modern
capitalists, eager to make a fi nancial profi t by developing new factories or
Politics and society
after Thermidor
The guillotine was used during the most radical phase of the Revolution to execute persons judged to be enemies of the republic. First adopted as a more humane way of infl icting capital punishment, it became a permanent symbol of revolutionary violence, and it claimed victims from every part of the Revolution itself. This picture illustrates the execution of Robespierre and four others who were denounced as conspirators against liberty and sent to the guillotine in July 1794. (Bettmann/Corbis)
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399
Historical Interpretations and Debates
The Political and Social Signifi cance of the French Revolution
Historians have proposed numerous and often confl icting political, economic, social, and cultural explanations to describe the historical signifi cance of the French Revolution—though most agree that the Revolution contributed decisively to the emergence of modern European institutions and ideas. The infl uential interpretations of Albert Soboul and Lynn Hunt exem- plify different economic and political explanations for the historical meaning of the Revolution and suggest why the debate about the French Revolution never ends.
Albert Soboul, The Parisian Sans- Culottes and the French Revolution, 1793–4 (1959) We need to remember that the Revolution
was fundamentally a struggle between the
European aristocracy and the Third Estate
as a whole. In this struggle, it is hardly
surprising that the French bourgeoisie
should have played the leading role. The
Revolutionary Government, founded upon an
alliance between the Montagnard bourgeoisie
and the Parisian sans-culotterie, had been
given the task of defending the Revolution
against the aristocracy both within France
and beyond her borders. . . .
Without the Parisian sans-culotterie, the
bourgeoisie could not have triumphed in so
radical a fashion. . . .
The success of the popular movement
. . . led to the organization of the Terror
which struck such an irreparable blow to the
old social order. The upper bourgeoisie of
the ancien régime, founded on commercial capital and linked in some ways with the
old social and political system of the feudal
aristocracy, failed to survive the upheaval
. . . The Terror had cleared the way for
the introduction of new relationships of
production. In the capitalist society born
of the Revolution, industry was destined
to dominate commerce: the function of
commercial capital, against which the
sans-culottes had fought so bitterly in the
Year II, would be subordinated henceforth
to the sole productive form of capital—
industrial capital.
Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (1984) The Revolution showed how much
everything depended on politics. . . . The
structure of the polity changed under the
impact of increasing political participation
and popular mobilization; political language,
political ritual, and political organization all
took on new forms and meanings. . . .
Revolutionary political culture
cannot be deduced from social structures,
social confl icts, or the social identity of
revolutionaries. Political practices were
not simply the expression of “underlying”
economic and social interests. Through
their language, images, and daily political
activities, revolutionaries worked to
reconstitute society and social relations. . . .
The chief accomplishment of the
French Revolution was the institution of
a dramatically new political culture. The
revolution did not startle its contemporaries
because it laid the foundations for capitalist
development or political modernization. . . .
Revolution in France contributed little to
economic growth or to political stabilization.
What it did establish, however, was
the mobilizing potential of democratic
republicanism and the compelling intensity
of revolutionary change. The language
of national regeneration, the gestures of
equality and fraternity, and the rituals of
republicanism were not soon forgotten.
Democracy, terror, Jacobinism, and the
police state all became recurrent features
of political life.
Sources: Albert Soboul, The Parisian Sans-Culottes and the French Revolution, 1793–4 , translated by Gwynne Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 249, 260–261: Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 2, 12, 15.
44. The Emergency Republic, 1792–1795: The Terror
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution400
machinery. The political victors after Thermidor were bourgeois in an older social sense,
those who had not been noble or aristocratic before 1789 yet had held secure positions
under the Old Regime, many of them lawyers or offi ceholders and often drawing income
from the ownership of land. There were also new elements produced by the Revolution
itself, parvenus and nouveaux riches, who had made money by wartime government con- tracts or had profi ted by infl ation or by buying up former church lands at bargain prices.
Such people, often joined by former aristocrats, and in reaction against Robespierrist virtue,
set an extravagant and ostentatious style of living that gave a bad name to the new order.
They also unleashed a “white terror” in which many ex-Jacobins were simply murdered.
But the Thermidorians, disreputable though a few of them were, had not lost faith
in the Revolution. Democracy they associated with red terror and mob rule, but they still
believed in individual legal rights and in a written constitution. Conditions were rather
adverse, for the country was still unsettled, and although the Convention made a sepa-
rate peace with Spain and Prussia, France still remained at war with Great Britain and
the Habsburg Empire. But the members of the Convention were still determined to make
another attempt at constitutional government. They set aside the democratic constitution
written in 1793 (and never used) and produced the Constitution of the Year III, which went
into effect at the end of 1795.
45. THE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC: THE DIRECTORY, 1795–1799
The Weakness of the Directory
The fi rst formally constituted French Republic, known as the Directory, lasted only four
years. It was politically weak and vulnerable because it rested on an extremely narrow
social base and it presupposed certain military conquests. The new constitution applied not
only to France but also to Belgium, which was now regarded as incorpo-
rated constitutionally into France, though the Habsburgs had not yet ceded
these “Austrian Netherlands,” nor had the British agreed to accept French
occupation. The constitution of 1795 thus committed the republic to a pro-
gram of successful expansion. At the same time it restricted the politically
active class. It gave almost all adult males the vote, but they voted only for “electors.” Per-
sons chosen as electors were usually men of some means, able to give their time and will-
ing to take part in public life; this in effect meant men of the upper middle class, because
the old nobility was disaffected. The electors chose all important department offi cials and
also the members of the national Legislative Assembly, which this time was divided into
two chambers. The lower chamber was called the Council of Five Hundred; the upper,
composed of 250 members, the Council of Ancients—“ancients” being those over 40.
The chambers chose the executive, which was called the Directory (from which the whole
regime took its name) and was made up of fi ve Directors.
The government was thus constitutionally in the hands of substantial property owners,
rural and urban, but its real base was narrower still. In the reaction after Thermidor many
people began to consider restoring the monarchy. The Convention, to protect its own mem-
bers, had ruled that two-thirds of the men initially elected to the Council of Five Hundred
and Council of Ancients must be ex-members of the Convention. This interference with
the freedom of the elections provoked serious disturbances in Paris, instigated mainly by
royalists. The Convention, having now accustomed itself to using the army, instructed a
young general named Bonaparte, who happened to be in Paris, to put down the royalist
The constitution of
1795
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40145. The Constitutional Republic: The Directory, 1795–1799
mob. He did so with a “whiff of grapeshot.” The new constitutional republic thus made
itself dependent on military protection at the outset.
The regime had enemies to both Right and Left. On the Right, undisguised royalists
agitated in Paris and even in the two councils; and they were in continuous touch with the
late king’s brother, the Count of Provence, whom they regarded as Louis XVIII (Louis
XVI’s son, who died in prison, was counted as Louis XVII). Louis XVIII had installed
himself at Verona in Italy, where he headed a propaganda agency fi nanced largely by
British money. The worst obstacle to the resurgence of royalism in France was Louis
XVIII himself. In 1795, on assuming the title, he had issued a Declaration of Verona, in
which he announced his intention to restore the Old Regime and punish all involved in
the Revolution back to 1789. It has been said, correctly enough in this connection, that
the Bourbons “learned nothing and forgot nothing.” Had Louis XVIII offered in 1795
what he offered in 1814, it is quite conceivable that his partisans in France might have
brought about his restoration and terminated the war. As it was, the majority of the French
adhered not exactly to the republic as set up in 1795, but to any system that would shut
out the Bourbons and privileged nobility, prevent a reimposition of the manorial system,
and secure the new landowners, peasant and bourgeois, in the possession of the church
properties that they had purchased.
The Left was made up of persons from various levels of society who still favored the
more democratic ideas expressed earlier in the Revolution. Some of them thought that
the fall of Robespierre had been a great misfortune. A tiny group of extremists formed
the Conspiracy of Equals, organized in 1796 by “Gracchus” Babeuf. His intention was
to overthrow the Directory and replace it with a dictatorial government in which private
property would be abolished and equality would be decreed. For these ideas, and for his
activist program, he has been regarded as a political precursor to modern communism. The
Directory repressed the Conspiracy of Equals without diffi culty and guillotined Babeuf
and one other. Meanwhile it did nothing to relieve the distress of the lower classes, who
showed little inclination to follow Babeuf even though they suffered from the ravages of
scarcity and infl ation.
The Political Crisis of 1797
In March 1797 occurred the fi rst really free election ever held in France under republican
auspices. The successful candidates were for the most part constitutional monarchists or at
least vaguely royalist. A change of the balance within the Five Hundred and the Ancients,
in favor of royalism, seemed to be impending. This was precisely what most of the repub-
licans of 1793, including the regicides, could not endure, even though they had to violate
the constitution to prevent it. Nor was it endurable, for other reasons, to General Napoleon
Bonaparte.
Bonaparte was born in 1769 into the minor nobility of Corsica, shortly
after the annexation of Corsica to France. He had studied in French military
schools and been commissioned in the Bourbon army but would never have
reached high rank under the conditions of the Old Regime. In 1793 he was a fervent young
Jacobin offi cer who had served the revolutionary cause by driving the British from Toulon
and who was consequently made a brigadier general by the government of the Terror. In
1795, as noted, he rendered valuable service to the Convention by breaking up a demon-
stration of royalists. In 1796 he received command of an army, with which, in two brilliant
campaigns, he crossed the Alps and drove the Austrians from north Italy. Like other gener-
als he soon became independent from the government in Paris, which was fi nancially too
Napoleon Bonaparte
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution402
harassed to pay his troops or to supply him. He lived by local requisitions in Italy, became
self-supporting, and in fact made the civilian government in Paris dependent on him.
He developed a foreign policy of his own. Many Italians had become dissatisfi ed with
their old governments, so that the arrival of the French republican armies threw north
Italy into turmoil. The Venetian cities revolted against Venice, Bologna against the pope,
Milan against Austria, and in Piedmont the Savoy monarchy was threatened by uprisings
of its own subjects. Combining with some of these revolutionaries, while rejecting others,
Bonaparte established a “Cisalpine” Republic in the Po Valley, modeled on the French
system, with Milan as its capital. Where the Directory, on the whole, had originally meant
to return Milan to the Austrians in compensation for Austrian recognition of the French
conquest of Belgium, Bonaparte insisted that France hold its position in both Belgium and
Italy. He therefore needed expansionist republicans in the government in Paris and was
perturbed by the royalist victories in the elections of 1797.
The Austrians negotiated with Bonaparte because they had been beaten by him in
battle. The British also, in conferences with the French at Lille, discussed peace in 1796
and 1797. The war had gone badly for England; a party of Whigs led by Charles James Fox
had always openly disapproved it, and the pro-French and republican radicals were so
active that the government suspended habeas corpus in 1794, and thereafter imprisoned
political agitators at its discretion. Crops were bad and bread was scarce and costly.
England too suffered from infl ation, for Pitt at fi rst fi nanced the war by extensive loans,
and a good deal of gold was shipped to the Continent to fi nance the Allied armies. In
February 1797 the Bank of England suspended gold payments to private citizens. Famine
threatened, the populace was restless, and there were even mutinies in the fl eet. Ireland was
in rebellion; the French came close to landing a republican army there, and it could be sup-
posed that the next attempt might be more successful. The Austrians, Britain’s only remain-
ing ally, had been routed by Bonaparte, and at the moment the British could subsidize them
no further. The British had every reason to make peace.
Prospects for peace therefore seemed good in the summer of 1797, but,
as always, it would be peace upon certain conditions. It was the royalists in
France that were the peace party, because a restored king could easily return
the conquests of the republic and would in any case abandon the new republics in Holland
and the Po Valley. The republicans in the French government could make peace with diffi -
culty, if at all. They were constitutionally bound to retain Belgium. They were losing control
of their own generals. Nor could the supreme question be evaded: Was peace dear enough to
purchase by a return of the Old Regime, such as Louis XVIII had himself
promised?
The c oup d’état of Fructidor (September 4, 1797) was a forceful
attempt to resolve all these internal and external issues. It was the turning
point for France’s constitutional republic, and it became a decisive event for
all Europe. The Directory asked for help from Bonaparte, who sent one of his generals,
Augereau, to Paris. While Augereau stood by with a force of soldiers, the councils annulled
most of the elections of the preceding spring. On the whole, it was the old republicans of the
Convention who secured themselves in power. Their justifi cation was that they were defend-
ing the revolution, keeping out Louis XVIII and the Old Regime. But to do so they had vio-
lated their own constitution and quashed the fi rst free election ever held in a constitutional
French republic. And they had become more than ever dependent on the army.
After the coup d’état the “Fructidorian” government broke off negotiations with England.
With Austria it signed the treaty of Campo Formio on October 17, 1797, incorporating
Prospects for peace
The coup d’état of
Fructidor
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403
Bonaparte’s ideas. By the new treaty Austria recognized the French annexation of Belgium
(the former Austrian Netherlands), the French right to incorporate the Left Bank of the
Rhine, and the French-dominated Cisalpine Republic in Italy. In return, Bonaparte allowed
the Austrians to annex Venice and most of mainland Venetia.
In the following months, under French auspices, revolutionary repub-
licanism spread rapidly through much of Italy, creating new republics with
classical names. The old patrician republic of Genoa turned into a Ligurian
Republic on the French model. At Rome the pope was deposed from his
temporal power and a Roman Republic was established. In southern Italy a Neapolitan
Republic, also called Parthenopean, was set up. In Switzerland at the same time, Swiss
reformers cooperated with the French to create a new Helvetic Republic.
The Left Bank of the Rhine, in the atomistic Holy Roman Empire, was occupied by
a great many German princes who now had to vacate their lands. The treaty of Campo
Formio provided that they be compensated by church territories in Germany east of the
Rhine and that France have a hand in the redistribution. The German princes turned greedy
eyes on the German bishops and abbots, and the almost 1,000-year-old empire, hardly
more than a solemn political abstraction since the Peace of Westphalia, sank to the level
of a land rush or real estate speculation, while France became involved in the territorial
reconstruction of Germany.
Revolutionary
republicanism spreads
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1789–1804
May 1789 Estates General convenes at Versailles
June 1789 The Third Estate declares itself to be the National Assembly
July 1789 Crowd assaults and captures the Bastille fortress in Paris
August 1789 National Assembly issues “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen”
and abolishes “feudal privileges”
September 1791 New French Constitution establishes a constitutional monarchy
April 1791 France declares war on Austria and Prussia
September 1792 New National Convention meets in Paris; France becomes a republic
January 1793 King Louis XVI is executed in Paris
1793–1794 The Radical Revolution and the Reign of Terror
July 1794 Robespierre and his Jacobin allies are executed
1795–1799 Republic called “the Directory” governs France and sends armies to
spread revolutionary republicanism in Europe
November 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte seizes power in a coup d’état
1799–1804 Napoleon is “First Consul” in French government called the Consulate;
laws are codifi ed in Napoleonic Code
1801 Napoleon’s Concordat with the Roman Catholic Church
1803–1804 Independent Republic of Haiti is established after French forces are
defeated in Saint-Domingue
1804 France becomes an empire under Emperor Napoleon I
45. The Constitutional Republic: The Directory, 1795–1799
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution404
THE FRENCH REPUBLIC AND ITS SATELLITES, 1798–1799 By 1799 the French Republic had annexed Belgium (the Austrian Netherlands) and the small German bishoprics and principalities west of the Rhine, and had created, with the aid of native sympathizers, a string of lesser revolutionary republics in the Dutch Netherlands, Switzerland, and most of Italy. With the treaty of Campo Formio between France and Austria in 1797, the Holy Roman Empire began to disintegrate, for the German princes of the Left Bank of the Rhine, who were dispossessed when their territories went to France, began to be compensated with territory of the church-states of the Holy Roman Empire. These developments were car- ried further by Napoleon (see map, p. 423).
N o r t h S e a
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
A driatic Sea
Seine R.
R h
ô n
e R
.
P o R.
R h
in e
R .
Danube R.
B a l t i c S e a
Loire R
.
F R A N C E
OTHER GERMAN STATES
A U S T R I A
CORSICA
SARDINIA
SPAIN
P R U S S I ABATAVIAN REPUBLIC
HELVETIC REPUBLIC
PI ED
M O
N T
SAVOY
LIGURIAN REPUBLIC
TUSCANY
ROMAN REPUBLIC
PARTHENOPEAN REPUBLIC
(1799)
BELGIUM (ANNEXED 1795) R
H IN
ELA N
D
B A
D EN
CISALPINE REPUBLIC
RUGEN
S I L E S I A
ENGLAND IO
N IA
N I.
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Paris
Rome
Marseille
Venice
Versailles
Varennes
Lille
Lunéville
Avignon
Fleurus
Basel
Milan
Marengo
Genoa
Nice
Verona
Campo Formio
Pillnitz
Hamburg
Berlin
Vienna Budapest
French Republic 1798
Dependent Republics 1798
Church States to be Absorbed by Other German States
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40546. The Authoritarian Republic: The Consulate, 1799–1804
The Coup d’État of 1799: Bonaparte
After Fructidor the idea of maintaining the republic as a free or constitutional government
was given up. There were more uprisings, more quashed elections, more purgings both to
Left and Right. The Directory turned into an ineffective dictatorship. It repudiated most of
the assignats and the debt but failed to restore fi nancial confi dence or stability. Guerrilla
activity fl ared up again in the Vendée and other parts of western France. The religious
schism became more acute; the Directory had to take severe measures toward the refrac-
tory clergy.
Meanwhile Bonaparte waited for the situation to ripen. Returning from Italy a con-
quering hero, he was assigned to command the army in training to invade England. He
concluded that invasion was premature and decided to strike indirectly at England, by
threatening India in a spectacular invasion of Egypt. In 1798, outwitting the British fl eet,
he landed a French army at the mouth of the Nile. Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire,
and the French occupation of Egyptian territories alarmed the Russians, who had their own
designs on the Middle East. The Austrians objected to the French rearrangement of
Germany. A year and a half after the treaty of Campo Formio, Austria, Russia, and Great
Britain formed an alliance known as the Second Coalition. The French Republic was again
involved in a general war. And the war went unfavorably, for in August 1798 the British
fl eet cut off the French army in Egypt by winning the battle of the Nile (or Aboukir), in
October the people of Cairo rose in revolt against the French occupation of Egypt, and by
1799 Russian forces, under Marshal Suvorov, were operating as far west as Switzerland
and north Italy, where the Cisalpine Republic went down in ruin.
Recognizing the multiple threats to France’s revolutionary Republic, General
Bonaparte decided that his opportunity had now come. He left his army in
Egypt and, slipping through the British fl eet, reappeared unexpectedly in
France. He found that certain civilian leaders in the Directory were plan-
ning a change. They included Sieyès, of whom little had been heard since
he wrote What Is the Third Estate? in 1789, but who had sat in the Conven- tion and voted for the death of Louis XVI. Sieyès’ formula was now “confi dence from
below, authority from above”—what he now wanted of the people was acquiescence, and
of the government, power to act. This group was looking about for a general, and their
choice fell on the sensational young Bonaparte, who was still only 30. Dictatorship by an
army offi cer was repugnant to most republicans of the Five Hundred and the Ancients.
Bonaparte, Sieyès, and their followers therefore resorted to force, executing the coup
d’état of Brumaire (November 9, 1799), in which armed soldiers drove the legislators
from the chambers. They proclaimed a new form of the republic, which Bonaparte entitled
the Consulate. It was headed by three consuls, with Bonaparte as the First Consul.
46. THE AUTHORITARIAN REPUBLIC: THE CONSULATE, 1799–1804
The next chapter takes up the affairs of Europe as a whole in the time of Napoleon
Bonaparte, the purpose at present being only to tell how he closed, in a way, the Revolu-
tion in France.
It happened that the French Republic, in falling into the hands of a
general, fell also to a man whom many of his contemporaries and some
later historians viewed as a “genius” or “great man” in European history.
Bonaparte was a short man who would never have looked impressive in civilian clothing.
The Directory turns
to Bonaparte
Napoleon’s “genius”
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution406
His manners were rather coarse; he lost his temper, cheated at cards, and pinched people by
the ear in a kind of formidable play—he was no “gentleman.” A child of the Enlightenment
and the Revolution, he was entirely emancipated not only from customary ideas but from
moral scruples as well. He regarded the world as a fl ux to be formed by his own mind. He
had an exalted belief in his own destinies, which became more mystical and exaggerated as
the years went on. He claimed to follow his “star.” His ideas of the good and the beautiful
lacked nuance, but he was a man of extraordinary intellectual capacity, which impressed
all with whom he came in contact. “Never speak unless you know you are the ablest man
in the room,” he once advised his stepson, on making him viceroy of Italy, a maxim that, if
he followed it himself, still allowed him to do most of the talking. His interests ran to solid
subjects, history, law, military science, public administration. His mind was tenacious and
perfectly orderly; he once declared that it was like a chest of drawers, which he could open
or close at will, forgetting any subject when its drawer was closed and fi nding it ready with
all necessary detail when its drawer was opened. He had all the masterful qualities associ-
ated with leadership; he could dazzle and captivate those who had any inclination to follow
him at all. Some of the most humane men of the day, including Goethe and Beethoven
in Germany, and Lazare Carnot among the former revolutionary leaders, at fi rst looked
on him with high approval. He inspired confi dence by his crisp speech, rapid decisions,
and quick grasp of complex problems when they were newly presented to him. He was,
or seemed, just what many people in France were looking for after ten years of upheaval.
Under the Consulate France reverted to a form of enlightened despotism, and
Bonaparte may be thought of as the last and most eminent of the enlightened despots.
Despotic the new regime undoubtedly was from the start. Self-government through elected
bodies was ruthlessly pushed aside. Bonaparte delighted in affi rming the sovereignty of the
people; but to his mind the people were a sovereign, like Voltaire’s God, who somehow
created the world but never thereafter interfered in it. He clearly saw that a government’s
authority was greater when it was held to represent the entire nation. In the weeks after
Brumaire he assured himself of a popular mandate by devising a written constitution and
submitting it to a general referendum or “plebiscite.” The voters could take it—or nothing.
They took it by a majority offi cially reported as 3,011,007 to 1,562.
The new constitution set up a make-believe of parliamentary institu-
tions. It provided for universal male suffrage, but the citizens merely chose
“notables” who were then appointed by the government itself to public posi-
tion. The notables had no powers of their own. They were merely available
for appointment to offi ce. They might sit in a Legislative Body, where they
could neither initiate nor discuss legislation but only mutely reject or enact it. There was
also a Tribunate that discussed public policies but had no enacting powers. There was a
Conservative Senate, which had rights of appointment of notables to offi ce (“patronage” in
American terms) and in which numerous storm-tossed regicides found a haven. The main
agency in the new government was the Council of State, imitated from the Old Regime; it
prepared the signifi cant legislation, often under the presidency of the First Consul himself,
who always gave the impression that he understood everything. The First Consul made all
the decisions and ran the state. The regime did not openly represent anybody, and that was
its strength, for it provoked the less opposition. In any case, the political machinery just
described fell rapidly into disuse.
Bonaparte entrenched himself also by promising and obtaining peace. The military
problem at the close of 1799 was much simplifi ed by the attitude of the Russians, who in
effect withdrew from the war with France. In the Italian theater Bonaparte had to deal only
with the Austrians, whom he again defeated, by again crossing the Alps, at the battle of
Bonaparte as First
Consul
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407
Marengo in June 1800. In February 1801 the Austrians signed the treaty of Lunéville, in
which the terms of Campo Formio were confi rmed. A year later, in March 1802, peace was
made even with Britain.
Peace was made also at home. Bonaparte kept internal order, partly by a secret politi-
cal police but especially through a powerful and centralized administrative machine in
which a “prefect,” under direct orders of the minister of the interior, ruled fi rmly over each
of the regional departments that the Constituent Assembly had created early in the Revo-
lution. The new government put down the guerrillas in the west. Its laws and taxes were
imposed on Brittany and the Vendée, and a new peace settled down on the factions left by
the Revolution. Bonaparte offered a general amnesty and invited back to France, with a
few exceptions, exiles of all stripes, from the fi rst aristocratic émigrés to the refugees and
deportees of the republican coups d’état. Requiring only that they work for him and stop
quarreling with each other, he picked reasonable men from all camps. His Second Consul
was Cambacérès, a regicide of the Terror; his Third Consul was Lebrun, who had been
Maupeou’s colleague in the days of Louis XV. Fouché emerged as minister of police; he
had been an Hébertist and extreme terrorist in 1793 and had done as much as anyone to
bring about the fall of Robespierre. Before 1789 he had been an obscure bourgeois pro-
fessor of physics. Talleyrand reappeared as minister of foreign affairs; he had spent the
Terror in safe seclusion in the United States, and his principles, if he had any, were those
of constitutional monarchy. Before 1789 he had been a bishop, and he descended from an
old and famous aristocratic lineage—no one who had not known the Old Regime, he once
said, could realize how pleasant it had been. Men of this kind were now willing, for a few
years beginning in 1800, to forget the past and work in common toward the future.
Disturbers of the new order the First Consul ruthlessly put down. Indeed, he concocted
alarms to make himself more welcome as a pillar of order. On Christmas Eve, 1800, on the
46. The Authoritarian Republic: The Consulate, 1799–1804
After repeatedly winning bat- tles against all the powers of Europe, Napoleon developed even more grandiose ideas of himself and the imperial power of France. This painting was completed in 1806 by Jacques- Louis David, the aging revolu- tionary whose work had once portrayed the Tennis Court Oath and the faces of com- mon people in Paris. Here he presents an idealized image of Napoleon as a young republi- can hero who crossed the Alps in 1800 to defeat the Austrians at the battle of Marengo. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution408
way to the opera, he was nearly killed by a bomb, or “infernal machine,” as people then
called such bombs. It had been set by royalists, but Bonaparte represented it as the work
of Jacobin conspiracy, being most afraid at the moment of some of the old republicans;
and over 100 former Jacobins were deported. Contrariwise, in 1804, he greatly exagger-
ated certain royalist plots against him, invaded the independent state of Baden, and there
arrested the Duke of Enghien, who was related to the Bourbons. Though he knew Enghien
to be innocent, he had him shot. His purpose now was to please the old Jacobins by stain-
ing his own hands with Bourbon blood; Fouché and the regicides concluded that they were
secure so long as Bonaparte was in power.
The Settlement with the Church; Other Reforms
For all but the most convinced royalists and republicans, reconciliation was made easier by
the establishment of peace with the church. Bonaparte himself was a pure eighteenth-century
rationalist. He regarded religion merely as a social convenience or as a useful component of
political order. But a Catholic revival was in full swing, and he saw its importance. The
refractory clergy were the spiritual force animating all forms of counterrevolution. “Fifty
émigré bishops, paid by England,” he once said, “lead the French clergy today. Their infl u-
ence must be destroyed. For this we need the authority of the pope.” Ignoring the horrifi ed
outcries of the old Jacobins, in 1801 he signed a concordat with the Vatican.
Both parties gained from the settlement. The autonomy of the prerevo-
lutionary Gallican Church came to an end. The pope received the right to
depose French bishops, because before the schism could be healed both
constitutional and refractory bishops had to be obliged to resign. The con-
stitutional or pro-revolutionary clergy came under the discipline of the Holy See. Publicity
of Catholic worship, in such forms as processions in the streets, was again allowed. Church
seminaries were again permitted. But Bonaparte and the heirs of the Revolution gained
even more. The pope, by signing the concordat, virtually recognized the Republic. The
Vatican agreed to raise no question over the former tithes and the former church lands. The
new owners of former church properties thus obtained clear titles. Nor was there any fur-
ther question of Avignon, an enclave within France, formerly papal, annexed to France in
1791. Nor were the papal negotiators able to undermine religious toleration; all that
Bonaparte would concede was a clause that was purely factual, and hence harmless, stating
that Catholicism was the religion of the majority of the French people. The clergy, in com-
pensation for loss of their tithes and property, were assured of receiving salaries from the
state. But Bonaparte, to dispel the notion of an established church, put Protestant ministers
of all denominations on the state payroll also. He thus checkmated the Vatican on impor-
tant points. At the same time, simply by signing an agreement with Rome, he disarmed the
counterrevolution. It could no longer be said that the Republic was godless. Good relations
did not, indeed, last very long, for Bonaparte and the papacy were soon at odds. But the
terms of the concordat proved lasting.
With peace and order established, the constructive work of the Consulate turned to the
fi elds of law and administration. The First Consul and his advisers combined what they
conceived to be the best of the Revolution and of the Old Regime. The modern state took on
clearer form. It was the reverse of everything feudal. All public authority was concentrated
in offi cially employed agents of government, no person was under any legal
authority except that of the state, and the authority of government fell on
all persons alike. There were no more estates, legal classes, privileges, l ocal
Concordat with the
Vatican
Consulate reforms
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409
liberties, hereditary offi ces, guilds, or manors. Judges, offi cials, and army offi cers received
specifi ed salaries. Neither military commissions nor civil offi ces could be bought and sold.
Citizens were to rise in government service according to their abilities rather
than their wealth or privileged birth.
This was the doctrine of “careers open to talent”; it was what the ambi-
tious professional classes of the Third Estate had wanted before the Revo-
lution, and a few persons of quite humble birth profi ted also. For sons of
the old aristocracy, it meant that family pedigree was not enough; they must also show
individual capacity to obtain employment. Qualifi cation came to depend increasingly on
education, and the secondary and higher schools were reorganized in these years, with a
view to preparing young men for government service and the learned professions. Scholar-
ships were provided, but it was mainly the upper middle class that benefi ted. Education,
in fact, in France and in Europe generally, came to be an important determinant of social
standing, with one system for those who could spend a dozen or more years at school,
and another for those who were to enter the work force at the age of 12 or 14. Meanwhile,
French intellectual life was strictly regulated and censored. When a few professors at the
National Institute began to question certain government policies, for example, Bonaparte
suppressed both their writings and the section of the Institute in which they worked; and
when the liberal critic Germaine de Staël published books that displeased the First Consul,
she was sent off to exile in Switzerland. Creative, critical intellectual debate thus became
impossible in France during these years, though Bonaparte satisfi ed many of the popular
demands for education and professional advancement.
Another deep demand of the French people, deeper than the demand for the vote, was
for more reason, order, and economy in public fi nance and taxation. The Consulate gave
these also. There were no tax exemptions because of birth, status, or special arrangement.
Everyone was supposed to pay, so that no disgrace attached to payment, and there was less
evasion. In principle these changes had been introduced in 1789; after 1799 they began to
work. For the fi rst time in ten years the government really collected the taxes that it levied
and so could rationally plan its fi nancial affairs. Accounting methods were improved, so
there was a new order in both the receipt and the expenditure of government revenues.
There was no longer a haphazard assortment of different “funds” on which various offi cials
drew independently and confi dentially as they needed money, but a concentration of fi nan-
cial management in the treasury and even in a kind of budget. The revolutionary uncertain-
ties over the value of money also dissipated. Because the Directory had shouldered the
odium of repudiating the paper money and government debt, the Consulate was able to
establish a sound currency and public credit. To assist in government fi nancing, one of the
banks of the Old Regime was revived and established as the Bank of France.
Like all enlightened despots, Bonaparte codifi ed the laws, and of all law
codes since the Romans the Napoleonic codes became the most famous. To
the 300 legal systems of the Old Regime and the mass of royal ordinances
were now added the thousands of laws enacted but seldom implemented by
the revolutionary assemblies. Five codes emerged—the Civil Code (often
called simply the Code Napoleon), the codes of civil and of criminal procedure, and the
commercial and penal codes. The codes made France legally and judicially uniform. They
assured legal equality; all French citizens had the same civil rights. They formulated the
new law of property and set forth the law of contracts, debts, leases, stock companies, and
similar matters in such a way as to create the legal framework for an economy of private
enterprise. They repeated the ban of all previous regimes on organized labor unions and
“Careers open to
talent”
The Napoleonic
Codes
46. The Authoritarian Republic: The Consulate, 1799–1804
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Chapter 9 The French Revolution410
were severe with individual workers, their word not being acceptable in court against that
of the employer—a signifi cant departure from equality before the law. The criminal code
was somewhat freer in giving the government the means to detect crime than in granting
the individual the means of defense against legal charges. As for the family, the codes rec-
ognized civil marriage and divorce but left the wife with very restricted powers over prop-
erty and the father with extensive authority over minor children; the legal system codifi ed
a paternalistic view of all family relations. The codes refl ected much of French life under
the Old Regime. They also set the character of France as it has been ever since, socially
bourgeois, legally egalitarian, and administratively bureaucratic.
In France, with the Consulate, the Revolution was over. If its highest hopes had not
been accomplished, many of the worst inequities and ineffi ciencies of the Old Regime had
at least been cured. The benefi ciaries of the Revolution felt secure. Even former aristocrats
were beginning to accept the new system. The working-class movement, repeatedly frus-
trated under all the revolutionary regimes, now vanished from the political scene to reap-
pear as a new socialism 30 years later. What the Third Estate had most wanted in 1789 was
now both codifi ed and enforced, with the exception of parliamentary government, which
after ten years of turmoil many people were temporarily willing to forgo. Moreover, in
1802, the French Republic was at peace in Europe with the papacy, Great Britain, and all
Continental powers, though a French army was still at war in Saint-Domingue. France
reached to the Rhine and had dependent republics in Holland and Italy. So popular was
the First Consul that in 1802, by another plebiscite, he had himself elected consul for life.
A new constitution, in 1804, again ratifi ed by plebiscite, declared that “the
government of the republic is entrusted to an emperor.” The Consulate
became the empire, and Bonaparte emerged as Napoleon I, Emperor of
the French.
But France, no longer revolutionary at home, was a revolutionary force
outside its borders. Napoleon became a terror to the patricians of Europe. They called him
the “Jacobin.” And the France that he ruled, and used as his arsenal, was an incomparably
formidable state. Even before the Revolution it had been the most populous in Europe,
perhaps the most wealthy, in the front rank of scientifi c enterprise and intellectual leader-
ship. Now all the old barriers of privilege, tax exemption, localism, and caste exclusiveness
had disappeared. The new France could tap the wealth of its citizens and put able men
into positions without inquiring into their origins. Every private, boasted Napoleon, carried
a marshal’s baton in his knapsack. The French looked with disdain on their caste-ridden
adversaries. The principle of civic equality proved not only to have the appeal of justice, but
also to be politically useful, and the resources of France were hurled against Europe with a
force that for many years no other nation or balance of powers could successfully oppose.
From Consulate to
empire
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
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411
C h a p t e r 10 NAPOLEONIC EUROPE
The repercussions of the French Revolution had spread throughout Europe since the fall of the
Bastille, and even more defi nitely after the outbreak
of war in 1792 and the ensuing victories of the
French republican armies. They became even more
evident after the republican General Bonaparte
turned into Napoleon I, Emperor of the French,
King of Italy, and Protector of the Confederation
of the Rhine. Napoleon surpassed all previous
European rulers in imposing a broad political unity
on the European continent. Although his imperial
power collapsed in less than 15 years, his military
campaigns and political ascendancy transformed
both international relations in Europe and the inter-
nal development of the various European peoples.
The French impact on other nations, though based
on military success, represented more than mere forcible subjugation. Many of the legal
and social innovations that came to France through revolution were brought to other coun-
tries in the early nineteenth century by administrative decree. There were for several years
Germans, Italians, Dutch, and Poles who worked with the French emperor to introduce the
changes that he demanded, and that they themselves often desired. In Prussia it was
the resistance to Napoleon that gave the incentive to internal reorganization and fostered
the emergence of a new German nationalism. Whether by collaboration or resistance,
Europe was transformed.
It is convenient to think of the fi ghting from 1792 to 1814 as a “world war,” as indeed
it was, affecting not only all of Europe but also places as far away as Latin America, where
the wars of independence began, or the interior of North America, where the United States
purchased Louisiana in 1803 and attempted a conquest of Canada in the War of 1812. But it
is important to realize that this world war was actually a series of wars, most of them quite
short and distinct. Only Great Britain remained continually at war with France, except for
47. The Formation of the
French Imperial System
48. The Grand Empire:
Spread of the Revolution
49. The Continental System:
Britain and Europe
50. The National Movements
and New Nationalist
Cultures
51. The Overthrow
of Napoleon:
The Congress of Vienna
Chapter emblem: Detail from a nineteenth-century illustration of Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I meeting on the
Niemen River in 1807. (Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina)
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe412
about a year of peace in 1802–1803. Never were the four great European powers, Britain,
Austria, Russia, and Prussia, simultaneously waging war against France until 1813.
The history of the Napoleonic period would be much simpler if the European govern-
ments had fought merely to protect themselves against the aggressive French. Each, how-
ever, in its way, was as dynamic and expansive as Napoleon himself. For some generations
Great Britain had been building a global commercial empire, Russia had been pushing
upon Poland and Turkey, and Prussia had been consolidating its territories and striving
for leadership in north Germany. Austria was less aggressive, but the Austrians were not
without their own dreams of ascendancy in Germany, the Balkans, and the Adriatic. None
of these ambitions ceased during the Napoleonic years. Governments, in pursuit of their
own expansive aims, were quite as willing to ally with Napoleon as to fi ght him. Only
gradually, and under repeated provocation, did they conclude that their main interest was
to dispose of the French emperor entirely.
47. THE FORMATION OF THE FRENCH IMPERIAL SYSTEM
The Collapse of the First and Second Coalitions, 1792–1802
The confl icting purposes of the major European powers had been apparent from almost the
beginning of the French Revolution. Leopold of Austria, in issuing the Declaration of Pillnitz
in 1791, had believed a general European coalition against France to be impossible. When
war began in 1792, the Austrians and Prussians kept their main forces in eastern Europe,
more afraid of each other and of Russia, in the matter of Poland, than of the French revolu-
tionary republic. Indeed, the main accomplishment of the First Coalition was
the partition of Poland and the dissolution of the Polish state.
In 1795 the French broke up the coalition. The British withdrew their
army from the Continent. Prussia and Spain each made a separate peace
with France. Indeed, Bourbon Spain—acting for reasons of strategic self-
interest that ignored all ideology or principle—formed an alliance with the French republic
that had guillotined Louis XVI and kept Louis XVIII from his monarchic rights. Spain
simply reverted to an earlier eighteenth-century pattern in allying with France because of
hostility to Great Britain, whose possession of Gibraltar, naval infl uence in the Mediterra-
nean, and attitude toward the Spanish Empire were disquieting to the Spanish government.
When Austria signed the peace of Campo Formio in 1797, the First Coalition was totally
dissipated, only British naval forces remaining engaged with the French.
The Second Coalition of 1799 fared no better. After the British fl eet defeated the
French at the battle of the Nile, cutting off the French army in Egypt, the Russians saw their
ambitions in the Mediterranean blocked mainly by the British and withdrew Suvorov’s
army from western Europe. Austria’s acceptance of the peace of Lunéville in 1801
dissolved the Second Coalition, and in 1802 Great Britain signed the peace of Amiens. For
the only time between 1792 and 1814 no European power was at war with another.
Peace Interim, 1802–1803
Never had a peace been so advantageous to France as the peace of 1802. But Bonaparte
gave it no chance. He used peace as he did war to advance his interests. Seeking to reestab-
lish slavery in the French Caribbean islands, Bonaparte dispatched a sizable army to Saint-
Domingue, where (as noted earlier) the French forces suffered a major defeat and the
The First Coalition
disintegrates
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41347. The Formation of the French Imperial System
Republic of Haiti emerged as a new independent state. Although he had wanted to suppress
Toussaint Louverture and reassert imperial power over a colonial population that was slip-
ping away from French control, Bonaparte sent this army with the additional and wider
goal of reviving France’s colonial empire in America. Spain had ceded Louisiana back to
France in 1800, giving the French a base for expanding their infl uence in the Caribbean,
but this plan collapsed when France failed to defeat the revolutionary movement in Saint-
Domingue. Bonaparte therefore decided to sell the Louisiana territories to the United
States; and the Haitian Revolution, which prevented the restoration of slavery in a long-
held French colony and created a new national state, also contributed directly to a vast
expansion of the new republic in North America. Meanwhile, within the French-dominated
territories of continental Europe, Bonaparte reorganized the Helvetic Republic, making
himself “mediator” of the Confederation of Switzerland. He reorganized Germany; that is
to say, he and his agents closely watched the rearrangement of territory that the Germans
themselves had been carrying out since 1797.
By the treaty of Campo Formio, it will be recalled, German princes of the Left Bank
of the Rhine, expropriated by the annexation of their dominions to the French Repub-
lic, were to receive new territories on the Right Bank. The result was a
scramble that later patriotic German historians called the “shame of the
princes.” The German rulers, far from opposing Bonaparte or upholding
any national interests, competed desperately for the acquisition of various
The “shame of the
princes”
Toussaint Louverture, pic- tured here with a sword and documents to symbolize his independence, led the politi- cal and military movement that ultimately established a new Republic of Haiti in 1804. Although Louverture him- self was captured and sent to a prison in France (where he died in 1803), the French defeat in Haiti made Napoleon aban- don his plans for an American empire and sell Louisiana to the United States. (British Library Board/Robana/Art
Resource, NY)
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe414
German territories, each bribing and fawning upon the French to win French support
against other Germans (Talleyrand made over 10 million francs in this process). The Holy
Roman Empire was fatally mauled by the Germans themselves. Most of its ecclesiastical
principalities and 45 out of its 51 free cities disappeared, annexed by their larger neigh-
bors. The number of states in the Holy Roman Empire was greatly reduced, but Prussia,
Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden consolidated and enlarged themselves. These arrange-
ments were ratifi ed in February 1803 by the diet of the empire. The enlarged German states
now depended on Bonaparte for the maintenance of their newly enhanced position.
Formation of the Third Coalition in 1805
Britain and France went to war again in 1803. Bonaparte, his communications with America
menaced by the British navy, and his army in Haiti decimated by disease and by the military
campaigns of the Haitian independence movement, had suspended his ideas for re -
creating an American empire. In May 1804, however, he pronounced himself to be Emperor
Napoleon of the French to ensure the hereditary permanency of his imperial system in
Europe, though at the time he had no heir. Francis II of Austria, seeing the Holy Roman
Empire in ruins, promulgated the Austrian Empire in August 1804. He thus advanced the
long process of integrating the Danubian monarchy. In 1805 Austria signed
an alliance with Great Britain; and the Third Coalition was soon completed
by the accession of the Russian Tsar Alexander I, who, after Napoleon him-
self, was to become the most considerable fi gure on the European stage.
Alexander was the grandson of Catherine the Great, educated by her to be a kind of
enlightened despot on the eighteenth-century model. The Swiss tutor of his boyhood, La
Harpe, later turned up as a pro-French revolutionary in the Helvetic Republic of 1798.
Alexander became tsar in 1801, at the age of 24, through a palace revolution that impli-
cated him in the murder of his father Paul. He still corresponded with La Harpe, and he
surrounded himself with a circle of liberal young men of various nationalities, of whom
the most prominent was the young Polish diplomat, Adam Jerzy Czartoryski. Alexander
regarded the still recent partitions of Poland as a crime. Encouraged by Czartoryski, he
wished to restore the unity of Poland with himself as a constitutional king. In Germany
many who had fi rst warmed to the French Revolution, but had become disillusioned, began
to hail the new liberal tsar as the protector of Germany and hope of the future. Alexander
perceived himself as a rival to Napoleon in guiding the destinies of Europe in an age of
change. Moralistic and self-righteous, he puzzled and disturbed the statesmen of Europe,
who generally saw, behind his humane and republican utterances, either an enthroned
leader of all the “Jacobins” of Europe or the familiar specter of Russian aggrandizement.
Yet Alexander, more than his contemporaries, formed a conception of international
collective security and the indivisibility of peace. He declared that the issue in Europe
was clearly between law and force—between an international society in which the rights
of each member were secured by international agreement and organization and a society
in which all trembled before the rule of cynicism and conquest embodied in the French
imperial usurper.
Alexander was therefore ready to enter a Third Coalition with Great Britain. Pictur-
ing himself as a future arbiter of Poland and central Europe, and with secret designs on the
Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean, he signed a treaty with England in April 1805. The
British agreed to pay Russia £1,250,000 for each 100,000 soldiers that the Russians raised.
Tsar Alexander I
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415
The Third Coalition, 1805–1807: The Peace of Tilsit
Napoleon meanwhile, since the resumption of hostilities in 1803, had been making prepa-
rations to invade England. He concentrated large forces on the Channel coast, together
with thousands of boats and barges in which he gave the troops amphibious training in
embarkation and debarkation. He reasoned that if his own fl eet could divert or cripple the
British fl eet for a few days he could place enough soldiers on the defenseless island to
force its capitulation. The British, sensing mortal danger, lined their coasts with lookouts
and signal beacons and set to drilling a home guard. Their main defense was twofold:
the Austro-Russian armies on the continent and the British fl eet under Lord Nelson. The
Russian and Austrian armies moved westward in the summer of 1805. In August Napoleon
relieved the pressure upon England, shifting seven army corps from the Channel to the
upper Danube. On October 15 he surrounded an Austrian force of 50,000 men at Ulm in
Bavaria, forcing it to surrender without resistance. On October 21 Lord Nelson, off Cape
Trafalgar on the Spanish coast, caught and annihilated the main body of the combined
fl eets of France and Spain.
The battle of Trafalgar established the supremacy of the British navy
for over a century—but only on the proviso that Napoleon be prevented
from controlling most of Europe, which could furnish an ample base for
eventual construction of a greater navy than the British. And to control
Europe was precisely what Napoleon proceeded to do. Moving east from Ulm he came
upon the Russian and Austrian armies in Moravia, where on December 2 he won the great
victory of Austerlitz. The broken Russian army withdrew into Poland, and Austria made
peace. By the treaty of Pressburg Napoleon took Venetia from the Austrians, to whom
he had given it in 1797, and annexed it to his kingdom of Italy (the former Cisalpine and
Italian Republic), which now included a good deal of Italy north of Rome. Venice and
Trieste soon resounded with the hammers of shipwrights rebuilding the Napoleonic fl eet.
In Germany, early in 1806, the French emperor raised Bavaria and Württemberg to the
stature of kingdoms and Baden to a grand duchy. The Holy Roman Empire was fi nally,
formally, and irrevocably dissolved. In its place Napoleon began to gather his German
client states into a new kind of Germanic federation, the Confederation of the Rhine, of
which he made himself the “protector.”
Prussia, at peace with France for ten years, had declined to join the Third Coalition.
But as Napoleon’s program for controlling Germany became clear after Austerlitz, the war
party in Prussia became irresistible, and the Prussian government now went
to war with the French unaided and alone. The French smashed the famous
Prussian army at the battles of Jena and Auerstädt in October 1806. The
French cavalry galloped all over north Germany unopposed. The Prussian
king and his government took refuge in the east, at Königsberg, where the
tsar and the re-forming Russian army might protect them. But the terrible Corsican pursued
the Russians also. Marching through western Poland and into East Prussia, he met the
Russian army fi rst at the sanguinary but indecisive battle of Eylau and then defeated it
on June 14, 1807, at Friedland. Alexander I was unwilling to retreat into Russia. He was
unsure of his own resources; if the country were invaded, there might be a revolt of the
nobles or even of the serfs—for people still remembered the great serf rebellion of the
1770s. Alexander feared also merely playing the game of the British. He put aside his war
aims of 1804 and signifi ed his willingness to negotiate with Napoleon. The Third Coalition
had gone the way of the two before it.
British victory at
Trafalgar
The Third Coalition
collapses
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe416
The Emperor of the French and the Autocrat of All the Russias met privately on a raft
in the Niemen River, not far from the border between Prussia and Russia, the very eastern-
most frontier of modern or “civilized” Europe, as the triumphant Napoleon gleefully imag-
ined it. The hapless Prussian king, Frederick William III, paced nervously on the bank
while the two imperial rulers discussed their visions for the whole European continent.
Bonaparte turned all his charm upon Alexander, denouncing England as the author of all
the troubles of Europe and captivating him by fl ights of Latin imagination, in which he set
before Alexander a boundless destiny as Emperor of the East, intimating
that Russia’s future lay toward Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, and India. The
result of their conversations was the treaty of Tilsit of July 1807, in many
ways the high point of Napoleon’s success. The French and Russian
empires became allies, mainly against Great Britain. Ostensibly this alliance lasted for fi ve
years. Alexander accepted Napoleon as a kind of Emperor of the West. As for Prussia,
Napoleon continued to occupy Berlin with French troops, and he took away all Prussian
territories west of the Elbe, combining them with others taken from Hanover to make a
new kingdom of Westphalia, which became part of his Confederation of the Rhine.
The Continental System and the War in Spain
Hardly had the “peace of the continent” been reestablished on the foundation of a Franco-
Russian alliance when Napoleon began to have serious trouble. He was bent on subdu-
ing the British who, secure on their island, seemed beyond his reach. Since the French
naval disaster at Trafalgar, there was no possibility of invading England in
the foreseeable future. Napoleon therefore turned to economic warfare. He
would fi ght sea power with land power, using his political control of the
Continent to shut out British goods and to block shipping to Britain from all
European ports. He would destroy the British trade in exports to Europe, both exports of
British products and the profi table British reexport of goods from America and Asia. The
overall strategy, as Napoleon planned it, was to ruin British commercial fi rms and cause a
violent business depression, marked by overloaded warehouses, unemployment, runs on
the banks, a fall of the currency, rising prices, and revolutionary agitation. The British gov-
ernment, which would simultaneously be losing revenues from its customs duties, would
thus fi nd itself unable to carry the enormous national debt, or to borrow additional funds
from its subjects, or to continue its fi nancial subsidies to the military powers of Europe. At
Berlin, in 1806, after the battle of Jena, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree, forbidding the
importation of British goods into any part of Europe allied with or dependent on himself.
He in that way formally established the Continental System.
To make the Continental System effective Napoleon believed that it must extend to all
continental Europe without exception. By the treaty of Tilsit, in 1807, he required both
Russia and Prussia to adhere to it. They agreed to exclude all British goods; in fact, in the
following months Russia, Prussia, and Austria all declared war on Great Britain. Napoleon
then ordered two neutral states, Denmark and Portugal, to adhere to his exclusionary com-
mercial system. Denmark was an important entrepôt for all central Europe, and the British,
fearing Danish compliance, dispatched a fl eet to Copenhagen, bombarded the city for four
days, and took captive the Danish fl eet. The outraged Danes allied with Napoleon and
joined the Continental System. Portugal, long a satellite of Britain, refused compliance;
Napoleon invaded it. To control the whole European coastline from St. Petersburg around
to Trieste he now had only to control the ports of Spain. By a series of deceptions he got
The Treaty of Tilsit
Economic warfare
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417
both the Bourbon Charles IV and his son Ferdinand to abdicate the Spanish throne, where-
upon the young Ferdinand was imprisoned in France. He then made his brother Joseph
king of Spain in 1808 and reinforced him with a large French army.
He thus involved himself in an Iberian entanglement from which he never escaped.
The Spanish regarded the Napoleonic soldiers as godless villians who desecrated churches.
Fierce guerrillas took the fi eld. Cruelties of one side were answered by atrocities of the
other. The British sent an expeditionary force of their small regular army, eventually under
the Duke of Wellington, to sustain the Spanish guerrillas; the resulting Peninsular War
dragged on for fi ve years. But from the beginning the affair went badly for Napoleon.
In July 1808 a French general, for the fi rst time since the Revolution,
surrendered an entire army corps, which had been surrounded and forced
to capitulate at Bailén. In August another French force surrendered to the
British army in Portugal. And these events raised hopes in the rest of Europe.
The Peninsular War
in Spain
This meeting between Napoleon and Russia’s Alexander I on the Niemen River produced an alliance and the Continental System. The new system was aimed against the British, but Alexander soon disliked the restrictions on Anglo-Russian commerce. His withdrawal from the Continental System provoked Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. (Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina)
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe418
An anti-French movement swept over Germany. It was felt strongly in Austria, where the
Habsburg government, undaunted by three defeats and hoping to lead a general German
national resistance, prepared for a fourth time since 1792 to go to war with France.
The Austrian War of Liberation, 1809
Napoleon summoned a general congress that met at Erfurt in Saxony in September 1808.
His main purpose was to talk with his ally of a year, Alexander; but he assembled numer-
ous dependent monarchs as well, by whose presence he hoped to overawe the tsar. He even
had Talma, the leading actor of the day, play in the theater of Erfurt before “a parterre of
kings.” Alexander was unimpressed. He was hurt in a sensitive spot because Napoleon, a
few months before, had made moves without Russian involvement to re-create a Polish
state, setting up what was called the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. This was not the kind of
Polish state that Alexander had envisoned, and he had also found Napoleon unwilling,
despite the grandiose language of Tilsit, really to support his expansion into the Balkans.
In addition, Alexander was taken aside by Talleyrand, Napoleon’s foreign
minister. Talleyrand had concluded that Napoleon was overreaching himself
and said so confi dentially to the tsar, advising him to wait. Talleyrand thus
betrayed the man whom he ostensibly served and prepared a safe place for
himself in the event of Napoleon’s fall; but he acted also as an aristocrat of the prenational-
istic Old Regime, seeing his own country as only one part of the whole of Europe, believ-
ing a balance among the several parts to be necessary and holding that peace would be
possible only when the exaggerated reach of French power would be reduced. For France
and Russia, the two strongest states, to combine against all other states was contrary to all
principles of the older diplomacy.
Austria proclaimed a war of liberation in April 1809. Napoleon advanced rapidly along
the familiar route to Vienna. The German princes, indebted to the French, declined to join in
a general German war against him. Alexander stood watchfully on the sidelines. Napoleon
won the battle of Wagram in July. In October Austria made peace. The short war of 1809
was over. The Danubian monarchy, by no means as fragile as it seemed, survived a fourth
defeat at the hands of the French without internal revolution or disloyalty to the Habsburg
house. From it, in punishment, Napoleon took part of Austrian Poland to enlarge the Grand
Duchy of Warsaw; and he took parts of Austrian-controlled Dalmatia, Slovenia, and Croatia
to establish a new creation that Napoleon called the Illyrian Provinces (see map, p. 423).
Napoleon at His Peak, 1809–1811
The next two years saw the Napoleonic Empire at its peak. In Austria
after the defeat of 1809 the conduct of foreign affairs fell to Clemens von
Metternich, who was to remain the Austrian foreign minister for 40 years.
He was a German from west of the Rhine, whose ancestral territories had
been annexed to the French Republic, but he had entered the Austrian service and even
married the granddaughter of Kaunitz, the old model of diplomatic savoir-faire, of which
Metternich now became a model himself. Austria had been repeatedly humiliated and even
partitioned by Napoleon, but Metternich was not a man to conduct diplomacy by grudges.
Believing that Russia was the really permanent problem for a state situated in the Danube
valley, Metternich thought it wise to renew good relations with France. He was quite willing
to go along with Napoleon, whom he knew personally, having been Austrian ambassador
to Paris before the short war of 1809.
Talleyrand
Metternich
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419
The French emperor, who in 1809 was exactly 40, was increasingly concerned by the
fact that he was childless. He had made an empire that he pronounced hereditary. Yet he
had no heir. Between him and his wife Josephine whom he had married in youth, and who
was six years his senior, there had long since ceased to be affection or even fi delity on either
side. He divorced her in 1809, though she protested that Napoleon’s childlessness was not
her fault (she had two children by a fi rst husband). He intended to marry a younger woman
who might bear him offspring. He intended also to make a spectacular marriage, to extort
for himself, a self-made Corsican army offi cer, the highest and most exclusive recognition
that aristocratic Europe could bestow. Tactful inquiries at St. Petersburg concerning the
availability of Alexander’s sister were tactfully rebuffed; the tsar intimated that his mother
would never allow it. The Russian alliance again showed its limitations. Napoleon was thus
thrown into the arms of Metternich—and of Marie Louise, the 18-year-old daughter of the
Austrian emperor and niece of another “Austrian woman,” Marie Antoinette. They were
married in 1810. In a year she bore him a son, whom he entitled the King of Rome.
THE THIRD OF MAY 1808 by Francisco de Goya (Spanish, 1746–1828)
Facing steadfast resistance to their military occupation of Spain, the French army committed atrocities such as the brutal scene that Goya portrayed in this image of the Peninsular War. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
47. The Formation of the French Imperial System
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe420
Napoleon assumed ever more pompous airs of imperial majesty. He was now, by
marriage, the nephew of Louis XVI. He showed more consideration to French noblemen of
the Old Regime—only they, he said, knew really how to serve. He surrounded himself with
a newly made hereditary Napoleonic nobility, hoping that the new families, as time went
on, would bind their own fortunes to the house of Bonaparte. The marshals became dukes
and princes; Talleyrand became the Prince of Benevento; and the bourgeois Fouché, an
Hébertist radical in 1793 and more latterly a police offi cial, was now solemnly addressed
as the Duke of Otranto. In foreign affairs also older diplomatic relations seemed to be reap-
pearing. With one signifi cant exception, all the powers of the successive coalitions were
allied with the French, and the Son of the Revolution now gravely referred to the emperor
of Austria as “my father.”
48. THE GRAND EMPIRE: SPREAD OF THE REVOLUTION
The Organization of the Napoleonic Empire
Territorially Napoleon’s infl uence enjoyed its farthest reach in 1810 and
1811, when it included the entire European mainland except the Balkan
peninsula. The Napoleonic domain was in two parts. Its core was the French
Empire; then came thick layers of dependent states, which together with
France comprised the Grand Empire. In addition, to the north and east were the “allied
states” under their traditional governments—the three great powers, Prussia, Austria, and
Russia, and also Denmark and Sweden. The allied states were at war with Great Britain,
though not engaged in positive hostilities; their populations were supposed to do without
British goods under the Continental System, but otherwise Napoleon had no direct lawful
infl uence upon their internal affairs.
The French Empire, as successor to the French Republic, included Belgium and the
Left Bank of the Rhine. In addition, by 1810, it had developed two appendages that on
a map looked like tentacles outstretched from it (see the map on p. 423). When he pro-
claimed France an empire and turned its dependent republics into kingdoms, Napoleon
had set up his brother Louis as king of Holland; but Louis had shown such a tendency to
ingratiate himself with the Dutch, and such a willingness to let Dutch businessmen trade
secretly with the British, that Napoleon dethroned him and incorporated Holland into the
French Empire. In his endless war upon British goods, Napoleon found it useful to exert
more direct control over the ports of Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck, Genoa, and Leghorn; he
therefore annexed directly to the French Empire the German coast as far as the western
Baltic, and the Italian coast far enough to include Rome, which he desired for its imperial
rather than its commercial value. Harking back to traditions as old as Charlemagne, he
considered Rome the second city of his empire and entitled his son the “King of Rome.”
When Pope Pius VII protested, Napoleon took him prisoner and interned him in France.
The whole French Empire, from Lübeck to Rome, was governed directly by departmental
prefects who reported to Paris, and the 83 departments of France, created by the Constitu-
ent Assembly, had risen to 130 by 1810.
The dependent states, forming with France the Grand Empire, were of different kinds.
The Swiss federation remained republican in form. The Illyrian Provinces, which included
Trieste and the Dalmatian coast, were administered in their brief two years almost like
departments of France. In Poland, because the Russians objected to a revived kingdom of
The empire at its
height
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42148. The Grand Empire: Spread of the Revolution
Poland, Napoleon called his creation the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Among the most impor-
tant of the dependent states in the Grand Empire were the German states organized into the
Confederation of the Rhine. Too modestly named, the Confederation included all Germany
between what the French annexed on the west and what Prussia and Austria retained on the
east. It was a league of all the German princes in this region who were regarded as sover-
eign and who now numbered only about 20, the most important being the four newly made
kings of Saxony, Bavaria, Württemberg, and Westphalia. Westphalia was an entirely new
and synthetic state, made up of Hanoverian and Prussian territories and of various small
parts of the old Germany. Its king was Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jerome.
Napoleon liked to use his family as a means of rule. The Corsican clan became the
Bonaparte dynasty. His brother Joseph from 1804 to 1808 functioned as king of Naples
and after 1808 as king of Spain. Louis Bonaparte was for six years king of Holland;
Jerome was king of Westphalia. Sister Caroline became queen of Naples after brother
Joseph’s transfer to Spain; for Napoleon, running out of brothers (having quarreled with
his remaining brother, Lucien), gave the throne of Naples to his brother-in-law, Joachim
Murat, a cavalry offi cer who was Caroline’s husband. In the “Kingdom of Italy,” which in
1810 included Lombardy, Venetia, and most of the former papal states, Napoleon himself
retained the title of king, but set up his stepson, Eugène Beauharnais (Josephine’s son)
as viceroy. The mother of the Bonapartes, Letitia, who had brought up all these children
under very different circumstances in Corsica, was suitably installed at the imperial court
as Madame Mère. According to legend she kept repeating to herself, “If only it lasts!”; she
outlived Napoleon by 15 years.
Napoleon and the Spread of the Revolution
In all the states of the Grand Empire the same course of events tended to
repeat itself. First came the stage of military conquest and occupation by
French troops. Then came the establishment of a native satellite govern-
ment with the support of local persons who were willing to collaborate with
the French and who helped in the drafting of a constitution specifying the powers of the
new government and regularizing its relationships with France. In some areas these two
stages had been accomplished under the republican governments before Napoleon came
to power. In some regions no more than these two stages really occurred, notably in Spain
and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw.
The third stage of French infl uence was one of sweeping internal reform and reorgani-
zation, modeled on Bonaparte’s program for France and hence derivatively on the French
Revolution. Belgium and the German territories west of the Rhine underwent this stage
most thoroughly, because they were annexed directly to France for 20 years. Italy and
much of Germany west of Prussia and Austria also experienced the third stage.
Napoleon considered himself a great reformer and man of the Enlight-
enment. He called his system “liberal,” and though the word to him meant
almost the reverse of what it later meant to nineteenth-century liberals,
he was possibly the fi rst to use it in a political sense. He believed also in
“constitutions”; not that he favored representative assemblies or limited government, but
he wanted government to be rationally “constituted,” that is, deliberately mapped out and
planned, not merely inherited from the jumble of the past. Although his own methods of
governing were authoritarian, he believed fi rmly in the rule of law. He insisted with the
zeal of conviction on transplanting his Civil Code to the dependent states. He assumed
Stages of French
occupation
Napoleon as reformer
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe422
that this code was based on the universal nature of justice and human relationships, and
he believed that it must therefore be applicable to all countries with no more than minor
adaptation. The idea that a country’s laws must mirror its distinctive national character and
history was foreign to his mind, for he carried over the rationalist and universalist outlook
of the Age of Enlightenment. He thought that people everywhere wanted, and deserved,
much the same thing. As he wrote to his brother Jerome, on making him king of Westpha-
lia, “the peoples of Germany, as of France, Italy and Spain, want equality and liberal ideas.
For some years now I have been managing the affairs of Europe, and I am convinced that
the crowing of the privileged classes was everywhere disliked. Be a constitutional king.”
The same plan of reform was initiated, with some variation, in all the dependent states
from Spain to Poland and from the mouth of the Elbe to the Straits of Messina. The reforms
were directed, in a word, against everything that still affi rmed or protected the old “feudal”
hierarchies. They established the legal equality of individual persons and gave governments
more complete authority over their individual subjects. Legal classes were wiped out, as in
France in 1789; the theory of a society made up of “estates of the realm” gave way to the
theory of a society made up of legally equal individuals. The nobility lost its privileges in
taxation, offi ceholding, and military command. Careers were “opened to talent.”
The manorial system, bulwark of the old aristocracy, was virtually liquidated wherever
French infl uence became predominant. Lords lost all legal jurisdiction over their peasants;
peasants became subjects of the state, personally free to move, migrate, or marry, and able
to bring suit in the courts of law. The manorial fees, along with tithes, were generally abol-
ished, as in France in 1789. In France the peasants escaped from these burdens without
having to pay compensation, in part because they had themselves risen in rebellion in 1789
and in part because France passed through a radical popular revolution in 1793. In other
parts of the Grand Empire, however, the peasants were required to pay indemnities, and the
former feudal class continued to receive income from its abolished rights. Only in Belgium
and the Rhineland, incorporated into France under the republic, did the manorial regime
disappear without compensation as in France, leaving a numerous entrenched class of small
landowning farmers. East of the Rhine Napoleon had to compromise with the aristocracy
that he assailed. In Poland, the only country in the Grand Empire where a thoroughgo-
ing serfdom had prevailed, the peasants received legal freedom during the French occupa-
tion; but the Polish landlords remained economically unharmed, because they owned all
the land. Napoleon had to conciliate them, for there was no other effective class in Poland
to which he could look for support. In general, outside of France, the assault upon feudal
traditions was not socially as revolutionary as it had been in France. The lord was gone, but
the landlord remained.
Everywhere in the Grand Empire the church lost its position as a public authority along-
side the state. Church courts were abolished or restricted; the Inquisition was outlawed in
Spain. Tithes were done away with, church property was confi scated, and monastic orders
were dissolved or severely regulated. Toleration became the law; Catholics, Protestants,
NAPOLEONIC EUROPE, 1810 Napoleon extended the sphere of French power well beyond the earlier expansion of the French Republic. By 1810 he dominated the whole continent except Portugal and the Balkan penin- sula. Russia, Prussia, and Austria had been forced into alliance with him, and he had made his brothers kings of Spain, Holland, and Westphalia; his brother-in-law king of Naples; and his stepson viceroy of Italy. The old Holy Roman Empire disappeared into other states, including Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine. In Poland, Napoleon undid part of the late eighteenth- century partitions by setting up the Grand Duchy of Warsaw.
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423
0 100 200 300 miles
French Empire
Grand Empire
Allied with Napoleon
N o r t h S e a
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
B a
l t ic
S e
a
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
Tag us R.
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aron n
e R.
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Danube R.
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.
Loire R.
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Elbe R. Rhine
R.
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d ia na R.
Danube R.
Oder R.
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Nieman R.
English Channel
CORSICA
MAJORCA IVIZA
CERIGO
MALTA (Britain)
BA LEA
RIC IS.
(Sp ain
)
CORFU
Elba
IO N
IA N
I.
(B ritain
)
MINORCA
CAPE FINISTERRE
CHANNEL I. (Britain)
HELIGOLAND (Britain)
TUNISIA (Turkish)
ALGERIA (Turkish)
TRAFALGAR
Rochefort
Nantes Orléans
Cherbourg
Plymouth
London
Edinburgh
Dover Boulogne
Amiens
Antwerp
Amsterdam
Brussels
Bordeaux
Oporto
Elvas
Cadiz
Tangier Gibraltar (Britain)
Seville Baylen
Valencia
Tunis
Cagliari
Naples
Florence
Rome
Leghorn
Lyons
Fontainebleau
Versailles Paris
Nice Toulon
Avignon
Marseille
Genoa
Milan
Basel
Trieste
Hohenlinden
JenaErfurt
Auerstaadt
Berlin
Leipzig
Prague
Vienna
Wagram
Budapest
Belgrade
Salonica
Austerlitz
Tarnapol Cracow
Brest-Litovsk
Vilna
St. Petersburg
Warsaw
Breslau
Posen
Danzig
Königsberg
Copenhagen
Stockholm
Memel
Eylau
Friedland Tilsit
Dresden
Mainz
Ulm
Cologne
Bremen
Hamburg Lübeck
Munich
Metz
Valmy
Strasbourg
Palermo
Taranto
Bari
Algiers
Madrid
Ciudad Rodrigo
Ocaña
Burgos
Talavera
Almeida Saragossa
Barcelona
Albuera
Lisbon
La Coruña
Toulouse
ANDALUSIA
LUCCA
KINGDOM OF NAPLES
KINGDOM OF
ITALY
LOMBARDY
BA D
EN
BE RG
SWITZERLAND
SAVOY
PIED M
O N
T
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
HUNGARY
PRU SSIA
K. OF SAXONY
BOHEMIA
SWEDEN
FINLAND
ESTONIA
LIVONIA
COURLAND
NORWAY
DENMARK
K. OF WESTPHALIA
SWEDISH POMERANIA
K. OF BAVARIA
WÜRTTEMBERG
VENETIA
ILLY R IA
N
ENGLAND
SCOTLAND
IRELAND
MECKLEN- BURG
KINGDOM OF HOLLAND
GALICIA
GRAND DUCHY OF WARSAW
RUSSIA
WALLACHIA
SERBIA BOSNIA
SLOVENIA
CRO ATI
A
PRO VINCES
DALM ATIA
MONTENEGRO
A U
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FRENCH EMPIRE
SPAIN
CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE
KINGDOM OF DENMARK AND NORWAY
GREAT BRITAIN
MOREA
A LB
A N
IA
KINGDOM OF SICILY
KINGDOM OF SARDINIA
PORTUGAL
MOROCCO
0 100 200 miles
Napoleon’s Russian Campaign June to December, 1812
Brest-Litovsk
Moscow Borodino
Smolensk
Borisov Tilsit
Königsberg
Riga
Vilna
Kovno
Vitebsk
Warsaw
RUSSIAN EMPIRE
Baltic Sea
48. The Grand Empire: Spread of the Revolution
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe424
Jews, and unbelievers received the same civil rights. The state was to be based not on the
idea of religious community but on the idea of territorial residence. With the nobility, or on
economic matters, Napoleon would compromise; but he would not compromise with the
Catholic clergy on the principle of a secular state. Even in Spain he insisted on the funda-
mental secularism of his system, a sure indication that he was not motivated by expediency
only, because it was largely his antireligious program that provoked the Spanish populace
to rebellion.
Guilds were generally abolished or reduced to empty forms, and the individual’s right
to work was generally proclaimed. Peasants, gaining legal freedom, might learn and enter
any trade they chose. The old town oligarchies and bourgeois patriciates were broken up.
Towns and provinces lost their antique liberties and came under the general legislation of
the whole governing state. Internal tariffs were removed, and free trade within state fron-
tiers was encouraged. Some countries shifted to a decimal system of money; and the het-
erogeneous weights and measures that had originated in the Middle Ages, and of which
the Anglo-American bushels, yards, ounces, and pints are living survivals, yielded to the
Cartesian regularities of the metric system. Ancient and diverse legal systems gave way to
the Napoleonic codes. Law courts were separated from the administration. Hereditary
offi ce and the sale of offi ce disappeared. Offi cials received salaries large enough to shield
them from the temptations of corruption. Kings were put on civil lists, with their personal
expenses separated from those of the government. Taxes and fi nances were modernized.
The common tax became a land tax, paid by every landowner; and governments knew how
much land each owner really possessed, for they developed systematic methods of
appraisal and assessment. Tax farming was replaced by direct collection. New methods of
accounting and of collecting statistics were introduced.
In general, in all countries of the Grand Empire, some of the main principles of the
French Revolution were introduced under Napoleon, with the notable exception that there
was no self-government through elected legislative bodies. In all countries
Napoleon found numerous persons who were willing to support him, mainly
among people in the commercial and professional classes, who were gener-
ally aware of Enlightenment writers, often anticlerical, desirous of more
equality with the nobility, and eager to break down the old localisms that interfered with
trade and the exchange of ideas. He found supporters also among many progressive nobles
and, in the Confederation of the Rhine, among the German rulers. His program appealed
to some people everywhere, and in all parts of the Grand Empire the Napoleonic reforms
were executed mainly by local leaders. Repression went with it, though hardly on the same
scale as the repressions of later dictatorships. There were no vast internment camps, and
Fouché’s police were engaged more in spying and submitting reports than in the brutaliz-
ing of the disaffected. The execution of a single Bavarian bookseller, named Palm, became
a famous outrage.
In short, there was at fi rst a good deal of pro-Napoleonic feeling in the Grand Empire.
The French infl uence (outside Belgium and the Rhineland) struck deepest in north Italy,
where there were no native monarchist traditions and where the old Italian city-states had
produced a strong and often anticlerical burgher class. In south Germany also the French
infl uence was profound. The French system had the least appeal in Spain, where Catholic
royalist sentiment produced a kind of counterrevolutionary movement of independence.
Nor did it appeal to agrarian eastern Europe, the land of lord and serf. Yet even in Prus-
sia, as will be seen, the state was remodeled along French lines. In Russia, during the
Tilsit alliance, Alexander gave his backing to a pro-French reforming minister, Speranski.
The Napoleonic infl uence was pervasive because it carried over the older movement
Support for Napoleon
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42549. The Continental System: Britain and Europe
of enlightened despotism and seemed to confer the advantages of the French Revolution
without the violence and the disorder. Napoleon, it seemed to Goethe, “was the expression
of all that was reasonable, legitimate and European in the revolutionary movement.”
But Napoleon’s reforms were also weapons of war. All the dependent states were
required to supply Napoleon with money and soldiers. Germans, Dutch, Belgians, Italians,
Poles, and even Spaniards fought in his armies. In addition, the dependent states defrayed
much of the cost of the French army, most of which was stationed outside France. This
meant that taxes in France could remain low, to the general satisfaction of the propertied
interests that had emerged or benefi ted from the Revolution.
49. THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: BRITAIN AND EUROPE
Beyond the tributary states of the Grand Empire lay the countries nominally independent,
joined under Napoleon in the Continental System. Napoleon thought of his allies as at best
subordinate partners in a common project. The great project was to crush Great Britain,
NAPOLEONIC GERMANY In the panel at the left are shown, by shading, territories of the Duchy of Württemberg in 1800. Note how Württemberg had “islands” of territory embedded within other states and how “holes” or enclaves formed by smaller states were enclosed within the core territories of Württemberg. Note, too, how Württemberg, itself only 50 miles wide, was surrounded by a mosaic of tiny jurisdictions—free cities, counties, duchies, principalities, abbacies, command- eries, bishoprics, arch-bishoprics, etc.—all “independent” within the Holy Roman Empire. The right-hand panel shows the Kingdom of Württemberg as consolidated and enlarged in the time of Napoleon. Similar consolidations all over Germany greatly reduced the number of states and added to the effi ciency of law and government.
Neckar R.
Rh in
e R.
Dan ub
e
R.
Iller R.
L. Constance
B A D E
N
SWITZERLAND
Stuttgart
F R A N C E
Württemberg in 1800
Smaller German States
0 10 20 30 miles Neckar R.
Rh in
e R.
D an ub
e R .
Iller R.
L. Constance B
A D
E N
SWITZERLAND
Stuttgart
F R A N C E
Württemberg in 1810
0 10 20 30 miles
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe426
Germaine de Staël was an infl u- ential leader of the liberal oppo- sition to Napoleon’s repressive cultural policies. She was forced to live in exile in Switzerland, but both her Swiss home and her writings provided crucial support for Napoleon’s critics. (Ken Welsh/The Bridgeman
Art Library)
and it was for this purpose that the Continental System had been established. But the crush-
ing of Britain became in Napoleon’s mind a means to a further end, the unifi cation and
mastery of all of Europe. This in turn, had he achieved it, would doubtless have merely
opened the way to other conquests.
At the point where he stood in 1807 or 1810 the unifi cation of con-
tinental Europe seemed a not impossible objective. He cast about for an
ideology to inspire both his Grand Empire and his allies. He held out the
cosmopolitan doctrines of the eighteenth century, spoke endlessly of the
enlightenment of the age, and urged all peoples to work with him against the medieval-
ism, ignorance, and obscurantism by which they were surrounded. Although he disliked
and even suppressed the creative work of writers such as his vehement critic Germaine de
Staël, Napoleon encouraged innovative scientifi c research and rewarded the scientists who
pursued it. He viewed science as the essential, rational foundation of modern knowledge.
And while appealing to ideas of modernity or progress he dwelt also on the grandeur of
Roman times. The Roman inspiration appeared in the arts he supported and in the archi-
tecture that expressed Napoleon’s conception of imperial glory. The massive “empire”
furniture, the heroic canvases of David, the church of the Madeleine in Paris (resembling a
classical temple and converted to a Temple of Glory), and the Arch of Triumph in the same
city (begun in 1806) all evoked the atmosphere of far-spreading imperial majesty and unity
in which Napoleon would have liked the peoples of Europe to live. In addition, to arouse
an all-European feeling, Napoleon worked upon the latent hostility to Great Britain. The
Continental unity
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427
British, in winning much of the eighteenth-century struggle for wealth and empire, had
made themselves disliked in many quarters. There was the natural jealousy felt toward the
successful, and resentment against the high-handedness by which success had been won
and maintained. Such feelings were present among almost all Europeans. It was believed
that the British were really using their sea power to win a larger permanent share of the
world’s seaborne commerce for themselves. Nor, in truth, was this belief mistaken.
British Blockade and Napoleon’s Continental System
The British, in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, when they declared France and its
allies in a state of blockade, did not expect either to starve them or to deprive them of
necessary materials of war. Western Europe was still self-suffi cient in food, and arma-
ments were to a large extent produced locally from simple materials like iron, copper, and
saltpeter. Europe required almost nothing indispensable from overseas. T he chief aim of
the British blockade was not, therefore, to keep imports out of enemy countries. The goal
was to keep the trade in such imports out of French or European control and thereby kill
off enemy commerce and shipping. In the short run the British sought to weaken the war-
making powers of the enemy government by undermining its revenues and its navy; and
in the long run they wanted to weaken the enemy’s commercial position in world markets.
Economic warfare was trade warfare. The British were willing enough to have British
goods pass through to Europe either by smuggling or by the mediation
of neutrals.
As early as 1793 the French republicans had denounced England as
the “modern Carthage,” a ruthless mercantile and profi t-seeking power that
aspired to enslave Europe to its fi nancial and commercial system. With the
wars, the British in fact obtained a monopoly over the shipment of overseas commodi-
ties into Europe. At the same time, being relatively advanced in the new techniques of
industrial production, they could produce cotton cloth and certain other articles, by power
machinery, more cheaply than other peoples of Europe. Britain thus threatened to monopo-
lize the European market for such manufactured goods. There was much feeling in Europe
against the modern Carthage, especially among the bourgeois and commercial classes who
were in competition with it. The upper classes were perhaps less hostile, not caring where
the goods that they consumed had originated, but aristocracies and governments were sus-
ceptible to the argument that Britain was a money power, a “nation of shopkeepers” as
Napoleon put it, which fought its wars with pounds sterling instead of blood and was
always in search of dupes in Europe.
It was on all these feelings that Napoleon played, reiterating time and again that
England was the real enemy of all Europe, and that Europe would never be prosperous or
economically independent until relieved of the incubus of British “monopoly.” To prevent
the fl ow of goods into Britain was no more the purpose of the Continental System than to
prevent the fl ow of goods into France was the purpose of the British blockade. The purpose
of each was to destroy the enemy’s commerce, credit, and public revenues by the destruc-
tion of its exports—and also to build up markets for their own national
economies.
To destroy British exports Napoleon prohibited, by the Berlin Decree
of 1806, the importation of British goods into the continent of Europe.
Goods were counted as British if they came from either British or British colonial origins,
even if they were brought to Europe in neutral ships as the property of neutrals. The British,
Anti-British
sentiments
Trade warfare
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe428
in response, ruled by an “order in council” of November 1807 that neutrals might enter
Napoleonic ports only if they fi rst stopped in Great Britain, where the regulations were
such as to encourage their loading with British goods. The British thus tried to move their
exports into enemy territory through neutral channels, which was precisely what Napoleon
intended to prevent. He announced, by the Milan Decree of December 1807, that any
neutral vessel that had stopped at a British port, or submitted to search by a British warship
at sea, would be confi scated upon its appearance in a Continental harbor.
With all Europe at war, virtually the only major trading neutral nation was the United
States, which could now trade with neither England nor Europe except by violating the
regulations of one belligerent or the other. It would thus become liable to reprisals, and
hence to involvement in war. President Jefferson, to avoid war, attempted a self-imposed
policy of commercial isolation that proved so ruinous to American foreign trade that the
United States government took steps to renew trade relations with whichever belligerent
fi rst removed its controls over neutral commerce. Napoleon offered to do so, on the condi-
tion that the United States would defend itself against the enforcement of British controls.
At the same time an expansionist party among the Americans, ambitious to annex Canada,
believed that with the British army engaged in Spain the time was ripe to complete the
War of Independence by driving Britain from the North American main-
land. The result was the Anglo-American War of 1812, which brought the
new American nation into the wider confl ict of the Atlantic world but had
few results, except to demonstrate the ineffi ciency of military institutions in
the new republic.
But Napoleon’s Continental System was more than a device for destroying the export
trade of Great Britain. It was also a scheme for developing the economy of continental
Europe, around France as its main center. The Continental System, if successful, would
replace the national economies with an integrated economy for the Continent as a whole.
It would create the commercial framework for a more unifi ed European civilization. And
it would ruin the British sea power and commercial monopoly; for a unifi ed Europe,
Napoleon thought, would itself soon take to the sea.
The Failure of the Continental System
But the Continental System failed; it was worse than a failure, for it caused widespread
antagonism to the Napoleonic regime. The dream of a united Europe, under French rule,
was not suffi ciently attractive to inspire the necessary sacrifi ce—even a sacrifi ce more of
comforts than of necessities. As Napoleon impatiently said, one would suppose that the
destinies of Europe turned upon a barrel of sugar. It was true, as he and his propagandists
insisted, that Britain monopolized the sale of sugar, tobacco, and other overseas goods, but
people preferred to deal clandestinely with the British rather than go without them. The
irrepressible desire for American commodities destroyed the Continental System.
British manufactures were somewhat easier than colonial goods to replace. Raw cotton
was brought by land from the Middle East through the Balkans, and the cotton manufac-
turers of France, Saxony, Switzerland, and north Italy were stimulated by the relief from
British competition. There was a great expansion of Danish woolens and German hardware.
The cultivation of sugar beets, to replace cane sugar, spread in France, central Europe,
Holland, and even Russia. Thus infant industries and investments were built up that, after
Napoleon’s fall, clamored for tariff protection. In general, the European industrial interests
were well disposed toward the Continental System.
The War of 1812
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429
Yet they could never adequately replace the British in supplying the
market. One obstacle was transportation. Much trading between parts of
the Continent had always been by sea; this coastal traffi c was now blocked
by the British. Land routes were increasingly used, even in the faraway
Balkans and Illyrian Provinces, through which raw cotton was brought; and improved
roads were built through the Simplon and Mont Cenis passes in the Alps. No less than
17,000 wheeled vehicles crossed the Mont Cenis pass in 1810. But land transport, at best,
was no substitute for the sea. Without railroads, introduced some 30 years later, a purely
Continental modern economy could not be maintained; and transoceanic trade had in any
case already shown that the political plan for a land-based commercial system would
likely become a historical anachronism in modern European societies.
Another obstacle was tariffs. The idea of a Continental tariff union was put forward by
some of his subordinates, but Napoleon never adopted it. The dependent states remained
insistent on their ostensible sovereignty. Each had widened its trading area by demolishing
former internal tariffs; but Europeans could not yet view their continent as a unifi ed com-
mercial system, and each state kept a tariff against the others. The kingdoms of Italy and
Naples enjoyed no free trade with each other nor did the German states of the Confedera-
tion of the Rhine. France remained protectionist; and when Napoleon annexed Holland
Consequences of the
Continental System
Construction on the Arch of Triumph began in 1806, but it was not completed until 1836. It became a monument of French nationalism, symbolizing both the Republic and the Empire. The continuous band of bas reliefs above the curve of the arch represented 172 French battles since Valmy in 1792. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
49. The Continental System: Britain and Europe
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe430
and parts of Italy to France, he kept them outside the French customs. At the same time
Napoleon forbade the satellite states to raise high tariffs against France. France was his
base, and he meant to favor French industry, which was much crippled by its loss of its
Middle Eastern and American markets.
Shippers, shipbuilders, and dealers in overseas goods, a powerful
element of the older bourgeoisie, were ruined by the Continental System. The
French ports were idle and their populations were distressed and disgruntled.
The same problems befell all ports of Europe where the blockade was strictly enforced; at
Trieste, total annual tonnage fell from 208,000 in 1807 to 60,000 in 1812. Eastern Europe
was especially hard hit. In western Europe there was some stimulus to new manufactures.
Eastern Europe, long dependent on western Europe for manufactured goods, could no longer
obtain them from England legally, nor from France, Germany, or Bohemia because of the
diffi culties of land transport and the British control of the Baltic. Nor could the landown-
ers of Prussia, Poland, and Russia market their produce. The aristocracy of eastern Europe,
which was the principal spending and importing class, had additional reason to dislike the
French and to sympathize with the British.
As a war measure against Britain the Continental System also failed. British trade
with Europe was signifi cantly reduced, but the loss was made up elsewhere because
of British control of the sea. Exports to Latin America rose from £300,000 in 1805 to
Economic stagnation
Napoleon used architecture to show that Paris was the capital of modern Europe and that his empire replicated the imperial grandeur of ancient Rome. He built the multicolumned Madeleine to be a temple of glory, but after his fall from power it became a church. (Bettmann/Corbis)
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43150. The National Movements and New Nationalist Cultures
£6,300,000 in 1809. Here again the existence of the overseas world frustrated the Conti-
nental System. Despite the System, export of British cotton goods, rising on a continuous
tide of the rapidly developing Industrial Revolution, more than doubled in four years from
1805 to 1809. And while part of the increase was due to mere infl ation and rising prices,
it is estimated that the annual income of the British people more than doubled in the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, growing from £140,000,000 in 1792 to £335,000,000
in 1814. Napoleon’s Continental System, in short, could never match or constrain the
expanding global systems of international trade and commerce.
50. THE NATIONAL MOVEMENTS AND NEW NATIONALIST CULTURES
The Resistance to Napoleon: Nationalism
From the beginning, as far back as 1792, the French met with resistance as well as collabora-
tion in the countries they occupied. There was resentment when the invading armies plun-
dered and laid requisitions upon the occupied countries; and there was anger when local
populations were required to pay tribute in men and money and to adopt policies that were
dictated by representatives of the French government. Europeans began to feel that Napoleon
was employing them merely as tools against England. And in all countries, including France
itself, people grew tired of the peace that was no peace, the wars and rumors of war, the
conscription and the taxes, the loss of lives and local liberties, the aloof bureaucratic govern-
ment, and the obviously insatiable appetite of Napoleon for power and self-exaltation.
Movements of protest and independence showed themselves even within the Napoleonic
structure. We have seen how the dependent states protected themselves by tariffs. Even the
emperor’s proconsuls tried to gain the support of local opinion, as when Louis Bonaparte,
king of Holland, tried to defend Dutch interests against Napoleon’s demands, or when Murat,
king of Naples, appealed to Italian sentiment to secure his own throne.
Nationalism developed as a movement of resistance against the forcible international-
ism of the Napoleonic Empire. Because the international system was essentially French,
the nationalistic movements were anti-French; and because Napoleon was
an autocrat, they were antiautocratic. The nationalism of the period was a
mixture of the conservative and the liberal. Some nationalists, predomi-
nantly conservative, insisted on the value of their own unique institutions,
customs, folkways, and historical development, which they feared might be
obliterated under the French and Napoleonic system. Others, or indeed the same persons,
insisted on more self-determination, more participation in government, more representa-
tive institutions, and more freedom for individuals against the bureaucratic interference of
the state. Both conservative and liberal nationalists rose up against Napoleon, destroyed
him, outlasted him, and shaped the history of the following generations.
Nationalism was thus very complex and appeared in different countries in different
ways. In England a profound national solidarity developed as people of different social
classes stood shoulder to shoulder against “Boney”; and ideas of reforming Parliament or
tampering with historic English liberties were resolutely put aside. It is possible that the
Napoleonic wars helped England through a very diffi cult social crisis, for the Industrial
Revolution was causing dislocation, misery, unemployment, and even revolutionary agita-
tion among a small minority, all of which were eclipsed by the patriotic need for resistance
to Bonaparte. In Spain, nationalism took the form of implacable resistance to the French
armies that desolated the land. Some Spanish nationalists were liberal; a bourgeois group
Anti-French
nationalism
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe432
at Cádiz, rebelling against the French regime, proclaimed the liberal Spanish constitution
of 1812, modeled on the French constitution of 1791. But Spanish nationalism drew its
greatest strength from sentiments that were counterrevolutionary, aiming to restore the
clergy and the Bourbons. In Italy the Napoleonic regime was better liked and national feel-
ing was less anti-French than in Spain. Commercial groups in the Italian cities generally
prized the effi ciency and enlightenment of French methods and often shared in the anti-
clericalism of the French Revolution. The French regime, which lasted in Italy from 1796
to 1814, broke the habit of loyalty to the various duchies, oligarchic republics, papal states,
and foreign dynasties by which Italy had long been ruled. Napoleon never unifi ed Italy,
but he consolidated it into only three parts, and the French infl uence brought the emerging
desire for a politically united Italy within the bounds of reasonable aspiration. Among the
Poles, Napoleon positively encouraged national feeling. He repeatedly told them that they
might win a restored and united Poland by faithfully fi ghting in his cause. A few Polish
nationalists, like the aging patriot Kosciusko, never trusted Napoleon, and some others,
like Czartoryski, looked rather to the Russian tsar for a restoration of the Polish kingdom;
but in general the Poles, for their own national reasons, were exceptionally devoted to the
emperor of the French and long lamented his passing.
The Movement of Thought in Napoleonic Germany
By far the most momentous new national movement developed in Germany.
The Germans rebelled not only against the Napoleonic rule but also against
the century-old ascendancy of French civilization. They rebelled not only
against the French armies but also against much of the philosophy of the Age
of Enlightenment. The years of the French Revolution and Napoleon were
for Germany the years of great cultural effl orescence, the years of Beethoven, Goethe, and
Schiller, of Herder, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schleiermacher, and many others. German ideas
fell in with all the ferment of the new cultural movement known as “romanticism,” which
was everywhere challenging the “dry abstractions” of the Age of Reason and shaping the
new themes of literature, music, art, and historical research. Romanticism contributed to
a growing German critique of eighteenth-century French culture, and German infl uence
spread into the culture and politics of other European societies. In the nineteenth century
the Germans came to be widely regarded as intellectual leaders, somewhat as the French
had been in the century before. And many of the distinctive features of German thought
were somehow connected with the broader anti-Enlightenment themes of both nationalism
and romantic philosophy.
Formerly, especially in the century following the Peace of Westphalia, the Germans
had been the least nationally minded of all the larger European peoples. They prided them-
selves on their world citizenship or cosmopolitan outlook. Looking out from the small states
in which most Germans lived, they were conscious of Europe, conscious of other countries,
but hardly conscious of Germany. The Holy Roman Empire was neither a forceful political
power nor the public embodiment of a well-defi ned national culture. The German world
had no tangible frontiers; the area of German speech simply faded out into Alsace or the
Austrian Netherlands, or into Poland, Bohemia, or the upper Balkans. “Germany” had not
yet taken on a coherent cultural or political existence. The upper classes, becoming con-
temptuous of much that was German, adopted French fashions, dress, etiquette, manners,
ideas, and language, regarding them as an international norm of civilized living. Frederick
the Great hired French tax collectors and wrote his own books in French.
The national
movement in
Germany
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433
About 1780 signs of a change set in. Even Frederick, in his later years, predicted a
golden age of German literature, proudly declaring that Germans could do what other
nations had done. In 1784 appeared a book by J. G. Herder called Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind. Herder was an earnest soul, a Protestant pastor and theologian who had once lived in Paris and found the French somewhat frivolous. He concluded that
imitation of foreign ways made people shallow and artifi cial. He declared
that German ways were indeed different from French but not for that reason
any less worthy of respect. All true culture or civilization, he held, must
arise from native roots. It must arise also from the life of the common peo-
ple, the Volk, not from the cosmopolitan and artifi cial life of the upper classes. Each group of people who shared the same language, Herder argued, also shared
their own distinctive attitudes, spirit, or genius. A sound civilization must express a national
character or Volksgeist. And the character of each people was special to itself. Herder did not believe the nations to be in confl ict; quite the contrary, he simply insisted that they were
different. He did not believe German culture to be the best; many other peoples, notably the
Slavs, would therefore fi nd his ideas applicable to their own nationalist needs. His philoso-
phy of history, however, was very different from that of Voltaire and the philosophes, who
had expected all people to progress along the same path of reason and enlightenment toward
a similar civilization. Herder thought that all peoples should develop their own genius in
their own way, each slowly unfolding with a kind of plantlike growth, avoiding sudden
change or distortion by outside infl uence, and all ultimately refl ecting, in their endless
diversity, the infi nite richness of humanity and of God.
Herder’s cultural
nationalism
Nationalism grew rapidly in all the European countries that resisted Napoleon’s expansionist military policies. This image of Britannia “blowing up the Corsican Bottle Con- jurer” expressed British national pride during this era. The bottle’s label says “British spirits, composed of True Lib- erty, Courage, Loyalty and Religion.” (Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina)
50. The National Movements and New Nationalist Cultures
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe434
The idea of the Volksgeist soon passed to other countries in the general movement of romantic thought. Like much else in romanticism, it emphasized genius or intuition rather
than reason. It stressed the differences rather than the similarity of mankind. It broke down
that sense of human similarity or universality that had been characteristic of the Age of
Enlightenment, and that revealed itself in French and American doctrines of the rights of
man, or again in the law codes of Napoleon. In the past it had been usually thought that
whatever was truly good was good for all peoples. Good poetry, for example, adhered to
certain classical principles or “rules” of composition, which were the same for all writers
from the Greeks on down. Now, according to Herder and to romantics in all countries,
good poetry was the poetry that expressed an inner genius, either an individual genius
or the unique genius of a people—there were no more rigid, classical “rules.” Good and
just laws, according to the older philosophy of natural law, somehow corresponded to a
standard of justice that was the same for all people. But now, according to Herder and the
romantic school of jurisprudence, good laws were those that refl ected local conditions or
national idiosyncrasies. Here again there were no “rules,” except possibly the rule that
each nation should follow its own cultural path.
Herder’s philosophy set forth a cultural nationalism, without a political message. The
Germans had long been a nonpolitical people. In the microscopic states of the Holy Roman
Empire they had had no signifi cant political questions to think about; in the more siz-
able ones they had been excluded from public affairs. The French Revolution made the
Germans acutely conscious of the state. It showed what a people could do with a powerful
state, once they took it over and used it for their own purposes. For one thing, the French
had raised themselves to the dignity of citizenship; they had become free individuals,
responsible for themselves, taking part in the affairs of their country. For another, because
they had a unifi ed state that included all French people, and one in which a whole nation
surged with a new sense of freedom, they were able to rise above all the other nations of
Europe. Many in Germany were beginning to feel humiliation at the paternalism of their
governments. The futilities of the Holy Roman Empire, which had made Germany for
centuries the battlefi eld of Europe, now fi lled them with shame and indignation. They saw
with disgust how their German princes, forever squabbling with each other for control
over German subjects, disgraced themselves before the French to promote their own inter-
ests. The national awakening in Germany, which set in strongly after 1800, was therefore
directed not only against Napoleon and the French but also against the German rulers and
many of the half-Frenchifi ed German upper classes. It was democratic in that it stressed
the superior virtue of the common people.
Germans became fascinated by the idea of political and national greatness, precisely
because they had neither. A great national German state, expressing the deep moral will
and distinctive culture of the German people, seemed to offer a solution to all their prob-
lems. It would give moral dignity to the individual German, solve the vexatious question
of the selfi sh petty princes, protect the deep German Volksgeist from violation, and secure the Germans from subjection to outside powers. The nationalist philosophy remained
somewhat vague, because in practice there was little that one could do. “Father” Jahn
organized a kind of youth movement, had his young men do calisthenics for the Father-
land and led them on open-air expeditions into the country, where they made fun of aris-
tocrats in French costume. He taught them to be suspicious of foreigners, Jews, and
internationalists, and indeed of everything that might corrupt the purity of the German
Volk. Most Germans thought him too extreme. Others collected wonderful stories of the rich medieval German past. There was an anonymous anti-French work, Germany in Its
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Deep Humiliation, for selling which the publisher Palm was put to death. Others founded the Moral and Scientifi c Union, generally known as the Tugendbund or league of virtue or manliness, whose members, by developing their own moral character, were to contribute
to the future of Germany.
The career of J. G. Fichte illustrates the course of German thought in
these years. Fichte was a moral and metaphysical philosopher, a professor
at the University of Jena. His doctrine that the inner spirit of the individ-
ual creates its own moral universe was much admired in many countries.
In America, for example, it entered into the transcendental philosophy of
Ralph Waldo Emerson. During his early philosophical career, Fichte expressed little inter-
est in a specifi c national feeling. He enthusiastically approved of the French Revolution, as
did many other German intellectuals at the time. In 1793, with the Revolution at its height,
Fichte published a laudatory tract on the French Republic. He saw it as an emancipation
of the human spirit, a step upward in the elevation of human dignity and moral stature. He
accepted the idea of the Terror, that of “forcing men to be free,” and he shared Rousseau’s
conception of the state as the embodiment of the sovereign will of a people. He came to
see the state as the means of human salvation. In 1800, in his Closed Commercial State, he sketched a kind of totalitarian system in which the state planned and operated the whole
economy of the country, shutting itself off from the rest of the world in order that, at home,
it might freely develop the character of its own citizens. When the French conquered
Germany Fichte became intensely and self-consciously German. He took over the idea
of the Volksgeist: not only did the individual spirit create its own moral universe, but the spirit of a people created a kind of moral universe as well, manifested in its language,
history, arts, folk-ways, customs, institutions, and ideas.
At Berlin, in 1808, Fichte delivered a series of Addresses to the German Nation, declar- ing that there was an ineradicable German spirit, a primordial and immutable national char-
acter, more noble than that of other peoples (thus going beyond Herder), to be kept pure at all
costs from all outside infl uence, either international or French. The German spirit, he held,
had always been profoundly different from that of France and western Europe. Germany
had never yet really achieved the national or international stature that such a noble, creative
people should attain, but Fichte confi dently affi rmed that the Germans would eventually play
a great role in world history. The French army commander then occupying the city thought
the lectures too academic to be worth suppression. They attracted only small audiences; but
his published lectures provided an enduring philosophical argument for German national-
ism, and many Germans later regarded him as a national hero.
Reforms in Prussia
Politically, the revolt against the French led to major transformations in Prussia and the
Prussian state. After the death of Frederick the Great in 1786 Prussia had fallen into a
period of satisfi ed inertia, such as is likely to follow upon rapid growth or spectacular suc-
cess. Then in 1806, at Jena-Auerstädt, the kingdom collapsed in a single battle. Its western
and most of its Polish territories were taken away. It was relegated by Napoleon to its old
holdings east of the Elbe River. Even here the French remained in occupation, for Napoleon
stationed his Ninth Corps in Berlin. But in the eyes of German nationalists Prussia had a
moral advantage. Of all the German states it was the least compromised by collaboration
with the French. Toward Prussia, as toward a haven, German patriots therefore made their
way. Prussia, east of the Elbe, formerly the least German of German lands, became the
Fichte and the
German national
spirit
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe436
center of an all-German movement for national freedom. The years after Jena contributed to
the “Prussianizing” of Germany; but it is to be observed that neither Fichte nor Hegel,
Gneisenau nor Scharnhorst, Stein nor Hardenberg, all of whom contributed
to the rebuilding of Prussia and to a deepening German identity within
Prussia, was a native Prussian.
The main problem for Prussia was military, because Napoleon could
be overthrown only by military force. And as always in Prussia, the require-
ments of the army strongly infl uenced the evolution of the state. The problem was con-
ceived to be one of morale and personnel. The old Prussia of Frederick, which had fallen
ingloriously, had been mechanical, arbitrary, soulless. Its people had lacked the sense of
membership in the state, and in the army its soldiers had held no hope of promotion and
felt no patriotic spirit. To produce this spirit was the aim of the army reformers Scharnhorst
and Gneisenau. Gneisenau, a Saxon, had served in one of the British “Hessian” regiments
in the War of American Independence, during which he had observed the military value
of patriotic feeling in the American soldiers. He was also a close observer of the conse-
quences of the French Revolution, which, he said, had “set in action the national energy of
the entire French people, putting the different classes on an equal social and fi scal basis.”
If Prussia was to strengthen itself against France, or indeed to avoid a future revolution
within Prussia itself, it must fi nd a means to inspire similar feelings of participation among
its own people and to allow capable individuals to fi ll important positions in the army and
government without regard to their social status.
The reconstruction of the state, prerequisite to the reconstruction of the army, was
initiated by Baron Stein and continued by his successor, Hardenberg. Like Metternich,
Stein came from western Germany, and he was long hostile to what he considered a
The reform movement
in Prussia
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1799–1815
1799–1801 Second Coalition (Austria, Russia, Britain) wages war with France
1803 Napoleon’s army is defeated in Haiti and France sells Louisiana to the United
States
1805–1807 Third Coalition (Austria, Russia, Britain) wages war with France
1806 Napoleon defeats Prussian armies and occupies Berlin
1806–1825 Latin American countries pursue successful campaigns for national
independence from Spain and Portugal
1807 Treaty of Tilsit creates French-Russian alliance; Napoleon proclaims
“Continental System” to exclude trade with Britain
1808–1814 Peninsular War leads to French defeats in Spain
1810 Napoleon marries Marie Louise, daughter of Austrian Emperor
1812 Napoleon’s “Grand Army” invades Russia and is destroyed in winter retreat
1813 French army loses decisive battle of Leipzig in Germany
1814 Abdication of Napoleon and restoration of Bourbon Monarchy in France
1814–1815 Congress of Vienna reorganizes the political order in Europe
1815 Napoleon returns to power for “100 Days”; fi nal defeat at the battle of Waterloo
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43751. The Overthrow of Napoleon: The Congress of Vienna
barely civilized Prussia, but he fi nally turned to the Prussian state as the best hope to lead
Germany as a whole into the future. Deeply committed to the philosophy of Kant and
Fichte, he emphasized the concepts of duty, service, moral character, and responsibility.
He thought that the common people must be awakened to moral life and raised from a bru-
talized servility to the level of self-determination and membership in the community. This,
he believed, required an equality more of duties than of rights.
Under Stein the old caste structure of Prussia became somewhat less rigid. Property
became interchangeable between social classes, and soldiers of all classes could now serve
as offi cers in the army. The burghers, to develop a sense of citizenship and participation
in the state, were given extensive freedom of self-government in the cities; the municipal
systems of Prussia, and later of Germany, became a model for much of Europe in the
following century.
Stein’s most famous work was the “abolition of serfdom.” It was naturally impos-
sible, because the whole reform program was aimed at strengthening Prussia for a war of
liberation against the French, to antagonize the Junkers who commanded the army. Stein’s
ordinance of 1807 abolished only the “hereditary subjection” of peasants to their manorial
lords. It gave peasants the right to move and migrate, marry, and take up trades without
the lord’s approval. If, however, they remained on the land, they were still subject to all
the old services of forced labor in the fi elds of the lord. Peasants who held small plots of
land as “tenures” from their lords continued to be liable for the old dues and fees. By an
edict of 1810, they might convert this traditional tenure into their own private property,
getting rid of the manorial obligations, but only on the condition that one-third of the land
held should become the private property of the lord. In the following decades many such
conversions took place; as a result, the estates of the Junkers grew considerably larger.
The reforms in Prussia gave new legal status and freedom of movement to the mass of
the population, thus laying the foundation for a modern state and modern economy. The
peasants tended to become mere hired agricultural laborers, however, and the social posi-
tion of the Junkers was heightened, not reduced; but Prussia avoided a political revolution.
Stein himself, because Napoleon feared him, was obliged to go into exile in 1808, but his
reforms endured.
51. THE OVERTHROW OF NAPOLEON: THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA
The situation at the close of 1811 may be summarized as follows. Napoleon
had the mainland of Europe in his grip. Russia and Turkey were at war on
the Danube, but otherwise there was no war except in Spain, where four
years of fi ghting had blocked the consolidation of French control. The Continental System
was working badly. Britain was hurt by it only in that, without it, British exports to Europe
would have risen rapidly in these years. Well launched in the economic growth of the
Industrial Revolution, Britain was amassing a vast store of national wealth that could
be used to assist European governments fi nancially against Napoleon. The peoples of
Europe were growing restless, dreaming increasingly of national freedom. In Germany
especially, many were looking for an opportunity to rise in a war of independence. But
Napoleon could be overthrown only by the destruction of his army, over which neither
British wealth nor British sea power, nor the European patriots and nationalists, nor the
Prussian nor the Austrian armed forces were able to prevail. All eyes turned to Russia.
Alexander I had long been dissatisfi ed with his French alliance. He had obtained from it
Europe in 1811
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe438
nothing but the annexation of Finland in 1809. He received no assistance from France in
his war with Ottoman Turkey; and he had to tolerate the existence of a French-oriented
Poland at his very door. The articulate classes in Russia, namely, the landowners and serf
owners, denounced the French alliance and demanded a resumption of open trade relations
with England. An international clientele of émigrés and anti-Bonapartists, including Baron
Stein, also gradually congregated at St. Petersburg, where they poured into the tsar’s ears
the welcome message that Europe looked to him for its salvation.
The Russian Campaign and the War of Liberation
On December 31, 1810, Russia formally withdrew from the Continental System. Anglo-
Russian commercial relations were resumed. Napoleon resolved to crush the tsar. He con-
centrated the Grand Army in eastern Germany and Poland, a vast force of 700,000 men,
the largest European army ever assembled up to that time for a single military operation. It
was an all-European host. Hardly more than a third was French; another third was German,
from German regions annexed to France, from the states of the Confederation of the Rhine,
and with token forces from Prussia and Austria; and the remaining third was drawn from all
other nationalities of the Grand Empire, including 90,000 Poles. Napoleon at fi rst hoped to
meet the Russians in Poland or Prussia. This time, however, they decided to fi ght on their
own ground, and they needed in any case to delay until their forces on the lower Danube
could be recalled. In June 1812 Napoleon led the Grand Army into Russia.
He intended a short, sharp war, such as most of his wars had been in the past, and
carried with him only three weeks’ supplies. But from the beginning everything went wrong.
It was Napoleon’s principle to force a decisive battle; but the Russian army kept withdraw-
ing toward the east. It was his principle to live on the country, so as to reduce the need for
supply trains; but the Russians destroyed as they retreated, and in any case, in Russia, even
in the summer, it was hard to fi nd sustenance for so many men and horses. Finally, not far
from Moscow, Napoleon was able to join battle with the main Russian force at Borodino.
Here again everything miscarried. It was his principle always to outnumber the enemy at the
decisive spot, but the Grand Army had left so many detachments along its line of march that
at Borodino the Russians outnumbered it. It was Napoleon’s principle to concentrate his
artillery, but here he scattered it instead. His principle was to throw in his last reserves at the
critical moment, but at Borodino, so far from home, he refused the risk of ordering the Old
Guard into action. Napoleon won the battle, at a cost of 30,000 men, as against 50,000 lost
by the Russians; but the Russian army was able to withdraw in good order.
On September 14, 1812, the French emperor entered Moscow. Almost immediately
the city broke into fl ames. Napoleon found himself camping in a ruin, with troops strewn
along a vulnerable line all the way back to Poland, and with a hostile army maneuvering
near at hand. Baffl ed, he tried to negotiate with Alexander, who refused all overtures.
After fi ve weeks, not knowing what to do and fearful of remaining isolated
in Moscow over the winter, Napoleon ordered a retreat. Prevented by the
Russians from taking a more southerly route, the Grand Army retired by
the same way it had come, but it could no longer live off the land. The
cold weather set in early and was unusually severe. For a century after
1812 the retreat from Moscow remained the last word in military horror. Men froze and
starved, horses slipped and died, vehicles could not be moved, and equipment was aban-
doned. Discipline broke down toward the end; the army dissolved into a horde of starv-
ing, disoriented fugitives, speaking a babel of languages, harassed by bands of Russian
The retreat from
Moscow
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439
irregulars, picking their way on foot over ice and snow, most of the time in the dark,
for the nights are long in these latitudes in December. Of 611,000 who entered Russia
400,000 died of battle wounds, starvation, and exposure, and 100,000 were taken pris-
oner. The Grand Army no longer existed.
Now at last all the anti-Napoleon forces rushed together. The Russians pushed west-
ward into central Europe. The Prussian and Austrian governments, which in 1812 had half-
heartedly supplied troops for the invasion of Russia, switched over in 1813 and joined the
tsar. Throughout Germany, the patriots, often half-trained boys, marched off in the War of
Liberation, though it was the professional armies of the German states that made the differ-
ence. In Spain Wellington at last pushed rapidly forward; in June 1813 he crossed the
Pyrenees into France. The British government, in three years from 1813 to 1815, poured
£32,000,000 as subsidies into Europe, more than half of all the funds granted during the
22 years of the wars. An incongruous alliance of British capitalism and eastern European
agrarian feudalism, of the British navy and the Russian army, of Spanish clericalism and
German nationalism, of divine-right monarchies and newly aroused democrats and liberals,
combined at last to bring the Man of Destiny to the ground.
Napoleon, who had left his army in Russia in December 1812 and rushed across
Europe to Paris by sleigh and coach in the remarkable time of 13 days, raised a new army
in France in the early months of 1813. But it was untrained and unsteady, and he himself
had lost some of his genius for command. His new army was smashed in October at the
battle of Leipzig, known to the Germans as the Battle of the Nations, the
greatest battle in number of men engaged ever fought until the twentieth
century. The allies drove Napoleon back upon France. But the closer they
came to defeating him the more they began to fear and distrust each other.
The Restoration of the Bourbons
The coalition already showed signs of splitting. Should the allies, together or singly, nego-
tiate with Napoleon? How strong should the France of the future be? What should be its
new frontiers? What form of government should it have? There was no agreement on these
questions. Alexander wanted to dethrone Napoleon and dictate peace in Paris, in dramatic
retribution for the destruction of Moscow. He had a scheme for giving the French throne to
Bernadotte, a former French marshal, now crown prince of Sweden, who as king of France
would depend on Russian support. Metternich preferred to keep Napoleon or his son as
French emperor, after clearing the French out of central Europe; for a Bonaparte dynasty
in a reduced France would be dependent on Austria. The British, with an eye on one of
their main strategic concerns, declared that the French must get out of Belgium and that
Napoleon must go; they held that the French might then choose their own government but
believed a restoration of the Bourbons to be the best solution. The Continental monarchies
in Austria, Prussia, and Russia had no concern for the Bourbons, and both Alexander and
Metternich, if they could make France dependent respectively on themselves, were willing
to see it remain strong even to the extent of including Belgium.
The British foreign minister, Viscount Castlereagh, arrived on the Continent for consul-
tations in January 1814. He held a number of strong cards. For one thing, Napoleon contin-
ued to fi ght, and the allies therefore continued to ask for British fi nancial aid. Castlereagh
skillfully used the promise of British subsidies to win acceptance of the British war aims,
which included France’s expulsion from Belgium. In addition, he found a common ground
for agreement with Metternich, both Britain and Austria fearing the domination of Europe
The “Battle of the
Nations”
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe440
by Russia. Castlereagh’s fi rst great problem was to hold the alliance together, for without
Continental allies the British could not defeat France. He succeeded, on March 9, 1814, in
getting Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain to sign the treaty of Chaumont. Each
power bound itself for 20 years to a Quadruple Alliance against France, and
each agreed to provide 150,000 soldiers to enforce such peace terms as might
be arrived at. For the fi rst time since 1792 a solid coalition of the four great
powers now existed against France. Three weeks later the allies entered
Paris, and on April 4 Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau.
He was forced to this step by lack of support in France itself. Twenty
years before, in 1793 and 1794, France had fought off the combined powers of Europe—
minus Russia. It could not and would not do so in 1814. The country cried for peace. Even
the imperial marshals advised the emperor’s abdication. But what was to follow him? For
25 years the French had lived under one revolutionary or activist regime after another.
The Quadruple
Alliance
The French army’s retreat from Russia in 1812 shattered Napoleon’s image of military invin- cibility and brought the anti-Napoleonic forces together for a decisive victory in the following year. This French painting portrays the misery that gave the retreat of 1812 its lasting reputa- tion for military horror. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
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441
Now they were divided. Some wanted a republic; others wished to retain the empire under
Napoleon’s infant son; still others desired a constitutional monarchy; and there were even
those who longed for the old regime. Talleyrand stepped into the breach. The “legitimate”
king, he said, Louis XVIII, was the man who would provoke the least factionalism and
opposition. The monarchical powers, likewise, had by this time concluded in favor of the
Bourbons. A Bourbon king would be peaceable, under no impulse to win back the con-
quests of the republic and empire. He would also, as the native and rightful king of France,
need no foreign support to bolster him, so that the control of France would not arise as an
issue to divide the victorious powers.
The Bourbon dynasty was thus restored. Louis XVIII, ignored and
disregarded for a whole generation, both by most people in France and by
the governments of Europe, returned to the throne of his brother and his
fathers. He issued a “constitutional charter,” partly at the insistence of the
liberal tsar and partly because, having actually learned from his long exile, he sought the
support of infl uential people in France. The charter of 1814 made no concession to the
principle of popular or national sovereignty. It was represented as the gracious gift of a
theoretically absolute king. But in practice it granted what most of the French wanted.
It promised legal equality, eligibility of all to public offi ce without regard to class, and a
parliamentary government in two chambers. It recognized the Napoleonic law codes, the
Napoleonic settlement with the church, and the redistribution of property effected during
the Revolution. It carried over the abolition of all feudal privileges and manorial rights.
It confi ned the vote, to be sure, to a very few large landowners; but for the time being,
except for a few irreconcilables, France settled down to enjoy the blessings of a chastened
revolution—and peace.
The Settlement before the Vienna Congress
It was with the government of the restored Bourbons that the powers, on May 30, 1814,
signed a treaty. This document, the “fi rst” Treaty of Paris, confi ned France to its prewar
boundaries of 1792. The allied statesmen disregarded popular cries for vengeance and
punishment, imposed no indemnity or reparations, and even allowed the works of art gath-
ered from Europe during the wars to remain in Paris. It was not the desire of the victors to
handicap the restored French monarchy on which they now placed their hopes. Napoleon
meanwhile was exiled to the island of Elba on the Italian coast.
To deal with other questions, the powers had agreed, before signing the Alliance of
Chaumont, to hold an international congress at Vienna after defeating Napoleon. The reces-
sion of the French fl ood left the future of much of Europe fl uid and uncertain. Both Russia
and Great Britain, however, before consenting to a general conference, specifi ed certain
matters that they would decide for themselves as not susceptible to international consider-
ation. The Russians refused to discuss Turkey and the Balkans; they retained Bessarabia
as the prize of their recent war with the Turks. They also kept Finland, as an autonomous
constitutional grand duchy, as well as certain conquests in the Caucasus almost unknown
to Europe, namely Georgia and Azerbaijan. The British refused any discussion of the free-
dom of the seas and also barred all questions about colonial and overseas territories. The
British government simply announced which of its colonial and insular conquests it would
keep and which it would return. The revolts in Latin America were left to run their course.
In Europe, the British remained in possession of Malta, the Ionian Islands, and the
island of Heligoland in the North Sea; in America, they kept St. Lucia, Trinidad, and
The Bourbons
restored
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe442
Tobago in the West Indies. Of former French possessions, the British kept the island of
Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Of former Dutch territories, they kept the Cape of Good
Hope and Ceylon, but returned the Netherlands Indies. During the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic wars in Europe the British had also made extensive conquests
in India, bringing much of the Deccan and the upper Ganges Valley under
their rule. The British emerged, in 1814, as the controlling European power
in both India and the Indian Ocean.
Indeed, of all the colonial empires founded by Europeans in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, only the British now remained as a growing and dynamic system. The old
French, Spanish, and Portuguese empires were struggling against revolutionary movements
and declining to much-reduced political and territorial versions of their former selves; the
Dutch still held vast establishments in the East Indies, but all the intermediate positions—
the Cape, Ceylon, Mauritius, Singapore—would soon be controlled by Britain. Nor, after
1814, did any people except the British have a signifi cant navy. With Napoleon and the
Continental System defeated, with the Industrial Revolution bringing power machinery to
the manufacturers of England, with no rival left in the contest for overseas dominion, and
with a virtual monopoly of naval power, whose use they studiously kept free from interna-
tional regulation, the British embarked on their century of world leadership, which may be
said to have lasted from 1814 to 1914.
The Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815
The Congress of Vienna assembled in September 1814. Never had such a brilliant gather-
ing been seen. All the states of Europe sent representatives; and many defunct states, such
as the formerly sovereign princes and ecclesiastics of the late Holy Roman Empire, sent
lobbyists to urge their restoration. But procedure was so arranged that all important mat-
ters were decided by the four triumphant Great Powers. Indeed it was at the Congress of
Vienna that the terms “great” and “small” powers entered clearly into the diplomatic
vocabulary. Europe was at peace, a treaty having been signed with the late enemy, but
France was represented at the Congress, by none other than Talleyrand, now minister to
Louis XVIII. Castlereagh, Metternich, and Alexander spoke for their respective countries;
Prussia was represented by Hardenberg. Although they were all aristocrats of the Old
Regime, they by no means desired to restore the territorial boundaries of the era before the
wars. They did desire, as they put it, to restore the “liberties of Europe,” meaning the free-
dom of European states from domination by a single power; and it was hoped that a proper
balance of power would also produce a lasting peace.
The chief menace to peace, and most likely claimant for the domination
of Europe, naturally seemed to be the late troublemaker, France. The Con-
gress of Vienna, without much disagreement, erected a barrier of strong
states along the French eastern frontier. The historic Dutch Republic, extinct
since 1795, was revived as the kingdom of the Netherlands, with the house of Orange as a
hereditary monarchy; to it was added Belgium, the old Austrian Netherlands with which
Austria had long been willing to part. It was hoped that the combined Dutch-Belgian king-
dom would be strong enough to discourage the perennial French drive into the Low Coun-
tries. On the south, the kingdom of Sardinia (or Piedmont) was restored and strengthened by
the incorporation of Genoa. Behind the Netherlands and Piedmont, and further to discour-
age a renewal of French pressure upon Germany and Italy, two great powers were installed.
Almost all the German left bank of the Rhine was ceded to Prussia, which was to be, in
British supremacy
Containing France
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443
Castlereagh’s words, a kind of “bridge” spanning central Europe, a bulwark against both
France in the West and Russia in the East. In Italy, again as a kind of secondary barrier
against France, the Austrians were fi rmly installed. They not only took back Tuscany and
the Milanese, which they had held before 1796, but also annexed the extinct republic of
Venice. The Austrian Empire now included a Lombardo-Venetian kingdom in north Italy,
which lasted for almost half a century. In the rest of Italy the Congress recognized the resto-
ration of the pope in the papal states and of former rulers in the smaller duchies; but it did
not insist on a restoration of the Bourbons in the kingdom of Naples. There Napoleon’s
brother-in-law Murat, with support from Metternich, managed for a time to retain his throne.
The Bourbon and Braganza rulers restored themselves in Spain and Portugal, respectively,
and were recognized by the Congress as the reigning royal families in the Iberian states.
As for Germany, the Congress made no attempt to put together again
the Humpty Dumpty of the Holy Roman Empire. The French and Napo-
leonic reorganization of Germany was substantially confi rmed, and the
kings of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Saxony kept the royal crowns that
Napoleon had bestowed on them. The king of England, George III, was
now recognized as king, not “elector,” of Hanover. The German states, 39 in number,
including Prussia and Austria, were joined in a loose confederation in which the members
remained virtually sovereign. The Congress ignored the yearnings of German nationalists
Germany remains
divided
The Congress of Vienna combined complex diplomatic negotiations with the cultural elegance of traditional elites. This picture shows the social status of the diplomats who sought to estab- lish peace and order in Europe after 25 years of revolution and warfare. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
51. The Overthrow of Napoleon: The Congress of Vienna
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe444
for a great unifi ed Fatherland; Metternich especially feared nationalistic agitation; and in
any case the nationalists themselves had no practical answer to concrete questions, such
as the government and frontiers that a united Germany should have.
Finally, there was the question of Poland, which almost brought the Congress to disas-
ter. The fall of Napoleon’s Grand Duchy of Warsaw had given Alexander an opportunity to
reassert his long-held plan for undoing the crime of the Polish partitions and reconstituting
a Polish kingdom—with himself as the constitutional king. He sought to achieve this goal
by allowing Prussia to absorb the kingdom of Saxony, but both Metternich and Castlereagh
vehemently opposed this plan. The Austrians feared the expansion of their two main rivals
in central Europe, and the British had not fought the French emperor to help the Russian
tsar extend his power over other European peoples and territories. After prolonged negotia-
tions, the strategic interventions of Talleyrand, and the threat of a possible war among the
recent allies, the contending factions reached a compromise.
The Congress created a new, somewhat smaller Polish kingdom that
would be remembered in history simply as “Congress Poland.” Alexander
gave the new state a constitution and became its king, but this new king-
dom (which comprised roughly the same area as Napoleon’s Grand Duchy)
survived as a political entity for only 15 years. Prussia, for its part, received about two-
fi fths of Saxony, but the enduring addition of both Saxon and Rhineland territories brought
the Prussian monarchy into the most economically advanced regions of Germany and to
the borders of France. The net effect of the Napoleonic wars and the peace settlement
was thus to shift the center of gravity of both Russia and Prussia farther west (see maps,
pp. 214–215, 230–231).
The main political work of the Congress was completed with the agreements on
Poland and Saxony, but at this point the whole settlement was unexpectedly brought into
jeopardy by the reappearance of Napoleon.
The Hundred Days and Their Aftermath
Napoleon escaped from Elba, landed in France on March 1, 1815, and again proclaimed
the empire. In the year since the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy discontent had been
spreading in France. Louis XVIII proved to be a sensible man, but a swarm of unreasonable
and vindictive émigrés had come back with him. Reaction and a “white terror” were raging
through the country. Most adherents of the Revolution therefore rallied to the emperor on
his dramatic reappearance. Napoleon reached Paris, regained control over the government
and army, and soon led an army into Belgium. He would, if he could, disperse the pompous
assemblage at Vienna. To the victors of the year before, and to most of Europe, it seemed
that the Revolution was again stirring, that the old horror of toppling thrones and recurring
warfare might not after all be ended. The opposing forces met in Belgium at Waterloo,
where the Duke of Wellington, commanding an allied force, won a great victory. Napoleon
again abdicated and was again exiled, this time to distant St. Helena in the south Atlan-
tic. A new peace treaty was made with France, the “second” Treaty of Paris. It was more
severe than the fi rst, because the French seemed to have shown themselves incorrigible
and unrepentant. The new treaty imposed minor changes on the frontiers, forced the French
to pay an indemnity of 700,000,000 francs over fi ve years, and placed a French-fi nanced
European army of occupation in northeastern France.
The effect of the Hundred Days, as the episode following Napoleon’s return from
Elba is called, was to renew the dread of revolution, war, and aggression. Britain, Russia,
Congress Poland
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445
Austria, and Prussia, after being almost at war with each other over Poland and Saxony in
January, again joined forces to get rid of the apparition from Elba, and in November 1815
they solemnly reconfi rmed the Quadruple Alliance of Chaumont, adding a provision that
no Bonaparte should ever govern France. They agreed also to hold future congresses to
review the political situation and enforce the peace. No change was made in the arrange-
ments agreed to at Vienna, except that Murat, who fought for Napoleon during the Hun-
dred Days, was captured and shot, and an extremely unenlightened
Bourbon monarchy was restored in Naples. In addition to the Quadruple
Alliance of the Great Powers, bound specifi cally to enforce or amend the
terms of the peace treaty by international action, Alexander devised a
vaguer scheme that he called the Holy Alliance. The tsar proposed that all
European monarchs sign a statement by which they promised to uphold Christian princi-
ples of charity and peace. All signed except the pope, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire,
and the prince regent of Great Britain. The Holy Alliance, probably sincerely meant by
Alexander as a condemnation of violence, and at fi rst not taken seriously by the others
who signed it and who thought it absurd to mix Christianity with politics, soon came to
signify, in the minds of liberals, a kind of unholy alliance of monarchies against liberty
and progress.
The Peace of Vienna, including generally the Treaty of Vienna itself,
the treaties of Paris, and the British and colonial settlement, was the most
far-reaching diplomatic agreement between the Peace of Westphalia of
1648 and the Peace of Paris, which closed the First World War in 1919. It had its strong
points and its weak ones. It produced a minimum of resentment in France, where most
people were willing to accept the new arrangements. It ended almost two centuries of
European confl icts over the control of colonial territories in Asia and the Americas; for
60 or 70 years no colonial empire seriously challenged the British. Two other causes
of friction in the eighteenth century—the control of Poland and the Austro-Prussian
dualism in Germany—were smoothed over for 50 years. With past issues the peace of
1815 dealt rather effectively; with future issues, not unnaturally, it was less successful.
The Vienna treaty was not illiberal in its day; it was by no means entirely reaction-
ary, for the Congress showed little desire to restore the state of affairs in existence
before the wars. The reaction that gathered strength after 1815 was not written into
the treaty itself.
But the treaty gave no satisfaction to nationalists and democrats. It was a disap-
pointment even to many liberals, especially in Germany. The transfer of peoples from
government to government without consultation of their wishes opened the way under
nineteenth-century conditions to a good deal of subsequent trouble. The peacemakers were
in fact hostile both to nationalism and to democracy, the potent forces of the coming age;
they regarded them, with reason, as leading to revolution and war. The problem to which
they addressed themselves was to restore a more traditional balance of power, the “liberties
of Europe,” and to make a lasting peace. In this they were successful. They restored the
European state system, a system in which a number of sovereign and independent states
existed without fear of conquest or domination. And the peace they made, though some
details broke down in 1830 and others in 1848, on the whole subsisted for half a century;
and not for a full century, not until 1914, was there a war in Europe that lasted longer than
a few months or in which all the great powers were again involved.
The Peace of Vienna thus brought to a close the great political and military upheavals
that had spread across Europe in the wake of the French Revolution. Yet even the most
Alliances against
Napoleon
The Peace of Vienna
51. The Overthrow of Napoleon: The Congress of Vienna
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Chapter 10 Napoleonic Europe446
N o r t h S e a
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
A e g e a n S e a
A driatic Sea
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
B a lt
ic S e
a
O de
r R .
Vistu l a R.
Tag us R.
Douro R.
Ebro R.
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ne R.
R h
o n e
R .
Loire R.
Seine R
.
Elbe R. Rhine
R.
Po R.
Danube R.
Guadia n a R.
Nieman R.
English Channel
CORSICA (France)
CRETE MALTA (Britain)
GREECE (Independant 1829)SICILY
Elba
HELIGOLAND (Britain)
TUNISIA (Turkish)
TRIPOLI TRIPOLI
ALGERIA (France, 1830)
IONIAN I. (Britain)
BALEARIC IS. (Spain)
AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
LITHUANIA
RUSSIAN EMPIRE
LUCCA
SWITZERLAND
SAVOY
PI ED
M O
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FRANCE
SPAIN PORTUGAL
MOROCCO
K IN
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MODENA PARMA
KINGDOM OF THE
TWO SICILIES
TYROL
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CRO ATI
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DALM ATIA
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PAPAL STATES
TUSCANY OTTOMAN EMPIRE
HUNGARY
WALLACHIA (Autonomous 1829)
BESSA RA
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(Russia 1812)
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(A utonom
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MONTENEGRO BULGARIA
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WÜRT- TEMBERG
SAXON STATES SA
XON Y
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KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS
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KINGDOM OF POLAND- (1815–1831)
EAST PRUSSIA
BELGIUM (Ind. 1831)
LUX.
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RRAINE
P R
U S S
I A
KINGDOM OF NORWAY AND SWEDEN
FINLAND (Russia, 1808)
HANOVER
HOLSTEIN
SCHLESWIG
ENGLAND
UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
BAVARIA
SCOTLAND
IRELAND
London
Edinburgh
Dublin
Bordeaux
Cadiz
Gibraltar (Britain)
Seville
Valencia
Naples
Rome
Lyon
Paris
Rouen
Nice
Toulon Marseille
Genoa
Milan
Bern
Berlin
Prague
Vienna Pressburg
Budapest
Belgrade
Salonica
Sofia
Athens
Austerlitz
Cracow
St. Petersburg
Reval
Riga
Warsaw
Breslau
Danzig
Copenhagen
Oslo
Stockholm
Cologne
Hamburg
Munich
Metz
Strasbourg
Palermo
Algiers
Madrid
Burgos
BarcelonaLisbon
Toulouse
Ottoman Empire
Austrian Empire
Bavaria
Prussia
Kingdom of Sardinia
0 100 200 300 miles
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447
conservative diplomats at Vienna recognized that the revolutionary events
and legacy would not simply vanish from European culture or history;
indeed the Holy Alliance and the vigilance of the conservative European
states after 1815 showed how deeply the French Revolution had affected all
of Europe and those places outside Europe where revolutionary ideas had become popular
and infl uential. The Latin American struggle for independence from Spain, for example,
continued to draw on the new conceptions of national sovereignty and continued to spread
across the New World while diplomats in Vienna were working to restore stability and
order in Europe.
The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire had demonstrated how a new,
more open system of social and professional advancement enabled a nation to exercise
power more effectively than any of the traditional, monarchical states. The revolutionary
regimes had introduced new methods for mobilizing national economic resources, military
forces, and large populations, all of which would reappear in the national mobilizations of
other modern states. The Revolution and Napoleon, in short, gave the modern world new
models of political organization and authoritarian rule. At the same time, however, the
famous revolutionary events also helped to spread new conceptions of human rights, polit-
ical participation, democratic government, and economic organization that would remain
powerful cultural ideals throughout Europe and much of the modern world; and the popu-
lar ideology of nationalism, which developed among both supporters and opponents of the
French Revolution and Napoleon, rapidly became one of the most pervasive political and
cultural forces in modern world history.
All of these ideas helped to produce and reshape the characteristic institutions of mod-
ern societies. They continued to attract fervent supporters after the Congress of Vienna and
after all other attempts to defend or revive the old order. The French Revolution and the
Napoleonic wars, for all their turmoil and terrible destructive violence, created a lasting
political and cultural legacy that has infl uenced modern nations almost everywhere, even
down to our own time in the twenty-fi rst century.
EUROPE, 1815 Boundaries show the political arrangements that emerged from the Congress of Vienna. France was reduced to the borders it had in 1789. Prussia was fi rmly installed on both banks of the Rhine, but South Germany remained as reorganized by Napoleon. Poland was again partitioned, with a larger share than in 1795 going to Russia—which also acquired Finland and Bessarabia. The Austrians added Venetia to what they had held before 1796. The union of the Dutch and Belgian Netherlands lasted only until 1831, when the kingdom of Belgium was established. Otherwise, the boundaries of 1815 lasted until the Italian war of 1859, which led to the unifi cation of Italy.
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
Legacy of the
Revolution
51. The Overthrow of Napoleon: The Congress of Vienna
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449
C h a p t e r 11 INDUSTRIES, IDEAS,
AND THE STRUGGLE
FOR REFORM, 1815–1848
In the period of some 30 years preceding 1815 two “revolutions” had been taking place. One was the
upheaval associated with the French Revolution and
the Napoleonic Empire. This revolution altered tra-
ditional social hierarchies and produced other social
changes, but its explicit goals focused mainly on
political reforms such as the reorganization of gov-
ernment, public power and authority, public fi nance,
taxation, administration, law, individual rights, and
the legal position of social classes. The other revolu-
tion, a revolution in a more metaphorical sense, was
primarily economic, having to do with the produc-
tion of wealth, the techniques of manufacture, the
exploitation of natural resources, the development of
new technologies, the formation of capital, and the
distribution of products to consumers. The political
and the economic revolutions in these years went on
somewhat independently of each other. Until 1815 the political revolution affected mainly
the Continent, while the economic revolution was most active in England. The Continent,
while evolving politically, remained economically less advanced than England, which was
transforming itself economically even as it remained conservative in other respects. Hence
it has been possible to deal with the political signifi cance of the French Revolution and its
Napoleonic sequel without much discussion of the Industrial Revolution, as the economic
changes then occurring in England are always called.
It may be (the matter is arguable) that the Industrial Revolution was more impor-
tant than the French Revolution or any other change in the social and political history
of human societies. In a telescopic view of world history the two biggest changes expe-
rienced by the human race in the past 10,000 years may have been the agricultural or
Neolithic revolution, which, beginning about 8000 b.c.e., ushered in the fi rst civiliza-
tions, and the Industrial Revolution, which ushered in the modern global civilization of the
52. The Industrial Revolution
in Britain
53. The Advent of the “Isms”
54. The Leaking Dam and the
Flood: Domestic
55. The Leaking Dam and the
Flood: International
56. The Breakthrough of
Liberalism in the West:
Revolutions of 1830–1832
57. Triumph of the West
European Bourgeoisie
Chapter emblem: Detail from an engraving, Young Saint-Simonienne (1832), by Malreuve. (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848450
last two centuries. However that may be, it proves on closer examination
that the economic and the political, the Industrial Revolution (or industri-
alization) and the other institutions of a society, cannot be kept apart in
the historical study of modern times. The Industrial Revolution occurred
fi rst in England, becoming evident by about 1780, because of certain political character-
istics of English society, because earlier commercial and naval successes had expanded
England’s access to world markets, and because English social life offered rewards to the
individual for new forms of risk-taking and innovation. Nor can the effects of political and
economic revolution, in England or elsewhere, be kept apart for the years after 1815.
With the defeat of Napoleon and signing of the peace treaty at Vienna in 1815, it
seemed that the French Revolution was at last over. European conservatism had triumphed;
because it restored European monarchies and frankly opposed the new “French ideas,” it
can appropriately be called “reaction.” But the processes of industrialization, as they accel-
erated in England and spread to the Continent, worked against the politically conservative
settlement. Industrialization greatly enlarged both the business and wage-earning classes,
and made it harder for monarchs and landed aristocrats to maintain their control over public
power. Industrial development in the nineteenth century was often called “progress,” and
economic progress led to a steady growth of the social groups that would challenge and
overturn the political reaction.
Industrial society arose in England, western Europe, and the United States in the
nineteenth century, within the system known as capitalism. In the twentieth century,
after the Russian Revolution in 1917, industrial societies were created in
which capitalism was vehemently rejected. Industrialism and capitalism
are therefore by no means the same. Yet all industrial societies use capital,
which is defi ned as wealth that is not consumed but is used to produce
more wealth, or future wealth. An automobile is a consumer’s good; the
automobile factory is the capital. What distinguishes a capitalist from a noncapitalist
society is not the existence of capital but the ways in which the capital is controlled.
The distinctions sometimes become blurred because modern states have played an active
role in most spheres of economic activity and because many privately owned economic
enterprises have developed through government protection, support, or expenditures. But
the systemic differences in the social and political control of capital have always carried
wide-ranging consequences, and they have shaped many of the key divergences in mod-
ern European societies. In one form of society the control of capital is through private
ownership, or institutions of private property, by which capital is owned by individuals,
families, or corporations that are in turn owned by shareholders—in any case not by the
state. In such societies, though ownership may be widespread, most capital is controlled
by relatively few people, responding to market forces. In the other form of society pro-
ductive capital in principle belongs to the public and is in effect owned and controlled by
the state or its agencies; such societies usually call themselves socialist, because the fi rst
socialists rejected the principle of private ownership of the means of production, that is,
of capital. In these societies the control of capital, or decisions on saving, investment,
and production, are also in the hands of relatively few under some form of government
management and plan.
In Europe the institutions of secure private property had developed gradually since the
Middle Ages, and much that happened in the French Revolution was designed to protect
property from the demands of the state. Possession of property was viewed as the basis of
personal independence and political liberty, and the expectation of keeping future profi ts
Industrialism and
capitalism
Political and
economic factors
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45152. The Industrial Revolution in Britain
inspired, in some, a willingness to commit their capital to new and uncertain ventures. It
made possible an entrepreneurial spirit. There had been a commercial capitalism in Europe
at least since the sixteenth century. Industrialization in western Europe therefore devel-
oped through capitalist institutions. Countries outside the western European orbit, and
industrializing later, faced a different problem. Those countries in which little capital had
accumulated from the trade and agriculture of previous generations, and that had few own-
ers of capital or enterprising individuals, generally lacked the resources to industrialize
by European methods. Such countries also often lacked the various political, social, legal,
and organizational features that were as important as the economic in fostering industrial
development. When these countries set out somewhat later to achieve industrialization,
they frequently placed more of their economic planning, decision making, and fi nancial
management under direct state control.
In the short run, within a few years, the Industrial Revolution in western Europe
favored the liberal, modernizing principles and legal rights proclaimed in the French
Revolution. In the middle run, or in half a century, it made Europe overwhelmingly
more powerful than other parts of the world, leading to a worldwide European ascen-
dancy in the form of imperialism. In the still longer run, by the twentieth century, the
European empires provoked anticolonial and anti-European political movements that
challenged Europe’s global ascendancy by trying to industrialize in self-protection or
to improve the economic conditions of their own peoples or to catch up with the politi-
cal centralization of the modern European states. The leaders of such movements often
affi rmed their national and economic identities, in part, by denouncing the capitalism
of the European imperial powers. Among these later industrializing societies the Soviet
Union, until its dissolution in 1991, and the People’s Republic of China, from 1949
into the twenty-fi rst century, would become the most infl uential proponents of a state-
managed industrial revolution.
52. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN BRITAIN
On the whole, from the beginning of history until about 1800, the work of the world was
done with hand tools. Since then it has been increasingly done by machines. Before about
1800 power was supplied by human or animal muscle, reinforced by levers or pulleys,
and supplemented by the force of running water or moving air. Since then power has been
supplied by the human manipulation of forms of energy found in steam, electricity, the
combustion of gases, and most recently within the atom. The far-reaching transition from
hand tools to power machinery was the vast technological and economic process that is
called the Industrial Revolution. Its beginning cannot be dated exactly. It grew gradually
out of the technical practices of earlier times. It is still going on, for in some countries
industrialization has only recently begun, and even in the most highly developed coun-
tries it is always making advances. But the fi rst country to be profoundly affected by
industrialization was Great Britain, where its effects became manifest in the half-century
following 1780.
It seems likely, despite the emphasis placed on revolutionary upheavals by historians,
that people are habitually quite conservative. Working people do not put off their old way
of life, move to strange and overcrowded towns, or enter the deadly rounds of mine and
factory except under strong incentive. Well-to-do people, living in comfort on assured
incomes, do not readily risk their wealth in new and untried ventures. The shift to mod-
ern machine production has required in every country a certain mobility of people and of
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848452
wealth that was connected to other political, cultural, and economic transitions in early
modern societies; and the new social mobility in eighteenth-century England developed
from a long historical process of wider social change.
The Agricultural Revolution in Britain
The English Revolution of 1688, confi rming the ascendancy of Parliament over the king, meant
in economic terms the ascendancy of the more well-to-do property-owning classes. Among
these the landowners were by far the most important, though they counted the great London
merchants among their allies. For a century and a half, from 1688 to 1832, the British govern-
ment was substantially in the hands of these landowners—the “squirearchy” or “gentlemen
of England.” The result was a thorough transformation of English farming, an Agricultural
Revolution without which the Industrial Revolution could not have occurred.
Many landowners, seeking to increase their money incomes, began
experimenting with improved methods of cultivation and stock raising.
They made more use of fertilizers such as animal manure; they introduced
useful implements such as the horse-hoe and the new seed drill, which was
invented by Jethro Tull in the early eighteenth century; they brought in new crops, such as
turnips, and a more scientifi c system of crop rotation; they attempted to breed larger sheep
and fatter cattle. Landlords who wanted to introduce such changes needed and sought full
control over their land. They saw only a barrier to progress in the old village system of
open fi elds, common lands, and semicollective methods of cultivation. Agrarian improve-
ments also required an investment of capital, which was impossible so long as the soil was
tilled by numerous poor and custom-bound small farmers.
The old common rights of the villagers were part of the English common law. Only
an act of Parliament could modify or extinguish these traditional rights, but the great land-
owners who controlled Parliament were able to pass hundreds of “enclosure acts,” autho-
rizing the enclosure, by fences, walls, or hedges, of the old common lands
and unfenced open fi elds. Land thus came under a strict regime of private
ownership and individual management. At the same time small owners sold
out or were excluded in various ways, the more easily because the larger
owners had so much local authority as justices of the peace. Ownership of land in England,
more than anywhere else in central or western Europe, became concentrated in the hands
of a relatively small class of wealthy landlords, who leased it out in large blocks to a rela-
tively small class of substantial farmers. This development, though in progress throughout
the eighteenth century, reached its height during the Napoleonic wars.
One result was greatly to raise the productivity of land and of farm labor. Fatter cattle
yielded more meat; more assiduous cultivation yielded more cereals. The food supply of
England increased, while a smaller percentage of the population was needed to produce it.
Labor was thus released for other pursuits, so that many English country people became
wage earners, working for the farmers and landlords, or spinning or weaving in their cot-
tages for merchants in the towns. English working men and women were therefore already
dependent on daily wages long before the coming of the factory and the machine. Work-
ing people became mobile; they would go where the jobs were, or where the wages were
slightly higher. They also became available for new kinds of work because fewer of them
were needed on the land to produce food. Such conditions hardly existed except in Great
Britain. On the Continent agricultural methods were less productive, and the rural workers
were more established on the soil, whether by institutions of serfdom as in eastern Europe
or by the possession of property or fi rm leaseholds as in France.
Agricultural
experimentation
The enclosure acts
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453
Industrialism in Britain: Incentives and Inventions
Meanwhile, as the eighteenth-century Agricultural Revolution ran its course, the British
had conquered a colonial empire, staked out markets all over the Americas and Europe,
built up a huge mercantile marine, and won command of the sea. British merchants could
sell more, if only more could be produced. They had customers and ships, and they could
also obtain the capital with which to fi nance new ideas. The profi t motive prompted a con-
tinuing search for more rapid methods of production. The old English staple export, woolen
cloth, could be marketed indefi nitely if only more could be woven. The possibilities in cot-
ton cloth were enormous. The taste of Europeans for cottons had been already formed by
imports from Asia. Using hand methods, Europeans could not produce cotton cloth in com-
petition with the lower-cost Asian producers. But the market was endless if cotton could
be spun, woven, and printed with less labor, that is, by machines. Capital was available,
mobile, and fl uid because of the rise of banking, credit, and stock companies. Funds could
be shifted from one enterprise to another. Wealthy landowners and merchants could divert
some of their profi ts to industry. If an invention proved a total loss, as sometimes hap-
pened, or if it required years of development before producing any income, the investment
could still be afforded. Only a country already wealthy from commerce and agriculture
could have been the fi rst to initiate the machine age. England was such a country.
The construction of cotton mills led to a rapid increase in the production of textiles and brought large numbers of workers together in new cities. This illustration of an English cotton mill in the early 1830s shows the technology of industrialization and the women workers who moved from older cottage industries into the new factories. (Mary Evans Picture Library/The Image Works)
52. The Industrial Revolution in Britain
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848454
These economic conditions induced a series of successful inventions in
the textile industry. In 1733 a man named John Kay invented the fl y shuttle,
by which only one person instead of two was needed to weave cloth on a
loom. The resulting increase in the output of weaving set up a strong
demand for yarn. This was met in the 1760s by the invention of the spinning jenny, a kind
of mechanized spinning wheel that enabled workers to increase their production of yarn.
The new shuttles and jennies were fi rst operated by hand and used by domestic workers in
their homes. But in 1769 Richard Arkwright patented the water frame, a device for the
multiple spinning of many threads. At fi rst it was operated by water power, but in the 1780s
Arkwright introduced the steam engine to drive his spinning machinery. Requiring a con-
siderable installation of heavy equipment, he gathered his engines, frames, and workers
into large and usually dismal buildings, called mills by the English, or factories in subse-
quent American usage. Mechanical spinning now for a time overwhelmed the hand weav-
ers with yarn. This led to the development of the power loom, which became economically
practicable shortly after 1800. Weaving as well as spinning therefore took place increas-
ingly in factories. These improvements in the fi nishing process put a heavy strain on the
production of raw cotton. An ingenious Connecticut inventor, Eli Whitney, while employed
as a children’s tutor on a Georgia plantation in 1793, produced a cotton gin, which by
speeding up the removal of seeds greatly increased the output of cotton. The gin soon
spread through the American South, where the almost decaying plantation economy was
abruptly revived, creating a new demand for enslaved labor and becoming an adjunct to the
Industrial Revolution in England. British imports of raw cotton multiplied fi vefold in the
30 years following 1790. In value of manufactures, cotton cloth rose from ninth to fi rst
place among British industries in the same years. By 1820 it made up almost half of all
British exports.
The steam engine, applied to the cotton mills in the 1780s, had for a
century been going through a development of its own. Scientifi c and techni-
cal experiments with steam pressures had been fairly common in the seven-
teenth century, but what gave the economic impetus to invention was the
gradual dwindling of Europe’s primeval stocks of timber. The wood shortage became
acute in England about 1700, so that it was more diffi cult to obtain the charcoal needed in
smelting iron, and smelters turned increasingly to coal. Deeper coal shafts could not be
sunk until someone devised better methods of pumping out water. About 1702 Thomas
Newcomen built the fi rst economically signifi cant steam engine, which was soon widely
used to drive pumps in the coal mines. However, it consumed so much fuel in proportion
to power delivered that it could generally be used only in the coal fi elds themselves. In
1763 James Watt, a technician at the University of Glasgow, began to make improvements
on Newcomen’s engine. He formed a business partnership with Matthew Boulton, who
was originally a manufacturer of toys, buttons, and shoe buckles. Boulton provided the
funds to fi nance Watt’s rather costly experiments, handmade equipment, and slowly ger-
minating ideas. Their partnership exemplifi ed the evolving connections between inventors
and wealthy investors; and by the 1780s the fi rm of Boulton and Watt was eminently suc-
cessful, manufacturing steam engines both for British use and for the export trade.
Soon after 1800 the steam engine was successfully used to propel river boats, notably
in New York on the Hudson River in 1807, by Robert Fulton, who employed an imported
Boulton and Watt engine. Experiments with steam power for land transportation began
at the same time. Just as Newcomen’s engine had been put to practical uses in the coal
fi elds of England a century before, so now it was in the coal fi elds that Watt’s engine fi rst
The steam engine
Inventions in the
textile industry
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455
became a locomotive. Well before 1800 the mines had taken to using rail-
ways, on which wagons with fl anged wheels, drawn by horses, carried coal
to canals or to the sea. In the 1820s steam engines were successfully placed
on moving vehicles. The fi rst fully satisfactory locomotive was George Stephenson’s
Rocket, which in 1829, on the newly built Liverpool and Manchester Railway, not only reached an impressive speed of 16 miles per hour but met more important safety tests as
well. By the 1840s the era of railroad construction was under way in both Europe and the
United States.
The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain in its early phase, down to 1830 or 1840,
took place principally in the manufacture of textiles, with accompanying developments
in the exploitation of iron and coal. The early factories were mostly textile factories, and
indeed mainly cotton mills; for cotton was an entirely new industry in Europe and hence
easily mechanized, whereas the long established woolen trade, in which both employers
and workers hesitated to abandon their customary ways, was mechanized more slowly.
The suddenness of the change must not be exaggerated. It is often said that the Industrial
Revolution was not a revolution at all. As late as the 1830s only a small fraction of the
British working people were employed in factories. But the factory and the factory system
were even then regarded as the coming mode of production, destined to grow and expand
and symbolize the irresistible march of progress.
Some Social Consequences of Industrialism in Britain
The Britain that emerged fundamentally unscathed and in fact strengthened from the wars
with Napoleon was no longer the sparsely populated “merrie England” of days of yore. The
island was becoming crowded with people, as was the lesser island of Ireland. The com-
bined population of Great Britain and Ireland tripled in the century from 1750 to 1850, ris-
ing from about 10 million in 1750 to about 30 million in 1850. The growth was distributed
very unevenly. Formerly, in England, most people had lived in the south. But the coal and
iron, and hence the steam power, lay in the Midlands and the north. Here whole new cities
rose seemingly out of nowhere. In 1785 it was estimated that in England and Scotland, out-
side of London, there were only three cities with more than 50,000 people. Seventy years
later, the span of one lifetime, there were 31 British cities of this size.
Preeminent among them was Manchester in Lancashire, the fi rst and
most famous of the new industrial cities. Manchester, before the coming
of the cotton mills, was a rather large market town. Though very ancient,
it had not been signifi cant enough to be recognized as a borough for rep-
resentation in Parliament. Locally it was organized as a manor. Not until 1845 did the
inhabitants extinguish the manorial rights, buying them out at that time from the last lord.
In population Manchester grew from 25,000 in 1772 to 455,000 in 1851. But until 1835
there was no regular procedure in England for the incorporation of cities. Urban organiza-
tion was more backward than in Prussia or France. Unless it had inherited its legal status
from the Middle Ages, a city had no legal existence. It lacked proper offi cials and adequate
tax-raising and lawmaking powers. It was therefore diffi cult for Manchester and the other
new factory towns to deal with problems of rapid urbanization, such as provision for police
protection, water and sewers, or the disposal of garbage.
The new urban agglomerations were drab places, blackened with the heavy soot of the
early coal age, settling alike on the mills and the workers’ quarters, which were dark at
best, for the climate of the Midlands is not sunny. Housing for workers was hastily built,
Manchester
Transportation
52. The Industrial Revolution in Britain
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848456
closely packed, and always in short supply, as in all rapidly growing communities. Entire
families lived in single rooms, and family life in such conditions tended to disintegrate.
A police offi cer in Glasgow observed that there were whole blocks of tenements in the
city, each swarming with a thousand ragged children who had fi rst names only, usually
nicknames—like animals, as he put it.
The distressing feature of the new factories was that for the most part they required
unskilled labor only. Skilled workers found themselves degraded in status.
Hand weavers and spinners, thrown out of work by the new machines,
either languished in misery or went off to a factory to fi nd a less skilled
job. The factories paid good wages by the standards for unskilled labor at
the time. But these standards were very low, too low to allow a man to support his wife and
children. This had generally been true for unskilled labor, in England and elsewhere, under
earlier economic systems also. In the new factories, however, the work was so mechanical
that children as young as 6 years old were often preferred. Women, too, worked for less
and were often more adept at handling a bobbin, which brought many women spinners
from the older, displaced “cottage industries” into the new industrial working class.
Unskilled labor
The invention of the steam locomotive and the development of new railways contributed to early nineteenth-century industrialization. This train was comming into London on one of the rail lines that began to connect smaller industrial cities to the commercial life of the British capital in the 1830s. (SSPL/Getty Images)
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457
The people who found jobs in the new factories—men, women, children—often
worked 14 hours a day or occasionally even more; and though such hours were familiar to
persons who had worked on farms, or at domestic industry in rural households, they
became more tedious and oppressive in the more regimented working conditions in the
mills. Holidays were few, except for the unwelcome leisure of unemployment, which was
a common scourge, because the short-run ups and downs of business were very erratic. A
day without work produced nothing to live on, but even where the daily wage was rela-
tively attractive, the worker’s real income was chronically insuffi cient. Workers in the
factories, as in the mines, were almost entirely unorganized. They were a mass of recently
assembled humanity without traditions or common ties. They bargained individually with
their employers who, usually small business people themselves, faced ferocious competi-
tion with others. The employers were often in debt for the equipment in their own facto-
ries, or they were determined to save money in order to purchase more, and so they held
their wages bill to the lowest possible fi gure.
The factory owners, the new “cotton lords,” were the fi rst industrial
capitalists. They were often self-made men, who owed their position to
their own intelligence, persistence, and foresight rather than to an aristo-
cratic birth. They lived in comfort without ostentation or luxury, saving from each year’s
income to build up their factories and their machines. Hard-working themselves, they
thought that landed gentlemen were usually idlers and that the poor tended to be lazy. They
were usually honest, in a hard and exacting way; they would make money by any means
the law allowed, but not beyond it. They were neither brutal nor knowingly hard-hearted.
The cotton lords
BRITAIN BEFORE AND AFTER THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION In 1700 England, Scotland, and Wales had only one city with a population of more than 100,000. In 1911 they had nearly 30, most of which were located in the industrialized Midlands (the area within the small rectangle).
IN 1911
0 50 100 miles
London
Glasgow Edinburgh
Newcastle
Sunderland
Hull Leeds
Sheffield
Nottingham
Leicester
Halifax
Norwich
Brighton
Plymouth
Southampton
Portsmouth
Cardiff
Birmingham Wolverhampton
Derby
Preston Bolton
Liverpool
Blackburn B radf
ord
Manch est
er Oldham
Population Density: Persons per Square Mile
250 to 500
Over 500
Cities over 100,000
ABOUT 1700
London
52. The Industrial Revolution in Britain
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848458
They gave to charitable and philanthropic causes. They believed that they did the poor a
favor by furnishing them with work and by seeing to it that they worked diligently and
productively. Most of them disapproved of public regulation of their business, though a
few, driven by competition to expedients that they did not like, such as the employment of
small children, would have accepted some regulation that fell on all competitors equally.
It was a cotton magnate, the elder Robert Peel, who in 1802 pushed the fi rst Factory Act
through Parliament. This act purported to regulate the conditions in which pauper children
were employed in the textile mills, but it was a dead letter from the beginning, because it
provided no adequate body of factory inspectors. The English at this time, alone among
the leading European peoples, had no class of trained, paid, and professional government
administrators; nor did they yet want such a class, preferring self-government and local
initiative. To have inspectors for one’s affairs smacked of Continental bureaucracy. The
fact that the older methods of economic regulation were obsolescent, actually unsuited to
the new age, had the effect of discrediting the idea of regulation itself. The new industri-
alists wanted to be left alone to manage their factories and workers without government
interventions. They considered it unnatural to interfere with business and believed that, if
allowed to follow their own judgment, they would assure the future prosperity and prog-
ress of the country.
Classical Economics: “Laissez-Faire”
The industrialists were strengthened in these beliefs by the emerging science of politi-
cal economy. In 1776 Adam Smith published his epochal Wealth of Nations, which criti- cized the regulatory and monopolistic economic practices of the older mercantilism. Smith
urged, though with moderation, that certain “natural laws” of production and exchange
be allowed to work freely in economic markets, and these themes were further developed
by early nineteenth-century theorists such as Thomas R. Malthus, David Ricardo, and the
so-called Manchester School. Their doctrine was dubbed (by its opponents) laissez-faire
and in its elaborated form is still called classical economics. It held, basically, that there is
a world of economic relationships autonomous and separable from government or politics.
It is the world of the free market, and this market is regulated within itself
by certain natural laws, such as the law of supply and demand. All persons
should follow their own enlightened self-interest; all know their own inter-
ests better than anyone else; and the sum total of individual interests will
add up to the general welfare and liberty of all. The market itself, as the
Manchester School theorists described it, will resolve the economic crises or imbalances
that arise in the recurring cycles of production and trade and supply and demand. Govern-
ment therefore should do as little as possible; it should confi ne itself to preserving security
of life and property and to providing reasonable laws and reliable courts, thus ensuring
the effi cient discharge of private contracts, debts, and obligations. Not only business but
education, charity, and personal matters generally should be left to private initiative. There
should be no tariffs; free trade should reign everywhere, for the economic system is world-
wide, unaffected by political barriers or national differences.
As for workers, according to classical economists before about 1850, they should not
expect to make more than a bare minimum living; an “iron law of wages,” the economists
argued, shows that as soon as workers receive more than a subsistence wage they breed
more children, who eat up the excess, so that they reduce themselves, and the working
class generally, again to a subsistence level. Workers, if discontented, should see the folly
of changing the economic system, for this is the system, the natural system—there is no
Self-interest and free
trade
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459
Historical Interpretations and Debates
Women and the Industrial Revolution
Historians agree that the transition to large-scale industrial production during the nineteenth century became one of the most far-reaching transformations in human history, but they often disagree about how industrialization changed social hierarchies, family life, and the economic positions of different social classes. Among numerous other changes, the Industrial Revolution altered traditional patterns of work and domestic life for both women and men, so that the new factory system helped to reshape the meaning of masculinity, womanhood, and the gendered division of labor. Compare the interpre- tations that Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott and Sonya O. Rose develop in their accounts of how industrialization infl uenced nineteenth-century European women and ideas about gender.
Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott, Women, Work, and Family (1987) Under the [pre-industrial] family wage
economy married women performed several
roles for their families. They often contributed
wages to the family fund, they managed
the household, and they bore and cared for
children. With industrialization, however, the
demands of wage labor increasingly confl icted
with women’s domestic activities. . . .
Industrial jobs required specialization and
a full-time commitment to work, usually in
a specifi c location away from home. While
under the domestic mode of production
women combined market-oriented activities
and domestic work, the industrial mode of
production precluded an easy reconciliation of
married women’s activities. The resolution of
the confl ict [in nineteenth-century England and
France] was for married women not to work
unless family fi nances urgently required it. . . .
In general, married women tended
to be found in largest numbers in the least
industrialized sectors of the labor force, in those
areas where the least separation existed between
home and workplace and where women could
control the rhythm of their work. . . .
Married women were thus clustered
in those jobs which were temporary and
episodic, which corresponded to their less
certain commitment to wage earning. These
jobs were also low-paying, exploiting the
usually desperate need that drove a married
woman to seek employment and the fact that
she had neither the skill nor the organizational
support which might command higher wages.
Sonya O. Rose , Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth- Century England (1992) Gender distinctions were woven into the
fabric of industrial capitalism, and the
development of industrial capitalism had
an impact on what it meant to be a man and
what it meant to be a woman. . . .
Gender distinctions . . . were articulated
in an ideology of family life that portrayed
men as those who were answerable for the
economic well-being of the family and women
as those charged with the care of children
and the upkeep of the household. These
representations were embedded in employer
hiring and managerial practices. . . . However,
the representations belied the extent to which
most men were frequently economically
dependent on their wives and children and
most married women frequently combined
their domestic responsibilities with economic
contributions to their households. Single and
widowed women had to be self-supporting
or the sole support of others, or they had to
make substantial economic contributions to
the households in which they lived. Because
women as a category were low-waged workers
and primarily were hired to do work defi ned
as unskilled, women without men were forced
to subsist on earnings that did not cover the
costs of maintaining themselves. . . .
The language of gender . . . constituted
the labor market as a domain in which jobs
were designed for men. Women’s employment,
especially the employment of married women
and women with children, became problematic.
Sources: Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott, Women, Work, and Family (New York: Methuen, 1987), pp. 123–124, 126: Sonya O. Rose, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 185–186.
52. The Industrial Revolution in Britain
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848460
other. Political economy as taught in grim Manchester was not without
reason called the “dismal science.”
For working people in England the Industrial Revolution was a hard
experience. It should be remembered, however, that neither low wages,
nor the 14-hour day, nor the labor of women and children, nor the ravages of unemploy-
ment were anything new. All had existed for centuries, in England and western Europe,
as agricultural and commercial capitalism replaced the more self-suffi cient economies of
the Middle Ages. Economic insecurity was thus a long-existing social experience for most
people in premodern Europe. The factory towns were in some ways better places than the
rural slums from which many of their people came. Factory routine was psychologically
deadening, but the textile mills were not always worse than the domestic sweatshops in
which manufacturing processes had previously taken place. The concentration of working
people in city and factory eventually opened the way to improvement in their condition. It
made their misery apparent; philanthropic sentiment gradually arose among the more for-
tunate. Gathered in cities, workers obtained more knowledge of the world. Mingling and
talking together, they developed a sense of solidarity, class interest, and common political
aims; and in time they became organized, establishing labor unions by which to obtain a
larger share of the national income.
Britain after the fall of Napoleon became the workshop of the world. Though factories
using steam power also sprang up in France, Belgium, New England, and elsewhere, it
was really not until after 1870 that Great Britain faced major industrial competition from
abroad. The British had a virtual monopoly in textiles and machine tools. The English
Midlands and Scottish Lowlands shipped cotton thread and steam engines to all the world.
British capital was exported to all countries, where it helped to bring new enterprises into
being and to develop the infrastructure for new industrializing economies. London became
the world’s clearinghouse and fi nancial center. Progressive people in other lands looked to
Britain as their model, hoping to learn from its advanced industrial methods, and to imitate
its parliamentary political system.
53. THE ADVENT OF THE “ISMS”
The combined forces of industrialization and of the French Revolution led after 1815 to
a proliferation of new doctrines and movements, most of which contributed to a general
European revolution in 1848. As for the 33 years from 1815 to 1848, there is no better way
of grasping their long-run meaning than to refl ect on the number of enduring “isms” that
arose at that time. The “isms” developed as more or less systematic attempts to describe
coherent sets of political, cultural, or social beliefs; and the advocates of each “ism” usually
organized groups or public “movements” that sought to implement their ideas by changing
political institutions or by transforming certain aspects of modern social and cultural life.
Words for the different “isms” appeared at various times in each European language,
and the English usage of such terms often followed their earlier emergence in other places.
Insofar as is known, however, the word “liberalism” fi rst appeared in the English language
in 1819, “radicalism” in 1820, “socialism” in 1832, “conservatism” in 1835. The 1830s
fi rst saw “individualism,” “constitutionalism,” “humanitarianism,” “feminism,” and “mon-
archism.” “Nationalism” and “communism” date from the 1840s. Not until the 1850s did
the English-speaking world use the word “capitalism” (French capitalisme is much older); and not until even later did people hear of “Marxism,” though the doctrines of Marx grew
out of and refl ected the troubled times of the 1840s.
Working people’s
experiences
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46153. The Advent of the “Isms”
The rapid coinage of new “isms” does not in every case mean that the ideas they
conveyed were new. Many of them had their origin in the Enlightenment, if not before.
People had loved liberty before talking of liberalism, and they had been conservative with-
out defi ning their ideas as conservatism. The appearance of so many “isms” shows rather
that people were making their ideas more systematic. To the “philosophy” of the Enlight-
enment were now added an intense activism and partisanship generated during the French
Revolution. People were obliged to reconsider and analyze society as a whole—and to
compete for infl uence in the expanding public sphere of modern national states. An “ism”
(excluding such words as “hypnotism” or “favoritism”) may therefore be defi ned as the
conscious espousal of a specifi c doctrine in competition with other doctrines. Many of the
new “isms” drew on the analytical themes of the emerging social sciences, and they often
developed institutions in which intellectuals could carry their ideas to other social groups
and wider social movements. New knowledge became linked to new forms of social and
political action. Without the “isms” created in the 30-odd years after the peace of Vienna it
is impossible to understand or even talk about the history of the world since that event, so
that a brief characterization of some of the most important is in order.
Romanticism
One of the most infl uential “isms” was not explicitly political. It was called “romanti-
cism,” a word fi rst used in English in the 1840s to describe a movement then half a century
old. Romanticism was primarily a theory of literature and the arts. Its great exponents
included William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Wollstone-
craft Shelley in England; Victor Hugo, René Chateaubriand, and George Sand in France;
and Friedrich von Schiller, Friedrich Schlegel, and many others in Germany. As a theory
of art it raised basic questions about the nature of human knowledge, the importance of
various human senses or faculties, the relation of thought and feeling, the meaning of the
past and of time itself, and the processes of artistic creativity. Romanticism rejected the
emphasis on classical rules and rational order that had shaped aesthetic theory during much
of the eighteenth century. Romantics celebrated the idiosyncratic visions of creative indi-
viduals rather than the symmetries of classical art and literature. They helped produce the
modern image of defi ant artistic rebels. Representing a new way of sensing all human
experience, romanticism affected much thinking on social and public questions as well as
early nineteenth-century debates about culture and the arts.
Possibly the most fundamental romantic attitude was a love of the
unclassifi able—of moods or impressions, scenes or stories, sights or sounds
or things concretely experienced, personal idiosyncrasies or peculiar cus-
toms that the intellect could never classify, box up, explain away, or reduce
to an abstract generalization. The romantics, characteristically, insisted on the value of
feeling and nonrational experiences as well as of reason. They were aware of the impor-
tance of the subconscious. They were likely to suspect a perfectly lucid idea as somehow
superfi cial. They loved the mysterious, the unknown, the half-seen fi gures on the far hori-
zon. Hence romanticism contributed to a new interest in unfamiliar, distant societies and in
strange, distant historical epochs. Where the philosophes of the Enlightenment had
deplored the Middle Ages as a time of intellectual error, the romantic generation looked
back upon them with respect and even nostalgia, fi nding in them a fascination, a colorful-
ness, or a spiritual depth that they missed in their own time. The “Gothic,” which rational-
ists thought barbarous, had a strong appeal for romantics. A Gothic Revival emerged in the
Love of the
unclassifi able
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848462
arts, of which one example was the British Parliament buildings, which were rebuilt in this
architectural style during the 1840s.
In medieval art and institutions, as in the art and institutions of every age and people,
the romantics saw the expression of an inner genius. The idea of original
or creative genius was in fact another of the most fundamental romantic
beliefs. A genius was a dynamic spirit that no rules could hem in, one
that no analysis or classifi cation could ever fully explain. Genius, it was
thought, made its own rules and laws. The genius might be that of the individual person,
such as the artist, writer, or Napoleonic mover of the world. It might be the genius or
spirit of an age. Or it might be the genius of a people or nation, the Volksgeist of Herder, an inherent national character making each people grow in its own distinctive way, which
could be known only by a study of its history; romanticism thus merged in many places
Creative genius
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN BRITAIN (AS SHOWN BY SOURCES OF INCOME) British national income grew about eightfold in the nineteenth century. Income derived from agriculture, forestry, and the like remained about the same, but the income from these activi- ties sank from one-third to one-sixteenth of all income. By 1851 half the national income came from manufacturing, trade, and transportation, and by 1901 three-quarters came from these sources. The category “income from abroad” refers to interest and dividends on loans and investments outside Great Britain, which grew rapidly after the 1850s. Source: P. Deane and W. A. Cole, British Economic Growth (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, second edition, 1967), pp. 166–167.
1801 1811 1821 1831 1841 1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 1901
Total national income
Income from government, professions, domestic service, etc.
Income from abroad
Trade and transport
Manufacture, mining, building
Agriculture, forestry, fishing
£ Millions (current prices) 1,800
1,600
1,400
1,200
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
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463
with new forms of nationalism. Here again romanticism gave a new impetus to study of the
past. Politically, romantics could be found in all camps, conservative, liberal, and radical,
but the emphasis on individual creativity led most romantics toward a critical view of rigid
social and cultural hierarchies. Romanticism thus added cultural and emotional passions to
the more political “isms” that evolved rapidly after 1815.
Classical Liberalism
The fi rst Liberals, calling themselves by that name (though Napoleon used that word for
his own system), arose in Spain among opponents of the Napoleonic occupation who also
sought reforms within Spanish political institutions. The word passed to France, where it
denoted opposition to royalism after the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814 and where it
gained intellectual infl uence through the work of liberal writers such as Benjamin Con-
stant. In England, many Whigs became increasingly liberal, as did even a few Tories.
Liberal political theorists also had infl uence in England, most notably in the writings of
John Stuart Mill, and a new Liberal Party became an important force in British politics
during the 1850s. Nineteenth-century, or “classical,” liberalism varied from country to
country, but it showed many basic similarities, including an emphasis on the rights and
liberties that individuals should possess in every well-ordered, modern society.
Liberals were generally persons of the business and professional classes, together with
enterprising landowners wishing to improve their estates. They believed in
what was modern, enlightened, effi cient, reasonable, and fair. They had con-
fi dence in the human capacity for self-government and self-control. They
set a high value on parliamentary or representative government, working
through reasonable discussion and legislation, with responsible ministries and an impartial
and law-abiding administration. Liberals thus demanded full publicity for all actions of
government, and to ensure such publicity they insisted on freedom of the press and free
rights of assembly. All these political advantages they thought most likely to be realized
under a good constitutional monarchy. Outside England they favored explicit written con-
stitutions. They were not democrats; they generally opposed giving every man the vote,
fearing the excesses of mob rule or of irrational political action. Only as the nineteenth
century progressed did liberals gradually and reluctantly come to accept the idea of univer-
sal male suffrage. Many continued to oppose female suffrage, though some liberals such as
John Stuart Mill argued that women should have the same voting rights as men. Liberals
subscribed to the doctrines of the “rights of man” as set forth in the American and French
revolutions, but with a clear emphasis on the right of property, and in their economic
views they typically followed the British Manchester School or the French economist
J. B. Say. They favored laissez-faire capitalism and free markets, remained suspicious of
the ability of government to regulate business, wanted to get rid of the guild system where
it still existed, and disapproved of attempts on the part of the new industrial laborers to
organize unions.
Internationally they advocated freedom of trade, to be accomplished by the lowering
or abolition of tariffs, so that all countries might exchange their products easily with each
other and with industrial England. In this way, they thought, each country would pro-
duce what it was best able to sell in international markets and so best increase its wealth
and standards of living. From the growth of wealth, production, invention, and scientifi c
progress they believed that the general progress of humanity would ensue. They generally
frowned upon the established churches and landed aristocracies as obstacles to advance-
ment. They believed in the spread of tolerance and education. They were also profoundly
Liberal beliefs
53. The Advent of the “Isms”
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848464
civilian in attitude, disliking wars, conquerors, army offi cers, standing armies, and military
expenditures. They wanted orderly change by processes of legislation. They shrank before
the idea of revolution; and liberals on the Continent usually admired Great Britain, even as
they set about creating their own distinctive national institutions.
Radicalism, Republicanism, Socialism
Radicalism, at least as a word, originated in England, where about 1820 the Philosophical
Radicals proudly applied the term to themselves. These Radicals in the 1820s included not
only the few working-class leaders who were beginning to emerge but also many of the
The new British Houses of Parliament were built during the 1840s. They became a prominent example of the Gothic revival in architecture and of the early nineteenth-century romantic fascination with the Middle Ages. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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new industrial capitalists, who were still unrepresented in Parliament. They took up where
such English “Jacobins” as Thomas Paine had left off a generation earlier, before the long
crisis of the French wars had discredited all radicalism as pro-French. The main goal of
Philosophical Radicalism, as its advocates described it, was to extend many of the liberal
claims for individual rights to much wider segments of the population.
The Philosophical Radicals were a good deal like the rationalist French philosophes
before the Revolution. They were followers of an elderly sage, Jeremy Bentham, who in
prolifi c writings from 1776 to 1832 undertook to reform the English criminal and civil law,
church, Parliament, and constitution. The English Radicals professed to deduce the right
form of institutions from the fundamental traits of human nature and psychology. They
impatiently waved aside all arguments based on history, usage, or custom. They wanted to
go to the roots of social and political life. (“Radical” is from the Latin word for “root.”)
They wanted a total reconstruction of laws, courts, prisons, poor relief,
municipal organization, rotten boroughs, and fox-hunting clergy. Their
demand for the reform of Parliament was vehement and insistent. They
detested the Church of England, the peerage, and the squirearchy. Many
radicals would just as soon abolish royalty also; not until the long reign of
Queen Victoria (1837–1901) did the British monarchy become undeniably popular in all
quarters. Above all, radicalism was democratic; it demanded a vote for every adult English-
man. After the Reform Bill of 1832 the industrial capitalists generally turned into liberals,
but the working-class leaders remained radical democrats, as will be seen.
On the Continent radicalism was represented by militant republican-
ism. The years of the First French Republic in the 1790s, which to liberals
and conservatives signifi ed horrors associated with the Reign of Terror,
were for the republicans years of hope and progress, cut short by forces of
reaction. Republicans were a minority even in France; elsewhere, as in Italy and Germany,
they were fewer still, though they existed. Mostly the republicans were drawn from intel-
ligentsia such as students and writers, from working-class leaders protesting social injus-
tice, and from elderly veterans, or the descendants of veterans, to whom the Republic of
’93, with its wars and its glory, was a living thing. Because of police repression, republi-
cans often joined together in secret societies. They looked with equanimity on the prospect
of further revolutionary upheaval, by which they believed that the cause of liberty, equal-
ity, and fraternity would be advanced. Strong proponents of political equality, they were
democrats demanding universal male suffrage. They favored parliamentary government
but were much less concerned with its successful or methodical operation than were
the liberals. Most republicans were bitterly anticlerical. Remembering the internecine
struggle between the church and the republic during the French Revolution, and still facing
the political infl uence of the Catholic clergy (for republicanism was most common in
Catholic countries), they regarded the Catholic Church as the implacable enemy of reason
and liberty. Opposed to monarchy of any kind, even to constitutional monarchy, intensely
hostile to church and aristocracy, conscious heirs of the great French Revolution, orga-
nized in national and international secret societies, not averse to overthrowing existing
regimes by force, the more militant republicans were considered by most other people,
including the liberals, to be little better than anarchists.
Republicanism shaded off into socialism. Socialists generally shared
the political attitudes of republicanism but added other views besides. The
early socialists, those before the Revolution of 1848, were of many kinds,
but all had certain ideas in common. All of them regarded the existing economic sys-
tem and distribution of wealth as aimless, chaotic, and outrageously unjust. All thought it
Demands for radical
reforms
Republican ideals
Socialist views
53. The Advent of the “Isms”
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848466
improper for owners of wealth to have so much economic power—to give or deny work to
the worker, to set wages and hours in their own interests, to guide all the labors of society
in the interests of private profi t. All therefore questioned the value of private enterprise,
favoring some degree of communal ownership of productive assets—banks, factories,
machines, land, and transportation. All disliked competition as a governing economic or
social principle and set forth principles of harmony, cooperation or association instead.
All fl atly and absolutely rejected the laissez-faire of the liberals and the political econo-
mists. Where the latter thought mainly of increasing production, without much concern
over distribution, the early socialists thought mainly of a fairer or more equal distribution
of income among all useful members of society. They believed that further steps toward
social and economic equality would take people beyond (or help them actually achieve)
the civil and legal equality that the French Revolution had so famously affi rmed.
One of the fi rst socialists was also one of the fi rst cotton lords, Robert Owen (1771–
1858) of Manchester and the Scottish Lowlands. Appalled at the condition of the mill-
hands, he created a kind of model community for his own employees, paying high wages,
reducing hours, sternly correcting vice and drunkenness, building schools and housing and
company stores for the cheap sale of workers’ necessities. From such paternalistic capital-
ism in his early years he passed on to a lifelong campaign for social reforms, in which he
was somewhat handicapped, not only by the opposition of industrialists, but also by his
unpopular radicalism in matters of religion.
Most of the early socialists were French, spurred onward by the sense
of an uncompleted revolution. One was a nobleman, the Count de Saint-
Simon (1760–1825), who had fought in the War of American Indepen-
dence, accepted the French Revolution, and in his later years wrote many
books on social problems. He and his followers, who called themselves not
socialists but Saint-Simonians, were among the fi rst clear exponents of a planned society.
They advocated the public ownership of industrial equipment and other capital, with con-
trol vested in the hands of great captains of industry or social engineers, who should plan
vast projects like the digging of a canal at Suez, and in general coordinate the labor and
resources of society to productive ends. Of a different type was Charles Fourier (1772–
1837), a somewhat doctrinaire thinker who subjected all social institutions to a sweeping
condemnation. His positive program took the form of proposing that society be organized
in small communal units that he termed “phalansteries.” Each of these he conceived to
contain 1,620 persons, each doing the work suited to his or her natural inclination. Among
the practical French no phalanstery was ever successfully organized. A number were
established in the United States, still the land of Europe’s utopian dream; the best known,
because it was operated by literary people, was the Brook Farm “movement” in Massachu-
setts, which ran through a troubled existence of fi ve years from 1842 to 1847. Robert
Owen also, in 1825, had founded an experimental colony in America, at New Harmony,
Indiana, on the then remote and unspoiled banks of the Wabash River; it, too, lasted only
about fi ve years. Such schemes, as their critics pointed out, presupposed the withdrawal of
select spirits to live by themselves and really had little to say about the problems of society
as a whole in an industrial age.
Politically the most signifi cant form of socialism before 1848 was the
movement stirring among the working classes of France, a compound of
revolutionary republicanism and socialism. The politically minded Paris
workers had been republican since 1792. For them the Revolution was not fi nished but
only momentarily interrupted. Reduced to political impotence during the early nineteenth
century, discriminated against in the law courts, obliged to carry identity papers signed by
Saint-Simonians and
Fourier
The French working
classes
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467
their employers, and goaded by the pressures of industrialization as new factories spread
across France, they developed a deep hostility to the wealthier, property-owning classes.
They found a spokesman in the Paris journalist Louis Blanc, editor of the Revue de progrès and author of the Organization of Work (1839), one of the most constructive of the early socialist writings. He proposed a system of “social workshops,” or state-supported manu-
facturing centers, in which the workers should labor by and for themselves without the
intervention of private capitalists. Of this kind of socialism we shall hear more.
As for “communism,” it was at this time an emerging synonym for socialism. A small
group of German revolutionaries, mainly exiles in France, took the name for themselves in
the 1840s. They would have been historically forgotten had they not included Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels among their members. Marx and Engels consciously used the word
when they wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and whenever they wanted to differ- entiate their variety of socialism from that of such utopians as Saint-Simon, Fourier, and
Owen. But the word communism went out of general use after 1848, to be revived after the Russian Revolution of 1917, at which time it received a somewhat new meaning.
Feminism
Feminism emerged as a new political and cultural movement in the early nineteenth cen-
tury, though the term itself did not appear until some women in France began to refer to
themselves as “feminists” during the 1830s. There were several strands of feminism, as
there were several strands of all signifi cant “isms,” but most feminists shared various ideas
with liberals, radicals, or socialists—especially the belief in the fundamental rights of
every person. Feminism sought to expand the rights of women in both public and private
life. Drawing on the legacy of the French Revolution and its conceptions of human rights,
feminists argued that the rights of man existed also for women (much as republicans and
socialists claimed that such rights must also exist for poor people and workers). Some
feminists, extending the arguments of Mary Wollstonecraft’s infl uential book, A Vindica- tion of the Rights of Women (1792), worked mainly to secure new voting and civil rights for women. Other feminists, though they might also support the quest for voting rights,
worked mainly to reform the laws that regulated family life or to advance the rights of
women in education, cultural life, and the economy. Both of these tendencies in early
nineteenth-century feminism drew on Enlightenment ideas about human rights, reform,
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT Engraving after a portrait by John Opie (English, 1761–1807)
Mary Wollstonecraft was the most infl uential English advocate for women’s rights in the revolutionary era of the 1790s. Her writings emphasized that women should have equal opportunities for a rational education, which would prepare them to participate more equally with men in modern public life and professional work. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
53. The Advent of the “Isms”
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848468
education, and progress, so that feminism resembled republicanism, radicalism, and social-
ism in its links to eighteenth-century predecessors, including French writers such as Con-
dorcet and Olympe de Gouges.
The writers and activists who sought new political rights for women
tended to be “egalitarian” feminists; that is, they stressed the ways in which
women and men shared the use of reason and universal human rights.
Despite the obvious connection to themes of the French Revolution, the
campaign for women’s political rights developed more rapidly in early nineteenth-century
England and America. These national differences may have refl ected the fact that voting
rights generally became more widespread in England and America in the decades before
1848; or the different feminisms may have developed because French republicanism had
become hostile to female political activities during the later stages of the French Revolu-
tion, and because the Napoleonic Code had given French women a subordinate position in
the patriarchical legal system that regulated family relations. In any case, French feminists
in the nineteenth century tended to focus on the social, cultural, or legal rights of women
rather than on campaigns to win the vote.
The fi rst nineteenth-century advocates for women’s rights in England
were Philosophical Radicals and followers of the socialist leader Robert
Owen. The socialists Anne Wheeler and William Thompson, for example,
published an important statement of the new feminist themes in their Appeal on Behalf of Women (1825), which traced the inferior status of women to fl aws in the economic system. Similar arguments appeared also in the writings of Owen himself and in the publications of
his feminist friend, the Scottish writer Frances Wright. But the most infl uential English argu-
ment for women’s political rights emerged in the works of the liberal writers Harriet Taylor
and John Stuart Mill, who worked together as close intellectual partners for more than 20
years (they ultimately married after the death of her fi rst husband). Beginning in the 1830s,
Taylor and Mill produced important works on the social, legal, and political inequalities that
women faced in even the most advanced modern societies. Their collaboration led fi nally to
Mill’s famous book, The Subjection of Women (1869), in which Mill referred to the decisive infl uence of Taylor’s ideas, though she had died before its publication. Mill built his case for
women’s political and social rights on the claim that women were inherently equal to men
(hence entitled to the same rights) and on the utilitarian argument that society could only
benefi t from the increased participation of women in public life. Translated into all the major
European languages, his book had much subsequent infl uence on feminist campaigns for
the political and legal rights of women in other nations as well as in England. Meanwhile,
American women launched their own campaign for voting rights at a convention in Seneca
Falls, New York, where leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton declared, in 1848, that
women were entitled to vote because they were “created equal” with men.
Feminists also entered public life on the Continent during the 1830s
and 1840s, especially in France. Socialists such as Saint-Simon and Fourier
gave critical attention to the history of the family, thereby encouraging their
followers to develop a social analysis of traditional restrictions on the rights
of women. Women activists in the Saint-Simonian groups of the 1830s established jour-
nals whose titles asserted new feminist identities: The Free Woman and The New Woman. A new generation of women writers also began to extend the earlier work of Germaine
de Staël, who had argued that “it is useful to society’s enlightenment and happiness that
women should carefully develop their intelligence and their reason.” All feminists advo-
cated better education for young women, reforms in property and divorce laws to enhance
women’s independence, and the right of women to participate in public debates. Many
Egalitarian feminism
English feminists
French feminism
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469
feminists in France, however, moved away from the egalitarian arguments for women’s
rights by stressing certain differences between men and women. The special responsibili-
ties of motherhood, for example, gave women a distinctive, essential task in educating the
rising generation, but only well-educated, competent women could raise intelligent, well-
educated children. Feminists thus strongly supported the creation of new schools for girls
and began seeking women’s access to higher education (public secondary schools for girls
were not established in France until the 1880s).
In addition to the campaigns for education and legal reforms, many feminists became
writers in order to describe the social lives of women or to assert their claims for a place
in public life. The travel writings of Flora Tristan (1803–1844), for instance, examined
the social constraints that women faced in both South America and Europe. Another
French writer of Tristan’s generation, George Sand (1804–1876), became the most infl uen-
tial literary woman of the 1840s. Her many novels and essays often portrayed independent
women, but her personal life was almost as famous and controversial as her books. Critics
mocked her for wearing male clothing, smoking cigars, and living with men outside mar-
riage; yet Sand also won the admiring support of readers throughout Europe, many of
whom saw her as a model for new forms of female cultural and political expression. She
therefore became a famous symbol for both supporters and enemies of the new femi-
nism; indeed, the term “George Sandism” was used to condemn women whose behavior
seemed radical or unconventional. Such hostility indicates how feminism had become
one of the expanding postrevolutionary “isms,” though the political campaign for wom-
en’s voting rights and other legal reforms would not achieve its main objectives until the
twentieth century.
53. The Advent of the “Isms”
The Saint-Simonian movement in France produced early feminist publications and also helped to launch a new social analy- sis of the restrictions on women’s rights. This engraving by the artist Malreuve in 1832 suggests the unconventional behav- ior of the Saint-Simonian feminists; the woman is wearing a dress short for its time and standing beside a document that says simply “Doctrine of St. Simon. The Free Woman?” (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848470
Nationalism: Western Europe
Nationalism fi rst arose in many places as part of the general reaction against the interna-
tional Napoleonic system, but it also drew its strength from specifi c cultural and political
traditions in each country. It was the most pervasive and the least crystallized of the new
“isms,” in part because it usually overlapped with various forms of romanticism, republi-
canism, or liberalism. In western Europe—Britain, France, or Spain—where national unity
already existed, nationalism was not a doctrine for nation-building so much as a set of politi-
cal and cultural beliefs, easily aroused when national interests were questioned but normally
taken for granted. Elsewhere—in Italy, Germany, Poland, the Austrian and Turkish
empires—where peoples of the same nationality were politically divided or subject to
foreign rule, nationalism was becoming a deliberate and conscious program for political
action. It was undoubtedly the example of the West, of Great Britain and France, successful
and fl ourishing because they were unifi ed nations, that stimulated the ambitions of other
peoples to become unifi ed nations too. The period after 1815 was in Germany a time of
rising agitation over the national question; in Italy, of the Risorgimento or “resurgence”; in
eastern Europe, of the Slavic Revival.
The movement was led by intellectuals, who often found it necessary
to instill in their compatriots the very idea of nationality itself. They seized
upon Herder’s conception of the Volksgeist, or national spirit, applying its emphasis on national differences to their own people. Usually they began with a cultural
nationalism, holding that each people had a language, history, world view, and culture of
its own, which must be preserved and perfected. They then usually passed on to a political
nationalism, holding that to preserve this national culture, and to protect the inherent rights
and freedom of its individual members, each nation should create for itself an independent
sovereign state. Nationalism thus fused culture and politics to affi rm the enduring exis-
tence of transcendent national identities, most of which took on the emotional meaning or
intensity of a deeply felt religious faith. Rejecting the older dynastic state system that had
regularly transferred territories and people among royal families, nationalists argued that
governing authorities should be of the same nationality and language as those they
governed. All persons who shared a national culture and national language should there-
fore be encompassed within the same state, and all should be granted the legal rights of
national citizenship.
Because such ideas could not be fully realized without the overthrow of every govern-
ment in Europe east of France, thoroughgoing nationalism was inherently revolutionary.
Outspoken nationalists were therefore persecuted by the authorities, which
drove them everywhere into secret nationalist societies. The Carbonari,
organized in Italy in the time of Napoleon, was the best known, but there
were many others—like the Veri Italiani, the Apophasimenes, and the Sublime and Perfect Masters. In some regions Masonic lodges might serve the same pur-
pose. Nationalism often merged with liberalism, socialism, or revolutionary republicanism
in an undifferentiated way. Members of the secret nationalist societies were initiated by
a complex ritual intended to impress upon them the dire consequences of betraying the
group’s secrets. They used special grips and passwords and adopted revolutionary names
to conceal their identity and baffl e the police. They were usually so organized that the ordi-
nary member knew the identity of only a few others, and never of the higher-ups, so that
those arrested could reveal nothing important. The societies circulated forbidden literature
and generally sought to generate a revolutionary ferment. Conservatives dreaded them, but
they were not really dangerous to any government that enjoyed the support of its people.
Volksgeist
Secret societies
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471
Best known o f the nationalist philosophers in western Europe was the Italian Joseph
Mazzini (1805–1872), who spent most of his adult life in exile in France
and England. In his youth he joined the Carbonari, but in 1831 he founded
a society of his own, called Young Italy, and he edited and smuggled into
Italy copies of a journal of the same name. Young Italy was soon imitated by other societ-
ies of similar aim, such as Young Germany. In 1834 Mazzini tried unsuccessfully to
bring about an uprising against the kingdom of Sardinia, which he viewed as a key obsta-
cle to the unifi cation of Italy. Undeterred by the total failure of this plan, he continued to
organize, to conspire, and to write. For Mazzini nationality and revolution were a holy
cause in which the most generous and humane qualities were to fi nd expression. He was
a moral philosopher, as may be judged from the title of his most widely read book, The Duties of Man, in which he placed duty to the nation intermediate between duty to family and to God.
To many Germans, divided and politically frustrated, nationality became the most
important component of collective and personal identities. Nationalism therefore had a
very wide infl uence on German culture, entering everything from folklore to metaphysics.
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for example, was fi rst published in 1812. It was the work of the two Grimm brothers, founders of the modern science of comparative linguistics, who traveled
about Germany to study the popular dialects and in doing so collected the folktales that for
generations had been current among the common people. They hoped in this way to fi nd
the ancient, native, indigenous “spirit” of Germany, deep and unspoiled in the bosom of the
Volk —a theme that had emerged previously in the philosophical writings of Herder. A similar preoccupation with nationhood revealed itself in the philosophy of Hegel (1770–1831),
possibly the most extraordinary of all nineteenth-century thinkers.
Mazzini
This caricature of George Sand, which appeared in a lithograph by Alcide Lorentz in 1842, mocks the famous author for her apparently “masculine” actions. Dressed in pants, holding a ciga- rette, and surrounded by her writings and political concerns, Sand is ridiculed in both the image and in a sarcastic caption—which alludes to her claim that genius “has no sex.” (Musee de la Ville de Paris, Musee Carnavalet,
Paris, France/Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman
Art Library)
53. The Advent of the “Isms”
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848472
To Hegel, witnessing the spectacle of the Napoleonic years, it was evi-
dent that for a people to enjoy freedom, order, or dignity it must possess a
potent and independent state. The state, for him, became the institutional
embodiment of reason and liberty—the “march of God through the world,” as he put it,
meaning not an expansion in space through vulgar conquest, but an expansion of the “Idea”
of freedom as it advanced through time and through the confl icts of human history. Hegel
conceived of reality itself as a process of endless change, a development having an inner
logic and necessary sequence of its own. He thus broke with the more static or mechanical
philosophy of the eighteenth century, with its fi xed categories of unchangeable right and
wrong. He became a philosopher of history, in which he saw the unfolding of a “Universal
Spirit” or Idea across time, and he linked this evolving Spirit in complex ways to reason
and freedom. He held that change came about through a historical “dialectic,” or irresist-
ible tendency of the Universal Spirit and the human mind to move forward by the creation
of opposites. A given state of affairs (the thesis ) would in this view inevitably produce the conception of an opposite state of affairs (the antithesis ), which would be followed by a reconciliation and fusion of the two (the synthesis ). This new synthesis became the start- ing point for a new “thesis” in the next stage of dialectical change. Thus, for example, the
very disunity of Germany, by producing the opposing idea of unity, would ultimately lead
toward the creation of a more unifi ed German state.
The Hegelian dialectic was soon to be appropriated by Karl Marx to new uses, but
meanwhile Hegel’s philosophy, with other currents in Germany, made the study of history
more philosophically meaningful than it had ever been before. History, the study of change
across time, seemed to be the very key with which to unlock the true signifi cance of the
world; it could show the unfolding of the Universal Spirit in specifi c times and places, and
each historical era became important as a phase in the progress toward freedom and reason.
Historical studies were stimulated, and the German universities became centers of historical
learning, attracting scholars from many countries. Most eminent of the German historians
was Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), founder of the “scientifi c” school of historical writ-
ing. Ranke, too, though intellectually scrupulous to the last degree, owed much of his incen-
tive to his national feeling. His fi rst youthful work was a study of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples; and one of his main ideas, throughout his long life, was that Europe owed its unique greatness to the coexistence and interplay of several distinct nations, which had always
resisted the attempts of any one nation to control the whole. By the latter Ranke really meant
France—the France of Louis XIV and Napoleon. The Germans, said Ranke in 1830, had a
mission from God to develop a culture and a political system that differed from those of the
French. They were destined to “create the pure German state corresponding to the genius of
the nation.” Ranke thus doubted that the constitutional, parliamentary, and individualist
principles of other national liberalisms were suited to the national character of Germany.
In economics Friedrich List, in his National System of Political Econ- omy (1840), held that political economy as taught in England was suited only to England. Economic theories were not abstract truths but a body of
ideas developed in a certain historical stage in a certain country. List thus
became a founder of the historical or institutional school of economics. The doctrine of
free trade, he said, was an English idea that was designed to make England the world’s
industrial center by keeping other countries in the status of suppliers of raw material and
food. But any country, he held, if it was to be civilized and develop its own national cul-
ture, must have cities, factories, industries, and capital of its own. It must therefore put up
high tariffs (at least temporarily, in theory) for protection. List, it should be remarked, had
developed his ideas during a sojourn in the United States, where Henry Clay’s “American
system” was in fact a national system of political economy.
List’s economics
Hegel’s philosophy
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Nationalism: Eastern Europe
In eastern Europe the Poles and the Magyars had long been active political nationalists, the
Poles wishing to undo the eighteenth-century partitions of Polish territories and reestablish
their Polish state, the Magyars insisting on autonomy for their kingdom of Hungary within
the Habsburg Empire. But for the most part nationalism in eastern Europe long remained
more cultural than political. Centuries of imperial political development had tended to
submerge the Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes—and
even the Poles and Magyars in lesser degree. Their upper classes spoke German or French
and looked to Vienna or to Paris for their ideas. The native languages had remained peas-
ant languages, barely known outside the isolated peasant cultures in which they were spo-
ken. It seemed that many of these languages would disappear.
But early in the nineteenth century the new nationalist intellectuals
began to demand the preservation of their historic cultures. They collected
folktales and ballads; they studied the languages, composing grammars and
dictionaries, often for the fi rst time; and they took to writing books in their
Preservation of
historic cultures
LANGUAGES OF EUROPE National movements in modern Europe often referred to the distinctive languages of various national groups, but there are only three main European language families: Germanic, Latin, and Slavic. The map shows language areas in the early twentieth century. It does not show the overlap of adjoining languages, bilingual areas, or the existence of small language “pockets” such as Turkish in the Balkans, Greek in Asia Minor, Yiddish in Poland, or German in scat- tered parts of eastern Europe. In the extreme northwest is the “Celtic fringe,” to which the Breton, Welsh, and Gaelic languages were pushed back in the early Middle Ages. For the area within the diamond-shaped zone no map on this scale can give a realistic idea of the overlap- ping languages. During the Second World War and its aftermath, however, many language pockets in eastern Europe were wiped out through exchange, transportation, or destruction of peoples.
IRISH
GAELIC
ENGLISH
WELSH
BRETON
FRENCH
SPANISH
BASQUE
PO R TU
G U
ES E
CATALAN ITALIAN
FLEMISH
DUTCH
CROATIAN
ALBANIAN
GREEK
BULGARIAN
ROMANIAN
SERB
MAGYAR
CZECH GERMAN
POLISH UKRAINIAN
(LITTLE RUSSIAN, RUTHENIAN)
DANISH
BYELORUSSIAN
LITHUANIAN
LATVIAN
ESTONIAN
GREAT RUSSIAN
FINNISH
SWEDISH
NORWEGIAN
GREEK
SLO VAK
T U R K IS H
Zone of Most Extreme Local Intermixture of Languages
SL OV
EN E
Germanic
Latin (or Romance)
Slavic
Celtic
0 200 400 miles
53. The Advent of the “Isms”
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848474
mother tongues. They urged their own educated social classes to give up foreign ways.
They wrote histories showing the famous exploits of their several peoples in the Middle
Ages. A new nationalism stirred the Magyars; in 1837 a national Hungarian theater was
established at Budapest. In what was to become Romania a former Transylvanian peasant
youth named George Lazar began as early as 1816 to teach at Bucharest. He lectured in
Romanian (to the surprise of the upper classes, who preferred Greek), telling how Roma-
nia had a distinguished history back to the Roman emperor Trajan. As for the Greeks, they
entertained visions of restoring the medieval Greek Empire (known to Westerners as the
Byzantine Empire) in which persons of Greek language or Greek Orthodox religion should
become the predominant people of the Balkans.
The most far-reaching of the East European movements was the Slavic
Revival. The Slavs included the Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, Byelorus-
sians, and Ruthenians; the Czechs and Slovaks; and the South Slavs, con-
sisting of the Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, and Bulgars. All branches of the Slavs began to
develop new nationalisms. In 1814, for example, the Serb Vuk Karajich published a gram-
mar of his native tongue and a collection of Popular Songs and Epics of the Serbs; he worked out a Serbian alphabet, translated the New Testament, and declared that the dialect
spoken in the city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) should become the literary language of all
South Slavs. In 1836 the Czech historian Francis Palacky published the fi rst volume of his
History of Bohemia, designed to give the Czechs a new pride in their national past. He fi rst wrote his book in German, the common reading language of educated Czechs. But he soon
recast it into Czech, signifi cantly reentitling it a History of the Czech People. Among Poles the poet and revolutionary Adam Mickiewicz became the most prominent advocate for a
new cultural nationalism. Arrested by the Russians in 1823 for membership in a secret
society, he was later allowed by the tsarist government to pass into western Europe. From
1840 to 1844 he taught Slavic literature in Paris at the Collège de France, using his lecture
platform as a rostrum to deliver eloquent pleas for the liberation of all peoples and the
overthrow of autocracy. He wrote epic poems on Polish historical themes and remained
politically active among the revolutionary Polish exiles settled in France.
Russia itself, which Poles and Czechs regarded as backward, was slower to develop
a pronounced national sense. Under Tsar Alexander I a Western or European orientation
prevailed, but in Alexander’s last years and after his death in 1825 the doc-
trines of Slavophilism began to spread. Russian Slavophilism, or the idea
that Russia possessed a distinctive way of life, different from and not to be
corrupted by that of Europe, became a Russian affi rmation of the funda-
mental idea of the Volksgeist. Such views in Russia were at least as old as the opposition to the reforms of Peter the Great. In the nationalistic nineteenth century they crystallized
more systematically into an “ism,” and they tended to merge into Pan-Slavism, which
made substantially the same assertions for the Slavic peoples as a whole. But Pan-Slavism,
before 1848, was no more than embryonic.
Other “Isms”
Romanticism, liberalism, radical republicanism, socialism, feminism, and nationalism
were the political and cultural forces driving many of the new European political and cul-
tural confl icts in the era between 1815 and 1848. Of other “isms” less need
be said. Conservatism remained strong. Politically, on the Continent, con-
servatism upheld the institutions of absolute monarchy, aristocracy, and
The Slavic Revival
Russian Slavophilism
Conservatism
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47554. The Leaking Dam and the Flood: Domestic
church and thus opposed the constitutional and representative government sought by liber-
als. As a political philosophy, conservatism built upon the ideas of Edmund Burke, who
had rejected the Enlightenment theories of universal natural rights. Burke held that every
people must change its institutions by the gradual evolution of its own traditions and that
no people could suddenly realize in the present any freedoms not already well prepared for
in the past. This doctrine lacked appeal for those to whom the past had been a series of
misfortunes, but it gained support among others who sought to defi ne and defend long-
established social or political practices. Conservatism sometimes passed into nationalism,
because it stressed the fi rmness and continuity of national character. But nationalists at this
time were more often liberals or republicans. Monarchism was conservative and even
reactionary. Gone was the enlightened despotism of the previous century, when kings had
boldly irritated their nobles and defi ed their churches. After the thunders of the French
Revolution aristocracy and monarchy huddled together, and their new watchword was to
maintain “the throne and the altar.”
Deeper than other “isms,” a feeling shared in varying ways by people
of all parties, was the profound current of humanitarianism. It consisted in a
heightened concern about the cruelty infl icted upon others. Here the thought
of the Age of Enlightenment suffered no reversal. Torture was gone, and even conservative
monarchical governments showed no inclination to restore it. Conditions in prisons, hos-
pitals, insane asylums, and orphanages attracted new humanitarian attention and gradually
improved. People became determined to change the miserable social position of pauper chil-
dren, chimney sweeps, women in the mines, and enslaved people in the Americas. Russian
serf owners and American slave owners began to show psychological signs of moral doubt.
To degrade human beings, use them as work animals, torture them, confi ne them unjustly,
hold them as hostages for others, abuse their bodies, tear apart their families, and punish
their relatives were increasingly regarded by Europeans as foreign to modern, enlightened
civilizations. The Christian sense of the inviolability of the human person was now again, in
a more secular, mundane way, beginning to relieve the sufferings of humanity.
54. THE LEAKING DAM AND THE FLOOD: DOMESTIC
It is now time to look more specifi cally at the most infl uential political reactions and
reform movements that emerged after the European peace settlement of 1814–1815. The
governments that defeated Napoleon wanted to assure themselves above all else that the
disturbances of the past 25 years would not be renewed. In France the restored Bourbon
king, Louis XVIII, aspired to keep his throne for himself and his successors. In Great
Britain the conservative governing class hoped to preserve the old England that they had
so valiantly saved from the clutches of Bonaparte. In Germany, Austria, Italy, and central
Europe the chief aim of Metternich, who for another 33 years remained the dominant polit-
ical fi gure in these regions, was to maintain a system in which the prestige of the Habsburg
dynasty should be supreme. The aims of the tsar, Alexander, were less clear. He was feared
by representatives of the other powers as a dreamer, a self-chosen world savior, a man who
said he wanted to bring Christianity into politics, a crowned Jacobin, and even a liberal.
It became one of Metternich’s chief hopes to convert Alexander to a fi rm conservatism.
The arrangements made by the victorious powers were in some ways moderate, at least
when the provocations they had undergone in the Napoleonic wars are considered. Partly
by the tsar’s insistence written constitutions existed after 1814 in France and in Russian
or “Congress” Poland. Some of the rulers of south German states allowed a measure of
Humanitarianism
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848476
representative government. Even the king of Prussia promised a representative assembly
for his kingdom, though the promise was not kept. But it was diffi cult to maintain any kind
of social or political stability. The forces of the political right and the privileged classes
(or in France the former privileged classes) denounced all signs of liberalism as dangerous
concessions to revolution. Those of the political left—liberals, nationalists, republicans—
regarded the newly installed regimes as hopelessly reactionary and inadequate. Statesmen
were jittery on the subject of revolution. They therefore met every sign of agitation with
attempts at repression, which, though they might drive agitation temporarily underground,
really only made it worse by creating additional grievances. A vicious circle was set end-
lessly revolving.
Reaction after 1815: France, Poland
In France Louis XVIII began his reign in 1814 with an amnesty to the regicides of 1793.
But the regicides, like all republicans, found the France of 1814 an uncomfortable place,
exposed as they were to the unoffi cial vengeance of counterrevolutionaries, and most of
them had rallied to Napoleon when he returned from Elba. This exasperated
the royalist counterrevolutionaries beyond all measure. A brutal “white ter-
ror” broke out after the Bourbon monarchy regained power in 1815. Upper-
class youths murdered Bonapartists and republicans; Catholic mobs seized
and killed Protestants at Marseilles and Toulouse. The Chamber of Deputies chosen in
1815 (by the tiny electorate of 100,000 well-to-do landowners) proved to be more reac-
tionary and royalist than the king . The king himself could not control the mounting frenzy of reaction, which he was sensible enough to realize would only infuriate the revolutionary
element still further, as in fact happened. In 1820 a fanatical workingman assassinated the
king’s nephew, the Duke de Berry. Those who said that all partisans of the French Revolu-
tion were criminal extremists seemed to be justifi ed. The reaction deepened, until in 1824
Louis XVIII died and was succeeded by his brother Charles X. Not only was Charles X the
father of the recently murdered Duke de Berry, but for over 30 years he had also been the
acknowledged leader of implacable counterrevolution. As the Count of Artois, youngest
brother of Louis XVI, he had been among the fi rst to emigrate in 1789. He was the favorite
Bourbon among the most obstinate ex-seigneurs, nobles, and churchmen. Regarding him-
self as hereditary absolute monarch by the grace of God, he had himself crowned at Reims
with all the romantic pomp of ages past, and proceeded to stamp out not only revolutionary
republicanism but liberalism and constitutionalism as well.
In Poland, it will be recalled, the Vienna settlement created a constitutional kingdom,
with the Russian tsar Alexander as king, joined in merely personal union with the Russian
Empire. The new machinery did not work very well. The Polish constitution provided for
an elected diet, a wide suffrage by the standards of the day, the Napoleonic civil code,
freedom of press and religion, and exclusive use of the Polish language. But the Poles dis-
covered that Alexander, though favoring liberty in the abstract, did not like to have anyone
disagree with him. They could make little use of their much touted freedom in any actual
legislation. The elected diet could not get along with Alexander’s viceroy, who was a Rus-
sian. In Russia the serf-owning aristocracy viewed Alexander’s idea of a constitutional
kingdom in Poland with a jaundiced eye. They wanted no experimentation with liberty on
the very borders of Russia.
The Poles themselves played into the hands of their Russian enemies,
in part because the Poles were among the fi rst central European peoples
to develop strong nationalist aspirations. They were dissatisfi ed with the
The “white terror”
Polish ambitions
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477
boundaries accorded to Congress Poland, and they dreamed of the vast kingdom that had
existed before the First Partition in 1772. At the University of Vilna professors and stu-
dents began to join secret societies. Some members of these societies were nationalist
revolutionaries who wanted to drive out Alexander, reunite with Prussian and Austrian
Poland, and reconstitute an independent Polish state. It was in the discovery and breaking
up of one such society that Adam Mickiewicz was arrested in 1823. Reaction and repres-
sion now struck the University of Vilna.
Reaction after 1815: The German States, Britain
In Germany those who had felt national stirrings during the Wars of Liberation were disil-
lusioned by the peace treaty, which maintained the several German principalities about as
Napoleon had left them and purposely united them only in a loose federation, or Bund.
National ideas were most common in the numerous universities, where students and pro-
fessors were more susceptible than most people to the doctrines of an eternal Volksgeist and a far-fl ung Deutschtum. National ideas tended to glorify the German common people and thus carried with them a kind of democratic opposition to aristocrats, princes, and
kings. Students in many of the universities in 1815 formed college clubs, called collec-
tively the Burschenschaft, which, as centers of serious political discussion, were to
King Charles X sought to restore the political principles and practices of the prerevolutionary French monarchy. His coronation in 1824, as portrayed here, thus re-created traditional royal pomp and symbols, but his attempts to repress liberal constitutionalism led to a new revolution and his abdication of power in 1830. (Time Life Pictures/Mansell/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
54. The Leaking Dam and the Flood: Domestic
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848478
replace the older clubs devoted to drinking and dueling. The Burschenschaft, a kind of German youth movement, held a nationwide congress at Wartburg in 1817. Students
listened to rousing speeches by patriotic professors, marched about in “Teutonic” cos-
tume, and burned a few reactionary books. This undergraduate performance posed no
immediate threat to any established state, but the nervous governments took alarm. In
1819 a theology student assassinated the German writer Kotzebue, known as an informer
in the service of the tsar. The assassin received hundreds of letters of congratulation, and
at Nassau the head of the local government barely escaped the same fate at the hands of a
pharmacy student.
Metternich now chose to intervene. He had no authority in Germany
except in that Austria was a member of the Germanic federation. He regarded
all these manifestations of German national spirit, or of any demand for a
more solidly unifi ed Germany, as a threat to the favorable position of the
Austrian Empire and to the whole balance of state power in Europe. He called a conference
of the principal German states at Carlsbad in Bohemia; the frightened conferees adopted
certain resolutions, proposed by Metternich, which were soon enacted by the diet of the
Bund. These Carlsbad Decrees (1819) dissolved the Burschenschaft and the equally nation- alistic gymnastic clubs (some of whose members thereupon joined secret societies). They
provided for government offi cials to be placed in the universities and for censors to control
the contents of books and the periodical and newspaper press. The Carlsbad Decrees
remained in force for many years, and they imposed an effective check on the growth of
liberal and nationalist ideas in Germany.
Nor did Great Britain escape the dreary rounds of agitation and repres-
sion. As elsewhere, radicalism produced reaction and vice versa. Britain
after Waterloo was a country devoted to its old traditions but also affl icted
by the most advanced social problems of a rapidly developing industrial
economy. In 1815, at the close of the Napoleonic wars, the landed classes
feared an inrush of imported agricultural products and consequent collapse of farm prices
and rentals. The landowning gentry who controlled Parliament enacted a new Corn Law,
raising the protective tariff to the point where import of grain became impossible unless
prices were very high. Landlords and their farmers benefi ted, but wage earners and indus-
trial workers found the price of breadstuffs soaring out of reach. At the same time there
was a postwar depression in industry. Wages fell and many were thrown out of work.
These conditions naturally contributed to the spread of political radicalism, which looked
fi rst of all to a drastic reform of the House of Commons in order that thereafter a radical
program of social and economic legislation might be enacted.
A riot broke out in London in December 1816. In the following February the Prince
Regent was attacked in his carriage. The government suspended habeas corpus and
employed agents provocateurs to obtain evidence against the agitators. Industrialists of Manchester and the new factory towns, determined to force through the reform of parlia-
mentary representation, took the chance offered by the distress of the working classes to
organize mass meetings of protest. At Birmingham a crowd elected a mock member of
Parliament. At sprawling Manchester 80,000 people staged an enormous demonstration at
St. Peter’s Fields in 1819; they demanded universal male suffrage, annual election of the
House of Commons, and the repeal of the Corn Laws. Although perfectly orderly they
were fi red upon by soldiers; 11 persons were killed and about 400 were
wounded, including 113 women. Radicals called this episode the Peterloo
massacre in derisive comparison with the battle of Waterloo.
Metternich intervenes
Economic crisis spurs
radicalism
The Peterloo massacre
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47955. The Leaking Dam and the Flood: International
The frightened government thanked the soldiers for their brave upholding of the social
order. Parliament rushed through the Six Acts (1819), which out-lawed “seditious and
blasphemous” literature, put a heavy stamp tax on newspapers, authorized the search of
private houses for arms, and rigidly restricted the right of public meeting. A group of revo-
lutionaries thereupon plotted to assassinate the whole cabinet at a dinner; they were caught
in Cato Street in London in 1820—whence the name “Cato Street Conspiracy.” Five
of them were hanged. Meanwhile, for publishing the writings of Thomas Paine, Richard
Carlisle spent seven years in prison.
“Our example,” wrote the Duke of Wellington to a Continental correspondent in 1819,
“will be of value in France and Germany, and it is to be hoped that the world will escape
from the general revolution with which we all seem to be threatened.”
In summary, the various European governments promoted reactionary policies every-
where they could reach in the years following the peace of 1815. The reaction was due
only in part to memories of the French Revolution. It was due even more to the living fear
of revolution in the present. This fear, though exaggerated, was no mere hallucination.
Sensing the rising fl ood, the established interests desperately built new barriers against it
in every country. The same is true of international politics at the time.
55. THE LEAKING DAM AND THE FLOOD: INTERNATIONAL
At the Congress of Vienna in 1814–1815 the powers agreed to hold meetings in the future
to enforce the treaty and take up new issues as they arose. A number of congresses of
the Great Powers resulted, which are of signifi cance as an early experimental step toward
German students celebrated their conception of German nationhood at a festival in 1817. Gathering near a castle at Wartburg where Martin Luther had once lived, they commemorated the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 and also burned books that were deemed hostile to German liberty. (akg-images/Newscom)
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848480
international regulation of European affairs. The congresses resembled, in a tentative and
partial way, the League of Nations that arose after the First World War of 1914–1918, or
the United Nations that followed after the war of 1939–1945, or the regular meetings of
political leaders as the European Union evolved in the early twenty-fi rst century. The pow-
ers had also, in 1815, in alarm after the return of Napoleon, subscribed to Alexander I’s
Holy Alliance, which became the popular term for the collaboration of the European states
in the congresses. The Holy Alliance, on the face of it a statement of Christian purpose and
international concord, gradually became an alliance for the suppression of revolutionary
and even liberal activity, following in that respect the trend of the governments that had
created it.
The “Peterloo Massacre” of 1819 was condemned in this caricature by the English artist George Cruikshank. A peaceable crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Fields, Manchester, to demand political reforms and repeal of the Corn Laws (which placed high tariffs on imported grains), but a militia of part-time soldiers opened fi re on the protesters, causing numerous casualties. The British government responded by commending the soldiers and passing new restrictions on public meetings. (George Cruikshank/The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images)
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481
The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1818
The fi rst general postwar assemblage of the powers took place at the Congress of
Aix-la-Chapelle (or Aachen) in 1818. The principal item on the agenda was to withdraw
the allied army of occupation from France. The French argued that Louis XVIII would
never be popular in France so long as he was supported by a foreign army. The other pow-
ers, because they all wanted the French to forget the past and accept the Bourbons, with-
drew their military forces without disagreement. They arranged also to have private bankers
take over the French reparations debt (the 700 million francs imposed by the second Treaty
of Paris); the bankers paid the allied governments, and the French in due time paid
the bankers.
Tsar Alexander was still the most advanced internationalist of the day.
He suggested at Aix-la-Chapelle a kind of permanent European union and
even proposed the maintenance of international military forces to safeguard
recognized states against changes by violence. Governments if thus reas-
sured against revolution, he argued, would more willingly grant constitutional and liberal
reforms. But the others demurred, especially the British foreign minister Lord Castle-
reagh. The British declared themselves willing to make international commitments against
specifi ed contingencies, such as a revival of aggression on the part of France. But they
would assume no obligations to act upon indefi nite and unforeseeable future events. They
reserved the right of independent judgment in foreign policy.
Concretely, the congress addressed itself to the problems of the Atlantic slave trade
and of the recurring attacks on commercial shipping by Barbary pirates in the Mediter-
ranean Sea. It was unanimously agreed that both should be suppressed. (Britian had abol-
ished the slave trade within the British Empire in 1807.) To suppress the slave trade and
piracy, however, required strong naval forces, which only the British possessed in adequate
amount, and it meant also that naval captains must be authorized to stop and search vessels
at sea. The continental states, always touchy on the subject of British sea power, refused
to countenance any such uses of the British fl eet. They feared for the freedom of the seas.
As for the British, they would not even discuss placing British warships in an international
naval pool or putting British squadrons under the authority of an international body. Noth-
ing therefore was done; the slave trade continued in much of the Atlantic world, booming
illicitly with the endless demand for cotton and other commodities; and the Barbary pirates
were not removed from the Mediterranean until the French launched a colonizing inva-
sion of Algeria in the early 1830s and took military control of this region along the North
African coast. The growth of international institutions was therefore blocked by the sepa-
rate interests of the sovereign states.
Revolution in Southern Europe: The Congress of Troppau, 1820
Scarcely had the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle disbanded when revolutionary agitation
came to a crisis in southern Europe. It was not that revolutionary or liberal sentiment
was stronger here than in the north, but rather that the governments in question, those of
Spain, Naples, and the Ottoman Empire, were more ineffi cient, fl imsy, and corrupt. Many
of the revolutionaries were hardly more than middle-class liberals; indeed, the Spaniards,
as we have noted, were the fi rst to use the word “liberal” in this modern political sense.
Many of them had at fi rst accepted the Napoleonic occupation of Spain as a progressive
development but had then turned against it and proclaimed a new constitution in 1812,
modeled on the French revolutionary constitution of 1789–1791. After Napoleon’s fi nal
Alexander’s
internationalism
55. The Leaking Dam and the Flood: International
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848482
defeat they attempted to force the restored Bourbon kings of Spain and
Naples to adopt this constitution of 1812.
In 1820 the governments of both Spain and Naples collapsed with
remarkable ease before the demonstrations of revolutionaries. The kings
of both countries reluctantly took oaths to the Spanish constitution of 1812. But Metter-
nich saw the insurrections as the fi rst symptoms of a revolutionary seizure against which
Europe should be quarantined. It was a fact that revolutionary agitation was international,
easily leaping across frontiers, because of the operations of secret societies and of political
exiles and because in any case the same ideas had spread in all countries after the French
Revolution. Metternich considered Italy in particular to be within the legitimate sphere
of infl uence of the Austrian Empire. He therefore called a meeting of the Great Powers
at Troppau in the Austrian-controlled region in Silesia, hoping to use the authority of an
international congress to put down the revolution in Naples. The governments of Great
Britain and France, not eager to play Austria’s game, sent only observers to the congress.
Metternich’s main problem was, as usual, Alexander. What would be the attitude of the
liberal tsar, the friend and patron of constitutions, toward the idea of a constitutional mon-
archy in Naples? At an inn in Troppau Metternich and Alexander met alone, and there
held a momentous interview over the teacups. Metternich reviewed the horrors of revo-
lutionism, the unwisdom of granting any concessions lest revolutionaries be encouraged.
Alexander was already somewhat disillusioned by the ungrateful feelings of the Poles, and
the upheaval in Naples posed a new threat to his view of royal authority. He had always
believed that constitutions should be granted by legitimate sovereigns, not extorted from
them by revolutionaries, as had happened in Naples. He allowed himself to be persuaded
by Metternich. He declared that he had always been wrong and that Metternich had always
been right; and he announced himself ready to follow Metternich’s political judgment.
Thus fortifi ed, Metternich drew up a document, the protocol of Troppau, for consider-
ation and acceptance by the fi ve Great Powers. It held that all recognized European states
should be protected by collective international action, in the interests of general peace and
stability, from internal changes brought about by force. It was a statement of collective
security against revolution. Neither France nor Great Britain accepted it. Castlereagh wrote
to Metternich that if Austria felt its interests to be threatened in Naples it should intervene
in its own name only. The British Tories did not object to the repression of the Neapolitan
revolution, but they rejected the principle of a binding international collaboration. Metter-
nich could get only Russia and Prussia to endorse his protocol, in addition to Austria.
These three, acting as the Congress of Troppau, authorized Metternich to dispatch an
Austrian army into Naples. He did so; the Neapolitan revolutionaries were arrested or put
to fl ight; the incompetent and brutal Ferdinand I was restored as “absolute” king; the
demon of revolution was seemingly exorcised. But the Congress of Troppau, ostensibly a
Europewide international body, had in effect functioned as an antirevolu-
tionary alliance of Austria, Russia, and Prussia. A gap had opened between
the three Eastern autocracies and the two Western powers—even when the
latter consisted of Tories and Bourbons.
Spain and the Middle East: The Congress of Verona, 1822
Thousands of revolutionaries and liberals fl ed from the political terror raging in Italy. Many
went to Spain, now dreaded by conservatives as the main seat of revolutionary infection. The
Middle East also seemed about to ignite in confl agration. Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek who
had spent his adult life in the military service of Russia, in 1821 led a band of armed followers
A gap opens between
East and West
Revolution in Spain
and Naples
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483
from Russia into Romania (then still a part of Ottoman Turkey), hoping that all Greeks and
pro-Greeks in the Ottoman Empire would join him. He expected Russian support, because
Russia had long wanted to use Greek Christians in a campaign to weaken its imperial rival in
the regions around the Black Sea. The possibility of an Ottoman Turkish Empire converted
into a “Greek” empire and dependent on Russia was naturally unpleasant to Metternich. To
deal with all these matters an international congress convened at Verona in 1822.
Alexander, in shifting from liberal to reactionary views, had not changed his belief in
the need for concerted international action. Had pure power politics determined his deci-
sions, he would doubtless have favored Ypsilanti’s Grecophile revolution.
But he stood by the principle of international solidarity against revolution-
ary violence. He refused to support Ypsilanti, who found less enthusiasm
for Greek culture among the Romanians and Balkan peoples than he had
expected and was soon defeated by the Turks. As for intervention to repress
the uprising in Greece itself, the question did not arise, because the Ottoman government
proved quite able for a time to handle the matter without assistance.
The question of the revolution in Spain was settled by foreign intervention. The Bour-
bon regime in France had no taste for a Spain in which revolutionaries, republicans, politi-
cal exiles, and members of secret societies might be harbored. The French government
proposed to the Congress of Verona that it be authorized to dispatch an army across the
Pyrenees. The Congress welcomed the offer, and despite many dire pre-
dictions of ruin, arising from memories of Napoleon’s Spanish disaster, a
French army of 200,000 men moved into Spain in 1823. The campaign
proved to be a military promenade through a cheering country. Spanish
liberals, constitutionalists, or revolutionaries were a helpless minority. The
mass of the people saw the invasion as a deliverance from Masons, Carbonari, and heretics
and shouted with satisfaction at the restoration of church and king. Ferdinand VII, unscru-
pulous and narrow-minded, repudiated his constitutional oath and let the most reactionary
Spaniards have their way. The revolutionaries were savagely persecuted, exiled, or jailed.
Latin American Independence
The Napoleonic wars and later political disturbances in Europe had wide-ranging reper-
cussions in all parts of America, where the European powers still controlled most of their
long-held colonial empires. While Great Britain was engaged against Napoleon, the United
States fought the inconclusive War of 1812 against its former mother country, and a few
years later, after minor military operations, obtained the cession of Florida from Spain.
During these same years, new movements for national independence emerged in Latin
America and used the turmoil in Europe as an opportunity to break free from the weaken-
ing Portuguese and Spanish empires. The Portuguese royal family, to escape Napoleon,
had taken refuge in its Brazilian Empire, becoming the only European monarchy ever to be
based in one of its colonies. When the dynasty was restored to power at Lisbon, however,
one of its members refused to leave Brazil, which emerged as a new “empire” independent
of Portugal; in 1889 the imperial regime gave way to a new Brazilian republic.
Spanish America reached over the enormous area from San Francisco to Buenos Aires.
Here, too, the thought of the Enlightenment, the news of the American and French revolu-
tions, the Napoleonic occupation of Spain, the French imprisonment of the Spanish king,
and the eventual restoration in 1814 of the Bourbon Ferdinand VII to the
Spanish throne all had their effects. The British had been commercially
active in Spanish America for over a century, and during the Napoleonic
Ypsilanti refused
support
The French invade
Spain
Motives for revolt
55. The Leaking Dam and the Flood: International
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848484
wars they had increased their exports to the Spanish Empire by twentyfold. There were thus
business interests in Spanish America that resisted any return to the old Spanish imperial
system of trade controls. More fundamental was the political and social resentment that
Creoles felt for the peninsulars. The Creoles were the white population of Spanish descent
born in America, and they found their ambitions blocked by the peninsulars who were sent
out from Spain to occupy the highest offi ces in the empire. In many places most of the
people were native Indians or mestizos of mixed Spanish and Indian origin, often living in
depressed economic conditions and far from the capital cities. The movement for indepen-
dence in most of Latin America therefore lacked the more widespread popular character
that it had developed in the British colonies that became the United States. It was mainly
led by Creoles who were active in municipal governments in the towns, though to achieve
their political goals the Creole leaders sometimes recruited supporters from other racial and
social groups. At times, the movement for independence also recruited some very conserva-
tive elements among large landowners and high churchmen. But the important leaders, such
as Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín, were men who had spent years in Europe and pre-
ferred the new constitutional principles of republicanism. In the end, despite their success in
gaining independence, they were generally unable to realize their other political aspirations
for their new countries. The dissensions that long continued to affl ict Spanish America were
all present within the independence movement itself.
Because of its vast extent, over 6,000 miles interrupted by mountain barriers, there
could be less unity in the liberation of Spanish America than had been possible, however
diffi cult, in the North American rebellion against England. There could be no Continental
Congress such as had met in Philadelphia in 1774. Revolts took place separately within the
great vice-royalties: New Spain (Mexico), New Granada (Colombia and Venezuela), Peru
(including Ecuador and most of Bolivia and Chile), and La Plata (Argentina, with claims
over what are now Uruguay and Paraguay).
The fi rst revolts were against Joseph Bonaparte after Napoleon made him king of
Spain in 1808. The rebels actually began their new political movements by proclaim-
ing their loyalty to the deposed Ferdinand VII, who, however, when restored in 1814,
refused to make any concessions to American demands, so that revolutionary sentiment
turned against him also. There followed a series of disconnected struggles between those
fi ghting for independence (with or without much internal change) and combinations of
offi cials, army offi cers, landowners, and churchmen who remained loyal to the Spanish
crown. Bolívar became the liberator of Venezuela and Colombia. San Martín became the
liberator of Argentina and Chile, and both combined in the liberation of Peru. In Mexico,
by way of exception, there was a true mass rising of Indians and mestizos, which was
put down by the middle- and upper-class Creole leaders. This conservative repression
of a more popular revolutionary movement led to a long period of turmoil in the newly
independent Mexican state, but Mexico was also the fi rst postcolonial nation after Haiti to
abolish slavery (1829); and it was by no means the only postcolonial society to face the
problems of internal confl icts, violence, or civil war. The United States soon plunged into
its own bitter civil war because of disputes over slavery and other divisive political prob-
lems. Meanwhile, much of Spanish America struggled with shifting national bound aries,
regional confl icts, attempted conquests, and various secessions. The political map of
South and Central America did not settle into its present form until later in the nineteenth
century. The transition from European colonial systems to the modern national states of
the Americas was therefore often as complicated or as violent as the postcolonial transi-
tions in nations that would later emerge from the twentieth-century European empires in
Asia and Africa.
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485
In addition to the recurring confl icts among themselves, the emerging Latin American
nations remained vulnerable to the imperial interventions of outside powers. L et us return
to the congress of European powers meeting in Verona in 1822. At the very time when a
French army suppressed the revolution in Spain, the revolutionaries in Spanish America
were declaring their independence. At Verona, Tsar Alexander urged the Congress to medi-
ate between Spain and its colonies. This was a euphemistic way of suggest-
ing military intervention in Spanish America, following the principle of
repressing revolutions that had been announced at Troppau. The British
objected. Even the Tory government favored revolutions that might break
up the Spanish Empire into independent states, with which free trade trea-
ties might be negotiated. Without at least benevolent neutrality from the
British fl eet no armed force could sail to America. The Spanish Americans therefore main-
tained their independence, thanks in part to the transatlantic infl uence of British sea power.
The new republics also received strong moral support from the United
States, which now declared its opposition to European colonial interven-
tions in the Americas. In December 1823 President James Monroe, in a mes-
sage to Congress, announced the “Monroe Doctrine.” It stated that attempts
by European powers to return parts of America to colonial status would be viewed as an
unfriendly act by the United States. The British foreign minister George Canning (who
had just succeeded Castlereagh) had at fi rst proposed a joint statement by Great Britain
and the United States against the eastern European powers on the Spanish-American
British favor Spanish-
American
independence
The Monroe Doctrine
Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) was known as “The Libera- tor” for his leadership of the South American revolution- ary movements. He had lived in Europe, where he was strongly infl uenced by the political ideas of the French Revolution. Although his revo- lutionary campaigns secured the independence of several new nations, Bolívar’s attempts to establish stable, constitu- tional governments were gener- ally stymied during the 1820s. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
55. The Leaking Dam and the Flood: International
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848486
question. President Monroe, at the advice of his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams,
decided instead to make a unilateral statement in the form of a message to Congress. They
intended to aim their “doctrine” at Great Britain as well as the Continental states, because
Britain, with its command of the sea, was in fact the only European power that could actu-
ally threaten the independence of American states at this time. Canning, having no such
threats in mind, and concerned more with the Congress of Verona, accepted the new inter-
national assertiveness from the United States. Indeed, he declared with a fl ourish that he
had “called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.” The Monroe
Doctrine, at its inception, was a kind of counterblast to the Metternich doctrine of the pro-
tocol of Troppau. Where the latter announced a European principle of intervention against
revolutions, the Monroe Doctrine announced that revolutions in America, if they resulted
in regimes recognized by the United States, were outside the attention or control of Euro-
pean powers. In any case, the effi cacy of the Monroe Doctrine long depended on the tacit
cooperation of the British fl eet.
Over 300 years of European colonial empires in America thus came to an end, with
few exceptions, in the half-century after 1776. One exception was Canada, where mem-
bership in the British Empire was voluntary, at least for the English-speaking inhabitants,
and where both the English and French Canadians resisted threats of annexation by the
United States. The other exceptions were in the West Indies, where Haiti was independent,
but where the smaller islands remained British, French, or Dutch; and the large islands of
Cuba and Puerto Rico remained Spanish until the United States expanded its own imperial
ambitions in the Spanish-American War of 1898.
The End of the Congress System
After the Congress of Verona no more such meetings were held. The attempt at a for-
mal international regulation of European affairs was given up. In the broadest retrospect,
the congresses failed to make progress toward an international order because, especially
after Alexander’s conversion to Metternich’s conservatism, they came to stand for nothing
except preservation of the status quo. They made no attempt at accommodation with the
new forces that were shaping Europe, so they could not evolve into a modern transnational
system for managing confl icts or social change. It was not the policy of these congresses
to forestall revolution by demanding that governments institute reforms. They simply
repressed or punished all revolutionary agitation. They propped up governments that could
not stand on their own feet.
In any case the congresses never succeeded in subordinating the separate interests of
the Great Powers. Perhaps Alexander’s repudiation of Ypsilanti was a sacrifi ce of Russian
advantage to international principle; but when the Austrian government intervened to crush
the revolution in Naples, and when the French government crushed the revolution in Spain,
though in both cases they acted with an international mandate, each was really promoting
what it conceived to be its own interests. The interest of Great Britain was to pull away from
the system entirely and to stand aloof from permanent international commitments. British
leaders such as Castlereagh and Canning sought to preserve the free exercise of sea power
and foreign policy, and they were more willing to take a benevolent view toward revolution
in other countries. Because France gradually pulled away also, the Holy
Alliance became no more than a counterrevolutionary league of the three
East European autocracies. The cause of liberalism in Europe was thus
advanced by the collapse of this highly conservative international system.
Liberalism advances
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48756. The Breakthrough of Liberalism in the West: Revolutions of 1830–1832
At the same time, however, the collapse of this international system opened the way to the
uncontrolled nationalism of the sovereign states. “Things are getting back to a wholesome
state again,” wrote George Canning in 1822. “Every nation for itself and God for us all!”
Russia: The Decembrist Revolt, 1825
Alexander I, “the man who defeated Napoleon,” the ruler who had led his armies from
Moscow to Paris, who had frightened European diplomats by the Russian shadow that he
threw over the Continent, and who yet in his way had been the great pillar of constitutional
liberalism and international order, died in 1825. His death was the signal for revolution in
Russia. Offi cers of the Russian army, during the campaigns of 1812–1815 in Europe, had
become acquainted with many unsettling ideas. Secret societies were formed even in the
Russian offi cer corps; their members held all sorts of confl icting ideas, some wanting a
constitutional tsardom in Russia, some demanding a republic, some even dreaming of an
emancipation of the serfs. When Alexander died it was for a time uncertain which of his
two brothers, Constantine or Nicholas, should succeed him. The restless coteries in the
army preferred Constantine, who was the older brother and who was thought to be more
favorable to innovations in the state. In December 1825 they proclaimed Constantine at St.
Petersburg, having their soldiers shout “Constantine and Constitution!”
But the fact was that Constantine had already renounced his claims in
favor of Nicholas, who was thus the rightful heir. The uprising, known as the
Decembrist revolt, was soon put down. Five of the mutinous offi cers were
hanged; many others were condemned to forced labor or interned in Siberia.
The Decembrist revolt was the fi rst manifestation of the modern revolutionary movement in
Russia—of a revolutionary movement inspired by an ideological program, as distinguished
from the elemental mass upheavals of Pugachev or Stephen Razin in earlier times. But
the immediate effect of the Decembrist revolt was to clamp repression upon Russia more
fi rmly. Nicholas I (1825–1855) maintained an unconditional and despotic autocracy.
Ten years after the defeat of Napoleon the new forces issuing from the French Revo-
lution seemed to be routed, and reaction, repression, and political immobility seemed to
prevail everywhere in Europe. A massive, conservative dam had sprung some political and
social leaks, but during most of the 1820s it seemed to be containing the fl ood.
56. THE BREAKTHROUGH OF LIBERALISM IN THE WEST: REVOLUTIONS OF 1830–1832
The reactionary dam broke open in 1830, and in western Europe the stream thereafter
never stopped. The seepage, indeed, had already begun. By 1825 Spanish America was
independent; the British and the French had pulled away from the congress system; and the
Greek nationalist movement against the Turks had become a popular liberal cause across
all of western Europe.
With the defeat of Ypsilanti in 1821 the Greek nationalists turned somewhat away
from the idea of a neo-Greek empire and began promoting the idea of independence for
Greece proper, the islands and peninsulas where Greek was the predominant language.
Tsar Nicholas was more willing than Alexander to assist this movement. The governments
of Great Britain and France were not inclined to let Russia stand as the only champion of
Balkan peoples. Moreover, liberals in the West thought of the embattled Greeks as ancient
Athenians fi ghting the modern despotism of an unenlightened Ottoman Turkish Empire.
Constantine and
Nicholas
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848488
The result of these converging interests and ideas was a joint Anglo-French-Russian
naval intervention, which destroyed the Turkish fl eet off the Greek coast at Navarino Bay
in 1827. Russia again, as often in the past, sent armies into the Balkans. A Russo-Turkish
war and a great Middle Eastern crisis followed, in the course of which the rival powers
agreed in 1829 to recognize Greece as an independent kingdom. The Balkan states of Serbia,
Wallachia, and Moldavia were also recognized as autonomous principalities within the badly
shaken Ottoman Empire (see map p. 661). From the same crisis Egypt emerged as an autono-
mous region under Mehemet Ali and in time became a center of Arabic nationalism, which
reduced Ottoman power in the south just as Balkan nationalism did in the north.
France, 1824–1830: The July Revolution, 1830
It was in 1830, and fi rst of all in France, that the wall of reaction really collapsed. Charles
X became king in 1824. In the next year the legislative chambers voted an indemnity, in the
form of perpetual annuities totaling 30 million francs a year, to those who as émigrés thirty-
odd years before had lost their property to confi scations by the revolutionary state. Catholic
clergy began to take over classrooms in the schools. A law pronounced the death penalty
for sacrilege committed in church buildings. But the France of the restored Bourbons still
had a mostly free public sphere for political and cultural debates; and against these appar-
ent efforts to revive the Old Regime a strong opposition developed in the newspapers and
in the chambers. In March 1830 the Chamber of Deputies, in which the bankers Laffi tte
and Casimier-Périer led the “leftist” opposition, passed a vote of no confi dence in the gov-
ernment. The king, as was his legal right, dissolved the Chamber and called for new
elections. The elections produced clear majorities for those who repudiated the king’s poli-
cies. He replied on July 26, 1830, with four ordinances issued on his own authority. One
dissolved the newly elected Chamber before it had ever met; another imposed censorship
on the press; the third so amended the suffrage as to reduce the voting power of bankers,
merchants, and industrialists and to concentrate it in the hands of the old-fashioned aristoc-
racy; the fourth called for an election on the new basis.
These July Ordinances provoked on the very next day the July Revolution. The
bourgeois liberals were enraged by their brazen ouster from political life. But it was the
republicans—the nucleus of revolutionary workers, students, and intelligentsia in Paris—
who actually moved. For three days, from July 27 to 29, barricades were erected in the city,
behind which a swarming populace defi ed the army and the police. Some
of the protestors were killed, but most of the army refused to fi re. Charles
X, in no mood to be made captive by a revolution like his long-dead brother
Louis XVI, precipitately abdicated and headed for England.
A few of the leaders now wished to proclaim a democratic republic. Working people
hoped for better conditions of employment. The political liberals, however, supported by
bankers, industrialists, various journalists, and intellectuals, had other aims. They had been
satisfi ed in general with the constitutional charter of 1814; it was only to the policies and
personnel of the government that they had objected, and they wished now to continue with
constitutional monarchy, somewhat liberalized, and with a king whom they could trust. A
solution to the deadlock was found by Lafayette, the aging hero of the American and the
French revolutions, who became commander of the reorganized National Guard and a
popular symbol of national unity. Lafayette brought the Duke of Orleans onto the balcony
of the Paris Hôtel de Ville, embraced him before a great concourse of people, and offered
him as the answer to France’s need. The duke was a collateral relative of the Bourbons; he
had also, as a young man, served in the republican army of 1792 and had later lived for a
Charles X abdicates
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489
time as an exile in the United States. The militant republicans accepted him, willing to see
what would develop; and the Chamber of Deputies on August 7 offered him the throne, on
condition that he observe faithfully the constitutional charter of 1814. He reigned, until
1848, under the title of Louis Philippe, king of the French.
The regime of Louis Philippe, called the Orléanist, bourgeois, or July
Monarchy, was viewed very differently by different groups in France and
in Europe. To the other states of Europe and to the clergy and legitimists
within France, it seemed shockingly revolutionary. The new king owed his throne to an
insurrection, to a bargain made with republicans, and to promises made to the Chamber
of Deputies. He called himself not king of France but king of the French, and he fl ew the
tricolor fl ag of the Revolution in place of the Bourbon lily. He cultivated a popular man-
ner, wore sober dark clothing (the ancestor of the modern business suit), and carried an
umbrella. Though in private he worked stubbornly to maintain his royal position, in public
he adhered scrupulously to the constitution.
The constitution remained substantially what it had been in 1814. The main political
change was one of tone; there would be no more absolutism, with its notion that constitu-
tional guarantees could be abrogated by a reigning prince. Legally the main change was
that the Chamber of Peers ceased to be hereditary, to the chagrin of the old nobility, and
that the Chamber of Deputies was to be elected by a somewhat enlarged body of voters.
Where before 1830 there had been 100,000 voters, there were now about 200,000. The
right to vote was still based on the ownership of a considerable quantity of real estate.
About one-thirtieth of the adult male population (the top thirtieth in the possession of
real property) now elected the Chamber of Deputies. The benefi ciaries of the new system
were the upper bourgeoisie—the bankers, merchants, and industrialists. The big property
owners constituted the pays légal, the “legal country,” and to them the July Monarchy was the consummation and stopping place of political progress. To others, and especially to the
radical democrats, it proved as the years passed to be a disillusionment and an annoyance
to which they would respond with new forms of political agitation.
Revolutions of 1830: Belgium and Poland
The immediate effect of the three-day Paris revolution of 1830 was to set off a series of
similar explosions throughout Europe, most notably in Belgium and Poland. These in turn,
coming after the collapse of the Bourbons in France, brought the whole peace settlement of
1815 into jeopardy. It will be recalled that the Congress of Vienna had joined Belgium
with the Dutch Netherlands to create a strong buffer state against a resurgent France and
had also done what it could to prevent direct Russian intervention in central Europe by
way of Poland. Both these arrangements were now undone.
The Dutch-Belgium union proved economically benefi cial, for Bel-
gian industry complemented the commercial and shipping activity of the
Dutch, but politically it worked poorly, especially because the Dutch king
had absolutist and centralizing ideas. The Belgians, though they had never
been independent, had always stood stiffl y for their local liberties under for-
mer Austrian rulers (and Spanish before them); now they did the same against the Dutch.
The Catholic Belgians disliked Dutch Protestantism; those Belgians who spoke French (the
Walloons) objected to regulations requiring the use of Dutch. About a month after the July
Revolution in Paris disturbances broke out in Brussels. The leaders asked only for local
Belgian self-government, but when the king took arms against them, they went on to pro-
claim political independence. A Belgian National Assembly met and drafted a constitution.
The July Monarchy
The benefi ts of the
Dutch-Belgian union
56. The Breakthrough of Liberalism in the West: Revolutions of 1830–1832
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848490
Nicholas of Russia wished to send troops to stamp out the Belgian
uprising. But he could not get his forces safely through Poland. In Poland,
too, in 1830, a revolution broke out. The Polish nationalists saw in the
fall of the French Bourbons a timely moment for them to strike. They objected also to
the appearance of Russian troops bound presumably to suppress freedom in western
Europe. One incident led to another, until in January 1831 the Polish diet proclaimed the
dethronement of the Polish king (i.e., Nicholas), who thereupon sent in a large army. The
Poles, outnumbered and divided among themselves, could not put up a successful resis-
tance. They obtained no support from the West. The British government was unsettled by
agitation at home. The French government, newly installed under Louis Philippe, had no
wish to appear disturbingly revolutionary, and in any case feared the Polish agents who
sought its backing as international fi rebrands and republicans. The Polish revolution was
therefore crushed. Congress Poland disappeared; its constitution was abrogated, and it was
LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE by Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798–1863)
Delacroix, a founder of the romantic school in nineteenth-century French art, painted this pic- ture soon after the July Revolution in Paris in 1830. It well illustrates the idealistic conception of revolution that prevailed among revolutionaries before 1848. Revolution is shown as a noble and moral act on behalf of the abstract ideals of liberty. The fi gures express determination and courage but show no sign of hatred or even anger. They are not a class; they are the people, affi rming the rights of man. Liberty, holding the tricolor aloft, is a composed and even rational goddess. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
Revolution in Poland
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491
merged into the Russian Empire. Thousands of Polish exiles settled in western Europe,
where they became familiar fi gures in republican circles. In Poland the engines of repres-
sion rolled. The tsar’s government sent thousands of Poles to Siberia, began to Russify
the Eastern Border, and closed the universities of Warsaw and Vilna. Because the Polish
revolution prevented the tsar from moving toward a possible intervention in Belgium, it
may be said that the sacrifi ce of the Poles contributed to the success of the West European
revolution of 1830, as it had to that of the French Revolution of 1789–1795.
It was true enough, as Nicholas maintained, that an independent Belgium presented
great international problems. Belgium for 20 years before 1815 had been part of France.
A few Belgians now favored reunion with it, and in France the republican left, which
regarded the Vienna treaty as an insult to the French nation, saw an opportunity to win
back this fi rst and dearest conquest of the First Republic. In 1831, by a small majority, the
Belgian National Assembly elected as their king the son of Louis Philippe, who, however,
not wishing trouble with the British, forbade his son to accept it. The Belgians thereupon
elected Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, a German princeling who had married into the British
royal family and become a British subject. He was in fact the uncle of a 12-year-old girl
who was to be Queen Victoria. The British negotiated with Talleyrand, sent over by the
French government (it was his last public service); and the result was a treaty setting up
Belgium as a perpetually neutral state, incapable of forming alliances and guaranteed
against invasion by all fi ve of the Great Powers. The aim intended by the Treaty of Vienna,
to prevent the annexation of Belgium to France, was thus again realized in a new way.
Internally Belgium settled down to a stable parliamentary system, somewhat more
democratic than the July Monarchy in France but fundamentally offering the same type of
bourgeois and liberal rule.
Reform in Great Britain
The three-day Paris revolution of 1830 had direct repercussions across the Channel. The
quick results following on working-class insurrection gave radical leaders in England the
idea that threats of violence might be useful. On the other hand, the ease and speed with
which the French bourgeoisie gained the upper hand reassured the British middle classes,
who concluded that they might unsparingly embarrass the government without courting a
mass upheaval.
The Tory regime in England had in fact already begun to loosen up.
A group of more liberal Tory leaders came forward in the 1820s, notably
George Canning, the foreign minister, and Robert Peel, son of one of the fi rst
cotton manufacturers. This group was sensitive to the needs of British business and to the
liberal doctrines of free trade. They reduced tariffs and liberalized the old Navigation Acts,
permitting British colonies to trade with countries other than Britain. The Liberal Tories
also undermined the legal position of the Church of England, forwarding the conception of
a secular state, though such was hardly their purpose. They repealed the old laws (which
dated from the seventeenth century) forbidding dissenting Protestants to hold public offi ce
except through a legal fi ction by which they pretended to be Anglicans. They even allowed
the Test Act of 1673 to be repealed and Catholic Emancipation to be adopted. Catholics
in Great Britain and Ireland received the same rights as others. Capital punishment was
abolished for about a hundred offenses. A professional police force was introduced in place
of the old-fashioned and ineffectual local constables. (It is after Robert Peel that London
policemen came to be called “bobbies.”) The new police were expected to handle protest
meetings, angry crowds, or occasional riots without having to call for military assistance.
The Tory regime
56. The Breakthrough of Liberalism in the West: Revolutions of 1830–1832
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848492
Despite their willingness to introduce moderate reforms, there were two things that the
Liberal Tories could not do. They could not question the Corn Laws, and they could not
change the elite membership in the House of Commons. By the Corn Laws, which set the
tariff on imported grain, a tariff raised to new heights in 1815, the gentlemen of England
protected their rent rolls; and by the existing structure of the House of Commons they gov-
erned the country, expecting the working class and the business interests to look to them as
natural leaders.
Never in 500 years of its history had the Commons been so unrepresentative. No
new borough had been created since the Revolution of 1688. The boroughs, or urban cen-
ters having the right to elect members of Parliament, were heavily concentrated in south-
ern England. Although the Industrial Revolution was shifting population
noticeably to the north, the new factory towns were not represented in Par-
liament. In a few boroughs real elections took place, but in some of them it
was the town corporation, and in others the owners of certain pieces of real
estate, that had the right to name members of Parliament. Many boroughs
were entirely dominated by infl uential persons called borough-mongers by their critics. As
for the rural districts, the “forty-shilling freeholders” chose two members of Parliament for
each county, in a convivial assembly much infl uenced by the gentlefolk. It was estimated
about 1820 that fewer than 500 men, most of them members of the House of Lords, really
selected a majority of the House of Commons.
Some two dozen bills to reform the House of Commons had been introduced in the
half-century preceding 1830. They had all failed to pass. In 1830, after the Paris revolu-
tion, the issue was again raised by the minority party, the Whigs. The Tory prime minister,
the Duke of Wellington, the victor of Waterloo and a most extreme conservative, so
immoderately defended the existing system that he lost the confi dence even of some of his
own followers. The existing methods of election in England, he declared, were more per-
fect than any that human intelligence could contrive at a single stroke. After this outburst a
Whig ministry took over the government. It introduced a reform bill. The House of Com-
mons rejected it. The Whig ministry thereupon resigned. The Tories, fearing popular vio-
lence, refused to take the responsibility for forming a cabinet. The Whigs resumed offi ce
and again introduced their reform bill. This time it passed the Commons but failed in the
House of Lords. An angry roar went up over the country. Crowds milled in the London
streets, rioters for several days were in control at Bristol, the jail at Derby was sacked, and
Nottingham castle was burned. Only the passage of the reform bill, it seemed, could pre-
vent an actual revolution. Using this argument, the Whigs got the king to promise to create
enough new peers to change the majority in the House of Lords. The Lords yielded rather
than be swamped, and in April 1832 the bill became law.
The Reform Bill of 1832 was a very English measure. It adapted the
English or medieval system rather than following the new ideas of the
French Revolution. On the Continent, constitutional political systems in
countries such as France rested on the idea that each representative should
represent roughly the same number of voters and that voters should qualify to vote by a
fl at uniform qualifi cation, usually the payment of a stated amount of property taxes. The
British held to the idea that members of the House of Commons represented boroughs and
counties, in general without regard to size of population (with exceptions). In other words,
no attempt was made to create equal electoral districts, and the vote was still distributed
in the reformed boroughs and counties on the basis of economic status, reliability, and
permanence. The total effect on the size of the electorate was to raise the number of vot-
ers in the British Isles from about 500,000 to about 813,000. Some persons actually lost
Problems of
representation
The Reform Bill of
1832
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493
their votes, namely, the poorer elements in the handful of old boroughs that had been fairly
democratic, like the borough of Westminster in greater London.
The most important change was not the increased size of the electorate but its redistri-
bution by region and by class. The Reform Bill reallocated the seats in the House of Com-
mons, moving more than 140 parliamentary seats from small, older boroughs to the new
industrial towns. Many previously excluded middle-class men in the growing northern
cities gained the right to vote—factory owners and businessmen and their principal
employees, doctors, lawyers, brokers, merchants, and newspaper people, relatives and
connections of the well-to-do.
The Reform Bill of 1832 was more sweeping than the Whigs would have favored
except for their fear or revolution. It was more conservative than the demo-
cratic radicals would have accepted, except for their belief that the suffrage
might be widened in the future. Whether Great Britain in 1830 was in dan-
ger of any real revolution can never be known. A distressed mass of work-
ers was led by an irate manufacturing class that was unwilling to tolerate
any longer its exclusion from political life, yet neither the workers nor the industrialists
turned toward violence and revolution. The reason probably lies fi rst of all in the existence
of the historic institution of Parliament, which, erratic though it was before the Reform
Bill, provided the means by which social changes could be legally accomplished and con-
tinued, in principle, to enjoy universal respect. Conservatives, driven to the wall, would
yield; they could allow a revision of the suffrage because they could expect to remain
themselves in public life. Radicals, using enough violence to scare the established interest,
did not thereafter face a blank wall; they could expect, once the breach was made, to carry
some day a further democratization of Parliament and with it their social and economic
program by orderly legislation.
Britain after 1832
But the British Reform Bill of 1832 was in its way a revolution. The new business inter-
ests, created by industrialization, now took their place alongside the old aristocracy in the
governing elite of the country. The aristocratic Whigs who had carried the Reform Bill
gradually merged with formerly radical industrialists and with a few Liberal Tories to form
the Liberal Party. The main body of the Tories, joined by a few old Whigs and even a few
former radicals, gradually turned into the Conservative Party. The two parties alternated in
power at short intervals from 1832 to the First World War, this being the classic period in
Great Britain of the Liberal-Conservative two-party system and a period in
which numerous political and social reforms would be enacted.
In 1833 slavery was abolished in the British Empire. In 1834 a new
Poor Law was adopted. In 1835 the Municipal Corporations Act, second
only to the Reform Bill in basic importance, modernized the local gov-
ernment of English cities; it broke up the old local oligarchies and brought in uniform
electoral and administrative machinery, enabling city dwellers to grapple more effec-
tively with the problems of urban life. In 1836 the House of Commons allowed the
newspapers to report how its members voted—a long step toward publicity of govern-
ment proceedings was thus taken. Meanwhile an ecclesiastical commission reviewed
the affairs of the Church of England; fi nancial and administrative irregularities were
corrected, together with the grosser inequalities between the income of upper and lower
clergy, all of which had made the church formerly a kind of closed preserve for the
landed gentry.
The ambiguous
impact of reform
Liberals and
Conservatives
56. The Breakthrough of Liberalism in the West: Revolutions of 1830–1832
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848494
The Tories, thus assaulted in their immemorial strongholds of local government and the
established church, carried a counteroffensive into the strongholds of the
new liberal manufacturing class, namely, the factories and the mines. Tories
whose own wealth still depended on ownership of land became champions of
the industrial workers. Landed gentlemen, of whom the most famous was
Lord Ashley, later seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, took the lead in publicizing
the social evils of a rapid and even ruthless industrialization. They received some support
from a few humanitarian industrialists; indeed, the early legislation tended to follow prac-
tices already established by the best or strongest business fi rms. A Factory Act of 1833 for-
bade the labor of children less than 9 years old in the textile mills. It was the fi rst effective
piece of legislation on the subject because it provided for paid inspectors and procedures for
enforcement. An act of 1842 initiated signifi cant regulation in the coal mines; the employ-
ment underground of women and girls, and of boys under ten, was forbidden.
The greatest victory of the working classes came in 1847 with the Ten Hours Act, which
limited the labor of women and children in all industrial establishments to ten hours a day.
Thereafter men commonly worked only ten hours also, because the work of men, women, and
young people was too closely coordinated in factories for the men to work alone. The Liberal
John Bright, Quaker and cotton magnate, called the Ten Hours Act “a delusion practiced on
the working classes.” Many such industrialists believed that regulation of the hours of labor
was contrary to the accepted principles of laissez-faire, economic law, the free market, free-
dom of trade, and individual liberty for employer and worker. Yet the Ten
Hours Act stood, and British industry continued to prosper.
Gathering their strength, the Whig-liberal-radical combination estab-
lished in 1838 an Anti-Corn Law League. Wage earners objected to the
The Tory
counteroffensive
The Anti–Corn Law
League
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1780–1869
1780s Mechanical spinning of cotton spreads across England
1792 Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Women
1807 Robert Fulton uses the steam engine to propel river boats
1819 “Peterloo Massacre” suppresses protesting English workers in Manchester
1819 Metternich’s “Carlsbad Decrees” suppress the German nationalist movement
1820 Congress of Troppau calls for international action against all revolutions
1823 Monroe Doctrine opposes European intervention in Latin America
1825 Decembrist Revolt of military offi cers is put down in Russia
1829 Steam locomotive is tested safely in England
1830 July Revolution in France forces abdication of Charles X; Louis-Philippe
becomes “king of the French”
1831 Russia suppresses national movement in Poland
1832 Reform Bill widens British suffrage; alters representation in Parliament
1839 Louis Blanc’s Organization of Work promotes new socialist ideas
1846 Repeal of Corn Laws marks ascendancy of British industrial interests
1869 John Stuart Mill argues for women’s rights in The Subjection of Women
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49557. Triumph of the West European Bourgeoisie
Corn Laws because the tariff on grain imports kept up the price of food. Industrial employ-
ers also objected to them because, in keeping up food prices, they drove up wages and
the cost of industrial production in England, thus working to England’s disadvantage in
the export trade. Defenders of the Corn Laws argued that protection of agriculture was
necessary to maintain the natural landowning aristocracy of the country, but they also
sometimes used more widely framed economic arguments, affi rming that Britain should
preserve an economic balance between industry and farming and avoid becoming too
exclusively dependent on imported food. The issue became a straight contest between the
industrialists, acting with working-class support, and the aristocratic and predominantly
Tory landowning interest. The Anti–Corn Law League, whose headquarters were at Man-
chester, operated like a modern political party. It had plenty of money, supplied by large
donations from manufacturers and small ones from laboring people. It sent lecturers on
tour, agitated in the newspapers, and issued a stream of polemical pamphlets and educa-
tional books. It held political teas, torchlight processions, and open-air mass meetings.
The pressure proved irresistible and received a fi nal impetus from a famine in Ireland.
It was a Tory government, headed by Sir Robert Peel, which in 1846 yielded before so
vociferous a demand.
The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 stands as a symbol of the change that had come
over England. It reaffi rmed the revolutionary consequences of the Reform Bill of 1832.
Industry was now a governing element in the country. Free trade was henceforth the rule.
Great Britain, in return for the export of manufacturers, became deliberately dependent on
imports for its very life. It was committed henceforth to an international and even world-
wide economic system in which tariffs would remain low or be abolished. The fi rst to
undergo the Industrial Revolution, possessing mechanical power and methods of mass pro-
duction, the British could produce yarn and cloth, machine tools and railroad equipment,
more effi ciently and more cheaply than any other people. In Britain, the early industrial
workshop of the world, people would pour increasingly into mine, factory, and city; live
by selling manufactures, coal, shipping, and fi nancial services to the other peoples of the
earth; and obtain raw cotton, rare ores, meat, cereals, and thousands of lesser but still vital
necessities from the rest of the earth in exchange. The welfare of Britain depended on the
maintenance of a freely exchanging worldwide economic system and, as always, on the
British navy’s control of the sea.
57. TRIUMPH OF THE WEST EUROPEAN BOURGEOISIE
In general, the decades following 1830 may be thought of as a kind of golden age of the
western European bourgeoisie, or what in English would be called the upper middle class.
In the older meaning, in French, a bourgeois had been a townsperson who was not of the nobility but enjoyed an income from business, a profession, or the ownership of property.
After the French Revolution, and even more after 1830, the word took on new meanings,
not all of them consistent. Artists, literary people, and old-line aristocrats might disdain the
bourgeois as a person of uncultivated tastes, supposedly interested only in making money.
From another point of view, shared by social theorists and working-class leaders, the bour-
geois was someone who could hire the labor of other people for business enterprises,
recreational activities, or household service. In a word, the bourgeois was the employer. The
nineteenth-century bourgeoisie and aristocracy tended to become more alike in their daily
pursuits and style of life, and to draw income from the possession of income-producing
property or capital. The bourgeoisie, formerly identifi ed in contrast to the nobility, was
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848496
now identifi ed in contrast to the working class, that is, those whose whole income depended
on daily labor in shops, offi ces, farms, or factories.
The reigning liberal doctrine was the “stake in society” theory; those who
govern should have something to lose. In the France of the July Monarchy
(1830–1848), only about one adult male in 30 had the vote. In the Britain of
the fi rst Reform Bill (1832–1867), one man in eight could vote for a member
of the House of Commons. In France only the most well-to-do were enfranchised; in Britain,
virtually the whole middle class, which, however, long supported members of the aristocracy
for the highest public positions. In Britain the continuation of the Tory landed interest in poli-
tics somewhat blunted the edge of capitalist and managerial rule, resulting in the passage of
signifi cant legislation for the protection of industrial labor. In France the aristocratic landed
interest, already weaker and less public spirited than in England, lost most of its infl uence
after the Revolution of 1830, and less was done to relieve the condition of labor.
The bourgeois age left its mark on Europe in many ways. For one thing, western Europe
continued to accumulate capital and build up its industrial plant. National income was con-
stantly rising, but a relatively small share went to the laboring class and a relatively large share
went to owners of capital. This meant that less was spent on consumers’ goods—housing,
clothing, food, recreation—and that more was saved and available for reinvestment. New stock
companies were constantly formed, and the law of corporations was amended, allowing for the
extension of corporate enterprise to new fi elds. The factory system spread from Britain to the
Continent and within Britain from the textile industry to other lines of production. The output
of iron, a good index to economic advancement in this phase of industrialism, rose about 300
percent in Great Britain between 1830 and 1848 and about 65 percent in France between 1830
and 1845. (All the German states combined, at the latter date, produced about a tenth as much
iron as Great Britain and less than half as much as France.) Railroad building began in earnest
after 1840. In 1840 Samuel Cunard put four steamships into regular transatlantic service. Much
capital was exported; as early as 1839 an American estimated that Europeans (mainly British)
owned $200,000,000 worth of stocks in American companies. Such investments fi nanced the
purchase of British and other goods and helped to rivet together a world economic system, in
which western Europe and especially England took the lead, with other regions remaining in a
somewhat subordinate status.
The Frustration and Challenge of Labor
The bourgeois age had the effect also of estranging the world of labor. The state in Britain
and France was as near as it has ever been to what Karl Marx was soon to call it—a com-
mittee of the bourgeois class. Already in France people spoke worriedly of the prolétaires, those at the bottom of society, who had nothing to lose. Republicans in France, radical
democrats in Britain, felt cheated and imposed upon in the 1830s and 1840s. They had in
each country forced through a virtual revolution by their insurrections and demonstrations
and then in each country had been left without the vote. Some lost interest in representative
institutions. Excluded from government, they were tempted to seek political ends through
extragovernmental, which is to say revolutionary or utopian, channels. Social and eco-
nomic reforms seemed to the average worker far more important, as a fi nal aim, than mere
governmental innovations. Workers were told by respected economists that they could not
hope to change the fundamental processes of the economic system in their own favor. They
were tempted, therefore, to destroy the system and to replace it utterly with some new sys-
tem conceived mainly in the minds of thinkers. They were told by the Manchester School,
“Stake in society”
theory
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BIG INVESTMENTS by Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879)
The Revolution of 1830, romanticized at fi rst by Delacroix and most European liberals, was in fact followed by a period of moneymaking and business ferment (as well as rapid economic development), made famous by the novels of Balzac and the graphic art of Daumier. This lithograph of 1837 shows a fi nancier with bundles of stock certifi cates piled beside him, offer- ing to sell shares in factories, foundries, and breweries to a skeptical client. Daumier’s satirical images provided vivid, memorable critiques of the corruptions and hypocrisies in nineteenth- century political and economic life. (Bibliothèque Nationale de France)
57. Triumph of the West European Bourgeoisie
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848498
and by its equivalent in France, that the income of labor was set by ineluctable natural laws,
that it was best and indeed necessary for wages to remain low, and that the way to rise in
the world was to get out of the laboring class altogether, by becoming the owner of a profi t-
able business and leaving working people about where they were.
The reigning doctrine emphasized the conception of a labor market. The
worker sold labor; the employer bought it. The price of labor, or wage, was
to be agreed upon by the two individual parties. The price would naturally
fl uctuate according to changes in supply and demand. When a great deal of a certain kind of
labor was required, the wage would go up until new persons moved into the market offering
more labor of this type, with the result that something like the old wage would again be
established. When no labor was needed, none should be hired, and persons
who could not sell labor might then subsist for a time by poor relief.
The new British Poor Law of 1834 was especially repugnant to the
British working class. It corrected crying evils of the old poor laws that had
left millions of people in habitual poverty but did nothing constructive to
relieve productive workers suffering from the poverty of occasional or cyclical unemploy-
ment. The new law followed the stern precepts of the dismal science; its main principle was
to safeguard the labor market by making relief more unpleasant than any job. It granted relief
only to persons willing to enter a workhouse, or poorhouse; and in these establishments the
sexes were segregated and life was in other ways made noticeably less attractive than in the
outside world. The workers considered the new law an abomination. They called the work-
houses “bastilles.” They resented the whole conception of a labor market, in which labor was
to be bought and sold (or remain unsold) like any other commodity. The fl uctuating, cyclical
labor market contributed to the social instability of working-class families and may also have
created new tensions between women and men. Court records from early nineteenth-century
England suggest that violent family disputes became more common when women earned
signifi cant portions of the working family’s household income or found work more read-
ily than their unemployed husbands; such situations challenged the traditional relations in
English family life, though women almost always received lower wages than men.
In the long run the condition of the workers would gradually improve through an
increase in productivity. Meanwhile the friends of the working class offered two means
of escape. One was to improve the bargaining position of labor in the market. This led to
the formation of labor unions for control of the labor supply and collective bargaining with
employers. Such unions, illegal in France, were barely legal in Great Britain after 1825,
though it was still illegal in both countries to strike. The other means of escape was to repu-
diate the whole idea of a market economy and of the capitalist system. It was to conceive
of a system in which goods were to be produced for use, not for sale; and in which working
people should be compensated according to their need, not according to the requirements of
an employer. This theory became the basis of most forms of nineteenth-century socialism.
Socialism and Chartism
Socialism emerged as one of the numerous early nineteenth-century “isms,” but it only
began to spread rapidly among the working classes after 1830. In France it blended with
revolutionary republicanism. There was a revival of interest in the great Revolution and
the democratic Republic of 1793. Cheap reprints of the writings of Robespierre began to
circulate in the working-class quarters of Paris. Robespierre was now seen as a people’s
hero. The socialist Louis Blanc, for example, who in 1839 published his Organization of Work recommending the formation of “social workshops,” also wrote a long history of the
The labor market
The Poor Law of
1834
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499
French Revolution, in which he pointed out the egalitarian ideals that had inspired the
National Convention in 1793. In Britain, as befi tted the different political history of the
country, socialistic ideas blended in with the movement for further parliamentary reform.
This was advanced by the working-class group known as the Chartists, from the People’s
Charter that they drafted in 1838.
Chartism was far more of a mass movement than the French socialism of the day. Only a
few Chartists were clearly socialists in their own minds. But all were anticapitalistic. All could
agree that the fi rst step toward social reform must be to win working-class
representation in Parliament. The Charter of 1838 consisted of six points. It
demanded (1) the annual election of the House of Commons by (2) universal
suffrage for all adult males, through (3) a secret ballot and (4) equal electoral
districts; and it called for (5) abolition of the property qualifi cations for membership in the
House of Commons, which had long perpetuated the idea that Parliament should be com-
posed only of gentlemen of independent income, and urged instead (6) the payment of salaries
to the elected members of Parliament, in order that people of small means might serve.
A convention composed of delegates sent by labor unions, mass meetings, and radical socie-
ties all over the country met in London in 1839. Convention was an ominous word, with
French revolutionary and even terrorist overtones; some members of this British convention
regarded it as the body really representing the people and favored armed violence and a gen-
eral strike, while others stood only for moral pressure upon Parliament.
A petition bearing over a million signatures, urging acceptance of the Charter, was sub-
mitted to the House of Commons. The violent and revolutionary wing, or “physical force”
Chartists, precipitated a wave of riots that were effectively quelled by the
authorities. In 1842 the petition was again submitted. This time, according
to the best estimate, it was signed by 3,317,702 persons. Because the entire
population of Great Britain in this period was about 19 million, it is clear
that the Charter, whatever the exact number of signatures, commanded the
explicit adherence of half the adult males of the country. The House of Commons neverthe-
less rejected the petition by 287 votes to 49. It was feared that political democracy would
threaten property rights and the whole economic system of British society. The Chartist
movement gradually died down in the face of fi rm opposition by the government and the
business classes and was weakened by mutual fears and disagreements among its own sup-
porters. It had not been entirely fruitless; for without popular agitation and the publicizing
of working-class grievances, the Mines Act of 1842 and the Ten Hours Act of 1847 might
not have been enacted. These measures in turn alleviated the distress of industrial workers
and kept alive a degree of confi dence in the future of the capitalist industrial economic sys-
tem. Chartism revived briefl y in 1848, as will be seen in the next chapter; but in general, in
the 1840s, British working people turned from overt political agitation to the forming and
strengthening of labor unions by which they could deal directly with employers without
having to appeal to the government. Not until 1867 was the suffrage extended in Great Brit-
ain, and it took about 80 years to realize the full program of the Charter of 1838, except for
the annual election of Parliament, for which there soon ceased to be any demand.
It is not possible to summarize the history of Europe between 1815 and 1848 as the
era of a single dominant ideology or social system. Among all the forces set free by the
French and Industrial revolutions—liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, republican-
ism, socialism, feminism, free market capitalism, democracy—no stabilization had been
achieved. No international system had been created; Europe had instead fallen increas-
ingly into two political and social camps, which represented geographical, economic, and
ideological divisions in nineteenth-century European societies. In general, the political and
The Charter of 1838
Petitions and the
defeat of the Chartists
57. Triumph of the West European Bourgeoisie
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Chapter 11 Industries, Ideas, and the Struggle for Reform, 1815–1848500
economic ideas of classical liberalism advanced most rapidly in the nations of western
Europe, whereas eastern Europe remained more agrarian and was mostly dominated by
three autocratic monarchies. Western Europe generally adhered more closely to the prin-
ciples of nationality and national sovereignty; governments in central and eastern Europe
still opposed them. The countries of northwestern Europe were growing collectively
richer, more industrialized, more liberal, more bourgeois. Middle-class people in
Germany, central Europe, and Italy (as well as in Spain and Portugal) did not usually enjoy
the political or social infl uence that they increasingly enjoyed in Great Britain or France.
But the industrializing societies in northwestern Europe had not solved their social prob-
lem; their whole material civilization depended upon a restless and sorely tried working
class. Everywhere there was repression, in varying degree, and everywhere apprehension,
more in some places than in others; but there was also confi dence in the progress of an
industrial and scientifi c society, and political faith in the unfi nished liberal program of the
rights of individuals. The result was the general European Revolution of 1848.
The newly organized London police await the arrival of a Chartist procession in the 1840s. The British government introduced a more disciplined police force to avoid incidents such as the Peterloo Massacre and to manage the mass demonstrations of groups such as the Chartists, who campaigned (unsuccessfully) for more democratic electoral laws. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
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501
C h a p t e r 12 REVOLUTIONS
AND THE REIMPOSITION
OF ORDER, 1848–1870
Fears haunting the established classes of Europe for 30 years came true in 1848. Governments col-
lapsed all over the Continent. Remembered hor-
rors appeared again, as in a recurring dream, in
much the same sequence as after 1789 only at a
much faster rate of speed. Revolutionaries milled
in the streets, kings fl ed, republics were declared,
and within four years there was another Napoleon.
Soon thereafter came a series of short wars.
Never before or since has Europe seen so truly
universal an upheaval as in 1848. While the French
Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of
1917 both had immediate international repercus-
sions, in each of these cases a single country took
the lead; and the upheavals that overturned mul-
tiple communist regimes in 1989, though wide-
spread, took place entirely in eastern Europe. In
1848 the revolutionary movements broke out spontaneously from Copenhagen to Palermo
and from Paris to Budapest. Contemporaries sometimes attributed the universality of the
phenomenon to the machinations of secret societies, and it is true that the faint beginnings
of an international revolutionary movement existed before 1848; but the revolutionary
plotters had little infl uence upon what actually happened, and the nearly simultaneous
fall of governments is quite understandable from other causes. Many people in Europe
sought substantially the same goals—constitutional government, the independence and
unifi cation of national groups, an end to serfdom and manorial restraints where they still
existed. With some variation, there was a common body of ideas among politically con-
scious elements of all countries. Some of the powers that the new forces had to combat
were themselves international, notably the Catholic Church and the far-spreading infl u-
ence of the Habsburgs, so that resistance to them arose independently in many places. In
any case, only the Russian Empire and Great Britain escaped the European revolutionary
convulsions of 1848, and the British received a very bad scare.
58. Paris: The Specter of Social
Revolution in the West
59. Vienna: The Nationalist
Revolutions in Central
Europe and Italy
60. Frankfurt and Berlin:
The Question of a Liberal
Germany
61. The New European “Isms”:
Realism, Positivism,
Marxism
62. Bonapartism: The Second
French Empire, 1852–1870
Chapter emblem: Detail from a nineteenth-century illustration of the 1848 uprising in Vienna. (Snark/Art
Resource, NY)
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870502
But the Revolutions of 1848, though they shook the whole Continent, lacked endur-
ing political and social strength. They failed almost as rapidly as they succeeded. Their
main consequence, at least in the short run, was to strengthen the more conservative forces
that viewed all revolution with alarm. Revolutionary ideals soon succumbed to military
repression. To some extent the European governments of the 1850s and 1860s, while hos-
tile to revolution, satisfi ed some of the aims of 1848, notably in national unifi cation and
constitutional government with limited representation, but they did so in a mood of cal-
culated realism that fi rmly reasserted their own authority. The repressed Revolutions of
1848 left a legacy of class fears and class confl ict, in which prophets of a new society
also became more realistic, as when Karl Marx, branding earlier forms of socialism as
“utopian,” offered his own views as hard-headed and “scientifi c.” New “isms” arose in
response to the evolving nineteenth-century political and cultural order, but power also
remained fi rmly with the institutions and national ideologies of the various European states
and their centralizing governments.
58. PARIS: THE SPECTER OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN THE WEST
The July Monarchy in France was a platform of boards built over a volcano. Under it
burned the repressed fi res of the republicanism put down in 1830, which since 1830 had
become steadily more socialistic.
Politics in the July Monarchy became increasingly separated from the changing social
classes in French society. So few interests were represented in the Chamber of Deputies
that the most basic social or political issues were seldom debated. Even most of the bour-
geois class had no representation. Graft and corruption became more common as eco-
nomic expansion favored stock swindles and fraud by business promoters and politicians
in combination. A strong movement set in to give the vote to more people. Radicals wanted
universal male suffrage and a republic, but liberals asked only for a broadening of voting
rights within the existing constitutional monarchy. The king, Louis Philippe, and his prime
minister, Guizot, instead of allying with the liberals against the radicals, resolutely and
obtusely opposed any change whatsoever.
The “February” Revolution in France
Reformers, against the king’s expressed wishes, planned a great banquet in Paris for
February 22, 1848, to be accompanied by demonstrations in the streets. The government
on February 21 forbade all such meetings. That night barricades were built in the working-
class quarters. Paving blocks, building stones, or large pieces of furniture were thrown
together across the narrow streets and intersections of the old city, constituting a maze
within which insurgents prepared to resist the authorities. The government called out the
National Guard, which refused to move. The king now promised electoral reform, but
republican fi rebrands took charge of the working-class elements, who demonstrated out-
side the house of Guizot. Someone shot at the guards placed around the house; the guards
replied, killing 20 persons. The republican organizers put some of the corpses on a torch-lit
cart and paraded them through the city, which, armed and barricaded, soon began to erupt
in an enormous riot. On February 24 Louis Philippe, like Charles X before him, abdicated
and left immediately for England. The February Revolution of 1848, like the July Revolu-
tion of 1830, had unseated a monarch in three days.
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50358. Paris: The Specter of Social Revolution in the West
The constitutional reformers hoped to carry on with Louis Philippe’s young grandson
as king, but the republicans, now aroused and armed, poured into the Chamber of Deputies
and forced the proclamation of a new republic. Republican leaders set up
a provisional government of 10 men, pending election by all France of a
Constituent Assembly that would write the new constitution for the second
French Republic. Seven of the 10 were “political” republicans, the most
notable being the poet Lamartine. Three were “social” republicans, the
most notable being Louis Blanc. A huge crowd of workers appeared before the Hôtel de
Ville, or city hall, demanding that France adopt the new socialist emblem—the red fl ag.
They were dissuaded by the eloquence of Lamartine, and the tricolor remained the repub-
lican standard.
Louis Blanc urged the Provisional Government to push through a bold
economic and social program without delay. But because the “social”
republicans were in a minority in the Provisional Government (though
probably not among Paris republicans generally), Louis Blanc’s ideas were very much
watered down in the application. He wanted a Ministry of Progress to organize a network
of “social workshops,” a plan for state-supported and collectivist manufacturing estab-
lishments that he had proposed in his writings. The new government, however, would
only create a more limited Labor Commission and a system of shops signifi cantly entitled
“national” rather than “social.” The National Workshops, as they are always called in
English (though “workshop” suggests something less signifi cant than Louis Blanc had in
mind), were established as a political concession to the social republicans, but no impor-
tant industrial work was ever assigned them for fear that they would compete with private
enterprise and disrupt the economic system. Indeed, the man placed in charge of them
admitted that his purpose was to prove the fallacies of socialism. Meanwhile the Labor
Commission was unable to win public acceptance for the ten-hour day, which the British
Parliament had enacted the year before. One action of the Provisional Government, how-
ever, had permanent effect: the fi nal abolition of slavery in the French
colonies.
The National Workshops became in practice a kind of regional project
for unemployment relief. Women were excluded from the workshops, but
men of all trades, skilled and unskilled, were set to work digging on the
roads and fortifi cations outside Paris. They were paid two francs a day. The number of
legitimate unemployed workers increased rapidly, for 1847 had been a year of depres-
sion and the revolution prevented the return of business confi dence. Other needy persons
also presented themselves for remuneration, and soon there were too many men for the
amount of work made available. From 25,000 enrolled in the workshops by the middle
of March, the number climbed to 120,000 by mid-June, by which time there were also in
Paris another 50,000 whom the bulging workshops could no longer accommodate. In June
there were probably almost 200,000 essentially idle but able-bodied men in a city of about
a million people.
The Constituent Assembly, elected in April by universal male suffrage throughout
France, met on May 4. It immediately replaced the Provisional Government with a tempo-
rary executive board of its own. The main body of France, a land of provincial bourgeois
and peasant landowners, was not socialist in the least. The temporary executive board,
chosen by the Constituent Assembly in May, included no social republicans. All fi ve of its
members were known as outspoken enemies of Louis Blanc; the socialists could no longer
expect even the grudging concessions that they had earlier obtained.
Proclamation of the
republic
Louis Blanc
The National
Workshops
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870504
The battle lines were now drawn after only three months of revolution, somewhat as
they had been drawn in 1792 after three years. Paris again stood for revolutionary actions
in which the rest of the country was not prepared to share. Revolutionary leaders in Paris,
in 1848 as in 1792, were unwilling to accept the processes of majority rule or slow par-
liamentary deliberation. But the crisis in 1848 was more acute than in 1792. A larger
proportion of the population were wage earners. Under a system of predominantly merchant
capitalism, in which machine industry and factory concentration were only just emerging,
the workers were tormented by the same evils as the more industrialized working classes of
England. Hours were if anything longer, and pay was less, in France than in Great Britain;
insecurity and unemployment were at least as great; and many workers believed that a cap-
italist economy held no future for the laborer. In addition, where the English worker shrank
from an actual assault on Parliament, the French worker saw nothing very sacrilegious in
the violation of elected assemblies. Too many regimes in France since 1789, including
those preferred by the comfortable classes, had been based on insurrectionary violence
for the French workers to feel much compunction over using it for their own ends.
There was in Paris a well-remembered tradition of revolutionary agitation, so that a confl ict between political activists and the police in February 1848 could lead quickly toward familiar patterns of radical political upheaval: crowds and barricades in the streets, publications calling for revolutionary change, and emotional responses to popular national symbols such as the tri- color fl ag. This nineteenth-century illustration depicts part of the Parisian crowd that marched on the Tuileries, forcing King Louis Philippe to abdicate power and leave the country. (Snark/Art Resource, NY)
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505
The “June Days” of 1848
On the one hand stood the nationally elected Constituent Assembly. On the other, the
National Workshops had mobilized in Paris the most distressed elements of the working
class. Tens of thousands had been brought together where they could talk, read journals,
listen to speeches, and plan for common action. Agitators and organizers naturally made
use of the opportunity thus presented to them. Men in the workshops began to feel desper-
ate, to sense that the social republic was slipping from them perhaps forever. On May 15
they attacked the Constituent Assembly, drove its members out of the hall,
declared it dissolved, and set up a new provisional government of their own.
They announced that a social revolution must follow the purely political
revolution of February. But the National Guard, a kind of civilian militia,
turned against the insurgents and restored the Constituent Assembly. The
Assembly, to root out socialism, now prepared to get rid of the National Workshops. It
offered those enrolled in them the alternatives of enlistment in the army, transfer to provin-
cial workshops, or expulsion from Paris by force. The whole laboring class in the city began
to resist. The government proclaimed martial law, the civilian executive board resigned,
and all power was given to General Cavaignac and the regular army.
There followed the “Bloody June Days”—June 24 to 26, 1848—three
days during which a terrifying class war raged in Paris. Over 20,000 men
from the workshops took to arms, and they were joined by thousands of
men and women from the working-class districts of the city. Half or more of Paris became
a labyrinth of barricades defended by determined men and equally resolute women.
Military methods of the time made it possible for civilians to shoot it out openly with
soldiers in the narrow streets; small arms were the main weapons, and armies still lacked
the military advantage of armored vehicles. The soldiers found it a diffi cult operation, but
after three days the outcome was in doubt no longer. Ten thousand persons had been killed
or wounded. Eleven thousand insurgents were taken prisoner. The Assembly, refusing all
clemency, decreed their immediate deportation to the colonies.
The June Days sent a shudder throughout France and Europe. Whether the battle in
Paris had been a true class struggle, how large a portion of the laboring class had really
participated (it was large in any case), how much they had fought for permanent objec-
tives, and how much over the temporary issue of the workshops—all these were secondary
questions. It was widely understood that a class war had in fact broken out in the capital of
France. Militant workers were confi rmed in a hatred of the bourgeois class and in a belief
that capitalism ultimately survived by shooting working-class men and women in the
streets. People above the laboring class were thrown into a panic. They were sure that they
had narrowly escaped a ghastly upheaval. The very ground of civilized living seemed to
have quaked. After June 1848, wrote a Frenchwoman of the time, society was “a prey to a
feeling of terror incomparable to anything since the invasion of Rome by
the barbarians.”
Nor were the political signs in England much more reassuring. There
the Chartist agitation for electoral reforms was revived by the February
Revolution in Paris. “France is a Republic!” cried the Chartist Ernest Jones;
the Chartist petition was again circulated and was soon said to have 6 million signatures.
Another Chartist convention met, considered by its leaders to be the forerunner of a Con-
stituent Assembly as in France. The violent minority was the most active; it began to
gather arms and to drill. The old Duke of Wellington swore in 70,000 special constables
to uphold the social order. Clashes occurred at Liverpool and elsewhere; in London the
Paris on the verge of
revolution
Class war
The revival of
Chartist agitation
58. Paris: The Specter of Social Revolution in the West
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870506
revolutionary committee laid plans for systematic arson and organized men to break up
the pavements for barricades. Meanwhile the petition, weighing 584 pounds, was carried
in three cabs to the House of Commons, which estimated that it contained “only” 2 million
signatures and again summarily rejected it. The revolutionary menace passed. One of the
secret organizers in London proved to be a government spy; he revealed the whole plan
at the critical moment, and the revolutionary committee was arrested on the day set for
insurrection. Most Chartists had in any case refused to support the militants, but the trucu-
lent minority of radical workers and journalists had a deeper sense of envenomed class
consciousness. The word “proletarian” was imported from France. “Every proletarian,”
wrote the Chartist editor of Red Revolution, “who does not see and feel that he belongs to an enslaved and degraded class is a fool. ”
The specter of social revolution thus hung over western Europe in the summer of
1848, though in all probability there could have been no successful socialist revolution at
the time. But the specter was there, and it spread a sinking fear among all who had wealth
or social positions to lose. This fear shaped the whole subsequent course of the Second
Republic in France and of the revolutionary movements that had by this time begun in
other countries as well.
The Emergence of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte
In France, after the June Days, the Constituent Assembly (with General Cavaignac as a
virtual dictator) set about drafting a republican constitution. It was decided, in view of the
disturbances just passed, to create a strong executive power in the hands of a president to
be elected by universal male suffrage. It was decided also to have this president elected
immediately, even before the rest of the constitution was fi nished. Four candidates
presented themselves: Lamartine, Cavaignac, Ledru-Rollin—and Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte. The poet Lamartine stood for a somewhat vaguely moral and idealistic repub-
lic; Cavaignac, for a republic of disciplined order; Ledru-Rollin, for somewhat chastened
social ideas. What Bonaparte stood for was not so clear. He was, however, elected by an
avalanche of votes in December 1848, receiving over 5,400,000, compared
to only 1,500,000 for Cavaignac, 370,000 for Ledru-Rollin, and a mere
18,000 for Lamartine.
Thus entered upon the European stage the second Napoleon. Born in
1808, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was the nephew of the great Napoleon.
His father, Louis Bonaparte, was at the time of his birth the king of
Holland. When Napoleon’s own son died in 1832, Louis Napoleon assumed the headship
of the Bonaparte family. He resolved to restore the glories of the Napoleonic Empire. With
a handful of followers he tried to seize power at Strasbourg in 1836 and at Boulogne in
1840, leading what the following century would know as Putsches. Both failed ridicu- lously. Sentenced to life imprisonment in the fortress of Ham, he had escaped from it as
recently as 1846 by simply walking off the grounds dressed as a stonemason. He professed
advanced social and political ideas, and he wrote two books. Napoleonic Ideas claimed that his famous uncle had been misunderstood and checkmated by reactionary forces; his other
book, Extinction of Poverty, was a somewhat anticapitalist tract like many others in this era of early industrial capitalism. But he was no friend of “anarchists,” and in the spring of
1848, while still a refugee in England, he enrolled as one of Wellington’s special constables
to oppose the Chartist agitation. He soon returned to France. Compromised neither by the
June Days nor by their repression, he was supposed to be a friend of the common people
and at the same time a believer in order; and his name was Napoleon Bonaparte.
Bonaparte’s
background
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507
For 20 years a groundswell had been stirring the popular mind. It is known as the
Napoleonic Legend. Peasants put up pictures of the emperor in their cottages, fondly imag-
ining that it had been Napoleon who gave them the free ownership of their land. The
completion of the Arch of Triumph in 1836 drove home the memory of imperial glories,
and in 1840 the remains of the emperor were brought from St. Helena and majestically
interred at the Invalides on the banks of the Seine. All this happened in a country where,
with government in the hands of a few, most people had little political experience or politi-
cal sense except what they had gained in revolution. When millions were suddenly, for the
fi rst time in their lives, asked to vote for a president in 1848, the name of Bonaparte was
the only one they had ever heard of. “How should I not vote for this gentleman,” said an
old peasant, “I whose nose was frozen at Moscow?”
So Prince Louis Napoleon became president of the Second Republic,
by an overwhelming popular mandate, in which an army offi cer was his
only faintly successful rival. He soon saw the way the wind was blowing.
The Constituent Assembly dissolved itself in May 1849 and was replaced by
the Legislative Assembly. Although this new legislative body was established under the
provisions of the new republican constitution and was elected by universal male suffrage, it
was a strange assembly for a republic. Five hundred of the Second Republic’s newly elected
deputies, or two-thirds, were really monarchists, but they were divided into irreconcilable
factions—the Legitimists, who favored the line of Charles X, and the Orléanists, who
favored that of Louis Philippe. One-third of the deputies called themselves republicans. Of
these, in turn, about 180 were socialists of one kind of another; and only about 70 were
political or old-fashioned republicans to whom the main issue was the form of government
rather than the form of the economy or society itself.
The president and the Assembly at fi rst combined to conjure away the specter of social-
ism with which republicanism itself was now clearly associated. An abortive insurrection of
June 1849 provided the chance. The Assembly, backed by the president, ousted 33 socialist
deputies, suppressed public meetings, and imposed controls on the press. In 1850 it went
so far as to rescind universal male suffrage, taking the vote away from about a third of
the electorate—naturally the poorest and hence most socialistic third. The Falloux Law of
1850 put the schools at all levels of the education system under supervision of the Catholic
clergy; for, as M. Falloux said in the Assembly, “lay teachers have made the principles of
social revolution popular in the most distant villages,” and it was necessary “to rally around
religion to strengthen the foundations of society against those who want to
divide up property.” The French Republic, now actually an antirepublican
government, likewise intervened forcefully against the revolutionary repub-
lic that Mazzini had established in the city of Rome. French military forces
were sent to Rome to protect the pope; they remained there 20 years.
Bonaparte knew that his repression of the socialists made him virtually indispensable
for the conservatives. They were so sharply divided between two sets of monarchists—
Legitimist and Orléanist—that each would accept any antisocialist regime rather than yield
to the other. Bonaparte’s problem was to win over the radicals. He did so by urging in 1851
the restoration of universal suffrage, which he had himself helped repeal in 1850. He now
posed as the people’s friend, the one man in public life who trusted the common man. He
let it be thought that greedy plutocrats controlled the Assembly and hoodwinked France.
He put his lieutenants in as ministers of war and of the interior, thus controlling the army,
the bureaucracy, and the police. On December 2, 1851, the anniversary of his uncle’s
famous victory at the battle of Austerlitz, he sprang a well-organized coup d’état. Placards
appeared all over Paris. They declared the Assembly dissolved and the vote for every adult
Louis Napoleon
becomes president
Antirepublican
government
58. Paris: The Specter of Social Revolution in the West
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870508
Frenchman reinstated. When members of the Assembly tried to meet, they were attacked,
dispersed, or arrested by the soldiers. The country did not submit without fi ghting. One
hundred and fi fty persons were killed in Paris, and throughout France probably 100,000
were put under arrest. But on December 20 the voters elected Louis Napoleon president for
a term of 10 years, by a vote offi cially stated as 7,439,216 to 646,737. A year later the new
Bonaparte proclaimed the empire, with himself as emperor of the French. Remembering
Napoleon’s son, who had died, he called himself Napoleon III.
French republicans had lost more than the political institutions of the Second Repub-
lic. The republic as republicans understood it, an egalitarian, anticlerical regime with
socialist or at least antibourgeois tendencies, had been dead since June 1848. Feeble any-
way, it was killed by its reputation for radicalism. Liberalism and constitu-
tionalism were dead also, at least in the political institutions by which the
new Napoleon now governed France. Republicans and monarchists were
all pushed aside, and for the fi rst time since 1815 France ceased to have any
signifi cant parliamentary life.
59. VIENNA: THE NATIONALIST REVOLUTIONS IN CENTRAL EUROPE AND ITALY
The Austrian Empire in 1848
The Austrian Empire of the Habsburgs, with its capital at Vienna, was in 1848 the most
populous European state except Russia. Its peoples, living principally in the three major
geographical divisions of the empire (Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary) were of about a
dozen recognizably different nationalities or language groups—Germans, Czechs, Magyars,
Poles, Ruthenians, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Dalmatians, Romanians, and Italians
(see map, p. 473). In some parts of the empire the nationalities lived in solid blocks, but in
many regions two or more were interlaced together, the language changing from village to
village, or even from house to house, in a way quite unknown in western Europe.
Germans were the most numerous national group. They occupied all of Austria proper
and considerable parts of Bohemia and were scattered also in small pockets throughout
Hungary. The Czechs occupied Bohemia and the adjoining Moravia. The Magyars were
the dominant group in the historic kingdom of Hungary, which contained
a mixture of nationalities with a considerable number of Slavic peoples.
Two of the most economically advanced parts of Italy also belonged to the
empire—Venetia, with its capital at Venice, and Lombardy, whose chief
city was Milan.
The Czechs, Poles, Ruthenians, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Dalmatians
in the empire were all Slavs; that is, their languages were all related to one another and to
the several forms of Russian. Neither the Magyars nor the Romanians were Slavs. The
Magyars, as national sentiment grew, prided themselves on the uniqueness of their lan-
guage in Europe, and the Romanians prided themselves on their linguistic affi liations with
the Latin peoples of the West. Romanians, Magyars, and Germans formed a thick belt sepa-
rating the South Slavs from those of the north. The peoples of the empire represented every
cultural level known to Europe. Vienna, where the Waltz King Johann Strauss was reigning,
recognized no peer except Paris itself. Milan was a great center of trade. Bohemia had long
had an important textile industry, which was beginning to be mechanized in the 1840s;
The demise of
parliamentary
government
The diversity of the
empire
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50959. Vienna: The Nationalist Revolutions in Central Europe and Italy
but 200 miles to the south a Croatian intellectual remarked, about the same time, that the
fi rst steam engine he ever saw was in a picture printed on a cotton handkerchief imported
from Manchester.
Thus the empire that the Habsburgs ruled from Vienna included, according to political
frontiers established 70 years later, in 1918, all of Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia,
with adjoining portions of Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Italy. But the
political authority of Vienna reached far beyond the borders of the empire.
Austria since 1815 had been the most infl uential member of the German
confederation, for Prussia in these years was content to look with deference
upon the Habsburgs. The infl uence of Vienna was felt throughout Germany
in many ways, as in the enactment and enforcement of Metternich’s repressive Carlsbad
Decrees described in the last chapter. It reached also through the length of Italy. Lombardy
and Venetia were part of the Austrian Empire. Tuscany, ostensibly independent, was gov-
erned by a Habsburg grand duke. The kingdom of Naples or the Two Sicilies, comprising
all Italy south of Rome, was virtually a protectorate of Vienna. The papal states looked
politically to Vienna for leadership, at least until 1846, when the College of Cardinals
elected a liberal-minded pope, Pius IX—the one contingency upon which Metternich con-
fessed he had failed to reckon. In all Italy there was only one state ruled by a native Italian
dynasty and attempting any consistent independence of policy—the kingdom of Sardinia
(called also Savoy or Piedmont) tucked away in the northwest corner around Turin. Italy,
said Metternich blandly, was only a “geographical expression,” a mere regional name. He
might have said the same of Poland, or even of Germany, though Germany was tenuously
joined in the Bund, or loose confederation, of 1815.
These peoples since the turn of the century had all began to identify the distinctive
meanings of their own Volksgeist as they developed new cultural nationalisms; and among Germans, Italians, Poles, and Hungarians a good deal of political agitation and liberal
reformism had been at work. Metternich, in Vienna, had discouraged such manifestations
for over 30 years, ominously predicting that if allowed to break out they would produce the
bellum omnium contra omnes —“the war of all against all.” As a prophet he was not wholly mistaken, but if it is the business of statesmanship not merely to prophesy events but to
control them, it cannot be said that Metternich’s Austrian regime was very successful.
The whole nationalities question was evaded. The fundamental problem of the century,
the bringing of peoples into some kind of mutual relationship with their governments—a
political aspiration that drew on diverse strands of nationalism, liberalism, constitution-
alism, and democracy—remained unconsidered by the responsible authorities of central
Europe. Metternich believed that a reigning royal family, with an offi cial bureaucracy,
should rule benevolently over peoples with whom it need have no connection and who
need have no connection with each other. Such ideas could be found everywhere among
the governing elites in eighteenth-century Europe. They dated from before the French
Revolution, and they were best suited to the agricultural, locally oriented societies that by
1848 were giving way to cities, cultural nationalisms, and new commercial institutions.
The March Days
In March 1848 most of the political institutions in central Europe collapsed with incredible
swiftness. At that time the diet of Hungary had been sitting for some months, considering
constitutional reforms and, as usual, debating further means of keeping German infl uence
out of Hungary. Then came news of the February Revolution in Paris. The radical party in
Vienna’s authority
and leadership
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870510
the Hungarian diet was aroused. Its leader, Louis Kossuth, on March 3 made an impas-
sioned speech on the virtues of liberty. This speech was immediately printed in German
and read in Vienna, where restlessness was also heightened by the news from Paris. On
March 13 workers and students rose in insurrection in Vienna, erected barricades, fought
off soldiers, and invaded the imperial palace. So fl abbergasted and terrifi ed was the gov-
ernment that Metternich, to the amazement of both liberals and conserva-
tives throughout Europe, resigned and fl ed in disguise to England.
The fall of Metternich proved that the Vienna government was com-
pletely disoriented. Revolution swept through the empire and through
all Italy and Germany. On March 15 rioting began in Berlin; the king of
Prussia promised a constitution. The lesser German governments collapsed in sequence.
On the last day of March a pre-Parliament met to arrange the calling of an all-German
national assembly. In Hungary, now mobilized by Kossuth’s national party, the diet on
March 15 enacted the March Laws, by which Hungary sought complete constitutional
separatism within the empire, while still recognizing the Habsburg house. The harassed
Emperor Ferdinand a few days later granted substantially the same status to Bohemia.
At Milan between March 18 and 22 the populace drove out the Austrian garrison.
Venice proclaimed itself an independent republic. Tuscany drove out its grand duke and
also established a republic. Charles Albert was king of Sardinia, a kingdom also called
Piedmont because its capital Turin and much of its territory apart from the island of Sardinia
lay in northwest Italy at the foot of the Alps. Stimulated by events in Paris, Charles Albert
had granted a constitution to his small country. He now declared war on Austria on March
Metternich’s fall
The Revolution of 1848 spread rapidly across the European continent, provoking an upris- ing in Vienna by mid-March. Workers, students, and even soldiers joined together to erect barricades and resist the king’s loyal troops. This nineteenth- century image of the Viennese crowd, however, suggests the tensions within a movement that rallied behind a ban- ner for “King, Freedom, and Fatherland.” (Snark/Art Resource, NY)
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511
23 and invaded Lombardy-Venetia, hoping to bring that area under his house of Savoy.
Italian troops streamed up from Tuscany, from Naples (where revolution had broken out as
early as January), and even from the papal states (the new pope had expressed some earlier
sympathy with liberal aims) to join in an all-Italian war against the seemingly helpless
Austrian government.
Thus in the brief span of these phenomenal March Days in 1848 the whole political
structure based on Vienna went to pieces. The Austrian Empire had fallen into its main
components, Prussia had yielded to revolutionaries, all Germany was preparing to unify
itself, and war raged in Italy. Everywhere constitutions had been widely promised by stu-
pefi ed governments, constitutional assemblies were meeting, and independent or autono-
mous nations struggled into existence. Patriots everywhere demanded liberal government
and national freedom—written constitutions, representative assemblies, responsible min-
istries, a more or less extended suffrage, restrictions upon police action, jury trial, civil
liberty, freedom of press and assembly. And where it still existed—in Prussia, Galicia,
Bohemia, Hungary—serfdom was declared abolished and the peasant masses became
legally free from control by their local lords. This change in the legal status of peas-
ants would become the most enduring and signifi cant social consequence of the central
European revolutions.
The Turning of the Tide after June
The revolution, as in France, surged forward until the month of June and then began to
ebb in every country. The old governments had been stunned during the March Days, but
not really broken. They merely awaited the opportunity to take back promises extorted
by force. The pressure originally imposed by the revolutionaries could not be sustained.
The revolutionary leaders lacked a strong social base. Middle-class, bourgeois, property-
owning, and commercial interests were nowhere nearly as highly developed as in western
Europe. The revolutionary leaders were to a large extent writers, editors, professors, and
students—intellectuals rather than the representatives of powerful social and economic
interests. In Vienna, Milan, and a few other cities the working class was numerous and
socialist ideas were fairly common, but the workers were not as literate, organized, or
politically conscious as in Paris or Great Britain. They were strong enough, however, to
disquiet the middle classes; and especially after the specter of social revolution rose over
western Europe, the middle-class and lower-class revolutionaries began to be afraid of
each other. The liberated nationalities also began to disagree. The peasants, once eman-
cipated, had no further interest in revolution. Nor did the peasants at this time have much
awareness of the emerging belief in collective national identities; nationalism was pri-
marily a doctrine of the educated middle classes or of the aristocratic landowning classes
in Poland and Hungary. Because the old internationally minded aristocracy furnished
the bulk of offi cers in the armies, and the peasants the bulk of the soldiers, the armies
remained almost immune to nationalist aspirations. This attitude within the armies
was decisive.
The tide fi rst turned in Prague. The all-German national assembly met at Frankfurt in
May. Representatives from Bohemia had been invited to come to Frankfurt, because many
Germans had always lived in Bohemia and because Bohemia formed part of the confedera-
tion of 1815 and part of the Holy Roman Empire that had preceded it. Many of the
Germans in Bohemia, the Sudeten Germans, were attracted to the Frankfurt Assembly, but
the idea of belonging to a national German state, a Germany based on the principle that the
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870512
inhabitants embodied a German nationality, did not appeal to the Czechs in Bohemia.
They refused to go to the all-German congress at Frankfurt. Instead, they called an all-Slav
congress of their own. At Prague, in June 1848, this fi rst Pan-Slav Assem-
bly met. Most of the delegates were from Slav communities within the Aus-
trian Empire, but a few came from the Balkans and non-Austrian Poland.
The spirit of the Prague congress was that of the Slavic Revival
described in the last chapter; the Czech historian Palacky was in fact one
of its most active fi gures. The congress was profoundly anti-German, because the essence
of the Slavic Revival was resistance to Germanization. But it was not profoundly anti-
Austrian or anti-Habsburg. A few extremists, indeed, maintained that Slavdom should
be the basis of political regeneration, and that the world therefore had no place for an
Austrian Empire. But the great majority at the Prague congress were Austroslavs who
held that the many Slavic peoples, pressed on two sides by the Russians and Germans,
needed the Austrian Empire as a political frame within which to develop their own
national life. The congress therefore demanded that the Slavic peoples be admitted as
equals with the other nationalities in the Austrian Empire, enjoying local autonomy and
constitutional guarantees.
The fi rst Pan-Slav
Assembly
EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS, 1848 The map shows cities in which notable revolutionary upheavals occurred during 1848. Although opponents of the revolutionary agitation suspected an international conspiracy, the revolutions erupted more or less spontaneously as urban populations took to the streets with demands for constitutional government, national independence, or new civil rights. It should be noted that the revolutions of 1848 took place mainly in central and eastern Europe—a pat- tern that suggests the spreading infl uence of ideas that had appeared earlier in the American and French revolutions. But the failure of these revolutions led to a conservative resurgence that delayed or prevented the development of liberal, constitutional governments in most of central and eastern Europe.
BELGIUM
F R A N C E
KINGDOM OF THE
TWO SICILIES
O T
T O M
A N E M P I R E
A U S T R I A N E M P I R E
PAPAL STATES
HUNGARY
P R U S
S I A
Pest
Rome
Palermo
Milan
Prague
Frankfurt
Venice
Berlin
ViennaMunich
Buda
Bucharest
Paris
Warsaw
Cracow
Revolts and Centers of Revolutionary Activity
Boundary of German Confederation
0 200 400 miles
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513
Victories of the Counterrevolution, June–December, 1848
But the Emperor Ferdinand, and the advisers on whom he chose to rely, would have noth-
ing to do with the liberal national movements or with the restrictions they wanted to
impose upon the powers of the state. All national movements were thus resisted. The fi rst
victory of the old government came at Prague. A Czech insurrection broke out in Prague
on June 12, at the time when the Slav congress was sitting, but the local Austrian army
commander bombarded and subdued the city, thereby reasserting Habsburg military con-
trol. The Slav congress dispersed.
The next victory of the counterrevolution came in north Italy in the following month.
Only Lombardy-Venetia, of all parts of the empire, had declared independence from the
Habsburgs during the upheavals of March. The diminutive kingdom of Sardinia had lent
support and had declared war on Austria. Italians from all over the peninsula had fl ocked
in to fi ght; and until after the June Days in Paris it even seemed possible that republican
France might intervene to befriend fellow revolutionaries as in 1796. But in
France the radical revolution was suppressed. The Italians were left to
themselves, and an Austrian army crushed the disparate revolutionary
movement in late July. The Sardinian king, Charles Albert, retreated into
his own country. Lombardy and Venetia were restored with savage ven-
geance to the Austrian Empire.
The third victory of the counterrevolution came in September and
October. The Hungarian radical party of Louis Kossuth was liberal and even
democratic in many of its principles, but it was a Magyar nationalist party
above all else. Triumphant in the March Days, it completely shook off the
German connection. It moved the capital from Pressburg near the Austrian
border to Budapest in the center of Hungary. It changed the offi cial language of Hungary
from Latin to Magyar. Less than half the people of Hungary were Magyars, and Magyar is
a diffi cult language, quite alien to the Indo-European tongues of Europe. It soon became
clear that one must be a Magyar to benefi t from the new liberal constitution and that
the Magyars intended to repress the national ambitions of all others with whom they shared
the country. Slovaks, Romanians, Germans, Serbs, and Croats violently resisted, each
group determined to keep its national identity unimpaired. The Croats, who had enjoyed
certain liberties before the Magyar revolution, took the lead under Count Jellachich, the
provincial governor of Croatia. In September Jellachich raised a civil war in Hungary,
leading a force of Serbo-Croatians, supported by the whole non-Magyar half of the popu-
lation. Half of Hungary, alarmed by Magyar nationalism, now looked to the Habsburgs and
the empire to protect them. Emperor Ferdinand made Jellachich his military commander
against the Magyars. Hungary dissolved into the war of all against all.
At Vienna the more clear-sighted revolutionaries, who had led the March rising, now
saw that Jellachich’s anti-Magyar army might soon be turned against them. They therefore
rose in a second mass insurrection in October 1848. The emperor fl ed; never had the Vien-
nese revolution gone so far. But it was already too late. The Austrian forces that had earlier
subdued the revolution in Prague now arrived at Vienna, where the besieged radicals soon
surrendered.
With the recapture of Vienna the upholders of the old order took
heart. Counterrevolutionary leaders—large estate holders, Catholic clergy,
high-ranking army men—decided to clear the way by getting rid of the
Emperor Ferdinand, considering that promises made in March by Ferdinand might be
more easily repudiated by his successor. Ferdinand abdicated and on December 2, 1848,
The Italians defeated
Magyar nationalism
Vienna recaptured
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870514
was succeeded by Francis Joseph, a boy of 18, destined to live until 1916 and to end
his reign in a crisis even more shattering than the revolutionary year in which he had come
to power.
Final Outburst and Repression, 1849
For a time in the fi rst part of 1849 the revolution in many places seemed to blaze more
fi ercely than ever. Republican riots broke out in parts of Germany, and political violence in
Rome forced Pope Pius IX to fl ee from the city. A radical Roman Republic was pro-
claimed under three Triumvirs, one of whom was the nationalist leader Mazzini, who has-
tened from England to take part in the republican upheaval. In north Italy Charles Albert of
Sardinia again invaded Lombardy. In Hungary, after the revived Habsburg authorities
repudiated the new Magyar constitution, the Magyars, led by the infl amed Kossuth, went
on to declare absolute independence. But all these manifestations proved short-lived.
German republicanism fl ickered out. A French army drove Mazzini and his republican
allies from Rome, thereby restoring Pope Pius IX to his traditional powers. The Sardinian
king was again defeated by an Austrian army, but in Hungary the Magyars put up a sus-
tained resistance, which Austria’s imperial army and the anti-Magyar native irregulars
could not overcome. The Habsburg authorities now renewed the procedures of the Holy
Alliance. The new Emperor Francis Joseph invited Tsar Nicholas to intervene. In August
1849 over 100,000 Russian troops poured over the mountains into Hungary, defeated the
Magyars, and laid the prostrate country at the feet of the court of Vienna.
The nationalist upheaval of 1848 in central Europe and Italy was now over. The
Habsburgs had reasserted their imperial authority over Czech nationalists in Prague,
Magyars in Hungary, Italian patriots in north Italy, and liberal revolution-
ists in Vienna itself. Reaction, or antirevolutionism, became the order of the
day. Pius IX, the formerly “liberal pope,” returned to the papal throne and
rejected all of his earlier liberal ideas. The breach between liberalism and
Roman Catholicism, which had opened wide in the fi rst French Revolution, was made a
yawning chasm by the revolutionary violence of Mazzini’s Roman Republic and by the
measures taken to repress it. Pius IX now reiterated the anathemas of his predecessors.
He codifi ed them in 1864 in the Syllabus of Errors, which warned all Catholics, on the authority of the Vatican, against everything that went under the names of liberalism, ratio-
nalism, socialism, and other modern “isms.” The Catholic Church thus emerged from the
mid-nineteenth-century revolutions (and the pope’s own encounter with revolutionary vio-
lence in Rome) as a more steadfast opponent of the European agitation for social reform as
well as the expanding movements for political and cultural nationalism. As for the nation-
alists in Italy, many became disillusioned with the fi recracker methods of romantic repub-
licans; and the more pragmatic nationalists concluded that Italy would be liberated from
Austrian infl uence only by an old-fashioned war between established powers.
In the Austrian Empire the main policy was now to oppose all forms of popular self-
expression with a more candid reliance on military force. Constitutionalism was to be
rooted out, as well as all forms of nationalism—Slavism, Magyarism, Italianism, and also
Germanism, which would draw the Austrian Germans away from the Habsburg Empire
to the great kindred body of the German people. The regime came to be called the Bach
system, after Alexander Bach, the minister of the interior. Under it, the
government was rigidly centralized. Hungary lost the separate rights it had
held before 1848. The ideal was to create a perfectly solid and unitary
Antirevolutionism
The Bach system
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51560. Frankfurt and Berlin: The Question of a Liberal Germany
political system. Bach insisted on maintaining the emancipation of the peasants, which
had converted the mass of the people from subjects of their landlords into subjects of
the state. He drove through a reform of the legal system and law courts, created a free
trading area of the whole empire with only a common external tariff, and subsidized
and encouraged the building of highways and railroads. The aim, as in France at the
same time under Louis Napoleon, was to make people forget liberty in an overwhelm-
ing demonstration of administrative effi ciency and material progress. But some, at that
time, would not forget. A liberal said of the Bach system that it consisted of “a standing
army of soldiers, a sitting army of offi cials, a kneeling army of priests, and a creeping
army of informers.”
60. FRANKFURT AND BERLIN: THE QUESTION OF A LIBERAL GERMANY
The German States
Meanwhile, from May 1848 to May 1849, the Frankfurt Assembly was sitting at the
historic city on the Main. It was attempting to bring a unifi ed German state into being,
one that should also be liberal and constitutional, assuring civil rights to its citizens and
possessing a government responsive to popular will as manifested in free elections and
open parliamentary debate. The mid-nineteenth-century failure to produce a democratic
Germany became one of the overshadowing facts of modern European history.
Joseph Mazzini (1805–1872) led the short-lived republic in Rome during the Italian upheavals of 1849, but his new regime was soon suppressed by foreign powers and he retreated to the life of an exile in England. Although Mazzi- ni’s Romantic nationalism lost favor in Italy after about 1850, his writings and political activities gave him a prominent place in the intellectual life of London, where this photo- graph was taken in the early 1860s. (The Granger Collection, NYC)
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870516
The convocation of the Frankfurt Assembly was made possible by the collapse of
the existing German governments in the March Days of 1848. These governments, the
39 states recognized after the Congress of Vienna, enjoyed their political independence
and formed the main obstacles in the way of unifi cation. The German states
resisted the surrender of sovereignty to a united Germany just as national
states in later eras were to resist the surrender of sovereignty to a United
Nations. In another way the German world was a miniature of the wider
political world. It consisted of both great and small powers. Its great powers
were Prussia and Austria. Austria was the miscellaneous empire described earlier. Prussia
after 1815 included the Rhineland, the central regions around Berlin, West Prussia and
Posen (acquired in the partitions of Poland), and historic East Prussia. The former Polish
areas were inhabited by a mixture of Germans and Poles. Neither of these great powers
would submit to the other or allow the other to dominate its lesser German neighbors.
This German “dualism,” or polarity between Berlin and Vienna, had
become somewhat less intense under the common menace of the Napo-
leonic Empire. The whole German question had lain dormant insofar as
the governments were concerned, nor did it agitate the old aristocracies.
In Prussia the Junkers, the owners of great landed estates east of the Elbe, were singularly
indifferent to the all-German dream. Their political feeling was not German but Prussian.
They were satisfi ed with their dominant position in Prussia and could expect only to lose
by absorption into Germany as a whole, for in Germany west of the Elbe the small peasant
holding was the basis of society, and there was no landowning element corresponding to
the Junkers. The rest of Germany looked upon Prussia as somewhat uncouth and eastern;
but this feeling, too, had diminished in the time of Napoleon, when patriots from all over
Germany enlisted in the Prussian service.
Berlin: Failure of the Revolution in Prussia
Prussia was illiberal but not backward. Frederick William III repeatedly evaded his prom-
ise to grant a modern constitution. His successor, Frederick William IV, who inherited
the throne in 1840 and from whom much was at fi rst expected by liberals, was equally
determined not to share his authority with his subjects. At the same time the government,
administratively speaking, was effi cient, progressive, and fair. The universities and ele-
mentary school system surpassed those of western Europe. Literacy was higher than in
England or France. The government followed in mercantilist traditions of evoking, plan-
ning, and supporting economic life. In 1818 it initiated a tariff union, at fi rst with tiny
states (or enclaves) wholly enclosed within Prussia. This tariff union, or Zollverein, was extended in the following decades to include almost all Germany.
On March 15, 1848, the rioting and street fi ghting that we have noted broke out in
Berlin. For a time it seemed as if the army would master the situation. But the erratically
conscientious king, Frederick William IV, called off the soldiers and allowed his subjects
to elect the fi rst all-Prussian legislative assembly. Thus though the army remained intact,
and its Junker offi cers remained unconvinced, revolution proceeded superfi cially on its
way. The new Prussian Assembly met in Berlin in May and proved surprisingly radical,
because it was dominated by anti-Junker lower-class extremists from East Prussia. These
men supported Polish revolutionaries and exiles who sought the restoration of Polish free-
dom. Their main belief was that the fortress of reaction was tsarist Russia—that the whole
structure of Junkerdom, landlordism, serf-owning, and repression of national freedom
Obstacles to
unifi cation
German dualism
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517
depended ultimately on the armed might of the tsarist empire. (The subse-
quent intervention of Russia in Hungary indicated the truth of their diagno-
sis.) Prussian radicals, like many elsewhere, hoped to smash the old Holy
Alliance by raising an all-German or even European revolutionary war
against Russia.
Meanwhile the radicals in Berlin supported demands for local self-government by the
Poles of West Prussia and Posen. But in those areas Germans and Slavs had long lived side
by side, and the Germans in Posen now refused to respect the authority of Polish offi cials.
Prussian army units stationed in Posen supported the German element. As early as April
1848, a month after the “revolution,” the army began to crush new pro-Polish institutions
that had been set up in Posen. It was clear where the only real power lay. By the end of
1848, in Prussia as in Austria, the revolution was over. The king again changed his mind;
and the old authorities, acting through the army, were again in control.
The Frankfurt Assembly
Meanwhile a similar story was enacted on the larger stage of Germany as a whole. The
disabling of the old governments left a power vacuum. A self-appointed committee con-
voked a preliminary parliament, which in turn arranged for the election of an all-German
assembly. Bypassing the existing sovereignties, voters throughout Germany sent delegates
to Frankfurt to create a federated superstate. The strength and weakness of the resulting
Frankfurt Assembly originated in the manner in which it was elected. The Assembly repre-
sented the moral sentiment of people at large, the liberal and national aspirations of many
Germans. It stood for an idea, but the delegates had no power to issue orders or expect
compliance. Superfi cially resembling the National Assembly that met in France in 1789,
the German National Assembly at Frankfurt was really in a very different position. There
was no preexisting national structure for it to work with. There was no all-German army
or civil service for the Assembly to take over, as had happened after 1789 in revolutionary
France. The Frankfurt Assembly, having no power of its own, became dependent on the
power of the very sovereign states that it was attempting to supersede.
The Assembly met in May 1848 (thus convening in the same month as the more
regional Prussian Assembly that met in Berlin). Its members with a handful of exceptions
were not at all revolutionary. They were overwhelmingly professional people—professors,
judges, lawyers, government administrators, clergy both Protestant and Catholic, and
prominent businessmen. They wanted a liberal, self-governing, federally unifi ed,
and “democratic” though not egalitarian Germany. Their outlook was earnest, peaceable,
and legalistic; they hoped to succeed by persuasion. Violence was abhorrent to them. The
example of the June Days in Paris, and the Chartist agitation in Great Britain, coinciding
with the early weeks of the Frankfurt Assembly, increased the dread for radicalism and
republicanism in Germany. The fate of Germany (and also the later history of Europe) lay
in the fact that this German revolution came at a time when social revolutionaries had
already begun to declare war on the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie was already afraid of
the lower classes. It was the worker or artisan, not the professor or respectable merchant,
who in unsettled times had actually seized fi rearms and shouted revolutionary utterances in
the streets. Without lower-class insurrection not even middle-class revolutions have been
successful. The combination that came together in France between 1789 and 1794,
an unwilling and divergent combination of bourgeois and lower-class revolutionaries,
could not develop in Germany in 1848. One form of revolutionary power—controlled
Radical Prussian
Assembly
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870518
popular turbulence—the Germans of the Frankfurt Assembly would not or
could not use. Quite the contrary: when radical riots broke out in Frankfurt
itself in September 1848, the Assembly undertook to repress them. Having
no force of its own, it appealed to the Prussian army. The Prussian army put
down the riots, and thereafter the Assembly met under its protection.
But the most troublesome question facing the Frankfurt Assembly was not social but
national. What, after all, was this “Germany” that so far existed only in the
mind? The Assembly at Frankfurt, eager to create a real Germany, naturally
could not propose a German state that would be smaller than the shadow
Germany that they so much deplored. Most members of the Assembly were
therefore Great Germans; they thought that the Germany for which they were writing a
constitution should include the Austrian lands, except Hungary. This would mean that the
federal crown must be offered to the Habsburgs. Others, at fi rst a minority, were Little
Germans; they thought that Austria should be excluded and that the new Germany should
comprise the smaller states and the entire kingdom of Prussia. In that case the king of
Prussia would become the federal emperor.
The desire of the Frankfurt Assembly to retain non-German peoples in the new
Germany, at a time when these peoples also were feeling national ambitions, was another
reason for its fatal dependency upon the Austrian and Prussian armies. The
Frankfurt Assembly applauded when an Austrian army broke the Czech
revolution and when Prussian forces put down the Poles in Posen. On this
matter the National Assembly at Frankfurt and the Prussian Assembly at
Berlin did not agree. The men of Frankfurt, thinking the Prussian revolu-
tionary assembly was too radical and pro-Polish, in effect supported the
Prussian army and the Junkers against the Berlin revolution, without which the Frankfurt
Assembly itself never could have existed. The Assembly, in short, turned against the revo-
lutionary movement in Berlin and lost its earlier base of popular support. When radical riots
later broke out against the Junkers, the tsar, and the Frankfurt Assembly itself, the Assem-
bly acknowledged its weak and vulnerable position by calling in Prussian forces for its
own protection.
The Failure of the Frankfurt Assembly
By the end of 1848 the debacle was approaching. The nationalists had checkmated each
other. Everywhere in central Europe, from Denmark to Naples and from the Rhineland to
Romania, the awakening nationalities had failed to respect each other’s aspirations; and by
quarreling with each other they had hastened the return of the old absolutist and nonnational
order. At Berlin and at Vienna the counterrevolution, backed by the army, was in the saddle.
At this very time, in December 1848, the Frankfurt Assembly at last issued a Declaration of
the Rights of the German People. It was a humane and high-minded document, announc-
ing numerous individual rights, civil liberties, and constitutional guarantees, much along
the line of the French and American declarations of the eighteenth century, but with one
signifi cant difference—the French and Americans spoke of the rights of man, while even
the liberal Germans spoke of the rights of Germans. In April 1849, the Frankfurt Assembly
completed its constitution. It was now clear that Austria must be excluded, for the simple
reason that the restored Habsburg government refused to come in. The Little Germans in
the Assembly therefore had their way. The hereditary headship of a new German Empire,
a constitutional and federal union of German states minus Austria, was now offered to
Frederick William IV, the king of Prussia.
Questions of territory
Dependence on
Austrian and
Prussian armies
An untimely
revolution
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519
Frederick William was tempted. The Prussian army offi cers and East Elbian landlords
were not. They had no wish to lose Prussia in Germany. The king himself had his scruples.
If he took the proffered crown, he would still have to impose himself by
force on the lesser states, which the Frankfurt Assembly did not represent
and which were in fact still the actual powers in the country. He could also
expect trouble with Austria. He did not want war. Nor was it proper for an
heir to the Hohenzollerns to accept a throne circumscribed with constitu-
tional limitations and representing the revolutionary conception of the sovereignty of the
people. Declaring that he could not “pick up a crown from the gutter,” he turned it down. It
would have to be offered freely by his equals, the sovereign princes of Germany.
Frederick William
tempted
The Frankfurt Assembly that convened in May 1848 (as depicted in this nineteenth-century illustration) consisted mostly of professional people who feared the working classes almost as much as or more than they feared the political powers of kings and Prussian aristocrats. The members of the Assembly wrote a constitution and sought to create a constitutional monarchy for all Germany outside Austria. But the Prussian king would not accept this kind of constitu- tional appointment to royal power and the Frankfurt Assembly’s national, democratic aspira- tions were blocked when the Assembly was dissolved in 1849. (akg-images/Newscom)
60. Frankfurt and Berlin: The Question of a Liberal Germany
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870520
Thus all the work of the Frankfurt Assembly went for nothing. Most
members of the Assembly, having never dreamed of using violence in the
fi rst place, concluded that they were beaten and went home. A handful of
extremists remained at Frankfurt, promulgated the constitution on their
own authority, urged revolutionary outbreaks, and called for elections. Riots broke out in
various places. The Prussian army put them down—in Saxony, in Bavaria, in Baden. The
same army drove the rump Assembly out of Frankfurt, and that was the end of it.
In summary, liberal nationalism failed to produce a unifi ed constitutional German state
in 1848, and a less liberal kind of nationalism soon replaced it. The weakness and failures
of German liberalism in 1848–1849 in the long run contributed to a complex estrangement
between Germany and western Europe. The failed revolutions of 1848 also pushed thou-
sands of disappointed German liberals and revolutionaries toward the United States, where
the stream of liberal immigrants came to be known as the “forty-eighters.”
In Prussia itself the ingenious monarch undertook to placate everybody by issuing a
constitution of his own, one that should be peculiarly Prussian. It remained in effect from
1850 to 1918. The Constitution established a single parliament for all the miscellaneous
regions of Prussia and divided the parliament into two chambers. The lower chamber was
elected by universal male suffrage, but the system of elections in effect divided the popula-
tion into three estates—the wealthy, the less wealthy, and the general run of the people.
Those few big taxpayers who together contributed a third of the tax returns chose a third of
the members of district electoral colleges, which in turn chose deputies to the Prussian
lower house. In this way one large property owner had as much voting power as hundreds
of working people. Large property in Prussia in 1850 still meant mainly the landed estates
of the East Elbian Junkers, but as time went on, it came to include industrial property in the
Rhineland also. The Junkers likewise were not harmed by the fi nal liquidation of serfdom.
They increased the acreage of their holdings, and the former servile agricultural workers
turned into free wage earners economically dependent on the great landowners.
For 1850 the Prussian constitution was fairly progressive. If the mass
of the people in Prussia could elect very few deputies, the mass of the
British people, until 1867 or even 1884, could elect no deputies to Parlia-
ment at all. But the Prussian constitution remained in force until 1918. By
the close of the nineteenth century, with democratic advances making their
appearance elsewhere, the electoral system in Prussia came to be reactionary and illib-
eral, giving the great landowners and industrialists an unusual position of special privilege
within the state.
61. THE NEW EUROPEAN “ISMS”: REALISM, POSITIVISM, MARXISM
The revolutions of 1848 failed not only in Germany but also in Hungary, Italy, and
France. The “springtime of peoples,” as it was called, was followed by chilling blasts of
winter. The dreams of half a century, visions of a humane nationalism, aspirations for
liberalism without violence, ideals of a peaceful and democratic republican common-
wealth, were all exploded. Everywhere the cry had been for constitutional government, but
only in a few small states—Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Piedmont—was
constitutional liberty more fi rmly secured by the revolutions of 1848. Everywhere the cry
had been for the freedom of nations, to unify national groups or rid them of foreign rule;
but nowhere was national liberty more advanced in 1850 than it had been two years
The Prussian
Constitution of 1850
The failure of liberal
nationalism
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52161. The New European “Isms”: Realism, Positivism, Marxism
before. France obtained universal male suffrage in 1848 and kept it permanently thereafter
(except for a brief reversion to a restricted suffrage in 1850–1851), but it did not obtain
democracy; it obtained a kind of popular dictatorship under Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.
One accomplishment, however, was real enough. The peasantry was emancipated in the
German states and the Austrian Empire. Serfdom and manorial restraints
were abolished, nor were they reimposed after the failure of the revolutions.
This was the most fundamental accomplishment of the whole movement.
The peasant masses of central Europe were thereafter free to move about,
fi nd new jobs, enter a labor market, take part in a money economy, receive
and spend wages, migrate to growing cities—or even go to the United States. But the peas-
ants, once freed, showed little concern for constitutional or bourgeois ideas. Peasant eman-
cipation, in fact, strengthened the forces of political counterrevolution.
The most immediate and far-reaching consequence of the 1848 revolutions, or of their
failure, was a new kind of intellectual and political realism. Idealism and romanticism
were discredited in European culture and politics. Revolutionaries became less optimis-
tic; conservatives, more willing to exercise repression. It was now a point of pride to be
realistic, emancipated from illusions, willing to face facts as they were. The future, it was
thought, would be determined by present realities rather than by imaginings of what ought
to be. Industrialization went forward, with England still far in the lead, but now spreading
New freedoms for
peasants
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1848–1857
January 1848 Marx and Engels publish the Communist Manifesto
February 1848 Revolution in Paris; proclamation of the Second French Republic
March 1848 Revolutions in Vienna, Berlin, Bohemia, and Hungary; Metternich
fl ees from Vienna to England; legal serfdom is abolished in central
Europe
March 1848 Italians rise against Austrian rule in northern Italy
May 1848 Prussian Legislative Assembly meets in Berlin
May 1848 All-German Frankfurt Assembly convenes to draft constitution for a
unifi ed German state
June 1848 Thousands die in worker-army clashes in Paris
June–December 1848 Counterrevolutionary forces regain control of Austrian Empire:
Bohemia, northern Italy, Hungary, Vienna
December 1848 Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is elected president of French Republic;
Francis Joseph becomes emperor of Austrian Empire
April 1849 King Frederick William IV of Prussia rejects Frankfurt Assembly’s
constitution and offer of hereditary rule in a federal German state;
Frankfurt Assembly is dissolved
1852 Louis Napoleon Bonaparte becomes “Emperor Napoleon III” and
establishes Second French Empire
1853–1870 Baron Haussmann supervises the modern rebuilding of Paris
1857 Gustave Flaubert publishes Madame Bovary
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870522
across the Continent and initiating the momentous transformation of Germany. The 1850s
were a period of rising prices and wages, thanks in part to the gold rush in California.
There was more prosperity than in the 1840s; the propertied classes felt more secure, and
spokesmen for labor turned from theories of society to the organizing of viable unions,
especially in the skilled trades.
Materialism, Realism, Positivism
The mid-nineteenth-century intellectual themes appeared in a new philosophical emphasis
on materialism, holding that everything mental, spiritual, or ideal was an outgrowth of
physical or physiological forces. In literature and the arts the new themes contributed to
descriptions or portrayals of the social world that came to be called realism. Writers and
painters broke away from romanticism, which they said colored things out of all relation to
the real facts. The “realists” attempted to represent and reproduce life as they found it, with-
out intimation of a better or nobler world. The French writer Gustave Flaubert, for example,
wrote meticulous descriptions of a provincial woman’s tedious, unhappy marriage in his
famous novel Madame Bovary (1857), a book that both mocked the illusions of romantic literature and showed the new artistic desire for a precise, unsentimental literary language.
More people in this era came to trust science, not merely for an understanding of nature but
for insights into the true meaning of human life and social relations. In religion the move-
ment was toward skepticism, renewing skeptical trends of the eighteenth century, which
had been somewhat interrupted during the intervening period of romanticism. It was vari-
ously held, not by all but by many intellectuals and other persons in the urban professional
classes, that religion was unscientifi c and hence not to be taken seriously; or that it was a
mere historical growth among peoples in certain stages of development and hence irrele-
vant to modern civilization; or that one ought to go to church and lead a decent life, without
taking the priest or clergyman too seriously, because religion was necessary to preserve the
social order against radicalism and anarchy. To this idea the radical or working-class coun-
terpart was the claim that religion was a bourgeois invention to delude the people.
“Positivism” was another term used to describe the new attitude. It origi-
nated with the French philosopher Auguste Comte, who had begun to publish
his numerous volumes on Positive Philosophy as long ago as 1830 and was still writing in the 1850s. He saw human history as a series of three stages,
the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientifi c. The French revolutions of 1789 and
1848 suffered, in his view, from an excess of metaphysical abstractions, empty words, and
unverifi able high-fl ying principles. According to Comte, those who worked for the improve-
ment of society must adopt a strictly scientifi c outlook, and he set out to promote this out-
look by producing an elaborate classifi cation of the sciences, of which the highest would be
the science of society, for which he coined the word “sociology.” This new science would
build upon the systematic observation of actual “positive” facts to develop broad scientifi c
laws of social progress. Comte himself, and his closest disciples, envisaged a fi nal scientifi c
Religion of Humanity, which, stripped of archaic theological and metaphysical concerns,
would serve as the basis for a better world in the future. More generally, however, positiv-
ism came to mean an insistence on verifi able facts, an avoidance of wishful thinking, a
questioning of all assumptions, and a dislike of unprovable generalizations. Positivism in a
broad sense, both in its demand for observation of facts and testing of ideas, and in its aspi-
ration to be humanly useful, contributed to the growth of the social sciences as a branch of
learning and as an intellectual foundation for the belief in historical progress.
Auguste Comte
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In politics the new emphasis on realism came to be known by the
German term Realpolitik. This simply meant a “politics of reality.” In domes- tic affairs it meant that people should give up utopian dreams, such as had
caused the revolutionary debacle of 1848, and content themselves with the blessings of an
orderly, honest, hard-working government. For radicals it meant that people should stop
imagining that the new society would result from goodness or the love of justice and that
social reformers must resort to the strategic methods of politics—power and calculation.
In international affairs Realpolitik meant that governments should not be guided by ideology, or by any system of “natural” enemies or “natural” allies, or by any desire to defend or
promote any particular view of the world; but that they should follow their own practical
or strategic interests, meet facts and actual situations as they arose, make any alliances that
seemed useful, disregard ethical theories and scruples, and use any practical means to achieve
their ends. The same persons who before 1848 had been not ashamed to express pacifi st and
cosmopolitan hopes now dismissed such ideas as a little softheaded. War, which govern-
ments had successfully tried to prevent since the fi nal overthrow of Napoleon in 1815, was
accepted in the 1850s as a strategic option that was sometimes needed to achieve a political
purpose. It was not especially glorious; it was not an end in itself; it was simply one of the
tools of realistic statesmanship. Realpolitik was by no means confi ned to Germany or even to the leaders of European governments, despite its German name and despite the fact that the
famous German chancellor Bismarck became its most famous practitioner. Two other tough-
minded thinkers, each in his own way, were Karl Marx and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.
Early Marxism
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were among the disappointed revolutionaries of 1848.
Marx (1818–1883) was the son of a lawyer in the Prussian Rhineland. He studied law and
philosophy at several German universities and received a doctoral degree in 1841. Unable
to fi nd an academic job, Marx associated with radical German intellectuals, began writing
for left-wing journals, and soon moved to Paris with other Germans who wanted to pro-
duce philosophical publications in the historic birthplace of modern revolutions. Engels
(1820–1893), the son of a well-to-do German textile manufacturer, was sent as a young
man to Manchester in England where his father owned a factory, to learn the business and
then manage it. Marx and Engels met in Paris in 1844. The French government forced
Marx to leave Paris early in the following year, but Marx and Engels would continue a
close intellectual and political collaboration over the next 40 years, mostly
in England.
In 1847 they joined the Communist League, a tiny secret group of rev-
olutionaries, mainly Germans in exile in the more liberal cities of western
Europe. The word “communist” then had only a vague and uncertain mean-
ing, and the League, as Engels later recalled, was at fi rst “not actually much more than the
German branch of the French secret societies.” It agitated like other societies during the
revolutions of 1848 and issued a set of “Demands of the Communist Party in Germany,”
which urged a unifi ed indivisible German republic; democratic suffrage; universal free
education; arming of the people; a progressive income tax; limitations upon inheritance;
state ownership of banks, railroads, canals, mines, and the like; and a degree of large-scale,
scientifi c, collectivized agriculture. It was such obscurely voiced radicalism that alarmed
the Frankfurt Assembly. With the triumph of counterrevolution in Germany the Communist
League was crushed.
The Communist
League
Realpolitik
61. The New European “Isms”: Realism, Positivism, Marxism
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870524
It was for this League that Marx and Engels wrote their Communist Manifesto, which was published in January 1848. But there was as yet no Marxism, and Marxism played no
role in the revolutions of 1848; it would not really emerge as a historical force in European
societies until the 1870s. Meanwhile, with the failure of the revolutions, Engels returned
to his factory at Manchester. Marx also settled in England, spending the rest of his life in
London, where, after long labors in the library of the British Museum, he fi nally produced
his huge work called Capital, of which the fi rst volume was published in German in 1867. The fi nal two volumes were edited by Engels and published after Marx’s death.
Sources and Content of Marxism
Marxism may be said to have had three sources or to have merged three national streams
of early nineteenth-century European history: German philosophy, French revolutionism,
and the British Industrial Revolution. As a student in Germany, and for a
while thereafter, Marx mingled with a group known as Young Hegelians,
who were actually critics of Hegel in that they expected the course of his-
tory to lead to a free and democratic society, instead of to the existing
Prussian state as Hegel had maintained. They joined with liberals in resisting the repres-
sive measures that prevailed in Germany after the defeat of Napoleon. Like democrats
and republicans, they believed that the promise of the French Revolution had not yet been
fulfi lled, because social and economic equality as well as a true political equality should
The Young Hegelians
A BURIAL AT ORNANS by Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1877)
A new realism emerged in many spheres of European culture after the failure of the revo- lutions in 1848. The artist Courbet in fact began to use the term “realism” in this period to describe his work, which frequently depicted ordinary people and peasants on monumental can- vasses. Paintings such as this portrayal of a funeral in the French countryside disturbed many nineteenth-century critics because Courbet painted images of the lower classes and also because he refused to romanticize his subjects or to portray common people in sentimental poses. (Album/Art Resource, NY)
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525
follow the civil and legal equality already won. In keeping with the general movement of
romanticism, the Young (or left) Hegelians hoped for a more personal emancipation from
the trammels of society, government, and religion.
In the mid-1840s, elaborating on Hegel, Marx developed the idea of the alienation of
labor, a social experience and state of mind produced when human beings in the historic
process of mechanization become estranged from the objects on which they work. This
alienation, as Marx described it, was a distinctive feature of modern capitalist societies.
The economic system of wage labor and private ownership of the means of production kept
workers from identifying with or benefi ting from the products of their labor. In fact, Marx
argued, the wealth (or capital) that workers produced was regularly used against them in
the social and political institutions of capitalist societies. It followed that true freedom
would become possible only when private property in capital goods was abolished. Some
of the early writings in which these ideas were worked out in the 1840s were not published
until a century later. They then led to a wide-ranging reconsideration
of Marxism, in which the early Marx was seen more as a social analyst,
“left” Hegelian philosopher or critical historian than as a revolutionary. But
Marx’s early writings had little impact on the growth of Marxism as a pro-
gram for revolutionary socialism in the nineteenth century.
Engels, engaged in the Manchester cotton industry, possessed a personal knowledge of
the new industrial and factory system in England. He was in touch with some of the most
radical Chartists, though he had no confi dence in Chartism as a constructive movement.
Engels and British
industrialism
Workers in Manchester came to be known as some of the most impoverished in the new industrial age, partly because writers such as Friedrich Engels focused on the city in their critiques of the capi- talist economy. This image of a demoral- ized worker was published in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Mary Barton (1848), a popular work that portrayed the miseries of the heroine’s unhappy working-class father in Manchester. (Lebrecht/The Image Works)
61. The New European “Isms”: Realism, Positivism, Marxism
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870526
In 1844 he published a revealing book, The Condition of the Working Classes in England. He drew from his observations much the same conclusions that Marx drew from philo-
sophical analysis and historical study. The depressed condition of labor was an actual fact.
It was a fact that labor received a relatively small portion of the national income and that
much of the product of society was being reinvested in capital goods, which belonged
as private property to private persons. Government and parliamentary institutions, also
as a matter of fact, were in the hands of the well-to-do in both Great Britain and France.
Religion was commonly viewed as necessary for keeping the lower classes in order, but
such views did not encourage the kinds of reform movements that religious groups had
often led in other centuries and in other cultures. The churches at the time actually took
little interest in problems of the workers. The family, as an institution, was indeed disinte-
grating among laboring people in the cities, through exploitation of women and children
and the overcrowding in inadequate and unsanitary living quarters.
Much of this was seized upon and dramatized in the Communist Manifesto as a sum- mons to revolution. The outbreak of revolution in France in February 1848, and its rapid
spread to other countries, confi rmed Marx and Engels in their beliefs. They interpreted the
actual class war that shook Paris in the June Days as a manifestation of a universal class
struggle, in which the workers or proletariat would rise against the owners
of capital, the bourgeoisie.
As a call to action, the Communist Manifesto was meant to be infl am- matory. It went beyond facts to denunciation and exhortation. It said that
workers were deprived of the wealth they had themselves created. It called
the state a committee of the bourgeoisie for the exploitation of the people. Religion was a
drug to keep the worker quietly dreaming upon imaginary heavenly rewards. The women
and children in working-class families had been brutalized by the bourgeoisie, and many
women were forced into prostitution. It seemed to Marx and Engels that uprooted workers
should be loyal to nothing—except their own class. Even the worker’s native country, in
their view, had become meaningless. The proletarian had no country. Workers everywhere
had the same problems and faced everywhere the same enemy. Therefore “let the rul-
ing classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but
their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!” So closed
the Manifesto. But Marx was no mere revolutionary schemer like the “revolution-makers,” as he later
scornfully called them. His mature thought was a system for producing revolution, but it
showed how revolution would necessarily come by operation of vast historical forces.
It was from English sources that Marx developed much of his eco-
nomic theory, as expounded at length in Capital. From British political economy he adopted the subsistence theory of wages, or Iron Law (which
orthodox economists presently abandoned because wages did in fact begin
to rise). It held that the average worker could never obtain more than a
minimum living standard—of which the corollary, for those who wished to draw it, was
that the existing economic system held out no better future for the laboring class as a class.
Marx likewise took over from orthodox economists the labor theory of value, holding that
the value of any human-made object depended ultimately on the amount of labor put into
it—capital being regarded as the stored up labor of former times. Orthodox economists, it
must be said, soon discarded the theory that economic value is produced by the input of
labor alone. Marx, from the labor theory, developed his doctrine of surplus value, which,
to simplify, meant in effect that workers were being robbed because they received in wages
The Communist
Manifesto
British political
economy
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527
only a fraction of the value of the products that their labor produced. The difference was
expropriated by the bourgeois capitalists—the private owners of the factories and the
machines. And because workers never received in wages the equivalent of what they pro-
duced, capitalism was constantly menaced by overproduction, the accumulation of goods
that people could not afford to buy. Hence it ran repeatedly into crises and depressions and
was obliged also to be constantly expanding in search of new markets. It was the depres-
sion of 1847, according to Marx, that had precipitated the revolutions of 1848; and with
every such depression during the rest of his lifetime Marx hoped that the day of the great
social revolution was drawing nearer.
What brought all these observations together in a unifi ed and compel-
ling doctrine was the philosophy of dialectical materialism. By dialectic,
Marx meant what the German philosopher Hegel had meant, that all things
are in movement and in evolution and that all change comes through the
clash of antagonistic elements. The word itself, coming from the Greek, meant originally
a way of arriving at a higher conclusion through a series of propositions, as in a logical
argument. The implications of the dialectic, for both Hegel and Marx, were that all his-
tory is a process of development in which events unfold in a clear historical direction; that
every event happens for good and suffi cient reasons; and that history—though not exactly
predetermined—is always shaped by impersonal forces and deep structural changes rather
than by individuals or chance events.
Marx differed from Hegel in one vital respect. Whereas Hegel emphasized the
primacy of ideas in social change, Marx gave emphasis to the primacy of material condi-
tions, or the relations of production, which included technology, inventions, natural
resources, and property systems. These material realities create the social world in which
people live. It is the relations of production that determine what kind of religions, philoso-
phies, governments, laws, and moral values are accepted. To believe that ideas precede and
generate actualities was, according to Marx, the error of Hegel. Hegel had thought, for
example, that the mind conceives the idea of freedom, which it then realizes in the Greek
city-state, in Christianity, in the French Revolution, and in the kingdom of Prussia. Not at
all, according to Marx: the idea of freedom, or any other idea, was generated by specifi c
economic and social conditions. Conditions were the roots; ideas, the trees. Hegel had held
the ideas to be the roots and the resulting actual conditions to be the trees.
Or as Marx and Engels said, they found Hegel standing on his head and set
him on his feet again.
In the picture of historical development offered by Marx material
conditions, or the relations of production, give rise to economic classes.
Agrarian conditions produce a landholding or feudal class, but with changes in trade
routes, money, and productive techniques a new commercial or bourgeois class arises. Each
class, feudal and bourgeois, develops an ideology suited to its needs. Prevailing religions,
governments, laws, and morals, as Marx described them, refl ect the outlook and interests
of these classes. The two classes inevitably clash. Bourgeois revolutions against feudal
interests break out when bourgeois economic development becomes increasingly con-
strained by the political power of the older feudal or aristocratic class—as in England in
1642, in France in 1789, in Germany in 1848, though the bourgeois revolution in Germany
proved abortive.
Meanwhile, as the bourgeois class develops, it inevitably calls another class into
being, its dialectical antithesis, the proletariat. The bourgeois is defi ned as the private
owner of capital, the proletarian as the wage worker who possesses nothing but his or her
Dialectical
materialism
Historical
development
61. The New European “Isms”: Realism, Positivism, Marxism
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870528
own hands. The more a country becomes bourgeois, the more it becomes proletarian. The
more production is concentrated in factories, the more the revolutionary laboring class is
built up. Under competitive conditions the bourgeois tend to devour and absorb each other;
ownership of the factories, mines, machines, and railroads (capital) becomes concentrated
into very few hands. Others sink into the proletariat. In the end the proletarianized mass
simply takes over from the remaining bourgeois. It “expropriates the expropriators,” and a
social revolution abolishes private property in the means of production.
Marx assumed that this revolution would create a classless society, because social
classes arose from economic differences that would disappear. The state and religion,
being outgrowths of bourgeois interests, would also disappear. For a time, until all vestiges
of bourgeois interests had been rooted out, or until the danger of counterrevolution against
socialism had been overcome, there would be a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” After that
the state would “wither away,” because there would no longer be an exploit-
ing class that required it.
In the meantime, bourgeois and proletarian are locked in a univer-
sal struggle; and workers and labor unions must be kept in a belligerent
and revolutionary mood. Marx wanted workers always to recognize that
the employer is their class enemy and that government, law, morality,
and religion are merely so much artillery directed against them. Workers must never let
themselves be fooled; they must learn how to detect the class interest underlying the most
exalted institutions and beliefs. In this constant gathering of military intelligence, ferreting
out the strategies of their class enemy, they would be helped by intellectuals especially
trained in explaining it to them.
Class war between
bourgeois and
proletariat
Karl Marx as he appeared near the end of his life. By the time he sat for this photograph in the early 1880s, he had been living in London for about 30 years, but he had developed many of his social and histori- cal theories while living on the European continent in the political, economic, and revo- lutionary context of the 1840s. (The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty
Images)
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529
Given this enduring class struggle, it would be dangerous—in Marx’s
view—for labor unions merely to obtain better wages or hours by nego-
tiation with employers, for by such little gains the war itself might be for-
gotten. It would likewise be dangerous, and even treasonous, for workers to put faith in
democratic machinery or “social legislation,” for the state, an engine of repression, could
never be made into an instrument of welfare. Law simply expressed the will of the stronger
class; “right” and “justice” were thin emanations of class interest. We must hold, wrote
Marx in 1875, to “the realistic outlook which has cost so much effort to instill into the
party, but which has now taken root in it”; and it was by such claims to realism or a “real-
istic outlook” that Marx sought to separate communism from earlier socialist theories.
Marx’s many critics have long argued, however, that his own theories (though claiming
a new realism) actually proposed inadequate or unrealistic accounts of human history as
well as the future development of industrial societies.
The Signifi cance of Marxism: Its Strength and Weaknesses
The original Marxism was a hard doctrine, with both advantages and handicaps in the
winning of adherents. One of its advantages was its claim to be scientifi c. Marx classifi ed
earlier and rival forms of socialism as utopian: they rested on moral indignation, and their
formula for reforming society was for human beings to become more just, or for the upper
classes to enact reforms as they became more responsive or sympathetic to the needs of
the lower classes. His own doctrine, Marx insisted, had nothing to do with ethical ideas;
it was purely scientifi c, resting upon the study of actual facts and real processes, and it
showed that socialism would be a historical continuation rather than a miraculous reversal
of what was already taking place. He also considered it utopian and unscientifi c to describe
the future socialist society in any detail. It would be classless, with neither bourgeois nor
proletarian; but to lay any specifi c plans would be idle dreaming. Let the revolution come,
and socialism would take care of itself.
Marxism thus brought together ideas that were scientifi c, historical, philosophical,
political, and apocalyptic. But some elements of Marxism stood in the way of its success-
ful propagation, even among the lower classes. The working people of Europe were not
really in the frame of mind of an army in battle. They hesitated to subordinate all else to
the distant prospect of a class revolution. They were not exclusively class-
people, nor did they behave as such. They still held to religious beliefs or to
a political faith in natural rights that could not portray morality as simply a
class weapon or right and justice as bourgeois deceptions. Increasingly,
they had national loyalties to their own countries. Only with great diffi culty
could they associate themselves emotionally with a world proletariat in an unrelenting
struggle against their own neighbors.
The cure for the revolutionism of 1848 proved in time to be the admission of the
laboring classes to a fuller membership in society. Wages generally rose after 1850, labor
unions were organized, and by 1870 in the principal European countries the workingman
very generally had gained the right to vote. Through their unions, workers were often able
to get better wages and working conditions by direct pressure upon employers. Having the
vote, they gradually formed working-class parties, and as they proceeded to act through
the state, they had less inclination to destroy it. Marx’s dismissive term for these maneu-
vers was “opportunism,” but such political campaigns gained increasing support among
workers, most of whom wanted to better themselves by dealing with employers and by
obtaining social reforms through existing government institutions rather than by waging
Confl icting working-
class values
Worker solidarity
61. The New European “Isms”: Realism, Positivism, Marxism
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870530
class war. From Marxism the working class absorbed much, including a
watchful hostility to employers and a sense of working-class solidarity; but
on the whole, as Marxism spread at the close of the nineteenth century, it
ceased to be really revolutionary. Had the old Europe not gone to pieces in the twentieth-
century wars, and had Marxism not been revived by Lenin and transplanted to Russia, it is
probable that Marx’s ideas would have been gradually domesticated into the general body
of European thought and that much less would have been said about them in later years in
Europe or elsewhere.
62. BONAPARTISM: THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE, 1852–1870
The new realism in European culture after 1848 extended also to the exercise of post-
revolutionary political power. We have seen how Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, elected pres-
ident of the French Republic in 1848, soon made himself Emperor of the French with the
title of Napoleon III. Those willing to fi ght for the parliamentary and liberal institutions
that he crushed were silenced. He became chief of state and then Emperor (in 1852) on a
wave of popular acclaim.
Political Institutions of the Second Empire
Napoleon III, like Napoleon I, came to power because of the fear of radicalism in a dis-
credited republic. Otherwise he bore little resemblance to his famous uncle. He was not a
professional soldier or a great organizer. When he became president of the republic at the
age of 40 he had been an adventurer and a conspirator, but he undoubtedly felt more con-
cern than Napoleon I for the plight of the working classes. Where Napoleon I had been
disdainful of public opinion, his nephew recognized it as an opportunity, not a nuisance.
Though journalists and intellectuals generally distrusted him, he drew some of them to his
side; he tried to placate the Catholic interests; and he appealed to the masses by giving
them the vote (however useless), by promises of prosperity, and by pageantry. He under-
stood perfectly that a single leader exerts more magnetism than an elected assembly. And
he knew that a Europe still shuddering over the June Days was hoping desperately for
order in France.
He gloried in modern progress. Toward the changes coming over
Europe the monarchs of the old school usually showed an attitude of timid-
ity and doubt if not positive opposition. Napoleon III boldly offered himself
as the strong leader who would move France toward a brave new world.
Like his uncle, he announced that he embodied the sovereignty of the people. He said that
he had found a solution to the problem of mass democracy. In all the other great Continen-
tal states and in Great Britain, in 1852, universal suffrage was thought to be incompatible
with intelligent government and economic prosperity. Napoleon III claimed to put them
together. Like Marx and other “realists” after 1848 he held that elected parliamentary bod-
ies, far from representing an abstract “people,” only accentuated class divisions within a
country. He declared that the regime of the restored Bourbons and the July Monarchy had
been dominated by special interests; that the republic of 1848 had fi rst been violent and
anarchic and then had fallen into the hands of a distrustful assembly that robbed the labor-
ing man of his vote; and that France would fi nd in the empire the permanent, popular, and
modern system for which it had been vainly searching since 1789. He affi rmed that he
Modern progress
Opportunism
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53162. Bonapartism: The Second French Empire, 1852–1870
stood above classes and would govern equally in the interests of all. In any case, like many
other political leaders after 1848, he held that forms of government were less important
than economic and social realities.
The political institutions of the Second Empire were therefore authori-
tarian, modeled on those of the Consulate of the fi rst Bonaparte. There was
a Council of State, composed of experts who drafted legislation and advised
on technical matters. There was also an appointive Senate and a Legislative
Body, which was elected by universal male suffrage in carefully managed
elections. But the Legislative Body had no real power to make laws, set the budget, or
control the army. Parliamentary life was reduced almost to absolute zero.
To captivate public attention and glorify the Napoleonic name the new emperor set up
a sumptuous court at the Tuileries. Balked in the ambition to marry into one of the great
dynasties, Napoleon III chose as his empress a young Spanish noblewoman, Eugénie, who
was destined to outlive the empire by 50 years, dying in 1920. It was said to be a love
match—a sure sign of popularized royalty. The court life of the empire was brilliant and
showy beyond anything known at the time in St. Petersburg or Vienna, and the pageantry
was expanded into the embellishment of the city of Paris. Baron Haussmann, who served
as Napoleon III’s creative, strong-willed city planner for major renovations in the French
capital, gave Paris much of the appearance that it has today. He built roomy railway sta-
tions with broad approaches, and he constructed a system of boulevards and public squares
offering long vistas ending in fi ne buildings or monuments, as at the Place de l’Opéra. He
also modernized the sewers and the water supply. The building program, like the expen-
sive court, had the additional advantage of stimulating business and employment. And the
cutting of wide avenues through the crooked streets and congested old houses would per-
mit easier military operations against insurrectionists entrenched behind barricades, should
the events of 1848 ever be repeated.
Economic Developments under the Empire
It was as a great social engineer that Napoleon III preferred to be known. In his youth he had
tried to understand the riddle of modern industrialism, and now, as emperor, he found some
of his main backers in former Saint-Simonians, who called him their “socialist emperor.”
Saint-Simon, it may be recalled, had been among the fi rst to conceive of a centrally planned
industrial system. But the Saint-Simonians of the 1850s shared the new desire to be realistic,
and their most signifi cant triumph was the invention of investment banking, by which they
hoped to guide economic growth through the concentration of fi nancial resources. They
founded a novel kind of banking institution, the Crédit Mobilier, which raised funds by sell- ing its shares to the public, and with the funds thus obtained bought stock in such new indus-
trial enterprises as it wished to develop. France entered a new phase of rapid economic
development—a distinctive French version of the Industrial Revolution.
The times were exceedingly favorable for expansion, for the discovery
of gold in California in 1849, and in Australia soon afterward, together
with the newly organized credit facilities, brought a substantial increase in
the European money supply, which had a mildly infl ationary effect. The
steady rise of prices and all money values encouraged the expansion of new companies
and the investment of capital. Railway mileage, increasing everywhere in the Western
world, increased in France from 3,000 to 16,000 kilometers in the 1850s. The demand
for rolling stock, iron rails, auxiliary equipment, and building materials for stations and
Authoritarian
political institutions
Expansion
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870532
freight houses kept the mines and factories busy. The railway network was rationalized, 55
small lines in France being merged into six big regional trunks. Iron steamboats replaced
wooden sailing ships. Between 1859 and 1869 a French company built the Suez Canal,
which it continued to own for almost a century, though the British government after 1875
was the principal stockholder.
Large French corporations made their appearance, in railroads and banking fi rst of all.
In 1863 the law granted the right of “limited liability,” by which a stockholder could not
lose more than the par value of the stock, however insolvent or debt-burdened the corpora-
tion might become. This encouraged investment by persons of small means, and by capi-
talists large and small in enterprises of which they knew very little; thus the wealth and
savings of the country were more effectively mobilized and put to work. Stocks and shares
became more numerous and diversifi ed. The Stock Exchange boomed. Financiers—those
whose business was to handle money, credit, and securities—assumed a new eminence in
the capitalistic world. Many people became very rich, richer perhaps than anyone had ever
been in France before.
The emperor aspired also to do something for the working class, within the limits of
the existing system. Jobs were plentiful and wages were good, by the ideas of the day, at
least until the temporary depression of 1857. The emperor had a plan, as did some of the
Saint-Simonians, for organizing forces of workers in military fashion and setting them to
clear and develop uncultivated land. Not much was done in this direction.
More was accomplished in the humanitarian relief of suffering. Hospitals
and asylums were established, and free medicines were distributed. The
outlines of a social-welfare state began somewhat vaguely to appear. Mean-
while the workers were building up unions. All combinations of workers
had been prohibited during the French Revolution, a prohibition that was deemed to be still
in force until the ambiguous legal position of labor unions began to change. In 1864 it even
became legal for organized workers to go on strike. Large labor units, or unions, and large
business units, or corporations, were thus legalized at the same time. Napoleon III hardly
did enough for labor to rank as a working-class hero, but he did enough to be suspected as
“socialistic” by many middle-class people of the day.
Later authoritarian regimes, bent like the Second Empire on a program of economic
development, were usually highly protectionist, but Napoleon III believed in freedom of
international trade. He had a project for a tariff union with Belgium, which some Belgians
also supported. Belgium was already well industrialized, and a Franco-Belgium union,
especially because Belgium had the coal that France lacked, would have formed a
trading area of very great strength. The plan was blocked by private interests in both coun-
tries, however, and strongly opposed by both Great Britain and the German Zollverein. The emperor then turned to an all-around reduction of import duties. Since the repeal of the
Corn Laws in 1846 the free traders were in power in England. They were eager to abolish
trade barriers between Britain and France. Napoleon III, overriding unusual
opposition in his Legislative Body, concluded a free trade treaty with Great
Britain in 1860. He set aside 40 million francs of government funds to assist
French manufacturers in making adjustments to British competition; but
this sum was never spent in full, which suggests that French industry was
generally able to compete successfully with the more intensively mechanized industry of
Britain. The Anglo-French treaty was accompanied by lesser trade agreements with other
countries. It looked, in the 1860s, as if Europe might actually be about to enter a new era
of economic cooperation and free trade.
Napoleon’s
“socialistic” initiatives
Free trade treaty with
Britain
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533
Internal Diffi culties and War
But by 1860 the empire was running into trouble. It took a few years to overcome the
depression of 1857. By his policy of free trade the emperor made enemies among certain
industrialists. The Catholics objected to his intervention in Italy, where he briefl y joined
an anti-Austrian military campaign in 1859. After 1860 opposition mounted. The emperor
granted more leeway to the Legislative Body. The 1860s are called the decade of the
Liberal Empire—all such terms being relative. We shall never know how the empire
might have evolved through these internal changes, because Louis Napoleon actually
ruined himself by war. His empire evaporated on the battlefi eld in 1870,
but he was at war long before that.
“The empire means peace,” he had assured his audiences in 1852:
l’Empire, c’ est la paix. But war is after all a supreme form of pageantry (or was then); France was the strongest country in Europe, and the emperor’s
name was Napoleon. Less than a year and a half after the proclamation of the empire
France was at war with a European state for the fi rst time since Waterloo. The enemy was
Russia, and the war was fought mainly on the Crimean Peninsula along the north coast of
the Black Sea. Napoleon III did not alone instigate the Crimean War, and yet this confl ict
“The empire means
peace”
Napoleon III’s ambitious plan to rebuild the city of Paris became one of the great urban projects of modern times. Organized by the strong-willed Baron Haussmann, the systematic, controversial reconstruction of Parisian streets, parks, buildings, sewers, and monuments transformed the city and produced an aesthetic grandeur that has drawn visitors ever since. This photograph shows some of the construction workers and the tools they used to build the new streets. (Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
62. Bonapartism: The Second French Empire, 1852–1870
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Chapter 12 Revolutions and the Reimposition of Order, 1848–1870534
showed his inclination to send French armies abroad. Many forces in Europe after 1848
pushed toward war; but Napoleon III was one of these forces. In 1859 the new Napoleon
was fi ghting in Italy, from 1862 to 1867 in Mexico, and in 1870 in France itself, in a war
with Prussia that he could easily have avoided. These wars were limited in scope and
duration (as compared to the huge Napoleonic wars in the early nineteenth century), but
they formed part of the wider European struggles for international infl uence, which are
discussed in chapter 13.
It is enough to say here that in 1870 the Second Empire went the way of the First, into
the limbo of governments tried and discarded by the French. It had lasted 18 years, exactly
as long as the July Monarchy, and longer than any other regime known in France, up to that
time, since the fall of the Bastille. Not until the twentieth century, when dictators sprouted
all over Europe, did people begin to recognize that the authoritarian Louis Napoleon had
been an omen of the future rather than a bizarre reincarnation of the past.
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
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535
C h a p t e r 13 THE
CONSOLIDATION
OF LARGE NATION-
STATES, 1859–1871
The rise of nineteenth-century nationalism and the quest for unifi ed national governments led to
a remarkable consolidation of nation-states dur-
ing the 12 years after 1859. Notable political uni-
fi cations and reforms in Europe during this period
included the formation of a new German empire,
a unifi ed kingdom of Italy, the Dual Monarchy of
Austria-Hungary, and the introduction of drastic
internal changes in tsarist Russia. Although this
chapter focuses mainly on national consolidations
within Europe, it is also important to note that
the historical movement toward the unifi cation
of larger national states was part of a global pat-
tern that included the triumph of central authority
after a civil war in the United States, the creation
of an independent, united Dominion of Canada,
and the emergence of a modernizing government
and economy in the empire of Japan. All these
disparate events refl ected profound changes that
accompanied the development of new technologies such as the railroad, steamship, and
telegraph. The communication of ideas, exchange of goods, and movement of people
over wide areas became more frequent and easier than ever before. New technologies and
the rapid expansion of new industries strengthened the political power of nation-states,
which gained increasing infl uence in the evolving social, economic, and cultural life of all
modern societies.
63. Backgrounds: The Idea
of the Nation-State
64. Cavour and the Italian War
of 1859: The Unifi cation
of Italy
65. The Founding
of a German Empire
and the Dual Monarchy
of Austria-Hungary
66. Tsarist Russia: Social
Change and the Limits of
Political Reform
67. Nation-Building in the
Wider Atlantic World: The
United States and Canada
Chapter emblem: Detail from a painting by Anton von Werner of the Proclamation of the German Empire at
Versailles in 1871. (Bismarck Museum/Bildarchiv Preussicher Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871536
63. BACKGROUNDS: THE IDEA OF THE NATION-STATE
Before 1860 there were two prominent, relatively coherent nation-states in Europe—Great
Britain and France. Spain, united on the map, was internally so fragmented as to belong to
a different category. Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian coun-
tries were nation-states, but small or peripheral to the main national centers of European
power. The characteristic political organizations were small states comprising fragments
of a nation, such as were strewn across the middle of Europe—Hanover, Baden, Sardinia,
Tuscany, or the Two Sicilies—and large sprawling empires made up of all sorts of
peoples, distantly ruled from above by dynasties and bureaucracies, such as the Romanov,
Habsburg, and Ottoman domains. Except for recent developments in the Americas the
same mixture of small nonnational states and of large nonnational empires was to be found
in most of the rest of the world.
Since 1860 or 1870 a nation-state system has prevailed. The consolidation of large
nations became a model for other peoples large and small. In time, in the following cen-
tury, other large groups of people undertook to establish nation-states as they gained inde-
pendence from European colonial empires in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Small and
middle-sized populations increasingly thought of themselves as nations, entitled to their
own political sovereignty and independence. Some of these sovereignties that emerged
after 1945 comprised fewer people than a single modern city. The idea of the nation-
state has thus served both to bring people together into larger units and to
break them apart into smaller ones. In the nineteenth century, outside the
disintegrating Ottoman Empire, from which Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and
Romania became independent, and in which an Arab national movement
also began to stir, the national idea served mainly to create larger units in place of small
ones. The map of Europe from 1871 to 1918 was the simplest it has ever been before or
since (see map, pp. 558–559).
This book has already had much to say about the idea of the nation-state and the emer-
gence of modern nationalisms. Earlier chapters have described the ferment of national
ideas and political movements stirred up by the French Revolution and by the Napoleonic
domination of Europe, the nationalist agitation and repression of nationalism in the years
after 1815, and the general failure to achieve popular patriotic aspirations in Germany,
Italy, and central Europe in the Revolution of 1848. For many in the nineteenth century,
nationalism became a kind of modern secular faith; and it spread throughout most of
Europe, stimulating an emotion-laden desire for national unity, independence, and the cre-
ation of a national state that could embody and protect a distinctive national culture. For
most devout nationalists, the nation represented higher truths as well as
collective and personal aspirations for a better future life.
A nation-state may be thought of as one in which supreme political
authority somehow rests upon and represents the will and feeling of its
inhabitants. There must be a people, not merely a swarm of human beings.
The people must basically feel some common cultural and political identity and have the
will to create a sovereign government. They must sense that they belong—that they are
members of a community, participating somehow in a common social and cultural life, that
the government is their government, and that outsiders are “foreign.” The outsiders or for-
eigners are usually (though not always) those who speak a different language. The nation is
usually (though not always) composed of persons sharing the same speech. A nation may
Unity and disunity
Characteristics of
nation-states
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53763. Backgrounds: The Idea of the Nation-State
also possess a belief in common descent or racial origin (however mistaken), or a sense of
a common history (remembered as coherent and purposeful), a common future, a common
religion, a common geographical home, or a common external menace. Nations take form
in many ways. But the people in all nations are alike in feeling or imagining themselves to
be communities, permanent communities in which individual persons, together with their
children and their children’s children, are committed to a collective destiny on earth. Such
beliefs in a shared collective culture do not arise spontaneously in large populations. They
develop over time and are sustained by the social networks in which individuals go about
their daily lives. People learn to identify with their nations as they grow up in the families,
schools, social organizations, religious institutions, and holiday rituals that shape a sense
of selfhood in modern human societies.
In the nineteenth century governments found that they could not effectively rule or
develop the full powers of state except by enlisting this sense of member-
ship and support among their subjects. The consolidation of large nation-
states had two distinguishable phases. Territorially, it meant the union
of preexisting smaller states. Morally and psychologically it meant the
creation of new ties between government and governed, the admission of new segments
of the population to political life, through the expansion of education and through the cre-
ation or extension of liberal and representative institutions. This process of national inte-
gration and institution-building was repeated in widely disparate cultures, ranging from
western Europe and, tsarist Russia, to Japan and the frontier societies of North America.
Although there was considerable variation in the real power of the new political institu-
tions and in the extent of self-government actually realized, parliaments were set up for
the new Italy, the new Germany, the new Japan, the new Canada; and there was eventu-
ally movement in Russia in the same direction. In Europe, some of the nationalist aims
that the revolutionists of 1848 had failed to achieve were now brought about by the estab-
lished authorities.
They were brought about, however, only through a series of wars. To create an all-
German or an all-Italian state, as the revolutions of 1848 had already shown, it was nec-
essary to break the power of Austria, render Russia at least temporarily ineffective, and
overthrow or intimidate those German and Italian governments that refused to surrender
their sovereignty. For almost 40 years after 1815 there had been no war between estab-
lished powers of Europe. Then in 1854 came the Crimean War; in 1859, the Italian War; in
1864, the Danish War; in 1866, the Austro-Prussian War; and in 1870, the Franco-Prussian
War. Concurrently the Civil War in the United States maintained national unity by sup-
pressing a secessionist movement for southern independence. After 1871, for 43 years
there was again no war between the major European powers.
The Crimean War, 1854–1856
Before moving on to the fi rst of the national consolidation movements, the Italian, we
must examine the Crimean War, which, though seemingly remote, helped to make possi-
ble the success of the European national movements. Its chief political signifi cance for
Europe is that it seriously weakened both Austria and Russia, the two powers most bent
on preserving the peace settlement of 1815 and on preventing national changes. The
Crimean War also had signifi cant cultural and social infl uences, however, because it
became a new kind of modern national war in which telegraph communications kept the
civilian populations of the western belligerent powers more immediately informed about
Consolidation and
constitutionalism
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871538
distant military campaigns. It was the fi rst war covered by newspaper correspondents and
the fi rst to be portrayed to noncombatants in the visual images of early photography; and
it was the fi rst war in which women, led by Florence Nightingale, established their posi-
tion as army nurses.
The pressure of Russia upon Ottoman Turkey was an old story. Every
generation saw its Russo-Turkish war. In the last Russo-Turkish war, to go
back no further than 1828–1829, Tsar Nicholas I protected the indepen-
dence newly won by Greece and annexed the left bank of the mouth of the
Danube. Now, in 1853, Nicholas again made demands upon the still large but weakened
Ottoman Empire, moving in on the two Danubian principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia
(later to be known as Romania), with military forces (see map, p. 661). The dispute this
time ostensibly involved the protection of Christians in the Ottoman Empire, including
the foreign Christians at Jerusalem and in Palestine. Over these Christians the French also
claimed a certain protective jurisdiction. The French had for centuries been the principal
Western people in the Middle East. They had often furnished money and advisers to
the Ottoman sultan, they carried on a huge volume of trade, they staffed and fi nanced
Christian missions, and they often talked of building a Suez canal. Napoleon III thus had
his own aspirations in the eastern Mediterranean, and he encouraged the Ottoman gov-
ernment to resist Russian claims to protect Christians within the Ottoman Empire. War
between Russia and Turkey broke out late in 1853. In 1854 France joined the side of the
Turks, as did Great Britain, whose settled policy was to uphold Ottoman Turkey and the
Middle East against penetration by Russia. The two Western powers were soon joined by a
small ally, the kingdom of Sardinia, better known because of its Italian mainland territory
and seat of government as Piedmont. Sardinia had no visible interest in the issues in the
Middle East, but it entered the war as a means to infl uence the Italian question.
The British fl eet successfully blockaded Russia in both its Baltic and Black Sea out-
lets. French and British armies invaded Russia itself, landing in the Crimean Peninsula, to
which all the important fi ghting was confi ned. The Austrian Empire had its own reasons to
oppose Russian expansion into Ottoman territories; and the Austrians did not want Russia
to conquer the Balkans, or to see Britain and France master the situation alone. Austria
therefore, though not yet recovered from the recent upheaval of 1848–1849, mobilized its
armed forces at a great effort to itself and occupied Wallachia and Moldavia, which
the Russians evacuated under this threat of attack by a new enemy. Tsar
Nicholas died in 1855, and his successor, Alexander II, sued for peace.
A congress of all the great powers made peace at Paris in 1856. By
the treaty the powers pledged themselves jointly to maintain the “integrity
of the Ottoman Empire.” The Russian tide ebbed a little. Russia ceded the left bank of
the mouth of the Danube to Moldavia and gave up its claim to the special protection of
Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Moldavia and Wallachia (united as Romania in 1858),
together with Serbia, were recognized as self-governing principalities under protection of
the European powers. At the Congress of Paris European diplomacy seemed to be achiev-
ing a more harmonious international system.
But trouble was in the making. Napoleon III needed glory. The Italians wanted some
kind of unifi ed Italy. The Prussians, who had done nothing in the Crimean War and were
only tardily invited to the Congress of Paris, feared that their status as a great power might
be slipping away. Napoleon III, the Italian nationalists, and the Prussians all stood to gain
by change. Change in central Europe and Italy meant a tearing up of the Treaty of Vienna
of 1815, long guarded by Metternich and unsuccessfully challenged by the revolutionaries
of 1848. Now, after the Crimean War, the forces opposing change were very weak. It was
Russian pressure
Peace in 1856
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53964. Cavour and the Italian War of 1859: The Unifi cation of Italy
the Russian and Austrian empires that had stood fi rmly for the status quo. But these two
powers, which had most seriously attempted to uphold the Vienna settlement, could do so
no longer. The fi rst proof came in Italy.
64. CAVOUR AND THE ITALIAN WAR OF 1859: THE UNIFICATION OF ITALY
Italian Nationalism: The Program of Cavour
In Italy there had long been about a dozen sizable states, together with a few very small
ones. Several of them had dissolved in the wars of the French Revolution, and all had been
reorganized, fi rst by Napoleon and then by the Congress of Vienna. The governments of
these states were generally content with their autonomy and independence. But the gov-
ernments were remote from their peoples.
There was a widespread disgust in Italy with the existing authorities,
and a growing desire for a liberal national state in which all Italy might be
embodied and through which the Italian grandeur of ancient times and of the
Renaissance might be resurrected. This sentiment, the dream of an Italian Risorgimento, or
resurgence, had become very heated at the time of the French Revolution and Napoleon,
and had then been transformed by the writings of Mazzini and other nationalists into an
Italian Risorgimento
The Crimean War weakened the international position of Austria and Russia, but its most enduring effect on nations such as Britain may have come in the ways that wars were described in the popular press and in the new role of women nurses. Florence Nightingale arrived in the Crimea with 36 nurses and was at fi rst opposed by army doctors. She is pictured here in one of the hospitals where she began to create the new military and social identity of the female nurse. (Time Life Pictures/Mansell/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871540
Historical Interpretations and Debates
The Roots of Modern Nationalism
Nationalist movements gained wide infl uence during the nineteenth century by combining a popular belief in the distinctive cultural traits of different human communities with an equally popular claim that every such cultural group should have its own sovereign political state. Most historians of nationalism agree that these ideas spread widely in modern schools, newspapers, political parties, and government institutions. They frequently disagree, however, about the infl uence of modern social and economic changes on the rise of nationalism; and they propose different interpretations of the possible continuities between premodern cultures and modern national identities. Compare the views of Ernest Gellner and Anthony D. Smith as they analyze the social roots and premodern origins of modern nationalisms and national identities.
Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (2nd ed., 2006) Contrary to popular and even scholarly belief,
nationalism does not have very deep roots in
the human psyche. . . . What is crucial for its
genuine explanation is to identify its specifi c
roots. . . .
The roots of nationalism in the distinctive
structural requirements of industrial society
are very deep indeed. This movement [toward
nationalism] is the fruit neither of ideological
aberration, nor of emotional excess. . . .
Universal literacy and a high level of
numerical, technical and general sophistication
are among [industrial society’s] functional
prerequisites. Its members are and must be
mobile and ready to shift from one activity
to another. . . . The educational system which
guarantees this social achievement becomes
large and is indispensable. . . .
[This] educational infrastructure is too
large and costly for any organization other
than the biggest one of all, the state. . . .
[State] and culture must now be linked, whereas in the past their connection was . . .
often minimal. Now it is unavoidable. That is
what nationalism is about, and why we live in
an age of nationalism. . . .
But nationalism is not the awakening of an old, latent, dormant force, though that
is how it does indeed present itself. It is in
reality the consequence of a new form of
[industrial] social organization, based on
deeply internalized, education-dependent
high cultures, each protected by its own
state. . . .
Anthony D. Smith, The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism (2000) [I] stress the importance of treating the
history of collective cultural identities and
ideologies like nations and nationalism over
long time spans. This is quite compatible
with the evidence that nationalism is a
modern ideological movement and that
many nations are both recent and novel.
But these modern nations are not created
ex nihilo; they have premodern antecedents
that require investigation in order to
establish the basis on which they were
formed. . . .
[The] central components of ethnic and
national phenomena [are] both sociocultural
and symbolic, rather than demographic
or political. Apart from various symbols,
like language, dress, emblems, rituals, and
artifacts, these elements consist in memories,
myths, values, and traditions and in the
institutionalized practices that derive from
them. . . .
[We] can begin to interpret the
historical record of collective cultural
identities and sentiments as predominantly
one in which ethnies fl ourished alongside other collectivities in the ancient and
medieval epochs of empires, city-states,
and kingdoms. . . . Thus, in several
cases we fi nd elements of nationhood
stretching back to the late medieval
period. . . . We can still agree that nations,
like nationalisms, are for the most part
relatively recent. . . .
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541
Sources: Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 2nd ed., introduction by John Breuilly (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 34, 36–37, 46–47; Anthony D. Smith, The Nation in History: Historio- graphical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000), pp. 63, 69.
Ernest Gellner . . . (contd. . . .) Nations as a natural, God-given way of
classifying men, as an inherent though long-
delayed political destiny are a myth.
Anthony D. Smith . . . (contd. . . .) But this does not entail the acceptance
of the modernists’ further contention that
nations are the products of modernity or
modernization. . . . We cannot derive the
identity, the location, or even the character of
the units we term nations from the processes
of modernization tout court.
intensely moral campaign for Italian national unity. Mazzini had seen his hopes for a uni-
fi ed republican Italy elevated for a brief moment and then blasted in the general debacle
of 1848. In the stormy events of 1848 the papacy vehemently rejected the radical romantic
republicanism of Mazzini, Garibaldi, and other fi rebrands; and the pope could no longer
be expected to support the cause of Italian nationalism. The same events had shown that
Austria could not be ousted from the Italian peninsula without the aid of an outside power.
These lessons were not lost on the prime minister of Piedmont, which was ruled since
1848 as a constitutional monarchy and was now under King Victor Emmanuel. This prime
minister after 1852 was Camillo di Cavour, one of the shrewdest political tacticians of that
or any age. Cavour was a liberal of Western type. He tried to make the state a model of
progress, effi ciency, and fair government that other Italians would admire. He worked hard
to establish constitutional and parliamentary practices. He favored the building of railroads
and docks, the improvement of agriculture, and emancipation of trade. He followed a
strongly anticlerical policy, cutting down the number of religious holidays, limiting the
right of church bodies to own real estate, abolishing the church courts—all without nego-
tiation with the Holy See. A liberal and constitutional monarchist, a wealthy landowner in
his own right, he had no sympathy for the revolutionary, romantic, and
republican nationalism of Mazzini.
Cavour shared in that new realism described in the last chapter. He did
not approve of romantic republicans but was willing to work with them sur-
reptitiously. He did not idealize war but was willing to make war to unify Italy under the
royal family of Savoy. With unruffl ed calculation he took Piedmont into the Crimean War,
sending troops to Russia in the hope of winning a place at the peace table and raising the
Italian question at the Congress of Paris. It was evident to him that against one great power
one must pit another and that the only way to get Austria out of Italy was to use the French
army. He therefore developed a master plan to provoke war with Austria, after having
assured himself of French military support.
It was not diffi cult to persuade Napoleon III to collaborate. The Bonapartes looked
upon Italy as their ancestral country, and Napoleon III, in his adventurous youth, had
traveled in conspiratorial Italian circles and even participated in an Italian insurrection
in 1831. Now, as emperor, in his role as apostle of modernity, he entertained a “doctrine
of nationalities” that held the consolidation of nations to be a forward step at the existing
stage of history. To fi ght reactionary Austria for the freedom of Italy would also mollify
Cavour’s “politics of
reality”
64. Cavour and the Italian War of 1859: The Unifi cation of Italy
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871542
liberal opinion in France, which in other ways Napoleon was engaged in suppressing.
Napoleon III therefore reached a secret agreement with Cavour. In April 1859, Cavour
tricked Austria into a declaration of war. The French army poured over the Alps.
There were two battles, Magenta and Solferino, both won by the French and Piedmon-
tese. But Napoleon III was now in a quandary. In Italy, with the defeat of the Austrians,
revolutionary agitation broke out all over the peninsula, as it had a decade before—and the
French emperor was no patron of popular revolution. The revolutionaries overthrew or
denounced the existing governments and clamored for annexation to Piedmont. In France,
as elsewhere, the Catholics, fearful that the pope’s temporal power would be lost, upbraided
the emperor for his godless and unnecessary war. The French position was indeed odd, for
while the bulk of the French army fought Austria in the north, a French military detach-
ment was still stationed in Rome, sent there in 1849 to protect the pope against Italian
republicanism. Napoleon III, in July 1859, at the height of his victories, stupefi ed Cavour.
He made a separate peace with the Austrians.
The Franco-Austrian agreement gave Lombardy to Piedmont but left
Venetia within the Austrian Empire. It offered a compromise solution to
the Italian question, in the form of a federal union of the existing Italian
governments, to be presided over by the pope. This was not what Cavour
or the Piedmontese or the more fi ery Italian patriots wanted. Revolution
continued to spread across the northern Italian states. Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and
Romagna drove out their old rulers. They were annexed to Piedmont, after plebiscites or
general elections in these regions had shown overwhelming popular favor for this step.
Because Romagna belonged to the papal states, the pope excommunicated the organizers
of the new Italy. Undeterred, representatives of all north Italy except Venetia met at the
Piedmontese capital of Turin in 1860 in the fi rst parliament of the enlarged kingdom.
The British government hailed these events with enthusiasm, and Napoleon III also rec-
ognized the expanded Piedmontese state, in return for the transfer to France of Nice and
Savoy, where plebiscites disclosed enormous majorities for annexation to France.
The Completion of Italian Unity
There were now, in 1860, a north Italian kingdom, the papal states in the middle, and the
kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by a Bourbon king in Naples and still standing in the
south. The latter was being undermined by revolutionary agitation, as often in the past. A
Piedmontese republican, Giuseppe Garibaldi, brought matters to a head. Somewhat like
Lafayette, Garibaldi was a “hero of two worlds,” who had fought for the independence of
Uruguay, lived in the United States, and been one of the Triumvirs in the short-lived
Roman Republic of 1849. He now organized a group of about 1,150 personal followers—
Garibaldi’s Thousand, or the Red Shirts—for an armed expedition that he would lead from
northern Italy to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the south. Garibaldi landed in Sicily
and soon crossed to the mainland. Revolutionists hastened to join him, and the government
of the Two Sicilies, backward and corrupt, commanding little loyalty from its population,
collapsed before this picturesque intrusion.
Garibaldi now prepared to push from Naples up to Rome. Here, of course, he would
meet not only the pope but also the French army, and the international scandal would rever-
berate far beyond Italy. Cavour, examining the new opportunities with his
usual pragmatism, decided that so extreme a step must be averted, but he
also saw that Garibaldi’s successes must be used to advance the national
Franco-Austrian
agreement
Garibaldi’s
compromise
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543
cause. Garibaldi, though not all his followers, was now ready to accept a monarchy as the
best solution to the problem of Italian unifi cation. The chief of the Red Shirts, the one-time
foe of kings thus consented to ride in an open carriage with Victor Emmanuel through the
streets of Naples amid cheering thousands. Plebiscites held in the Two Sicilies showed an
almost unanimous willingness to join with Piedmont. In the remainder of the papal states,
except for Rome and its environs, plebiscites were held also, with the same result. A parlia-
ment representing all Italy except Rome and Venetia met in 1861, and the Kingdom of Italy
was formally proclaimed, with Victor Emmanuel II as king “by grace of God and the will
of the nation.” Venetia was added in 1866, as a reward for Italian aid to Prussia in a war
against Austria. Rome was annexed in 1870 after the withdrawal of French troops in the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
So Italy was “made,” as the phrase of the time expressed it. It had been made by the
high-minded cultural nationalism of Mazzini, the audacity of Garibaldi, and the cold real-
ism of Cavour. In the end, however, the Italians also achieved national unifi cation through
insurrections, armed violence, and the endorsement of popular votes.
Persistent Problems after Unifi cation
Very little was settled or ended by unifi cation. Even territorially, the more pronounced
nationalists refused to believe that Italian unity was completed. They looked beyond
to regions of mixed population where Italians were numerous or preponderant—to the
Trentino, to Trieste, to certain Dalmatian islands, or to Nice and Savoy. They saw in these
regions an Italia irredenta, “an unredeemed Italy,” awaiting in its turn the day of incorpo- ration. Irredentism even passed into the English language as a word signifying a vociferous
demand, on nationalist grounds, for annexation of regions beyond one’s own frontiers.
UNIFICATION OF ITALY, 1859–1870
SARDINIA
SICILY
LOMBARDY VENETIA
PARMA
TUSCANY
MODENA
PIEDMONT
PAPAL STATES
ROME
NAPLES
K IN
G D
O M
O F
S A
R D
IN IA
Florence
VeniceMilanTurin
FORMATION OF DUAL MONARCHY OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, 1867
A U S
T R I A
H U N G A R Y
Vienna Budapest
NATION-BUILDING, 1859–1867 In the eight years after 1859 Italy was unifi ed (except for the city of Rome, annexed in 1870), and the Habsburg government tried to solve its nationalities problem by creating the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The maps show the political components of the new Italian nation-state and the two adjoining regions that formed the Habsburg-ruled Dual Monarchy in central Europe.
64. Cavour and the Italian War of 1859: The Unifi cation of Italy
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871544
This photograph of Giuseppe Garibaldi suggests the confi dent, charismatic per- sonal style that enabled him to lead a spirited group of Italian nationalists or “Red Shirts” into southern Italy, to form an alliance with King Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont, and to help establish a uni- fi ed Italian nation-state. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The occupation of R ome in 1870 by the Italian government further
widened the rift between the church and the Italian national movement.
The pope, deprived of territories the papacy had held for a thousand years,
renewed his condemnations and chose to remain in lifelong seclusion in the Vatican. His
successors followed the same policy until 1929. Hence good Italian patriots were bound to
be anticlerical, and good Catholics were bound to look upon the Italian state with unfriendly
eyes. The regional differences between northern and southern Italy did not disappear with
unifi cation. Many nationalists in the north still looked upon the agrarian south—the land of
priest, landlord, and impoverished peasant—as disgracefully backward.
The new Italy was parliamentary but not democratic. At fi rst the vote was only given
to some 600,000 persons out of more than 20 million. Not until 1913 was the suffrage
signifi cantly broadened. Meanwhile parliamentary life, confi ned to a few, was somewhat
isolated from the mass of the population and frequently corrupt. But the dream of ages
was realized. Italy was one. The period of fragmentation and foreign rule that seemed so
shameful to patriots, the long centuries that had elapsed since the Renaissance, were now
terminated in the glories of a successful Risorgimento.
65. THE FOUNDING OF A GERMAN EMPIRE AND THE DUAL MONARCHY OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
To play upon the divisions among the Germans, keeping them in rivalry with each other
and dependent upon outside powers, had been the policy of France ever since the Reforma-
tion and of Russia since it began to take part in the affairs of Europe. To keep the Germanic
world divided was in fact a kind of negative prerequisite to the development of modern
European history as we know it, for without it the economic and cultural leadership of
Europe would hardly have become concentrated along the Atlantic seaboard; nor would
a great military empire have arisen in Russia and spread along the Baltic and into Poland.
Gradually, as we have seen, the Germans became dissatisfi ed with their position. They
became increasingly nationalistic during and after the Napoleonic wars. Many German
thinkers held that Germany was different from both western and eastern Europe, destined
someday to work out a peculiarly German way of life and political system of its own.
Occupation of Rome
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54565. The Founding of a German Empire and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary
To the Slavs the Germans felt immeasurably superior. German philosophy, as shown most
clearly in Hegel, took on a certain characteristic tone. It tended to criticize modern indi-
vidualism and to skip lightly over liberal conceptions of individual liberty; it also tended
to glorify group loyalties, the nation, and the state. It emphasized the progressive evolution
of history, which in the thought of Hegel, and after him Marx, became a vast impersonal
force that was moving in clear directions and almost independent of human beings or
human will. History was often said to ordain, require, condemn, justify, or excuse. What
one did not like could be dismissed as a mere historical phase, opening into a quite dif-
ferent and more attractive future. What one wanted, in the present or future, could be
described as historically necessary and bound to come.
The German States after 1848
In 1848 a series of revolutions had unseated the several governments of Germany. At the
Frankfurt Assembly a group composed essentially of private citizens had tried to organize
a united Germany by constitutional methods. They failed because they had no power.
Hence after 1848 the Germans began to think in terms of power, developing a somewhat
excessive admiration for die Macht. The men of Frankfurt failed also, perhaps, because they were insuffi ciently revolutionary. The Germans were still attached emotionally to
their various regional states. What happened in Italy, a revolutionary destruction of all the
old governments except that of Piedmont, could not readily happen in Germany.
After the failure of the 1848 revolution German nationalists and liberals were con-
fused. By 1850 the old states were restored—Austria and Prussia, the kingdoms of
Hanover, Saxony, Bavaria, and Württemberg, together with about 30 other states ranging
in size down to the free cities of Hamburg and Frankfurt. The loose confederation of 1815,
linking all these states together, was restored also (see map, p. 549). But within this frame-
work great economic and social changes were occurring. Between 1850
and 1870 the output of both coal and iron in Germany multiplied sixfold.
In 1850 Germany produced less iron than France; in 1870, more. Germany
was rapidly gaining economic unity and overcoming the economic and
social lag that had separated Germans from the fast-developing industrial and global com-
merce in northwestern Europe. The German cities were growing, bound together by rail-
road and telegraph, requiring larger supporting areas on which to live. Industrial capitalists
and industrial workers were becoming more numerous. With the advantages of unity more
obvious than ever, with the ideals of 1848 badly compromised, with a strong philosophical
respect for the state and for power, and with a habit of accepting the successful event as
the “judgment of history,” the Germans were ripe for what happened. They did not unify
themselves by their own exertions. They fell into the arms of Prussia.
Prussia in the 1860s: Bismarck
Prussia had always been the smallest and most precarious of the great powers. Ruined by
Napoleon, it had risen again. It owed its international infl uence and internal character to its
army. Actually it had fought fewer wars than other great powers, but its army enabled
Prussia to expand by conquest or diplomacy. The taking of Silesia in 1740 by force, the
acquisition of parts of Poland in the partitions of the 1770s and 1790s, and the addition of
the Rhineland in 1815 by diplomatic or international agreement were the highlights of
Prussian growth. After 1850 those who controlled the destinies of Prussia were
Advantages of unity
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871546
apprehensive. Their state had been shaken by revolution. In the Crimean War and at the
Congress of Paris they were hardly more than spectators. It seemed as if the hard-won and
still relatively recent position of Prussia might be waning.
Since 1815 the population of Prussia had grown from 11 to 18 million, but the size of
the army had not changed. Merely to enforce existing principles of conscription would
therefore almost double the army. But this would require increased fi nancial appropria-
tions. After 1850 Prussia had a parliament. It was a parliament, to be sure, dominated by
men of wealth; but some of the wealthy Prussians, notably the industrialists
of the Rhineland, were liberals who wished the parliament to have control
over government policies. These men did not like professional armies and
considered the Prussian Junkers, from whom the offi cer corps was recruited,
as their main rivals in the state. The parliament refused the necessary mili-
tary appropriations. The king at this juncture, in 1862, appointed a new chief minister, Otto
von Bismarck.
Bismarck was a Junker from old Brandenburg east of the Elbe. He cul-
tivated the gruff manner of an honest country squire, though he was in fact
an accomplished man of the world. Intellectually he was far superior to the
rather unsophisticated landlord class from which he sprang and for which
he often felt an impatient contempt. He shared in many Junker ideas. He advocated, and
even felt, a kind of stout Protestant piety. Although he cared for the world’s opinion, it
never deterred him in his actions; criticism and denunciation left him untouched. He was
not a nationalist. He did not look upon all Germany as his Fatherland. He was a Prussian.
His social affi nities, as with the Junkers generally, lay to the East with corresponding land-
owning elements of the Baltic provinces and Russia. Western Europe, including the bulk of
Germany, he neither understood nor trusted; it seemed to him revolutionary, free-thinking,
and materialistic. Parliamentary bodies he considered ignorant and irresponsible as organs
of government. Individual liberty seemed to him disorderly selfi shness. Liberalism,
democracy, and socialism were repugnant to him. He preferred to stress duty, service,
order, and the fear of God. The idea of forming a new German union developed only
gradually in his mind and then as an adjunct to the strengthening of Prussia.
Bismarck thus had his predilections and even his principles. But no principle bound
him; no ideology seemed to him an end in itself. He became the classic practitioner of
Realpolitik. First he made wars; then he insisted upon peace. Enmities and alliances were to him only matters of passing convenience. The enemy of today might be the friend of
tomorrow. Far from planning out a long train of events, then following it step by step to a
grand consummation, he seems to have been practical and opportunistic, taking advantage
of situations as they emerged and prepared to act in any one of several directions as events
might suggest.
In 1862, as minister president, he set out to thwart the liberals in the Prussian parlia-
ment. For four years, from 1862 to 1866, Bismarck waged this constitutional struggle. The
parliament refused to vote the proposed taxes. The government collected
them anyway. The taxpayers paid them without protest—it was the orderly
thing to do, and the collectors represented public authority. The limitations
of Prussian liberalism, the docility of the population, the respect for offi cial-
dom, the belief that the king and his ministers were wiser than the elected
deputies—all clearly revealed themselves in this triumph of military policy over the theory
of government by consent. The army was enlarged, reorganized, retrained, and reequipped.
Bismarck fended off the showers of abuse from the liberal majority in the chamber.
Parliamentary
politics
Bismarck
Constitutional
struggle
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547
The liberals declared that the government’s policy was fl agrantly unconstitutional. The
constitution, said Bismarck, could not have been meant to undermine the state. The gov-
ernment, said the liberals, was itself undermining Prussia, for the rest of Germany hoped
to fi nd in Prussia, as Italy had found in Piedmont, a model of political freedom. What the
Germans admired in Prussia, replied Bismarck coldly, was not its liberalism but its power.
He declared that the Prussian boundaries as set in 1815 were unsound, that Prussia must be
prepared to seize favorable opportunities for further growth. And he added one of his most
memorable utterances: “Not by speeches and majority votes are the great questions of the
day decided—that was the great error of 1848 and 1849—but by blood and iron.”
Bismarck’s Wars: The Creation of the North German Confederation, 1867
A favorable opportunity was not long in presenting itself. The Danes, engaged in a process
of national consolidation of their own, wished to make the duchy of Schleswig an integral
part of Denmark. The population of Schleswig was part Dane and part German. The diet of
the German confederation, unwilling to see Germans thus annexed outright to Denmark,
called for an all-German war upon the Danes. Bismarck had no desire to support or
strengthen the existing German confederation. He wanted not an all-German war but a
Prussian war. To disguise his aims he acted jointly with Austria, a fellow member of the
German confederation. In 1864 Prussia and Austria together went to war with Denmark,
which they soon defeated. It was Bismarck’s intention to annex both Schleswig and the
duchy of Holstein to Prussia, gaining whatever other advantages might present themselves
from future trouble with Austria. He arranged a provisional occupation of Schleswig by
Prussia and of Holstein by Austria. Disputes soon arose over rights of passage, the keeping
of internal order, and other problems with which occupying forces are commonly affl icted.
While pretending to try to regulate these disputes he allowed them to ripen.
He now proceeded to discredit and isolate Austria. Other European powers were pre-
occupied with their own domestic issues and not much concerned with Austrian interests
in a regional territorial dispute, so Bismarck used strategic diplomatic negotiations to
ensure that no foreign state would ally itself with Austria or intervene in German affairs.
To weaken Austria within Germany, Bismarck presented himself as a dem-
ocrat. He proposed a reform of the German confederation, recommending
that it have a popular chamber elected by universal male suffrage. Bismarck as democrat
Otto von Bismarck’s pragmatic use of power and his successful campaign to create a unifi ed German nation-state made him the most successful practi- tioner of Realpolitik in late nineteenth- century Europe. This photograph suggests the talent for well-focused observation that enabled Bismarck to see clearly what was at stake in the many political and diplomatic confl icts of his generation. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
65. The Founding of a German Empire and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871548
He calculated that the mass of the German people were wedded neither to the well-to-do
capitalistic liberals, nor to the existing government structures of the German states, nor to
the house of Habsburg. He would use “democracy” to undermine all established interests
that stood in his way.
Meanwhile the occupying powers continued to quarrel over Schleswig-Holstein.
Austria fi nally raised the matter formally in the German federal diet, one of whose func-
tions was to prevent war between its members. Bismarck declared that the diet had no
authority, accused the Austrians of aggression, and ordered the Prussian army to enter Hol-
stein. The Austrians called for federal sanctions in the form of an all-German force to be
sent against Prussia. The result was that Prussia, in 1866, was at war not only with Austria
but also with most of the other German states. The Prussian army soon proved its superior-
ity. Trained to an unprecedented precision, equipped with the new needle-gun, by which
the infantryman could deliver fi ve rounds a minute, brought into the zone of combat by
an imaginative use of the new railroads, and skillfully commanded, the Prussian army
overwhelmed the Austrians and defeated the other German states soon
thereafter. The Austro-Prussian, or Seven Weeks’ War, was amazing in its
brevity. Bismarck hastened to make peace before the other European powers
could realize what had happened.
Prussia annexed outright, together with Schleswig-Holstein, the whole kingdom of
Hanover, the duchies of Nassau and Hesse-Cassel, and the free city of Frankfurt. Here the old
governments simply disappeared before the axe of the “red reactionary.” The German federal
union disappeared likewise. In its place, in 1867, Bismarck organized a North German
Confederation, in which the newly enlarged Prussia joined with 21 other states, all of which
combined it greatly outweighed. The German states south of the river Main—Austria,
Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, and Hesse-Darmstadt—remained outside the new organiza-
tion, with no kind of union among themselves.
For the North German Confederation Bismarck produced a constitu-
tion. The new structure, though a federal one, was much stronger than
the now defunct Confederation of 1815. The king of Prussia became its
hereditary head. Ministers were responsible to him. There was a parlia-
ment with two chambers. The upper chamber, as in the United States, represented the
states as such, though not equally. The lower chamber, or Reichstag, was deemed to rep-
resent the people and was elected by universal male suffrage. Such fl irting with democ-
racy seemed madness to both conservative Junker and liberal bourgeois. It was indeed
a bold step, for only France at the time exemplifi ed universal suffrage in Europe on a
large scale, and in the France of Napoleon III neither old-fashioned conservatives nor
genuine liberals could take much satisfaction. As for Great Britain, where voting rights
were extended in this same year, 1867, they were still given to fewer than half the adult
male population. Bismarck sensed in the “masses” an ally of strong government against
private interests. He negotiated even with the socialists, who had arisen with the indus-
trialization of the past decade, and who, in Germany at this time, were mainly followers
of Ferdinand Lassalle. The Lassallean socialists, unlike the Marxian, believed it pos-
sible to improve working-class conditions through the action of existing governments.
To the great annoyance of Marx, then in England (his Capital fi rst appeared in 1867), the majority of the German socialists reached an understanding with Bismarck. In return for
a democratic suffrage they agreed to accept the North German Confederation. Bismarck,
for his part, by making use of democratic and socialist sentiment, won popular approval
for his emerging empire.
Seven Weeks’ War
A new constitution
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549
THE GERMAN QUESTION, 1815–1871 From 1815 to 1866 there were 39 German states joined in the German Confederation (the larg- est states are shown here). The movement to create a unifi ed Germany gave rise in this era to opposing nationalist groups: the Great Germans, who favored an all-German union that would include Austria; and the Little Germans, who were willing to exclude Austria and its empire from a new German nation-state. Bismarck was a Little German but a Great Prussian. He (1) enlarged Prussia by conquest in 1866; (2) joined Mecklenburg, Saxony, and other regions with Prussia in the North German Confederation of 1867; and (3) combined this Confederation with Bavaria, Württemberg, and other southern states to form the German Empire in 1871. He also (4) conquered Alsace-Lorraine from France; and (5) excluded Austria from the new German empire. These boundaries remained unchanged until 1918.
Prussia, 1815–1866
Annexed to Prussia, 1866
Joined with Prussia in North German Confederation, 1867
South German States Joined in German Empire, 1871
Alsace-Lorraine, Ceded by France to German Empire, 1871
Austrian Dominions Excluded from German Confederation, 1866, and from German Empire, 1871
Bismarck's German Empire
0 100 200 miles
German Confederation, 1815–1866
Elbe R.
Oder
R h
in e R
.
North Sea Baltic Sea
Vistula R.
Danube R.
EAST PRUSSIA
P O S E N
B O H E M I A
M O R A V I A
SAXONY
MECKLENBURG
SCHLESWIG
HOLSTEIN
HANOVER
NASSAU
HESSE- CASSEL THURINGI
B A V A R I AWÜRTT- EMBURG
A LS
A C
E B
A D
EN H
ES SE
-D
AR MS
T
A U S T R I A N E M P I R E
A U S T R I A
TYROL
P
R
U
S S
I
(to Bavaria)
Hamburg
Frankfurt
Berlin
Cracow
Vienna
Budapest
65. The Founding of a German Empire and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871550
The Franco-Prussian War
The creation of the North German Federation greatly expanded Prussia’s political infl u-
ence, but the situation was not yet stable. The small south German states were left fl oating
in empty space; they would sooner or later have to gravitate into some orbit or another,
whether Austrian, Prussian, or French. In France there were angry criticisms of Napoleon
III’s foreign policy. France had sent troops to Mexico during the early 1860s and (with the
collaboration of Mexican monarchists) had managed to place Napoleon’s own chosen
ruler—an Austrian archduke named Maximilian—on a precarious Mexican imperial
throne. But this French-style empire lacked broad support, and a popular republican move-
ment overthrew Maximilian’s regime in 1867, soon after Napoleon III withdrew his mili-
tary forces. Maximilian was executed, and the whole Mexican intervention became a
transatlantic imperial fi asco. Meanwhile, a united Italy had been allowed to rise on France’s
borders. And now, contrary to all principles of French national interest observed by French
governments for hundreds of years, a strong and independent power was being allowed to
spread over virtually the whole of Germany. Everywhere people began to feel that war was
inevitable between France and Prussia. Bismarck played on the fears of France among the
leaders and populations in the south German states. South Germany, though in former
times often a willing satellite of France, was now suffi ciently nationalistic to consider such
subservience to a foreign people disgraceful. To Bismarck it seemed that a war between
Prussia and France would frighten the small south German states into a union with Prussia,
leaving only Austria outside—which was what he wanted. To Napoleon III, or at least to
some of his advisers, it seemed that such a war, if successful, would restore public approval
of the Bonapartist Empire. In this infl ammable situation the responsible persons of neither
country worked for peace.
Meanwhile, in a totally unexpected chain of events, a revolution in Spain had driven
the reigning queen into exile, and a Spanish provisional government invited Prince
Leopold of Hohenzollern, the king of Prussia’s cousin, to be constitutional king of Spain.
Installing a member of the Prussian royal family as the head of government in Spain
would clearly provoke strong opposition from France. Three times the Hohenzollern fam-
ily refused the Spanish offer. Bismarck, who could not control such family decisions but
who foresaw the possibility of a usable incident, deviously persuaded the Spanish to issue
the invitation still a fourth time. On July 2, 1870, Paris heard that Prince Leopold had
accepted. The French ambassador to Prussia, Benedetti, at the direction of
his government, met the king of Prussia at the bathing resort of Ems, where
he formally demanded that Prince Leopold’s acceptance be withdrawn. It
was withdrawn, and the French seemed to have their way. Bismarck was
disappointed.
The French government now went still further. It instructed Benedetti to approach the
king again at Ems and demand that at no time in the future would any Hohenzollern ever
become a candidate for the Spanish throne. The king politely declined any such commit-
ment and telegraphed a full report of the conversation to Bismarck at Berlin. Bismarck,
receiving the telegram, which became famous as the “Ems dispatch,” saw a new opportu-
nity, as he put it, to wave a red fl ag before the Gallic bull. He condensed the Ems telegram
for publication, so reducing and abridging it that it seemed to newspaper readers as if a curt
exchange had occurred at Ems, in which the Prussians believed that their king had been
insulted and the French believed that their ambassador had been snubbed. In both coun-
tries the war party demanded satisfaction. On July 19, 1870, on these trivial grounds, and
France thwarts new
Spanish king
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551
with the ostensible issue of the Spanish throne already settled, the irrespon-
sible and decaying government of Napoleon III declared war on Prussia.
Again the war was short. Again Bismarck had taken care to isolate his
enemy in advance. The British generally felt France to be in the wrong. They had been
alarmed by the French operations in Mexico, which suggested an ambition to re-create a
French American empire. The Italians had long been awaiting the chance to seize Rome;
they did so in 1870, when the French withdrew their troops from Rome for use against
Prussia. The Russians had been awaiting the chance to upset a clause of the Peace of 1856
that forbade them to keep naval vessels in the Black Sea. They did so in 1870.
The War of 1870, like the others of the time, failed to become a general European
struggle. Prussia was supported by the south German states. France had no allies. The
French army proved to be technically backward compared with the Prussian. War began
on July 19; on September 2, after the battle of Sedan, the principal French army surren-
dered to the Germans. Napoleon III was himself taken prisoner. On September 4 an insur-
rection in Paris proclaimed the Third Republic. The Prussian and German forces moved
into France and laid siege to the capital. Though the French armies dissolved, Paris refused
to capitulate. For four months it was surrounded and besieged.
A short war
The French suffered a crushing defeat at Sedan in northeastern France during the brief Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Napoleon III was captured along with much of his army. French civilians fl ed from both the battle and advancing Prussian troops, as can be seen in this German engraving of terrifi ed people crossing a dangerous, crowded bridge. (De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images)
65. The Founding of a German Empire and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871552
The German Empire, 1871
With their guns encircling Paris, the German rulers or their representatives assembled at
Versailles. The château and gardens of Versailles, since Louis XVI’s unceremonious depar-
ture in October 1789, had been little more than a vacant monument to a society long since
dead. Here, in the most sumptuous room of the palace, the resplendent Hall of Mirrors,
where the Sun King had once received the deferential approaches of German princes,
Bismarck on January 18, 1871, arranged for the German Empire to be proclaimed. The king
of Prussia received the hereditary title of German emperor. The other German rulers (except-
ing, to be sure, the ruler of Austria, and those whom Bismarck had himself dethroned)
accepted his imperial authority. Ten days later the people of Paris, shivering, hungry, and
helpless, opened their gates to the enemy. France had no government with which Bismarck
could make peace. It was not at all clear what kind of government the country wanted.
Bismarck insisted on the election of a Constituent Assembly by univer-
sal suffrage. He demanded that France pay the German Empire a war indem-
nity of 5 billion gold francs (then an enormous and unprecedented sum) and
cede to it the border region of Alsace and most of Lorraine. Though most
Alsatians spoke German, most of them also felt themselves to be French, having shared in
the general history of France since the seventeenth century. There was strong local protest
at the transfer to Germany; thousands of Alsatians moved to other places within the new
French Republic or to Algeria, and the French never reconciled themselves to this cold-
blooded amputation of their frontier. The peace dictated by Bismarck was embodied in the
treaty of Frankfurt of May 10, 1871. Thereafter, as will be seen, the French Constituent
Assembly gradually proceeded to construct the Third Republic.
The consolidation of Germany transformed the face of Europe. It reversed the dictum
not only of the Peace of Vienna but even of the Peace of Westphalia. The German Empire,
no sooner born, was the strongest state on the continent of Europe. Rapidly
industrialized after 1870, it became more potent still. Bismarck had astutely
exploited the confl icting ambitions of other European states and used three
short wars to bring about a German unifi cation that most European govern-
ments had long sought at all costs to prevent. He outwitted everybody in
turn, including the Germans. The united all-German state that issued from the nationalist
movement was a Germany conquered by Prussia. Within the new empire Prussia directly
controlled about two-thirds of the whole imperial territory. Before such unanswerable
success the Prussian liberals capitulated, and the Prussian parliament passed an indemnity
act; the gist of it was that Bismarck admitted to a certain high-handedness during the con-
stitutional struggle but that the parliament legalized the disputed tax collections ex post
facto, agreeing to forgive and forget, in view of the victory over Austria and its conse-
quences. Thus liberalism gave way to a triumphant nationalism.
The German Empire received substantially the constitution of the North German
Confederation. It was a federation of monarchies, each based in theory on divine or heredi-
tary right. At the same time, in the Reichstag elected by universal male suffrage, the empire
rested on a kind of mass appeal and was in a sense democratic. Yet the country’s ministers
were responsible to the emperor and not to the elected chamber. Moreover, it was the rulers
who joined their territories to the empire, not the peoples. There were no popular plebi-
scites as in Italy. Each state kept its own laws, government, and constitution. The people
of Prussia, for example, remained for Prussian affairs under the rather illiberal constitution
of 1850 with its three-class system of voting; in affairs of the Reich, or empire, however,
they enjoyed an equal vote by universal suffrage. The emperor, who was also the king of
Bismarck’s demands
The strength of the
German state
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553
Prussia, had legal control over the foreign and military policy of the empire. The German
Empire in effect served as a mechanism to magnify the role of Prussia, the Prussian army,
and the East Elbian Prussian aristocracy in world affairs.
The Habsburg Empire after 1848
Bismarck united Germany, but he also divided it, for he left about a sixth of the Germans
outside his German Empire. These Germans of Austria and Bohemia had now to work out
a common future with the dozen other nationalities in the Danubian domain. The clumsi-
ness of the old Habsburg multinational empire is clear enough, but more impressive is
its astonishing capacity to survive the recurring upheavals in central European societies.
Having survived repeated attempts to dismember it during the eighteenth century, the
Napoleonic wars, and the revolutions of 1848, the empire held together
until the cataclysm of the First World War. But the events of the 1850s and
1860s greatly altered its character. Habsburg resilience
The new German Empire was offi cially proclaimed in January 1871 at the historic French palace in Versailles. King Wilhelm of Prussia became the German Emperor. This painting by Anton von Werner shows how Bismarck assembled military offi cers and representatives from all of the constituent German states in the famous “Hall of Mirrors”—a symbolic site of past French grandeur that made the German celebration all the more humiliating for the French. (Bismarck Museum/Bildarchiv Preussicher Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY)
65. The Founding of a German Empire and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871554
The essential question, in a nationalist age, was how the Habsburg government would
react to the challenges that emerged from the expanding campaigns for national self-
expression. By Habsburg, in this period, one means primarily Francis Joseph, who as
emperor from 1848 to 1916 reigned even longer than his famous contemporary, Queen
Victoria. Francis Joseph, like many others, could never shake off his own tradition. His
thoughts turned on his royal house and on its rights. Buffeted unmercifully by the waves of
change and by central European nationalisms, he cordially disliked everything liberal, pro-
gressive, or modern. Personally, Francis Joseph was incapable of enlarged views, ambi-
tious projects, bold decisions, or persevering action. And he lived in a pompous dream
world, surrounded in the imperial court by great noblemen, high churchmen, and bespan-
gled personages of the army.
Yet the government was not idle; it was, if anything, too fertile in devising new deals
and new dispensations. Various expedients were tried after 1849, but none was tried
long enough to see if it would work. For several years the ruling idea was
centralization—to govern the empire through the German language and
with German effi ciency, maintaining the abolition of serfdom as accom-
plished in 1848 (and which required a strong offi cial control over the land-
lords if it was to work in practice) and favoring the building of railroads
and other forms of material progress. This Germanic and bureaucratic centralization was
distasteful to the non-German nationalities, and especially to the Magyars. It is important
to say Magyars, not Hungarians, because the Magyars composed less than half of the very
mixed population within the then existing borders of Hungary. Nevertheless the Magyars,
as the strongest of the non-German groups, and hence the most able to maintain a political
system of their own, felt the Germanic infl uence as most oppressive.
The Compromise of 1867
In 1867 a compromise was worked out between the Germans of Austria-Bohemia and
the Magyars of Hungary. It worked to the common disadvantage of the Slavs, who were
viewed as a backward, less civilized people by both the Germans and the
Magyars. The compromise created a Dual Monarchy, of a kind unparal-
leled in Europe. West of the river Leith was the Empire of Austria; east of
it was the Kingdom of Hungary. The two were now judged exactly equal.
Each had its own constitution and its own parliament, to which the governing ministry in
each country was henceforth to be responsible. The administrative language of Austria
would be German; of Hungary, Magyar. Neither state could intervene in the other’s affairs.
The two countries were joined by the fact that the same Habsburg ruler should always be
emperor in Austria and king in Hungary. Yet the union was not personal only; for, though
there was no common parliament, delegates of the two parliaments were to meet together
alternately in Vienna and Budapest, and there was to be a common ministry for fi nance,
foreign affairs, and war. To this common ministry of Austria-Hungary both Austrians and
Hungarians were to be appointed.
Both Austria and Hungary under the Dual Monarchy were in form constitutional par-
liamentary states, but neither was democratic. In Austria, after much juggling with voting
systems, a true universal male suffrage was instituted in 1907. In Hungary, when the First
World War came in 1914, still only a quarter of the adult male population had the vote.
Socially, the great reform of 1848, the abolition of serfdom, was not allowed to move
toward more upsetting political or economic conclusions. The owners of great landed
estates, especially in Hungary (but also in parts of the Austrian Empire) remained the
Germanic
centralization
A dual monarchy
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55566. Tsarist Russia: Social Change and the Limits of Political Reform
unquestionably dominant class. T hey were surrounded by landless peasants, an agrarian
proletariat, composed partly of lower classes of their own nationality and
partly of entire peasant peoples, like the Slovaks and Serbs, who had no
educated or wealthy class of their own. National and social questions
therefore came together. For some nationalities, especially the Magyars,
not only a national but also a social and economic ascendancy was at stake. Landlordism
became the basic social issue. A landowning class, increasingly educated in the knowl-
edge and organizational methods of modern European cultures, faced a depressed peasant
mass that was generally left out of the advancing civilization of the day.
66. TSARIST RUSSIA: SOCIAL CHANGE AND THE LIMITS OF POLITICAL REFORM
Tsarist Russia after 1856
For Russia also the Crimean War set off a series of changes. The ungainly empire, an “enor-
mous village” as it has been called, stretching from Poland to the Pacifi c, had proved unable
to repel a localized attack by France and Great Britain, into which neither of the Western
National and social
questions
Hungary and Austria formed a political union under a Dual Monarchy and common govern- ment ministries after 1867, but most of the population continued to live a traditional agrarian life. This painting by the Hungarian artist Miklos Barabas, The Arrival of the Bride (1856), portrays one of the enduring rituals of rural societies, which were often romanticized in nineteenth-century nationalism. (Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, Hungary/The Bridgeman Art Library)
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871556
powers had put anything like its full resources. Alexander II (1855–1881), who became tsar
during the war, was no liberal by nature or conviction. But he saw that something drastic must
be done. The prestige of western Europe was at its height, because the most successful gov-
ernments and advanced industrial economies had developed in the western European nation-
states. The reforms in Russia therefore followed, at some distance, the European model.
Imperial Russia was a political organization very diffi cult to describe. Its own subjects
did not know what to make of it. Some, called Westernizers in the mid-nineteenth century,
believed Russia was destined to become more like western Europe. Others, the Slavophiles,
believed Russia was entrusted with a special destiny of its own, which imitation of Europe
would only weaken or pervert.
That Russia differed from other regions of Europe, at least in degree,
was doubted by nobody. The leading institution was the autocracy of the
tsar. This was not exactly the absolutism known in earlier European monar-
chies. In Russia certain very old European conceptions were missing, such as the idea that
spiritual authority is independent of even the mightiest prince or the old feudal idea of
reciprocal duties between king and subject. The notion that people have certain rights or
claims for justice at the hands of power, which no one in the early modern European states
had ever expressly repudiated, was in Russia a somewhat doctrinaire importation from
western Europe. The tsardom did not rule by law; it ran the country by ukase, police action,
and the army. The tsars, since Peter and before, had built up their state very largely by
importing European technical methods and technical experts, often against strong objection
by native Russians of all classes, upon whom the new methods were, when necessary, sim-
ply forced. More than any state in Europe, the Russian Empire was a machine superim-
posed upon its people without organic connection—bureaucracy pure and simple. But as
more Russians entered into contact with the other cultures of Europe many people acquired
European ideas in which the autocracy was not interested—ideas of liberty and fraternity,
of a just and classless society, of individual personality enriched by humane culture and
moral freedom. Russians who began to espouse such ideas found themselves chronically
critical of the government and of Russia itself. The government, massive though it seemed,
was afraid of such people. Any idea arising outside offi cial circles seemed pernicious, and
the press and the universities were as a rule severely censored.
A second fundamental institution, which had grown up with the tsar-
dom, was legalized bondage or serfdom. The majority of the population
living on Russia’s vast landed estates, in the households of wealthy land-
lords, or in rural villages were serfs dependent upon masters. Russian serf-
dom was more onerous than the serfdom that existed in east-central Europe until 1848. It
resembled the slavery of the Americas in that serfs were “owned”; they could be bought and
sold and used in occupations other than agriculture. Some serfs worked the soil, render-
ing unpaid labor service to the gentry. Others could be used by their owners in factories or
mines or rented out for such purposes. Others were more independent, working as artisans
or mechanics, and even traveling about or residing in the cities, but from their earnings they
had to remit certain fees to the lord or return home when he called them. The owners had a
certain paternalistic responsibility for their serfs, and in the villages the gentry constituted a
kind of personal local government. The law, as in the American South, did little or nothing
to interfere between gentry and servile mass, so that the serfs’ day-to-day fortunes depended
on the personality or economic circumstances of their owners.
By the mid-nineteenth century most Russians agreed that serfdom must some day end.
Serfdom was in any case ceasing to be profi table; some two-thirds of all the privately
owned serfs (that is, those not belonging to the tsar or state) were mortgaged as security for
Autocracy of the tsar
The severity of
Russian serfdom
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557
loans at the time of Alexander II’s accession. Increasingly serfdom was recognized as a bad
system of labor relations, making the serfs illiterate and stolid drudges, without incentive,
initiative, self-respect, or pride of workmanship, and also very poor soldiers for the army.
Educated Russians, full of Western ideas, were estranged from the gov-
ernment, from the Orthodox Church, which was an arm of the tsar, and from
the common people of their own country. They felt ill at ease in a nation of
uneducated peasants and a pang of guilt at the virtual slavery on which their
own position rested. Hence arose another distinctive feature of nineteenth-
century Russian life, the intelligentsia. In Russia it seemed that the experience of being
educated, debating ideas, and reading books made the intelligentsia more self-conscious
of themselves as a class apart. They were made up of students, university graduates, and
persons who had a good deal of leisure to read. Such people, while not very free to think,
were more free to think than to do almost anything else. The Russian intelligentsia tended
to embrace sweeping reformist philosophies, and they believed that intellectuals should
play a large role in society. They formed an exaggerated idea of how thinkers could direct
the course of historical change. Their characteristic attitude was one of opposition. Some,
overwhelmed by the mammoth immobility of the tsardom and of serfdom, turned to revo-
lutionary and even terroristic philosophies. This only made the bureaucrats more anxious
and fearful, and the government more fi tfully repressive.
The Emancipation Act of 1861 and Other Reforms
Alexander II, on becoming tsar in 1855, attempted to enlist the support of the liberals
among the intelligentsia by implementing a whole series of signifi cant reforms. He gave
permission to travel outside Russia, eased the controls on the universities, and allowed
the censorship to go relatively unenforced. Newspapers and journals were founded, and
those written by Russian revolutionaries abroad, like the Polar Star of Alexander Herzen in London, penetrated more freely into the country. The result was a great outburst of
public opinion, which was agreed at least on one point, the necessity of emancipating the
peasants. This was in principle hardly a party question. Alexander’s father, Nicholas I,
had been a noted reactionary, who abhorred European liberalism and organized a system
of secret political police until then unparalleled in Europe for its arbitrary and inquisitorial
methods. Yet Nicholas I had taken serious measures to alleviate serfdom. Alexander II,
basically conservative on Russian affairs, proceeded to set up a special branch of the gov-
ernment to study the question. The government did not wish to throw the whole labor
system and economy of the country into chaos, nor to ruin the gentry class without which
it could not govern at all. After many discussions, proposals, and memoranda, an imperial
ukase of 1861 declared serfdom abolished and the peasants free.
By this great decree the peasants became legally free from the control of their former
masters. They were henceforth subjects of the government, not subjects of their previous
owners. It was hoped that they would be stirred by a new sense of human dignity. As one
enthusiastic offi cial put it shortly after emancipation: “The people are erect and trans-
formed; the look, the walk, the speech, everything is changed.” The gentry lost their old
quasi-manorial jurisdiction over the villages. They could no longer exact forced and unpaid
labor or receive fees arising from servitude.
It is important to realize what the Act of Emancipation did and did
not do. Roughly (with great differences from region to region) it allocated
about half the cultivated land to the gentry and half to the former serfs. The
latter had to pay redemption money for the land they received and for the
Western ideas and
education
Land allocation
66. Tsarist Russia: Social Change and the Limits of Political Reform
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871558
N o r t h S e a
ATLANTIC OCEAN
B a l t
i c
S e a
Elbe R.
Oder R.
Tagus R.
Ebro R .
R h
o n
e R
.
Loire R.
Seine R.
English Channe l
Po R.
A driatic
Sea
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
Vistula R. Rhine
R .
GREAT BRITAIN
NORWAY AND
SWEDEN
BELGIUM LUX.
NETHERLANDS
FRANCE
MOROCCO
A U S T R I A -
H U N G A R Y
ITALY
SWITZERLAND
GREE (indepen
DENMARK
SPAIN
PORTUGAL
IRELAND
SCOTLAND
ENGLAND
POLAND
F I N L A
N
AU ST
RIA
HUNGARYCROATIA- SLOVENIA
MONTENEGRO (independent)
BOSNIA
HERZE- GOVINA
SERBIA (Aut.)
A LBA
N IA
ALGERIA (France)
TUNISIA
GERMAN EMPIRE
M AC
EDO N
R
SICILY
Sardinia
Corsica (France)
BALEARIC IS. (France)
Shetland I. (Britain)
MALTA (Britain)
N O
R
W A
Y
S W
E D
E N
LAP L A N D
EAST PRUS.HELIGOLAND
(Britain)
Budapest
Dresden
Lisbon Madrid
Tangier Algiers Tunis
Brussels
Riga
Bordeaux
Marseille
Copenhagen
Prague
Warsaw
Stockholm
Kristiania
Venice
Munich
Berlin
Vienna
Paris
London
Rome
Naples
Fez
Gibraltar (Britain)
Seville
Bilbao
Barcelona
Lyon
Tours
Reims
Liverpool
Belfast
Dublin
Amsterdam
Hamburg
Metz
Strassburg
Milan
Turin
Danzig
Helsing
V
Bremen
Cologne
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559
EUROPE, 1871 This map shows the exis- tence of the newly unifi ed German Empire and a unifi ed Kingdom of Italy. The German domain was enlarged by the incor- poration of Schleswig (in the neck of the Dan- ish Peninsula) and the annexation from France of Alsace and parts of Lorraine (the regions around Strassburg and Metz on the map). From 1871 to 1914, Europe had fewer separate states than at any other time in its history. There were no further changes in national borders during this period except for the voluntary separation of Norway and Swe- den in 1905 and various realignments in south- eastern Europe as the Ottoman Empire with- drew from the Balkans.
0 200 300 miles100
B l a c k S e a
L. Lagoda
Pruth R.
Danub e R.
Dardanelles
Dniester
R .
Volga R.
U ral
R.
C
a s p
i a n
S e
a
A egean
Sea Euphrates R.
Tig ris
R .
D o
n R.
Sea of Azov
Dnieper R.
R U S S I A N E M P I R E
ECE ndent)
N D
CRIMEA
SYRIA
BULGARIA
NIA
ROM AN
IA
(Aut ono
m ou
s)
CYPRUS (Turkish)
CRETE (Turkish)
O T T O M A N E M P I R E
DOBRUJA
BESSARABIA
ARABIA
M E S O
P O T A
M I A
PERSIA
C A U C A S I A
Constantinople
Odessa
Sinope
Athens
St. Petersburg
Kiev
gfors
ilna
Rostov
Baghdad
Tabriz
Baku
Astrakhan
Moscow
Smyrna
Stevastopol
Orenburg
66. Tsarist Russia: Social Change and the Limits of Political Reform
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871560
fees that the gentry lost. The government actually paid the redemption money directly to
the gentry at the time of emancipation, but the emancipated serfs were required to repay
these funds to the government over many years and decades. The Russian aristocracy
was thus far from weakened; in place of a kind of human property largely mortgaged
anyway, they now had clear possession of roughly half the land, they received the redemp-
tion money, and they were rid of obligations to the peasants.
The peasants, on the other hand, now owned about half the arable land in their own
right—a considerable amount by the standards of almost any European country. They did
not, however, possess it according to the principles of private property or independent
farming that had become prevalent in Europe. The peasant land, when redeemed, became
the collective property of the ancient peasant village assembly, or mir. The village, as a unit, was responsible to the government for repayment of the redemption money and for
collection of the necessary sums from its individual members. The village assembly, in
default of collection, might require forced labor from the defaulter or a member of his fam-
ily; and it could prevent peasants from moving away from the village, lest those remaining
bear the whole burden of payment. It could (as in the past) assign and reassign certain
lands to its members for tillage and otherwise supervise cultivation as a joint concern. To
keep the village community intact, the government presently forbade the selling or mort-
gaging of land to persons outside the village. This tended to preserve the peasant society
but also to discourage the investment of outside capital, with which equipment might be
purchased, and so to retard agricultural improvement and the growth of wealth.
Not all peasants within the village unit were equal. As in France before
the Revolution, some had the right to work more land than others. Some were
only day laborers. Others had rights of inheritance in the soil (for not all land
was subject to reassignment by the commune) or rented additional parcels of
land belonging to the gentry. These lands they worked by hiring other peas-
ants for wages. None of the Russian peasants, however, after the emancipation, possessed
full individual freedom of action. In their movements and obligations, as in their thoughts,
they were restricted by their villages as they had once been restricted by their lords.
Alexander II proceeded to overhaul the legal system with reforms that brought the
Russian system closer to the judicial practices in western European countries. With the
disappearance of the lord’s jurisdiction over his peasants a new system of local courts was
needed in any case, but the opportunity was taken to reform the courts from bottom to top.
The arbitrariness of authority and defenselessness of the subject were the inveterate evils.
They were greatly mitigated by the edict of 1864. Trials were made public, and private
persons received the right to be represented in court by lawyers of their own choosing.
All class distinctions in judicial matters were abolished, although in practice peasants con-
tinued to be subject to harsh disadvantages. A clear sequence of lower and higher courts
was established. Requirements were laid down for the professional training of judges, who
henceforth received stated salaries and were protected from administrative pressure. A
system of juries on the English model was introduced.
While thus attempting to establish a rule of law, the tsar also moved
in the direction of allowing self-government. He hoped to win over the lib-
erals and to shoulder the upper and middle classes with some degree of
public responsibility. He created, again by an edict of 1864, a system of
provincial and district councils called zemstvos. Elected by various elements, including
the peasants, the zemstvos gradually went into operation and took up matters of education,
medical relief, public welfare, food supply, and road maintenance in their localities. Their
Inequality among
peasants
A system of
self-government
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561
The emancipation of the peasants in Russia transformed the legal status of the former serfs and opened opportunities for the development of more prosperous peasant communities. There was still much poverty in the Russian countryside after 1861, but the people who are drinking and playing music outside this rural Russian house seem to be part of a more prosperous post- emancipation peasant class. (Fotosearch/Getty Images)
66. Tsarist Russia: Social Change and the Limits of Political Reform
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871562
great value was in developing civic sentiment among those who took part in them. Many
liberals urged a representative body for all Russia, a Zemsky Sobor or Duma, which, how-
ever, Alexander II refused to concede. After 1864 his policy became more cautious, and
he resisted the kinds of political institutions that contributed to the development of more
liberal nation-states in other societies. A rebellion in Poland in 1863 inclined him to take
advice from those who favored repression. He began to mollify the vested interests that
had been disgruntled by the reforms and to whittle down some of the concessions already
granted. But the essence of the reforms remained unaffected.
Revolutionism in Russia
The autocrat who thus undertook to liberalize Russia barely escaped assassination in 1866,
had fi ve shots fi red at him in 1873, missed death by half an hour in 1880 when his imperial
dining room was dynamited, and in 1881 was to be killed by a bomb. The revolutionaries
were not pleased with the reforms, which if successful would merely strengthen the exist-
ing order. Some of the dissatisfi ed intelligentsia in the 1860s began to call themselves
“nihilists”: they believed in “nothing”—except science—and took a cynical view of the
reforming tsar and his zemstvos. The peasants, saddled with heavy redemption payments,
remained basically unsatisfi ed, and intellectuals toured the villages fanning this discontent.
Revolutionaries developed a mystic conception of the revolutionary role of the Russian
masses. Socialists, after the failure of socialism in Europe in the Revolution of 1848, came
in many cases to believe, as Alexander Herzen wrote, that the true future of socialism lay
in Russia, because of the very weakness of capitalism in Russia and the existence of a kind
of collectivism already established in the village assemblies or communes.
More radical than Herzen were the anarchist Bakunin and his disciple
Nechaiev. In their People’s Justice these two called for terrorism not only against tsarist offi cials but against liberals also. As they wrote in the Cate- chism of a Revolutionist, the true revolutionary “is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion—the revolution. . . . He has severed every link
with the social order and with the entire civilized world. . . . Everything which promotes
the success of the revolution is moral, everything which hinders it is immoral.” Terrorism
(which in that time generally meant assassination) was rejected by many of the revolution-
aries, especially by those who in the 1870s took up the scientifi c socialism of Karl Marx.
To Marx it did not seem that violence against some specifi c government offi cials would
advance an inevitable historical or social process. But other groups, recognizing the inspira-
tion of men like Bakunin and Nechaiev, organized secret terrorist societies. One of these,
the People’s Will, determined to assassinate the tsar. In an autocratic state, they held, there
was no other road to justice and freedom.
Alexander II, alarmed by this underground menace, which of course did not escape
the attention of the police, again turned for support to the liberals. The liberals, who were
themselves threatened by the revolutionaries, had become estranged from the government
by its failure to follow through with the reforms of the early 1860s. Now, in 1880, to rally
support, the tsar again relaxed the autocratic system. He abolished the dreaded secret police
set up by his father, allowed the press to discuss most political subjects freely, and encour-
aged the zemstvos to do the same. Further to associate representatives of the public with the
government, he proposed, not exactly a parliament, but two nationally elected commissions
to sit with the council of state. He signed the edict to this effect on March 13, 1881, and on
the same day was assassinated, not by a demented individual acting wildly and alone, but
by the joint efforts of the highly trained members of the terrorist society, the People’s Will.
Bakunin and
anarchism
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56367. Nation-Building in the Wider Atlantic World: The United States and Canada
Alexander III, upon his father’s death, abandoned the project for elected commissions
and during his whole reign, from 1881 to 1894, reverted to a program of brutal resistance to
liberals and revolutionaries alike. Although the new regime established by peasant emanci-
pation, judicial reform, and the zemstvos was allowed to continue, the broader process of
creating new political institutions for a more modern state did not move forward in late
nineteenth-century Russian society. How Russia fi nally received a parliament in 1905 is
explained below in the chapter on the Russian Revolution. At present it is enough to have
seen how even tsarist Russia, under Alexander II, shared in a liberal movement that was
then at its height. The abolition of serfdom, putting both aristocrat and peasant more fully
into a money economy, opened the way for capitalistic development within the empire.
Between the two confi ning walls of autocracy and revolutionism—equally hard and unyield-
ing—European ideas of law, liberty, and humanity began to spread in a ten-
tative way; and the Russian government, with its own halting methods,
began to move toward the political and legal consolidation that was develop-
ing more rapidly in the national states of western Europe.
67. NATION-BUILDING IN THE WIDER ATLANTIC WORLD: THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
The history of Europe, long interconnected with the history of other societies around the
world, remained connected to the history of the new American nations that had gained their
independence from European empires in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
European cultures were still infl uential in all parts of the Americas, and Europeans were
much involved in the North American societies that emerged from earlier English, French,
and Spanish colonies. The United States steadily expanded its economic and political
power during the nineteenth century, Canada moved gradually toward independence from
Great Britain, and Mexico struggled to protect its sovereignty and lands against invasions
from both the United States and European forces coming from France. This book mostly
examines the societies, cultures, and states of Europe, but the signifi cance of European
nation-building becomes more apparent within the context of other developments in the
transatlantic world. The European processes and models of national consolidation also infl u-
enced North America—where many Europeans immigrated during the nineteenth century
and where the growing populations were also constructing more unifi ed national states.
Between autocracy
and revolutionism
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1854–1871
1854–1856 France and Britain join with Ottoman Turkey to defeat Russia in the Crimean War
1861 Italians establish the unifi ed Kingdom of Italy
1861 Tsar Alexander II abolishes serfdom in Russia
1861–1865 Civil War in the United States; federal union is upheld and slavery is abolished
1867 Austria and Hungary join together in a “Dual Monarchy” under the Habsburg
ruler Francis Joseph
1867 Creation of the independent Dominion of Canada
1870 Prussia defeats France in brief war; Napoleon III abdicates and Parisians pro-
claim a Third French Republic
1871 King Wilhelm of Prussia becomes emperor in newly established German Empire
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871564
Immigration, Civil War, and National Consolidation in the United States
The immigrants to the United States in this era (except for an uncounted, illegal importa-
tion of enslaved Africans) came almost entirely from Europe, and before 1860 most of the
immigration fl owed from Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany. Few concessions were made
to the non-English immigrant populations. English was the language of the public schools,
the police, law courts, local government, and public documents, all of which
contributed to the nationalism and new national identity that spread across
American society. The immigrants did not constitute minorities in the Immigration
The victories of Union armies during the American Civil War preserved the unity of the United States and also gave the national government the power to abolish slavery. This illustration from a French journal in 1863 provides a European image of newly freed people celebrating President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and leaving the places where they had been enslaved. Lincoln’s proclamation is posted on the side of the coach. The abolition of slavery became another example of how the consolidation of large nation-states took place on both sides of the Atlantic. (RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY)
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565
European sense. They generally learned to speak English, and they were more than willing
to accept the eighteenth-century political traditions of republicanism, self-government, and
individual liberty. Immigrants also embraced the popular belief in the social component of
America’s national creed, which confi dently asserted that the future would be better in
America than either the present or the past in Europe. Such ideas contributed to a collective
affi rmation of national destiny and unity among the nation’s diverse social classes and
immigrant communities.
But at the same time the United States was falling to pieces, in large part because the
Industrial Revolution in the Atlantic world had different effects on the U.S. North and
South. The South became closely connected to the British economy, producing raw cotton
for British textile mills and depending on an enslaved labor force to generate the exports
that were the region’s main economic product. In the North, the Industrial Revolution led
to the building of factories, for which the manufacturers needed both tariff
protection and new workers, many of whom were recent immigrants from
Europe. Confl icts over free trade and tariffs thus became entangled with the
issue of slavery; and the confl ict over slavery became part of a larger debate
about individual rights and liberty on both sides of the Atlantic. Over the course of the
nineteenth century, slavery had come under increasing moral condemnation in both
Europe and the Americas. It was abolished in the British colonies in 1833, in the French
colonies in 1848, and in the Spanish American republics at different dates in the fi rst half
of the century. Similarly, legal serfdom was abolished in the Habsburg possessions in
1848 and in Russia in 1861. The slave system in the American South was increasingly out
of step with the nineteenth-century liberal movement toward individual legal and
political rights.
The westward expansion of the United States thus extended a confl ict that France and
Great Britain had once waged for control of lands beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Now
the Northern and Southern states in the American republic competed to make the western
territories either free or slave. In 1846 the United States made war upon
Mexico by methods that anticipated the aggressive tactics Bismarck would
soon use to expand the territories of Prussia. Many Northerners denounced
the war as an act of Southern aggression, but the new conquests became
permanent possessions of the United States. This territory, which extended from Texas to
the Pacifi c coast, was more than half of the land in the entire Mexican Republic, and its
conquest by the United States showed how European methods of national state expansion
and consolidation were also used in North America.
The Mexican-American War further intensifi ed the sectional confl ict in the United
States, especially after the fi rst new state created in this vast new region of the country,
California, joined the Union as a free state. The American opponents of slavery, the Aboli-
tionists, were part of a transatlantic humanitarian movement; and their political goals
somewhat resembled the aspirations of the radical democrats who came forward in Europe
in 1848. Meanwhile, a growing sectionalism in the American South came to
resemble the new nationalism felt by many peoples in Europe who were
seeking to separate from larger empires or older monarchical states. Like
the Magyar landowners of the Austrian empire, Southern white elites began
to believe that their way of life could be best maintained by separation from a Union in
which they were likely to become a permanent political minority. When the new, Northern-
based Republican party was able to elect Abraham Lincoln as the American president in
1860, the advocates for Southern independence moved quickly to secede from the United
States and to form the Confederate States of America. This secession set off a prolonged
Northern and
Southern economies
Mexican-American
War
Secession of the
American South
67. Nation-Building in the Wider Atlantic World: The United States and Canada
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871566
civil war, which attracted wide international attention, in part because some of the battles
were as large as the major battles in Europe during the Napoleonic wars.
European governments, while never recognizing the Confederacy, were mostly par-
tial to the South. The United States stood for principles still considered revolutionary in
Europe, so that while the European working classes generally favored the North, the upper
classes were willing enough to see the North American republic collapse into fragments.
In this respect, Great Britain and France viewed the breakup of the United States as a
strategic opportunity that they had formerly seen in the breakup of the Spanish Empire: an
independent Confederate nation might provide convenient access to agricultural com-
modities that were needed in European factories, and it might open a new
tariff-free market in which Europeans could sell their manufactured goods.
The breakup of the United States might also offer new opportunities for
European expansion in other parts of the Americas. It was, for example,
during the American Civil War that Napoleon III sent a French army to
Mexico and set up a kind of satellite empire under the Austrian archduke Maximilian. The
most serious European attempt to challenge the Monroe Doctrine, violate the indepen-
dence of a Latin American republic, and revive European colonialism thus occurred at the
time when the United States was in dissolution.
But the North won the war and the Union was upheld; the Mexicans soon got rid of their
unwanted European emperor; and Tsar Alexander II sold Alaska to the United States. More
generally, the war ended the older idea that the United States was a Union or confederation
from which member states might withdraw at will. The outcome of the American Civil War
therefore settled a political argument about the meaning of the American republic, and the
United States in the 1860s affi rmed the increasingly popular view of the
nation-state as it was defi ned in Europe. The United States would be a
national state, composed not of member states but of a unitary national peo-
ple irrevocably bound together. This doctrine was now written explicitly into
the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, which pronounced all Americans to be citi-
zens not of their several states but of the United States. Meanwhile, the Thirteenth Amend-
ment abolished slavery everywhere in the country (without compensation to the former
slaveholders) and linked the United States somewhat belatedly to the broader nineteenth-
century European campaign to abolish slavery and serfdom. The Northern triumph in the
Civil War thus ensured the continuing consolidation of a unifi ed North American nation that
could be counted among those countries such as Germany and Italy that were also unifying
diverse territories under more centralized national governments during this same era.
The Union victory in the American Civil War expanded the infl uence of Northern
industrialists and others who sought to advance the nation’s internal economic development
through manufacturing and fi nance. As in France under Napoleon III, there was a good deal
of corruption, fraud, and irresponsible speculation, but industry boomed, the cities grew, and
the American national state became more like other industrializing nations
in Europe as it promoted the building of railroads, provided public lands
for the creation of state-supported universities, and facilitated the growth of
new business corporations. In short, the American Civil War, which might
have reduced English-speaking America and its diverse regions into com-
peting minor republics, resulted instead in the economic and political consolidation of a
large nation-state, liberal and more democratic in its political principles, offi cially opposed
to slavery, and committed to the expansion of a capitalist industrial economy. In all of these
ways, the history of the United States in this era can be seen as part of a wider process of
nation-building throughout the Atlantic world.
European responses to
American Civil War
The Union upheld
Infl uence of business
and fi nance
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567
The Dominion of Canada: A New Model for Decolonization
North of the United States, at the time of the American Civil War, lay a vast territory that was
still part of the British Empire and in varying degrees still dependent on Great Britain.
The European population in this territory had originated in three great
streams. One part was French, settled in the St. Lawrence Valley since the
seventeenth century. A second part was made up of descendants of United
Empire Loyalists, the old seaboard colonists who had fl ed from the United
States after the American Revolution. A third part consisted of recent immigrants from Great
Britain, men and women of the working classes who had left the home country to improve
their lives in America.
Although there were recurring tensions and confl icts between the French-speaking
and English-speaking populations, the people in Canada had shown little inclination to
separate from Great Britain. During the 1840s and 1850s, however, the British government
moved toward a new system of self-government for its enormous North American colony.
This transition drew on the recommendations of Lord Durham, a Whig
political leader who had served as a governor in Canada and also written an
infl uential report on Canadian affairs. Durham’s Report was long regarded
as one of the classic documents in the rise of the British Commonwealth of
Nations—the international system that gradually evolved out of the modern British
Empire. His recommendations included proposals for economic improvements such as the
building of railroads, but Durham’s Report also put forward new political plans. He urged
the granting of virtual self-government for Canada (united in one great
province of French- and English-speaking populations) and the introduc-
tion of the British system of “responsible government,” in which the prime
minister and cabinet should be responsible to and under the control of the
elected assembly in the province. The British governor would become a kind of legal and
ceremonial fi gure like the sovereign in Great Britain.
Lord Durham’s proposals were generally adopted, and Canada moved toward the
autonomous governing of its internal affairs. The principle of responsible government was
established by the late 1840s, so that the British governors of Canada allowed the elected
assembly to adopt policies and appoint or remove ministers as it chose. This system
became the foundation for an even more independent Canadian state that began to emerge
while the Civil War was tearing apart the United States. In the face of this example (and
despite the concerns of many French Canadians), the Canadian political elites decided to
form a strong union in which all powers were to rest in the central government except those
specifi cally assigned to the various provinces. A new federal constitution,
drafted in Canada by Canadians, was passed by the British Parliament in
1867 as the British North America Act, which constitutionally established
the Dominion of Canada. The eastern maritime provinces (Nova Scotia,
New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) joined Quebec and Ontario in
the new Dominion. These political arrangements established a united country that facili-
tated rapid westward expansion to the Pacifi c Coast, and Canada became another example
of the transatlantic movement toward modern national consolidation.
The Dominion of Canada, though at fi rst not large in population, possessed from the
beginning a signifi cance beyond the mere number of its people. It was the fi rst example of
successful devolution, or granting of political liberty and independence, within one of the
European colonial empires. It embodied principles that Edmund Burke and Benjamin
Franklin had vainly recommended a century before to keep the thirteen colonies loyal to
European population
Lord Durham’s
Report
Self-government
British North
America Act
67. Nation-Building in the Wider Atlantic World: The United States and Canada
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Chapter 13 The Consolidation of Large Nation-States, 1859–1871568
Great Britain. T he Dominion after 1867 moved forward from independence in internal mat-
ters to independence in such external affairs as tariffs, diplomacy, and the decisions of war
and peace. Although Britain would continue to expand its empire in other
parts of the world after 1870, its policies in Canada pioneered the develop-
ment of a “dominion status” that became the precedent for other European
“settler societies” that later gained political independence—Australia (1901),
New Zealand (1907), and the Union of South Africa (1910). A similar model
was also used in the 1920s, temporarily, in Ireland. By the middle of the twentieth century
the same idea, or what may be called the Canadian idea, was also applied in various ways to
the worldwide process of decolonization as the British Empire gave up control of its colo-
nies in Asia and Africa. Despite their often diffi cult and confl icted transitions to national
independence, people in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the former British colonies in Africa
chose to become postcolonial republics that would remain loosely and voluntarily joined
together and to Great Britain in a Commonwealth of Nations.
More immediately, in America, the founding of the Canadian dominion stabilized
relations between British North America and the United States. Both Canada and the
United States regarded their long national border as fi nal; and each of these expanding
nations now set out to develop their national territories (a process that would include the
displacement of indigenous peoples and new internal confl icts among the different regions
of each nation). The withdrawal of British control from Canadian affairs also furthered the
long-developing conception of an American continent entirely free from European politi-
cal control, though the European model of state-building and national cultures would
remain infl uential long after the departure of the last British colonial administrators.
The unifying North American nations therefore exemplifi ed a wider process of
national consolidation that spanned the Atlantic Ocean and spread across Europe to Russia
(reaching also into Japan). It was an era in which emerging modern societies were revolu-
tionized economically by the railroad and steamship and also revolutionized
politically by the consolidation of new national political institutions. These
states increasingly embodied certain liberal and constitutional principles,
or at least the machinery of representative government. But the whole earth
had also become an arena in which powerful national states sought to pro-
mote their economic and political interests with little respect for the constitutional prin-
ciples that were becoming important in domestic political institutions. The most powerful
European states in 1871 included Great Britain, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, and
Russia. Britain had developed a new political mechanism for the emergence of a postco-
lonial nation in Canada, but the main European powers were at this time more interested
in acquiring colonies than in promoting decolonization. Whether the newly united Italian
nation should be called a Great Power was not yet clear. All agreed that the United States
would eventually play a large role in international affairs, but it had not yet become a major
infl uence on the politics and economies of Europe.
Model for dominion
status
Power of national
states
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
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569
C h a p t e r 14 EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION,
1871–1914:
ECONOMY AND POLITICS
Half a century elapsed between the period of national consolidation described in the last chapter
and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
In this half-century European civilization achieved
its greatest power in global politics, developed
its leading role in the global economy, and also
exerted its maximum infl uence upon peoples out-
side Europe.
For Europe and the European world the years
1871 to 1914 were marked by hitherto unparalleled
material and industrial growth; international peace;
domestic stability; the advance of constitutional,
representative, and democratic government; and
continued faith in science, reason, and progress.
But in these very years, in politics, economics, phi-
losophy, and the arts, there were also new trends
operating to undermine the liberal premises and tenets of this European civilization. Mean-
while, a new wave of European imperialism spread across Africa and Asia, creating new
colonial empires, new global economic connections, and new international and cultural
confl icts. All of these developments contributed to and refl ected the European ascendancy
before 1914, and all produced a legacy that has decisively infl uenced the modern world
down to our own time.
For purposes of historical analysis, we must separate the European ascendancy in this
complex era into different thematic strands. This chapter therefore examines economic and
political trends in Europe after 1871, the next describes new European social and cultural
movements that became infl uential during this period, and the following chapter discusses
the worldwide impact of European imperialism. By 1914, the institutions and ideas of
modern European civilization were spreading across most of the world, but these same
institutions and ideas were also facing new critical challenges from within Europe and
from people on other continents who resented the European domination of their econo-
mies, governments, and cultures.
68. The Modern “Civilized
World”
69. Basic Demography:
The Increase
of Europe’s Population
70. The World Economy
of the Nineteenth Century
71. The Advance
of Democracy:
Third French Republic,
United Kingdom,
German Empire
Chapter emblem: Detail from a photograph of Italian immigrants arriving in New York about 1900. (The Art
Archive at Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics570
68. THE MODERN “CIVILIZED WORLD”
Materialistic and Nonmaterialistic Ideals
With the extension of the nation-state system Europe was more clearly divided among self-
conscious political entities that jealously guarded their borders and sovereign interests. Its
unity lay in a kind of modern historical convergence that was moving Europeans toward
similar ways of social life and similar cultural beliefs (despite the growth of nationalism,
which, on a deeper level, expressed commonly held assumptions about human societies).
This convergence also developed in countries where large numbers of Europeans continued
to immigrate, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Europe
and its social, cultural offshoots constituted what Europeans and North Americans increas-
ingly called the “civilized world” or the “West.” Other regions—mostly in Asia, Africa,
and Latin America—were described by Europeans as “backward.” Europeans and other
Westerners were thus extremely conscious and inordinately proud of their civilization in
the half-century before 1914. They believed it to be the well-deserved outcome of centuries
of progress. Believing themselves to be the most advanced branch of mankind in the most
important areas of human endeavor, they assumed that all peoples should respect the same
social ideals—that insofar as other peoples were unwilling or unable to adopt them, they
were “backward,” and that insofar as they did adopt European ways, they became “civi-
lized” in their turn. Such ideas shaped the ideology and practice of imperial-
ism, which entered a dynamic new phase in the late nineteenth century.
The ideals of this European or “Western” civilization were in part
materialistic. If Europeans and Westerners considered their civilization to
be better in 1900 than in 1800, or better than the ways of non-Western peo-
ples at the same time, it was because they took pride in having more wealth and a higher
standard of living, which gave them more kinds of food and clothing, new household com-
forts, and better sanitary facilities. Europeans also saw clear signs of material progress in
their modern ocean liners, railroads, streetcars, and telegraph systems; and after about 1880
they were beginning to use telephones and electric lights. But the ideal of civilization, as
Europeans defi ned it, was by no means exclusively materialistic. Knowledge as such, cor-
rect or truthful knowledge, was held to be a civilized attainment—scientifi c knowledge of
nature, in place of superstition or demonology; geographical knowledge, by which civi-
lized people were aware of the earth as a whole with its general contours and diverse inhab-
itants. The ideal was also profoundly moral, derived from Christianity, but now secularized
and detached from religion. An Englishman, Isaac Taylor, in his Ultimate Civilization, published in 1860, defi ned this moral ideal by listing the contrasting “relics of barbarism”
that he thought would ultimately disappear from human history—“Polygamy, Infanticide,
Legalized Prostitution, Capricious Divorce, Sanguinary and Immoral Games, Infl iction of
Torture, Caste and Slavery.” Several of these had been unknown to the approved customs
of Europe at least since the coming of Christianity (though prostitution was more or less
tolerated in almost all European societies). Torture had gone out of use by about 1800,
even in the illiberal European states; and legalized caste and slavery were gradually abol-
ished by Western countries in the course of the nineteenth century. But most non-Western
peoples, in 1860, still allowed or tolerated two or three of the “relics” that Taylor placed
outside the realm of civilized behavior.
Apart from these cultural conceptions of modern civilization, there were
(and are) certain other indices, more purely quantitative, that sociologists
worked out to show the level of advancement of a given society. One of
The ideals of
European civilization
Indices of
advancement
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57168. The Modern “Civilized World”
these was the death rate, or number of persons per thousand of population who died each
year. In England, France, and Sweden the “true” death rate (or death rate regardless of the
proportion of infants and old people, who are most susceptible to death) fell from about
25 (per 1,000 per year) before 1850, to 19 in 1914 and 18 in the 1930s. Indeed, before
the Second World War, it stood seemingly stabilized at about 18 in all countries of north-
western Europe, the United States, and the British dominions. Death rates in countries not
“modern” have usually run over 40 even in favorable times. A closely related index was
infant mortality, which fell rapidly after 1870 in all countries affected by medical science.
Thus a woman under more modern conditions had to go through pregnancy and childbirth
less often to produce the same number of surviving children. Another index of improving
conditions was life expectancy, or the age that a person, at birth, had an even chance of
attaining. In England life expectancy at birth rose from 40 years in the 1840s to 59 in 1933
and to 78 at the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century. In India in 1931 it was less than
27 years. It had risen to about 65 by 2010. Still another index was the literacy rate, or pro-
portion of persons above a certain age (such as ten) able to read and write. In northwestern
Europe by 1900 the literacy rate approached 100, whereas in some countries of the world
at that time it had still not risen very far above zero. A further basic index of social change
could be found in the productivity of labor, or amount produced by one worker in a given
expenditure of time. This is often diffi cult to compute, especially for earlier periods for
which statistical data are lacking. In the 1930s, however, the productivity of a farmer in
Denmark was over ten times that of a farmer in Albania. All northwestern Europe was
above the European average in this respect with the exception of Ireland, whereas Ireland,
Spain, Portugal, Italy and all eastern Europe fell below it.
The essence of civilized living has doubtless always evolved in the intangibles, in
the way in which people use their minds and in the attitudes they form toward others or
toward the conditions and planning of their own lives. The intangibles, however, can carry
quite different meanings for persons of different cultures or ideologies. On the quantitative
criteria there is less disagreement. People in almost all societies wish to lower the death
rate, raise the literacy rate, and increase the productivity of human exertion. Whatever we
might say about the intangible qualities of a civilized society, if we apply quantitative or
sociological indices alone, we can say that for about four decades after 1870 Europe was in
fact the political, economic, and cultural center of a modern civilization that was develop-
ing new material advantages and expanding rapidly around the world.
The “Zones” of Civilization
Or rather, a certain region of Europe was the center. For there were really two Europes in
the late nineteenth century, an inner zone and an outer. A Frenchman writing in the 1920s
about the two Europes that had risen since 1870, called the inner zone the “Europe of
steam,” and bounded it by an imaginary line joining Glasgow, Stockholm, Danzig,
Trieste, Florence, and Barcelona. It included not only Great Britain but Belgium,
Germany, France, northern Italy, and the western portions of the Austrian Empire. Virtu-
ally all heavy European industry was located in this zone. Here the railway network was
thickest. Here the wealth of Europe was concentrated, in the form both of a high living
standard and of accumulations of capital. Here likewise were almost all the laboratories
and scientifi c activity of Europe. Here, in the same zone, lay the strength of constitutional
and parliamentary government and of liberal, humanitarian, socialist, and reformist move-
ments of many kinds. In this zone the death rate was low, life expectancy was high,
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics572
conditions of health and sanitation were at their best, literacy was almost universal, pro-
ductivity of labor was impressive. To the same zone, for practical purposes, belonged
certain regions of large-scale European settlement overseas, especially the
post-Civil War United States.
The outer zone included most of Ireland, most of the Iberian and
Italian peninsulas, and all Europe east of what was then Germany, Bohe-
mia, and Austria proper. The outer zone was agricultural, though the productivity of
agriculture, per farm worker or per acre, was far less than in the inner zone. The people
were poorer, more illiterate, and more likely to die young. The wealthy were landlords,
The outer zone
TRAIN IN THE SNOW by Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)
Trains became one of the new symbols of modernity during the nineteenth century, but few artists saw them as appropriate subjects for paintings. Monet and other Impressionists, how- ever, wanted to apply their artistic techniques to the familiar objects of everyday life, includ- ing the iron shapes of a passing locomotive. In this typical Impressionist rendering of modern technology, the solid mass of the train melts into the play of light and the indeterminate grays of a dull winter day. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
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57369. Basic Demography: The Increase of Europe’s Population
often absentees. Most people in the outer zone increasingly supported themselves after
1870 by selling grain, livestock, wool, or lumber to the more industrialized inner zone
but they were too poor to purchase many manufactured products in return. To obtain
capital, the outer-zone societies borrowed in London or Paris. Their social and political
philosophies were characteristically imported from Germany or other western European
cultures. They borrowed engineers and technicians from the fi rst zone to build bridges and
install telegraph systems, and they sent their youth to universities in the fi rst zone to study
medicine or other professions. Many areas of European settlement overseas, for example
in Latin America and the agrarian parts of the United States, may also be thought of at that
time as belonging to this outer zone.
Beyond the European world lay a third zone, the immense reaches of Asia and Africa,
all viewed as “backward” by the standards or cultural assumptions of Europe, with the
exception of modernizing Japan; and it was these areas of the world, after 1870, that
became most widely colonized by Europe and most disrupted by the “new imperialism”
of the major European powers. Much of the world’s history since 1870 could be written
as a recurring story of the economic and cultural relations among these three zones.
But it is necessary in all human matters to guard against formulas that are too simple
and also to recognize the constant changes as well as continuities in the histories of all
human societies.
69. BASIC DEMOGRAPHY: THE INCREASE OF EUROPE’S POPULATION
European and World Population Growth since 1650
All continents except Africa gained enormously in population in the three centuries fol-
lowing 1650, but it was Europe that grew the most. There is little doubt that the propor-
tion of Europeans in the world’s total, including those of European origin in other
continents, reached its maximum for all time between 1850 and the Second World War
(broad estimates for global population trends, beginning with 1650, are given in the table
on p. 574).
The causes of the rise in population after 1650 cannot be positively
known. Some of them obviously operated in Asia as well as Europe. In
Europe the organized sovereign states, as established in the seventeenth
century, put an end to a long period of civil wars, stopping the chronic
violence and marauding, with the accompanying insecurity of agriculture and family life,
which were more deadly than wars fought between governments. Similarly, the Tokugawa
shogunate (1600–1868) kept peace in Japan, and the Manchu or Qing dynasty (1644–1912)
brought a long period of order in China. The British rule in India and the Dutch in Java
greatly reduced the autonomous power of local rulers, but it also curbed internal violence
and famines, thus helping populations to grow very rapidly. All such factors, which allowed
more people to remain alive longer, also favored the stability of families and the birth
and raising of children. Death rates could fall and birth rates could rise from similar causes.
The great exception to the swelling rise of population was Africa, where the slave trade
removed over 10 million people (and what would have been an even larger number of their
descendants) in three or four centuries, and where slave raiding led to the disruption of
African cultures. In the Americas the native Indians were devastated by diseases brought
from Europe to which at fi rst they had no immunity.
Causes of
demographic growth
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics574
ESTIMATED POPULATION OF THE WORLD BY CONTINENTAL AREAS*
Millions
1650 1750 1850 1900 1950 2000
Europe 100 150 263 396 547 727
United States and Canada 1 2 26 82 172 313
Australasia-Oceania 2 2 2 6 13 31
Predominantly “European” 103 154 291 484 732 1,071
Latin America 12 16 38 74 167 521
Africa 100 106 111 133 230 811
Asia 330 515 822 959 1,403 3,719
Predominantly “Non-European” 442 637 971 1,166 1,800 5,051
World Total 545 791 1,262 1,650 2,532 6,123
Percentages
Europe 18.3 19.1 20.8 24.0 21.6 11.9
United States and Canada .2 .2 2.1 5.0 6.8 5.1
Australasia-Oceania .4 .2 .2 .3 .5 .5
Predominantly “European” 18.9 19.5 23.1 29.3 28.9 17.5
Latin America 2.2 2.0 3.0 4.5 6.6 8.5
Africa 18.3 13.0 8.8 8.1 9.1 13.3
Asia 60.6 65.0 65.1 58.1 55.4 60.7
Predominantly “Non-European” 81.1 80.0 76.9 70.7 71.1 82.5
World Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
*This table is designed to show only the numbers and proportion of people living in predominantly “European”
cultures (that is, descended from societies with European languages and traditions) and “non-European” cul-
tures over the modern period. It reveals the rapid increase in the proportion of “Europeans” in this sense from
1750 to 1900, and a steady decline in the “European” proportion during the twentieth century. The estimates
show general population patterns rather than precise numbers (which cannot really be known). Demographers
often revise their estimates for the number of people in past societies, and this table, though a useful overview,
is subject to serious reservations. The population of the former Soviet Union is divided between Europe and
Asia, but millions of Russian “Europeans” have long lived in the Asian parts of the former U.S.S.R. It must also
be remembered that the population of the United States consists of Africans, Asians, and Native Americans as
well as Europeans, that the people in Latin American countries now generally speak a European language and
differ widely in their racial composition, and that there are well over 4 million persons of European origin in
southern Africa. In short, the table has nothing to do with race, for there are many whites who do not live in
“European” cultural zones and many nonwhite people in the Americas and elsewhere (including Europe) who
participate fully in institutions and languages derived from Europe.
Sources: For 1650 to 1900, A. N. Carr-Sanders, World Population (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936); for 1750, 1850, and 1900, John D. Durand, “The Modern Expansion of World Population,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 111 (1967); and for 1950 and 2000, United Nations, World Populations Prospects, the 2010 Revision (New York: United Nations, 2011), and Massimo Livi-Bacci, A Concise History of World Population, 5th ed. (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2012).
In Europe, sooner than elsewhere, other causes of growth were at work beyond the
maintenance of civil peace. T h ey included liberation from certain endemic
affl ictions, beginning with the subsiding of bubonic plague in the seven-
teenth century and the use of vaccination against smallpox in the eigh-
teenth. Agricultural improvement produced more food, notably in England
Improved living
conditions
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575
after about 1750. The improvement of transportation by road, canal, and railroad made
localized famine a thing of the past, because food could be moved into areas of temporary
shortage. With the Industrial Revolution larger populations could subsist in Europe by
importing food from overseas. In the cities of Europe and North America, by 1900, the
supply of pure drinking water and facilities for the disposal of garbage and sewage were
better than in the past.
Hence population grew for several generations more substantially in Europe and its
offshoots than elsewhere. The approximate percentages in the table on page 574 show that
Asia, by these estimates, increased less than threefold between 1650 and 1900, but Europe
increased fourfold, and the total number of Europeans, including the descendants of those
who migrated to other continents, multiplied fi vefold. The ascendancy of European civili-
zation in the two and a half centuries after 1650 was due in some measure to demographic
growth. But while in 1900 the proportion of “Europeans” in all continents was approach-
ing a third of the human race, after 1900 this proportion began to fall. By the early twenty-
fi rst century it could be projected that “Europeans” would constitute only a tenth of the
human beings on the planet in the year 2100.
Stabilization of European Population
The stabilization and relative decline of the European population followed from a fall in
the birth rate. As early as 1830 the birth rate began noticeably to drop in France, with the
result that France, long the most populous European state, was surpassed in population by
Germany about 1870, by the British Isles about 1895, and by Italy about 1930. France, once
thought to be decadent for this reason, was in fact only the leading country in a population
cycle through which the European countries seemed to pass. The birth rate, which had fallen
below 30 per hundred in France in the 1830s, fell to that level in Sweden in the 1880s; in
England in the 1890s; and in Germany and the Netherlands between 1900 and 1910. After
the Second World War there was a temporary rise, but by 2000 the birth rate was less than
15 per 1,000 in Europe and North America, hardly suffi cient to maintain existing popula-
tion levels. In much of the rest of the world it was still well over 25 or even 30.
The reduced birth rate is not a mere dry statistical item, nor does it affect populations
merely in the mass. It is one of the indices of a more modern civilization, fi rst appearing in
that inner European zone in which the other indices were also highest, and thence spread-
ing outward in a kind of wave. Concretely, a low birth rate in the nineteenth century meant
that families averaged from two to four children, where in former times, families might
consist of ten children or even more. The low birth rate refl ects the small family system,
and few institutions were more fundamental to modern life. The principal means used to
hold down the birth rate, or to limit the family, was the practice of contraception. But the
true causes or reasons why parents wanted to limit their families were deeply embedded in
the social patterns of modernizing societies.
Historical demographers have detected a “European family pattern” as
far back as the seventeenth century. It was a pattern in which, in comparison
to other societies, Europeans married later, and a larger number never mar-
ried at all. Late marriage shortened the number of years during which a
woman bore children and enabled young people to acquire skills or accumulate savings (as
in tools and household goods) before setting up new families. The effect was less-explosive
population growth, and less-extreme poverty, than in other parts of the world. Evidence
indicating the use of various forms of contraception can be found in the eighteenth century
A European family
pattern
69. Basic Demography: The Increase of Europe’s Population
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics576
among the upper classes, by study of the number and spacing of their children. The practice
seems to have spread to other social classes during and after the French Revolution, in part
because the new Napoleonic Code (1804) required that inheritances be divided among all
sons and daughters. The French peasants, many of them owners of land, began to limit
themselves to two or three children in order that all children (by inheritance, marriage, and
dowries) might remain in as high an economic and social position as their parents. It was
thus the quest for economic security and higher living standards that led to the reduced
birth rate in France and subsequently in other parts of Europe.
In the great cities of the nineteenth century, in which standards of life for the work-
ing classes often collapsed, the effect might at fi rst be a proliferation of
offspring. But life in the city, under crowded conditions of housing, also
set a premium on the small family. There were many activities in the city
that people with many children could only with diffi culty enjoy. After about
1880 child labor became much less frequent among the working classes. When children
ceased to earn part of the family income, parents tended to have fewer of them. About the
same time governments in the advanced countries and nation-states began to require univer-
sal compulsory schooling. The number of years spent in education, and hence in economic
dependency upon parents, grew longer and longer until it became common even for young
adults to be still engaged in study. Each child represented many years of expense for its
parents. The ever rising idea of what it was necessary to do for one’s children and the desire
of parents to give them every possible advantage in a competitive world were probably the
most basic causes of voluntary limitation of the family. Hardly less basic was the desire to
lighten the burdens upon mothers. The small family system, together with the decline of
infant mortality, because they combined to free women from the interminable bearing and
tending of infants, probably did more than anything else to improve the position of women
in modern societies. Freed at least in part from the traditional cycles of pregnancy and child
care, middle-class women were eventually able to pursue advanced education, new profes-
sions, and new kinds of social or political activities. The use of contraception also spread
widely among the working class during the early twentieth century; demographic research
in England, for example, suggests that almost 70 percent of working-class couples were
using contraception by the 1930s (compared to fewer than 20 percent in 1900).
The effects of the small family system upon total population became manifest only
slowly. More people lived on into the middle and older age groups, and the fall of the birth
rate was gradual, so that in all the leading countries total numbers continued to rise, except
in France, which hardly grew between 1900 and 1945. The persistent note was one of
superabundant increase. In fi ve generations, between 1800 and 1950, a population of about
200 million “Europeans” grew into roughly 700 million “Europeans” around the globe.
Because productivity increased even more rapidly, the standard of living for most of these
“Europeans” rose in spite of the increase of numbers, and there was no general problem of
overpopulation.
Growth of Cities and Urban Life
Where did so many people go? Some stayed in the rural areas where most people had
always lived. Rural populations in the inner zone became more dense, turning to the more
intensive agriculture of truck gardening or dairy farming, leaving products like wool and
cereal grains to be raised elsewhere and then imported. But it is estimated that of every
seven persons added to the western European population only one stayed on the land. Of
the other six, one left Europe altogether and fi ve went to the growing cities.
Life in the city
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577
The nineteenth-century city was mostly the child of the railroad, for with the railroads
it became possible for the fi rst time to concentrate manufacturing in large towns, to which
bulky goods such as foods and fuel could now be moved in great volume. The growth of
cities between 1850 and 1914 was phenomenal. In England two-thirds of the people lived
in places of 20,000 or less in 1830; in 1914 two-thirds lived in places of 20,000 or more.
Germany, the historic land of archaic towns carried over from the Middle Ages, rivaled
England after 1870 in modern industrial urbanization. Whereas in 1840 only London and
Paris had a million people, the same could be said by 1914 of other major European cities
such as Berlin, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. Some places, like the English Mid-
lands and the Ruhr Valley in Germany, became a mass of contiguous smaller cities, vast
urban agglomerations divided only by municipal lines.
THE GLEANERS by Jean-Francois Millet (French, 1814–1875)
Although France, like other European countries, became a more urban society over the course of the nineteenth century, many French people still lived and worked in the countryside, as Millet showed in this painting of poor peasant women who gleaned the fi elds for a few stalks of grain. (Alinari/Art Resource, NY)
69. Basic Demography: The Increase of Europe’s Population
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics578
The evolving demographic pattern in nineteenth-century European bourgeois families may be seen in this portrait of a Victorian-era English family sitting in their garden. The declin- ing number of children eventually gave women more time and freedom for diverse activities because they were less tied to long cycles of pregnancies and childrearing. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The great city set the tone of modern society. City life was impersonal
and anonymous; people were uprooted, less tied to home or church than
in the country. They lacked the country person’s feeling of deference for
aristocratic families. They lacked the sense of self-help characteristic of older rural com-
munities. It was in the city that the daily newspaper press, which spread rapidly in the
wake of the telegraph after 1850, found its most habitual readers. The so-called yellow or
sensational press appeared about 1900. Articulate public opinion was formed in the cit-
ies, and city people were on the whole disrespectful of tradition, receptive to new ideas,
having in many cases deliberately altered their own lives by moving from the country or
from smaller towns. It is hardly surprising that the new conditions of urban life fostered
the spread of socialism among the industrial masses in European cities. Some of the more
Impact of urban life
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579
blatant nationalism that arose after 1870 was also stimulated by city life, for people felt
increasingly detached from all institutions except the state. At the same time city life,
by its greater facilities for schooling, reading, and discussion, made for a more alert and
informed public opinion of an enlightened kind.
Migration from Europe, 1850–1940
During the same period in which cities were growing, almost 60 million people left
Europe altogether, of whom possibly a fi fth sooner or later returned. This vast movement
of people is called the Atlantic Migration because all crossed that ocean
except those who moved to European settler societies in Africa, Australia,
and New Zealand or from European to Asian Russia. It towers above all
other European migrations in magnitude, and possibly also in signifi cance,
for it was by this means that earlier colonial offshoots of Europe were
transformed into new societies that carried the very strong infl uence of European political,
social, religious, and cultural traditions. All parts of Europe contributed to the migration,
as shown in the table below, which comprises the years from 1850 to 1940. Before 1850
the mass movement had scarcely begun, though by that time over a million immigrants had
entered the United States since the close of the Napoleonic wars. After 1940 the character
of intercontinental migration was greatly transformed. In recent decades, since the Second
World War, there have been large migrations into Europe from Africa, the Middle East,
and Asia, and into the Americas from places outside Europe. But in the century before
1940 the migration of European peoples was a key force in the dissemination of European
institutions and cultures.
The Atlantic
Migration
From: British Isles 18,300,000
Italy 10,200,000
Russia 9,000,000
Germany 5,000,000
Spain 4,500,000
Austria-Hungary 4,200,000
Portugal 2,500,000
Sweden 1,200,000
Norway 750,000
Denmark 470,000
Finland 390,000
France 390,000
Switzerland 340,000
Netherlands 210,000
Belgium 150,000
57,600,000
EMIGRATION FROM EUROPE, 1850–1940
Source: William Woodruff, Impact of Western Man: A Study of Europe’s Role in the World Economy, 1750–1960 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966), p. 106.
69. Basic Demography: The Increase of Europe’s Population
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics580
It is hard to give satisfactory fi gures for emigration from Europe. In the statistical
sources the English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish are usually mixed, and until the First World
War, that is until 1914, the Poles, Czechs, other Slavic peoples, Hungarians, East European
Jews, and others were not counted as such but were included among emigrants from the
Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and German empires. Millions of Jews, Irish, Poles, and many
thousands of others are therefore invisible in the fi gures, which also include several mil-
lion Russians who moved from the European to Asian parts of Russia. It must be remem-
bered also that some intercontinental migration did not involve Europeans. For a few years
after 1850 enslaved Africans were still brought illegally to the United States and Brazil.
Workers went from India to the West Indies and South Africa, and many Chinese settled in
the United States and southeast Asia. With these reservations, the table on this page shows
the pattern of European emigration in the 90 years preceding the Second World War.
The British and Irish went to the British dominions and the United States. The Italians
divided between the United States and Latin America. Spaniards settled overwhelmingly
in the Spanish American republics, and the Portuguese settled in Brazil. The Germans
moved overwhelmingly to the United States, though some went to Argentina and Brazil.
The extraordinary preponderance of the United States is apparent. At the same time, it
should be noted that almost half of the European migration went to other countries around
the world. The new countries received the following infl uxes of people:
Causes of the exodus
To: United States 32,300,000
Asian Russia 7,000,000
Argentina 6,600,000
Brazil 4,700,000
Canada 4,300,000
Australia 2,900,000
New Zealand 650,000
Uruguay 600,000
Cuba 600,000
South Africa 250,000
Mexico 250,000
IMMIGRATION INTO VARIOUS COUNTRIES, 1850–1940
Source: Woodruff, Impact of Western Man, p. 108.
The exodus from Europe was due to a remarkable and temporary juxta-
position of causes. One fundamental cause, or precondition, was that before
1914 the new countries generally welcomed immigration. Hands were
wanted to farm the land, build houses, dig in the mines. This was least true of Australia and
New Zealand, which preferred to limit themselves to English-speaking settlers and which
also pioneered as social democracies, becoming models even before 1900 of legislation to
protect the working classes. One result was that no inrush of outsiders to compete for jobs
at low wages was desired. A similar combination of national preferences and labor protec-
tionism led to laws restricting immigration in the United States in 1921 and 1924. There-
after immigrants could enter only under quotas, and the quotas were lowest for eastern and
southern Europe, the areas from which most emigration had been coming.
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581
TO CANADA
E U R O P E TO THE UN
ITED STAT ES
TO LA
TI N
AM ER
IC A
TO A
SI A
N R
U SS
IA
TO AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND
T O
SO U
T H
A FR
IC A
Width of Arrows Is Proportionate to the Number of Emigrants
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 EMIGRANTS TO:
UNITED STATES
LATIN AMERICA
ASIAN RUSSIA
CANADA
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND
SOUTH AFRICA
TOTAL EMIGRANTS 1850–1940
MILLIONS OF PERSONS
MIGRATION FROM EUROPE, 1850–1940 About 60 million people left Europe in the century preceding the Second World War, distrib- uting themselves as shown in the diagram above. (See fi gures on p. 580.) About half went to the United States, but the migration of European peoples also built up “European” societies in other regions of the world. These overseas “European” societies, which also included many non-European peoples, produced food and raw materials for Europe and borrowed capital or bought manufactured goods from Europe, thus helping to support European economic devel- opment and to expand the modern worldwide economic system.
69. Basic Demography: The Increase of Europe’s Population
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics582
In Europe there were many conditions propelling emigrants outward. Physically, the
steamship made it easier and cheaper to cross the sea, and the railroad helped people to get
to the ports as well as to distribute themselves after landing in the new countries. Economi-
cally, people in the lower social classes could more easily afford a long journey. People
migrated to improve their material circumstances; but some high points in the wave of
emigration coincided with high points in the business cycle in Europe, when jobs in Europe
were plentiful and wages were at their highest. Of the opposite case, of actual fl ight from
economic ruin or starvation, the emigration from Ireland after 1846 is the best example. In
the “great potato famine” of 1845–1849 nearly 1 million Irish died of starvation and dis-
ease, and more than 1.5 million emigrated to the United States in the next few years. After
the revolutions of 1848 a certain number of Europeans also left Europe for political rea-
sons, and, later on, to avoid compulsory military service. The best example of fl ight from
segregation and discrimination, and from direct persecution in government-encouraged
pogroms, was the emigration of the Jews of Russia and Russian Poland, of whom a million
and a half moved to the United States in the 15 years preceding the First World War.
But perhaps the most basic historical factor in the whole European exodus was the
underlying liberalism of the age. Never before (nor since) had people been
legally so free to move. Old laws requiring skilled workmen to stay in their
own countries were repealed, as in England in 1824. The old semicom-
munal agricultural villages, with collective rights and obligations, holding
individuals to their native groups, fell into disuse except in Russia. The disappearance of
serfdom allowed the peasants of eastern Europe to change residences without obtaining
a lord’s permission. Governments permitted their subjects to emigrate, to take with them
their savings of shillings, marks, kronen, or lire, and to change nationality by becoming
Freedom of movement
The mass migration of people is one of the distinctive social patterns of mod- ern history, and such migrations have reshaped societies in all parts of the world. This Italian woman and her chil- dren, who arrived in New York about 1900, were part of the vast emigration out of Europe that deeply affected the social and economic development of postcolonial nations in the Americas. (The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)
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58370. The World Economy of the Nineteenth Century
naturalized in their new homes. The rise of liberty in Europe, as well as the hope of enjoy-
ing it in America, made possible the great emigration. This mass movement of people was
all the more remarkable because it took place by private initiative and at private expense.
The new national states did not initiate or organize the migration; individuals, fami-
lies, and small local groups (to borrow the metaphor of one authority) simply detached
themselves atom by atom from the mass of Europe, crossed the seas on their own, and reat-
tached themselves atom by atom to the accumulating mass of the New World. The mass
migrations of the late nineteenth century thus launched a worldwide movement of people
that continues to the present day, grows in importance, and remains one of the most char-
acteristic social patterns of modern world history.
70. THE WORLD ECONOMY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
How did the swelling population of Europeans manage to feed itself? How, in fact, did it
not merely feed itself but enjoy an incomparably higher standard of living in 1900 than
in 1800? The answers to such questions varied in the different regions of Europe, but the
overall advance came through the new science, industry, transportation, and communica-
tions and also through the expansion of global trading systems. At the same time, Europe-
ans were developing new business, fi nancial, and labor organizations that contributed to a
steady growth in economic productivity.
The “New Industrial Revolution”
The Industrial Revolution and the global economy entered upon a new phase, which is
often called the “new” or “second” Industrial Revolution. The use of steam power, the
growth of the textile and metallurgical industries, and the advent of the railroad had char-
acterized the earlier era of industrialization. Now, after 1870, new sources of power were
tapped, the already mechanized industries expanded, new industries appeared, and indus-
try spread geographically.
The steam engine itself was refi ned and improved. By 1914 it still predominated over
other power machinery, but electricity with its incomparable advantages came into use.
The invention of the internal combustion (or gasoline) engine and the diesel engine gave
the world automobiles, airplanes, and submarines in the two decades before 1914; the
advent of the automotive and aviation industries made oil one of the most
coveted natural resources. In the new chemical industries industrial research
laboratories were replacing the individual inventor. Chemists discovered
new fertilizers and from coal tar alone produced a bewildering array of new
products ranging from artifi cial food fl avors to high explosives. With explosives the fi rst
great tunnels were built, the Mount Cenis in 1873, the Simplon in 1906—both in the Alps;
and great new canals, the Suez in 1869, the Kiel in 1895, the Panama in 1914. Chemistry
made possible the production of synthetic fabrics like rayon, which revolutionized the
textile industry. Electricity transformed all indoor and outdoor lighting, making cities both
brighter and safer. There was a communications revolution too. The telephone appeared in
the 1870s, and the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi helped to bring the continents
closer together when he successfully transmitted wireless signals across the Atlantic in
1901. The moving picture and the radio modestly presented themselves before 1914 and
soon led to the production of new popular entertainments that crossed the traditional social
Industrial advances
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics584
and cultural boundaries of European societies. Medicine ran the alphabetical gamut from
anesthetics to X-rays; yellow fever was overcome. Vastly improved processes for refi ning
iron ore made possible a great expansion in the production of steel, the key product of the
new industrial age; aluminum and other metal alloys were also produced through new
industrial processes. Railroad mileage multiplied; the European network, including the
Russian, increased from 140,000 miles in 1890 to 213,000 in 1914.
In this second phase of the Industrial Revolution machine industry spread geographi-
cally from Britain and Belgium, the only truly industrial countries in 1870, to France, Italy,
Russia, Japan, and, most markedly, to Germany and the United States. In Europe industrial
production was concentrated in the “inner zone.” Three powers alone—Britain, Germany,
and France—accounted in 1914 for more than seven-tenths of all European manufactures
and produced over four-fi fths of all European coal, steel, and machinery. Of
the major European powers Germany was now forging ahead. To use steel
alone as a criterion, in 1871 Germany was producing annually three-fi fths
as much steel as Britain; by 1900 it was producing more, and by 1914 it was
producing twice as much as Britain—but only half as much as the new industrial giant,
the United States. By 1914 American steel output was greater than that of Germany,
Britain, and France combined. Britain, the pioneer in mechanization, was being outstripped
in both the Old World and the New. The three European powers increased their industrial
production by about 50 percent in the two decades before 1914, but the United States
had a far higher annual growth rate from 1870 to 1913, 4.3 percent as compared to the
next leading powers, Germany with 2.9 percent, Britain with 2.2 percent, and France with
1.6 percent. By 1914 the United States had moved ahead of Europe in the mechanization
of agriculture, in manufactures, and in coal and steel production, in which it was producing
over two-fi fths of the world’s output. The Americans were pioneering also in assembly-
line, conveyor-belt techniques for the mass production of automobiles and all kinds of
consumer goods, thereby launching a twentieth-century challenge to Europe’s long-term
dominance in the global economy.
Free Trade and the European “Balance of Payments”
It was Britain in the mid-nineteenth century, then the workshop of the world, that had inau-
gurated the movement toward free trade. It will be recalled that in 1846, by the repeal of
the Corn Laws, the British embarked upon a systematic free trade policy, deliberately
choosing to become dependent upon overseas imports for their food. France adopted free
trade in 1860. Other countries soon followed. It is true that by 1880 there was a movement
back to protective tariffs except in Britain, Holland, and Belgium. But the tariffs were
impediments rather than barriers, and the economic system, until 1914, increasingly
depended on the extreme mobility of goods across political frontiers. Politically, Europe
was more than ever nationalistic; but economic activity, under generally liberal conditions
in which business was supposed to be free from the political state, remained predomi-
nantly international and globe-encircling.
Broadly speaking, the great economic accomplishment of Europe before 1914 was to
create a system by which the huge imports used by industrial Europe could be acquired
and paid for. All European countries except Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Balkan states
imported more than they exported. It was the British again who led in this
direction. Britain had been a predominantly importing country since the
close of the eighteenth century. Despite the expanding export of cotton
The industrial powers
Imports vs. exports
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manufactures and other products of the Industrial Revolution, Britain consumed more
goods from abroad than it sent out. Industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth
century confi rmed the same situation. Between 1800 and 1900 the value of British exports
multiplied eightfold, but the value of imports into Great Britain multiplied tenfold, and in
the decade before 1914 the British had an import surplus of about three-quarters of a bil-
lion dollars a year. Great Britain and the industrial countries of Europe together (roughly
Europe’s inner zone), at the beginning of the twentieth century, were drawing in an import
surplus, measured in dollars, of almost $2 billion every year (the dollar then representing
far more goods than it came to represent later). The imports into Europe’s inner zone con-
sisted of raw materials for its industries and of food and amenities for its people.
How were the imports paid for? How did Europe continue to enjoy a favorable
balance of payments despite an unfavorable balance of trade in commodities? Export of
European manufactures paid for most imports, but not all. It was the so-
called invisible exports that made up the difference, that is, shipping and
insurance services rendered to foreigners, and interest on money lent out or
invested, all bringing in foreign exchange and enhancing Britain’s position
in the global economy. Shipping and insurance were important. An Argentine merchant in
Buenos Aires, to ship hides to Germany, might employ a British vessel; he would pay the
freight charges in Argentine pesos, which might be credited to the account of the British
Invisible exports
The Bessemer steel-making process enhanced the production of steel and rapidly became an important component of industrial expansion during the later decades of the nineteenth cen- tury. Its importance for Britain is suggested by this illustration of the future King Edward VII and his wife, who are observing the new methods of steel production from box seats at a fac- tory in Sheffi eld in 1875. (Henry Guttmann/Getty Images)
70. The World Economy of the Nineteenth Century
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics586
shipowner in an Argentine bank; the British shipowner would sell the pesos to someone, in
England or elsewhere in Europe, who needed them to buy Argentine meat. The far-fl ung
British merchant marine thus earned a considerable amount of the food and raw materials
needed by Britain. To insure themselves against risks of every conceivable kind people all
over the world turned to Lloyds of London. With the profi ts drawn from selling insurance
the British could buy what they wished. Governments or business enterprises borrowed
money in Europe, mainly in England; the interest payments, putting foreign currencies into
European and British hands, constituted another invisible export by which large quantities
of imports could be fi nanced. But the lending of money to foreigners is only part of a larger
phenomenon, the export of capital.
The Export of European Capital
The migration of millions of Europeans had the effect of creating new European-style
economies and societies that purchased manufactures from Europe and produced the food,
wool, cotton, and minerals that Europe needed. European nations could not have had such
far-reaching international infl uence if they had exported people only, especially people of
such small means as most emigrants were. Europe also exported the capital that enabled
the new settlers in overseas societies to develop productive economies.
The export of capital meant that an older and wealthier country, instead of using its
whole annual income to raise its own standard of living, or to add to its own capital by
expanding or improving its houses, factories, machinery, mines, and transportation, diverted
some of its income to expanding or improving the houses, factories, machinery, mines, and
transportation of foreign countries. It meant that British, French, Dutch, Belgian, Swiss,
and eventually German investors bought the stocks of foreign business enterprises and the
bonds of foreign businesses and governments; or they organized companies of their own to
operate in foreign countries; or their banks granted loans to banks in New York or Tokyo,
which then lent the funds to local users.
Capital arose in Europe to some extent from the savings of quite small people, espe-
cially in France, where peasants and modest bourgeois families were notably
thrifty. But most capital accumulated from savings by the well-to-do. The
owners of a business, for example, instead of spending the company’s
income by paying higher wages, took a portion of it in profi ts or dividends,
and instead of spending all this on their own living, reinvested part of it in domestic or
foreign enterprises. The gap between rich and poor was thus one cause of the rapid accu-
mulation of capital, though the accumulation of capital, in the nineteenth century, produced
in turn a steady rise of living standards for the working classes. In a sense, however, the
common people of western Europe, by forgoing the better housing, diet, education, or
pleasures that a more democratic or consumer-oriented society might have provided for
them, contributed by their productivity to the export of capital and hence the fi nancing and
building up of other regions of the world.
The British were the chief exporters of capital, followed at some distance by the French,
and at the close of the century by the Germans. As early as the 1840s half the annual increase
of wealth in Great Britain was going into foreign investments. By 1914 the British had
$20 billion in foreign investments, the French had about $8.7 billion, and the Germans had
about $6 billion. A quarter of all the wealth owned by the inhabitants of Great Britain con-
sisted in 1914 of holdings outside the country. Almost a sixth of the French national wealth
lay in investments outside France. All three countries had given hostages to fortune, and
Capital accumulation
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587
fortune proved unkind, for in the First World War the British lost about a quarter of their
foreign investments, the French lost about a third, and the Germans lost all.
These huge sums, pouring out from Europe’s inner zone for a century before 1914,
at fi rst went mainly to fi nance the Americas and the less affl uent regions
of Europe. European capital was also invested in Asia and Africa, espe-
cially after the rapid expansion of Europe’s colonial empires in the 1890s.
No country except Great Britain completely built its railways with its own
resources. In the United States the railway system was built very largely
The recipients of
European capital
CLASSIC LANDSCAPE by Charles Sheeler (American, 1883–1965)
This landscape depicts an American plant of the Ford Motor Company in 1931, but it also sym- bolizes what has been called the Second Industrial Revolution. In this phase of industrializa- tion, electricity, the internal combustion engine, and the automobile were especially important, and industry spread far beyond its early centers in Britain and western Europe. The picture is “classic” in its clear delineation, its array of familiar mathematical forms, and the universality of its message. The plant seems rational and precise, but there are no human beings. It is as if the machine had a life of its own and could do without human hands. (National Gallery of Art)
70. The World Economy of the Nineteenth Century
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics588
with capital obtained from England. In central and eastern Europe British companies
often constructed the fi rst railways, then sold out to native operating companies or to gov-
ernments that subsequently ran them. In the Argentine Republic the British not merely
fi nanced and built the railways, but long continued to operate and own them. In addi-
tion, up to 1914 the British sold about 75 million tons of coal a year to South America to
keep the railways going, not to mention items for replacement and upkeep of equipment.
Docks, warehouses, mines, plantations, processing and manufacturing establishments all
over the world were similarly built up with capital drawn from Europe. European capital
also helped emigrants in the new countries to develop public services and institutions that
required major fi nancial investments. In the United States, for example, state and local
governments very commonly sold their bonds in Europe to build roads, pave streets, or
construct school systems for the westward-moving population. A few of these American
bonds proved a partial or total loss to European investors, but on the whole, by 1914, the
United States had paid back a good deal of its indebtedness. Even so, in 1914, Americans
still owed about $4 billion to Europeans—a sum three times as large as the national debt
of the United States at the time. This kind of economic investment (along with the patterns
of mass immigration) helps to explain how and why Europe remained deeply involved in
distant nations that had long since declared their political independence from European
colonial empires.
An International Money System: The Gold Standard
The international economy rested upon an international money system, based in turn upon
the almost universal acceptance of the gold standard. England had adopted the gold stan-
dard in 1821, when the pound sterling was legally defi ned as the equivalent of 113 grains of
fi ne gold. Western Europe and the United States adopted an exclusively gold standard in the
1870s. A person holding any “civilized” money—pounds, francs, dollars, marks, and the
like—could turn it into gold at will, and a person holding gold could turn it into any money.
The currencies were like so many different languages all expressing the same meaning. All
had substantially the same value, and until 1914 the exchange rates between currencies
remained highly stable. It was assumed that no modern industrial country’s currency ever
“fell”; such things might happen in a remote Latin American republic or in China, or in the
French Revolution, but not in the world of modern progress and European affairs.
The important currencies were all freely exchangeable. A French mer-
chant selling silks to a German, and hence receiving German marks, could
turn the marks into francs, pounds sterling, or dollars. That is, he was not
obliged to buy from Germany or spend his money in Germany but could
use the proceeds of his German sale to buy French, British, or American goods or services
as he chose. Trade was multilateral. A country needing imports from another country, such
as American cotton, did not have to sell to that country to obtain them; it could sell its own
goods anywhere and then import according to its needs.
It was the acceptance of the gold standard, and the fact that all important countries
possessed a suffi cient share of gold to support their currencies, that made
possible so fl uid an interchange. At the same time the gold standard had
less wholesome effects. It was hard on countries that lacked gold. And it
produced a gradual fall of prices, especially between 1870 and 1900,
because (until the gold discoveries in South Africa, Australia, and Alaska in
the 1890s) the world’s production of gold lagged behind the expanding production of
Currency exchange
Effects of the gold
standard
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589
industrial and agricultural goods. Persistently declining prices were a hardship to those
who habitually worked with borrowed money—many farmers, many businessmen, and
debtor nations as a whole. A famous speech by William Jennings Bryan in the United
States in 1896, declaring that mankind should not be crucifi ed “upon this cross of gold,”
expressed a common, worldwide anger about a fi nancial system that worked against the
interests of indebted persons and indebted nations. But falling prices were an advantage to
the wage-earning class, which generally improved its position in these years, and also to
the wealthy, the owners and lenders of capital, the bankers and fi nanciers, who so long as
prices were falling were repaid in money of more value than that which
they had lent.
The center of the global economic and fi nancial system was London.
The London banks prospered in consequence of the defeat of Napoleon,
the older fi nancial centers in Amsterdam having been ruined in the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic wars. It may be recalled also that the victors in 1815 imposed upon France an
indemnity of 700 million francs, which in 1818 was taken over by a syndicate of private
bankers; the London banks played a leading part in this affair and so developed close
connections with many government treasuries. In the Crimean War of 1854–1856, with
England at war with Russia, the London banks fl oated loans for the Russian government—
so independent were business and politics at the time. The early adoption of the gold
standard in England meant that many people, British and foreign, kept their funds in the
form of sterling on deposit in London, where quantities of available capital therefore accu-
mulated. London became the apex of a fi nancial pyramid that had the world for its base.
It was the main center for the exchange of currencies, the clearinghouse of the world’s
debts, the depository from which all the world borrowed, the banker’s bank, as well as the
world’s shipping center and the headquarters of many international corporations.
A World Market: Unity, Competition—and Insecurity
Never had the earth been so unifi ed economically, with each region playing specifi c roles
in a global specialization. Western Europe, and in 1870 mainly Great Britain, was the
world’s industrial workshop. Other parts of the earth supplied its many needs. An English
economist marveled in 1866 that Britain now had its granaries in Chicago and Odessa, its
forests in Canada and the Baltic, its sheep farms in Australia, and its gold and silver mines
in California and Peru, while drinking tea brought from China and coffee from East Indian
plantations. The same could have been said of most of Europe’s inner-zone
nations by the time of the First World War.
A true global market had been created. Goods, services, commodities,
money, capital, and people moved back and forth almost without regard
to national boundaries. Articles were bought and sold at uniform world prices. Dealers in
wheat, for example, followed prices in Minneapolis, Liverpool, Buenos Aires, and Danzig
as reported by telegraph and cable from day to day. They bought where it was cheapest and
sold where it was dearest. In this way the world’s wheat supply was distributed roughly
according to need or ability to pay. The worker of Milan, if the Italian crop was poor and
prices were high, was fed from another source. On the other hand, the Italian wheat grower
would in this case feel the pinch of world competition. The world market, while it orga-
nized the world into a unifi ed economic system, at the same time brought distant regions
into competition for the fi rst time. The producers of goods and commodities—whether
entrepreneur, factory employee, farmer, or coffee planter—had no secure outlet for their
London at the center
A true global market
70. The World Economy of the Nineteenth Century
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics590
EXPORT OF EUROPEAN CAPITAL TO 1914 In 1914 the British, French, and Germans held upwards of $30 billion in foreign and colonial loans and investments, distributed as shown on the map. Dutch investments, especially in the West Indies, together with Swiss, Belgian, and Scandinavian holdings, would add several billion dollars more. Proceeds from such investments helped Europeans to pay for the excess of their imports over exports. British capital predominated in the overseas world, while the less-developed regions of eastern Europe and the Middle East were fi nanced mainly from Germany and France. Much of the investment shown here was lost or expended in the First World War.
GREAT BRITAIN GERMANY
FRANCE
TO R
US SI A
TO AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND THE BALKANS
TO THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
TO A
FR IC
A , A
SIA
A N
D A
U STR
A LIA
TO LA
TI N
AM ER
IC A
TO THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
Width of Arrow Segments Is Proportionate to the Amount of Capital Export
0 1 32 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS
GREAT BRITAIN
FRANCE
GERMANY
EXPORTED CAPITAL TO:
ASIA, AFRICA, AND AUSTRALIA
UNITED STATES AND CANADA
LATIN AMERICA
RUSSIA
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND THE BALKANS
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
TOTAL EXPORTED CAPITAL
TO 1914
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591
products, as had generally been true in the past. They were in competition not only with
persons across the street or down the road but also with other producers throughout the
world. It was this worldwide system of production and consumption that established the
modern economic foundation for what is now called “globalization.”
The creation of an integrated world market, the fi nancing and building up of countries
outside of Europe, and the consequent feeding and support of Europe’s increasing popula-
tion were the great triumphs of the nineteenth-century system of unregulated capitalism.
The system was intricate, with thousands and even millions of individuals and business
fi rms supplying each other’s wants without central planning. But it was extremely precari-
ous, and the position of most people in this network of global economic exchanges was
exceedingly vulnerable. Region competed against region and person against person. A fall
of grain prices in the American Middle West, besides ruining a few speculators, might
oblige German or Argentine wheat growers to sell at a price at which they could not live.
Factory owners might be driven out of business if competitors successfully undersold them
or if a new commodity made their own product obsolete. The workers, hired only when
needed by an employer, faced unemployment when business slackened or when jobs dis-
appeared because of labor-saving inventions.
The system went through cycles of boom and depression, the most
notable example of the latter being the “long depression” that set in about
1873 and lasted to about 1893. The new global economy depended on
expansion and on credit; but sometimes people could not pay their debts, so
that credit collapsed; and sometimes expansion failed to keep pace with expectations, and
anticipated profi ts proved to be losses. To combat the essential insecurity of private capi-
talism, governments, businesses, and workers resorted to all manner of devices. Against
competition from other countries governments established protective tariffs; business
enterprises entered into acquisitions and mergers, sometimes approaching monopolies. For
the working classes governments adopted social insurance measures as protection against
accidents, illness, and unemployment. Labor meanwhile turned increasingly to its own
trade unions and socialist parties. All this signalized the gradual decline in the years after
1880 of nineteenth-century unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism.
Changes in Organization: Big Business
A great change came over capitalism itself about 1880 or 1890. Formerly characterized
by a large number of small units, small businesses run by individuals, partnerships, or
small companies, it was increasingly characterized by large and impersonal corporations.
The attractions of the “limited liability” corporation as a form of business
organization and as a means of encouraging investment arose from laws
enacted by most countries in the nineteenth century that limited the indi-
vidual investor’s personal loss in the event of a bankruptcy to the amount of
his or her shares of stock in the enterprise. The corporation, in its modern
form appearing fi rst with the railroads, became the usual form of organization for industry
and commerce. As machinery grew more complicated, only a large pool of capital could
fi nance it. And as corporations grew in size and number, relying on the sale of stock and
the issue of bonds, the infl uence of banking and fi nancial circles was enhanced. Financiers,
using not so much their own money as the savings of others, had a new power to create or
to destroy, to stimulate, discourage, or combine corporate enterprises in various industries.
Industrial capitalism brought fi nance capitalism with it.
Cycles of boom and
depression
The “limited liability”
corporation
70. The World Economy of the Nineteenth Century
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics592
The new world market strongly encouraged the development of export industries and com- modity production in agrarian societies that mainly produced food in earlier times. During the decades before 1914, the colonized areas of Asia, Africa, and the Americas rapidly increased their production of commodities such as tea, coffee, sugar, and cocoa, most of which fl owed into the more industrialized, capitalist economies of Europe and North America. These work- ers in India collected tea for export and thus participated, though with low wages, in a global trading system that was transforming agriculture and daily life throughout the modern world. (The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)
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59371. The Advance of Democracy: Third French Republic, United Kingdom, German Empire
Corporate organization made it possible to concentrate diverse economic processes
under unifi ed management. In retail commerce, large department stores appeared after
about 1870 in the United States and France, selling all kinds of goods that were formerly
sold only in small shops and establishing a fi xed price for each piece of merchandise. In
industry, steel offers a good example of the new, large-scale enterprises. Steel became a
big business when heavy blast furnaces were introduced. It was not economically safe for
the steel business, or for the blast furnaces, to rely for iron and coal on independent pro-
ducers. The steel works therefore began to operate mines of their own or to buy out or
otherwise reduce coal and iron mines to subsidiary status. Some, to assure their markets,
began to produce not merely steel but steel manufactures as well—steel ships, railway
equipment, naval and military ordnance. Thus entire processes from mining
to fi nished product became concentrated in a “vertical” integration.
“Horizontal” integration meant that concerns at the same level com-
bined with each other to reduce competition and to protect themselves against fl uctuations
in prices and markets. Some fi xed prices, some agreed to restrict production, and some
divided up markets among themselves. They were called trusts in the United States; car-
tels, in Europe. They were common in the steel industry and in many other new industries
at the close of the century, such as chemicals, aluminum, and oil. It was in
the United States that such big business developed furthest, headed by
“captains” of industry and “titans” of fi nance. Andrew Carnegie, by origin
a poor Scottish immigrant boy, produced more steel than all England; but
industrial production in Europe was also increasingly consolidated in large
national and transnational cartels.
Many of the new combinations were benefi cial in making the ups and downs of busi-
ness less erratic, and so providing more stable prices and more continuous and secure
employment. Generally they reduced the costs of production; but whether the savings went
into higher profi ts, higher wages, or lower prices depended on numerous factors. Some
cartels were greedier than others or were confronted with only weakly organized or unor-
ganized labor. In any case, for good or ill, decisions rested with management and fi nance.
A new kind of private power had arisen, which its critics liked to call “feudal.” Because
no economic system had ever been so centralized up to that time, never in fact had so few
people exercised so much economic power over so many. The middle class, with the rise
of great corporations, came typically to consist of salaried employees; the salaried person
might spend a lifetime with the same company, and feel toward it, in its disputes with labor
or government, a loyalty not unlike that of a lord’s retainer in feudal times. The labor-
ing class was less amenable; labor attempted to organize unions capable of dealing with
increasingly gigantic employers. It also after about 1880 played an increasingly decisive
role in the politics of all advanced nations.
71. THE ADVANCE OF DEMOCRACY: THIRD FRENCH REPUBLIC, UNITED KINGDOM, GERMAN EMPIRE
In the years from 1815 to 1870 European political life had been marked by the rise of
nationalism and by liberal agitation for constitutional government, representative assem-
blies, responsible ministries, and guarantees of individual liberties. In the years from 1871
to 1914 the most notable political development was the democratic extension of the vote to
working-class men—the adoption of universal male suffrage, which in turn meant for the
fi rst time the creation of mass political parties and the need for political leaders to appeal
Vertical integration
“Captains” of
industry, “titans” of
fi nance
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics594
to a wide electorate. Although there was growing agitation for voting rights for women in
the decades before 1914, that reform would not be achieved until after the First World War
(and, in some countries, after the Second World War). The extension of male suffrage and
democratization often took place in a continuing monarchical and aristocratic framework,
but almost everywhere in Europe by 1914 some machinery of democratic self-government
was being introduced. In addition, to counter the growing strength of socialism after 1871,
and for humanitarian reasons, governments were also assuming responsibility for the
social and economic problems arising from industrialism. The welfare state in its modern
form began to take shape.
France: The Establishment of the Third Republic
In France the democratic republic was not easily established, and its troubled early years
left deep cleavages within the country. It will be recalled that in September 1870, when the
empire of Napoleon III revealed its helplessness in the Franco-Prussian War, insurrection-
aries in Paris, as in 1792 and 1848, again proclaimed the creation of a French Republic. A
provisional government of national defense sought desperately to continue the war, but the
cause was hopeless. By January 1871, a bitter siege of Paris came to an end and an armi-
stice was signed. Bismarck, insisting that only a properly constituted government could
make peace, permitted the election, by universal male suffrage, of a National Assembly
that was to consider his peace terms and draft a constitution for the new French state.
When the elections were held in February, it was found, as in 1848 (and, indeed, 1797),
that republicanism was so distrusted by the French people as a whole, and most especially
in the provinces and rural areas, that a free election brought monarchist elements into
power. Republicanism was still thought to be violent—bellicose in its foreign policy, tur-
bulent in its political workings, unfriendly to the church, and socialistic or at least egalitar-
ian in its views of property and private wealth. The new Assembly contained only about
200 republicans out of more than 600 deputies.
But the Paris republicans, who had defended France when Napoleon III failed to do
so, who for four months had been besieged, starved, and frozen by the Germans, and who
still refused to make peace on the harsh terms imposed by Bismarck and about to be
accepted by the Assembly, refused to recognize the latter’s authority. A civil war broke out
between the National Assembly, now sitting at Versailles, and the city of Paris, where a
revolutionary municipal council or “Commune” was set up. Paris, so lately attacked by
German soldiers, was soon attacked again by the French soldiers of the new
National Assembly.
The Paris Commune, which lasted from March to May 1871, seemed
to be another explosion of social revolution. Actually, it was in essence a
revival of the Jacobinism of 1793. It was fi ercely patriotic and republican; anti-German;
opposed to wealthy bourgeois, aristocrats, and clergy; in favor of government controls of
prices, wages, and working conditions, but still not socialist in any sweeping or systematic
way. Among its leaders, however, there were a few of the new international revolutionary
socialists who saw in a Jacobin or democratic republic a step toward their new order. Marx
in England, and others elsewhere, hopefully read into the Commune the impending doom
of the bourgeoisie. This was precisely what more conservative elements feared. To many
of the French middle and peasant class, and to people like them all over Europe, it seemed
that the Communards were wild and savage destroyers of nineteenth-century civiliza-
tion. The fi ghting in Paris was atrocious beyond anything known in any preceding French
The Paris Commune
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The Bon Marché department store in Paris became a well-known example of the new, large stores that began to displace smaller shops and independent merchants. The new commercial culture is evident in this late nineteenth-century illustration of the store’s vast expanse, pro- liferation of merchandise, and affl uent shoppers. Department stores provided a safe meeting place for women as well as lower prices for the many new products of the industrial era. (The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics596
revolution. The Communards, in fi nal desperation, burned a number of public buildings
and put to death the archbishop of Paris, whom they held as a hostage. The armed forces of
the National Assembly, when fi nally triumphant, were determined to root out the inveter-
ate revolutionism of Paris. Some 330,000 persons were denounced, 38,000 were arrested,
20,000 were put to death, and 7,500 were deported to New Caledonia. The Third Republic
was born in an atmosphere of class hate and social terror.
The form of government for the new regime still had to be established. The monar-
chist majority in the Assembly was itself evenly divided between those who favored a
restoration of the Bourbon family and those who favored the Orléanist. The monarchists
thus checkmated each other and, in effect, opened the way toward a new French Republic.
Meanwhile, after extended discussion of various constitutional projects, the Assembly
adopted in 1875 not a constitution, but certain constitutive laws. By a margin of one vote,
a resolution indirectly amounting to the establishment of a republic was passed. The new
laws provided for a president, a parliament in two chambers, and a council of ministers, or
cabinet, headed by a premier. The two legislative bodies were to emerge from different
electoral processes: the Senate was to be elected by a complicated and indirect system of
election, the Chamber of Deputies, by universal, direct, male suffrage.
Within two years, in 1877, the role of the president, the ministers, and the parliament
was further clarifi ed as a result of an unsuccessful attempt by an early president, Marshal
MacMahon, to dismiss a premier of whom he did not approve but who had the backing of
the Chamber. MacMahon proceeded to dissolve the Chamber and to hold new elections,
but the example of Napoleon III’s transformation of the Second Republic into an authoritar-
ian regime was still fresh. The elections vindicated the principle of parliamentary primacy
and of the responsibility of the premier and his cabinet to the legislature,
especially to the more popularly elected lower house. The true executive
in republican France for a long time was not the president, who became a
ceremonial fi gure, but the premier and the cabinet, themselves held strictly
to account by a majority of the legislature. Unfortunately, that majority, in a
parliament where a dozen or so parties were represented, was always diffi cult to form and
could be created only by unstable, temporary, shifting party alliances, coalitions, or blocs.
No president, and indeed no premier, could henceforth dissolve the Chamber in order to
hold new elections and consult the country as could be done in Britain. Actually, under
the Third Republic the substantial machinery of state—ministries, prefectures, law courts,
police, army, bureaucracy, all under highly centralized control—was carried over virtu-
ally untouched as in all upheavals since the time of Napoleon I. France in the nineteenth
century, although volatile in appearance, in effect underwent less extensive governmental
reorganization than any other leading country in Europe.
Troubles of the Third French Republic
Yet the Third Republic was precarious. The government had changed so often since 1789
that all forms of government seemed to be transitory. Questions that in other countries were
questions about specifi c government policies or party programs became in France funda-
mental questions of “regime”—monarchy versus republic. Many people, especially those
infl uenced by the upper classes, the Catholic clergy, and the professional army offi cers,
continued to harbor a positive aversion to the republic. On the other hand, the unmerciful
and vindictive repression of the Commune made many middle-class people sympathetic
to the republicans. Many turned republican simply because no other form of government
Parliamentary
primacy
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established itself or because it was the form of government that divided the country the
least. As republicanism took in wider elements of society, it became less revolutionary
and less fearsome. In 1879, for the fi rst time, republicans won control of both houses of
the government. In the 1880s their radicalism hardly went further than the founding of a
democratic and compulsory school system at government expense and the passage of anti-
clerical legislation intended to curb church infl uence in education.
For over a quarter of a century, however, republican energies had to be expended in
defense of republican institutions in order to ensure the survival of the regime. An initial
crisis arose in 1886–1889, when General Boulanger gathered around him an incongruous
following that included not only Bonapartists, monarchists, and aristocrats but also extreme
radical republicans who wished a war of revenge against Germany and workers who were
disgruntled over their economic conditions. Boulanger became a popular fi gure and
This barricade and its defenders suggest the revolutionary fervor of the Paris Commune, which controlled the French capital in the spring of 1871. The Commune was in many respects a revival of revolutionary Jacobinism rather than a precursor of social revolution, but it pro- voked intense fear and brutal repression from more conservative forces in French society. Revolutionary images of Parisian radicals in the streets—as seen in this photograph—made the Paris Commune a symbol of political idealism and martyrdom for many socialists and a symbol of dreadful social dangers for the middle and upper classes. (akg-images/Newscom)
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics598
seemed for a moment about to seize power. But the menace collapsed in a comical failure
as the general lost heart at the crucial hour and fl ed into exile. Meanwhile, in the 1880s and
1890s scandals and revelations of corruption in high republican circles provided ammuni-
tion for the antirepublicans. Moreover, the hope that unsympathetic French Catholics
would “rally” to the republic, as urged by French prelates and by Pope Leo
XIII in 1892, was shattered by the Dreyfus Affair, which in the late 1890s
rocked the country and attracted wide attention outside France as well.
In 1894 a French military court found Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a
Jewish army offi cer, guilty of treason for leaking secret military documents to the
German embassy in Paris. Dreyfus was deported to life imprisonment at Devil’s Island,
but evidence accumulated to show his innocence and to indicate the guilt of another offi -
cer, Major Esterhazy, an adventurer known to be riddled with gambling debts. But the
army refused to reopen the case, unwilling to admit it had erred; a staff offi cer, Major
Henry, even forged documents to confi rm Dreyfus’s guilt. Meanwhile anti-Semites, roy-
alists, traditionalists, militarists, and most of the “best” people fought the reopening of the
case, deeming it unpatriotic to shake the nation’s confi dence in the army and wishing also
to disgrace the republican regime. The partisans of Dreyfus stubbornly upheld him, both
because they believed in justice and because they wished to discredit their antirepublican
adversaries. The country was deeply split into political and cultural factions that defended
or attacked republicanism with arguments that repeated the bitter ideological confl icts of
The Dreyfus Affair
This photograph of Alfred Dreyfus shows the French army cap- tain after he was found guilty of treason in 1894. Stripped of his army rank and deported to prison on an island near French Guiana, his unjust conviction sparked bitter debates in France, a surge of anti-Semitism, and protracted legal campaigns that ulti- mately led to his complete exoneration and return to the French army. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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every French revolution since 1789. Finally, following a passionate pro-Dreyfus cam-
paign by writers such as Emile Zola, Dreyfus was pardoned by the French president in
1899 and granted complete legal exoneration in 1906. In the aftermath of the affair, leftist
republicans and socialists held power in the Chamber of Deputies and gained revenge
by blocking the promotions of antirepublican offi cers and by anticlerical legislation.
In 1905, in a series of laic laws, they “separated” church and state, unilaterally ending
the close relationship established under Napoleon’s concordat a century earlier. All ties
between church and state were severed, priests and bishops were no longer to be paid by
the state, church property was taken over (“even the chandeliers”) by the government, and
Catholic laymen were to administer each parish. The Pope retaliated by excommunicat-
ing all deputies who had voted for these measures. Gradually compromises were worked
out; some provisions were made less stringent, and tensions, if they did not disappear,
at least eased.
The Strength and Weakness of the Republic
The Third Republic, when the First World War came in 1914, had lasted more than twice
as long as any French regime since 1789. Born unwanted and accidentally,
though it still had opponents, the republic now commanded the loyalty of
the overwhelming mass of the French people. What it had done, since 1871,
was to domesticate democratic republicanism in Europe. Republicanism,
one of the most militant of revolutionary movements down to 1870, had
been shown in France to be compatible with order, law, parliamentary government, eco-
nomic prosperity, and a mutual tolerance between classes, to the extent at least that they
no longer butchered each other in the streets. Industrial workers were in many ways less
well off than in England or Germany, but there were fewer of them; and for most people
France in these years was a pleasant country, where painters, writers, scholars, and scien-
tists fl ourished, where bankers, bourgeois and well-established farmers could freely pursue
their economic interests, a country living comfortably and unhurriedly on the savings of
generations, and one in which, in close-knit family groups, average men and women could
plan securely for their own and their children’s future.
But the comforts and values of bourgeois France were not those that would be needed
for international leadership in the modern age of technology and industrial power. Though
substantial economic progress was made, the country lagged behind Germany in industrial
development; the French entrepreneur showed little inclination to take the business risks
needed for industrial growth. Politically, the fragmentation of political parties, itself a
democratic refl ection of a divided public opinion, and the distrust for historic reasons of a
strong executive power led to the rise and fall of numerous short-lived ministries—no
fewer than 50 in the years between 1871 and 1914. Ministerial instability was to be a
chronic problem of the Third Republic both before and after 1914; continuity of govern-
ment policy was, however, generally maintained because of stability in certain key minis-
tries and because of the permanent civil service.
French labor remained a steady source of discontent. Although French workers
benefi ted from some labor legislation in the two decades after 1890, they continued
to feel frustrated at the failure to establish a “social republic.” Social-
ist representation in the Chamber grew, strengthening the antiroyalist
factions in the French government. However, the most important single
party of the republic, the Radicals, or Radical Socialists, were in actuality
Domesticating
republicanism
The Radical
Socialists
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics600
radical republicans—patriotic, anticlerical spokesmen for the small shopkeepers and the
lesser propertied interests; they drew the line at the advanced social legislation that labor
expected from them, and on occasion their leaders even took positive steps to prevent
unionization and to suppress strikes. Because some of these Radicals had started out
as socialists, the distrust of French workers for all politicians and even for political
processes was intensifi ed. But the diffi culties of the republic went deeper. The political
energies of France’s republican leaders had gone into liquidating the past, into curbing
the political strength of the monarchists, the church, and the army; by the turn of the
century, even before these older issues were fully resolved, the republic was compelled
to meet the challenge of labor and to face other domestic and international pressures that
were to try it sorely. The Third Republic was to weather the crisis of the First World War
but not that of the Second.
The British Constitutional Monarchy
The British constitutional monarchy in the half-century before 1914 was the great exem-
plar of reasonable, orderly, and peaceable self-government through parliamentary meth-
ods. For over 60 years (1837–1901), spanning two-thirds of the nineteenth century, Queen
Victoria reigned as a constitutional monarch and gave her name to a distinguished era of
material progress, literary accomplishment, and political stability. The two major political
parties, Liberal and Conservative, the heirs roughly of the Whigs and Tories, took form in
the 1850s, the former producing its great leader in William E. Gladstone; the latter, a series
of leaders of whom the most colorful was Benjamin Disraeli.
The advance toward an egalitarian political democracy in Britain was more cautious
and slower than in France. The Reform Bill of 1832 had granted the vote to about an eighth
of the adult male population. The democratic Chartist agitation of the 1830s and 1840s
attracted wide popular support but failed to produce further reforms in the electoral sys-
tem. In 1867, however, in response to continued demand for a wider suffrage, the Second
Reform Bill was passed, Conservatives as well as Liberals outdoing one another in an
effort to satisfy the country and to win new political strength for their own party. The bill,
adopted under Disraeli’s Conservative ministry, extended the suffrage from
about 1 million eligible voters to about 2 million, or over a third of the adult
males in the United Kingdom, reaching down far enough to include most
workers in the cities. Disraeli’s colleague Lord Derby called it a “leap in
the dark.” In 1884, under Liberal auspices, the suffrage was again broad-
ened, this time in the rural areas, adding some 2 million additional voters and enfranchis-
ing over three-fourths of all adult males in the country. Not until 1918 did Great Britain
adopt universal male suffrage, as generally understood; and at that time the long campaign
for women’s political rights gained at least a partial victory when women over the age of
30 received the right to vote.
The leadership of the country at the turn of the century was still in the hands of men
from the upper and wealthier classes. Until 1911 the government paid no salaries to
members of the House of Commons, who therefore, in both political parties, were usu-
ally gentlemen with private incomes, possessing the same family background and edu-
cation. An attitude of sportsmanship and good feeling was characteristic of British
politics. The two parties alternated in power at regular intervals, each indulgent toward
the other, carrying over and developing rather than reversing the policies of its predeces-
sor in offi ce. Both parties sought support where they could fi nd it, the Liberals leaning
The extension of
suffrage
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somewhat more on the industrial and commercial interests and the Conservatives rely-
ing more on the landed aristocracy; both sought and succeeded in winning their share of
the new working-class vote.
The Liberals were usually the more willing to pioneer, the fi rst of
the four ministries of Gladstone being especially notable in this respect.
Gladstone in this fi rst ministry (1868–1874) developed the principle
of state-supported public education under the Forster Education Act of
1870, introduced the secret ballot, formally legalized labor unions, promoted competi-
tive examinations for civil service posts, reorganized the upper judiciary, eliminated the
purchase and sale of commissions in the army (a form of property in offi ce), and by abol-
ishing religious tests enabled persons who were not members of the Church of England
to graduate from Oxford and Cambridge. The Conservative Party, less sensitive to pres-
sure from business interests for a laissez-faire policy in economic matters, and continuing
the tradition of early Tory reformers, took the initiative in promoting new labor legis-
lation. Under Disraeli’s second ministry (1874–1880), the existing acts regulating pub-
lic sanitation and conditions in mines and factories were extended and codifi ed, safety
measures were enacted to protect sailors, and the fi rst attempt to regulate housing condi-
tions for the poorer classes was initiated. But the Liberals, it must be added, sought to
protect the workers’ interests too. In Gladstone’s second ministry (1880–1885), for exam-
ple, workers were assured of compensation for injuries not of their own responsibility, and
Gladstone later campaigned to reduce labor hours and to extend employers’ liability
in accidents.
British Political Changes after 1900
At the turn of the twentieth century, after the long era of Liberal and
Conservative ministries, important changes began to transform British
political culture. Labor emerged as an independent political force, the
Labour Party itself being organized shortly after 1900. The rise of labor had
a deep impact upon the Liberal Party and indeed upon liberalism itself. The new Labour
Party insisted that protective measures should be taken to counteract the poor health, low
income, and economic insecurity of British workers. Facing this pressure from a politi-
cized labor movement, the Liberals abandoned their traditional position of laissez-faire
and sponsored a policy of government intervention and social legislation on behalf of
working people. The Liberals, though they acted in part for humanitarian reasons, were
aware that with the emergence of the Labour Party workers who customarily had voted for
them might readily transfer their allegiance.
The Liberals, in control of the government from 1906 to 1916, with Herbert Asquith
as prime minister and David Lloyd George as chancellor of the exchequer during most
of this time, put through a spectacular program of social welfare. Sickness, accident, and
old-age insurance, and a degree of unemployment insurance were adopted, and a moderate
minimum wage law was enacted. Labor exchanges, or employment bureaus, were estab-
lished throughout the country. Restrictions on strikes and other trade union activities were
removed. To meet the costs of the new program as well as of other government expendi-
tures, Lloyd George’s budget of 1909 called for progressive income and
inheritance taxes: wealthier taxpayers would be taxed at progressively
higher rates. He was in effect advancing the then novel idea of using taxa-
tion to modify the social extremes of wealth and poverty. It was a “war
Liberals and
Conservatives
Rise of British labor
A war against
poverty
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics602
budget,” he said, intended “to wage war against poverty.” Its fi scal measures were directed
primarily at the landed aristocracy, and it aroused great opposition, especially in the House
of Lords, where the contest over the budget led to a further constitutional curtailment of
the power of the upper house. The Parliament Act of 1911 deprived the Lords of all veto
power in money matters and of all but a two-year delaying veto on action of the Commons
on other legislation. At this time, too, the government voted to pay salaries to members of
the House of Commons, making it possible for workers and others without independent
incomes to take seats in Parliament.
The Liberal Party was embracing a program of positive state interven-
tion in social and economic matters that the older liberalism, nurtured on
the doctrines of laissez-faire and the Manchester School, would not have
accepted. With the Liberals actively seeking the support of labor and altering much of
their traditional program, the Conservatives in the twentieth century tended to become the
party of industry as well as of landed wealth and to replace the Liberals as the champions
of economic liberalism and laissez-faire. In the next generation, after the First World War,
the Conservatives were to remain one of the two major parties of the country; the Liberals
were to be far outstripped by the Labour Party.
Meanwhile, despite its gains, labor was not pacifi ed. Real wages showed a tendency to
fall after 1900, and great coal and railway strikes broke out in 1911 and 1912. The British
capacity to survive crises without violence, while still conspicuous, was being strained. An
even more serious threat came from Ireland.
The Irish Question
Britain suffered from one of the most bitter minorities confl icts in Europe—what the
British called the Irish question. After 1801 Britain was known as the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland. The British government had incorporated Ireland into the United
Kingdom as a defensive measure against pro-French sympathies in Ireland during the wars
of the French Revolution, but the Irish representatives who thereafter sat in Parliament
were generally hostile to this incorporation and obstructionist in their tactics. The Irish
had many substantial grievances, among which two were conspicuous. The Irish peasants
were defenseless against their landlords, far more so, for example, than the French peas-
ants before 1789; and the Irish people, though predominantly Catholic, were obliged to
pay tithes to the established Church of Ireland (an Anglican sister church to the Church of
England), which also owned a good deal of the land.
Gladstone, in his fi rst ministry, disestablished the Church of Ireland. H e also initiated
measures to protect the Irish farm tenant. By 1900, under Conservative auspices, Irish
tenants were being assisted by the British government to buy out their landlords—often
English or Anglicized and absentee Irish landowners. The Irish also
wanted home rule, or a parliament of their own. Gladstone, in trying to
give it to them in 1886, split his Liberal Party, part of which went along
with the Conservatives in opposing a political division of the British Isles.
Home rule was fi nally granted to Ireland in 1914. But the Ulster Unionists, Protestants
whose ancestors had moved into northern Ireland (mostly from Scotland) during the sev-
enteenth century, objected vehemently to inclusion in an autonomous Ireland, in which
they would be outnumbered by the Catholics of the south. The latter, however, insisted
State intervention
Home rule
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with equal vehemence on the inclusion of Ulster, not wishing to see a political division
of Ireland.
The Ulster Unionists, backed by British Conservatives, started arming and drilling
to resist the act of Parliament that authorized home rule. Great Britain, in 1914, was
about to see a civil war on its own doorstep. It suffered from something like the insol-
uble nationalist disputes that affl icted Austria-Hungary. During the First World War
home rule was suspended. After considerable violence on both sides Catholic Ireland—
which for a time called itself Eire—received dominion status in 1922; but eventually
this Irish dominion dissolved all ties with Britain and became the Republic of Ireland.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON ON THE ISLAND OF LA GRANDE JATTE by Georges Seurat (French, 1859–1891)
This picture of sunny calm, painted in 1886, conveys the well-being that many prosperous Europeans enjoyed or imagined in the late nineteenth century. The people portrayed here seem to live in a peaceable world that is far removed from social confl icts and from a later age of speed and mechanical amusements. Technically, this is one of the most remarkable pictures ever painted. The artist created it without the use of lines by fi lling the canvas with thousands of minute dots of the primary colors, which blur and mix in the eye to produce the forms, hues, light, and shadows of nature. (The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA/The Bridgeman Art Library)
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics604
Northern Ireland remained in the United Kingdom and was dominated by Protestants, so
that its Catholic minority continued to be an alienated, discontented population within
the British state. The “Irish question” thus remained one of modern Britain’s unresolved
issues, generating bitter resentments and violent confl icts during all of the twentieth
century and beyond.
Bismarck and the German Empire, 1871–1890
The German Empire, as put together by Bismarck in 1871 with William I, king of Prussia,
as Kaiser, was a federation of monarchies, a union of 25 German states, in which the
weight of monarchical Prussia, the Prussian army, and the Prussian landed aristocracy
was preponderant. It developed neither the strong constitutionalism of England nor the
democratic equality that was characteristic of France. To win popular support for his proj-
ects, Bismarck exploited existing democratic and socialist sentiment and provided that
members of the Reichstag, the lower chamber, be elected by universal male suffrage.
Remaining chancellor of the united empire for almost 20 years, from 1871 to 1890, he
usually tried to have a majority in the Reichstag on his side, but he recognized no depen-
dence on a majority in principle, holding to the doctrine that it was the emperor and his
chancellor who were to govern the country. Moreover, in practice, the legislative powers
Real wages for British workers tended to fall in fi rst decade of the twentieth century, causing hardships for people such as these coal miners in Wales. Miners joined in strikes throughout Britain after 1910, contributing to economic and political crises that altered the older doctrines and policies of laissez-faire liberalism. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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of the lower house were severely restricted, and the upper chamber, representing the
princes and not the people, and favored by the government, tended to be more important.
Despite the nature of the empire Bismarck’s unifi ed Germany at fi rst displeased the Prus-
sian conservatives, the East Elbian Junker landlords. They opposed his democratic
concessions and were left horrifi ed when in 1872 he undertook to abolish what was left of
their manorial jurisdiction over their peasants.
Bismarck in the 1870s therefore leaned not on the Conservatives but on the National
Liberals. With their aid he put through a number of economic and legal measures designed
to consolidate the unity of the new empire. Bismarck’s fi rst serious confl ict developed with
the Catholic Church. At the very time that he was bent on subordinating all
groups within the state to the sovereign power of the new empire, the church
had spoken out. In 1864 in the Syllabus of Errors, the pope denounced the encroachment of all governments on educational and church affairs; in 1870
the new dogma of papal infallibility made it incumbent on Catholics to accept unreserv-
edly the pope’s pronouncements in matters of faith and morals. To many, the implication
was that the new empire could not count on the undivided loyalty of its Catholic citizens.
To defend Catholic interests and those of the south German states where Catholicism pre-
dominated, Catholic elements had organized the strong Center Party, which now upheld
the church pronouncements. In 1871 Bismarck launched the Kulturkampf, or “battle for modern civilization.” The Liberals joined in eagerly. Like nineteenth-century liberals else-
where in Europe (Gladstone’s campaign against Anglican privilege and the French laic
laws have just been mentioned), they were strongly anticlerical and disapproved of the
infl uence of organized churches in public and private life. Laws were put through impos-
ing restrictions upon Catholic worship and education, the Jesuits were expelled, and many
Catholic bishops throughout Germany were arrested or went into exile. But Bismarck grad-
ually concluded that the anti-Catholic legislation was fruitless, that he had overestimated
the danger to the state of organized Catholicism, and that he needed the support of the
Center Party for other parts of his program. Meanwhile, the country’s rapid and spectacular
industrial expansion had stimulated the growth of the German working class, and to Bis-
marck’s alarm, socialism was spreading.
The Catholic Church
71. The Advance of Democracy: Third French Republic, United Kingdom, German Empire
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1850–1914
1850–1940 About 60 million people migrate from Europe
1869 Opening of Suez Canal in Egypt facilitates global trade
1870s Western Europe and United States adopt the “gold standard” for global currency
exchanges
1871 The revolutionary Paris Commune is violently suppressed in France
1890 Kaiser William II dismisses Bismarck and begins to shape policies of the
German Empire
1894–1899 Dreyfus Affair bitterly divides republican and antirepublican factions in France
c. 1900 European population reaches its highest percentage of world population
1906–1916 Liberal government in Britain introduces broad program of social welfare
1914 Opening of Panama Canal facilitates European trade in the Americas
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics606
The German Social Democratic Party had been founded in 1875 by a fusion of Marx-
ian socialists and the reformist followers of Ferdinand Lassalle on an essentially moderate
program that Marx had denounced. But even a moderate socialism was mistrusted by
Bismarck. He shared in the European horror at the recent Paris Commune, he feared social-
ism as anarchy, and he knew that socialism was in any case inherently republican, which
made it a potentially revolutionary movement in an empire of monarchies. Two radical
attempts on the emperor’s life (in neither case by Social Democrats) provided him with all
the excuse he needed. In 1878, having already made peace with the Catholics, he set out to
eradicate socialism. Antisocialist laws from 1878 to 1890 prohibited social-
ist meetings and socialist newspapers. For 12 years socialism was driven
underground. But repression was not his only weapon; he turned also to
another tactic. Bismarck sought to persuade the workers to place their faith
in him and the German Empire rather than in the prophets of socialism. To
that end, in the 1880s, he initiated an extensive program of social legislation. Workers were
insured by the state against sickness, accident, and incapacity in old age. “Our democratic
friends,” said Bismarck, “will pipe in vain when the people see princes concerned with
their well-being.” In social insurance imperial Germany was, from whatever motives, years
ahead of more democratic England, France, and the United States.
Bismarck failed to kill socialism. The number of socialists elected to the Reichstag
was greater in 1890 than in 1878. It seems, however, that Bismarck by the later 1880s was
more apprehensive than ever of a social revolution that would destroy his empire; and he
contemplated new actions by which the Reichstag might be throttled. He never reached
this point, however, because in 1890, at the age of 75, he was obliged by the new emperor,
William II, to retire.
The German Empire after 1890: William II
William I died in 1888 and was succeeded by his son Frederick III, who had been married
for many years to the eldest daughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria. Incurably ill of cancer,
he died some three months after his accession. Frederick’s son, William II,
the last king of Prussia and the last German Kaiser, began his reign
(1888–1918) as a young man of 29, full of startling ideas about his personal
power and privileges, somewhat in contrast to his father. He was also
uncomfortable in the presence of an elder statesman who had made the German Empire,
who had been his grandfather’s aide and adviser, and whom he regarded partly with ven-
eration and partly as an old fogy. William soon quarreled with Bismarck over continuation
of the antisocialist laws and over matters of foreign affairs. When Bismarck forbade his
ministers to meet with the emperor on policy matters unless he was present, William
resolved that he, and not Bismarck, would rule the empire. In 1890 William ordered
Bismarck to resign, “dropping the pilot,” in the celebrated phrase. Under the four chancel-
lors who succeeded Bismarck, it was William who dominated policy.
After 1890 Germany embarked upon what was termed a “new course.”
In foreign affairs this meant a more aggressive and ambitious colonial,
naval, and diplomatic policy. In domestic affairs it meant a more conciliatory
attitude toward the laboring class. The antisocialist laws were dropped, and
the system of social security legislation was enlarged and codifi ed. But no expansion of
parliamentary democracy seemed possible. William II believed in the divinely ordained
prerogatives of the house of Hohenzollern, and the empire still rested on the power of the
Repression of
socialism
William II
A “new course”
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607
federated princes, the Junkers, the army, and the new industrial magnates. But the Social
Democrats, the Progressive Party, and other democratic forces were growing in strength.
They demanded, for Prussia, a reform of the illiberal constitution of 1850, and for the
Reich, real control over the federal chancellor by the majority party in the Reichstag. In the
election of 1912 the Social Democrats reached a new high by polling 4.25 million votes,
about one-third of the total, and by electing 110 members to the Reichstag, in which they
now formed the largest single party; yet they were excluded from the highest posts of gov-
ernment. The imperial German political system, which Bismarck had created and which
was now ruled by William II, was moving toward a constitutional crisis, but war came in
1914 and the political confl ict was deferred.
Developments Elsewhere; General Observations
Of political developments in other European states before 1914, something has already
been said in the preceding chapter. Italy had become a constitutional monarchy in the
1860s and completed its unifi cation by the forceful seizure of Rome in
1870. Despite parliamentary reforms, Italian political life was characterized
by unstable majorities and by opportunistic maneuvering and manipulation
by moderate liberal political leaders who maintained themselves in offi ce
for long periods of time by shuffl ing and reshuffl ing political coalitions.
The liberal leaders were anticlerical, and the quarrel with the papacy over the seizure of the
papal territories remained unsettled. The popes refused to recognize the Italian kingdom
and forbade Catholics to participate in its affairs or even to vote in elections. Catholics
voted nonetheless and in 1907 bishops in each diocese were permitted to relax the ban, as
they increasingly did.
Industry had begun to expand in northern cities such as Milan. More as a matter of
expediency than out of any democratic impulse, the government moved to extend the fran-
chise to the working classes. The narrow suffrage of 1861 was broadened, fi rst in 1882,
and then in 1912, when a new reform increased the number of eligible voters from 3 to 8
million, or virtually universal male suffrage. Because of illiteracy and political inertia not
all of the newly enfranchised Italians hastened to exercise their voting privilege. The social
problem remained serious, too, despite some modest labor legislation. Poverty and illiter-
acy, especially in the agrarian south, were widespread, and radical unrest appeared in the
industrial cities. The fi rst manifestations of an antiparliamentary ideology, chauvinistic
nationalism, and explosive irrationalism appeared in the writings and political activism of
literary men such as Gabriele d’Annunzio and Filippo Marinetti. The latter published in
1909 the manifesto of a radical new movement he called “Futurism,” which vehemently
condemned all artistic traditions, celebrated the speed of modern technologies, and por-
trayed human violence as a kind of creative action. Such ideas would soon spread into
politics, bringing a new irrationalism to Italian political culture. Meanwhile the machinery
of political democracy was gradually established in Italy, but there could be no assurance
about the evolution of a stable Italian parliamentary democracy.
In the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, created by the political com-
promise of 1867, Austria and Hungary were each in form constitutional par-
liamentary states. In theory, the Emperor-King Francis Joseph ruled through
ministries responsible to the legislature in each state. However, in the important sphere of
matters affecting the empire as a whole, such as foreign affairs and military questions, there
was little parliamentary restraint on the emperor. Here he had virtually fi nal authority;
Political scene in
Italy
Austria-Hungary
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Chapter 14 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Economy and Politics608
moreover, in all matters he still had broad powers to govern by decree, which he exercised.
As in Germany, the tide of socialism was held back both by repressive laws and by social
insurance and benevolent legislation. The most serious problem in the empire remained the
nationalist agitation by the various subject nationalities that were seeking more autonomy
or their own sovereign states. This political agitation helped to deepen the new national self-
consciousness among the Czechs and other Slavic peoples. Political democracy took a dif-
ferent course in Austria than in Hungary. In the former, partly as an effort to placate
nationalist sentiment, universal male suffrage was introduced in 1907. In the latter the
expansion of voting rights was bitterly and successfully resisted by the Magyars, who saw
suffrage as a weapon that could be employed by the Slavs to contest and destroy the Magyar
preponderance. Austria itself, despite the democratic suffrage, was ruled very much like the
German Empire, with the legislature able to debate and criticize but not control policy.
Of other countries it can be said that the political forms of democracy
showed signs of advancing everywhere, though women were still generally
excluded from voting and from all public offi ces. Universal male suffrage
was adopted in Switzerland in 1874, in Belgium in 1893, in the Netherlands
in 1896, and in the next few years in Norway and Sweden (Norway was peacefully sepa-
rated in 1905 from Sweden). In southern Europe, besides Italy, universal male suffrage was
Democratic advances
Kaiser William II’s decision to remove Bismarck from his powerful position in Germany’s government was widely described as “dropping the pilot” of the German Empire. This theme was conveyed by the British cartoonist John Tenniel, who portrayed William expel- ling Bismarck from the ship of state in this famous illustration for the British magazine Punch. (Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)
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609
introduced in Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and, after the revolt of 1908, in Ottoman
Turkey. Even tsarist Russia, after the Revolution of 1905, received a Duma, or national
parliament, elected on a wide franchise but on an indirect and undemocratic class basis and
with narrow powers. Among states west of the Russian Empire, only Hungary and Romania
had a highly restricted suffrage on the eve of the First World War. The vote for women pro-
gressed more slowly. Women voted before 1914 only in certain western states of the United
States, in Australia, New Zealand, Finland, and Norway. Not until after the First World War
did female suffrage begin to make signifi cant advances, and women did not gain the right to
vote in France and Italy until after the Second World War.
The progress of representative and democratic institutions did not mean an end
to the rule of monarchs, landed aristocrats, and other minority interests. For one thing,
with the exception of France and Switzerland, Europe remained monarchical. Second,
despite the growing importance of parliaments, parliamentary control over political life
was far from guaranteed; emperors and kings still ruled through their chancellors and
prime ministers. Of the major world powers it was mainly in the United
States (at least for white males), Britain, and France that democratic and
popular control was something of a reality. But the extension of the suf-
frage, by the relaxation of property qualifi cations, had a dynamic of its
own and was altering the framework of politics everywhere; mass political
parties, including socialist parties and confessional, or religious-oriented, parties were
replacing the older narrow oligarchic political organizations, and support now had to
be sought on a wider electoral basis. In almost all Europe, and in many of the outlying
areas peopled by European descendants and immigrants, democracy was advancing, even
within the older framework. By 1871, most European nations, with the notable exception
of Russia, had written constitutions, guarantees of personal freedom, parliamentary and
representative institutions, and limitations on absolutism; in the years between 1871 and
1914 the most signifi cant new political development was the advance of male suffrage
and the accompanying rise of new, mass-based political parties.
The growing populations and economies of European nations thus created a social sta-
bility in which political institutions gradually became more democratic and more respon-
sive to public opinion. Wealth and resources fl owed into Europe from all parts of the
world, so that the middle classes and even workers had more comforts and material goods
than ever before—and more opportunities to participate in the political institutions of their
various nations. Europe’s dominant role in the global economy, the massive migration of
European people, and the military power of European nation-states gave European civili-
zation its extraordinary world infl uence in the decades after 1870.
During these same years, however, the growing power of industrial corporations and
capitalist fi nancial institutions as well as the traditional power of older European social
hierarchies and cultural attitudes also provoked opposition, which appeared in popular
political movements, as in socialism, and in criticisms of European imperialism. The
critics eventually infl uenced many people outside Europe, gaining a following wherever
European economic and cultural institutions had appeared. European critiques of Western
capitalism, traditions, and ideas therefore became another aspect of Europe’s global infl u-
ence at the end of the nineteenth century.
Expansion of the
suffrage
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
71. The Advance of Democracy: Third French Republic, United Kingdom, German Empire
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611
C h a p t e r 15 EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION,
1871–1914:
SOCIETY AND CULTURE
The belief in progress has been at the center of modern thought since the Scientifi c Revolution of
the seventeenth century. Although some romantic
poets, conservatives, and socialists questioned the
consequences of modern technologies and industry,
most people in the nineteenth century assumed that
progress was both inevitable and benefi cial. Lib-
erals were especially optimistic about progressive
developments in all the main spheres of modern
life: scientifi c knowledge, technological inventions,
economic expansion, constitutional government,
and protection for fundamental human rights. But
the liberals were by no means alone in seeing the late nineteenth-century European ascen-
dancy as the historical confi rmation of human progress.
There were also many Europeans, however, who protested that whole groups of
human beings were still denied the benefi ts of modern civilization, that workers were not
receiving their rightful share of modern wealth, or that women were not entering their
rightful place in modern political life. New political movements in these decades therefore
sought to expand the economic and legal rights of workers and women, claiming that such
reforms would advance the broader cause of social progress; and in fact the new political
movements were often able to gain new rights or benefi ts for the groups they represented.
Meanwhile, science itself continued to produce advances in both the theoretical
understanding of nature and the technological inventions that were transforming modern
societies. Yet it was also at this time that various thinkers began to question the certitudes
of scientifi c knowledge and to stress the limits of human reason, thus challenging many of
the cultural assumptions that sustained the popular belief in human progress. These new
trends in European intellectual life before 1914 began to erode some of the confi dence in
the progressive evolution of human history (at least among certain philosophers or artists)
and to undermine the optimism of classical liberalism. The idea of progress remained a
powerful theme in all modern cultures, but by the early twentieth century the limits and
72. The Advance
of Democracy:
Socialism, Labor Unions,
and Feminism
73. Science, Philosophy,
the Arts, and Religion
74. The Waning of Classical
Liberalism
Chapter emblem: Albert Einstein as he appeared after he had published scientifi c papers on the theory of relativity
in 1905 and 1916. (General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture612
consequences of progress were also becoming subjects for historical refl ection, artistic
representation, and cultural debate.
72. THE ADVANCE OF DEMOCRACY: SOCIALISM, LABOR UNIONS, AND FEMINISM
The artisan and laboring classes had always been suspicious of “bourgeois” liberalism’s
optimistic view of free competition, unrestrained private enterprise, the Manchester
School, laissez-faire, the laws of supply and demand, the free market for goods and labor,
and the idea of an economy independent of states and governments. These
were the ideas of middle-class liberals, not of radical democrats. Popular
leaders had opposed them in the French Revolution in 1793. The English
Chartists had been outspokenly anticapitalistic, and on the Continent the
ideas of socialism had been spreading. In 1848 there was a strong move-
ment among the working classes for a “social” republic, and, though the social revolution
failed in 1848, the force of it was enough to terrify the possessing classes. With the advent
of the ballot, workers pressed for social legislation and used their political power to gain a
greater measure of social democracy.
But in addition, before and after obtaining the ballot, working people resorted to other
devices for the improvement of their position. Against the owners of capital, who con-
trolled the giving of jobs, workers advocated two principal lines of action. Some believed
they could abolish the capitalist economic system; others believed they should bargain
with their capitalist employers. The former view led to radical forms of socialism; the lat-
ter, to the formation of labor unions. Socialism, in logic, meant the extinction of the private
employer as such, or at least to the dissolution of the larger capitalist corporations. Trade
unionism, in logic, meant that the workers had every reason to keep their employers pros-
pering in business in order that bargaining with them might produce better economic
results. The working-class movement thus contained an internal contradiction that was
never completely resolved in the nineteenth century and that would become even more
divisive after the Russian Revolution in the early twentieth century.
Middle-class and educated people who took up the workers’ cause,
the “intellectuals” of the movement—Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Louis
Blanc, Ferdinand Lassalle, and thousands of less famous names—tended
more to socialism than to unionism. They thought of society as a whole, they
saw the economy as a complex social system, and they thought of the future
in long-run terms that allowed generously for whole historical epochs to come and go.
Most actual workers, put to work at an early age, barely educated if at all, with the wak-
ing hours of their adult lives spent on manual jobs, were inclined to keep their attention
more on unionism than on socialism. To earn a shilling more every week beginning next
week, to be spared the nervous strain and physical danger of constant exposure to unpro-
tected machinery, to have 15 minutes more every day for lunch, were likely to seem more
tangible and important than far-reaching but distant plans for a reconstructed society. The
worker looked on the intellectual as an outsider, however welcome; the intellectual looked
on the worker as shortsighted and timid, however much in need of help.
After the failures of 1848 the socialist and trade union movements diverged for a gen-
eration. The 1850s, compared with the hungry ‘40s, were a time of full employment, rising
wages, and increasing prosperity for all classes. Workers set to organizing unions, socialist
thinkers to perfecting their doctrines.
Opponents of
liberalism
Workers and
intellectuals
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61372. The Advance of Democracy: Socialism, Labor Unions, and Feminism
The Trade Union Movement and Rise of British Labor
Organizations of wage workers, or labor unions in the modern sense (as distinguished from
medieval craft guilds), had long maintained a shadowy and sporadic existence. But they
had always been extralegal, frowned upon or actually prohibited by governments. French
revolutionaries in the Le Chapelier Act of 1791 and British Tories in the Combination Act
of 1799 had been as one in forbidding workers to unite. It was the rise of bourgeois
liberalism, so insensitive to the worker in most ways, that fi rst gave legal freedom to labor
unions. The British unions received a tacit recognition from the Liberal Tories in 1825 and
explicit recognition from Gladstone’s Liberal ministry in 1871. French unions were recog-
nized by Napoleon III in 1864, then restrained in the reaction caused by the Commune,
then fully legalized in 1884. In Germany Bismarck negotiated with labor leaders to fi nd
support against the vested interests that stood in his way.
The prosperity of the 1850s favored the formation of unions, for workers could
always organize most easily when employers were most in need of their services. The craft
union—or union of skilled workers in the same trade, such as carpenters—was at fi rst the
typical organization. It was most fully developed in England, where a “new model” union-
ism was introduced by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (i.e., machinists) in 1851.
It was the policy of the new model union offi cials to take the unions out
of politics, to forget the semisocialism of the Chartists, to abandon Robert
Owen’s grandiose idea of “one big union” for all workers, and to concen-
trate on advancing the interests of each separate trade. The new leaders
proposed to be reasonable with employers, avoid strikes, accumulate union
funds, and build up their membership. This strategy was successful. The unions took root,
and the two governing parties in England, reassured by the unexpected moderation of
working-class representatives, combined to give the town worker the vote in 1867.
In the 1880s, and especially with the great London dock strike of 1889, which closed
the port of London for the fi rst time since the French Revolution, unions of unskilled work-
ers began to form. Industrial unionism, or the joining in one union of all workers in one
industry, such as coal or transportation, regardless of the skill or job of the individual
worker, began to take shape at the same time. In some cases the older skilled unionists
joined with unskilled laborers who worked beside them. By 1900 there were about
2,000,000 union members in Great Britain, compared with only 850,000 in Germany and
250,000 in France.
It was largely because British workers were so far advanced in trade unionism, and
so successful in forcing collective bargaining upon their employers, that they were much
slower than their Continental counterparts in forming a workers’ political party. By the
1880s, when avowed socialists were already sitting in French, Belgian, and German parlia-
ments, the only corresponding persons in Britain were a half-dozen “Lib-Labs,” as they
were called, laboring men elected on the Liberal ticket. The British Labour
Party was formed at the turn of the century by the joint efforts of trade
union offi cials and middle-class intellectuals. Where on the Continent the
labor unions were often led, and even brought into being, by the socialist
political parties, in Britain it was the labor unions that brought into being,
and subsequently led, the Labour Party. The infl uence of British labor unions made the
Labour Party less socialistic than working-class parties on the Continent. Its origin and
rapid growth were due in large measure to a desire to defend the unions as established and
respectable institutions.
“New model”
unionism
The British Labour
Party
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture614
The unions were threatened in their very existence by a ruling of the
British courts in 1901, the Taff Vale decision, which held a union fi nancially
responsible for business losses incurred by an employer during a strike.
The shortest and most orderly strike, by exhausting a union’s funds, might
ruin the union. Opposition to the Taff Vale decision unifi ed the unions and all other exist-
ing labor and socialist organizations and precipitated the formation of the modern Labour
Party. In the election of 1906 the new Labour Party sent 29 members to Parliament, which
thereupon overruled the Taff Vale decision by new legislation. The social legislation put
through Parliament by the Liberal Party government in the next few years, in good part
under pressure from labor, was described in the last chapter.
European Socialism after 1850
As for socialism, which had so frightened the middle and upper classes in 1848, it seemed
in the 1850s to go into abeyance. Karl Marx, after issuing the Communist Manifesto with Engels in 1848, and agitating as a journalist in the German revolution of that year, with-
drew to the secure haven offered by England, where, after years of painstaking research, he
published the fi rst volume of his Capital in 1867. This work, of which the succeeding two volumes were published after his death, gave body, substance, and argument to the princi-
ples announced earlier in the Communist Manifesto. Marx lived for more than 30 years in London, but he scarcely mixed with the labor leaders then building up the English unions.
A steady rise in the member- ship of labor unions trans- formed political life in all industrialized societies. This illustration of British miners voting to strike was published in an Italian newspaper, but it depicts the kind of worker activism that became common in most European nations and in other parts of the modern world by the early twentieth century. (Domenica del Corriere/Collection
Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art
Resource, NY)
The Taff Vale
decision
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615
He associated mainly with political exiles and temporary visitors of numerous nationali-
ties, and the fi rst volume of Capital was not even published in English until 1886. In 1864 there took place in London the fi rst meeting of the Interna-
tional Working Men’s Association, commonly known as the First Inter-
national. It was sponsored by a heterogeneous group, including the
secretary of the British carpenters’ union, Robert Applegarth; the aging
Italian revolutionary, Mazzini; and Karl Marx. With the union offi cials
absorbed in union business, leadership in the Association gradually passed to Marx, who
used it as a means of publicizing the ideas about to appear in his Capital. At subsequent annual congresses, at Geneva, Lausanne, Brussels, and Basel, Marx built up his position.
He made the Mazzinians unwelcome, and he denounced the German Lassalleans for
their willingness to cooperate with Bismarck, arguing that it was not the business of
socialists to cooperate with the state but to seize it. His sharpest struggle was with the
Russian Bakunin. Drawing on his experience in tsarist Russia, Bakunin viewed the state
as the cause of the worker’s affl ictions; he was hence an “anarchist,” holding that
the state should be attacked and abolished. To Marx anarchism was abhorrent; the cor-
rect doctrine, in Marx’s view, was that the state—tsarist or bourgeois—was a product of
economic conditions and a weapon of the propertied interests, so that the true target for
revolutionary action must be not the state but the capitalist economic system. Marx
drove Bakunin from the First International in 1872.
Meanwhile members of the First International watched with great
excitement as the Paris Commune emerged in 1871. They hoped that the
new revolutionary events in Paris might be the opening act of a European
working-class upheaval. Members of the International infi ltrated the Commune, and the
connection between the two, though rather incidental, was one reason why the French
Provisional Government repressed the Commune with such terrifi ed ferocity. But the
Commune actually destroyed the First International. The Commune had been bloody
and violent, an armed rebellion against the democratically elected National Assembly of
France. Marx praised it as a stage in the international class war. He even saw in it a fore-
taste of what he was coming to call the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” He thus frightened
away many possible followers. Certainly British trade unionists, sober and steady individ-
uals, would have nothing to do with such doings or such doctrines. The First International
faded out of existence after 1872.
But in 1875, at a German workers’ conference in Gotha, Marxian and Lassallean
socialists united to found the German Social Democratic Party, whose remarkable growth
thereafter, against Bismarck’s attempts to stop it, has already been noted. About 1880
socialist parties sprouted in many European countries. In Belgium, highly industrialized, a
Belgian Socialist Party appeared in 1879. In the industrial regions of France some workers
were attracted to Jules Guesde, a self-taught worker, former Communard, and now a rigid
Marxist, who held it impossible to emancipate the working class by compromise of any
sort; others followed Paul Brousse, who thought workers could arrive at socialism through
parliamentary methods; still others supported Jean Jaurès, who eloquently linked social
reform to the French revolutionary tradition and the defense of republican institutions. Not
until 1905 did the socialist groups in France form a unifi ed Socialist Party. In England,
in 1881, H. M. Hyndman founded a Social Democratic Federation on the German model
and with a Marxist program; it never had more than a handful of members. In 1883 two
Russian exiles in Switzerland, Plekhanov and Axelrod, recent converts to Marxism,
founded the Russian Social Democratic Party, from which the Russian communism of the
The First
International
The Paris Commune
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture616
following century would later evolve. The socialist parties all came together
to establish an international league in 1889, known as the Second Interna-
tional, which thereafter met every three years and lasted until 1914.
Revisionist and Revolutionary Socialism, 1880–1914
Marx died in 1883, but the new socialist parties of the 1880s were all Marxist in inspira-
tion. Marxism or “scientifi c socialism,” by the force of its social analysis, the mass of
Marx’s writings over 40 years, and an attitude of unyielding hostility to competing social-
ist doctrines, had gradually become the most infl uential form of systematic socialism.
Strongest in Germany and France, Marxism was relatively less successful in Italy and
Spain, where the working class was less concentrated in large factories, generally less edu-
cated, and still unable to place its hopes in the ballot. Workers in southern Europe were
more habituated to insurrectionism in the manner of Garibaldi and they turned more fre-
quently to the anarchism preached by Bakunin.
Marxism also attracted relatively little support from labor groups in England. The
workers stood by their trade unions, and middle-class critics of capitalism followed the
Fabian Society, established in 1883. The Fabians (so called from the ancient Roman gen-
eral Fabius Cunctator, the “delayer,” or strategist of gradual methods) were very English
and very un-Marxist. George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Sidney and
Beatrice Webb were among early members of the Society. For them social-
ism was the social and economic counterpart to political democracy, as
well as its inevitable outcome. They held that no class confl ict was neces-
sary or even existed; and they believed that gradual and reasonable and
conciliatory measures would in due time bring about a socialist state. Rejecting the idea
that revolutionary violence would be needed to change the economic system, the Fabians
argued that improvement of local government, or municipal ownership of such things as
waterworks and electric lighting, were practical steps toward a more just society. The
Fabians, like the trade union offi cials, were thus content with small and immediate satis-
factions. They joined with the unions to form the Labour Party. A t the same time, by
patient and detailed research into economic realities, they provided a mass of practical
information on which a legislative program could be based.
The Marxist or Social Democratic parties on the Continent grew rap-
idly in the decades after 1870. Marxism turned into a less revolutionary
“parliamentary socialism”—except indeed for the Russian Social Demo-
cratic Party, because Russia had no parliamentary government. The growth
of socialist parties meant that true workers, and not merely intellectuals,
were voting for socialist candidates for the Reichstag, Chamber of Deputies, or whatever
the lower house of parliament might be called; and this in turn meant that the moderat-
ing infl uence of labor unions within the parties was increased. The workers and their
union offi cials might in theory consider themselves locked in an enormous struggle with
capital; but in practice their aim was to gain more for themselves out of their employers’
business. They might believe in the internationalism of the workers’ interests; but in prac-
tice, acting through the parliaments of their various national states, they would work for
orderly legislation that benefi ted the workers of their own countries—social insurance,
factory regulation, minimum wages, or maximum hours.
By the close of the nineteenth century it was becoming apparent that Marx’s prediction
of growing worker impoverishment (based initially on conditions of the 1840s) had not come
true, at least not yet; the bourgeoisie was getting richer, but the proletarian was not getting
poorer. Real wages—or what the wage earner’s income would actually buy, even allowing for
Fabian socialism in
England
Parliamentary
socialism on the
Continent
The Second
International
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617
the losses due to unemployment—are estimated to have risen about 50 percent in the industri-
alized countries between 1870 and 1900. This increase was due to the greater productivity of
labor through mechanization, the growth of the world economy, the accumulation of capital
wealth, and the gradual fall in prices of food and other items that the workers had to buy.
Marxism began in the 1890s to undergo a movement of revisionism that responded to a
changing social environment. Workers could now gain somewhat better wages and also
vote for new political parties that gave them more public infl uence. The revi-
sionists were led in France by Jean Jaurès, Socialist leader in the Chamber of
Deputies, and in Germany by Eduard Bernstein, Social Democratic member
of the Reichstag and author in 1898 of Evolutionary Socialism, an important tract setting forth the new views. The revisionists held that the class confl ict might not be
absolutely inevitable, that capitalism might be gradually transformed in the workers’ inter-
est, and that now that the workers had not only the vote but also a political party of their
own, they could obtain their ends through democratic channels, without revolution and
without any dictatorship of the proletariat. Most socialists or social democrats followed the
revisionists. Repeatedly, but in vain, the Second International had to warn its component
socialist parties against collaboration with the bourgeoisie.
This tendency to “opportunism” among Marxists drove the really revo-
lutionary spirits into new directions. Thus there arose revolutionary syndical-
ism, of which the main intellectual exponent was a Frenchman, Georges
Sorel. “Syndicalism” is simply the French word for trade unionism ( syndicat, a union), and the idea was that the workers’ unions might themselves become the supreme
authoritative institutions in society, replacing not only property and the market economy, but
also government itself. The means to this end was to be a vast general strike, in which all
workers in all industries would simultaneously stop work, thus paralyzing society and forc-
ing acceptance of their will. Syndicalism made most headway where the unions were weak-
est, as in Italy, Spain, and France, because here the unions had the least to lose and were
most in need of sensational doctrines to attract members. Its strongest base was in the French
General Confederation of Labor, founded in 1895.
Among orthodox Marxists there was also a revival of Marxist funda-
mentals in protest against revisionism. In Germany Karl Kautsky criticized
the revisionists as compromisers who betrayed Marxism for petty-bourgeois
ends. In 1904 he and other rigorists prevailed upon the Second International
to condemn the political behavior of the French socialist Alexandre Mille-
rand, who in 1899 had accepted a ministerial post in a French cabinet. Socialists might use
parliaments as a forum, the Second International ruled, but socialists who entered the gov-
ernment itself were unpardonably identifying themselves with the enemy bourgeois state.
Not until the First World War did socialists henceforth join the cabinet of any European
country. In the Russian Social Democratic Party the issue of revisionism came to a head in
1903 at a party congress held in London—for the most prominent Russian Marxists were
mainly exiles. Here a group led by the committed revolutionist V. I. Lenin demanded that
revisionism be stamped out. Lenin won a majority, at the moment at least, and hence the
uncompromising Marxists were called Bolsheviks (from the Russian word for majority),
while the revisionist Russian Marxists, those willing to work with bourgeois liberals and
democrats, were subsequently known as Mensheviks or the “minority” group. But in 1903
most European socialists viewed the Russian Marxists as marginal to their own national
campaigns for social reform.
In general, in Europe’s inner zone, by the turn of the century, most
people who called themselves Marxists were no longer actively revolu-
tionary. As revolutionary republicanism had quieted down in the Third
The revisionists
Syndicalism
Orthodoxy vs.
revisionism
Marxism transformed
72. The Advance of Democracy: Socialism, Labor Unions, and Feminism
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture618
French Republic, revolutionary Marxism also seemed to have quieted down into the milder
doctrines of social democracy. What would have happened except for the coming of war
in 1914 cannot be known; possibly social revolutionism would have revived, because real
wages no longer generally rose between 1900 and 1914, and considerable restlessness
developed in labor circles, punctuated by great strikes. But in 1914 the working class as a
whole was not in a revolutionary mood. Workers still sought a greater measure of social
justice, but the social agitation so feared or hoped for in 1848 had subsided. There seem to
have been three principal reasons for the decline in revolutionary agitation. Capitalism had
worked well enough to raise the workers’ living standard above what they could remember
of their parents’ or grandparents’ economic situation; workers had gained the right to vote,
so they expected to benefi t from new public policies rather than from the overthrow of
their governments; and they had created political parties and increasingly powerful labor
unions, all of which protected their interests and helped them acquire a larger share of the
national income.
Feminism, 1880–1914
The campaign for women’s rights also became more international and better organized
during the same decades that the new workers’ parties were spreading across Europe.
Women received less pay than men for the work they performed in the new industrial
economy, and in most places they still faced numerous restrictions on their rights to own
property, participate in political meetings, vote in elections, and attend universities. The
movement for women’s rights therefore continued to promote the kind of reforms that
feminists had been advocating since the early nineteenth century, including more access to
education and the right to vote. Women’s groups on the Continent tended to emphasize
legal and social reforms rather than voting rights, whereas British and American feminists
gave more attention to the campaign for women’s suffrage. But activists in all industrial-
ized societies were increasingly drawn to national and international organizations, in part
because such groups created useful networks for spreading information and political ideas.
American women such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton joined with
European feminists to establish an International Council of Women in 1888, and the grow-
ing demand for women’s rights crossed the borders of all modern nations.
Although some feminists worked to make birth control available to more women or
to improve the conditions of women workers, the quest for voting rights
attracted the most public attention, especially in the United States and
Britain. New organizations such as the National American Woman Suf-
frage Association and, in Britain, the Women’s Social and Political Union
sponsored petitions, mass meetings, and protests that demanded equal vot-
ing rights in both local and national elections. The suffrage movement in Britain became
especially militant after the British Parliament rejected every legislative proposal to grant
women the vote—a pattern of offi cial opposition that had become a recurring theme in
British politics since the 1860s. Frustrated by the stubborn resistance of male politicians,
the energetic leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union, Emmeline Pankhurst, led a
radical wing of the suffrage movement in a campaign of violent protests in the years before
1914. Pankhurst’s supporters and allies disrupted sessions of Parliament, broke store win-
dows, destroyed mailboxes, and damaged government buildings to protest the exclusion of
women from British elections and political institutions. When arrested, the “suffragettes”
went on hunger strikes, to which the police responded by painful forcible feedings.
Suffragettes seek
the vote
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The campaign for women’s voting rights became increas- ingly militant as early twentieth-century leaders such as Emmeline Pankhurst urged activists to take direct action against government institutions and facilities. This pho- tograph of Pankhurst was taken shortly before the First World War—a transformative event that would reshape the social roles of British women and lead fi nally to the enactment of female suffrage in 1918. (Library of Congress [LC-DIG-ggbain-12112])
The British campaign for women’s voting rights often mobilized women for marches in the streets, public demonstrations, and confrontations with government offi cials. The protestors at this march in 1913 were following a woman who had been arrested at an earlier suffragist demonstration, and the presence of the police is an example of the close government surveil- lance that was part of every such event. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
72. The Advance of Democracy: Socialism, Labor Unions, and Feminism
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture620
Pankhurst and other suffragettes were widely ridiculed in the British press and Parlia-
ment, but their campaign attracted growing support during the First World War (when the
militant protests were suspended), and, as noted earlier, British women over the age of 30
fi nally received the right to vote in 1918. The law was changed again in 1928, when the
voting age for British women was lowered to 21. Meanwhile, women had also gained the
right to vote in Germany, the United States, and other Western nations in the early years
of this postwar era. The campaign for voting rights was only one component of modern
feminism, however; and the movement to enhance women’s rights in the economy, legal
system, family, and education would develop new themes and new political strategies
throughout the twentieth century.
73. SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, THE ARTS, AND RELIGION
Faith in the powers of natural science has been characteristic of modern European society
for over three centuries, but never was there a time when this faith spread to so many people
or was held so fi rmly and with so few mental reservations as in the half-century preceding
the First World War. Science lay at the bottom of the whole movement of industrialization;
and if science gained wide popularity after about 1870, in that persons ignorant of science
came to look upon it as an oracle of wisdom, it was because it manifested itself to every-
body in the new wonders of daily life. Hardly had the world’s more industrialized regions
digested the railroad, the steamship, and the telegraph when a whole series of new inven-
tions began to appear during the era of the second Industrial Revolution. In the 30 years
following 1875 the number of patents tripled in the United States, quadrupled in Germany,
and multiplied in all modern countries. The scientifi c and technical advance was as com-
pletely international (though confi ned mainly to the “inner zone”) as any movement the
world has ever seen. Never had the rush of scientifi c invention been so fundamentally use-
ful, so helpful to the constructive labors and serious problems of mankind.
In more basic scientifi c thinking important changes set in about 1860
or 1870. Up to that time, generally speaking, the underlying ideas had been
those set forth by Isaac Newton almost two centuries before. The law of
universal gravitation reigned unquestioned, and with it, hardly less so, the
geometry of Euclid and a physics that was basically mechanics. The ulti-
mate nature of the universe was thought to be regular, orderly, predictable, and harmoni-
ous; it was also described as timeless, in that the passage of ages in the natural world
brought no signifi cant change or development. By the end of the epoch considered here,
that is, by 1914, the old conceptions had begun to yield on every side.
The Impact of Evolution
In impact upon general thinking the greatest change came in the new
emphasis upon biology and the life sciences. Here the great symbolic date
is the publication by Charles Darwin of the Origin of Species in 1859. Evo- lution, after Darwin (1809–1882), became the most infl uential intellectual
theme of the era. Evolutionary philosophies, holding that the way to understand anything
was to understand its development, were not new in 1859. Hegel had introduced the evo-
lutionary conception into metaphysics; and he and Marx, into historical theories of human
society. The idea of progress, taken over from the Age of Enlightenment, was also a kind
Changing conceptions
in science
Charles Darwin
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62173. Science, Philosophy, the Arts, and Religion
of evolutionary philosophy; and the great activity in historical studies, under romantic
and nationalist auspices, had made people think of human affairs in terms of a process
that unfolded over time. In the world of natural science, the rise of geology after 1800
had opened the way to evolutionary ideas about the surface of the earth, and venturesome
biologists had begun to speculate on an evolutionary development of living forms. What
Darwin did was to stamp evolution with the seal of science, marshaling the evidence for it
and offering an explanation of how it worked. In 1871, in The Descent of Man, he applied the same hypotheses to human beings.
By evolution, Darwin meant that species are mutable; that no species is created to
remain unchanged once and for all; and that all species of living organisms, plant and ani-
mal, microscopic or elephantine in dimensions, living or extinct, have developed by suc-
cessive small changes from other species that went before them. An important corollary
was that all life was interrelated and subject to the same laws. Another corollary was that
the whole history of living things on earth, generally held by scientists in Darwin’s time to
be many millions of years, was a unifi ed history unfolding continuously in a single com-
plex process of evolution.
Darwin thought that species changed, not by any intelligent design or by a purpose-
ful activity in the organism, but essentially by a kind of chance. Individual organisms,
through the play of heredity, inherited slightly different characteristics, some more useful
than others in food getting, fi ghting, or mating; and the organisms that had the most useful
characteristics tended to survive, so that their characteristics were passed
on to offspring, until the whole species gradually changed. Certain phrases,
not all of them invented by Darwin, summed up the theory. There was a
“struggle for existence” resulting in the “survival of the fi ttest” through
“Survival of the
fi ttest”
Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) set forth scientifi c arguments for the bio- logical evolution of living organisms and provoked cultural debates far beyond the academic sphere of natural scien- tists. Darwin is portrayed here as an age- ing, somewhat detached scientifi c expert whose grandfatherly appearance scarcely suggests the intellectual revolution that he launched through his research and writings. (Library of Congress [LC-USZ61-104])
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture622
“natural selection” of the “most favored races”—races meaning not human races but the
strains within a species. The struggle for existence referred to the fact that in nature more
individuals were born in each species than could live out a normal life span; the “fi ttest”
were those individual specimens of a species having the most useful characteristics, such
as fl eetness in deer or ferocity in tigers; “natural” selection meant that the fi ttest survived
without purpose in themselves or in a Creator; the “favored races” were the strains within a
species having good survival powers in a complex natural environment.
Darwin’s ideas precipitated a great outcry. Scientists rushed to defend and churchmen
to attack him. The biologist T. H. Huxley became the chief spokesman for Darwin—
“Darwin’s bulldog.” He debated with, among others, the bishop of Oxford. Darwin was
denounced, with less than fairness, for saying that human beings came from monkeys. It
was feared that all grounds of human dignity, morality, and religion would collapse.
Darwin himself remained complacent on this score. Under civilized conditions, he said,
the social and cooperative virtues were useful characteristics assisting in survival, so that
“we may expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fi xed by inheri-
tance.” Much of the outburst against Darwin was somewhat trivial, nor were those who
attacked him generally noted for spiritual insight; yet they were not mistaken in sensing a
profound danger.
That Darwinism said nothing of God, Providence, creative (or intelligent) design, or
salvation was not surprising; no science ever did. That evolution did not square with the
fi rst chapter of Genesis was disturbing but not fatal; much of the Old Testament was
already regarded as symbolic, at least outside fundamentalist religious circles. Even the
idea that humans and animals were of one piece was not ruinous; the animal side of human
nature had not escaped the notice of theologians. The novel and upsetting
effect of evolutionary biology was to change the conception of nature.
Nature was no longer a harmony; it was a scene of struggle, “nature red in
tooth and claw.” Elimination of the weak was natural, and it might even be
considered good insofar as it contributed to evolutionary development.
Such conceptions of what was good or benefi cial for evolutionary progress profoundly
challenged traditional religious ideas about morality and virtue; indeed, the potential cri-
tique of Christian ethics posed a greater threat to religious values than the revision of the
biblical account of creation. Darwin’s theory asserted that there were no fi xed species or
perfected forms, but only an unending fl ux. Change was everlasting; and everything
seemed relative to time, place, and environment. There were no higher norms of good and
bad; a good organism was one that survived where others perished; adaptation replaced
virtue; outside successful adaptation there was nothing “right.” The test was, in short, suc-
cess; the “fi t” were those who survived; and here Darwinism merged with the new realism,
or Realpolitik, and other social doctrines that were appearing in Europe at the same time from other causes.
Such at least were the implications if one generalized from science, carrying over
scientifi c fi ndings into human affairs, and the prestige of science was so
great that this is precisely what many people wished to do. With the pop-
ularization of biological evolution, a school of social theorists known as
Social Darwinists actively applied the ideas of the struggle for existence
and survival of the fi ttest to human society. Social Darwinists were found all over Europe
and the United States. Their doctrines were put to various political and cultural uses, to
show that some peoples were naturally superior to others, such as whites to blacks, or Nor-
dics to Latins, or Germans to Slavs (or vice versa), or non-Jews to Jews; or that the upper
Changing views of
nature
Social Darwinism
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623
and middle classes, comfortable and contented, deserved these blessings because they had
proved themselves “fi tter” than the shiftless poor; or that big business in the nature of
things had to take over smaller concerns; or that some states, such as the British or German
Empires, were bound to rise, or that war was morally a fi ne thing, proving the virility and
survival value of those who fought. These ideas gave new meanings to national wars and to
the claims for cultural or racial superiority that were used to justify late nineteenth-century
European imperialism.
Genetics, Anthropology, and Psychology
Meanwhile Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), an Austrian monk patiently
experimenting with the cross-pollination of garden peas in his Augustinian
monastery, arrived at an explanation of how heredity operates and how
hybridization can take place. Unlike Darwin, his fi ndings, published in
1866, were ignored until 1900, when they were rediscovered and became the basis for the
new science of genetics. Mendel’s ideas foreshadowed the remarkable breakthroughs in
the scientifi c study of heredity and control over genetic materials that began in the second
half of the twentieth century and have continued into our own time.
Anthropologists gained public infl uence in this era by setting out to explain the physi-
cal and cultural characteristics of all branches of humankind. Physical anthropologists
became interested in the several human “races,” some of which they considered might be
“favored” in the Darwinian sense, that is, superior in inheritance and survival value. Some
European scientists and intellectuals argued that the whites were the most competent race,
and then extended their racist categories to assert that the Nordics or Germans or Anglo-
Saxons were superior among Europeans. The public became more race conscious than
Europeans had ever been before. On the other hand the cultural anthropologists, surveying
all manner of primitive or complex societies with scientifi c comparisons, seemed some-
times to teach a more defl ating doctrine. Scientifi cally, it seemed, no culture or society was
“better” than any other, all being adaptations to an environment, or merely a matter
of custom—of the mores, as people said in careful distinction from “morals.” The new anthropology thus contributed new cultural evidence to support a kind of relativism or
skepticism—a negation of values, a belief that right and wrong were matters of social con-
vention, psychological conditioning, mere opinion, or point of view. We are describing, let
it be emphasized, not the history of science itself but the effects of science upon European
civilization at the time.
The impact of anthropology was felt keenly in religion too. Sir James
Frazer (1854–1941) in his multivolumed The Golden Bough demonstrated that some of the most sacred practices, rites, and ideas of Christianity were
not unique among human religious traditions; similar rituals and beliefs
could be found in numerous premodern societies, and, according to Frazer, only the thin-
nest of lines divided belief in magic from religion. Anthropology, like Darwinian evolu-
tion, could therefore undermine traditional religious beliefs, including a belief in either the
uniqueness or the universal truth of European religions.
Psychology, as a science of human behavior, led to thoroughly upsetting implications
about the very nature of human freedom and rationality. It was launched in the 1870s as a
natural science by the German physiologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), who developed
various new experimental techniques. The Russian Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) conducted a
famous series of experiments in which he “conditioned” dogs to salivate automatically at
Gregor Mendel
Anthropology and
religion
73. Science, Philosophy, the Arts, and Religion
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture624
the ringing of a bell once they had become accustomed over a period of time to associate
the sound with the serving of their food. Pavlov’s observations were important. They
implied that a great part of animal behavior, and presumably human behavior, could be
explained on the basis of conditioned responses. In the case of human beings, their actions
and responses to various situations were apparently conditioned or deeply shaped by ear-
lier environments, training, and social experiences rather than by personal choices or con-
scious reasoning.
Most signifi cant of all the developments in the study of human behav-
ior was the work of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and those infl uenced by
him. Freud, a Viennese physician, founded psychoanalysis at the turn of
the century. He came to believe that certain forms of emotional disturbance
like hysteria were traceable to unconscious desires and painful earlier forgotten episodes
of patients’ lives. After fi rst trying various techniques such as hypnosis, which he soon
abandoned, he employed free association, or free recall. If patients could be helped to
bring their suppressed desires or painful experiences into conscious recall, the symptoms
of illness would often disappear.
From these beginnings Freud and his followers explored the role that the unconscious
played in all human behavior, he himself stressing the sexual drive. In one of his most
famous books, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), he argued that the analysis of dreams provided the most direct access to a person’s repressed memories and unconscious mind.
In later books such as Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) Freud extended his account of unconscious drives and frustrations into the broader cultural spheres of religion, edu-
cation, art, literature, and war, arguing that the deepest desires within the human mind
were both repressed and expressed in the social customs and institutions of all societies.
Freud and Freudian ideas had great infl uence on the social and behavioral sciences, and
a good deal of the Freudian vocabulary later entered into everyday modern language and
popular culture. In its deepest signifi cance psychoanalysis, by revealing the wide areas of
human behavior outside conscious control, suggested that human beings were not essen-
tially rational creatures at all. Although Freud identifi ed with the scientifi c traditions of the
Enlightenment, his theory of the unconscious called into question the classical liberal and
Enlightenment assumptions about how reasonable, free persons developed, explained, and
acted upon their individual interests or beliefs.
The New Physics
The revolution in biology of the nineteenth century, together with the developments in
psychology and anthropology, were soon to be matched and surpassed by the revolution in
physics. In the late 1890s physics was on the threshold of a revolutionary transformation.
Like Newtonian mechanics in the seventeenth century and Darwinian evolution in the
nineteenth, the new physics represented one of the great scientifi c revolutions of all time.
There was no single work comparable to Newton’s Principia or Darwin’s Origin of Species unless Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, propounded in a series of scientifi c papers in 1905 and 1916, might be considered as
such. Instead there was a series of discoveries and fi ndings, partly mathe-
matical and then increasingly empirical, that threw new light on the nature
of matter and energy. In Newtonian physics the atom, the basic unit of all matter, which
the Greeks had hypothesized in ancient times, was like a hard, solid, unstructured billiard
ball, permanent and unchanging; and matter and energy were separate and distinct.
Sigmund Freud
Einstein’s theory of
relativity
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625
But a series of discoveries profoundly altered this view in the early decades of the
twentieth century. In 1896 the French scientist Antoine Henri Becquerel discovered radioac-
tivity, observing that uranium emitted particles or rays of energy. In the years immediately
following, from the observations and discoveries of the French scientists Pierre and Marie
Curie and the Englishmen J. J. Thomson and Lord Rutherford, there emerged the notion that
atoms were not simple but complex and, moreover, that various radioactive atoms were by
nature unstable, releasing energy as they disintegrated. The German physicist Max Planck
demonstrated in 1900 that energy was emitted or absorbed in specifi c and discrete units or
bundles, each called a quantum; moreover, energy was not emitted smoothly and continu-
ously as previously thought, nor was it as distinguishable from matter as once supposed. In
1913, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr postulated an atom consisting of a nucleus of protons
surrounded by electrically charged units, called electrons, rotating around the nucleus, each
in its orbit, like a minuscule solar system.
The study of radioactivity led scientists back toward an idea long rejected, the favored
view of the alchemists, that matter was transmutable; in a way undreamed of even by the
alchemists, it was convertible into energy. The German-born Jewish scien-
tifi c genius Albert Einstein (1879–1955) expressed this conversion of mat-
ter into energy in a famous formula e 5 mc 2 . The formula summarized his theory of relativity, which also carried the profoundly revolutionary notion
that time, space, and motion were not absolute in character but were relative to the observer
and the observer’s own movement in space. In later years, in 1929 and in 1954, Einstein
brought together into one common set of laws, as Newton formerly had done, a unifi ed
fi eld theory, an explanation of gravitation, electromagnetism, and subatomic behavior. Dif-
fi cult as it was for even the serious-minded to grasp, and a great deal was still the subject of
scientifi c controversy, it modifi ed much that had been taken for granted since Newton. The
Newtonian world was being replaced by a four-dimensional world, a kind of space-time
continuum; and in mathematics, non-Euclidian geometries were being developed.
e 5 mc 2
Sigmund Freud’s description of the unconscious mind reshaped modern conceptions of human psychology and infl uenced the arts, literature, and social theories as well as the medical treatment of mental illnesses. As this photograph suggests, however, the “revolutionary” Dr. Freud was also a typical member of his own cultural milieu— the professional class in early twentieth-century Vienna. (Mondadori via Getty Images)
73. Science, Philosophy, the Arts, and Religion
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture626
It turned out, too, that neither cause and effect nor time and space nor Newton’s
law of universal gravitation meant very much in the subatomic world nor indeed in the
cosmos when objects moved with the speed of light. It was impossible, as the German
scientist Werner Heisenberg demonstrated a little later, in 1927, by his principle of uncer-
tainty, or indeterminacy, to ascertain simultaneously both the position and the velocity of
the individual electron. On these foundations established before the First World War there
developed the new science of nuclear physics and the tapping of the atom’s energy. The
atom and its world of subatomic particles were discovered to be even more complex than
conceived of before 1914. Despite the complexity of the scientifi c language and theories,
new ideas about the “relativity” of human knowledge soon began to infl uence European
art, philosophy, and literature—much as Newtonian physics had infl uenced nonscientifi c
thought in the Enlightenment-era culture of the eighteenth century.
Trends in Philosophy and the Arts
Although some writers and artists resembled earlier Romantic thinkers in criticizing
Enlightenment ideas or modern science, most European intellectuals in this period viewed
science as the model for all forms of knowledge. They were drawn to positivism or to
the belief that scientifi c methods provided the only “positive” knowledge of the world.
Anything unknowable to science must therefore remain unknowable
forever—a doctrine called agnosticism, or the acknowledgment of igno-
rance. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) in England and Ernst Haeckel (1834–
1919) in Germany were widely read popularizers of agnosticism; both also
pictured a universe governed by Darwinian evolution. For Spencer especially, all philoso-
phy could be unifi ed, organized, and coordinated through the doctrine of evolution; this
doctrine he applied not only to all living things but also to sociology, government, and
economics as well. The evolution of society, he believed, was leading toward increasing
freedom for the individual, the role of governments being merely to maintain freedom
and justice; governments should therefore not interfere with natural social and economic
processes, nor coddle the weak and unfi t. Yet, like Darwin himself, Spencer believed that
Agnosticism
The new theories that emerged in physics after 1900 transformed earlier Newto- nian science and gave the young Albert Einstein an international reputation. This picture shows Einstein standing next to his personal books and papers in the 1920s, several years before he moved to the United States to escape the intolerance and repression in Nazi Germany. (General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)
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627
altruism, charity, and goodwill were useful as individual ethical virtues. He separated
such virtues from religious traditions, however, by describing them as laudable products
of evolutionary development.
These l atter views of individual ethics were not shared by another of the serious
writers of the age, also much infl uenced by evolutionary ideas, the
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Drawing upon
many intellectual currents of the century, Nietzsche was an unsystematic,
radical thinker to whom it is easy to do less than justice. It is evident,
however, that he held a low opinion of modern, democratic societies. From a back-
ground of evolutionary thinking he developed the concept of an Overman, a new kind of
noble being who would create new ethical values and philosophical truths that would
enable him to break away from constraining cultural traditions and also to dominate or
dazzle the multitude. Qualities of humility, patience, helpfulness, hope, and love, in
short the specifi cally Christian virtues, Nietzsche described as a slave morality con-
cocted by the weak to disarm the strong. He drew sharp contrasts between the ethical
traditions of Christianity and his own philosophical values, which emphasized qualities
of courage, love of danger, intellectual excellence, and personal independence. Indeed
he argued that all humans, even philosophers, were driven more by their instincts and a
“will to power” than by reason or rational thought. His critique of religion revived and
revised some forms of classical paganism. Nietzsche was neither much read nor much
respected by his contemporaries, many of whom considered him unbalanced or even
insane; but he nevertheless expressed with unshrinking frankness many of the ethical
and philosophical implications of the new evolutionary ideas. And his critique of reason
and rationality had wide infl uence among anti-Enlightenment thinkers both before and
after the First World War.
As in the sciences and philosophy, the new works of creative imagination—literature,
drama and the fi ne arts—conveyed changing conceptions of truth, ethics, and social life.
Some writers, like Emile Zola in France or Henrik Ibsen in Scandinavia, turned to the
portrayal of social problems, producing a realistic literature that dealt with industrial strife,
strikes, prostitution, divorce, or insanity. New psychological theories also appeared in
literary works, especially in fi ctional portraits of troubled characters and irrational human
behavior. The new novels and plays were indeed often truer to specifi c social or psy-
chological experiences than the older forms of European literature. But some literary
movements—for example, the symbolist poets in France—were experimenting with lan-
guage in works that moved modern writing far away from the literal representation of
social realities. In a sense the arts followed the intellectual developments of the age, refl ect-
ing, as they do today, diverse attitudes of relativism, irrationalism, social determinism,
linguistic ambiguity, and interest in the operations of the unconscious mind. On the other
hand, never had artist and society been so far apart. The French painter Paul Gauguin, an
extreme case, fl ed to the South Seas, abandoned his family and modern European life, and
reveled in the stark violence of tropical colors (see Gauguin’s painting Ia Orana Maria on p. 628). Others became absorbed in technicalities or mere capricious self-expression.
Art at its extreme fringe became almost incomprehensible and the average person seemed
deprived of a visual means (as old as the cave paintings of the Stone Age) of perceiving
and enjoying the world.
The artistic movement known as Impressionism did not sever all links between paint-
ing and the external world, however, and the Impressionists became perhaps the most
infl uential artists in late nineteenth-century Europe. Rising to prominence in the 1870s and
Friedrich Nietzsche
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture628
1880s, painters such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissaro, Berthe
Morisot, and Mary Cassatt rejected traditional styles of academic painting in France and
turned instead to the representation of everyday life and the colorful play of light in the
natural world. In contrast to earlier painters who had worked in studios and depicted scenes
from mythology, classical history, or exotic cultures, the Impressionists preferred to paint
outdoors and to portray the streets or buildings of modern France, the daily activities of
IA ORANA MARIA by Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)
Gauguin moved to Tahiti in the early 1890s, searching for non-European alternatives to the culture and art he had known in France. His use of color and his portrayal of Tahitians infl uenced avant-garde European artists, but Gauguin also continued to draw on (classical) European artistic themes. The title of this painting means “Hail Mary,” an allusion to the biblical Annunciation in which the angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that she would give birth to a child. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY)
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629
ordinary people, or the pleasures of a modern café. Monet was especially adept at repre-
senting the same object in various shades of light (see, for example, the Rouen Cathedral at top of this page), but all Impressionists used light and color rather than classical lines
or themes to convey their “impressions” of the modern world. Most Impressionist painters
were French and most were men, though women such as Morisot and the American-born
Cassatt also produced innovative works, often portraying women in the different phases of
their lives (see Morisot’s Young Girl Boating on p. 630 and Cassatt’s The Boating Party on p. 631)
Impressionism gradually gained international infl uence and became the aesthetic
starting point for other artists, usually called Postimpressionists, who portrayed people
and objects in novel and increasingly abstract forms and surprising colors. The works of
Paul Cézanne are infl uential examples of the Postimpressionist art that pushed steadily
beyond Impressionism in a continuing attempt to represent the artist’s distinctive per-
sonal vision of human experience (see Cézanne’s Self-Portrait with Beret on p. 632). By the early twentieth century, artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Vasily
A distinctive fascination with light can be seen in most Impres- sionist works, as in Claude Monet’s paintings of the cathe- dral at Rouen. This view of the cathedral in the evening light was one of a series that Monet painted in the 1890s, when he portrayed the different appear- ances and colors of objects in various shades of light over the course of a single day. (Musée d’Orsay Paris/Gianni
Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art
Resource, NY)
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture630
Kandinsky were painting “Cubist” or “Abstract Expressionist” works that represented
natural objects and the human body in highly abstract forms and splashes of color, most of
which bore little or no resemblance to what scientists might have called objective reality
(see Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon on p. 633). After the First World War, and continuing throughout the twentieth century, the same
trends of subjectivism in the arts attracted a wider, less-skeptical audience. People read
books without punctuation (or with peculiar punctuation); listened to music called atonal,
composed for effects of discord and dissonance; and studied intently abstract or “nonob-
jective” paintings and sculpture to which the artists themselves often refused to give titles.
Although they were often critical of modern industrial society, artists and their art also
exemplifi ed the specialization and division of labor in modern social or economic systems.
Artists were no longer speaking for society or creating art for common use or enjoyment
but were specialists plying their trade and pursuing their own concerns—like other modern
specialists whose work was often incomprehensible to outsiders.
YOUNG GIRL BOATING by Berthe Morisot (French, 1841–1895)
The French painter Berthe Morisot was one of the fi rst women to adopt the methods and per- spectives of Impressionist art. This painting shows the movement’s characteristic concern with the play of light and color in outdoor scenes. The portrayal of a young girl on the water was also typical of Morisot’s particular interest in representing the experiences and memories of women. (The Bridgeman Art Library)
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631
The Churches and the Modern Age
Religion had always been one of the most infl uential components of
European societies, but like other cultural traditions it faced new chal-
lenges and critiques in the later nineteenth century. It was now a long time
since almost everyone had looked to religion for social and intellectual
guidance. But religion was more threatened after 1860 or 1870 than ever in the past,
because never before had science, or philosophies drawing upon science, addressed them-
selves so directly to the nature of life and of human existence. Never before had so many
of the fundamental premises of traditional religion been questioned or denied. Darwinian
Threats to religion
THE BOATING PARTY by Mary Cassatt (American-born, lived in France, 1844–1926)
Cassatt lived and worked throughout her adult life in France. She developed her most distinc- tive works under the infl uence of both Impressionism and the traditions of Japanese art. She painted many pictures of mothers with their children, including this somewhat mysterious image of a man rowing a woman and child across a European lake. (National Gallery of Art)
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture632
evolution challenged the value of Christian ethics as well as the traditional picture of Cre-
ation, and anthropologists questioned the uniqueness of the most sacred Christian tenets.
There developed also the “higher” criticism of the Bible, an effort to apply to the Scrip-
tures the techniques of scholarship long applied to secular documents, to incorporate
archeological discoveries, and to reconstruct a naturalistic, historical account of ancient
religious times. This form of critical, textual analysis, going back at least to the seven-
teenth century, now took on signifi cant proportions and was applied both to the Old Tes-
tament and the New. The Bible became for many scholars another object for historical
analysis rather than a sacred text. In the case of the Old Testament the patient scrutiny of
style and language cast doubt on the validity of certain prophecies; and in the New the
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH BERET by Paul Cézanne (French, 1839–1906)
Cézanne went beyond early Impressionist art to develop a new emphasis on the shapes or contours of natural objects, buildings, and people. He also applied his innovative techniques to portraits of himself, striving to depict his identity as a painter through both the style and the content of such works. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
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633
inconsistencies of the several Gospel sources were demonstrated by a new generation of
scholars and critics. The German theologian David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874), one
such critical scholar, was the author of a widely discussed Life of Jesus, in which many miraculous and supernatural episodes were reverently but fi rmly explained away as myth.
The sensitive French historian and man of letters Ernest Renan (1823–1892) in a some-
what similar vein wrote on Jesus and the origins of Christianity and on the life of ancient
Israel, giving secular explanations for the oldest religious stories and beliefs. Moreover,
the whole tenor of the time, its absorption in material progress, kept people away from
church; and the wholesale uprooting, the movement from country to city, often broke
religious ties.
The Protestant churches were less successful than the Catholic in pro-
tecting their membership from the disintegrating effects of the age. Church
attendance among Protestants became increasingly casual, and the doctrines
set forth in sermons seemed increasingly remote. Protestants traditionally
trusted their own private judgment and regarded their clergy as their own agents, not as
authoritative teachers placed above them. Protestants also had always set special emphasis
on the Bible as the source of religious belief; and as doubts accumulated on the literal truth
of Biblical narratives there seemed no other authoritative source on which to rely.
Protestants tended to divide between modernists and fundamentalists. The fundamen-
talists, as they were called in the United States, in an effort to defend the literal word of
Scripture, were often obliged to deny the most indubitable fi ndings of science. The mod-
ernists were willing enough to accept science and to interpret much of the Bible as alle-
gory, but only with diffi culty could they recapture a strong sense of spirituality or urgent
feeling of Christian truth. Most Protestant churches were slow to face the social problems
and wholesale injustices produced by the economic system, though a group of “Christian
Challenges to
Protestantism
Pablo Picasso’s representations of the human body in paintings such as this disorienting collec- tive portrait, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), became the best-known works of early “Cub- ism.” The Cubist painters por- trayed objects from multiple perspectives and used abstract shapes or unexpected colors to convey the subjective visions of the artist rather than a realistic image of the external world. (The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed
by Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture634
socialists” had emerged by the early twentieth century in some Protestant denominations.
Because both education and the care for orphans, sick, and mentally disturbed persons
generally passed to the state, Protestant groups had less to do in the relief of suffering and
the upbringing of the young. Protestantism, to the regret of many Protestants, became
increasingly a customary observance by people whose minds were elsewhere. Not until
after the First World War could a strong Protestant revival be discerned, with a reaffi rma-
tion of basic doctrines by European theologians such as Karl Barth (1886–1968), and
an ecumenical movement on the part of divergent Protestant churches
to combine.
The Roman Catholic Church proved more resistant to the trends of
the age. We have seen how Pope Pius IX (1846–1878), after being driven
from Rome by republicans in 1848, gave up his inclinations to liberalism. In 1864, in the
Syllabus of Errors, he denounced as erroneous a long list of widely current ideas, includ- ing the faith in rationalism and science, and he vigorously denied that the head of the
church “should reconcile and align himself with progress, liberalism, and modern civiliza-
tion.” The Syllabus was a warning to Catholics, not a matter of dogma incumbent upon them to believe. In dogma, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary was announced
as dogmatic truth in 1854; a century later, in 1950, the bodily assumption of Mary into
heaven was proclaimed. Thus the Catholic Church reaffi rmed in a skeptical scientifi c age,
and against Christian modernists, its faith in the supernatural and miraculous.
Pius IX also convened a general church council, which met at the Vatican in 1870. It
was the fi rst such council since the Council of Trent some 300 years before. The Vatican
Council proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility, which holds that the pope, when
speaking ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals, speaks with a fi nal and supernatural
authority that no Catholic may question or reject. The Vatican Council, and the accep-
tance of papal infallibility by Catholics, was the climax of centuries of development
within the church. In brief, as the world grew more national, Catholicism became more
international. As state sovereignty and secularism grew, Catholic clergy looked increas-
ingly to the spiritual powers of Rome for protection against alien forces, including the
nationalism and centralizing power of modern nation-states. Much in the past 300 years
had made Catholics distrustful of their own governments or of non-Catholics in their
midst—the Protestantism and the state churches of the sixteenth century, the Jansenist
movement of the seventeenth, the anticlericalism of enlightened despotism in the eigh-
teenth, the hostility to the church shown by the French Revolution, and by liberalism,
republicanism, and socialism in the nineteenth century. By 1870 the net effect was to
throw Catholics into the arms of the Holy See. Ultramontanism, the unconditional accep-
tance of papal jurisdiction, prevailed over the old French Gallicanism and other national
tendencies that had long existed within the Catholic Church as a counterbalance to the
power of the popes.
In 1870, while the 600 prelates of the Vatican Council were sitting, the new Italian
state unceremoniously entered and annexed the city of Rome. The pope’s temporal power
thus disappeared. It is now widely agreed that with the loss of local temporal interests the
spiritual hold of the papacy on Catholics throughout the world was ultimately enhanced.
The popes long refused, however, to recognize the loss of Rome; and each pope in turn,
from 1870 to 1929, adopted a policy of self-imprisonment in the Vatican
grounds. By the Lateran treaty of 1929 the papacy fi nally recognized the
Italian state, and Italy conceded the existence of a Vatican City about a
square mile in area, as an independent state not legally within Italy at all.
Catholicism resists
Vatican City
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635
The papacy thus gained the independence from national or secular authority deemed nec-
essary by Catholics to the performance of its role.
Pius IX’s successor, Leo XIII (1878–1903), carried on the counteroffensive against
irreligion and instituted a revival of medieval philosophy as represented by Thomas Aqui-
nas. But Leo XIII is chiefl y remembered for formulating Catholic social
doctrine, especially in the encyclical Rerum Novarum (“of modern things”) of 1891, to which subsequent pontiffs have adhered, and from which vari-
ous movements of Catholic socialism are derived. Rerum Novarum upheld private property as a natural right, within the limits of justice; but it found fault with capi-
talism for the poverty, insecurity, and even degradation in which many of the laboring
classes were left. It declared that much in socialism was Christian in principle; but it criti-
cized socialism insofar as (like Marxism) it was materialistic and antireligious. The pope
therefore recommended that Catholics, if they wished, form socialist parties of their own
and that Catholic workers form labor unions under Catholic auspices.
As for Judaism, the Jews were a small minority, but their condition had always been a
kind of barometer refl ecting changes in the atmosphere of tolerance as a
whole. In the nineteenth century the basic trend was toward emancipation
and assimilation. Science and secularism had the same dissolving effect
upon Orthodox Judaism as upon traditional Christianity. Reform Judaism
grew up as the Jewish counterpart to modernism in other faiths. Secular Jews moved away
from worship altogether. In society at large, the prevalence of liberalism allowed them to
act as citizens and to enter business or the professions like everybody else, freed from old
legal discriminations that had been imposed on them for centuries.
Toward the end of the century two important new tendencies began to challenge or
counter earlier trends that were leading to the assimilation of Jewish communities and indi-
viduals. One, a cultural and political nationalism, originated with Jews themselves, some of
whom feared an assimilation that would lead to a loss of Jewish identity and perhaps even
the disappearance of Judaism itself. The other countertendency, or barrier to
assimilation, was the rise of a virulent new anti-Semitism, noticeable in many
quarters by 1900. Racist theories, dislike for Jewish competitors in busi-
ness and the professions, socialist scorn for Jewish capitalists like the Roth-
schilds, upper-class fears of Jewish revolutionists and Marxists, together
with a growth of ethnic nationalism, which held that France should be purely French
and Latin, Germany purely German and Nordic, or Russia purely Russian and Slav, all
combined to raise an anti-Semitic hue and cry. In Russia there were fi erce pogroms, or
massacres of Jews. In France the Dreyfus case, which dragged on from 1894 to 1906,
revealed unsuspected depths of anti-Semitic fury. Many Jews were forced by such hostility
into a new sense of Jewish identity. The Hungarian-born Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl
was one. Appalled by the turbulence of the Dreyfus affair in civilized France, which he
observed fi rsthand as a reporter for a Vienna newspaper, he founded modern, or politi-
cal, Zionism when he organized the fi rst international Zionist congress at Basel in 1897.
Advocating many of the political and cultural ideas that shaped the popular nationalisms of
this era, Zionists hoped to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, in which Jews from all the
world might fi nd refuge, although there had been no independent Jewish state there since
ancient times.
Many Jews, wishing civic assimilation yet despairing of obtaining it, began to
sympathize with the fusion of nationalism and religion in the Jewish nationalist move-
ment, looking to Zionism and a Jewish renascence as a way to maintain their own dignity.
Rerum Novarum
Jewish emancipation
The rise of anti-
Semitism
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture636
Others insisted that Judaism was a religious faith, not a nationality by itself; that Jews
and non-Jews within the same country shared in exactly the same nationality, citizenship,
and political or social outlook. On the integration of Jews into the larger community
the traditions of the Enlightenment, the American and French revolutions, the empire
of Napoleon I, and the liberalism of the nineteenth century all agreed. But these tradi-
tions were often denounced by a new generation of European ethnic nationalists, whose
anti-Semitism contributed to a threatening political environment in which Jews debated
the opportunities as well as the obstacles for both civic assimilation and the expanding
Zionist movement.
74. THE WANING OF CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
The net effect of the political, economic, cultural, and intellectual trends described above
was twofold. There was a continued advance of much that was basic to classical liberalism
and at the same time a weakening of the grounds on which liberalism had fi rmly rested
ever since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A third effect might be noted too.
Even where the essentials of liberalism persisted, in program and doctrine it underwent
important changes; liberalism persisted but the classical type of liberalism
was in eclipse.
Classical liberalism, the liberalism in its heyday in the nineteenth cen-
tury, went back at least as far as John Locke in the seventeenth century and
the philosophes of the eighteenth. It found its highest nineteenth-century expression in
political philosophers such as John Stuart Mill and in the outlook of political leaders such
as William Gladstone. Classical liberalism had as its deepest principle the liberty of the
individual. Man, or each specimen of humankind according to liberals, was or could
become a freestanding being. “Man” meant for them any member of the human race, homo
sapiens, though in practice, except for a few like Mill, they were usually thinking of adult
Liberalism changed
This is a photograph of the Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), who responded to anti-Semitic ideologies in central Europe and the anti-Semitism of the Dreyfus Affair in France by launching a new Zionist movement in late nineteenth-century Europe. Herzl organized the fi rst international Zionist Congress and called for the creation of a new Jewish state in Palestine, which was at this time part of the Ottoman Empire and occupied by a predomi- nantly Arab population. (Three Lions/Getty Images)
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63774. The Waning of Classical Liberalism
males. The very principle of liberalism, however, with its stress on the autonomy of the
individual, also contributed to the growing movement for women’s rights.
The individual, in this view, was not simply formed by race, class, church, nation, or
state but was ultimately independent of all such collective identities. Individuals did not
hold their ideas because they belonged to particular ethnic or social groups. They were
viewed as autonomous persons who were capable of the free use of reason
or of thinking independently, apart from their own interests, prejudices, or
unconscious drives. And, because this was the nature of rational human
behavior, people of different interests could reasonably and profi tably dis-
cuss their differences, analyze public issues, make compromises, and reach
solutions by peaceable agreement. It was because they thought all persons potentially rea-
sonable that liberals strongly favored the expansion of education and legal protections for
free speech and a free press. They opposed all imposition of force upon the individual,
from physical torture to mental indoctrination.
In religion, liberals thought each individual should adopt any faith or no faith as he
or she chose and that churches and clergy should play little or no part in public affairs.
In politics, they thought that governments should be constitutional and limited in power,
with individuals governing themselves through their chosen representatives, with issues
discussed and decided by the use of intelligence, both by the voters in election campaigns
and by elected deputies in parliamentary debate. The will of a majority, or larger num-
ber of individuals, was taken as decisive, with the understanding that the minority might
become a majority in its turn as individuals changed opinions and voted in free elections.
At fi rst distrustful of democracy, fearing the excesses of popular rule, and eager to limit
political power and the suffrage to the propertied classes, in the course of the nineteenth
century liberals had accepted the democratic principle of universal male suffrage, if not
The rational
individual
The English political writer John Stuart Mill, who appears here in a photograph from the early 1850s, was one of the most infl uential advocates of classical liberal- ism. By the last years of his career, how- ever, he had also become a prominent supporter of political rights for women and of social reforms that broke with some of the individualism in classical lib- eral theory. (Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-2939])
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture638
yet the vote for women. In economics, liberals thought of the whole world as peopled by
individuals doing business with one another—buying and selling, borrowing and lending,
hiring and fi ring—without interference from governments and without regard to religion
or politics, both of which were thought to impose superfi cial differences upon the under-
lying uniformity of mankind. The practical consequences of liberalism were toleration,
constitutionalism, laissez-faire, free trade, and an international economic system. It was
thought that all peoples would progress to these same ends, though the era’s pervasive rac-
ism and the attitudes of imperialism blocked the actual application of liberal principles to
the non-European peoples who lived under European rule in old and new colonial empires.
There never was a time, even in one country, when all liberal ideas were simultane-
ously triumphant. Pure liberalism, like most other cultural and political ideologies, has
never existed except as a doctrine. Advancing in one way, liberalism would be blocked or
reversed in another. On the whole, however, in the decades before 1914, European states
and cultures were predominantly liberal. But signs of the wane of liberalism set in clearly
about 1880; some, like the changing conceptions of human behavior, the new interest in
the irrational and the rising anti-Semitism, have already been mentioned.
The Decline of Nineteenth-Century Liberalism: Economic Trends
The free economy produced many hardships. Workers tossed by the ups and downs of a
labor market and producers caught in the uncertainties of a world commodity market clam-
ored for protection against exposure. A severe depression in 1873 sent prices and wages
into collapse, and the economy did not fully recover until 1893. European farmers, both
small French farm owners and big Junker landlords in East Germany, demanded tariff
protection; they could not compete with the American Middle West or the steppes of South
Russia, both of which after 1870 poured their cereals at low prices into Europe. The revival
of tariffs and decline of free trade, very marked in Europe about 1880, thus began with the
protection of agricultural interests. Industry soon demanded the same favors. In Germany
the Junkers and the rising Rhineland industrialists joined forces in 1879 to extort a tariff
from Bismarck. The French in 1892 adopted a high tariff to shelter both manufacturing and
agricultural interests. The United States, rapidly industrializing but still facing the compe-
tition of manufactured goods from Europe, also adopted protective tariffs beginning in the
1860s, the earliest of all.
The Industrial Revolution was now defi nitely at work in countries other than Great
Britain. There was increasing resistance among Europeans who had long bought manufac-
tures from England, selling only raw materials and foodstuffs in return. Everywhere there
was a revival of the arguments of the German economist Friedrich List,
who a half-century before, in his National System of Political Economy (1840), had branded free trade as a system mainly advantageous to the
British and declared that no country could become strong, independent, or
even fully civilized if it remained an agrarian supplier of unfi nished goods. With Germany,
the United States, and Japan manufacturing for export, a nationalist competition for world
markets set in, contributing also to the drive for colonies and the new imperialism described
in the next chapter. The new imperialism itself was another sign of the waning of liberal-
ism, which had been largely indifferent to colonies.
In all these respects the division between politics and economics, pos-
tulated by liberals, began to fade. A kind of neomercantilism arose, recall-
ing the attempts of governments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
A revival of List
Economic nationalism
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639
to subordinate economic activity to political ends. A better term for this later period is
economic nationalism, which became noticeable by 1900. Nations struggled to strengthen
themselves by tariffs, by trade competition and by internal regulation, without regard to
the effect upon other nations. Workers and business entrepreneurs were now very much
affected in purely economic matters by the nation to which they belonged and by the gov-
ernment or laws under which they lived.
It was of course to protect themselves against insecurity and abuse as individuals that
workers formed labor unions. It was likewise to protect themselves against the uncertain-
ties of uncontrolled markets that business interests began to merge; to concentrate in large
corporations; or to form monopolies, trusts, or cartels. The rise of big business and orga-
nized labor undermined the practice of individual competition and free markets to which
the theories of classical liberalism had been closely attached. Organized labor, socialist
parties, universal male suffrage, and a sensitivity to social distress all obliged political
leaders to intervene increasingly in economic matters. Factory codes became more
detailed and better enforced. Social insurance, initiated by Bismarck, spread to other
countries. Governments regulated the purity of foods and drugs. The social service state
developed, a state assuming responsibility for the social and economic
welfare of the mass of its own subjects or citizens. The “new” liberalism
on both sides of the Atlantic, that of the Liberals in England of the David
Lloyd George era, of the Republican President Theodore Roosevelt and the
Democratic President Woodrow Wilson in the United States, accepted the
enlarged role of the government in social and economic matters. Both Roosevelt and
Wilson, and others in Europe, sought also to reestablish economic competition by govern-
ment action against monopolies and trusts. The new liberals were generally more favor-
ably disposed toward workers and the disadvantaged classes than toward business; the
improvement of the workers’ lot was increasingly viewed as an extension of liberalism’s
traditional concern with the dignity and worth of the individual person. The welfare state
with an enlarged role for government, remote as it was from classical liberalism, was
The “new” liberalism
and the welfare state
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1859–1920
1859 Charles Darwin publishes Origin of Species; “evolution” becomes a key theme in modern intellectual life
1880s–1890s Claude Monet and other artists portray the nuances of light and color in
Impressionist paintings
1889 European socialist parties establish the Second International
1897 Theodor Herzl organizes the fi rst international Zionist congress
1900 Sigmund Freud develops his theory of the unconscious mind in The Interpretation of Dreams
1905 Albert Einstein introduces the theory of relativity in physics
1907 Pablo Picasso advances his new Cubist style of painting in works such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
1918–1920 Women gain the right to vote in Britain, Germany, and the United States
74. The Waning of Classical Liberalism
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture640
embraced by many new liberals as a mechanism for the advancement of individual inter-
ests. Unlike the socialists, who generally stressed the social identities of economic classes
and the collective interests of workers, the new liberals still emphasized the autonomy of
individual citizens—even as they argued that such citizens needed the assistance of gov-
ernment interventions. Advocates of the older or classical liberalism, however, often
opposed the growing power of governments and centralized authority and were apprehen-
sive for individual liberties.
Intellectual and Other Currents
Liberalism, both old and new, was undermined also by many developments
in the fi eld of thought described earlier in this chapter—Darwinian evo-
lution, the new psychology, and trends in philosophy and the arts. Para-
doxically, this great age of science found that the human being was not
a rational animal. Darwinian theory implied that the human species was merely a highly
evolved organism whose faculties could be described basically as successful adaptations to
an environment. Psychology seemed to teach that what was called reason was often only
rationalization, or a fi nding of alleged “reasons” to justify material wants or emotional and
unconscious needs, and that conscious refl ection dominated only a narrow part of human
behavior. Ideas themselves were said to be the products of cultural conditioning or of
social power. There were English ideas or Anglo-Saxon ideas, or bourgeois or progres-
sive or reactionary ideas. In politics, some believed that parties or nations with confl icting
interests could never reasonably agree on a program common to both, because neither
could ever get beyond the limitations of its own outlook. It became common to dismiss
the arguments of an adversary without further thought and without any expectation that
analytical thought could overcome diffi culties. This insidious “anti-intellectualism” was
destructive to liberal principles. If, because of prior conditioning, it was impossible to
change one’s mind, then there was no hope of settling matters by persuasion.
From the view that the human being was not essentially a rational creature, which in
itself was only a scientifi c attempt at a better understanding of human behavior, it was but
a short step deliberately to reject reason and to emphasize and cultivate the irrational; to
stress the will, intuition, impulse, and emotion; and to place a new value on violence and
confl ict. A philosophy of “realism,” a kind of unreasoning faith in the constructive value of
struggle and a tough-minded rejection of ideas and ideals, spread across much of Europe.
It was not new. Marxism, since the 1840s, had taught that class war, latent or open, was
the driving force of history. Now Nietzsche rejected the religious descriptions of ethical
virtues in favor of personal courage and daring; and the Social Darwinists glorifi ed the
successful and the dominant in all phases of human activity as the most “fi t” in a perpetual
struggle for existence. Other thinkers embraced a frank irrationalism. Georges Sorel, the
philosopher of syndicalism, in his Refl ections on Violence in 1908, declared that violence was good irrespective of the end accomplished and that workers should believe in the
“myth” of a future general strike, with its attendant debacle of bourgeois civilization, even
though it was known to be only a myth. The function of thought, in this philosophy of the
social myth, was to keep people agitated and excited and ready for action, not to achieve
any correspondence with rational or objective truth. Such ideas soon passed into the fas-
cism and other activist movements of the twentieth century.
Thus, the end of the nineteenth century, the greatest age of peace in Europe’s history,
abounded in philosophies glorifying struggle. People who had never heard a shot fi red in
Challenges to
Liberalism
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641
anger solemnly announced that world history m oved forward by violence and antagonism.
They said not merely that struggle existed (which would have been a purely
factual statement) but that struggle was a positive good through which
progress was to be accomplished. The popularity of struggle was due not
only to the intellectuals but also in part to actual historical events. People
remembered that before 1871 certain weighty questions had been settled by
force, that the movements of social revolution in 1848 and in the Paris Commune of 1871
had been put down by the military, and that the unity of Italy and Germany, as well as of
the United States, had been confi rmed by war. In addition, after 1871, all continental
European states maintained large standing armies, the largest ever supported until then in
time of peace.
The popularity of
struggle
These miners, who were on strike at a coal mine in northern France in 1906, represent the militancy of the early twentieth-century European labor movement. Demanding better wages, better working conditions, and a greater role in public life, labor became an important force in the political cultures of all major European states during this era. (Roger-Viollet)
74. The Waning of Classical Liberalism
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Chapter 15 European Civilization, 1871–1914: Society and Culture642
In economic and political matters, even in England, the homeland of classical liberal-
ism, there were numerous signs between 1900 and 1914 that the older liberalism was on
the wane. Joseph Chamberlain led an English movement to return to tariff protection (to
repeal, so to speak, the repeal of the Corn Laws); it failed at the time, but was strong
enough to disorient the Conservative Party in 1906. The Liberal Party abandoned its
traditional laissez-faire policy in sponsoring the labor legislation of the years following
1906. The new Labour Party required its members in Parliament to vote as directed by the
party, thus initiating a system of party solidarity, eventually copied by others, that hard-
ened the lines of opposition, denied that individuals should freely change sides, and hence
reduced the practical signifi cance of parliamentary discussion. The Irish nationalists had
long used unparliamentary methods; in 1914, when Parliament at last enacted Irish home
rule, the anti-Irish and conservative interests prepared to resist parliamentary action by
force. The English suffragettes, despairing of ever getting the men to listen to reason,
resorted to the amazingly “un-English,” violent political actions noted earlier. And in 1911
and 1912 great railway and coal strikes disclosed the rising power of organized labor out-
side of Parliament and Britain’s other governing institutions.
Still, it is the persistence of liberalism rather than its wane that should
be emphasized at the close of two chapters on European history in the half-
century before 1914. Tariffs existed, but goods still circulated freely in
world trade. Nationalism was heightened, but there was nothing like totali-
tarianism. Racist ideas were widespread, but they still had more infl uence
on the colonial empires than on government policies within Europe itself. Anti-Semitism
was increasingly vocal; but all governments except the Russian protected the rights of
Jews, and the years from 1848 to 1914 were in fact the great period of Jewish integra-
tion into general society. The laissez-faire state was disappearing, but social legislation
continued the humanitarian strain that had always been an essential part of liberalism. A
few radicals called for social revolutions, but social democrats and working people were
overwhelmingly revisionist, loyal to parliamentary procedures and to their existing states.
Doctrinaires exalted the grim beauty of war, but all governments down to 1914 tried to
prevent war on the continent of Europe among the great powers. And despite the skep-
ticism of some radical philosophers, artists, and intellectuals, there was still a supreme
popular faith in progress.
The persistence of
liberalism
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
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643
C h a p t e r 16 EUROPE’S WORLD
SUPREMACY,
1871–1914
The economic, political, and cultural institutions and ideas of modern European civilization, as
described in the last two chapters, spread steadily
across most of the world after about 1870. The
large European nation-states, which were now
equipped with the overwhelming new powers of
science and industry, gained empires for them-
selves throughout the globe. The history of Europe
became more closely involved than ever before in
the interconnected history of the whole world.
For a while the most active of the imperial-
ist nation-states were located in Europe, and the
40 years preceding the First World War can there-
fore be described as the era of Europe’s world
supremacy. With the rise of the United States the
term “Western” came into use, signifying “Euro-
pean” cultures in an expanded sense. The rapid
economic development of Japan made the term
Western an inappropriate description for many aspects of “modernity” or “modernization,”
as did other later developments in the cultures and societies outside of Europe. “Modern-
izing” social changes were transforming almost all parts of the world by the early twentieth
century. Somewhat later, in the decades after 1950, Europeans and other social analysts
around the globe began to speak of “developed” countries, in comparison
with which many regions were seen as “less developed” or “developing.”
There also came to be a broad category of nations that constituted a so-called
Third World. This diffuse Third World had no specifi c geographical iden-
tity, but the term referred to developing countries that were outside the European-American
and Soviet-Russian spheres of direct infl uence during the geopolitical confl icts of the later
twentieth century. All such terms were somewhat imprecise, but they represented efforts to
deal with the same complex historical reality, namely, a bifurcation between “modern” and
The “Third World”
75. Imperialism: Its Nature
and Causes
76. The Dissolution
of the Ottoman Empire
77. The Partition of Africa
78. Imperialism in Asia:
The Dutch, the British,
and the Russians
79. Imperialism in Asia:
China and Europe
80. The Russo-Japanese War
and Its Consequences
Chapter emblem: British soldiers in southern Africa during the Boer War, 1899–1902 (Fox Photos/
Getty images)
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914644
“traditional” societies, or between rich countries and poor ones, or between industrialized
and less industrialized nations, or between the powerful and the weak.
For the fi rst time in human history, by 1900, it was possible to speak of a world civiliza-
tion. Although retaining important differences in languages, culture, and social practices, all
countries were drawn into a world economy and a world market. The attributes of political
and economic modernity were much the same everywhere—modern science, modern weap-
ons of warfare, machine industry, fast communications, public education, effi cient taxation
and law enforcement, and modern public health, sanitation, and medicine.
But not all peoples participated in this global evolution on equal terms. It was the
Europeans, or those building European-style industrial economies on other continents,
who reaped the greatest rewards. Elsewhere, tribal societies and massive old civilizations
alike began to come apart, reacting to the pressures of modern economic and social
changes. Scientifi c ideas changed ways of thinking everywhere, as they had in Europe. In
India, China, or Africa local industries often suffered, and many people found it harder
than ever to subsist even at a low level. The building of railways in China, for example,
threw boatmen, carters, and innkeepers out of work. In India, the hand spinners and weav-
ers of cotton could not compete in their own villages with the machine-made products of
Lancashire. In parts of Africa, tribal groups that had lived by owning herds of cattle, mov-
ing from place to place to obtain grazing lands, found European farmers or plantation or
mine owners occupying their country and were often forced by the European colonial law
to give up their migratory habits. Peoples of all races began to produce for export—rubber,
raw cotton, jute, petroleum, tin, gold—and hence were exposed to the rise and fall of world
prices. A depression in one part of the global economy tended to become a world depres-
sion, dragging all down alike.
Imperialism, or the European colonialism of the late nineteenth cen-
tury, may be somewhat narrowly defi ned as the government of one people
by another. As a specifi c form of political control, European imperialism
proved to be transitory, weakening and disappearing in this form after the
Second World War. But the broader economic and cultural aspects of the colonial systems
continued to infl uence “postcolonial” societies long after they regained their political inde-
pendence. Imperialism and empire-building became a new nineteenth-century phase in the
worldwide spread of the industrial and scientifi c civilization that had originated in Europe’s
“inner zone.” That it was not the last phase of such expansion became clear as the twentieth
century unfolded. The subordinated peoples, forcibly introduced to European economic and
cultural systems by imperialism, came to see a need for modernizing and industrializing
their own countries and for using the methods or resources of European science, technol-
ogy, and capital; but they wished to get rid of imperialists, govern themselves, and control
the conditions under which modernization and borrowing should take place. In opposition
to European empires, subject peoples began to assert ideas learned from Europe—ideas of
liberty and democracy, and of an anticapitalism that passed easily into socialism. Many
such ideas were derived from the French and American revolutions, or from Marxism, or
from the whole modern history of Europe itself; but these ideas were transformed or chal-
lenged as they entered into the political and cultural traditions of other civilizations.
The present chapter deals only with the imperialist phase of this global transforma-
tion. By one of the ironies of history, the imperialist rivalries of the European powers,
while representing Europe’s world supremacy, also contributed to the disaster of the First
World War, and so to the collapse of such political and economic supremacy as Europe
had enjoyed.
Imperialism
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64575. Imperialism: Its Nature and Causes
75. IMPERIALISM: ITS NATURE AND CAUSES
European civilization had always shown a tendency to expand. In the Middle Ages Latin
Christendom spread by conquest and conversion to include the whole area from Spain to
Finland. Then came the age of overseas discoveries and the founding of early modern colo-
nial empires, whose expansion and confl icts affected the balance of power within Europe
throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and whose most far-reaching conse-
quence was the gradual “Europeanization” of the Americas. At the same time European
culture spread among the upper classes of Russia. The fi nal defeat of Napoleon in 1815,
however, left only one of the old colonial empires standing in any strength, namely, the
British. For 60 years after the Napoleonic wars there were no signifi cant colonial rivalries
among the major European powers. In many circles there was an indifference to overseas
empires. Under principles of free trade, it was thought unnecessary to exercise political
infl uence in areas in which one did business. During these years, however, the French took
control of Algeria, the British strengthened their Indian Empire, the Dutch developed Java
and the neighboring islands more intensively, and the Western powers “opened” Japan and
began to move into the coastal territories of China. Among these various colonial inter-
ventions, the French occupation of Algeria may have had the most signifi cant infl uence
within a European society. The French army waged a series of brutal military campaigns
in the 1830s and 1840s to suppress strong Muslim opposition to colonization; and a stream
of immigrants began to fl ow from France into the Algerian towns and countryside that
the army gradually brought under French control. Napoleon III viewed France’s expan-
sion across North Africa as another opportunity to demonstrate his own imperial grandeur,
which he asserted in the course of two highly publicized trips to Algeria during the 1860s.
But the French conquest of Algeria and the development of European colonies in Asia did
not lead to overt imperial confl icts among Europeans, and there was no systematic imperial
program, doctrine, or “ism.”
Rather suddenly, about 1870 or 1880, colonial questions came again to the fore—
driven in part by the rising power of the recently consolidated German Empire and French
reactions to the loss of Alsace and Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War. In the short
space of two decades, by 1900, the advanced industrial countries partitioned most of the
earth among themselves. A world map by 1900 showed their colonial possessions in some
nine or ten colors.
The New Imperialism
The new imperialism differed both economically and politically from the
colonialism of earlier times. The older empires had been maritime and mer-
cantile. European traders in India, Java, or south China had simply pur-
chased the wares brought to them by local merchants as produced by local
methods. They operated on a kind of cash-and-carry basis. European governments had
few direct territorial ambitions in Asia beyond the protection of way stations and trading
centers. To these generalizations America, the Philippines, and Australia had been excep-
tions. The societies in these areas of the world had neither native states that Europeans
respected, nor native industries in which Europeans were interested. Europeans had there-
fore developed territorial claims, invested capital, brought in their own methods of produc-
tion, and often imported enslaved labor, especially in the then-booming sugar islands of
the West Indies.
New imperialism
vs. old colonialism
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914646
The new imperialism changed the earlier patterns of European economic and political
involvements in Asia and Africa. Europeans were no longer content simply to purchase what
local merchants provided. They wanted goods of a kind or in a quantity that preindustrial
handicraft methods could not supply. They moved into the so-called “backward” countries
more thoroughly. They invested capital in them, setting up mines, plantations, docks, ware-
houses, factories, refi neries, railroads, river steamships, and banks. They built offi ces,
homes, hotels, clubs, and cool mountain resorts for European offi cials and visitors. Taking
over the productive economic life of the country, they transformed large elements of the
local population into the wage employees of foreign owners and so introduced the class
problems of industrial Europe in a form accentuated by racial differences. Or they lent
money to non-European rulers—the khedive of Egypt, the shah of Persia, the emperor of
China—to enable them to hold up their tottering thrones or simply to live with more pleasure
and magnifi cence than they could from their usual revenues. Europeans thus developed a
huge fi nancial stake in governments and economic enterprises outside their own nations and
commercial networks within Europe.
To secure these investments, and for other reasons, in contrast to what had happened
under the older colonialism, the Europeans now aspired to political and
territorial domination. Some areas became outright colonies, directly gov-
erned by European states and their appointed government offi cials. Others
became protectorates: here the native chief, sultan, bey, rajah, or prince
was maintained and guaranteed against internal upheaval or external con-
quest. A European “resident” or “commissioner” usually told him what to do, thereby
protecting European interests through a kind of indirect rule. In other regions, as in China
or Persia, where no single European state could make good its claims against the others,
they arranged to divide the country into “spheres of infl uence,” each European power hav-
ing advisory privileges and investment and trade opportunities within its own sphere. The
sphere of infl uence was the vaguest of all forms of imperial control; supposedly, it left the
country independent, but each “sphere” of outside infl uence undermined the sovereignty
or local power of the state in which it was established.
An enormous differential opened up, about 1875, between the power of European and
non-European states. Queen Elizabeth had dealt with the Great Mogul of the Indian sub-
continent with genuine respect, at least in part because his revenues in the early seven-
teenth century were some 20 times greater than those of the English monarchy. Even
Napoleon had pretended to regard the shah of Persia as an equal. Then came the Industrial
Revolution in Europe, iron and steel ships, heavier naval guns, and more accurate rifl es.
Democratic and nationalist movements produced large states and unifi ed European peo-
ples who gave service and fi nancial support to their governments. Seemingly endless
wealth, with modern administration, allowed European governments to tax, borrow, and
spend without apparent limit. The modern nation-states loomed as enormous power com-
plexes without precedent in the world’s history. At the same time it so happened that all
the principal non-European empires were in decay. They were receiving a minimum of
support from their own subjects. As in the eighteenth century when the disintegration
of the Mogul Empire had enabled the British to take over India, so in the nineteenth century
the political weakness and vulnerabilities of the sultan of Turkey, the sultan of Zanzibar,
the shah of Persia, the emperor of China, and the shogun of Japan made European inter-
vention remarkably easy. Only the Japanese were able to revolutionize their government in
time to ward off imperialist penetration. Even the Japanese, however, were restricted by
early treaties that controlled their tariff policies until after 1900.
Political and
territorial domination
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647
So great was the difference in the sheer mechanics of power that usually
a mere show of force allowed the Europeans to impose their will. A garrison
of only 75,000 troops long held India for the British. Numerous sporadic lit-
tle wars were constantly fought—Afghan wars, Burmese wars, Zulu wars—
which affected local populations but which passed unnoticed by Europeans in the home
country. Such wars might be compared to the operations of the United States army against
the Indians of the western plains, but they did not become true national wars or national
military mobilizations. The Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Boer War of 1899 were
also wars of colonial type, fought between entirely unequal parties. Often a show of naval
strength was enough to gain European control over a new territory. It was the classic age of
the punitive bombardment. In 1856 the British consul at Guangzhou, to punish acts of vio-
lence against Europeans in southern China, called upon the local British admiral to bombard
that Chinese city. In 1863 the British bombarded the Japanese province of Satsuma, and in
1864 an allied force including Americans bombarded Choshu—precipitating revolution in
Japan. Similarly, Alexandria was bombarded in 1882 and Zanzibar in 1896. The usual con-
sequence of such “gunboat diplomacy” was that the local ruler signed a treaty, reorganized
the government, or accepted a European (usually British) adviser.
Europeans impose
their will
European access to colonial territories in the period of the “new imperialism” often depended on the construction of new railroads, which carried both people and goods into and out of the interior districts of the European colonies. This picture portrays the arrival of a locomotive that a team of elephants pulled into central India when a new railroad track was built in the region of Indore. (The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY)
75. Imperialism: Its Nature and Causes
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914648
Incentives and Motives
Behind the new imperial aggressiveness lay many pressures and motives. The Europeans
could not maintain for themselves the style of life to which they had become accustomed
except by bringing the rest of the world within their economic orbit. But many other cultural
and social concerns also drove Europeans into distant, unknown places. Catholic and Protes-
tant groups sent growing numbers of missionaries to remote regions, where they sometimes
got into trouble with the local people and where some missionaries were even killed. Public
opinion in the home countries, soon learning of such events by ocean cable, might clamor
for political action to suppress such outbreaks of anti-Christian violence. Similarly, scien-
tists required geographical expeditions for their observations and discoveries. Wealthy per-
sons traveled more, now that travel was so easy; they hunted tigers or elephants, or simply
went to see the sights. It seemed only reasonable at the close of the nineteenth century that
all Europeans wherever they might choose to go should enjoy the personal security and the
orderly legal procedures that colonial governments sought to provide for the Europeans who
visited or lived in their overseas empires.
Economically, European life required material goods, many of which
only tropical regions could supply. Even the working classes now drank tea
or coffee every day. After the American Civil War Europe relied for its cot-
ton increasingly on Africa and the East. Rubber and petroleum became
staple needs. The lowly jute, which grew only in India, was used to make burlap, twine,
carpets, and the millions of jute bags employed in commerce. The lordly coconut tree had
innumerable common uses, which led to its intensive cultivation in the Dutch Indies. Vari-
ous parts of it could be eaten, or manufactured into bags, brushes, cables, rope, sails, or
doormats or converted into coconut oil, which in turn went into the making of candles,
soap, margarine, and many other products.
Industrial countries also attempted to sell their own products, and one of the reasons
given by imperialists, in support of imperialism, was the urgent necessity of fi nding new
overseas markets. The industrialization of Germany, the United States, Japan, and other
countries, after about 1870, meant that they competed with each other and with Great
Britain for foreign trade. A slow decline in prices after 1873 meant that a business fi rm had
to sell more goods to turn over the same amount of money. Competition became more
intense. The advanced industrial countries, as we have seen, raised tariffs to keep out each
other’s products. It was therefore argued that each industrialized nation must develop a
colonial empire, an area of “sheltered markets,” as the phrase went in England, in which
the home country would supply manufactured goods in return for raw materials. The idea
was to create a large self-suffi cient trading unit, embracing various climates and types of
resources, protected if necessary from outside competition by tariffs, guaranteeing a mar-
ket for all its members and wealth and prosperity for the home country.
This phase of imperialism is often called neomercantilism, because it
revived in substance the mercantilism, or national economic systems, of the
sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
Purely fi nancial considerations also characterized the new European
imperialism. Money invested in the so-called “backward” countries by the
close of the nineteenth century brought a higher rate of return than if
invested in the more industrialized ones. For this there were many reasons, including the
cheap labor of non-European regions, the heavy and unsatisfi ed demand for non-European
products in wealthier countries, and the greater risk of losses in areas where European
Raw materials
Neomercantilism
The profi t motive
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649
ideas of law and order did not prevail. By 1900 western Europe and the northeastern
United States were equipped with their basic industrial apparatus. Their railway networks
and fi rst factories were built. Opportunities for investment in these countries became stabi-
lized. At the same time, these countries were accumulating capital that was available for
new investments. In the midcentury most exported capital was British-owned. By the close
of the century more French, German, American, Dutch, Belgian, and Swiss investors were
investing or lending outside their own borders. In 1850, most exported capital went to
build up Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, or Argentina. By 1900 more of it
was going to undeveloped regions in other parts of the world. This capital was the property
of individual small savers or of large banking combinations. Investors preferred “civi-
lized” political control over the parts of Asia, Africa, or Latin America in which their
railroads, mines, plantations, government loans, or other investments were situated. Hence
the profi t motive, or desire to invest “surplus” capital, promoted imperialism.
This analysis was put forward by critics of the global economic system
such as the English socialist J. A. Hobson, who wrote an infl uential book on
imperialism in 1903, and later by Lenin, in his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of World Capitalism, written in 1916. They ascribed imperialism pri- marily to the accumulation of surplus capital and condemned it on socialist
Socialist critics
Europeans often described their colonial empires as systems that advanced a “civilizing mis- sion.” This “mission” consisted (in the European view) mainly of promoting European meth- ods of education, commerce, labor, and legal justice, all of which provoked both resistance and adaptations among colonized peoples. This image from a late nineteenth-century British newspaper showed a missionary teaching African men in Nyasaland (Malawi) to prepare European-style bread, but it also carried a typical European message about the benevolent purposes of imperialism. (Images of Empire/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
75. Imperialism: Its Nature and Causes
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914650
grounds. Hobson argued that a change in the domestic economy of the industrialized
nations would remove the main motive for imperialism: if more of the national income
went to workers as wages, and less of it to capitalists as interest and dividends, or if wealthy
people were more heavily taxed and the money used for social welfare, there would be no
surplus of capital and no real imperialism. Because the working class, if this were done,
would also have more purchasing power, it would be less necessary to look endlessly for
new markets outside the country. But the surplus capital explanation of imperialism was
not entirely convincing. That investors and exporters were instrumental in the rise of impe-
rialism was very true, and yet it was more doubtful that imperialism arose essentially from
the capitalists’ pressure to invest abroad. Perhaps even more basic was Europe’s need for
imports—only by enormous imports could Europe sustain its dense population, complex
industry, and high standard of living. It was the demand for such imports—cotton, cocoa,
coffee, copper, and the like drawn from the colonies—that made investment in the colo-
nies fi nancially profi table. Moreover, non-Europeans themselves often asked for the
capital, glad though the European lenders were to lend it at high rates. In 1890 this might
mean merely that a shah or sultan wanted to build himself a new palace, but the need of
non-Europeans for Western capital was basic, nor was it to decline in later times. Lastly,
the imperialism of some countries, notably Russia and Italy, which had little capital and
few modern-type capitalists of their own, could not reasonably be attributed to pressure for
lucrative foreign investments.
For the British, however, the capitalistic incentive was of great importance. We have
seen how the British, in 1914, had $20 billion invested outside Great Britain, a quarter of
all their wealth. About half, or $10 billion, was invested in the British Empire. Only a tenth
of French foreign investments was in French colonies. French investment in the colonial
world in general, however, including Egypt, Suez, South Africa, and Asia in addition to
the French colonies, amounted to about a fi fth of all French foreign investments. Only an
infi nitesimal fraction of German foreign investment in 1914 was in German colonies,
which were of slight value. A fi fth of German foreign investments, however, was placed in
Africa, Asia, and the Ottoman Empire. These sums are enough to suggest the economic
pressures upon the European governments to assert political infl uence in
Africa, Turkey, or China. In addition, French investors had in 1914 a huge
stake in the Russian Empire. Russia, an imperial power with respect to
adjoining countries in the Balkans and Asia, occupied an almost semicolo-
nial status with respect to western Europe. The tsardom until its demise in
1917, not unlike the Ottoman sultanate or the Qing dynasty in China, increasingly depended
on foreign loans, predominantly French. The French in 1914 had lent over $2 billion to
Russia, more than to all colonial regions combined. For these huge outlays the motivation
was at least as much political as economic. The French government urged French banks to
buy Russian bonds. The aim was not merely to make a profi t for bankers and small inves-
tors but to build up and hold together a military ally against Germany.
Politics went along with economics in the whole process of imperialist expansion.
National security, both political and economic, was as important an aim as the accumula-
tion of private wealth. So, too, was the growing concern in many quarters
over the economic security and welfare of the working classes. The ideas
of the British statesman Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) illustrated how
these motives entered into imperialist thinking.
Chamberlain, father of Neville Chamberlain, who was to be prime minister of Britain
in the years just prior to the Second World War, began as a Birmingham manufacturer, the
Foreign economic
interests in Russia
Joseph Chamberlain
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type of man who a generation before would have been a staunch free trader and upholder
of laissez-faire. Discarding the old individualism, he came to believe that the national
community should and could take better care of its members and that the British commu-
nity (or empire) could advance the welfare of Britons. As mayor of Birmingham he intro-
duced a kind of municipal socialism, including public ownership of utilities. As colonial
secretary from 1895 to 1903, he preached Britain’s need for “a great self-sustaining and
self-protecting empire” in an age of rising international competition—a worldwide British
trading area, developed by British capital, which would give a secure source of raw materi-
als and food, markets for exports, and a steady level of profi ts, wages, and employment.
Chamberlain saw with misgivings the tendencies toward independence in Canada,
New Zealand, and the Australian Commonwealth. For these dominions he favored
complete self-government, but he hoped that, once assured of virtual political indepen-
dence, they would reknit their ties with each other and with Great Britain. Britain and its
dominions, in Chamberlain’s view, should pool their resources not only for military defense
but also for economic well-being. The dominions had already levied tariffs against British
manufacturers in order to build up their own. Chamberlain urged the dominions to charge a
lower duty on British wares than on the same wares coming from foreign countries. In
return, he even proposed that Great Britain adopt a protective tariff, so that it might then
favor Canadian or Australian goods by offering them a lower rate. His plan was to bind the
empire together by economic bonds, making it a kind of global tariff union, or system of
“imperial preference.” Because Britain imported mainly meat and cereals from the domin-
ions, Chamberlain was obliged to recommend a tariff even upon these products—to
“tax the people’s food,” repudiating the very ark of the covenant of Free Trade upon
which the British economy had rested for half a century. The proposal was rejected. Cham-
berlain died in 1914, his goal unaccomplished. But after the First World War the British
Empire, or Commonwealth of Nations, followed closely the proposals he
had mapped out.
Whether the economic welfare and security of the European working
classes was advanced by imperialism is still debated. It is probable that the
worker in western Europe did gain some economic benefi ts from imperial-
ism. Socially conservative imperialists were joined in this belief by thinkers of the extreme
Left. Marx himself, followed by Lenin, thought that the European worker obtained higher
real wages through the infl ow of low-priced colonial goods and commodities. To Marxists
this was unfortunate, for it gave European workers a vested interest in imperialism, made
the European proletariat “opportunistic” (i.e., unrevolutionary), and blocked the formation
of a true international world proletariat of all races.
Another imperialist argument much heard at the time held that European countries
must acquire colonies to which surplus population could migrate without altogether aban-
doning the native land. It seemed unfortunate, for example, that so many Germans or
Italians emigrating to the United States should be lost to the fatherland. This argument was
purely specious. No European country after 1870 acquired any colony to which European
families in any numbers wished to move. The millions who were still leaving Europe
continued to go mainly to the Americas, where in the circumstances no European colony
could be founded.
The competitive nature of the European state system introduced other almost exclu-
sively political features to the new imperialism. The European states sought constantly to
guard their security against each other. They wanted to keep some kind of balance among
themselves, in the overseas world as in Europe. Hence, as in the scramble for Africa, one
Working classes and
imperialism
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914652
government often hurriedly annexed territory simply for fear that another might do so fi rst.
Or again, colonies came to have an intangible but momentous value in symbolism
and prestige. To have colonies was a criterion of national greatness. It was
the sign of having arrived as a Great Power. Britain and France had held
colonies for centuries. Therefore the new powers formed in the 1860s—
Germany, Italy, Japan, and in a sense the United States—came to believe
they had to have colonies also.
Imperialism as Crusade
Imperialism arose from the commercial, industrial, fi nancial, scientifi c, political, journal-
istic, intellectual, religious, and humanitarian impulses of Europe compounded together. It
was an outthrust of the modern European civilization that had forcefully asserted its power
and infl uence around the world for almost four centuries; and its advocates claimed that it
would bring civilization and enlightenment to those who still sat in darkness. Faith in “mod-
ern civilization” had become a kind of substitute religion. Imperialism was its crusade.
Diplomacy and
imperialism
This photograph of Indian servants bringing tea to British offi cials suggests the social hier- archy and the pattern of cross-cultural relations in colonial India at the end of the nineteenth century. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
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65376. The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire
So the British spoke of the White Man’s Burden; the French, of their mission civilisa- trice; the Germans, of diffusing Kultur; the Americans, of the “blessings of Anglo-Saxon protection.” Social Darwinism and popular anthropology taught the racist doctrine that the
white races were “fi tter” or more gifted than the peoples of other races. Some imperialists
gave less emphasis to “race” as a rationale for empires, turning instead to cultural justifi ca-
tions for the colonization of distant peoples and societies. T hey argued that the “backward-
ness” of non-European societies was due to historic, and hence temporary, causes but that
for a long period into the future the more “civilized” Europeans must keep a guardianship
over their darker protégés. The psychology of imperialism contained strands of idealism
and humanitarianism as well as greed, and numerous Europeans went to the
colonies to build schools or hospitals rather than railroads or mines. Young
people of good family left the pleasant lands of Devonshire or Poitou to
spend long and lonely years in hot, isolated places, sustained by the thought
that they were advancing the work of humanity. They saw their colonial labors as contribu-
tions to a humanitarian campaign to spread modern education; to put down slave raiding,
torture, and famine; to combat degrading superstitions; to fi ght the diseases of neglect and
fi lth; and to promote the ideas and institutions of legal justice (even though colonial legal
systems did not treat the colonizers and native people in the same way). But these accom-
plishments, however real, went along all too obviously with European self-interest and
were expressed with unbearable complacency and gross condescension to other cultures
and the larger part of the global human population. As Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1899
(in his exhortation to Americans after their taking over of the Philippines):
Take up the White Man’s burden— Send out the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to exile, To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness, On fl uttered folk and wild— Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child.
Responding to such cultural beliefs and the imperial interventions that they encour-
aged, the colonized peoples in Asia and Africa would soon launch anticolonial movements
that reshaped modern global history and also changed the views of imperialism within
Europe itself. During the decades of new imperial expansion before 1914, however, people
living in the newly colonized societies were generally unable to resist the European powers
or to counter the popular fusion of nationalism and imperialism in most European cultures.
Imperialism thus repeated similar themes and practices throughout the modern world, but
we must now discuss some regional examples to see how the European ascendancy evolved
somewhat differently in specifi c places, confl icts, and cross-cultural exchanges.
76. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
The Ottoman Empire in the 1850s
Among all the diverse parts of the non-European world, the Ottoman, or Turkish, Empire
was the nearest to Europe and the most directly connected to modern European history. The
major European states had a long history of relations with the Ottoman Empire because of
Trade missions
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914654
Historical Interpretations and Debates
The Rationales and Paradoxes of Modern European Imperialism
Historians have often emphasized the economic and geo-political interests that contributed to the late nineteenth-century resurgence of European imperialism, but the cultural justifi cations for this “new imperialism” have also attracted historical attention in recent decades. Many Europeans believed that colonization brought humanitarian assistance and “civilizing prog- ress” to non-European peoples, even as the imperial systems deprived them of political and economic independence. Compare the ways in which Antoinette M. Burton and Christopher L. Miller analyze the cultural presuppositions and paradoxes that emerged when British feminists and French liberals supported imperialism in Asia and Africa.
Antoinette M. Burton, “The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and ‘The Indian Woman,’ 1865–1915” (1992) [A] sense of national and racial superiority
based on Britain’s imperial status was an
organizing principle of Victorian culture.
Middle-class Victorian feminists
generally shared these assumptions. . . .
Despite both their genuine concern for the
condition of Indian women and the feminist reform activities of prominent Indian
women during this period, many middle-
class British feminists viewed the women
of the East not as equals but as unfortunates
in need of saving by their British feminist
‘sisters.’ . . .
Liberal bourgeois feminism in Britain
contained a number of premises which made
it . . . compatible with and easily fueled by
an imperial ethos. First, both were grounded
in the idea of superiority, rooted in the
ostensibly feminine virtues of nurturing,
child-care, and purity. . . .
Secondly, feminist argument, no less
than imperial apologia, was preoccupied with
race preservation, racial purity, and racial
motherhood. . . .
Lastly, feminism, like imperialism,
was structured around the idea of moral
responsibility. . . . Feminism and female
reform ideology virtually dictated the
existence of dependent clients on whom
to confer aid, comfort, and (hopefully) the
status of having been saved. . . .
British women [therefore] felt they
had a special responsibility toward Indian
women. . . .
Christopher L. Miller, “Unfi nished Business: Colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Ideals of the French Revolution” (1994) [A] certain pattern of forced and dubious
reconciliation [developed] between the ideals
of the [French] Revolution and France’s
nationalistic and imperialistic tendencies. The
pattern is clear: the ideals of the Revolution,
by the very fact that they are taken to be
immutable and immortal, are pressed into
service as justifi cations for various policies
of domination and exploitation . . . French
colonialism passes [in the nineteenth century]
for the exportation of the ideals of 1789. This idea, as paradoxical as it may seem,
served as the most compelling rationale for
colonialism. . . . [T]he ideal of liberty, as
it was translated into nineteenth-century
contexts, became a banner of liberalism under which ardent republicans . . . advocated
colonial conquest and rule. . . .
Because France embodies an ideal
[of liberty], France can only do good by
advancing its own self-interests in the
world: idealism and nationalism will both be
served. . . .
Once France is understood to be a force
for moral good, and so long as France’s
ideals are not put into question, France can
behave as it wants. . . .
A discourse of enlightenment and
progress was the key to the success of
colonialism; a misguided idealism, referring
to either the mission civilisatrice or to national prestige, seems to have held the fl oor
in the [French] debate on colonialism. . . .
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655
its geographical proximity and also because of its strategic dominance in the eastern Medi-
terranean. The empire still extended in the nineteenth century from Hungary and the Balkan
Peninsula to the south Russian steppes and from French-controlled Algeria to the Persian
Gulf. The empire was not at all like a modern (or imagined) European nation-state. Immense
in extent, it was a complex social and political system within which people belonged to
diverse and often overlapping religious communities. Most of its people were Muslim,
including both orthodox Muslims and reformist sects such as the Druzes and the Wahhabis;
some were Jews who had always lived in the Middle East; many were Christian, principally
Greek Orthodox and Armenian, who had also always lived there. The Turks were the ruling
class and Islam was the dominant religion. Only Muslims, for example, could serve in the
army; non-Muslims were known as raya, the “fl ock” or “herd”—they paid the taxes. Per- sons of different religion lived side by side, each under the laws, courts, and customs of his
or her own religious group. Religious offi cials—patriarchs, bishops, rabbis, imams,
ulemas—were responsible to the Turkish government for their own people, over whom
therefore they had a great deal of authority.
Western Europeans had their own special rights. Roman Catholic clergy, living
mainly in Palestine, looked to the pope in religion and to France for a mundane protector.
European merchants enjoyed the regime of the “capitulations,” or special
rights granted by the Ottoman government in numerous treaties going back
to the sixteenth century. By the capitulations Turkey could not levy a tariff
of more than 8 percent on imported goods. Europeans were exempt from
most taxes. Cases involving two Europeans, civil or criminal, could be settled only in a
court held by a European consul under European law. Disputes between a European and an
Ottoman subject were settled in Turkish courts, but in the presence of a European observer.
The Ottoman Empire, in short, lacked the European idea of nationalism or national
unity. European ideas of sovereignty and a uniform law for all its peoples were also absent,
as was the idea of the secular state, or of law and citizenship separated from religion. More
generally, the empire had fallen behind modern industrial nations in its scientifi c, mechani-
cal, material, humanitarian, and administrative achievements.
Ottoman Turkey came to be called the “sick man of Europe,” and its
declining power led to what Europeans referred to as the “Eastern Ques-
tion.” Since the loss of Hungary in 1699 the Ottoman Empire had entered on
a long process of territorial disintegration (see map, p. 661). That the empire
The capitulations
The “sick man of
Europe”
Sources: Antoinette Burton, “The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and ‘The Indian Woman,’ 1865–1915,” in Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, eds., Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 137–139, 152; Christopher L. Miller, “Unfi n- ished Business: Colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Ideals of the French Revolution,” in Joseph Klaits
and Michael H. Haltzel, eds., The Global Ramifi cations of the French Revolution (New York and Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 107, 112–113, 117, 126.
Antoinette M. Burton . . . (contd. . . .) Historians must not lose sight of the fact
that feminism(s) are and always will be as
much quests for power as they are battles for
rights. Nineteenth-century feminists sought
empowerment by a variety of means—
education, the vote, welfare legislation—not
the least of which was by allying their cause
with British imperial rule.
Christopher L. Miller . . . (contd. . . .) The French colonial system . . . built
itself over a myth of the Revolution, while
suppressing the truth that . . . you can’t
dominate and liberate at the same time.
76. The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914656
lasted another two centuries was mainly due to the European balance of power. But by the
1850s the empire was falling away at the edges. Russia had advanced in the Crimea and the
Caucasus. Serbia was autonomous, Greece was independent, and Romania was recognized
as a self-governing principality. The French occupied Algeria. A native Arab dynasty, the
Sauds, of the Wahhabi reform sect, ruled over much of Arabia. A former Turkish governor
of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, had established his family as hereditary rulers or “khedives” in
the Nile Valley. Notwithstanding these changes, the Ottoman Empire in the 1850s was still
huge. It encompassed not only the Turkish or Anatolian Peninsula (including Armenia and
territory south of the Caucasus) but also the central portion of the Balkan Peninsula from
Constantinople to the Adriatic where many Christians of Slavic nationality lived, Tripoli
(as Libya was then called) in North Africa, and the islands of Crete and Cyprus. Egypt and
Arabia, though autonomous, were still under the nominal suzerainty of the sultan.
The Crimean War of 1854–1856 opened a new phase in Ottoman history as in that of
Europe. We have seen how this war was followed by the consolidation of great nation-
states in Europe and how the United States, Canada, and Japan consolidated or modernized
themselves at the same time. Ottoman Turkish reformers tried to do the same between
1856 and 1876.
In the Crimean War the Turks were on the winning side, but the war
affected them as it affected Russia, the loser. Collaboration with the major
European powers exposed the Ottoman Empire’s military and political
weakness and pointed to the need for better organization. The outcome of
the war was taken to prove the superiority of the political systems of England and France.
It was therefore on western European lines that Turkish reformers wished to remodel. It
was not merely that they wanted to defend themselves against another of the periodic wars
with Russia. They wished also to avoid being periodically saved from Russia by the coun-
tries of western Europe, a process which if continued could lead only to French or British
control of Turkey.
Attempts at Reform and Revival, 1856–1876
In 1856 the Ottoman government issued the Hatt-i Humayun, the most far-reaching Turk-
ish reform edict of the century. Its purpose was to create an Ottoman national citizenship
for all persons in the empire. It abolished the civil authority of religious hierarchs. Equality
before the law was guaranteed, as was eligibility to public offi ce without regard to reli-
gion. The army was opened to Christians and Muslims alike, and steps were even taken to
include both in nonsegregated military units. The edict announced a reform of taxes, secu-
rity of property for all, abolition of torture, and reform of prisons. It promised to combat
the chronic evils of graft, bribery, and extortion by public offi cials.
For 20 years there were serious efforts to make the reform decree of 1856 a reality.
European and liberal ideas circulated freely, gaining new infl uence in Ottoman society.
Newspapers were founded. Writers called for a national Turkish revival, threw off the old
Persian style in literature, composed histories of the Ottomans, and translated
Enlightenment-era French authors such as Montesquieu and Rousseau. Foreign loans
entered the country. Railroads joined the Black Sea and the Danube. Abdul Aziz (1861–
1876), the fi rst sultan to travel to Europe, visited Vienna, London, and the great Paris
world’s fair of 1867. But powerful resistance developed against such radical changes. Also,
the best efforts of the Turkish reformers miscarried. There were too few Turks with skill or
experience in the work required, and there was too much dependence on borrowed money.
In 1874 the Ottoman government, having recklessly overborrowed, repudiated half its debt.
The Crimean War
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657
A new and more determined reforming minister, Midhat Pasha,
goaded by opposition and desperate at the weight of inertia, deposed Abdul
Aziz in 1876, deposed the latter’s nephew three months later, and set up
Abdul Hamid II as sultan. The new sultan at fi rst briskly went along with
the reform movement, proclaiming a new constitution in 1876. It declared the Ottoman
Empire to be indivisible, and promised personal liberty, freedom of conscience, freedom
of education and the press, and parliamentary government. The fi rst Turkish parliament
met in 1877. Its members earnestly addressed themselves to reform. But they reckoned
without Abdul Hamid, who in 1877 revealed his true intentions. The sultan got rid of
Midhat, packed off the parliament, and threw away the constitution.
Repression after 1876
Abdul Hamid reigned for 33 years, from 1876 to 1909. For all this time he lived in fear and
isolation, fi ghting ferociously against modernizing forces that he did not understand. The
sultan feared that tampering with the old Ottoman way or introducing the
new science and constitutional forms of government might lead to ruin. He
dreaded any moves to check his own whim or power. He was thrown into
a panic by Turkish reformers, who became increasingly driven to terrorist
acts in the face of his opposition. Driven away by Abdul Hamid, some tens of thousands of
Young Turks, the activists of the reform era before 1876, or their children and successors,
lived in exile in Paris, London, or Geneva, plotting their return to Turkey and vengeance
upon Abdul the Damned. The sultan was frightened also by agitation among his non-
Turkish subjects. Nationalist Armenians, Bulgars, Macedonians, and Cretans defi ed and
taunted the Ottoman authorities, which responded with the Bulgarian massacres of 1876
and the Armenian massacres of 1894. These horrible butcheries of thousands of peasants
Abdul Hamid’s fears
Abdul Hamid II
The Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II came to power in alliance with a move- ment for constitutional reform, but he soon became an autocratic ruler who violently suppressed his political oppo- nents, massacred ethnic minorities, and resisted all the currents of modern social and cultural life that were coming into his empire from Europe. He is pictured here in his royal attire, sitting alone in the isolated style that characterized his long reign. (Bettmann/Corbis)
76. The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914658
by Ottoman troops came as a shock to Europeans, who were no longer accustomed to such
violence within their own nation-states. Last, and with good reason, Abdul Hamid feared
the imperialist European powers whose expansionist ambitions focused increasingly upon
his dissolving empire.
A thoroughly reformed, consolidated, and modernized Ottoman Empire was
far from what the European governments desired. They might wish for humanitarian
reforms in Turkey, for more effi ciency and honesty in Turkish government and fi nance,
and even for a Turkish parliamentary system. Such demands were eloquently expressed
by liberals like Gladstone in England. But no one in Europe wanted what Turkish
reformers wanted, a reinvigorated Ottoman Empire that could deal with Europe politi-
cally as an equal.
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878: The Congress of Berlin
In Russia, since the time of Catherine II in the eighteenth century, many had dreamed of
installing Russian power on the shores of the Bosporus. Constantinople they called Tsar-
igrad, the Imperial City, which (in their view) Orthodoxy was to liberate from the infi del.
Crusading motives, in this nationalist and imperialist age, now reappeared
anew in the form of Pan-Slavism. This doctrine was preached by some of
Russia’s leading nineteenth-century intellectuals, including the novelist
Dostoevski and the publicist Danilevsky. Danilevsky’s Russia and Europe, published in 1871, predicted that Russia would enter into a long war with Europe, which
would then be followed by the creation of a grand federation of the East. The new east-
ern federation would include Slavs, Greeks, Hungarians, and parts of Ottoman Turkey
under Russian control. This type of Pan-Slavism was patronized by the Russian govern-
ment because it diverted attention from internal and revolutionary troubles. As for the
Slav peoples of the Ottoman Empire, they were willing to use Russian Pan-Slavism as a
means of combating their imperial Turkish rulers. Insurrection against the Ottoman
Empire broke out in the Balkans during the mid-1870s. In 1877 Russia declared war,
launching a military campaign against the Ottoman Empire for the sixth time in a
hundred years.
The British, who had fought Russia to protect Ottoman interests in 1854, were pre-
pared to do so again. A number of recent developments added to their apprehension. The
Suez Canal was completed in 1869, and the Canal’s location within the Ottoman Empire
restored the Middle East to its ancient position as a crossroads of world trade. In 1874
Benjamin Disraeli, a Conservative and an imperialist, became prime minister of Great
Britain. By a sudden coup in the following year he was able to buy up, from the almost
bankrupt ruling khedive of Egypt, 44 percent of the shares of the Suez Canal Company. In
1876, in a dramatic affi rmation of imperial splendor, he had Queen Victoria take the title
of empress of India. British commercial and fi nancial interests in India and the Far East
were growing, and the Suez Canal, of which the British government was now the princi-
pal stockholder, was becoming the economic lifeline of the empire. But
the Ottoman state, and hence the whole Middle East, was now collapsing
before the Russians, whose armies advanced rapidly through the Balkans,
reached Constantinople, and forced the Turks to sign a treaty in 1878, the
treaty of San Stefano. By this treaty Turkey ceded to Russia strategic ter-
ritory on the south side of the Caucasus Mountains, gave full independence to Serbia and
Romania, promised reforms in Bosnia, and granted autonomy to a new Bulgarian state,
Pan-Slavism
The treaty of San
Stefano
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659
whose boundaries were to be very generously drawn and which was expected to fall under
Russian domination. England seethed with a popular clamor for war against Russia. The
outcry gave the word “jingoism” to the language:
We don’t want to fi ght, but by jingo, if we do, We’ve got the men, we’ve got the ships, we’ve got the money too.
It now appeared that the Ottoman Empire’s inability to fend off foreigners from its
borders would precipitate at least an Anglo-Russian and possibly a general European war.
But war was averted by diplomacy. Seeking to avert the extension of Russian infl uence
in the eastern Mediterranean, Bismarck assembled a congress of all the European great
powers at Berlin in 1878. Once again Europe attempted to assert itself as a unity, to restore
life to the much-battered Concert of Europe by dealing collectively with
the common problem presented by the Eastern Question. The congress
in effect initiated a partition of the Ottoman domain, thereby keeping peace
in Europe at the expense of the Ottoman government in Turkey. The Euro-
pean balance now both protected and dismembered the Ottoman Empire at
the same time.
The Russians were persuaded at Berlin to give up the recent treaty of San Stefano,
but they held on to the territory they had gained below the Caucasus Mountains and
confi rmed the independence of the Serbs and Romanians. Montenegro, too, was recog-
nized as an independent state. Bulgaria was divided into three zones with varying
degrees of autonomy, all still nominally within the Ottoman Empire. At the same time,
Austria-Hungary gained a new role in the Balkans. It was authorized by the congress to
“occupy and administer” Bosnia (but not annex it) in compensation for the spread of
Russian infl uence along the borders of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman government
also ceded Cyprus to Britain, thereby giving the British a large island from which they
could further ensure the security of the Suez Canal. The French were told that they
might expand from Algeria into Tunisia. To the Italians (who counted least) it was more
vaguely hinted that they might later be allowed to expand across the Adriatic into Alba-
nia. As Bismarck put it, “the Italians have such a large appetite and such poor teeth.”
Germany took nothing. Bismarck said he was the “honest broker” with no interest except
in European peace.
The treaty of Berlin in 1878 dispelled the immediate threat of war.
It expanded the western European presence in the Mediterranean and
reduced the territories of the Ottoman Empire, but it left many continu-
ing problems that would contribute to the causes of the First World War
36 years later. Neither the Balkan nationalists nor the Russian Pan-Slavs
were satisfi ed. All politically minded Turks, both the reactionaries like Abdul Hamid
and the revolutionary Young Turks in exile, were indignant that peace had been made by
further dismemberment of their empire. The demonstrated weakness of Ottoman Turkey
was a constant temptation to all of the European powers. In the years before 1914 the
German government gained new infl uence within the Ottoman Empire. Germans and
German capital entered Turkey, projecting, and partially completing, a great Berlin to
Bagdad railway to be accompanied by the exploitation of Middle Eastern resources. The
railroad was all but completed before 1914 despite the protests and representations of the
Russians, the French, and particularly the British, who saw it as a direct threat to their
empire in India.
Weakness of
Ottoman Empire
The continuing
Turkish problem
76. The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914660
Egypt and North Africa
For Egypt, technically autonomous within the Ottoman Empire, the 1850s and 1860s were
a time of reform, economic development, and deepening connections with Europe. The
Egyptian government modernized its administration, court system, and property law, coop-
erated with the French in building the Suez Canal, encouraged shipping on the Red Sea,
and let British and French interests construct railroads. Between 1861 and 1865, while the
American South was unable to export raw cotton to Europe, the annual export of Egyptian
cotton rose from 60 million to 250 million pounds. Egypt more than Turkey was drawn into
the world market, and the khedive of Egypt became more interested in European culture.
The khedive Ismail built a new opera house in Cairo, where, in 1871, two years after the
opening of the Suez Canal, Verdi’s Aïda, written at the khedive’s request, was resound- ingly performed for the fi rst time.
Such improvements cost a good deal of money, borrowed in England and France. The
Egyptian government was soon in fi nancial straits, only temporarily relieved by the sale of
canal shares to Disraeli. By 1879 matters reached the point where
European banking interests forced the abdication of Ismail and his replace-
ment by Tewfi k, who also became thoroughly enmeshed by his creditors.
This led to nationalistic protests within Egypt, headed by Colonel Arabi. In
a pattern later repeated in many parts of the colonial world, the nationalists opposed both
the foreigners and their own government, charging it with being a mere front for European
interests. Arabi’s movement, an early expression of Arab nationalism, led to riots in
Alexandria, where Europeans had to fl ee aboard British and French shipping in the harbor.
A British squadron then unceremoniously bombarded Alexandria. British troops (the
French, though invited to take part, refused) disembarked in 1882 at Suez and Alexandria,
defeated Arabi, and took Tewfi k under their protection. The military intervention of 1882
was said by the British to be temporary, but British troops remained there for a long time,
through two world wars and well into the twentieth century, not leaving until 1956. Egypt
thus became a British “protectorate,” which would become a common form of European
British intervention
The Suez Canal, which was com- pleted in 1869, quickly became Britain’s all-important lifeline to its Asian Empire and a busy crossing point for the expand- ing global economy. This picture shows the ship of Edward, Prince of Wales, entering the canal in 1875, when the prince was en route to India. (Otto Herschan/Getty Images)
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661
imperial control. The British protected the khedive from discontent within
his own country, from the claims of the Ottoman court, and from the rival
attentions of other European powers.
The French strenuously objected when the British stayed on so long in Egypt. The
French had long made the greatest investments in the Middle East, and persons in that
region who were interested in European cultures overwhelmingly preferred French lan-
guage and culture to English. The French, harboring deep suspicion of British designs in
Egypt, compensated themselves by building a North African empire farther west. They
continued to expand their control of Algeria, assumed a protectorate over Tunisia, and
Egypt as protectorate
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1699–1914 Beginning in 1699, with the loss of Hungary to the Austrian Habsburgs, the Ottoman Empire entered upon a long process of territorial disintegration. Dates shown are those at which terri- tories dropped away. In general, regions lost before 1815 were annexed directly by Austria and Russia. European territories lost in the nineteenth century emerged as independent states, owing to the rise of nationalism and rivalries among the great European powers. In the Arab world, reaching from Algeria to the Persian Gulf, regions lost before the First World War were absorbed into European colonial empires; those lost at the end of the First World War were mostly assigned to France and Britain as mandates, but after the Second World War these regions became independent Arab states and the Republic of Israel. A Turkish nationalist movement blocked European attempts to partition Turkey after the First World War, and in 1923 the Turks estab- lished the Turkish Republic.
To Austria
To Russia
Became Independent
To Britain
To Italy
Ottoman Empire 1914 0 100 200 miles
Dniester R .
Pru th
R.
A driatic
Sea
A e g
e an
Sea M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
B l a c k S e aDa nub
e R.
Don R.
Ha lys
R .
Euphrates R .
T igris
R
.
L. Van
AUSTRIA
HUNGARY 1699
WALLACHIA 1829
CRIMEA 1783
M O
LD A
V IA
1829
BESSA RA
BIA
1812
RUMELIA 1913
GREECE 1830
BANAT 1718BOSNIA
1878
ALBANIA 1913
GALICIA
RUSSIAN EMPIRE
TRANSYLVANIA
MONTENEGRO
SERBIA 1878
1792 1783
1783
1829
1878
BULGARIA
DOBRUJA
KURDISTAN
PERSIA
KARSITALY
RO M
A N
IA 1817
1774
CRETE (Autonomous, 1898)
DODECANESE I. 1912
CYPRUS 1878
DARDANELLES
BO SPO
RUS
ARABIAPA LE
ST IN
E
MESOPOTAM
IA
O T
T O
M A N
E M P I R E
CAUCASUS
ARMENI A
Vienna
Budapest
Athens Smyrna
Constantinople
Odessa
Sinope Sofia
Sarajevo
Skopje
Salonica
Sevastopol
Angora
Adalia
Rostov
Batum
Adana
Sivas
Erzerum
Aleppo
Mosul
Mediterranean Sea
Black Sea
Red Sea
TUNISIA 1881
TRIPOLI (LIBYA) 1912
EGYPT 1882
ALGERIA 1830
HEJAZ 1916
YEMEN
SAU
D I A
RA BIA
1699 –1923
To Austria
To Russia
To France
To Britain
To Italy
Became Independent
League of Nations Mandate to Britian and France 1920
Turkish Republic 1923
76. The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914662
began to penetrate Morocco. Upon these latter French advances the British, and soon the
Germans, looked with unmitigated disfavor. Rivalry for the spoils of the Ottoman Empire
thus created enmity among the Great Powers of Europe and constituted a fertile source of
the war scares, fears, and diplomatic maneuvers that preceded the First World War.
The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire became indistinguishable from the whole
chronic international crisis before 1914. It is enough to say here, to keep the fate of the
Ottoman Empire in focus, that Abdul Hamid’s frantic defensive policies
came to nothing and that the Young Turks won control of the Ottoman
government in 1908. They forced the restoration of the constitution of 1876
and introduced many reforms. Finally, when all Europe became involved
in war in 1914, Russia again declared war on Ottoman Turkey, and the Turks came into
the war on the side of Germany, whose political and economic infl uence in the empire had
been steadily growing. During the war, with British aid, the Arabs detached themselves
from the empire, eventually becoming independent Arab states. Egypt, too, ended all con-
nections with the empire. In 1923 a Turkish republic was proclaimed. It was confi ned to
Constantinople (henceforth called Istanbul) and the Anatolian Peninsula, where the bulk
of the Turkish people lived. The new republic proceeded to undergo a thorough nation-
alist and secular revolution. Other areas of the pre-1914 Ottoman Empire were divided
into various territorial “mandates” and states, whose instabilities and subsequent confl icts
would have far-reaching effects in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and the wider
world down to the twenty-fi rst century.
77. THE PARTITION OF AFRICA
South of Mediterranean Africa lay the Sahara desert, and south of that lay sub-Saharan
Africa, of which Europeans knew so little that they called it the “Dark Conti-
nent.” Africa is so enormous that even the part south of the Sahara is almost
as large as the whole continent of North America. For centuries Europeans
knew only its coasts—the Gold Coast, Ivory Coast, Slave Coast—to which
from an inexhaustible interior had come shackled processions of captive
enslaved people, as well as the swelling waters of great rivers, like the Nile, Niger, and
Congo, whose sources in the unknown hinterland were a subject of romantic speculation.
The people were black, but diverse both in physique and in culture, and speaking almost a
thousand languages. They had been working with iron for more than 2,000 years, and they
were adept in many arts, such as bronze sculpture, gold artifacts, weaving, basketry, and the
making of ceremonial masks with strikingly symbolic or abstract patterns. Along the north-
ern fringe some had converted to Islam, but mostly they adhered to other traditional religions
that had emerged and evolved within the diverse cultural histories of African societies.
They lived mainly in villages in tribal communities, engaged in agriculture or moving
herds of cattle from place to place. But great cities or agglomerations had also arisen, from
Timbuktu in the north with its old caravan trade across the Sahara, to the vast complex
of buildings at Zimbabwe in the south, which was already in ruins when the Europeans
fi rst saw it. There had also been extensive kingdoms whose memory was preserved, in the
absence of writing, by specially trained narrators from one generation to the next. But these
kingdoms had disappeared or declined by the nineteenth century. They had been weak-
ened by intertribal wars, by the slave trade that set Africans against one another to satisfy
the demand of outsiders, or by demographic causes that are now diffi cult to trace. Hence
Africa, somewhat like the Ottoman Empire and China, met the assault of the Europeans at
Young Turks
The “Dark
Continent”
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66377. The Partition of Africa
a time when its powers of resistance were reduced. Before the mid-nineteenth century there
were no permanently resident non-African communities south of the Sahara except for a
few Arabs who had been on the east coast since the seventh century and the Europeans who
had been at the Cape of Good Hope since 1652. In the Union of South Africa, when it was
established in 1910, some 1.1 million whites lived along with about 5 million blacks.
The Opening of Africa
Missionaries, explorers, and individual adventurers fi rst opened this world
to Europe without much assistance or interest from national governments.
The historic pair, Livingstone and Stanley, well illustrate the drift of early
European activities in sub-Saharan Africa. Before the new imperialist age,
in 1841, the Scot David Livingstone arrived in southeast Africa as a medi-
cal missionary. He gave himself to humanitarian and religious work, with some occasional
trading and much travel and exploration, but without political or economic aims. Explor-
ing the Zambesi River, he was the fi rst white man to look upon the Victoria Falls. Fully
at home in inner Africa, safe and on friendly terms with its native people, he was quite
content to be left alone. But the hectic forces of modern civilization sought him out. Word
spread in Europe and America that Dr. Livingstone was lost. The New York Herald, to manufacture news, sent the roving journalist H. M. Stanley to fi nd him, which he did in
1871. Livingstone soon died, deeply honored by the Africans among whom he worked.
Stanley was a man of the new era. Seeing vast economic possibilities in Africa, he went to
Europe to solicit backers. In 1878 he found someone with the same ideas, who happened
to be a king, Leopold II, king of the Belgians.
Leopold, for all his royalty, was at heart a commercial promoter. China, Formosa, the
Philippines, and Morocco had in turn attracted his fancy, but it was the central African
basin of the Congo that he decided to develop. Stanley was exactly the man he needed, and
the two founded at Brussels, with a few fi nanciers, an International Congo Association in
1878. It was a purely private enterprise; the Belgian government and people had nothing
to do with it. Europeans considered all Africa inland from the coasts to be, like America in
the time of Columbus, a terra nullius, without government and claimed by nobody, wide open to the fi rst Europeans or other outsiders who might arrive. Stanley, returning to the
Congo in 1882, in a year or two concluded treaties with over 500 chiefs, who received a
few trinkets or a few yards of cloth for putting their marks on his mysterious European
papers and accepting the blue-and-gold fl ag of the Congo Association.
Because the “Dark Continent” still lacked the clear boundaries of delineated inter-
nal frontiers, no one could tell how much territory the Association might soon cover by
these methods. The German explorer Karl Peters, working inland from Zanzibar, was also
signing treaties with the chiefs of East Africa. The Frenchman Brazza, departing from
the west coast and distributing the tricolor in every village, was claiming territory on the
Congo River that was larger than all of France. The Portuguese meanwhile aspired to join
their long-held coastal colonies of Angola and Mozambique into a trans-African empire,
for which they sought a generous portion of the interior. Britain supported Portugal. In
every case the home governments in Europe still hesitated to deepen their involvement
in an Africa that remained almost totally unknown to even the most adventurous European
travelers. But the governments were pushed on by small organized minorities of colonizing
enthusiasts, and they faced the probability that if they missed the moment for colonization
it would be too late.
Livingstone and
Stanley
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914664
Bismarck, who personally thought African colonies an absurdity but was sensitive to
the new political pressures, called another conference at Berlin in 1885, this time to submit
the African question to international regulation. Most European states, as well as the United
States, attended. The Berlin conference had two goals: to set up the territo-
ries of the Congo Association as an international state, under international
auspices and restrictions; and to draft a code governing the way in which
European powers wishing to acquire African territory should proceed.
The Congo Free State, which in 1885 took the place of the Interna-
tional Congo Association, was not only an international creation but also embodied in
some ways what became known in the next century as international mandates or interna-
tional (European-controlled) trusteeships for non-European peoples. The Berlin confer-
ence specifi ed that the new state should not be the colony of any power, including Belgium,
but delegated its administration to Leopold. It drew the boundaries, making the Congo
Free State almost as large as the United States east of the Mississippi, and it added certain
specifi c provisions: the Congo River was internationalized, persons of all nationalities
should be free to do business in the Congo state, there should be no tariff levied on imports,
and the slave trade should be suppressed. Leopold in 1889 reassembled the signatory pow-
ers in a second conference, held at Brussels. The Brussels conference took further steps to
root out the slave trade, which remained a stubborn though declining evil, because the
Muslim societies lagged behind Europe and the Americas in abolishing slavery. The Brus-
sels conference also undertook to protect the rights of the local people, correct certain glar-
ing abuses, and reduce the traffi c in liquor and fi rearms.
But all this effort at internationalism failed because Europe had no international
machinery by which the hard daily work of enforcing general agreements could be car-
ried out. Although slavery was banned, Leopold went his own way in the
Congo. His determination to make it commercially profi table for his own
benefi t led him to unconscionable abuses. Europe and America demanded
rubber, and the rubber trees of the Congo were at the time one of the world’s
few sources of supply. The Congo people, already affl icted by the diseases and weakening
effects of a lowland equatorial climate, could be made to fulfi ll assigned quotas of rub-
ber sap only by inhumanly severe coercion. Leopold and his agents, some of whom were
African, and the managers of the concessions he leased out extorted forced labor from the
native population, compelling them to meet impossible quotas under brutal conditions,
with the resulting deaths of thousands. The rubber trees meanwhile were destroyed without
any plans for replacement.
Leopold, by ravaging its resources and virtually enslaving its people, was able to draw
from the Congo a handsome income and to amass a personal fortune. He nevertheless
could not make the entire enterprise profi table and needed more investment capital for
further development. He therefore borrowed from his own government in 1889 and 1895
in return for giving the government the right to annex the Congo in 1901. The Belgian
parliament turned down the opportunity that year, but beginning in 1904 public outrage
mounted after European press revelations of the scandalous atrocities in the Congo. A con-
certed campaign compelled the Belgian government in 1908 to take the Congo over from
Leopold, who died the following year. The Congo Free State became the Belgian Congo,
a Belgian colony. Under the Belgian government’s administration the worst excesses of
forced labor and other abuses were ended, even though the Congo continued to attract
investments from Europeans and other outsiders.
The Berlin conference
of 1885
The Belgian Congo
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665
The Berlin conference of 1885 had also laid down certain rules for imperial claims of
African territories—a European power with holdings on the coast had prior rights in the
hinterland; occupation must not be on paper only through drawing lines on a map, but must
consist in real occupation by administrators or troops; and each power must give proper
notice to the others as to what territories it considered its own. A wild scramble for “real
occupation” quickly followed. In 15 years almost the entire continent was “occupied” by
the various European nations. The sole exceptions were Ethiopia, and, technically, Liberia,
founded in 1822 as a colony for emancipated American slaves and virtually a protectorate
of the United States.
Everywhere a variant of the same process was repeated. First would appear a handful
of white men, bringing their inevitable treaties—sometimes printed forms. To get what they
wanted, the Europeans commonly had to ascribe powers to a tribal chief that by the customs
of the tribe he did not possess—powers to convey sovereignty, sell land, or grant mining
concessions. Thus the Africans were baffl ed at the outset by unfamiliar European legal
conceptions. Then the Europeans would build up the position of the chief to whom they had
ascribed new powers. This enhancement of a local leader’s position was essential for the
colonizing process because the Europeans themselves had no infl uence over the people.
Workers in the Congo were forced to remove particles of wood and fi ber from the rub- ber that was harvested for export to Europe and America. This picture of workers, which was published in 1909, shows both the tedious physical labor in the rubber industry and a common Western image of Africans in the era of Euro- pean colonialism. (Mary Evans Picture Library/The
Image Works)
77. The Partition of Africa
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914666
T he collaboration with tribal chiefs led to the widespread system of “indirect rule,” by
which colonial authorities acted through and expanded the existing social
and political hierarchies. There were many things that only the chief could
arrange, such as security for isolated Europeans, porter services, or gangs of
workmen to build roads or railroads.
Labor was the overwhelming problem. For pure slavery Europeans now had an abhor-
rence, and they abolished it wherever they could. But the Africans, so long as they lived
within the traditional social customs and values of their own communi-
ties, did not react to European economic plans like the free wage earner
postulated in European business and commercial theories. They had little
expectation of individual gain and almost no use for money. They thus
seemed to work only sporadically by European standards, disdaining the continuous and
tedious labor that Europeans wanted them to perform. The result was that Europeans all
over Africa resorted to forced labor, thereby disrupting the social communities that most
Africans valued more than the very low wages of European companies. For road build-
ing, colonial offi cials forced workers to contribute their labor to construction systems that
resembled the French corvée before the Revolution. A local chief would often be required to supply a quota of able-bodied men for a certain length of time, and frequently he did
so gladly to raise his own importance in the eyes of the Europeans. More indirect meth-
ods were also used. The colonial government might levy a hut tax or a poll tax, payable
only in money, for which the African would have to seek a job. Or the new government,
once installed, might allocate so much land to Europeans as private property (another
foreign conception) that the local tribe could no longer subsist on the lands that remained
to it. Or the whole tribe might be moved to a reservation, like the displacement of Indians
in the United States. In any case, while the women tilled the fi elds or tended the stock
at home, the men would move away from their communities to take jobs under Euro-
pean control for infi nitesimal pay. The men then lived in compounds, far from family and
tribal kindred; they became demoralized; and the labor they gave, untrained and unwilling,
would scarcely have been tolerated in more industrialized societies. In these circumstances
everything was done to uproot the Africans, and little was done to benefi t them or to pro-
tect the social systems in which they had lived before the Europeans arrived.
Conditions began to improve in the twentieth century as a more professional or
enlightened colonial administration was gradually built up. Some colonial offi cials even
came to serve as buffers or protectors of the local peoples against social abuses or the
intruding white man’s economic interests. Throughout the colonial era many European
offi cials believed that part of the ethos of imperialism was to put down slavery, tribal
warfare, superstition, disease, and illiteracy. Slowly a “Europeanized” class of Africans
developed in the various colonial societies—chiefs and the sons of chiefs, Catholic priests
and Protestant ministers, warehouse clerks and government employees. Young men from
Nigeria or Uganda appeared as students at Oxford, the University of Paris, or universi-
ties in the United States. These students increasingly resented both the exploitation and
paternalism of the colonial systems. They showed signs of turning nationalistic, like their
counterparts in the Ottoman Empire and Asia. Although they usually wanted to develop
the economies, infrastructures, and schools in their own societies, they wanted such
developments to evolve at a pace and for a purpose of their own, and with methods that
recognized the value of their own cultural traditions. As the twentieth century progressed,
nationalism in Africa grew more vocal, more intense, and more forceful in challenging the
European powers.
“Indirect rule”
The labor problem
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667
Friction and Rivalry between the Powers
Meanwhile, in the 15 years from 1885 to 1900, the Europeans in Africa came danger-
ously near to open blows. The Portuguese annexed huge domains in Angola
and Mozambique. The Italians took over two barren tracts, Italian Somalil-
and and Eritrea on the Red Sea. They then moved inland, in quest of more
imposing possessions, to conquer Ethiopia and the headwaters of the Nile.
The colonial race in
Africa
PRECOLONIAL AFRICA: SITES AND PEOPLES This map shows Africa before colonization by the Europeans in the nineteenth century. It does not refer to a particular date or to particular kingdoms that the Europeans displaced. Names in blue designate important ancient or medieval centers, such as the Ghana and Mali empires, which no longer existed in modern times. Even the most extensive African kingdoms had indefi nite and shifting boundaries, which cannot be readily indicated on a map. “Bantu,” as used in the phrase “Bantu peoples,” refers to a large group of languages spoken from north of the Congo River to the southern African Coast. Concentrations of other language groups and peoples are also shown.
0 500 miles
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
R e
d Se
a
AT L A N T I C O C E A N
I N D I A N O C E A N Senegal R.
N iger R.
L. Victoria
N ile
R .
Co
ng o
R.
Zambezi R.
MEROË
BORNU
ZIMBABWE RUINS
SONGHAI EMPIRE
GHANA MALI
MOROCCO
HAUSA
ASHANTI
DARFUR
KIKUYU
SAN (Bushmen)
KHOIKHOI (Hottentots)
SO M
A LI
TUNIS
ZANZIBAR
EGYPT
ETHIOPIA
A R A B S T A T E S
BENIN IBO
D A
H O
M E Y
S A H A R A D E S E R T
KALAHARI DESERT
S U D A N
G U I N E A
SW A
H IL
I L A
N G U AG
E
BU GA
ND A
B A
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U
P E
O P
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EUROPEAN COASTAL STATIONS SIN C E 15TH
C EN
TU R Y
A R
A B
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A ST
A L
SE
TT LE
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7T H C
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Timbuktu
Cape Town (Dutch Settlement, 1652)
77. The Partition of Africa
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914668
African workers built the new European-owned mines that began sending valuable minerals around the world. The laborers in this picture are digging a new gold mine in southern Africa in the late 1880s. (Robert Harris/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Some 80,000 Ethiopians, however, defeated and routed 20,000 Italians in pitched battle
at Adowa in 1896. It was the fi rst time that Africans successfully defended themselves
against the forces of a European imperialist nation, and it discouraged invasion of Ethiopia
by the Italians (or other Europeans) for 40 years. Italy and Portugal, like the Congo Free
State and Spain (which retained a few vestiges of former days), were able to enjoy sizable
holdings in Africa because of mutual fears among the principal contenders. The principal
contenders were Great Britain, France, and Germany. Each preferred to have territory held
by a minor power rather than by one of its signifi cant rivals.
The Germans were latecomers in the African colonial race, which Bismarck entered
with reluctance. By the 1880s all the usual imperialist arguments were heard in Germany,
though most of them, such as the need for new markets, for emigration to overseas ter-
ritories, or for the investment of capital, had little or no application in tropical Africa. The
Germans established colonies in German East Africa and in the Cameroons and Togo on
the west coast, along with a desert area that came to be called German Southwest Africa
(where they ruthlessly suppressed the rebellious Herero people). It did not escape the
notice of German imperial planners that someday the Congo and the Portuguese colonies
might be joined with their colonies in a solid German belt across the African heartland.
The French controlled most of West Africa, from Algeria across the Sahara and the Sudan
to various points on the Guinea coast. They also occupied Obok on the Red Sea, and
after the Italian defeat in 1896 their infl uence in Ethiopia grew. French planners therefore
dreamed of a solid French belt across Africa from Dakar to the Gulf of Aden. The French
government in 1898 dispatched Captain J. B. Marchand with a small party eastward from
Lake Chad to hoist the tricolor far away on the upper Nile, in the southern part of the
Sudan, which no European power had as yet “effectively” occupied.
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669
The two presumptive east-and-west belts, German and French, were cut (presump-
tively) by a north-and-south belt, projected in the British imperial imagination as an “Africa
British from the Cape to Cairo.” From the Cape of Good Hope Cecil Rhodes pushed north-
ward into what was later called Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Kenya and Uganda in the mid-
continent were already under British control. In Egypt, a British protectorate since 1882, the
British began to support old Egyptian claims to the upper Nile. The fi rst venture proved a
disaster when in 1885 a British general popularly known as “Chinese Gordon” for previous
military successes in China, leading an Egyptian force, was killed by Muslim troops at
Khartoum. In the following decade British opinion turned imperialist in earnest. Another
British offi cer, General Kitchener (with a young man named Winston Churchill under his
command), again started southward up the Nile and defeated the local Muslims in 1898 at
Omdurman. He then pushed on further upstream. At Fashoda he met Marchand, who had
moved his small French force into this area on the White Nile tributary of the great river.
The ensuing Fashoda crisis brought Britain and France to the verge of
war. Already at odds over Egypt and Morocco, the two governments used
the encounter at Fashoda to force a showdown. It was a test of strength,
not only for their respective plans for all Africa but also for their rela-
tive position in all imperialist and international issues. Both at fi rst refused to yield. The
British virtually threatened to fi ght. The French, fearful of their insecurity against Germany
in Europe, at last decided not to take the risk. They backed down and recalled Marchand’s
expedition from Fashoda. A wave of hatred for the British swept over France.
The British no sooner won this Pyrrhic victory than they became involved in a major
confl ict at the other end of the African continent. In 1890 Cecil Rhodes had become prime
minister of the Cape Colony. He was a principal sponsor of the Cape-to-Cairo imperial
dream. Two small independent neighboring republics, the Transvaal and the Orange Free
State, stood in his way. Their people were Afrikaners—descendants of the Dutch who had
originally settled the Cape in the seventeenth century. After 1815, when England annexed
the Cape of Good Hope, they had made the “great trek” into the interior territory of the
Transvaal to escape from British rule. The Boers, as the English called them (from the
Dutch word for farmer), were simple, obstinate, and old-fashioned. They had strongly
opposed the British abolition of slavery, and they disliked fortune hunters, footloose
adventurers, mining-camp people, and other outsiders.
The discovery of diamonds and gold in the Transvaal brought the issue of outsid-
ers to a head. British capital and British people poured in. The Boers in the Transvaal
refused to pass legislation needed by the mining corporations and their employees. In 1895
Rhodes, attempting to precipitate revolution in the Transvaal, sent a party of armed irregu-
lars, under Dr. Jameson, a physician-turned-colonial administrator, over its borders. This
Jameson Raid was a failure, but in Europe a great cry went up against British bullying
of a small inoffensive republic. The German emperor, William II, dispatched a famous
telegram to Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal, congratulating him on his driving off
the invaders “without having to call for the support of friendly powers,” that is, Germany.
Three years later, in 1899, the British Empire went to war with the two small repub-
lics. The South African (or Boer) War lasted until 1902 and provoked strong opposition
within Britain as the human and fi nancial costs steadily mounted. The British army sent
300,000 troops, who became bogged down in a guerilla war against elusive Boer fi ght-
ers. Facing an irregular adversary, the British resorted to brutal “search and
destroy” tactics that ravaged the country. They also gathered about 120,000
Boer women and children in concentration camps (a term that came into
common usage during this war), where at least 20,000 people died after
The Fashoda crisis
The South African
War
77. The Partition of Africa
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914670
suffering in the harsh conditions of this confi nement. The Boers were eventually subdued
and brought within the British system, but their two republics were allowed to retain their
self-governing institutions. In 1910 the Transvaal and the Orange Free State were com-
bined with Cape Colony and Natal to form the Union of South Africa, which received
semi-independent status along the lines of the Dominion of Canada.
The Fashoda crisis and the Boer War, coming in rapid succession, revealed to the
British the bottomless depths of their unpopularity in Europe. All European governments
and peoples were pro-Boer; only the United States, involved at the time in a similar
AFRICA, 1914 The map shows the recognized colonial holdings of European nations in 1914. The insert sug- gests the general directions of European expansion about 1898. These expansionary pressures led to the Fashoda crisis in 1898 and the Boer War in 1899. In 1898 the British and German governments held secret discussions on the possible partitioning of the Portuguese colonies, but no such partitioning took place because the British greatly preferred to have the Portu- guese colonies remain in the hands of Portugal.
British
French
German
Italian
British
French
German
Lines of Political Pressure about 1898
0 500 miles
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
R e
d Se
a
AT L A N T I C O C E A N
I N D I A N O C E A N
L. Chad
Ni ge
r R .
Suez Canal
N ile
R.
B lu
e N
il L. Tana
L. Victoria
L. Nyasa
W h ite
N ile
Ubangi R. Co
ng o
R.
Za mb
ezi R.
L. Tanganyika
CANARY I. (Spain)
MADEIRA I. (Portugal) MALTA
(Britain)FRENCH MOROCCO
SENEGAL
TUNISIA ALGERIA
LIBYA EGYPT
ARABIA
ITALIAN SOMALILAND
RIO DE ORO (Spain)
RIO MUNI (Spain)
S A H A R A D E S E R T
FRENCH WEST AFRICA
NIGERIA
KAMERUN
BELGIAN CONGO
GERMAN
SOUTH-WEST
AFRICA
UNION OF
SOUTH AFRICA
ETHIOPIA
BRITISH EAST AFRICA
GERMAN EAST AFRICA
SUDAN
ANGLO- EGYPTIAN
GAMBIA
PORTUGUESE GUINEA
SIERRA LEONE
LIBERIA
IVORY C OAS
T
GOL D C
OA ST TO
GO
G U I N E A
C O A S T
S U D A N
FR EN
CH
E Q
U A
T O
R IA
L A
FR IC
A
ANGOLA (Portugal)
ZANZIBAR (Britain)
ERITREA
FRENCH SOM. BRITISH
SOM.
AD EN
(Br itai
n)
MADAGASCAR
UG AN
DA
NYASA- LAND
NATAL
TRANS- VAAL
BECHUANA- LAND
ORANGE FREE STATE
WALVIS BAY (Britain)
CAPE COLONY
CAPE OF GOOD HOPE
VICTORIA FALL
S X
M O
ZA M
BI Q
U E
(P or
tu ga
l)
R H
O D
E S IA
Gibraltar (Britain) Tangier
Libreville
Dakar
Alexandria Cairo
Omdurman Khartoum
Obok
Fashoda
Algiers
Adowa
Addis Ababa
Cape Town
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67178. Imperialism in Asia: The Dutch, the British, and the Russians
military conquest of the Philippines, showed any sympathy for the British. The British,
after the Boer War, began to rethink their international position, as will soon be seen.
As in the case of the Ottoman Empire, imperial rivalries between the
Great Powers over the spoils of Africa embittered European international
relations and helped prepare the way for the First World War. In Africa as
a whole, there was little territorial change after the Boer War, although in
1911 Italy took Libya from the Ottoman Empire. In 1914 the Germans were
blocked from access to their short-lived empire. Had the Germans won the First World
War, the map of Africa would probably have been greatly revised, but because they lost
it, the only change was to assign the German colonies, under international mandate, to the
French, British, and Belgians. With this change, and except for Italy’s ephemeral conquest
of Ethiopia in 1935, the political map of Africa remained divided by the lines that were
drawn during the brief years of colonial partition—until the spectacular and rapid end of
the European empires after the Second World War.
78. IMPERIALISM IN ASIA: THE DUTCH, THE BRITISH, AND THE RUSSIANS
The Dutch East Indies and British India
British India and the Dutch East Indies, in the half-century before the First World War,
became what the Europeans envisioned when they imagined their “ideal colonies.” They
illustrated the kind of empire that all imperialists would have wished to have, and a glance
Embittered
international relations
The British military campaign against the Transvaal and the Orange Free State between 1899 and 1902 was widely con- demned, in part because it was waged against descendants of seventeenth-century Dutch set- tlers (the Afrikaners or Boers) in South Africa; the suppres- sion of black Africans never evoked the same criticisms within Europe. This picture of British soldiers crossing a river suggests the scale and costs of the Boer War, which became especially notorious when the British interned Afrikaner women and children in con- centration camps, where thou- sands perished. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914672
at them suggests the goal toward which European imperialism was moving and the system
that it was trying to create.
Whereas all countries of western Europe showed a surplus of imports,
receiving more goods from the rest of the world than they sent out, India
and the Dutch East Indies invariably, year after year and decade after
decade, showed a surplus of exports, sending out far more goods than they
took in. This export surplus was the hallmark of a profi table colonial area, geared closely
into the world market, with low purchasing power for the native population and kept going
by foreign investment and management. Both regions, in addition, were so large as to have
a good deal of internal business—commerce, insurance, banking, transportation—which
never appeared in the statistics for world trade, but which, being dominated by Europeans,
added immeasurably to their profi ts. Both had rich and varied natural resources, tropical in
character, so that they never competed with the products of Europe—though India even
before 1914 showed tendencies to industrialization. In both regions the colonized people
were adept and quick to learn the methods of modern economic and bureaucratic institu-
tions. But they were divided by religion and language, so that, once conquered, they were
relatively easy for Europeans to govern because they could not easily come together in a
united political movement.
Neither region before the First World War had any self-government at the highest lev-
els. Both were ruled by a civil service, honest and high-minded by its own lights, in which
the most infl uential and best-paying positions were reserved for Europeans.
Hence upper-class families in England and the Netherlands valued their
empires as fi elds of opportunity for their sons—somewhat as they had for-
merly valued an established church. In both India and Indonesia (as the
Dutch colony began to be named by anti-Dutch nationalists in the early
twentieth century) the governments were more or less benevolent despotisms, which, by
curbing warfare, plague, and famine, at least allowed the population to grow in numbers.
Java, with 5 million people in 1815, had 48 million in 1942. India’s population in the same
years grew from less than 200 million to almost 400 million. Finally, as the last virtue of a
European-defi ned perfect colony, no foreign power directly challenged the British in India
or the Dutch in their islands.
The Dutch in 1815 occupied little more than the island of Java itself. In the following
decades the British moved into Singapore, the Malay Peninsula, and north Borneo, and
made claims to Sumatra. The French in the 1860s entered Indochina. The Germans in the
1880s annexed eastern New Guinea and the Marshall and Solomon islands. Ultimately it
was the mutual jealousy of these three European powers that preserved the Dutch position.
The Dutch also took the initiative themselves. To forestall occupation by other Euro-
peans, and to put down native pirates and fi nd raw materials that the world demanded, the
Dutch spread their rule over the whole 3,000-mile extent of the archipelago. They created
an empire in place of the old chain of coastal trading posts and suppressed internal revolts
in 1830, 1849, and 1888; not till the twentieth century was northern Suma-
tra or the interior of Celebes brought under control. For some decades the
Dutch exploited their huge empire by a kind of forced labor, the “culture
system,” in which the authorities required farmers to deliver, as a kind of
tax, stated amounts of specifi c crops, such as sugar or coffee. After 1870 a freer system
was introduced. The Dutch also, as an important matter of policy, favored instruction in
the Malay and Javanese languages, not in Dutch. This preserved the native cultures from
the disintegration that could result from the imposition of European schooling, but at the
Export surplus
European colonial
rule
The “culture system”
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673
same time it meant that the more radical or destabilizing European ideas of nationalism
and democracy entered more slowly.
In India in 1857, the British faced a dangerous rebellion, which they
commonly called the “Indian Mutiny”, as if it had simply been a revolt of
undisciplined soldiers. The British army in India, with its “sepoys” (native
Indian troops), was the only organization through which Indians could exert
any collective pressure. The proportion of sepoys in Britain’s Indian army was high in 1857
(about fi ve-sixths) because units from Britain itself had been withdrawn for the Crimean
War and for action in China. Many Indians outside the army had been unhappy with British
policies for decades. Rulers had been conquered and dethroned. Landowners had lost their
property and been replaced by new owners more friendly to the British. Religious senti-
ments were infl amed. The British too obviously regarded Indian beliefs as wrong or even
repulsive; they had outlawed suttee, or widow burning, the ancient Hindu practice of a
widow burning herself to death on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband; suppressed the
Thugs, a small sect of holy assassins; and one British offi cer even declared that in ten years
the government would abolish caste. Many Hindus therefore saw the British as dangerous
opponents of their ancient religious traditions. Meanwhile, the Muslims were mobilized by
Wahhabi fundamentalism, a popular reform movement that sought to purify and defend the
religious practices of Islam. Mysterious propaganda circulated over India. It infi ltrated the
sepoys, announcing to Muslim soldiers that certain newly issued cartridges were greased
with the fat of a pig and to Hindus that the same cartridges were greased with the fat of a
cow. Because for Hindus the cow was sacred, and for Muslims to touch pork was profane,
there was much agitation among soldiers from both of India’s main religious groups. The
sepoys launched an uprising in the Ganges Valley; and with them the other injured interests,
including the fading Great Mogul and his court, also rose against the British.
The British put down the rebellion with much brutality, aided by the fact that western
and southern India took no part in it. But the uprising persuaded the British to a radically
new course of policy, pursued basically until the end of the Indian Empire
almost a century later. The British East India Company and the Mogul
Empire were both fi nally and forever done away with. British authorities
ruled directly, but the British concluded that they must rule India with and
through the Indians themselves, not against them. This in practice meant a collaboration
between the imperial power and the Indian upper classes. The British began to shelter
Indian vested interests. They supported the Indian landlords and became more indulgent
toward Indian “superstition.” Where before 1857, when they conquered an Indian state,
they had simply abolished it and incorporated its territories, after the Mutiny they kept the
remaining Indian states as protectorates. States existing in 1857, such as Hyderabad and
Kashmir and over 200 others, with their galaxy of rajahs and maharajahs, carried on to the
end of British rule in 1947. It was largely to provide a fi tting summit for this mountain of
Indian royalty that Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India in 1877.
India had been a considerable manufacturing country by preindustrial standards, Indian
merchants had once been important throughout the Indian Ocean, and before 1800 Indian
exports to Europe had included many textiles and other fi nished goods. The native crafts
collapsed before modern industrialism reinforced by political power. “India,” observed a
British expert in 1837, “can never again be a great manufacturing country, but by cultivat-
ing her connection with England she may be one of the greatest agricultural countries in
the world.” Free trade (made possible by military superiority, usually overlooked by the
economists) turned Britain into the world’s workshop and India into a supplier of raw
The “Indian Mutiny”
British rule in India
78. Imperialism in Asia: The Dutch, the British, and the Russians
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914674
materials. Indian exports in the latter part of the nineteenth century consisted increasingly
of raw cotton, tea, jute, oilseeds, indigo, and wheat. The British shipped their manufactures
in return. Business in India boomed; India came to have the densest railway network out-
side of Europe and North America. It is important to note, however, as a commentary on
European trade with colonies and poor countries that Britain in 1914 did far more trading
with the 6 million people of Australia and New Zealand than with the 315 million impov-
erished people of India.
The British, in contrast to the Dutch, decided in 1835 to favor instruction in English,
not in the native languages. The historian T. B. Macaulay, one of the commission to make
this recommendation, branded the Indian languages as vehicles of barbarous and unenlight-
ened ideas—a bar to progress. The British also, after the great Mutiny, admitted Indians to
the civil service and to governors’ councils—sparingly indeed, but more than the Dutch in
Indonesia. There were also many Indian businessmen. A class of “hybrid” Indian intel-
lectuals and government workers spoke perfect English, often after completing their
The great Sepoy Rebellion in 1857 among local troops in India shook the British Empire more profoundly than any other event of the nineteenth century. Although the Indian Mutiny (as the British called it) was eventually suppressed, this illustration suggests why the violence and bru- tality left bitter memories on all sides and why the British soon restructured the whole system by which they governed Indian society. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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675
education in England. They demanded more of a role in the public affairs and governance of
their country. In 1885 the predominantly Hindu Indian National Congress was organized;
in 1906, the All-India Muslim League. M uslim separatism, while favored
by the British and sometimes even blamed upon them, expressed long-
existing religious identities, but these identities now became linked to new
nationalist political movements. Nationalism spread. It became increasingly
anti-British; and radical nationalism turned also against the Indian princes, capitalists, and
businessmen, as accomplices in imperialism, and so the new nationalism often took on
the color of socialism. In the period of the First World War, under nationalist pressure, the
British granted more representation to Indians, especially in provincial affairs. But the
movement toward self-rule was never fast enough to overcome the basic anti-British feeling
of the Indian peoples, and Indian nationalism grew rapidly after the First World War.
Confl ict of Russian and British Interests
While no outside power yet threatened the British in India, British statecraft discerned
in the northern sky a large cloud that was clearly approaching. The Russian Empire had
occupied northern Asia since the seventeenth century. About 1850 Russian pressure on
inner or central Asia resumed. It was a type of imperialism in which neither the demand for
markets nor for raw materials, nor for the investment of capital, counted for much. In these
matters Russia was itself in a semicolonial position with respect to the economies of west-
ern Europe. The Russians had, like the other European imperial powers, a desire to spread
Indian nationalism
This photograph of the future Indian national leader Jawaharlal Nehru indi- cates the kind of British education that many young Indians received during the imperial era. Nehru studied at Harrow School (where this picture was taken about 1905) and at Cambridge Univer- sity before joining Gandhi in the inde- pendence movement during the 1920s. He later served as the fi rst prime minis- ter of independent India from 1947 until his death in 1964. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
78. Imperialism in Asia: The Dutch, the British, and the Russians
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914676
0 200 400 600 800 1,000 miles
S I B E R
H I M A L A Y A S
TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD
SUMA
ANDAMAN IS. (Britain)
C a
sp ia
n S
e a
B l a c k
Se a
M e
d i
t e
r r
a n
e a
n S
e a
R e
d S
e a
Suez Canal
Aral Sea
B a y o f B e n g a l
L. Balkhash
In du
s R.
G anges R.
Ya
Lena
L. Bai
A R C T I C O C E A N Y
e n
ise y
R .
Ob R.
I N D I A N O C E A N
P ersian
G ulf
B rahma pu
traYEMEN
OMAN
BOKHARA 1868
BRITISH SPHERE,
1907
RUSSIAN SPHERE, 1907
A R
A B
I A
H E JA
Z AFGHANISTAN
SINKIANG
PERSIA
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
I N D I A
BHUTAN NEPAL
BURMA (Britain, 1852, 1885)
MAL (Britain
SIAM
A F R I C A
R U S S I A N E M P I R
OUTER MONGOLIA (Autonomous, 1912 Russian Sp
C H I N
B R I T I S H I N D I A
INN E
KASHMIR 1846
PUNJAB
BALUCHISTAN 1883
1846
1873 1873
1881
1884
1885
(F YÜNNAN
T I B E T
CEYLON
1864
1895
1852
1826
1876
1854
1860-65
EUR OPE
ASIA
TehranBaghdad
Baku
Astrakhan
Constantinople
Cairo Jerusalem
Aden (Britain, 1839)
Mosul
Basra
Mecca
Merv
Kabul
Tashkent
Kashgar
Delhi
Calcutta
Lhasa
Bombay
Diu (Portugal)
Goa (Portugal)
Hyderabad
Karachi
Pondicherry (France) Karikal (France)
Madras
Yanaon (France)
Rangoon
Bangkok
Han
Chungkin
Urga
Chita Irkutsk
Omsk Tomsk
Tobolsk Samara
Moscow
St. Petersburg Archangel
MANCHURIA
KOREA
JEHOL
SHANTUNG
Mukden Kinchow
Tientsin
Tsinan
Peking
Tsingtao
Taku
Chifu
Kiao-chow (Germany, 1898)
Wei-hai-wei (Britain, 1898)
Port Arthur DairenGulf of
Chili
Y e l l o w S e a
(Lease to Russia, 1898; Japan, 1905)
G ra
nd Ca
na l
GR EA
T W ALL
CRITICAL AREA, 1895–1905 0 100 200 miles
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677
IMPERIALISM IN ASIA, 1840–1914 The map shows boundar- ies and possessions as they appeared in 1914. During these years the British and Dutch fi lled out their hold- ings in India and the East Indies; and Britain moved into Burma. The Russians pressed southward from Siberia into Central Asia, founded Vladivostok in 1860, and entered Man- churia at the close of the century. The French built their empire in Indochina and the United States took control of the Philippines. The Germans, as late- comers, were confi ned to miscellaneous parts of the western Pacifi c. The Japa- nese won control of Korea and the island of Formosa (now Taiwan). Meanwhile all of the imperial powers obtained special rights and concessions in the coastal cities and other regions of China.
I A
HAINAN
BORNEO CELEBES
YAP
GUAM (U.S.A., 1898)
CAROLINE IS. (Germany, 1899)
MARIANA IS. (Germany, 1899)
FORMOSA (Japan, 1895) PESCADORES (Japan, 1895)
KAMCHATKA
ATRA
JAVA
RY U
K Y
U IS
.
NEW GUINEA
TIMOR
PELAU
SAKHALIN KURIL IS. (Japan, 1875)
KARAFUTO (Japan, 1905)
A LEU
TIA N
IS. (U
.S.A .,
1 8
6 7 )
S o u t h C h i n a S e a
E a s t C h i n a
S e a
an gt
se R.
P A C I F I C O C E A N
S e a o f J a p a n
S e a o f O k h o t s k
na R.
Am
ur R.
ikal
B e r i n g S e a
M ekong
R .
LAY STATES in, 1800, 1824)
FRENCH INDOCHINA
1884, 1907
D U T C H E A
S T I N
D I E
S
A U S T R A L I A
E
PHILIPPINES IS. (U.S.A., 1898, 1899)
JAPANESE EMPIRE
KOREA (Japan, 1905, 1910)
ALASKA (Purchased by U.S.A. from Russia, 1867)
Sphere)
A
Hong Kong (Britain, 1842) Maçao (Portugal, 1557)
Kwang-chow (Lease to France, 1898)
NE R M
ON GO
LIA
KAISER WILHELMSLAND (Germany, 1884)
KWANGSI (French Sphere)
SARAWAK 1888
BRITISH NORTH BORNEO
1888
JEHOL
MANCHURIA
ANN A M
MARITIME PROVINCE (Russia, 1868)
AMUR PROVINCE 1858
noi
Batavia
Manila
Peking Port Arthur (Japan, 1905)Tientsin
Hankow
Kiao-chow (Germany, 1898)
Nanking Ningpo
1842
Shanghai (Britain, 1842)
Saigon
Singapore (Britain, 1819)
Foochow Amoy
Canton (Britain, 1842)
g
Tokyo
Harbin
Vladivostok 1860
Khabarovsk
Mukden
a
Yakutsk
(Portugal, 1859) Darwin
78. Imperialism in Asia: The Dutch, the British, and the Russians
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914678
their type of civilization; but Russian expansion was distinctively political in that most of
the initiative came from the government rather than from business interests, nationalist
political parties, or religious groups. Russia was an icebound empire, craving warm-water
ports. It was a landlocked empire, so that whichever way it turned it had to move toward
one ocean or another. The ocean, however, was the domain of the major European powers,
and in particular the British.
In the large picture, Russia pushed by land against the Ottoman Empire, Persia, India,
and China, all of which the British (and others) reached by sea. In 1860, on the shores of
the Sea of Japan, the Russians founded Vladivostok, the farthest-fl ung of all Slavic cities,
whose name meant Lord of the East. But their advance in the midcentury was mainly in
the arid and thinly settled regions of western Asia. The British had already fought two
Afghan wars to keep Afghanistan as a no-man’s land between Russia and India. Contem-
poraries called the political and military rivalry between Britain and Russia in Central Asia
“the great game.” In 1864 the Russians took Tashkent in Turkestan. A decade later they
touched the borders of India itself but were kept away by an Anglo-Russian agreement,
which allotted a long tongue of land to Afghanistan and so separated British India and the
Russian empire by 20 miles.
Russian advances in Turkestan, east of the Caspian, increased the pressure on Persia,
which had long felt the same pressure west of the Caspian, where cities like Tifl is and
Baku, now Russian, had once been Persian. If Tifl is and Turkestan could
fall to the Russian Empire, there was no reason why Persia should not do so
next—except that Persia had a seacoast and so might also be available for
occupancy by the British. In 1864 a British company completed the fi rst
Persian telegraph as part of the line from Europe to India. Other British
investments and interests followed. Oil became important about 1900. In 1890, to bolster
the Persian government against Russia, the British granted it a loan—taking the customs in
Persian Gulf ports as collateral. In 1900 the Russian government granted the same favor,
making its own loan to Persia, and appropriating as security all Persian customs except
those of the Gulf. Clearly Persia was losing control of its own affairs, falling into foreign-
dominated zones, and turning ripe for imperial partition. A Persian nationalist revolution,
directed against all foreigners and against the subservient government of the shah, broke
out in 1905 and led to the assembly of the fi rst parliament but hardly settled
the question of Persian independence. In 1907 the British recognized a
Russian “sphere of infl uence” in northern Persia; the Russians, a British
sphere in the south (see map, pp. 676–677).
Imperial ambitions had deepened the hostility between Great Britain and Russia, with
disputes over Persia and the Indian borderlands adding fuel to the quarrel they had long
waged over the Ottoman Empire. We have seen how the struggle for Africa had at the
same time estranged Britain from France and indeed from all Europe. Global imperial
rivalries therefore contributed directly to Britain’s diplomatic isolation within Europe—an
international danger that soon pushed British leaders toward a search for new alliances.
79. IMPERIALISM IN ASIA: CHINA AND EUROPE
China before European Interventions
In this era of new European imperial rivalries, the biggest bone of imperialist contention
was China. On this bone every Great Power without exception tried to bite. The Manchu,
or Qing (formerly transliterated, and still pronounced, as Ch’ing), dynasty (1644–1912)
Foreign interests in
Persia
Spheres of infl uence
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67979. Imperialism in Asia: China and Europe
held a suzerainty over the whole area affected by Chinese civilization, from the mouth
of the Amur River (as far north as Labrador) to Burma and Indochina (as far south as
Panama), and from the ocean westward into Mongolia and Tibet. In the old Chinese view
China was the Middle Kingdom, the civilized center of the world surrounded by less
enlightened peoples. The Europeans were outlandish barbarians. A few had trickled
through to China since the European Middle Ages. But the Chinese people persistently
wanted nothing to do with them.
China was moving into an upheaval of its own even before European infl uence
became of any importance. For about 4,000 years the country had seen dynasties come and
go in long cycles. The Qing dynasty in the nineteenth century was showing the signs of a
dynastic cycle nearing its end. It was failing to preserve order or to curb extortion. About
1800 a White Lotus Society revolted and was suppressed. In 1813 a Heav-
enly Reason Society attempted to seize Peking (now Beijing). In the 1850s
a Muslim rebellion set up a temporary independent state in the southwest.
Greatest of all the upheavals was the Taiping Rebellion, which lasted for
more than a decade (1850–1864) and in which as many as 20 million peo-
ple are thought to have perished. Except that some fragmentary Christian ideas obtained
from missionaries were expressed by some of the Taipings (and its leader claimed to be
the younger brother of Jesus), the rebellion was due entirely to Chinese causes. The rebels
attacked the Manchus, who had come from Manchuria two centuries before, as corrupt
foreigners ruling over China. Their grievances focused on pervasive social problems that
included poverty, extortion, exorbitant rents, and absentee landlords, and their goal was to
establish a new dynasty.
The Taiping
Rebellion
“THE BRITISH LAKE,” 1918 This map shows the most important parts of the British Empire except for Canada, the Carib- bean islands, and the United Kingdom itself. All shores of the Indian Ocean are shown to be British, except for French Madagascar; the politically weak Portuguese, Italian, and Dutch colonies; and the Arabian and Persian coasts, in which British infl uence was strong. It is easy to see why the Mediterranean and Suez Canal, leading from Europe into the Indian Ocean, were called the lifeline of the British Empire.
British
Predominance of British Influence German to 1918, British Mandate Thereafter Ottoman to 1918, British Mandate Thereafter
I N D I A N O C E A N
Suez Canal
EQUATOR
ARABIA EGYPT
IRAQ
JORDAN
PERSIA
INDIA
AUSTRALIA
UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA
NEW ZEALANDTASMANIA
ETHIOPIA
ANGLO- EGYPTIAN
SUDAN
KENYA
BRITISH SOM. CEYLON
UGANDA ITALIAN
SOM.
TANGANYIKA
ANGOLA (Port.)
SOUTHWEST AFRICA
(Union of South Africa
Mandate)
MADAGASCAR (Fr.)
MOZAMBIQUE (Port.)
RHOD ESI
A
BURMA
MALAYA BORNEO
NEW GUINEA NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES
Em pire Lifeline
Aden
Hong Kong
Singapore
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914680
The Taipings set up a state in south China and their armies were at fi rst disciplined,
but the fi ghting lasted so long that both the Taiping leaders and the Manchu commanders
sent against them got out of control, and much of the country sank into chronic banditry
and disorder. It was in this period that China’s war lords, men controlling armed forces but
obeying no government, appeared. The Manchus managed to put down organized Taip-
ing resistance after 14 years, with some European assistance, led by the British General
Gordon, the “Chinese Gordon” who later died at Khartoum. But it is clear that Chinese
social confl ict, agrarianism, and nationalism (the latter at fi rst only anti-Manchu) antedated
the impact of European imperialism.
This was the internally divided and distracted China in which Europeans began to
intervene forcefully after about 1840. It became their policy to extort concessions from the
Manchu Empire but at the same time to defend the Qing dynasty against internal opposition,
as was shown in the European response to the Taiping Rebellion. Europeans supported the
Qing emperors because they needed some kind of government in China with which they
could make treaties, legalizing their claims and binding upon the whole country.
The Expansion of European Infl uence in China
The modern phase of Chinese relations with Europe was inauspiciously opened by the
Opium War of 1839–1841. We have already observed how, though Europeans wanted
Chinese products, the Chinese had no interest in buying European products in return. Trade
therefore was diffi cult, and the British East India Company had for decades solved the
problem of getting Chinese tea for Europe by shipping Indian-grown opium in return,
because opium was one available commodity for which Chinese demand existed. When the
Chinese government attempted to control this socially disruptive infl ow of opium, the Brit-
ish government went to war to protect the free trade of opium and other products. Fifteen
years later, in 1857, Britain and France combined in a second war upon China to force the
Chinese to receive their diplomats and deal with their traders. The Chinese continued to
resist, whereupon 17,000 French and British soldiers entered Beijing and deliberately
burned the emperor’s very extensive Summer Palace, an appalling act of vandalism from
which soldiers brought back enough stolen cultural objects—vases, tapestries, porcelain,
enamels, jades, wood carvings—to set a fashion in Europe and America for Chinese art.
From the fi rst of these wars arose the treaty of Nanking (1842); from the second, the
treaties of Tientsin (1857), whose terms were soon duplicated in still other treaties signed
by China with other European powers and with the United States. The resulting com-
plex of interlocking agreements imposed restrictions on China or conferred
rights upon foreigners and came to be known as the “treaty system.” To the
British in 1842 the Chinese ceded the island of Hong Kong outright and
somewhat later granted adjoining territories on a long lease. They opened
over a dozen cities, including Shanghai and Canton (now called Guangzhou), to Europeans
as “treaty ports.” In these cities Europeans were allowed to make settlements of their own,
immune to all Chinese law. Europeans traveling in the Chinese Empire remained subject
only to their own governments, and European and American gunboats began to police
the Yangtse River. The Chinese likewise paid large war indemnities, though it was they
themselves who suffered most of the damages. They agreed to the continuing import of
opium and also agreed to levy no import duty over 5 percent; China thus became a free
trade market for European products. To administer and collect the customs a staff of Euro-
pean experts was introduced. Money from the customs, collected with a new effi ciency
The treaty system
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681
on a swelling volume of imports, went in part to the British and French in payment of the
indemnities, but part remained with the Qing government, which, as noted, the Europeans
had no desire to overthrow.
Annexations and Concessions
While China was thus permeated at the center by the extraterritorial and other insidious
privileges for Europeans, whole blocks of its territory were cut away at the outer rim. The
Russians moved down the Amur River, established their Maritime Province, and founded
Vladivostok in 1860. The Japanese, now adapting to the methods of the Europeans in such
matters, in 1876 recognized the independence of Korea. The British annexed Burma in
1886. The French in 1883 assumed a protectorate over Annam despite Chinese protests;
they soon combined fi ve areas—Annam, Cochin China, Tonkin, Laos, and Cambodia—
into French Indochina. (The fi rst three were known also as Vietnam, a word not familiar in
most of the world until after the Second World War.) These outlying territories had never,
it is true, been integral parts of China proper; but they had long maintained their most
important political and cultural relations with China and had also paid
tribute to the Chinese emperor.
Japan now joined with the European powers in developing new imperi-
alist ambitions, which became apparent in 1894 when the Japanese went to
war with China over disputes in Korea. The Japanese soon won, equipped as they were with
modern weapons, training, and organization. They obliged the Chinese to sign the treaty of
Shimonoseki in 1895, by which China ceded Formosa and the Liaotung Peninsula to Japan
and recognized Korea as an independent state. The Liaotung was a tongue of land reaching
down from Manchuria to the sea; at its tip was Port Arthur. Manchuria was the northeastern
part of China itself. This sudden Japanese triumph precipitated a kind of upheaval among
the Europeans who had been expanding their power and presence in east Asia. No one had
realized how strong Japan had become. Europeans were astounded that a people who were
not “European” in their culture or race should show such aptitude for modern war and
diplomacy. It was to be supposed that Japan now had designs on Manchuria.
It so happened that Russia, not long before, in 1891, had begun to
build the Trans-Siberian Railway, whose eastern terminus was to be Vladi-
vostok, the “Lord of the East.” Manchuria extended northward between
central Siberia and Vladivostok. The Russians, whether or not they ever
dominated Manchuria themselves, could not allow its domination by another Great Power.
It happened also that Germany was at this time looking for a chance to enter the Far East-
ern arena, and that France had formed an alliance with Russia, whose good will it was
eager to retain. Russia, Germany, and France joined together in demanding that Japan give
up the Liaotung Peninsula. The Japanese hesitated; they were indignant, but they yielded
to the European demands. The Liaotung Peninsula went back to China.
In China many alert people were humiliated at the defeat by the Japanese whom they
had despised. The Chinese government, at last facing the inevitable, began madly to plan
for a program of modernization and reform, which led to even deeper European involve-
ment in Chinese affairs. Huge loans were obtained from Europe—the customs being
pawned as security, following a pattern already well established in Turkey, Persia, and
Santo Domingo. But the European powers did not wish China to become consolidated
too soon. Nor had they forgotten the sudden apparition of Japan. The result was a frantic
European scramble for further concessions in 1898.
Japanese imperialism
“Lord of the East”
79. Imperialism in Asia: China and Europe
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914682
It seemed in 1898 as if the Chinese Empire in its turn would be partitioned. The Ger-
mans extorted a 99-year lease on Kiaochow Bay, plus exclusive rights in the Shantung
Peninsula. The Russians took a lease on the Liaotung Peninsula from which they had just
excluded Japan; they thus obtained Port Arthur and rights to build railroads in Manchuria
to interlock with their Trans-Siberian system. The French took Kwangchow and the British
Wei-hai-wei, in addition to confi rming their sphere of infl uence in the Yangtse Valley. The
Italians demanded a share but were refused. The United States, fearing that
all China might soon be parceled out into exclusive spheres, announced its
policy of the Open Door. The idea of the Open Door was that China should
remain territorially intact and independent and that powers having special
concessions or spheres of infl uence should maintain the 5 percent Chinese tariff and allow
businessmen of all nations to trade without discrimination. The British supported the Open
Door as a means of discouraging actual annexations by Japan or Russia, which as the only
Great Powers adjacent to China were the only ones that could dispatch large military forces
into its territory. The Open Door was a program not so much of leaving China to the
Chinese as of assuring that all outsiders should fi nd it literally “open.”
If readers will imagine what the United States would be like if foreign warships
patrolled the Mississippi as far as St. Louis; if foreigners came and went throughout the
country without being under its laws; if New York, New Orleans, and other cities con-
tained foreign settlements outside its jurisdiction but in which all banking and management
were concentrated; if foreigners determined the tariff policy, collected the proceeds, and
remitted much of the money to their own governments; if the western part of the city of
The Open Door
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1850–1906
1850–1864 Taiping Rebellion in China is suppressed by Qing dynasty; up to 20 million die
1856 Ottoman Empire launches reforms to modernize the legal and military system
1857 “Indian Mutiny” threatens British control of India and leads to reforms in the
imperial administration
1876 Abdul Hamid takes power as sultan in Ottoman Empire; repressive regime lasts
for 33 years
1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War leads to Russian gains in the Balkans
1885 Berlin Conference sets European terms for imperial control of Africa
1885 Hindu Indian National Congress is organized to challenge British power in India
1894–1895 Japan goes to war with China and takes Formosa (later called Taiwan)
1898 French and English forces come to brink of imperial confl ict at Fashoda in
Sudan—the “Fashoda Crisis”
1899 Chinese revolt against European powers, the “Boxer Uprising,” is suppressed by
European forces
1899–1902 The Boer War enables Britain to consolidate power in South Africa
1904–1905 Japan defeats Russia in Russo-Japanese War and expands into Manchuria
1906 All-India Muslim League is organized to promote Indian nationalism and
Muslim rights within Britain’s largest Asian colony
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683
NORTHEAST CHINA AND ADJOINING REGIONS IN THE ERA OF IMPERIALISM Manchuria became an object of dispute among China, to which it belonged historically, Russia, and Japan. It was dominated by the Russians from 1898 to 1905, by the Japanese from 1905 to 1945, and again by the Russians from 1945 to 1950, when they transferred it to the People’s Republic of China. Korea was dominated by Japan from about 1895 (and for- mally annexed by Japan in 1910) until the end of the Second World War. It was then divided into Russian and American occupation zones. After the Korean War (1950–1953) it remained divided into two independent states, North Korea under a Communist regime and a Western- supported South Korea.
Russian
British
German
Spheres of Influence About 1900
0 100 200 300 miles
S e a o f J a p a n
Y e l l o w S e a
E a s t C h i n a
S e a
P A C I F I C O C E A N
A m
ur
R .
U ss
u ri
R .
A m
u r
R .
Ya lu
R.
Hw an
g Ho
R.
Ya ng
ts
e R.
M A N C H U R I A (Russia Occupied, 1900–1905)
R U S S I A N E M P I R E
JEHOL
SHANTUNG
KOREA (Japan 1895, 1905, 1910)
OUTER MONGOLIA
INN ER
MO NG
OLI A
S I B E R I A
M A
R IT
IM E
PR O
V IN
C E
J A
P A
N E
S E
E M
P I
R E
LIAOTUNG PENINSULA
C
H
I
N
A
TR A
NS-SIBER IA
N
RAILR O
AD
C H
IN
ESE E ASTERN RAILRO
A D
SHIKOKU
KYUSHU
HONSHU
HOKKAIDO
SAKHALIN
KARAFUTO (Japan 1905)
FORMOSA (Japan 1895)
R Y
U K
Y U
I.
Chita
Chengteh
Kiao-chow (Germany
1898)
Peking
Tsinan Wei-hai-wei
(Britain 1898)
Port Arthur (Russia, 1898; Japan, 1905)
Tsingtao
Tientsin
Seoul
Fusan
Nanking
Shanghai
Ningpo
Foochow
Amoy
Osaka
Tokyo
Vladivostok
Khabarovsk
Harbin
Mukden
79. Imperialism in Asia: China and Europe
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914684
Washington had been burned (the Summer Palace), Long Island and California had been
annexed to distant empires (Hong Kong and Indochina), and all New England was coveted
by two immediate neighbors (Manchuria); if the national authorities were half in collusion
with these foreigners and half victimized by them; and if large areas of the country were
prey to bandits, guerrillas, and revolutionary secret societies conspiring against the helpless
government and occasionally murdering some of the foreigners—then they can understand
how observant Chinese felt at the end of the nineteenth century, why European interven-
tions were increasingly resented throughout Asia, and why the term “imperialism” came to
be held by so many of the world’s peoples in abomination.
One Chinese secret society, its name somewhat literally translated as
the Order of Literary Patriotic Harmonious Fists, dubbed the Boxers by
hostile foreigners, broke out in insurrection in 1899. The Boxers pulled up
railway tracks, fell upon Chinese Christians, besieged the foreign legations,
and killed about 300 foreigners, including numerous Christian missionaries. The European
powers, joined by Japan and the United States, sent a combined international force against
the insurgents, who were put down. The victors imposed still more severe controls on the
Chinese government and infl icted an indemnity of $330 million that was to be divided
among the foreign powers that had contributed troops to the anti-Boxer campaign. On
the other hand, as a consequence of the Boxer Uprising, the Qing offi cials strove desper-
ately to strengthen themselves by modernizing the country. Meanwhile, a new revolu-
tionary movement, aiming at expulsion of Manchus and foreigners alike, began to spread
rapidly throughout China, especially in the south, under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen.
The Boxer Uprising
Chinese resentments against their government’s concessions to foreign imperialist powers erupted in the violence of the so-called Boxer Uprising in 1899. This Chinese woodblock illus- tration of an attack on Europeans conveys the anger that fueled new national movements during this era of widespread European interventions in Chinese economic and political life. (The British Library/Robana via Getty Images)
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68580. The Russo-Japanese War and Its Consequences
80. THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Russia and Japan increasingly opposed each other’s intrigues in Manchuria and Korea.
The Japanese felt a need for supplying their new factories with raw materials and mar-
kets on the Asian mainland, for employment for their modern army and navy and for
recognized status as a Great Power—a status that nations could attain in this era only by
controlling an overseas empire. The Russian government needed an atmosphere of crisis
and expansion to stifl e criticism of tsarism at home; it could not abide the presence of
a strong power directly on its East Asian frontier; it could use Manchuria and Korea to
strengthen the exposed outpost of Vladivostok, which was somewhat squeezed against
the sea and landlocked by Japanese waters. The Russians had obtained a concession from
China to build the Chinese Eastern Railway to Vladivostok across the heart of Manchuria.
A railway, in Manchuria, implied special zones, railway guards, mining and timber rights,
and other auxiliary activities. The Japanese saw the fruits of their successful war of 1895
against China greedily enjoyed by their rival. In 1902 Japan signed a military alliance with
Great Britain. We have seen how the British were alarmed by their diplo-
matic isolation after Fashoda and the Boer War and how for many years
they had been expecting to have trouble with Russia. The Anglo-Japanese
military alliance became one of the British responses to their international
isolation, and the alliance lasted 20 years.
War between Japan and Russia broke out in 1904, beginning with a Japanese naval attack
on Russian installations at Port Arthur. Both sides sent large armies into Manchuria. The deci-
sive battle of Mukden (which was fought for control of the important Manchurian city now
called Shenyang) engaged more troops than any previous battle in human history—624,000
men. Military observers were present from all the major powers, anxiously trying to learn
what the next war in Europe might be like. The Russians sent their Baltic fl eet around three
continents to the Far East, but to the world’s amazement the Russian fl eet was met and
destroyed at Tsushima Strait by the new and untested navy of Japan. Russian communications
by sea were thereby broken, and because the Trans-Siberian Railway was unfi nished and
because the Japanese also won the battle of Mukden, Russia was beaten.
At this point the president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, stepped upon the
scene. With a new colonial outpost in the Philippines and a growing interest in China, it
was to the American advantage to have neither side win too overwhelming a victory in the
Far East. The most imperially minded of all American presidents offered his mediation,
and plenipotentiaries of the two powers met at Portsmouth, New Hamp-
shire. By the treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, Japan recovered from Russia
what it had won and lost in 1895, namely Port Arthur and the Liaotung
Peninsula; a preferred position in Manchuria, which remained nominally
Chinese; and a protectorate in Korea, which remained nominally indepen-
dent until it was annexed by Japan in 1910. Japan also received from Russia the southern
half of the island of Sakhalin. Much of what Russia lost to Japan in 1905 was regained
40 years later at the end of the Second World War.
The Russo-Japanese War was the fi rst war between Great Powers since 1870. It was
the fi rst war fought under conditions of developed industrialism. It was the fi rst actual war
between modern powers to be caused by imperial competition in the exploitation of less
developed countries. Most signifi cant of all, in a period of intense concern with “race,” it
was widely noted that a nation of nonwhite people had defeated a nation of white people.
Russo-Japanese
rivalry
The treaty of
Portsmouth
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Chapter 16 Europe’s World Supremacy, 1871–1914686
The only other such defeat of a modern European nation was the Ethiopian rout of the Ital-
ians at Adowa in 1896, but now an Asian nation had shown that it could learn and play, in
less than half a century, the geopolitical game of the Europeans.
The Japanese victory set off long chains of repercussions in at least
three different directions. First, the Russian government, frustrated in its
foreign policy in East Asia, shifted its attention back to Europe, where it
resumed an active role in the affairs of the Balkans. This contributed to
a series of international crises in Europe that led to the First World War.
Second, the tsarist government was so weakened by the war, both in prestige and in actual
military strength, and opinion in Russia was so disgusted at the clumsiness and incom-
petency with which the war had been handled, that the various underground movements
Consequences of
Japanese victory
The Japanese victory over the Russians in the battle of Mukden showed the world that Japan had become a major military and industrial power in east Asia. This lithograph from 1905, “Fighting in the Snow,” portrays a decisive attack in the battle and illustrates how the Russo- Japanese War quickly gained symbolic signifi cance in the rise of twentieth-century Japanese nationalism. (The Granger Collection, NYC)
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687
were able to come to the surface, producing the Russian Revolution of 1905. This in turn
was a prelude to the great Russian Revolution of 1917, of which Soviet communism
was the outcome. Third, news of Japan’s victory over Russia electrifi ed those who heard
of it throughout the non-European world. The fact that Japan was itself an imperialist
power was overlooked in the excited realization that the Japanese people were gaining
the kind of international power and infl uence that had long given the European nations an
apparently unstoppable ascendancy. Only half a century ago the Japanese, too, had been
“backward”—defenseless, bombarded, and bulldozed by the Europeans. Now Japan had
achieved the status of a Great Power that could sign military alliances with Great Britain
and defeat the armed forces of the Russian Empire.
The moral was clear. Everywhere leaders of subjugated peoples concluded, from the
Japanese precedent, that they must bring European science and industry to their own coun-
tries, but that they must do it, as the Japanese had done, by ending European political
control of Asian or African colonies, supervising the process of modernization themselves,
and preserving their own distinctive cultures. New “hybrid elites” in colonized societies
combined their growing knowledge of European culture with a growing pride in their own
cultural traditions, thereby creating the new nationalisms that would become a major,
worldwide legacy of modern European imperialism. Nationalist revolutions began in Per-
sia in 1905; in Turkey in 1908; in China in 1911. In India and Indonesia many were stirred
by the Japanese achievement. In the face of rising agitation, the British admitted an Indian
to the Viceroy’s Council in 1909, and in 1916 the Dutch created a People’s Council, to
include Indonesian members, in the Dutch East Indies. The self-assertion of Asians was to
grow in intensity after the First World War, when the limits of European power became
increasingly evident.
The Japanese victory and Russian defeat can therefore be seen as start-
ing points for three mighty developments: the First World War, the Russian
Revolution, and the Revolt of Asia against European imperialism. These
far-reaching upheavals all contributed to the weakening of Europe’s infl u-
ence in modern global history. They gradually put an end to Europe’s world supremacy
and undermined confi dent ideas about the inevitable progress and expansion of European
civilization. Each of these transitional events would alter Europe’s long-dominant interna-
tional position and help to make the world of the twentieth century far different from that of
the nineteenth. But Europeans could not have imagined, in 1905, that the Russo-Japanese
War might be a fi rst step toward great confl icts that would soon transform Europe’s impe-
rial role in the wider non-European world.
Asian self-assertion
and nationalism
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
80. The Russo-Japanese War and Its Consequences
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C h a p t e r 17 THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Somewhere before 1914 Europe went off the his- torical track that was supposed to lead its peoples
toward a better future. At the beginning of the
twentieth century, most Europeans believed they
were heading for a kind of high historical plateau,
full of a benign progress and more abundant civili-
zation, in which the benefi ts of modern science and
invention would be more widely diffused and even
competitive struggle would work out somehow for
the best. Instead, Europe stumbled in 1914 into
disaster. It is not easy to see exactly where Europe
went astray, at what point, that is, the First World
War became inevitable, or (because the human
mind does not know what is truly inevitable) so
overwhelmingly probable that only the most Olym-
pian statesmanship could have avoided it.
But no such statesmanship appeared, and Europe fell into a deadly, grinding war that
consumed much of its wealth, killed millions of its young men, and ultimately weakened
or even destroyed much of its power and infl uence around the world. The Great War of
1914–1918, in short, became one of the decisive events in modern European and global
history. Like other such upheavals—the Protestant Reformation, for example, or the French
Revolution—this vast clash of opposing forces spread across all the traditional boundar-
ies of Europe, shattering empires and cultural beliefs that had seemed as indestructible
as the earlier unity of the Roman Catholic Church or the enduring power of “old regime”
monarchies.
81. THE INTERNATIONAL ANARCHY
The great political questions in mid-nineteenth-century Europe had been settled by force.
The German Empire was the strongest and most obvious of the new political structures
that had emerged through the use of armed power, but all of the major European states had
81. The International Anarchy
82. The Armed Stalemate
83. The Collapse of Russia
and the Intervention
of the United States
84. The Collapse of the
Austrian and German
Empires
85. The Economic, Social, and
Cultural Impact of the War
86. The Peace of Paris, 1919
Chapter emblem: Soldier in the trenches near Passchendaele, Belgium, in 1917. (Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty
Images)
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Chapter 17 The First World War690
concluded that large military forces were essential for their national existence. Never had
the European states maintained such huge armies in peacetime as at the beginning of the
twentieth century. One, two, or even three years of compulsory military service for all
young men became the rule. In 1914 each of the Continental Great Powers had not only a
huge standing army but millions of trained reserves among the civilian population. Few
people wanted war; all but a few sensational writers preferred peace in
Europe, but many took it for granted that war would come someday. The
idea that war was bound to break out sooner or later probably made some
statesmen in some countries more willing to unleash it. In any case,
the popular expectation of future wars as well as the large standing armies
helped to produce the Great War that exploded in 1914; but the war also came from other
causes, including the interlocking system of international alliances, Germany’s desire for a
greater role in world affairs (which challenged Britain’s earlier ascendancy and raised
nationalist anxieties in France), and the ongoing confl icts in the Balkans.
Rival Alliances: Triple Alliance versus Triple Entente
Political diagnosticians, from Richelieu to Metternich, had long thought that an effective
union of Germany would revolutionize the relationships of Europe’s peoples. After 1870
their anticipations were more than confi rmed. Once united (or almost united), the Germans
entered upon their industrial revolution. Manufacturing, fi nance, shipping, and population
grew phenomenally. By 1900, for example, Germany produced more steel than France and
Britain combined, though in 1865 the French alone had produced more than the Germans.
People in Germany felt that they needed and deserved a “place in the
sun,” by which they vaguely meant some kind of acknowledged supremacy
like that of the British. Neither the British nor the French, the leaders of
modern Europe since the seventeenth century, could share in such German
aspirations. The French nursed the chronic grievance of Alsace and Lorraine, annexed to
Germany in 1871. The British saw German salesmen appear in their foreign markets, sell-
ing goods often at lower prices and using what they viewed as ungentlemanly methods;
they saw Germans turn up as colonial rivals in Africa, the Middle East, and the Far
East; and they watched other European states gravitate into the Berlin orbit, looking to the
mighty German Empire as a friend to advance their interests.
Bismarck after 1871 feared that another European war might tear his new German
Empire to pieces. He therefore followed, until his retirement in 1890, a policy of diplo-
macy and peace. We have seen him as the “honest broker” at the Berlin Congress of 1878,
helping to adjudicate the Eastern Question, and again offering the facilities of Berlin in
1885 to bring some international order to African affairs. To isolate France, divert it from
Europe, and keep it embroiled with Britain, he looked with satisfaction on French colonial
expansion. He took no chances, however; in 1879 he formed a military
alliance with Austria-Hungary, to which Italy was added in 1882. Thus
was formed the Triple Alliance, which lasted until the First World War. Its
terms were, briefl y, that if any member became involved in war with two
or more powers, its allies should come to its aid by force of arms. To be on the safe side,
Bismarck signed a “reinsurance” treaty with Russia also. Because Russia and Austria were
enemies (because of the Balkans), Germany needed considerable diplomatic fi nesse to stay
allied to both at the same time. After Bismarck’s retirement his system proved too intri-
cate, or too lacking in candor, for his successors to manage. The Russo-German agreement
The inevitability of
war?
A “place in the sun”
The Triple Alliance
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69181. The International Anarchy
lapsed. The French, faced by the Triple Alliance, soon seized the opportunity to form their
own alliance with Russia, the Franco-Russian Alliance signed in 1894. In its time this
was regarded as politically almost impossible. The French Republic stood for everything
radical; the Russian Empire, for everything reactionary and autocratic. But ideology was
thrown to the winds, French capital poured into Russia, and the tsar bared his head to the
Marseillaise. The Continent was thus divided by 1894 into two opposed camps, the German-
Austrian-Italian against the Franco-Russian. For a time it seemed that this rigid division
might soften. Germany, France, and Russia cooperated in the Far Eastern crisis of 1895
to stem the expanding power of Japan. All were anti-British at the time of Fashoda and
the Boer War. The Kaiser, William II, outlined tempting pictures of a Continental league
against the global hegemony of England and its empire.
Much depended on what the British would do. They had long prided
themselves on a “splendid isolation,” going their own way, disdaining the
kind of dependency that alliance with others always brings. European hos-
tility toward Britain during the Fashoda crisis and the Boer War came as a
shock. British relations with France and Russia were going badly. Some in England,
including Joseph Chamberlain, therefore thought that a better understanding with Germany
should be sought as part of a broader strategy to reduce British isolation. Arguments of
race, in this race-conscious age, made the English and Germans feel akin. But politically it
was hard to cooperate. The Kaiser’s Kruger Telegram of 1896, expressing support for the
South African Boers in their confl ict with Britain, was a studied insult. Then in 1898 the
Germans decided to build a navy.
A new kind of race now entered the picture, the naval competition
between Germany and Great Britain. British sea power for two centuries
had been all too successful. The American Admiral Mahan, teaching at this
time in the American Naval War College and taking his examples largely from British
history, argued that sea power had always been the foundation of Britain’s greatness and
that in the long run sea power must always choke off and ruin a power operating on land.
Nowhere were Mahan’s books read with more interest than in Germany. The German
naval program, mounting rapidly after 1898, became a source of concern to the British,
and by 1912 the German navy was perceived as an aggressive menace to Britain’s global
interests. The Germans insisted that they must have a navy to protect their colonies, secure
their foreign trade, and “for the general purposes of their greatness.” The British held
with equal resolution that England, as a densely populated industrial island, dependent
upon imports even for food, must at all costs control the sea in both peace and war. They
adhered stubbornly to their traditional policy of maintaining a navy as large as the next two
combined. The naval race led both sides to enormous and increasing expenditures. In the
British it produced a sense of profound insecurity, driving them as the years passed ever
more inescapably into the arms of Russia and France.
Slowly and cautiously the British emerged from their diplomatic isolation. We have
noted that in 1902 they formed a military alliance with Japan against their common enemy,
Russia. The decisive break, however, came in 1904, from which may be dated the immedi-
ate series of crises issuing ten years later in the First World War.
In 1904 the British and French governments agreed to forget their confl ict at Fashoda
and the accumulated bad feeling of the preceding 25 years. The French recognized the
British occupation of Egypt, and the British recognized the French expansion into Morocco.
They also agreed to support each other against protests by third parties. There was no
“Splendid isolation”
Naval race
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Chapter 17 The First World War692
specifi c alliance; neither side said what it would do in the event of war; it was only a close
understanding, an entente cordiale. The French immediately tried to reconcile their new friend to their ally, Russia. After defeat by Japan the Russians proved amenable. The
British, increasingly uncertain of German aims, proved likewise willing. In 1907 Britain
and Russia, the inveterate adversaries, settled their differences in an Anglo-Russian Con-
vention. In Persia, the British recognized a Russian sphere of infl uence in the north, while
the Russians recognized a British sphere in the south and east. By 1907 England, France,
and Russia were acting together. The older Triple Alliance faced a newer
Triple Entente, the latter somewhat the looser, because the British refused
to make any formal military commitments.
The Crises in Morocco and the Balkans
The Germans, who already felt encircled by the alliance of France and Russia, watched
with concern as England drifted into the Franco-Russian camp. The Entente Cordiale was
barely concluded when the German government decided to test it by seeing how far the
British would go in support of France. The French, now enjoying British
backing, were taking over more police powers, concessions, and loans
in Morocco. In March 1905 Kaiser William II disembarked from a German
warship at Tangier, where he made a startling speech in favor of Moroccan
independence. To diplomats everywhere this carefully staged performance was a signal:
Germany was attempting to break up the new understanding between France and England.
The Germans demanded and obtained an international conference at the Spanish port city
of Algeciras, but the conference, which met in 1906, supported the French claims in
Morocco, only Austria voting with Germany.
The German government had thus created an incident and been rebuffed. The British,
disturbed by German diplomatic tactics, stood by the French all the more fi rmly. French and
British army and naval offi cers now began to discuss common plans. Distrust of Germany
also inclined the British to bury the hatchet with Russia in the next year. The German attempt
to break the Entente simply made it more solid. In 1911 came a second Morocco crisis.
A German gunboat, the Panther, arrived at Agadir “to protect German interests.” It soon became apparent that the move was a holdup; the Germans offered to make no further trou-
ble in Morocco if they could have the French Congo. This crisis also passed, the Germans
obtaining some small accessions in Africa, but it increased British hostility to Germany.
Meanwhile a series of crises rocked the Balkans. The Ottoman Empire,
now in an advanced state of dissolution, still held a band of territory from
Constantinople westward to the Adriatic (see map, p. 698), which included
Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, and Macedonians. In the center and west of the peninsula,
Triple Entente
Testing the Entente
Crises in the Balkans
ANGLO-GERMAN INDUSTRIAL COMPETITION, 1898 AND 1913 This diagram shows the huge increase in world trade in the years before the First World War and also the fact that German exports grew in these years more rapidly than British exports. The exports of both countries together multiplied no less than threefold in these 15 years. The increase refl ected a small rise in prices, but it was mainly due to a real increase in volume of business. In 1913, total German exports about equaled the British, but German exports to the United States and Russia greatly exceeded the British exports to these countries. Note how the Germans even gained exports in British India, where the liberalism of British trade policy freely admitted competitive goods. In merchant marine, though the Germans doubled their tonnage, the British continued to enjoy an overwhelming lead.
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693
GREAT BRITAIN
GERMANY GERMAN
BRITISH
G ER
M A
NBR IT
IS H
GERMAN
BRITISH
GE RM
AN
BR ITI
SHG ER
M A
N
B R
IT IS
H
TO R
U SS
IA
TO CH
INA
TO BRITISH INDIA
TO A
RG EN
TI N
A
TO UNITED STATES 1898 1913 1898 1913
18 98
19 13
18 98
19 13
1898 1913 1898 1913
189 8
191 3
189 8
191 3
18 98
19 13
18 98
19 13
HUNDRED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS
0 1 2EXPORTS TO:
UNITED STATES
BRITISH INDIA
RUSSIA
ARGENTINA
CHINA
1898 1913
1898 1913
1898 1913
1898 1913
1898 1913
1898 1913
1898 1913
1898 1913
1898 1913 1898 1913
1898 1913 1898 1913
TOTAL EXPORTS TO ALL COUNTRIES, FOREIGN AND COLONIAL, 1898 AND 1913
MERCHANT MARINE
GREAT BRITAIN
GERMANY
1898 1913 1898 1913
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 15 MILLIONS OF TONS
GREAT BRITAIN
GERMANY
3 4 5 10 15 20 25
81. The International Anarchy
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Chapter 17 The First World War694
Kaiser William II sought to strengthen Germany’s interna- tional position by undermining the alliance between France and Britain. His visit to Morocco in 1905, as shown in this image of his arrival at Tangiers, exempli- fi ed the Kaiser’s assertive style of personal diplomacy, but his call for Moroccan independence failed to weaken the French- British Entente. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
north of the Turkish belt, was the small, landlocked, independent kingdom of Serbia,
adjoined by Bosnia-Herzegovina, which belonged legally to Turkey but had been “occupied
and administered” by Austria since 1878. Within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, adjoining
Bosnia on the north and west, lay Croatia and Slovenia.
Serbs, Bosnians, Croats, and Slovenes all spoke basically the same language, Serbo-
Croatian, the main difference being that Serbs and Bosnians wrote with the eastern or
Cyrillic alphabet while the Croats and Slovenes wrote with the western or Roman alpha-
bet. The difference refl ected deep differences in religion. The Slovenes and Croats had
long been Roman Catholic, and hence more affi liated with western Europe;
the Serbs and many Bosnians were Eastern Orthodox and so closer to
Russia; and there were also, especially in Bosnia, large numbers of Slavs who
were Muslims, converted during the Ottoman domination. With the Slavic
Revival, which emphasized linguistic identities, many of these peoples came to feel that
they were really one people, for which they took the name South Slavs, or Yugoslavs. After
the Dual Monarchy was formed in 1867, as we have seen, the Slavs of the Habsburg Empire
were kept subordinate to the German Austrians and the Hungarian Magyars. By 1900 radi-
cal Slav nationalists within the empire had concluded that the Dual Monarchy would never
grant them equal status and that all South Slavs should form an independent state of their
own. Concretely, this meant that an element of the Austro-Hungarian population, namely,
Ethnic and religious
divisions
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695
the Croatian and Slovenian nationalists, wished to get out of the empire and join with Serbia
across the border. Serbia became the center of South Slav agitation.
This brew was brought to a boil in 1908 by two events. First, the Young Turks, whose
long agitation against Abdul Hamid has been noted, managed in that year to carry through
a revolution. They obliged the sultan to restore the liberal parliamentary constitution of
1876. They showed, too, that they meant to stop the territorial dissolution of the Ottoman
Empire by taking steps to have delegates from Bulgaria and Bosnia sit in the new Otto-
man parliament. Second, Russia, its foreign policy in the Far East ruined by the Japanese
war, turned actively to the Balkan and Turkish scene. Russia, as always, wanted control at
Constantinople. Austria wanted full annexation of Bosnia, the better to discourage the
pan-Yugoslav ideas that challenged Austria’s infl uence in the former territories of the
Ottoman Empire.
The Russian and Austrian foreign ministers, Alexander Isvolsky and Alois von
Aehrenthal, came to a secret agreement in 1908. They would call an international confer-
ence, at which Russia would favor Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Austria would support
the opening of the Bosporus Straits to Russian warships. Austria, without waiting for a con-
ference, proclaimed the annexation of Bosnia without more ado. This infuriated the Serbs,
who had marked Bosnia for their own. Meanwhile, that same year, the Bulgarians and the
Cretans broke fi nally with the Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria becoming fully
independent, Crete uniting with Greece. Isvolsky was never able to realize
the Russian plans for Constantinople. His partners in the Triple Entente,
Britain and France, refused to back him, and the projected international con-
ference was never called. In Russia itself public opinion knew nothing of Isvolsky’s secret
deal. The known fact in Russia was that the Serbs, the little Slav brothers of Russia, had
their toes rudely stepped on by the Austrian annexation of Bosnia.
This “fi rst Balkan crisis” presently passed. The Russians, weakened by the Japanese
war and by the domestic revolutionary turmoil of 1905, accepted the Austrian fait accom-
pli. Austrian infl uence in the Balkans seemed to be growing. And South Slav nationalism
was frustrated and infl amed.
In 1911 Italy declared war on Ottoman Turkey, from which it soon conquered Tripoli
and the Dodecanese Islands. With the Ottomans thus embarrassed, Bulgaria, Serbia, and
Greece joined together in their own war against Turkey, hoping to annex certain Balkan
territories to which they believed they had a right. The Ottoman army was soon defeated
again, but the Bulgarians claimed more of Macedonia than the Serbs would yield. The fi rst
Balkan war of 1912 was followed in 1913 by a second, in which Albania, a mountainous,
mainly Muslim region on the Adriatic, was the subject of angry discord. The
Serbs occupied part of it in the two Balkan wars, but Greeks also claimed
a part, and it had also on several occasions been vaguely promised to Italy.
Russia supported the Serbian claim. Austria was determined to shut off the
Serbs from access to the sea, which they would obtain by annexation of Albanian territory.
An agreement of the main European powers conjured up an independent kingdom in Alba-
nia. This confi rmed the Austrian policy, kept Serbia from the sea, and aroused vehement
outcries in both Serbia and Russia. But Russia again backed down. Serbian expansionism
was again frustrated and infl amed.
The third Balkan crisis proved to be the fatal confl ict that dragged all of Europe into
the recurring violence in the borderlands of the Austrian and Ottoman Empires. The third
crisis was fatal because two others had gone before it, leaving feelings of exasperation in
Austria, desperation in Serbia, and humiliation in Russia.
The fi rst Balkan crisis
Two Balkan wars
81. The International Anarchy
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Chapter 17 The First World War696
The Sarajevo Crisis and the Outbreak of War
On June 28, 1914, a young Bosnian revolutionary, a member of the Serbian secret society
called “Union or Death” and commonly known as the Black Hand, acting
with the knowledge of certain Serbian offi cials, assassinated the heir to the
Habsburg Empire, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, in the streets of Sara-
jevo, the Bosnian capital, in the Austrian Empire. The world was shocked
at this terrorist outrage and at fi rst sympathized with the protests of the
Austrian government. Francis Ferdinand, who would soon have become emperor, was
known to favor some kind of transformation of Austria-Hungary, in which a more equal
place might be given to the Slavs; but the reformer who makes a system work is the most
dangerous of all enemies to the implacable revolutionary, and it is perhaps for this reason
that the archduke was killed by the Black Hand.
The Austrian government was determined to end the South Slav separatism that was
gnawing its empire to pieces. It decided to crush the independence of Serbia, the nucleus
of South Slav agitation, though not to annex it, because most Austrians thought too many
Slavs were living within the empire already. The Austrian government consulted the
German to see how far it might go with the support of its ally. The Germans, issuing their
famous “blank check,” encouraged the Austrians to be fi rm. The Austrians,
thus reassured of strong German support, dispatched a drastic ultimatum to
Serbia, demanding among other things that Austrian offi cials be permitted
to collaborate in investigating and punishing the perpetrators of the assas-
sination. The Serbs counted on Russian support, judging that Russia could
not yield in a Balkan crisis, for the third time in six years, without losing its infl uence in
the Balkans altogether. The Russians in turn counted on France; and France, terrifi ed at the
possibility of being someday caught alone in a war with Germany and determined to keep
Russia as an ally at any cost, in effect gave a blank check to Russia.
The Serbs rejected the critical item in the Austrian ultimatum as an infringement on
Serbian sovereignty, and Austria thereupon declared war upon Serbia. Russia prepared to
defend Serbia and hence to fi ght Austria. Expecting that Austria would be joined by
Germany, Russia rashly mobilized its army on the German as well as the Austrian fron-
tier. Because the power that fi rst mobilized had all the advantages of a rapid offensive, the
German government demanded an end to the Russian mobilization on its border and,
receiving no answer, declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914. Convinced that France
would in any case enter the war on the side of Russia, Germany also declared war on
France on August 3. These German declarations of war would become the basis for later
charges that Germany bore complete responsibility, or guilt, for the huge human and
fi nancial costs that all European nations would pay over the next four years.
The German decisions were posited on a reckless hope that Great Britain might not
enter the war at all. England was bound by no formal military alliance. Even the French
did not know for certain, as late as August 3, whether the British would join them in war.
The British clung to scraps of their old proud isolation; they hesitated to
make a fi nal choice of sides; and as the foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey
repeatedly explained, in England only parliament could declare war, so the
foreign offi ce could make no binding promise of war in advance. It has
often been said that had the German government known as a positive fact that England
would fi ght, the war might not have come. Hence the evasiveness of British policy is made
a contributing cause of the war, and the guilt for what followed is expanded to include
The assassination at
Sarajevo
The German “blank
check”
English isolation
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697
(at least to some extent) the government of every major European state. In reality, the
probability that England would fi ght was so great that to underestimate it, as the Germans
did, was an act of supreme self-deception. The British government was deeply committed
to France, especially through naval agreements, but what swept the British public toward
the French was the German invasion of Belgium. The German plan to crush France quickly
was such that it could succeed only by crossing Belgium. When the Belgians protested, the
Germans invaded anyway, violating the treaty of 1839, which had guaranteed Belgian
neutrality. England declared war on Germany on August 4.
The mere narration of successive crises does not explain why the chief nations of
Europe within a few days became locked in combat over the murder of an
imperial personage. Among more obvious general causes, the alliance sys-
tem and nationalist ideologies should be emphasized. Europe was divided
into two armed camps. Every incident tended to become a test of strength
between the two. A specifi c national incident, such as German intervention
in Morocco, or the assassination of Francis Ferdinand, could not be settled on its own mer-
its, merely by the parties concerned. However it was dealt with, one of the two camps was
deemed to have lost or gained and hence to have lost or gained infl uence in other incidents,
Causes of the First
World War
Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria meets here with leaders of the Catholic Church dur- ing his visit to Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. Shortly after this meeting, the Archduke (the tall man with a moustache) and his wife were assassinated by a Bosnian terrorist who wanted Bosnia to separate from the Austrian Empire and join with Serbia to form a larger Slavic state. The ensuing diplomatic crisis quickly spread beyond Austria and Serbia, mobilized all of the nations in the European alliance system, and led to the First World War of 1914–1918. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
81. The International Anarchy
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Chapter 17 The First World War698
of perhaps greater importance, that would arise in the future. The political leaders in each
nation believed that they must stand by their allies whatever the specifi c issue; and every
local confl ict or confrontation became connected to wider anxieties about national secu-
rity. This was because all lived in the fear of war, of some nameless future war in which
allies would be necessary.
The Germans complained of being “encircled” by France and Russia. They dreaded
the day when they might have to face a war on two fronts. Willing to accept even a Euro-
peanwide war to break their threatened “encirclement” by the Entente powers, they were
obliged to hold to their one ally, Austria-Hungary, which was in turn able to sell its support
at its own price. The French dreaded a coming confl ict with Germany, which in 40 years
had far surpassed France in population and industrial strength; they were obliged to cling
to their ally Russia, which therefore could oblige the French to yield to Russian wishes. As
for Russia and Austria, they were both tottering empires. Especially after 1900, the tsar-
ist regime suffered from endemic revolutionism and the Habsburg Empire from chronic
nationalistic agitation. Authorities in both empires became desperate. Like the Serbs,
they had little to lose and were therefore increasingly reckless in their foreign policies. It
was Russia that drew France and hence England into war in 1914, and Austria that drew
Germany. Seen in this light, the tragedy of 1914 is that the instability and nationalist
THE BALKANS, 1878 AND 1914 Austria and Russia had gradually pushed the Ottoman Empire out of Europe since 1699. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 attempted to stabilize the situation by recognizing Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro as independent monarchies, and northern Bulgaria as an autonomous prin- cipality within the Ottoman Empire. The ambitions and discontents of these new states, of Greece, and of non-Turkish people remaining within the Ottoman Empire culminated in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. Albania then became independent, and Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece became contiguous. Austrian and Russian pressures meanwhile continued; in 1908 Austria annexed Bosnia, where the South Slav population, like the Serbs, was hostile to the Austrian annexation.
Adriatic Sea
Aegean Sea
Black Sea
Mediterranean Sea
Danube R.
A U S T R I A - H U N G A R Y
O T T O M A N
E M P I R
E
ITALY
GREECE (Independent)
ROMANIA (Independent)
RUSSIA
BOSNIA (Austrian Military
Occupation) SERBIA (Independent)
MONTENEGRO (Independent)
BULGARIA (Autonomous)
EAST RUMELIA (Aut. Prov.)
A LB
A N
IA
D O
B R
U JA
MA CED
ONI A
(To Greece 1881)
1878
Belgrade
Constantinople
0 100 200 miles
Adriatic Sea
Aegean Sea
Black Sea
Mediterranean Sea
Danube R.
A U S T R I A - H U N G A R Y
ITALY
GREECE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
ROMANIA
RUSSIA
BOSNIA (Annexed 1908)
SERBIA
MONTENEGRO
BULGARIA EAST RUMELIA
1914
ALBANIA (Independent) (To Greece 1913)
(To Bulgaria 1885)
1913
(To Serbia 1913)
(To Bulgaria 1913)
Belgrade
Sarajevo
Constantinople
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699
confl icts in the politically bankrupt parts of Europe, through the alliance system, dragged
the more advanced parts automatically into ruin.
The German Empire, too, faced an internal crisis. The Social Democrats became the
largest party in the Reichstag in 1912. Their sentiments for the most part were antimilita-
rist and antiwar. But the German imperial government recognized no responsibility to a
majority in the chamber. Policy was determined by men of the old unreconstructed upper
class, in which army and navy interests, now reinforced by new business interests, were
strong; and even moderates and liberals shared in the ambition to make Germany a world
power, the equal of any. The perplexities the ruling groups faced at home, the feeling that
their position was being undermined by the Social Democrats, may have made them more
willing to view war as a way out. And while it is not true that Germany alone started the
war, as its enemies in 1914 popularly believed, it must be granted that its policies had for
some years been peremptory, arrogant, devious, and obstinate. In a broad sense, the emer-
gence of a consolidated industrial Germany after 1870, making its bid for world-power
status relatively late, was a distant and basic cause of war.
The alliance system was only a symptom of deeper trouble. In a word, the world had
an international economy but an anarchic system of competing, sovereign national states.
Economically, each European people now required habitual contact with the world as a
whole. Each national population was to that extent dependent and insecure. Industrial
countries were especially vulnerable, relying as they did on the import of raw materi-
als and food and on the expanding export of goods, services, or capital in return. There
was, however, no world state to police the worldwide system, assuring participation in
the world economy to all nations under all conditions. Each nation had to take care of
itself. This international competition for economic and political advantages generated
much of the popular support for nationalist political ideologies and much of the drive for
imperialism, in which each Great Power tried to stake out part of the world system
for itself. Both nationalism and the new imperialism intensifi ed the quest for allies and
for binding alliances. The alliances, in a world that was in the strict sense anarchic (and
seemed likely to remain so), were a means by which each nation attempted to bolster its
security; to assure that it would not be cut off, conquered, or subjected to another’s will;
and to obtain some hope of economic success in the competitive struggle for use of the
world’s goods.
82. THE ARMED STALEMATE
The First World War lasted over four years, from 1914 to the end of 1918, the United
States entering with effective result in the last year. Germany and its allies were called the
Central Powers, while the Entente governments were termed the Allies. The war was
appalling in its human costs; on the western front, more men were used and killed in the
First World War than in the Second.
At fi rst a short war, as in 1870, was universally expected. The German General Staff
had its plans ready for a two-front struggle against France and Russia. The disadvantage
of fi ghting on two fronts was offset by the possession of good rail lines,
which allowed the rapid shuttling of troops from one front to the other. The
German war plan, known as the Schlieffen Plan, rested upon this fact. The
idea was fi rst to defeat France by the rapid wheeling motion of a tremen-
dous army through Belgium and then to turn at more leisure against Russia, whose great
size and less-developed railways would make its deployment much slower.
The Schlieffen Plan
82. The Armed Stalemate
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The War on Land, 1914–1916
On August 3, 1914, the Germans launched 78 infantry divisions in a massive invasion
toward the West. They were opposed by 72 French divisions, 5 British, and 6 Belgian. The
Germans swept irresistibly forward. The Schlieffen Plan seemed to be moving like clock-
work. Germany’s civilian authorities made plans for the conquest and annexation of large
parts of Europe. Then a hitch occurred: the Russians were fulfi lling the terms of their
THE FIRST WORLD WAR Land fi ghting in the First World War was mainly confi ned to the areas shown by the darker horizontal shading. The huge battles on the western front, which produced more casualties than all of the battles in the West during the Second World War, swayed back and forth over an area less than 100 miles wide.
0 100 200 miles
The Central Powers
Occupied Areas
Areas of Major Fighting
N o r t h S e a
Black Sea
B a lt
ic S e
a Marne
R .
A driatic
Sea
Dardanelles
Masurian Lakes
BELGIUM
F R A N C E
LUX.
ITALY
A U S T R I A - H U N G A R Y
GREECE
R U S S I A
ALBANIA
MONTENEGRO BULGARIA
ROMANIA
SERBIA
SWITZERLAND
JUTLAND
POLAND
EAST PRUSSIA
G E
R M
A N
Y
A RG
O NNE
WESTERN FRONT
ITALIAN FRONT
BALKAN FRONT GALLIPOLI
EASTERN FRONT
PRIPET MARSHES
Farthest German Advance, 1918
D ec., 1915
UKRAINE
GREAT BRITAIN
TURKEY
Berlin
Paris
London
Vienna
Constantinople
Brest-Litovsk
St. Petersburg
Riga
Passchen- daele
Chateau- Thierry
Verdun
Caporetto
Odessa
Tannenberg
Rome
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Almost everyone in 1914 expected a short war and a quick resolution of the international cri- sis. These German soldiers at the Berlin railway station were preparing to board trains that would take them to the front. Accompanied by their wives or girlfriends and carrying fl owers, they departed Berlin amid the optimistic fanfare that spread across all Europe in the early days of the war. (akg-images/Newscom)
alliance; the 10 billion francs invested by the French in Russia now paid their most signifi -
cant dividend. The Russians pushed two armies into Germany, penetrating into East
Prussia. The German commander, Helmuth von Moltke, withdrew forces from the German
right wing in France, on August 26, for service in the East. The Germans moved on, but
their striking arm was weakened and their lines of communication were already overex-
tended. General Joffre, the French commander, regrouping his forces with
strong support from the relatively small British contingent and at exactly
the right moment, ordered a counterattack.
The ensuing battle of the Marne, fought from September 5 to 12,
changed the whole character of the war. The German invasion was stopped,
The battle of the
Marne
82. The Armed Stalemate
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and the German army had to retreat. The hope of felling France at a single blow was ended.
Each side now tried to outfl ank and destroy the other until the battle lines extended to the
sea. The Germans failed to win control of the Channel ports; French and British communi-
cations remained uninterrupted. For these reverses the great victories meanwhile won by
the Germans on the eastern front, though of gigantic proportions (the battles of Tannen-
berg and the Masurian Lakes, at which 225,000 Russians were captured), were in the long
run small consolation.
In the West the war of movement now settled into a war of position. The armies on the
western front became almost immobile. The units of horse cavalry—the uhlans, hussars,
and lancers that had pranced off to war in high spirits—disappeared from
the fi eld. Because aviation was barely beginning, and motor transport was
still new (the armies had trucks, but no self-propelled guns, and no tanks
until very late in the war), the basic soldier more than ever was the man on
foot. The most deadly new weapon was the machine gun, which made it impossible for
foot soldiers to advance across open fi elds without overwhelming artillery preparation.
The result was a long military stalemate in which the indispensable infantry sought protec-
tion in a vast network of trenches.
In 1915 the Germans and Austro-Hungarians put their main effort into an attempt to
knock out Russia. They pressed far into the tsarist empire. The Russian losses were
enormous—2 million killed, wounded, or captured in 1915 alone. But at the end of the
year the Russian army was still fi ghting. Meanwhile the British and French, hoping to open
up communications with Russia, launched a naval attack on Ottoman Turkey, which had
joined the war as a German ally. Aiming at Constantinople by way of the Dardanelles, the
British and French poured 450,000 men into the narrow peninsula of Gallipoli. Large con-
tingents of the invading Allied army were drawn from colonized populations in Asia and
Africa and from Australia and New Zealand, but the campaign soon stalled in another
deadly stalemate. Almost 400,000 Ottoman and Allied soldiers were killed or wounded,
including more than 140,000 in the British-French expeditionary forces. After almost a
year the Allies abandoned the enterprise as a costly failure.
In 1916 both sides turned again to northern France in an attempt to break the dead-
lock. The Allies planned a great offensive along the river Somme, while the Germans
prepared for a new assault in the neighborhood of Verdun. The Germans attacked Verdun
in February. The French commander Joffre put in General Pétain to defend
it but resisted committing his main reserves, holding them for the coming
offensive on the Somme. Pétain and his troops, held to minimum numbers,
War in the trenches
The battle of Verdun
The German and Allied armies settled into trenches across the entire western front after 1914. Despite repeated, deadly attempts to achieve offensive breakthroughs, neither side could gain strategic advantages or signifi cantly change the long-entrenched positions. These vulnerable French soldiers were stationed in a “departure trench,” preparing for one of the many futile assaults during the protracted mili- tary stalemate. (Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-93510])
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703
thus had to take the full weight of the German army. The battle of Verdun lasted almost ten
months, engaged about 2 million soldiers, and became a legend of determined French
resistance (“they shall not pass”). The Germans fi nally abandoned the attack because they
sustained almost as many casualties as the French—330,000 to 350,000.
While the inferno still raged at Verdun, the Allies opened their offen-
sive on the Somme in July. They brought up unheard of amounts of artil-
lery, and the newly raised British army was present in force. The idea was
to break through the German line simply by stupendous pressure. On both
sides, Allied and German, the art of generalship had sunk to an all-time
low. Despite a weeklong artillery bombardment the British lost 60,000 men on the fi rst day
of the attack. In a week they had advanced only 1 mile along a 6-mile front. In a month
they had advanced less than 3 miles. The battle of the Somme, lasting from July to
October, cost the Germans about 500,000 men, the British 400,000, and the French
The battle of the
Somme
The miseries and dangers on the western front are conveyed in this photograph of soldiers in the battle of Passchendaele in 1917. Human life in such conditions became a raw struggle for survival; most soldiers reported that the grinding, daily experience on a battlefi eld seemed far removed from the nationalism or political concerns of civilians and government leaders. (Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images)
82. The Armed Stalemate
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200,000. Nothing of any value had been gained. It was, indeed, at the Somme that the Brit-
ish fi rst used the tank, an armored vehicle with caterpillar tracks that could crash through
barbed wire, lunge over trenches, and smash into machine gun nests; but the tanks were
introduced in such small numbers, and with such skepticism on the part of many com-
manders, that they had no effect on the battle.
The War at Sea
With land armies thus bogged down on all fronts both sides looked to the sea. The long
preponderance of British sea power, and the more recent Anglo-German naval race, would
now be tested. The British, with French aid, imposed a strict naval block-
ade. International law at the time placed goods headed for a country at war
into two classes. One class was called contraband; it included munitions
and certain specifi ed raw materials that might be used in the manufacture
of military equipment. The other class, including foodstuffs and raw cotton, was defi ned
as noncontraband. A country was supposed, by international law, to be able to import
Naval blockade
The belligerent nations of Europe suffered more casualties in the First World War than in any previous European confl ict. The fi ghting also destroyed large areas of the countryside as well as whole towns that became part of the battlefi eld. Examples of such destruction can be seen around these British soldiers who were advancing near the front in Flanders in 1917. (Ingram Publishing)
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noncontraband goods even in wartime. These terms of wartime law had been set forth as
recently as 1909 at an international conference in London. The purpose was to make it
impossible for a sea power (that is, the British) to starve out an enemy in wartime or even
to interfere with normal civilian production. The jealousy of Continental Europe for Brit-
ish sea power was an old story.
Such law, if observed, would make the blockade of Germany entirely ineffective, and
the Allies did not observe it. To starve out the enemy and ruin his economy was pre-
cisely their purpose. Economic warfare took its place alongside armed attack as a military
weapon, as in the days of Napoleon. The Allies announced a new international law. The
distinction between contraband and noncontraband was gradually abolished. The British
navy (aided by the French) proceeded to stop all goods of whatever character destined for
Germany or its allies. Neutrals, among whom the Americans, Dutch, and Scandinavians
were the ones mainly affected, were not allowed to make for German ports at all.
The United States protested vehemently against these regulations and defended the
rights of neutrals. It reasserted the distinction between contraband and noncontraband,
claimed the right to trade with other neutrals, and upheld the “freedom of the seas.” These
claims led to mutual bad feelings between the American and British governments in 1915 and
1916. But when the United States entered the war, it adopted the Allied position, and its navy
joined in enforcing exactly the same regulations. International law was in fact changed. In the
Second World War the very words “contraband” and “freedom of the seas” were never heard.
The Germans countered with an attempt to blockade England. A few isolated German
cruisers were able for some time to destroy British shipping. But the Germans relied
mainly on the submarine, against which the British naval power at fi rst
seemed helpless. The submarine was an unrefi ned weapon; a submarine
commander could not always tell what kind of ship he was attacking, nor
could he remove passengers, confi scate cargo, escort the vessel, or indeed do much except
sink it. Citing British abuses of international law in justifi cation, the German government
in February 1915 declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, in
which Allied vessels would be torpedoed and neutral vessels would be in grave danger.
Three months later the liner Lusitania was torpedoed off the Irish coast. About 1,200 persons were drowned, including about 120 Ameri-
can citizens. The Lusitania was a British ship; it carried munitions of war manufactured in the United States for Allied use; and the Germans had
published ominous warnings in the New York papers that Americans should not take pas-
sage on it. Americans then believed that they should be able to sail safely, on peaceable
errands, on the ship of a belligerent power in wartime. The loss of life shocked people in
the United States. President Wilson informed the Germans that another such act would be
considered “deliberately unfriendly.” The Germans, to avoid trouble, refrained for two
years from making full use of their submarines. For two years the Allied use of the sea was
only partly impeded.
Allied access to the sea was confi rmed by the one great naval engagement of the war,
the battle of Jutland. The German admirals became restless at seeing their newly built navy
skulking behind minefi elds on the German shores, yet they could not presume to challenge
the superior British Grand Fleet, posted watchfully at Scapa Flow. They hoped, however,
to decoy smaller formations of British ships, destroy them one by one, and perhaps eventu-
ally obtain enough of a naval balance in the North Sea to loosen the British blockade by
which Germany was slowly being strangled. They were themselves, however, trapped into
a major engagement in which the British Grand Fleet of 151 ships took them by surprise in
Submarine warfare
The Lusitania
82. The Armed Stalemate
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the spring of 1916. After a few hours of furious combat the Germans were able to with-
draw into mined waters. They had lost less tonnage and fewer men than the British. They
had proved themselves to be dangerously profi cient in naval combat. But they had failed to
undermine the British preponderance at sea.
Diplomatic Maneuvers and Secret Agreements
With no military solution in sight, both sides looked about for new allies.
The Ottoman Empire, fearing Russia, had joined Germany and Austria-
Hungary as early as October 1914. The leading prospective ally was
Italy, which, though formally a member of the Triple Alliance, had long
ago drifted away from it. Both sides solicited the Italian government, which
bargained imperturbably with both. The Italian public was divided, but extreme nation-
alists saw a chance to obtain their irredenta, the border regions in which Italians lived outside the national territory that had been incorporated at the time of national unifi cation.
The Italian government therefore cast its lot with the Allies in the secret treaty of London
of 1915. It was agreed that if the Allies won the war, Italy would receive (from Austria)
the Trentino, the south Tyrol, Istria and the city of Trieste, and some of the Dalmatian
Islands. If Britain and France took over Germany’s African colonies, Italy should receive
additional territory in Libya and Somaliland. The treaty of London, in short, continued the
most brazen prewar practices of territorial expansionism, but the Allies were desperate for
additional military support. Italy, thus bought, and probably against the will of most Ital-
ians, opened up a front against Austria-Hungary in May 1915.
The Allies likewise made plans for a fi nal partition of the Ottoman Empire, which still
reached from Constantinople through the Middle East into Arabia and into Mesopotamia
(modern Iraq). By a secret treaty they agreed that, upon an Allied victory, Mesopotamia
was to go to Britain, Syria and southeastern Asia Minor to France, small portions to Italy,
and Kurdistan and Armenia to Russia. The prewar attitudes and practices of European
imperialism thus continued to guide the governments in every warring nation of Europe.
Each side also tampered with minorities and discontented groups living within the
domains of the other. The Germans promised an independent Poland to embarrass Russia.
They stirred up local nationalism in Ukraine. They raised up a pro–German Flemish move-
ment in Belgium. They persuaded the Ottoman sultan, as caliph, to proclaim a holy war in
North Africa, hoping that irate Muslims would drive the British from Egypt and the French
from Algeria. This had no success. German agents worked in Ireland and one Irish nation-
alist, Sir Roger Casement, landed in Ireland from a German submarine, precipitating the
Easter Rebellion of 1916, which was suppressed by the British.
To Americans the most amazing of similar activities was the Zimmer-
mann telegram. In 1916 an American military force had crossed the Mexican
border in pursuit of bandits, against protests by the Mexican government.
Relations between the United States and Germany were also deteriorat-
ing. In January 1917 the German state secretary for foreign affairs, Arthur
Zimmermann, dispatched a telegram to the German minister at Mexico City, telling him
what to say to the Mexican president. He was to say that if the United States went to war
with Germany, the Germans would form an alliance with Mexico and if possible Japan,
enabling Mexico to get back its “lost territories.” These latter referred to the region con-
quered by the United States from Mexico in the 1840s—Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona
(California was not mentioned). Zimmermann’s telegram was intercepted and decoded by
Italy joins the Allies
The Zimmermann
telegram
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the British, who sent it to Washington. Printed in the newspapers, it shocked public opin-
ion in the United States.
The Allies were more successful in appealing to nationalist discontent, for the obvious
reason that the most active national minorities were within the lands of their enemies. They
were able to promise restoration of Alsace-Lorraine to France without diffi culty. They prom-
ised independence to the Poles, though anticipating some diffi culty as long as the Russian
monarchy stood. It was easier for them to favor national independence for Czechs, Slovaks,
and South Slavs, because an Allied victory would dissolve the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
But the Allied use of nationalist ambitions also extended from Europe into the Otto-
man Empire and beyond. Within the Ottoman Empire the British aroused Arab hopes for
independence. The British Colonel T. E. Lawrence led an insurrection against the Turks in
the northwestern Arabian Peninsula—a region called the Hejaz that includes the Muslim
holy city of Mecca. Encouraged by Lawrence and the British to pursue aspirations for an
independent Arab state, the emir Hussein of Hejaz in 1916 took the title of
King of the Arabs and established a kingdom that reached from the Red
Sea to the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, Zionists saw in the impending Otto-
man collapse the opportunity to realize their dream for a Jewish state in
Disruption in the
Ottoman Empire
Colonel T. E. Lawrence emerged as the key British liaison to Arab forces fi ghting for indepen- dence from the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. He appears in this photograph at Versailles (wearing a British army uniform and Arab headdress) behind the left shoulder of Prince Faisal, who became the British-appointed King of Iraq in 1921. (Bettmann/Corbis)
82. The Armed Stalemate
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Palestine. Because Palestine was peopled by Arabs (and had been for over 1,000 years)
the Zionist program collided with British plans to sponsor Arab nationalism. Neverthe-
less, the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, issued the famous Balfour Declaration
in 1917, promising the British government’s support for the idea of a “Jewish homeland”
in Palestine (though with protection for the rights of non-Jewish peoples) and also setting
the foundations for a clash between Jewish and Arab nationalism, which has affl icted the
Middle East down to the present.
For the Armenians these years were especially disastrous. They were a Christian people
living in the eastern part of the Anatolian peninsula where it abuts on Russia, and like other
peoples in the Ottoman Empire, including the Turks themselves, they had developed aspira-
tions for a national state of their own, which confl icted with the plans of Turkish reformers
to make the empire more Turkish. It was only 20 years since such clashes had produced
the horrifying Armenian massacres of 1894. Now in 1915 the Turkish government, as the
Russian army threatened its eastern frontier, ordered the deportation of Armenians from
the war zone as potential sympathizers with Russia and the Western Allies. Supposedly
they were to be resettled in Syria and Palestine. In fact, in the atmosphere of military crisis,
political hatred, bureaucratic contempt, and wartime scarcities hundreds of thousands of
Armenians perished in what most historians describe as a genocidal massacre. Virtually
no Armenians remained within the territories that became the Turkish republic a few years
later. The surviving Armenians became another of the world’s scattered peoples with no
state of their own except for a small Armenian republic, briefl y independent after 1918,
then part of the Soviet Union for 70 years, and fi nally independent again after 1991.
At the same time that they were seeking to disrupt and dismember the Ottoman
Empire, the British and French were using the war as an opportunity to take control of the
German colonies in Africa. The British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, revealed to
Colonel House, President Wilson’s personal emissary, that the Allies did not intend that
Germany should ever get its colonies back, though it also became clear that they did not
intend to grant true independence to the people who lived there.
In China, too, the third important area of imperialist competition, the war accelerated
the tendencies of preceding years. The Japanese saw their own opportunity in the self-
slaughter of the Europeans. Japan had been allied to Britain since 1902, and in August 1914
the Japanese declared war on Germany. They soon overran the German con-
cessions in China and the German islands in the Pacifi c, the Marshalls
and Carolines. In January 1915 Japan presented its Twenty-One Demands
on China, a secret ultimatum for further concessions, most of which the
Chinese were obliged to accept. Japan thereby proceeded to turn Manchuria and north
China into an exclusive protectorate.
As for the Germans, their war aims were even more expansionist and
more menacing to existing boundaries within Europe itself. Early in Sep-
tember 1914, when a quick victory seemed within their grasp, Bethmann-
Hollweg, who remained chancellor until the summer of 1917, drew up a list
of German war aims, which stayed unaltered until the end of hostilities. The plans called for
an enlarged German Empire dominating all central Europe and annexations or satellites in
both western and eastern Europe. In the east, Lithuania and other parts of the Baltic coast
were to become German dependencies, large sections of Poland were to be directly annexed,
and the remainder was to be joined with Austrian Galicia to form a German-dominated Pol-
ish state. In the west, Belgium was to become a German dependency to provide more direct
access to the Atlantic, and French Lorraine with its rich iron ore was to be added to the
Japan in China
German expansionism
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already German parts of Alsace-Lorraine. Colonial adjustments, including the acquisition
of most of central Africa from coast to coast, were also projected. The political map of
Europe and of colonial Africa would thus be transformed in Germany’s favor.
All these developments, especially the Allied negotiations, whether accomplished
facts or secret agreements, affecting Europe, the Middle East, Asia, or Africa, became very
troublesome later at the peace conference. They continued some of the most unsettling ten-
dencies of European politics before the war. It does not appear that the Allies, until driven
by Woodrow Wilson, gave any thought to controlling postwar nationalism or what could
be called international anarchy. As president of the United States, Wilson for a long time
could see little to choose between the warring alliances, though his personal sympathies
were with England and France. In 1916 he attempted to mediate, entering into confi dential
discussions with both sides; but both still hoped to win on their own terms, so negotiation
was fruitless. Wilson judged that most Americans wished to remain unin-
volved in European confl icts, and in November 1916 he was reelected to
a second term, on the popular cry “he kept us out of war.” Wilson urged a
true neutrality of thought and feeling, or a settlement, as he said, that should
be a “peace without victory.”
As of the end of 1916, it is hard to see how the First World War would have turned out
had not two new sets of forces altered the stalemate.
83. THE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA AND THE INTERVENTION OF THE UNITED STATES
The Withdrawal of Russia: Revolution and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The fi rst great governmental victim of the First World War was the Russian Empire. As the
Russo-Japanese War had led to the Revolution of 1905 in Russia, so the more ruinous
confl ict in Europe led to the far greater Revolution of 1917. The story of the Russian Revo-
lution is told in the following chapter. It is enough to say here that war offered a prolonged
test that the tsarist government could not meet. Bungling, dishonest, and secretive, inca-
pable of supplying the materiel required for modern fi ghting, driving hordes of peasants
into battle in some cases even without rifl es, losing men by the millions yet offering no
goal to inspire sacrifi ce, the tsarist regime lost the loyalty of all elements of its people.
In March 1917 the troops in St. Petersburg mutinied, while strikes and riots desolated
the city. The Duma, or Russian parliament, used the occasion to press its demands for
reform, which the tsarist government was unwilling and unable to address.
On March 15 Nicholas II abdicated. A provisional government took over,
made up of liberal noblemen and middle-class leaders, generally demo-
crats and constitutionalists, with at fi rst only one socialist. The provisional
government held power from March to November 1917. Its members,
who shared in the liberalism of western Europe, believed that a liberal and parliamentary
regime could not succeed in Russia unless the German Empire were defeated. They took
steps, therefore, to prosecute the war with a new vigor. In July 1917 a new offensive was
opened, but the demoralized Russian armies again collapsed.
The mass of the Russian people would no longer support a war in which they were
asked to suffer so much for so little. Nor did Russian peasants or workers feel any enthusi-
asm for the European-style intellectuals and professional men who headed the provisional
government. Ordinary Russians, insofar as they had any politics, were drawn to one or
A “peace without
victory”
The provisional
government
83. The Collapse of Russia and the Intervention of the United States
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another of numerous forms of socialism, Marxist and non-Marxist. The Russian Marxist
Party, the Social Democrats, was divided between Menshevik and Bolshevik factions, the
latter being more radical. The Bolshevik leaders had for some time lived as exiles in west-
ern Europe. Their principal spokesman, V. I. Lenin, with a few others, had
spent the war years in Switzerland. In April 1917 the German government
offered safe passage to Lenin through Germany to Russia. A railway car full
of Bolsheviks, carefully “sealed” to prevent infection of Germany, was thus
hauled by a German train to the frontier, whence it passed on to St. Peters-
burg, or Petrograd, as the city was renamed during the war. The aim of the Germans in this
affair, as in the sending of Roger Casement to Ireland in a submarine, was of course to use
a kind of psychological warfare against the enemy’s home front. It was to promote rebellion
against the provisional government and thus at last to eliminate Russia from the war.
The position of the Provisional Government became rapidly more untenable until by
November 1917 the situation was so confused that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were able to
seize power. The Bolsheviks stood for peace with Germany, partly to win popular favor in
Russia and partly because they regarded the war as a struggle among capitalist, imperialist
powers that should be left to exhaust and destroy each other for the benefi t of socialism. On
December 3, 1917, a peace conference opened between the Bolsheviks and the Germans at
Brest-Litovsk. Meanwhile the peoples within the western border of the old Russia—Poles,
Ukrainians, Bessarabians, Estonians, Latvians, Finns—with German back-
ing, proclaimed their national independence. The Bolsheviks, because they
would not or could not fi ght, were obliged to sign with Germany a treaty
to which they vehemently objected, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 3,
1918. By this treaty they acknowledged the “independence,” or at least the
loss to Russia, of Poland, Ukraine, Finland, and the Baltic provinces.
For the Germans the treaty of Brest-Litovsk represented their maximum success dur-
ing the First World War; it accomplished some of the war aims formulated at the beginning
of hostilities. Not only had they neutralized Russia, they also now dominated eastern
Europe through political puppets placed at the head of the new independent states. A cer-
tain number of German troops remained in the East to preserve the new arrangements. But
it was no longer a two-front war. Masses of the German army were shifted from east to
west. The High Command, under the leadership of generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff
since August 1916, prepared to launch a fi nal assault in France to end the war in 1918.
The year 1918 was essentially a race to see whether American aid could reach Europe
soon enough, in suffi cient amount, to offset the added strength that Germany drew from
the collapse of Russia. In March of that year the Germans, beginning with gas attacks and
a bombardment by 6,000 artillery pieces, opened a formidable offensive before which the
French and British both recoiled. On May 30, 1918, the Germans again
stood at the Marne, 37 miles from Paris. There were still only two Ameri-
can divisions in action in France, though the United States had been at war
for over a year. At this point in the story of the Great War there are there-
fore two open questions: how the United States entered the war and the length of time
required for the buildup of its forces overseas.
The United States and the War
We have seen how President Wilson clung persistently to neutrality. The
American people were divided, in part because of their diverse histori-
cal connections with Europe. Many had been born in Europe or were the
The Bolsheviks return
from exile
The treaty of
Brest-Litovsk
American intervention
America divided
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711
children of immigrants. Those of Irish origin were anti-British; those of German origin were
often sympathetic to Germany. On the other hand, since the time of the Spanish-American
and Boer wars, a noticeable current of friendliness to the English had been running stronger
than ever before in American history. The sale of war materiel to the Allies and the pur-
chase of the bonds of Allied governments had given certain limited though infl uential cir-
cles a material interest in an Allied victory. American idealism was on the side of England
and France, insofar as it was not isolationist. An Allied victory would clearly advance the
cause of democracy, freedom, and progress far more than a victory of the German Empire.
On the other hand, England and France were suspected of somewhat impure motives, and
they were allied with the Russian autocracy, the reactionary and brutal tsardom.
The fall of tsarism made a great impression. Democrats and progressives now came
forward even in Russia. No one had heard of Lenin or could foresee the Bolshevik Revo-
lution. It seemed in the spring of 1917 that Russia was struggling along the path that
England, France, and America had already taken. An ideological barrier had dropped
away, and the demand for American intervention to safeguard democracy became more
insistent.
The Germans gave up the attempt to keep the United States out. Constricted ever more
tightly by the blockade, and failing to get a decision on land, the German government and
High Command listened more readily to the submarine experts, who declared that if given
a free hand they could force British surrender in six months. Civilian and diplomatic mem-
bers of the government objected, fearing the consequences of war with the United States.
They were overruled; it was a good example of the way in which, in Ger-
many, the army and navy had taken the highest policy into their hands.
Unrestricted submarine warfare was to be resumed on February 1, 1917. It
was foreseen that the United States would declare war, but the German
High Command believed that this would make no immediate difference. They estimated in
1917 (correctly) that there would be about a year between the time when the United States
entered a European war and the time when it could take part with its own army. Mean-
while, the planners said, in six months they could force Britain to accept defeat.
On January 31, 1917, the Germans notifi ed Wilson of the resumption of unrestricted
submarine attacks. They announced that they would sink on sight all merchant ves-
sels found in a zone around the British Isles or in the Mediterranean. Wilson broke off
diplomatic relations and ordered the arming of American freighters. Meanwhile, the pub-
lication of the Zimmermann telegram convinced many Americans of German aggressive-
ness. German secret agents also had been at work in America, fomenting strikes and causing
explosions in factories engaged in the manufacture of munitions for the Allies. In Febru-
ary and March several American ships were sunk. Americans regarded all
these activities as an interference with their rights as neutrals. Wilson at last
concluded that Germany was a menace. Having made his decision, he now
saw a clear-cut issue between right and wrong. Wilson obtained a rousing
declaration of war from Congress, on April 6, 1917, and the United States
went to war against Germany “to make the world safe for democracy.”
At fi rst the German campaign realized and even exceeded the predictions of its spon-
sors. In February 1917 the Germans sank 540,000 tons of shipping; in March, 578,000
tons; April, as the days grew longer, 874,000 tons. Something akin to terror seized the
government in London. Britain was reduced to a six-week reserve of food. Gradually
countermeasures were developed—mine barges, hydrophones, depth charges, airplane
reconnaissance, and most of all the convoy. It was found that a hundred or more freighters
together, though all had to steam at the pace of the slowest, could be protected by a
Unrestricted subma-
rine warfare
“To make the world
safe for democracy”
83. The Collapse of Russia and the Intervention of the United States
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Chapter 17 The First World War712
suffi cient concentration of warships to keep submarines away. The United States navy,
which, unlike the army, was of considerable size and ready for combat, supplied enough
additional force to the Allies to make convoying and other antisubmarine measures highly
effective. By the end of 1917 the submarine was no more than a nuisance. For the Germans
the great plan ultimately produced the anticipated penalty without the reward—its net
result was only to add America to their enemies.
On the western front in 1917, while the Americans desperately got
themselves ready for the war they had entered, the French and British
continued to hold the line. The French, fi nding in General Nivelle a com-
mander who still believed in the breakthrough, launched an offensive so
unsuccessful and so bloody that mutiny spread through the French army.
Pétain replaced Nivelle and restored discipline to the exhausted and disillusioned soldiers,
but he had no thought of further attack. “I am waiting for the Americans and the tanks,” he
said. The British then assumed the main burden. For 3 months late in 1917 they fought the
dismal battle of Passchendaele. They advanced 5 miles, near Ypres, at a cost of 400,000
men. At the very end of 1917 the British surprised the Germans with a raid by 380 tanks,
which penetrated deep into the German lines, but were obliged to withdraw, because no
reserve of fresh infantry was at hand to exploit their success.
Meanwhile the Austro-Hungarians, strongly reinforced by German troops, over-
whelmed the Italians at the disastrous battle of Caporetto. The Central Powers streamed
into northern Italy, but the Italians, with British and French reinforcements, were able to
hold the line. The net effect of the campaigns of 1917 and of the repulse of the submarine
at the same time was to reemphasize the stalemate in Europe, incline the weary Allies to
await the Americans, and give the Americans what they most needed—time.
The Americans made good use of the time given them. Conscription, which was
democratically called selective service, was adopted immediately after the declaration of
war. The United States Army, whose professionals in 1916 numbered only
130,000, performed the mammoth feat of turning over 3.5 million civilians
into soldiers. With the navy, the United States came to have over 4 mil-
lion in its armed services (which may be compared with over 12 million in
the Second World War). Aid fl owed to the Allies in Europe. To the loans
already made through private bankers were added some $10 billion lent by the American
government itself. The Allies used the money mainly to buy food and munitions in the
United States. American farms and factories, which had already prospered by selling to
the Allies during the period of neutrality, now broke all records for production. Civilian
industry was converted to war uses; radiator factories turned out guns, and piano facto-
ries manufactured airplane wings. Every possible means was employed to build up ocean
shipping, without which neither American supplies nor American armies could reach the
theater of war. Available shipping was increased from one million to ten million tons.
Civilian consumption was drastically reduced. Eight thousand tons of steel were saved
in the manufacture of women’s corsets and 75,000 tons of tin were spared in the making
of children’s toy wagons. Every week people observed meatless Tuesday, and sugar was
rationed. Daylight-saving time, invented in Europe during the war, was introduced to save
coal. By such means the United States made enormous stocks available for its European
Allies as well as itself, though for some items, notably airplanes and artillery ammunition,
the American armies, when they reached France, drew heavily on British and French man-
ufactures. The deepening involvement in Europe’s Great War therefore pushed the United
States to develop a more active national government and to collaborate more closely than
ever before with the western European states and peoples.
The French and
British hold the line
America mobilizes
for war
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The Final Phase of the War
The Germans, as we have seen, victorious in the east, opened a great fi nal offensive in the
west in the spring of 1918, hoping to force a decision before American participation turned
the balance forever. To oppose the new German assault, a unity of command was achieved
for the fi rst time when a French general, Ferdinand Foch, was made commander in chief of
all Allied forces in France, with the national commanders subordinate to him, including
Pershing for the Americans. In June the Germans fi rst made contact with American troops
in signifi cant force, meeting the Second Division at Château-Thierry. The German position
was so favorable that civilians in the German government thought it opportune to make a
last effort at a compromise peace. The military, headed by Hindenburg and Ludendorff,
successfully blocked any such attempts; they preferred one fi nal gamble. The German
armies reached their farthest advance on July 15 along the Marne.
There were now nine American divisions in the Allied line. Foch used them to spear-
head his counterattack on July 18. The badly overstrained Germans began to falter. Over
250,000 American troops were now landing in France every month. The fi nal Allied
offensive that opened in September, with American troops in the Argonne occupying an
eastern sector, proved more than the Germans could withstand. The Ger-
man High Command notifi ed its government that it could not win the war.
The German foreign offi ce made peace overtures to President Wilson. An
armistice was arranged, and on November 11, 1918, fi ring ceased on the
western front.
Because Germany’s allies had surrendered during the preceding weeks, the deadly,
grinding battles were fi nally over, but the war continued to affect almost every aspect of
European politics and society. The horror it brought to individual lives cannot be told by
statistics, which dryly report that almost 10 million men had been killed and 20 million had
been wounded. Each of the European Great Powers (except Italy) lost from 1 million to
2 million in killed alone. The United States, with some 330,000 casualties of all types (of
whom 115,000 died) lost in the entire war fewer men than the main combat-
ants had lost in single battles such as Verdun or Passchendaele; but American
assistance was decisive in the defeat of Germany. It came late in the war,
when the others had been struggling for almost 4 years, so that the mere
beginnings of American military action were enough to turn the scale. On the
date of the armistice there were 2 million American soldiers in France, and another million
were on the way. But the American army had really been in combat only 4 months. During
the whole year of 1918, out of every hundred artillery shells that were fi red by the three
Allied armies, the French fi red 51, the British fi red 43, and the Americans fi red only 6.
The war was thus less costly for the United States than for any of the other major
military powers. About 50,000 Americans were killed in battle. Most other deaths were
caused by disease, including the deadly infl uenza epidemic of 1918—which killed as
many as 43,000 U.S. soldiers over several months. The horrible toll of military deaths
in all countries during the World War was actually far surpassed in 1918–1919 by the
worldwide infl uenza pandemic that caused at least 50 million deaths across the globe.
A virulent new strain of virus (called the Spanish fl u) was the source of the disease, and
some historians now believe that perhaps up to 100 million persons died as it moved
through much of Africa, Latin America, and Asia as well as Europe and North America.
This rapidly spreading pandemic became one of the most deadly events in all of world
history, and it added to the profound sense of loss that affected people everywhere after
the Great War.
The armistice
Casualties of war
83. The Collapse of Russia and the Intervention of the United States
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Chapter 17 The First World War714
84. THE COLLAPSE OF THE AUSTRIAN AND GERMAN EMPIRES
The war proved as fatal to the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires as to the Russian.
The subject nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or the “national councils” repre-
senting them in the Western capitals, obtained recognition from the Allies,
and in October 1918 declared their independence. The last Habsburg
emperor, Charles I, abdicated on November 12, and on the next day Austria
was proclaimed a republic, as was Hungary in the following week. Before
any peace conference could convene, the new states of Czechoslovakia,
Yugoslavia, an enlarged Romania, a republican Hungary, and a miniature republican
Austria were in existence by their own action.
The German Empire stood solid until the closing weeks. Liberals, democrats, and
socialists had lately begun to press for peace and democratization. Yet it was the High
Nationalities gain
independence
These American soldiers were part of the divisions that began to arrive in France during 1917, but the American military presence did not become signifi cant until the following year. The steady arrival of fresh troops from the United States enabled the Allied commanders to launch a decisive fi nal offensive, forced the German high command to recognize that Germany could not win the war, and contributed to the expanding involvement of the United States in all aspects of modern European history. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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715
Command itself that precipitated the debacle. In the last years of the war dictatorial pow-
ers had become concentrated in the hands of General Ludendorff, and in September 1918
only he and his closest military associates realized that the German cause was hopeless.
On September 29, at supreme headquarters at Spa in Belgium, Ludendorff informed the
Kaiser that Germany must ask for peace. He urged that a new government be formed in
Berlin refl ecting the majority in the Reichstag, on democratic, parliamentary principles.
In calling for immediate peace negotiations, Ludendorff seems to have had two ideas
in mind. First, he might win time to regroup his armies and prepare a new offensive. Or if
collapse became unavoidable, then the army would not be blamed for the defeat because
the civilian or democratic elements would be the groups in Germany that sued for peace.
The liberal Prince Max of Baden was recruited to head a cabinet in which even social-
ists were included. In October various reforms were enacted, the Bismarckian system was
ended, and Germany became a liberal constitutional monarchy. These changes served the
purpose of Ludendorff and other generals because the German military caste, at the moment
of Germany’s crisis, was more eager to save the army than to save the empire. The army
must never admit surrender; that was an affair for small men in business suits. Emperor,
High Command, offi cers, and aristocrats were unloading frantically upon civilians.
President Wilson unwittingly played into their hands. Speaking now as the chief of the
Allied coalition, the one to whom peace overtures were fi rst made, he insisted that the
German government must become more democratic. It may be recalled
how Bismarck, after defeating France in 1871, demanded a general election
in France before making peace. Wilson, unlike Bismarck, really believed in
democracy; but in a practical way his position was the same. He wanted to
be sure that he was dealing with the German people rather than with a dis-
credited elite. He wanted it to be the real Germany that applied for and accepted the Allied
terms. In Germany, as realization of the military disaster spread, many people began to
regard the Kaiser as an obstacle to peace. Or they believed that Germany would obtain bet-
ter terms if it appeared before the Allies as a republic. Even the offi cer corps, to halt the
fi ghting before the army disintegrated, began to talk of abdication. Sailors mutinied at Kiel
on November 3, and councils of workers and soldiers were formed in various cities. The
socialists threatened to withdraw from the newly formed cabinet (that is, go into opposition
and end the representative nature of the new government) unless William II abdicated. A
general strike, led by minority socialists and syndicalists, began on November 9. “Abdica-
tion,” Prince Max told the emperor, “is a dreadful thing, but a government without the
socialists would be a worse danger for the country.” William II abdicated on November 9,
and slipped across the frontier into Holland, where despite cries to try him as a “war crimi-
nal” he lived quietly until his death in 1941. Germany was proclaimed a republic on the
day he abdicated. Two days later the war stopped.
The fall of the empire in Germany, with the consequent adoption of the republic,
did not arise from deep revolutionary action or change of basic sentiment in the German
people. It was an episode of the war. The republic (soon called the Wei-
mar Republic) arose because the victorious enemy demanded it, because
the German people craved peace, because they wished to avoid forcible
revolution, and because the old German military class, to save its face and
its future strength, wished at least temporarily to be excused from its previous role in
the German government. When the war ended, the German army was still in France, its
discipline and organization still apparently unimpaired. No hostile shot had been fi red on
German soil. It was said later, by some, that the army had not been defeated, that it had
been “stabbed in the back” by a dissolving civilian home front. This was untrue, but the
Democracy in
Germany
The Weimar
Republic
84. The Collapse of the Austrian and German Empires
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Chapter 17 The First World War716
myth became popular among many postwar German nationalists. It was actually the panic-
stricken Ludendorff who fi rst cried for “democracy.” But the circumstances in which the
German republic originated made its later history, and hence all later history, very troubled.
85. THE ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL IMPACT OF THE WAR
Effects on Capitalism: Government-Regulated Economies
European society was forced by the First World War into many basic changes that were to
prove more lasting than the war itself. First of all, the war profoundly affected capitalism
as previously known. Essential to the older capitalism (or economic liberalism, or free
private enterprise) had been the idea that government should leave business alone, or at the
most regulate certain general conditions under which businesses went about their affairs.
Before 1914 governments had increasingly entered the economic fi eld.
They had put up tariffs, protected national industries, searched for markets
or raw materials by imperialist expansion, or passed protective social legis-
lation to benefi t the wage-earning classes. During the war all governments
controlled their economies far more minutely. Indeed, the idea of the
“planned economy” was fi rst applied in the First World War as the warring states attempted
to direct all the wealth and moral purpose of their societies to a single end.
Historians often describe this vast confl ict as an example of the modern “total war.”
Such wars differ from “limited wars” or from earlier dynastic confl icts, which often had
little direct effect on most people in a warring society. The term “total war,” by contrast,
suggests how the various European states mobilized every component of
their armed forces, civilian populations, government institutions, economic
resources, social organizations, and cultural systems against enemies that
were deemed a mortal threat to the very existence of their nations. The
war’s enormous human and fi nancial costs required constant propaganda campaigns to
sustain civilian morale, recruit more soldiers, and counter a growing disillusionment with
leaders who could never achieve a decisive victory. “Total war” thus directly affected
every social group and almost every person in the belligerent countries.
Because in 1914 no one had expected a long war, no one had made plans for industrial
mobilization. Everything had to be improvised. By 1916 each government had set up a
system of boards, bureaus, councils, and commissions to coordinate its war effort. The aim
was to see that all labor was effectively utilized and that all natural resources within the
country, and all that could possibly be imported, were employed where they would do the
most good. In the stress of war free competition was found to be wasteful; undirected pri-
vate enterprise was found to be too uncertain and too slow. The profi t motive came into
disrepute. Those who exploited shortages to make big profi ts were stigmatized as
profi teers. Production for civilian use, or for mere luxury purposes, was cut to a minimum.
Businesses were not allowed to set up or close down factories as they chose. It was impos-
sible to start a new business without government approval, because the
fl otation of stocks and bonds was controlled and raw materials were made
available only as the government permitted. It was equally impossible to
shut down a business engaged in war production. If a factory was ineffi -
cient or unprofi table, the government kept it going anyway, making up the losses, so that
in some cases management came to expect government support. Here too the tests of com-
petition and profi tability were abandoned.
The “planned
economy”
Total war
The “rationalization”
of production
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717
The new goal was coordination or “rationalization” of production in the interests of
the country as a whole. Labor was discouraged from protesting against hours or wage
scales, and the big unions generally agreed to refrain from strikes. For the upper and mid-
dle classes it became embarrassing to show their comforts too openly. It was patriotic to eat
meagerly and to wear old clothes. War gave a new impetus even to the idea of economic
equality, if only as a wartime strategy to enlist rich and poor alike in a common cause.
Military conscription was the fi rst step in the allocation of manpower.
Draft boards told some men to report to the army, granting exemptions to
others to work safely in war industries. Given the casualty rates at the front,
state determination over individual life could hardly go farther. With the
insatiable need for troops, drawing in men originally exempted or at fi rst
rejected as physically inadequate, great numbers of women poured into factories and
offi ces, and in Britain even into newly organized women’s branches of the armed forces.
Women took over many jobs that most people had thought only men could do. Women did
not remain in the labor force after the war in such large numbers because they often gave
way to returning veterans; but the wartime experience in this and the Second World War
was part of the social transition by which the labor force in all countries was enlarged,
women’s place in modern society was revolutionized, and the lives and outlook of millions
of individual women were turned more actively toward public participation in national
economies. The First World War thus contributed to the redefi nition or reorganization of
women’s work—a social process that had begun in the early Industrial Revolution and that
would be intensifi ed during the Second World War and in the years that followed.
During the war governments did not directly force men or women to drop one
job and take another. There was no systematic labor conscription except in Germany.
But by infl uencing wage scales, granting draft exemptions, forcing some industries to
expand and others to contract or stand still, and propagandizing the idea that work in an
arms factory was patriotic, the state shifted vast numbers of workers to war production.
Impressed or “slave” labor was not used in the First World War, nor were prisoners of war
obliged to give labor service, though there were some abuses of these rules of interna-
tional law by the Germans, who were possibly the least scrupulous and certainly the most
hard-pressed.
Governments controlled all foreign trade. It was intolerable to let pri-
vate citizens ship off the country’s resources at their own whim. It was
equally intolerable to let them use valuable foreign exchange by importing
unneeded goods or to drive up prices of necessities by competing with one another. For-
eign trade became a state monopoly, in which private fi rms operated under strict licenses
and quotas. The greatest of the exporting countries was the United States, whose annual
exports rose from $2 billion to $6 billion between 1914 and 1918. The endless demand for
American farm and factory products naturally drove up prices, which, however, were fi xed
by law in 1917, for the most important items.
As for the European Allies, which even before the war had exported less than they
imported and were now exporting as little as possible, they could make purchases in the
United States only by enormous loans from the American government. British and
French citizens, under pressure from their own governments, sold off their American
stocks and bonds, which were bought up by Americans. The former owners received
pounds sterling or francs from their own governments, which in return took and spent
the dollars paid by the new American owners. In this way the United States ceased to be
a debtor country (it had owed some $4 billion to Europeans in 1914), and became the
The allocation of
manpower
Export controls
85. The Economic, Social, and Cultural Impact of the War
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Chapter 17 The First World War718
world’s leading creditor country. By 1919 Europeans were in debt to the United States
by about $10 billion—an economic transformation that also affected transatlantic poli-
tics and cultural exchanges.
The Allies controlled the sea, but they never had enough shipping to meet rising
demands, especially with German submarines taking a steady though fl uctu-
ating toll. Each government set up a shipping board to expand shipbuilding
at any cost and to assign available shipping space to whatever purposes—
troop movements, rubber imports, foodstuffs—the government considered
most urgent in view of overall plans. Control and allocation eventually became interna-
tional under the Interallied Shipping Council, of which the United States was a member
after entering the war. In England and France, where all manufactures depended on imports,
government control of shipping and hence of imports was itself enough to give control over
the whole economy.
Germany, denied access to the sea and also to Russia and western Europe, was obliged
to adopt unprecedented measures of self-suffi ciency. The Germans went with less food
than other belligerents. Their government controls became more thorough and more effi -
cient, producing what they called “war socialism.” In Walter Rathenau
they found a man with the necessary ideas and organizing skills. He was
a Jewish industrialist, son of the head of the German electrical trust. One
of the fi rst to foresee a long war, he launched a program for the mobiliza-
tion of raw materials. Early in the war it seemed that Germany might be soon defeated by
lack of nitrogen, necessary to make explosives. Rathenau sweepingly requisitioned every
Shipping and imports
German “war
socialism”
The need for workers during the First World War opened opportunities for women in jobs that were traditionally open only to men. These German women, who were working in an armaments factory in 1917, exemplifi ed this trend in the workforce and also the general mobi- lization of an entire population to serve the demands of modern warfare. (akg-images/Newscom)
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719
conceivable natural source, including the very manure from the farmers’ barnyards, until
German chemists succeeded in extracting nitrogen from the air. The German chemical
industry developed many other substitute products, such as synthetic rubber. German pro-
duction was organized into war companies, one for each line of industry, with private busi-
ness fi rms working under close government supervision.
The other warring governments also replaced competition between individual fi rms
and factories with coordination. Consortiums of industrialists in France allocated raw
materials and government orders within each industry. The War Industries Board did the
same in the United States. In Britain, similar methods became so effi cient that by 1918, for
example, the country produced every two weeks as many shells as in the whole fi rst year
of the war and turned out 70 times as much heavy artillery.
Infl ation, Industrial Changes, Control of Ideas
No government, even by heavy taxes, could raise all the funds it needed except by printing
paper money, selling huge bond issues, or obliging banks to grant it credit. The result,
given heavy demand and acute shortages, was rapid infl ation of prices. Prices and wages
were regulated but were never again so low as before 1914. The hardest hit by this devel-
opment were those whose income could not easily be augmented—people living on sup-
posedly safe investments, those drawing annual salaries, professional people, government
employees. These classes had been one of the most stabilizing social infl uences in Europe
before the war. Everywhere the war threatened their status, prestige, and standard of liv-
ing. The huge national debts meant higher taxes for years to come. The debt was most
serious when it was owed to a foreign country. During the war the Conti-
nental Allies borrowed from Britain, and they and the British both bor-
rowed from the United States. They thereby mortgaged their future. To pay
the debt, they were bound for years to export more than they imported—or,
roughly, to produce more than they consumed. It may be recalled that in 1914 every
advanced European country habitually imported more than it exported. That fact, basic to
the European standard of life, was now threatened with reversal.
Moreover, with Europe torn by war for four years, the rest of the
world accelerated its own industrialization. The productive capacity of the
United States increased immensely. The Japanese began to sell in China,
in India, and in South America, providing civilian goods that had previously come from
Europe. Argentina and Brazil, unable to get locomotive parts or mining machinery from
England, created their own industries to manufacture such items for themselves. In India the
Tata family, controlling $250 million of native Indian capital, developed numerous manu-
facturing enterprises, one of which became the largest iron and steel works in the British
Empire. With Germany entirely out of the world market, with Britain and France producing
desperately for their armies, and with the world’s shipping commandeered for war uses,
the position of western Europe as the world’s workshop was undermined. After the war
Europe had new competitors. The economic foundations of the European-centered global
trading system had slipped away. The age of European supremacy was in its twilight.
All the belligerent governments during the war attempted to control ideas as they did
economic production. Freedom of thought, respected everywhere in Europe for half a cen-
tury, was discarded. Propaganda and censorship became more effective than any govern-
ment, however despotic, had ever been able to devise. No one was allowed to sow doubt by
raising basic questions about the rationale for the war or the actions of government leaders.
Mortgaging the future
Industry spreads
85. The Economic, Social, and Cultural Impact of the War
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Chapter 17 The First World War720
It must be remembered that the facts of the prewar international crises, as related
above, were then largely unknown. People were trapped in a nightmare whose causes they
could not comprehend. Each side wildly charged the other with having
started the war from pure malevolence. The long attrition, the fruitless
fi ghting, the unchanging battle lines, and the appalling casualties were a
severe ordeal to morale. Civilians had to be kept at a high emotional pitch
during the demoralizing years in which they were deprived of their usual
liberties, grieving the loss of family and friends, working harder, eating dull food, and see-
ing no military victory. Placards, posters, schoolbooks, public lectures, religious services,
solemn editorials, patriotic speeches, and slanted news reports all conveyed the national
message. The new mass press and the new motion pictures proved to be ideal media for the
direction of popular thinking. Intellectuals and professors advanced complicated reasons,
usually historical, for loathing and crushing the enemy. In Allied countries the Kaiser was
portrayed as a demon, with glaring eyes and abnormally bristling mustaches, bent on the
Propaganda and
public opinion
Every nation in the First World War used propaganda posters to rally public support, recruit soldiers, and show the evil actions of the enemy. The picture on the left is an Austrian post- card with the typical image of a soldier defending the “Fatherland, Family, and Future.” The child represents the nation’s future. The poster on the right portrays the female symbol of the French Republic, Marianne, who is calling on the French to buy war bonds “for the fl ag and for victory.” This money will support the soldiers who stand behind Marianne and defend the French nation. (Left: akg-images/Newscom; right: Barbara Singer/The Bridgeman Art Library)
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mad project of conquest of the world. In Germany people were taught to dread the day
when Cossacks and Senegalese should rape German women and to hate England as the
inveterate enemy that inhumanly starved little children with its blockade. Each side con-
vinced itself that all right was on its side and all wrong, wickedness, and barbarity were on
the other. An infl amed opinion helped to sustain men and women in such a fearsome strug-
gle. But when it came time to make peace the rooted convictions, fi xed ideas, profound
aversions, hates, and fears became an obstacle to balanced political judgment.
Cultural Pessimism
We have seen how many European intellectuals in the decades before 1914 began to ques-
tion the theories of classical liberalism and to celebrate the social value of human struggle
and violence. Such ideas, widely disseminated by popular writers and intellectuals, con-
tributed to the public enthusiasm that accompanied each nation’s entry into the Great War.
Indeed, some of the best-known younger writers, including Charles Péguy in France and
Rupert Brooke in England, went off to die in the early battles, leaving liter-
ary testaments about the spiritual nobility of sacrifi ces for the nation. But as
the war dragged on through more than four murderous years, much of the
early literary patriotism turned into cynicism, pessimism, and despair. By
1918, famous war poets such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen were condemning
the horrors of a senseless war and mocking the propaganda that fl owed from every national
government. Irony and bitterness became pervasive themes in the creative works of post–
World War I European culture.
War poets
Wilfred Owen, pictured here in his army uniform, was one of the English war poets who described the horrors of the First World War. He was killed in France, one week before the armistice in November 1918. (Fotosearch/Stringer/Getty Images)
85. The Economic, Social, and Cultural Impact of the War
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Chapter 17 The First World War722
Historical Interpretations and Debates
Cultural Responses to the First World War
Historians often describe the First World War as the decisive, transformative event in modern European history. In addition to the horrifi c loss of human lives, the war undermined Europe’s pre-1914 supremacy in global political affairs, international trade, and colonial empires. At the same time, the war shattered much of the cultural confi dence and optimism that had char- acterized nineteenth-century European intellectual life. A younger generation of writers, artists, and skeptics emerged from the war with a sense of pessimism and alienation that altered European politics and social life as well as postwar philosophies and cultural move- ments. Compare the ways in which the historians Paul Fussell and Robert Wohl interpret the cultural responses to the “Great War” among those who returned from the battlefi elds and remembered their wartime experiences.
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975)
Every war is ironic because every
war is worse than expected. Every war
constitutes an irony . . . because its
means are so melodramatically
disproportionate to its presumed ends. In
the Great War eight million people were
destroyed because two persons, the Archduke
Francis Ferdinand and his Consort, had
been shot. . . .
The Great War was more ironic than
any before or since. It was a hideous
embarrassment to the prevailing Meliorist
myth which had dominated the public
consciousness for a century. It reversed the
Idea of Progress. . . .
No man in the prime of life knew [in
1914] what war was like. All imagined that it
would be an affair of great marches and great
battles, quickly decided.
Out of the world of summer, 1914,
marched a unique generation. It believed
in Progress and Art and in no way doubted
the benignity even of technology. The word
machine was not yet invariably coupled with the word gun. . . .
The innocent [British] army fully
attained the knowledge of good and
evil at the Somme on July 1, 1916
[when 60,000 were killed or wounded
on the fi rst day of battle]. That moment,
one of the most interesting in the whole
long history of human disillusion, can
stand as the type of all the ironic actions
of the war. . . .
Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (1979)
What intellectuals [of this generation]
found most diffi cult to accept about the war
was its mechanical and impersonal quality.
Death and wounds were not ordinarily
doled out in hand-to-hand combat, but in the
whizzing and hissing and booming of shells
fi red by an unseen foe. Soldiers lay huddled
like animals in craters and dugouts. . . .
What of value could intellectuals have
found in the ugliness and the senseless
slaughter of European trench warfare? . . .
The theme that comes back most
frequently in the literature of the war is the
discovery of comradeship. . . . Comradeship
arose out of the sharing of a common danger
and a common disillusion that was “beyond
all hope.” It was sharpened . . . by a sense of
alienation from those [left] behind—those
who had not been there, who had not seen the
horrors, who had not experienced the fear of
dying and the relief of survival. . . .
The front experience appears to have
weakened some and strengthened others; to
have driven some toward the Right and others
toward the Left; to have given some the taste
for war and violence and to have persuaded
others to preserve the peace at any cost. . . .
No unitary pattern of response emerges.
But one thing seems clear: The
front taught an unforgettable lesson in
generationalism to those who came to know
it. . . . Hence the dichotomy of young versus
old was invested with a new and powerful
emotional charge. . . .
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Sources: Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 7–8, 21, 24, 29, 35; Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 218–220, 222.
Paul Fussell . . . (contd. . . .) I am saying that there seems to be one
dominating form of modern understanding;
that it is essentially ironic; and that it
originates largely in the application of mind
and memory to the events of the Great War.
Robert Wohl . . . (contd. . . .) The younger men . . . were haunted
by the memory of an experience that would
overshadow everything that would happen to
them during the rest of their lives.
The war’s most widespread cultural consequence thus emerged in new forms of cul-
tural pessimism. The psychological studies of Sigmund Freud, for example, increasingly
emphasized the raw power of human aggression—what Freud began to call the death
instinct—which could never be completely tamed in even the most advanced modern soci-
eties. His famous postwar book, Civilization and Its Discontents, offered pessimistic descriptions of the endless struggle between humanity’s deep irrational drives and civi-
lized moral standards, a struggle in which the unconscious instincts of both individuals and
social groups seemed constantly to overwhelm the precarious defenses of
civilization. A different kind of pessimism appeared in the infl uential work
of Oswald Spengler, the German philosopher-historian whose book The Decline of the West (1918) became a best-selling account of how Western civilization had fallen into crisis and decay. Drawing on cyclical theories of life and death,
Spengler traced the history of the West from its energetic youth (the Renaissance) to a
creative middle passage (the eighteenth century) to a declining old age (the twentieth cen-
tury). Spengler’s historical theories, so alien to the nineteenth-century liberal confi dence in
Western progress and expansion, attracted attention far beyond Germany because they
offered explanations for events that seemed otherwise to be simply chaotic and absurd.
This sense of a crisis in Western culture spread also through new literary and artistic
movements, most notably perhaps, in the nonsensical productions of Dada-
ism. The Dada movement, developing in Switzerland after 1915 and promoted
by the poet Tristan Tzara, rejected the structures of traditional literature and
generated nihilistic criticisms of European rationality, aesthetic ideals, and social conven-
tions. After a brief moment of postwar popularity in Paris, Dadaism vanished from the
scene, but its fascination with irrational impulses, “spontaneous” writing, and strange dreams
passed into the more enduring ideas of Surrealism. Meanwhile, even the most sober-minded
European authors believed that the war had exposed a sickness in the heart of European
civilization. The great German writer Thomas Mann, for example, set his postwar novel The Magic Mountain within a Swiss sanatorium, where everyone is ill and where tubercular char- acters from all parts of Europe debate the fl awed traditions of Western civilization. And the
Irish poet W. B. Yeats, also seeing that something in Europe had gone terribly wrong, sum-
marized the anxiety of a whole generation in his famous poem “The Second Coming” (1919):
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the World, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Freud and Spengler
Tzara, Mann, Yeats
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Chapter 17 The First World War724
86. THE PEACE OF PARIS, 1919
The late ally, Russia, was in the hands of the Bolsheviks by 1919, completely ostracized
and taking no part in international relations. The late German and Austro-Hungarian
empires were already defunct, and more or less revolutionary regimes struggled to replace
them. New republics already existed along the Baltic Coast, in Poland, and in the Danube
basin but without effective governments or acknowledged frontiers. Central Europe was in
a state approaching chaos, with Russian-style revolution threatening to break out in most
countries. Western Europe was wrenched out of all resemblance to its former self. The
Allied blockade of Germany continued. In these circumstances the victors assembled in
Paris, in the bleak winter of 1919, to reconstruct the world. During 1919 they signed fi ve
treaties, all named after Paris suburbs—St.-Germain with Austria, Trianon with Hungary,
Neuilly with Bulgaria, Sèvres with Turkey (1920), and especially, with Germany the
Treaty of Versailles.
Europeans looked with awe and expectation to one man—the presi-
dent of the United States. Woodrow Wilson occupied a lone eminence and
enjoyed a universal prestige. Victors, vanquished, and neutrals admitted
that American intervention had decided the confl ict. Everywhere people
who had been long tried, confused, and bereaved were now stirred by Wilson’s thrilling
language in favor of a higher cause, of a great concert of right in which peace would be
forever secure and the world itself would be at last free. Wilson reached Europe in Janu-
ary 1919, visiting several Allied capitals. He was wildly acclaimed, and almost mobbed,
greeted as the man who would lead civilization out of its wasteland.
The Fourteen Points and the Treaty of Versailles
Wilson’s views were well known. He had stated them in January 1918 in his Fourteen
Points—the principles upon which, after victory, peace was to be established. The Fourteen
Points demanded an end to secret treaties and secret diplomacy (or in Wilsonian language,
“open covenants openly arrived at”); freedom of the seas “alike in peace and in war”;
removal of barriers and inequalities in international trade; reduction of armaments by all
powers; colonial readjustments; evacuation of occupied territories; self-determination
of nationalities and a redrawing of European boundaries along national lines; and, last but
not least, an international political organization to prevent war. On the whole, Wilson
stood for the fruition of the democratic, liberal, progressive, and nationalistic movements
of the century past, for the ideals of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the
revolutions of 1848. As Wilson saw it, and as many believed, the World War should end in
a new type of treaty. There was thought to be something sinister about peace conferences
of the past, for example, the Congress of Vienna of 1815. The old diplomacy was blamed
for leading to war. Lenin in his own way and for his own purposes was saying this in
Russia too. It was felt that treaties had too long been wrongly based on a politics of power
or on unprincipled deals and bargains made without regard to the people concerned.
Democracy having defeated the Central Powers, people hoped that a new
settlement, made in a democratic age, might be reached by general agree-
ment in an atmosphere of mutual confi dence. There was a real sense that a
new political era was dawning.
Wilson had had some diffi culty, however, in persuading the Allied governments to
accept his Fourteen Points. The French demanded a guarantee of German payment for the
Woodrow Wilson
A new era
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725
war damages in northern France. The British vetoed the freedom of the seas “in peace and
war”; it was naval rivalry that had estranged them from Germany, and they had fought the
war to preserve British command of the sea. But with these two reservations the Allies
expressed their willingness to follow Wilson’s lead. The Germans who asked for the armi-
stice believed that peace would be made along the lines of the Fourteen Points with only
the two modifi cations that were demanded by France and Britain. In addition, the socialists
and democrats now trying to rule Germany thought that having overthrown the Kaiser and
the war lords, they would be treated by the victors with moderation and that a new demo-
cratic Germany would reemerge to take its rightful place in the world.
Twenty-seven nations assembled at Paris in January 1919, but the full or plenary ses-
sions were unimportant. Matters were decided by conferences among the Big Four—Wilson
himself, Lloyd George for England, Clemenceau for France, Orlando for Italy. The con-
junction of personalities was not a happy one. Wilson was stern and stubbornly righteous;
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1879–1920
1879 Germany signs military alliance with Austria-Hungary
1894 France and Russia create the Franco-Russian alliance
1904 France and Britain establish close relations in the Entente Cordiale
1905 Germany challenges French-English relations by calling for Moroccan
independence from France
1912–1913 Two Balkan wars contribute to Serbian and Russian hostility toward
Austria
June 1914 Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand is assassinated by Bosnian terrorist
in Sarajevo
August 1914 Germany declares war on Russia and France; England declares war on
Germany
September 1914 Battle of the Marne stops German advance in France and leads to trench
warfare on the Western front
1916 Battles of Verdun and the Somme confi rm military stalemate in France
March 1917 Revolution in Russia overthrows Tsar Nicholas II; provisional government
takes power and continues the war
April 1917 United States declares war on Germany
November 1917 Britain issues “Balfour Declaration,” promising support for a Jewish
homeland in Palestine; Bolshevik Revolution in Russia
March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ends war between Russia and Germany
November 1918 Collapse of German and Austrian Empires
November 1918 Armistice ends the fi ghting on the Western Front
1919 Western Allies complete the Versailles treaty and recognize new nations
in eastern Europe; Germany is charged with war guilt and reparations
1920 Treaty of Sèvres breaks up the Ottoman Empire and leads to French and
British “mandates” in Middle East
86. The Peace of Paris, 1919
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Chapter 17 The First World War726
Lloyd George, a fi ery and unpredictable Welshman; Clemenceau, an aged patriot, the
“tiger of France,” who had been politically active since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870;
Orlando, a passing phenomenon of Italian politics. None of them was especially equipped
for the task in hand. Clemenceau was a pronounced nationalist, Lloyd George had always
been concerned with domestic reforms, Orlando was by training a professor like Wilson,
and Wilson, a former college president, was imbued with a sense of mission. Wilson
arrived in Europe with a plan for future international relations, but he lacked concrete
knowledge of peoples other than his own. However, all of the Big Four democratically
represented the governments and peoples of their respective countries, and thus they could
speak with an authority denied to professional diplomats of the old school.
Wilson fi rst fought a hard battle for a League of Nations, a perma-
nent international body in which all nations, without sacrifi cing their sover-
eignty, would meet together to discuss and settle disputes, each promising
not to resort to war. Few European statesmen had any confi dence in such a League. But
they yielded to Wilson, and the covenant of the League of Nations was written into the
treaty with Germany. In return, Wilson had to make concessions to Lloyd George, Clem-
enceau, Orlando, and the Japanese. He was thus obliged to compromise the idealism of
the Fourteen Points. Probably compromise and bargaining would have been necessary
anyway, for such general principles as national self-determination and colonial readjust-
ment invariably led to differences of opinion in concrete cases. Wilson allowed himself
to believe that if a League of Nations were established and operating, faults in the treaty
could later be corrected at leisure by international discussion.
A special kind of disagreement arose over the covenant of the League. Wilson wished
to include a clause endorsing religious freedom. The Japanese insisted that it be broadened
to condemn racial discrimination as well. The Americans and British were opposed to the
latter for fear that an international authority might interfere with their race-based immigra-
tion practices. In the end both proposals were abandoned.
The great demand of the French at the peace conference was for security against Ger-
many. The war in the West had been fought almost entirely on French soil, and the French
wanted above all else to prevent another such war in the future. To trim Germany down
more nearly to French size, they proposed that the part of Germany west of the Rhine be
set up as an independent state under Allied auspices. Wilson and Lloyd George objected,
sagely observing that the resulting German resentment would only lead to another war.
The French yielded, but only on condition that they obtain their security in another
way, namely, by a promise from both Britain and the United States to join them immedi-
ately if they were again attacked by the Germans. An Anglo-French-American guarantee
treaty, with these provisions, was in fact signed at Paris. France obtained
control over the Saar coal mines for 15 years; during that time, a League
commission would administer the Saar territory, and in 1935 a plebiscite
would be held. Lorraine and Alsace were returned to France. German forti-
fi cations and troops were banned from a wide belt in the Rhineland. Allied troops would
occupy the Rhineland for 15 years to ensure German compliance with the treaty.
In eastern Europe the Allies wished to set up strong buffer states against Bolshevism
in Russia. Sympathies with Poland ran high. Those parts of the former German Empire
that were inhabited by Poles, or by mixed populations of Poles and Germans—Posen and
West Prussia—were assigned to the new Polish state. This gave Poland a corridor to the
sea, but this Polish corridor also cut off the bulk of Germany from East Prussia. Danzig, an
old German town, became a free city, belonging to no country. Upper Silesia, a rich
A League of Nations
Alsace and Lorraine
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mining country, went to Poland after a disputed plebiscite. In Austria and among the Sude-
ten Germans of Bohemia, now that there was no longer a Habsburg Empire (whose promi-
nence and power had blocked an all-German union in 1848 and also a few years later in the
time of Bismarck), a feeling developed for annexation to the new German republic. But the
feeling was unorganized, and in any case the Allies naturally refused to make Germany
bigger than it had been in 1914. Austria was thus reduced to a small republic; and Vienna,
a former imperial capital cut off from its empire—a head severed from its body and
scarcely more capable of sustaining life. The Sudeten Germans became disgruntled citi-
zens of the new state of Czechoslovakia.
Germany lost all its colonies. Wilson and the South African General
Smuts, to preserve the principle of internationalism against any imputation
of raw conquest, saw to it that the colonies were actually awarded to the
League of Nations. The League, under “mandates,” then assigned them to
various powers for administration. In this way France and Great Britain divided the best of
the African colonies; the Belgian Congo was slightly enlarged; and the Union of South
Africa took over German Southwest Africa. In the colonial world, Italy got nothing. Japan
received the mandate for the German Pacifi c islands north of the equator; Australia, for
German New Guinea and the Solomon Islands; New Zealand, for German Samoa. The
Japanese claimed rights over the German concessions in China. The Chinese at the Paris
conference tried to get all special concessions and extraterritorial rights in China abol-
ished. No one listened to such proposals. By a compromise, Japan received about half the
former German rights. The Japanese were dissatisfi ed, and the Chinese walked out of the
conference. Meanwhile, the young Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh, who was then
living in Paris, wanted Wilson to recognize that France was violating the principles of
national self-determination in Indochina, but such criticisms of European colonialism were
ignored at Versailles. The western European powers continued to control their large Asian
empires, and the new mandate system of the League of Nations expanded their imperial
infl uence in Africa and the Middle East.
The Allies took over the German fl eet, but the German crews, rather than surrender
it, solemnly scuttled it at Scapa Flow. The German army was limited to 100,000. Because
the Allies forbade conscription, or the annual training of successive groups of young civil-
ians, the army became exclusively professional, the offi cer class retained political infl u-
ence within the much-reduced but intensely self-conscious German military forces, and
the means the Allies used to demilitarize Germany served if anything the contrary purpose.
The treaty forbade Germany to have any heavy artillery, aviation, or submarines. Wilson
saw his plan for universal disarmament applied to Germany alone.
The French, even before the armistice, had stipulated that Germany must pay for war
damages. The other Allies made the same demand. Wilson, at the conference, was stupe-
fi ed at the size of the bills presented. The Belgians suggested, for their own
share, a sum larger than the entire wealth of all Belgium according to offi -
cially published Belgian statistics. The French and British proposed to
charge Germany with the entire expenses, including war pensions, they had
incurred during the war. Wilson observed that “total” reparation, while not strictly unjust,
was absolutely impossible, and even Clemenceau noted that “to ask for over a trillion
francs would lead to nothing practical.” The insistence on enormous reparations was in
fact largely emotional. No one knew or considered how Germany would pay, though all
dimly realized that such sums could only be made up by German exports, which would
then compete with the Allies’ own economic interests. The Germans, to avoid worse, even
Germany loses its
colonies
War damages
86. The Peace of Paris, 1919
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Chapter 17 The First World War728
offered to repair physical damages in Belgium and France, but were brusquely refused on
the ground that the Belgians and French would thereby lose jobs and business. No mone-
tary total was set for reparations in the treaty; it was made clear that the sum would be very
large, but it was left for a future commission to determine. The Allies, maddened by the
war and themselves loaded with huge debts to the United States, had no desire to listen to
economic reason and regarded the reparations as simply another means of righting a wrong
and of putting off the dangers of a German revival. As a fi rst payment on the reparations
account the treaty required Germany to surrender most of its merchant marine, make coal
deliveries, and give up all property owned by German private citizens abroad. This last
proviso ended Germany’s prewar career as an exporter of capital.
It was with the specifi c purpose of justifying the reparations that the famous “war guilt”
clause was written into the treaty. By this clause Germany explicitly “accepted
the responsibility” for all loss and damage resulting from the war “imposed
upon them (the Allies) by the aggression of Germany and her allies.” The
Germans themselves felt no such responsibility as they were now obliged
formally to accept. They considered their honor as a people to be impugned.
The war guilt clause gave a ready opening to agitators in Germany and made even moderate
Germans regard the treaty as something to be overturned as a matter of self-respect.
The Treaty of Versailles was completed in three months. The absence
of the Russians, the decision not to give the Germans a hearing, and the will-
ingness of Wilson to make concessions in return for obtaining the League
of Nations, made it possible to dispose of intricate matters with consider-
able facility. The Germans, when presented with the completed document
in May 1919, refused to sign. The Allies threatened a renewal of hostilities. A government
crisis ensued in Berlin. No German wished to damn himself, his party, or his principles, in
German eyes, by putting his name to a document that all Germans regarded as outrageous.
A combination drawn from the Social Democratic and Catholic parties fi nally consented to
shoulder the hateful burden. Two abashed and virtually unknown representatives appeared
at the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and signed the treaty for Germany in the presence of a
large concourse of Allied dignitaries. The other treaties drafted by the Paris conference, in conjunction with the Versailles
treaty, laid out a new map for eastern Europe and registered the recession of the Russian,
Austrian, and Ottoman Turkish empires. Seven new independent states now existed:
Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Romania
was enlarged by adding areas formerly Hungarian and Russian; Greece was enlarged at the
expense of Turkey. Austria and Hungary were now small states, and there was no connec-
tion between them. The belt of states from Finland to Romania was regarded as a cordon sanitaire, a quarantine zone, to prevent the infection of Europe by communism. The cre- ation of Yugoslavia (or the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, as it was called
until 1929), although dominated by the Serbs and under the Serbian monarchy, seemed to
fulfi ll the aims of the South Slav movement that had set off the fatal crisis of 1914. The
fact, however, that Italy received Trieste and some of the Dalmatian Islands (in keeping
with the secret treaty of 1915) left the more ambitious South Slavs discontented.
The treaty of Sèvres transformed the political order in the Middle East. The Ottoman
Empire completely disappeared. Turkey emerged as a smaller republic confi ned to Asia
Minor and the area around Constantinople, but most other people in the former empire fell
under the control of France or Britain. Syria and Lebanon went to France as mandates of
the League of Nations. Palestine and Iraq went to Great Britain on the same basis, though
The “war guilt”
clause
The Treaty of
Versailles
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729
the British had to wage a military campaign to suppress strong nationalist resistance in Iraq
before they could establish a cooperative government under the ruler they had chosen, King
Faisal. The Kingdom of Hejaz in Arabia was recognized as an independent state; by 1924,
however, it fell under the control of what was to become the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In
general, the breakup of the Ottoman Empire left a vast area of the Middle East unsettled.
Indeed, the complex legacy of the Ottoman Empire as well as the British and French man-
dates continued to shape the enduring confl icts in this region down to the twenty-fi rst
century; and Europeans would remain deeply involved in Middle Eastern wars and revolu-
tions long after their neocolonial mandates had given way to independent nation-states.
Signifi cance of the Paris Peace Settlement
The most general principle of the Paris settlement was to recognize the
right of national self-determination, at least in Europe. Each European peo-
ple or nation, as defi ned by language, was in principle set up with its own
sovereign and independent national state. Czechoslovakia, a special case,
National
self-determination
These four men represented the leading Allied powers at the Versailles peace conference in 1918: (from left to right) Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the United States. Neither the Germans nor the Russians were represented at Versailles. The decisions of the peace con- ference, including a war guilt clause that blamed Germany for the recent war, produced deep resentments among the excluded peoples. (Bettmann/Corbis)
86. The Peace of Paris, 1919
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0 200 300 miles100
CORSICA (France)
SARDINIA BALEARIC IS.
(Spain)
SICILY
ORKNEY IS. SCAPA FLOW
FAROE IS. (Denmark)
North Sea
Ba lti
c Se
a
Po R.
Rhine R
.
ATLANTIC OCEAN
Adriatic Sea
A ege
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
ARCTIC OCEAN
MALTA (Britain)
ICELAND (Denmark)
ITALY
AUSTRIA
GREECE
A LB
A N
IA
SERBIA BULGA
ROM
NORWAY SWEDEN
FINLAND
POLAND
TUNISIA (France)
G E R M A N Y WEIMAR REPUBLIC
DENMARK GREAT BRITAIN
NETHERLANDS
BELGIUM
F R A N C E SWITZERLAND
S P A I N
LUX.
ESTONIA
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
RUHR
SAAR GALICIA CZECHOSLOVAKIA
ALGERIA (France)MOROCCO
(France)
SPANISH MOROCCO
IRISH FREE STATE
ULSTER
Y U G O SL A V I A
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AR Y
B
EAST PRUS.
POLISH CORRIDOR
PORTUGAL
TRANSYLVANI
London
Paris
Versailles
Brussels
Florence
Trieste
Rome
At
Sofia
Belgrade Buchares
Budapest Vienna
Prague
LocarnoGeneva
Strasbourg
Frankfurt
Weimar
Copenhagen
Stockholm
Oslo
Memel
Warsaw
Amsterdam
Helsink
Madrid
Lisbon
Bilbao
Cadiz Gibraltar (Britain)
Tangier Algiers
Bordeaux
Seville
Dublin
Cologne
Riga
Marseille
Naples
Liverpool
Munich
Berlin
DanzigHamburg
Dresden
Stuttgart
Trent
Fiume
Zara (Italy)
Bres Litov
Vil
Kaunas
Revel
Reykjavík
Edinburgh
Barcelona
Metz
Narvik
Bremen
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731
EUROPE, 1923 The map shows European boundaries between the two World Wars after the Peace of Versailles and certain other agreements. Germany returned Alsace-Lorraine to France and lost the region around Danzig (the “Polish corridor”) to Poland. In place of the Austro-Hungarian Empire we fi nd the “succes- sion states”—Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Romania. Poland regained its independence, and Finland and the three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—emerged from the tsarist empire. Most of Ireland became a “free state” in the British Commonwealth of Nations, only Ulster remain- ing in the United Kingdom. These boundaries lasted until 1938, when Germany annexed Austria and the Sudeten part of Czechoslovakia.
Areas Lost by Germany
Areas Lost by Russia
Areas Lost by Ottoman Empire
Austria and Hungary plus Areas Lost by Austro-Hungarian Empire
CYPRUS (Britain)
DODCANESE IS. (Italy)
B l a c k S e a Da
nu be R
.
L. Onega
L. Ladoga
gean Sea
Tigris
R.
E uphrates R.
V o
lg a
R.
a
Caspian
Sea
CRETE (Greece)
CRIMEA
PALESTINE TRANS- JORDAN
LEBANON
GEORGIAN S.S.R.
AZERBAIJAN S.S.R.
ARMENIAN S.S.R.
UKRANIAN S.S.R.
BYELO- RUSSIAN
S.S.R.
SAUDI ARABIA
S O V I E T U N I O N
ARIA
MANIA
T U R K E Y
IRAN
IRAQ
SYRIA AND LEBANON
BESSA RA
B IA
BUKO VINA CAUCASIA
KAZAK S.S.R.
DOBRUJA
IA
(Turkey) Istanbul
Moscow
thens
st
ki
Kiev
Baghdad
Leningrad
Batum Baku
Sevastopol
Tabriz
Astrakhan
Smyrna
st- vsk
lna
Archangel
Mosul
Ankara
Orenburg
Samara
Sverdlovsk
Tsaritsyn
Volgoda
Tiflis
Saratov
Murmansk
86. The Peace of Paris, 1919
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Chapter 17 The First World War732
had two national components, as its originally hyphenated name Czecho-Slovakia made
clear. Nationalism triumphed as a culmination of the nineteenth-century belief that it went
along naturally with liberalism and democracy. It must be added that the peacemakers at
Paris had little choice in this matter, for the new states had already declared their indepen-
dence. Because in eastern Europe the nationalities were in many places intermixed, and
because the peacemakers did not contemplate the actual movement and exchange of popu-
lations to sort them out, each new state found alien minorities living within its borders or
could claim that people of its own kind still lived in neighboring states under foreign rule.
Hence minority problems and irredentism troubled eastern Europe, as they had before
1914. Eventually it was the complaint of Germans in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia
that they were an oppressed minority, together with the irredentist demand of Germany to
join these outlying Germans to the fatherland, that produced the Munich crisis preceding
the Second World War. The Germans thus became militant advocates for their own “rights
of national self-determination,” which the peacemakers themselves, in 1919, had estab-
lished as an essential principle of postwar European political boundaries.
The Treaty of Versailles was designed to put an end to the German
menace. It was not a successful treaty. The wisdom of the treaty has been
debated without end, but a few comments may safely be made. For practi-
cal purposes, with respect to Germany, the treaty was either too severe or
too lenient. It was too severe to conciliate, but not severe enough to destroy
German power. Possibly the victors should have dealt more moderately with the new Ger-
man republic, which professed their own ideals, as the monarchical victors over Napoleon,
in 1814, had dealt moderately with the France of the restored Bourbons, regarding it as a
regime akin to their own. As it was, the Allies imposed upon the German Republic about
the same terms that they might have imposed upon the German Empire. They innocently
played the game of Ludendorff and the German reactionaries; it was the Social Democrats
and liberals who bore the “shame” of Versailles. The Germans from the beginning showed
no real intention to live up to the treaty. On the other hand, the treaty was not suffi ciently
disabling to destroy Germany’s economic and political strength, which had in any case
become a central fact of modern European history. Barring a complete (and now impos-
sible) dismemberment of the unifi ed German state, there was no way for the Allies perma-
nently to reduce Germany’s power and infl uence in European or world affairs. Even the
degree of severity that the Versailles treaty incorporated soon proved to be more than the
Allies were willing to enforce.
The treaty makers at Paris in 1919, working hastily and still in the heat of war, under
pressure from press and propaganda in their own countries, drafted a set of terms that they
themselves did not in the long run wish to impose. As the years passed, many people in Allied
countries declared various provisions of the Versailles treaty to be unfair or unworkable. The
loss of faith by the Allies in their own treaty only made easier the task of those German agita-
tors who demanded its repudiation. The door was soon opened for Adolf Hitler. Even at the beginning the Allies showed doubts. Lloyd George, in the
last weeks before the signing, tardily called for certain amendments, though
in vain; for in 1919 British opinion shifted somewhat from fear of Germany
to the fear of Bolshevism, and already the idea of using Germany as a bul-
wark against communism was expressed. The Italians disliked the whole settlement from
the beginning; they observed that the spoils of Africa and the Middle East went only to
France and Great Britain. The Chinese were also deeply dissatisfi ed. The Russians, when
they reentered the international arena some years later, found a situation that they did not
The failure of
Versailles
Victors’ uneasiness
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733
like and had played no part in making. They objected to being faced with a cordon sani- taire from Finland to Romania and soon remembered that most of this territory had once belonged to the Russian Empire.
The United States never ratifi ed the Treaty of Versailles at all. A wave of isolationism
and disgust with Europe spread over the country; and this feeling, together with some
rational criticism of the terms and a good deal of party politics, caused the Senate to repu-
diate Wilson’s work. The Senate likewise refused to make any advance promises of mili-
tary intervention in a future war between Germany and France and hence also declined to
ratify the Anglo-French-American guarantee treaty on which Wilson had persuaded Clem-
enceau to rely. The French considered themselves duped, deprived both of the Rhineland
and of the Anglo-American guarantee. They raised more anguished cries over their insecu-
rity. This led them to try to hold Germany down while it was still weak, in turn raising
many further complications.
The League of Nations was established at Geneva. Its mere existence
marked a great step beyond the international anarchy before 1914. Wilson’s
vision did not die. But the United States never joined; Germany was not
admitted until 1926, nor was Russia until 1934. The League could handle
and dispatch only such business as the Great Powers were willing to allow. It was asso-
ciated with a West European ascendancy that no longer corresponded to the facts of the
world situation. Its covenant was part of the Versailles treaty, and many people in many
countries, on both sides in the late war, saw in it not so much a system for international
adjudication as a means for maintaining a new status quo in favor of Britain and France.
The First World War dealt a last blow to the ancient institutions of monarchy and
aristocratic feudalism. Thrones toppled in Turkey, in Russia, in Austria-Hungary, in the
German Empire and in the individual German states; and with the kings went the courtly
retainers and all the social preeminence and special advantage of the old landed aristocra-
cies. The war was indeed a victory for democracy, though a bitter one. It carried further
a transformative political and social process as old as the French and American revolu-
tions. But for the basic problems of modern civilization, industrialism and nationalism,
economic security and international stability, it gave no answer. And it left the major Euro-
pean nations much weaker than before to face the rising economic power of the United
States, the revolutionary government of the Soviet Union, and the emerging anticolonial
movements of Africa and Asia.
The League of
Nations
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
86. The Peace of Paris, 1919
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735
C h a p t e r 18 THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION AND
THE EMERGENCE OF
THE SOVIET UNION
The Russian Revolution became almost as important as the First World War in its infl uence on
later twentieth-century events and global confl icts.
Although the war of 1914–1918 was one of the
decisive, short-term causes of the revolution, the
far-reaching upheaval came also from numerous
other social and political problems in Russian
society—and the revolutionary ideas of the
Bolshevik Party attracted followers far beyond
Russia itself. The Russian Revolution of 1917 can
thus be compared in its historical magnitude with
the French Revolution of 1789. Both originated in
deep-lying and distant causes, and both made their
repercussions felt in many countries for many
years. The present chapter will examine the revolutionary process in Russia over half a
century. We begin with a brief overview of the old regime before 1900, pass through the
two revolutions of 1905 and 1917, and survey the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
down to 1939, at which time a new order had been consolidated under Joseph Stalin, a
form of “planned economy” had been realized, and the last of the original revolutionaries,
or Old Bolsheviks, either had been silenced or put to death.
The comparison of the Russian Revolution to the French is enlight-
ening in many ways. Both claimed to be movements of liberation—the
one against “feudalism” and “despotism”; the other against “capitalism”
and “imperialism.” Neither was a strictly national movement dealing with
merely domestic troubles; both claimed a universal historical signifi cance
and addressed their message to all the world. Both overthrew traditional monarchies,
passed through phases of increasing radicalism, and attracted followers in all countries.
French and Russian
revolutions
87. Backgrounds
88. The Revolution of 1905
89. The Revolution of 1917
90. The Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics
91. Stalin: The Five-Year Plans
and the Purges
92. The International Impact of
Communism, 1919–1939
Chapter emblem: Families of soldiers marching in St. Petersburg in 1917 to demand more rations for Russian
troops. (Sovfoto)
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union736
Both aroused a strong reaction on the part of those whose view of life was endangered.
And both showed the same pattern of revolutionary politics: a relative unity of opinion so
long as the problem was to overthrow the old regime, followed by disunity and confl ict
over the founding of the new, so that one set of revolutionaries eliminated others, until a
small, organized, and determined minority (Jacobin democrats in 1793; Bolshevik com-
munists in 1918) suppressed all opposition in order to defend or advance the revolutionary
cause; and in short order (within a matter of months in France; years in Russia), many of
the most intensely revolutionary leaders were themselves suppressed or liquidated.
The differences are equally deserving of notice. Relatively speaking, or compared by
many criteria with other European societies, Russia in 1900 was among the least advanced
countries and France in 1780 in many ways was in the lead. The main strength of the
French Revolution lay in the middle classes, who soon managed to prevail over more
extreme pressures. In the Russian Revolution middle-class people were also active, espe-
cially at fi rst, but they proved unable to cope with mass discontents and succumbed to a
more radical party that appealed to workers and peasants. In France the Revolution just
“happened,” so to speak, in that ordinary people from many walks of life unexpectedly
found themselves in a revolutionary situation, and even the Jacobin dictatorship was
improvised by individuals who had spent their lives thinking of other things. In Russia
professional revolutionaries worked for the revolution long in advance, and the dictator-
ship of the Bolsheviks realized the plans and preparations of 20 years.
In France the revolution was followed by a reaction in which émigrés returned, dis-
possessed classes reappeared in politics, and even the Bourbons were restored. The French
Revolution was followed by a century of uneasy compromise. The Russian Revolution
effectively wiped out its opposition; few émigrés returned; no Romanovs regained their
throne. The Russian Revolution was in this sense more immediately successful. But in
the long run other signifi cant differences reemerged. By the 1990s the ideas proclaimed
in Russia in 1917 were in ruins, while those proclaimed in France in 1789 were widely
accepted—representative constitutional government, equal civil rights under national sov-
ereignty, and legal safeguards for persons and property.
The repercussions of the Russian Revolution were felt widely around
the world because of Russia’s special position in global politics and eco-
nomic affairs. Since the days of Peter the Great and before, it had always
faced toward both Europe and Asia. It was European, yet it was also out-
side Europe and even opposed to it. If about 1900 it was the least developed of the major
European countries, it was at the same time one of the most developed, industrialized, or
modernized parts of the world outside the “inner zone” of European nations. Its revolution
could win sympathy on the left in Europe because it reinforced the old European social-
ist objections to capitalism. It aroused the interests of peoples in other continents because
it also denounced economic imperialism and the possession of colonies by Europeans,
affi rming that imperialism was merely the “highest stage” of capitalism and that both must
be overthrown together. The Soviet Union, once established, came to occupy an intermedi-
ate position between Europe and the colonial world (or what later came to be called the
Third World). In Europe and America it would long be feared or admired as the last word
in social revolution. In the colonial, or formerly colonial, world it suggested new begin-
nings, a new way to become modern without being capitalistic or Western, a step in a
worldwide rebellion against European supremacy. The Russian Revolution thus not only
produced communism and hence fascism in Europe but also added strength to the emerg-
ing anticolonial movements in Asia and elsewhere.
Repercussions of the
revolution in Russia
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73787. Backgrounds
Although professional revolutionaries worked for revolution in Russia, they did not
“cause” it. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not bring about the Russian Revolution. They
captured it after it had begun. They boarded the ship in midstream. The Russian Revolu-
tion, like all great revolutions, originated in a totality of previous history, in diverse local
causes, and in the prolonged dissatisfaction of many kinds of people.
87. BACKGROUNDS
Russia after 1881: Reaction and Progress
We have seen in earlier chapters how the tsarist autocracy arose, how it ruled as a machine
superimposed upon its subjects, how the upper class became westernized while the masses
sank further into serfdom, and how an intelligentsia developed, divorced both from the
work of government and the activities of the people. It has been explained in Chapter 13
how Alexander II freed the serfs in 1861 and created provincial and district councils or
zemstvos, elected mainly by landowners, which attended to such matters as roads, schools,
and hospitals.
In 1881 Alexander II was assassinated by members of the revolutionary group called
the People’s Will. His son, Alexander III (1881–1894), tried to stamp out revolutionism
and to silence even peaceable criticism of the government. Revolutionaries and terrorists
were driven into exile. The People’s Will as an organized group became
extinct. Jews were subjected to pogroms, by far the worst of any (until then)
in modern times. For the fi rst time the empire adopted a program of sys-
tematic Russifi cation. Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, the peoples of the
Caucasus, the scattered German communities, the Muslim groups in central
Asia—all faced the prospect of forcible assimilation to Russian culture. The philosopher
and chief offi cial of this movement was Pobiedonostsev, procurator of the Holy Synod, or
layman head, under the tsar, of the Russian Orthodox Church. Pobiedonostsev saw Europe
as something alien and doomed; and he dreamed of turning Holy Russia into a kind of
churchly community, in which a disciplined clergy should protect the faithful from insidi-
ous European infl uences.
This is not, however, what happened. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century
Russia became more than ever before a part of European civilization. Almost overnight it
presented Europe with great works of literature and music that Europeans could appreci-
ate. The nineteenth-century Russian novel became known throughout the Western world.
All could read the novels of Tolstoy (1828–1910) without a feeling of strangeness; and if
characters in the novels of Turgenev (1818–1883) and of Dostoevski (1821–1881) behaved
more strangely, the authors themselves were obviously within the great European cultural
family. The melodies of Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) and of Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908)
became familiar throughout Europe and America; if they sometimes seemed hauntingly
wild, distant, or sad, they still betrayed no more than the usual amount of national idiosyn-
crasy. Russians also contributed to the sciences, notably chemistry. They were known to
be especially talented in the more abstruse intellectual exercises, such as higher mathemat-
ics, physics, or chess.
Russia also, from the 1880s, began to pass through the Industrial Revolution and
take its place as an integral part of the world economic system. European capital entered
the country, fi nancing railways, mines, and factories (as well as government and the
army) until by 1914 Europeans had about the same amount invested in Russia as in the
Russifi cation in the
old regime
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union738
United States, some $4 billion in each case. In 1897, under the reforming
ministry of Count Witte, Russia adopted the gold standard, making its cur-
rency readily convertible with all others. In the quarter-century between
1888 and 1913 the Russian railway mileage more than doubled, the miles
of telegraph wires multiplied fi vefold, the number of post offi ces trebled, and the number
of letters carried by the mails multiplied seven times.
Although still industrially undeveloped by European standards, Russia was industri-
alizing rapidly. Exports rose in value from 400 million rubles in 1880 to 1.6 billion in
1913. Imports, though smaller, grew more rapidly, quintupling in the same period. They
consisted of such items as tea and coffee and of the machines and industrial goods made
in western Europe.
Industrialization, in Russia as in all countries, brought an increase both of the business
and of the wage-earning classes, or, in socialist terminology, of the bourgeoisie and of the
proletariat. Though growing, they were still not numerous by comparison to similar social
classes in the more industrialized nations. Factory workers, laboring for 11 or more hours
a day for low wages under hard conditions, were in somewhat the same position as in
England or France before 1850. Unions were illegal and strikes were prohibited. Neverthe-
less, great strikes in the 1890s called attention to the misery of the new industrial workers.
There was one distinctive feature to the Russian proletariat. Russian industry was heavily
concentrated; half of Russia’s industrial workers were employed in factories employing
over 500 persons. It was easier for workers under such circumstances to be organized eco-
nomically and at the proper time to be mobilized politically. As for the Russian business
and capitalist class, it was relatively the weaker because of several features in the situation.
Ownership of much of Russia’s new industrial plant was in foreign hands. Much was
owned by the tsarist government itself; Russia already had the largest state-operated eco-
nomic system in the world. Moreover, in Russia (unlike the United States at the time) the
government itself was a heavy borrower from Europe; hence it was less dependent fi nan-
cially on its own people and more able to maintain an absolutist regime.
Nevertheless, the rising business and professional classes, reinforced by enterprising
landowners, were strong enough to form a liberal segment of public opinion, which emerged
in 1905 as the Constitutional Democratic Party (or “Cadets”). Many of those
who were active in the provincial zemstvos also became Constitutional
Democrats. They were liberals, progressives, or constitutionalists in the
European sense, thinking less about the troubles of factory workers and peas-
ants than about the need for a nationally elected parliament to control the policies of state.
Russia remained predominantly agricultural. Its huge exports were mainly farm and
forest products. The peasants formed four-fi fths of the population. Free from their former
lords since 1861, they lived in village communes called mirs. In most communes much of the land was divided and redivided among peasant households by agreement of the
village community, nor could anyone leave without communal permission. The peasants
still carried a considerable burden. Until 1906 they paid redemption money arising from
the Emancipation of 1861, and even after that, other forms of onerous payments. They
also paid high taxes, for the government defrayed the interest on its foreign loans from
taxes raised at home. The constantly rising export of cereals (also used to pay off Russia’s
foreign debts) tended to keep food from the farmer’s table; many peasants raised the best
wheat for sale and ate black bread themselves. The farm population, in short (as in other
countries in similar stages of their development), bore a considerable share of the costs of
industrialization.
The “Cadets”
Industrialization
before 1914
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739
U n der such pressures, and because of their crude methods of cultiva-
tion, the peasants were forever demanding more land. “Land hunger” was
felt both by individual families and by the mirs. The Emancipation had
turned over roughly half the land to peasant ownership, individual and collective; and
in the following half-century the peasants added to their share by buying from nonpeas-
ant owners. The mirs were by no means obsolescent. They were in fact fl ourishing; they acquired far more land by purchase than did individual buyers, and perhaps half or more of
the peasants valued communal security above the uncertain pleasures of private property.
The exceptions were the minority of more enterprising and wealthier peasants, later called
the kulaks. These “big farmers” stood out conspicuously from the impoverished mass of
peasants, by whom they were often disliked.
The Emergence of Revolutionary Parties
The peasants were the ancient source of revolutionary disturbance in Russia. After the
Emancipation in 1861 they continued to believe that they had some kind of rights in all the land of former estates on which they had formerly been serfs—not merely in the portion
that had been allotted to peasant possession. They demanded (and obtained) credit from
the government to buy from the big landowners or former masters. Their land hunger
could not be appeased. They remained jealous of the landed aristocrat’s very existence. In
Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, the rural population was divided into two sharply distinct
classes—on the one hand, the peasants of all types who worked the soil, and on the other,
the gentry who resided upon it. The two never intermarried. They differed not merely eco-
nomically but in speech, dress, and manners, and even in the looks of their faces and
hands. But in the last three decades of the nineteenth century the Russian peasants were
notably quiet. Insurrectionism seemingly subsided.
The other traditional source of revolutionary disturbance lay among
the intelligentsia. Revolutionary intelligentsia (as distinguished from those
who were simply liberal or progressive) held a violent contempt for the
Russian Empire and yearned for a catastrophic overthrow of the tsardom. Since the days of
the Decembrists in 1825 they had formed secret organizations, comprising a few hundred
or thousands of members, engaged in outwitting the tsarist police, by whom they were
constantly interpenetrated. At a Bolshevik Party congress held in 1913, out of 22 delegates
present, no fewer than 5, unknown to the others, were government spies.
The revolutionary intelligentsia, because there was normally little that they could do,
spent their time in vehement discussion and interminable refi nement of doctrine. By 1890
the terrorism and nihilism of the 1870s were somewhat passé. The great question was
where these willing offi cers of a revolutionary movement could fi nd an army. Disputa-
tion turned upon such topics as whether the peasants or the new factory workers were the
true revolutionary class, whether the peasants were potentially proletarian or incurably
petty bourgeois, whether Russia was bound to experience the same historical process
as the other countries of Europe, or whether it was different; and, specifi cally, whether
Russia had to go through capitalism or might simply skip the capitalist stage in reaching
the socialist society.
Most of the revolutionary intelligentsia were “populists.” Some had once belonged
to the now broken People’s Will. Some continued to approve of terrorism and assassina-
tion as morally necessary in an autocratic country. They generally had a mystical faith in
the vast inchoate might of the Russian people, and because most R ussians were peasants,
The intelligentsia
Peasant demands
87. Backgrounds
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union740
the populists were interested in peasant problems and peasant welfare. They believed
that a great native revolutionary tradition existed in Russia, of which the peasant rebel-
lion of Pugachev, in 1773, was the chief example. The populists admired
the mir, in which they saw the European socialist idea of a “commune”
represented. They read and respected Marx and Engels (indeed, a populist
fi rst translated the Communist Manifesto into Russian); but they did not believe that an urban proletariat was the only true revolutionary class or that socialism
had to evolve historically out of capitalism. They said that in Russia the horrors of capi-
talism could be skipped. They addressed themselves to the plight of the farmer and the
evils of landlordism, favored strengthening the mir and equalizing the shares of all peas-
ants in it; and, because they did not believe that socialism would have to emerge from the
prior triumph of capitalism in Russia, they thought that revolution might come quite
soon. This populist sentiment crystallized in the founding in 1901 of the Social Revolu-
tionary Party.
Two populists, Plekhanov and Axelrod, fl eeing to Switzerland in the 1870s, founded
in exile the organization from which the Russian Social Democratic or Marxist Party was
to grow. A few Marxists began to declare themselves (though not publicly) in Russia itself.
When the youthful Lenin met his future wife N. K. Krupskaya in 1894, she already
Populism
Although new industries began to develop in Russia during the early twentieth century, most people continued to live and work in the countryside. This picture of peasants harvesting hay before the First World War shows that women performed much of the labor and that modern machinery had not yet reached Russian farms. (Library of Congress [LC-DIG-prokc-20224])
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741
belonged to a circle of self-defi ned Marxists. The fact that the peasants in the 1890s were
disappointingly quiescent while machine industry, factor labor, and strikes were develop-
ing rapidly turned many of the revolutionary intelligentsia, though still only
a minority, from populism to Marxism. To Plekhanov and Axelrod were
added, as young leaders, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924), Leon Trotsky
(1879–1940), Joseph V. Stalin (1879–1953), and others.
Of these it was Lenin who, after Marx, was to be claimed by commu-
nism as a theoretical father. Lenin was a short almost rotund man, with a
bounding quickness and intense, penetrating gaze. His hair receded in early
youth, leaving a massive forehead, behind which a restless mind was inex-
haustibly at work. Even in his 20s he was called the Old One. He was of upper-middle-
class origin, son of an inspector of schools who rose in the civilian bureaucracy to a rank
equivalent to major general. Lenin’s boyhood was comfortable and even happy, until the
age of 17, when his elder brother, a student at St. Petersburg, became somewhat inciden-
tally involved in a plot to assassinate Alexander III, for which he was put to death by order
of the tsar himself. Because of this blot on the family record it became impossible for Lenin
to continue with his law studies. He soon joined the ranks of professional revolutionar-
ies, having no other occupation and living precariously from the party funds, which came
mainly from the donations of well-to-do sympathizers.
Arrested as a revolutionary, he spent three years of exile in Siberia. Here the tsarist gov-
ernment treated educated political prisoners with an indulgence not later shown by the Soviet
regime. Lenin and most of the others lived in cottages of their own or boarded with local resi-
dents. No labor was required of them. They borrowed books from Europe; met and visited
with one another; debated, played chess, went hunting, and wrote. They chafed, however, at
being cut off from the mainstream of Russian political life back home. Lenin, his term over,
proceeded in 1900 to western Europe, where except for short secret trips to Russia he
remained until 1917. His intellectual vigor, irresistible drive, and shrewdness as a tactician
soon made him a force in the party. Genius has been called the faculty for everlasting concen-
tration upon one thing. Lenin, said his one-time close associate Axelrod, “for twenty-four
hours of the day is taken up with the revolution, has no thoughts but thoughts of revolution,
and even in his sleep dreams of nothing but revolution.” Such accounts of his intensely
focused activism suggest why and how Lenin would come to lead the Bolshevik Party.
In 1898 the Marxists in Russia, spurred on by émigrés, founded the Social Demo-
cratic Labor party. They were not more revolutionary than the larger group
of Social Revolutionaries. They simply had a different conception of the
revolution. First of all, as good Marxists, they were more inclined to see the
revolution as an international movement, part of the dialectical process of
world history in which all countries were involved. Russia for them was no
different from other countries except that is was less advanced. They expected the world
revolution to break out fi rst in the industrial societies of western Europe. They particularly
admired the German Social Democratic Party, the largest and most fl ourishing of all the
parties that acknowledged the fatherhood of Marx.
If the Social Democrats were more oriented to Europe than the Social Revolutionar-
ies, it was because so many of their spokesmen lived there in exile. They tended to think
that Russia must develop capitalism, an industrialist proletariat, and the modern form of
class struggle before there could be any revolution. Seeing in the urban proletariat the true
revolutionary class, they looked upon the peasantry with suspicion, ridiculed the mir, and
abhorred the Social Revolutionaries. Like Marx himself, the Russian Marxists disapproved
Marxism
Lenin
The Social
Democrats
87. Backgrounds
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union742
of sporadic terrorism and assassination. For this reason, and because their doctrine seemed
somewhat academic and their revolution seemed rather conditional and far in the future,
the Marxists were for a time actually favored by the tsarist police, who regarded them as
less dangerous than the Social Revolutionaries.
Split in the Social Democrats: Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
The Russian Marxists held a second party congress in Brussels and London in 1903,
attended by émigrés like Lenin and delegates from the underground in Russia, and by
Social Democrats and members of lesser organizations. The purpose of the congress was
to unify all Russian Marxism, but in fact it split it forever. The two resulting factions called
themselves Bolshevik, or majority, and Menshevik, or minority. Lenin was the main author
of the split and hence the founder of Bolshevism. Although after 1903 it was usually
the Mensheviks who had the majority, Lenin clung proudly and stubbornly to the term
Bolshevism, with its favorable connotation of a majority in his support. For a number of
years after 1903 the Social Democrats remained at least formally a single Marxist Party,
but they were now irreconcilably divided into two wings. In 1912 the Bolshevik wing
organized itself as a separate party.
Bolshevism, or Leninism, originally differed from Menshevism
mainly on matters of organization and tactics. Lenin believed that the party
should be a small revolutionary elite, a hard core of reliable and zealous
workers. Those who favored a larger and more open party, with member-
ship for mere sympathizers, became Mensheviks. Lenin insisted upon a strongly central-
ized party, without autonomy for national or other component groups. He demanded
strong authority at the top, by which the central committee would determine the doctrine
and control personnel at all levels of the organization. The Mensheviks favored a greater
degree of infl uence by the membership as a whole. Lenin thought that the party would
strengthen itself by purges, expelling all who developed deviations of opinion. The
Mensheviks, by contrast, came to recommend cooperation with liberals, progressives, and
bourgeois democrats. Lenin regarded such cooperation as purely tactical and temporary,
never concealing that in the end the Bolsheviks must impose their views through a dicta-
torship of the proletariat. The Mensheviks, in short, came to resemble the Marxists of
western Europe, insofar as that was possible under Russian conditions. Lenin stood for
the rigid reaffi rmation of Marxian fundamentals—dialectical materialism and irreconcil-
able class struggle.
Lenin accepted and added little to Marx’s main governing ideas: that capitalism
exploited the workers; that history was shaped by economic forces and was moving toward
socialism; that class struggle was the law of society; and that existing forms of religion,
government, philosophy, and morals were weapons of the ruling class. He did, however,
develop certain theories of imperialism and of the “uneven development of capitalism”
that had been propounded in only general terms by Marx and Engels.
According to this Leninist elaboration of earlier Marxist theory, “imperial-
ism” was exclusively a product of monopoly capitalism, that is, capitalism
in its “highest” and “fi nal” stage, which develops differently and at differ-
ent times in each country. Monopoly capitalism, as Lenin interpreted it,
was bent on exporting surplus capital and investing it in underdeveloped areas for greater
profi ts. The unceasing drive for colonies and markets in a world already almost completely
partitioned was leading inevitably to international imperialist wars for the redistribution of
Leninism
Imperialism and
development
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743
colonies, as well as to intensifi ed national colonial struggles for independence; both would
provide new revolutionary opportunities for the proletariat.
In other respects, Lenin roundly denounced all who attempted to “add” anything to the
fundamental principles of Marx. Nothing infuriated him so much as revisionist efforts to tone
down the class struggle or hints that Marxism might in the last analysis perhaps fi nd room
for some kind of religion. As he wrote in 1908: “From the philosophy of Marxism, cast of
one piece of steel, it is impossible to expunge a single basic premise, a single essential part,
without deviating from objective truth, without falling into the arms of bourgeois-reactionary
falsehood.” Lenin was a convert who viewed Marxism as a coherent system of historical
truth. He found in it a theory of revolution that he accepted without reservation as scientifi c
and on which he was more outspokenly dogmatic even than Marx himself. His powers
of mind, which were great, were spent in demonstrating how the unfolding events of the
twentieth century confi rmed the analysis of the master.
Although Leninism contributed little to Marxism as a theory of history, it contributed
a great deal to it as a political movement. Lenin was an activist. He was
the supreme agitator, a fi eld commander in the class war who could dash
off a polemical pamphlet, dominate a party congress, or address throngs of
workers with equal ease. Beside him, Marx and Engels seem almost to be
reclusive sociologists. Marx and Engels had preferred to believe that the dictatorship of the
proletariat, when it came, would represent the wishes of the great majority in a society in
which most people had become proletarians. Lenin more frankly foresaw the possibility
that the proletarian dictatorship might represent the conscious wishes of a small vanguard
and might have to impose itself on great masses by an unshrinking use of force.
Above all, Lenin developed Marx’s idea of the role of the party. He drew on the rich
experience of pre-Marxist revolutionaries in Russia—the mysterious use of false names,
Lenin as activist
Lenin built the Russian Bolshevik Party into a disciplined revolutionary movement by insisting that a small, centralized elite should make all of the party’s key strategic decisions. When the opportunity for revolutionary action fi nally arrived during the First World War, the Bolsheviks had an effective, centralized political organization, a well-defi ned Marxist conception of class confl ict, and the strong-willed leadership of Lenin—who is shown here addressing a crowd in the spring of 1920. (AFP/Getty Images)
87. Backgrounds
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union744
invisible ink, secret ciphers, forged passports, and hidden meeting places—
the whole conspiratorial wonderland that, when it existed to a lesser degree
in western Europe before 1848, drew Marx’s scorn and laughter. Lenin’s
conception of the party was basically Marx’s, reinforced by his own experience as a
Russian. The party was an organization in which intellectuals provided leadership and
understanding for workers, who could not see so clearly for themselves. For trade unionism,
concerned only with the day-to-day demands of workers, Lenin had even less patience than
Marx. “The unconscious growth of the labor movement,” he wrote, “takes the form of trade
unionism, and trade unionism signifi es the mental enslavement of the workers to the bour-
geoisie.” The task of intellectuals in the party was to make the trade unions and the work-
ers class-conscious and hence revolutionary. Armed with “objective” knowledge, known
to be correct, the party leadership naturally could not listen to the subjective opinions of
others—the passing ideas of laborers, peasants, mistaken party subordinates, or other
parties pretending to know more than Marx himself. The idea that intellectuals supply
the brains and workers the brawn, that an elite leads while the toilers meekly follow, is
understandable enough in view of the Russian background, which had created on the one
hand a highly self-conscious intelligentsia and on the other a repressed working class and
peasantry deprived of all opportunity for political experience of their own. The insistence
on a leading and powerful role for the party elite became one of the most distinctive traits
of Leninism and one of the ideas most foreign to the democratic movements in other parts
of Europe.
Leninism accomplished the marriage of Russian revolutionary traditions with the
Western doctrine of Marxism. It was an improbable marriage, whose momentous offspring
was to be communism. But at the time, when Bolshevism fi rst appeared in 1903, it had
little or no effect. When revolution fi rst broke out in Russia in 1905, it took the revolution-
ary émigrés almost entirely by surprise.
88. THE REVOLUTION OF 1905
Background and Revolutionary Events
The almost simultaneous founding at the turn of the century of the Constitutional Demo-
cratic, Social Revolutionary, and Social Democratic parties was clearly a sign of mounting
discontent. All three parties were essentially propaganda agencies, made up of leaders
without followers, intellectuals who followed various lines of thought. All, even those
who became Constitutional Democrats, were watched by the police and obliged to do most
of their work underground. At the same time, after 1900, there were signs
of growing popular unrest. Peasants were trespassing on lands of the gen-
try and even rising in local insurrections against landlords and tax collec-
tors. Factory workers sporadically refused to work. But with these popular
movements none of the new parties had formed any solid links, in part because there were
still no elections in Russia above the provincial zemstvo level.
The government refused to make concessions of any kind. The tsar, Nicholas II, who
had mounted the throne in 1894, was a man of narrow outlook. Tutored in his youth by
the lay leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, he regarded all ideas questioning autoc-
racy, Orthodoxy, and Great Russian nationalism as un-Russian. That persons in the gov-
ernment should be controlled by interests outside the government—the mildest liberalism
Growing discontent
The party
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74588. The Revolution of 1905
or most orderly democracy—seemed to the tsar, the tsarina, and the leading offi cials to be
a monstrous aberration. Autocracy, for them, was the best and only form of government
for Russia.
The chief minister, P lehve, and the circles at court hoped that a short successful war
with Japan would create more attachment to the government. The war went so badly that
its effect was the reverse. Critics of the regime (except for the handful of
the most internationalist Marxists) were suffi ciently patriotic to be ashamed
at the ease with which Russia was defeated by an upstart, Asian power. As
after the Crimean War, there was a general feeling that the government had
exposed its incompetence to all the world. Liberals believed that its secret
methods, its immunity to criticism or control, had made it sluggish, obstinate, and ineffi -
cient, unable either to win a war or to lead the economic modernization that was taking
place in Russia. But there was little that the liberals could do.
The police had recently allowed a priest, Father Gapon, to try to organize the
St. Petersburg factory workers, hoping thus to counter the propaganda of revolutionaries.
Father Gapon took up the workers’ grievances in all seriousness. They believed, as unedu-
cated peasants only recently transplanted to the city, that if only they could reach the ear of
the tsar, whom they called the Little Father, he would hear their complaints with shocked
surprise and rectify the evils that affl icted Russia. They drew up a petition, asking for an
eight-hour day, a minimum daily wage of 1 ruble (50 cents), a repudiation of bungling
bureaucrats, and a democratically elected Constituent Assembly to introduce representa-
tive government into the empire. Unarmed, peaceable, respectful, singing “God save the
Tsar,” a crowd of 200,000—men, women, and children—gathered before the tsar’s Winter
Palace one Sunday in January 1905. But the tsar was not in the city, and his offi cials were
fearful. Troops marched up and shot down the demonstrators in cold blood, killing
several hundred.
“Bloody Sunday” in St. Petersburg snapped the moral bond upon
which all stable government rests. The horrifi ed workers saw that the tsar
was not their friend. The autocracy stood revealed as the force behind
the hated offi cials, the tax collectors, the landlords, and the owners of the
industrial plants. A wave of political strikes broke out. Social Democrats
(more Mensheviks than Bolsheviks) appeared from the underground or from exile to give
revolutionary direction to these movements. Councils or “soviets” of workers were formed
in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The peasants, too, in many parts of the country spontane-
ously began to erupt, overrunning the lands of the gentry, burning manor houses and doing
violence to their owners. Social Revolutionaries saw opportunities for a radical political
upheaval and tried to take over this movement. The liberal Constitutional Democrats—
professors, engineers, business people, lawyers, and leaders in the provincial zemstvos
founded 40 years before—tried also to seize leadership or at least use the crisis to force
the government’s hand. All agreed on one demand: that there should be more democratic
representation in the government.
The tsar yielded grudgingly and as little as possible. In March 1905 he promised to
call to offi ce men “enjoying the confi dence of the nation.” In August (after a ruinous defeat
in the naval battle of Tsushima) he agreed to call a kind of Estates General, for which peas-
ants, landowners, and city people should vote as separate classes. Still the revolution raged
unchecked. The St. Petersburg Soviet, or workers’ council, led mainly by Mensheviks
(Lenin had not yet reached Russia), declared a great general strike in October. Railroads
stopped, banks closed, newspapers ceased to appear, and even lawyers refused to go to
Response to military
defeat
Reactions to “Bloody
Sunday”
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union746
their offi ces. The strike spread to other cities and to the peasants. With the government
paralyzed, the tsar issued his October Manifesto. It promised a constitution, civil liberties,
and a Duma to be elected by all classes alike, with powers to enact laws and control the
administration.
The tsar and his advisers intended to divide the opposition by releas-
ing the O ctober Manifesto, and in this they succeeded. The Constitutional
Democrats, with a Duma promised, allowed themselves to hope that social
problems could henceforth be dealt with by parliamentary methods. Lib-
erals were now afraid of revolutionaries, industrialists feared the strength
shown by labor in the general strike, and landowners demanded a restoration of order
among the peasants. The more militant peasants and workers, however, were not yet satis-
fi ed: the former still wanted more land and less taxation; the latter, a shorter working day
and a living wage. The several branches of revolutionary intellectuals worked upon the
continuing popular agitation, hoping to carry matters forward until the tsarist monarchy
was abolished and a socialist republic was established with themselves at its head. They
believed also (and correctly) that the October Manifesto was in any case a deception, which
the tsar would refuse to implement as soon as revolutionary pressure was removed. The
soviets continued to seethe, local strikes went on, and there were mutinies among soldiers
at Kronstadt and sailors in the Black Sea fl eet.
But the government was able to maintain itself. With the middle-class liberals now
inactive or demanding order, the authorities arrested the members of the St. Petersburg
Soviet. Peace was hastily made with Japan, and reliable troops were recalled from the Far
The October
Manifesto
The angry response to “Bloody Sunday” in early 1905 erupted in a wave of strikes, demands for political reform, and militant demonstrations, including this protest march in St. Petersburg. Most of the protestors in this photograph were students, and they were marching behind red fl ags that had become a modern symbol for revolutionary political movements. (Sovfoto)
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747
East. The revolutionary leaders fl ed back to Europe, or again went underground, or were
caught and sent to prison or to Siberia; executions were carried out in the countryside.
The Revolution of 1905 would prove to be only a dress rehearsal for the revolution to
come in 1917.
The Results of 1905: The Duma
The chief apparent result of the Revolution of 1905 was to make Russia, at least osten-
sibly, into a parliamentary type of state like the rest of Europe. The promised Duma was
convoked. For ten years, from 1906 to 1916, Russia had at least the superfi cial attributes of
a semiconstitutional monarchy.
But Nicholas II soon showed that he did not intend to yield much. He drew the teeth
of the new Duma before the assembly could even be born, by announcing in advance, in
1906, that it would have no power over foreign policy, the budget, or government person-
nel. His attitude toward constitutional monarchy continued until 1917 to be entirely neg-
ative; the one concession that tsarism would not allow was any real participation in
government by the public. Within this “public” the two extreme fringes were equally
impervious to liberal constitutionalism. On the Right, stubborn upholders of pure autoc-
racy and the Orthodox Church organized the Black Hundreds, terrorizing the peasantry
and urging them to boycott the Duma. On the Left, in 1906, the Social Revolutionaries
and both the Bolshevik and Menshevik wings of the Social Democrats likewise refused
to recognize the Duma, urged workers to boycott it, and refused to put up any candidates
for election.
The short-lived fi rst Duma was elected in 1906 by a system of indirect
and unequal voting, in which peasants and workers voted as separate
classes, and with proportionately far less representation than was granted to
the landlords. In the absence of socialist candidates, workers and peasants voted for all
sorts of people, including the liberal Constitutional Democrats (the Cadets), who obtained
a sweeping majority. The Cadets, when the Duma met, found themselves still fi ghting for
the bare principle of constitutional government. They demanded true universal male suf-
frage and the responsibility of ministers to a parliamentary majority. The tsar’s response
was to dismiss the Duma after two months.
A second Duma was elected in 1907, with the government trying to
control the elections through suppression of party meetings and newspa-
pers, but because Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks now consented to
take part, some 83 socialists were elected. The Cadets, becoming fearful of the revolution-
ary Left, concluded that constitutional progress must be gradual and showed a willingness
to cooperate with the government. But the Duma came to an abrupt end when the govern-
ment denounced and arrested some 50 socialists as revolutionaries bent only on destruc-
tion. A third Duma, elected after an electoral change that gave increased representation
to the landed propertied class and guaranteed a conservative majority, managed to hold
several sessions between 1907 and 1912, as did a fourth Duma from 1912 to 1916. The
deputies, by following the lead of the government, by addressing themselves only to con-
crete issues, by losing themselves in committee work, and by avoiding the basic question
of where supreme power lay, kept precariously alive a modicum of parliamentary institu-
tions in the tsarist empire.
The fi rst Duma
The second Duma
88. The Revolution of 1905
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union748
The Stolypin Reforms
Some offi cials believed that the way to checkmate the revolutionaries and strengthen the
hold of the monarchy was for the government, while keeping all controls in its own hands,
to attract the support of moderate people by a program of reforms. One of these reformers
was Peter Stolypin, whom the tsar retained as his principal minister from 1906 to 1911. It
was Stolypin who dissolved the fi rst two Dumas. But it was not his policy merely to stand
still. His aim was to build up the propertied classes as friends of the state. He believed,
perhaps rightly, that a state actively supported by widespread private property had little to
fear from doctrinaire intellectuals, conspirators, and émigrés. He therefore broadened the
powers of the provincial zemstvos, in which the larger landowners took part in administer-
ing local affairs. For the peasantry he put through legislation more sweeping than any since
the Emancipation, allowing peasants to sell their shares in the communal land of the mirs
and leave their villages. Peasants also gained the right to acquire private control over land
and to buy property from the communes or the gentry.
The Stolypin policy was successful. Between 1907 and 1916,
6.2 million families out of 16 million who were eligible applied for legal
separation from the mir. There was no mistaking the trend toward individual
property and independent farming. But the results of the Stolypin program
must not be exaggerated. The mir was far from broken. A vast majority of
peasants were still involved in the old system of common rights and communal restric-
tions. The land shortage was still acute in the agricultural areas where yields were highest.
Land hunger and poverty continued in the countryside. There were the new big farmers—
the kulaks —to be resented and envied, but the largest landed proprietors were still the gentry. About 30,000 landlords owned nearly 200 million acres of land, and another 200
million acres made up other large landed estates.
Stolypin was not left long to carry on his program. The tsar gave him only an unwill-
ing support. Reactionary circles disliked his tampering ways and his European orientation.
Social Revolutionaries cried out against dissolution of the communes. Even Marxists, who
should in theory have applauded the advance of capitalism in Russia, feared that Stolypin’s
reforms might do away with agrarian discontent. “I do not expect to live to see the revolu-
tion,” said Lenin in these years. Stolypin was shot dead while attending the theater in Kiev,
in the presence of the tsar and tsarina, in 1911. The assassin, a member of the terrorist wing
of the Social Revolutionaries, is thought also to have been a secret agent of the reactionary
tsarist police. It may be added that Stolypin’s predecessor, Plehve, and about a dozen other
high offi cials within the past few years had similarly died at the hands of assassins.
But all in all, despite its violence and repression, the Russian Empire
on the eve of the First World War was moving toward the kinds of political
and social institutions that had developed earlier in the more industrialized
societies of western Europe. Its industries were growing, its railways were
expanding, and its exports were almost half as great in value as those of the United States.
It had a parliament, if not a parliamentary government. Private property and individualist
capitalism were spreading to new social layers of the population. There was a guarded
freedom of the press, illustrated, for example, by the legal and open establishment of the
Bolshevik Party paper, Pravda (or Truth ), in St. Petersburg in 1912. It is not possible to say how far this development might have gone, for it was menaced on both the Right and
the Left by obstinate reactionaries upholding the absolute tsardom and by revolutionar-
ies whom nothing but the end of tsardom and wholesale transformation of society could
Success of the
Stolypin program
Westernization
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74989. The Revolution of 1917
appease. But both extremes were discouraged. The desperation of extreme reactionaries in
the government, the feeling that they might in any case soon lose their position, perhaps
made them the more willing to precipitate a European war by armed support of Serbian
nationalists. As for the revolutionary parties, and especially the Bolsheviks, they were los-
ing in membership on the eve of the war; their leaders lived year after year in exile, dream-
ing of the great days of 1905, which stubbornly failed to repeat themselves and sometimes
pessimistically admitting, as Lenin did, that there might be no revolution in their time.
89. THE REVOLUTION OF 1917
End of the Tsardom: The Revolution of March 1917
War again put the tsarist regime to a test that it could not meet. In this war, more total than any
had ever been, willing cooperation between government and people was indispensable to suc-
cess. This essential prerequisite the tsarist empire did not have. National minorities—Poles,
Ukrainians, the peoples of the Caucasus, Jews, and others—were disaffected. As for the
socialists, who in every other European parliament voted for funds to fi nance the war, the
dozen otherwise disunited socialists in the Duma refused to do so and were promptly jailed.
The ordinary worker and peasant marched off with the army, but without the sense of per-
sonal conviction felt in 1914 by common people in other European nations. More decisive
was the attitude of the middle class. Because they patriotically wished Russia to win, the glar-
ing mismanagement of the government was the more intolerable to them. The Russian disas-
ters at the battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes, with which the war opened in 1914,
were followed by the advance of the Central Powers into Russia in 1915, at the cost of
2 million Russian soldiers killed, wounded, or captured.
At the war’s outbreak middle-class people, as in all countries, offered
their assistance to the government. The provincial zemstvos formed a union
of all zemstvos in the empire to facilitate the mobilization of agriculture
and industry. Business groups at Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was renamed during the war)
formed a commercial and industrial committee to get the factories into maximum pro-
duction. The government distrusted these signs of public activity arising outside offi cial
circles. On the other hand, organized in this way, middle-class people became conscious of
their own strength and more critical of the bureaucracy. Rumors spread that some offi cials
in the war ministry itself were pro-German, reactionaries who feared the liberalism of
Britain and France with which Russia was allied.
Life at court was increasingly bizarre. The tsarina Alexandra, German by origin,
looked upon all Russians outside her own circle with contempt, incited her husband to play
the proud and pitiless autocrat, and took advice from a self-appointed holy man, the mys-
terious Rasputin. She was convinced that Rasputin possessed supernatural and prophetic
powers, because he had apparently cured her young son of hemophilia. Rasputin, by his
infl uence over her, had a voice in appointments to high offi ce. All who wished an audi-
ence with the imperial pair had to go through him. Patriotic and enlightened persons of all
classes vainly protested. In these circumstances, and given the military defeats, the union
of zemstvos and other such wartime bodies complained not merely of faults of adminis-
tration but of fundamental conditions in the state. The government responded by holding
them at arm’s length. The tsarist regime, caught in a total war, was afraid of the help
offered by its own people.
Middle-class support
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union750
During the war, in September 1915, the Duma was suspended. The war
thus revived all the basic political issues that had been latent since the Rev-
olution of 1905. The union of zemstvos demanded restoration of the Duma,
which reassembled in November 1916 and expressed loud indignation at
the way affairs were conducted. Among all elements of the population, dissatisfaction
with the course of the war and with the government’s ineptitude mounted. In December
Tsar Nicholas II, the last of the Romanov rulers in Russia, sought to wage war against Germany without mobilizing the popular support of the Russian people. This photograph shows the tsar with his wife and children during the fi rst year of the war. Nicholas abdicated the throne in March 1917, and the Bolsheviks put the entire family to death in the following year. (akg-images/Newscom)
The mystical monk Rasputin gained a much-resented infl uence over tsarina Alexandra and the affairs of the Russian government because he seemed to cure the illness of the royal family’s young son. Rasputin’s mysterious personality is evoked in this picture, which was taken shortly before his enemies at court mur- dered him in 1916. (Musée des 2 Guerres Mondiales Paris/Gianni
Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)
Deepening of political
divisions
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Rasputin was assassinated by nobles at the court. The tsar began to consider repression and
again adjourned the Duma. Members of the Duma and of the new extragovernmental bod-
ies concluded that the situation could be saved only by force. It is when moderate persons,
normally concerned with their own business, come to such conclusions that revolution
becomes a political possibility. The shift of moderates and liberals, their need of a coup
d’état to save themselves from reactionaries, likewise raised the long-awaited prospects of
the minority of professional revolutionaries.
Again it was the workers of Petrograd who precipitated the crisis. Food had become
scarce, as in all the belligerent countries. But the tsarist administration was too clumsy and
too demoralized by graft to institute the controls that had become usual elsewhere, such
as maximum prices and ration cards. It was the poorest who felt the food shortage most
keenly. On March 8, 1917, food riots broke out, which soon developed, doubtless with
the help of revolutionary intellectuals, into political insurrection. Crowds shouted, “Down
with the tsar!” Troops within the city refused to fi re on the insurgents; mutiny and insub-
ordination spread from unit to unit. Within a few days a Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’
Deputies, on the model of 1905, had been organized in Petrograd.
Middle-class leaders, with the government now helpless, demanded dismissal of
the ministry and formation of a new one commanding the confi dence of a majority of the
Duma. The tsar retaliated by again disbanding the Duma. The Duma set up an executive
committee to take charge until the situation clarifi ed. There were now two new authorities
in the city: one, the Duma committee, essentially moderate, constitutionalist, and relatively
legal; the other, the Petrograd Soviet, representing revolutionary forces aris-
ing by spontaneous upsurge from below. The Petrograd Soviet (or workers’
“council”) was to play in 1917 a role like that of the Paris Commune of
1792, constantly pushing the supposedly higher and more nationwide
authority to the left. The Soviet became the public auditorium and administrative center of
the working-class upheaval. Because it was generally socialist in its outlook, all the fac-
tions of doctrinaire socialists—Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks—tried to
win it over and utilize it for their own ends.
The Duma committee, under pressure from the Petrograd Soviet, on March 14 set up
a provisional government under Prince Lvov. The Duma liberals, as a concession to the
Soviet, admitted one socialist to the new government, Alexander Kerensky, a moderate,
legal-minded Social Revolutionary; and they furthermore consented to demand the abdi-
cation of Nicholas II. The tsar was then at the front. He tried to return to his palace near
Petrograd, but the imperial train was stopped and turned back by troops. The army, fate-
fully, was taking the side of the revolution. The very generals in the fi eld, unable to vouch
for the loyalty of their men, advised abdication. Nicholas yielded; his brother, the grand
duke, declined to succeed him; and on March 17, 1917, Russia became a republic.
The Bolshevik Revolution: November 1917
The provisional government, following the best precedents of European revolutions,
called for elections by universal male suffrage to a Constituent Assembly, which was to
meet late in the year and prepare a constitution for the new regime. It tried also to continue
the war against Germany. In July an offensive was mounted, but the demoralized Russian
armies were quickly routed. Pending fi nal decision by the Constituent Assembly, the
provisional government promised wholesale redistribution of land to the peasants but took
no action. Meanwhile, the peasants, driven by the old land hunger, were already
The Petrograd Soviet
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union752
overrunning the rural districts, burning and looting. At the front the armies melted away;
many high offi cers refused to serve the republic, and masses of peasant soldiers simply
turned their backs and went home, unwilling to be absent while land was being handed
out. The Petrograd Soviet, opposing the provisional government, called for speedy termi-
nation of the war. Fearing reactionary offi cers, it issued on March 14 its Order No. 1,
entrusting command within the army to committees elected by both offi cers and soldiers.
Discipline collapsed.
The revolution was thus already well advanced when Lenin and
the other Bolsheviks arrived in Petrograd in the middle of April. They
immediately took sides with the Petrograd Soviet against the provisional
government, and with similar soviets that had sprung up in other parts of
the country. In July an armed uprising of soldiers and sailors, which the
Bolshevik central committee disapproved of as premature, was put down. The Bolsheviks
were blamed, and Lenin had to fl ee to Finland. But as a bid for popular support the provi-
sional government named the socialist Alexander Kerensky as its head in place of Prince
Revolution
advancing
Russia’s costly military defeats and the food shortages that developed because of the long war contributed decisively to the revolutionary uprising that overthrew Tsar Nicholas II. Similar discontents soon undermined popular support for the provisional government, which tried to continue the war. These women in Petrograd were demanding increased food rations for Russian soldiers, but their demonstration in 1917 is an example of the wider political mobiliza- tion that swept across Russia during that revolutionary year. (Sovfoto)
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753
Lvov in an uneasy coalition of moderate socialists and liberals. Kerensky’s middle position
was next threatened from the Right. The newly appointed military commander, General
Kornilov, dispatched a force of cavalry to restore order. Not only conservatives but liberals
wished him success in the hope that he would suppress the soviets. Kornilov’s movement
was defeated, but with the aid of the Bolsheviks, who rallied with other socialists, and of
revolutionary-minded soldiers in the city who offered armed resistance. Radicals denounced
liberals as accomplices in Kornilov’s attempt at counterrevolution, and both camps blamed
Kerensky for having allowed the plot to be hatched under his government. Both liberals
and moderate socialists abandoned Kerensky, and he had to form a government of uncer-
tain political support. Meanwhile the food shortage worsened with transport disarranged
and the farm population in turmoil, so that workers in the city listened more willingly to the
most extreme speakers.
The Bolsheviks adapted their program to what the most active elements in a revolu-
tionary people seemed to want. Lenin concentrated on four points: fi rst, immediate peace
with the Central Powers; second, redistribution of land to the peasants; third, transfer of
factories, mines, and other industrial plants from the capitalists to committees of workers
in each plant; and, fourth, recognition of the soviets as the supreme power instead of the
provisional government. Lenin, though a rigid dogmatist on abstract questions, was a fl ex-
ible and bold tactician, and his program in 1917 was dictated more by the immediate situ-
ation in Russia than by considerations of theoretic a l Marxism. What was needed was to
win over soldiers, peasants, and workers by promising them “peace, land, and bread.”
With this program, and by infi ltration and parliamentary stratagems, as well as by their
accuracy as political prophets—predicting the Kornilov counterrevolution and “unmask-
ing” the trend of middle-way liberals to support it—the Bolsheviks won a majority in the
Petrograd Soviet and in soviets all over the country.
Lenin thereupon raised the cry, “All power to the Soviets!” to crush
Kerensky and forestall the coming Constituent Assembly. Kerensky, to
broaden the base on which he stood, and unable to wait for the Constituent
Assembly, convoked a kind of pre-parliament representing all parties, labor
unions, and zemstvos. Lenin and the Bolsheviks boycotted his pre-parliament. Instead they
called an all-Russian Congress of Soviets.
Lenin now judged that the hour had come for the seizure of power. The Bolsheviks
themselves were divided, but Lenin was backed by Trotsky, Stalin, and a majority of the
party Central Committee. Troops garrisoned in Petrograd voted to support the soviets,
which the Bolsheviks now controlled. On the night of November 6–7, 1917, the Bolsheviks
took over telephone exchanges, railway stations, and electric power plants in the city. A
warship turned its guns on the Winter Palace, where Kerensky’s government sat. The latter
could fi nd almost no one to defend it. The hastily assembled Congress of Soviets pro-
nounced the provisional government defunct and named in its place a Council of People’s
Commissars, of which Lenin became the head. Trotsky was named commissar for foreign
affairs; Stalin, commissar for nationalities. Kerensky fl ed, eventually arriving in the United
States, where he died in 1970.
At the Congress of Soviets Lenin introduced two resolutions. One
called upon the belligerent governments to negotiate a “just democratic
peace,” without annexations and without indemnities; the second “abolished
all landlord property” immediately and without compensation. Although
determined to establish a proletarian dictatorship, the Bolsheviks knew the importance of
the Russian peasants. The millions of acres belonging to the large estates that were now
“All power to the
Soviets!”
Resolutions on peace
and property
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union754
expropriated provided a base of peasant support for the new regime without which it could
hardly have survived.
Thus was accomplished the Bolshevik or November Revolution. 1 But the long awaited
Constituent Assembly remained to be dealt with. It fi nally met in January 1918. Thirty-six
million persons had voted for it. Of these, 9 million had voted for Bolshevik deputies,
showing that the Bolshevik program, launched less than a year before by a small band of
émigrés, had a widespread mass appeal. But almost 21 million had voted for Kerensky’s
party, the agrarian, populist, peasant-oriented Social Revolutionaries. However, said Lenin,
“to hand over power to the Constituent Assembly would again be compromising with the
malignant bourgeoisie.” The Assembly was broken up on the second day of its sessions;
armed sailors dispatched by the people’s commissars simply surrounded it. The forcible
dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was a frank repudiation of majority rule in favor
of “class rule”—to be exercised for the proletariat by the Bolsheviks. The dictatorship
of the proletariat was now established. Two months later, in March 1918, the Bolsheviks
renamed themselves the Communist Party.
The New Regime: The Civil War, 1918–1922
In these same months, the Communists, or Bolsheviks, signed the peace of Brest-Litovsk
with Germany, surrendering to Germany control over the Baltic provinces, Poland, and
Ukraine. The Russian conquests of two centuries were thus abandoned, but to Lenin it
made no difference. He was convinced that the events that he had just mastered in Russia
were the prelude to a general upheaval; that the war, still raging in Europe, would bring
all of the belligerent nations to the inevitable proletarian or Marxist revolution; that Impe-
rial Germany was therefore doomed; and that Poles, Ukrainians, and others would soon
emerge, like the Germans themselves, as free socialist peoples. In any case, it was largely
by promising peace that Lenin had won enough backing to overthrow Kerensky, who on
this deep popular demand had delayed too long, waiting for Britain and France to release
Russia from its treaty obligations as an ally. But real peace did not come, for the country
sank immediately into civil war.
Not only old tsarist reactionaries, and not only bourgeois liberals, zemstvo members,
and Constitutional Democrats, but all types of anti-Leninist socialists as well, Mensheviks
and Social Revolutionaries, scattered in all directions to organize resistance against the
regime of soviets and people’s commissars; and they soon obtained aid from the Western
Allies. Both sides competed for the support of the peasants.
As for the new regime, the oldest of its institutions was the Bolshevik Party, founded
as a wing of the Social Democrats in 1903; the next oldest were the soviets, dating from
1905 and 1917; and then came the Council of People’s Commissars set up on the day of
the coup d’état. The fi rst institution founded under the new order was a political police, an
Extraordinary All-Russian Commission of Struggle Against Counterrevolution, Specula-
tion, and Sabotage, commonly known from its Russian initials as the Cheka and in later
years, without basic change of methods or purpose, under such successive names as the
OGPU, the NKVD, the MVD, and the KGB. It was established on December 7, 1917. In
January 1918 the Red Army was founded, with Leon Trotsky as war commissar and virtu-
ally its creator. In July a constitution was promulgated.
1 Also known as the October Revolution, because according to the Julian calendar used in Russia until 1918, the
events described took place in October.
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In social policy the B olsheviks at fi rst adopted no long-range plans, contenting
themselves with a mixture of principle and expediency known as “war com-
munism.” They nationalized some of the largest industrial enterprises but left
the bulk under the control of workers’ committees. The pressing problem was
to fi nd food, which had ceased to move through any normal channels. The
peasants, very much as in the French Revolution under similar conditions—worthless money,
insecure property titles, unruly hired hands, armed marauding, and a doubtful future—were
producing less food than usual, consuming it themselves, or hoarding it on their own farms.
The response of the government and city workers also resembled the French response in
1793. The new government levied requisitions, required the peasants to make stated “deliver-
ies,” and invited labor unions to send armed detachments into the country to procure food by
force. Because it was naturally the big farmers who had the surplus, they came into disrepute
as starvers of the people. Class war broke out between farmers who feared that their very
subsistence as well as their property would be taken away and city people, often supported by
hungry agricultural laborers, who were driven to desperation by famine. Many peasants,
especially the larger farmers, therefore rallied to anti-Bolshevik political leaders.
Centers of resistance developed on every side. In the Don Valley a small force assem-
bled under Generals Kornilov and Denikin, with many army offi cers, gentry landowners,
and expropriated business people taking part in it. The Social Revolutionaries gathered
followers on the middle Volga. Their most signifi cant military support came from a force
of some 45,000 Czechs, who had deserted or been captured from the Austro-Hungarian
armies and had then been organized as a Czech Legion to fi ght on the side of Russia and
the Allies. After the November Revolution and the peace of Brest-Litovsk, these Czechs
decided to leave Russia by way of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, return to Europe by sea,
and resume fi ghting on the western front. When Bolshevik offi cials undertook to disarm
them, they allied with the Social Revolutionaries on the Volga.
The Allied governments believed that Bolshevism was a temporary madness that with
little effort could be stopped. They wished above all to bring Russia back into the war
against Germany, an objective they sought to achieve by launching a mili-
tary intervention in East Asia, through Vladivostok. The Japanese, who had
declined military aid to their allies in any other theater, viewed this action
favorably, seeing in the ruin of the Russian Empire a rare opportunity to
develop their sphere of infl uence in East Asia. It was agreed that an interallied military
force should land at Vladivostok, cross Siberia, join with the Czechs, break up Bolshevism,
and fall upon the Germans in eastern Europe. For this ambitious scheme Britain and France
could supply no soldiers, engaged as they were on the western front. The force turned out
to be American and Japanese, but predominantly Japanese; Japan contributed 72,000 men
and the United States only 8,000. They landed at Vladivostok in August 1918.
The civil war lasted until 1920, or even later in some places. It became a confused
melee in which the Bolsheviks struggled against Russian opponents, independence-
minded nationalities, and foreign intervention. The Red Army fought in Ukraine fi rst
against the Germans and then against the French, who occupied Odessa as soon as the war
ended in Europe. It reconquered Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, all of which
had declared their independence in 1918; put to fl ight a hundred thousand “Whites,” as
the counterrevolutionaries were called, in the south; and fought off Admiral Kolchak,
who in Siberia proclaimed himself ruler of all Russia. In 1920, the Bolsheviks carried on
a war with the new republic of Poland, which was scarcely organized when it set out to
recover the huge Ukrainian and Byelorussian territories that had been Polish before 1772.
“War communism”
Allied responses
89. The Revolution of 1917
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union756
A small force of British, French, and American troops occupied the northern Russian city
of Archangel until the end of 1919, and the Japanese remained at Vladivostok until the
end of 1922.
But the anti-Bolshevik forces could never unite. The anti-Communist
Russians represented every hue of the political spectrum from unregen-
erate tsarists to left-wing Social Revolutionaries. Many of the rightist
anti-Bolsheviks openly antagonized the peasants by proceeding to restore
expropriated landed estates in areas they occupied; many engaged in vin-
dictive reprisals in a kind of “white terror.” Leon Trotsky, on the other hand, shaped in
the civil wars a disciplined, effective Red Army, recruiting it, organizing it, unifying it,
and equipping it as best he could, assigning political commissars to watch it, and assuring
that trustworthy offi cers occupied its high command. The Bolsheviks could denounce the
foreign intervention and appeal to national patriotism, and they could win peasant support
by the distribution of land.
By 1922 the Bolsheviks, or Communists, had established themselves up to the fron-
tiers of the former tsarist empire in every direction except on the European side. There the
band of Baltic states—Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—remained independent;
Romania had acquired Bessarabia, the new Romanian frontier reaching now almost to
Odessa. Poland, as a result of the war of 1920, retained a frontier farther east than the
Allies themselves had intended. Russia thus lost thousands of square miles of territory and
Disunity among anti-
Bolshevik forces
Leon Trotsky commanded the Red Army that defeated the Bolsheviks’ many ene- mies in the Civil War of 1918–1922. He is seen here in the early years of the revo- lution, when he emerged as a key politi- cal and military leader of the Bolshevik Party and an infl uential theorist of inter- national communism. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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757
buffer areas that the tsars had brought into their empire over the centuries. These territories
remained lost to the new Soviet state until the Second World War. But peace was won and
the regime stood.
It was during these civil wars that the Red Terror broke out in Russia.
Like the famous Terror in France in 1793, it was in part a response to civil
and foreign war. Before the Bolshevik Terror, however, the old Jacobin
Terror paled. Thousands were shot in Russia merely as hostages (a prac-
tice unknown to Europe for some time); and other thousands were killed without even
the summary formalities of revolutionary tribunals. The Cheka was the most formidable
political police that had yet appeared. The Bolshevik Terror was aimed at the physical
extermination of all who opposed the new regime. A bourgeois class background would
go far to confi rm the guilt of the person charged with conspiring against the Soviet state.
As a chief of the Cheka said: “The fi rst questions you should put to the accused person
are, To what class does he belong, what is his origin, what was his education, and what is
his profession? These should determine the fate of the accused. This is the essence of the
Red Terror.”
The Red Terror
The Bolsheviks’ consolidation of power depended on the carefully controlled Red Army. This is a Red Army artillery battalion that was engaged in the suppression of the Kronstadt sailors’ uprising in 1921. (ITAR-TASS/Sovfoto)
89. The Revolution of 1917
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union758
But a working-class background for a man or a woman made little difference. In 1918
a young woman named Fanny Kaplan shot at Lenin and wounded him. She deposed that
she had favored the Constituent Assembly, that her parents had emigrated to America in
1911, that she had six working-class brothers and sisters; and she admitted that she had
intended to kill Lenin. She was of course executed, as were others in Petrograd. When the
sailors at Kronstadt, who were among the fi rst adherents of the Bolsheviks, rose in 1921,
objecting to domination of the soviets by the party (threatening a kind of leftist renewal of
the revolution, like the Hébertists who had opposed Robespierre), they were branded as
petty bourgeois and shot down by the thousands. The Terror struck at the revolutionists
themselves quite as much as it did the bourgeoisie; it was to continue to do so long after the
revolution was secure.
The Terror succeeded in its purpose. Together with the victories of the
Red Army, it established the new regime. Those “bourgeois” who survived
took on the protective coloration of “toilers.” No bourgeois person as such
presumed to take part in the new politics of Russia. Mensheviks and other
socialists fl eeing to Europe told appalling stories of the human toll taken by Lenin. Hor-
rifi ed European socialists repudiated communism as an atrocious, Russian perversion of
Marxism. But, at whatever cost, Lenin and his followers were now able to start building
the socialist society as they understood it.
90. THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS
Government: The Nationalities and Federalism
With the end of the civil wars and foreign intervention, and with the termination of the
war with Poland, it became possible in 1922 to establish the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics. There were at fi rst four such republics in the Union, but political reorganiza-
tion and the occupation of new territories at the beginning of the Second World War
increased the number to 15 (see map, pp. 762–763). Although many of these new repub-
lics were established in central Asia, most of the Soviet Union’s population lived in three
large Slavic regions: the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian
Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. In the new
Union, which geographically replaced the old Russian Empire, the name Russia was not
offi cially used. The guiding conception was a blend of the national and the international:
to recognize nationality by granting autonomy to national groups, while holding these
groups together in a higher union and allowing new groups to enter regardless of historic
frontiers. In 1922 the expectation of world revolution was still alive. The constitution,
formally adopted in 1924, pronounced the founding of the U.S.S.R. to be “a decisive
step by way of uniting the workers of all countries into one World Soviet Socialist
Republic.” It made the Union, in principle, fl uid and expansible, declared that any mem-
ber republic might secede and that newly formed soviet socialist republics might join
(none ever did voluntarily). When the U.S.S.R. occupied contiguous territories (once
part of the tsarist empire) after the outbreak of the Second World War, these territories
were also transformed into Soviet Socialist republics—the three independent Baltic
states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; Bessarabia, detached from Romania; and Karelia,
taken from Finland after the Russo-Finnish War. Bessarabia became the Moldavian
S.S.R., and Karelia temporarily, from 1940 to 1956, had the status of a Karelo-Finnish
S.S.R., a 16th Soviet Socialist republic.
A new regime
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75990. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
The federal principle in the U.S.S.R. was designed to resolve the prob-
lem of nationalism. The tsardom, in its last decades, had tried to deal with
this problem by systematic Russifi cation. The nationalities had resisted,
and nationalist discontent had been one of the forces fatally weakening
the empire. Nationalism, the demand that national groups should have
their own political sovereignty, had not only broken up the Austro-Hungarian empire but
“Balkanized” central and eastern Europe. This might have happened after 1917 in Russia
except for the fact that the Red Army during the civil wars occupied large parts of the tsar-
ist empire that had broken away and declared their independence. As it turned out, by 1922
the U.S.S.R. occupied a sixth of the world’s land area.
A hundred languages were spoken in the Soviet Union, and 50 distinct nationalities
were recognized within its borders. Many of these were small splinter groups or isolated
communities left by the ebb and fl ow of humanity in inner Asia over thousands of years.
All recognized nationalities received a cultural autonomy, or the right to use their own
language, have their own schools, wear their own dress, and follow their own folkways
without interference.
An answer to the
problem of
nationalism
A good example of early “socialist realism” in Soviet art, this Soviet political poster from 1918 celebrates “One Year of Proletarian Dictator- ship” and portrays the early achievements of the revolution. A worker and a peasant stand on the symbols and chains of the old regime. The happy people in the background are celebrating their triumph and moving confi dently toward a prosperous, industrialized future. (Sovfoto)
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union760
Administratively the nationalities were put on various levels, with
varying degrees of separate identity according to their size and importance.
The most important were the soviet republics themselves, but in practice
the Russian S.F.S.R., with over half the population and three-fourths of the territory of
the Union, predominated over all the others. When to the Russian were added the Ukrainian
and the Byelorussian republics, the overwhelmingly Russian and Slavic character of the
Union was marked. Moreover all political and economic rights were severely limited by
the concentration of authority in the hands of the central government. There was little sub-
stance in the formal claim that each constituent republic was sovereign and had the right
to conduct its own foreign affairs. During the Second World War there was evidence that
separatism had not wholly died down, remaining especially alive in Ukraine, and sev-
eral autonomous areas were offi cially dissolved for separatist activities or even for collu-
sion with the German invaders. By the late 1980s it became increasingly apparent that the
Soviets could not prevent the disintegration of the multinational empire that they had
inherited from the tsars.
Government: State and Party
Government in the Union, and in each component republic, followed a pattern worked out
during the revolution and written into the constitutions of 1924 and 1936. In theory, a prin-
ciple of parallelism was adopted. On the one hand was the state: on the other, paralleling
the state but technically not part of it, was the party. But the close interlocking relationship
between the two made the parallelism virtually meaningless because the party actually
controlled all of the state institutions.
The distinctive state institution was the council or soviet. Here elec-
tions took place, and authority proceeded from the bottom upward to the
top through an ascending hierarchy of local, provincial, and national
Soviets. Under the constitution of 1924 only “toilers” had the right to vote.
In the later constitution of 1936 a more direct democratic procedure was introduced. Voters
henceforth directly elected members of the higher soviets, a secret ballot was adopted, no
class was any longer denied the vote, and a bicameral parliament was created. On the state
side, as set forth in the constitution of 1936, the government embodied many seemingly
democratic features.
Yet alongside the state, at all levels and in all localities, was the party. Only one party
was allowed, the Communist, though nonparty members might be elected to the Soviets
or to other offi cial positions. In the party, authority began at the top and
proceeded downward. At its apex stood the Central Committee, whose
membership varied from about 70 in the 1930s to more than double that in
later years. Within the Central Committee a powerful Politburo, or polit-
ical bureau, of about a dozen members dominated discussions of policy
and personnel. An even more powerful general secretary, the offi ce that
Stalin virtually fashioned, dominated the entire structure and apparatus with authority over
appointments, assignments, and decisions at all levels. Thus power and authority in the
Communist Party fl owed downward and outward, as in an army, or as in a highly central-
ized government agency or large private modern corporation, except that the party was not
subject to any outside control. Discipline was likewise enforced in ways not used in liberal
countries, the fearsome machinery of the secret police being available for use against party
members as well as those outside.
Elections
The Central
Committee of the
party
The Soviet republics
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761
The number of party members, men and women, w hich could not have been more
than 70,000 at the time of the revolution, rose to about 2 million by 1930, 3 million by
1940, and to 19 million in the late 1980s. The Leninist ideal of a highly disciplined party,
made up of faithful and zealous workers who willingly carried out orders,
continued to characterize the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. A party
of 2 million members, though small in contrast to the population of the
U.S.S.R., still represented an enormous growth for the party itself; for each
old member who had joined before 1917 there were thousands of new ones.
To preserve party unity under the new conditions strict uniformity was enforced. The base
of the party structure consisted of small nuclei or cells. In each factory, in each mine, in
each offi ce, in each class at the universities and technical schools, in each labor union, in
each of the larger villages, a few people belonged to the party and imparted party views
and party momentum to the whole social group.
The party in the U.S.S.R. by the 1930s functioned as a tightly knit,
highly disciplined leadership group. Those who joined it were willing to
work hard, devote themselves to party matters day and night, absorb and
communicate the party policy (or “party line”), go where they were sent,
attend meetings, speak up, perceive and explain the signifi cance of passing events for the
Soviet Union or the world revolution, and master intricate technical details of farming,
manufacturing, or the care of machinery. The party was a specially trained elite whose
members were present at all levels of government and in constant touch with each other.
If the party was a leadership group, the corollary was that more than 95 out of
100 persons were condemned to be followers, and while it is perhaps true (as apolo-
gists for the system maintained) that under any system true leadership is exercised by a
tiny fraction of people, the difference between Communist and non-Communist in the
U.S.S.R. became a clear matter of social status. As the years passed, many Communists
in the U.S.S.R. were less the revolutionary fi rebrand type than the successful and well-
rewarded man or woman in any social system. They represented the satisfi ed, not the
dissatisfi ed. They enjoyed extensive material privileges, not only for themselves but
also for their children. They became a new vested interest. Within the party, members
had to be not so much leaders as followers. A homogeneous and monolithic organiza-
tion had to present a solid front to the far more numerous outsiders. From time to time
a good deal of difference of opinion and open discussion was tolerated within the party,
but in the end the entire membership had to conform. The party favored a certain fertil-
ity of mind in looking for ways to get tasks accomplished, but it did not favor, and in
fact repressed, originality, boldness, risk-taking, or freedom of thought or action. The
dangers of stagnation in such a one-party system became apparent within the Soviet
Union itself in later times.
The New Economic Policy, 1921–1927
By 1920 “war communism” had hopelessly antagonized the peasants, who were cultivating
less than two-thirds as much land as in 1914. This fact, together with a severe drought and
the breakdown of transportation, produced a great famine. Millions of people died. The
ravages of eight years—of the First World War, the revolution, the civil wars, the Terror,
the famine—had left the country in ruins, its productive facilities thrown back by decades
as compared with 1914. Lenin concluded that socialization had advanced too fast. He
openly advocated a compromise with capitalism, a strategic retreat. The New Economic
Growth and nature of
the party
The party’s leadership
role
90. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union762
Areas Annexed in 1940
0 200 300 400100 500 miles
S I B E
A LTAI M
OUNTAINS
KUZNETSK BASIN
SINKIANG
T U
R K
E S
T A
N
U R
A L
M O
U N
T A
I N S
Severnaya Zemlya
Franz Josef Land
Spitzbergen (Norway)
Novaya Zemlya
A R C T I C O C E A
North Cape B a r e n t s S e a
K a r a S e aB a l t i c S e a
N o r t h S e a
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
D vin
a R
.
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b
R.
Y en
isei R .
L. Balkhash
Aral Sea
C a
sp ia
n S
e a
V o
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Black Se
a
M editerranean
Sea
R e d
Se a
P e
rsia n
G u
lf
SWEDEN
FINLAND
KA RE
LIA ESTONIAN S.S.R
N O R WAY
POLAND
LITHUANIAN S.S.R.
ROMANIA
MOLDAVIAN S.S.R.
UKRAINIAN S.S.R.
BYELO- RUSSIAN S.S.R.
LATVIAN S.S.R.
R U S S I A N S O V I E T F E D E R A T E D S O C I A L
MONGOL
C H I
TANNU T UVA
1944
KIRGIZ S.S.R.
TADJIK S.S.R.
UZBEK S.S.R.
KAZAK S.S.R.
TURKMEN S.S.R.
AZERBAIJAN S.S.R.
IRAN
AFGHANISTAN
GEORGIAN S.S.R.
ARMENIAN S.S.R.
TURKEY
SYRIA
IRAQ
SAUDI ARABIA
Kha
Igarka
Kara
Salekhard
Samaroyo
Tobolsk Sverdlovsk
Archangel
Kirov
Kazan
Moscow
Gorki
Kuibyshev
Viborg Leningrad
(St. Petersburg, 1990)
Minsk
Berlin
Kiev
Odessa
Istanbul
Ankara
Batum
Baku
Astrakhan
Teheran Ashkhabad Tashkent Alma Ata
Omsk
Semipalantinsk
Novosibirsk
Tomsk Yeneseisk
Novokuznetsk
Murmansk
Warsaw
Perm
Magnitogorsk Volgograd
Sevastopol Rostov
Policy, or NEP, adopted in 1921, lasted until 1927. Most of the decade of the 1920s saw a
relaxation of tempo (and of terror) for most people in the U.S.S.R.
Under the NEP, while the state controlled the “commanding heights”
of the economy, maintaining state ownership of the basic productive indus-
tries, it allowed a great deal of private trading for private profi t. The basic
problem was to restore trade between town and country. The peasants
Private enterprise
under the NEP
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763
THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS, 1922–1991 The U.S.S.R. was over 5,000 miles long and covered one-sixth of the land area of the globe. It was the only state that immedi- ately adjoined so many impor- tant political areas—Europe in the west, the Middle East in the south, China along a long fron- tier, Japan across a narrow sea, and the United States on the coast near Alaska. The Union had 15 member republics (for a short time 16), of which the Russian was by far the largest. Most of it lay farther north than the Great Lakes of North America, but around Tashkent, in the latitude of New York and Chicago, cotton and citrus fruits were grown by irrigation. The diversion of riv- ers for this purpose led to envi- ronmental disasters such as the spread of deserts and the gradual drying up of the Aral Sea.
R I A K
A M
C H
A TK
A
Wrangel I.
Novosibirsk I.
Sakhalin
K U
R IL
E IS
. (f
ro m
Ja p
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1 9
4 5
)
B e r i n g S t r a i t
B e r i n g S e a
K o
lym a
R .
A N
L
ena R.
S e a o f O k h o t s k
P A C I F I C O C E A N
Am ur R.
Sea of Japan
Yellow Sea
ALASKA
I S T R E P U B L I C
MANCHURIA
JAPAN
NORTH KOREA
SOUTH KOREA
LIAN REPUBLIC
N A
Okhotsk
Khabarovsk
Sovetskaya Gavan
Nikolaevsk
Petropavlovsk
Anadyr
atanga
Chita Irkutsk
Ulan Bator
Kirensk Tygda
Birobijan
Harbin Vladivostok
Mukden
Peking Lü-Ta (Darien Port Arthur)
Vitim
Yakutsk
Verkhoyansk
would produce only for their own subsistence unless they could exchange a surplus for
city-made wares such as clothing or tools. The city people had to be fed from the country if
they were to turn out factory products or even continue to live in the city. Under the NEP,
peasants were allowed to sell their farm products freely. Middlemen were allowed to buy
and sell farm products and manufactured articles at will, selling to whom they pleased at
market prices and at a profi t to themselves. The NEP thus fostered a new commercial class
90. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union764
in the cities and favored the big individualist farmer or kulak in the countryside. Indeed,
rural changes initiated before 1914 were still at work; peasant families consolidated mil-
lions of acres as private property in 1922, 1923, and 1924. Correspondingly, other peasants
became “proletarians,” wage-earning hired hands. Under the NEP the worst damages of
war and revolution were repaired. But there was no real progress, for in 1928 Russia was
producing only about as much grain, raw cotton, cattle, coal, and oil as in 1913, and far
less than it presumably would have produced (given the rate of growth before 1913) had
there been no revolution.
Social and Cultural Changes after the Revolution
Most Bolsheviks wanted their revolution to accomplish much more than the reconstruction
of the state and economy; they wanted to revolutionize the daily lives of the workers, peas-
ants, and “toilers,” whom they now expected to construct a new classless society. The new
Soviet society was supposed to destroy traditional gender hierarchies as well as the hierar-
chies of class and wealth. Under the legal reforms of the revolutionary regime, women
received equal voting rights, the right to divorce, and access to birth control
and abortion—which was legalized in 1920. The new theoretical rights,
however, did not have much immediate effect on the social or economic
lives of most women in the Soviet Union. Some of the new rights soon lost
signifi cance (for example, the right to vote) or disappeared (for example, abortion became
illegal again in the 1930s and 1940s), and traditional social relations among the rural
masses could not simply be transformed by revolutionary decrees. But it is also true that
many girls and young women, like the boys and young men from the working classes,
began to receive more education, especially after the turmoil of the Civil War subsided in
the early 1920s.
The campaign to improve prerevolutionary literacy rates was only one example of
the early Bolshevik aspirations for radical cultural changes. Writers and artists rallied to
the revolutionary cause, seeing the social upheaval as part of a wider rejection of tradi-
tional ideas and artistic forms. The creative fi lm director, Sergei Eisenstein, joined with
avant-garde theatrical groups to create imaginative new techniques for editing fi lms, por-
traying dramatic action, and representing political themes. Using his new
techniques, Eisenstein produced a famous fi lm about the Russian Revo-
lution of 1905, Potemkin (1925), which was commissioned by the Soviet government and which is still regarded by many critics as one of the most
innovative fi lms in the history of cinema. Meanwhile, some radical artists
sought to combine “futurist” art with the socialist revolution, and the young Russian poet
Vladimir Mayakovsky moved on from a famous “Ode to Revolution” to innovative experi-
ments with a new poetic language. In the end, though, Mayakovsky fell into despair and
committed suicide as Soviet society entered the Stalinist era of rigid social control. By
the late 1920s the period of experimental art was over, and the new cultural orthodoxy of
“socialist realism” was celebrating the beauty of large factories and tractors rather than the
abstract mysteries of the artistic avant-garde. Like all other spheres of Soviet life, art fell
under the strict control of the Communist Party and government institutions.
Stalin and Trotsky
Lenin died in 1924 prematurely at the age of 54 after a series of paralyzing strokes that left
him incapacitated in the last two years of his life. His embalmed remains were put
Women’s rights
Art, literature, and
fi lm
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76591. Stalin: The Five-Year Plans and the Purges
permanently on view in the Kremlin; Petrograd was renamed Leningrad; a leader cult was
built up around his name and image. The party presented him as a deifi ed equal of Marx
himself, and it became necessary for all Communists in the Soviet Union to claim unfl inch-
ing fi delity to the Leninist tradition. Actually, in his own lifetime, the Old Bolsheviks had
never regarded Lenin as infallible. They had often differed with him and with each other.
As he lay dying, and after his death, his old companions and contemporaries, carrying on
the feuding habits of the émigré days, fought with each other for control of the party in
Lenin’s name. They disputed over Lenin’s intentions, but behind the scenes, the general
secretary of the party, Joseph Stalin, whom Lenin had warned against, was drawing all the
strings of party control into his own hands. More openly and vociferously, Leon Trotsky,
who as war commissar in the critical years had been only less conspicuous than Lenin
himself, raised the basic issues of the whole nature and future of the movement.
Trotsky, in 1925 and 1926, inveighed against the lassitude that had descended upon
socialism. 2 He developed his doctrine of “permanent revolution,” an incessant drive for
proletarian objectives on all fronts in all parts of the world. He champi-
oned world revolution, which many in the party were beginning to discard
in favor of fi rst building socialism in one country. He denounced the ten-
dency to bureaucratic ossifi cation in the party and urged a new movement
of the masses to give it life. He called for more forceful development of industry and for
the collectivization of agriculture, which had fi gured in Communist manifestos ever since
1848. Above all, he demanded immediate adoption of an overall plan, a central control and
operation of the whole economic life of the country.
Trotsky failed to carry the party with him. He was charged with leftist deviationism,
machinations against the Central Committee, and inciting public discussion of contro-
versial issues outside the party. At a party congress in 1927, 95 percent of the delegates
dutifully voted for Stalin and the Central Committee and fewer than 5 percent voted for
Trotsky. Trotsky was fi rst exiled to Siberia, then banished from the U.S.S.R.; he lived in
Europe and then in Mexico, writing and propagandizing for the permanent revolution,
stigmatizing developments in the U.S.S.R. as a monstrous betrayal of Marxism-Leninism,
and organizing an underground against Stalin as he had done in former days against the
tsar. He was murdered in Mexico in 1940 by a Soviet agent. Not until the late 1980s was
anyone in the U.S.S.R. permitted to talk or write about him and his contributions to the
revolution.
91. STALIN: THE FIVE-YEAR PLANS AND THE PURGES
Economic Planning
Hardly had Trotsky been expelled when Stalin and the party appropriated certain frag-
ments of his program. In 1928 the party launched the First Five-Year Plan, aimed at rapid
industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. “Planning,” or the central planning
of a country’s whole economic life by government offi cials, was to become the distinctive
feature of Soviet economics and the one that for a time was to have the greatest infl uence
on other parts of the world.
Permanent revolution
2 For Communists, though not for socialists, the terms “communism” and “socialism” were almost interchange-
able, because Russian Communists regarded their own system as true socialism and all other socialism as oppor-
tunistic, reactionary, or false. Communism was also defi ned, in the U.S.S.R., as a future state of society toward
which socialism, that is, Soviet socialism, was the intermediate stage.
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union766
In retrospect, it seems strange that the C ommunists waited ten years before adopting
a plan. The truth seems to be that the Bolsheviks had only vague ideas of what to do after
their seizure of power. Marxism for the most part gave only general descriptions of a
future classless society. The main constructive idea had been mapped out, most clearly by
Engels. Within each private enterprise, Engels had observed, harmony and order reigned; it was only between private enterprises that capitalism was chaotic. In the individual fac- tory, he noted, the various departments did not compete with each other; the output of all
departments was planned and coordinated by management. In an approximate way, the
great capitalist mergers and trusts, controlling many factories, prevented competition
between them, assigned specifi c quotas to each, anticipated, coordinated, and stabilized
the work of each plant and each person by an overall policy. The obvious
next step, according to Engels and other socialists, was to treat all the eco- nomic life of a country as a single factory with many departments, a single
enormous monopoly with many members under one unifi ed, far-seeing
management.
During the First World War the governments of belligerent countries had in fact
adopted such centralized controls, not because they were socialist but because in time of
war people were willing to subordinate their usual liberties to a single undisputed social
purpose—victory. The “planned society” therefore made its fi rst actual
(though incomplete) appearance in the First World War. It was partly from
socialist doctrine as exemplifi ed by Engels, partly from experience of the
war, and in even larger measure from the pressure to meet the continuing
chronic problems of the country by raising its productive level that Stalin
and the party in Russia developed the idea of an economic plan.
The U.S.S.R. decided to plan for fi ve years into the future, beginning with the First
Five-Year Plan in 1928. The aim of the plan was to strengthen and enrich the country,
make it militarily and industrially self-suffi cient, lay the groundwork for a true workers’
society, and overcome the Russian reputation for backwardness. As Stalin said in a speech
in 1929: “We are becoming a country of metal, a country of automobiles, a country of trac-
tors. And when we have put the U.S.S.R. in a motor car and the muzhik in a tractor. . . . we shall see which countries may then be ‘classifi ed’ as backward and which as advanced.”
The Plan was declared fulfi lled in 1932, and a Second Five-Year Plan was launched, last-
ing until 1937. The Third, inaugurated in 1938, was interrupted by the war with Germany
in 1941. New plans were introduced after 1945.
The First Five-Year Plan (like its successors) listed the economic goals
to be achieved. It was administered by an agency called the Gosplan. Within
the frame of general policy set by the party, the Gosplan determined how
much of every article the country should produce, what wages all classes of
workers should receive, and at what prices all goods should be exchanged. Because all
decisions were made at the top, it was as much a command economy as a planned econ-
omy. The plan, in short, undertook to control, by conscious centralized state management,
the fl ow of resources and workforce that was regulated in capitalist economies by shifts in
demand and supply and through changes in prices, wage levels, profi ts, and interest rates.
The system was exceedingly intricate. Countless reports, checkups, and exchanges of
information were necessary. A huge class of bureaucrats came into existence to handle the
paperwork. The plan achieved some of its goals, exceeded a few, and failed in some. The
criteria for fulfi llment were almost always quantitative, often to the complete neglect of
quality control.
Engels’ centralized
economy
Wartime conditions
and economic
planning
The First Five-Year
Plan
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767
The primary objective of the First Five-Year Plan was to build up the
heavy industry, or capital wealth, of the U.S.S.R. The aim was to industri-
alize without the use of foreign loans. 3 Russia in 1928 was still chiefl y an
agricultural country. The world offered hardly any case of a country shift-
ing from agriculture to industry without borrowing capital from abroad. Britain, the origi-
nal home of the Industrial Revolution, was the best example, although even there in the
eighteenth century a great deal of capital invested in England was owned by the Dutch.
An agricultural country could industrialize from its own resources only by drawing upon
agriculture itself. An agricultural revolution had been prerequisite to an industrial revolu-
tion in England. By enclosure of land, the squeezing out of small independent farmers, the
introduction of scientifi c cultivation, and under the auspices of a growing class of wealthy
landowners, England had both increased its production of food and released many of the
rural population to fi nd employment in industry. The First Five-Year Plan called for a simi-
lar agricultural revolution in Russia, without benefi t to landlords and under the auspices of
the state, but no one could foresee all of its social and economic consequences.
The Collectivization of Agriculture
The agricultural plan of 1929 set up collective farms, averaging a few thousand acres
apiece, which were considered to be the property not of the state but of the peasants col-
lectively who resided on them. (A few state-operated collective farms were also estab-
lished, as models for the others.) Individual peasants were to pool their privately owned
fi elds and livestock in these collectives. When those peasants who possessed fi elds or
stock in considerable amount—the prosperous peasants or kulaks—resisted surrendering
them to the new collectives, they were ruthlessly liquidated as a class. Zealous detach-
ments of Communists from the cities used violence; poor peasants turned upon rich ones;
hundreds of thousands of kulaks and their families were killed and many more were trans-
ported to labor camps in remote parts of the Soviet Union. Collectivization was intended
to convert the peasantry into a class more nearly resembling the proletariat of Marxian
doctrine, a class of people who as individuals owned no capital and employed no labor,
and so would better fi t into a proletarian, socialist state. The year 1929, not 1917, was the
memorable revolutionary year for most people in Russia.
Collectivization was accomplished at the cost of village class war in
which many of the most capable farmers perished and at the cost also of
a wholesale destruction of livestock. The big farmers slaughtered their
horses, cattle, pigs, and poultry rather than give them up. Even middling
and small farmers did the same, caring nothing about animals that were no
longer their own. The ruinous loss of animals was the worst unforeseen food calamity of
the First Five-Year Plan. The agricultural disorders led to a deadly famine in southeast
Russia and Ukraine in 1932 that cost millions of lives. Despite the famine Stalin refused to
cut back on cereal and other food exports because they were needed to pay for industrial
imports under the Five-Year Plan.
The human costs of
collectivization
Building capital
wealth
3 The Bolsheviks had repudiated the entire debt of the tsarist empire. Their credit in capitalist countries was there-
fore not good, so that, in addition to fearing dependence upon foreign lenders, they were in any case for a long
time unable to borrow large sums.
91. Stalin: The Five-Year Plans and the Purges
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union768
By introducing thousand-acre units in place of small ones, c ollectivization made it
possible to apply capital to the soil. Formerly most peasants had been far too poor to buy a
tractor and the fi elds had in any case been too small to use one; only a few kulaks had
employed any such machinery. In the course of the First Five-Year Plan hundreds
of Machine Tractor Stations were organized throughout the country. Each
Station maintained a force of tractors, harvesting combines, and expert
agronomists, which could be dispatched from one collective farm to another
by local arrangement. The new collectivized system made it easier for
higher authorities to control the agricultural surplus (products not con-
sumed by the village itself). Each collective was assigned a quota. Members of the collec-
tive could sell in a free market any products they raised beyond this quota. Meanwhile the
government knew the quantity of agricultural produce it could count on, either to feed the
cities and other regions that did not produce their own food or for export in the world mar-
ket to pay for imports of machinery from the West. By 1939 all but a negligible fraction of
Mechanization of
agriculture
The creation of collective farms during Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan was one of the most radi- cal and most resented economic actions of the new Communist regime. Millions of farm ani- mals were destroyed by angry peasants and millions of people died in the subsequent period of repression and famine. But the creation of large-scale agriculture and tractor stations gradu- ally made it possible for farmers to use new machinery in Russian fi elds. These farmers were heading for work on new tractors in the early 1930s. (Sovfoto)
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769
the peasantry was collectivized, but collectivization failed to increase agricultural output.
The new collectives denied peasants the freedom to make their own economic decisions,
destroyed their incentive to improve the land they worked, and prevented them from
passing land on to their heirs. Agriculture therefore remained a troubled sector of the econ-
omy. Collectivization made possible, however, the success of industrialization by aug-
menting the supply of industrial workers. Because the villages needed less labor, 20 million
people moved from country to city between the years 1926 and 1939 and were available
for jobs in the new industries.
The Growth of Industry
While the agricultural base was being revolutionized, industrialization went rapidly for-
ward. At fi rst there was considerable dependence on the capitalist countries. Engineers and
other technicians from western Europe and the United States went to work in the Soviet
Union. Much machinery was imported. But the worldwide depression that set in about
1931, bringing a catastrophic fall of agricultural prices, made foreign-made machines
more costly in terms of the cereals that were the chief Soviet export. The international situ-
ation also deteriorated. While the U.S.S.R. always considered the whole outside world
hostile to it, both Japan and Germany in the 1930s showed overt hostility and posed a new
military threat. The Second Five-Year Plan, launched in 1933, though in some ways less
ambitious than the fi rst, showed an even greater determination to cut down imports and
achieve national self-suffi ciency, especially in the heavy industry basic to war production.
No ten years in the history of any industrializing country had ever
shown such a rate of industrial growth as the decade of the fi rst two plans in
the Soviet Union. In Great Britain industrialization had been gradual; in
Germany and the United States it had been more rapid, and in each country
there had been decades in which output of coal or iron doubled; but in the
U.S.S.R., from 1928 to 1938, production of iron and steel expanded four times and that of
coal expanded three and a half times. In 1938 the U.S.S.R. was the world’s largest pro-
ducer of farm tractors and railway locomotives. Four-fi fths of all its industrial output came
from plants built in the preceding ten years. In 1939 the U.S.S.R., as measured by purely
quantitative standards, was surpassed in gross industrial output only by the United States
and Germany.
These astounding developments were enough to change the relative
economic strength of the world’s peoples with respect to one another. It
was signifi cant that the fi ve-year plans brought industrialization to cen-
tral Asia and even to the most distant places in Siberia. In part because of
these developments in Asia, the Russia that went to war with Germany in 1941 proved
to be a different antagonist from the Russia of 1914. Industrialization in the Urals and in
Asia enabled the U.S.S.R. (with Allied assistance) to survive the German occupation and
destruction of the older industrial areas in the Don valley. The new “socialist fatherland”
was able to absorb terrible losses and strike back, because a great deal of the increased
industrial output helped to equip and modernize the Red Army.
At the same time, the degree of industrialization of the U.S.S.R. can easily be exag-
gerated. It was phenomenal because it started from so little. Qualitatively, by European
criteria, standards of production were low. Many of the hastily constructed new plants
were shoddy and suffered from rapid depreciation. In effi ciency, as shown by output per
worker employed, the U.S.S.R. continued to lag behind other industrialized countries. In
intensity of modernization, as shown by output of certain items in proportion to the whole
Rates of industrial
growth
Changes brought by
modernization
91. Stalin: The Five-Year Plans and the Purges
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union770
population, it also lagged. Per capita comparisons with other industrial nations, in 1937,
show that the U.S.S.R. produced less coal, electricity, cottons, woolens, leather shoes, or
soap than did the United States, Britain, Germany, France, or Japan, and less iron and steel
than any of them except Japan. Production of paper is revealing because paper is used in so
many different aspects of modern education, economic activity, communications, govern-
ment affairs, and household life. Where the United States about 1937 produced 103 pounds
of paper per person, Germany and Great Britain each produced 92, France produced 51,
and Japan produced 17, the U.S.S.R. produced only 11.
Social Costs and Social Effects of the Plans
Industrialization in Russia demanded huge and continuing sacrifi ces on
the part of the people. It was not merely that kulaks lost their lives, or that
millions of others, whose exact numbers have never been known, were
Sacrifi ces and
rewards
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1894–1937
1894 Creation of Russian Marxist organization, the Social Democratic Party
1903 Social Democrats split into two factions, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks;
Lenin leads Bolsheviks
January 1905 Economic hardship, “Bloody Sunday,” and Russo-Japanese War spark
Revolution of 1905 in St. Petersburg
October 1905 Tsar’s October Manifesto establishes new parliamentary body, the Duma
1906–1911 Stolypin’s reforms promote growth of prosperous farmers (kulaks)
1914 Russia enters war with Germany and suffers crushing military defeats
March 1917 Tsar Nicholas II abdicates; Russia becomes a republic under provisional
government and continues war with Germany
April 1917 Germany provides safe passage for Bolshevik leaders to enter Russia
November 1917 The Bolshevik Revolution: Lenin and followers overthrow the provisional
government in Petrograd
January 1918 Bolsheviks dissolve Constituent Assembly and establish the Red Army
1918–1922 Bolsheviks consolidate power and suppress all opponents in Civil War
and Red Terror
1919–1920 Creation of Third, or Communist, International (the Comintern)
1921–1927 New Economic Policy allows more independent commercial activity
1922 Establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R)
1925–1927 Stalin prevails over Trotsky to take control of the Bolshevik Central
Committee
1928 Stalin launches the First Five-Year Plan for economic development
1929 Soviet regime begins the collectivization of agriculture; resistance from
kulaks and others leads to widespread repression and famine
1936–1937 Public “purge trials” remove Old Bolsheviks from Communist Party;
many are executed or imprisoned
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771
found to be enemies of the system and sent off to correctional labor camps. All were
required to accept a program of austerity and self-denial, going without the better food,
housing, and other consumer goods that might have been produced, in order that the capi-
tal wealth and heavy industry of the country might be built up. The plan required hard
work and low wages. Morale was sustained by propaganda. One of the chief functions of
party members was to explain why sacrifi ces were necessary. In the late 1930s life began
to ease; food rationing was abolished in 1935, and a few more products of light industry,
such as dishes and fountain pens, began to appear in Soviet retail stores. Living standards
rose back to the level of 1927 with prospects brighter for raising them. But the need for
war preparations, as the world again approached chaos, again drove back the vision of
the Promised Land.
Socialism, as realized in the plans, did away with some of the evils of unrestrained
free enterprise. There was no acknowledged unemployment or cycle of boom and depres-
sion. There was less misuse of women and children than in the early days of European
industrialization. There was a minimum below which no one was supposed to fall. On the
other hand, there was no economic equality. Marxism, indeed, had never seen complete
equality of income as a principal objective. While there were no very rich people, as in
other parts of Europe (where the income of the very rich often came from inherited prop-
erty), the differences in income were nevertheless great. High government offi cials, man-
agers, engineers, and favored artists and intellectuals received the highest rewards. People
with large incomes could build precarious little fortunes for themselves and their children.
They could not, however, under socialism, own any industrial capital, that is, buy shares of
stock or other equities. There was, of course, no stock exchange.
Competition of a special kind developed. In 1935 a miner named Sta-
khanov greatly increased his daily output of coal by devising improvements
in his methods of work. He also greatly increased his wages, because Soviet
workers were paid at piece rates. His example proved contagious; workers all over the
country began to break records of all kinds. The government publicized their achievements,
called them Stakhanovites and “labor heroes,” and pronounced the movement to be “a new
and higher stage of socialist competition.” In labor circles in the United States such strain-
ing to increase output was called a speed-up, and piecework wages had long been anathema
to the organized labor of all countries. Nor was management free from competitive pres-
sure. A factory manager who failed to show the net income (or “profi t”) upon which the
plan counted, or who failed to meet his quota of output, might lose not only his job but also
his social status—or even his life.
Solidarity was purchased at the price of totalitarianism. The govern-
ment supervised everything. There was no room for skepticism, indepen-
dence of thought, or any criticism that weakened the will to achieve. As in
tsarist times, no one could leave the country without special permission,
which was given far more rarely than before 1914. There was, of course, only one politi-
cal party. There were no free labor unions, no free press, no freedom of association, and at
best only an irritable tolerance for religion. Soviet Jews who adapted to the system found
themselves in a more favorable position than ever before; some even attained positions
of high importance. Many still faced lingering suspicion and distrust, however, and in
religious matters they met harassment. Art, literature, and even science became vehicles
of political propaganda; creative, experimental works—and the people who promoted
them—disappeared from Soviet cultural life. Conformity was the ideal, and the very pas-
sion for solidarity made for fear and suspicion of all who might go astray. As for the num-
ber of people sacrifi ced to Stalin’s brutal Juggernaut—liquidated bourgeois, liquidated
Competition
The price of
solidarity
91. Stalin: The Five-Year Plans and the Purges
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union772
peasants, purged party members, disaffected persons sentenced to long terms in labor
camps—a precise fi gure is diffi cult to arrive at, but it certainly reached many millions over
the years in which the various Soviet plans were implemented.
The Purge Trials of the 1930s
In 1936 socialism was judged to have proved so successful that a new constitution for the
U.S.S.R. was proclaimed. It enumerated, as rights of Soviet citizens, not merely the usual
civil liberties of modern democracies but the rights to steady employment, rest, leisure,
economic security, and a comfortable old age. All forms of racism were condemned. It
reorganized the Soviet republics and granted equal and direct universal suffrage. The con-
stitution of 1936 received favorable comment in western Europe, where it was hoped that
the Russian Revolution, like former revolutions, had at last turned into more peaceable and
quiet channels. It was nonetheless apparent that the Communist Party remained the sole
governing group in the country, that Stalin was tightening his dictatorship, and that the
party was racked by internal troubles.
Throughout the 1930s Stalin acted preemptorily to suppress all dissent.
As early as 1933, the party underwent a drastic purge, in which a third of its
members were expelled. Even the faithful were appalled at Stalin’s growing Stalinist repression
The rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union emphasized heavy machinery rather than consumer goods, but the Sovi- ets also began to produce their own cars. This automobile fac- tory in the city of Gorky (a city renamed by the Soviets for the Russian writer) represented the new industrial economy and also expressed the requisite political loyalty to Stalin. (Sovfoto)
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773
ruthlessness. Serge Kirov, an old friend and revolutionary companion of Stalin since 1909,
head of the Leningrad party apparatus, and member of the Politburo since 1930, showed
signs of leading the disaffected. In 1934 he was assassinated in his offi ce, it is now thought
by a police agent of Stalin’s. The assassination gave Stalin an excuse to strike out at his
opponents, imagined or real, by a revival of terror, immediately executing over a hundred
persons and launching extraordinary purges that continued during the next four years.
A series of sensational trials took place. In 1936, 16 Old Bolsheviks
were brought to trial. Some, like Zinoviev and Kamenev, had been expelled
from the party in 1927 for supporting Trotsky and subsequently, after the
proper recantations, had been readmitted. Now they were charged with
the murder of Kirov, with plotting the murder of Stalin, and with having
organized in 1932 under Trotsky’s inspiration a secret group to disrupt and terrorize the
Central Committee. To the amazement of the outside world, all the accused made full
confession to the charges in open court. All blamed themselves as unworthy and erring
Trials of the Old
Bolsheviks
Soviet propaganda depicted Stalin as the benevolent national leader and as the worthy succes- sor to Lenin. This typical poster shows a thoughtful, visionary Stalin with a new hydro-electric plant in the background. The artist, Konstantin Ivanov, quoted Lenin on the poster and gave this work a straightforward political title: “To communism—along the path laid by Lenin.” (Sovfoto)
91. Stalin: The Five-Year Plans and the Purges
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union774
reprobates. All were put to death. In 1937, after similar trials, 17 other Old Bolsheviks
met the same fate or received long prison sentences; and in 1938 a group of “rightists”
were executed after they were charged with wanting to restore bourgeois capitalism. The
same confessions and self-accusations followed in almost every case, with no other verifi -
able evidence adduced. How these confessions were obtained in open court from hardened
revolutionaries apparently in full possession of their faculties and bearing no sign of physi-
cal harm mystifi ed the outside world. Only later did it become clear that psychological
torture had broken the will of those accused and that threats against their families (or
promises to spare them) had played the major part.
In addition to these public trials there were other arrests, private inquisitions, and
executions that extended from the highest levels of the party, government, and military
into intellectual and scientifi c circles and the lesser echelons of state institutions. In later
years the KGB itself disclosed that in the years 1930–1953 (the year of Stalin’s death)
3,778,334 persons had been tried and sentenced for “counterrevolutionary” activity and
crimes against the state, most of them in the Great Terror of 1934–1938, and that 786,098
were executed; unknown others died in prison camps, later to be known as the Gulag. In
later years, the innocence of many of Stalin’s victims was offi cially confi rmed and their
reputations posthumously restored.
By these purges Stalin rid himself of all possible rivals for his own
position. He disposed of the embarrassment of having colleagues about
him who could remember the old days, who could quote Lenin as a former
friend, or belittle the reality of 1937 by recalling the dreams of 1917. After
1938 there were virtually no Old Bolsheviks left. A younger group, prod-
ucts of the new order, practical, constructive, impatient of “agitators,” and acquiescing in
Stalin’s dictatorship, were operating what was now an established system.
92. THE INTERNATIONAL IMPACT OF COMMUNISM, 1919–1939
The Background: Socialism and the First World War
Marxism had always been international in its outlook. To Marx and the early Marxists
existing states (like other institutions) owed their character to the class struggle. After
Marx’s death, however, as Marxist parties grew in numbers, and as the states of western
Europe became more democratic, most people who called themselves Marxists accepted
the national state, seeing in it a means by which the workers’ lot could be gradually
improved. This view was part of the movement of revisionism, or what more rigorous
Marxists called “opportunism.” In the First World War national loyalty proved its strength.
The socialist parties in the Reichstag, the French Chamber, and other parliamentary bodies
voted for war credits without hesitation. Socialist workers reported for mobilization like
everyone else.
Small minorities of socialists in every country nevertheless broke with the national-
ist majority and refused to accept the war. These more militant socialists
denounced the action of the socialist majorities as a sellout to capitalism and
imperialism. They met in international conferences with each other and with
socialists from the neutral countries. Active among them had been Lenin
and other Russian Social Democrats then in Switzerland. “The only task
for socialists,” wrote Lenin in 1914, “is to convert the war of peoples into a civil war.” The
Reinforcing the
dictatorship
Class solidarity
vs. nationalism
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77592. The International Impact of Communism, 1919–1939
minority or antiwar socialists met at the small Swiss town of Zimmerwald in 1915, where
they drew up a “Zimmerwald program,” calling for immediate peace without annexations
or indemnities; and then the Zimmerwald group itself began to split. Most Zimmerwalders
regarded peace, or the repudiation of the war, as their aim. But a “Zimmerwald Left” began
to develop, inspired mainly by Lenin and the Russian émigrés. This faction made its aim not
peace but revolution. It hoped that the war would go on until it caused social revolution in
the belligerent countries.
Then in April 1917, as we have seen, with the German imperial government arranging
their trip, Lenin and the other Bolsheviks went back to Russia and accomplished the
November Revolution. Lenin, until his death in 1924, believed that the Russian Revolution
was only a local phase of a world revolution—of the revolution of strict Marxian doctrine. Because he expected proletarian upheaval to follow soon in Germany, Poland, the Danube
Valley, and the Baltic regions, he accepted the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. He took no pride in
Russia; he was no patriot or “social-chauvinist,” to use his own term. In the founding of
the U.S.S.R. in 1922 he saw a nucleus around which other and greater soviet republics of
any nationality might coalesce.
The First World War was in fact followed by attempted revolutions
in Germany and eastern Europe. With the German and Austro-Hungarian
empires wrecked, socialists and liberals of all descriptions strove to estab-
lish new regimes. Among socialists the old differences persisted, between
those favoring gradual, nonviolent, and parliamentary methods and a more extreme group
who saw in postwar disintegration a chance to realize the international proletarian rev-
olution. The fi rst group looked upon the Bolshevik Revolution with horror; the second
looked upon it with admiration. The fi rst group included not only trade union offi cials
and practical socialist politicians but also such prewar giants of Marxian exegesis as Karl
Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein. The mass of European socialists, with their fi ercest leaders
removed, were to remain relatively moderate. Marxist in principle, they were in fact more
than ever wedded to gradual, peaceable, and parliamentary methods. The second group,
radical Leninists, continued to agitate for the forcible overthrow of European capitalism
and European political institutions; and they began to join together in the Bolsheviks’
new organization for promoting world revolution, the Third, or Communist, International,
which was created in March 1919.
The Founding of the Third International
The Second International, which since its foundation in 1889 had met every two or three
years until 1914, held its fi rst postwar meeting at Berne in 1919. It represented socialist
parties and labor organizations of all countries. The Berne meeting was stormy, for a small
minority vehemently demanded “revolution as in Russia, socialization of property as in
Russia, application of Marxism as in Russia.” Overruled at Berne, they went to Moscow
and there founded a new International in conjunction with the Russian Communist Party,
and with Lenin and the Russians dominating it completely. It was Lenin’s hope, by found-
ing a new International of his own, to discredit moderate socialism and to claim for the
Communists the true line of succession from the First International of Karl Marx.
The fi rst congress of the Third International in 1919 was somewhat
haphazard, but at the second, in 1920, the extreme left parties of 37 coun-
tries were represented. The Russian Party was supposedly only one compo-
nent. Actually, it supplied most of the personnel and most of the funds; the
Attempted revolutions
in Europe
The Third
International
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union776
Bolshevik Zinoviev was its fi rst president, remaining in this offi ce until his disgrace as a
Trotskyist in 1927. The Third, or Communist, International—the Comintern—was in part
a spontaneous rallying of Marxists from all countries who viewed the Bolshevik Revolu-
tion as the true fruition of Marxism; but, even more, it was the creation and weapon of the
Bolsheviks themselves, by which they wished to discredit and isolate the moderate social-
ists and bring about world revolution. Of all enemies the Communists hated the socialists
most, reserving for them even stronger epithets than they bestowed upon capitalists and
imperialists, because Communists and socialists were competing for the same objective,
the leadership of the world’s working class.
The second congress of the International, in 1920, endorsed a program
of Twenty-One Points, written by Lenin. These included the requirements
that each national party must call itself Communist, repudiate “reformist”
socialism, propagandize labor unions and get Communists into the impor-
tant union offi ces, infi ltrate the army, impose an iron discipline upon mem-
bers, require submission to the orders of the international Executive, use both legal channels
and secret underground methods, and expel promptly any member not hewing to the party
line. Making no pretense of respect for parliamentary democracy, the second congress
ruled that “the only question can be that of utilizing bourgeois state institutions for their
own destruction.” The Comintern was not an assemblage of humanitarians engaged in wel-
fare work; it was a weapon for revolution, organized by revolutionaries who knew how to
seize power by revolutionary methods. In most countries, as in France, there were many
Lenin’s Twenty-One
Points
The Russian Revolution brought about a split between socialists who favored parliamentary politics and those who supported the revolutionary methods of the Bolsheviks. The latter group met in Russia to form the Third, or Communist, International. It adhered to the views of Lenin, who is speaking here to a meeting of the Third International in 1920. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
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777
socialists who could not accept the Twenty-One Points. Once unifi ed socialist parties
therefore broke up. Communists and socialists went their separate ways.
For several years the U.S.S.R., using the Comintern or more conven-
tional diplomatic channels, promoted world revolution as best it could.
Communists from many countries went to Russia for indoctrination. Native-
born or Russian agents proceeded to the Dutch Indies, China, Europe, and
America. Until 1927 the Chinese revolutionists welcomed assistance from
Moscow; the Russian Borodin became an adviser in their affairs. In 1924, in England,
publication of the “Zinoviev letter,” in which the Comintern allegedly urged British work-
ers to provoke revolution, led to a great electoral victory for the Conservative Party. The
Bolshevik menace, real and imagined, produced everywhere a strong reaction. It was basic
to the rise of fascism described in the chapters to follow.
In 1927, with the suppression of Trotskyism and world revolutionism in Russia, and
with the concentration under Stalin on a program of building socialism in one country, the
Comintern moderated its activities. In 1935, as fascist dictators became noisily bellicose
and threatened the Soviet Union, the U.S.S.R. through the Comintern instructed all Com-
munist parties to enter into coalitions with socialists and activist liberals in what were
called “popular fronts” to combat fascism and reaction and support the national defense of
their own countries. During the Second World War (in 1943), as a gesture of goodwill to
Great Britain and the United States, the U.S.S.R. abolished the Comintern entirely. It reap-
peared for a few years from 1947 to 1956 under a new name, the Communist Information
Bureau or Cominform, and was then disbanded.
It was not through the Comintern that the U.S.S.R. exerted its great-
est global infl uence in the years after 1917. It exerted its infl uence by the
massive fact of its very existence, which showed that a new type of modern
economic system could emerge from a revolution. Before 1917 no one in
Europe or Asia had thought that anything was to be learned from Russia. Twenty years
later even critics of the U.S.S.R. feared that it might represent the wave of the future. Its
sheer power was soon demonstrated in the Second World War. Marxism was no longer
merely a theory; there was an actual society, embracing a sixth of the globe, which called
itself Marxist.
In every country those who were most critical of capitalist institutions compared them
unfavorably to those of the Soviet Union. Some believed that something like Soviet results
might be obtained without the use of Soviet methods, which were dismissed as typically
Russian, a deplorable heritage from the tsars. With the appearance of Communism and
Communist parties, socialism and socialist ideas seemed in contrast to be middling and
respectable. Everywhere in the 1930s the idea of planning began to fi nd favor. Workers
obtained more security against the fl uctuations of capitalism. Colonial and formerly colo-
nial peoples, especially in Asia, were particularly impressed by the achievement of the
U.S.S.R., which had shown how a traditional society could modernize without falling
under the infl uence of foreign capital or foreign guidance.
For a long time the Communist Party in the Soviet Union presented itself as the leader
of world revolution and tried to exert control over Communist parties in all other coun-
tries. This became increasingly diffi cult. Over the years the U.S.S.R. pur-
sued diplomatic and military policies and engaged in acts of aggression and
territorial expansion, such as the tsarist state might have done. By the late
1980s the U.S.S.R. was no longer an innovative society, and many people
both within the Soviet Union and in the former colonial world came to
Promoting world
revolution
The U.S.S.R.’s
impact
Waning Soviet
infl uence in later
years
92. The International Impact of Communism, 1919–1939
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Chapter 18 The Russian Revolution and the Emergence of the Soviet Union778
believe that it could not adapt to modern social realities. Its economic system was in a
shambles; the component republics demanded autonomy or independence. The revelation
from within the Soviet Union itself of the persecution and deaths of tens of millions of
innocent victims, along with the restiveness of its own nationalities, undermined its role
as leader of oppressed peoples elsewhere. European Communist parties proclaimed their
independence from Moscow. Meanwhile a new form of dynamic communism emerged
after 1949 in the People’s Republic of China. Yet all Communist parties, including the
Chinese, were derived from Marxism and from the Russian Revolution of 1917, once
hailed as the fi rst great victory over capitalism and imperialism. It was thus a revolution
that profoundly infl uenced fervent supporters throughout much of the twentieth century.
But the repressive political system, stifl ing cultural policies, brutal purges, and economic
failures of the Soviet state also produced passionate opponents and a widespread hostility
to Communism, even among many of its former advocates and supporters.
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
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779
C h a p t e r 19 DEMOCRACY, ANTI-
IMPERIALISM, AND THE
ECONOMIC CRISIS AFTER
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
We have followed events in the Soviet Union in detail to about the year 1939 but have left the story
of Europe and the rest of the world at the signing
of the peace treaties of 1919. We turn now to the
wider history of political and economic change dur-
ing the period of just 20 years that elapsed between
the formal close of the First World War in 1919
and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.
In these 20 years Europeans passed through vari-
ous (sometimes overlapping) cycles of optimistic
confi dence, disillusionment, hope, and fear. There
were a few years of superfi cial prosperity, abruptly
followed by unparalleled economic disaster.
For a time, in the 1920s, democracy and democratic reforms seemed to be advanc-
ing; then, in the diffi cult economic conditions of the 1930s, dictatorship began to spread
in countries that had earlier tried to move toward greater democracy. Meanwhile, during
these same decades, new political and social movements in Asia were challenging the
European empires and colonial economic systems that had long given the European powers
their dominant position in global affairs. The Great War, the Russian Revolution, and
the changing world economy all affected European relations with the peoples and cultures
of Asia, where anticolonial and nationalist campaigns attracted growing popular support.
Let us fi rst examine the apparent triumphs of democracy and the growing opposition to
European imperialism in the 1920s, turn next to the devastating worldwide effects of the
Great Depression that began in 1929, and then, in the following chapter, trace the new
confl icts and rising dangers of the 1930s.
93. THE ADVANCE OF DEMOCRACY AFTER 1919
The fi rst years following the war were a time of social troubles. The victors and losers
alike faced serious diffi culties in the economic reconversion from war to peace. Veter-
ans demobilized from the huge armies found themselves unemployed and psychologically
93. The Advance of
Democracy after 1919
94. The German Republic and
the Spirit of Locarno
95. Anti-Imperialist
Movements in Asia
96. The Great Depression:
Collapse of the World
Economy
Chapter emblem: Mahatma Gandhi leading a group of nonviolent protestors in 1930 during the political
campaign for India’s national independence. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War780
restless. Farms and factories geared to maximum production during the war faced a sudden
disappearance of markets. They produced more than could now be sold, so that the war
was followed by a sharp postwar economic depression, which, however, had run its course
by 1922. Basically, the economic position even of the victors was seriously damaged, for
the war had disjointed the world of 1914, in which industrial western Europe had lived by
exchange with eastern Europe and with overseas colonies and trading partners.
Gains of Democracy and Social Democracy
The war, President Wilson had said, was fought to make the world safe for democracy.
Political democracy, to be sure, now made numerous advances. The new states that
emerged from the war all adopted liberal democratic principles such as written constitu-
tions and universal suffrage. Democracy made advances even in countries that had long
been in large measure democratic. Great Britain, for example, dropped the last barriers to
universal male suffrage in 1918. The most conspicuous innovation in many countries was
the growing enfranchisement of women. We have seen how the women’s suffrage move-
ment in Great Britain achieved an important breakthrough in 1918, when women received
a somewhat restricted right to vote; in 1928 the restrictions were dropped and the vote was
granted on an equal basis with men. In 1920, through an amendment to the constitution,
female suffrage became general in the United States. Women voted also in Germany and
in most of the new states of Europe. In the Soviet Union women received the vote on an
equal basis with men after the revolution in 1917.
In most European countries the successors of the old prewar socialists gained in
strength. With the left wings of the old socialists generally seceding, calling themselves
Communists, and affi liating with each other and with Moscow in the Communist Interna-
tional, the European socialists or social democrats were preponderantly parties of peace-
able or revisionist Marxism, entirely willing to pursue their political and social goals by
parliamentary and legislative methods. Labor unions, with new self-confi dence gained
from the role they had played in the war, grew in membership, prestige, and importance.
Social legislation that before the war would have seemed radical was
now enacted in many places. An eight-hour legal working day became com-
mon; and government-sponsored insurance programs against sickness,
accident, and old age were either adopted or extended; an act of 1930, in
France, insured almost 10 million workers. An air of progressive democ-
racy pervaded Europe and the European world. The social service, or welfare, state, already
beginning to emerge in most European countries in the late nineteenth century, was becom-
ing more fi rmly established.
Among the states that might have been expected to continue their prewar democratic
gains in the postwar years, only Italy turned away from democracy. Italy had been a par-
liamentary state since 1861 and had introduced a democratic male suffrage in the elections
of 1913. In 1919 the Italians held their second such elections. But Italian
democracy soon abruptly ended. In 1922 an agitator named Benito
Mussolini, leading a movement that he called Fascism (thereby adding a
new word to the world’s political vocabulary), ended Italian parliamentary government
and founded his Fascist regime. Lenin in his way had already created the fi rst single-party
state; Mussolini became the fi rst of the dictators in postwar Europe outside the Soviet
Union. Fascist Italy in the 1920s was the chief exception in what seemed to be a rising tide
of democracy.
Social legislation
enacted
Mussolini
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78193. The Advance of Democracy after 1919
The New States of Central and East-Central Europe
In central and east-central Europe—in Germany, in the territory of the former Austro-
Hungarian Empire, and in the western fringe of former tsarist Russia—new states and new
governments struggled to establish themselves. The new postwar states included, besides
republican Germany, the four successor states to the Habsburg Empire—Austria, Hun-
gary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia; and the fi ve states that had broken away from the
Russian Empire—Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (see map, pp. 730–731).
The other small states in eastern Europe, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Albania, had
already been independent before 1914; their boundaries underwent some modifi cation and
their governments underwent considerable reorganization after the war. Turkey, the suc-
cessor to the Ottoman Empire, was also a new republic.
Although many people in all countries had developed nationalist iden-
tities and aspirations, the new states in Europe were to a large extent acci-
dents of the war. Nowhere, except possibly in Poland, did they represent a
deeply felt, long-maturing revolutionary or republican sentiment. Only an infi nitesimal
number of Germans in 1914 would have voted for a republic. Even among the nationalities
Accidents of war
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. constitution, which gave Ameri- can women the right to vote in all elections, was part of a more general expansion of women’s political rights in the Atlantic world after the First World War. This poster was published by the League of Women Voters shortly after the amendment was approved in 1920, and it clearly urged women to use their new voting rights by going to the polls. (MPI/Getty Images)
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War782
of Austria-Hungary in 1914 few persons would have chosen the complete breakup of the
Habsburg Empire. The republicans, moderate socialists, agrarians, or nationalists who now
found themselves in power had to improvise governments for which there had been little
preparation. They had to contend with reactionaries, monarchists, and members of the old
aristocracy. They had also to deal with Communist revolutionaries, who, inspired by
Lenin’s success, hoped to bring about a dictatorship of the proletariat. A Communist revolt
broke out in Germany in 1919 but was quickly suppressed; Soviet regimes were actually
set up and soon crushed in Hungary and in the German state of Bavaria; and as late as 1923
there was a Communist uprising in the German state of Saxony.
The new central European states all embodied the principle of national
self-determination, which held that each nationality should enjoy political
sovereignty—one nation, one government. But people in this region were
and always had been locally intermixed. Each of the new states therefore
included minority nationalities; with the exception of a disruptive, forced exchange of
populations between Greece and Turkey arranged in 1923, there was no thought of the
actual physical removal of “alien” groups. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia were
the most composite of the new states. Poland and Czechoslovakia each had many disaf-
fected Germans. In Czechoslovakia the Slovaks resented Czech domination and in Yugo-
slavia, where the Serbs were in control, Croatian and other separatist movements actively
opposed the Serb domination.
Nevertheless, despite economic and nationalist troubles, the new states and govern-
ments attempted at the outset to make themselves democratic. All the newly created states
were republics except Yugoslavia, where the monarchy was under the older Serbian
dynasty. Hungary started out in 1918 as a republic, but the attempt of the Communist
leader Béla Kun to found a Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 brought back the counter-
revolutionaries who restored the Habsburg monarchy in principle, though they were pre-
vented by foreign pressure from restoring the king in person. Hungary emerged in 1920
as a monarchy with a perennially vacant throne, under an authoritarian regency exercised
by Admiral Horthy. All smaller states of Europe, including Hungary, possessed at least the
machinery of democracy until the 1930s; that is, they had constitutions, parliaments, elec-
tions, and a diversity of political parties. If civil liberty was sometimes violated, the right
to civil liberty was not denied; and if elections were sometimes rigged, they were at least
in principle supposed to be free.
Economic Problems of Eastern Europe; Land Reform
Eastern Europe for centuries had been an agrarian region of large landed estates, which
supported on the one hand a wealthy landowning aristocracy of almost feudal outlook,
and on the other an impoverished mass of agricultural workers with little or no property
of their own. The landed aristocracy had been the chief support of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire and an important pillar of the old order in the tsarist empire and in eastern
Prussia. The mass of the rural population through all this region had been free from
serfdom only since the middle of the preceding century. The middle class of business
and professional people was small except in Austria and Bohemia, the western portion
of Czechoslovakia. In general, people in this whole region were conscious of lagging
behind western Europe, not only in industry, factories, railroads, and great cities, but
also in literacy, schooling, reading habits, health, death rates, length of life, and material
standards of living.
Self-determination
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78393. The Advance of Democracy after 1919
The new states set out to modernize themselves, generally on the model
of the western European nations. In addition to introducing democratic and
constitutional ideas, they put up protective tariffs, behind which they tried
to develop factories and industries of their own. But the new national
boundaries created diffi culties. Where Europe had 6,000 miles of frontiers in 1913, it had
almost 10,000 after the war, and all the increase was in eastern Europe. Goods circulated
much less easily. Protected industries in the old agricultural regions produced ineffi ciently
and at high cost. Old and established industries in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and western
Poland, cut off by the new frontiers and new tariffs from their former markets, fell upon
hard times. The working class of Vienna lived in misery. Vienna, a city of 2 million per-
sons, formerly the capital of an empire of 50 million, was now the capital of a republic of
6 million. In Czechoslovakia the German minority living in the Sudetenland complained
Obstacles to
modernization
The peace settlements after the First World War transformed Vienna from its previous status as the capital city of a large empire into the capital of a small republic, but the city managed to sustain much of its earlier cultural vitality during the 1920s. This bustling outdoor cafe and dance suggest how the Viennese found ways to enjoy themselves in the diminished political context of the postwar Austrian state. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War784
that in hard times the German businesspeople and workers, because of government
policies, always suffered more than their Czech counterparts. Economically, the carving up
of eastern Europe into a dozen independent states was self-defeating.
The greatest of reforms undertaken by the new eastern European
states was the reform o f landownership. Although this reform could not
solve basic economic problems in the area, it did have substantial effect
on the pattern of land distribution. The whole traditional agrarian base of
society was overturned. The work of the revolutions of 1848, which, in the Habsburg
lands, had liberated the peasants from legal dependency but left them landless, was now
carried a step further. The example of the Russian Revolution provided a powerful stimu-
lus, for in Russia in 1917 peasants had driven off landlords, and Communists won a
hearing among discontented and propertyless peasants from Finland to the Balkans. Not
until 1929, it should be recalled, did the Soviet Union embark on the collectivization of
agriculture; until then, communism appeared to favor the small individual farmer. But it
may be said with equal truth that the model for agrarian reform lay in western Europe,
especially in France, the historic land of the small peasant proprietor.
Land reform worked out differently in different countries, but large estates were gen-
erally broken into smaller farms throughout the Baltic states and in much of Czechoslova-
kia. This transformation refl ected nationalist sentiment as well as a new social policy
because most of the large landowners in all of these places were German. In Romania and
Yugoslavia the breakup of large estates, though considerable, was less thorough. In Fin-
land, Bulgaria, and Greece the issue hardly arose, because small landownership was
already common. Land reform had least success in Poland and Hungary, where the landed
magnates were exceptionally strong and well-rooted.
After the land reforms, political parties of small landholders became
the chief democratic force within the various states on the western bor-
der of Russia. Often they inclined to socialism, especially because capital-
ism was associated in their minds with foreign investors and outsiders. On
the other hand, the great landowners, the former aristocrats of the prewar
empires, whether already expropriated or merely threatened with expropriation, were con-
fi rmed in a reactionary outlook. Although the land reforms provoked political fears among
traditional social elites, the changes in land ownership did not destroy the social and eco-
nomic hierarchies in eastern European societies. The new landowners’ farms were small,
frequently no more than ten acres. The peasant owners lacked capital, agricultural skill,
and knowledge of the market. Farm productivity did not rise. In place of old differences
between landlord and tenant there developed new differences between the more comfort-
able peasants and the proletarian hired hands. The continuance of relative poverty, the
obstinacy of reactionary upper classes, the new economic tensions among the peasants
themselves, the economic distortions produced by numerous tariff walls, and the lack of
any sustained tradition of self-government all helped to frustrate the democratic experi-
ments launched in the 1920s.
94. THE GERMAN REPUBLIC AND THE SPIRIT OF LOCARNO
The keystone of Europe was Germany, which also had its revolution in 1918. But it was a
revolution without revolutionaries, a negative revolution caused more by the disappearance
of the old than by any decisive arrival of the new. The emperor and the High Command of
Land reform
Peasant and small-
holder parties
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78594. The German Republic and the Spirit of Locarno
the army, in the last weeks of the war, had bowed out of the picture, leaving it to others to
face defeat and humiliation. For a time after November 1918, the political leaders in charge
of affairs were mainly Social Democrats. The Social Democrats were Marxists, but their
Marxism was the tamed, toned down, and revisionist Marxism that had prevailed for
20 years before the advent of Lenin. They were trade union offi cials and party managers.
They could look back, in 1918, on decades spent in developing labor organizations and
building up the Social Democratic Party, which in 1912 had become the largest single party
in the Reichstag. Now, in 1918, they were a cautious and prudent group, essentially conser-
vative, more anxious to preserve what they had already achieved than to launch audacious
new social experiments. Before 1917 the Social Democrats considered themselves well to
the Left. But the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the emergence of a pro-Bolshevik or
Communist element in Germany put the Social Democrats in the middle. The middle is an
awkward spot, especially in disturbed times; the Communists regarded the Social Demo-
crats as reactionaries, despicable traitors to the working-class movement, whereas the true
reactionaries, recruited from old monarchists, army offi cers, Junker landowners, and big
business groups, saw in social democracy, or professed to see in it, a dangerous fl irtation
with Bolshevism.
The middle group in Germany, the Social Democrats reinforced by the Catholic Cen-
ter Party and others, was more afraid of the Left than of the Right. They were appalled in
1918 and 1919 by the stories brought out of Russia, not merely by bourgeois and aristo-
cratic exiles but by refugee Social Democrats, Mensheviks, and anti-Leninist Bolsheviks,
many of whom the socialists had long known and trusted in the Second International. In
January 1919 the Spartacists, 1 led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxem-
burg, attempted to bring about a German proletarian revolution, like that
in Russia. Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks aided them. For a time, there
seemed to be a possibility that the Spartacists might succeed in imposing a
communist dictatorship of the proletariat in Germany. But the Social Democratic Provi-
sional Government crushed the Spartacist uprising, turning for that purpose to demobi-
lized army offi cers and volunteer vigilantes recruited from the disbanding army. The
Spartacist leaders Liebknecht and Luxemburg were arrested and shot while in police
custody. The events of “Spartacus Week” widened the chasm between Social Democrats
and Communists.
Shortly after the suppression of the Spartacists, elections were held for a National
Constituent Assembly. No single party received a majority, but the Social Democrats were
the leading party. A coalition of Social Democrats, Center Party, and liberal democrats
dominated the Assembly. After several months of deliberations at the city of Weimar, in
July 1919, a constitution was adopted establishing a democratic republic. The Weimar
Republic (as the regime in Germany from 1919 to the advent of Hitler in 1933 is called)
was soon threatened ominously from the Right. In 1920 a group of disaffected army offi -
cers staged a Putsch, or armed revolt, put the republican government to fl ight, and attempted to place a puppet of their own, one Dr. Kapp, at the head of the state. The Berlin
workers, by turning off public utilities, stopped the Kapp Putsch and saved the republic.
But the Weimar government never took suffi ciently fi rm measures to put down private
armed bands led by reactionary or outspokenly antidemocratic agitators. One of these was
soon to be Adolf Hitler, who as early as 1923 staged an abortive revolt in Munich. Being
The Spartacists
1 So named from Spartacus, a Roman slave who led a slave revolt in south Italy in 72 b.c.e.
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War786
democratic and liberal, the Weimar government would not deny the rights of free speech
or of election to the Reichstag to even the most radical antidemocratic groups on the Left
or the Right.
The Weimar Republic was in principle highly democratic. The consti-
tution embodied all the devices then favored by the most advanced demo-
crats, not only universal suffrage, including the vote for women, but also
proportional representation and the initiative, referendum, and recall. But
except for the legal eight-hour day and a few other such safeguards to the
workers’ welfare the republic of which the Social Democrats were the main architects
in its formative years was remote from anything socialist. No industries were national-
ized. No property changed hands. No land laws or agrarian reforms were undertaken,
as in the new states of eastern Europe; the East Elbian Junkers remained untouched in
their landed estates. The very statues of Germany’s earlier emperors, kings, princes,
and grand dukes were left standing in the streets and squares. Offi cials, civil servants,
police agents, professors, and schoolteachers of old imperial Germany remained at their
respective duties. The army, though limited by the Versailles treaty to 100,000 men,
remained the old army in miniature, with all its essential organization intact, and lack-
ing only in numbers. In the offi cer corps the old professional and aristocratic infl uences
remained strong.
Never had there been a revolution so mild, so reasonable, so tolerant. There was no
terror, no fanaticism, no stirring faith, no expropriation, and no émigré migration. There
had in truth been no revolution at all in the sense in which England, France, the United
States, Russia, and other countries either recently or in the more distant past had experi-
enced revolutions.
The German Democracy and Versailles
The supreme question for Europe and the world after 1920 was how Germany would adjust
to the postwar conditions. How would the Germans accept the new internal regime of
democracy? How would they accept the new German frontiers and other provisions of the
Treaty of Versailles? The two questions were unfortunately interconnected. The Weimar
The Weimar
Republic
The Spartacists in Germany tried to provoke a Soviet-style, Communist revolution in early 1919, but their uprising was suppressed by the Social Demo- cratic Provisional Government. These people are burning polit- ical pamphlets that they had seized from Spartacist newspa- per offi ces. (Central Press/Getty Images)
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78794. The German Republic and the Spirit of Locarno
Republic and the Treaty of Versailles were both products of the defeat of Germany in the
war. There were many Germans who favored democracy, notably the numerous Social
Democrats, and many more possibly could have been won over to it, given time and
favorable conditions. But no one, not even the Social Democrats, accepted the Treaty of
Versailles or the new German frontiers as either just or fi nal. If democracy in Germany
meant the perpetual acceptance of the treaty without amendment, or if it meant eco-
nomic distress or hardship that could either reasonably or unreasonably be explained as
consequences of the treaty, then democracy would lose such appeal as it had for the
Germans.
The German republicans, as we have seen, protested against the Ver-
sailles treaty before signing, and signed only under pressure. The Allies
continued the wartime naval blockade after the armistice, thus confi rming,
in German eyes, the argument that the Treaty of Versailles was a Diktat, a vengeful, dic- tated peace. The “war guilt” clause, while it perhaps satisfi ed a distinctive Anglo-American
sense of morality, offended a distinctive German sense of honor. Neither the reparations
demanded of them nor the new frontiers were accepted by the Germans as settled. They
regarded reparations as a perpetual mortgage on their future, and they generally expected
some day to revise their eastern frontier, recover at least the Polish corridor, and merge
with German-speaking Austria.
The French lived in fear of the day when Germany would recover.
Their plans for their own security and for the collective security of
Europe against a German revival had been disappointed. They had been
unable to detach the Rhineland from Germany. The United States Senate had refused to
ratify the treaty that Wilson signed at Paris, by which the United States was to guarantee
France against German invasion in the future. Both Britain and the United States showed
a tendency to isolation, to pull away from the Continent, to get back to “normalcy,” to
work mainly for a restored trade in which a strong Germany would be a large customer.
The League of Nations, of which the United States was not a member and in which
every member nation had a veto, offered little assurance of safety to the French. The
French began to form alliances against a potentially resurgent Germany with Poland,
Czechoslovakia, and other eastern European states. They insisted also on German pay-
ment of reparations. The amount of reparations, left unstated in the treaty, was fi xed by
a Reparations Commission in 1921 at 132 billion gold marks (the equivalent at the time
of $35 billion), a sum that even non-German economists said was more than Germany
could possibly pay.
The Weimar government in these circumstances looked to the Soviet Union, which
had been no party to the Versailles treaty and claimed no reparations. The Soviet govern-
ment meanwhile, concluding from the failure of proletarian revolution in Germany and
Hungary that the time was not ripe for the sovietizing of Europe, prepared
to enter into normal diplomatic relations with established governments.
Germany and the Soviet Union, despite ideological repugnance, thus signed
the treaty of Rapallo in 1922. In the following years the Soviet Union
obtained needed manufactures from Germany, and German factories and workers were
kept busy by orders from the Soviets. The German army dispatched offi cers and techni-
cians to give instruction to the Red Army. Obliged by the Treaty of Versailles to restrict
its activities, the German army was in fact able, through its work in Russia and through
a number of subterfuges at home, to maintain a high standard of training and technical
knowledge of new weapons and equipment.
The Versailles treaty
as “Diktat”
French fear
Soviet-German
relations
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War788
Reparations, the German Infl ation of 1923, Recovery
The French, blocked in the attempt to collect reparations and assisted by the Belgians, in
1923 sent units of the French army to occupy the industrial sites of the Ruhr Valley. The
Germans responded by general strikes and passive resistance. To sustain the workers the
Weimar government paid them benefi ts, grinding paper money off the printing presses
for this purpose. Germany, like other belligerent countries, had suffered from infl ation
during and after the war; neither the imperial nor the Weimar government had been will-
ing to impose heavier taxes to offset it. But what now swept Germany was different from
ordinary infl ation. It was of catastrophic and utterly ruinous proportions. Paper money
became literally worthless. By the end of 1923 it took over 4 trillion paper marks to equal
a dollar.
This infl ation brought far more of a social revolution than the fall of
the Hohenzollern Empire had ever done. Debtors paid off debts in worth-
less money. Creditors received baskets full of meaningless paper. Salaries
even when raised lagged behind the soaring cost of living. Annuities, pensions, proceeds
of insurance policies, savings accounts in the banks, income from bonds and mortgages—
every form of revenue that had been arranged for at some time in the past, and which often
represented the economy, foresight, and personal planning of many years—now turned
to nothing. The middle class was pauperized and demoralized. Middle-class people were
now materially in much the same position as workers and proletarians. Their whole view
of life, however, made it impossible for them to identify themselves with the laboring
class or to accept its socialist ideologies. They had lost faith in society itself, in the future,
in the old burgher codes of self-reliance and rational planning of their own lives in an
understandable world. A kind of moral void was created, with nothing for them to believe
in, hope for, or respect.
The infl ation, however, by wiping out all outstanding indebtedness within the country,
made it possible, once the losses were written off and accepted, to start up economic pro-
duction afresh. The United States was persuaded to play a reluctant role, in part because it
was demanding the payment of huge war debts by the Allies. The Allies—Britain, France,
Belgium—insisted that they could not pay these debts to the United States
unless they collected reparations from Germany. In 1924 the Dawes Plan,
named for the American Charles G. Dawes who negotiated the agreement,
provided Germany with a new means to ensure the fl ow of reparations. By
the Dawes Plan the French evacuated the Ruhr, the reparations payments were cut down,
and arrangements were made for the German republic to borrow abroad. A good deal of
American private capital was invested in Germany in the following years, both in German
government bonds and in German industrial enterprises. Gradually, so at least it seemed,
Germany was put on its feet. For four or fi ve years the Weimar Republic even enjoyed a
bustling prosperity, and there was new construction in roads, housing, factories, and ocean
liners. But the prosperity rested in good measure on foreign loans, and the Great Depres-
sion that began in 1929 reopened all the old questions.
The Spirit of Locarno
These years of economic prosperity were years also of relative international calm. Yet none
of the fundamental international issues were addressed or resolved. The universal German
hatred for the Treaty of Versailles elicited no concessions from the Allies. Conceivably,
A social revolution
The Dawes Plan
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78994. The German Republic and the Spirit of Locarno
had the Allies been willing at this time to amend the treaty by international agreement,
they might have taken the wind from the sails of nationalistic rabble-rousers in Germany
and so spared themselves much later grief. It may be, however, that no possible conces-
sion would have suffi ced. The great problem was to prevent a German overthrow of the
treaty structure by violence, especially in eastern Europe where the Germans regarded the
new frontiers as very much subject to reconsideration. After the Ruhr incident in 1923 and
adoption of the Dawes Plan in 1924, a group of moderate and peace-loving national leaders
shaped the foreign policy of the principal countries—Gustav Stresemann in Germany,
Édouard Herriot and Aristide Briand in France, and Ramsay MacDonald in England.
The charter of the League of Nations provided for international sanctions against
potential aggressors. Like the system of congresses after the Peace of Vienna, the League
was designed to assure compliance with the peace treaties or at the very least their modifi -
cation without resort to force. No one expected the League, by any authority of its own, to
prevent war between Great Powers; but the League achieved various minor pacifi cations in
the 1920s, and in any case its headquarters at Geneva offered a convenient meeting place in
which statesmen could talk.
As a further assurance against war, in 1925, the European powers
signed a number of treaties at Locarno, Switzerland. These marked the high-
est point in international goodwill reached between the two World Wars.
Germany signed a treaty with France and Belgium guaranteeing their respective frontiers
The Locarno treaties
The catastrophic German infl ation of 1923 destroyed the value of wages, savings, and investments. Consumers paid for goods with baskets of paper money, forcing merchants such as this baker and his employees to calculate their daily sales with trillions of almost worthless German marks. (akg-images/Newscom)
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War790
unconditionally. It signed arbitration treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia—not guar-
anteeing these frontiers as they stood but undertaking to attempt changes in them only by
international discussion, agreement, or arbitration. France signed treaties with Poland and
Czechoslovakia promising military aid if they were attacked by Germany. France thus for-
tifi ed its policy of balancing German power in the East by its own diplomatic alliances and
by supporting the Little Entente, as the alliance of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Roma-
nia was called. Great Britain “guaranteed”—that is, promised military aid in the event of
violation—the frontiers of Belgium and France against Germany. It did not give an equiva-
lent guarantee with respect to Czechoslovakia or Poland. The British policy was based on
the view that their security would be threatened by German expansion westward, but not
by German expansion to the east. It was on the borders of Czechoslovakia and Poland,
14 years later, that the Second World War began. Had Britain gone along with France in
1925 in guaranteeing these two countries, then abided by the guarantee, the Second World
War might possibly have been prevented. On the other hand, no war ever depends on any
single decision. It is the accumulation of many decisions that matters; and the expansionist
ambitions of Hitler and the German Nazis would not have disappeared in 1939 if the
British had simply “guaranteed” the protection of national borders in the 1920s.
In 1925 people talked with relief of the “spirit of Locarno.” In 1928 international har-
mony was again strengthened when the French foreign minister Briand and the United
States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg arranged for the Pact of Paris. Ultimately signed
by 65 nations, it condemned recourse to war for the solution of international controversies
(though it provided no measures of enforcement).
In the mid-1920s the outlook for European international relations
was therefore full of hope. At Locarno, Germany had of its own volition
accepted its borders both east and west, to the extent of abjuring violence
and unilateral action even in the east. In 1926 Germany joined the League
of Nations. Germany appeared to be developing a democratic republic. Democracy also
seemed to work, as well as could be expected, in most of the new states of eastern Europe,
and Communist Russia itself had halted its postwar revolutionary offensive. The world
economy was again expanding, and the major European nations seemed to be more pros-
perous. World production was at or above the prewar level. World trade, by 1929, measured
in hard money—gold—had almost doubled since 1913. The war and the postwar troubles
were remembered as a nightmare from which Europe had fi nally escaped. It seemed that,
after all, the world had been made safe for democracy.
But complacency was shattered by the great world Depression, by the growth of a
malignant nationalism in Germany, due in part to the Depression, and by the assertion of
a new militancy in Japan, which also was not unrelated to the Depression. But let us turn
fi rst to the postwar Asian nationalisms that rose up against European imperialism and chal-
lenged Europe’s once-dominant position in the global economy.
95. ANTI-IMPERIALIST MOVEMENTS IN ASIA
Resentments in Asia
The peoples of Asia had never been satisfi ed with the position in which they found them-
selves after the great European expansion of the nineteenth century. Increasingly they
condemned everything associated with “imperialism.” In this respect there was little
A hopeful outlook
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79195. Anti-Imperialist Movements in Asia
difference between countries actually governed by Europeans as parts of European
empires in the nineteenth century, such as British India, the Netherlands Indies, and
French Indochina, and countries that remained nominally independent under their own
government, such as China, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire. In the former, as new
national movements began to develop, there was objection to the monopoly of Europeans
in the important offi ces of government. In the latter, there was objection to the special
rights and privileges enjoyed by Europeans, the widespread impounding of customs reve-
nues to pay foreign debts, the special privileges for foreigners in Turkey, the extraterrito-
rial rights in China, and the spheres of infl uence in Persia that divided the country between
British and Russians.
By imperialism, in either case, Asians meant a system whereby the
affairs of their own country were conducted, its resources exploited, and its
people employed for the benefi t of foreigners, Europeans, or white people.
They meant the system of absentee capitalism, by which the plantations, docks, or facto-
ries on which they themselves labored, were the property of owners thousands of miles
away whose main interest was a regular fl ow of profi ts. They meant the constant threat
that an alien civilization would disintegrate and eat away their own ancient cultures. They
meant the burden of having to speak a European language or the disagreeable prospect of
having to fi ght in wars originated by Europeans. And they meant the airs of superiority
assumed by white people, the race consciousness exhibited by all Europeans, the color
line that was everywhere drawn, the attitudes varying between contempt and condescen-
sion, the relation of native “boy” and European “sahib.” Imperialism to them signifi ed the
gentlemen’s clubs in Kolkata to which no Indian was ever admitted, the hotels in Shanghai
from which Chinese were carefully kept out, or the park benches in various cities on which
no “native” could ever sit. In deeper psychology, as well as in economics and politics, the
revolt of self-conscious Asians was a rebellion against an imperial system that reduced
them to social inferiority and humiliation in their own societies.
The revolt against European imperialism was generally ambivalent or two-sided. It
was a revolt against Western supremacy; but at the same time, in most cases those who
revolted meant to learn from and imitate numerous components of European cultures. By
using the methods and knowledge of European science, industry, organization, and other
sources of European power, they sought to preserve their own identity and achieve politi-
cal and economic equality with the European nation-states. Anti-imperialist movements
and intellectuals thus borrowed from Western culture even as they vehemently rejected
European ideologies that assumed the superiority of European institutions or races.
The twentieth-century challenge to European imperialism in Asia had broken out
with the Russo-Japanese War, when an Asian people in 1905 defeated a major European
power for the fi rst time. In 1906 revolution began in Persia, leading to the
assembly of the fi rst majlis, or parliament. In 1908 the Young Turks staged a successful revolution in Constantinople and summoned a parliamentary
assembly to represent all regions then in the Ottoman Empire. In 1911
the revolutionists in China, led by Sun Yat-sen, overthrew the Manchu
(or Qing) dynasty and proclaimed the Chinese Republic. In each case the rebels charged
their old monarchs—shah, sultan, emperor—with subservience to European imperialists.
In each case they summoned national assemblies on the prevailing democratic model of
Europe, and they proposed to revive, modernize, and even Europeanize their countries to
the degree necessary to avoid domination by the imperial powers.
Imperialism in Asia
Anti-imperialist
revolts
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War792
First World War and Russian Revolution
In the First World War almost all the Asian peoples were somehow involved. The Ottoman
Empire, allied with Germany, immediately repudiated all the capitulations, or special legal
rights of Europeans. In Persia, where Russian and British intervention in 1907 had blocked
the developing movement for constitutional reform, there was a concerted attempt to main-
tain Persian neutrality in the war and to get rid of the foreign spheres of infl uence that
Russia and Britain had imposed through agreements between themselves. Persian territory
became a battleground of British, Russian, and Turkish forces; and a large number of Per-
sians died from wartime violence, disruption, and disease. China, which joined the Allies,
attempted at the peace conference to have the extraterritorial rights in China abolished. We
have seen how this request of the Chinese Republic was refused, and how the Allies instead
transferred many of the prewar German concessions to the Japanese. The colonized regions
of Asia, the Dutch, French, and British possessions, were stimulated economically by the
war. The Netherlands Indies, though remaining neutral, increased its output of foodstuffs,
oil, and raw materials. India developed its steel industry and textile manufactures and con-
tributed over a million soldiers, combat and service troops, to the British cause. All the
colonized regions were stirred by Woodrow Wilson’s call to make the world safe for
democracy.
The home governments made concessions, but they were always afraid
they might go too far. They insisted that their subject peoples were not yet
capable of self-government. Huge investments were at stake, and the whole
world economy depended on the continuing fl ow of raw materials from
tropical and subtropical countries. But they did compromise. In 1916 the
Dutch created a legislative assembly to advise the governor general of the Indies; half its
members were Indonesians. In 1917 the British agreed to a measure of self-government in
India; an Indian legislative assembly was set up with 140 members, of whom 100 were
elected, and in the provinces of British India the number of elected representatives and of
local Indian offi cials was increased. The French in 1922 provided for a somewhat similar
assembly in Indochina. Thus all three colonial powers at about the same time began to
experiment with consultative bodies whose membership was partly elective and partly
appointive, partly non-European and partly European.
The Russian Revolution added a new stimulus to unrest in Asia. The
Bolsheviks denounced not only capitalism but also imperialism. In Marxist-
Leninist ideology imperialism was an aspect of capitalism, which Lenin had
called the “highest” or “fi nal” phase of capitalist societies. Colonial peoples
also tended to identify the two, not so much for Marxist reasons as because
modern capitalism was a foreign or “imperialist” phenomenon in colonial countries, where
the ownership and the management of large enterprises were foreign. Nationalism in Asia,
the movement for independence or for more equality with Europe, thus easily shaded off
into socialism and the denunciation of capitalist exploitation. The Bolsheviks were quick
to see the advantages for themselves in this situation. As it became clear that the world
revolution, as expected by Lenin, would not soon come to pass in Europe, the Russian
Communists turned to Asia as the theater in which world capitalism might be attacked by
a great fl anking movement. In September 1920 a “congress of oppressed Eastern peoples”
assembled at Baku, on the coast of the Caspian Sea. Zinoviev, head of the Communist
International, called for war upon “the wild beasts of British capitalism.” In the following
years a few future radical leaders from Asian countries sojourned in Moscow. Meanwhile,
Home government
concessions
Bolshevik
anti-imperialism
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79395. Anti-Imperialist Movements in Asia
Communists dispatched from Moscow stirred up the discontents which existed, quite with-
out Russian instigation, all over Asia.
The postwar situation in Asia was thus extremely fl uid. People who were not Commu-
nists hailed communism as a liberating force. Anti-European activists declared that their
countries must Europeanize, at least in certain aspects of science, technology, and social
organization. Nationalism overshadowed all other “isms.” In the Indian National Congress
rich Indian capitalists worked together with socialist leaders in relative harmony so long as
the common enemy was the British.
The Turkish and Persian Revolutions
The most immediately successful of the revolutionary movements took place in Turkey.
The Young Turks at fi rst, in 1908, had meant to prevent the further dissolution of the Otto-
man Empire. This proved to be impossible. In the Balkan wars of 1912–1913 the Ottoman
power was almost totally excluded from the Balkan Peninsula. In the First World War, in
which the Turks were on the losing side, the Arabs with a great deal of British assistance
broke away. After the war, in 1921, the Greeks invaded the Anatolian Peninsula. They
dreamed of a greater Greece embracing both sides of the Aegean. Europeans still regarded
Turkey as “the sick man of Europe,” the Ottoman state as doomed to extinction, and the
Turkish people as barbarous or incompetent. The Allies had agreed in 1915 to partition the
Ottoman Empire; and after the war the western European powers favored the Greek inva-
sion. Italian and French forces occupied parts of Anatolia; and Italians, French, and British
undertook to take Constantinople from Turkish rule, though its disposition remained
uncertain. In these circumstances a powerful army offi cer named Mustapha Kemal rallied
Turkish national resistance. Within two years, and with aid from the Soviet Union, the
Turks drove out the Greeks and the European Allies. They affi rmed their hold on the
Anatolian Peninsula, and on both shores of the Straits, including Constantinople, which in
1930 was renamed Istanbul.
The Nationalists, under the energetic drive of Mustapha Kemal, now
put through a sweeping revolution. They abolished the sultanate and the
caliphate, because the sultan had compromised himself with foreigners and
was also, as caliph or commander of the faithful, a religious leader for all Islam and hence
a conservative link with the past. The Turkish Republic was promulgated in 1923.
Whereas the Ottoman Empire had been a composite organization made up of diverse
religious communities, among which the Muslims were the ruling group, the Turkish
Republic was conceived as a national state in which the “people,” that is, the Turkish peo-
ple, were sovereign. Universal suffrage was introduced, along with a parliament, a minis-
try, and a president with strong powers. Non-Turks in Asia Minor now became “foreign”
in a way they had not been before. We have seen that the Armenians were deported and
massacred during the First World War. The other large non-Turkish and Christian people
were the Greeks. After the war about 1.4 million Greeks either fl ed or were offi cially
transported from Asia Minor to Greece and in exchange some 400,000 Turks residing in
northern Greece were transported to Turkey. This forcible exchange of peoples became
an early example of what would later be called “ethnic cleansing.” The forced migration
caused great hardship, it uprooted most of the Greek population that had lived in Asia
Minor since antiquity, and it overwhelmed the impoverished Greek kingdom by obliging
it suddenly to absorb a mass of destitute refugees, who were a quarter as numerous as the
population of Greece itself. But it enabled the Turkish Republic to acquire a relatively
The Turkish Republic
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War794
homogeneous population (except for a Kurdish minority in eastern Turkey), and it ended
minority disputes between Greece and Turkey until new problems arose after the Second
World War.
For the fi rst time in any Muslim country the spheres of government and religion were
sharply distinguished. The Turkish Republic affi rmed the total separation of church and
state. It declared religion to be a private belief, and it tolerated all religions. Government
was reorganized on secular and nonreligious principles stemming from the French Revolu-
tion. The law of the Qur’an was thrust aside. The new law was modeled on the Swiss Code,
the most recently codifi ed European legislation, itself derived from the Code Napoleon.
Mustapha Kemal urged women to put aside the veil, to come out of the
harem, to vote, and to occupy public offi ce. He made polygamy a crime.
Men he required by law to discard the fez. He fought against the fez as
Peter the Great had fought against the beard, and for the same reason, see-
ing in it the symbol of backward habits. The hat, “headgear of civilization,” correspond-
ingly became the symbol of progress. The people shifted to European dress. The European
Separation of church
and state
The governments of Greece and Turkey agreed in the early 1920s to force the migration of Muslims from Greece and of Christians from Turkey. This dual expulsion caused great hard- ship for hundreds of thousands of displaced people, including these beleaguered Muslim refu- gees who moved into Turkey during the fall of 1923. (Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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79595. Anti-Imperialist Movements in Asia
alphabet became mandatory; literate Turks had to learn to read again, and illiteracy was
reduced. The European calendar and the metric system were adopted. Turks were required
to assume hereditary family surnames, like Europeans; Kemal himself took the name
Atatürk, or Great Turk. The capital was moved from Istanbul to Ankara. The republic put
up a high tariff. In 1933 it adopted a fi ve-year plan for economic development. The Turks,
having shaken off foreign infl uence, were determined not to become again dependent on
European capital or capitalism. The fi ve-year plan provided for mines, railroads, and fac-
tories, mainly under government ownership. At the same time, while willing to accept
Russian aid against the western European powers, the republic had no patience with com-
munism, which it suppressed. The Turks wanted a modern Turkey—by and for the Turks;
and the Turkish government (like the late nineteenth-century Japanese government) set out
to gain its full independence from the western European powers by imposing European-
style reforms on its own people and institutions.
Persia experienced a different kind of political revolution, but there
were comparable attempts to reduce the infl uence of foreign powers. When
the British tried to establish a postwar colonial protectorate there in 1919,
they were stymied by strong national resistance. Meanwhile, the new Soviet regime with-
drew from Persia and renounced all claims of the previous Russian government. In 1921
an army offi cer named Reza Khan overthrew the older ruling Qajar dynasty and in 1925
became shah (with British and Soviet support). Henceforth known as Reza Shah Pahlavi,
he established a repressive regime that sought to modernize the country and to break away
from various agreements with the British government. Earlier concessions, capitulations,
and spheres of infl uence were abolished, and Reza Shah renegotiated the British oil con-
tracts. There were also efforts to assert greater control over foreign corporations and to col-
lect more taxes, though revenues still fell below what the shah hoped to extract. Beginning
in 1935, the government affi rmed its national identity by changing the country’s offi cial
international name to Iran, which had for some time been used within the nation itself.
The National Movement in India: Gandhi and Nehru
India at the close of the First World War was on the verge of revolution against British
rule. Discontented Indians looked for leadership to Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Mahatma, or
Holy One, who in the following decades, though hardly typical of modern Asia, attained a
worldwide eminence as the champion of subjected peoples. Gandhi had been educated in
England in the 1890s and had practiced law in South Africa, where he became aware of
racial discrimination as a worldwide problem. In India, after 1919, he led a movement for
self-government and economic and spiritual independence from Great Britain. He also
sought greater tolerance within India itself, both between Hindus and Muslims, and
between upper-caste Hindus and the depressed outcastes and untouchables. The weapons
he favored were those of nonviolence, passive resistance, civil disobedience, and the boy-
cott. He took to self-imposed fasts and hunger strikes to cope with his British jailers and
later with the Indians themselves.
Gandhi and his most loyal followers, as the troubles mounted, refused to be elected to
or take part in the partially representative institutions that the British had cautiously intro-
duced. They also undermined the British economic position in India by refusing to buy or
use goods imported from England. The latter touched the British in a sensi-
tive spot. Before the World War half of all exports of British cotton cloth
went to India, but by 1932 this proportion had fallen to a quarter. Gandhi
New regime in Persia
Gandhi’s campaign
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War796
turned against all industrialism, even the mechanized industry that was growing up in
India itself. He put aside European clothing, took to using a spinning wheel and living on
goat’s milk, urged Indian peasants to revive their old handicrafts, and appeared on solemn
occasions clad in no more than a homespun loincloth. By the high level of his principles
Gandhi made himself an inspiration to many groups that differed on more mundane mat-
ters. Even in Britain and other Western countries he came to be regarded as one of the
great spiritual leaders of all time.
India was very much divided within, and the British maintained that
because of these divisions the ending of British rule would precipitate anar-
chy. There were Hindus and Muslims, between whom clashes and terrorist
outrages were chronic. (Gandhi was himself assassinated in 1948 by an
anti-Muslim Hindu fanatic.) There were the hundreds of minor potentates
of the native states. There were Indian capitalists and wealthy industrialists, like the Tata
family, and growing masses of proletarians produced by Indian industrialization. There
were the higher castes and the outcastes, and there were hundreds of millions of peasants
living in rural poverty. In politics, there were those who demanded full independence,
boycotted the British, and spent years in jail, as did Gandhi and his more practical-minded
but devoted follower Jawaharlal Nehru; and there were the moderates who believed that
they might best advance the welfare of India by accepting government offi ce, cooperating
with the British, and working for dominion status within the British Empire. Marxism
exerted a strong appeal, not indeed on the spiritual and pacifi c Gandhi, but on Nehru and
even many of the less radical leaders. In the 1920s the Soviet Union stood in their eyes for
the overthrow of imperialism; in the 1930s it pointed the way toward economic develop-
ment by its adoption of fi ve-year plans. For a people wishing to move from poverty to
Divisions in society
and politics
The president of the new Turkish Repub- lic, Mustapha Kemal Atatürk, sought to reduce the infl uence of Islam and to “Europeanize” diverse aspects of Turkish society. In this photograph from about 1925, he shows his support for such changes by wearing European-style clothes and by dancing at his daughter’s wedding. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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79795. Anti-Imperialist Movements in Asia
industrial strength and higher living standards without loss of time, and without depen-
dence on foreign capital and capitalism, the Soviet Union with its economic planning
seemed to offer a more appropriate model and more practical lessons than the rich democ-
racies of western Europe, with their centuries of gradual progress behind them.
The 20 years between world wars were years of repeated disturbance,
rioting and repression, sporadic violence despite the exhortations of
Gandhi, conferences and round tables, reforms and promises of reform, with
a shift in the 1930s toward more participation of Indians in the governing
institutions of the colonial system. Independence from Britain, however,
was not won until after the Second World War; and in this transition to independence the
Indian subcontinent was partitioned into two new nations, a predominantly Hindu India
and a predominantly Muslim Pakistan.
National Movements in French Indochina and the Netherlands Indies
Resistance to European imperialism developed also in French-controlled Indochina and
in the Netherlands Indies. We have seen how the Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh
urged President Wilson to recognize the rights of colonized people in French Indochina at
the time of the Versailles peace conference, but his petition was ignored. The Bolshevik
denunciation of European imperialism therefore attracted Ho’s sympathetic attention. He
moved from France to Moscow, where he became active in the Comintern and began to
develop his ideas for an anticolonial revolution in Indochina. He spent most of the 1920s
and 1930s in the Soviet Union or in China, however, so that his slowly emerging commu-
nist movement had little direct infl uence in Vietnam before the Second World War.
Meanwhile, a new nationalist party was established within Vietnam in 1927. Draw-
ing on both socialism and the ideas of the Nationalist Party in China, anticolonial activists
formed the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang (VNQDD). This group and others launched an anti-
French campaign that included targeted assassinations of French offi cials and support for
disaffected Vietnamese soldiers who served in the French colonial army. Some of these
soldiers, encouraged by civilian nationalists, mutinied against their French commanders
in 1930, but the revolt was quickly suppressed. In the aftermath of this brief rebellion, the
French colonial government executed or imprisoned the main nationalist agitators. Other
Vietnamese nationalists fl ed to China, and the anticolonial movement stalled until the Sec-
ond World War, when Ho Chi Minh arrived to lead a new Viet Minh nationalist and com-
munist movement against both the Japanese and (after 1945) the French.
In the Netherlands Indies, where the nationalist movement was less developed than in
India, the interwar independence movement somewhat resembled the anticolonial activi-
ties in Indochina. The Bolshevik critique of imperialism drew some Indonesian national-
ists to communism, and a serious rebellion, in which communists took part, broke out in
1926. But the Dutch quickly suppressed the revolt and cracked down on both the com-
munist and the noncommunist elements of the nationalist movement. In the following year
a new Indonesian National Party (PNI) was created by young Indonesians who wanted to
build a unifi ed, anticolonial movement. Although the Dutch soon arrested the party’s lead-
ers, including the future fi rst president of Indonesia (Sukarno), the independence move-
ment continued to gain support.
The peoples of the Indonesian archipelago were almost as diverse as those of India.
Only the Dutch empire had brought them politically together. Opposition to the Dutch
gave them a common program. In 1937 the legislative council petitioned for dominion
Continuing struggle
for independence
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War798
status. But not until after the Second World War and the failure of a military effort to
repress the nationalists did the Dutch, in 1949, concede independence.
The Chinese Revolution: The Three People’s Principles
The Chinese Revolution had opened in 1911 with the overthrow of the Manchu (Qing)
dynasty, which itself had belatedly begun to introduce modernizing reforms. A Chinese
Republic was proclaimed, but the fi rst immediate result was the establishment in Peking
(now Beijing) of a military dictatorship exercised by General Yüan Shih-kai, who had
been a close adviser to the Manchus. In the south the veteran revolutionary Dr. Sun
Yat-sen reorganized the Guomindang (National People’s, or Nationalist
Party), successor to the prerevolutionary network of underground societies
of which he had been the chief architect. 2 Sun, elected the fi rst president of
the republic by a revolutionary provisional assembly, resigned within a few
months in favor of General Yüan, who he mistakenly believed would unite
the country under a parliamentary regime. Subsequently, in the confusion that followed the
struggle for power in Peking after Yüan’s death in 1916, Sun was proclaimed president of
a rival government in the south at Canton (now Guangzhou), which exercised a nominal
power over the southern provinces. Not until 1928 could any government have any basis
for claiming actual rule over China—and even then, there were important exceptions.
It was Sun Yat-sen who best expressed the ideas of this phase of the Chinese Revolu-
tion. Born in 1867 and educated under American infl uence in the Hawaiian Islands, he had
received a medical degree at Hong Kong, had traveled and lived around the world, studied
European and American ideas, lectured to Chinese audiences in America, collected money
for his conspiracies against the Manchus, and had returned from Europe to take part in the
revolution. Shortly before his death in 1925 Sun gathered the lectures that he had been
expounding for years into a book, The Three People’s Principles. The book sheds much light on the revolt of China and of all Asia against the supremacy of the Western imperial
powers.
The three people’s principles, according to Sun Yat-sen, were democ-
racy, nationalism, and livelihood. Livelihood meant social welfare and eco-
nomic reform—a more equitable distribution of wealth and land, a gradual
end to poverty and unjust economic exploitation. By nationalism Dr. Sun
meant that the Chinese who had always lived mainly in the clan and fam-
ily had now to learn the importance of the nation and the state. They were in fact a great
nation, he taught, the world’s most cultured, and had once prevailed from the mouth of
the Amur to the East Indies. But they had never been cohesive. The Chinese had been “a
sheet of loose sand”; they must now “break down individual liberty and become pressed
together into an unyielding body like the fi rm rock which is formed by the addition of
cement to sand.”
By democracy Sun Yat-sen meant the sovereignty of the people. Like Rousseau, he
gave little attention to voting, elections, or parliamentary processes. He believed that while
Sun Yat-sen and the
Nationalists
Democracy, nation-
alism, livelihood
2 The Pinyin system, adopted in 1979 by the People’s Republic of China, is now widely used for the translitera-
tion of Chinese into languages like English that use the Latin alphabet, replacing the older Wade-Giles spelling.
Kuomintang is now rendered as Guomindang, Mao Tse-tung as Mao Zedong, Peking as Beijing, Nanking as
Nanjing, Chou En-lai as Zhou Enlai, Teng Hsiao-p’ing as Deng Xiaoping, and so on. For a few names like Sun
Yat-sen or Chiang Kai-shek the original spellings are often retained.
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79995. Anti-Imperialist Movements in Asia
The nonviolent principles of Mohandas Gandhi profoundly shaped the Indian movement for national independence after the First World War. He is shown here in typically simple clothing as he led his followers on a “walk to the sea” to collect salt as part of a boycott of British goods and to promote his nonviolent campaign for Indian national independence. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War800
the people were sovereign, the able should govern. Adhering in this respect to traditional
Confucian teachings, he believed that government should be conducted by experts, a prin-
ciple he criticized the Western powers for neglecting. Dr. Sun felt a warm sympathy for
Lenin. Yet he was by no means a doctrinaire Marxist. Marxism he thought inapplicable to
China, arguing that the Chinese must take Marxism as they took all other European ideas,
avoiding slavish imitation, using, adapting, amending, or rejecting as they saw fi t. China
had no native capitalism in any European sense. The “capitalists” in China, he said, were
owners of land, especially in cities such as Shanghai, where the coming of Europeans had
raised land values to dizzy heights. Hence if China could get rid of imperialism it would
take a long step toward getting rid of capitalism also; it could begin to equalize landown-
ing and confi scate unearned rents. Because China, he observed, had no true capitalists, the
state itself must undertake capitalist and industrial development. This would require loans
of foreign capital and the services of foreign managers and technicians, adding another
reason why the Chinese state, to maintain control, must be strong.
With Sun Yat-sen, in short, democracy easily shaded off into a theory of benevolent
and constructive dictatorship. Marxism, communism, socialism, “livelihood,” the planned
society, welfare economics, and antiforeign and anti-imperialist sentiment were all mixed
together in a complex combination of European and Chinese ideas and political aspira-
tions. The new nationalism in China (as well as the new Chinese Communism that was
beginning to develop at the same time) may therefore be seen as an example of the ways in
which the emerging campaigns against European imperialism often drew on European
ideologies and intellectual traditions, even as they denounced the actions of European gov-
ernments or corporations and the racism of European cultures.
The fi rst aim of Sun Yat-sen and of the revolutionists in China was to
shake off the “treaty system” that had bound China to outside interests
since 1842. In this respect the Paris peace conference had been as disap-
pointing for the Chinese as it had been for other explicitly colonized
peoples. The Chinese not only failed to obtain the abolition of Western privileges and
extraterritorial rights but also could not win back the former German concessions that the
Japanese had taken over during the war. Widespread student and worker demonstrations
directed against the Western powers took place at the time of the Paris peace conference
on May 4, 1919. The May Fourth movement heightened antiforeign consciousness.
As the western European powers proved obdurate, Sun and the Guomindang turned to
Russia. They declared the Russian and Chinese revolutions to be two aspects of the same
worldwide movement of liberation. The Chinese Communist Party, organized in 1921,
became allied with the Guomindang in 1923. The latter accepted Russian Communist advis-
ers, notably the veteran revolutionist Borodin, whom Sun Yat-sen had known
years before in the United States. The Soviet Union, following its strategy of
outfl anking world capitalism by penetrating Asia, sent military equipment,
army instructors, and party organizers into China. It also surrendered the
Russian concessions and extraterritorial rights that the tsars had acquired in China. The
Chinese policy of friendliness to Russia began to produce the hoped-for effects; the British, to
draw China from Russia, gave up a few of their lesser concessions at Hankow and other cities.
China: Nationalists and Communists
The Guomindang, its armies reorganized and strengthened, displayed a fresh vitality and
after 1924 launched a military and political offensive. The new offensive was planned by
Antiforeign sentiments
Alliances with Russia
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80195. Anti-Imperialist Movements in Asia
the ever-active Russian advisers, supported by the Chinese Communists, and headed by
Chiang Kai-shek, who succeeded to the leadership of the Nationalist party upon Sun’s
death in 1925. Chiang’s main objectives were to compel the independent war lords and the
regime still holding offi ce in Beijing to accept the authority of a single Nationalist govern-
ment. By the end of 1928 Chiang’s armies had swept northward, occupied Beijing, and
transferred the seat of government to Nanjing. Chiang now exercised at least nominal con-
trol over most of China, although effective control was still limited by the recalcitrance of
many provincial war lords. The outside powers, acknowledging the accomplishments of
the Guomindang, extended diplomatic recognition to the Nanjing government and con-
ceded its right to organize and run the country’s tariff and customs affairs. They also par-
tially surrendered their extraterritorial privileges and pledged to abolish them completely
in the near future.
In 1927, while a measure of national unity was being forged in the country, an open
break occurred between the Guomindang and its left wing. In the course of the north-
ern military campaign, and particularly in the seizure of Nanjing, popular disturbance
and excesses, including the killing of a number of foreigners, had taken place, allegedly
fomented by the Communists. Chiang himself had never apparently considered the alli-
ance with either the Communists or the Russians as anything more than one of conve-
nience. He now took decisive action, purging Communists and Russian advisers from the
party, and executing many people who were affi liated with left-wing groups. Borodin and
others fl ed to Moscow, and a Communist-led uprising in Guangzhou was
forcefully suppressed. A number of armed Communist groups fl ed to the
safety of the mountain regions in the south and joined other guerrilla con-
tingents. In that way the Chinese Red Army was formed; among its leaders
was Mao Zedong, a former librarian, teacher, newspaper editor, and union
organizer, who had been one of the founding members of the party.
The Communists, operating in southeast China, fed on popular discontent and drew
support from the peasantry by a systematic policy of expropriation and distribution of large
landed estates as well as by intensive propaganda. They succeeded in fi ghting off Chiang’s
armies and even in winning over part of his troops. Organizing a network of local soviets,
in 1931 they proclaimed a Chinese Soviet Republic in the southeast. When the Nationalist
armies succeeded in dislodging them, the Communists, under Mao’s leadership, undertook
in 1934–1935 an amazing 6,000-mile march over near-insuperable terrain to north-central
Yenan, where they were closer to Soviet supply lines. About 90,000 began the Long March,
of which only half survived. They entrenched themselves again, fought off the Nationalist
armies, and built up a popular following among the rural masses. The Chinese
Communists thus survived all attempts to destroy their army and their base of
popular support; and after a long struggle against the Japanese invasion of
China during the Second World War, the Communists eventually defeated the
Guomindang. Taking power in all China by 1949, Mao and his allies fi nally
drove both the Europeans and the Americans from their long-established positions in the
Chinese cities and economy—thereby becoming also an international symbol for other
anti-imperialist movements in late twentieth-century Asia. The Chinese Revolution
was a prolonged, ruthless confl ict, and it never established a democratic political system. It
also differed from the national movements that challenged the European colonial systems
in India, Indochina, and the Netherlands Indies, but it became a widely infl uential force in
the broader Asian rejection of European imperialism during the decades after the
First World War.
Communists purged
from the Guomindang
Advance of Chinese
Communism
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War802
96. THE GREAT DEPRESSION: COLLAPSE OF THE WORLD ECONOMY
The capitalist economic system was a delicate and interlocking mechanism in which any dis-
turbance was rapidly transmitted with accelerating impact through all the parts. The European
economy, like the economies in all other regions of the world, was deeply entangled in a
global system of trade and production. For many basic commodities prices were determined
by the free play of supply and demand in a worldwide market. There was much regional divi-
sion of labor; large areas lived by producing a few specialized articles for sale to the world as
a whole. A great deal of production, both local and international, especially in the 1920s, was
fi nanced by credit, that is, by promises of repayment in the future. The system rested upon
mutual confi dence in the processes of mutual exchange—on the belief of lenders, creditors,
and investors that they would get their money back and on the belief of borrowers that they
could pay their debts. This vast interlocking system also depended on the ability of farms and
factories to market their products at prices high enough to bring a net return, so that farmers
and factory people might purchase the output of other factories and farms—all this round and
round in countless circles of mutual interdependence and throughout the world as a whole.
The Prosperity of the 1920s and Its Weaknesses
The fi ve years after 1924 were a period of prosperity in that there was an expansion of
international trade, building, and new industries. The automobile, for example, still in very
limited use before 1914, became an article of mass production after the war.
Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai led nearly 100,000 Communists on the famous “Long March” from southeast China to the northwest province of Yenan in 1934–1935. They were escap- ing the armies of the National- ist Guomindang and seeking to establish new bases near their allies in the Soviet Union. This picture shows Mao and Zhou as they appeared at the time of the march, which crossed almost 6,000 miles of remote terrain. The Chinese Commu- nist Party, after 1949, would become the most powerful opponent of European imperial interventions in Asia. (Keystone/Getty Images)
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80396. The Great Depression: Collapse of the World Economy
Its widespread use increased the demand for oil, steel, rubber, and electrical equipment,
caused the building of tens of thousands of miles of roads, and created whole new occupa-
tions for truck drivers, garage mechanics, and gas station attendants. Similarly the new
mass popularity of radios and movies had repercussions in all directions. The economic
expansion was most phenomenal in the United States, but almost all European countries
enjoyed it in greater or lesser degree. “Prosperity” became a magical term, and some
thought that it would last indefi nitely, that the secret of human plenty and of progress had
been found, and that science and invention were at last realizing the hopes of ages.
But there were weaknesses in this prosperity, various imperfections in
this or that gear or valve of the mechanism, fl aws that, under stress, were to
bring the whole intricate structure to a halt. The expansion was largely
fi nanced by credit, or borrowing. Laboring people received less than a pro-
portionate share; wages lagged behind profi ts and dividends; mass purchas-
ing power, even when infl ated by installment buying (another form of credit), was
inadequate to pay for the vast output that it was technically possible to produce. And
throughout the world the whole decade of the 1920s was a time of chronic agricultural
depression, so that farmers could neither pay their debts nor purchase manufactures to the
degree required for the smooth functioning of the system.
Military operations in the First World War had reduced wheat fi elds
under cultivation in Europe by a fi fth. The world price of wheat went up,
and farmers in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere increased their
acreage. Often, to acquire land at high prices, they assumed mortgages that
A prosperity fi nanced
by credit
Worldwide agricul-
tural depression
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1911–1935
1911 Revolution in China ends the Qing (Manchu) dynasty
January 1919 Spartacist attempt at proletarian revolution is suppressed in Berlin
July 1919 Weimar Republic is established in Germany
1919 Gandhi launches campaign in India for independence from Britain
1922 Germany and the Soviet Union agree to diplomatic relations in Treaty of
Rapollo
1923 French occupation of the Ruhr Valley and ruinous German infl ation
1923 Turkish Republic is established under the leadership of Kemal Atatürk, who
launches modernizing reforms
1925 Treaties at Locarno recognize the postwar European national borders
1925 Reza Khan becomes shah of Iran and seeks to curb British and other foreign
concessions
1925 Death of Sun Yat-sen is followed by confl icts between Nationalists and
Communists in China and gradual decline of European infl uence
October 1929 Stock market crash in New York leads to the Great Depression
1932 Governments respond to economic crisis with national protectionism
1932–1939 Writers respond to social crisis with new “social realism”
1934–1935 Chinese communists make the 6,000-mile Long March and claim to lead the
“anti-imperialist” movement in China
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War804
in later years they were unable to repay. After the war Europe restored its wheat production,
and eastern Europe reentered the world market. Agriculture everywhere was increasingly
mechanized, and farmers rapidly increased their output of wheat by using a tractor-drawn
harvester-thresher combine. At the same time dry farming opened up new land, and sci-
ence increased the yield per acre. The result of all these agricultural developments was a
superabundant global output of wheat. But the demand for wheat was what economists call
“inelastic.” By and large, within the area of Europe and the wider Western world, people
already ate as much bread as they wanted and would buy no more; and the undernourished
masses of Asia, who in pure theory could have consumed the excess, could not pay even
low costs of production or transportation. The world price of wheat fell incredibly. In 1930
a bushel of wheat, in terms of gold, sold for the lowest price in 400 years.
Wheat growers everywhere were faced with ruin. Growers of many other crops faced
the same dismal prospect. Cotton and corn, coffee and cocoa all collapsed. Brazilian and
Movies became one of the most popular entertainments in European cities during the early twentieth century. This crowd was waiting to enter London’s Brixton Astoria Theater in December 1930. Similar movie theaters attracted large audiences throughout Europe, even amid the economic crisis of the Great Depression. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)
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80596. The Great Depression: Collapse of the World Economy
African planters were caught by overproduction and falling prices. In Java, where the acre-
age in sugar had been extended and the unit yield from the sugar cane had also multiplied
ten times under scientifi c cultivation over the past century, prices bottomed out of the
world market.
The acute phase of the Great Depression, which began in 1929, was made worse by
this chronic background of global agricultural distress, because there was no reserve of
purchasing power on the farms. The farmer’s plight became even worse when city peo-
ple, struck by depression in industry, cut down their expenditures for food. Agricultural
depression, rather than industrial depression, was at the root of widespread troubles in the
inter-war years throughout eastern Europe and the colonial world.
The Crash of 1929 and the Spread of Economic Crisis
The Depression, in the strict sense, began as a stock market and fi nancial crisis. Prices of
stocks had been pushed upward by years of continuing expansion and high dividends. At
the beginning of 1929 prices on the European stock exchanges began to weaken. But the
real crisis, or turning point, came with the crash on the New York Stock Exchange in Octo-
ber 1929. Here values had been driven to fantastic heights by excessive speculation. Not
only professional speculators, but quite ordinary people bought stock with borrowed funds.
Often trading on “margin,” they “owned” fi ve or ten times as much stock as the amount of
their own money put into it; the rest they borrowed from brokers, and the brokers bor-
rowed from banks, the purchased stock in each case serving as collateral. With money so
easy to obtain, people pushed up American stock prices by bidding against each other and
enjoyed huge fortunes on paper; but if prices fell, even a little, the hapless owners would
be obliged to sell their stock to pay off the money they had borrowed. Hence the weaken-
ing of values on the New York Stock Exchange set off uncontrollable tidal waves of sell-
ing, which drove stock prices down irresistibly and disastrously. In a month stock values
dropped by 40 percent, and in three years, from 1929 to 1932, the average value of 50
industrial stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange dropped from 252 to 61. In these
same three years 5,000 American banks closed their doors.
The crisis passed from fi nance to industry and from the United States
into Europe and the rest of the world. The export of American capital came
to an end. Americans not only ceased to invest in Europe but sold the for-
eign securities that they had. This pulled the foundations from under the
postwar revival of Germany and hence indirectly of much of Europe. Americans, their
incomes falling, ceased to buy foreign goods; people in Europe saw their American mar-
kets slip away, and prices tumbled. In 1931 the failure of a leading Vienna bank, the Credi- tanstalt, sent a wave of shivers, bankruptcies, and business calamities over Europe. Everywhere business fi rms and private people could not collect what was owed them or
even draw on money that they thought they had in the bank. They could not buy, and so the
factories could not sell. Factories slowed down or closed entirely. Between 1929 and 1932,
the latter year representing the depth of the Depression, world production is estimated to
have declined by 38 percent, and the world’s international trade fell by two-thirds. In the
United States national income fell from $85 billion to $37 billion.
Unemployment, a chronic disease ever since the Great War, assumed
the proportion of a plague. In 1932 there were 30 million unemployed per-
sons reported in the world; and this fi gure did not include the further mil-
lions who could fi nd work only for a few hours in the week, or the masses in Asia or
Crisis reaches the rest
of the world
Unemployment
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War806
Africa for whom no statistics were to be had. The worker’s wages were gone, the farmer’s
income touched bottom; and the decline of mass purchasing power forced more idleness of
machinery and more unemployment. People in the prime of life spent years out of work.
Young people could not fi nd jobs or establish themselves in an occupation. Skills and
talents of older people grew rusty. Millions were reduced to living and supporting their
families on the pittances of charity, doles, or relief. Great modern cities saw an outburst of
sidewalk art, in which jobless able-bodied men drew pictures on the pavement with col-
ored chalk, in the hope of attracting a few sixpence or dimes. People were crushed in spirit
by a feeling of uselessness; months and years of fruitless job hunting left them demoral-
ized, bored, embittered, and resentful. Never had there been such waste, not merely of
machinery that now stood idle but also of the trained and disciplined labor force on which
all modern societies were built. And people chronically out of work turned to new and
disturbing political ideas.
Political and Economic Reactions to the Crisis
Optimists at the time, of whom President Herbert Hoover in the United States was one,
declared that this Depression, though a severe one, was basically only another periodic
low point in the business cycle, or alternation of expansion and contraction, which had
ebbed and fl owed in the Western world for over a century. Prosperity, they blithely said,
was “just around the corner.” Others came to believe that the crisis represented the break-
down of the whole system of capitalism and free private enterprise. These people in many
cases looked for signs of the future in the planned economy then being introduced in
the U.S.S.R. There was some truth in both views. After 1932, in part for purely cyclical
reasons—because the Depression cut down indebtedness and reduced the costs of doing
business—it again became possible to produce and sell. World steel production, for exam-
ple, which had stood at 121 million tons in 1929, and then collapsed to 50 million in 1932,
by 1936 again reached 122 million. To a considerable degree, to be sure, revival was due
to rearmament, especially in Europe. On the other hand, the Great Depression did put an
end to some aspects of the older free-market economic system. Even if such a stricken
economy had internal powers of full recuperation, people would not stand for such ter-
rifying insecurity in their personal lives. The horrors of mass unemployment were long
remembered.
All governments took new steps to provide work and incomes for their people. All in
one way or another strove to free themselves from dependency on the uncertainties of the
world market. The interlocking world economy collapsed both from the Depression itself
and from the measures adopted to cure it. One of the most marked economic conse-
quences of the Depression was a strong movement toward economic nationalism—toward
greater self-suffi ciency within the sphere that each government could hope
to control.
The internationalism of money, the gold standard, and the free convert-
ibility of currencies were gradually abandoned. Countries specializing in
agricultural exports were among the fi rst to be pinched. Agricultural prices were so low
that even a large quantity of exports failed to produce enough foreign currency to pay
for needed imports; hence the exporting country’s currency fell in value. The currencies
of Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand all depreciated in 1929 and
1930. Then came the turn of the industrial countries. England, also, as the Depression
went on, could not sell enough exports to pay for imports. It had to pay for imports in part
Economic nationalism
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80796. The Great Depression: Collapse of the World Economy
by sending gold out of the country; thus the gold reserve supporting the pound sterling
declined, and people who had pounds sterling began to convert their pounds into dol-
lars or other currencies for which they thought the gold basis was more secure. This was
known, in the poetic language of economics, as the “fl ight from the pound.” In 1931 Great
Britain went off the gold standard, which is to say that it devalued the pound. But after
Britain devalued, some 20 odd other countries, to protect their own exports and their own
industries, did the same. Hence somewhat the same relative position reappeared. Even the
United States, which possessed most of the world’s gold supply, renounced the gold stan-
dard and devalued the dollar in 1934. The purpose was mainly to help American farmers;
with dollars cheaper in terms of foreign currencies, foreigners could afford to buy more
American agricultural products. But it became harder for Europeans and other foreigners
to sell to the United States.
Rising unemployment in Depression-era Britain led to widespread protests such as this “Hun- ger March.” Unemployed workers demanded more access to the government assistance that helped impoverished people buy food. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War808
Hence the Depression, adding its effects to those of the World War and
postwar infl ation, led to chaos in the international monetary exchanges.
Governments manipulated their currencies to uphold their sagging exports.
Or they imposed exchange controls, which required that foreigners from
whom their own people purchased, and to whom they gave their own cur-
rency, should use this currency to buy from them in return. Trade, which had been multilat-
eral, became increasingly bilateral. Sometimes, notably in the relations between Germany
and eastern European countries in the 1930s, bilateralism degenerated into actual barter.
The Germans would exchange a certain number of cameras with Yugoslavia in return for a
certain number of pigs. In such cases the very conception of a market disappeared.
Currency control was one means of keeping one’s own factories from idleness by
holding or capturing export markets in time of depression. Another way of keeping one’s
own factories going was to shut out competitive imports by the old device of protective
tariffs. The United States enacted the unprecedentedly high Hawley-Smoot tariff in 1930,
which soon contributed to the further decline of international trade. Other countries,
equally or more distressed, now could sell less to America and hence buy fewer American
goods. Other countries likewise raised their own tariffs in the desperate hope of reserving
national markets for their own people. Even Great Britain, citadel of free trade in the nine-
teenth century, turned to protectionism. It also revived and adopted Joseph Chamberlain’s
old idea of an imperial tariff union. In 1932, by the Ottawa agreements, Britain and the
British dominions adopted a policy of lower tariffs against one another and higher tariffs
against the rest of the world.
Even tariffs were not always enough for economic nationalists. Quo-
tas or quantitative restrictions were adopted in many nations. By this
system a government said in effect not merely that goods brought into
the country must pay a high tariff duty but that above a certain amount
no goods could be brought in at all. Increasingly both importers and exporters worked
under government licenses, in order that a country’s entire foreign trade could be centrally
planned and managed.
Thus the world economy disintegrated into fi ercely competing national economic sys-
tems. In the oceanic wreckage of the Great Depression, each state tried to create an island
of economic security for its own people. Some efforts were made to break down the ris-
ing barriers. An International Monetary and Economic Conference, meeting in London
in 1933, attempted to open the clogged channels of world trade; it ended in failure, as did
attempts to stabilize the exchange rates of various currencies. Soon thereafter, the wartime
Allies defaulted on their postwar debt payments to the United States. Legislation in Con-
gress then denied them the right to fl oat bonds or obtain new loans in the American secu-
rities market. American actions thus reinforced economic nationalism. The era that had
opened with Woodrow Wilson’s dream of international economic cooperation was ending
with an unprecedented intensifi cation of economic rivalry and national self-centeredness;
it was only one of the promises of the postwar world to be blasted by the Great Depression.
Cultural Reactions to the Crisis
The effects of the economic crisis spread to the cultural and intellectual life of the 1930s.
Responding to the despair and social dislocation of the masses of unemployed, artists and
writers turned to describing painful social realities and committed themselves to political
activism.
International
monetary exchanges
in chaos
Quotas
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80996. The Great Depression: Collapse of the World Economy
AUTOUR D’ELLE by Marc Chagall (Russian, then French, 1887–1984)
Although this painting clearly does not represent the social realism that emerged in the 1930s, it exemplifi es the diversity of twentieth-century art. It was painted by Chagall in 1945 in mem- ory of his wife. At the center is the Russian city of Smolensk, where they had been married 30 years before. The surrounding faces and fi gures are individually quite distinct, but they fl oat disconnectedly like the vivid images in a dream. Past and present, memory and percep- tion, fantastic and real objects fl ow together in a free play of the unconscious mind. These qualities characterized surrealism, of which the younger Chagall had been a forerunner. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 19 Democracy, Anti-Imperialism, and the Economic Crisis after the First World War810
All this was in contrast to the 1920s. The postwar decade had been
a period of great achievement in what is generally called “modernist” art
and literature. Painters projected disjointed dreamlike scenes evoking their
personal memories or disorienting personal experiences, and writers emphasized their own
personal vision and the innermost lives of the characters whom they depicted. These writ-
ers were responsible for remarkable explorations of memory, time, and the internal work-
ings of the human mind. The Irish writer James Joyce published his famous novel Ulysses portraying the life and thoughts of its leading character during a single day in Dublin,
contributing with it to a new literary fascination with interior monologues and “stream
of consciousness” writing. The French novelist Marcel Proust also developed lengthy
descriptions of personal and emotional experiences in his multivolume Remembrance of Things Past, and the English writer Virginia Woolf examined the complex passage of time through the characters she created in novels such as To the Lighthouse. A generation of American writers, including Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, had even settled in
Paris after the First World War to pursue experimental forms of literature and art. The
political and social world by no means disappeared from modernist literature, but these
writers were more concerned with exploring the inner complexities of human psychology,
partly in response to the horrors of the First World War.
Now, under the harsh economic conditions of the 1930s, it became common to reject
the literary exploration of psychological anxieties as inadequate or even as self-indulgent.
A new kind of “realist” literature and a literature of political engagement won support
from intellectuals in all industrial societies, especially among those who believed that the
Great Depression had grown out of fundamental fl aws and injustices in the capitalist econ-
omy. Some writers, like the French novelist André Gide, as well as some poets, artists, and
fi lm-makers, temporarily embraced communism and praised the social experiments of the
Soviet Union. Others simply decided that they should set aside the arcane language of the
literary avant-garde and write about the social suffering of the day. A new genre of prole-
tarian literature came into being. Many of the American expatriates who had settled in
Paris to pursue avant-garde art or literature returned to the United States in the early 1930s.
As the American critic Malcolm Cowley noted in his Exile’s Return, the new social prob- lems called for new kinds of writing. Joyce’s Ulysses was a classic modernist work of the 1920s, but the literary style of high Modernism gave way to a new kind of “social litera-
ture” and nonfi ction in the 1930s. A younger generation of socially conscious authors,
such as the English writer George Orwell, published Depression-era books that focused on
poverty and the economic realities of daily life. Describing his own encounters with
impoverished living conditions in Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Orwell emphasized the “real world” social experiences of people who struggled simply to survive. His themes and those elaborated by others exem-
plifi ed the social and cultural anxiety that affected Europeans of all social classes in the
wake of the unprecedented economic crisis. Meanwhile, the anxiety that fostered a new
literary and artistic “realism” also contributed in very different ways to the
rise of an angry political extremism, which, as we shall see, was now
attracting new support among disillusioned and displaced people in every
part of Europe and the wider Atlantic world.
Realism and
extremism
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e .
Modernism
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811
C h a p t e r 20 DEMOCRACY
AND DICTATORSHIP
IN THE 1930S
In the 1920s many people believed, or hoped, that despite the horrors of the World War, Europe
was again moving toward the material and politi-
cal goals summed up in the idea of progress. In
the 1930s they began to fear that “progress” was a
phantom, to speak the word self-consciously with
mental quotation marks, and to be content if only
they could prevent a relapse into positive barba-
rism and a new world war.
The Great Depression ushered in the nightmare of the 1930s. Everywhere the demand
was for security. Each nation tried to live, insofar as possible, within itself. Each regulated,
controlled, guided, planned, and tried to rescue its own economic system, attempting to
be as little infl uenced as possible by the unpredictable behavior of other countries. Within
each country the same search for security encouraged the advancement of the welfare state
and social democracy.
Where democratic institutions were strong and resilient, governments took steps to
protect individuals against the ravages of unemployment and destitution and to help guard
against future catastrophes. This political response to the economic crisis shaped new dem-
ocratic social reforms in northwestern Europe and in the United States, where President
Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” legislation brought numerous European-style social
welfare policies into American society. On the other hand, where democratic govern-
ments were not well established or taken for granted, which was the case in many coun-
tries after the First World War, dictatorship spread alarmingly in the 1930s with the coming
of the Depression. Democracy was said to be suited only to wealthy or prosperous coun-
tries. Unemployed people generally cared far more for economic help or for promises of
economic help than for any theory of how persons wielding public power should be selected.
The cry was for a leader, someone who would act, make decisions, get results, inspire con-
fi dence, and restore national pride. The Great Depression opened the way for unscrupulous
and ambitious political adventurers, for dictators like Adolf Hitler in Germany, whose solu-
tion to all political and international problems, it turned out, was war.
97. Trials and Adjustments
of Democracy in Britain
and France
98. Italian Fascism
99. Totalitarianism:
Germany’s Third Reich
Chapter emblem: Benito Mussolini addressing a Fascist meeting in Italy in 1932. (Keystone/Getty Images)
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s812
97. TRIALS AND ADJUSTMENTS OF DEMOCRACY IN BRITAIN AND FRANCE
British Politics: The 1920s and the Depression
Britain, like the United States, even in the troubles of the Depression, remained fi rmly
attached to representative institutions and democratic principles. The Great Depression
aggravated and intensifi ed Britain’s older economic diffi culties. More dependent on over-
seas markets than any other people, the British until 1914 had managed to hold their
lead, exporting industrial products and investment capital, selling insurance and other ser-
vices, and importing foodstuffs. But in the years before 1914 the British were increasingly
losing markets because of the emergence of other economically aggressive industrial
nations, the growth of tariff barriers, the development of indigenous textile and other indus-
tries in India and elsewhere in Asia, the competition of new textile products with British
cottons and woolens, and the substitution of new sources of fuel for British coal. The losses
were accelerated by the economic disruption of the First World War, the disappearance of
many overseas investments, and the postwar disorganization and impoverishment of mar-
kets. The widespread rise in tariffs after the war and the customs barriers in the new small
states of Europe also hurt British exports. After 1918 Britain lived in a world no longer
dependent on, or eager for, its manufactures. Britain’s very historical primacy as the pio-
neer industrial country was also a handicap. Both labor and management had become
adjusted to older conditions, and the more recently industrialized countries had newer tech-
niques and machinery.
The net result of all this was that in the interwar years, even in times of relative prosper-
ity for the rest of the world, Britain was in Depression and suffered severely
from unemployment. The unemployment insurance adopted in 1911 was
called heavily into play. By 1921 over 2 million unemployed were receiving
benefi t payments, contemptuously called the “dole” by those who disliked
it. Unemployment insurance, an expanded old-age pension system, medical
aid, government-subsidized housing, and other social welfare measures helped to relieve
economic distress and to prevent any drastic decline in the living standards of British work-
ers. The welfare state was well established in Britain before the Labour Party took offi ce
after the Second World War.
The labor unions made a strenuous effort to retain wage gains and other concessions
won in wartime. Industry, hard-pressed itself, resisted. This situation reached a climax in
1926 in the coal-mining industry, which was in a particularly bad plight; government sub-
sidies had not helped and even conservative investigators had recommended some form of
amalgamation and public management. A strike by the coal miners led to a “general strike”
supported by the other British unions; about half of the 6 million organized workers in
Britain left their jobs as a token of sympathy and solidarity. But the government declared a
state of emergency and made use of army and navy personnel and middle-class volunteers
to take over essential services. The strike ended in failure, and even in a setback for the
trade unions. They were put under stricter control by the Trades Disputes Act of 1927,
which declared all general or sympathy strikes illegal and even forbade the unions from
raising money for political purposes.
After the election of 1922, the Labour Party displaced the Liberal Party
as the second of the two great parties of the country and faced the Conserva-
tives as the offi cial opposition. The Labour Party, which had been no more
than a loose federation of trade union and socialist organizations before the
Unemployment
insurance
The Labour Party
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81397. Trials and Adjustments of Democracy in Britain and France
war, tightened its organizational structure, promoted labor legislation, and, bridging the
gap between the trade unionists and the socialists, committed itself to a program of social-
ism. But it was a program of gradualist, democratic socialism operating through customary
British parliamentary procedures and hence able to gain the goodwill of large sections of
the middle classes.
Twice, in 1924 and in 1929, Labour governed the country with Ramsay MacDonald
as prime minister, in each case as a coalition government. In 1924 Labour demonstrated
its moderation. It did no more than extend unemployment relief and inaugurate housing
and public works projects; indeed it acted fi rmly in the face of strikes that broke out. But it
aroused opposition when it gave diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union and pledged a
loan to the Soviets for the purchase of British goods. Meanwhile newspapers published the
so-called Red (or Zinoviev) letter purporting to be secret instructions from the head of the
Communist International for British Labour groups to prepare for a Communist uprising
in Britain. The document’s authenticity has never been established, but the Conservatives
successfully exploited it and won the election of 1924.
In the election of May 1929, however, Labour’s representation almost doubled, and
the Conservative representation dropped proportionately. MacDonald again became prime
minister. The Wall Street crash and the worldwide Depression came while the Labour
Party government was in offi ce. The effects of the Depression were quickly felt. Unem-
ployment, which had hovered about the 1 million mark in 1929, soon approached the
3 million fi gure. The government expended large sums to supplement the unemployment
insurance payments, and the public debt began to grow. Alarmed by the mounting defi cit,
The British coal miners’ strike in 1926 generated a massive “general strike” by sympathetic workers throughout Britain. These striking engineers marched across London to show their solidarity with the miners, but the government soon responded to this broad-based labor action with legislation that made all such sympathy strikes illegal. (G. Adams/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s814
MacDonald made plans to introduce a severe retrenchment policy, even to the extent of
reducing the dole payments. The Labour Party was outraged; some of the Labour ministers
in his cabinet refused to support him.
Critics such as the British economist John Maynard Keynes argued that the govern-
ment’s defi cit spending was in fact essential for economic recovery. Keynes had begun to
put forward this view of government expenditures even before the Great Depression struck,
and he would soon bring his theories together in his most famous book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). In this book and other writings, Keynes argued that if private investment funds were idle, govern-
ment funds must be employed to encourage or stimulate economic activity
and to increase purchasing power until such time as private funds fl owed
again. Governments should therefore get money into circulation and “prime the pump” of
industrial production. According to Keynes and others who criticized MacDonald’s poli-
cies, the British government should set aside old orthodoxies about the dangers of defi cit
fi nancing, because such policies were actually the most direct and rapid method for pre-
venting a more general collapse of the capitalist system. Keynes’s ideas attracted the inter-
est of some policymakers in other countries (including the United States) and later gained
wide international infl uence, but MacDonald rejected the new economic theories and
continued to promote austerity measures. He was read out of the Labour Party, along with
those ministers who had gone along with him. MacDonald thereupon
formed an all-party coalition cabinet known as the National government,
which in an election of 1931 won an overwhelming victory, but it was the
Conservative members of the coalition who took a majority of the seats
in Parliament.
The National government coped with the Depression chiefl y along retrenchment lines,
under Ramsay MacDonald from 1931 to 1935, Stanley Baldwin to 1937, and Neville
Chamberlain after 1937. In addition to retrenchment and budget balancing, the government
encouraged industry to reorganize and rationalize production by providing low-interest
loans. Mainly, the government concentrated on economic nationalist measures rather than
on fundamental changes in the capitalist economic system. Despite some recovery from
the depths of the Depression, none of the steps taken brought full recovery or full employ-
ment. Unemployment persisted until military conscription and a growing armament
program absorbed the jobless through a kind of inadvertent “Keynesian” expansion of gov-
ernment expenditures.
Britain and the Commonwealth: Imperial Relations
To the older British Empire—India, the crown colonies, protectorates, and spheres of
infl uence—the postwar settlement added a number of League of Nations mandates. British
rule in its various forms extended to almost 500 million people, a fourth of the earth’s
population and land surface. It was principally in Palestine, Egypt, India, and Ireland that
the British faced complex imperial problems after the First World War. In Palestine, where
Britain exercised a League of Nations mandate following the breakup of the Ottoman
Empire, a bitter confl ict developed as Jewish emigrants moved into the territory after 1919
(at which time there had been a relatively small population of about 570,000 Muslims,
75,000 Christians, and 60,000 Jews). The emigration increased rapidly during the 1930s,
when Jews were escaping from Nazism and the rising anti-Semitism in Europe. Arabs and
Jews began to struggle with each other and with Britain for control of lands that both
Theories of Keynes
The formation of the
National government
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815
groups claimed on the basis of long ancestries and ancient religions, infl amed now by
modern nationalisms. In Egypt in 1922, Britain, although retaining the right to station
some troops there, formally ended the protectorate it had established 40 years earlier; but
many questions, especially the status of Sudan, remained unresolved. In India the agitation
for national independence, as we have seen, grew more intense. In all of these areas, from
the Middle East to South Asia, nothing resembling a solution was developed until after the
Second World War. In Ireland, however, the independence movement fi nally managed to
establish a separate Irish state.
The Irish question had disoriented English politics for 40 years. Home
rule, authorized by Parliament in 1914, had been deferred for the duration of
the war. During the hostilities the Irish nationalists even accepted German
support and rose in rebellion against the British in 1916. The rebellion was
suppressed, but after the war the Irish nationalists, led by the Sinn Fein Party, fought a
small but savage war of independence against the British. In 1922 the British fi nally recog-
nized the Irish Free State, granting it dominion status within the British Commonwealth.
But the Protestants in Ulster, the northern counties of Ireland where Presbyterians of
Scottish origin had lived for three centuries and where they comprised a majority of the
population, insisted on remaining outside the new state. Despite the vehement dissatisfac-
tion of Irish nationalists, Ulster continued to be part of what was now called the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In 1937 the Irish Free State affi rmed its
full sovereignty and took the name Eire. In 1949 it broke all ties with the British Common-
wealth and renamed itself the Republic of Ireland. The Irish question, however, remained
unsettled throughout the rest of the century and beyond because the Irish agitated for the
annexation of Ulster. The confl ict pitted Irish moderates against Irish extremists, the latter
perpetrating assassinations, bombings, and other disturbances to further their cause of unit-
ing all Ireland with the Irish Republic. The Protestants in Ulster meanwhile remained obdu-
rate about retaining their own religious and cultural identity and maintaining their political
affi liation with Britain.
As for the dominions, the political status of these areas of European
settlement overseas was now more clearly defi ned than ever before. The
dominions—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Union of South
Africa—had long pursued their own independent policies, even levying
tariffs against British goods. They had all joined loyally with Great Britain in the First
World War, but all were stirred by a nationalism of their own and desired their indepen-
dence to be regularized and promulgated to the world. An imperial conference in 1926
defi ned “dominion status,” which was then corroborated by the Statute of Westminster
of 1931. The dominions became legally equal with each other and with Great Britain.
No act passed by the British Parliament would apply to a dominion except by the domin-
ion’s own consent. Despite independent policies in economic matters and even in foreign
affairs, the bonds between the dominions and Britain remained fi rm; the support of the
dominions in the Second World War was to be vital in Britain’s survival. In the postwar
world, with decolonization, the Commonwealth became a larger, more heterogeneous,
and even more fl exible institution.
France: The 1920s and the Coming of the Depression
When the Depression came to France, right-wing agitation of fascist type made more
headway than in Britain or the United States. Earlier, in the 1920s, France was preoccupied
The Irish question
The dominions
97. Trials and Adjustments of Democracy in Britain and France
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s816
with recovery from the physical destruction of the war, the instability of public fi nances,
and the fear of a resurgent Germany. Immediately after 1919, and for most of the 1920s,
the government was run by coalitions of parties of the conservative Right, that is, parties
supported by business and fi nancial interests, well disposed toward the army and church,
and determined to maintain the traditional order in domestic affairs. In contrast to Britain,
Germany, and the United States, for example, France continued to exclude women from
the right to vote. For a brief time, from 1924 to 1926, the Radical Socialists were in con-
trol; this party of the moderate left, whose leader was Edouard Herriot, served as spokes-
man for the lower classes, small business, and farmers; it advocated progressive social
legislation but only so long as increased taxes were not necessary. Despite its name, a
carryover from an earlier era, it was fi rmly committed to private enterprise and private
property (and was often described as “neither radical nor socialist”); it was staunch in its
defense of individual liberties and fervently anticlerical; sometimes, it seemed, its anti-
clericalism was a substitute for a more positive legislative program.
Although the Radical Socialists cooperated in parliamentary elections with the Social-
ists, the other major party of the Left, the two parties differed too profoundly on economic
policies to preserve stable coalitions. In the 1920s the Socialists were still recovering from
the secession of the more orthodox Marxists who had formed a French Communist Party.
Both Left and Right in France shaded off into antidemocratic groups that were hostile to
the parliamentary republic. These included the Communists on the
Left, who sat in Parliament and took part in elections; and on the extreme
Right, royalists of the Action Française and other antirepublican organiza- tions, which operated principally outside the Chamber as militant and noisy
pressure groups.
The outstanding fi gure of the moderate conservative right was
Raymond Poincaré, who sent troops into the Ruhr in 1923 when the
Germans failed to pay reparations, and who also “saved” the franc. The rep-
arations question was extremely important for French fi nances. The coun-
try had undertaken a large-scale reconstruction program to repair the wartime devastation
of northern and eastern France and had counted upon the defeated enemy to pay. When
German reparations were not paid as anticipated, the public debt mounted, a balanced
budget became impossible, and the franc declined precipitously. The huge war expendi-
tures, heavy loss of foreign investments, notably in Russia, and an outmoded taxation pro-
gram that invited widespread evasion added to French diffi culties. After 1926, when the
fi nancial crisis reached a climax, a “national union” ministry under Poincaré inaugurated
new taxes, tightened tax collection, cut down drastically on government expenditures
to balance the budget, and eventually stabilized the franc—at about one-fi fth its prewar
value. The internal debt was thus in effect largely repudiated, to the despair of many bond-
holders, but the threat of a runaway infl ation like that of Germany’s Weimar Republic was
avoided. From 1926 to 1929 France prospered. New factories, replacing those destroyed
in the war, were modern and up to date. The index of industrial production rose; tourists
fl ocked in. As in many other countries, however, workers did not share proportionately in
the prosperity of the 1920s, and labor unions still had little infl uence on the French gov-
ernment’s social policies.
The Great Depression came later to France and was less severe than in the United
States or Germany. Trade declined. Unemployment increased; in 1935, close to 1 million
workers were unemployed, and half of those employed worked part-time. Industrial produc-
tion, which in 1930 was 40 percent above the prewar level, sank by 1932 to 1913 fi gures.
Hostility to the
republic
Poincaré ’s measures
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817
The government displayed its older pattern of unstable, short-lived ministries; in 1933
fi ve ministries rapidly succeeded one another (there were some 40 in the 20 interwar years).
The Depression-era cabinets followed a policy of retrenchment and economy, clung to the
gold standard, and faced the threat of an aggressive new government in Germany, where
Adolf Hitler had become chancellor in 1933.
97. Trials and Adjustments of Democracy in Britain and France
Britain repeatedly used its armed forces to suppress the movement for Irish independence dur- ing and after the First World War. The British army thus operated in Ireland’s cities as a kind of special police force. These troops were holding back the crowd in a Dublin street while other soldiers conducted a raid on Irish nationalists in 1921—shortly before the Irish Free State was fi nally established. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s818
Depression Ferment and the Popular Front
In the uneasy years of the Great Depression, the latent right-wing hostility to the repub-
lic came to the surface. Fascist-type “leagues” appeared in open imitation of Italian and
German fascist organizations, many obtaining funds from wealthy industrialists; the older
Action Française and right-wing veterans’ associations like Colonel de le Rocque’s Croix de Feu continued to be active. The same elements that had been antirepublican, antidemo- cratic, or monarchist since the French Revolution, and that in the nineteenth century had
rallied behind Boulanger and denounced Dreyfus, now grew more strident in their attacks
on the parliamentary republic.
In 1934 it seemed for a moment that the opportunity awaited by the antirepublican ele-
ments had come. A political and fi nancial scandal shook the country. A fi nancial manipula-
tor and adventurer with important political connections, Serge Alexandre Stavisky, induced
the municipal authorities at Bayonne to launch a fl otation of worthless bonds. Faced with
Although the Great Depression was at fi rst less severe in France than in other European coun- tries, rising unemployment eventually contributed to a new political mobilization of French workers. The Popular Front government that came to power in 1936 thus enacted legislation to support collective bargaining and to establish a 40-hour week for people like these workers at a Parisian subway construction site. (Imagno/Getty Images)
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819
exposure, he fl ed and apparently committed suicide; the sensationalist press and right-wing
political agitators encouraged the rumor that Stavisky had been shot by the police to pre-
vent the implication of high-ranking politicians. A clamor went up accusing the govern-
ment of involvement in the fi nancial scandal. Where elsewhere such an
affair would have called only for turning the incumbents out of offi ce, in
France it supplied ammunition for those who demanded the end of the
republic itself, which they now equated with corruption and venality.
The agitation reached a climax in street riots in February 1934. A crowd of angry
antirepublican activists and other right-wing extremists assembled in Paris at the Place
de la Concorde, where they threatened the nearby Chamber of Deputies and battled vio-
lently with the police; several were killed and hundreds were injured. French liberals and
democrats, organized labor, and socialists were outraged by the threat to the republic
from violent agitators who resembled the fascist groups that had seized power elsewhere
in Europe. The Communists, hostile to the fascist groups, were unfriendly to the govern-
ment too, but soon, guided by the Comintern, they sensed the danger to the Soviet Union
in the event of a French fascist triumph and joined with the antifascists. As elsewhere, in
the 1930s the Communists emerged from their sectarian revolutionary isolation, adopted
patriotic programs, and widened their prestige, infl uence, and appeal. An impressive
labor-sponsored general strike was held a week after the riots. Shortly thereafter, Radical
Socialists, Socialists, and Communists drew together in a political coali-
tion that came to be known as the Popular Front, of the kind that was being
organized, or advocated, in many countries in the 1930s. It campaigned on
a pledge to defend the republic against fascism, to take measures against
the Depression, and to introduce labor reforms. In the spring of 1936 the
Popular Front won a decisive victory at the polls. The French Socialists for the fi rst
time in their history became the leading party in the Chamber; their chief, Léon Blum,
long a spokesman for democratic and reformist socialism, became premier of a coalition
cabinet of Socialists and Radical Socialists; the Communists, who had increased their
representation in the Chamber from 10 to 72 seats, did not join the cabinet but pledged
their support.
Scandals
The emergence of the
Popular Front
The French Popular Front brought the leftist, antifas- cist political parties together in a governing coalition that held power for about a year in 1936–1937. Despite its brevity, the Popular Front government introduced numerous reforms that became permanent fea- tures of French social and eco- nomic life. This photograph shows Premier Léon Blum addressing supporters of the Popular Front on Bastille Day in 1936. (akg-images/Newscom)
97. Trials and Adjustments of Democracy in Britain and France
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s820
The Popular Front and After
Blum’s Popular Front ministry, although it lasted little more than a year, put through a
program of far-reaching legislation. In part, this was due to the Popular Front election pro-
gram, in part to unforeseen events, for the tremendous enthusiasm generated by the victory
led to a spontaneous nationwide wave of “sit-down strikes,” in which the striking workers
refused to leave their factories or shops until Blum pledged a number of immediate reforms.
Parliament in short order passed laws providing for a 40-hour week, vacations with
pay, and a collective bargaining law. The encouragement given to collective bargaining led
to the nationwide signing of collective labor contracts for the fi rst time in the country’s his-
tory and to enormous growth in trade union membership, from about 1 million to 5 million
in a year’s time. Other legislation was important too. Steps were taken to nationalize the
armaments and aviation industry; the fascist armed leagues were, at least in theory, dis-
solved; the Bank of France was reorganized and placed under government control to break
the power of the nation’s close-knit economic elite, the so-called “two hundred families.”
Machinery was established for the arbitration of labor disputes. Aid was given to farmers
through price fi xing and government purchases of wheat. All these measures aimed at both
recovery and reform. Blum spoke openly of his program as a “French New
Deal,” thus suggesting that the actions of the Popular Front were similar
to President Roosevelt’s social reforms in the United States. But French
conservatives, and the quasi-fascists to their Right, cried revolution; they
uttered dark predictions that a French Lenin would follow Blum. They did
not conceal their sullen resentment at what had come to pass: the fate of Catholic France in
the hands of a leftist, a Socialist, and a Jew. Even salvation by a warrior from outside the
country, one who had demonstrated his anti-Bolshevism, would be preferable. They envied
the protection given to established interests by Mussolini, and there were those who, it was
said, even muttered “better Hitler than Léon Blum.”
The Popular Front reforms, long overdue though they were, came to France at a time
when the sands were rapidly running out. While France had a 40-hour week, German arms
plants were operating at full capacity. In the shadow of Nazi remilitarization a rearmament
program had to be undertaken at the very same time as reform; even moderates argued that
the country could not afford both. Opposition from many quarters hindered success. French
employers balked at cooperating in the new labor reforms and tried to pass on rising pro-
duction costs to consumers. Labor was disgruntled at the price rises that canceled out its
wage gains. Both employers and labor applied the 40-hour week in such a manner that
plants were shut down for two days a week instead of operating in shifts, as the law had
made possible. Nothing could check the fl ight of gold from the country. Industrial produc-
tion hardly rose; even in 1938, when it had shown substantial recovery in other countries,
it was only 5 percent higher in France than at the depth of the Depression.
In July 1936 the Spanish Civil War had broken out. The Communists
attacked the Blum government for refusing aid to the hard-pressed Span-
ish Popular Front government, which was fi ghting fascist forces across the
Pyrenees; Blum, following the lead of Britain and fearful also of involving
a divided France, resisted. In 1937, after a year in offi ce, the Blum govern-
ment was overthrown by the Senate, which refused to grant it emergency fi nancial pow-
ers. The Popular Front coalition rapidly disintegrated. By mid-1938 the Radical Socialists
had abandoned their allies on the Left and under Edouard Daladier formed a conserva-
tive ministry, whose attention was increasingly occupied by the international crisis. Little
remained of the Popular Front, or indeed of the strength of labor, which declined rapidly
Overdue measures for
reform and recovery
The overthrow of
Blum’s government
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82198. Italian Fascism
and exhausted itself further by an unsuccessful general strike in 1938 in protest against
nullifi cation of the 40-hour week. Although the conservative government did not overturn
all of the recent social reforms, French workers found that 1936 had gone the way of other
“great years” in French history; the comfortable classes had been thrown into panic by
the social turmoil; internal division and class hatreds had grown sharper. Yet the French
democracy, the Third Republic itself, had been successfully preserved and its domestic
enemies repulsed, at least for a time.
Western Europe and the Depression
Britain and France, and indeed all western Europe, Europe’s inner zone, never fully recov-
ered from the Great Depression before the Second World War. When economic expansion
resumed after the war, the interwar years seemed like a deep trough in Europe’s economic
history. Western Europe barely maintained its old industrial equipment in the Depression
and was unable to utilize even its existing machinery to capacity. Moreover, as the events
of 1929 had clearly shown, Europe’s economic dependence on the United States was pro-
nounced, and the U.S.S.R. was becoming an industrial giant. The economic destiny of
Europeans in the 1930s was very much in doubt.
There were other signs of decline. The birth rate in western Europe in
the 1930s fell to its lowest recorded levels as people postponed marriage
or limited the size of their families because of economic and psychologi-
cal stresses. Birth rates did not run signifi cantly higher than death rates; the population
was stagnating and growing older. There was a scarcity of middle-age men because of the
casualties of the First World War. Politically neither British nor French democratic political
leaders were able to cope with the economic dilemmas of the Depression era. Nor could the
Socialists, who found little practical guidance in the ideas of Marxian economics or class
struggle, but failed to renew or reinvigorate their own doctrines in any signifi cant way.
98. ITALIAN FASCISM
Though they shade into each other imperceptibly, it is possible to distinguish dictator-
ship from totalitarianism. Dictatorship, an old phenomenon in history, has commonly been
regarded as a mere expedient, designed for emergencies and believed to be temporary; at
most, it is a theory of government to justify the authoritarian exercise of state power. Total-
itarianism, as it arose after the First World War, was not merely a theory of government
but a theory of life and of human nature. It claimed to be no expedient but a permanent
form of society and civilization, and insofar as it appealed to emergency for justifi cation, it
regarded life itself as an everlasting emergency. This new kind of totalitarianism, when it
emerged in western Europe, came from the political Right and carried signifi cant theoreti-
cal differences from Russian Communism—which it vehemently rejected and yet in its
repressive methods, its cult of the leader, and its one-party rule it often resembled. The fi rst
of the new right-wing totalitarian movements to seize power in Europe appeared somewhat
unexpectedly in Italy in the form of fascism.
Mussolini and the Fascist Seizure of Power
The belief widely held in the 1920s that democracy was generally advancing was not deeply
disturbed by the failure of Russia or Turkey or China to develop effective parliaments or
liberal institutions. Most Europeans regarded these regions as “backward” countries, in the
Other signs of decline
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s822
throes of revolution; someday, when conditions quieted down, it could be supposed, they
would move forward to democracy as known in Europe. I taly thus became a jarring excep-
tion to the apparent victory of democracy in western societies because the Italians had
always been an integral part of Europe and European history. Although Italy had accepted
parliamentary liberalism and other democratic institutions since 1861, Benito Mussolini
seized control of the Italian government in 1921 and proclaimed the new
ruling ideology and political system of Fascismo. Mussolini, born in 1883, the son of a blacksmith, was a fi ery and pug-
nacious character, who before the war had followed the career of profes-
sional revolutionary, left-wing socialist, and radical journalist. He had read
and digested Marxist writings but also works such as Sorel’s Refl ections on Violence and the writings of Nietzsche. During the war he turned intensely nationalist, clamored for
Italian intervention on the side of the Allies, and demanded the conquest from Austria of
Italia irredenta, the “unredeemed” Italian lands to the north and across the Adriatic. In the war he served as a corporal. In March 1919 he organized, mainly from demobilized
and restless ex-soldiers, his fi rst fi ghting band, or fascio di combattimento. Fascio meant a bunch or bundle, as of sticks; it called to mind the Latin fasces, or bundle of rods, carried by the lictors in ancient Rome as a symbol of state power—for Mussolini loved to conjure
up ancient glories.
In 1919 Italian glories were dim. Italy had entered the war on the side of the Allies
quite frankly for territorial and colonial spoils; the secret treaty of London in 1915 had
promised the Italians certain Austrian lands and a share in German and Ottoman Turkish
possessions. During the war Italian arms did not especially shine; Italian troops were
routed at Caporetto in 1917. Yet Italy lost over 600,000 lives in the war, and the Italian
delegates came to the peace conference confi dent that their sacrifi ces would be recognized
and their territorial aspirations would be satisfi ed. They were rapidly disappointed. Wilson
refused to honor the provisions of the London secret treaty and other demands of the
Italians. Britain and France displayed no eagerness to side with Italy. The Italians received
some of the Austrian territories promised to them, but to their resentment they were given
no part of the former German or Ottoman Turkish possessions as mandates.
After the war Italy, like other countries, suffered from the burden
of wartime debt and from acute postwar depression and unemployment.
Social unrest spread. In the countryside land seizures took place, not in any
signifi cant proportions but enough to spread concern among landowners;
tenant farmers refused to pay rents; peasants burned crops and destroyed livestock. In the
cities great strikes broke out in heavy industry and in transportation. Some of the strikes
turned into sit-down strikes, the workers refusing to leave the plants; demands were raised
even for worker control of the factories. Moderate socialist and labor leaders disavowed
all such extremism, but left-wing socialists who, as elsewhere, had turned Communist
and joined the Third International, fanned the existing discontents. Meanwhile, armed
bands of young men, most prominent of whom were the Blackshirts or Fascists, brawled
with Communists and ordinary workers in the streets. By the late summer of 1920 the
strikes and the agrarian unrest had subsided, although violence in the streets persisted.
During the months of turmoil the government refrained from any bold action, and the
already low respect for Italy’s parliamentary system sank even lower. In 1919 the fi rst
postwar election gave impressive victories to the Socialists and a new Catholic Popular
Party (the latter were also called Christian Socialists). In 1921, in the wake of the postwar
disturbances, new elections were held. Despite concerns about the recent social turmoil,
The birth of
Fascismo
Social unrest
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823
liberals and democrats, moderate socialists, and the Catholic Popular Party were all
returned in large numbers. Mussolini’s Fascist Movement won only 35 of the 500-odd
seats. This less than impressive showing was the best the Fascists ever achieved in a free
election, but the Fascist ranks were nonetheless swelling outside the regular channels of
electoral politics—in the backwash, as it were, of the postwar unrest.
Mussolini and the Fascists at fi rst went along with the radical tide; they did not disap-
prove the factory seizures; they inveighed against plutocracy and war profi teers and called
for a high levy on capital and profi ts. But Mussolini, never one to sacrifi ce opportunity for
principles or doctrine, soon came forward with his Fascists as the upholders of national
law and order, and hence property; he now pledged battle “against the
forces dissolving victory and nation.” Although the social agitation sub-
sided, burning itself out on its own, and there had never been any real threat
of a Soviet-style revolution in Italy, the propertied classes had gone through
a great fright; they found comfort in the Fascist Movement and were will-
ing to lend it fi nancial support. Patriots and nationalists of all classes rallied to it, as well as
the lower middle class, which was pinched by economic infl ation and, as elsewhere, was
unable to fi nd protection or solace in labor unions or socialist movements. The black-
shirted upholders of national order proceeded methodically to administer beatings (and
doses of castor oil) to Communists and alleged Communists, to Socialists and Christian
Socialists, and to ordinary persons who did not support them; nor did they refrain from
Mussolini: Upholding
order and property
Fascist groups joined a “March on Rome” that sought to displace Italy’s liberal-democratic government in October 1922. Mussolini joined the March as the Blackshirts entered the capi- tal, and he is seen here (in civilian clothes) leading his Fascist followers through the city— shortly before he became prime minister in a new coalition ministry. (akg-images/Newscom)
98. Italian Fascism
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s824
arson and murder. Vigilante Fascist squadrons, the squadristi, broke up strikes, demol- ished labor union headquarters, and drove from offi ce duly elected Socialist and Commu-
nist mayors and town offi cials. Mussolini nevertheless reinforced his claim as paladin of
law, authority, and order by declaring his loyalty to king and church; a few years earlier he
had been a rabid republican and anticlerical.
In October 1922 the “March on Rome” took place. The Blackshirts
mobilized for a threatened coup and began to converge from various direc-
tions on the capital; Mussolini remained at a safe distance in Milan. The
liberal-democratic coalition cabinet had viewed the events of the past two
years with disapproval but at the same time saw with satisfaction that the Blackshirts were
serving a useful national purpose by suppressing troublemakers on the Left. Now they
made belated but ineffectual gestures to save the situation by an effort to have martial law
declared, but the king refused to approve. The cabinet resigned and Mussolini was named
premier. It was all quite legal, or almost so. Indeed Italy was still in form a constitutional
and parliamentary monarchy. Mussolini headed only a coalition ministry and received
from parliament no more than a year’s grant of full emergency powers to restore order and
introduce reforms.
But soon it was clear in whose hands power rested. Before the expiration of his emer-
gency powers Mussolini forced through parliament a law providing that any party securing
the largest number of votes in an election should automatically receive two-thirds of the
seats in the legislature. The two-thirds law was not even necessary. In the 1924 elections,
although seven opposition slates appeared, the Fascists, aided by control of the electoral
machinery and the use of squadristi, received well over three-fi fths of the total vote.
The “March on
Rome”
Benito Mussolini liked to por- tray his Fascist regime in Italy as a restoration of the power and grandeur of ancient Rome. Speaking here at a Fascist rally in 1932 and surrounded by uniformed followers as well as symbols of the Roman Empire, Mussolini struck a character- istic stance to convey a public image of decisive, powerful leadership in the authoritarian Italian state. (Keystone/Getty Images)
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After the e lections of 1924 the highly respected Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti
publicly exposed hundreds of cases of armed Fascist violence, fraud, and
chicanery. He was murdered by Fascists. There was widespread indignation
in the country, and the press clamored for Mussolini’s resignation. The left
and centrist parties, in an act that proved to be a serious miscalculation,
withdrew in protest from the Chamber, wanting to have nothing to do with such a govern-
ment. Mussolini, not directly involved in the assassination, expressed a willingness to pun-
ish the perpetrators but eventually took full responsibility and moved to consolidate his
dictatorship. Within a few years he reduced the Italian parliament to a nonentity, placed the
press under censorship, abolished the labor unions, deprived labor of the right to strike,
and abolished all political parties except the Fascist Party.
The Fascist State
Fascism in the 1920s was an innovation that the rest of the world was slow to understand.
In his more fl amboyant moments Mussolini strutted, stuck out his jaw, and glared
ferociously; he jumped through fl aming hoops to show his virility and had his chief subor-
dinates do likewise; to the outside world this seemed an odd way of demonstrating fi tness
for public offi ce. He denounced democracy as historically outmoded and declared that it
accentuated class struggle, split people into countless minority parties, and led to selfi sh-
ness, futility, evasion, and empty talk. In place of democracy he preached the need for
vigorous action under a strong leader; he himself took the title of Leader, or Duce. He denounced liberalism, free trade, laissez-faire, and capitalism, along with Marxism, mate-
rialism, socialism, and class consciousness, which he said were the evil offspring of liberal
ideas and capitalist economies. In their place he preached national solidarity and state
management of economic affairs under the same Leader’s farseeing and audacious vision.
And in fact Mussolini seemed to bring a limited kind of new effi ciency to Italian society;
as the saying went, he made the trains run on time.
Mussolini introduced, at least in theory, the syndical, or corporative
state, which had been discussed in both left- and right-wing circles for
many years. Left-wing syndicalism, especially before the First World War,
looked to revolutionary labor unions to expropriate the owners of industry and then to
assume the direction of political and economic life. A more conservative syndicalism had
been endorsed and encouraged by the Catholic church, with which Mussolini made his
peace when he signed with the papacy the Lateran accord in 1929 recognizing the inde-
pendence and sovereignty of Vatican City. The more conservative type of syndicalism
looked nostalgically toward a revival of the medieval guilds, or “corporations,” in which
master and journeymen, employer and employees, had labored side by side in a suppos-
edly golden age of social peace.
The Fascist corporative system, however, did not resemble the older syndicalist theo-
ries because in practice the hand of the state was writ large, something that neither of the
earlier corporative doctrines had anticipated. The system went through a number of com-
plicated stages, but as it fi nally emerged in the 1930s, it provided for the division of all
economic life into 22 major areas, for each of which a “corporation” was established. In
each corporation representatives of Fascist-organized labor groups, employers, and the
government determined working conditions, wages, prices, and industrial policies; and in
a national council these representatives were supposed jointly to devise plans for Italy’s
economic self-suffi ciency. In each case the role of government was decisive and the whole
Matteotti’s murder
The corporative state
98. Italian Fascism
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s826
structure was under the jurisdiction of a minister of corporations. As a fi nal step, these
corporative economic chambers were integrated into the government proper so that in
1938 the old Chamber of Deputies was superseded by a Chamber of Fasces and Corpora-
tions representing the corporations and the Fascist party, all of its members selected by the
government and not subject to popular ratifi cation.
None of this was democratic, but this was an improvement over democracy, the
Fascists asserted. A legislature in an advanced economic society, they said, should repre-
sent not political parties and geographical constituencies but economic occupations. Orga-
nization along such lines would do away with the anarchy and class confl ict engendered by
free capitalism, which only sapped the strength of the national state. In the end real author-
ity rested with the government—the head of the government, the Duce, who settled most
matters by decree. In point of fact, social unrest and class confl ict were “ended,” not by the
corporative system as such, but by the prohibition of strikes and lockouts and the abolition
of independent labor unions. The corporative system represented the most extreme form
of state control over economic life within a framework of private enterprise
and a capitalist economy, that is, one in which ownership continued to rest
in private hands. It was the Fascist answer to Western-style democracy and
to Soviet proletarian dictatorship. Fascism, said Mussolini, is the “dictator-
ship of the state over many classes cooperating.”
When the Depression struck, none of Italy’s economic controls availed very much.
Mussolini was eager to lay upon the world Depression the blame for Italy’s continuing
economic ills. He turned to a vigorous program of public works and to increasing economic
self-suffi ciency. Throughout the Fascist era, however, no fundamental reform changed
the status of the farmers and peasants. The existing structure of society, which in Italy
meant social extremes of wealth and poverty, remained unaltered. Fascism provided nei-
ther the economic security nor the material well-being for which it had demanded the
State control of
economic life
The Italian Fascist Party sought to bring all individuals and social groups under the con- trol of an authoritarian national state. This woman at a Fascist rally in Rome exempli- fi ed a disciplined, nationalized gender identity that the Italian government regularly pro- moted during the 1930s. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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82799. Totalitarianism: Germany’s Third Reich
sacrifi ce of individual freedom and democracy. It undeniably, however, substituted a wide-
spread psychological exhilaration, a feeling that Italy was undergoing a heroic national
revival; and after 1935 to support that feeling Mussolini turned increasingly to military and
imperialist adventures.
Fascism came to be regarded in other countries as a possible alternative to demo-
cratic or parliamentary government, as an actual corrective to troubles whose reality no
one could deny. All Communists hated it, and so did all socialists, labor leaders, moderate
leftists, idealistic liberals, and many traditional conservatives. Wealthier or established
people, because of fear of Bolshevism, made more allowances in its favor. In eastern
European countries, often highly nationalistic, or infl uenced by disgruntled landowners,
or simply unused to settling questions by majority vote, fascism made a
considerable appeal. In the Latin countries, in Spain, Portugal, and France,
Mussolini’s corporative state found champions and admirers. Sometimes,
in Europe and elsewhere intellectuals spun sophisticated theories about the
new order of discipline and authority, forgetting how Mussolini himself with unusual can-
dor had written, “Fascism was not the nursling of a doctrine worked out beforehand with
detailed elaboration; it was born of the need for action.”
99. TOTALITARIANISM: GERMANY’S THIRD REICH
The Rise of Adolf Hitler
It was in Germany that Mussolini found his aptest pupil. Born in Austria in 1889, Adolf
Hitler did little before the war. He was not an intellectual, like the prewar leftist journalist
Mussolini. He was never a socialist, but he fell into a restless and racist type of radicalism.
Son of an Austrian customs offi cial, he lost his father at 14 and his mother a few years
later. He dropped out of high school at 16 and at 19 came to the great metropolis of Vienna
as an art student but was never accepted into the academy to which he sought admission.
When the small inheritance left by his parents ran out and a government grant for orphan
students ended, he drifted into various menial jobs, occasionally selling a few of his post-
card and poster paintings but mainly eking out a marginal existence with hardly any
friends, money, or livelihood.
The young Hitler did not like what he saw in Vienna: neither the trap-
pings of the Habsburg court, nor the nobility of eastern Europe who rode
by in their carriages, nor the mixed nationalities of the Danubian Empire,
nor the Vienna worker’s attachment to international Marxism, nor above all the Jews, who
thanks to a century of liberal infl uences had become assimilated into the German culture
and now occupied many distinguished positions in business, law, medicine, and journalism
in the city. He became exceedingly race conscious and racist, not unlike others in many
countries at the time. The youthful Hitler took a special satisfaction in thinking of himself
as a pure German of the good old German stock. He became violently anti-Semitic, and
he also disliked aristocracy, capitalism, socialism, cosmopolitanism, internationalism, and
“hybridization.”
His aversion to Austria led him in 1913 to move to Munich, capital of the South
German state of Bavaria. Once again he drifted without livelihood except by occasionally
selling a few of his watercolors. When the war broke out, he volunteered for the German
army. He served as a dispatch runner to the front line, and at one point was the victim of
a gas attack that temporarily blinded him and injured his vocal cords. Although he rose in
The appeal of fascism
Hitler’s dislikes
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s828
rank only to the rough equivalent of corporal, he received important military decorations.
For Hitler, as for Mussolini and others, the war was a thrilling, noble, and liberating
experience. The average individual in modern society often led a routinized, dull exis-
tence. Peace, for many, was a drab routine from which war was an exciting emancipation.
Human atoms, fl oating in an impersonal and unfriendly world, they were stirred by the
nationalism that the war aroused into a sense of belonging to, believing in, and fi ghting
for something greater than themselves, but that was yet their own. When peace returned,
they felt a letdown.
When the war ended, Hitler remained for a time on active duty and was transferred
to Munich. Bavaria in 1919 was a principal focus of the Communist expansion in central
Europe; a Bavarian Soviet Republic even existed for about three weeks until crushed by
the federal government in Berlin. The Communist threat made Bavaria a busy center for
anticommunist, antisocialist, antirepublican, and antidemocratic agitation of all kinds, and
the seat of a disgruntled illiberalism. It swarmed with secret societies and paramilitary
organizations led by discontented army offi cers or others who remained alienated from
civilian society and hostile to the new Weimar democracy. Hitler, working with the army’s
political instruction program, which had been created to combat socialist and democratic
propaganda among the demobilized veterans and workers, joined at the army’s behest a
tiny party called the German Workers’ Party and soon became its leader. Early in 1920 he
proclaimed its 25-point program, the party now calling itself the National
Socialist German Workers’ Party. Thus were born the Nazis, so called from
the German way of pronouncing the fi rst two syllables of “National.” Now
demobilized, Hitler was fully launched on a career of radical politics.
We have earlier noted the beginnings of the Weimar Republic and the burdens it was
compelled to bear from the start—the Versailles peace, reparations, the catastrophic infl a-
tion of 1923. Something has been said also of the failure of the republicans to inaugurate
the kind of deeper social changes that might have democratized the political and social
structure of German society and thereby strengthened republican forces. For fi ve years
after the war, violence remained sporadic in Germany. Communist agitation continued;
but more dangerous, because they attracted more sympathy among the Germans, were the
maneuvers of monarchist and antirepublican organizations, which maintained armed bands
and staged uprisings like the unsuccessful Kapp Putsch of 1920. One such private “army”
was the Brownshirts or Storm Troopers maintained by the Nazis. Such bands even resorted
Nazi origins
The small Nazi Party gained enough followers by 1923 for Adolf Hitler to believe that a popular revolt or Putsch might cause the collapse of Germa- ny’s Weimar Republic. Hitler appears here (holding a hat) with his supporters at the time of the “beer hall Putsch ” in Munich, an almost farcical event for which he was sentenced to a brief term in prison. (Keystone/Getty Images)
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829
to assassination. Thus Walter Rathenau was murdered in 1922; he had organized German
production during the war, and in 1922 he was foreign minister, but he had democratic and
internationalist inclinations—and was a Jew. Another victim was Matthias Erzberger, a
leading moderate politician of the Catholic Center Party—he had helped “betray” the army
by signing the armistice.
In 1923, when reparations payments were not forthcoming, the French army occupied
the Ruhr. A clamor of national indignation swept over Germany. Hitler and the National
Socialists, who since 1919 had obtained a considerable following, denounced the Weimar
government for shameful submission to the French. They judged the
moment opportune for seizing power; and at the end of 1923, in imitation of
Mussolini’s march on Rome the year before, the Brownshirts staged the
beer hall Putsch in Munich. Hitler jumped on the platform, fi red a revolver
at the ceiling, and shouted that the “national revolution has broken out.” But
the police suppressed the disturbance, and Hitler was sentenced to fi ve years in prison. He
was released in less than a year; the Weimar democracy dealt mildly with its enemies.
In prison Hitler wrote his book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a turbid stream of personal recollection, racism, nationalism, collectivism, theories
of history, Jew-baiting, and political comment. Mein Kampf sold widely. The book and the publicity that had accompanied the fi ve-week trial con-
verted Hitler into a political fi gure of national prominence. The former soldier was not
alone in his ideas; no less a person than General Ludendorff, who had distinguished him-
self in the war, and after the war became one of the most grotesquely unbalanced of the old
offi cer class, gave his warm support to Hitler and even took part in the beer hall Putsch.
Beginning in 1924, with the French out of the Ruhr, reparations adjusted, a new
and stable currency adopted, and loans from foreign countries, mainly the United States,
Germany began to enjoy an amazing economic revival. National Socialism lost its appeal;
the party lost members, Hitler was regarded as a charlatan, and his followers as a lunatic
fringe. All seemed quiet. Then came the Great Depression in 1929. Adolf Hitler, who
might have faded out of history, was transformed by the circumstances attending the
Depression in Germany into a fi gure of Napoleonic proportions.
No country suffered more than Germany from the worldwide economic collapse.
Foreign loans abruptly ceased. Factories ground to a halt. There were 6 million unem-
ployed. The middle class had not really recovered from the great infl ation of 1923; struck
again, after so brief a respite, they lost all faith in the economic system and in its future.
The Communist vote steadily mounted; large numbers of the middling masses, who saw in
communism their own death warrant, looked about desperately for someone
to save them from Bolshevism. The Depression also stirred up the universal
German loathing for the Treaty of Versailles. Many Germans, still mourn-
ing the huge loss of lives in the World War, explained the ruin of Germany
by the postwar treatment it had received from the Allies—the constriction of
its frontiers; the loss of its colonies, markets, shipping, and foreign investments; the colos-
sal demand for reparations; the occupation of the Ruhr; the infl ation; and much else.
Any people in such a trap would have been bewildered and resentful. But many
Germans responded to their crisis with ideas and actions that may have refl ected or grown
out of Germany’s political experience and position in Europe over the previous three or
four centuries. Democracy—the agreement to obtain and accept majority verdicts, to dis-
cuss and compromise, to adjust confl icting interests without wholly satisfying or wholly
crushing either side—was hard enough to maintain in any country in a crisis. In Germany
The beer hall
Putsch
Mein Kampf
The crisis confronting
Germany
99. Totalitarianism: Germany’s Third Reich
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s830
democracy was itself an innovation, which had yet to prove its value, which could easily
be called un-German, an artifi cial or imported doctrine, a foreign system foisted upon
Germany by the victors in the late war.
Hitler infl amed all such feelings by his propaganda. He denounced the
Treaty of Versailles as a national humiliation. He denounced the Weimar
democracy for producing class struggle, division, weakness, and wordy
futility. He called for “true” democracy in a vast and vital stirring of the
people, or Volk, behind a Leader who was a man of action. He declared that Germans, pure Germans, must rely only on themselves. He inveighed against Marxists, Bolsheviks, Com-
munists, and Socialists, throwing them all together in a deliberate beclouding of the issues;
but he claimed to favor the right kind of socialism for the little man, that is, the doctrine of
the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. He ranted against unearned incomes, war
profi ts, the power of the great trusts and chain stores, land speculators, interest slavery, and
unfair taxes. Above all, he denounced the Jews, who, like individuals in other social and
religious groups, could be found in all political camps. They now came under attack from
anti-Semitic extremists on all sides of the political spectrum. To the Left, Jewish capital-
ists were anathema. To the Right, Jewish revolutionaries were a horror. In anti-Semitism
Hitler’s propaganda
Nazi Party members and paramilitary groups often marched around German cities in the decade before Hitler came to power. This parade through Nuremberg in 1929 was thus one of the recurring demonstrations of Nazism’s racist nationalism during the last decades of the Weimar Republic. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
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831
Hitler found a lowest common denominator upon which to appeal to all parties and classes.
At the same time the Jews were a small minority (only 600,000 in all Germany), so that in
an age of mass politics it was safe enough to attack them.
In the election of 1930 the Nazis won 107 seats in the Reichstag; in 1928 they had won
only 12; their popular vote went up from 800,000 to 6.5 million. The Communist represen-
tation rose from 54 to 77. By July 1932 the Nazis more than doubled their popular vote, won
230 seats, and were now by far the largest single party though because of the multiplicity
of parties they fell well short of a majority. In another election, in November 1932, the
Nazis, though still well out in front, showed some loss of strength, losing 2 million votes,
and dropping to 196 seats. The Communist vote had risen progressively to a peak of 100 in
November 1932.
After the relative setback of November 1932 Hitler feared that his movement was
passing. But certain conservative, nationalist, and antirepublican elements—old aristo-
crats, Junker landowners, army offi cers, Rhineland steel magnates, and other industrialists —
had conceived the idea that Hitler could be useful to them. From such sources, which
supported other reactionary causes as well, came a portion of Nazi funds. This infl uential
group, mainly from the small Nationalist Party, was confi dent that it would be able to
control Hitler and hence control the wave of national and mass discontent that he
was leading.
Amid the continuing economic crisis in 1932, Franz von Papen became the leader
of a Nationalist cabinet with the backing of the infl uential army leader General Kurt von
Schleicher. In December 1932 Schleicher forced Papen’s downfall and
succeeded him. When he too was compelled to resign a month later, both
men, intriguing separately and against each other, prevailed upon President
Hindenburg to name Hitler chancellor of a coalition cabinet. On January
30, 1933, by entirely legal means, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of the
German Republic; other positions in the new cabinet were fi lled by the Nationalists, with
whom the Nazis were to share power.
But to share power was not the Nazis’ aim. Hitler called for another election. A week
before election day in March the Reichstag building caught fi re. The Nazis, without any
real evidence, blamed it on the Communists. They frightened the population with a Red
scare, suspended freedom of speech and press, and set loose the Brownshirts to bully the
voters. Even so, in the election, the Nazis won only 44 percent of the vote; with their
Nationalist allies, they had 52 percent. Hitler, trumpeting a national emergency, was voted
dictatorial powers by a pliant Reichstag from which the Communist deputies by now had
been excluded. The Nazi revolution began.
The Nazi State
Hitler called his new order the Third Reich. He declared that following the First Reich,
or Holy Roman Empire, and the Second Reich, the empire founded by Bismarck that had
ended with the war in 1918, the Third Reich would carry on the process of true German
history, of which, he said, it was the organic outgrowth and natural culmination. The Third
Reich, he prophesied, would last a thousand years.
Like Mussolini, Hitler took the title of Leader, or, in German, the Führer. He claimed to represent the absolute sovereignty of the German people. Jews were considered un-
German. Democracy, parliamentarianism, and liberalism were condemned and together
with communism were labeled as “Jewish.” Women were supposed to bear numerous
Hitler named
chancellor
99. Totalitarianism: Germany’s Third Reich
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s832
children, but they could not play an active role in the Nazi government or in the leadership
of the Nazi Party. Concentration camps were set up for opponents of the regime. The new
“racial science” classifi ed Jews as non-Aryans and included as Jewish any-
one who had one Jewish grandparent. Almost at once Jews were driven
from public offi ce, the civil service, teaching, and other professions. The
Nuremberg laws of 1935 deprived Jews of all citizenship rights and forbade
intermarriage or even sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews. On November 9, 1938,
Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass,” the anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany turned to fi erce violence. When a 17-year-old Polish-Jewish student, distraught by the mistreatment
of his parents, shot and killed a German diplomatic offi cial in the German Embassy in
Paris, Nazi storm troopers in a savage orgy of vandalism, looting, and incendiarism
smashed Jewish shops, businesses, and synagogues in German cities; beat up thousands of
Jews; and rounded up 30,000 to be sent to concentration camps. Party and government
leaders moved in to control the storm troopers and to use anti-Semitism for their own pur-
poses. The government levied a 1 billion-mark fi ne on the Jewish community for provok-
ing the assault and collected the insurance payments for the shattered glass and other
property damage. Jews who in the wake of these events belatedly tried to fl ee the country
Anti-Semitism
The Nazi-orchestrated attack on Jewish shops and businesses in November 1938 carried the offi cial anti-Semitism of the Nazi state to a new level of violence in German cities. The shattered windows and signs at this Jewish store in Berlin convey the mean- ing of Kristallnacht —the night of broken glass. (akg-images/Newscom)
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833
discovered that neither they nor their families could readily fi nd places of refuge; the doors
in Europe and the United States were for the most part closed to them. The events of 1938
in Germany still resembled an older-style pogrom, but they also expressed a radical new
racism and foreshadowed the state-organized systematic destruction, in the Holocaust, of
6 million European Jews and of others in the grisly death camps.
The new totalitarian order was thought of as absolutely solid, and monolithic, like one
huge single slab of rock in which no particle had any separate structure. Germany ceased
to be federal; all the old states such as Prussia and Bavaria were abolished. All political
parties except the National Socialists were destroyed. The Nazi Party was itself violently
purged on the night of June 30, 1934, when many of the old Brownshirt leaders, those who
represented the more social revolutionary wing of the movement, were accused of plotting
against Hitler and were summarily shot. A secret political police, the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei) and a system of permanent concentration camps in which thousands were detained without trial or sentence suppressed all persons who were deemed to be
“un-German” and all ideas at variance with the Nazi Party and the dictates of the Leader.
Law itself was defi ned as the will of the German people operating in the inter-
ests of the Nazi state (and with the Nazi regime as the sole interpreter of the German
“will”). Churches, both Protestant and Catholic, continued to function but were “coor-
dinated” with the new regime; their clergy were forbidden to criticize its
activities, international religious ties were discouraged, and efforts were
made to keep children out of religious schools. The government encouraged
anti-Christian pagan movements and worship of the old Teutonic gods, but
nothing was sponsored so much as worship of Nazism and its Führer. A Nazi Youth Movement and schools and universities indoctrinated the rising generation in
the new concepts and carried older nationalist ideas to new racist extremes. The total, all-
encompassing repression thwarted the efforts of a few dedicated Germans to develop a
broad resistance movement.
Labor unions also were “coordinated”; they were replaced by a National Labor Front.
Strikes were forbidden. Under the “leadership principle” employers were set up as small-
scale Führers in their factories and industries and given extensive control, subject to close government supervision. On the positive side (if such a term may be used for any aspect of
this totalitarian system), an extensive public works program was launched, reforestation
and swamp drainage projects were organized, housing and super-highways were built. A
vast rearmament program absorbed the unemployed and within a short time unemploy-
ment disappeared. Even under Nazi statistics labor’s share in the national income was
reduced, but workers had jobs; and an organization called Strength Through Joy attended
to the needs of people with small incomes, providing entertainment, vacations, and travel
for many who could never otherwise afford them. The constant Nazi propaganda and the
improving economy and social programs—for those not directly suppressed or excluded—
steadily increased the popular support for Hitler’s regime, even as personal and political
freedoms rapidly disappeared.
The government assumed increasing controls over industry, while leaving ownership
in private hands. In 1936 it adopted a Four-Year Plan of economic development. All coun-
tries after the Great Depression tended to economic nationalism, but Nazi
Germany set up the goal of autarky and self-suffi ciency—absolute inde-
pendence from foreign trade. German chemists developed artifi cial rubber,
plastics, synthetic textiles, and many other substitute products to enable the
country to do without raw materials imported from overseas.
“Coordinating”
German society
Economic autarky
and self-suffi ciency
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s834
Historical Interpretations and Debates
Women in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany
The fascist parties relegated women to a secondary position in all spheres of public and eco- nomic life, which partly explains why early historians of the twentieth-century right-wing totalitarian states in Italy and Germany gave relatively little attention to the experiences or roles of women. A more recent generation of historians, however, has described how fascism tried to control women and (with discomforting historical examples) how women also sup- ported or contributed to the functioning of fascist societies—noting that many women were not simply passive victims. Compare the themes that the historians Victoria De Grazia and Claudia Koonz emphasize in their accounts of women’s social positions within Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1945 (1992) Fascism took as axiomatic that women
and men were different by nature. The
government politicized this difference to
the advantage of males and made it the
cornerstone of an especially repressive,
comprehensive new system for defi ning
female citizenship, for governing
women’s sexuality, wage labor, and social
participation. Every aspect of being female
was thus held up to the measure of the
state’s interest and interpreted in light of the
dictatorship’s strategies of state building. . . .
In fascist statecraft, the duty of women
toward the nation lay fi rst and foremost in
making babies. . . .
Women’s procreative role now
potentially defi ned every aspect of their
social being. Thus, Italian women not only
confronted their exclusion from politics
. . . , but they also risked exclusion from
the entire public sphere: their rights in the
workplace, their contributions to culture, and
their service as volunteers were all called
into question by the offi cial message that
their preeminent duty was to bear the nation’s
children. . . .
Above all, fascist policy fought against
an especially dangerous notion, that work was
a universal right—for women as for men—
and that for women, it should also open the
door to social emancipation. . . . If [women]
held jobs, it had to be out of family necessity
or because no men would take them. Thus
Mussolini’s “civilization of labor” belittled
women’s professional abilities
Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politic s (1987) What, then, did women do for the [Nazi]
men who ignored them [in public life]?
. . . They gave men Nazis the feeling of
belonging not just to a party but to a total
subculture that prefi gured the ideals of the
Nazi state for which they fought. . . . While
Nazi men preached race hate and virulent
nationalism that threatened to destroy the
morality upon which civilization rested,
women’s participation in the movement
created an ersatz gloss of idealism. The
image did not, of course, deceive the victims,
but it helped Nazis . . . to continue their
work under the illusion that they remained
decent. . . .
For women, belonging to the “master
race” opened the option of collaboration
in the very Nazi state that exploited them
. . . [and] denied them access to political
status. . . . Far from remaining untouched by
Nazi evil, women operated at its very center.
Wives, when they remained in their
“proper place,” kept their family world
apart from the masculine sphere of brutality,
coercion, corruption, and power. As with so
many other aspects of Nazi ideology, this
vision of womanhood embodied a traditional
ideal carried to extremes. . . .
In Hitler’s Germany, women provided
in a separate sphere of their own creation the
image of humane values that lent the healthy
gloss of motherhood to the “Aryan” world of
the chosen. . . . [Wives] gave the individual
men who confronted daily murder a safe
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835
Claudia Koonz . . . (contd . . . .) place where they could be respected for who
they were, not what they did.
Victoria De Grazia . . . (contd . . . .) and vocational skills not only in the eyes of
government, employers, and men but in the
view of women themselves.
Sources: Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 7, 41, 44, 168; Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Poli- tics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), pp. 5–6, 419.
For Europe as a whole one of the basic economic problems, especially after the
World War, was that while the Continent was economically a unit dependent on exchange
between diverse regions, politically it was cut to pieces by tariff restrictions, currency dif-
ferences, and hothouse industries artifi cially nurtured by nationalist ambition. The Nazis
claimed to have a solution for this problem in a network of bilateral trade agreements
assuring all neighboring peoples an outlet for their products. But it was a solution in which
Germans were to be the most industrial and most advanced, the most powerful and wealth-
iest. Other Europeans were to be relegated to permanently inferior status. What could not
be accomplished under trade agreements and economic penetration could be accomplished
by conquest and war. Within a few years after 1933, although the regime had its share of
bureaucratic confusion and personal rivalries, the Nazi revolution had turned Germany
into a huge disciplined war machine, its internal foes liquidated or silenced, its mesmer-
ized masses roaring their approval in giant demonstrations, ready to follow the Führer in
storming new Valkyrian heights. “Today Germany,” went an ominous phrase; “tomorrow
the whole world.”
Totalitarianism: Some Origins and Consequences
Totalitarianism was a many-sided thing. It had appeared fi rst with the Bolshevik Revolu-
tion, for in the denial of individual liberty the Communist regime did not differ from the
most extreme right-wing totalitarianism as manifested in Germany. Although Mussolini
was the fi rst to use the term “totalitarian,” and advance it explicitly as an ideology, the
Fascist regime that he established lacked the all-embracing control over people’s lives to
merit that term in its full political meaning. The Catholic Church came to terms with the
regime, anti-Semitism did not appear until much later, the Italian upper legislative house
or Senate continued to function, and the king retained many of his prerogatives. As to
the differences between Soviet totalitarianism and Naziism, they were important, at least
in principle. Theoretically, the proletarian dictatorship was temporary; it did not at fi rst
glorify the individual Leader; and it was not nationalistic, for it rested on a principle of
worldwide class struggle in all nations alike. It adopted a democratic-sounding constitution
and paid at least lip service to individual rights. Its constitution offi cially condemned rac-
ism, and it did not deliberately and consciously cultivate an ethics of war and violence. But
as time passed, Soviet totalitarianism or Communism became harder to distinguish from
totalitarian regimes like Naziism. The Soviet dictatorship and one-party state seemed per-
manent; the hollowness of the constitution and the guarantee of individual rights became
more apparent; a cult developed around the person of Stalin; the emphasis became more
nationalistic, falling less on the workers of the world and more on the glories of the Soviet
motherland; and it sent untold numbers to perish in the harsh labor camps of the Gulag.
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s836
Totalitarianism, as distinct from mere dictatorship, though it appeared
rather suddenly in Europe after the First World War, was no historic freak.
It was an outgrowth of a good deal of development in the past. The state
was an institution that had continuously acquired new powers ever since the
Middle Ages. The First World War continued and advanced the process. The twentieth-
century totalitarian state, mammoth and monolithic, claiming absolute dominion over
every department of life, carried this old development of state sovereignty to a new
extreme. For centuries, for example, the state had clashed with the church. The twentieth-
century dictators did the same. In addition, however, they were in most cases not merely
anticlerical but explicitly anti-Christian, offering, or imposing, a “total”
philosophy of life.
The new fascist and Nazi philosophy drew heavily upon historic
nationalism, which it distorted, exaggerated, and militarized. It rejected
classical liberalism, which stressed the autonomy of rational individuals,
and promoted instead an organic theory of society. It held that society was a kind of liv-
ing organism within which the individual person was but a single cell. Individuals, in this
theory, had no independent existence; they received life itself and all their ideas from the
society, people, nation, or culture into which they were born and by which they were nur-
tured. In Marxism, the absolute subordination of individuals to their class came to much
the same thing. Individuals were a microscopic cell, meaningless outside the social body.
It made little sense, given such theories, to speak of the individual’s “reason” or “free-
dom,” to allow individuals to have their own opinions or to count up individual opinions
to obtain a merely numerical majority. Valid ideas were those of the group as a whole, of
the people or race or nation (or, in Marxism, the class) as a solid block. Even science was
a product of specifi c societies; there was a “Nazi science,” which was bound to differ in its
conclusions from democratic bourgeois, Western, or “Jewish” science; and for the Soviets
there was a Soviet science, consistent with dialectical materialism and better equipped to
see the truth than the decadent bourgeois, capitalistic, or fascist science of the non-Soviet
world. All art, too—music, painting, poetry, fi ction, architecture, sculpture—was good art
insofar as it expressed the society or nationality in which it appeared.
The avowed philosophy of totalitarian regimes was subjective. Whether an idea was
held to be true depended on whose idea it was. Ideas of truth or beauty or right were not
supposed to correspond to any outer or objective reality or to the critical evaluations of
rational thought; they had only to correspond to the inner nature, interests, or point of view
of the people, nation, society, or class that entertained such ideas. The older Enlightenment
concepts of universal reason, natural law, natural right, and the ultimate alikeness of all
mankind, or of a common path of all mankind in one course of progress, disappeared.
The totalitarian regimes did not simply declare, as a dry fi nding of social science,
that peoples’ ideas were shaped by environment. They set about actively shaping ideas
through the constant use of propaganda and by establishing propaganda offi ces as a prin-
cipal branch of government. Propaganda was hardly new, but in the past, and still in the
democratic countries, it had been a piecemeal affair, urging the public to accept this or
that political party, or rally to this or that campaign. Now, like all else, it became “total.”
Propaganda was monopolized by the state, and it demanded faith in a whole view of life
and in every detail of this coordinated whole national system. Formerly the control of
books and newspapers had been mainly negative; under Napoleon or
Metternich, for example, censors had forbidden statements on particular sub-
jects, events, or persons. Now, in totalitarian countries, control of the press
The evolution of
totalitarianism
Reliance on historic
nationalism
Propaganda
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837
became frighteningly positive. The government manufactured thought. It manipulated opin-
ion. It rewrote history. Writers were required to adopt whole ideologies; books, newspapers,
magazines, and the radio diffused an endless and overwhelming cloud of words. Loudspeak-
ers blared in the streets; gigantic blown-up photographs of the Leader looked down in public
places. The propaganda experts were sometimes fanatics, but often they were cynics like
Dr. Joseph Goebbels in Germany, too intelligent to be duped by the rubbish with which they
duped their country.
The very idea of empirical truth evaporated. No norm of human utterance remained
except political expediency—the wishes and self-interest of those in power. No one could
learn anything except what the government wanted people to know. No one could escape
the omnipresent offi cial doctrine, the insidious penetration of the very recesses of the mind
by ideas planted by outsiders for their own purposes. People came to accept and even to
believe the most extravagant statements when they were endlessly repeated, year after
year. Barred from all independent sources of information, having no means by which any
offi cial allegation could be tested, the peoples in totalitarian countries became increas-
ingly, in fact and not merely in sociological theory, incapable of the use of reason.
Racism, more characteristic of Nazi Germany than of totalitarianism in
general, was a further exaggeration, or degradation, of older ideas of nation-
alism and national solidarity. It defi ned the nation in a tribal sense, as a
biological entity, a group of persons possessing the same physical ancestry
and the same or similar physical characteristics. Anti-Semitism was the most venomous
form of racism in Europe. While a latent hostility to Jews had always been present in the
Christian world, modern anti-Semitism had little to do with Christianity. It arose in part
from the fact that in the nineteenth century with the removal of religious barriers, the Jews
Racism
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1922–1938
1922 Britain recognizes the Irish Free State with dominion status; fi rst step toward
full sovereignty as Republic of Ireland
October 1922 Mussolini takes power in Italy after the Fascist March on Rome
1923 Nazis fail to mobilize political support during an attempted Putsch in Munich
1924 First Labour government is elected in Britain under Ramsey MacDonald
January 1933 Hitler comes to power in Germany; Nazis soon take control of all state
institutions and suppress opposition
March 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt introduces the “New Deal” in the United States to
mitigate economic effects of the Great Depression
1934 Right-wing and fascist groups in France challenge the Third Republic with
riots during the Stavisky Affair
1935 Nazis adopt Nuremberg laws against Jews
1936 Left-wing Popular Front comes to power in France under Léon Blum and
enacts notable social reforms
1938 The Nazi regime encourages violent attacks on Jews and Jewish property
during Kristallnacht—the night of broken glass
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s838
entered into general society and many achieved positions of prominence, especially in
Germany, so that from the point of view of resentful individuals they could be represented
as dangerous competitors in business or the professions. But most of all, anti-Semitism
was infl amed by propagandists who wished people to feel their supposed
racial purity more keenly or to forget the deeper problems of society,
including poverty, class divisions, and economic inequities.
Totalitarianism was an escape from the realities of class confl ict. It was
a way of pretending that differences between rich and poor were of minor
importance. Typically, a totalitarian regime came into power by stirring up
class fears, then remained in power, and represented itself as indispensable by declaring
that it had settled the class problem. Thus Mussolini, Hitler, and certain lesser dictators
before seizing offi ce pointed alarmingly to the dark menace of Bolshevism, and once in
power, declared that all classes stood shoulder to shoulder in slablike solidarity behind
the Leader.
Nor were events in Russia (or in China after the Second World War) altogether differ-
ent. The Bolsheviks in 1917, armed with the ideas of Marx, aroused the workers against
capitalists, landlords, the middle classes, and rich peasants; once in power and after exten-
sive liquidations, they declared that the classless society had arrived, that no true social
Totalitarianism
“resolves” class
confl ict
The Nazis promoted racist defi - nitions of German nationhood and created racial propaganda to show the “ideal” German family. This image of the “new people” was produced for a 1938 calendar that conveyed the Nazis’ biological view of gender identities as well as the regime’s racial portrait of the German nation. (akg-images/Newscom)
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839
classes any longer existed, and that all citizens stood solidly behind a regime from which,
they said, all good citizens benefi ted equally. Only the democracies admitted that they suf-
fered from internal class problems, from maldistribution of wealth, or from social distinc-
tions between favored and unfavored groups in society.
The dictatorships blamed their troubles on forces outside the country. They accused
dissatisfi ed persons of conspiring with foreigners or refugees—with being the tools of
Trotskyism, imperialism, or international Jewry. Or they talked of the struggle (as Mussolini
did) between rich nations and poor nations, the “have” and the “have not” countries, and
thus transformed the problem of poverty into an international struggle. In the distinction
between have and have not countries there was, of course, more than a grain of truth; in more
old-fashioned language some countries (such as the European democracies, as well as the
United States and the British dominions of the 1930s) had progressed farther than others in
their economic productivity and accumulation of wealth. It is probable that any propaganda
is more effective if partly true. But when the totalitarians blamed their troubles on other
countries and transformed the confl ict between have and have not into a struggle between
nations, they gave the signal that war might be a solution for social ills that had not yet
disappeared.
Violence, the acceptance and even glorifi cation of violence, was
indeed the characteristic most clearly distinguishing the totalitarian from
the democratic systems. We have seen how a cult of violence, or belief
that struggle was benefi cial, had arisen before the First World War. The
war itself habituated people to violence and direct action. Lenin and his followers showed
how a small group could seize the helm of state under revolutionary or chaotic conditions.
Mussolini in 1922 taught the same lesson, with further refi nements; for the Italy in which
he seized power was not at war, and it was merely the threat or possibility of revolution,
not revolution itself, that provided him with his opportunity. In the 1920s, for the fi rst time
The glorifi cation of
violence
The Nazi regime used public spectacles to send a message of irresistible national power to both the German people and foreign observers. The annual Nazi ral- lies at Nuremberg became the most carefully organized expressions of alle- giance to the Third Reich and the Nazi ideology. The salute to Hitler, as shown in this photograph of the Führer leading his offi cers between rows of soldiers at Nuremberg in 1938, was a typical exam- ple of the fervent loyalty and emotion that such events were designed to evoke. (Bettmann/Corbis)
99. Totalitarianism: Germany’s Third Reich
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Chapter 20 Democracy and Dictatorship in the 1930s840
since the seventeenth century, some of the most civilized parts of Europe, in time of peace,
saw private armies marching about the country, bands of uniformed and organized ruf-
fi ans, Blackshirts or Brownshirts, who manhandled, abused, and even killed law-abiding
citizens with impunity. Nor would anyone in the 1920s have believed that by the 1930s
Europe would see the reintroduction of torture.
The very ethics of totalitarianism was violent and neopagan. It borrowed from and
distorted Nietzsche and other prewar theoreticians, who, safe and civilized, had declared
that people should live dangerously, avoid the fl abby weakness of too much thought,
and throw themselves with red-blooded vigor into a life of action. The new regimes all
instituted youth movements. They appealed to a kind of juvenile idealism in which young
people believed that by joining some kind of squad, donning some kind of uniform, and
getting into the fresh air they contributed to a great moral resurgence of their country.
Young men were taught to value their bodies but not their minds, to be tough and hard,
and to regard mass gymnastics as patriotic demonstrations. Young women were taught to
breed large families without complaint, to be content in the kitchen, and to look with awe
upon their virile mates.
The body cult fl ourished while the mind decayed. Especially in National Socialism the
ideal was to turn the German people into a race of splendid blond Nordics. Contrariwise,
euthanasia was adopted for the chronically ill and the insane and was proposed for the
aged. Nazi ideologists produced pseudoscientifi c racist theories to explain and justify their
actions. Later, in the Second World War, when the Nazis overran eastern Europe, they
committed Jews and others to gas chambers, destroying over 6 million human beings by
the most scientifi c methods. Human beings were viewed as animals; one bred the kind one
wanted and killed the kind one did not.
The Spread of Dictatorship
The trend toward dictatorship, if not necessarily of the totalitarian variety, spread in Europe
in the 1930s. By 1938 only 10 out of 27 European countries remained democratic, in the
sense that different political parties honestly competed for offi ce and that citizens within
generous limits thought and acted as they pleased. They were Great Britain and France;
Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland; Czechoslovakia and Finland; and the three Scandina-
vian countries Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
The promise of the early 1920s that constitutional and democratic government would
fl ourish was thwarted. The weakness or absence of a parliamentary or democratic tradi-
tion, low education and literacy standards, the hostility of reactionary elements, the fear of
Bolshevism, and the dissatisfaction of existing national minorities, all cou-
pled with the economic strains resulting from the Great Depression, contrib-
uted to the collapse of representative institutions. Apart from the avowedly
totalitarian or fascist regimes of Germany and Italy, the new dictatorships
and authoritarian systems generally rested on a combination of personal
and military power, but several refl ected or absorbed some of the ideologi-
cal features of a generic fascism. In Portugal, Salazar inaugurated a clerical-corporative
dictatorship in 1932 that lasted for over four decades. In Austria, Dollfuss fused various
right-wing political and military elements into a clerical-fascist “Christian” dictatorship
that violently suppressed the Socialists and sought in vain to counter the German threat.
In Spain General Franco established a right-wing authoritarian government after a bloody
civil war (described in the next chapter).
The collapse of
democratic
governments
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841
The authoritarian regimes were alike in repressing individual liberties, banning oppo-
sition parties, and abolishing or nullifying parliamentary institutions. Many borrowed
features of fascism, establishing a corporative state, outlawing independent labor organi-
zations, and forbidding strikes; many, like Hungary, Romania, and Poland, enacted anti-
Semitic legislation. None of the right-wing regimes went as far as Hitler’s Third Reich in
the total coordination of all political, economic, intellectual, and biological activities in a
revolutionary mass-based dictatorship.
The acceptance and glorifi cation of violence, it has been noted, was the feature most
clearly distinguishing the totalitarian from the democratic systems. War in the Nazi and
Fascist ethics was a noble thing, and the love of peace a sign of decadence. The Soviet
regime by its own theory regarded war with non-Soviet powers as inevitable someday,
but did not preach it as a positive moral good. The exaltation of war and struggle, the need
for maintaining national solidarity, and the habit of blaming foreign countries for social
troubles helped to make violence seem like a normal and appropriate means for strength-
ening the nation. These general ideological themes were intensifi ed by the considerable
armaments programs on which the dictatorships embarked and by the personal ambition
and egotistical mania of individual dictators. All of this made the decade of the 1930s a
time not only of domestic political reaction but of recurrent international crises that led
fi nally, in 1939, to a second and even greater world war.
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
99. Totalitarianism: Germany’s Third Reich
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843
C h a p t e r 21 THE SECOND
WORLD WAR
Peace in the abstract, the peace that is the mere absence of war, does not exist in international rela-
tions. Peace is never found apart from certain con-
ditions; it means peaceable acceptance of given
conditions, or peaceable and orderly transformation
of conditions by negotiation and agreement. The
conditions in the 1930s were basically those laid
down by the Paris peace conference of 1919—the
states recognized, the frontiers drawn, the terms
agreed to, at the close of the First World War. In
the 1930s neither Germany, Italy, Japan, nor the
U.S.S.R. was content with these conditions; they
were “revisionist” or dissatisfi ed powers; and the fi rst three were willing to undertake war
itself to make a change. Great Britain, France, and the United States were satisfi ed powers,
expecting no benefi t from change in the conditions; but on the other hand they had lost faith
in the conditions of the postwar settlement and were unwilling to risk war for the sake of
upholding them. They had written a treaty in 1919 that a dozen years later they were unwill-
ing to enforce. They stood idly by, as long as they could, while the dissatisfi ed powers tore
to pieces the states recognized, the frontiers drawn, and the terms agreed to at the Peace of
Paris. From the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to the outbreak of European war in
1939, force was used by those who wished to upset international order, but never by those
who wished to maintain it. A new world war was therefore launched by nations that had
never accepted the outcome of the last one.
The war that raged across the world from 1939 to 1945 was the most destructive confl ict
in human history. It was also the most widely dispersed global war that has ever been fought.
The Second World War affected nations on every continent; caused the deaths of almost
60 million people (at least two-thirds of whom were civilians); produced vast physical dam-
age in cities, factories, and countrysides; generated new forms of genocidal mass murder as
well as new military weapons of mass destruction; and contributed decisively to the new
global infl uence of two superpower nations—the United States and the Soviet Union.
100. The Weakness of
the Democracies:
Again to War
101. The Years of Axis Triumph
102. The Western-Soviet
Victory
103. The Foundations
of the Peace
Chapter emblem: German troops entering a destroyed Polish village in September 1939. (akg-images/Newscom)
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Chapter 21 The Second World War844
Historians often disagree about the social or political consequences of warfare, but the
Second World War was unquestionably one of the defi nitive, shaping events in modern
world history. Both the haunting memories and complex legacy of the Second World War
still infl uence modern cultures and people everywhere in the twenty-fi rst century.
100. THE WEAKNESS OF THE DEMOCRACIES: AGAIN TO WAR
The Pacifi sm and Disunity of the West
While dictators stormed in the 1930s, the Western democracies were swayed by a pro-
found pacifi sm. Many people responded to the vast human and fi nancial costs of the
recent world war by insisting on peace regardless of consequences. They came to believe
(especially in Britain and the United States) that the First World War had been a mistake,
that little or nothing had been gained by it, that they had been deluded by wartime propa-
ganda, and that wars were really started by armaments manufacturers. They believed also
that Germany had not really caused the war of 1914, that the Treaty of Versailles was too
hard on the Germans, that democracy was after all not suited to all nations, that it took
two to make a quarrel, and that there need be no war if one side refused to be provoked—a
whole system of pacifi c and tolerant ideas in which there was perhaps both truth and
misunderstanding.
The pacifi sm in western Europe also had other roots, most evident in
France. About 1.4 million Frenchmen had died in the First World War; half
of all French males between the ages of 20 and 32 in 1914 had been killed.
To the French it was inconceivable that such a human disaster should be
repeated. French strategy was therefore defensive and sparing of man-
power. If a new war came, the French expected to fi ght it mainly in the
elaborate fortifi cations, called the Maginot Line, which they built on their eastern frontier
facing Germany, from the Swiss to the Belgian border; to its north the Ardennes forest was
to be a barrier to any invader. During the Depression, France was torn by internal class
confl ict and by fascist and quasi-fascist agitation. Many French on the Right, historically
unsympathetic to the republic and seeing, or claiming to see, in such movements as the
Popular Front the threat of social revolution, did not conceal their admiration for Musso-
lini or even for Hitler. Abandoning their traditional role as ardent nationalists, they would
do nothing to oppose the dictators. On the other hand, many on the Left looked with sym-
pathy upon the Soviet Union. France was ideologically too divided in the 1930s to possess
a fi rm foreign policy, and all elements took false comfort from the supposed impregnabil-
ity of the carefully constructed Maginot Line.
A similar situation, in lesser degree, prevailed in Great Britain and the United States.
The loss and bloodshed of the First World War were remembered with both mourning
and anger. It was well known that another world war would be even more horrible; there
was an unspeakable dread of the bombing of cities. Typical of the time was a resolution
adopted by students at Oxford in 1933 that they would never take up arms for their coun-
try under any conditions. In the 1930s, when any international action seemed to favor
either the U.S.S.R. on the one hand, or Hitler and Mussolini on the other, it was hard to
establish any foreign policy on a fi rm basis of national unity. In Britain some members
of the upper classes were overtly sympathetic to the fascist dictators or saw in them a
bulwark against communism. The government itself tried to be noncommittal; it believed
that some means of satisfying or appeasing the more legitimate demands of the dictators
The pacifi sm in
western Europe
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845100. The Weakness of the Democracies: Again to War
might be found. Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister after 1937, became the
principal architect of the appeasement policy.
The United States government, despite President Roosevelt’s repeated denunciation
of the aggressors, followed in practice a policy of rigid isolation in both Europe and Asia.
Neutrality legislation, enacted by a strong isolationist bloc in Congress in the years 1935 to
1937, forbade loans, export of munitions, and use of American shipping facilities to any
belligerent once the president had recognized a state of war in a given area. From this
American neutrality legislation the European aggressors of the 1930s derived great benefi t,
but not the victims of aggression.
As for the rulers of the U.S.S.R., they were revisionist and dissatisfi ed in that they did not
accept the new frontiers of eastern Europe nor the territorial losses incurred by Russia in the
First World War. They resented the cordon sanitaire created in 1919 against the spread of Bolshevism, the ring of small states on their borders from
Finland to Romania, which were almost without exception vehemently anti-
Soviet. They had no fondness for the international status quo, nor had they
abandoned their long-range revolutionary objectives. But, as Communists
and as Russians, they were obsessed by fear of foreign attack and invasion. Their Marxist
doctrine taught the inherent hostility of the entire capitalist world; the intervention of the
European Allies in the revolution and civil wars confi rmed their Marxist theory. Resentful
and suspicious of the outside world, in the 1930s the men in the Kremlin were alarmed pri-
marily by Germany. Hitler, in Mein Kampf and elsewhere, had declared that he meant to obliterate Bolshevism and subordinate large stretches of eastern Europe to Germany.
The Soviets thus became interested in collective security, in international action against
aggression. In 1934 they joined the League of Nations. They instructed Communist parties
to work with socialists and liberals in popular fronts. They offered assistance in check-
ing fascist aggressors, signing mutual assistance pacts with France and Czechoslovakia in
1935. But many Europeans fl ed from the Soviet embrace with a shudder. They distrusted
Soviet motives, or they were convinced that the purges and trials of the 1930s had left
the Soviets weak and undependable as allies, or they felt that the fascist dictators might
be diverted eastward against the Soviets and so spare the western European democracies.
Here again, though the Soviet Union was ostensibly willing, no effective coalition against
aggression could be formed.
The March of Nazi and Fascist Aggression
Adolf Hitler perceived these weaknesses with uncanny genius. Determined to wreck the
whole treaty system, which most Germans, to be sure, found humiliating, he employed
tactics of gradual encroachment that played on the hopes and fears of the democratic peo-
ples. He inspired in them alternating tremors of apprehension and sighs of relief. He would
rage and rant, arouse the fear of war, take just a little, declare that it was all he wanted, let
the former Allies naïvely hope that he was now satisfi ed and that peace was secure, then
rage again, take a little more, and proceed through the same cycle.
Each year he precipitated some kind of emergency, and each time the French and
British saw no alternative except to let him have his way. In 1933, soon after seizing power,
he took Germany out of the League of Nations and out of the Disarmament Conference
then taking place. He successfully wooed Poland, long France’s ally, and in
1934 the two countries signed a nonaggression treaty. That same year the
Nazis of Austria attempted a Putsch, assassinated the Austrian chancellor,
Russian resentment
Hitler’s triumphs
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Chapter 21 The Second World War846
Dollfuss, and demanded the union of Austria with Germany. The Western powers did
nothing. It was Mussolini who acted. Not desiring to see Germany installed at the Brenner
Pass, he mobilized large Italian forces on the frontier, discouraged Hitler from intervening
openly in Austria, and so preserved the independence of Austria for four more years. In
January 1935 a plebiscite was conducted in the Saar by the League of Nations as stipu-
lated under the Versailles treaty. Amidst intense Nazi agitation, the Saar voted for reunion
with the Reich. Two months later, in March 1935, Hitler dramatically repudiated those
clauses in the Versailles treaty intended to keep Germany disarmed; he now openly built
up the German armed forces. France, England, and Italy protested such arbitrary and one-
sided denunciation of an international treaty but did nothing about it. Indeed, Great Britain
entered into a naval agreement with Germany, to the consternation of the French.
On March 7, 1936, using as his justifi cation the new Franco-Soviet pact, Hitler repudi-
ated the Locarno agreements (which had confi rmed post–World War I national borders)
and reoccupied the Rhineland; that is, he sent German troops into the German territory
west of the Rhine, which by the Treaty of Versailles was supposed to be a demilitarized
zone. The French government considered possible military action to force the German
army to leave the Rhineland; and at this time Hitler might have been checked, for German
military strength was still weak and the German army was prepared to withdraw, or at least
consult, at signs of resistance. But the French government was divided and unwilling to act
without Britain; and the British would not risk war to keep German troops from occupying
German soil. The following year was quieter, but Nazi agitation fl ared up in Danzig, which
the Treaty of Versailles had set up as a free city. In March 1938 German forces moved into
Austria, and the union of Austria and Germany, the Anschluss, was at last consummated.
Hitler lived in Vienna as an unknown artist before the First World War, but he returned as the all-powerful German Führer after the union of Austria and Germany in March 1938. Proceed- ing through Vienna in this triumphant motorcade, he was hailed by Austrian Nazis and others who celebrated the long-anticipated Anschluss on the city’s streets. (akg-images/Newscom)
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847
In September 1938 came the turn of Czechoslovakia and the Munich crisis. To understand
the context for the events in Munich, we must fi rst pick up other threads in the story.
Mussolini, too, had his ambitions and required sensational foreign tri-
umphs to magnetize the Italian people. Since 1919 the Italians had been
dissatisfi ed with the peace arrangements. They had received none of the
territories of the former Ottoman Empire, and they were excluded from the
former German colonies that had been liberally parceled out as mandates
to Great Britain, France, Belgium, Japan, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. They
had never forgotten the humiliating defeat of Italian forces by Ethiopia at Adowa in 1896,
which had blocked Italy’s imperial ambitions in northeast Africa. Ethiopia remained the
only part of black Africa (with the exception of Liberia) that was still independent.
In 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia. The League of Nations, of which Ethiopia was a
member, pronounced the Italian action an unwarranted aggression and imposed sanctions
on Italy, by which members of the League were to refrain from selling Italy either arms
or raw materials—oil was excepted. The British even gathered large naval forces in the
Mediterranean in a show of strength. In France, however, there was considerable sympathy
for Mussolini among infl uential political factions, and in England there was the fear that
if sanctions became too effective, by refusal of oil or by closure of the Suez Canal, Italy
might be provoked into a general war. Mussolini was thus able to defeat Ethiopia in 1936
and to combine it with Italian Somaliland and Eritrea in an Italian East African empire.
Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian emperor, made futile pleas for further action at Geneva. The
League of Nations again failed, as in an earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, to
provide machinery for disciplinary action against a wayward Great Power.
The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939
Hardly had the Ethiopian crisis been disposed of, to the entire satisfaction of the
Italian aggressor, when another serious crisis broke out in Spain. In 1931, after a decade of
political disturbance, a rather mild revolution had driven out Alfonso XIII, of the Bourbon
family, and brought about the establishment of a democratic Spanish Republic. Old
hostilities within the country came to a head. The new republican government undertook
a program of social and economic reform. To combat the long-entrenched power of the
church, anticlerical legislation was enacted: church and state were separated, the Jesuit
order was dissolved and its property confi scated, and the schools were removed from cleri-
cal control. An old movement for Catalan independence was somewhat mollifi ed by the
grant of considerable local autonomy. To placate the peasantry the government began to
break up some of the larger landed estates and to redistribute the land. The government’s
program was never pushed vigorously enough to satisfy the more radical social and politi-
cal groups, who manifested their dissatisfaction in strikes and uprisings, particularly in
industrial Barcelona, the Catalan capital, and the mining areas of the Asturias, but it was
radical enough to antagonize the great property owners and the church. After 1933 the
government fell into the hands of rightist and conservative parties, who ruled through inef-
fective and unpopular ministries. An insurrection of the miners in the Asturias was put
down with much brutality. Agitation for Catalan independence was repressed.
In February 1936 new elections were held. All groups of the Left—republicans, social-
ists, syndicalists, anarchists, communists—joined in a Popular Front against monarchists,
clericals, army offi cers, other adherents of the old regime, and Falangists, or Spanish
fascists. The Left won a victory at the polls, and pressed forward with a reform program.
Mussolini’s ambitions
100. The Weakness of the Democracies: Again to War
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Chapter 21 The Second World War848
In July 1936, a group of military men led an insurrection against the republican govern-
ment; General Francisco Franco emerged as leader. The parties of the Left united in resis-
tance and the whole country fell into civil war. It was the most devastating
war in all Spanish history; over 600,000 people lost their lives, and it was
accompanied by extreme cruelties on both sides. For nearly three years the
republican or loyalist forces held their own before fi nally succumbing to the
insurgents led by Franco, who in March 1939 established an authoritarian, fascist-type rule
over the exhausted country.
Spain provided a rehearsal for the greater struggle soon to come. The republican gov-
ernment needed and expected to purchase arms abroad to suppress the rebellion, but Britain
and France were resolved not to let the war expand into a general confl ict. Although pro-
republican groups and individuals in Europe and the United States wanted to send military
assistance to the antifascist forces, the British and French governments forbade the ship-
ment of all war materials to Spain; even the French Popular Front government put obstacles
in the way of aid to the hard-pressed Spanish Popular Front. The United States extended its
neutrality legislation to cover civil wars and placed an embargo on the export of arms to
Spain. At British and French instigation 27 nations, including all the major European pow-
ers, agreed not to intervene or take sides. But the nonintervention policy proved a fi asco.
Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union intervened anyway. The two fascist powers supported
Franco and denounced the republicans as the tools of Bolshevism, while the U.S.S.R.
Francisco Franco
Right-wing forces launched a military insurrection against Spain’s republican government in July 1936. In the civil war that followed, Germany and Italy sent aid to General Francisco Franco, but antifascist groups mobilized everywhere to fi ght for the Republic. This antifascist rally in Spain was one of the many meetings that supported the Republic and the armed forces that were ultimately unable to restore it. (David Seymour/Magnum Photos)
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849
supported the Republic, reinforced the growing strength of the Spanish Communists, and
stigmatized the rebels under Franco as the agents of international fascism. Germans,
Italians, and Russians sent military equipment to Spain, testing their tanks and planes in
battle. The fascist bombings of Guernica, Madrid, and Barcelona horrifi ed the democratic
world. The Germans and Italians sent troops (the Italians over 50,000); the Soviets if only
for geographical reasons did not send troops but sent technicians and political advisers.
Thousands of volunteers of leftist or liberal sympathy from the United States
and Europe went to Spain to serve with the republican forces. Spain became
the battlefi eld of contending ideologies. The Spanish Civil War split the
world into fascist and antifascist camps.
As in the case of Ethiopia, the war in Spain helped bring Germany and Italy together.
Mussolini had at fi rst, like others, feared the revival of a militant Germany. He had success-
fully opposed Hitler when the latter threatened to absorb Austria in 1934, but Mussolini’s
view of Germany changed in the following years. The Ethiopian war, Italian ambitions in
Africa, and a clamorous Italian demand for ascendancy in the Mediterranean, the mare nos- trum of the ancient Romans, estranged Italy from France and Britain. In 1936, soon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Mussolini and Hitler came to an understanding, which
they called the Rome-Berlin Axis—the diplomatic axis around which they hoped the world
might turn. That year Japan signed with Germany an Anti-Comintern Pact, soon ratifi ed by
Italy too; ostensibly an agreement to oppose communism, it was actually the
foundation for a diplomatic alliance. Each, thus furnished with allies, was
able to push its international aggression with more success. In 1937, Japan
launched a brutal, full-scale invasion of eastern China, where the Japanese
Spain splits the world
Alliance of Germany,
Italy, and Japan
100. The Weakness of the Democracies: Again to War
GUERNICA by Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973)
Picasso painted this famous picture shortly after the fascist bombing of the Spanish city of Guernica in 1937. Although it expressed Picasso’s response to a specifi c event in the Spanish Civil War, its disjointed images of the death, suffering, and destruction in modern warfare quickly gave this work a haunting, universal meaning. (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofi a, Madrid/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 21 The Second World War850
quickly gained control of much of the country; and in 1938 Mussolini accepted what he had
denied to Hitler in 1934—the German absorption of Austria.
The Munich Crisis: Climax of Appeasement
By annexing Austria in March 1938 Hitler added about 6 million Germans
to the Reich. Another 3 million Germans lived in Czechoslovakia (see
maps, pp. 473, 730–731). All those who were adults in 1938 had been born
under the Habsburg Empire. They had never, since 1918, been content with
their new position as a minority in a Slavic state and had long complained about various
forms of subtle discrimination. There were Polish, Ruthenian, and Hungarian minorities
also, and because even the Slovaks had a strong sense of separate identity, there was in
actuality no preponderant national majority of any kind. The fact that Czechoslovakia had
one of the most enlightened minorities policies in Europe, enjoyed the highest living stan-
dard east of Germany, and was the only country in central Europe in 1938 that was still
democratic only demonstrated the diffi culty of maintaining a democratic, multiethnic state
even under the most favorable of conditions.
Czechoslovakia had become the strategic keystone of Europe. It had a fi rm alliance
with France, by which the French pledged to defend it against German attack, and an alli-
ance with the Soviet Union, which, however, was contingent on the functioning of the
French alliance. With Romania and Yugoslavia it formed the Little Entente, upon which
France relied to maintain the existing boundaries in that part of Europe. It had a well-
trained army, important munitions industries, and strong fortifi cations against Germany,
which, however, were located in precisely the Sudeten border area where the population
was almost all German. When Hitler annexed Austria—because Vienna is further east
than Prague—he enclosed Czechoslovakia in a vise. From the German point of view it
could now be said that western Czechoslovakia, which was almost a third German anyway,
formed a bulge protruding into the German Reich.
The Sudeten Germans of Czechoslovakia, whether Nazis or not, fell under the infl u-
ence of agitators whose aim was less to relieve their grievances than to promote National
Socialism. Hitler fomented their demands for union with Germany. In May 1938 rumors
of an imminent German invasion caused the Czechs to mobilize; Russia, France, and
England issued warnings to Germany. Hitler gave assurances but was nevertheless
determined to smash the Czechs in the autumn. France and England were appalled
by their narrow escape from war. The nervous French acquiesced in the leadership of
Britain, which in the following months strove to avoid any fi rm stand that might precipi-
tate war. The Czechs, under pressure from Britain and France, accepted British media-
tion on the Sudeten issue and in the summer of 1938 offered wide concessions to the
Sudeten Germans amounting to regional autonomy, but this was not enough to satisfy
Hitler, who loudly proclaimed that the plight of the Germans in Czechoslovakia was
intolerable and must be corrected. The Soviets urged a fi rm stand, but the Western pow-
ers had little confi dence in Soviet military strength and, given the Soviet geographical
situation, their ability to render assistance to Czechoslovakia. Moreover, they feared
that fi rmness might mean war. They could not be sure whether Hitler was bluffi ng. He
might, if opposed, back down; but it seemed equally likely, or indeed more so, that he
was entirely willing to fi ght.
As the crisis grew in September 1938, the British prime minister, Neville Chamber-
lain, who had never before traveled on an airplane, fl ew to Germany twice to discuss
Czechs divided
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851
Hitler’s terms for a possible solution to the Czech issues. The second time Hitler raised his
demands so that even the British and French could not accept them. Mobilization began;
war seemed imminent. Suddenly, in the midst of the unbearable tension, Hitler invited
Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier, the French premier, to a four-power conference at
Munich, to be attended by his ally, Mussolini. The Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia itself
were excluded. At Munich Chamberlain and Daladier accepted Hitler’s terms and then put
enormous pressure on the Czech government to yield—to sign its own death warrant.
France, urged on by England in an appeasement course that it was only too willing to fol-
low, repudiated its treaty obligation to protect Czechoslovakia, ignored the Soviets who
reaffi rmed their willingness to aid the Czechs if the French acted, and abandoned its whole
system of a Little Entente in the East. The Munich agreement permitted
Germany to annex the adjoining fringe of Bohemia in which the majority of
the people were Germans. This fringe contained the mountainous
approaches and the Czech fortifi cations, so that its loss left Czechoslovakia
Appeasement: the
Munich agreement
Britain and France accepted Hitler’s demand for German control over the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia at the Munich conference in September 1938. Although most people in Czechoslovakia deeply resented the western European appeasement of Hitler’s aggressive demands, these Sudeten women welcomed the German troops who streamed into their region almost immediately after the Munich meetings adjourned. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
100. The Weakness of the Democracies: Again to War
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Chapter 21 The Second World War852
militarily defenseless. After promises to guarantee the integrity of what remained of
Czechoslovakia, the conference disbanded. Chamberlain and Daladier were welcomed
home with cheers. Chamberlain reported that he had brought “peace in our time.” Again
the democracies sighed with relief, hoped that Hitler had made his last demand, and told
themselves that, with wise concessions, there need be no war.
The Munich crisis, with its death sentence to Czechoslovakia, revealed
the helpless weakness into which the western European democracies had
fallen by 1938. There may have been little that the French and British
could have done at Munich to save Czechoslovakia. Their countries lagged
behind Germany in military preparedness. They had little confi dence in and
were suspicious of the Soviets; and they were impressed by the might of the German army
and air force. Bolder leaders than Daladier and Chamberlain, knowing the state of their
own armed forces, may well have declined to risk a quarrel. The French and British gov-
ernments (and many of the people they represented) desperately wanted peace and would
buy it at a high price, not daring to believe that they were dealing with a blackmailer whose
price would always be raised.
The western Europeans suffered, too, from another moral uncertainty. By the very
principle of national self-determination, accepted by the victors after the First World War,
Germany could argue that it had a right to all that it had hitherto demanded. Hitler, in send-
ing German troops into the German Rhineland, annexing Austria, stirring up Danzig, and
incorporating the Bohemian Germans, had only asserted the right of the German people to
have a sovereign German state. Moreover, if Hitler could be diverted eastward, enmeshed
in a war with Russia, then communism and fascism might destroy each other—so many
in France and Britain might hope. Possibly it was one of Hitler’s motives, in the Munich
crisis, to isolate the Soviet Union from the major western European states. If so, he suc-
ceeded well enough.
End of Appeasement
The fi nal disillusionment came in March 1939. Hitler took control of Bohemia-Moravia,
the really Czech part of Czechoslovakia, which he transformed into a German protector-
ate. Exploiting Slovak nationalism, he declared Slovakia “independent.” Czechoslovakia,
merely trimmed down at Munich, now disappeared from the map. Having promised to
take only a bite, Hitler swallowed the whole. He then seized Memel from Lithuania and
raised demands for Danzig and the Polish Corridor. A horrible realization now spread in
France and Britain. It was clear that Hitler’s most solemn guarantees were worthless, that
his designs were not limited to Germans, but reached out to all eastern Europe and beyond,
that he was essentially insatiable, that he could not be appeased. In April 1939 his partner
in aggression, Mussolini, took over Albania.
The western European powers belatedly began to make preparations for a military
stand. Britain, changing its previous appeasement policies at the eleventh hour, gave a
guarantee to Poland and followed that with guarantees to Romania and Greece. That spring
and summer the British tried to form an anti-German alliance with the U.S.S.R. But Poland
and the Baltic states were unwilling to allow Soviet armies within their borders, even for
the purpose of defending themselves against the Germans. The Anglo-French negotiators
refused to put pressure on them. Because the Poles, in 1920, had conquered more territory
than the Allies had meant them to have, pushing their eastern border well into Byelorussia,
almost to Minsk, the Anglo-French territorial scruples seemed to the Soviets unnecessarily
Western democratic
weakness
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853101. The Years of Axis Triumph
delicate. They did not wish the Germans to launch an attack on them from a point as far
east as Minsk. They may have thought also that what the French and British really wanted
was for the Soviet Union to take the brunt of a Nazi attack. They considered it an affront
that the British sent lesser offi cials as negotiators to Moscow when the prime minister him-
self had three times fl own to Germany to deal with Hitler.
The climax came when the Soviets, having quietly undertaken negotiations earlier
that spring, on August 23, 1939, openly signed a treaty of nonaggression and friendship
with Nazi Germany. In a provision kept secret at the time, it was agreed that in any future
territorial rearrangement the Soviet Union and Germany would divide Poland between
them, that the Soviet Union would enjoy a preponderant infl uence in the
Baltic states and have its claim to Bessarabia, lost to Romania in 1918,
recognized. In return the Soviets pledged to stay out of any war between
Germany and Poland or between Germany and the western European
democracies.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact stupefi ed the world. Communism and Nazism, supposed to be ide-
ological opposites, had come together. A generation more versed in ideology than in power
politics was dumbfounded. The pact was recognized as the signal for war; all last-minute
negotiations failed. The Germans invaded Poland on September 1. On September 3 Great
Britain and France declared war on Germany. The second European war in a generation thus
began in Poland, but it soon spread very widely and became the Second World War.
101. THE YEARS OF AXIS TRIUMPH
Nazi Europe, 1939–1940: Poland and the Fall of France
The Second World War opened with a fast-moving German assault across the western
borders of Poland. German forces totaling over 1 million men, spearheaded by armored
divisions and supported by the concentrated air power of the Luftwaffe, rapidly over- ran western Poland and subdued the ill-equipped Polish armies. The out-
come of the campaign, a spectacular example of Blitzkrieg, or lightning warfare, was clear within the fi rst few days; organized resistance ended
within a month. The Germans set about to integrate their Polish conquest
into the Reich.
Simultaneously, the Soviet Union, acting under the secret clauses of the Nazi-Soviet
Pact, moved into the eastern half of Poland two weeks after the German invasion; the
territory occupied was roughly equivalent to what the new Soviet state had lost to Poland
in 1920. The Soviets proceeded also to establish fortifi ed bases in the Baltic states—
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Finland resisted Soviet demands. It refused to cede bor-
der territories sought by the Russians or to yield military rights within their country. The
Soviets insisted; Leningrad, the second major city of the U.S.S.R., lay only 20 miles
from the Finnish frontier. When negotiations foundered, the Soviets attacked in Novem-
ber 1939. Finnish resistance was valiant and at fi rst effective, but the small country was
no match for the U.S.S.R. Western European sympathies were with the Finns; the British
and French sent equipment and supplies and even planned an expeditionary force. The
Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations for the act of aggression—the only
power ever to be expelled. By March 1940, however, the fi ghting was over. Finland had
to yield somewhat more territory to the U.S.S.R. than originally demanded but retained
its independence.
The Nazi-Soviet
Pact
German Blitzkrieg
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Chapter 21 The Second World War854
Meanwhile all was deceptively quiet in western Europe. The pattern of 1914, when the
Germans reached the Marne in the fi rst month of hostilities, was not repeated. The main
armies did not even move. The French stayed behind their Maginot Line; the British had
few troops on the continent; the Germans did not stir from behind their Siegfried Line, or
West Wall, in the Rhineland. Hardly any air action took place. It was called
the “phony war.” The western European democracies rejected Hitler’s
peace overtures after the conquest of Poland but clung to their peacetime
outlook. The hope still lingered that somehow a real clash might even yet be
averted. During this same strange winter, a cold and bitter one, the Germans put their
forces through special training, whose purpose became apparent in the spring.
On April 9, 1940, the Germans suddenly attacked and overran Norway, ostensibly
because the British were laying mines in Norwegian waters in an endeavor to cut off
German sources of Swedish iron ore. Denmark, too, was overrun, and an Allied expedi-
tionary force with inadequate air strength had to withdraw. Then on May 10, the Germans
delivered their main blow, striking at the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France
itself. Nothing could stand against the German armored divisions and dive bombers.
The Nazi use of massed tanks, though already demonstrated in Poland, took the French
and British by surprise. Strategically, the Allies expected the main advance to be in cen-
tral Belgium, as in 1914, and indeed as in the original German plan, which had been
The “phony war”
The German army launched the massive, far-reaching vio- lence of the Second World War with its motorized assault on Poland. The new term Blitzkrieg was used to describe this kind of rapid military advance, which is represented here by the arrival of German troops in a bombed-out Polish village. Closely supported by air power and moving quickly on motor- cycles, trucks, and armored vehicles, the Germans showed how the new tactics of offensive warfare could overwhelm the defensive strategies that had stopped advancing armies in the First World War. (akg-images/Newscom)
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altered only a few months earlier. Hence the French and British sent into Belgium the
best-equipped troops they had.
But the Germans delivered their main armored thrust, seven divisions, through
Luxembourg and the Ardennes forest, long considered by the French General Staff impass-
able to tanks. In France, skirting the northwestern end of the Maginot Line, which had
never been extended to the sea, the German armored divisions crossed the Meuse, drove
deep into northern France against confused and ineffective resistance and, racing westward
toward the Channel ports, cut off the Allied armies in Belgium. The Dutch, fearful of fur-
ther air attack on their crowded cities, capitulated. The Belgian king sued for an armistice,
and a large part of the French armies surrendered. The British fell back upon Dunkirk and
could hope only to salvage their broken forces before the trap closed completely. Fortu-
nately Hitler had halted the advance of his overextended armored divisions. In the week
ending June 4 an epic evacuation of over 330,000 British and French troops was success-
fully executed from the beaches of Dunkirk, under air cover, with the help of all kinds of
British vessels, manned in part by civilian volunteers, even though the precious equipment
of the shattered army was almost totally abandoned.
In June the mechanized German forces drove relentlessly southward. Despite attempts
at fragmented resistance by French forces (about 100,000 French soldiers died in the Battle
of France), Paris itself was occupied on June 13, and Verdun was occupied two days later;
by June 22 France sued for peace and an armistice was signed. Hitler danced with glee.
France, obsessed by a defensive military psychology at the outset of the war, its armies
unprepared for mechanized warfare, its government divided, its people split into hostile
and suspicious factions, had fallen into the hands of an openly defeatist
group of leaders. The collapse of France left the world aghast. Everyone
knew that France had suffered great losses in the earlier world war and that
it was no longer its former self, but it had still been considered a Great
Power. Its collapse in one month seemed inconceivable. Some French, fl eeing to England,
established a Free French movement under General Charles de Gaulle; others soon began
to form a resistance movement within France. The British made the bitter decision to
destroy a part of the French fl eet anchored in the Algerian harbor of Oran to prevent its
falling into enemy hands.
France itself under the terms of the armistice was occupied in its northern two-thirds
by the Germans. The Third Republic, its capital now at Vichy in the unoccupied southern
third, was transformed by vote of a confused and stunned parliament into an authoritarian
regime headed by the 84-year-old Marshal Pétain and the cynical and unscrupulous Pierre
Laval. The republic was dead; the very slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” was banned
from offi cial use and replaced by a new right-wing ideology of “Work, Family, Father-
land.” French fascist groups, long frustrated in their campaigns to destabilize or destroy the
Third Republic, now saw their opportunity to undermine republican traditions in French
politics and society. Pétain, Laval, and others, claiming that they were act-
ing to shield France from further suffering, proceeded to collaborate with
the Nazis and to integrate Vichy France into the “new order” in Europe (see
map, p. 864). The Vichy government cooperated in sending hundreds of
thousands of French workers as slave laborers to Germany and even took the initiative in
identifying and deporting thousands of French Jews to what were eventually Nazi death
camps. The French people themselves had hard choices to make. Some chose to cooper-
ate with the collaborators and the victorious Germans; others chose in a variety of ways to
resist, some even joining the underground Resistance; most went about their daily lives,
trying to survive amid the dangerous and oppressive conditions until the fortunes of war
Fall of France
Vichy France
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Chapter 21 The Second World War856
might change. Not for many years after the war did the French admit responsibility as a
nation for the misdeeds and collaborations of the Vichy era.
Mussolini attacked France in June 1940, as soon as it was clear that Hitler had defeated
the French armies. Shortly thereafter, he invaded Greece and moved against the British in
Africa. The Duce tied his own destinies, for good or ill, to those of the Führer. Because the Germans were emphatically the senior partner in this combination, because they were on
good terms with Franco in Spain, and because the U.S.S.R. was benevolently neutral, the
aggressive Nazi war machine now dominated the European continent.
History seemed to repeat itself, in the distant and unreal way in which it ever repeats.
The Germans controlled almost exactly the same geographical area that Napoleon had
controlled in the early nineteenth century. Organizing a new “continental system,” they
made plans to govern, exploit, and coordinate the resources, industry, and labor of Europe.
Not having planned for a long war, and only belatedly mobilizing their resources for a
sustained military effort, they intensifi ed the exploitation of their conquered subjects.
They impressed millions, prisoners of war or civilians, as slave labor, to work under close
control in the German war industries. They garrisoned Europe with their
soldiers, creating what they called Festung Europa, the Fortress of Europe. In every country they found sympathizers, collaborators, or “quislings”—
the prototype was Vidkun Quisling, who had organized a Norwegian
Fascist Party in 1933 and was Norwegian premier from 1942 to 1945. When Hitler later
was at war with the Soviet Union, some Europeans joined Hitler in the crusade against
Bolshevism; 500,000 non-Germans fought in the divisions of the Waffen SS.
The Battle of Britain and American Aid
In 1940, as in 1807, only Great Britain remained at war with the conqueror of Europe.
After Dunkirk the British awaited the worst, momentarily expecting invasion. Winston
Churchill, who replaced Chamberlain as prime minister in May 1940 during the military
debacle, rose to the summit of leadership in adversity. To Parliament and the British peo-
ple he promised nothing but “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” He pledged implacable war
against “a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human
crime.” To the American democracy across the Atlantic he appealed, “Give us the tools,
and we will fi nish the job.” The United States began to respond.
Since 1939, and even before, the American government had been
anything but neutral. Opinion was excitedly divided. One group, called isola-
tionist, opposed involvement in the European war, believing that Europe was
hopeless, or that the United States could not save it, or that the Germans
would win anyway before America could act, or that Hitler, even if victorious
in Europe, constituted no danger to the United States. Another group, the interventionists,
urged immediate aid to the European Allies, believing that Hitler was a menace, that fascism
must be destroyed, or that the Nazis, if they subjugated all Europe, would soon tamper with
the Latin American republics. President Roosevelt was an interventionist, convinced that
American security and vital interests were endangered by Nazi aggression; he tried to unite
national opinion by declaring that the United States might openly assist the Allies without
itself fi ghting, by using “measures short of war.”
The neutrality legislation of the mid-1930s was amended in November
1939, when the ban on the sale of arms was repealed. Roosevelt described
Britain as “the spearhead of resistance to world conquest”; the United States
Festung Europa
American
“neutrality”
“The great arsenal of
democracy”
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was to be “the great arsenal of democracy.” Both were fi ghting for a world, he said, in
which the Four Freedoms were to be secure—freedom of speech, freedom of worship,
freedom from want, and freedom from fear. In June 1940, immediately after Dunkirk,
the United States sent a small initial shipment of arms to Britain. A few months later the
United States gave the British 50 overage destroyers in return for the right to maintain
American bases in Newfoundland, the Bermudas, and the British Caribbean islands.
The rapid, complete military collapse of France in 1940 stunned the French people and indeed the entire world. Parisians faced this humiliating sight of German troops marching through the great symbol of French nationalism, the Arc de Triomphe, as they began to cope with an oppressive German military occupation that would last more than four years. (Berliner Verlag/Archiv/dpa/Corbis)
101. The Years of Axis Triumph
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Chapter 21 The Second World War858
In 1941 it adopted Lend-Lease, a policy of providing arms, raw materials, and food to pow-
ers at war with the Axis. At the same time, in 1940 and 1941, the United States introduced
conscription, built up its army and air force, and projected a two-ocean navy. To protect its
shipping it secured bases in Greenland and Iceland and convoyed Allied shipping as far as
Iceland.
After the fall of France, the Germans stood poised for an invasion of Britain. But they
had not calculated on such rapid and easy successes in Europe, they had no immediately
practical plan for an invasion, and they needed to win control of the air before a sea inva-
sion could take place. Moreover, there was always the hope, in Hitler’s mind at least, that
the British might sue for peace, or even become an ally of Germany. The air assault on
Britain began that summer and reached its climax in the autumn of 1940. Never until then
had any bombing been so severe. But the Germans were unable to win control over the air
in the battle of Britain. Gradually the British Royal Air Force fought off the
bombers with more success; new radar devices helped detect the approach
of enemy planes. Although Coventry was wiped out, the life and indus-
try of other cities badly disrupted, and thousands of people killed, 20,000
in London alone, still the productive activity of the country carried on. Nor, contrary to
the predictions of air power theorists, did the bombings break the morale of the civilian
population.
In the winter of 1940–1941 the Germans began to shift their weight to the east.
Hitler set aside the planned invasion of Britain, for which he seems never to have had
much enthusiasm anyway. He had already decided, like Napoleon before him, that before
committing his resources to an invasion of England he must fi rst dispose of a disliked
“ally” in Russia, a project much closer to his ideology and his illusions.
The Nazi Invasion of Russia: The Russian Front, 1941–1942
The Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, which had precipitated the war, like the alliance between
Napoleon and Alexander I, was never a warm or harmonious understanding. Both parties
probably entered it mainly to gain time. The Soviets gained space as well, pushing their
borders westward. Stalin, incredibly, seems to have convinced himself that he could remain
uninvolved in the war going on. But he and the Nazis soon fell into disputes over eastern
Europe. The Soviets, with the Nazis preoccupied by the war, hoped to win complete con-
trol over the Baltic and to gain infl uence in the Balkans as well. They had already occupied
eastern Poland and the three Baltic states and won territory from Finland. In June 1940, to
the chagrin of the Germans, they aggressively sovietized and converted the three Baltic
states into member republics of the U.S.S.R. The old German landowning class, the famous
“Baltic barons,” who had lived there for centuries, were uprooted. At the same time, the
Soviets seized from Romania the Bessarabian province that they had lost in the First World
War and incorporated it too as a Soviet republic. The Soviets were expanding toward the
Balkans, an area of historic Russian interest, and they seemed bent on winning control over
eastern Europe.
This the Germans viewed with dismay. The Nazis wished to reserve eastern Europe
for themselves as a counterpart to industrial Germany. Hitler therefore
moved to bring the Balkans under German control. By early 1941 he black-
mailed or, by territorial concessions, cajoled Romania, Bulgaria, and
Hungary into joining the Axis; they became Axis lesser partners and were
Air war over Britain
Hitler takes the
Balkans
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859
occupied by German troops; Yugoslavia also was occupied despite resistance by the army
and population. Greece, too, was subjugated, the Germans coming to the rescue of
Mussolini’s hard-pressed troops. Hitler thus barred Soviet expansion in the Balkans and
made the Balkan states part of the Nazi new order. The Balkan campaigns delayed his
plans, but now, to crush the Soviets and to gain the wheat harvests of Ukraine and the oil
wells of the Caucasus, the core of the Eurasian “heartland,” Hitler launched a massive
invasion of the U.S.S.R. on June 22, 1941. Stalin, refusing to heed several warnings he
had received, was caught completely by surprise, and momentarily seemed incapable of
mounting any kind of defense.
The German army threw 3 million men into Russia along a vast
2,000-mile front. The Russians gave way. One swift moving battle melted
into another. By the autumn of 1941 the Germans had overrun Byelorussia
and most of Ukraine, where the brutal military occupation led immediately to
Nazi mass murders of Jews, Bolshevik government offi cials, and other civilians. In the north,
Leningrad was in a state of siege; in the south, the Germans had entered the Crimean Pen-
insula and were besieging Sebastopol. And toward the center of the vast front, the Germans
stood, exhausted, but apparently victorious, within 25 miles of Moscow. But the overconfi -
dent German forces had not calculated on the stubbornness of Soviet resistance once Stalin
recovered from his initial shock, replaced some of his military commanders, and rallied the
country to the defense of the Russian motherland. Nor were the Germans prepared to fi ght in
an early and extraordinarily bitter Russian winter, which suddenly descended upon them. A
counteroffensive, launched by the Red Army that winter, saved Moscow.
Hitler, disgusted and impatient with his subordinates, took over direct command of
military operations; he shifted the main attack to the south and began a great offensive in
the summer of 1942 directed toward the oil fi elds of the Caucasus. Sebastopol soon fell;
the siege of Stalingrad began. After the failure to take Moscow, Hitler, aware now that the
war would not be brief, took steps to mobilize the German economy on a fuller wartime
basis. Germany had been ready for war in 1939 as no other major power had been, but
lacked preparation in depth for a protracted confl ict. In the early months of 1942 Hitler
found in Albert Speer an organizing genius who, despite all kinds of obstacles from party
leaders and government functionaries, coordinated labor and resources in the next two
years and tripled armaments production. Nazi Germany and all of its hard-pressed enemies
entered into the absolute mobilization of total war.
1942, the Year of Allied Dismay: Russia, North Africa, the Pacifi c
A year after the invasion of the Soviet Union, in the summer of 1942, the German line
reached from beleaguered Leningrad in the north, past the western outskirts of Moscow, past
Stalingrad on the Volga southward to the Caucasus Mountains; the Germans were within
a hundred miles of the Caspian Sea. But the Russians had traded space for time. Though
the industrial Don Basin and the food-producing regions of Ukraine were overrun, and the
deliveries of Caucasus oil rendered hazardous and uncertain, the Russians continued to fi ght.
Industries were shifted to the new Ural and Siberian cities; and neither the Soviet economy
nor the Soviet government was yet struck in a vital spot. A “scorched earth” policy, in which
the retreating Russians destroyed crops and livestock, and guerrilla units wrecked industrial
and transportation facilities, guaranteed that Russian resources would not fall into the hands
of the advancing conqueror.
The Nazi invasion of
Russia
101. The Years of Axis Triumph
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Chapter 21 The Second World War860
Simultaneously, late in 1942 the Axis also moved forward in North
Africa. Here the desert campaigns started in September 1940 with an
Italian eastward offensive from Libya, which succeeded in crossing over
into Egypt. The stakes were high—control over Suez and the Mediterranean. At the
height of the battle of Britain, Churchill made the decision to send troops and supplies,
much needed at home, to North Africa. A British counteroffensive against vastly superior
numbers swept the Italians out of Egypt and by early 1941 the British moved deep into
Libya. Shortly thereafter the British overran Ethiopia and ended Mussolini’s short-lived
East African Empire. But in North Africa fortunes were fi ckle. A German elite force,
the Afrika Korps under General Rommel, in the spring of 1941 attacked in Libya and
drove the British back to the Egyptian frontier. A few months later, once more on the
offensive, the British advanced into Libya. Again fortunes shifted. By mid-1942 Rommel
had repulsed the British and penetrated Egypt. The British took up a stand at El Alamein,
70 miles from Alexandria, their backs to the Suez Canal. Here they held the Germans.
But it seemed in 1942 that the Axis armies, breaking through the Soviet Caucasus and
across the isthmus of Suez in North Africa, might enclose the whole Mediterranean and
Middle East in a gigantic vise, and even, moving farther east, make contact with their allies
the Japanese, who were at this time penetrating into the Indian Ocean. For the Pacifi c situ-
ation in the latter half of 1941 had also exploded. It was Japan that fi nally drew the United
States into war.
The Japanese, in 1941, had conducted a war against China for ten years. With the war
raging in Europe and the European imperial powers unable to deploy military forces in
The desert campaigns
The German army’s advance across the Soviet Union opened the way for murder squads to execute large civilian populations whom the Nazis deemed to be “inferior” people. These griev- ing Russians searched for dead family members after the Nazis had moved through their city in early 1942. (Dmitri Baltermants/The Dmitri Baltermants Collection/Corbis)
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861102. The Western-Soviet Victory
their Asian colonies, Japanese expansionists saw a propitious moment to
assert themselves throughout east Asia. In 1940 they cemented their alli-
ance with Germany and Italy in a new three-power pact; the following year
they concluded a neutrality treaty with the Soviet Union. From the Vichy
French government the Japanese obtained a number of military bases and other conces-
sions in Indochina. The United States belatedly placed an embargo on the export of such
materials as scrap iron and steel to Japan. Hesitating to precipitate any all-out drive of the
Japanese toward the Dutch East Indies and elsewhere, the United States still sought some
defi nition of Japanese ambitions in southeast Asia. The new Japanese prime minister,
General Hideki Tojo, a staunch champion of the Axis, publicly proclaimed that the infl u-
ence of Britain and the United States was to be totally eliminated from Asia, but he agreed
to send representatives to Washington for negotiations.
At the very time that the Japanese representatives in Washington were carrying on
conversations with the Americans, on December 7, 1941, without warning, the Japanese
launched a heavy air raid on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in
Hawaii and began to invade the Philippines. Simultaneously, they launched
attacks on Guam, Midway, Hong Kong, and Malaya. The Americans were
caught off guard at Pearl Harbor; close to 2,500 were killed, the fl eet was
crippled, and the temporary disablement of the American naval forces allowed the Japa-
nese to roam at will in the western Pacifi c. The United States and Great Britain declared
war on Japan on December 8. Three days later Germany and Italy declared war on the
United States, as did the Axis puppet states; the war had become a global struggle.
The Japanese, working overland through Malaya, two months later captured Singa-
pore, a British colonial city and naval base long famous for its supposed impregnability, the
veritable Gibraltar of the East. In 1942 the Japanese conquered the Philippines, Malaya,
and the Netherlands Indies. They invaded New Guinea and threatened Australia; they
moved into the Aleutians. They streamed into the Indian Ocean, threatening the main cen-
ters of the British Empire in South Asia. They took control of Burma and seemed about
to invade India. Everywhere they found ready collaborators among Asian enemies of
European imperialism. They held up the idea of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
under Japanese leadership, in which the one clear element (apart from the dominance of
Japan) was that the Europeans should be ejected.
Meanwhile, as noted, the Germans stood at the Caucasus and almost at the Nile. And
in the Atlantic, German submarines were sinking Allied ships at a disastrous rate. The
Mediterranean was unusable. For the Soviet-Western alliance, 1942 was the year of dis-
may. Despite Allied naval and air victories in the Pacifi c, the late summer
and autumn of 1942 was the worst period of the war. Few realized, wrote
the United States Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall some years
later, how “close to complete domination of the world” were Germany and
Japan and “how thin the thread of Allied survival had been stretched.” That Germany and
Japan had no plans to concert their strategy and operations was no small factor in the even-
tual Allied victory.
102. THE WESTERN-SOVIET VICTORY
Plans and Preparations, 1942–1943
By January 1942 there were 26 nations, including the three Great Powers—Britain, the
United States, and the U.S.S.R.—and representing every continent, aligned against the
Pearl Harbor
The year of dismay
Japan and the Pacifi c
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Chapter 21 The Second World War862
Axis, a combination to which President Roosevelt gave the name the United Nations. Each
pledged to use all its resources to defeat the Axis and never to make a separate peace. The
Grand Alliance against the Axis aggressors, which could not be created in the 1930s, had
at last been consummated.
The two Atlantic democracies, the United States and Great Britain, pooled their
resources under a Combined Chiefs of Staff. Never had any two sovereign states formed so
close a coalition. In contrast with the First World War an overall strategy
was in effect from an early date. It was decided that Germany was the main
enemy, against which it was necessary to concentrate fi rst. For the time
being the Pacifi c war was relegated to the background. Australia became
the chief base for operations against the Japanese. The American navy and air force soon
brought Japanese southward expansion to a halt and frustrated Japanese efforts to cut off
supply lines to Australia; naval and air victories were won in the spring of 1942 in the
battle of the Coral Sea and at Midway, the only relief to the overall gloom of that period.
The Japanese threat to Britain’s imperial position in South Asia began to recede. In the
summer American forces landed at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. A long ordeal of
“island hopping” began, but the Americans and British built up their main forces for the
war in Europe.
The fi rst point of concentration for the British-American strategic war plan in Europe
was an air bombardment of Germany. Meanwhile Stalin called for a true “second front,” an
immediate invasion by Allied ground forces that would relieve the pressure of the German
divisions that were devastating the Soviet Union. Suspicious as ever of the Western capitalist
governments and their military priorities, the Soviet government regarded the failure to
establish a second front as new evidence of anti-Soviet feeling. But neither the United States
nor Britain, in 1942, was ready to undertake land action by a direct assault on Festung Europa. Although in the Second World War, as in the First, more than two years elapsed between the outbreak of war in Europe and the intervention of the United States; and
although in the second war American military preparations began much
sooner, the United States in 1942 was still involved in the cumbersome pro-
cesses of mobilization, converting its industry to the production of war mate-
rials for itself and its Allies, imposing controls on its economy to prevent a
runaway infl ation, and giving military training to its profoundly civilian-minded people, of
whom over 12 million men and women eventually served in the armed forces—over three
times as many as in the First World War.
The American home front was transformed like the societies of other
warring nations into a war economy. The government introduced the
kinds of wartime policies and controls that had already been enacted in
Britain. It carefully rationed the sale of food and essential materials such
as oil and rubber, sold millions of “war bonds,” distributed thousands of war posters to
sustain civilian morale, and worked closely with the nation’s industrial companies to pro-
duce vast quantities of ships, warplanes, tanks, and every kind of military armament and
equipment. Persons of all racial and ethnic groups found new jobs in the expanding indus-
trial workforce. The total mobilization, however, led also to new forms of racial exclu-
sion. Black Americans remained segregated in the armed forces; and more than 100,000
Japanese-Americans on the West Coast were forcibly evacuated to internment camps,
where they remained until the end of the war. The national mobilization had different
effects on the social and economic positions of women. Large numbers of American
women, as in Britain, and more so than in the First World War, took wartime jobs in the
A unifi ed strategy
War preparations
The home front
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863
military, in defense industries, and in other spheres of the national economy. In con-
trast, almost to the end, Nazi ideology placed obstacles in the way of utilizing women in
German factories.
During the fi rst year after the United States entered the war, German submarines con-
trolled enough of the Atlantic shipping lanes to threaten the transport of American troops
and war supplies. In effect, the risk of Atlantic crossings blockaded much of the American
army in the United States. The American and British navies, however, gradually won the
battle of the Atlantic; the submarine menace was reduced to tolerable proportions by the
fi rst part of 1943. The Americans and British decided to begin the assault upon Germany,
from Great Britain as a base, with a massive and prolonged air bombardment. Because pre-
cision bombardment of factories and other military targets proved diffi cult either by day or
by night, the air assaults became area bombings; German cities were bombed mercilessly,
and (as in the German air attacks on British cities) most of the casualties were civilians. In
Hamburg in 1943 fi res raged on and destroyed most of the city after several days of inces-
sant bombing. Because not everything could be shipped across the Atlantic at the same
The Second World War quickly became a “total war” for which men and women were widely mobilized in every warring nation. These women were receiving their pay as members of Britain’s Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), a women’s branch of the British army that sup- ported diverse military operations both within Britain and in other countries. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
102. The Western-Soviet Victory
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Chapter 21 The Second World War864
time, and because the United States and Britain were engaged in war with Japan as well,
land invasion had to be deferred until 1944. The embattled Russians questioned whether
the Western Allies ever meant to face the German army at all.
The Turning of the Tide, 1942–1943: Stalingrad, North Africa, Sicily
Meanwhile, at the end of 1942 the tide had begun to turn. In November an Anglo-American
force under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower gained control of the French-
held territories in Algeria and Morocco after an amphibious operation of unprecedented
EUROPE 1942 The map shows Europe at the height of Axis military success during the Second World War. Austria, the Sudetenland, Bohemia-Moravia, Poland, and Alsace-Lorraine were all joined to Hitler’s Reich. The Atlantic Coast from southern France to northern Norway was under German military occupation, as was much of Russia. Southern Europe from Vichy France to Romania was also occupied or allied with Germany.
Hitler's “Empire”
Allied With Germany
Occupied by the Axis
At War Against the Axis
0 200100 300 miles
Relations between the Axis and Vichy France were governed by the Armistice of June 1940, but Germany occupied the whole of France in November 1942.
Farthest Axis Penetration
December 1941 November 1942
SHETLAND IS. (Britain)
ORKNEY IS.
FAROE IS. (Denmark)
CORSICA (Vichy France)
SARDINIA (Italy)BALEARIC IS.
(Spain)
A R C T I C O C E A N
ATLANTIC OCEAN
N o r t h S e a
English C hannel
Rh in
e R .
A d riatic
Sea
Danube R.
Dniester R.
Elbe R.
L. Ladoga
L. Onega
V o
lg a
R .
White Sea
D onetz R.
Do n R
.
B l a c k S e a
C a s p
i a n
S e a
Ba lti
c Se
a
A egean
Sea
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
North Cape
ICELAND
UNITED KINGDOM
EIRE
NORTHERN IRELAND
S P A I N
PORTUGAL
NETHERLANDS
BELGIUM
GERMANY
F R A N C E
SWITZERLAND
LUX.
MOROCCO (Vichy France)
ALGERIA (Vichy France) TUNISIA
(Vichy France)
ITALY
MALTA (Britain)
CROATIA
A LB
A N
IA
BULGARIA
GREECE
ROMANIA
SERBIA
SICILY
CRETE
BESSA RA
BIA ESTONIA
LITHUANIA LATVIA
AUSTRIA
UKRAINE
POLAND
SLOVA KIA
DENMARK
FINLAND NORWAY
SWEDEN
T U R K
E Y
CRIMEA
TRANSCAUCASIA
PALESTINE TRANS- JORDAN
LEBANON
CYPRUS (Britain)
SYRIA
IRAQ
BOHEMIA MORAVIA
SUDETEN- LAND
SPANISH MOROCCO
BYELO-RUSSIA SUWALKI
E. PRUS.
SAUDI ARABIA
IRAN
S O V I E T U N I O N
H U N G A R Y
Reykjavík
London
Dublin
Dunkirk
Paris
Madrid
Lisbon
Bilbao
Barcelona
Cadiz Gibraltar (Britain)
Tangier
Casablanca Oran
Algiers Bizerte
Bordeaux Vichy
Brest
Toulon
Cologne Essen
Sedan
Rome
Belgrade
Vienna Budapest
Sofia
Athens
Bucharest
Cassino
Palermo
Munich
Istanbul
Memel
Riga
HelsinkiOslo
Stockholm
Copenhagen
Berlin Warsaw
Bergen
Danzig
Breslau
Hamburg
Leningrad
Kiev
Narvik
Moscow
Archangel
Smolensk
Kuibyshev
Kkarkov
Sevastopol
Ankara
Batum
Rostov
Stalingrad
Astrakhan
Grozny
Baghdad
Tabriz
Baku
Coventry Rotterdam
Taranto Salerno
Anzio
Murmansk
Maikop
Yalta
Tula
Nuremburg
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865
proportions. In the competition that developed in the succeeding months for leadership of
the French liberation committee, newly established in Algiers, General de Gaulle, though
virtually ignored by President Roosevelt, pushed aside all rivals and moved forward with
plans for France’s revival.
After the North African landings, the Germans took over control of unoccupied
France as well; they were frustrated, however, in the effort to seize the remainder of the
French fl eet when French crews scuttled their ships at Toulon. In North Africa the Allied
forces fought their way eastward into Tunisia. Meanwhile British forces under General
Montgomery, having held the Germans at El Alamein in June 1942, had
already launched their third (and fi nal) counteroffensive in October; they
now pushed the Germans westward from Egypt until a large German
force was crushed between the two Allied armies in Tunisia. By May
1943 Africa was cleared of Axis forces. Mussolini’s dream of an African
empire had been thwarted; the Mediterranean was open; the threat to Egypt and the Suez
Canal ended.
At the same time it became clear, in the winter of 1942–1943, that the Germans had
suffered a catastrophic reversal in the Soviet Union in the titanic battle of
Stalingrad. In August 1942 massive German forces, an army of well over
a quarter million, began an all-out assault on Stalingrad, the vital key to
all transport on the lower Volga River; by September they had penetrated
the city itself. Stalin ordered his namesake city held at all costs; Russian soldiery and
the civilian population mounted a desperate defense. Hitler, still gambling on a decisive,
crushing victory, was as obstinate in ordering the city taken. After weeks of fi ghting, the
Germans occupied most of the city when suddenly a great Red Army counterattack, led
by General Zhukov, trapped the German army and took a terrible toll. Fewer than 100,000
German soldiers were still alive in Stalingrad when their commander fi nally surrendered
in February 1943; and the aura of Germany’s military invincibility was permanently shat-
tered. The Soviets followed up their victory with a new counteroffensive, a great westward
Africa cleared of Axis
forces
Stalingrad
The destruction of cities and loss of life on the eastern front during the Second World War went far beyond the destruction and losses in all other theaters of the war. This photograph of Stalingrad at the time of the huge, extended battle for that city suggests the incredible deso- lation and losses that resulted from the fi ghting and the vast movement of armies across the Soviet Union and all of eastern Europe. (akg-images/Newscom)
102. The Western-Soviet Victory
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Chapter 21 The Second World War866
drive that regained for them what they had initially lost in the fi rst year of the war. After
Stalingrad, despite some setbacks, the Soviet Union was on the offensive for the remain-
der of the war. Stalingrad (or Volgograd as it was later renamed) became a turning point
not only in the history of the war but in the history of central and eastern Europe as well.
American equipment meanwhile arrived in the Soviet Union in prodigious quantities.
The terms of Lend-Lease were liberally extended to the Soviets; a stream of American
vehicles, clothing, food, and supplies of all kinds made its way laboriously to the U.S.S.R.
through the Arctic Ocean and through the Persian Gulf. Machinery and equipment were
sent for the Soviet arms plants, which were themselves vastly increasing their output.
Anglo-American bombing meanwhile was cutting into German airplane production at
home. The Allied contribution to the Soviet war effort was indispensable, but Russian
human losses were tremendous. Between 20 and 25 million people in the Soviet Union
died from war-related causes. More than two-thirds of these casualties were civilians;
many had been killed early in the war by Nazi murder squads whose assignment was to
eliminate all so-called “undesirable” persons from territories occupied by the German
army. But the number of battle deaths alone went far beyond Allied losses in other military
theaters of the war. The Soviet Union lost more men in the battle of Stalingrad, for exam-
ple, than the United States lost in combat during the entire war in all the-
aters combined.
With contemporary American successes against Japanese forces in the
Solomon Islands at the end of 1942 and the slow throttling of German sub-
marines in the Atlantic, there was new hope for the Allies on all fronts.
In a spectacular campaign in July–August 1943, the British, Canadians, and Americans
conquered the island of Sicily. Mussolini fell from power, and the 21-year-old Fascist
regime came to an end. Mussolini set up an “Italian Social Republic” in the north, but it
was no more than a German puppet government. Some months later, in April 1945, the
Duce, as he attempted to fl ee the country, was seized and shot by anti-Fascist Italians.
When the new Italian government under Marshal Badoglio, in August 1943, tried to make
peace, the German army occupied Italy. The Allies, having crossed to the Italian mainland
from Sicily, attacked from the south. In October the Badoglio government declared war
on Germany, and Italy was recognized by the Allies as a “cobelligerent.” But the Germans
stubbornly blocked the advance of the Allies to Rome despite new Allied landings and
beachheads. The Italian campaign turned into a long and disheartening stalemate because
the Allies, concentrating troops in Britain for the approaching cross-Channel invasion,
could never spare enough for the Italian front.
The Allied Offensive in Europe, 1944–1945
Festung Europa, especially along its western approaches, the coasts of Holland, Belgium, and France, bristled with every kind of fortifi cation that German scientifi c and military
ingenuity could devise. A seaborne attack upon these coasts clearly differed from the ear-
lier amphibious attacks on Algeria, Sicily, or the Pacifi c islands in that the German defend-
ers, in the part of Europe where the road and railway network was thickest, could
immediately rush overwhelming reserves to the spot attacked—except insofar as feinting
tactics kept the Germans uncertain, air power destroyed their transport, or the Russians
held the bulk of their forces tied down on the eastern front. Precise and elaborate plans
were developed for the Allied assault. Ten thousand aircraft were to provide aerial protec-
tion, scores of warships were to bombard the coast, 4,000 ships were to carry the invading
New hope for the
Allies
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867
troops and their supplies across the Channel, and artifi cial harbors were to be created
where none existed.
The invasion of western Europe began before dawn on June 6, 1944.
The spot selected was the coast of Normandy directly across the Channel
from England; false intelligence reports, planted by the Allies, led the
Germans to expect the main thrust, when it occurred, to be at Calais. An
unparalleled combination of forces—British, Canadian, and American, land, sea, and
air, backed up by huge accumulations of supplies and troops assembled in Great Britain,
and the whole under the unifi ed command of General Eisenhower—assaulted the French
coast, established a beachhead, and maintained a front. The Allies poured in their strength,
over 130,000 men the fi rst day, 1 million within a month. After heavy fi ghting around the
town of Saint-Lô in early July, the Germans were thrown back more easily than had been
expected. By August Paris was liberated, and by September the Allies crossed the frontier
of Germany itself. In France, Italy, and Belgium the men and women in the underground
Resistance movements, which had grown up in secret during the years of German occu-
pation, came into the open and drove out Germans and pro-German collaborators. In
Germany itself no widespread or deeply rooted Resistance movement ever developed, but
a small group of Germans, military and civilian, formed an underground. On July 20, 1944,
after the failure of earlier efforts, the members of this group attempted to assassinate Hitler
by exploding a bomb at his military headquarters in East Prussia; Hitler was only injured
and took a fearsome revenge on the conspirators.
In August, in another amphibious operation, the Allies landed on the French Mediter-
ranean coast and swept up from southern France to join the Allied forces advancing against
stiffening resistance. At one point, as the Allied forces moved beyond France, their offen-
sive suffered a serious reversal. A sudden German attack under Hitler’s direct personal
orders in December 1944 was launched against thinly held American lines on the Belgian
sector in the Ardennes, creating a vulnerable “bulge” in the advancing armies and causing
heavy losses and confusion. But the Allies rallied, and Hitler used up his last armored
reserves in the effort. Neither the Ardennes counteroffensive nor the new destructive
weapons rained on Britain, jet-propelled fl ying bombs and rockets, opening up the missile
age, availed the Germans. All this time the Americans and British kept up their massive air
bombardments, destroying many of Germany’s industrial cities and killing over 50,000
civilians in the fi re-bombing of Dresden in February 1945. On the ground they pushed on
and smashed through the heavily fortifi ed Siegfried Line. The last natural obstacle,
the Rhine, was crossed when in March 1945 American forces by a stroke of luck discov-
ered an undestroyed bridge at Remagen; they poured troops over it and established a
bridgehead—the fi rst troops to cross the Rhine in combat since the armies of Napoleon.
The main crossing, under the British, subsequently took place farther to the north. Soon the
Allies were accepting wholesale surrenders in the Ruhr Valley.
Meanwhile in 1944 the Russian armies swept the Germans from
Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic states, and eastern Poland. By August they
reached the suburbs of Warsaw. The Polish underground rose against the
Germans, but the Soviets, determined that Poland not be liberated by non-Communist
Polish leadership, refused to permit aid to the rising, and it was crushed, with a heavy loss
of Polish lives. Earlier, in 1943, the mass graves of thousands of Polish prisoners of war,
mainly offi cers, had been found by the Germans in the Katyn Forest. Despite continuing
Soviet denials at the time, documents in the Russian archives later revealed that they had
been shot by the Red Army on Stalin’s orders in 1940, after the Soviet Union had joined
The invasion of
Europe
The eastern front
102. The Western-Soviet Victory
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Chapter 21 The Second World War868
THE SECOND WORLD WAR These two maps show the global character of the war and the central position of the United States with respect to the European and Pacifi c theaters. The numbered legends summarize the successive stages of the war in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. In 1942, with the Germans reaching as far east as Egypt and Stalingrad and the Japanese as far west as Burma, the great danger to the Soviet-Western alliance was that these two might join forces, dominate southern Asia, control the oil resources of the Persian Gulf, and stop the fl ow of Western supplies to the Soviet Union from this direction. The almost simultaneous Soviet- Western successes, late in 1942, at Stalingrad and El Alamein, and in the invasion of Morocco- Algeria and of Guadalcanal, proved to be the turning point of the war. In 1943 the German submarine campaign in the Atlantic was defeated, so that American troops and supplies could
Allied Thrusts
Lend-Lease Supply Lines
Hitler's "Empire"
Allied with Germany
Occupied by the Axis
At War Against the Axis
GREENLAND (Denmark)
NORTH
POLE
AZORES (Portugal)
CANARY IS. (Spain)
CAPE VERDE IS. (Portugal)
AT L A N T I C O C E A N
Panama Canal
Suez Canal
NORWAY FIN-
LAND
SWEDEN
GERMANY DEN.
UNITED KINGDOM
FRANCE
SPAIN
PORTUGAL
ITALY
SOVIET UNION
IRAN
TURKEY
TUNISIA
LIBYA EGYPT
ALGERIA (France)
FRENCH MOROCCO
FRENCH WEST AFRICA
FRENCH EQUATORIAL
AFRICA ITALIAN
SOM.
BRAZIL
VENEZUELA
CUBA
UNITED STATES
CANADA
ICELAND
4. Greatest Axis Expansion, December 1941–November 1942
6. Germany Surrenders May 8, 1945
1. Hitler Invades Poland September 1, 1939
2. France Surrenders June 22, 1940
5. Allies Invade: North Africa, November 8, 1942 Normandy Coast, June 6, 1944
3. United States: Bases-Destroyer Deal, September 2, 1940 Enacts Lend-Lease, March 11, 1941 Enters the War December 8, 1941
Dakar
Casablanca Oran
El Alamein
Stalingrad
Kuibyshev
Moscow
Murmansk
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869
with Germany in partitioning Poland. The Russians, their lines now overextended, and
checked for several months by German strength in Poland, pushed southward into Roma-
nia and Bulgaria; both countries changed sides and declared war against Germany. Early
in 1945 the Soviets, reopening their offensive, forced their way into East Prussia and
Silesia and by February reached the Oder River, 40 miles from Berlin, where Zhukov
Japanese Empire 1940
Occupied by Japan, June 1942
At War against Japan, August 7, 1945
Supply Lines
Allied Land or Naval Attacks
Allied Air Thrusts
Soviet Thrusts into Manchuria and Korea
ALEU TIA
NS
Attu
Kiska
Sakhalin
Karafuto
OkinawaFORMOSA
Sumatra
Borneo
Java Celebes
Leyte
PHILIPPINE IS.
Palau
Yap Guam
CAROLINE IS.
Truk
New Guinea
Iwo Jima
MARIANA IS. Saipan Tinian
Wake
Eniwetok
Kwajalein
MARSHALL IS.
SOLOMON IS.
GILBERT IS.
Guadalcanal
New Hebrides (Britain & France) FIJI IS. (Britain)
Howland (U.S.A.)
Tutuila (U.S.A.)
Midway
HAWAIIAN IS. (U.S.A.)
B e r i n g S e a Bay of Bengal
P A C I F I C O C E A N
C O R A L S e a
I N D I A N O C E A N
CANADA ALASKA
UNITED STATES
SOVIET UNION MONGOLIA
MANCHUKUO
JAPAN
KOREA
SINKIANG
TIBET
C H I N A
INDIA
BURMA
THAI- LAND
INDO- CHINA
AUSTRALIA
NEW ZEALAND
2. Greatest Japanese Expansion June 1942
5. Soviet Union Enters the War August 8, 1945
4. U.S. Forces Reoccupy the Philippines October 1944
1. Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941
6. Atomic Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 1945 Japan Surrenders September 2, 1945
3. U.S. Forces Land on Guadalcanal August 7, 1942
Dutch Harbor
Seattle
San Francisco
Tokyo Nagasaki
Vladivostok
Peiping
Shanghai
Chungking
Canton Hong Kong
Singapore
Manila
Hiroshima
Hollandia
Port Moresby
Pearl Harbor
Sydney
move more freely to Europe. The invasion of Normandy in June 1944, with continuing Rus- sian pressure from the east, brought about the German surrender in May 1945. Meanwhile, in the Pacifi c, American occupation of the islands and reoccupation of the Philippines prepared the way for the surrender of Japan, which followed the dropping of two atomic bombs in August 1945.
102. The Western-Soviet Victory
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Chapter 21 The Second World War870
paused to regroup his forces. In March and April Russian forces occupied Budapest
and Vienna.
The fi nal drive on Germany began. Hitler moved troops from the col-
lapsing western front to reinforce German positions on the Oder and to
protect his capital. In April the Americans reached the Elbe, about 60 miles
from Berlin, with hardly any obstacles before them; but here they halted, by
decision of General Eisenhower. The Americans, whose supply lines were
already overextended, wanted a clear line of demarcation from the Russians; they also
believed it necessary to divert forces southward against a possible German last stand in
The fi nal drive on
Germany
THE HOLOCAUST This map shows the loss of life that resulted from what the Nazis called their “Final Solution”— that is, their systematic genocidal program of destroying the Jews and Judaism. Before the Second World War most European Jews lived in Poland and the adjoining parts of the Soviet Union. The Germans occupied all of these areas during the war, and most deaths occurred in these territories. The map shows both the number killed in each country and the percentage of its Jewish population that were victims of this deliberate genocide. The numbers add up to about 6 million men, women, and children, or an estimated two-thirds of the Jewish popula- tion of Europe as a whole. Although word of this annihilation policy reached the outside world through the Vatican and other sources, the Allied leaders at fi rst disbelieved the reports, and then, giving priority to their military objectives, did nothing to stop the systematic slaughter.
Percentage of Jewish Population Annihilated
83–90
65–77
50–60
11–26 Figures indicate number of Jews killed under Nazi Racial Policies (in thousands)
FRANCE 90
NETHERLANDS 105
BELGIUM 40
GERMANY AND AUSTRIA
210
ITALY 8
YUGOSLAVIA 26
CZECHOSLOVAKIA 155
POLAND 3,000
BALTIC STATES
228
NORWAY 1
BYELORUSSIAN S.S.R. 245
RUSSIAN S.S.R. 107
UKRAINIAN S.S.R. 900
ROMANIA 300
BULGARIA 14
HUNGARY 450
GREECE 54
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871
the Alps. But mainly the decision was made as a gesture of goodwill toward the Russians,
who were to be permitted to take Berlin as compensation for their heavy sacrifi ces in the
common cause, and to preserve the Western-Soviet coalition until fi nal victory. Similarly,
the American troops that moved southward were held back from taking Prague, and the
Soviets were permitted to take the Czech capital too. At the end of the war the Soviets
were therefore in control of all the major capitals of central and eastern Europe—a military
situation that would carry major political consequences.
The Allies offered no terms to Hitler nor to any Germans. They demanded uncondi-
tional surrender, and the Germans fought on in the very streets of Berlin. On the last day
of April Hitler perished by his own hand in the ruins of his capital after denouncing some
of his closest party subordinates as traitors. Admiral Doenitz, designated by Hitler as his
successor, went through the formalities of surrender on May 8, 1945. Because fi ghting had
already ceased on the Italian front a few days earlier, the war in Europe was over.
Allied troops found horrifying evidence of mass murder as they entered death camps and con- centration camps that the Nazis had constructed throughout Germany and central Europe. These emaciated survivors were liberated from the camp at Buchenwald, where they had been forced to work as slave laborers and where more than 40,000 people had died. This group includes Elie Wiesel (seventh from left in second level, near the vertical beam), who would later write searing descriptions of the camps and of the Holocaust. (National Archives, Washington, DC/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY)
102. The Western-Soviet Victory
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Chapter 21 The Second World War872
The Holocaust
Meanwhile a generation reared to mistrust the fabricated atrocity tales of the First World
War painfully and belatedly became aware of the real German horrors of the Second—
hostages rounded up and shot in reprisal for resistance; whole villages like Lidice in
Czechoslovakia or Oradour-sur-Glane in France razed to the ground and their inhabitants
slain or deported; concentration camps like Dachau and Buchenwald, where the prison-
ers were given minimal rations and worked to death, and where Allied troops found only
pitifully emaciated survivors; above all, the mass death camps with gas chambers and
crematory ovens at Auschwitz (where at its peak 12,000 victims a day were gassed to
death), Treblinka, Belzéc, Sobibor, and others, where peoples whom the Nazis deemed
“inferior” could be systematically liquidated.
In the areas of Nazi domination in eastern Europe, the Nazis fi rst used special fi ring
squads and mobile gas units to kill “undesirables,” but Hitler’s murderous ambitions could
not be achieved through such temporary or improvised methods of killing in the country-
side. As the war went on, the more unstructured forms of mass murder were replaced by a
systematically organized, European-wide system for gathering people at “collection” cen-
ters and transporting millions of men, women, and children in railroad cattle cars to the
mass death camps where some were worked to death and others were put to death at once.
By far the largest proportion killed were some 6 million Jews, but millions of other Poles,
Russians, other Slavic peoples, Gypsies, and others were slain as well—either in the death
camps or in various killing fi elds throughout Europe.
Many of the plans for systematic annihilation of the Jews, which would come to be
known and remembered after the war as the Holocaust, were decided upon at a high-level
Nazi meeting at Wannsee in January 1942. In the genocidal view of Nazi planners such
as Heinrich Himmler, these policies would provide the wartime “Final Solution” to the
so-called “Jewish problem” that Hitler had agitated with maniacal racist fury for so many
years. Genocide, the planned, systematic effort to destroy a whole people,
was the greatest of the Nazi sins against humanity. Although there have
been mass murders in many other places and eras of human history, the
genocidal attack on European Jews had a uniquely modern scale and sci-
entifi c organization, which explains in part why it has produced such painful memories
and questions for later generations. How could such murderous events occur in the heart
of modern European civilization? The fact that the Holocaust was carried out by ordinary
people and bureaucrats raises pointed questions about individual and collective responsi-
bilities for deadly government policies, about the danger of misused, modern technologies,
and about the destructive consequences of racist ideologies.
Survivors described extraordinary acts of courage and human will among the prison-
ers in Nazi death camps, but the Holocaust has become the modern world’s most terrifying
example and memory of systematic murder and human brutality. And although it was easy
enough to blame the Holocaust on Hitler and the other rabid leaders of the Nazi regime,
the most haunting aspect of these massive crimes may have come from the unquestion-
ing participation of so many anonymous followers. One of the few survivors from the
camp at Auschwitz, the Italian Jewish writer Primo Levi, summarized the problem that
reappears constantly in later historical, ethical, and political refl ections on the Holocaust
and suggests why this event remains so memorable in modern world history. “We must
remember,” Levi wrote, “that these faithful followers, among them the diligent executors
of inhuman orders, were not born torturers, were not (with a few exceptions) monsters:
The “fi nal solution”
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873
they were ordinary men. Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly danger-
ous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act
without asking questions.”
The Last Phase of the War in the Pacifi c and the Atomic Bomb: 1944–1945
In the Pacifi c, American operations against Japan had dragged on for three years, hampered
by the strategic decision of the Allies to concentrate against Germany fi rst. Slowly,
from points in the Solomon Islands, the easternmost fringe of the Indonesian archipelago,
American forces worked their way in a northwesterly direction toward faraway Japan,
fi ghting against stubborn entrenched Japanese resistance and at heavy cost. Finally, in a
protracted and bloody battle lasting over 2½ months, in the spring of 1945 they won the
island of Okinawa, only 300 miles from Japan itself. Okinawa was captured just as the
Germans collapsed in Europe. From the new Allied bases on islands that the Americans
had won in their long offensive campaign and from aircraft carriers at sea, a crushing air
offensive was launched against Japan, shattering Japanese industry, destroying the rem-
nants of the Japanese navy, and compelling the Japanese government to give serious
thought to suing for peace. The Allied leaders refused to believe, however, that Japanese
defenses were ready to crumble or that the Japanese were ready to negotiate. The American
army prepared to shift combat troops from the European theater to Asia.
The stage was being set for a full-scale invasion of Japan itself.
Then, on August 6, 1945, an American aircraft dropped an atomic
bomb—built in the United States in utmost secrecy by European refugee
and American scientists—on the city of Hiroshima, with a population of
200,000 people. The city was destroyed in this single explosion, and about 100,000 lives
were lost; thousands of others were injured or suffered the long-term effects of radia-
tion. Two days later, the Soviet Union, which had pledged to enter the confl ict in the East
within three months after the surrender of Germany, declared war on Japan and invaded
Manchuria. On August 9 a second American atomic bomb struck Nagasaki and killed
approximately 60,000 more. The atomic bombs and the Soviet declaration of war drove
the Japanese to make peace at once. On September 2, 1945, the formal surrender was
signed. The emperor was permitted to remain as head of state, but Japan was placed under
a United States army of occupation.
Meanwhile, the atomic bomb, like the death camps of the Holocaust, soon became
another haunting memory and symbol of the new forms of violence and mass destruction
that a staggeringly costly global war had bequeathed to humanity. It was probably true,
as American leaders insisted at the time and in retrospect, that the atomic bomb was the
least costly way (in terms of American and European lives) for the United States to bring
the war in Japan to a rapid, victorious conclusion; but it is also true that the introduction
of this hugely destructive weapon brought instant death to large civilian populations, cre-
ated an unprecedented new threat to human survival, and set up an endless danger that has
loomed over the modern world ever since. European history would thus evolve, after 1945,
in an international context that always included the annihilating possibilities of atomic
weaponry.
The Second World War of the twentieth century was over, the greatest confl ict in
human history. The same cold impersonal statistics that had recorded 10 million killed in
the First World War reported 15 million military deaths and (unlike the First World War)
more than twice as many civilian fatalities. Soviet military deaths were estimated at over
The atomic bomb
102. The Western-Soviet Victory
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Chapter 21 The Second World War874
The human consequences of Nazi brutalities appear in this picture of a Nazi concentration camp near the German city of Ohrdruf in early May 1945. American soldiers were making their way through the camp, where the Nazis had subjected Poles, Czechs, German Jews, and German political prisoners to forced labor and then shot or fl ogged to death the internees who could no longer work. (Bettmann/Corbis)
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875
6 million, German at 3.5 million, Chinese at 2.2 million, Japanese at 1.3 million, Polish at
700,000. British and Commonwealth losses were over 400,000, American about 300,000,
French about 200,000. Over 25 million suffered battle wounds. The military death fi gures
would have been higher except that one of every two of those wounded was saved by new
sulfa and penicillin drugs and blood plasma transfusions. None of these statistics could
be more than approximate; and no one could estimate the complete toll of human lives
lost from Allied and Axis bombings, Nazi mass slayings of Jews in the Holocaust and of
other people in all the German-occupied nations, Nazi and Soviet deportation policies,
and postwar famines and epidemics. Some estimates place the total at 60 million men,
women, and children, but at such fi gures the human mind retreats and human sensitivities
are dulled.
The atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was the most destructive weapon in the long history of warfare. This photograph shows a view of the city after the single American bomb had reduced the buildings to rubble and killed 100,000 people. The bomb helped to end the Second World War in Japan, but it also altered Europe’s infl uence in global affairs and cre- ated an enduring atomic threat to the future of human civilization. (AP Photo)
102. The Western-Soviet Victory
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Chapter 21 The Second World War876
103. THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE PEACE
Whereas the First World War had been concluded by a peace conference a few months
after the close of hostilities, the Second World War ended in no such clear-cut settlement.
Nothing like the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 followed the defeat of Germany in 1945.
The peace terms emerged episodically, at fi rst during a series of conferences among the
Allied nations during the war, and then in a series of de facto arrangements in the years
after 1945.
The foundations for a peaceable postwar world were being laid, it was thought, at
various meetings where the strategy of the war itself was gradually planned. As early as
August 1941, before the United States had entered the war, Roosevelt and Churchill met at
sea off the coast of Newfoundland and drew up the Atlantic Charter. Later, there were
meetings in 1943 at Casablanca, at Cairo, and at Tehran (which was close enough to the
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1935–1945
1935 Mussolini launches an Italian invasion and conquest of Ethiopia
March 1936 German troops enter Rhineland; France and Britain do not intervene
July 1936 Fascist groups under General Franco in Spain rise against the Spanish
Republic; Franco takes power after three-year Civil War
March 1938 Hitler annexes Austria to Nazi Germany
September 1938 French and British leaders meet with Hitler in Munich and accept German
takeover of Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia
August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact includes plan for division of Poland
September 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland begins the Second World War
May–June 1940 Nazis conquer the Netherlands, Belgium, and France
July1940 French collaborators set up a pro-fascist regime in Vichy
September 1940 German air attacks on Britain are repelled in Battle of Britain
June 1941 Germany launches massive invasion of the Soviet Union
December 1941 Japanese attack on U.S. Pacifi c fl eet at Pearl Harbor brings the United
States into war with Japan and then Germany
January 1942 Nazi leaders launch plans to build death camps for genocidal killing
of European Jews and others, leading to over 6 million deaths in the
Holocaust
February 1943 Soviet forces defeat the Germans in decisive battle at Stalingrad
June 1944 Allied Armies open a “western front” in France after D-Day landings at
Normandy
February 1945 Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin agree on postwar arrangements at meeting
in Yalta
May 1945 Germany surrenders after Hitler commits suicide in Berlin
September 1945 Japan surrenders after the United States drops two atomic bombs and the
Soviet Union declares war on Japan
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877
Soviet Union for Stalin to participate); and in the fi nal phase of the war, in February 1945,
at Yalta (a Crimean resort city in the Soviet Union), and in July 1945 at Potsdam in the
environs of shattered Berlin.
The Atlantic Charter, issued jointly by Roosevelt and Churchill at their fi rst meeting,
resembled in spirit the earlier Fourteen Points of Woodrow Wilson. It pledged that sover-
eign rights and self-government would be restored to all who had been forcibly deprived
of them, that all nations would have equal access to world trade and world resources,
that all peoples would work together to achieve improved living standards and economic
security. The postwar peace, it promised, would assure people of all lands freedom from
fear and want; and it would end force and aggression in international affairs. Here, and in
the Four Freedoms enunciated by President Roosevelt, the ideological basis of the peace
was proclaimed. At the 1943 conferences, and through other consultations, the Allies
endeavored to concert their military plans. At Casablanca in January 1943,
they resolved to accept nothing less than the “unconditional surrender”
of the Axis powers. This vague formula, adopted somewhat cavalierly at
American initiative, and without much thought to possible political impli-
cations, was intended mainly to prevent a recurrence of anything like the
ambiguity surrounding the armistice of 1918, when nationalist Germans complained that
Germany had not been defeated on the battlefi eld but had been “stabbed in the back” by
a dissolving home front.
At Tehran in December 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met with Stalin for the fi rst
of two wartime meetings. They discussed the postwar occupation and demilitarization of
Germany, laid plans for a postwar international organization, and debated strategy for win-
ning the war. Throughout the war Roosevelt, unwilling to disturb the unity of the Western-
Soviet coalition in the global struggle in which America was engaged, followed a policy
of postponing controversial territorial and political decisions until victory was assured.
Churchill was more apprehensive. Steeped in traditional balance-of-power politics, he
sensed that without prior diplomatic bargaining and political arrangements, the victory
over the Nazis would leave Russia dominant over central and eastern Europe. At Tehran
he proposed operations in the Mediterranean and an invasion through the Balkans, both for
political reasons and out of concern for the casualties that a cross-Channel invasion would
involve. But Roosevelt persuaded him otherwise. It was agreed that a landing in France
would take place in the spring of 1944; thus the major second front that Stalin had been
promised would fi nally be opened. Stalin pledged that he would launch a simultaneous
offensive on the eastern front.
The strategy that would win the war in the next 18 months was decided upon at
Tehran, but that strategy, without prior political agreements, all but guaranteed the Soviet
domination of postwar eastern Europe. Later, in October 1944, as the Russian armies
advanced westward, Churchill visited Stalin and sketched out a demarcation of spheres of
infl uence for the Western powers and the Soviets in the Balkan states (a Soviet preponder-
ance in Romania and Bulgaria, a Western preponderance in Greece, and an even division
of infl uence in Hungary and Yugoslavia). Soviet control over the Baltic states had virtually
been conceded by the British earlier. Roosevelt, however, would not agree to any such
arrangement, which he considered old-fashioned and a dangerous revival of the worst
features of pre-1914 diplomacy.
The two conferences that arrived at the most important political deci-
sions were the meetings at Yalta and at Potsdam in 1945. The Yalta meet-
ing in February 1945 took place when the Allies were close to fi nal
“Unconditional
surrender”
The agreements at
Yalta
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Chapter 21 The Second World War878
victory—closer than anyone at the time could realize. The three Allied statesmen met at
the old tsarist Crimean summer resort on the Black Sea, toasted their common triumphs,
and, as at Tehran, took the measure of each other. Roosevelt thought of himself as a media-
tor between Churchill and Stalin where European issues were involved. He took pains to
avoid giving Stalin the impression that he and Churchill were in any sense united against
him; in point of fact, Roosevelt was suspicious of Churchill’s devotion to empire and the
British colonial system, which he considered anachronistic for the postwar world. Despite
differences, the Big Three reached agreements, at least formally, on Poland and eastern
Europe, the future of Germany, the war in Asia, and the projected postwar international
organization—the United Nations.
The discussion of Poland and eastern Europe raised the most seri-
ous diffi culties. Stalin’s armies, having driven the Nazi forces to within
40 miles of Berlin, were in control of Poland and of almost all eastern and
central Europe. The Russians remembered these areas as anti-Soviet, and
Poland particularly as the perpetrator of aggression against Soviet territory
in 1920. Stalin had already taken steps to establish a “friendly” government in Poland,
which meant a government subservient to the Soviets. Neither Roosevelt nor Churchill had
fought the war against the Nazis to leave the Soviet Union the undisputed master of central
and eastern Europe and in a position to impose a totalitarian political system on all this
vast area. At Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill extracted from Stalin a number of promises
for the areas he controlled. In accordance with the Atlantic Charter, the liberated states
were to be permitted provisional governments “broadly representative of all democratic
elements in the population,” that is, not consisting merely, as in the case of the provisional
government of Poland already established, of authorities subservient to the Soviets. They
pressed Stalin to pledge also the “earliest possible establishment through free elections of
governments responsive to the will of the people.” The pledge was a verbal concession that
cost the Soviet leader little; he rejected the suggestion of international supervision over
the elections. The Declaration on Liberated Europe, promising sovereign rights of demo-
cratic self-determination, provided a false sense of agreement; there would actually be no
free postwar elections in Soviet-controlled eastern Europe.
A number of territorial changes were also accepted, pending fi nal settlement at a post-
war peace conference. The Russian-Polish boundary would be set roughly at the so-called
Curzon line, the Polish frontier contemplated by the Allies in 1919 before the Poles con-
quered territory to their east. The Poles would be compensated, in the north and west, at the
expense of Germany (see map, p. 909). On this and on other matters relating to Germany
there was a large area of accord; the three were united in their hatred of German Nazism
and militarism. Germany was to be disarmed and divided into four occupation zones
under the administration of the Big Three powers and France—the latter at the insistence
of Churchill. There was vague talk, at Yalta and earlier, of dismembering Germany, of
undoing the work of Bismarck; but the diffi culties of such an undertaking were understood
and the proposal was eventually discarded. The Americans and British rejected as exces-
sive the Soviet proposals for reparations, a sum of $20 billion to be paid in kind, half to
the Soviets. It was agreed, however, that reparations would go to those countries that had
borne the main burdens of the war and suffered the heaviest losses. The Soviet Union was
to receive half of whatever total sum was set.
To the satisfaction of everyone, the participants agreed on plans for a postwar interna-
tional organization, to be called the United Nations. Roosevelt believed it essential to win
the Soviets over to the idea of an international organization. He was convinced that the
Poland and eastern
Europe
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879
Great Powers, cooperating within the framework of the United Nations and
acting as international police, could preserve the future peace and security
of the world. No less than Stalin or Churchill, he emphasized the impor-
tance of the Great Powers in the new organization, although he accepted a dignifi ed role
for the smaller nations as well. All agreed that each of the Great Powers, the permanent
members of the new organization’s Security Council, would have a veto power on impor-
tant decisions. The Soviets pressed for 16 votes in the General Assembly of the new orga-
nization, arguing that their constitution gave sovereign rights to each of their then 16
constituent republics and also that the British dominions would each have a seat. In the
interests of harmony, at Churchill’s behest, they were given three.
Critical agreements were reached on new plans for eastern Asia. Here political and
military decisions were inextricably linked. The Soviets had remained neutral in the
Pacifi c war despite their historic interests in that part of Asia. Given the magnitude of the
Soviet war effort on the European front, no one had pressed them to enter the Pacifi c war
earlier. It was agreed to wait at least until the Germans were on the verge of defeat. At
Yalta, Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan, but Soviet “public opinion,” he averred,
would demand compensation. The U.S.S.R. would enter the war against Japan “two to
three months” after Germany had surrendered. In return, the Soviets would receive territo-
ries and rights that tsarist Russia had lost to Japan 40 years before in the Russo-Japanese
war of 1904–1905 (see map, p. 683), with the addition of the Kurile Islands, which had
never been Russian before.
Roosevelt made controversial concessions at Yalta because he believed he needed
Soviet support in the last phase of the war against Japan and because he wished to preserve
The United Nations
The fi nal meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin took place in the Crimean resort city of Yalta in February 1945. Roosevelt’s position here between the other two leaders suggests his mediating position at the conference. The agreements reached at Yalta shaped the postwar organization of eastern Europe, laid the foundation for the United Nations, and eventually brought the Soviet Union into the war against Japan, but some critics in the Western democra- cies later complained that the Yalta accords made too many concessions to Stalin and opened the way for Soviet domination of central Europe. (Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-7449])
103. The Foundations of the Peace
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Chapter 21 The Second World War880
the Western-Soviet coalition until fi nal victory was guaranteed. He believed also that war-
time cooperation would produce postwar harmony. Churchill, less sanguine about the
future and about “diplomacy by friendship,” would have preferred a franker defi nition of
spheres of infl uence. Such ideas were ruled out as the thinking of a bygone era. Yet the
spirit of the Atlantic Charter, so closely identifi ed with the American president, the pledge
of sovereign self-determination for all peoples, was already being contravened.
At Potsdam, in July 1945, after the German collapse, the Big Three met again. A new
American president, Harry S. Truman, represented the United States; Presi-
dent Roosevelt had died in April, on the eve of fi nal victory. Churchill, in
the midst of the conference, was replaced by a new British prime minister,
Clement Attlee, after the Labour Party’s victory at the polls. Stalin still
The Potsdam
Conference
THE SURVIVOR by George Grosz (German, then American, 1893–1959)
Grosz was a refugee from Nazi Germany. This picture, which he painted in 1945, vividly portrays the horrors of modern warfare, the brutal collapse of civilization, and the terri- fi ed emotions of an isolated, fi lthy survivor. Note the symbolism of a broken swastika in the arrangement of the man’s body and the debris. (akg-images/Newscom)
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881
represented the Soviet Union. By now, disagreements between the Western Allies and
the Soviets had deepened, not only over Soviet control in Poland, eastern Europe, and the
Balkans, but over German reparations and other matters. Yet Truman and Attlee were still
prepared to make concessions in the hope of establishing harmonious relations. Agree-
ments were announced on the postwar treatment of Germany, which included German
disarmament, demilitarization, “denazifi cation,” and the punishment of war criminals—
who were soon prosecuted for war crimes in trials at Nuremberg. Each power could take
reparations in kind from its occupation zone and the Russians would get substantial addi-
tional deliveries from the Western zones so that the original $10 billion Soviet demand
was virtually met.
Pending the fi nal peace treaty, German territory east of the Oder-Neisse
rivers had been committed to Polish administration at the Yalta meeting,
but the Polish-German boundary was now set at the western Neisse, even
further west than originally envisaged. Poland thus extended its territorial boundaries
about a hundred miles westward as compensation for Russian westward expansion at Pol-
ish expense. German East Prussia was divided between the Soviet Union in the north and
Poland in the south. Königsberg, founded by the Teutonic Knights and for centuries the
coronation city of Prussian kings, became the Russian city of Kaliningrad. The ancient
German cities of Stettin and Breslau became the Polish cities of Szczecin and Wroclaw.
Danzig became Gdansk. The de facto administration of these areas hardened into perma-
nent rule. The transfer of the German population in these eastern areas was supposed to be
effected in an orderly and humane fashion, but millions of Germans were driven from their
homes or fl ed westward within a few months. For them (and for the Sudeten Germans who
were expelled from Czechoslovakia) this forced migration was a fi nal, unsettling conse-
quence of the vast war that Hitler had unleashed in central Europe.
The Potsdam participants agreed that peace treaties would be signed as soon as pos-
sible with the former German satellite states; the task of preparing them was entrusted to
a council of foreign ministers representing the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet
Union, and China. In the months that followed, the widening chasm between the Soviets
and their recent Western Allies manifested itself in stormy meetings in London, Paris, and
New York, as well as in a peace conference held in Paris in 1946, at which were repre-
sented the 21 states that had contributed substantial military forces to the defeat of the Axis
powers. In February 1947 treaties were signed with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria,
and Finland, all of which paid reparations and agreed to certain territorial adjustments. In
1951 a peace treaty was signed with Japan, but not by the Soviets, who signed their own
treaty in 1956. The years went by, but no fi nal treaty was signed with Germany, which
for many years to come remained divided into western and eastern zones. The wartime
Western-Soviet coalition had fallen apart, shattering the dreams or aspirations for a lasting
peace among those who had fought the Second World War to a decisive triumph over one
kind of aggression and totalitarianism, but who now found themselves confronted with a
new age of crisis.
Germany divided
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
103. The Foundations of the Peace
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883
C h a p t e r 22 THE COLD WAR AND
RECONSTRUCTION
AFTER THE SECOND
WORLD WAR
Every age has its share of social confl icts, eco- nomic problems, political upheavals, wars, and
cultural changes, but the fi rst half of the twentieth
century must surely be ranked as one of the most
deadly and disorienting periods that people have ever
known. During these decades, over the course of a
single lifetime, the world passed through the Great
War of 1914–1918, a global infl uenza pandemic
(which killed at least 50 million people), the col-
lapse of longstanding dynasties in Europe and the
Middle East, the Russian Revolution, the worldwide
Great Depression, the rise of aggressive fascist and
Nazi dictatorships, the Second World War (stretch-
ing from Europe and North Africa to all of east and
southeast Asia), the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied
Europe, the fi rst use of atomic bombs, the rise of
Communist China, and the breakup of the Ottoman and European empires into new nations in
the eastern Mediterranean and South Asia.
These events brought massive disruptions to individual lives, caused more millions of
deaths than can ever be accurately counted, and produced far-reaching changes in global
political and economic systems—including the rapid, international ascendancy of the
United States and a steady decline in Europe’s previous control over people or economies
in much of the non-European world. In short, the upheavals of the early twentieth century
profoundly transformed the course of modern world history. Yet people everywhere, like
their ancestors after earlier upheavals, moved on from these cataclysms to rebuild their
lives, their societies, their political institutions, and their economic activities. History did
not end, of course, and the age-old resilience of human beings and their cultures appeared
again in the decades that followed the Second World War.
104. The Cold War:
The Opening Decade,
1945–1955
105. Western Europe: Economic
Reconstruction
106. Western Europe: Political
Reconstruction
107. Europe and the Global
Economy
108. Communist Societies in
the U.S.S.R. and Eastern
Europe
Chapter emblem: Hungarian protestors burning a picture of Joseph Stalin in 1956. (Hulton-Deutsch
Collection/Corbis)
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War884
The end of that titanic war marks a transition for historians as well as for the people
who lived through it, because the decades after 1945 or 1950 are the beginning of what
historians often call “contemporary history.” Although the postwar era is increasingly dis-
tant from our own time, the historical consequences of many events and changes since the
Second World War are still evolving and are still part of our contemporary world. Contem-
porary history arouses strong feelings, leads to many of the world’s current confl icts, and
directly shapes the experiences and attitudes of most people who are now alive. For histo-
rians, the complexities of contemporary history can pose even more challenges than those
of earlier eras, because many sources are still unavailable, or because present-day confl icts
distort historical perspectives, or because the lasting infl uence of recent events cannot yet
be known. These distinctive, open-ended aspects of contemporary history will begin to
emerge in this chapter and those that follow as we examine the unsettled events and trends
of the contemporary world, which continues to evolve more rapidly and in more ways than
any historical narrative can describe with the long-range perspectives of historical analysis.
104. THE COLD WAR: THE OPENING DECADE, 1945–1955
Certain issues that had confronted humankind for over a century became even more com-
plex and more urgent in the second half of the twentieth century. Three can be singled out:
science, the organization of industrial society, and national sovereignty.
The atomic bomb dramatized the new problem of science. People in all
parts of the world shuddered at the instantaneous destruction of Hiroshima.
The postwar contest to produce more sophisticated nuclear weapons spurred
the realization that a third world war would be unthinkable. Human beings now
possessed the means to annihilate not only civilization but even human existence on the planet,
a thought especially shocking to a world that set one of its highest values on scientifi c progress.
Science, and its partner, invention, had for a long time transformed both industry and
war. It had conquered many of the dreaded plagues and diseases of the world. Everyone
had long known that science could be applied either constructively or destructively, but the
extreme violence of the two world wars suggested that the destructive uses were becoming
more common. It was the magnitude of the new destructive possibilities that now made
thoughtful people worry. Scientists themselves, after the Holocaust and the fi rst atomic
explosion, affi rmed the need for a moral regeneration. They insisted that science itself was
neutral, free from blame for the horrors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that
the trouble lay not with science but with the uses to which scientifi c knowledge was put.
The problem of organizing industrial society was also unresolved after
1945. There were in theory two opposite social poles. At one, best repre-
sented by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (until its demise in 1991),
all capital was owned by the state and supplied to managers and workers
as needed, and all production and interchange were planned in advance by
public authorities. In the Soviet form of socialism (as well as in the People’s Republic
of China after 1949), which the outside world called communism because it had come
about through revolution and been maintained through dictatorship, the government’s role
was all-encompassing. At the other pole, best exemplifi ed by the United States, economic
exchange took place through the mechanism of the market, and capital was owned by
private persons who chose the channels of investment and determined the availability of
jobs. Neither the socialist nor the capitalist system was pure in practice, and even in capi-
talist countries mixed economies became the rule, with varying degrees of government
The atomic bomb
Organizing
industrial society
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885104. The Cold War: The Opening Decade, 1945–1955
intervention. Most western European countries developed such mixed economies after
1945 and also expanded their social welfare systems, in part to reduce the kinds of social
instability that had contributed to the political extremism and dictatorships of the 1930s.
Many Europeans looked for a “middle way” between the Soviet and American systems,
because they saw specifi c problems on both sides. The chief drawbacks in the Soviet sys-
tem appeared in the lack of political and economic freedom and in its stifl ing of individual
initiative; in the American system, the drawbacks appeared in the periodic economic crises
and in the threats to the economic security of individual workers. In the years after the
Second World War, the Europeans and Americans expended much more effort trying to
correct the lack of economic security than the Soviets did to correct the lack of freedom.
Another postwar question hinged on the unity of the modern world. It was indisput-
ably one world in the sense that there existed a close-knit, interdependent economy, that
political events and environmental changes affected the whole globe, and that world cul-
tures and religions interacted as never before. But it was far from homogeneous. All
admired the steam turbine and stood in awe of nuclear fi ssion, but beyond the material
level schemes of values diverged. No people wished to be subordinated to another, or to an
international body, or to lose its way of life in a uniform global civilization.
After the Second World War, as after the First, an international organization was set up to
prevent war in the future. A conference of all anti-Axis powers, held at San Francisco in 1945,
founded the United Nations (UN) and drew up its charter. The new organization was designed
to maintain international peace and security and to encourage cooperative
solutions to international problems. Although it was widely acknowledged that
peace would depend primarily on the Great Powers, all states, regardless of
size, would be represented. Two agencies were central. The General Assembly
was a deliberative body in which all member states, however small, had an equal vote. The
Security Council, whose primary responsibility was to preserve peace, consisted of the fi ve
Great Powers, who were to be permanent members, and ten rotating members chosen for two-
year terms. Apart from the two superpowers, the United States and the U.S.S.R., it was not
easy to defi ne the Great Powers in 1945, but the permanent seats were assigned to the United
States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and China. 1 Despite the decline of Europe’s
economic and political infl uence in other regions of the world, the traditional western Euro-
pean powers retained their prominent, prewar positions in the new international organization.
Each permanent member had a veto power. Thus the Security Council could act on
important matters only if the Great Powers were unanimous. Although widely criticized,
the veto was accepted as necessary. In major crises the agreement of the Great Powers
would be needed to maintain world peace. The U.S.S.R. demanded the veto most frankly,
but the United States would not have joined without this safeguard. In the following years,
however, even small countries refused to abide by judgments of the UN. No nation, large
or small, was yet willing to forgo its independence or subordinate itself to an international
body with the authority to put down violence, but there was much hope, and even confi -
dence, that the authority and prestige of the UN would grow with time.
The UN had 51 original members. To symbolize the strong American
commitment (and the contrast with America’s earlier refusal to join the League
of Nations), its headquarters was located in New York. The charter provided
for the admission of new members, including the former Axis countries and
The United Nations
Membership expands
1 Nationalist China (the Republic of China, or Taiwan) occupied the seat until 1971, when the People’s Republic of
China (Communist China) replaced it. By the early twenty-fi rst century there were growing demands to expand the
number of permanent seats on the Security Council by adding other large nations from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War886
their satellites, and also wartime neutrals, so that it could be truly international. From 1947 to
1955 a few additional states were admitted; in 1955, 16 more; and in the next several decades,
after decolonization and other changes, the organization expanded so that by the second decade
of the twenty-fi rst century it had over 190 members. In 1948, in good part because of the per-
suasive powers of the American delegate Eleanor Roosevelt, it adopted a sweeping Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, but left unanswered the means of implementing it.
The UN and its Security Council failed to fulfi ll the role projected for it in the early post-
war era because of the tensions between the American-led Western nations and the Soviets.
Although the UN remained one of the few arenas where the Americans and Soviets could
meet and debate, it was powerless to prevent the two superpowers from drifting further and
further apart. On the other hand it helped from the beginning to mediate regional disputes
and to play a role in peacekeeping missions. Most Europeans supported the UN as part of a
new international order that might reduce the kinds of national wars that had nearly destroyed
their twentieth-century societies. But the UN also evolved away from the preoccupations
of the older European powers as it expanded to include new nations in regions that later
twentieth-century diplomats called the “Third World.” Many of these newer members of the
UN were former colonies of the European empires, and they became known as the Third World
because they chose not to align themselves with either the Western or the Soviet camp in inter-
national affairs. Such nations increasingly used the General Assembly of the UN as a forum in
which to express their grievances against global economic and political systems, which they
criticized for protecting the interests of the wealthier European and American nations.
The UN was established to resolve international confl icts and to foster peaceful exchanges between nations, but it also adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This picture of an early UN meeting shows a representative of the Philippines, Pedro Lopez, calling for the establishment and protection of a free press in all nations of the world. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
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887104. The Cold War: The Opening Decade, 1945–1955
The Cold War: Origins and Nature
The Second World War left only the United States and the Soviet Union still standing in
any strength. The United States emerged physically unscathed from the war, its economy
stronger than ever before. Although it demobilized much of its wartime military force, it
alone possessed the atomic bomb. The Soviet Union had been devastated by the war, in
which over 20 million of its population had perished, but it was still a formidable military
power, with 4 million soldiers under arms and in control of eastern European populations
and territories well beyond its pre-1939 boundaries. It became common to speak of the two
countries as superpowers—continental land giants, possessing enormous resources, over-
shadowing all other states, including the long-dominant nations of western Europe.
In the kind of two-superpower system that emerged after the Second World War, each
power can readily identify its only dangerous enemy. A diplomatic equilibrium is more diffi -
cult to sustain in such situations because each views the other power’s every action as possible
aggression or provocation; and each, ignorant of the other’s strength, exaggerates the power
and danger of its enemy. After 1945 the United States and the U.S.S.R. fell into this unhappy
relationship, which began to develop confl icts as soon as the two superpowers attempted to
devise postwar settlements in Europe. The emerging diplomatic confl icts were compounded
by a deep-seated ideological tension between capitalist democracy and Marxist-Leninist com-
munism that dated back to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The widening diplomatic, geo-
political, and ideological clash of interests came to be known as the Cold War,
so called because the antagonisms and rivalries, intense though they were,
always fell short of open or direct military hostilities between the two powers.
It was not possible for anyone to know what Stalin, who dictated the Soviet decisions,
or his lieutenants in the Kremlin, really believed or intended at the end of the Second World
War. Probably they considered a clash between the U.S.S.R. and the Western capitalist pow-
ers as inevitable at some point in the future. Probably they were disturbed by the ambi-
tious goals of American capitalism, which sought markets in eastern Europe and elsewhere,
and by the American monopoly of the atomic bomb. They themselves undoubtedly saw an
opportunity to consolidate their hold over European territories gained during the war (or
regained, given that the new Soviet state had lost control of some of these territories at the
end of the First World War), and to create an outer buffer zone for Soviet national security.
Undoubtedly they also saw in the aftermath of the Second World War, as of the First, an
opportunity to promote the international Communist cause in the shattered nations of central
Europe and among the still-colonized peoples within the large European empires.
Whether the Soviets were acting to protect their national security, fulfi ll old Russian ter-
ritorial ambitions in eastern Europe, or promote communism on a world scale, the political
leaders of the United States and a great majority of the American people became convinced
that the Soviets were bent on consolidating their grip on central and eastern Europe and then
embarking on a worldwide Communist offensive. The American government therefore devel-
oped a global strategy of “containment,” by which the United States and its allies would seek
to “contain” this new Soviet offensive. Although the American government would take direct
military steps mainly in reaction to Soviet expansion or threats of expansion, many people in
the United States came to ascribe almost all of the complex social and political unrest on the
globe to initiatives launched by the Kremlin; and in contrast to its rapid mili-
tary withdrawal from Europe in 1918–1919, the United States maintained a
strong military and political presence in European affairs long after 1945.
In Europe, at the close of hostilities, Soviet armies occupied eastern Europe and
Germany as far west as the Elbe River. American, British, and French armies held the
The Cold War
Containment
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War888
remainder of Germany, most of Austria, and all of Italy. During the war, the armed forces
liberating an area exercised political authority. In that way, the sweep of the Red Army
gave the Soviets political control over much of central and eastern Europe; 100 million
people passed under Soviet domination. On the other hand, the United States excluded the
Soviets from any active role in its occupation of Italy (and, in Asia, of Japan). For the
Soviet Union, occupation meant full control over a nation’s political, economic, and social
institutions and the right to shape the occupied country in its own image. The Western pow-
ers, on the other hand, had hoped that postwar eastern Europe would develop pluralist and
democratic societies, which would have been open to Western trade and infl uence. During
the war the Americans and British had conceded Soviet predominance in eastern Europe,
which the Soviets had liberated from the Nazis, but they soon resented the transformation
of Poland and other East European countries into Soviet-dominated Communist states.
For Stalin, however, this kind of transformation was the only way to guar-
antee “friendly regimes” on his borders. Beginning as early as the Potsdam
conference in July 1945, Truman denounced the Soviets for violating their
pledge to allow free elections in the eastern European states and for failing to
cooperate in the joint occupation of Germany. American diplomats began to
believe that Soviet control over eastern Europe was similar to the Nazi and Fascist aggression
of the 1930s, to which Truman himself frequently compared it. Stalin may have been acting
more as a Russian nationalist bent on protecting Russian national security than as a champion
of worldwide Communist revolution, but his stubbornness and paranoia about capitalist encir-
clement, and his lack of concern for world public opinion, made it diffi cult for the Americans
and western Europeans to deal with him in the Cold War or to distinguish between legitimate
Soviet security needs and an expansionist, Communist missionary zeal.
A series of Soviet actions fed the belief that Stalin’s ambitions transcended eastern
Europe. In Asia, as pledged at Yalta, the Soviets had declared war on Japan in August
1945 and moved into Manchuria, where they were well positioned to help the Chinese
Concerns about
Soviet expansion
The Allied military victory over Nazi Germany was followed by new distrust and confl ict in Europe. The Soviet Union took control over Communist satellite states, creating what Winston Churchill called an “iron curtain” against free institutions and ideas. This picture shows Churchill giving a famous speech in March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, where he fi rst described the new iron cur- tain that had descended across eastern Europe. (AP Photo)
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889104. The Cold War: The Opening Decade, 1945–1955
Communists. In Korea, once the Japanese were defeated, the Soviets by agreement occu-
pied the northern part of the country but also took steps to consolidate their occupation
zone into a Communist government. Iran was another trouble spot. The Americans,
British, and Russians had jointly occupied Iran during the war to forestall a Nazi takeover,
but the Soviets refused to evacuate their troops at the stipulated time and pressed for oil
concessions (such as the British and Americans already enjoyed).
The Soviets also sought a trusteeship over the former Italian colonies in North Africa,
within easy reach of the Suez Canal; and they massed troops on the Turkish border, press-
ing for joint control over the Black Sea straits and for naval access to the Mediterranean
through the Dardanelles—an old tsarist goal. The British, acting again in their earlier role
as the “Western” guardians of the Mediterranean and Middle East, bolstered the Turkish
defenses despite their own fi nancial weakness. In Greece, in a civil war that raged from
1946 to 1949, Communist guerrillas battled the British-supported royalist, or nationalist,
army. Stalin, perhaps recognizing his wartime agreement with Churchill that Greece would
remain in a sphere of Western infl uence, lent little aid to the Communists, but Tito’s new
Communist regime in Yugoslavia helped the Communist guerrillas. The Communist pres-
sures on Turkey, Greece, and Iran aroused British and American concerns about Soviet
strategic designs on the eastern Mediterranean and on the oil reserves of the Middle East.
One casualty of the postwar tension was a plan for international super-
vision of nuclear weapons. The United States knew that it was only a mat-
ter of time before the Soviets (and other nations) could build the atomic
bomb, because the scientifi c basis for it was known. At the moment the
British alone shared the secret. The United States proposed in 1946 that atomic energy be
controlled by an international authority and that its use be limited to peaceful purposes.
Such an international body would have the right to send inspectors into any country to
check violations and enforce sanctions that would not be subject to veto in the Security
Council. The Soviets objected and would not give up their veto. The idea of foreigners
freely examining their society was repugnant to them. They questioned the good faith of
the United States, which would not destroy its atomic bombs or halt further testing and pro-
duction until the proposed international authority was established (many Americans also
opposed international controls on their own nuclear arms). The British, in turn, fearful of
an American relapse into isolationism, undertook to become a nuclear power on their own.
The plan for international control foundered on mutual suspicion and mistrust. The Soviets
proceeded with their own atomic research (and effi cient espionage), which yielded results
even sooner than expected. In 1949 the Soviets successfully tested an atomic bomb, and the
nuclear arms race, universally dreaded, now began. The British also moved forward with
the independent development of their own atomic bomb, which they fi rst tested in 1952.
The political confl icts had meanwhile deepened in 1946 and 1947. The American pol-
icy of containment, as formulated by the State Department, postulated that the Russians
would expand wherever a power vacuum existed. Advocates for the strategy of contain-
ment argued that the Western powers should show both patience and fi rmness, and in time
Soviet society itself might change. In the meantime, however, the United States and its
European allies needed to maintain their military strength and use economic and other
counterpressures to resist the Soviets. Containment, the cornerstone of American policy,
came to be interpreted in more rigorously military terms than some of its early proponents
had intended. Meanwhile Churchill, even before the Soviets had fully completed the trans-
formation of eastern Europe into Communist satellites, made an eloquent speech in March
1946 in which he described the “iron curtain” that had descended between eastern and
Mutual mistrust
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War890
western Europe—“from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.” That spring the
United States turned down a pending Soviet request for a reconstruction loan, Congress
having decided that Lend-Lease should end with the war, and also cut off reparations
deliveries to the Soviets from the American occupation zone of Germany.
In 1947 fi nancially strained Great Britain, forced to cut back on its commitments in the
Mediterranean, informed Washington that it could no longer aid the anti-Communist forces
in Greece or support Turkey in its resistance to Soviet pressures. The United States quickly
moved to fi ll the vacuum. Truman not only agreed to provide the necessary assistance in the
Mediterranean but at the same time also formulated in March 1947 a broad national policy
to contain communism everywhere—“to assist free peoples who are resisting attempted
subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” The Truman Doctrine committed
the United States to unprecedented involvement in global military and economic affairs. The
Marshall Plan, which would provide billions of dollars for reconstruction of
the war-damaged European economies and infrastructure, was announced
by the American secretary of state, George Marshall, in 1947. Although
the plan was designed to hasten European economic recovery, it also served
the political purpose of checking Communist expansion in western Europe.
The American national security state began to take shape. A National Security Coun-
cil was created to advise the president on security matters, and a Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) was created to coordinate the gathering of intelligence. The CIA soon
received authorization to conduct covert operations as well, so that American agents began
operating widely in both western and eastern Europe.
The Soviets in their turn denounced the American capitalist and imperialist “warmon-
gers.” With the United States arming Greece and Turkey; American air bases established in
the Middle East; American armed forces in occupation of Japan, Okinawa, and South Korea;
and the Americans possessing the atomic bomb, the Soviets felt threatened
and encircled. Soviet suspicions mounted after 1947, but they also drew on
memories that went back to the foreign intervention in the Russian Revolution
and civil war in 1917–1920, the Soviets’ exclusion from the Munich Pact, and
the delay in opening up a second front in the Second World War as well as the
cessation of Lend-Lease at the end of the war and the rejection of a requested postwar loan.
In 1947 the Soviets decided they needed to reassert closer control over all Communist
parties in every part of the world. They therefore reestablished in new form the old Commu-
nist International, or Comintern, which had been abandoned in 1943 as a gesture of wartime
cooperation, renaming it the Communist Information Bureau, or Cominform. The Soviets
also replaced coalition governments in central and eastern Europe, in which the Communists
had formerly shared power, with regimes dominated by Communist parties. In Czechoslo-
vakia, for example, where President Benes’s democratic coalition had been viewed as a pos-
sible bridge between eastern and western Europe, the Czech Communist Party, faced with
defeat in a forthcoming election, seized power in February 1948. By this time, the postwar
Soviet-American suspicions and confl icts had created a mutual perception of permanent dan-
gers, which each side sought to counter by its own assertive political or military actions. The
increasingly bitter Cold War therefore spread into the local disputes and political confronta-
tions that were constantly developing in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere around the globe.
Germany: The Berlin Blockade and the Airlift of 1948–1949
The key to the rebuilding of Europe, and the most critical area of Soviet-Western conten-
tion, was Germany, divided by Allied agreement into four zones and occupied by the United
The Truman
Doctrine
Soviet suspicions
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891104. The Cold War: The Opening Decade, 1945–1955
States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France. The Allies had agreed to joint Allied policies
for a defeated Germany, even though each of the four powers was to occupy its separate zone.
Berlin also was divided into four separate Allied sectors, with joint administration for the city
as a whole. All had agreed that Germany should pay reparations, both in capital equipment
and current production, mainly to the Soviet Union, which had suffered most from German
military destruction, and that limits should be placed on German productive capacity.
At the war’s end the Americans, supported by the British, quickly came to favor the
economic reconstruction of Germany to accelerate European recovery and to reduce
The Soviet closure of the railways and roads into Berlin provoked one of the most dramatic events of the early Cold War: the Berlin Airlift. For almost a year (1948–1949) the Americans and their Western allies fl ew supplies into the isolated city on military aircraft such as the plane in this picture. Images of the airlift became part of the evolving Cold War struggle for international public opinion and an enduring symbol of the new links between West Berlin and the postwar Western Allies. (Bettmann/Corbis)
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War892
DEPORTATION AND RESETTLEMENT, 1939–1950 The age-old distribution of nationalities in central and eastern Europe was radically trans- formed between 1939 and 1950. About 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, with over 300,000 survivors emigrating to Israel by 1950, and millions of Germans, Poles, and others were forc- ibly uprooted.
Left panel: The fi rst stage began with the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1939, after which the Germans occupied western Poland, while the Russians annexed eastern Poland and the three Baltic republics. Western Poland received Poles expelled from Germany, while in eastern Poland about 2 million Poles were deported to Siberia, being replaced by about the same num- ber of Russians and Ukranians. Many Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians were moved to other parts of the Soviet Union. Thousands of Germans were “returned” to Germany from the Baltic republics and from places such as Romania, where they had long formed German enclaves. The “Volga Germans,” Tatars, and others in south Russia were sent to Siberia.
0 200 400 miles
1939–1944 (Post–World War I Boundaries)
180,000 Balts
2,000,0 00 Poles
2,000,000 Russians and Uk rainians
50 0,0
00 Ge
rm ans
730,000 Germans
Poles
130 ,00
0 G e
rm an
s
1,200,000
AUSTRIA HUNGARY
U . S . S . R .
BULGARIA
YUGOSLAVIA
ROMANIA
P O L A N D
ESTONIA
LATVIA
LITHUANIA
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
G E
R M
A N
Y
UKRAINE
TO SIBERIA
European dependence on American fi nancial aid. The Ruhr, in the western zone, was still
Europe’s industrial heartland. The Soviets, on the other hand, were determined to use
German resources to repair the devastation in their own country. They removed large
amounts of food and stripped entire plants of machinery in their zone. The Western Allies
refused to permit the dismantling of factories in their zones and insisted that the Soviets
take their share of current production only from their own zone. By May
1946 joint administration of Germany had all but broken down. Early in
1947 the United States and Britain united their two zones; the French, over-
coming their initial reluctance to see a revived Germany, soon merged their
Two Germanys
emerge
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893104. The Cold War: The Opening Decade, 1945–1955
0 200 400 miles
1945–1950 (Post–World War II Boundaries)
320,000 Jews to Israel (1945–1950 only) 120,000 from Poland 91,000 from Romania 37,000 from Bulgaria 33,000 from Turkey 22,000 from Czechoslovakia 17,000 from Hungary
300,000 Balts
2,300,000 Russians and Ukrainians
1,800,00 0 Ukr
ainia ns,
Krim Tar
tar s,
Kalm uck
s, e tc.
4,500,000 Poles 3,500
,000 Germans
500,000 Germans
11 ,60
0,0 00 G
erman s
300 ,0
00 Ba
lt s
AUSTRIA HUNGARY
RUSSIAN S.F.S.R.
BULGARIA
YUGOSLAVIA
ROMANIA
P O L A N D
ESTONIAN S.S.R.
LATVIAN S.S.R.
LITHUANIAN S.S.R.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
UKRAINIAN S.S.R.
TO SIBERIAMOLDAVIAN S.S.R.
EAST
GERMANY
WEST GERMANY
BYELORUSSIAN S.S.R.
Right panel: A second stage of displacements came with the Soviet victory and collapse of Hitler’s Reich. The German–Polish frontier was now moved westward to the Oder River. Millions of Germans from east of the Oder, along with other millions from the Sudeten regions of Czechoslovakia, from Hungary, and from Romania, were thrown back into what remained of Germany, most fl eeing to the western zones. Poles streamed into what had been Germany east of the Oder; others came into Poland from Ukraine. Russians moved into what had been eastern Poland and the Baltic states. Ukranians and various non-Russian minorities were sent to Siberia. Some Balts escaped to western Europe; others were redistributed to various places in the Soviet Union.
Amid all of these movements of people, the most conspicuous, long-term changes, in addition to the virtual disappearance of East European Jews, were the expulsion of the Germans from eastern Europe and a westward movement of Poles and Russians. (Westermanns Atlas zur Weltgeschichte)
zone as well. The Western powers encouraged the reconstruction of governments in the
individual German states and the convening of a constituent assembly to set up a federal
republic. The Soviets, in their zone, took steps to establish a Communist-dominated gov-
ernment. Two Germanys were emerging.
In June 1948 the Western powers, recognizing the need for drastic currency reform
to cope with infl ation and encourage West German economic revival, sud-
denly revoked the old worthless currency and at a 1-to-10 ratio issued a new
German mark, the Deutsche mark. The Soviets, who had not been consulted,
objected to this violation of the wartime agreement to treat Germany as a
Berlin blockade and
airlift
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War894
single economic unit. In retaliation they blockaded all road and rail access to Berlin, which
lay 100 miles deep within the Soviet zone. The blockade was a sharp challenge and test of
will. If the Western powers abandoned Berlin, they could also lose authority in other parts of
Europe and open the way for Soviet westward expansion, and perhaps expansion elsewhere.
Knowing that they could not resort to military measures against the much stronger Soviet
ground forces, the Allies responded with a massive airlift. For close to a year, American
and western European aircraft fl ew in thousands of tons of food and other supplies to the
occupation forces and to the 3 million inhabitants of West Berlin. The Soviets harassed the
planes but avoided direct confrontation and, fi nally, in May 1949 lifted the blockade.
Each side now proceeded with the formation of a German government. The Federal
Republic of Germany, its capital in the small Rhineland city of Bonn, came into existence
in September 1949; the German Democratic Republic, its capital in the eastern sector of
Berlin, one month later. There were now two Germanys, and the division of Europe had
hardened along a rigid new political boundary.
The Atlantic Alliance
In 1948 Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg formed a West
European Union for collective self-defense, but it had only limited military resources. In
1949 the United States took the lead in creating a larger military alliance and collective
security system. The United States, Canada, and ten European nations met in Washington
and agreed to military arrangements for the joint defense of western Europe. The Atlantic
Pact was a military alliance of unlimited duration and broad scope: “an armed attack
against one or more” was to be considered “an attack against all.” The United States for-
mally committed itself to the security of western Europe and agreed to supply funds and
equipment for European rearmament. It was the fi rst such military alliance of its kind in
American history and another example of the deepening American involvement in the
multiple spheres of European political and economic life.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) emerged with a net-
work of military arrangements and a chain of command headed by Gen-
eral Eisenhower. Because West Germany remained the most vulnerable
target for Soviet expansion, large numbers of American troops (eventu-
ally over 300,000) were stationed there as the nucleus of the NATO armed forces. But
with overwhelming Soviet superiority in ground forces, the NATO defense strategy was
based primarily on American air power rather than on ground troops alone. The treaty
solemnly affi rmed American determination not to abandon the Continent. In later years
the West Europeans became restive with American leadership, or, alternatively, feared an
American decoupling from Europe, but NATO remained western Europe’s shield
against Soviet aggression. The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO were
the three prongs of the American and western European response to a potential Soviet
challenge.
Meanwhile the West European countries, with the aid of the Marshall Plan, were mak-
ing an impressive economic recovery and cooperating with each other (the Marshall Plan
is discussed in the next section of this chapter). The Soviets could not be expected to view
with equanimity the revival and growing unity of western Europe. American fi nancial and
military assistance, NATO, the containment policy, all defensive in Western eyes, and
indeed provoked by Soviet expansionism, were hostile acts from the Soviet perspective.
The Soviet Union drew its six eastern European satellite or client states, variously styled
NATO
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895104. The Cold War: The Opening Decade, 1945–1955
people’s republics or people’s democracies, closer to it. It formalized economic ties by
creating in 1949 a Council for Mutual Economic Aid and a few years later coordinated the
existing network of military alliances in the Warsaw Pact of 1955. The Soviets also added
to their military and air power and continued their nuclear research.
By 1949 Stalin’s postwar expansion seemed contained and Truman could claim suc-
cess for his policies. The Soviets had dropped their demands on Turkey and departed from
Iran. Insurrectionary strikes launched by Communist parties in western Europe had failed,
as did a Communist bid for power in Italy in the elections of 1948, in which the Vatican
and the United States strongly supported the anti-Communist camp. Marshal Tito in 1948
successfully defi ed the Cominform, and Yugoslavia went its separate Communist way.
In Greece the American- and British-backed Greek royalists triumphed in 1949 against the
Communist guerrillas. The Soviet blockade of Berlin had failed to drive the Americans
and West Europeans from the city.
The rivalry over Europe thus led to a stalemate by about 1950. The
Soviet threat to western Europe diminished. The continent remained
divided into a western and eastern Europe, Germany into two Germanys, Berlin into West
and East Berlin. After the failure of the Soviet blockade of Berlin, there was no such overt
confl ict or military confrontation within Europe. Despite renewed threats to Berlin, each
side recognized the strength and security concerns of the other. But any thoughts that the
world might settle into peace, no matter how uneasy, were shattered in June 1950. The
Western-Soviet struggle shifted to Asia.
America, Europe, and New Confl icts in Asia
In Asia new confl icts also developed during the early postwar years. The Chinese Com-
munists triumphed over the Nationalists, and Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Repub-
lic of China in 1949. In Japan the United States used its military occupation from 1945 to
1952 to foster parliamentary institutions and revive the Japanese economy, which would
begin to grow rapidly. Rejecting Soviet demands for a share in the occupation of Japan, the
United States, with British and French approval, lodged full authority in General Douglas
MacArthur as supreme commander of the occupation forces. But a new Asian war soon
erupted in Korea, drawing in both American and European forces.
The Western Allies and the Soviet Union had agreed during the Second World War
that Korea, once an object of imperialist rivalry between tsarist Russia and Japan, but
under Japanese control since 1910, would become free and independent after Japan’s
defeat. In 1945 the United States, for reasons of military expediency, pro-
posed that Soviet troops temporarily occupy the northern part of the coun-
try down to the 38th parallel; American troops would temporarily occupy
the southern half. But postwar negotiations for a unifi ed Korea foundered.
The U.S.S.R. established a satellite government in its occupation zone and built up North
Korean military strength. The United States developed its own client state in the south and
lent economic and military assistance. Despite the original plans for a united Korean state,
two Koreas had come into existence.
Following a series of border skirmishes between North and South Korea, the North
Koreans launched a sudden, full-scale invasion of the south in June 1950. American and
western European leaders saw the invasion as an open act of Communist military aggres-
sion, the fi rst such clear-cut military aggression of the Cold War. The timing of the inva-
sion seems to have surprised the Soviets, however, because they were then boycotting the
Stalemate in Europe
Korea after 1945
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War896
Security Council of the UN to protest the exclusion of the People’s Republic of China.
They were thus unable to exercise their veto when the Council condemned the invasion
and authorized military countermeasures; but the Soviets quietly furnished
military aid to North Korea and denounced the Americans and western
Europeans for intervening in Asian affairs. President Truman, who viewed
the North Korean invasion as a new example of Soviet expansionism, used
the authority of the Security Council resolution to send American combat
troops to Korea and to approve air strikes on North Korean territory. Gen-
eral MacArthur, the wartime hero of the Pacifi c War who had successfully presided over
the occupation of Japan, was named commander of the UN multinational forces. Although
these forces consisted largely of Americans, a number of western European nations also
sent troops and supported the Korean campaign.
After early setbacks, the American-led UN army drove the North Koreans back above
the 38th parallel, and then rapidly moved toward the Yalu River, the boundary between
Korea and the People’s Republic of China. Mao, incensed at the arrival of a multinational
army on the Chinese border, took action to assert China’s new international infl uence. In
late October 1950 a large Chinese army suddenly appeared and drove the
advancing UN forces back below the 38th parallel. It was now an entirely
new war, to which China had committed major military resources. The
European allies, at fi rst gratifi ed by the American show of determination
in Asia, grew worried that the war would escalate into a global, possibly
nuclear confl ict. President Truman, also growing concerned about a wider war in which
the United States would lack the full support of its European allies, replaced the belligerent
General MacArthur with another commander and sought to negotiate a truce.
In July 1951 a cease-fi re agreement brought large-scale fi ghting to a halt, but armi-
stice negotiations dragged on until 1953. An armistice was eventually signed, drawing
the line of partition between North and South Korea roughly where the fi ghting had
begun three years earlier, at the 38th parallel. Korea thus became offi cially divided, like
Germany, into communist and anticommunist countries.
UN authorizes
military action
Chinese army enters
Korea
The Korean War was a key test for the American and western European policy of contain- ing communism, yet, like all modern wars, it disrupted the lives of millions of civilians, including those who knew little about the larger political issues at stake. This Korean girl and her baby brother were pho- tographed near an American tank in the summer of 1951, but their expressions convey some of the timeless, local struggle to survive amid the violent inter- national confl icts of govern- ments and global powers. (RV Spencer/Interim Archives/Getty
Images)
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897105. Western Europe: Economic Reconstruction
In addition to the costly loss of life on all sides, the Korean War also affected the global
economy. The United States itself could not supply all of the military needs and expenditures
of the war, so the confl ict became a stimulus for the economic growth of western Europe and
Japan. It also quickened the pressures for German rearmament. In American eyes, the costs of
the war were justifi ed because a fl agrant act of aggression had been checked
in Asia. Most western Europeans, even those who were concerned about the
recklessness of General MacArthur, found reassuring implications for Europe
in the fi rm American response to Communist military aggression.
The Korean War also had direct political repercussions in Europe. Despite continu-
ing misgivings among the French and other Europeans over a revival of German military
strength, the American government pressed for West German rearmament. When a French
proposal for a European Defense Community (with a “European army,” in
which the Germans were to serve as “European soldiers”) failed to pass the
French legislature in 1954, West Germany was authorized to create an army
of its own under the overall command of NATO. Concern over a resurgent
German militarism was receding in the context of the Cold War. The West
German constitution guaranteed civilian control over the military. A strong antimilitarist
movement had emerged in the country itself, and a new democratic political culture was
developing. In 1955 the Federal Republic of Germany became a full member of NATO.
The decades that followed the confl icts of the early Cold War in Europe and Asia
brought new crises, including confrontations over Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam, and the Middle
East, to name only the most important. Above all, a mounting nuclear arms race between
the two superpowers and the stockpiling of the most formidable weaponry ever assembled
continued to threaten Europe and the wider world. Amid the ongoing confl icts of the Cold
War, however, Europeans steadily rebuilt their cities, industries, commercial infrastruc-
tures, and social systems. This era of remarkable economic recovery and political recon-
struction brought Europeans back into the global economy and contributed to the growth of
Europe’s population, even as European governments confronted a new wave of anticolonial
movements in their empires and the evolving challenges of eastern European communism.
105. WESTERN EUROPE: ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION
The Second World War had left Europe in a worse state of disorder than the First. It had ruined
one of the world’s chief industrial areas and brought its economic system to collapse. Even
when the worst local devastation was repaired, suffering and distress persisted. Europe could
no longer pay for the imports that it needed. During the war the West Europeans, and especially
the British, had used up their overseas investments and lost a good share of the shipping ser-
vices they had once provided. Overseas countries had built up their own industries and needed
those of Europe less, and the United States had taken over markets once in European hands.
At the same time, western Europe was not to be written off. Its population exceeded
that of either of the superpowers. Even in ruins, it still possessed one of the world’s leading
industrial plants and an educated workforce with the skills needed to rehabilitate and run
it. The Europeans did not wish to be rescued by either of the superpowers. Most rejected
communism as a modern form of enslavement. Yet they feared excessive dependence on
the United States. Memories of the stock-market crash of 1929, the economic collapse of
Europe after the withdrawal of American capital, and the Great Depression bred skepti-
cism about American capitalism.
Economic effects of
Korean War
Political effects in
Europe
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War898
The Marshall Plan and European Recovery
For the non-Communist world, the single most important economic real-
ity in the early postwar years was the productivity of the American eco-
nomic system. The American economy had expanded enormously during
the war. At the war’s end the United States accounted for two-thirds of the
world’s industrial production and held two-thirds of the world’s gold. Its
gross national product was two and a half times higher than in 1939; its exports were three
times greater. Despite predictions about postwar economic collapse, its economy grew at
unprecedented rates in the 1950s and 1960s.
When Lend-Lease ended after the war, the United States sent billions of dollars worth
of goods to western Europe to relieve distress and made loans to individual states, espe-
cially to Britain. But the Europeans themselves quickly set about to rebuild their econo-
mies. Within two years, by 1947, the economies of western Europe were approaching
prewar levels of production. American aid was still desperately needed, however, to con-
tinue the purchase of food, fuel, raw materials, and industrial parts essential to full recov-
ery. By the spring of 1947 that recovery appeared at risk. The poorest harvest in a century
was feared. With Cold War tensions mounting, Communist parties in France and Italy
moved away from earlier cooperation in postwar reconstruction and launched a wave of
strikes. Even if the Soviet Union was not actively promoting revolution in western Europe,
understanding perhaps that the United States and its allies would not tolerate overt revolu-
tion there, the Americans were concerned about European stability. Between the two
superpowers the Soviets had more to gain by chaos in western Europe and the United
States had more to gain by its rebuilding.
American economic aid so far had been improvised and piecemeal. In June 1947
Secretary of State George C. Marshall used the occasion of his Harvard commencement
address to invite the Europeans to cooperate in drawing up blueprints for a
broad program of reconstruction, for which the United States would provide
the fi nancial support. The plan, as formulated, was “directed not against
country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.”
To reinforce its nonpolitical character, the United States extended the invi-
tation to all European governments, including the Soviet Union and the East European
states. The Soviet Union rejected the proposal and forbade the participation of its East
European satellites, denouncing the plan as “a new venture in American imperialism.”
The West European countries, by contrast, responded eagerly. Under the Marshall
Plan, or European Recovery Program, as enacted by Congress, American aid was coordi-
nated with each country’s needs and with joint European priorities to maximize the benefi ts.
The Offi ce for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) in Paris, with which the Ameri-
cans worked closely, identifi ed projects, coordinated the planning, and allocated the funds.
The results of the Marshall Plan exceeded the boldest anticipations of
its American sponsors. The West Europeans utilized their technical and
managerial skills to improve transportation facilities, modernize their infra-
structure, and expand their productive capacity. They reduced trade barriers
among themselves and facilitated trade by setting up a payments union.
Hard currency, now available for imports, reduced the fi nancial pressures on the western
European governments and thus curtailed the need for further austerity. The Marshall Plan
accelerated the recovery already under way, enhanced the economic exchanges with the
United States, and encouraged the economic cooperation of the European countries with
each other.
U.S. economic
strength
The Marshall Plan
Results of the
Marshall Plan
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899105. Western Europe: Economic Reconstruction
While the United States thus used its economic resources to help revive its com-
petitors, the Marshall Plan also served American interests by restoring a world market,
of which the United States would be a principal benefi ciary. By creating markets for
American exports in Europe, it helped fuel the postwar economic boom in the United
States. The Americans satisfi ed their humanitarian impulse, served their economic needs,
and reduced the possible drift of Europeans toward the Communist camp. At the same time
the Marshall Plan sharpened the division between the Soviet bloc and western Europe.
Economic Growth in Western Europe
For West Germany the currency reform of 1948, Marshall Plan aid, and the economic
opportunities opened up by the Korean War ignited a stunning economic revival and
expansion, the Wirtschaftswunder, or “economic miracle.” By 1950 the Federal Republic of Germany was exceeding prewar Germany’s production levels, and by 1958 it was the
leading industrial country of western Europe. France, Italy, and other West
European countries experienced an “economic miracle” also. For two and a
half decades, from 1948 to 1974 (when a global recession set in), the west-
ern European economies grew at unprecedented and uninterrupted rates of
growth. The West Europeans basked in prosperity and rising living stan-
dards. Europeans would later speak of the “silver ’50s” and the “golden
’60s”; the French would speak also of the “30 glorious years.” Although Britain’s econ-
omy, burdened by older industries and the loss of overseas markets, lagged behind the
growth in other countries, it too grew faster than at any time in the interwar years.
The prosperity of western Europe in this era derived from a competitive, capitalist,
free-market and private-enterprise economy, but it was accompanied almost everywhere
by varying degrees of extensive economic planning, systematic govern-
ment intervention, and a network of social services to help cope with the
instability of competitive capitalism and the business cycle. No one any-
where wished to repeat the hard times and suffering of the Great Depres-
sion. Keynes’s theories about the wider economic stimulus of government
spending, fi rst formulated in the 1930s but without many adherents at that
time, took hold in the postwar era and dominated government policy in
the 1950s and 1960s even when conservative governments were in control. Governments
kept their economies under close surveillance and used their fi scal and monetary powers
to promote investment, production, and employment and to control infl ation. They took
“countercyclical” measures; that is, at signs of decline in the business cycle they increased
government spending. Full employment was accepted as a goal. Improved statistical tech-
niques and economic forecasting, although far from precision instruments, made economic
planning and “fi ne-tuning” feasible. Such planning, however, took the form of guidance
and direction, not coercion, and differed markedly from the rigid, detailed, and doctrinaire
centralized planning of the Soviet Union and the eastern European Communist states.
In Britain, France, and Italy (less so in West Germany, which had lived through state
control under the Nazis), the postwar governments also nationalized a number of the key
sectors of the economy to bring them under government control. But even in these mixed
economies, the private capitalist sector represented the major share of economic activity.
In all western Europe economic growth became virtually an obsession as both govern-
ments and people came to expect growth rates far exceeding those of the past.
When the sustained economic growth led to a labor shortage, West Germany and other
countries invited foreign workers to join their labor force. Turks, Greeks, Yugoslavs,
The silver ‘50s and
golden ‘60s
Economic planning
and government
intervention
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War900
Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians (mostly from southern Italy) were invited in as “guest
workers.” Four and a half million workers arrived in the Federal Republic of Germany
alone, over half of them Turks, who did not return home but often formed large enclaves in
which people maintained many of their own cultural traditions and identities. After the
postwar collapse of the European colonial empires, immigrants from the former European
colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean also arrived in western Europe in large num-
bers. Beginning in the 1950s, a steady stream of immigrants fl owed into Britain from India,
Pakistan, the West Indies, and Africa. France drew large numbers from its
former North African colonies, especially Algeria, and from its former col-
onies in western Africa. The Netherlands became home for many Indone-
sians. Later political refugees also arrived in Europe from Vietnam and
A steady stream of
immigrants
The European “economic miracle” of the 1950s and 1960s brought new jobs and wealth to workers throughout Europe. This picture of British workers in 1957 shows women assembling circuit panels for television sets, one of the important new consumer products in post–World War II economies and social life. (Arthur Tanner/Fox Photos/ Getty Images)
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901106. Western Europe: Political Reconstruction
other parts of Asia. The new Europeans often brought different cultures and religions into
European cities. Most European societies became more multicultural, and there was more
racial diversity everywhere. Mosques became a common sight in neighborhoods where
previously there had been only churches or synagogues. The infl ux of guest workers and
immigrants by the millions later created new social confl icts and resentments, especially in
less affl uent times after the 1970s. The growing presence of large immigrant communities
led to new social friction, often overtly racial or religious, testing the fl exibility and toler-
ance of European societies that were increasingly multiethnic and culturally diverse.
A postwar baby boom and an infl ux of at least 13 million immigrants and refugees
increased the population of western Europe by 25 percent between 1945 and 1970. But by
the 1960s the birth rate of the West Europeans began to level off and western Europe’s
population began to show signs of long-term decline—a demographic pattern that has also
reappeared in other modern, wealthy societies around the world.
In these same postwar years the welfare state grew, going well beyond its
pre-1914 origins or its expansion in the interwar years. The postwar govern-
ments gave a high priority to social objectives, to what the French Resistance
charter had called “a more just social order”: the right to a suitable job, gov-
ernment compensation in the event of unemployment or disability, social security in old age,
free or subsidized health care, and the redistribution of wealth and income through progres-
sive taxation. The protection of the welfare state was intended to be universal, not confi ned,
as in earlier times, to the poor and disadvantaged. Its social objectives could be achieved in
the 1950s and 1960s because of a salutary interplay of government, management, and labor,
which all shared in the consensus about investment and growth. Only later, from the late 1970s
on, did a growing number of critics attract political support by arguing that all these entitle-
ments had become excessive and an impediment to economic growth and competitiveness.
106. WESTERN EUROPE: POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION
Western Europe also confronted overwhelming challenges of political reconstruction at
the end of the war. Britain was economically exhausted and in the process of liquidating
its empire. France, recovering from the collapse of 1940, the occupation, and the wartime
Vichy regime, became engaged in costly colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria. Italy had
to renew its political life after two decades of fascism. Germany, after the Nazi defeat,
was divided and under military occupation. Nevertheless political reconstruction went for-
ward. Britain resumed its role as the world’s oldest parliamentary democracy; France and
Italy adopted new constitutions; out of the western zone of occupied Germany the Federal
Republic of Germany emerged in 1949.
The smaller states of western Europe also resumed their parliamentary democracies. Only
Spain and Portugal remained under prewar dictatorships until those regimes also came to an
end in the mid-1970s. The right to participate in political life continued to expand throughout
western Europe. Women fi nally received the vote in France and Italy as the war drew to a
close and in Switzerland in 1971. And in another suffrage reform that went almost unnoticed,
the legal voting age in most countries was quietly reduced to 18 in the 1970s.
The earliest postwar elections showed the political strength of a new
desire for social reforms, which also advanced because right-wing politi-
cal groups, as in France, lost infl uence after their wartime collaborations
with the Nazis. The Resistance movements had called during the war for a federal union
Growth of the welfare
state
The spirit of reform
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War902
of Europe to prevent future wars and had emphasized the need for economic and social
rights as well as political freedom. Postwar governments were therefore asked to provide
protection against the insecurities of old age, disability, ill health, and unemployment.
Such ideals shaped the political debates and social reforms in the fi rst years after 1945, but
democratic politics soon reverted to older patterns of bargain and compromise.
The welfare state idea persisted, as did the evolving desire for a more integrated Europe,
but politics became less rigidly ideological. Socialists, following the Scandinavian model,
became Social Democratic reformists, accepting capitalism but insisting that they could
manage capitalist economies more effectively than liberals, centrists, or conservatives. In
France and Italy the presence of large Communist parties, with strong attachments to the
Soviet Union in the early postwar years, complicated the search for pragmatic solutions to
social problems, and yet the Communists also participated in parliaments and rejected rev-
olutionary violence within their own societies. In the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy,
and France, the Christian Democrats, drawing inspiration from Roman Catholic religious
and ethical precepts, played a key role in shaping and governing the new regimes. They
accepted the welfare state but backed away from the egalitarianism of the socialists and,
over time, increasingly came to represent conservative and business interests.
Great Britain: Labour and Conservative
In Great Britain, the fi rst parliamentary elections in ten years, in July 1945, unseated Win-
ston Churchill and the Conservative-led wartime coalition and voted in a Labour govern-
ment. For the fi rst time in its history Labour had a majority of its own. Governing from
1945 to 1951, with Clement Attlee as prime minister, it set Britain on a new course of
parliamentary socialism and the modern welfare state.
On the premise that the country’s basic industries could not be left
to the unplanned anarchy of capitalism and unregulated competition, the
Labour government nationalized the Bank of England, the coal mines, elec-
tricity and gas, iron and steel, and other parts of the economy. Because
four-fi fths of industry remained in private hands, it was a mixed economy that emerged.
At the same time Labour greatly expanded and revamped the social insurance program
inherited from the Liberal reforms of 1906–1914. During the war, in 1942, the British
economist William Henry Beveridge had prepared a government report that proposed to
guarantee “full employment in a free society” and social security for all “from the cradle
to the grave.” Drawing on the Beveridge Report, Labour now extended insurance cover-
age for unemployment, old age, and other contingencies; inaugurated a comprehensive
national health service; and increased income and inheritance taxes.
In the elections of 1951 Labour lost its majority in Parliament. The Conservatives
returned to offi ce and governed for the next 13 years under a succession of prime ministers.
After 1964 the two parties alternated in offi ce. The shifting electoral fortunes stemmed
from disagreement within the country over the welfare state, dissatisfaction with the per-
formance of the economy, concerns about the processes of decolonization in the British
Empire, and frustration at Britain’s diminished global status.
During their years in offi ce, the Conservatives restored some nationalized industries to
private control but did little else to dismantle the welfare state. Both parties recognized,
however, that the social reforms of the welfare state could be absorbed only if the economy
prospered. But there were nagging economic problems. The liquidation of investments to
pay for the Second World War, the loss of export markets, and a decline in income from
shipping and other services adversely affected the country’s balance of payments and
Labour government
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903106. Western Europe: Political Reconstruction
weakened the British pound. With American fi nancial aid, an intensifi ed
export drive, an austerity program that reduced imports, and a curtailment
of military and imperial commitments, the economy gradually improved,
but the British failed at the time to rebuild their obsolescent capital equip-
ment and infrastructure as effectively as their West European neighbors
across the Channel.
Such problems impeded the growth of Britain’s economy and made British workers
vulnerable to competition from more effi cient foreign industries. When infl ation set in dur-
ing the late 1960s and intensifi ed in the 1970s, the trade unions demanded wage increases
to match rising prices. Strikes and prolonged work stoppages troubled the economy and
divided British society. Until the late 1970s, when a new political era opened, the question
was whether Labour or the Conservatives could better manage British decline, not how
they could overcome it.
Meanwhile troubles in Northern Ireland persisted. After the partition in
1922, as noted earlier, the six predominately Protestant counties of North-
ern Ireland, had remained part of the United Kingdom. The Catholic minor-
ity, about one-third of the population, protested militantly that they were
victims of political and economic discrimination and pressed for annexation to the Repub-
lic of Ireland. Open violence broke out in 1969, infl amed by the Irish Republican Army on
the one hand and Protestant extremists on the other. In the sectarian violence that followed,
over 3,000 persons lost their lives.
The French Republic: Fourth and Fifth
After the liberation of France, General Charles de Gaulle, the very incarnation of the Resis-
tance, became provisional president and elections were held for a Constituent Assembly.
Because no one wanted to reestablish the discredited Third Republic, the French under-
took the process of creating a new republican government. The parties of the Right were
discredited by their role in the Vichy regime, but the Left emerged from the war with new
strength and prestige. The Communists, the Socialists, and the Popular Republican Move-
ment ( Mouvement Républicain Populaire, or MRP), a Catholic progressive party akin to Christian Democrats elsewhere on the Continent, formed the provisional government. The
Left pressed for a systematic purge of collaborators, despite the diffi culties in determin-
ing levels of guilt. The purge had begun as soon as the army reached French soil, taking
the form of angry drumhead trials and executions. Gradually, the process
was brought under more orderly judicial procedures. Even so, the trials of
Marshal Pétain and Pierre Laval were impassioned showpieces. The debate
over collaboration and trials of collaborators continued to divide the coun-
try in later decades, in part because some of the most egregious acts of violence against the
French Jews and others had originated with the French Vichy government and not the Nazi
occupiers. Such issues were critically examined in memoirs, controversial history books,
and fi lms, including, for example, the much-debated documentary The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) by the fi lmmaker Marcel Ophuls.
The Fourth Republic’s machinery of government differed in only a few details from
the Third. Once again the presidency was only ceremonial and the premier and cabinet
were responsible to an all-powerful National Assembly. De Gaulle made no secret of his
dislike for the new constitution, the return of party rivalries, and the dominant role of the
legislature, all of which interfered with his vision of a strong France ready to resume a lead-
ership role in world affairs. He resigned in protest in December 1946. The Communists,
Britain’s economic
challenges
Troubles in Northern
Ireland
Purging collaborators
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War904
Socialists, and MRP continued their tripartite coalition under Socialist leadership until the
Communists, in the heightened tensions of the Cold War, fomented a series of strikes and
were expelled from the cabinet in May 1947.
Parliamentary division and ministerial instability grew more acute.
Periodically de Gaulle returned to the political scene, heading a movement
called the “Rally of the French People,” which he described as “above
parties.” Except for the brief reform ministry of Pierre Mendès-France in
1954–1955, governmental ineffectiveness in the midst of colonial wars as
well as recurring domestic and foreign crises fi lled the public with cynicism and hostility.
Yet despite its record of political instability—25 cabinets from 1946 to 1958—the
Fourth Republic enacted signifi cant legislation. The provisional government had national-
ized several key industries, and as in Britain a mixed economy gradually emerged.
“Rally of the French
People”
French leaders sought to revive the national economy and demographic vitality after the Nazi occupation and collapse of international trade during the Second World War. Although France struggled to establish a stable political system, a postwar “baby boom” (encouraged by govern- ment benefi ts for families) led to a rapid growth of the population, an expansion of schools such as this Parisian kindergarten, and a steady increase in trade and industrial production. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
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905106. Western Europe: Political Reconstruction
The existing social security legislation was expanded. An economic plan, drawn up by
Jean Monnet, a farsighted economist and public offi cial who later played a large role in the
creation of the European Economic Community, enlarged and modernized the country’s
economic base and paved the way for industrial expansion. A fl exible form of economic
planning, inspired by Monnet, in which government, management, and labor played mutu-
ally reinforcing roles, became an accepted part of French economic life. By 1952 produc-
tion levels were 1½ times those of 1938, and industrial output was growing at an annual
rate of over 5 percent. From 1946 to 1966 production tripled. (In the half-century from
1889 to 1940, it had no more than doubled.) The country also displayed a demographic
vitality, at least for a time, that confounded pessimists who had long worried about France’s
low birth rate.
What fi nally brought down the Fourth Republic was the strain of trying to preserve
the old French colonial empire. France alone, of all the major powers, was almost con-
tinuously at war for close to 15 years, fi ghting colonial wars. It faced economic problems
that resembled the need for postwar reconstruction in Germany, Italy, and
Japan, but the former Axis nations emerged from their defeats with no rest-
less colonies to subdue. The new French constitution of 1946 recognized
the emergence of new political aspirations in the French Empire by giving
the colonies representation in Paris but such reforms did not satisfy nationalists pressing
for independence. From 1946 to 1954 the French forces unsuccessfully fought against
independence movements in Indochina until they fi nally had to withdraw. Then, within
a matter of months, the Arab movement for independence in Algeria rose up in another
anticolonial war, which further drained France’s material resources, political morale, and
national confi dence. The European settlers in Algeria and army leaders adamantly opposed
French withdrawal and staged an insurrectionary coup in Algiers in May 1958. When civil
war threatened, the country turned to the one man it believed could save the situation—
Charles de Gaulle, then living quietly in self-imposed retirement. The army leaders, the
settlers in Algeria, and the parties of the Right were convinced, given de Gaulle’s solici-
tude for the army and French national pride, that he would maintain French control of
Algeria. De Gaulle accepted the summons. In June 1958 the National Assembly approved
his appointment as premier, giving him emergency powers for six months, including the
authority to prepare a new constitution.
The Fifth French Republic thus emerged from the crisis in Algeria and from the politi-
cal program of Charles de Gaulle. In the autumn of 1958 the new constitution was over-
whelmingly accepted in a popular referendum, and de Gaulle was shortly thereafter elected
president. The presidency, as de Gaulle had long urged, became the fulcrum of power. The
president was the fi nal authority in foreign affairs and national defense. The president
named the prime minister (as the premier was now called) and had the right to dissolve the
National Assembly, call for new elections, submit important questions to popular referen-
dums, and assume emergency powers, all of which de Gaulle did during his years in offi ce.
Political instability disappeared; in the fi rst 11 years of the Fifth Republic there were only
three cabinets.
DeGaulle settled the Algerian crisis in his own way. Sensitive to the
revolution sweeping the colonial world, he came to recognize that France
must accept a policy of independence for Algeria, which the people of both
France and Algeria voted to approve in separate referendums in the spring
and summer of 1962. Even earlier he granted independence to all of the French colonies
in sub-Saharan Africa. With peace, governmental stability, and economic prosperity, the
French reconciled themselves to the loss of empire and looked for new ways to play a
Colonial wars
France under
de Gaulle
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War906
leading role on the world scene under de Gaulle. France became the world’s fi fth largest
industrial power in the 1960s, behind only the United States, the U.S.S.R., West Germany,
and Japan. In 1960 France became the fourth nation, along with the United States, the
U.S.S.R., and Britain, to develop a nuclear bomb. De Gaulle even created an independent
nuclear strike force, but the French also became western Europe’s largest producers of
nuclear energy for peacetime energy needs.
After the settlement of the Algerian crisis, de Gaulle built a kind of plebiscitary
democracy by direct appeals to the electorate. Although civil liberties were preserved and
free elections were maintained, much of the old democratic ferment disappeared. Skilled
technicians ran the affairs of state, and de Gaulle, an uncrowned republican monarch, pre-
sided as arbiter over the nation’s destinies.
The nation grew restless. There was increasing skepticism about de Gaulle’s tech-
nocratic system of government and his extravagant posturing in world affairs. Suddenly,
in May 1968, grievances in the overcrowded universities sparked a revolt
that led to demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of students and then
brought 10 million workers out on strike, paralyzing the economy and
threatening the regime itself. Students demanded reforms in the education
system, but many also supported the striking workers who agitated for new
rights in their factories as well as better wages. De Gaulle survived the revolt but only after
assuring himself of army support. Stressing the threat of communism and domestic chaos,
he won an overwhelming majority for his party in new elections. Although there was wide
support for institutional reforms in French society, the country as a whole rejected the
outburst of radical political agitation, which was similar to revolts of students and young
people all over the globe in 1968. Educational reforms and other changes were introduced,
but the strikes and social disruptions of 1968 hurt the French economy. In 1969 de Gaulle
chose to turn a referendum on various constitutional and regional reforms into a vote of
confi dence in himself. When his proposed reforms lost by a small margin, he resigned
and retired to his country estate, where he died a year later, an august, heroic, austere, and
always controversial fi gure whose exploits in war and peace assured him a lasting place in
France’s history.
The Federal Republic of Germany
To communicate to the German people and to the entire world the enormity of the Nazi
crimes, the four wartime Allies had convened an international trial in 1945–1946 at
Nuremberg. Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels were already dead, but 22
other Nazi leaders and the major Nazi organizations were indicted for
crimes against peace, that is, plotting and waging a war of aggression; war
crimes, which were defi ned as violations of the accepted laws and conven-
tions of warfare; and crimes against humanity, that is, acts of mass murder
and genocide. The evidence of evil deeds, massive and incontrovertible,
was set down for posterity in many volumes of recorded testimony. Despite the high moral
purpose of the trials and an honest effort to establish fair judicial procedures for the
accused, some critics questioned their appropriateness, especially the decision to try the
leaders of a defeated sovereign nation for planning and waging war and to indict an agency
of government such as the General Staff of the military. Some also questioned the propri-
ety of having the Soviet Union sit in judgment of the Nazis. These critics argued that the
Soviets were themselves guilty of crimes because they had contributed to the outbreak of
May 1968
The Nuremberg
Trials
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907106. Western Europe: Political Reconstruction
the war, shared in the partition of Poland, and incorporated the Baltic states into the Soviet
Union. Others dismissed the trials as victors’ justice. Yet the Nuremberg trials served in a
singular way to reinforce international standards of civilized behavior and to describe the
meaning of “crimes against humanity.” The court condemned 12 of the defendants to
execution. Seven received prison terms of varying length, including life sentences; three
were acquitted.
The four occupation authorities also carried out a “denazifi cation”
program, which produced mixed results. Because so many professional
Germans had been members of Nazi organizations, it became diffi cult to
exclude them from public life if the normal processes of government were to resume.
Some individuals guilty of the more heinous Nazi crimes fl ed the country and were still
being apprehended and tried many decades after the war’s end by the Germans them-
selves or in French or Israeli courts. But the people who survived the Nazi camps and the
families of Nazi victims only began to receive some fi nancial restitution at the end of the
twentieth century.
Denazifi cation
Demonstrations and strikes swept across France in May 1968, evoking memories of nineteenth-century revolutionary battles in the barricaded streets of Paris, but President de Gaulle was more successful than earlier French kings in quelling crowds and protests. As this photograph suggests, however, clashes between the police and student demonstrators pro- duced strong reactions among all groups in French society during the weeks before de Gaulle and his followers consolidated their power by winning new national elections. (Sipa Press)
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War908
Divided Germany (and Berlin) meanwhile gained new international signifi cance as a
central arena of the Cold War. The German Democratic Republic became one of the most
loyal client states of the Soviet Union. The Federal Republic of Germany became a pros-
perous parliamentary democracy, a full partner of the West, and also made efforts to atone
for the horrors of the Nazi regime.
The West German government encouraged private industry and a capi-
talist, competitive economy; but it also shaped overall economic policies
and provided broad social services, so that West Germany emerged with
what became known as a “social market economy.” The guaranteed ben-
efi ts came to exceed those of other major industrial Western countries. The
Federal Republic also pioneered in bringing labor and capital together. The labor unions
accepted a role as social partners in the expanding economy, moderating wage demands
to avoid infl ation. A “codetermination” law gave workers seats on the boards of directors
of larger fi rms.
After independent state governments had been set up in each state (or Land ) in West Germany with the encouragement of the occupying powers, a constitutional convention
representing the ten German states met in 1948–1949 in Bonn. The convention produced
a Basic Law (or Grundgesetz ) and offi cially established the Federal Republic of Germany. The Basic Law, by design not called a constitution, was to be temporary, valid
only until at some future date the two parts of Germany could be reunited. An extensive
bill of rights was one of its most prominent features. Power was decentralized under a
federal system.
The founders deliberately set out to avoid the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic.
The president, elected indirectly and not by popular vote, was a ceremonial fi gure with
limited political power; a president of stature could, however, as the years revealed, exer-
cise substantial moral authority. The head of government, or real executive,
was the chancellor, responsible, along with the cabinet, to the majority in
the popularly elected lower house, the Bundestag. To avoid instability, a chancellor could be overthrown only when a new majority was ready with
an immediate replacement. Proportional representation guaranteed that
each party would be apportioned seats equivalent to its share of the popular vote, but to
prevent splinter parties and political fragmentation, a party received seats in the legislature
only if it won at least 5 percent of the national vote. The Christian Democratic Union and
the Social Democrats emerged as the two chief parties and shared between them a large
proportion of the popular vote.
The Christian Democratic Union governed uninterruptedly for 20 years, from 1949 to
1969. In reaction to the Nazi barbarism, it sought to infuse politics with a moral idealism
and ethical purpose. Not a confessional party, it appealed to Protestants and Catholics alike,
who were almost equally represented in West Germany, and it received strong support
from the business community and large segments of the middle classes. The dominating
fi gure in the party and government in the early years was the Christian Democratic leader,
Konrad Adenauer, who had begun his career in the pre-1914 imperial era. A patriarchal,
strong-willed personality, his ambition was to regain for Germany a position of dignity
and international respect while moving away from the extreme nationalism
that had been such a destructive force in modern German and European
history. He became chancellor in 1949 at the age of 73 (with only a slim
majority) and governed for 14 years. Opponents criticized der Alte (“the old man”) for creating a “chancellor’s democracy”; but he provided the resolute
A “social market
economy”
The power of the
chancellor
Christian Democrats
and Konrad
Adenauer
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909106. Western Europe: Political Reconstruction
leadership, stability, and continuity that made possible the remarkable economic expansion
of the 1950s and the regaining of full West German sovereignty.
Adenauer successfully integrated the Federal Republic of Germany into the emerging
political, economic, and military structures of western Europe, strengthening ties with
France, cooperating in the movement for European economic integration, and winning the
support and confi dence of the United States and the other Western powers. Indeed, within
a decade after the disastrous military defeat that had left a shattered and occupied country,
THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC Balti
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GERMANY AND ITS BORDERS, 1919–1990 Upper panel: The boundaries established after the Treaty of Versailles. Note the Free City of Danzig and the Polish Corri- dor. Middle panel: Germany’s borders at the height of the Second World War in 1942. The Reich proper had then annexed (1) Luxembourg, (2) Alsace and Lorraine from France, (3) Carniola from Yugoslavia, (4) Austria, (5) the Sudeten regions and a Bohemian–Moravian protec- torate from Czechoslovakia, (6) the Free City of Danzig, and (7) Poland. Lower panel: Germany after Hitler’s defeat. East Prussia was divided between Poland and the U.S.S.R., and Poland reached westward almost to Berlin. A Communist East Germany (the German Democratic Republic) and a democratic West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany) grew out of the zones occupied respec- tively by the Soviets and the West. After the fall of the Com- munist regime in East Germany, Germany was reunited in 1990.
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War910
The new spirit of international cooperation in postwar Europe was expressed in the collabo- ration of French President Charles de Gaulle and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (standing next to de Gaulle here and waving to a crowd). The two leaders met often to create a partnership that became the foundation for a new Europe. After fi ghting three major wars in the heart of Europe over a period of 75 years, Germany and France estab- lished a peaceful alliance that brought stability to the con- tinent and eliminated the tra- ditional problem of warfare between two former enemies. (Dalmas/Sipa Press)
West Germany was a major economic power, a coveted ally of the West and an equal
member of NATO. The major opposition party, the Social Democrats, heirs to the Social
Democratic Party founded in the 1870s, criticized Adenauer for his overly close identifi ca-
tion with the United States and for ignoring the issue of national reunifi cation. But the
Social Democrats abandoned their traditional Marxist ideology at a party congress in 1959
and steadily broadened their appeal to the middle classes and younger voters.
In 1965 the Social Democrats, who had softened their neutralist stand in foreign
affairs, joined the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats (a small liberal centrist
party) in a “grand coalition.” Willy Brandt, the former Social Democratic
mayor of West Berlin, became foreign minister and launched his “East-
ern policy,” or Ostpolitik, a policy that encouraged building bridges to the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, including East Germany. In 1969, with
the support of the Free Democrats, he became chancellor of a new coalition
that ended the 20-year tenure of the Christian Democrats. Brandt negoti-
ated treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland in 1971, formally accepting the German
eastern border at the Oder and West Neisse River line that the Allies had established at the
end of the Second World War. His government offi cially recognized the German Demo-
cratic Republic and promoted close economic ties with it and other countries of eastern
Europe. When a spy scandal in his own entourage cut short his chancellorship in 1974, his
Social Democratic colleague Helmut Schmidt took over and continued his policies. Not
until 1982 would the Christian Democrats return to offi ce with Helmut Kohl as chancellor.
Meanwhile, in the early 1980s, reunifi cation with East Germany still seemed unlikely, only
a remote possibility.
Willy Brandt’s
“grand coalition”
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911106. Western Europe: Political Reconstruction
The Italian Republic
During the struggle to oust the German armies from the Italian peninsula after the fall of
Mussolini in 1943, the Italian political parties, repressed for over two decades under
Fascism, sprang to life. All supported the provisional governments in postwar reconstruc-
tion and committed themselves to democratic renewal. In 1946 the country voted by a nar-
row margin to abolish the Savoy monarchy, never distinguished, and now tarnished by its
cooperation with the Fascist regime. A constitution for the new Italian Republic established
a ceremonial presidency, cabinet government, and legislative supremacy. Proportional rep-
resentation guaranteed equitable representation for all political parties, large and small.
The Christian Democrats quickly became the dominant party. It appealed to all classes
and sectors of Italian society, successfully blending support for democratic political prin-
ciples, a moderately regulated free-enterprise economy, and the labor tenets of social
Catholicism. Although the party remained independent of the Roman Catholic Church, it
remained close to the hierarchy. In Alcide De Gasperi, who had survived
the Fascist years as a librarian in the Vatican, it found an effective leader.
For seven formative years from 1946 to 1953 he presided over a series of
coalition governments, which made possible postwar economic reconstruc-
tion and expansion. In the Cold War he kept Italy fi rmly in the Western
camp. As in France, the Communist Party’s role in the resistance to Fascism helped to
establish its position as a leading party in postwar politics. Communists at fi rst held seats
in the cabinet and cooperated in economic reconstruction, but when they fomented politi-
cally inspired strikes in 1947, De Gasperi dismissed them from his ministry. In 1948, dur-
ing the early years of the Cold War, the United States intervened openly for the fi rst time
in its history to infl uence a European election, throwing its weight behind the Christian
Democrats to thwart the Communists. The Christian Democrats for the fi rst and only time
won an absolute majority in the legislature. The Communists, despite their continuing par-
liamentary strength and support by a third to a fourth of the electorate, remained excluded
from the cabinet.
After De Gasperi’s disappearance from the political scene in 1953, the Christian Dem-
ocrats governed under a succession of short-lived coalition cabinets formed with small
centrist parties. Over the years the Christian Democrats became faction-ridden and less
interested in reform than in patronage. Abandoning their initial idealism, they catered to
propertied and narrow interests, and many in the party profi ted from business connections.
In the early 1960s the Socialists became part of the governing coalition, but this “opening
to the Left” did not alter political rigidities, and the country grew impatient with the unin-
terrupted tenure of the Christian Democrats.
The Communists gained further strength in the 1960s. They weakened their ties with
Moscow, renounced tenets of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy such as the dictatorship of the
proletariat, and tempered their assault on religion. Architects, with the French party, of
what came to be known as “Eurocommunism,” they declared that each
nation, without deferring to Moscow, must fi nd its own way to a new soci-
ety through parliamentary democracy and national consensus. The stron-
gest Communist Party in the Western world, the Italian party counted
1.8 million members at its peak in the mid-1970s and won the support of 35 percent of
the electorate. Communist mayors and municipal councils governed in many major cities,
including Rome. But the Christian Democrats continued to reject the Communist bid for
seats in the national government.
Alcide De Gasperi’s
Christian Democrats
Eurocommunism
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War912
The unstable political scene did not interfere with Italy’s unprece-
dented economic growth and prosperity. The industrial triangle of Genoa,
Milan, and Turin in northern Italy provided the nucleus for recovery and
expansion. A prosperous economy emerged. By 1949 industrial production
reached 1939 levels, and by the early 1950s Italy’s rate of industrial growth
rivaled that of West Germany and France. Italy was transformed from the primarily agri-
cultural country it had been before the Second World War into one of the world’s leading
industrial nations. An economic revolution had dramatically elevated living standards for
most Italians. Only the underdeveloped south remained a troubled economic region, even
in times of advancing prosperity. In general, however, Italy joined the other nations of
western Europe in a remarkably rapid political and economic recovery from the cata-
strophic events of the Second World War.
107. EUROPE AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
Even before the close of hostilities in 1945, the United States, with British support, devel-
oped a bold initiative to reshape the postwar world economy. Determined to avoid the
economic nationalism, trade restrictions, and currency instability of the interwar years, the
planners sought to restore the free fl ow of trade and the stable currencies of the pre-1914
era. In 1944 the United States convened an international conference of 44 nations at
Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The participants pledged to reduce trade barriers and
work for stable currencies in the postwar world.
An effort to establish a formal world trade organization to oversee international com-
merce foundered, but an alternative strategy proved successful. The United States had
earlier negotiated bilateral trade agreements with a number of countries to reduce tariffs on
a reciprocal basis, with each agreement carrying a “most-favored nation” clause whereby
concessions to one country were extended to all. These piecemeal arrangements led in
1948 to a broader arrangement, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
embodying the same negotiating principle. Subscribed to initially by 23
nations, GATT became the foundation of a postwar global commercial sys-
tem in which Europeans gradually regained part of the international infl u-
ence they had lost during the Second World War.
The General Agreement laid down rules to prevent discrimination in international
trade, set up procedures for handling complaints, and provided a framework for continuing
negotiation through lengthy bargaining sessions, or “rounds,” designed to lower tariffs and
remove nontariff barriers. By the 1990s over 100 countries were participating. GATT was
only a partial substitute for a formal international trade organization, but it contributed to
the vast expansion of world trade beginning in the 1950s. Not until 1997 was a formal
World Trade Organization (WTO) established, with enlarged powers to mediate agree-
ments and settle trade disputes. The WTO in its turn faced new problems and recurring
controversies as it tried to resolve the confl icting claims of different nations in the global
economy.
The “world economy” in the early postwar years meant the world’s non-Communist
or free-market economies. The strategic centers were North America and western Europe,
with the addition of Japan, which doubled its share of world trade between 1951 and 1960.
Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, Australasia, and Africa were also
integrated into the postwar world economy, so that the new commercial
networks had truly global dimensions. The Soviet Union played no part in
A prosperous
economy
GATT
Global participation
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913107. Europe and the Global Economy
any of the postwar trade negotiations and restricted its commerce principally to its East
European bloc of satellites. In the late 1960s the Soviets and the East European countries
opened up trade and economic relations with western Europe and the United States but not
until the late 1980s did they seek integration into the global economy.
Currency Stability: Toward the “Gold-Dollar” Standard
If the fi rst objective of the wartime Bretton Woods conference was to liberalize trade, the
second was to stabilize the world’s currencies. The chaos of the interwar years when nation
after nation abandoned the gold standard and competed in currency devaluations to gain
Europe’s postwar economic expansion included new exchanges with Japan, where innovative technologies contributed to the growing Japanese role in the global economy of the 1950s and 1960s. This superexpress train, which went into service between Tokyo and Osaka in 1964 and is shown here passing Mount Fuji, became one of the well-known symbols of modern Japanese society. Reaching speeds of over 150 miles per hour, these trains set a standard for the later development of other very high-speed trains in Europe and showed how the new commercial streams fl owed between Europe and Asia in both directions. (George Gester/Science Source)
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War914
trade advantages haunted everyone. The Bretton Woods conference sought to restore the
equivalent of the pre-1914 gold standard, which had provided for fi xed exchange rates and
the convertibility of all currencies into gold or into the equivalent at the time, British
pounds sterling.
Currency stabilization, however, turned out to be more diffi cult than
anticipated. The stable conversion of different currencies into gold or dol-
lars at fi xed exchange rates did not become possible until the end of 1958.
For about a dozen years, until 1971, each major currency had a par value in
gold and in dollars. For that same short time the American dollar, like the
British pound before 1914, was accepted as the equivalent of gold itself. But the postwar
economic situation changed rapidly as the American share of world commerce declined in
the 1960s; the era of the “gold-dollar standard” proved short-lived, and a system of “fl oat-
ing currencies” and fl uctuating exchange rates took its place.
Meanwhile two important agencies established after the war helped in international
fi nancial settlements. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) provided loans to governments
to manage temporary balance of payments diffi culties and to help reduce the
need for currency devaluations. The International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development (or World Bank) made long-term loans to the governments
of poorer countries for economic development. Both agencies played a larger
role in later years than in the immediate postwar era, and both became con-
troversial when critics complained that their policies did not really benefi t
the world’s poorer nations or people. Both were located in Washington, their major funding
provided by the United States. The economic center of gravity for the North Atlantic world,
like the political and the military, lay after 1945 on the American side of the ocean.
European Integration: From the Common Market to the European Community
As western Europe expanded economically, it also drew closer together in a more inte-
grated economic system. There had been numerous proposals in the interwar years for
a European federation. The war, the wartime Resistance movements, the Marshall Plan,
European cooperative recovery efforts, and the threat from the Soviet Union in the Cold
War all reinforced the idea that western Europe’s future lay in unity. A
number of European leaders pressed for the creation of a “United States of
Europe.” In 1949 delegates representing the parliaments of ten countries met
in Strasbourg to establish a Council of Europe with the hope that it might
become a legislative body for a federated Europe. Although the Council of
Europe grew in membership over the years and continued to support the idea of federation,
it never became an important political force. It confi ned itself to humanitarian, cultural, and
social issues. In 1958 it set up a European Court of Human Rights to protect the rights of
individuals in its member nations against arbitrary government actions. It banned corporal
punishment in the schools and outlawed the death penalty for convicted criminals.
European integration itself, however, took a different path, beginning in the economic
area. In 1948 Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg created a customs union, called
Benelux, which provided the benefi ts of an expanded free trade area for the three small
countries. At the same time the visionary but pragmatic French administrator Jean Monnet,
who had helped reorganize the postwar French economy, recognized that the fi rst steps
toward greater European unity had to develop along modest economic lines and begin with
specifi c objectives.
Currency
stabilization
The IMF and the
World Bank
Expansion and unity
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915107. Europe and the Global Economy
In 1952, under a plan designed by Monnet, six West European countries—France, the
Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, and the three Benelux nations—placed their coal and
steel industries under a form of supranational authority. They established
the European Coal and Steel Community, its headquarters in Luxembourg.
The six nations not only agreed to eliminate import duties and quotas on
coal and steel but also placed production under a common High Authority
with decision-making powers. A council of ministers represented the six
governments, but the High Authority carried out major administrative functions.
Monnet was the fi rst president of the European Coal and Steel Community, which
paved the way for economic integration that would extend far beyond a single sector of
the West European economy. In a momentous second step, the same six nations on March
25, 1957, signed the Treaty of Rome, creating a large free-trade area or cus-
toms union, the European Economic Community, or Common Market, its
headquarters in Brussels, with the goal of moving toward full economic and
even political integration. The six nations pledged to eliminate tariff barri-
ers, develop a common tariff with respect to the outside world, harmonize social and eco-
nomic policies, and work toward the free movement of capital and labor. Under a separate
treaty the member countries also agreed to coordinate their nonmilitary atomic research
and technology in a European Atomic Community.
The six-nation Common Market, encompassing 175 million people in 1958, quickly
became one of the thriving economic aggregates of the expanding world economy. By 1968,
even earlier than anticipated, the last internal tariff was dropped and trade among the six
nations grew at a rate double that of trade with outside countries. Its infl uence spread to the
former European colonies, with which it worked out preferential trade arrangements. Through
the Common Market, western Europe set about to recapture a key role in the new confi gura-
tion of global affairs, which had been dominated since 1945 by the two superpowers. The
Common Market also helped further absorb a revived democratic West Germany into western
Europe and to nurture reconciliation between France and Germany, ending the internecine
rivalries that had devastated the European continent in the fi rst half of the twentieth century.
In 1967 the three “Communities” consolidated themselves into what
now came to be called the European Community. Their high commissions
became the European Commission and their assemblies became the Euro-
pean Parliament, meeting in Strasbourg. The members of the European Par-
liament took seats by party affi liation and not by nation. In 1979, for the fi rst time, they
were not chosen by their respective governments but were elected by a European-wide
electorate. The Parliament enjoyed only limited legislative authority, but it supervised the
budget and the European Commission and kept alive the idea of unity. Final decision
making still rested with the council of ministers representing each of the member nations,
whose decisions on important matters had to be unanimous.
Great Britain initially refrained from joining the Common Market. Its economic ties to
the Commonwealth, its dependence on low-priced food imports, and its unwillingness to
accept any supranational authority kept both Labour and Conservative governments from
joining. But Britain’s economy continued to lag behind the economic growth of the major
western European nations, prompting the British government eventually to seek Common
Market membership in 1963. Britain’s request was vetoed by President de Gaulle, how-
ever, because he regarded Britain and its admittedly “special relationship” with the United
States as a threat to French leadership on the Continent. Not until after de Gaulle retired
from the political scene in 1969 did Britain gain admission.
The European Coal
and Steel Community
The Common Market
The European
Community
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War916
If the years 1958–1968 showed remarkable gains in economic integra-
tion, the advance toward political unity was slower. Although de Gaulle
understood the contribution of the Common Market to the prosperity of
western Europe and envisioned a strong western Europe as a counterpoise
to the two “hegemonic superpowers,” he opposed political or supranational authority for
the Community. Europe had to be a Europe of sovereign states, a Europe des patries. The more dedicated Europeanists were disappointed. Yet the supranational economic and
political machinery of the Community, the day-to-day cooperation of the European civil
servants or bureaucrats (inevitably called “Eurocrats”) in Brussels and Strasbourg, and the
close consultation on common interests were favorable signs for unity, even apart from the
military and defense ties that brought the western Europeans together in NATO. French-
German friendship, cemented by de Gaulle and Adenauer and reinforced by their succes-
sors, remained the linchpin of cooperation within the Community.
The Europeans showed no haste to surrender their national sovereignty and indepen-
dence, but the European Community created a strong sense of common destiny, a shared
faith in democratic institutions and market economies and a concern for human rights and
social needs. It not only contributed immeasurably to the economic and political strength
of western Europe but also helped restore it to a larger role in world affairs; and by the
beginning of the twenty-fi rst century the European Community was projecting its own
transnational military force.
Western Europe accounted in the 1960s for one-fourth of all imports
and one-fi fth of all exports in the world economy; for a time its exports
equaled those of the United States and Japan combined. One-third of the
largest multinational corporations, that is, corporations that set up subsid-
iaries outside their own country for manufacturing or sales, were Euro-
pean. London, Frankfurt, and Paris were again important fi nancial centers. In 1971 West
European steel production surpassed that of the United States. European (and Japanese)
automobiles cut sharply into American domestic and foreign markets. Self-suffi cient in
food, western Europe became the world’s largest exporter of dairy products. The Federal
Republic of Germany, in the 1960s, enjoyed a gross national product exceeded only by
the economies of the United States and the U.S.S.R., even though it had only one-fourth
the population of each; it accounted for one-third of the Common Market’s gross national
product. Western Europe and Japan were whittling away at the American economic lead in
production and trade and bringing to a close the era of the dollar’s supremacy.
End of the Gold-Dollar Standard, 1971
The new trading patterns created monetary problems for the global fi nancial
system that had developed after the Second World War. Because America’s
exports no longer exceeded its imports, American trade shifted to an unfa-
vorable balance of payments. The United States spent more abroad than it
earned abroad. The postwar dollar shortage in other countries gave way to a “dollar glut.”
Western Europe accumulated large dollar reserves (or “Eurodollars”), some $50 billion by
1971; oil-rich Arab states held “petrodollars.” The number of dollars held abroad exceeded
American gold reserves.
The shift in the American economic position undermined confi dence in a dollar that
many now viewed as overvalued. De Gaulle, resentful of American political and economic
power, demanded an end to the gold-dollar standard and a return to gold itself. In 1965
Advance toward
political unity
West European
competition
Trade imbalances
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917107. Europe and the Global Economy
France redeemed hundreds of millions of its dollar holdings for gold. Other central banks
in Europe and Japan did not follow suit, but private investors speculated against the dollar.
American gold and foreign currency reserves dropped precipitously.
In 1971 President Nixon unilaterally suspended gold convertibility and thus devalued
the dollar against European and other currencies. A second devaluation came in 1973. The
global monetary system projected at Bretton Woods ended. Despite many proposals, there
was no formal revision of the postwar methods for currency exchanges. Instead, on a day-
to-day basis and with considerable success, the world’s major currencies
were allowed to “fl oat,” that is, to fl uctuate daily against each other and
against the dollar in world markets. Gold itself fl uctuated freely and offi cial Floating currencies
The global economy of the 1970s and the “fl oating” of national currencies gave a new impor- tance to the world’s leading fi nancial markets and stock exchanges. Governments in Europe and around the world found that the value of their money and the stability of their economies were constantly affected by the speculations of infl uential investors. The traders in this pho- tograph were active at the London stock exchange, where fi nancial speculators helped Britain regain much of its earlier prominence in international markets. (George W. Hales/Fox Photos/Getty Images)
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War918
gold prices were abolished. Although the American dollar remained the world’s principal
reserve currency, the West German mark and the Japanese yen took their place beside the
dollar as key international currencies.
The breakdown of the postwar monetary arrangements did not seriously affect the
world economy. Currencies did not collapse because they were no longer exchangeable for
gold. For currency stability the fi nancial markets and global trading companies learned to
rely mainly on international consultation and rapid exchange of information, but govern-
ments found their currencies and economic policies vulnerable to speculators and fast-
moving exchanges in a global fi nancial system that crossed all national boundaries.
108. COMMUNIST SOCIETIES IN THE U.S.S.R. AND EASTERN EUROPE
Stalinism in the Postwar Years
In March 1953 Russia’s twentieth-century Peter the Great died. Like his eighteenth-century
tsarist predecessor, Stalin had a massive impact during his almost 30 years in power. He was
responsible for industrialization in the 1930s, the rallying of the country in the Great Patriotic
War, the expansion of the nation’s borders, the consolidation of Communist regimes in eastern
Europe, and the emergence of the Soviet Union as a nuclear power. But the human costs of the
Stalinist transformation of the country were staggering. Millions had fallen victim in the 1930s
to his forced collectivization of the countryside and the ensuing famine, and additional millions
had died as a result of his purges. Western and Soviet scholars alike have estimated the total
fi gure of Stalin’s victims at least as high as 20 million, quite apart from the millions of lives lost
in the Second World War. Because the civil war and war communism earlier under Lenin had
also taken millions of lives, the Communist regime from its emergence in 1917 to its demise in
1991 must be counted among the costliest experiments in social engineering in all history.
The Stalinist terror had continued during the war. Entire ethnic groups
like the Crimean Tatars and the Volga Germans, suspected of collabora-
tion with the Nazis, were forcibly moved east to Siberia. Mass deportations
took place from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the three Baltic republics
that had been formally annexed in 1940. At the war’s end, returning Soviet soldiers who
had been prisoners of war and civilian deportees forced to work for the Nazis in Europe
were sent off to labor camps because their exposure to other European societies made them
suspect. The unbridled authority of the secret political police (the NKVD, later the KGB)
continued to increase, and the network of forced labor camps grew in size. Ideological
restrictions tightened. Stalin’s personal suspicions, growing sharper with the passage of
the years, fi lled even his closest associates with dismay. In later years, in a freer atmo-
sphere both before and after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Russians debated whether
Stalin’s dictatorship represented a logical outgrowth of the Bolshevik Revolution itself
and of many of Lenin’s policies or was his own personal distortion.
Controls over intellectual life in the postwar years took on a vehemently national-
istic and xenophobic tone; deviations from Stalin’s “line” in economics, music, genet-
ics, history, and linguistics were forbidden. An offi cially inspired anti-Semitism, thinly
disguised as anti-Zionism, accused Jewish intellectuals of being “rootless cosmopolitans.”
The political police meanwhile fabricated conspiracies to justify the terror. In the fi ctitious
“doctors’ plot,” offi cially announced in early 1953, a score of Jewish doctors were arrested
for plotting to poison Stalin and other Kremlin leaders; one month after Stalin died, his
successors withdrew the charges and freed the imprisoned physicians.
Stalinist terror
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919108. Communist Societies in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe
Khrushchev: The Abortive Effort at Reform
After Stalin’s death the party leaders resolved to exercise collective control, determined
that no single leader should again dominate party and government. In the struggle for
power, however, authority gradually shifted to Nikita S. Khrushchev. Outwardly jovial
and ebullient, Khrushchev was a tough and hardened party stalwart who had enforced
Stalin’s purges in Ukraine and had long been a member of the Central Committee and
Politburo, but he was shrewd enough to recognize the need for change.
In part to win allies against those in the party who were opposed to change,
Khrushchev encouraged a greater measure of cultural and intellectual freedom—a “thaw.”
He put restraints on the still formidable powers of the political police. He
surprised many with an attack on Stalin’s record. In a speech to the twentieth
party congress in 1956, he offi cially revealed or corroborated the “crimes of
the Stalin era,” making partial but nonetheless startling disclosures of the
Stalinist terror. Stalin had been personally responsible for the purges and
executions of the 1930s, and millions of victims had been innocent of the charges against
them; his most intimate colleagues had lived in fear for their lives. Khrushchev also revealed
Stalin’s initial loss of nerve and ineptitude at the time of the German invasion in June 1941.
Although Khrushchev criticized Stalin, the thaw in Soviet society was never sys-
tematic or thorough. In 1958 Boris Pasternak was forbidden to accept the Nobel Prize
in literature because his novel, Dr. Zhivago, by stressing individual freedom, implicitly condemned the oppressiveness of Soviet society. But in 1962 Alexander Solzhenitsyn was
permitted to publish his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a depiction of human suffering in the forced labor camps. Khrushchev continued the de-Stalinization cam-
paign. Cities named in Stalin’s honor were renamed: Stalingrad, the most famous, became
Volgograd. Stalin’s body was removed from the mausoleum on Red Square, where it had
lain next to Lenin’s, and buried outside the Kremlin Wall.
Khrushchev’s “thaw”
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1945–1962
1945 The UN is established at a conference in San Francisco
1947 Secretary of State George C. Marshall announces U.S. plan to aid the rebuilding
of Europe
1948–1949 American airlift of supplies sustains West Berlin during Soviet blockade
1949 The Soviet Union successfully tests an atomic bomb
1949 United States and western Europe create NATO
1949 Mao Zedong and the Communist Party proclaim the People’s Republic of China
1950–1953 Korean War demonstrates new American policy to “contain” communism
1953 Death of Stalin opens new era in Soviet and East European history
1956 Unsuccessful revolts against Soviet control in Poland and Hungary
1957 Six western European nations establish a new Common Market for trade
1958 France establishes the Fifth Republic with Charles de Gaulle as president
1962 French war in Algeria ends with recognition of Algerian independence
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War920
For the economy Khrushchev pressed decentralization, attempting to
loosen tight central economic controls by creating regional economic coun-
cils and offering factory managers greater autonomy and incentives for effi -
ciency and profi tability. Meanwhile the country successfully tested the hydrogen bomb;
launched its fi rst space satellite, Sputnik, in 1958; and built its fi rst intercontinental ballis-
tic missiles. The Soviet economy was second only to that of the United States in gross
national product, though it lagged far behind in the production and consumption of modern
consumer goods. Within a decade, Khrushchev boasted in the early 1960s, the Soviet econ-
omy would surpass the American. The stress on heavy industry and on military expendi-
tures meant, of course, continuing privation for the ordinary citizen, and the emphasis on
quantity to the neglect of quality concealed deep fl aws in the system as a whole.
Khrushchev’s most ambitious effort lay in agriculture, the weakest sector of the econ-
omy ever since Stalin’s forced collectivization. He sought to bring under cultivation the
“virgin lands” of Soviet Central Asia, in Kazakhstan and elsewhere, but crop failures
thwarted the experiment. His reforms did little to alter the bureaucratized system of collec-
tive and state farms inherited from Stalin or to inspire the collective farmers to increase
their output. For the party itself he unsuccessfully sought fi xed terms of offi ce for impor-
tant party posts. Few of his reforms were acceptable to the government and party
Decentralization
The Cold War did not end after the death of Joseph Stalin, but the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev spoke of “peaceful coexistence” with Western nations and even traveled to the United States. Wearing his Soviet medals, Khrushchev appears in a congenial mood during a White House meeting in 1959 with the American President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon. (RIS-Novosti/Sovfoto)
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921108. Communist Societies in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe
bureaucrats, the apparatchiki, who saw their privileged positions threatened and who mus- tered opposition to his “hare-brained” schemes.
Khrushchev pursued a truculent foreign policy. Proclaiming that war was not inevitable
with the United States and other capitalist countries, he spoke of “peaceful coexistence,”
and relations for a time improved. But the Cold War confl icts by no means disappeared.
In 1960 he scuttled a summit meeting with Allied leaders and in 1962, following new
tensions in Berlin, Khrushchev overreached himself in a confrontation with the United
States during the Cuban missile crisis (to be described in a subsequent chapter). He also
clashed openly with Communist China. His boastfulness and recklessness,
his retreat in Cuba, the failure of his agricultural and other economic poli-
cies, and his attempt to reform the party itself led to his downfall. In 1964
the party leadership ousted him from offi ce. He lived quietly in Moscow
until his death in 1971. In the post-Stalin era, a reformer did not necessarily have to fear for
his life, but there were clear limits to the reforms the party and bureaucracy would tolerate.
Leonid I. Brezhnev, who had helped engineer Khrushchev’s downfall, soon emerged as
the new Soviet leader.
Eastern Europe: The Decades of Dictatorship
Although nothing like the Russian Revolution of 1917 erupted in Europe after the Second
World War, communism made dramatic advances in central and eastern Europe through
the Red Army’s military presence and the support given to local Communist leaders.
Eleven European states and 100 million Europeans fell under Communist-style govern-
ments. The areas considered in 1919 by the Allied peacemakers to be a protective buffer
against Bolshevism were now under Communist domination.
The three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, came under Soviet control
under the terms of the Nazi-Soviet pact, and in 1940 they were incorporated into the
U.S.S.R. as Soviet socialist republics. Later, in the sweep of military operations during
the last months of the war, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia fell
into the orbit of Soviet infl uence. East Germany, initially part of the joint
Allied occupation of Germany, was shaped into a sixth Soviet satellite as
the German Democratic Republic. Yugoslavia and Albania, liberated by
their own partisan leaders rather than by the Red Army, were governed by
Communist regimes but with looser ties to the Soviet Union and soon broke
with the Soviets. Despite its defeat in the Soviet-Finnish War in 1940, Finland escaped
Communist domination. Accepting its wartime territorial losses, it maintained its indepen-
dence by a cautious neutrality in foreign policy and a discreetly correct relationship with
the Soviets. Austria, after a decade of joint occupation by the four Allied powers, gained
independence as a neutral state in 1955.
Consolidation of Communist Control
The Soviets consolidated control in eastern Europe in stages. Soviet military occupation
made it possible for local Communist leaders, many returning from exile in Moscow, to
dominate Left coalition governments. In the early coalition governments everywhere, the
Communists shared power but held the key ministries of interior, propaganda, and justice,
and controlled the police, the army, and the courts. Individuals alleged to have been “fascist”
or to have collaborated with the Nazis were barred from public life and from voting; the
Khrushchev’s fall
Soviet satellites
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War922
loose defi nition of “fascist” and “reactionary” barred many who were only anti-Communist.
In the fi rst elections, in Poland and elsewhere, purges and disfranchisement made a mockery
of Stalin’s pledge at Yalta to hold “free and unfettered elections” in eastern Europe. Protests
by the United States and Great Britain only hardened the Soviet position.
The new regimes confi scated and redistributed large estates and put
uncultivated land to use, so that 3 million peasant families acquired about
6 million acres of land; the agrarian reforms were the fi nal blow to the landed
aristocracy that had once ruled in eastern Europe. They also nationalized the
economy. As they struggled with postwar reconstruction, the new regimes
had lent a sympathetic ear to the American invitation in 1947 to accept Marshall Plan aid.
But Stalin blocked their participation in the Marshall Plan, fearing that the East European
countries would drift into the Western economic orbit. After the summer of 1947, wherever
non-Communists were still strong, the Communists ousted their political rivals and banned
or reduced to impotence all other political parties. In Czechoslovakia the coalition govern-
ment lasted longer than elsewhere but fell victim to a Communist coup in February 1948.
With the Communists in control, the leaders of the opposition political parties were
forced into fl ight, imprisoned, or in other ways silenced. The new regimes, notably in
Poland and Hungary, clashed also with the Roman Catholic Church; high-ranking prelates
were brought to public trial and imprisoned, and church property was confi scated. The
Communist leaders themselves soon became Stalin’s victims. From 1949 to 1953, refl ect-
ing the repression in the Soviet Union in Stalin’s last years, purges, arrests, trials, confes-
sions, and executions occurred in the highest ranks of each party. Leaders were accused of
nationalist deviations and of conspiring with Tito, the independent-minded Communist
leader of Yugoslavia.
The new “people’s democracies” took steps to collectivize agriculture in countries
where peasants had long struggled to gain more control over the lands on which they
worked. In Bulgaria, the most docile of the satellites, over half the arable
land was collectivized; but in Hungary, only about a third. In Poland, where
resistance was strongest, collectivization was halted after a short time. Agri-
culture in the people’s republics, as in the Soviet Union, remained the weak-
est part of the economy. Farmers diligently cultivated their individual plots
of land but worked reluctantly on the large collectives. All of the East European societies
also entered a new phase of industrialization. But the emphasis on heavy industry to the
neglect of consumer goods and pressures to complement the economy of the Soviet Union
severely limited the improvement of East European living standards—an enduring eco-
nomic problem that ultimately weakened the internal political power of every eastern
European Communist regime.
The Soviets formalized their economic relationship with eastern
Europe through the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, but the
Council (established in 1949) never worked as cooperation among equals.
The Soviets provided low-cost raw materials and oil and provided a large
market for East European goods, regardless of their quality, but much of the
economic cooperation principally benefi ted the Soviet Union. Militarily, the Warsaw Pact,
signed in 1955, brought the six East European countries together into a mutual defense
alliance, and Soviet troops remained stationed in eastern Europe in large numbers.
Yugoslavia, freed from the Nazis largely by its own partisan armies, made a remarkable
show of resistance to the Soviets. The Yugoslav Communist leader, Marshal Tito, kept a
tight grip on the multinational state but loosened centralized controls over the economy and
Agrarian reform and
nationalization
Collectivization
Economic and
political cooperation
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923108. Communist Societies in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe
abandoned collectivization of agriculture. He pursued an independent foreign policy, openly
defi ed Moscow, and took his stand with the neutralist nonaligned nations of Asia and Africa.
The fi rst major Communist fi gure to declare his independence from Moscow, Tito estab-
lished a model of national autonomy for other Communist leaders and parties to follow.
Ferment and Repression in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary, 1953–1956
The changes in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death directly affected the Soviet satellites.
The East Europeans chafed at collectivization, forced industrialization, austere living stan-
dards, subservience to the Soviets, and harsh rule by Stalinist-type leaders who remained
in power for years after Stalin disappeared. An initial outburst, riots in East Berlin in June
1953, was quickly suppressed. New ferment rose to the surface, however, after Khrush-
chev denounced the brutal character of the Stalin dictatorship and, in an attempt to win
back Yugoslavia, made the offi cial concession that “different roads to socialism” were
possible. This concession and his de-Stalinization speech in 1956 opened a Pandora’s box;
undermining Stalin’s infallibility undermined Soviet infallibility as well.
In 1956 open revolt broke out in Poland and Hungary, led by the East
European Communist Party leaders themselves. In Poland, where national
sentiment and church attachments ran deep, pressures for internal freedom
and for independence from Moscow led to riots and demonstrations. The
Communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka relaxed political and economic controls, halted
collectivization, improved relations with the church, and took steps to loosen the bonds
to Moscow. The country welcomed an alternative to direct Soviet control. Khrushchev
threatened military action but backed down. For a few years, Gomulka curbed police terror
and created a freer atmosphere, but the reform era was short-lived, and Gomulka’s regime
controlled Poland with growing repression throughout the 1960s.
In Hungary, in 1956, events took a tragic turn. When news of Gomulka’s success in
Poland reached Budapest, demonstrations broke out; young rioters even toppled a statue
of Stalin. The reform-minded Communist leader Imre Nagy, who had earlier been driven
from the premiership, returned to power. His reform program and release of political pris-
oners ignited pressures not only for democratization and parliamentary government but
also for the severance of ties to Moscow. Alarmed, the Soviets forced the party leadership
to remove Nagy from power and to replace him with the more subservient Jánós Kádar,
who accepted Soviet intervention. Khrushchev dispatched troops, tanks, and artillery to
suppress the “counterrevolution” and forcefully reestablished Communist rule. Severe
reprisals followed. Nagy himself was imprisoned, then tried and hanged, and his body
was thrown into a mass grave. In the wake of the repression, 200,000 Hungarians fl ed
into exile, mainly to the United States, a larger number than at any time since the crush-
ing of the European revolutions of 1848–1849. The Soviet tanks in Budapest weakened
any remaining illusions about the liberalism of Stalin’s successors, provoked international
condemnation, and drove many Communists in western Europe and elsewhere to renounce
their affi liations with Communist parties.
By the late 1950s the Soviet Union and the United States had therefore established
opposing “spheres of infl uence” in eastern and western Europe, but these arrangements
became relatively stable during the Cold War because neither superpower was able or
willing to challenge the ascendancy of the other power within its own European sphere.
Although the Americans and their western European allies harshly condemned the Soviet
repression in Hungary, for example, they did not take steps to intervene with military
Revolt in Poland
and Hungary
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Chapter 22 The Cold War and Reconstruction after the Second World War924
The demand for reforms spread rapidly in Hungary during the fall of 1956. Emboldened by changes in Communist Poland and by the policies of Hungar- ian reformer Imre Nagy, the people of Budapest protested the repressive policies of the Soviet Union, destroyed statues of Communist leaders, and (like the group in this picture) defi - antly burned portraits of Joseph Stalin. The Soviets soon inter- vened with decisive military force. Nagy was executed, and the new Soviet-supported Hun- garian regime crushed all forms of anti-Communist dissent. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
force. The Cold War thus never evolved into a new international war on the European con-
tinent, despite the bitter confrontations, mutual suspicions, and ongoing arms race.
In this same era, however, both the Europeans and the Americans became involved
in wars outside of Europe, especially when the expanding anticolonial movements were
viewed as part of a global communist challenge to either the European imperial systems or
the interests of the United States. Most of Europe’s far-fl ung Asian and African colonies
entered a new stage of nationalist agitation after the Second World War—agitation that
developed into prolonged guerrilla wars in places such as Vietnam and Algeria. These
campaigns against European empires often became entangled in the wider confl icts of the
Cold War; and the new nations that emerged from the struggles for decolonization also
became new sites for the interplay of global political forces and for the destabilizing social
transitions of the turbulent world economy.
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e .
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925
C h a p t e r 23 DECOLONIZATION
AND THE BREAKUP
OF THE EUROPEAN
EMPIRES
Among all of the political and cultural changes in the three decades after 1945, nothing was more rev-
olutionary, more dramatic, or perhaps more unex-
pected in Europe than the rapid and almost complete
demise of the European overseas colonial empires.
Although the main colonial nations were all weak-
ened or even defeated during the various phases of
the Second World War, Britain, France, the Nether-
lands, Belgium, and Portugal still governed large
parts of the world’s population in 1945. Within
30 years, however, the colonial empires of these nations had all disintegrated. Hundreds of
millions of people around the world became citizens of new states whose governments,
economies, and cultures became independent after long periods of European colonial
control; and European interactions with the peoples of their former empires entered a new
era of postcolonial exchanges in which Europe’s world supremacy came to an end.
The Second World War reinforced nationalist agitation for independence and freedom.
It was diffi cult to wage war in the name of self-determination and democracy, often with
the colonial countries as allies, without encouraging the idea of freedom
among subject peoples. The Japanese conquests in Asia had also under-
mined the image of European invincibility. After the war the Europeans,
economically exhausted, learned that they could rule their empires only at
prohibitive military cost and in embarrassing contradiction to their recent
war against the racist regime in Nazi Germany and their own professed ideals of demo-
cratic self-government.
In some instances the colonial powers, bowing to agitation for independence, liqui-
dated their colonial holdings without armed struggle, as in the British withdrawal from the
Indian subcontinent in 1947. Elsewhere the European powers withdrew only after pro-
tracted bloody wars, as in the case of the Dutch in Indonesia, the French in Indochina and
Contradictions
of empire
109. The Emergence
of Independent Nations
in South Asia and
Southeast Asia
110. The African Revolution
111. Europe and the Modern
Middle East
Chapter Emblem: Independence parade in Kuala Lumpur in 1957. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires926
Algeria, the British in Malaysia, and the Portuguese in Angola and Mozam-
bique. The United States also played a part in the transformation of colo-
nialism. It gave independence to the Philippines, granted Puerto Rico
commonwealth status, and took in Alaska and Hawaii as equal members
of the federal union, but it also waged a long, unsuccessful war in the 1960s against a
communist-nationalist movement in Vietnam that had earlier driven out the French. The
last prominent vestiges of the European empires in Asia ended when Britain surrendered
Hong Kong to China in 1997 and Portugal transferred Macao to China in 1999.
The Europeans also withdrew from Africa and from the various post-1919 “mandates”
that they had received from the League of Nations after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire
in the Middle East. By the mid-twentieth century, nationalist movements had emerged
throughout this region, challenging the weakened European powers and demanding the
establishment of new African and Arab states as well as the creation of an independent
Israel. European governments lacked the political will and the resources to maintain impe-
rial rule in their African colonies and Middle Eastern mandates, but the transitions in this
region—as in parts of Asia—were often delayed by widespread violence and local wars.
The French resisted the nationalist upsurge in Algeria, the British suppressed antico-
lonial militants in Kenya, and the Portuguese fought to keep their colonies in Angola and
Mozambique, but the independence movements would ultimately manage
to free every African country from European control. Meanwhile, the Arab
countries that emerged from the European mandates and colonial systems
in North Africa and the Middle East entered into a prolonged confl ict with
the new Jewish state of Israel, which was established in 1948 after the
British withdrew from the mandate they had exercised over Palestine. The creation of
Israel represented the triumphant fulfi llment of a Zionist movement that had grown steadily
in Europe since the late nineteenth century and gained new support after the genocidal
Nazi Holocaust, but it also brought about the displacement of a large Palestinian Arab
population and a series of regional wars that would repeatedly involve the governments
and peoples of Europe. The legacy of Europe’s entanglement in the Middle East and the
former Ottoman Empire would therefore remain an important component of European
international affairs long after the earlier mandates and colonies had dissolved into inde-
pendent states and national economies.
The breakup of the European empires in the second half of the twentieth century
thus led to the largest liberation of colonial peoples and transfer of political power in all
of human history. This era could, in fact, be called “The Age of the Asian and African
Revolutions.” Extending and revising the ideas of the earlier “Age of the Atlantic Revolu-
tions,” the twentieth-century upheavals destroyed previously existing colonial systems,
overthrew “old regime” governments, and claimed everywhere to represent the “national
sovereignty” of oppressed peoples. The processes of decolonization even-
tually contributed to the emergence of over 100 new nations—a political
upheaval that must count among the most far-reaching consequences of the
two world wars, and especially of the second. Many of the new nations
were political entities rather than coherent national communities with shared cultures,
languages and traditions, but they were now sovereign territorial states, internationally
recognized and with seats in the United Nations.
Although the new nations broke free from European political control, Europe’s
colonial infl uence lingered in many of the postcolonial states, partly because older
colonial borders were mostly retained as new national boundaries and partly because
Revolutionary wars
in Asia and Africa
Africa and the
Middle East
New nations
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927109. The Emergence of Independent Nations in South Asia and Southeast Asia
European colonial languages were often used as cultural tools for building national unity in
multilingual societies. More generally, however, many people in the former colonies main-
tained long-established connections with European institutions and schools, migrated to
join family members in Europe, or continued to sell goods and commodities to European
consumers. The end of colonialism, in short, opened a new phase of European exchanges
with the non-European world, but it by no means ended the many economic and cultural
interactions that had deeply infl uenced European societies during every era of modern
global history. This chapter focuses on the diverse history of the most signifi cant antico-
lonial movements and transitions to independent statehood between the late 1940s and
1970s, by which time the European control of colonized territories and peoples had almost
completely disappeared.
109. THE EMERGENCE OF INDEPENDENT NATIONS IN SOUTH ASIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
The End of British Rule in India and Pakistan
The end in 1947 of British rule in India, the largest and most populous of all colonial areas
ruled by Europeans, was epoch-making. Unfortunately, it fueled an explosion of ethnic
and religious confl icts on the Indian subcontinent. The Indian National Congress, founded
in 1885, had developed strength in the interwar years under the leadership of Gandhi
and Nehru. The Congress Party leaders demanded independence but also wished to avoid
social revolution in the complex multiethnic country. Along with the British-trained
Indian civil service, they considered themselves well prepared to govern an independent
state. But the Muslim League, founded in 1906, claimed to speak, under Muhammad Ali
Jinnah’s leadership, for millions of Muslims unwilling to live in an India dominated by
the Hindus and the Congress Party. The Muslims insisted on their own national state,
The British departure from India in 1947 may have been the most momentous transition from European colonialism to national independence in all of Asia. The presentation of the new Indian fl ag at this Home Guard ceremony in Mumbai was one of countless symbolic affi rmations that a new era had begun. New problems soon emerged, but Britain was relinquish- ing its long-held imperial power to intervene in other societies and to control the governments of other peoples. (Keystone/Getty Images)
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires928
rooted in Islam. The Congress leaders, in contrast, pressed for a unifi ed, secular India,
with religion separated from politics and with freedom of worship for all religions. British
colonial administrators sought to maintain political peace by negotiating with both the
Muslim League and the Congress Party, but there was clearly no way for the British to
satisfy both factions.
During the Second World War India supported the British, but at the same time the
Congress Party and the Muslim League stepped up a “quit India” campaign. To retain
Indian support for the war effort and to counter Japanese anti-Western propaganda, the
British pledged independence. At the war’s end, the British under Labour Party leader-
ship were poised to honor their pledge, but the Congress Party and the Muslim League
continued to have irreconcilable differences as plans were developed for an
independent Indian state. To end the impasse the British decided on parti-
tion. In 1947 Britain granted independence to two nations: to India, predom-
inantly Hindu, with a population of 350 million at the time, which became
the Republic of India; and to Pakistan, mainly Muslim, with a population of 75 million,
which became the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Large Muslim populations were concen-
trated in two widely separated regions of Britain’s former Indian Empire, and Pakistan was
established as a state with two disconnected parts, West and East Pakistan, separated by a
thousand miles of Indian territory. About 60 million Muslims were also left in India, which
helped keep India the multireligious secular state that Gandhi and Nehru desired. Ceylon
(later renamed Sri Lanka) and Burma (later called Myanmar) in South Asia also received
independence from Britain at this time.
The partition, overly hasty and ill-conceived, led immediately to violence and a vast
social upheaval. Independence in August 1947 brought with it terrible communal riots
between the Hindu and Muslim communities costing at least a million lives in a matter of
weeks; some 17 million Hindus and Muslims were caught up in mass expulsions and tur-
bulent migrations. In the worst of the tragedies, in the northern province of Punjab, Hindu
and Sikh religious zealots ambushed and slaughtered trainloads of Muslim refugees fl eeing
west to Pakistan, and Muslim fanatics did the same to Hindus and Sikhs migrating east to
India. Gandhi, while praying for civil peace, was himself assassinated in 1948 by a Hindu
extremist protesting his program for religious toleration. Only after the uglier features of
the communal warfare subsided could the tasks of governing begin.
Jawaharlal Nehru, the British-educated leader of the Congress Party and a close associ-
ate of Gandhi, became the leader of the new Indian government, serving as prime minister
from 1947 until his death in 1964. Nehru set the country on the path of British-style parlia-
mentary democracy and even a kind of Fabian socialism. With no effective
opposition, Nehru’s program was more paternalistic than democratic. The
masses looked to him to resolve the country’s enormous problems of pov-
erty; rapidly growing population; and ethnic, religious, and linguistic diver-
sity. In addition to Hindi and English, 16 other languages received offi cial recognition. In
economic matters Nehru, a moderate socialist who had studied law and economic theory in
Britain, understood the need for private capitalist enterprise; but he believed that economic
planning, government controls, and the nationalization of key industries were also neces-
sary. Under his leadership a modern industrial India with a mixed economy began to take
shape and in many ways grew impressively in the years that followed.
Meanwhile, the British-designed partition of South Asian territories and populations
did not solve the problems of Hindu-Muslim relations. India and Pakistan fell into a recur-
ring pattern of confl ict, centered in part on the former princely state of Kashmir (offi cially,
Partition of India
Nehru’s paternalism
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929
Jammu and Kashmir) in the Himalayas. Although three-fourths of the population were
Muslim, the Hindu maharajah after procrastinating opted to take Kashmir into India. Open
fi ghting over the issue of Kashmir broke out between India and Pakistan in 1948, and
tense relations and intermittent confl icts have continued ever since. War again broke out
over Kashmir in 1965–1966, ending in an uneasy truce. In 1971 India went to war with
Pakistan, but this time to support Bangladesh in its bloody war of secession from Pakistan.
Although the British could not be blamed for all of the enduring confl icts between India
and Pakistan, the continuing tensions between these two nations showed how the borders
and politics of the postcolonial states were still affected by British colonial policies for
many decades after the imperial system was dissolved.
Pakistan’s independence leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah was, like Nehru, a British-
educated lawyer. He was by no means an Islamic extremist and might have made a signifi -
cant difference in the country’s history, but he died shortly after independence, and his
successor was assassinated. Despite the machinery of British-style parliamentary democ-
racy, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan soon succumbed to military rule and over the years
oscillated between periods of military rule, restoration of constitutional government,
which generally meant civilian misrule, and the return of military dictatorship. By the end
of the century military dictators had run the country for half of its years of independence.
The awkward postcolonial arrangement for uniting the widely sepa-
rated Muslim populations of South Asia in a single nation collapsed in vio-
lence. In East Pakistan, which had been carved out of the old Indian state
of Bengal during the hasty British partition in 1947, most of the popula-
tion lived in congested, impoverished conditions that fueled political and
social resentments against the West Pakistani leaders who dominated the government of
Pakistan. These resentments exploded into a war of secession in 1971, when East Pakistan
proclaimed its independence and with the help of Indian military forces established the
new state of Bangladesh (or “Bengali nation”). The postcolonial, two-state political settle-
ment was thus permanently altered, and yet Britain’s earlier colonial infl uence on South
Asian politics, cultures, and economic life never completely disappeared. There was also a
continuing migration of South Asians into the cities of modern Britain, so that by the early
twenty-fi rst century more than 2 million people of Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi origin
were living around London or in the English midlands. This growing South Asian popula-
tion played an increasingly prominent role in Britain’s commerce and culture, bringing
new global trade as well as diverse religions, foods, music, and transnational communities
into British society.
The British Withdrawal from Burma (Myanmar), Malaysia, and Singapore
Burma, India’s neighbor to the east, embarked on a unique path of isolation and repression
after it gained independence in 1948. Britain had annexed the country to its Indian Empire
in 1885; and gradually, over the next half century, the British built a railway network,
developed the country’s mining and forest resources, and encouraged rice cultivation.
Burma became for a time the world’s largest exporter of rice. In the interwar years the
British encouraged limited self-government but also imprisoned nationalist leaders such
as Aung San, who pressed for immediate independence. After the Japanese invasion of
Burma in the Second World War the nationalist leaders took up arms
against the Japanese but also took advantage of the Japanese conquest to
advance Burma’s independence from Britain.
Bengali secession
and war
Burmese independence
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires930
After the war the British recognized Burma’s independence, but Aung San, who was
to become prime minister, was assassinated and his associate, U Nu, a devout Buddhist
and somewhat doctrinaire socialist, became the fi rst prime minister. To the new leaders of
the nation anti-imperialism meant anticapitalism and the new government was determined
to socialize the country rapidly. In contrast with the pattern in many former British colo-
nies, almost all connections with European commerce and culture were severed. There was
little money, however, so it was diffi cult to import machinery and to train workers; “the
Burmese path to socialism,” as it was styled, became impossible. In addition to economic
chaos, Burma faced armed rebellion from insurgent separatist minorities, many of them
reinforced after 1949 by the new Communist regime in China. Ethnic minorities made up
about one-third of the country’s population. Many of these minorities were incensed by
Nu’s plan to make Buddhism the offi cial state religion.
The British partition of its South Asian colonial empire into mostly Muslim Pakistan and pre- ponderantly Hindu India led to chaotic mass migrations and expulsions as people fl ed across the new borders in all directions. These trains in Amritsar, India, were swamped with Indian refugees who were trying to move to other Indian cities after fl eeing from West Pakistan in October 1947. (Bettmann/Corbis)
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931
THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT, 2000 The map shows nations that emerged from the dissolution of the British Empire in South Asia. East Pakistan was part of Pakistan until its war of secession in 1971 led to the establishment of an independent Bangladesh; Pakistan and Bangladesh are predominantly Muslim. India is predominantly Hindu, but large Muslim and Sikh minorities live there. The political ascen- dancy of a Hindu nationalist party in the 1990s altered India’s pluralistic political culture and also changed the names of cities that were known during and after the British colonial era as Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras (Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai). Political movements have changed other colonial-era names in the region, including the name of the country now called Myanmar, which was known as Burma throughout the era of British control and early independence. The island called Ceylon in the time of the British Empire is now Sri Lanka. The dispute between India and Pakistan over the status of Jammu and Kashmir has remained unresolved. Confl icts in this disputed territory, intensifi ed by the development of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan, as well as international wars in Afghanistan and continuing internal confl icts in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, made South Asia one of the world’s politically volatile regions in the early twenty-fi rst century.
0 500 miles
H I M A L A Y A S
ANDAMAN IS.
NICOBAR IS.
B a y o f B e n g a l
In d
u s
R .
Ganges R.
I N D I A N O C E A N
Brahma pu
tra
R .
ARABIAN SEA
AFGHANISTANIRAN
I N D I A
BHUTAN NEPAL
M Y
A N
M A
R (B
U R
M A
)
C H I N A
PAKISTAN T I B E T
SRI LANKA
JAMMU and KASHMIR
TAJIKISTAN
KYRGYZSTAN
TURKMENISTAN
UZBEKISTAN
MALDIVES
BANGLADESH
New Delhi
Kolkata (Calcutta)
Yangon (Rangoon)
Mumbai (Bombay)
Hyderabad
Karachi
Pondicherry
Chennai (Madras)
Islamabad
Colombo
Lahore
Kanpur
Dhaka
Bangalore
Ahmadabad
Despite the offi cial political framework of a multiparty parliamentary democracy, the
military exercised a parallel power with the civilian authorities. As the ethnic insurgen-
cies became more threatening in 1962, the army head General Ne Win staged a military
takeover. He would retain power for the next 26 years in a one-party state still dedicated to
pursuing the “Burmese path to socialism,” but in effect a military regime that carried the
country into deeper isolation. Seeking to affi rm its complete break from the earlier colonial
era, the government later changed the nation’s name to Myanmar. Movements for demo-
cratic reform were stifl ed; and few countries of the former British Empire moved away
from Britain as quickly or decisively as Burma.
Meanwhile, a different movement toward nationhood developed in Malaysia. In the
Malayan Peninsula British plans for independence after the Second World War were
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires932
This image of an elegantly attired Brit- ish High Commissioner waving farewell from his airplane as British rule ended in Malaya became an often-repeated, post-1945 scene in all parts of Asia and Africa. Europeans left colonies that they had dominated for many decades or even centuries, giving way everywhere to new national political movements that both rejected and borrowed from the imperial systems that they replaced. This independence parade in Kuala Lumpur, which took place on the day after the High Commissioner’s exit in September 1957, exemplifi es the cultural hybridity that often emerged among the new member nations of the expanding British Commonwealth. (Central Press/Getty Images, Keystone/Hulton
Archive/Getty Images)
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933
delayed because of tensions between the country’s Muslim Malay majority and its sizable
Chinese and Indian minorities. These large minority populations had lived in Malaysia
since the nineteenth century when the British had imported workers from
China and India to work in the tin and rubber mines. The Chinese had come
to play a dominant role in the economy. At the same time a militant Com-
munist movement had emerged, and the British for several years fought a
Communist insurgency. In 1957, with the rebellion mostly subdued, Britain
granted independence. Five years later Malaya joined with Singapore and other former
British dependencies to create the Federation of Malaysia.
Singapore withdrew in 1965 to become a small island-nation with a fl ourishing mod-
ern economy and high living standards but governed by a semi-authoritarian, paternalistic
regime under Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore thus resembled other East Asian countries that
made rapid economic advances without establishing full-fl edged democracies. British cul-
ture remained infl uential in Singapore, however, and English became the
offi cial language—a cultural strategy that unifi ed diverse ethnic groups and
effectively linked Singapore to the global economy. There was no absolute
repression, but no genuine democracy either. Singapore nevertheless dif-
fered from Burma and other inward-looking countries by embracing international eco-
nomic institutions and maintaining strong connections with British culture.
The transitions out of the British Empire thus took different forms, but the British sur-
rendered almost all of their vast Asian Empire within a decade or so after the end of the
Second World War. However, most of the former British colonies in Asia (as well as in
Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacifi c) agreed to retain a voluntary association with Britain
and each other in a new Commonwealth of Nations. Both Malaysia and Singapore, for
example, became members of this Commonwealth, which grew into an association of over
50 independent nations. The Commonwealth did not force its members to act in concert
on international issues, but it helped to promote useful interchange between the diverse
peoples who had once lived within Britain’s far-fl ung empire.
The Dutch Withdrawal from Indonesia
Another major European empire in Southeast Asia, the Dutch East Indies, also came to an
end. Agitation for independence, as in India, went back to pre-1914 days, but the Indone-
sian Nationalist Party, founded in 1927, and a growing Communist Party had met with
little success in the interwar years. The Japanese, as elsewhere in Asia, exploited anti-
Western sentiment during the Second World War and found Indonesian nationalist leaders
to use as collaborators in their military occupation. At the same time a broad resistance
movement emerged in which the Communists played a major part. Once the Japanese
were ousted at the war’s end in August 1945, before the Dutch could return, the Indonesian
Nationalist leader Sukarno (Indonesians often use only their family name in public life)
proclaimed the country’s independence. For four years the Dutch stubbornly fought the
nationalist movement, but they fi nally ceded independence in 1949.
Sukarno began with a parliamentary constitutional program and a democratic ideol-
ogy derived from the struggle against the Dutch, but the democratic phase did not last. In
1959 he dissolved the Constituent Assembly and governed in the follow-
ing years under a populist dictatorship that he called “guided democracy”;
before long he insisted upon being elected “president for life,” and he
sought to play a prominent, independent role in Cold War diplomacy.
Malaysian
independence
Singapore
Sukarno’s “guided
democracy”
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires934
Sukarno became one of the chief spokesmen for the postcolonial and developing
nations of Asia and Africa. He hosted the meeting in Bandung in 1955 at which leaders of
29 of the new nations celebrated their new sovereignty, condemned Western imperialist
and capitalist exploitation, and pledged neutralism and nonalignment in the Cold War.
Sukarno cultivated friendship with the Soviet Union and Communist China and loosened
earlier economic ties with Europe. Meanwhile the Indonesian Communist Party, backed
by the People’s Republic of China, had quietly grown into the third largest Communist
Party in the world with some 2 million members.
For a time Sukarno managed to work with and control the large Communist Party, but
in 1965 leftist army offi cers attempted a coup. A relatively unknown army leader, General
Suharto, quickly moved to suppress what was alleged to be a Communist
rebellion, but he also ousted Sukarno. Suharto ruled Indonesia for the next 32
years, continuing the economic and cultural transitions from Dutch colonial-
ism that had begun under Sukarno. The Suharto regime, which began with
the brutal repression of the Communists, maintained power through a central-
ized, authoritarian political system. Yet Suharto (like a number of other undemocratic leaders
in postcolonial nations) was steadfastly supported by Western governments during the Cold
War as a bulwark against the Asian infl uence of Communist China and as an alternative to
the kind of postcolonial movement that had emerged from the French Empire in Indochina.
The Independence Movement in Indochina
The French colonial empire also fell apart, not, however, without a long struggle. The fi rst
of France’s postwar colonial wars was fought over Indochina. When France offered auton-
omy to the states of Indochina at the end of the Second World War within a French federa-
tion, Cambodia and Laos accepted; but Vietnam (as Cochin-China, Tonkin, and Annam
jointly came to be called) demanded full independence. Open warfare broke out against
the French in 1946, and French armies and Communist-led Vietnamese forces fought each
other for more than seven years.
Suharto’s war on the
Communists
Indonesian President Sukarno emerged from the indepen- dence movement against the Dutch Empire to become a leader of the world’s new and developing nations during the era of decolonization. He is shown here in 1955, address- ing the international meeting at Bandung, where represen- tatives of nonaligned nations affi rmed their independence, pledged to remain neutral in the Cold War, and con- demned the legacies of Western imperialism. (Lisa Larsen/Time Life Pictures/
Getty Images)
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935
The Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, who headed the independence movement in
Vietnam, had spent earlier years in London and in Paris (where, as noted earlier, he had fi rst
called for the “self-determination” of Indochina during the Versailles peace conference and
witnessed the founding of the French Communist Party in 1920). He later lived in Moscow
and in China. He returned to Vietnam in 1941, organized a Vietnamese independence
movement (the Viet Minh), and mobilized guerrilla armies to fi ght the Japanese. At the
war’s end he proclaimed Vietnam’s independence. The French tried to reassert control by
using an ineffectual former emperor of Annam as a puppet. When negotiations failed, Ho
turned his armies against the French. Because the Communists led the inde-
pendence movement, the French could claim that they were fi ghting to stem
the tide of world communism, not to preserve nineteenth-century colonial
privileges. Yet communism here, as often in Asia, was linked to nationalism,
anticolonialism, anti-Westernism, and genuine popular discontent.
Communism and
imperialism
The French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 effectively ended the era of European colonialism in Indochina. Vietnamese soldiers led these captured French troops toward a prison camp in the last days of a war that showed the limits of European power and overturned the social- political hierarchies of France’s collapsing Asian Empire. (AFP/Getty Images)
109. The Emergence of Independent Nations in South Asia and Southeast Asia
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires936
Under President Eisenhower the United States, anticolonial but ready to champion
anti-Communist causes in the Cold War, aided the French fi nancially but refrained from
open military intervention. The war drained French morale and resources. In the spring of
1954 at the very time that an international conference was meeting in Geneva to arrange a
settlement in Indochina, the French army after a long, costly siege suffered a severe defeat
at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. The conference, with French acquiescence, recognized
the independence of Vietnam, as well as of Cambodia and Laos. The colonial empire in
French Indochina came to an end.
Vietnam was provisionally partitioned at the 17th parallel into a northern and south-
ern sector until elections could be held for the entire country, but the elections never took
place. Neither Ho nor the Western-backed regime in the south was satisfi ed with the settle-
ment of 1954, and a civil war of increasing intensity soon began. The United States, taking
up the struggle that France had abandoned, became deeply involved in the war by the early
1960s. The American government saw the war in Vietnam as part of a global Communist
challenge that had to be contained, so that a confl ict that began in the anticolonial upheavals
of the late 1940s became one of the most protracted and costly confl icts of the Cold War
era. Meanwhile, France’s entire colonial empire in Indochina—like the British and Dutch
empires in the same region—had given way to new national states. Such transitions rede-
fi ned Europe’s interactions with Asian peoples and societies, but the collapse of empires
also transformed national identities within those European countries (such as France)
that had long viewed their colonial systems as tangible and symbolic expressions of their
national power and infl uence in global affairs.
110. THE AFRICAN REVOLUTION
Africa is a large continent, considerably larger than North and Central America combined.
Its estimated population grew from 220 million in 1950 to more than 1 billion in the early
twenty-fi rst century, so that it has had one of the fastest-growing populations in the modern
world. A distinction may be made between North Africa and sub-Saharan
Africa. North Africa, stretching from Mauritania and Morocco to Egypt,
mostly Muslim and Arab, belongs as much to the Mediterranean world (and
even more to the Islamic Middle East) in ethnic composition, culture, geog-
raphy, and history. The history of northern Africa has always included com-
mercial, cultural, and population exchanges with southern Europe. In sub-Saharan Africa, to
the south, the population is predominantly black, and in addition to large Islamic communi-
ties, there are many people who adhere to traditional African animist faiths or to Christian-
ity. An ethnographic and linguistic map of Africa would reveal hundreds of different ethnic
groups and some 800 African languages, of which about 50 are spoken by a half million
people or more. A large number of Africans since the colonial era also speak English or
French, and there are also numerous descendants of European and South Asian settlers and
immigrants, most notably in South Africa. Europe’s involvement with sub-Saharan Africa,
which fi rst developed with the early modern trade in gold, ivory, and enslaved people, was
most pervasive during the era of modern European imperialism, but European infl uences
and exchanges remained signifi cant in many of the region’s postcolonial societies.
In 1945 the map of Africa was scarcely different from what it had been in 1914. All
of Africa was European-governed with the exceptions of Egypt, Liberia, and Ethiopia (the
latter had regained its independence from Italy during the Second World War). By the
early 1960s, however, there were 35 independent states, and most of Africa was either
North and sub-
Saharan Africa
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937110. The African Revolution
independent or close to achieving independence. By the early twenty-fi rst
century there were 53 independent African states, making up more than a
fourth of the membership of the UN. Of the 53 states, all but fi ve were in
sub-Saharan Africa.
The new states differed from older nations in many ways. Africa’s territorial boundar-
ies, as we have seen, were drawn hastily during the era of European imperial expansion in
the late nineteenth century, and the new states often contained highly diverse ethnic and
linguistic groups. These groups usually lacked the “national” affi nities that are associated
with the concept of a modern, imagined “nation-state,” while ethnically related peoples
were frequently distributed over two or more countries. The age of European imperialism
also left the African states economically underdeveloped, dependent on world markets,
and with little experience in self-governing institutions; the very rapidity of the transi-
tion to independence added to their diffi culties. Ethnic or civil wars and regional confl icts
marked much of Africa’s fi rst half-century of independence. The following survey of anti-
colonial movements and the emergence of postcolonial African states can only sketch the
broad outlines of decolonization, which sometimes led to wars with European colonial
powers and always led to complex political, economic, and cultural transitions.
French North Africa and the War in Algeria
During the Second World War the Allied leaders had made various commitments to self-
determination. With Italy defeated (and Ethiopia liberated), the wartime Allies in 1951
granted independence also to the former Italian colony of Libya, and the British took steps
to end what was left of their privileged position in Egypt. These events galvanized French
North Africa, where Arab nationalist leaders, often French-educated, had pressed for
independence since the 1920s. In Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria—the Maghreb, as these
Arab states of northwest Africa are called—the nationalists mounted a vigorous campaign.
Morocco and Tunisia were not outright colonies but French protectorates under their tra-
ditional rulers, the Moroccan sultan and the Tunisian bey. The French in 1956 granted
independence to both countries. The Moroccan sultan became king as a constitutional
monarch, but as the years went by, the monarchy increasingly enlarged its powers. Tuni-
sia became a republic and was governed for its fi rst 30 years by Habib Bourguiba, who
introduced many democratic reforms (including rights of divorce for women) but insisted
on being named president for life. In both countries the push for political, economic, and
cultural liberalization continued long after independence, often against counterpressures
from Muslim traditionalists.
Algeria’s story was very different. In the early nineteenth century the French had
invaded and occupied Algeria, which was part of the weakening Ottoman Empire. After
several brutal military campaigns Algeria became a fully controlled French colony. Later
in the nineteenth century French and other Europeans settled there in substantial numbers,
creating large immigrant communities that came to dominate the political and economic
life of the country and its Arab population. The French meanwhile provided a few limited
measures for Algerian self-rule and representation along with a promise that further con-
cessions could be made when the country became fully assimilated to French and Euro-
pean ways. Some additional political concessions were granted in the
interwar years, but after 1945 Algerian nationalists pressed for full indepen-
dence. Although Algeria was represented in the French legislature in Paris,
the suffrage in Algeria was heavily weighted in favor of the European
French colons in
Algeria
Independence
movements
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires938
AFRICA AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY This map shows the emergence of independent African states (with dates of independent nationhood) and may be compared with earlier maps for precolonial Africa (p. 667) and for Africa in 1914 at the height of European imperialism (p. 670). The fi rst of the new sub-Saharan states was Ghana, which gained independence from Britain in 1957 and took its name from a medieval African kingdom that had been located further north. The more recently established states include Zimbabwe (1980) and Namibia (1990) in southern Africa and Eritrea (1993) in northeastern Africa. By the end of the twentieth century all of the European colonial empires had disappeared and the white-controlled apartheid regime in South Africa had given way to a nonracial, democratic political system.
0 500 1,000 miles
Dates Indicate Year of Independence
Mediterranean Sea
ATLANTIC OCEAN
INDIAN OCEAN
N ile
R .
N iger R.
Congo R.
Z a m
be zi R.
R ed
Sea
Suez Canal
GUINEA 1958
GAMBIA 1965
MOROCCO 1956
ALGERIA 1962 LIBYA
1951 EGYPT
1922
TUNISIA 1956
SUDAN 1956
CHAD 1960
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF
CONGO (formerly Belgian Congo & Zaire)
1960
NIGER 1960
MALI 1960
NIGERIA 1960
MAURITANIA 1960
GUINEA- BISSAU
1974 SIERRA LEONE
1961 LIBERIA
1847
CÔTE D'IVOIRE
1960
BURKINA FASO 1960
GHANA 1957
BENIN 1960
CAMEROON 1960
EQUATORIAL GUINEA 1968
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
1960
ETHIOPIA (Ancient)
DJIBOUTI 1977
KENYA 1963
UGANDA 1962
RWANDA 1962 BURUNDI 1962 TANZANIA
(Tanganyika & Zanzibar) 1964
GABON 1960
CONGO REPUBLIC
1960 (formerly
French Congo)
NAMIBIA 1990
ZAMBIA 1964
ZIMBABWE 1980
BOTSWANA (Bechuanaland)
1966
ANGOLA 1975
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
1931
MALAWI 1964
LESOTHO (Basutoland) 1966
SWAZILAND 1968
Western Sahara
(occupied by Morocco)
SOMALIA 1960
MADAGASCAR 1960
TOGO 1960
SENEGAL 1960
CABINDA (Angola)
M O
ZA M
BI Q
U E
19 75
COMOROS 1975
SEYCHELLES 1968
ERITREA 1993
Cape of Good Hope
CANARY IS. (Sp.)
Zanzibar I.
SÃO TOMÉ & PRÍNCIPE
Cape Town
Dakar
Tangier
Cairo
Aswan
settlers to the distinct disadvantage of the Arab majority. O f the 9 million or so inhabitants,
about 1 million were Europeans. Many of the colons, or European settlers, mostly French, like the family of the French writer Albert Camus, had lived there for generations. Because
the Europeans controlled the economy and owned most of the land and industry, they
feared for their political and economic privileges if Algeria were cut loose from France and
governed by an Arab Muslim majority that had long lived under conditions of unequal
treatment. The French military suppressed initial postwar uprisings, but the nationalist
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939
movement grew, and in the autumn of 1954 the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched
a fi erce guerrilla war against the French.
The French-Algerian war lasted 7½ years, involving at its peak 500,000
French troops and provoking sharp political divisions within France itself.
There were numerous demonstrations and protests, some of which led to
violence in French cities. At one such demonstration in Paris, in 1961, the
police attacked a large crowd, killing dozens of protestors in what later came to be called
the Paris “massacre.” Meanwhile, the Algerian armed forces received aid and support from
Egypt and other Arab states. Torture and cruelty became common on both sides. In the
spring of 1958, during a French cabinet crisis in which the Europeans in Algeria feared
that a negotiated settlement might be arranged, an insurrection by army leaders and
diehard European settlers in Algiers brought political changes in Paris and General Charles
de Gaulle’s return to power. To the dismay of the army leaders, however, de Gaulle unex-
pectedly arranged a cease-fi re and soon spoke of autonomy and self-determination for the
Algerians. In 1962, in a referendum, he won the backing of the French electorate for full
independence. Army leaders thereupon rebelled, and some of his closest former associates
helped form a secret army of terrorists who bombed and killed, and even attempted his
assassination. Nevertheless, de Gaulle pressed on with negotiations for Algerian indepen-
dence, and in 1962 French rule ended. The long and brutal war had cost the lives of 10,000
French and 100,000 Algerian combatants as well as many thousands of Algerian
civilians.
After independence there was a mass exodus of Europeans from Algeria. Some of
the immigrants (who were known as Pieds-Noirs in France) remained bitter critics of de Gaulle’s Algerian policies, but most people in France and Algeria were grateful that de
Gaulle had negotiated an end to the ordeal and withdrawn the French army.
The French accepted the loss of Algeria and other parts of their empire
in West Africa, recognizing that a large overseas colonial system was no
longer in France’s economic interests or essential for the nation’s infl u-
ence in Europe and the wider world. With a prospering economy in the later 1960s, the
French turned their attention to other matters. Although staunchly anti-Western, the new
Algerian government accepted French technical assistance for the development of the
country’s extensive oil and natural gas resources. The FLN, for its part, retained power and
governed under a military-dominated one-party regime for the next 30 years, gradually
producing political and economic resentments that would lead to future internal confl icts.
The long period of French control had ended, however, and Algeria could move on to a
new era of political and cultural independence. More generally, after 1962 the Algerian
revolutionary movement became a widely studied example of anticolonial campaigns, in
part because the French-educated writer Franz Fanon wrote about the war’s cultural and
psychological meaning for colonized persons in his infl uential book The Wretched of the Earth (1961)—a work that continued to attract international attention during the postcolo- nial era. Fanon was originally from the French island of Martinique, but he participated in
the Algerian Revolution and drew on his training as a psychiatrist to describe the corrosive
effects of violence in colonial societies and anticolonial warfare.
End of British Rule in West Africa: Ghana and Nigeria
In North Africa nationalist agitation for independence, already under way in the interwar
years, might have been expected, but south of the Sahara the movement for liberation was
less advanced before the Second World War. Here black African populations still lived in
The French-Algerian
War
Algerian independence
110. The African Revolution
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires940
colonial empires that Europeans had carved out either in the colonial age that opened in the
fi fteenth century or in the “scramble for Africa” in the brief decade and a half of European
imperialist competition after 1885.
Yet independence movements, barely in existence before 1945, soon
announced their presence. The British fi rst resisted the mounting nationalist
pressures, imprisoning or exiling nationalist leaders, but then, recognizing
the strength of the liberation movements and the pressures of their own
postwar economic problems, they decided in the 1950s to change their
imperial policies. Britain thereafter moved quickly to grant autonomy to its colonies,
which soon became dominions and then independent republics.
The Gold Coast (soon renamed Ghana) was the fi rst British colony to win indepen-
dence, and its history both before and after independence exemplifi ed political and eco-
nomic patterns that would reappear in many of Britain’s African colonies. The British
initially resisted a militant civil disobedience movement led by the nationalist leader
Kwame Nkrumah and even imprisoned him. But in 1951 they freed Nkrumah and conceded
From colonies to
independent republics
The Algerian war for independence from France was one of the most bitter, protracted strug- gles for decolonization, in part because a large French population had lived in Algeria for several generations. France had about 500,000 soldiers in Algeria, including these troops in the city of Oran, but the French army could not defeat the Algerian FLN or regain control of the Algerian countryside. Algeria became an independent nation in 1962. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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941
Ghana was the fi rst African nation to gain independence from Great Britain during the 1950s. The president of the new nation, Kwame Nkrumah, appears in this picture, waving to supporters at a national cel- ebration in 1957. Nkrumah led the struggle for independence and became a key fi gure in the Pan-African movement, but his autocratic methods of gov- erning and his extravagances provoked a military coup that ousted him from power in 1966. (Bettmann/Corbis)
self-government. Nkrumah’s party o verwhelmingly won the elections that followed, and he
became prime minister. In 1957 the colony won full independence with dominion status,
and in 1960 Nkrumah transformed it into a republic with himself as presi-
dent. With independence, the country shed the name of Gold Coast, which
was too closely identifi ed with the centuries of imperialist exploitation and
the slave trade. It called itself Ghana, recalling an African kingdom some-
what to the north that had fl ourished from the sixth to the eleventh centuries. Nkrumah
quickly gathered extensive power into his own hands, banned opposition parties, governed
autocratically, and declared himself president for life. The early postcolonial history of
Ghana thus showed an antidemocratic political evolution that would reappear often in
Africa (and in Asia): charismatic nationalist leaders who led the struggles for independence
repeatedly turned into personal dictators once independence was won, and the party of the
independence movement often became the basis for one-party governments.
Nkrumah adopted an anti-Western stance, championed a nonalignment policy in the
Cold War, and sought a leading role in a pan-African movement, hosting in 1958 the fi rst
All-African People’s Congress in Ghana’s capital, Accra. He also cultivated close ties with
the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Nkrumah’s arbitrary rule, unbridled
Nkrumah’s Ghana
110. The African Revolution
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires942
extravagances, and cult of personality provoked growing opposition, however, and military
leaders ousted him in 1966. There then followed a series of military coups until a more
democratic system of multiparty elections developed in the 1990s. Every phase of Ghana’s
postindependence history—especially the gradual evolution from authoritarian rule toward
more democratic government in the early twenty-fi rst century—resembled general trends
that could be seen in much of postcolonial Africa; and the democratization in Ghana would
ultimately become part of a wider African movement for political reform.
Similar political patterns developed in Nigeria, which was the largest British-governed
colonial territory and population in Africa (its population would exceed 150 million by the
early twenty-fi rst century). British-educated Nigerians, who had pressed for political rep-
resentation in the 1920s, stepped up pressure against the British colonial
system after the Second World War. Britain granted independence in 1960,
and in 1963 Nigeria became a republic with a constitution, political parties,
and guarantees of civil rights. The postcolonial political system soon broke
down, however, because of regional and ethnic tensions, a series of military coups, and a
secessionist movement that led to a devastating civil war in the late 1960s. Despite this
internal violence, the recurring coups, and the confl icts between religious and ethnic
groups, Nigeria—like Ghana—moved eventually toward a more stable democratic system
in the late 1990s, supported in part by a booming oil industry. The Nigerian social elites
also retained various links with British society, and postcolonial Nigeria was one of the
largest member states in the British Commonwealth of Nations.
End of British Rule in East Africa: Kenya and Uganda
In East Africa, especially in Kenya, the independence movements after 1945 encoun-
tered obstacles, but the struggles to establish new nations moved through the usual politi-
cal stages to achieve sovereign statehood. European settlers, who had arrived early in
the century in considerable numbers, dominated economic and political life. They had
dispossessed the Kikiyu and Maasai peoples to create large coffee and tea plantations on
the most desirable land. Many Indians had also arrived from South Asia as merchants
and traders. Africans, restricted to working as subsistence small farmers, agricultural
laborers, and unskilled workers in the cities, resented their second-class economic and
social status.
In the 1920s and 1930s young nationalist leaders, many of whom, like Jomo Kenyatta,
had studied in Britain, agitated for land reform and African representation in government.
After the Second World War a movement for independence led by Kenyatta and his party
gathered momentum. When the European settlers stubbornly resisted pressures for inde-
pendence, the Kenyan militants responded with violence and acts of terrorism. The settlers
retaliated, and as the violence mounted, the British declared a state of emergency and
imprisoned or removed from the troubled area many of the nationalist leaders. Eventually,
however, the British faced up to the inevitable movement toward decolonization. T hey
ended the state of emergency, released Kenyatta, and in 1963 granted
Kenya independence. Over 55,000 Europeans left the country. Kenya
became a republic in 1964 with Kenyatta as its fi rst president. Until his
death 14 years later he completely dominated political life, following the
all-too-familiar pattern of the independence leader’s turning dictator after
independence. Like other new African leaders he championed pan-Africanism and neutral-
ism in the Cold War.
Nigeria
Kenyatta and
Kenyan independence
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943
Uganda, which Winston C hurchill once described as the “pearl of
Africa” because of its natural beauty, won independence in 1962. It, too,
encompassed many ethnic groups, who had been brought together in a Brit-
ish protectorate during the 1890s. Uganda was the scene of much missionary activity. Both
Protestantism and Roman Catholicism made many early twentieth-century converts, so
that the population became two-thirds Christian. Some permanent European settlers estab-
lished large plantations, but the African farmers mostly cultivated small plots of cotton,
tea, and coffee. Meanwhile, following the kind of migration that the British often facili-
tated between various parts of their global empire, South Asians settled in Uganda to play
a leading role as merchants. In 1921 Britain established a legislative council, but the fi rst
African members were admitted only in 1945, and not until several years later did they
receive a substantial number of seats. Pressure for independence continued to develop
until the British offi cially withdrew in the early 1960s. A new constitution, approved in
1963, transformed the Ugandan state into a republic, which fell almost immediately into
the hands of dictatorial leaders, including (after 1971) the notorious Idi Amin. Centralizing
all power under his own control, Amin brutalized the country for eight years with
Uganda
Uganda’s postcolonial dictator Idi Amin expelled thousands of Asians who had played a key role in the country’s colonial economy. The refugees pictured here left Uganda in 1972 and were among the fi rst to arrive in London, where they joined a multicultural population that brought new cultural perspectives and practices into late twentieth-century British society. (George W. Hales/Fox Photos/Getty Images)
110. The African Revolution
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires944
repressive policies that shocked both the recently departed British and all of Africa. As
many as 300,000 Ugandans may have lost their lives in executions and massacres. A once
prosperous agricultural economy with thriving coffee, tea, and cotton exports lay in ruins.
Professionals and intellectuals fl ed the country; and in 1972 Amin expelled some 60,000
Asians, mostly the Indian community, which had been a strong presence in the country’s
commerce. These exiles scattered in all directions, forming a new South Asian immigra-
tion into Britain and joining the far-fl ung Indian diaspora of the 1970s.
Amin was fi nally overthrown in 1979 with the help of outside forces from Tanzania,
but the history of his Ugandan regime had shown how the transitions to postcolonial
independence could carry former British colonies into authoritarian quag-
mires, some of which lasted for decades. The British people and govern-
ment had reached a general consensus, by the 1960s, that their vast empire
must be dissolved. Yet the messy confl icts of decolonization in both west-
ern and eastern Africa showed (as in Asia) that the British imperial system
had never fully established the public institutions, economic opportunities, mass educa-
tion, and political values that would be needed to sustain stable democratic states in the
postcolonial era.
The French Sub-Saharan Empire
The French, largely as a consequence of the bloody war in Algeria, dissolved the remainder
of their vast colonial empire in sub-Saharan Africa peacefully. After the Second World War
they had hoped that a French-educated and assimilated African elite would maintain ties to
France in a loosely organized French Union. They gave the African colonies representation
in the French National Assembly and promised self-governing institutions, but control
remained centralized in Paris, and by the mid-1950s the African colonies, inspired by
nationalist movements elsewhere, pressed for independence. De Gaulle recognized the
inexorable pressure for independence and offered the sub-Saharan colonies their freedom of
choice. By 1960 all 15 colonies had chosen independence, though these new nations—like
the former British colonies—were often slow to develop democratic political institutions.
Many of the African countries that emerged from the French Empire
retained close ties with France for economic aid and cultural cooperation.
France remained a strong presence among the African francophone nations
(and indeed the strongest presence of all the European countries on the
African continent), training the armies of the new states, lending fi nancial
assistance, and taking a leading role in economic development. 1 On numerous occasions
after 1960 the French intervened in Africa with military force. In 1979, for example, they
helped overthrow a brutal dictator who had seized power in the Central African Republic
in 1966 and for 13 years ruled as head of a self-proclaimed Central African Empire; and
they later sent troops to intervene in other confl icts in places such as Chad and Ivory Coast.
Problems of
decolonization
French aid and
cooperation
1 The francophone, or French-speaking, sub-Saharan African states emerging from the French colonial empire
in 1960 were Benin (until 1975 called Dahomey), Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of
Congo (Brazzaville), Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Madagascar (or Malagasy Republic), Mali, Mauritania,
Niger, Senegal, Togo, and Burkina Faso (until 1984 called Upper Volta). Comoros became independent in 1975;
Djibouti, in 1977. Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, in North Africa, are also part of francophone Africa as former
French protectorates. The former Belgian colonial territories must also be included: the Democratic Republic of
Congo (once the Belgian Congo, and from 1971 to 1997 called Zaire), and Burundi and Rwanda (once Belgian
trusteeships).
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945
France thus continued to see itself as a key international power in African affairs. The
French organized the African Financial Community, which helped stabilize African cur-
rencies in the postcolonial era, and became the largest donor of aid to the continent. While
some African leaders criticized such actions as neocolonialism, others viewed the French
presence more as a partnership than an intrusion. As elsewhere in Africa, the promise of
democratic government in the former French colonies turned for the most part into civilian
or military dictatorships, even if the degree of repression varied. Here too the indepen-
dence party often became the sole legally recognized political party. Presidents concen-
trated power in their own hands, often holding offi ce for 20 years or more. Meanwhile, the
economic and political problems in France’s former colonies contributed to a continuing
migration of people from West Africa to France, where the immigrants became increas-
ingly prominent in the social and cultural life of French cities.
Independence Movements in the Belgian Congo and Portugal’s African Colonies
European decolonization also took place in the African territories of Belgium and
Portugal. Both of these smaller European countries had sustained a certain international
status by holding large colonies in Africa, and infl uential groups in each nation had long-
standing interests in the colonial economies. The demise of the Belgian and Portuguese
colonies thus became a fi nal sign of the disintegrating European imperialism in Africa.
The Belgian Congo was a byword for European imperialist exploitation and cruelty
in the late nineteenth century. The most abusive features were remedied before 1914, but
political control remained concentrated in Brussels and little was done to prepare the large
colony (it was 80 times the size of Belgium) for self-government. Agitation for indepen-
dence intensifi ed when the neighboring French Congo, its capital at Brazzaville, won inde-
pendence in 1960 and became the Republic of Congo.
Faced with pressure for independence, the Belgian government, which had fi rst pro-
posed a transition period of 30 years, decided against gradualism and in 1960 announced
its intention to withdraw in six months’ time. Chaos followed. The two key nationalist
leaders, one of them the leftist leader Patrice Lumumba, were at odds with one another.
Ethnic and regional antagonisms ran deep, and no one was prepared to carry out govern-
mental responsibilities. The army mutinied, and the soldiers turned against the European
offi cers who had remained to command the new nation’s military forces. Belgian para-
troopers hastily fl ew back, and a UN international military force was sent to restore order.
When Lumumba was assassinated in 1961 (with evidence of American connivance), the
troubled situation became even more volatile because of a threatened Soviet-Western con-
frontation within the context of wider Cold War confl icts in Europe. The Soviets charged
the Europeans and their American supporters with deliberately creating the
chaos so that the Europeans might return.
Eventually, in 1965, Colonel Joseph Désiré Mobutu established a dic-
tatorship that would last for the next 32 years. He at once nationalized the
large mining enterprises and set out to break the country’s historical con-
nections to Belgian colonialism. To symbolize the new era, all geographical and personal
names were Africanized. He himself took the name Mobutu Sese Seko. The country
became Zaire, as did the famous river. The capital city of Leopoldville and the second
largest city, Stanleyville, both carrying names reminiscent of European
imperialism, became Kinshasa and Kisangani; Lake Albert became Lake
Mobutu. The former European presence in the country was thus effaced,
Cold War
entanglement
Mobutu and Zaire
110. The African Revolution
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires946
and yet Western governments would support Mobutu in future years because of his anti-
communism and his willingness to have his country serve as a base for operations against
leftist movements and governments in neighboring countries such as Angola. Once again
the postcolonial transition out of a European empire became entangled in the global con-
fl icts of the Cold War; and this broader international context also affected the anticolonial
war in Angola.
Among all the colonial powers in Africa, Portugal, itself under authoritarian dictator-
ship until 1974, clung longest to its colonies, symbols of grandeur from the days of Vasco
da Gama’s late fi fteenth-century explorations and the early age of European expansion.
To retain Angola, on the southwestern African coast, and Mozambique, on the southeast-
ern, both of which at one time had been fl ourishing centers of the slave trade and had
been under Portuguese rule for over 400 years, the Portuguese dictatorship stubbornly sup-
pressed anticolonial revolts that broke out in 1961. As the fi ghting dragged on, disaffected
offi cers and soldiers in the army, radicalized by the prolonged colonial
war, turned against the Portuguese regime and overthrew the authoritarian
government in 1974. The following year Portugal granted independence to
Angola, Mozambique, and its smaller African colonies. Hundreds of thou-
sands of Portuguese fl ed.
A new postindependence war soon began in Angola as Soviet-supported Marxist
forces fought American-supported, anti-Marxist groups for control of the country, but the
only remaining European empire in Africa had fi nally collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of
Portuguese migrated to Portugal or to cities in South Africa, where the last white-controlled
government in sub-Saharan Africa would hold on to power until the early 1990s.
Portuguese withdrawal
from Angola
THE MODERN ARAB WORLD The Arabic language zone is one of the most extensive in the world, reaching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf. In 1945 the Arab states formed a League, which was to provide an Arab counterweight to Europe’s twentieth-century infl uence in the region and which eventu- ally came to have 22 members. The League proved to be rather loose and its members often disagreed, but after 1948 all Arab nations expressed varying levels of suspicion and hostility toward the Israeli state in the midst of an otherwise predominantly Arab world.
0 500 milesArab League
Mediterranean Sea
ATLANTIC OCEAN
INDIAN OCEAN
N ile
R .
N iger R.
R ed
Sea
Gulf o f Ade
n
Persian Gulf
MOROCCO
ALGERIA LIBYA EGYPT
TUNISIA
SUDAN
MAURITANIA
DJIBOUTI
Western Sahara
(occupied by Morocco)
SOMALIA
CANARY IS. (Sp.)
SPAIN
SAUDI ARABIA
YEMEN
OMAN
QATAR UNITED ARAB
EMIRATES
IRAQ IRAN
KUWAIT
BAHRAIN
SYRIA
TURKEY
JORDAN
ISRAEL
LEBANON CYPRUS
GREECE
CRETE
CO N
STA N
TIN E
A LG
IER S
O R A
N
Tangier
Cairo Jerusalem
Amman
Beirut Baghdad Tehran
Riyadh
Sanaa Khartoum
Tripoli
TunisAlgiers Ceuta (Sp.)
Rabat Casablanca
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947111. Europe and the Modern Middle East
The African Revolution against European colonialism now came to an end, at least as a
political/military upheaval; and like earlier anticolonial revolutions in the Americas and in
Asia, it ushered in a new era of independence and national sovereignty. European cultures
and trading systems were still infl uential in much of postcolonial Africa (as in the earlier
postcolonial societies of the Atlantic world), but the new nations did not quickly construct
democratic governments, protect human rights, resolve regional confl icts, or bring about
signifi cant changes in the economic conditions of the most impoverished social classes.
There were new civil wars and social confl icts that could be compared to the political and
cultural struggles that had also developed in other places after European colonial powers
withdrew or, indeed, that had long affl icted societies within Europe itself. Yet the African
revolutions, for all their problems and disappointments, represented another major phase
in Europe’s changing relations with the wider world—relations that were now fi nally mov-
ing beyond the long, complex history of European empires.
111. EUROPE AND THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST
The Islamic and the Arab World
In the Islamic, or Muslim, world, the age of colonial domination also ended,
and a powerful renewed sense of identity emerged. Much of the Islamic
world was determined to share in the economic and material advances of
modern Europe, but many Muslims also wanted to develop or reform their societies with-
out assimilating European or American cultural patterns. Religious and cultural traditions
thus provided alternatives to Europeanizing reforms and infl uenced the political institu-
tions in the diverse, new independent nations. In many cases strong tensions developed as
Islamic traditionalists resisted secular changes. Turkey made a concerted effort to protect
the secular society decreed by its founder, Kemal Atatürk; but elsewhere, in Saudi Arabia,
Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan, and other countries, Islamic fundamentalism created virtual the-
ocracies, profoundly affecting the interactions between Islamic societies and Europe.
The Arab states that emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire
at the end of the First World War became League of Nations mandates
under British or French administration, with the expectation of one day
receiving independence. Egypt became nominally independent in 1922 and
Iraq in 1932, although the British retained treaty rights in each until after 1945. The other
Arab states became independent during or after the Second World War, when the British
and French ended their mandates. In 1945 Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and
Jordan formed the infl uential League of Arab States, or Arab League. Libya, after gaining
independence in 1951, also became a member. In the decades that followed, newly inde-
pendent Arab states as well as the Palestinian National Authority joined so that it grew to
have 22 members by the end of the twentieth century.
Although Europeans sometimes imagined a united Arab or Islamic
culture, the unity of the Arab world was more fragile than often thought.
Divisive rivalries persisted between Sunni and Shiite Muslims and between
secular and religious political movements. The pan-Arabism advocated by Egypt’s Col-
onel Nasser in the 1950s failed to rally lasting support. A United Arab Republic join-
ing Egypt and Syria in 1958 was short-lived. After the Second World War, however, the
Arab states found common cause in their opposition to the state of Israel, which itself had
emerged as a new sovereign state from a British mandate in the Middle East in 1948. The
Islamic identity
The Arab states
Arab rivalries
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires948
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1946–1979
1946 Communist-led independence movement launches war against French control
of Vietnam
1947 Britain ends its imperial rule in South Asia, partitioning most of the region
into the two new nations of India and Pakistan
1948 Burma gains independence from Britain
1948 Republic of Israel is established in former British mandate of Palestine;
Arab states go to war against Israel
1949 Indonesia wins independence from the Netherlands
1954 France withdraws from Indochina; two governments emerge in North and
South Vietnam
1954–1962 Algerian nationalists wage war for independence from France
1955 Leaders of 29 “new nations” meet in Bandung, Indonesia, to affi rm
“nonalignment” in the Cold War and condemn Western imperialism
1956 Britain, France, and Israel attack Egypt after it nationalizes Suez Canal
1957 Ghana is the fi rst British colony in Africa to win independence
1960 France’s 15 sub-Saharan colonies complete their voting for independence
1960 Congo gains independence from Belgium, but falls into violent confl ict
1963 Federation of Malaysia is established, temporarily uniting Malaya and
Singapore after independence from Britain
1963 Kenya wins independence from Britain
1965 Singapore breaks away from Malaysia to become an independent nation
1965 General Suharto overthrows Sukarno; begins 32-year rule in Indonesia
1971 India intervenes militarily to help Bangladesh gain independence from
Pakistan
1973 Yom Kipper War: Egypt and Syria fi ght new war with Israel; confl ict leads to
Arab oil embargo as a geopolitical weapon, creating an oil crisis in Europe
1975 Angola and Mozambique gain independence from Portugal, completing the
breakup of European empires in Africa
1979 Ayatollah Khomeini returns from exile to lead Islamic Revolution in Iran
Arab states viewed Israel as a Western-backed intrusion into their land, and the result was
a series of continuing tensions and confl icts that frequently brought wider international
forces into play and also affected people in Europe.
The Emergence of Israel
Zionism, evolving in the late nineteenth century as a response to European anti-Semitism,
became a movement to establish (or reestablish) a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then part
of the Ottoman Empire. A small number of Jewish pioneers from Russia and eastern
Europe had made their way to Palestine before 1914. During the First World War, while at
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949
war with the Ottoman Empire, the British by the Balfour Declaration of 1917 voiced sup-
port for “a Jewish homeland in Palestine” but in other ways the British supported emergent
Arab nationalism. In 1923, after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the British received a
League of Nations mandate for Palestine, and a growing number of Jewish
settlers arrived in the 1920s and 1930s.
The whole question of Palestine poignantly reemerged at the end of
the Second World War when the homeless survivors of the Nazi Holocaust,
which had all but wiped out central and eastern Europe’s Jews, sought out
Palestine as a place of refuge. But in deference to Arab protests the British limited immi-
gration from Europe and turned away whole shiploads of refugees. The Jewish leaders
pressed their cause with the UN and sympathetic American political circles and contested
the British restrictions, at times resorting even to terrorist activities directed against the
British. In 1947 the UN in a vote supported by both the United States and the Soviet Union
recommended partition of Palestine into two parts: a Jewish sector and an Arab sector,
with the area around Jerusalem under international control.
The Arabs, who had boycotted the UN committee hearings, rejected the partition, com-
plaining that they were being asked to make sacrifi ces for Europe’s persecution of the Jews.
Both sides prepared for confl ict. On May 14, 1948, when the Zionist leaders proclaimed
the Republic of Israel, Israel’s fi ve Arab neighbors—Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and
Iraq—refused recognition and invaded the new state. The Israelis (as the citizens of the new
republic called themselves) not only defended themselves but also counterattacked. In the
course of the fi ghting at least 600,000 Palestinian Arabs fl ed, or were forced by the Israelis
to fl ee, to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and other Arab states. During the war Jordan took over
the West Bank of the Jordan River, and part of Jerusalem and Egypt took the Gaza Strip,
but elsewhere Israel gained territory.
The question of
Palestine
The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 marked the triumphant culmination of a long- developing campaign in Europe and Palestine to establish an independent Jewish state. The fi rst prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, who was originally from Poland, joined the Zionist migration to Palestine in the early twentieth century. He is pictured here, sign- ing the proclamation that established the new Israeli state, opened an important new era in Jewish history, and led to a long confl ict with the surrounding Arab nations. (AP Photo)
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By the end of hostilities and the armistice of 1949 Israel had increased its originally
allotted land by about half. Jerusalem came under divided control. The plan for interna-
tional control was abandoned. Jordan now governed East Jerusalem, but Israel retained
control of West Jerusalem. The Arab states, unwilling to negotiate peace or even recognize
the existence of Israel as a sovereign state, made little effort to absorb the Palestinian refu-
gees who had fl ed to the Arab states and who continued to live in overcrowded, squalid
refugee camps for decades to come.
The New State of Israel
The Israelis saw themselves as creating a Jewish homeland after the Holo-
caust, so that persecuted Jews in Europe and other parts of the world would
never again be without a refuge. Under a Law of Return Jewish immigrants
from anywhere in the diaspora were automatically entitled to citizenship.
After independence Israel over the years built a modern, European-style, urban, industrial
society with a democratically elected parliament, the Knesset, and a lively political cul-
ture. For many years the moderately socialist Labor Party governed. The country provided
a large role for labor unions and agricultural cooperatives (famous as kib- butzim ), extensive health and educational services, and support for scientifi c and technological research. Implementing European conceptions of a mixed
A Jewish homeland
Economic growth
The creation of Israel and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war of 1948–1949 drove some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs into neighboring countries and refugee camps. These Palestinians were liv- ing in 1956 at a camp on the West Bank of the Jordan River—an area that came under Israeli control after the Six Day War in 1967 and remained a source of confl ict as the Palestinians later sought to establish an independent state in this territory. (John Chillingworth/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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951
economic system, the Israelis at fi rst developed an economy that was about half government-
controlled until a later shift to privatization. Economic development took off swiftly, and
industry expanded. Living standards compared favorably to those of western Europe.
Over 2 million immigrants arrived in the decades after 1948. Many Jews arrived from
the Arab states in North Africa or from Arab and non-Arab Muslim states in Asia, forced
to abandon established communities where their families had lived for centuries but where
Jews were now persecuted. From 1989 to 1992 about 400,000 Soviet Jews, fi nally permit-
ted by the Soviet government to migrate, moved to Israel from Russia and other areas of
the dissolving Soviet Union. The population of 870,000 in 1948 reached about 5,750,000
by the opening of the twenty-fi rst century.
The Arab-Israeli Wars after Independence
Four more Arab-Israeli wars were fought during the decades after 1948–1949. Israel, with
Britain and France as allies, went to war with Egypt in 1956 when Egypt nationalized the
Suez Canal and attempted to bar Israeli shipping, but the war also carried the implicit goal
of weakening Egypt’s President Nasser. The American president, Dwight Eisenhower,
opposed the British-French intervention in Egypt, fearing the implications for Cold War
confl icts in other regions, the possible effects on NATO, and the threat of a wider war with
the Soviet Union. In a rare break with its key European allies, the American government
demanded that the attack on Egypt should stop. American diplomats also worked with oth-
ers to pass a UN resolution calling for a cease-fi re. The assault was therefore suspended,
and the British-French forces soon withdrew from Egyptian territory. After the crisis
passed, the United States reaffi rmed its support for Israel and provided extensive economic
assistance. In Europe, however, the Suez crisis provoked a reassessment that pushed some
leaders in a different direction. France, originally a staunch Israeli ally and a supplier of
weapons for the Israeli military, moved away from some of its earlier support for Israel
after Charles de Gaulle became president in the late 1950s. De Gaulle decided that he
should help restore a balance of power in the region by developing closer relations with
the Arab states. The U.S.S.R., also one of the original backers of the Jewish state, reversed
itself and sent arms to Egypt and other Arab nations. The American government, following
its Cold War strategy of containment, now sought to prevent the expansion of Soviet infl u-
ence in the Middle East and pledged support to countries in the region that would oppose
communism. For the Europeans and Americans alike, the Middle East became another
contested site in the global rivalries of the Cold War.
In 1967 Israel successfully waged the Six-Day War against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan,
when Egypt moved to close the Gulf of Aqaba to Israel, which would have strangled the
Israeli economy. The outcome of the brief fi ghting in 1967 was momentous. After defeat-
ing the three Arab armies, Israel took from Jordan the West Bank of the Jordan River and
East Jerusalem; from Syria, the Golan Heights (from which the Syrians had been able to
shell Israeli settlements); and from Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip. The Israeli
occupation of Palestinian towns and the later development of Israeli settlements in the
occupied territories provoked the further development of Palestinian nationalism, new
demands for an independent Palestinian state, and the emergence of radical Palestinian
groups that began to launch terrorist attacks against Israelis, including a deadly attack on
Israel’s athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany, in 1972.
Another war broke out in 1973 when Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked the Israelis
on the Jewish holy day Yom Kippur. Israel recovered from the surprise attack, defeated the
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires952
Syrian army, and trapped the Egyptian forces in the Sinai Peninsula. With the Israelis near
victory, the League of Arab States suddenly introduced a new strategic weapon in sup-
port of Egypt and Syria, an embargo on oil shipments. Although the embargo was aimed
specifi cally at the United States and at a few European countries, such as the Netherlands,
and although it was lifted early in 1974, the price of oil quadrupled in a few short months.
This rapid price rise affected the European economy and disrupted commerce throughout
much of the global trading system. Meanwhile, the war ended with an American-mediated
settlement. Israel withdrew from the west bank of the Suez Canal, but continued to occupy
most of the Sinai Peninsula until the early 1980s.
Violence continued in the decades after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, leading to new
acts of Palestinian terrorism and an Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the early 1980s. Each
crisis in the Middle East, however, only seemed to confi rm that Europe’s infl uence in the
region had declined, that the Israeli/Palestinian confl ict defi ed all outside attempts to medi-
ate a solution, and that Europe would likely remain vulnerable to the fl uctuating costs of
oil that fl owed from Arab countries into the European economy. More generally, it was
British and French troops entered the Sinai Peninsula in 1956 as part of a joint military opera- tion with Israel to stop Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal and to weaken Egyptian President Nasser. The American government strongly opposed the Suez campaign and took diplomatic steps to bring about the withdrawal of European forces. These British soldiers were part of the expeditionary force that took over the road leading to Port Said and thus blocked Egyptian forces from the Suez Canal. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
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953
also apparent that the breakup of the Ottoman Empire had presented Europeans with a set
of intractable problems that affected everything from oil prices to the threat of terrorism
within European societies and the rise of new Islamic religious movements among some of
the immigrant communities in European cities.
The Revolution in Iran
Where change occurred rapidly in the Middle East, it was clear that traditionalists often
resented the European and American infl uence that accompanied modern economic and
cultural changes. They opposed secularism and the disruption of older religious and cul-
tural institutions as a Western subversion. Yet most people in other parts of the world were
not prepared for the fi erce anti-Westernism of the Islamic revolution that erupted in 1979,
not in an Arab state, but in Iran, where the principal language was Persian (or Farsi). Iran
was a Shiite state, whereas nine-tenths of the Islamic world adhered to the Sunni branch of
Islam, but the Shiite revolutionary leaders in Iran helped to foment a new religious reviv-
alism everywhere in the Muslim world.
Over the centuries of modern history Persia (or Iran, as it was known
after 1935) had often faced the disruptions of foreign domination. At the
opening of the twentieth century, as we have seen, Britain and Russia, cov-
eting its newly discovered oil resources, divided it into spheres of European infl uence.
After the First World War the British had tried to retain control, but in 1921 an army
offi cer, Reza Khan, seized power, assumed the title of shah, or hereditary ruler, in 1925,
and embarked on a program of modernization. During the Second World War, however,
in 1941, when some of his machinations brought him threateningly close to the Axis, the
British and Russians occupied the country and forced him to abdicate in favor of his son,
Muhammad Reza. The young shah identifi ed with western Europe and the United States.
After the war American infl uence became dominant. When Prime Minister Mossa-
degh and a leftist parliament moved to nationalize and control the oil industry in the early
1950s, the shah, with clandestine support from the American CIA, ousted him and blocked
the attempt. With oil wealth and extensive American military and economic aid, the shah
embarked upon an ambitious development program. He broke up estates controlled by
feudal landowners and the Islamic clergy, reorganized the armed forces, and sent students
in large numbers to study abroad. The pace and breadth of secularization and economic
reforms pleased urban business and professional interests but alienated others, especially
in the countryside. Moreover, the shah presided over an increasingly authoritarian regime,
crushing opposition and dissent with his secret police. His huge personal wealth also did
not go unnoticed. The United States, pleased with the policies of its anti-Soviet ally in a
strategic part of the world, ignored the swelling internal restlessness. In 1978 religious-
inspired protests and strikes and riots broke out as the opposition coalesced around Islamic
clerics. A tidal wave of demonstrations forced the shah to fl ee the country in January 1979.
In February the aged leader of Iran’s Shiite community, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
(ayatollah is the highest rank in the Shiite religious hierarchy), returned to Iran from Paris.
The ayatollah had lived in France during the last phase of a fi fteen-year
exile (he spent most of these years in Iraq), but he had closely followed the
Iranian protests and denounced the shah’s pro-Western, anticlerical, and
irreligious regime. Ayatollah Khomeini quickly assumed leadership of the
revolution and proclaimed an “Islamic republic.” His newly formed revolu-
tionary guards routed the shah’s troops. Supreme control rested with the ayatollah and his
Foreign domination
Ayatollah Khomeini’s
“Islamic republic”
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires954
ISRAEL AND ADJOINING REGIONS AFTER THE ERA OF THE BRITISH MANDATE “Palestine” is the term by which Europeans long designated a small region of predominantly Arab population on the east coast of the Mediterranean. The area belonged to the Ottoman Empire until the end of the First World War. In 1922 the League of Nations made the terri- tory a mandate of Great Britain, which soon responded to Arab dissatisfactions by placing restrictions on the migration of European Jews, who had been moving into Palestine since the rise of Zionism in the late nineteenth century. After the deaths of millions of Jews in the Holocaust during the Second World War, the Zionist aspiration for an independent Jewish state won new international support, especially in Europe and North America. In 1947 the UN proposed a partition of Palestinian lands to create a new Jewish state and a division of the city
BRITISH MANDATE 1922–1948
0 40 miles
Mediterranean Sea
Dead Sea
Gulf of Aqaba
Jo rd
a n
R .
Sea of Galilee
SYRIA
JORDAN
EGYPT
SINAI PENINSULA
P A
L E
S T
I N
E
Jerusalem
PROPOSED UN PARTITION
1947
Jewish Arab Jerusalem
Mediterranean Sea
Dead Sea
Gulf of Aqaba
Jo rd
a n
R .
Sea of Galilee
SYRIA
EGYPT
SINAI PENINSULA
LEBANON
J O
R D
A N
Jerusalem
Gaza
Tel Aviv
Haifa
REPUBLIC OF ISRAEL 1948–1967
Mediterranean Sea
Dead Sea
Gulf of Aqaba
Jo rd
a n
R .
Sea of Galilee
SYRIA
EGYPT
SINAI PENINSULA
LEB.
J O
R D
A NNegev
ISRAEL
Jerusalem
Gaza
Tel Aviv
Haifa
Occupied by Israel 1967
Regained by Egypt 1975
UN Zone
AFTER 1967
Mediterranean Sea
Gulf of Suez
Gulf of Aqaba
Dead Sea Suez Canal
Red Sea
SYRIALEBANON
JORDAN EGYPT
ISRAEL GOLAN HEIGHTS
WEST
BANK
SINAI PENINSULA
SAUDI ARABIA
Cairo Gaza Jerusalem
Tel Aviv
Haifa
Amman
Beirut
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955
AFTER ISRAELI-EGYPTIAN PEACE, 1979–1982
0 200 miles100
Mediterranean Sea
Gulf of Suez
Gulf of Aqaba
Dead Sea Suez Canal
Red Sea
SYRIALEBANON
JORDAN
ISRAEL GOLAN HEIGHTS
WEST
BANK
SINAI PENINSULA
SAUDI ARABIA
EGYPT
Gaza
Jerusalem
Tel Aviv
Haifa
Amman
Beirut
Area under Palestinian Control
0 40 miles
Mediterranean Sea
Dead Sea
Gulf of Aqaba
Jo rd
a n
R .
Sea of Galilee
SYRIA
JORDAN
EGYPT
SINAI PENINSULA
WEST BANK
GAZA STRIP
Jerusalem
Tel Aviv- Yafo
Jericho
Gaza
Beersheeba
of Jerusalem into separate zones. The Arabs rejected this plan, but in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 the Israelis won control of wider boundaries than those fi rst proposed. The Arab states still refused to recognize Israel. In the Six-Day War of 1967 the Israelis occupied additional territory, as shown in the fourth panel, labeled after 1967. In 1973, in the Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria attacked to regain their lost lands, but Israel defeated them and continued to occupy the Sinai Peninsula and other territories, although Egypt eventually won control of the east bank of the Suez Canal. Under a peace treaty that Israel and Egypt negotiated in 1979, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt, but retained the small area known as the Gaza Strip. In 1993 Israel agreed to begin withdrawing from some areas of the occupied territories and allow the fi rst steps toward self-government for the Palestinians. A new Palestinian Authority emerged to govern the autonomous Palestinian communities, but a long series of later confl icts and negotiations had still not led to a fi nal peace settlement or an independent Palestinian state in the early twenty-fi rst century. In 2005, however, Israel removed all Jewish settlements and its military forces from the Gaza Strip.
council of religious guardians, appointed to guarantee the new regime’s strict commitment
to Islam and to ensure control of the revolution through a network of mosques.
The revolutionary authorities forcefully rejected the European and American infl u-
ences in Iranian society and set out to restore traditional Islamic ways of life. Women were
ordered to wear the chador, the traditional long black dress covering them from head to toe.
The necktie was outlawed for men, who were also encouraged to grow beards. The author-
ities banned Western music, classical and popular, from radio and television and enforced
the Islamic prohibition on alcohol. Islamic law, to be interpreted by the clerics, took
precedence over secular law. Thousands were executed for religious, moral, or political
offenses. The ayatollah’s theocracy pushed aside moderate leaders, even those who had
welcomed the overthrow of the shah. The fi rst president was forced to fl ee into exile in
France; the foreign minister was executed.
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Chapter 23 Decolonization and the Breakup of the European Empires956
Militants, m any of them university students, aroused to frenzied
heights by the ayatollah’s fervid denunciations of the United States as “the
great Satan,” took action on their own. Reacting to the admission of the ail-
ing shah to the United States in the autumn of 1979, revolutionary guards and students
seized the American embassy in Tehran in retaliation and held 50 American hostages for
close to 15 months, demanding the return of the shah and his wealth to Iran. The American
hostages were fi nally released in early 1981, but the new Iranian Islamic Republic contin-
ued to repress its internal critics. Iran also entered into a long war with Iraq after the Iraqi
military launched attacks on Iranian territory. Meanwhile, the Iranian revolutionaries
sought to eradicate many of the secular and Western infl uences that would never com-
pletely disappear from Iranian politics, culture, and economic life.
Although the Iranian Revolution mobilized new political movements of radical Mus-
lims in other countries, condemned American policies in the Middle East, and altered the
balance of power between the major Islamic states, it may be best understood in relation
to modern European history as a fi nal great upheaval in the vast movement toward decolo-
nization that swept across the world between the late 1940s and the late 1970s. Whatever
else might be said about the specifi c ideas and aspirations of the Islamic Revolution, it
clearly represented another popular campaign for the expulsion of Western political and
economic interests from a society that was long dominated by the outside power of Britain
and then the United States. A religious movement that may have attracted much less sup-
port in a different context or time therefore generated strong nationalist passions among
“ The great Satan”
The revolution in Iran brought on a wave of militant, anti-Western demonstrations. These Ira- nian women, wearing the chador to assert their strong Islamic values, showed their determined support for Islamic religious traditions and the new political order as well as their opposition to European-style clothing by wielding powerful, modern weapons. (Christine Spengler/Sygma/Corbis)
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957
the huge crowds, political activists, and intellectual elites who saw Islamic clerics as an
expression of Iranian national sovereignty and as the leaders of a mass movement for true
national independence.
The anticolonial and anti-imperialist movements that developed in South and South-
east Asia during the late 1940s and spread across all of Africa and the Middle East in the
1950s and 1960s ultimately came to a fi nal explosion in the Iranian Revolution of 1978–
1979. To be sure, the Iranian anger was directed more at the United States than at Europe.
Yet the Iranian critique of modern secular cultures and social practices was also part of a
broader rejection of the whole European ascendancy that had held sway over most of Asia
and Africa since the later nineteenth century and that was now ending in the global pro-
cesses of decolonization. The Islamic themes of the Iranian Revolution and of other radical
religious movements in the Arab world differed enormously from the ideas of the secular
Communists who led the anticolonial movements in places such as Vietnam, and yet simi-
lar challenges to European power and culture could be found wherever anticolonial or anti-
Western movements emerged in the 1940s to 1970s. The “Age of the Asian and African
Revolutions” changed Europe’s position in global history, much like the previous “Age of
the Atlantic Revolutions” had transformed Europe’s position in the Americas. European
culture, science, commerce, and political theories remained powerful forces in the modern
world, but Europe’s relations with non-European peoples and societies, after decoloniza-
tion, would never again return to the hierarchical global systems of earlier historical eras.
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
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959
C h a p t e r 24 COEXISTENCE,
CONFRONTATION,
AND THE NEW
EUROPEAN ECONOMY
We must turn from our account of the breakup of empires to other political and economic changes
that affected the internal development of European
societies as well as Europe’s position in global
affairs during the late twentieth century. By the
end of the 1950s western Europe and Japan had
drawn on American aid and their own technical
expertise to rebuild their war-damaged cities and
factories. Responding to the new challenges of a
bipolar world and the global ambitions of two com-
peting superpowers, western Europe had joined
more closely together economically in the evolv-
ing European Community (EC) and buried many of its old antagonisms. Regions of the
world that formerly were part of European colonial empires were everywhere asserting
their new social and cultural autonomy. The global economy grew increasingly interdepen-
dent and the vicissitudes of economic expansion and contraction reverberated worldwide.
Older distinctions between “industrialized” Europe and “nonindustrialized” societies
became blurred, and even the Soviet bloc in eastern Europe expanded its trade and fi nan-
cial exchanges with non-Communist countries.
Yet the Cold War continued to manifest itself in an escalating nuclear arms race and in
the worldwide confrontation of the two superpowers, each of which attempted to prevent
the other from gaining the ascendancy. The stockpiling of nuclear arms and the develop-
ment of sophisticated long-range delivery systems led to the accumulation of unparalleled
destructive power. The nuclear missiles supposedly were built for deterrence and not for
use, and a new kind of balance of power emerged that preserved the peace. The people
of Europe (like others around the world) nonetheless lived under the threat of a possible
nuclear catastrophe, and neither economic nor intellectual life could fully escape from the
global shadow of the Cold War.
112. Confrontation and
Détente, 1955–1975
113. Collapse and Recovery of
the European and Global
Economy: The 1970s and
1980s
114. The Cold War Rekindled
and Defused
Chapter emblem: Citizens of Prague celebrate the destruction of a tank in 1968, after the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia. (Reg Lancaster/Express/Getty images)
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy960
As time passed, the phenomenon of “bipolarity,” or the predominance of the two
superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, gradually gave way to new global
confi gurations; and Europe gradually became a more independent force within the con-
text of superpower confl icts. Many Europeans, for example, became strong advocates for
human rights, or they protested the escalating arms race that led to the placement of nuclear
weapons in the densely populated countries of both eastern and western Europe. But while
the charged atmosphere of the Cold War lasted, despite periods of détente, Europeans
were forced to live with repeated international crises that were often beyond their control.
As late as 1985 no one could foresee how or when the Cold War would end.
112. CONFRONTATION AND DÉTENTE, 1955–1975
The Soviet leaders who succeeded Stalin after 1953 seemed at times more conciliatory
and willing to acknowledge the need for arms control and cooperation in the nuclear age.
An alternative of peaceful coexistence and competing world systems promised to open up,
and there were even recognizable periods of détente, or formal relaxation of
tensions. But dangerous confrontations recurred, the nuclear arms buildup
assumed unprecedented forms and dimensions, and relations see-sawed
over the next several decades between conciliation and crisis.
By 1955 the Cold War had stabilized, especially in Europe. The North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), strengthened by the West German armed forces, faced the Warsaw
Pact nations of the Soviet bloc. The iron curtain still divided Europe, but the threat of
direct military confrontation receded. The Western powers and the Soviet Union were
even able to agree in 1955 on a treaty with Austria, ending the joint Allied occupation and
leaving Austria independent and neutral.
We have seen how Khrushchev had emerged as the dominant Soviet leader after the
death of Stalin. Sharp-tongued, volatile, boastful, he announced that the Soviets would
abandon their revolutionary principles only “when shrimp learn to whistle” and pledged that
the Soviets would “bury” Western capitalism. Nonetheless he rejected the
inevitability of war and emphasized the “possibility and necessity of peace-
ful coexistence.” President Eisenhower, in offi ce from 1953 to 1961, contin-
ued the policy of containment and the American military buildup, but both
superpowers recognized the need for coexistence in the nuclear age.
In 1955 President Eisenhower, along with the British and French, met at Geneva with
Soviet leaders in a friendlier atmosphere than any since the Second World War. Although
they reached no new agreements, the American president could speak of “a new spirit of
conciliation and cooperation.” But tensions mounted over Berlin. The Soviets, incensed
that East Germans were fl eeing in large numbers to West Berlin and then to the Federal
Republic of Germany, demanded that the Western powers end their occupation of West
Berlin, but Eisenhower forcefully rejected the ultimatum, and the crisis passed. In 1959,
when Khrushchev visited President Eisenhower at his weekend retreat in Camp David,
they spoke of peaceful coexistence and even of mutual disarmament.
At a second summit conference in Paris, the superpowers continued to recognize
their common interests in preserving stability and peace. But by then Khrushchev, under
criticism at home and from Mao in China for being too conciliatory toward the West,
produced irrefutable evidence of American reconnaissance fl ights over
Soviet territory and broke up the conference. By the summer of 1960
the “spirit of Geneva” and the “spirit of Camp David” had faded. When
Periods of détente
Pressures for
coexistence
Cooperation fades
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961112. Confrontation and Détente, 1955–1975
Khrushchev spoke before the United Nations, he boasted of Soviet arms production and
denounced the United States.
The United States, unwavering in its resolve to maintain the defense of western
Europe, accepted Soviet hegemony east of the iron curtain. The Americans and their west-
ern European allies protested but did not intervene when in 1953 the Soviets put down
antigovernment riots in East Berlin, or when in 1956 the Soviets exerted pressure on
Poland to curb its reform movement, or when the Soviets, even more dramatically, sent
troops and tanks that year to crush the Hungarian revolt, or later, in 1968, the Czech upris-
ing. The United States offered little more than moral encouragement to dissident groups in
all of these eastern European states.
At the same time one part of the world after another was being brought into the Amer-
ican strategic defense system. In the Suez crisis in 1956 (which broke out simultaneously
with the troubles in Hungary) the United States deterred Britain, France, and Israel from
pressing military action against Egypt, at least in part because it might have
encouraged Soviet intervention. European actions in the Middle East were
thus constrained by the Cold War, and the American allies were frustrated,
but a wider confl ict with the Soviets was averted. American foreign policy
in the Cold War remained based on the premise that unrest on every con-
tinent was Soviet-inspired—a premise that sometimes prevented Americans from under-
standing the complex local causes of political confl icts within Europe or around the world.
The nuclear arms race continued. In October 1957 the Soviets, to the world’s aston-
ishment, demonstrated their prowess in the new era of rocket technology when they suc-
cessfully launched Sputnik, the fi rst artifi cial satellite to orbit in outer space. A few months later the United States launched its own space satellite, Explorer I. The space age had opened, and the military implications of space rocketry quickly became apparent.
A new kind of arms race emerged, using the technology of intercon-
tinental ballistic missiles and the idea of “mutual deterrence.” Given the
destructive capability of the new weaponry, it became impossible to pro-
mote a strategy of “massive retaliation.” Now that American cities were
vulnerable to nuclear destruction, anxiety spread in western Europe that the
United States might not so readily defend it. De Gaulle, the French presi-
dent, voiced these and other misgivings in the 1960s as he built up a French nuclear force
and called for a more independent role for the West Europeans. Rejecting the rigid bipo-
lar patterns of the Cold War and viewing postwar international relations as a traditional
struggle between great powers rather than as a confl ict of ideologies, de Gaulle urged
Europeans to recognize their own spheres of national interest and to promote Europe’s
reunifi cation—“from the Atlantic to the Urals.” He declined to follow the American lead
in foreign policy in Europe or elsewhere. Although he kept France in the Atlantic alliance,
in a gesture of independence he withdrew France from the integrated NATO military com-
mand in 1966 and pressured NATO into moving its headquarters from French soil. His
aspirations for a leadership role on the international scene troubled many Europeans, but
he nevertheless articulated European uneasiness with American hegemony over western
Europe’s policies in world affairs.
The Cold War in the 1960s
The gravest direct Soviet-American confrontations came during the early 1960s. President
John F. Kennedy heightened the rhetoric of the Cold War in these years, proclaiming that
American Cold War
policy
A new kind of arms
race
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy962
the United States “had to pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any
friend or oppose any foe in order to assure the success and survival of liberty.” Kennedy
took steps to close what he called a “missile gap” with the Soviets; and he supported
Cuban exiles who launched an unsuccessful assault on Cuba—where the revolutionary
leader Fidel Castro was developing close relations with the Soviet Union. The new ten-
sions spilled over into Europe later in 1961. At a meeting with Kennedy in Vienna that
year, Khrushchev delivered a new Soviet ultimatum for the western European powers and
THE WORLD ABOUT 1970 This political map of the world about 1970 shows a number of important changes that reduced Europe’s global infl uence after the end of the Second World War: the breakup of the Euro- pean colonial empires in Asia and Africa, the emergence of some 50 independent republics in Africa and of several new states in Asia, the emergence of the People’s Republic of China, and the peripheral expansion of the Soviet Union.
PORTUGAL SPAIN
MOROCCO
SPANISH SAHARA
ALGERIA
TUN
WESTERN SAMOA
GREENLAND (Denmark)
ICELAND NORWAY
SW
NIGERIA
S
A
C A N A D A
U N I T E D S T A T E S
MEXICO CUBA
COLOMBIA
VENEZUELA
NICARAGUA
HONDURAS
BOLIVIA
PERU B R A Z I L
PARAGUAY
ARGENTINA
URUGUAYCHILE
ECUADOR
GUATEMALA EL SALVADOR
COSTA RICA
ITA
FRANCE
BELGIUM
DEN.
NETH.
SW ITZ
.
U.S. State of Alaska
ALEU TIAN
S
H AI
TI
DO M
IN CA
N R EP
UB LIC
PUERTO RICO (U.S.) GUADELOUPE (Fr.) MARTINIQUE (Fr.) ST. LUCIA (Br.)
BARBADOS TRINIDAD & TOBAGO
GRENADA
JAMAICA
PAN AM
A
GALAPAGOS IS. (Ec.)
BAHAMAS
FALKLAND IS. (Br.)
CABINDA (Angola)
GABO
EQUAT. GUINEA
CA RO
NIGER
B EN
IN
TO G
O
G H
A N
A
IV O
RY C
O A
ST
LIBERIA
SIERRA LEONE
GUINEA- BISSAU
GAMBIA SENEGAL
CAPE VERDE
GUINEA UPPER VOLTA
MALI MAURITANIA
CANARY IS. (Sp.)
LUX. AU
E. GER
W. GER.
IRELAND
UNITED KINGDOM
U.S. State of Hawaii
SOCIETY IS. (Fr.)
COOK IS. (Br.)
TUAMOTU IS. (Fr.)
MARQUESAS IS. (Fr.)
AZORES (Sp.) MADEIRA
(Port.)
ASCENSION IS. (Br.)
SÃO TO MÉ &
PRIN CIPE
BERMUDA (Br.)
BELIZE
TONGA
GUYANA SURINAME
FRENCH GUIANA
S O U T H AT L A N T I C O C E A N
SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN
Bering Sea
Hudson Bay
Cape of Good
NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN
NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN
A R C T I C O C E A N
Cape Horn
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963112. Confrontation and Détente, 1955–1975
the United States to leave Berlin. Kennedy, smarting over the recent defeat in Cuba, reaf-
fi rmed the Western resolve to remain in Berlin. He asked Congress to expand American
military forces, inaugurated a civil defense program, and made plans for fall-out shelters in
the event of nuclear war. The European members of the Atlantic alliance backed him, and
the immediate crisis passed. But in the summer of 1961 the Soviets, exasperated at the
continuing exodus from East Berlin (over 3 million East Germans had already fl ed), con-
structed the Berlin Wall, a 28-mile rampart of concrete and barbed wire, with armed sentry
stations. The Wall stood as a grim physical reminder of the Cold War and of the enduring
postwar division of Germany; hundreds of East Germans who attempted to
cross the barrier met their deaths. Meanwhile, both the Soviets and the
Americans resumed their testing of nuclear weapons. The Berlin Wall
British Commonwealth
SPAIN
ALGERIA
TUNISIA
PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA SOUTH KOREA
MONGOLIA
INDIA
TIBET
THAI- LAND
JAPAN
AUSTRALIA
NEW ZEALAND
NORWAY
SWEDEN FINLAND
LIBYA EGYPT
SYRIA IRAQ IRAN
OMAN
AFGHAN- ISTAN
S O V I E T U N I O N
NIGERIA
ANGOLA
RWANDA
TANZANIA
SOUTH- WEST
AFRICA
REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
SUDAN
MADAGASCAR
POLAND CZECH.
ROM- ANIAYUGO-
SLAVIA
GREECE TURKEY ITALY
FRANCE
BELGIUM
DEN.
NETH.
SW ITZ
.
LESOTHO
SWAZILAND
BOTS- WANA MOZAMBIQUE
RHODESIA
ZAMBIA MALAWI
MAURITIUS REUNION (Fr.)
ZAÏRE
COM OROS
SEYCHELLES (Br.)
CO N
G O
CABINDA (Angola)
GABON
EQUAT. GUINEA
CAME- ROON
CENT. AFR. REP.
KENYA UGANDA
SOMALIA
ETHIOPIA
DJIBOUTI
CHAD NIGER
B EN
IN
TO G
O
G H
A N
A
A ST
UPPER VOLTA
MALI
MALDIVES
P.D.R. YEMENYEMEN
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
SAUDI ARABIA
BAHRAIN QATA R
KUWAIT JORDAN
LEB. ISRAEL
PA K
IS TA
N
CYPRUSMALTA
ALB.
LUX.
BULGARIA
AUST.HUN.
E. GER.
W. GER.
NITED GDOM
SRI LANKA (CEYLON)
NEPAL B H UT
AN
BANGLADESH
BURMA LAOS
CA MB
.
N. VIETNAM
SINGAPORE
SUMATRA
MALAYSIA SARAWAK
BORNEO
I N D O N E S I A JAVA (Port.)
TIMOR
TASMANIA
NEW GUINEA
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
THE PHILIPPINES
M ACAO
HONG KONG (Br.)
TAIWAN (Nat. China)
Okinawa
R Y
U K
Y U
IS
NORTH KOREA
MANCHURIA KURIL IS.
Sakhalin
CAROLINE IS. (U.S. Administered)
GUAM (U.S.)
OMÉ & PR
INCI PE
BURUNDI
(Port.)
PALAU
S. VIETNAM
C E A N
INDIAN OCEAN
PACIFIC OCEAN
Caspian Sea
Black Sea
Coral Sea
Cape of Good Hope
A R C T I C O C E A N
South China Sea
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy964
The most dangerous Western-Soviet confrontation occurred not in Berlin but in Cuba,
where in the fall of 1962 Khrushchev dispatched Soviet soldiers and technicians to the
island to construct missile sites that would have brought the American mainland within
target range. For the United States this Soviet intrusion on America’s own doorstep was a
completely unacceptable military threat.
During 13 tense days in October President Kennedy and his advisers resolved not to
take any hasty military action but to stand fi rm against the Soviet military presence in
Cuba, fully aware that the showdown could lead to nuclear war. Kennedy imposed a
blockade (or quarantine) of the island, forbidding further deliveries of arms and supplies.
The launching of any nuclear missile from Cuba, he made clear, would lead to a “full
retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.” Although Khrushchev blus-
tered that the blockade was illegal, he backed down. He recalled Soviet
ships that were en route to Cuba and also accepted Kennedy’s demand that Cuban missile crisis
The Berlin Wall became both a concrete and symbolic expression of the bitter divisions in Europe during the Cold War. This photograph shows how workers built the Wall in 1961 under the close supervision of armed guards. Although the Wall accomplished the Soviets’ short-term political objective by stopping the exodus of East Germans, it also confi rmed the repressive character of Soviet-controlled states in eastern Europe. (Popperfoto/Getty Images)
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965112. Confrontation and Détente, 1955–1975
the missiles be withdrawn from the Cuban bases. In one note Khrushchev
agreed to remove the missile sites in return for an American pledge not to
invade Cuba. In a second note, more aggressive in tone, he demanded the
removal of American missile sites in Turkey. Kennedy replied only to the
fi rst message, but privately let it be known that the United States would eventually remove
its missiles in Turkey. By late October the most ominous crisis of the Cold War,
an “eyeball-to-eyeball” confrontation, as the American Secretary of State Dean Rusk
described it, was over.
Khrushchev had lost face; he was weakened still further by economic problems within
the Soviet Union, and he was ousted from power in 1964. Tensions once again eased, and
the Soviet leaders would never again show such recklessness, but the Cuban crisis had a
direct effect on the arms race. Both the Soviet Union and the United States moved to
expand their nuclear arsenals, and the Soviets under Khrushchev’s successors were deter-
mined to achieve nuclear parity.
The Americans drew their own lessons from the Cuban missile crisis. Reaffi rming a
global policy of resisting Communist forces wherever they appeared, the United States soon
became deeply involved in the continuing confl ict in Vietnam. Like other countries in this
era, Vietnam had been divided into Communist and non-Communist sectors after the French
left in 1954, but American policymakers feared that the French withdrawal from Indochina
would open the way for Communist expansion across Southeast Asia. The
American presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon
therefore sought to fi ll the vacuum that was created in this region by the col-
lapse of France’s colonial system. During the decade after the construction
of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis, the United States sent an
American army of well over 500,000 troops to support the anti-Communist regime in South
Vietnam, launched wide-ranging attacks on Communist guerrilla forces, and conducted
massive air bombardments of territories and supply lines that were controlled by Ho Chi
Minh’s North Vietnamese government. The death of Ho himself in 1969 had little effect on
the war, which continued into the 1970s. The anti-Communist regime was unable to estab-
lish a stable government or expel the Communists from the countryside, however, and the
United States—facing domestic unrest and broad-based criticism in Europe—ultimately
withdrew its forces. The war ended in 1975 when the Communists took complete control of
South Vietnam and united the country under one government.
The American war in Vietnam signifi cantly affected European views of the United
States. America’s allies in western Europe were generally critical of the deepening American
military involvement, which coincided with Europe’s own political and military withdrawal
from empires in Asia and Africa. Europeans became skeptical of the strategic
value as well as the morality of the American war. President de Gaulle, a
moralizer when it suited his vision of the French role in world affairs, saw
the American intervention in Vietnam as the doomed follow-up to France’s
own colonial failures in Indochina; and he claimed that it was “detestable” for
“a great nation to ravage a small one.” The United States, which had been hailed as a great
liberating force in Europe in the 1940s, was now condemned by antiwar protestors in the cit-
ies and universities of Germany, France, Britain, and other European countries. The critique
of American policies in Vietnam, however, did not push Europeans toward a new sympathy
for the Soviet Union. In fact, by the late 1960s a new generation of Soviet leaders had shown
most people in western Europe why they had good reasons to sustain their political, economic,
and cultural alliances with the United States—even in the worst years of the Vietnam War.
An eyeball-to-eyeball
confrontation
The Vietnam War
Critiques of
Vietnam War
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy966
Brezhnev and the Prague Spring in Eastern Europe
Leonid I. Brezhnev, who emerged as the dominant Soviet leader after Khrushchev’s fall
from power in 1964 and came to head both party and state, was intent, with reckless dis-
regard for the costs to the economy, on building the country’s military and naval strength
to compete with the United States. Yet he avoided direct confrontation and saw political
and economic advantages in a relaxation of tensions and arms negotiations. A widening
rift with Communist China made détente with the Western powers even more important.
But the two superpowers continued to vie with each other for infl uence in the Middle East,
Africa, and other strategic areas of the world; and the Soviets consolidated their hold on
eastern Europe.
Despite the failure of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the longing for freedom and
independence in eastern Europe could not be suppressed. When in 1968 the liberalizing
reforms of Alexander Dubček allowed for more open political debates and threatened the
The American war in Vietnam provoked frequent protests across Europe, including this anti- war demonstration in London in the spring of 1968. Despite the widespread opposition to American policies in Vietnam, however, western European nations maintained their strong political and military alliance with the United States during every decade of the long Cold War. (Evening Standard/Getty Images)
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967112. Confrontation and Détente, 1955–1975
one-party state in Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev and the party leadership ruthlessly crushed
the “Prague spring.” They dispatched 250,000 troops, including token Polish, Hungarian,
and East German contingents, to suppress the incipient revolution and remove Dubček and
his reformist allies from power. The “Brezhnev Doctrine” that year proclaimed the Soviet
right to intervene in the name of “proletarian internationalism” in any Communist country
VIETNAM AND ITS NEIGHBORS AFTER THE ERA OF FRENCH COLONIALISM, SHOWING BOUNDARIES IN 1970 The French built up their colonial empire in Indochina during the 60 years before the Second World War, controlling the old Asian territories of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Shaken by Japanese occupation of the region during the Second World War, the French were unable to defeat a postwar Vietnamese movement for independence that drew strength also from Communist affi liations. When the French withdrew in 1954, the Geneva Accords provided for partition of Vietnam until national elections could take place and unity could be restored, but the elections never took place. Because the north was now Communist, the United States provided economic and military support for an anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam. This involvement grew in the 1960s as the confl ict between North and South Vietnam devel- oped into a large-scale war. The United States intervened with over 500,000 troops and heavy air bombardments, but the American forces (like the French before them) could not defeat the Vietnamese Communists—who were supplied with arms by the Soviet Union. American troops were gradually withdrawn in the early 1970s, and North Vietnam eventually won the war. Hostilities ended in 1975 with Communist regimes in control of a unifi ed Vietnam and of Laos and Cambodia.
0 200 miles10050 150
Demarcation Line of 1954
M ekong
R.
Gulf of Tonkin
South China Sea
Gulf of Thailand
Mekong Delta
Tonle Sap
C h
a o
P h
ra ya
R .
P in
g R
. N an
R .
C H I N A
BURMA NORTH VIETNAM
SOUTH VIETNAM
T H A I L A N D
CAMBODIA
HAINANL A
O
S
Dienbienphu
Danang
Chulai
Quangngai
Quinhon
Hanoi
Vinh
Donghoi
Bangkok
Phnompenh
Saigon
Sama
Nanning
Pingsiang Loakay
Yen Bay
Haiphong
Thanuyen
Thanhoa Paksong Ban
BanLuang Prabang
Vang Vieng
Nan Lampang
Changmai
Moulmein
Nakhon Sawan
Ta Khli
Vientiane
Udon Hué
Vinhlinh
Pakse
Kontum
Pleiku Ankhe
Ratchasima
Than Buri Stungtreng
Battambang
Bo Duc Ben Cat
Bein Hoa
Nhatrang
Camranh Bay
Camau
Kompong Cham
Preyveng
Rachgia
Tan Son Nhut Vinhlong
Cantho
Kompong Som (Sihanoukville)
Tamky
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy968
The citizens of Prague responded angrily to the Soviet military forces in their city in August 1968, but they could do little against the 250,000 well-armed troops. These young people celebrated the destruction of a Soviet tank; elsewhere in the city, however, the Soviets were destroying the reformist government of Alexander Dubček and suppressing the movement that had attempted to create a more democratic political system in Czechoslovakia. (Reg Lancaster/Express/Images)
to protect “socialism” against “internal or external forces” and prevent the
“restoration of a capitalist regime.” It was in its own way a kind of mirror
image of the Truman Doctrine. Czechoslovakia returned to a tight dictator-
ship ruled by party bosses with close ties to Moscow. The United States did
no more than protest the armed intervention in Czechoslovakia, demonstrating once again
that it would not openly challenge Soviet control over eastern Europe in what was tacitly
accepted as a sphere of Soviet infl uence. But the invasion of Czechoslovakia, like the sup-
pression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, alienated the Communist faithful in many parts
of the world and undermined the Soviet infl uence on the western European Communist
parties, which strongly denounced the military intervention.
Brezhnev and Nixon
Although President Nixon, who took offi ce in 1969, continued and even intensifi ed the
war in Vietnam, he introduced greater fl exibility into the American policy
of containment and pursued a policy of systematic détente in the Cold War.
Like his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, (and somewhat like
The Brezhnev
Doctrine
Nixon and détente
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969112. Confrontation and Détente, 1955–1975
President de Gaulle in France), Nixon believed in the balance of power diplomacy of an
earlier age, and he assumed that each country’s long-range national self-interest and geo-
political concerns should count more than ideology.
Under the Nixon-Kissinger policy the United States linked Western technology, trade,
and investment to Soviet cooperation in international affairs. The economic inducements
were important because the Soviet Union’s economic diffi culties were aggravated by its
growing arms burden. Khrushchev’s earlier boast of surpassing the West economically
had proved hollow. The Soviets badly needed Western technology, investment credits, and
even Western grain. In the new atmosphere American and West European private bankers
made large loans to the East European nations, which benefi ted even more than the Soviets
from détente. The two Germanys moved closer together in economic relations, recognized
each other diplomatically, and were admitted to the UN in 1973 as two separate sovereign
states.
The Nixon-Kissinger policies in Europe developed out of a reassess-
ment of global realities. Unlike the bipolar situation in 1945 when there
were only two superpowers, there were now other emergent power cen-
ters, including the People’s Republic of China. In 1971 the United States
withdrew its objections to the entry of the People’s Republic of China into the UN as a
replacement for Taiwan. The American opening to China increased pressure on the
Soviets to pursue détente. The Soviet arms buildup under Brezhnev signifi ed that the
Soviets were approaching nuclear parity, and both the United States and the Soviet
Union found it to their advantage to negotiate arms reduction. In 1972 Nixon and the
Soviet leaders reaffi rmed the goal of “peaceful coexistence” and signed
the SALT I treaty. Each nation agreed to reduce its antimissile defense
system to make it possible to work toward equality in offensive weapons.
After Nixon resigned from the presidency in 1974 following the Water-
gate scandal, détente continued under his successor, President Gerald
Ford.
Détente offered an opportunity to settle or phase out some unresolved European issues
of the Second World War. In 1975, in what resembled a peace conference for Europe,
three decades after the Second World War had ended, 35 nations—the 16 members of
NATO, the 7 Warsaw Pact states, and 12 European countries not formally
members of either alliance—met at Helsinki over a period of two years in a
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. They pledged to work
for peace, economic and cultural cooperation, and the protection of human
rights. The Helsinki Accords, although not a formal treaty, confi rmed that
postwar Europe had regained the political and economic vitality that was shattered in the
chaos and destruction of 1939–1945. The accords ratifi ed the European territorial boundar-
ies established after the Second World War and set up “Helsinki watch committees” for
the surveillance of human rights in nations that signed the agreements. The U.S.S.R. con-
sidered the commitment to human rights a small price to pay in exchange for the economic
and other benefi ts of détente. It still expected to keep strict limits on dissent within its
own country and in its East European satellites, but it failed to see how much the Helsinki
Accords would encourage dissenters to defy repression. The Helsinki agreements helped
to create a new political environment in which dissident movements gained support in
eastern Europe and gradually mobilized opposition groups that would bring about the col-
lapse of every Communist regime in the Soviet bloc by the end of the 1980s. The Helsinki
New American
policies
SALT I
The Helsinki Accords
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy970
conference was thus the high point of Cold War détente. It showed the growing importance
of human rights as a key issue in European political life, and it became the starting point
for wider historical changes, though in the short run, in 1979, Soviet-Western relations
took another downward turn. But we must fi rst turn to the changing world economy, to
which the Soviet Union and the countries of eastern Europe were now more closely tied
than ever before.
113. COLLAPSE AND RECOVERY OF THE EUROPEAN AND GLOBAL ECONOMY: THE 1970S AND 1980S
Interdependence is a form of dependency, and the expansion of the global economy after
the Second World War made each country more vulnerable to events in distant places. In
1974, after two and a half decades of spectacular growth, the European economic boom
came to an abrupt end. Signs of economic slowdown and infl ationary pressures were
already visible in the late 1960s, and recession might have occurred in any event, but it
was the oil embargo growing out of the Arab-Israeli war in the autumn of 1973 that pre-
cipitated the crisis.
Oil had replaced coal as a major source of energy. Readily available at low prices,
it came primarily from the vast reserves of the Middle East and was transported easily
and economically into Europe by tanker through the Persian Gulf and Suez Canal. The
major international oil companies, mostly American, for a long time controlled prices and
production, and purchasers paid for the oil in dollars. The Western economies had come
to depend on cheap oil. In 1960, 14 of the oil-exporting countries in the
Middle East, Africa, and Latin America formed the Organization of Petro-
leum Exporting Countries (or OPEC) to curb the monopoly concessions
enjoyed by foreign companies and to assume a larger share of authority
over production and prices.
Within OPEC the Arab states of the Middle East were the most assertive. The oil
issue turned intensely political during the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973 when the
Arab oil-producing states embargoed the shipment of oil to states accused of supporting
Israel. The OPEC cartel cut back production and quadrupled oil prices. Apprehension
spread in western Europe, Japan, and the United States, which needed foreign oil to
supplement its domestic resources. Never had an essential commodity risen in price so
rapidly; the entire global industrial complex seemed vulnerable. The oil shortage and the
price escalation, coming on the heels of the international monetary diffi culties and
devaluations of the dollar in 1971–1973, sharply increased the balance of payment defi -
cits for all oil-importing countries, undermined currencies, accelerated an infl ationary
spiral already underway, and seriously interrupted the spectacular growth of the West
European economies.
The immediate panic caused by the oil embargo passed, but prices
remained at a much higher level. Later in the decade, in 1979, a second oil
crisis occurred when Iran, in the midst of its revolution, halted oil exports
and the OPEC cartel again doubled prices. Eventually, however, the oil
cartel proved less cohesive and intimidating than originally feared. Additional energy
resources became available within Europe itself, easing some of the dependence on Mid-
dle Eastern oil imports. After the discovery of oil in the North Sea, Britain and Norway
became exporters of oil. The Netherlands and other countries turned to natural gas; France,
to nuclear energy. Many European countries also initiated energy conservation measures,
OPEC
Dependence on oil
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971113. Collapse and Recovery of the European and Global Economy: The 1970s and 1980s
but frequent fl uctuations in oil prices continued to affect Europe’s economy and political
relations with the oil-producing Arab states.
The Recession: Stagnation and Infl ation
The recession that began in 1974 was severe, although it never approximated the depths of
the Great Depression. What set it apart from previous economic declines was the accompa-
nying infl ation, which raced on in major industrial countries at double-digit annual fi gures.
In some European countries the annual rate of infl ation rose to over 20 percent; it
reached 27 percent in Britain in 1975. In the United States prices doubled over the course
of the decade, thus reshaping trade on both sides of the Atlantic. For a time
economic growth ground to a standstill in western Europe. By the late 1970s
the recession was worldwide. Bankruptcies shook several countries; pro-
duction declined; economic growth slowed or even halted. Over 10 percent
of the West European labor force were unemployed.
The economic troubles were somewhat cushioned for the unemployed in industrial
countries. Labor unions were still active, although declining in membership and infl uence,
and welfare benefi ts were more advanced than they had been in the 1930s. Workers in
Essen, Turin, Liverpool, or Lyon could count on severance pay, trade union benefi ts, and
government unemployment compensation far beyond the welfare payments and dole of
earlier generations. These benefi ts reduced human suffering and also lim-
ited the decline in consumer purchasing power. The recession, however,
aggravated the problem of “structural unemployment.” Because of automa-
tion, high technology, and the dwindling importance of older, less-effi cient
sectors (such as coal mining, shipbuilding, and other so-called smokestack
industries), many workers would never return to their old jobs or use their old skills again;
and labor unrest spread into many of the European industries in which earlier generations
of workers had built up strong unions.
Effects of recession
Structural
unemployment
New economic problems in the mid-1970s led to the restructuring of older Euro- pean industries, rising unemployment, and high infl ation. Facing the loss of jobs and the stagnation of wages, labor unions responded with strikes and other protests such as this “litter assault” on the Champs Élysées by striking Parisian newspaper workers. These kinds of actions brought public attention to the workers’ griev- ances, though this particular protest clearly ignored the environmental con- cerns that were also developing in this era. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy972
The combination of stagnation and infl ation (dubbed “stagfl ation” by
journalists) created unprecedented problems for governments. Keynesian
theory, which had gained a wide following in Europe after 1945, called for
government spending and defi cit fi nancing in slow times to buoy demand and keep
employment stable. With infl ation rampant, such measures became questionable. The
dilemma centered on whether curbing infl ation or reducing unemployment should claim
the highest priority. Efforts to fi ght infl ation by tight money and high interest rates would
discourage investment, aggravate the business slowdown, and swell the ranks of the unem-
ployed. Government spending to prime the pump or reducing interest rates to facilitate
private borrowing could feed infl ation.
With the American economy troubled, the western European industrial countries
looked to the Federal Republic of Germany and its powerful economy and trade surpluses
to take the lead in expanding investment and production. Germany, however, mindful of
the hyperinfl ation of the 1920s, set its highest priority on controlling infl ation; it kept inter-
est rates high and rejected expansionist policies. Other countries followed the same track.
By the early 1980s infl ation was brought under control in the United States and in western
Europe, but in Europe unemployment continued at levels unheard of in the early postwar
decades. The high unemployment put new pressures on government budgets, which had
risen steadily in all the “welfare state” societies of the industrial world.
From 1950 to the mid-1970s the percentage of gross national product spent on social
measures in the industrial countries had more than doubled, creating a pattern of rising
taxes and government expenditures that came to be criticized as an obstacle
to economic growth.
The established tenets of Keynesian economics were now challenged
as never before. The British Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher,
who became prime minister in 1979, gained international prominence by
leading a campaign against the welfare state that had developed in Britain since the Second
World War. She attacked the welfare state as costly, wasteful, paternalistic, and bureau-
cratic and blamed it for eroding individual initiative and responsibility. Nationalized
industries and some public services also came under criticism from Thatcher and other
European conservatives.
Although conservative governments in Britain and elsewhere continued to make sig-
nifi cant expenditures for national defense, they sought to curb government spending on
social measures. Meanwhile to stimulate production they offered numerous
incentives to private enterprise, including tax reductions, deregulation, and
restraints on unions that interfered with technological innovation. “Supply
side” economics, as these ideas were labeled by conservative economists
in the United States, emphasized increased production rather than the hitherto prevailing
notion of increased consumer demand as most important for economic growth. The results
were then expected to “trickle down” for everyone’s benefi t, with a safety net in place for
the truly disadvantaged.
The gradual return of prosperity in the 1980s reinforced faith in the free-market econ-
omy, despite uneasiness about the continuing vicissitudes of the business cycle. Conserva-
tive economic theories and policies appeared to be confi rmed by a worldwide movement
toward market economies and away from centralized planning, which in its rigidly Marxist
form had manifestly failed in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Defenders of the Euro-
pean welfare state systems, however, continued to stress the importance of supplement-
ing market economies with direct action by governments to manage business cycles, help
Stagfl ation
Faith in Keynes
shaken
Supply side economics
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973113. Collapse and Recovery of the European and Global Economy: The 1970s and 1980s
unemployed workers, and provide essential health care. The welfare, or interventionist, state
still served important social needs and seemed destined to survive, even if in modifi ed form.
A new generation of liberal, labor, and socialist leaders came to preach the virtues of a “new
middle way” that leaned heavily on market economies as the key to economic growth but
without surrendering the prerogatives of government in confronting the social and economic
problems of modern societies.
Economic and Political Change in Western Europe
Britain was especially hard hit by the recession of the 1970s. Of all the industrial nations, it
suffered the highest rate of infl ation. Unemployment climbed, and the pound dropped to a
new low in global fi nancial markets. The trade unions refused to accept the sacrifi ces that
even their own Labour Party believed necessary to revive the economy, and disruptive
strikes in coal and transportation exasperated much of the country. Radical factions in the
Labour Party pressed for increased nationalization of industry and for nonalignment in the
Cold War. Alienated by the economic confusion and changing social conditions in British
society, which they blamed on Labour governments that had been in power since 1974, the
voters in 1979 turned to the Conservatives, who now resolved to change the welfare state.
Margaret Thatcher, the fi rst woman prime minister in any major West-
ern country, immediately and decisively cut government expenditures,
reduced imports, and resisted trade union wage demands. The focus of gov-
ernment policies shifted to investment, productivity, and economic growth.
Infl ation was curbed, but unemployment rose. The Thatcher government in its early years
seemed headed for political trouble, but in 1982 Thatcher stirred old patriotic and impe-
rial memories by dispatching a small armada 8,000 miles to the coast of South America,
thwarting the attempted takeover of the Falkland (or Malvina) Islands by Argentina. The
Conservatives won a sweeping parliamentary majority the following year.
Margaret Thatcher
Conservatives sought to reduce or dismantle vari- ous social programs of the modern welfare state after they came to power in the 1980s. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was the best- known European advocate for the reduction of government participation in domestic economic life, though she favored higher government expen- ditures for military forces. She is shown here in 1985 with President Ronald Reagan, her close American political ally who was attending a meet- ing with Thatcher and other government leaders in Germany. (Apesteguy/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy974
For a time in the 1980s the Thatcher policies were successful in implementing the
main Conservative goals. The government curtailed the power of the unions, returned
over one-third of the nationalized industries to private enterprise, and made credit more
readily available for business and for home buyers. Britain could soon point to the high-
est economic growth rate of all the European countries, rising productivity, low infl ation,
a stronger pound, a higher standard of living for most people, widened home ownership,
and buoyant self-confi dence. Unemployment, however, remained high; fi scal retrench-
ment hurt education, especially the universities; and pockets of deep depression
persisted, especially in the north of England and in Scotland and Wales, where traditional
industries such as coal mining and shipbuilding faced diffi culties competing in the new
global economy. The south and southeast enjoyed a bustling prosperity, particularly in
the high-technology industries around London and Cambridge. Meanwhile London rein-
forced its position as a world fi nancial center, and the United Kingdom became once
again a leading creditor nation. Decades of economic decline and demoralization seemed
to have been reversed. The opposition was disunited and in disarray. In the elections of
1987, Labour’s popular vote dropped to its lowest point in decades, and union member-
ship declined.
But when economic growth slowed and the initial stimulus of privatization and dereg-
ulation wore off, Thatcher introduced a number of fi scal measures that led to her fall in
1990. Her successor as prime minister, John Major, had to cope with a new recession that
set in after 1990, a weakened pound, and persistent unemployment. Labour, meanwhile,
under new leadership that abandoned older ideas of class struggle and attracted a broad
range of middle-class support, continued to challenge the Conservatives, arguing that the
Thatcher era had favored the rich and fostered a less equitable society.
Finally, under the moderate “New Labour” leadership of Tony Blair, the
Labour Party won the parliamentary elections in 1997 and regained control
of the government for the fi rst time since 1979. Blair and the increasingly
moderate Labour Party would remain in power on into the opening decade of the twenty-
fi rst century, winning a third consecutive electoral victory in 2005 and seeking to promote
a “middle way” between earlier welfare state policies and the free-market policies of the
Thatcher era.
In France, politics in the 1980s veered toward the Left. An austerity program adopted
in the 1970s by the conservative parties to combat infl ation was unpopular, and the gov-
ernment’s aloofness, elitism, and seeming unconcern with social issues under de Gaulle’s
successors helped the Socialist-led opposition gain electoral strength. In 1981 François
Mitterrand became the fi rst Socialist president in the French Fifth Republic, thus achiev-
ing a long-sought goal he had set for himself and the Socialist party. Mitterrand had a
varied and complex career, some aspects of which were unknown until the last years
of his life, including his association with right-wing causes in the early 1930s and his
wartime service to the Vichy government before joining the Resistance Movement. He
was known as a moderate Socialist, whose socialism owed more to liberal idealism than
to Marxism. A consummate politician, he revitalized the Socialist Party
and reached out to many who chafed at the social insensitivities of the Gaul-
lists and Conservatives. “Changer la vie”—change life for everyone—was
his campaign slogan. Not only did he win the presidency, but his Socialist
Party triumphantly gained an absolute majority in the National Assembly.
Labor reforms were immediately introduced. The workweek was reduced from 40 to
39 hours and a fi fth week of annual paid vacation was added. Following up on the
New Labour
Mitterrand and
“Changer la vie”
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975113. Collapse and Recovery of the European and Global Economy: The 1970s and 1980s
nationalizations of 1945, Mitterrand nationalized the remaining large banks as well as sev-
eral leading industrial corporations. One of the few European leaders still faithful to
Keynesian precepts in the 1980s, Mitterrand rejected the kind of deregulation and free-
market philosophy that Thatcher was advocating in Britain. He expected government
pump priming and labor reforms to raise purchasing power, stimulate the economy, and
thus absorb the costs of the expanded welfare state. But increased labor costs reduced
French competitiveness abroad, and private investment also dried up. The immediate con-
sequences were slow economic growth, trade defi cits, infl ation, unemployment, and a
weakening franc. Within two years Mitterrand abruptly changed course. He halted further
nationalization and other reforms, insisted on retrenchment and austerity to cope with
infl ation, and placed a strong emphasis on modernization. Cutting off subsidies to decay-
ing industries, he shifted government support to high technology. The new policies encour-
aged economic growth but contributed little to reducing unemployment. Many of his
Socialist followers became disenchanted and frustrated. Others in the country, however,
were relieved to see him turning away from state-oriented economic policies and also tak-
ing a more “centrist” approach to social and political issues.
Renewed economic problems, however, cost the Socialist Party popular support. It
lost its parliamentary majority in 1986 and Mitterrand was forced to govern with a Con-
servative prime minister. The term “cohabitation” entered the political lan-
guage to signify a popularly elected president of one party governing with
a prime minister who represented the opposing parliamentary majority. It
was a precedent that de Gaulle never foresaw. But as an established prac-
tice that was repeated over the years to come, it became a legacy of Mitterrand that demon-
strated the resiliency of the Fifth Republic. In the Gaullist tradition, however, the president
continued to determine defense and foreign policy.
When in 1988 Mitterrand was reelected president, the Socialists regained a small plu-
rality in the National Assembly. But unemployment, scandals involving Socialist min-
isters, and inroads by environmental and other groups led to a socialist rout in 1993 and
the return of a large conservative majority. Cohabitation resumed under the conservative
Gaullist Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, who was then elected to the presidency in the
elections of 1995 and 2002, and the seesaw pattern of French politics continued in his
administration. Although the French economy strengthened impressively in the 1990s,
unemployment remained a persistent problem, especially for young people. A growing
political movement on the Far Right, the National Front, attracted disaffected voters who
blamed French economic problems on the nation’s growing immigrant population. The
leader of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, became a prominent fi gure in French
political culture and even reached the fi nal round of voting in the presidential election
of 2002. Meanwhile, in response to the ongoing problems of unemployment, a Social-
ist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, secured passage of a new labor law that reduced the
workweek in France from 39 to 35 hours to create new jobs. The measure met with strong
opposition from most employers, but it exemplifi ed ongoing attempts to deal with struc-
tural problems in the economy. During these same years, there were also new attempts to
enhance the position of women in French public life. Women played a much larger role in
French government and public institutions than ever before, occupying key ministries and
high-level posts in business and professional life. A new law, implemented in stages after
2000, provided that women were to be candidates in elections for representative bodies in
equal numbers with men. A few women writers and scholars were even admitted to the
French Academy, a male bastion since 1635.
“Cohabitation”
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy976
Socialists and Social Democrats holding offi ce in western Europe in
these years championed modernization, market economies, and economic
growth as the path to the good society; and their policies often won broad
support, even as conservatives increasingly pushed for changes in the eco-
nomic policies of the welfare states. Moderation and pragmatism succeeded in overshad-
owing if not entirely replacing older Marxist ideologies. Helmut Schmidt, the Social
Democratic chancellor in West Germany from 1974 to 1982, was one leading exemplar. In
Italy, Bettino Craxi and a Socialist coalition in 1983 ended the long tenure of the Christian
Democrats, who had formed 40 consecutive cabinets since 1945. The Italian Socialists
governed for an unprecedented four years but were barely distinguishable in policies and
practices from the long-entrenched Christian Democratic establishment. In Spain the pop-
ular Socialist Party leader, Felipe Gonzalez, in 1982 headed the fi rst Left government since
the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s and governed on into the mid-1990s. In Portugal, after
the revolutionary turbulence of 1974, a Socialist and a Social Democratic Party competed
with each other on moderate platforms.
In West Germany Helmut Schmidt’s Social Democratic government moved to con-
trol infl ation through policies of retrenchment and fi scal conservatism, but the industrial
slowdown of the late 1970s brought unemployment to a country that for years had known
only labor scarcity. Even after recovery, unemployment persisted at about 8 percent.
West European
Socialists
French workers, like workers in all the major industrial countries of Europe, were increas- ingly drawn from the immigrant communities that grew rapidly during the later decades of the twentieth century. These workers, who were protesting working conditions at a French automobile factory in 1982, represent some of the diverse ethnic and cultural origins of the contemporary French workforce. (Richard Melloul/Sygma/Corbis)
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977113. Collapse and Recovery of the European and Global Economy: The 1970s and 1980s
The doors once open to guest workers began to close; bonuses were offered to those who
would return home; activist reactionary groups (as in Britain, France, and Austria) alarm-
ingly exploited anti-immigrant and antiforeign sentiment. In 1982 the Christian Demo-
crats were returned to offi ce with Helmut Kohl as chancellor, who would remain in offi ce
for the next 16 years. Economic growth resumed, although at more modest rates, and the
mark maintained itself as one of the world’s strongest currencies. The German Federal
Republic remained the most productive nation in western Europe, accounting for a third of
the combined output of the EC. But heavy labor costs, resulting from high wages and gen-
erous social benefi ts, burdened the economy and reduced its competitiveness in world
markets until the late 1990s—when the Germans brought more fl exibility
into their labor practices and wage system. Meanwhile the prospects in the
1980s for reunifi cation of the two Germanys still seemed remote—
Germany would apparently remain “one nation and two states,” in Willy
Brandt’s phrase.
The Enlarged European Community: Problems and Opportunities
After de Gaulle passed from the political scene in 1969, the way had opened for enlarging
the six-nation EC. In 1973 Britain, Denmark, and Ireland were admitted; the 6 became 9.
In the next decade, with the admission of Greece in 1981 and Spain and Portugal in 1986,
the 9 became 12. In 1995, with the admission of Austria, Finland, and Sweden, the num-
bers grew to 15. The largest expansion made possible by momentous changes in eastern
Europe after 1989 and by the collapse of Soviet communism, would take place at the
beginning of the twenty-fi rst century, in 2004, when 10 more nations from eastern and
southern Europe (from Estonia to Malta) joined what had come to be known as the Euro-
pean Union (EU). 1 Other states came into the EU during the next decade, so that by the
second decade of the twenty-fi rst century there were 28 members and several more candi-
dates for admission.
Expansion of the European Union brought new diffi culties, aggravated
by the economic slowdown of the 1970s and then by the wage differentials
between richer and poorer countries. A food importer, Britain objected to
the “common agricultural policy” agreed upon in 1968, whereby countries such as France
and Italy received large subsidies for their farmers, whose products were withheld from
the open market and stored at great expense to keep prices artifi cially high. The admission
of the less industrially advanced southern Mediterranean states in the 1980s (and of eastern
nations in the early twenty-fi rst century) introduced serious regional differences in wages
and government budgets. Despite the original promise and accomplishments of the Com-
munity as a whole, the free trading area remained far from complete. Countries still placed
quotas on agricultural imports; France kept out Italian wines. Burdensome administrative
regulations at some borders persisted amid the general development of a transnational
economy.
“One nation and two
states”
Growing pains
1 By 2013 the EU member states were Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic,
Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
There was also a continuing debate over the question of whether Turkey would eventually become a member of
the EU.
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy978
Except for a limited circle of Europeanists, the enthusiasm for close political integra-
tion seemed to have dimmed. With enlargement and greater diversity, the Community
became even more intergovernmental and less supranational. Britain was always reluctant
to support additional supranational authority for the Community. In periods of economic
slowdown and monetary instability the national governments themselves had to cope with
the problems. In 1973 the government leaders began meeting as a council on a regular
basis, the presidency rotating among the member states. The fi rst elections to the European
Parliament in 1979 were more symbolic than substantial, and the Parliament’s role as a
legislature failed to grow signifi cantly. While the more ambitious dream of a United States
of Europe went unrealized, the Community, for all its problems, remained an important
institution, poised for further growth.
Toward a “Single Europe”: The European Union
Even during the prosperous 1960s, the European economy did not maintain its growth in all
areas. But in the 1970s the Europeans entered a new phase of industrialism, a “third indus-
trial revolution,” marked by the introduction of automation, computers, and other forms of
advanced technology. Progress would no longer be measured in coal and steel or in ships
and textiles but in nuclear reactors, microelectronics, telecommunications, computers,
robotics, and space technology. In the “postindustrial” age data processing, information
storage and retrieval, and more sophisticated communications capabilities were the keys to
competitive success. In 1977 the fi rst personal computer was produced for what would
soon become a mass market, with rapid improvements to follow in speed
and capacity. More workers were employed in the service sector than in the
older basic industries, and the service economy was growing faster than
either agriculture or industry. It was widely noted that the global economy
The postindustrial
age
Although skeptics questioned and resisted the growing integration of the European Union (EU), most political leaders continued to promote a more unifi ed European economy and culture. Ger- man Chancellor Helmut Kohl, for example, visited Strasbourg, France in 1986 to give a speech on European unity and to honor Robert Schuman—a leading French architect of the post-1945 trans- national cooperation. Schuman’s portrait and an EU pennant were placed behind Kohl to affi rm the themes of his speech. (STF/AFP/Getty Images)
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979113. Collapse and Recovery of the European and Global Economy: The 1970s and 1980s
was eroding the economic and political autonomy of the nation-state. Using new technolo-
gies, the multinational corporations of the industrial world invested capital and set up shop
across the globe, independent of all national boundaries; and this new global production
system weakened Europe’s competitive position in many of its traditional industries.
In the new forms of technology, the Europeans found themselves for a time outdis-
tanced by the Americans and the Japanese. American multinational corporations con-
trolled most of the high-technology industries in Europe—before the Japanese arrived to
compete. Trade competition from Japan and the rapidly developing industrial countries of
the Pacifi c Rim posed new economic challenges for all national governments and for most
of Europe’s major commercial institutions. The post-1974 recession made it diffi cult for
the Europeans to promote research and development. Western Europe lagged behind
other parts of the world in recovering economically after 1974 or in coping with
unemployment.
The EC set about to reinvigorate itself in the 1980s. Although internal tariffs had dis-
appeared, nontariff obstacles still impeded the fl ow of trade. Nationally dictated, and
therefore varying, standards of production and quality prevailed. In 1987,
by the “Single European Act” the 12 member-nations agreed to establish
common production standards, remove impediments to the fl ow of capital,
seek uniform tax rates, recognize each other’s professional and commercial
licensing, and honor a common charter of labor rights. They would create
an integrated “single Europe,” a “Europe without borders.” A unifi ed European currency
and central banking system were projected for the end of the 1990s, and even a common
The Single European
Act
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1957–1995
1957 Soviet Union launches fi rst satellite into outer space
1961 Soviet Union constructs the Berlin Wall to stop exodus from East Germany
1962 United States compels the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba
1968 Protests spread across Europe in response to the American war in Vietnam
1968 Soviet troops enter Czechoslovakia to crush reform movement in Prague
1974 High oil prices and infl ation contribute to European and global economic recession
1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes prime minister in Britain; introduces Conservative reforms
1979 Soviet Union invades Afghanistan to protect a left-wing regime
1981 François Mitterrand becomes president of France; introduces Socialist reforms
1982 Helmut Kohl becomes chancellor of West Germany
1983 Protests in western Europe against deployment of new intermediate-range nuclear
weapons on European bases
1987 Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev reach a U.S.-Soviet agreement to withdraw
intermediate-range nuclear weapons from Europe
1992 Treaty of Maastricht establishes the European Union (EU)
1995 EU expands to include 15 nations, creating a foundation for further expansion in the
early twenty-fi rst century
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy980
defense and foreign policy were envisaged for the future. These arrangements were con-
fi rmed in a Treaty of European Union signed at Maastricht in the Netherlands at the close
of 1991, and ratifi ed after protracted debate by the parliaments or electorates of the mem-
ber states by the end of 1992. Opponents in several countries raised objections to the loss
of national control in so many areas, but the treaty was adopted. The EC became the EU.
The way was open to closer integration.
The EU represented a domestic market of 345 million people (one-third larger than
that of the United States) and by the early 1990s was the largest trading bloc in the global
economy, accounting for 40 percent of all international trade. With the new steps toward
integration and the later expansion of EU membership, Europeans hoped to enlarge
investment, develop high technology, stimulate productivity, end the lag-
ging rate of economic growth, and reduce an unemployment rate that was
still distressingly high. In the world as a whole, a return to protectionism
was always a lurking international danger for Europe’s increasingly inte-
grated commercial system. Advocates of tariffs on imported goods could
Dangers of
protectionism
The Treaty on European Union, which was signed by twelve nations in the Dutch city of Maas- tricht in 1992, became the key statement of EU policies on government budgets, national debts, the new European currency, and other economic and legal issues. This voter was among those who encountered the arguments for and against EU policies in France, where a contentious referendum on ratifi cation of the Maastricht agreements led to a narrow approval in Septem- ber 1992. (François Xavier Marit/AFP/Getty Images)
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981114. The Cold War Rekindled and Defused
be found in most industrial nations, and the industrial nations might divide into large
regional trading blocs. New competitive barriers could thus threaten the free trade that
had contributed so much to post-1945 prosperity. Meanwhile, there were growing con-
cerns about the effects of “globalization” on the industrial and agricultural economies
within Europe itself.
114. THE COLD WAR REKINDLED AND DEFUSED
We must go back in time to pick up the fl ow of international affairs that continued to
infl uence European politics and cultures. The election of Jimmy Carter to the presi-
dency of the United States brought a new moral idealism to American foreign policy
after 1977. Carter declared that human rights must be “the soul of our foreign policy”
and linked détente more closely to progress on this issue in the Soviet
Union and eastern Europe. The theme of human rights had also become
a key issue for many Europeans in the years after the Helsinki agree-
ments of 1975. The Americans proposed, for example, that economic aid
would be forthcoming only if the Soviets permitted freedom to dissent-
ers, the right of emigration for Soviet Jews and others, and an end to the coercion of
Poland. The Soviets did not take kindly to these public pressures. Both the Americans
and the Soviets meanwhile reinforced their military and nuclear strength, even as they
negotiated a new strategic arms treaty. But before the new treaty could
be ratifi ed by the United States Senate, the Soviet Union moved troops
into the neighboring state of Afghanistan to bolster a weak pro-Soviet
leftist regime. It was the fi rst Soviet military intervention of that kind
outside eastern Europe, and it was widely denounced on both sides of
the Atlantic.
Carter condemned the Soviet invasion, withdrew the arms treaty from the Senate,
embargoed sales of grain and high technology to the Soviets, took measures to increase the
military budget, and set up procedures at home for a renewal of the draft.
The invasion of Afghanistan, Carter informed the U.S.S.R., was the most serious
threat to world peace since 1945. The European allies, however, were not as con-
vinced. Some Europeans argued that the Afghanistan episode was a regional matter,
that the Soviet Union was acting to prevent instability on its borders, and that détente
should continue. Unwilling to disturb commercial relations with the Soviets and east-
ern Europe, they refused to support the economic embargo, which, among other conse-
quences, would have interfered with the completion of a Soviet natural gas pipeline to
western Europe. As it developed, Afghanistan turned out to be the U.S.S.R.’s Vietnam.
Some 100,000 Soviet troops fought for more than 8½ years before withdrawing igno-
miniously in 1989. Like the Americans in Vietnam, the Soviets were unable to use
their overwhelming military power to defeat the Muslim guerrillas who, armed with
American weapons and supported by Pakistan, fought stubbornly from their Afghan
mountain strongholds.
In the midst of these expanding international tensions (which included the Iranian
Revolution and hostage crisis), the new Republican president, Ronald Rea-
gan, came to offi ce in the United States and affi rmed his commitment to
a hard line in the Cold War. The Soviet Union, Reagan asserted in 1983,
represented “the focus of evil in the modern world.” It was “an evil empire”
with “dark purposes.” Despite the strain on its economy, the Soviet Union
Human rights
Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan
Reagan and the “evil
empire”
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy982
Historical Interpretations and Debates
The Nature and Legacy of the Cold War
Europeans emerged from the devastating human and material losses of the Second World War in a weakened position between the ascendant American and Soviet superpowers. The competing ambitions of the United States and the Soviet Union often played out after 1945 on the European continent as both sides developed spheres of infl uence and also used their European bases in the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries as a front line in their global military strategies. After several decades of confl ict and confrontation, however, the Soviet system in eastern Europe collapsed, creating a sense of triumph in the Western countries and opening new opportunities for the increasingly unifi ed European economy. Compare the views of Eric Hobsbawm and John Lamberton Harper as they explain how the Cold War affected Europeans and why the Western powers ultimately prevailed.
Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914 –1991 (1994) The peculiarity of the Cold War was that,
speaking objectively, no imminent danger of
world war existed. More than this: in spite
of the apocalyptic rhetoric on both sides, . . .
the governments of both the superpowers
accepted the global distribution of force at
the end of the Second World War. . . .
Once the USSR acquired nuclear
weapons . . . both superpowers plainly
abandoned war as an instrument of policy
against one another, since it was the
equivalent of a suicide pact. . . .
All Western European governments . . .
were without exception wholeheartedly
anti-communist, and determined to protect
themselves against possible Soviet military
attack. . . . . Yet [fear of] the “communist
world conspiracy” was not a serious part
of the domestic politics of any of those
who had some claim to being political
democracies. . . .
However, the effect of the Cold
War on the international politics of
Europe was more striking than on the
Continent’s domestic politics. It created
the “European Community” with all its
problems; an entirely unprecedented
form of political organization, namely a
permanent . . . arrangement to integrate
the economies, and to some extent the
legal systems, of a number of independent
nation-states. . . .
John Lamberton Harper, The Cold War (2011). The Cold War was a competition between
social-economic systems that regarded
each other as natural enemies. Each side’s
ideology, or secular religion, conditioned its
choice of friends and determined its basic
objectives: safeguarding and advancing
capitalism and democracy, on one hand;
protecting and expanding Communism, on
the other. Each side espoused a directional
and messianic view of history, believing its
cause would prevail. . . .
In its central theater [in Europe], the
confl ict was a total mismatch. Thanks to the
way World War II ended, most of the rich,
industrially advanced regions of Europe fell
into the Western sphere. The EEC’s founding
members were the main benefi ciaries of the
US-Soviet confrontation as well as important
protagonists of the eventual Western victory.
Thanks partly to U.S. aid and protection,
they recovered quickly, developed generous
welfare systems, and pursued a successful
strategy of integration. . . .
In the 1980s Western Europe
restructured industry and embarked
on a new round of integration. Central
and Eastern Europe’s per capita GDP
was 51 percent (on average) of Western
Europe’s in 1950; 47 percent in 1973; a
mere 40 percent in 1989. By then, countless
Eastern Europeans, including once-loyal
Communists, were ready to reinvent
themselves as capitalists. . . .
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983114. The Cold War Rekindled and Defused
Eric Hobsbawm . . . (contd . . . .) The “Community” was, like so many
other things in post-1945 Europe, created
both by and against the USA. It illustrates
both the power and ambiguity of that country
and its limits; but it also illustrates the
strength of the fears that held the anti-Soviet
alliance together. . . .
[E]ven though the USA was unable to
impose its politico-economic plans on the
Europeans in detail, it was strong enough to
dominate their international behavior. The
policy of the alliance against the USSR was
the USA’s, and so were its military plans.
John Lamberton Harper . . . (contd . . . .) [T]he West won the contest partly
because the playing fi eld was always tilted
in its favor, and the United States shared
the laurels . . . with Europe. . . . A degree of
Western triumphalism was understandable in
1989–90. But a clear look back on the Cold
War battlegrounds, along with a sense of
relief that the world survived forty-fi ve years
of confrontation, evokes feelings of humility
and regret.
Sources: Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World , 1914–1991 (New York: Pantheon, 1994), pp. 226, 229, 236–237, 239–241; John Lamberton Harper, The Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 244–246, 250.
during the 1970s had built up its military strength, modernized its conventional fi ghting
forces, created a powerful navy, and achieved nuclear parity. With congressional support
Reagan substantially increased defense appropriations, sponsored the largest peacetime
military spending in American history, and took a confrontational stand against commu-
nism everywhere. He stepped up arms shipments to the Muslim guerrillas in Afghani-
stan and sent aid to Pakistan, which was backing the Afghan rebels. Reagan also favored
strong anti-Communist actions in Europe. Against the Communist government in Poland
he applied economic sanctions when, under pressure from the Soviets, it imposed martial
law in 1981 to suppress the Solidarity trade union movement. He reinforced the embargo
on the sale of high technology to the Soviets and to eastern Europe, but the embargo on
grain sales was dropped because of opposition from American farmers. Yet Reagan would
also move gradually toward his own policies of détente and negotiation with the Soviet
Union during the later years of his presidency.
Nuclear Arms Control
No nuclear weapons were used in any confl ict in the years after 1945, yet
over every crisis hung the ultimate threat of a nuclear clash. We have seen
how the earliest negotiations on nuclear disarmament, at a time when the
United States alone possessed the atomic bomb, were broken off in 1947; how in 1949
the Soviets successfully tested their fi rst atomic bomb, ending the American monopoly;
and how the United States in 1952 and the Soviet Union shortly thereafter developed the
hydrogen or thermonuclear bomb, which by its chain reaction had vastly more destructive
capacity than the mere 20,000 tons of TNT of the Hiroshima bomb. By the 1960s both
superpowers were building strategic long-range missiles, that is, intercontinental ballistic
missiles, capable of delivering their nuclear warheads accurately and swiftly to targets in
each other’s homeland.
The ultimate threat
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy984
The arms experts insisted that nuclear arms were increasingly built
for deterrence rather than for use in an intercontinental war. The interna-
tional balance of power came to be described as a “balance of terror,” and
military strategists referred to “mutually assured destruction” (the acro-
nym for which, ironically, was MAD). Deterrence became the accepted formula.
Although Britain and France had developed their own nuclear weapons by the early
1960s, and the People’s Republic of China also became a nuclear power in that era, the
arms race developed mainly in the competition of the American and Soviet superpowers.
Europeans lived between the two great nuclear forces, but they could only be worried
spectators as the superpowers on each side amassed huge stockpiles of arms, capable of
destroying each other and Europe many times over, in what was described as “overkill.”
When the Soviets developed antiballistic defense missiles, which undermined deterrence,
the United States responded by building its own defense system and more powerful
offensive weapons—such as the MIRV (a “multiple independently targeted reentry vehi-
cle”). The MIRV was a delivery system carrying up to 10 nuclear war-
heads, each guided to separate targets and each many times more powerful
than the Hiroshima bomb. Meanwhile, shorter-range missiles with nuclear
warheads were also deployed in Europe for use as possible strategic sup-
port in the event of a European land war. The Americans placed the
intermediate-range Pershing missiles in Germany, for example, and the Soviets placed
comparable nuclear weapons along the borders that divided the eastern and western Euro-
pean nations. For the fi rst time in its long history, the very survival of Europe rested in the
military hands of others.
By the 1980s each superpower possessed about 25,000 nuclear weapons, of which
roughly 12,000 on each side were strategic, that is, long-range, or intercontinental; but
many were also designed for shorter-range use in places such as the European borderlands.
Together the arsenals of the two major nuclear powers exceeded 500,000 megatons
(millions of tons) of explosive power, dwarfi ng the total explosive power used in all the
previous wars of human history. This was the context in which the American and Soviet
leaders began to rethink their strategic interests and to initiate new negotiations that would
also alter the “balance of terror” within Europe.
Early in the Reagan administration, in 1981, Soviet and American offi cials resumed
low-level talks on strategic arms limitations, but in an atmosphere of Cold War mis-
trust, suspicion, and continuing arms buildup. Especially disturbing for the western Euro-
pean and American governments was the deployment in eastern Europe of new Soviet
intermediate-range nuclear missiles capable of reaching a radius of 600 to 1,500 miles. As
the Soviets developed this new force in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the
United States joined with its European allies to reinforce existing defenses
in western Europe with a new generation of intermediate Pershing and
cruise missiles. These missiles were to serve as a new deterrent against
Soviet military action, but they were also deployed as a forceful encour-
agement for the Soviets to remove or reduce their own missiles from eastern Europe. The
construction of the new American missile sites set off mass antimissile protests in much
of western Europe and provoked a new European wave of post-Vietnam criticisms of
American military policies. The West European governments, however, remained fi rm
in their support of the new missiles, and the new weapons were installed at strategic
military bases.
MAD: Mutually
assured destruction
Overkill
New missiles and
European protests
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985114. The Cold War Rekindled and Defused
High-level arms negotiations between the Soviet and Western governments all but
ceased during the fi rst years of the Reagan presidency, in part because Soviet leaders such
as Leonid Brezhnev were ailing and in part because Western leaders such
as Reagan and Thatcher were not eager to negotiate with Communist
regimes. Beginning in 1985, however, the emergence of the new Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev offered an opening for new negotiations on
nuclear weaponry. Unlike his predecessors, Gorbachev seemed to view
détente as a means to help the weak Soviet economy and as an essential
diplomatic process for avoiding catastrophe in the nuclear age. For his part, Reagan was
confi dent that American military strength would give the Americans and western Europe-
ans a stronger position from which to negotiate; and Reagan would ultimately hold four
summit meetings with Gorbachev in the later 1980s.
New arms
negotiations
The nuclear arms race evolved during the early 1980s as both the Soviets and Americans deployed new intermediate-range missiles within Europe. The new strategic weapons provoked deep concern among Europeans who feared that they could be caught in a devastating nuclear exchange between the opposing superpowers. The German protestors at this demonstration therefore represented a broader antimissile movement that spread across western Europe, but the new missiles were nevertheless installed. Later Soviet-U.S. negotiations, however, led to the removal of these weapons and the easing of Cold War tensions. (Jean Gaumy/Magnum Photos)
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Chapter 24 Coexistence, Confrontation, and the New European Economy986
At their third meeting, in December 1987, the American and Soviet leaders made a
remarkable breakthrough by consenting to remove the intermediate-range missiles that each
country had installed in Europe. Gorbachev also agreed to reduce the number
of short-range nuclear missiles; in fact, the Soviets were willing to destroy
over four times as many missiles as the United States. Even more unprece-
dented, the Soviets agreed to allow the United States to verify the destruction
of the weapons through on-site inspections. Negotiations for the further
reduction of long-range nuclear weapons would continue after Reagan left offi ce and would
lead fi nally to another strategic arms treaty in 1991, pledging each of the superpowers to
reduce its arsenal by about a third of its missiles.
All of these remarkable changes in the nuclear arms race altered the political and stra-
tegic context for the people of western and eastern Europe as well as for the Americans and
the Soviets. The international confl icts of the Cold War came to an end. Equally important
for Europeans, a new wave of political dissent gathered force in eastern Europe, leading
to the collapse of the Communist regimes, the free movement of people across formerly
rigid national boundaries, and the unexpected demise of the Soviet Union
itself. New problems emerged, of course, including ethnic and national vio-
lence in southeastern Europe; but the protracted European transition out
of the Second World War fi nally came to a close. The Cold War threat of
Communist expansion in Europe disappeared, providing new possibilities
for a more unifi ed Europe that would link the continent’s western and eastern nations in
new forms of commerce, cultural exchange, and political cooperation. The challenges of
“globalization” remained an ongoing problem for European economies, but the diminu-
tion of the nuclear arms race—which in the early 1980s had seemed to be only a remote
possibility—was soon followed by an equally unexpected upheaval across all of eastern
Europe in 1989.
Removal of missiles
End of Cold War
confl icts
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e .
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987
C h a p t e r 25 THE INTERNATIONAL
REVOLT AGAINST
SOVIET COMMUNISM
Europeans and most other people around the world were astonished in the mid-1980s to see
some of the basic structures of Soviet communism,
as they had evolved since the Russian Revolution
of 1917, begin to come apart. The transitions in
the Soviet Union also opened the way for other
extraordinary events, in 1989, in central and east-
ern Europe, where the existing Communist regimes
collapsed one by one and were replaced with virtu-
ally no violence. In an even more epochal event, in
1991, the Communist regime of the Soviet Union
itself came to an end after holding absolute power
for 74 years; and the U.S.S.R. disintegrated into Russia and its other component republics.
In a strict sense, if revolutions are defi ned as violent upheavals, there was no actual
revolution in 1989–1991. Indeed, it was a source of wonder and satisfaction that such
sweeping change could occur without armed struggle. The older regimes disappeared less
by explosion than by implosion—a breakup from within. The “revolution” of 1989 could
remain peaceful because (in contrast to the French Revolution of 1789) it faced no strong
internal resistance or threat of foreign intervention. Yet the upheavals were revolutionary
in that they demolished existing repressive authorities and brought abrupt, radical change.
They reasserted political ideals that were revolutionary when proclaimed in America in
1776, in France in 1789, throughout Europe in 1848, and in many of the anticolonial
movements after 1919 or 1945—ideals that were now called human rights and the prin-
ciples of a democratic civil society. These ideals had been incorporated into the American
Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and they
had become the guiding ideals for democracies in most of the modern world. Democracy
meant representative and constitutional government and freely contested elections; and
freedom and independence meant guarantees against repression by one’s own government
or dictatorial foreign rule. Such ideas were now invoked again to support the new political
revolutions of 1989, though the actual practice of democracy in post-Communist societies
(as in even the oldest democratic societies) often fell short of the professed ideals.
115. The Crisis in the Soviet
Union
116. The Collapse of
Communism in Central
and Eastern Europe
117. The Collapse of the Soviet
Union
118. After Communism
Chapter emblem: Germans destroying the Berlin Wall in November 1989. (Robert Wallis/Sipa Press)
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism988
The Revolution of 1989 gave the people of central and eastern Europe a long-deferred
opportunity to decide their own destiny. With the collapse of the U.S.S.R. one of the two
superpowers that had dominated international affairs and a European sphere of infl uence
since 1945 abruptly disappeared. The Cold War, as the world had known it, came to an
end, even if Russia remained a large and important power. A new global and European
political era opened, leading to new challenges and frustrations, but also raising expecta-
tions and possibilities for a more peaceful international order.
115. THE CRISIS IN THE SOVIET UNION
Neither the transformation of central and eastern Europe nor of the Soviet Union could have
taken place as they did without the changes in the U.S.S.R. that began in 1985. It is not easy
to explain how the reformist Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev could rise to supreme
power from within the Soviet system of centralized control and one-party government.
The country was in dire straits, however, and the party leadership itself was desperately look-
ing for some way to revitalize the state’s political and economic policies. As a young man
Gorbachev studied at the university in Moscow and at the agricultural institute in Stavropol,
his home city in southwestern Russia. After working as an agricultural researcher, he
received a full-time party assignment in the region and came to the attention of Yuri V.
Andropov (soon to be the party general secretary) and other party leaders in Moscow. His
appointment to the party secretariat in Moscow in 1978, with special responsibility for agri-
culture, afforded him a privileged view of the country’s deep economic troubles. By 1980 he
was a member of the Politburo, and by 1984 he was being groomed by Andropov for top
party leadership. After the frustrating experience of an incapacitated Brezhnev clinging to
power and of Andropov and Konstantin U. Chernenko, his two successors, dying in offi ce
after only brief terms, the Politburo in March 1985 decided that it was time for a more force-
ful, younger leader. At 54, Gorbachev was by far its youngest member. Andrei Gromyko, for
many years foreign minister of the U.S.S.R., ultimately endorsed Gorbachev and is said to
have reassured those with doubts: “He has a nice smile but he has iron teeth.”
Gorbachev at once demonstrated a dynamism and vigor that had been absent from
recent Soviet leadership. His fi rst task was to convince the party and country that funda-
mental economic restructuring was needed to break a pervasive pattern of
economic stagnation. He called this restructuring perestroika, by which he meant a drastic modifi cation of the centrally planned command economy
inherited from Stalin and carried forward with only minor changes since.
However well the older system may have served the industrialization of the country, the
test of the Second World War, and the projects of postwar reconstruction, it was ill-suited
for the contemporary industrial world. Industry and agriculture urgently needed freedom
from restraints to release creative energies, provide incentives for productivity, introduce
new technologies, raise quality levels, and satisfy consumer needs. Gorbachev’s proposed
remedies included decentralization, self-management for industry and agriculture, an end
to the rigidity imposed by the party and government bureaucracy, and incentives for pro-
ductivity. He moved cautiously, believing that exhortation and a sense of urgency would
bring results, but his appeals and initial moderate reforms quickly clashed with the vested
interests of the entrenched Soviet bureaucrats.
For his economic restructuring to succeed, Gorbachev had to have the support of the
country, which he hoped to win through political change. Thus he also
called for glasnost, or “openness,” which he closely linked to economic reform. By glasnost he meant the right to voice the need for change, the
Perestroika
Glasnost
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989115. The Crisis in the Soviet Union
freedom to criticize the existing system, and the willingness to reexamine past mistakes
and wrongdoings. Even if this new openness originally had a more limited objective,
glasnost soon took on a dynamic of its own. It led to an unprecedented liberalization of Soviet society, a freer press, and an end to the decades of totalitarian control over political,
cultural, and intellectual life. The ferment that had been choked off after Khrushchev’s
brief “thaw” in the 1950s was reborn. Newspapers, theater, the arts, and political dis-
course opened up as at no time before. Books and plays written in the 1960s or earlier but
never permitted publication or performance made their appearance, including Pasternak’s
Dr. Zhivago and eventually even Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, the novel that gave the outside world a concise and widely used name for Stalin’s network of forced labor
camps. Gorbachev permitted the physicist Andrei Sakharov, a leading dissenter and com-
mitted opponent of the regime, to return to Moscow from exile and take an active part in
political life. Soviet Jews, who had earlier been refused permission to leave the country,
were now allowed to emigrate in larger numbers. The atmosphere changed visibly. People
became freer and less fearful. The legal codes were revised to encompass a measure of
civil liberties, allow freedom of expression, and reduce police abuses. The KGB itself came
under public and legislative scrutiny. Gorbachev even spoke of freedom of conscience and
tolerance for religion, negotiating a rapprochement with the Orthodox Church.
In 1987, on the very occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution,
Gorbachev spoke publicly of “Stalin’s enormous and unforgivable crimes.” A monument
to Stalin’s victims was planned, while the press openly discussed their total number,
clearly in the tens of millions. New history textbooks were prepared, as well as a revised
history of the party. Gorbachev told the country that there should be “no forgotten names
or blanks in history or literature.”
Although Gorbachev did not challenge the role of the Communist Party as the directing
agent of Soviet society, he was clearly introducing changes that would curb its monopoly
on power. Remembering how Khrushchev had been dislodged after only a few years, he set
out to mobilize a wide popular base for himself. Reform could not simply be imposed from
above. The people, he said, needed more than a “good tsar.” Constitutional
reforms in 1988 created a new national legislature, and multicandidate
elections were to replace the traditional one-party slate of nominees. What
began as a technocratic vision of a more effi cient economy was moving the
country to a sweeping transformation of Soviet life and society.
In the freer atmosphere the government released long-suppressed information about
poor grain harvests, ineffi cient state enterprises, and nuclear accidents that had occurred
before the worst nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986. At party meetings
and at the new Congress of People’s Deputies the public heard for the fi rst time outspoken
critiques of Soviet society: descriptions of poverty, corruption, crime, alcoholism, and
drugs; of serious shortcomings in medicine, health, and housing; of environmental decay.
Tens of millions, perhaps one-fi fth the population, lived in poverty.
Gorbachev soon recognized that the country’s economic problems were more intrac-
table than he had thought, but he persisted with his gradualist reform program. Private
enterprise and state industries were one day to be integrated into a market-based econ-
omy, linked to the outside world. Foreign capital for trade and investment and joint ven-
tures with foreign fi rms were to be welcomed. Soviet managers were encouraged to travel
abroad to learn advanced (sometimes elementary) business and accounting
practices. B ut many of these reforms remained paper decrees only; party
offi cials and government bureaucrats helped checkmate others. The older
economic system remained virtually unchanged. Gorbachev shrank from
Gorbachev’s
constitutional reforms
Limited economic
reforms
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism990
moving more rapidly to a market-oriented competitive economy. His concerns about pain-
ful short-term dislocations and political unrest reinforced his commitment to reform rather
than abandon the older system in its entirety.
Gorbachev’s reforms in agriculture also fell far short of what was needed. Accepting
the existing structure of state and collective farms, which had been established in the
Stalinist era of the 1930s, he did little more than allow them greater managerial autonomy.
Production did not rise. Belatedly, he launched a more extensive agrarian policy to expand
the supply of food and other farm products. Farmers and farm families would be permitted
to work with state and collective farms on a share-crop basis, or farm their own land. They
could lease land for their lifetime and even bequeath this right to their children. But the
state remained the legal owner of the land, and little more than 1 percent of the land shifted
to private hands. The agrarian economy therefore continued to lag, forcing the government
to purchase food imports in global markets.
But the constitutional and political changes that Gorbachev had initi-
ated signifi cantly loosened the monopoly grip of the party. In March 1989
openly contested, multicandidate elections were held, the fi rst since 1917,
though well over half the seats were reserved for the party and various
state-sponsored associations. Voters elected a Congress of People’s Depu-
ties, which in turn chose a smaller standing legislative body to meet more frequently. Both
were empowered to initiate legislation and freely debate issues. In 1990, under another
constitutional reform, the Congress of People’s Deputies created a presidency with broad
executive powers modeled on the American and French examples. The Congress elected
Gorbachev president.
Gorbachev brought about stunning political changes, unprecedented in the years since
the revolution. Western political leaders in the era of the Great Depression had sought to
save capitalism by reforming it. Gorbachev was likewise bent on saving the Communist
system by reform. Yet the country remained divided and disoriented. It was torn between
the old guard, who resisted the Gorbachev changes, and a growing group of
democratic reformers in the central legislature and in the newly elected par-
liaments of the restless component republics who believed that Gorbachev
had not gone far enough in either political or economic matters. As time
went by, praise for his policies gave way to criticism for the continuing
dismal economic record; his indecisive, sometimes contradictory, steps in shaping a mar-
ket economy; and his reluctance to revamp the collectivized agricultural system. He also
seemed determined to repress ethnic unrest and to reject the demands of the constituent
republics for greater freedom from central control. The military, the industrial bureaucrats,
and the party were still in command.
The loosening of totalitarian controls unleashed nationalist movements and long-
suppressed ethnic tensions. Every one of the 15 federated constituent republics of the
Soviet Union began to raise demands for independence. Secessionist pressures under-
standably went furthest in the three Baltic republics. People in Latvia, Lithuania, and
Estonia remembered their 20 years of independence between the two world wars; how
they had fallen victim to the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939; and how one-third of their popula-
tion had been killed, deported, or driven into exile in the war and postwar years. In the
freer atmosphere of glasnost, the constituent republics, which had come to consider them- selves trapped within the Soviet Empire, were able to denounce Soviet control. For his part
Gorbachev was willing to create a federation council to advise on matters relating to the
republics, but he would not risk the wrath of the old guard by going beyond that.
The party’s grip
loosened
Criticisms of
Gorbachev
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991
Gorbachev and the West
As the new era evolved, Communist ideology and the view of world affairs that had helped
to create and prolong the Cold War were also transformed. Gorbachev repudiated ideo-
logical struggle. He cited the progress of science and technology as requiring “a different
road to the future.” In an interdependent globe besieged by nuclear, ecological, and eco-
nomic dangers, the highest concern must be “universal human interests” and the “universal
human idea.” Because Marx and Lenin had taught their followers to reject “universal”
ideals as a smoke screen for class rule and oppression, the turnabout was startling.
Gorbachev changed the image of the Soviet Union as a military threat and pro-
moter of world revolution. He became a familiar and popular fi gure in Western capitals
as a negotiator, diplomat, and often Western-style politician. He followed
his conciliatory words with deeds. He removed troops and weapons from
eastern Europe, negotiated nuclear arms reduction agreements with the
United States, ended the war in Afghanistan, and helped to resolve Cold
War regional confl icts. And he accepted, even encouraged, reforms in eastern Europe,
probably not foreseeing how far they would go. He spoke up for human rights, paid tribute
to the standards embodied in the Helsinki Accords, and called for a “common European
Encouraging détente
Mikhail Gorbachev advocated economic and cultural reforms that came to be known in gen- eral terms as the call for glasnost, or “openness,” and perestroika, or “structural reforms.” Gorbachev expected the reforms to benefi t agriculture as well as the industrial sector of the Soviet economy, and he campaigned for his program among both farmers and workers. He is shown here (smiling, on the left) during a meeting with potato farmers near Moscow in 1987. Such contacts with people in the countryside affi rmed the spirit of glasnost, but the reforms on state-owned farms did not go far enough to bring about a rise in agricultural production. (TASS/Sovfoto)
115. The Crisis in the Soviet Union
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism992
home” for western and eastern Europe. The Cold War of the post-1945 years began to lose
its ideological intensity and rationale. We have seen how Gorbachev extended the earlier
policies of détente, believing that the reduction of nuclear arms was essential for the relief
of intolerable military burdens on the Soviet economy. Gorbachev’s support for détente
thus went hand in hand with his plans for domestic economic reform. From their low point
in the early 1980s, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States, as noted ear-
lier, abruptly changed after 1985. A series of meetings between Gorbachev and President
Ronald Reagan led to major new agreements on the reduction of nuclear weapons.
In summit meetings in Washington and Moscow, the Soviet and American leaders had
closer contact with each other’s people than ever before. Gorbachev mingled with throngs
in crowded Washington streets. Reagan, in the shadow of Lenin’s tomb in Moscow, spoke
openly about the Soviet repression of dissidents, the refusal to permit Jews to emigrate,
religious persecution, and the ongoing war in Afghanistan. Gorbachev eventually commit-
ted his country to the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the unwinnable war against Muslim
insurgents in Afghanistan—a “bleeding wound” he called it. Meanwhile Gorbachev lent
encouragement to the vast changes taking place in eastern Europe. In 1990 Gorbachev and
President George H. W. Bush, Reagan’s successor, could jointly hail the end of the Cold
War. In 1991 they signed a strategic arms treaty pledging each nation to scale down by
about a third its arsenal of long-range nuclear missiles.
116. THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
While Gorbachev was introducing reforms in the mid-1980s, central and eastern Europe
remained under Stalinist-type party bosses, some in offi ce for over 30 years, impervious to
pressure for reform. But cracks and fi ssures were apparent even before Gorbachev began
making changes in the Soviet Union. The years of détente had already opened up the East
European states to Western loans and investments and to closer contacts with the West.
Dissidents called for a recognition of the human rights guaranteed by the Helsinki Accords
in 1975, to which the Soviet Union and the East European bloc had subscribed. They wrote
about ending party-state dictatorships and the restoration one day of a “civil society” in
which people could live their lives free from the dictates of the state.
As in the Soviet Union itself, East Europeans discussed the shortcom-
ings of their centrally planned economies, which had stagnated since the
1970s. Initiative and productivity were stifl ed, and large subsidies propped
up ineffi cient state-run monopolies unchallenged by competition. The older
plants and industrial infrastructure were decaying; the environment was deteriorating. A
scarcity of investment capital prevented the growth of new industries. Only in Hungary
had decentralizing reforms and tentative steps toward a market economy been adopted. In
East Germany, the showcase for achievements under central planning, economic growth
had slowed and consumer goods were scarce. Even if state-run planned economies were to
continue, many argued for new market competition, incentives for entrepreneurs and work-
ers, and encouragement of joint ventures with the outside capitalist world.
Poland: The Solidarity Movement
In the 1970s and 1980s demands for economic reform and political liberalization surfaced
almost everywhere, but nowhere so forcefully as in Poland. Gomulka, who governed
Economic stagnation
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993116. The Collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe
Poland for 14 years after 1956, disappointed the reformers. He used troops to put down
strikes, persecuted church leaders, and permitted an anti-Semitic campaign against the
small number of Jews still living in Poland. In 1970, after riots over food prices, the party
replaced him with the reform-minded Edmund Gierek, who embarked on an ambitious
economic development program, fi nanced by heavy borrowing from western Europe. The
initial results were promising and the economy began to improve, but to meet its rising
debt obligations, the country expanded exports at the expense of domestic consumption.
Economic conditions again deteriorated, sparking a new wave of social unrest.
In 1980 the rise in food prices led to widespread strikes, which began in the Lenin
shipyards in Gdansk and spread rapidly to other cities. A somewhat freer political atmo-
sphere made it possible for workers to create an aggressive independent trade union fed-
eration, Solidarity, the fi rst of its kind in any Communist country. The new
workers’ movement found a militant leader and national symbol of protest
in Lech Walesa. Before long Solidarity claimed a national membership of
10 million industrial and agricultural workers. With backing from leaders
of the Polish Catholic Church, its leaders called for free elections and a role for Solidar-
ity in government. The Soviets, then still in the Brezhnev era, once again saw a socialist
regime threatened. They put heavy pressure on the Polish government and party to curb
Solidarity, oust Gierek, and install the dependable and steely General Jaruzelski as party
head and premier. When strikes and demonstrations continued to mobilize wide popular
support, raising the threat of Soviet military intervention, Jaruzelski, in 1981, imposed
martial law, banned Solidarity, and arrested its leaders.
But once the power of Solidarity was curbed and the Soviet threat of intervention
passed, Jaruzelski himself took a different tack. To placate labor he lifted martial law and
initiated a reform program of his own. International pressure also contributed to liberaliza-
tion. John Paul II, the fi rst Polish pope to head the Roman Catholic Church, inspired huge
demonstrations for freedom during visits to Poland after his elevation to the papacy in
1978; and Lech Walesa was honored with a Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. Polish dissidents
thus became international symbols of the growing European campaign for human rights.
Jaruzelski’s efforts at economic reform failed to improve the economy or mollify
widespread resentments. Meanwhile, in the late 1980s, Gorbachev’s liberalizing reforms
in the Soviet Union encouraged further reforms in Poland and suggested that the Soviets
would not intervene to check liberalization in eastern Europe. The recognition that the
“Brezhnev Doctrine” was no longer operative encouraged a movement for reform even
within the Polish Communist Party itself.
In 1989 Jaruzelski and the party leadership permitted parliamentary elections, in which
Solidarity and other groups were free to put forward candidates, although the Communist
Party was guaranteed a fi xed number of seats. The fi rst open elections in Poland in over
40 years gave Solidarity a landslide victory in all contested seats. A Solidarity-led coali-
tion cabinet was formed in which the Communists were a minority. The
party took steps to transform itself into a Western-type socialist party, but
many of its members drifted away. The party-state dictatorship ended with-
out bloodshed. The authoritarian walls in eastern Europe were breached,
thus allowing political and economic reforms to fl ow into Polish society.
The new government moved at once to restructure the economy along free-market
lines. Sharp differences emerged between Lech Walesa, elected president in 1990, and his
one-time political allies; and former Communists soon returned to the political scene, but
Poland was fi nally and henceforth in charge of its own national political destiny.
Lech Walesa
Reforms within the
party
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism994
Hungary: Reform into Revolution
In Hungary the attempt at reform in 1956, initiated by the Communist Party leadership
itself, had been brusquely interrupted when the Soviets intervened with troops and tanks to
suppress the “counterrevolution.” Imre Nagy, the party leader, and other leaders of the
revolt were hanged. For the next 32 years, hard-liner János Kádár ran the country. But
even under Kádár the party, without relinquishing its monopoly on political control, moved
away from an infl exible centrally planned economy, encouraged a degree of private enter-
prise, and turned to Western countries for capital investment. For a time the economy
expanded and standards of living rose, but the limited reforms accomplished no fundamen-
tal change. After 1985, as Gorbachev’s reforms were implemented in the Soviet Union, a
new drive for political and social change began to develop also within Hungary.
In 1988 the party sought to show its support for change and also to maintain power
by easing Kádár out of offi ce. The new Hungarian leadership allowed opposition parties
and multiparty elections and began to dismantle the older party-state apparatus. It even
dissolved the Communist Party, reconstituting it along socialist and social–
democratic lines, and a wide range of independent political groups came
forward. Reform was therefore initiated by the party itself, and it had turned
into a revolution without bloodshed. The new leaders reclaimed the mem-
ory of the suppressed 1956 uprising as a progressive movement and formally condemned
those who had invited Soviet intervention. Nagy’s body was exhumed from a mass grave
and given a hero’s reburial. By sweeping aside the humiliation of 1956, the country reas-
serted its national independence, restored self-government and civic freedom, and opened
the way to a market-oriented economy and a pluralist democracy.
The developments in Hungary soon precipitated even more dramatic events. The new
Hungary, looking westward, symbolically demolished a portion of the barbed-wire barrier
on its Austrian border. A few months later, in September 1989, when large numbers of
East Germans vacationing in Hungary sought to emigrate to the West, Hungary opened
its border with Austria and allowed the Germans to exit. For the fi rst time since 1961 East
Germans found a safe way to leave their country, and this exodus helped to bring about a
dramatic political transformation in all of Germany.
The German Democratic Republic: Revolution and Reunifi cation
Given Gorbachev’s positive attitude toward reform, it was understandable that the pace
of change in eastern Europe would accelerate, but nobody could have anticipated the full
dimensions of the upheaval. In the four hard-line dictatorships—the German Democratic
Republic, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania—there still appeared to be little chance
for a Communist sharing of power in the spring of 1989, let alone a revolutionary trans-
formation. Yet by the end of that year the Communist regimes had fallen in all of these
countries.
In the German Democratic Republic Erich Honecker, in power since 1961, stubbornly
held the line against reform. Although the country boasted the strongest economy and
highest per capita income in eastern Europe, its citizens enjoyed far fewer amenities than
the West Germans. The Berlin Wall built in 1961 still barred their free movement into
West Germany. Although Honecker had agreed to the closer economic and political rela-
tions with West Germany that Willy Brandt had initiated with his Ostpolitik in 1969, he refused to relax controls at home. But the East Germans excitedly watched the Gorbachev
changes in the Soviet Union and the rush of events in Poland and Hungary. When in the
Party initiatives
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995
The independent Polish trade union movement, Solidarity, gained the support of millions of workers in the early 1980s. Solidarity organized strikes and demonstrations, demanding better wages for workers and major reforms in the Communist political system. These demonstrators gathered to support Solidarity at a rally outside the court buildings in Warsaw in November 1980. The Solidarity movement was suppressed after martial law was imposed the following year, but the Polish Communist Party could never destroy the movement’s popular appeal. Solidarity eventually won control of Poland’s fi rst new government in free elections that took place at the end of the decade. (Keystone/Getty Images)
autumn of 1989 Hungary opened the way for them to leave, thousands seized the opportu-
nity. The trickle soon became a fl ood. The East Germans, many of them skilled workers
and professionals looking for better economic opportunities, fl ed the
repression and drabness of the German Democratic Republic for the Fed-
eral Republic of Germany, where as Germans they were entitled by law to
receive citizenship and assistance in fi nding homes and jobs. By the end of
1989, 350,000 of East Germany’s population of 17 million had left, and
many more emigrated in the early months of 1990.
Flight from
Honecker’s rule
116. The Collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism996
When demonstrations against the East German government mounted, Gorbachev
clearly signaled that Honecker could not expect the Soviet troops stationed in East
Germany to save the regime, and he even warned against the use of force to prevent reform.
In Leipzig, over 100,000 demonstrators, assembling in churches, marched in solemn pro-
cession with lighted candles, calling for the resignation of party and government leaders
and for an end to the police state. The party forced Honecker to resign.
The new leadership promised elections and confi rmed the right of free and unrestricted
travel. On November 9, 1989, when the government opened up the hated symbol of con-
fi nement itself, the Berlin Wall, excited Berliners on both sides of the barrier tore it down.
The exodus to West Germany continued. By now even the new freedom of movement, the
end of censorship, the new parliamentary supervision over the state security police, and the
pledge of free elections did not suffi ce. Many East Germans were infuriated by public dis-
closure of the corruption and luxurious living that Honecker and the party
elite had enjoyed while ordinary people suffered over the years. The entire
party structure now came crashing down. The Politburo and Central Com-
mittee resigned. Honecker and other leaders were arrested on charges of
corruption and embezzlement, and younger reformers assumed control.
Delegates from a wide variety of opposition groups, exultant over their “gentle” revolu-
tion, met with reform-minded representatives of the former Communist Party to oversee
the transition to a new constitutional regime, which many still envisaged as a socialist but
democratic society that would now become democratic.
Once the German Democratic Republic was no longer Communist, however, pressure
for reunifi cation with West Germany began to build. Helmut Kohl, the Christian Democratic
chancellor in West Germany, took the initiative to reunite the two Germanys. For many of the
wartime Allies the prospect of a reunifi ed Germany of close to 80 million people, possessing
one of the world’s most powerful economies, stirred grim ghosts of the past. The “German
question” resurfaced. The entire postwar settlement stood at issue. Because
no fi nal peace treaty had ever been signed, reunifi cation required the approval
of the four major Allied powers of the Second World War. There was hesita-
tion, especially in France and Britain, but it was diffi cult, as the Americans
argued, to deny the German people the right of self-determination 45 years
after the end of the war. Moreover, the Federal Republic of Germany had demonstrated its
commitment to democracy. There was confi dence that a reunifi ed Germany could integrate
East Germany and remain part of democratic western Europe and the European Community.
Despite the unspeakable crimes of the Nazi era, it seemed unreasonable to insist upon unal-
terable traits of national character or to punish future generations for atrocities of the past.
Reunifi cation therefore moved forward swiftly. The four Allied powers, including the
U.S.S.R., gave their approval and relinquished their occupation rights. Germany confi rmed
the earlier cession of territories in the east to the U.S.S.R. and Poland and pledged the invi-
olability of the German-Polish border. The two German states merged their economies and
the West German mark became the common currency. On October 3, 1990, the two states
formally united to become an enlarged Federal Republic of Germany, its capital to be rees-
tablished within a few years in Berlin. In the fi rst nationwide elections, Chancellor Kohl
and his Christian Democrats, who played a key role in the reunifi cation, won a sweeping
victory. Although the nation’s postelection exhilaration was soon tempered by the gigantic
problems of absorbing the thoroughly decayed East German economy, a key component
of post-1945 European politics and confl icts—the division of Germany—permanently
disappeared. Equally important, Germany had been reunited through democratic processes
rather than through violence or the actions of an authoritarian government.
Corruption within the
party
The “German
question” revived
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997
Czechoslovakia: “‘89 Is ‘68 Upside Down”
In Czechoslovakia the ruling hard-liners who took power after Soviet military forces had
ruthlessly crushed the “Prague spring” in 1968 disapproved of Gorbachev’s reforms in the
Soviet Union and stifl ed dissent at home. But the dissidents quietly grew in numbers and
infl uence. Charter ’77, an organization of intellectuals formed after the Helsinki Accords
of 1975, became a rallying point for the struggle against the dictatorship. The Czech public
followed with intense interest the disintegration of Communist power in Poland, Hungary,
and East Germany. When demonstrations broke out in the autumn of 1989, the govern-
ment arrested the dissident leaders, but thousands of demonstrators in Prague called for
the release of the imprisoned dissidents and for the government’s resignation. Reformers
came together in a loose coalition and found inspiring leadership in the ideas and activism
of the dissident writer Vaclav Havel, an outspoken opponent of the regime who had repeat-
edly suffered persecution and imprisonment for his views.
The demonstrations grew in intensity. When 350,000 demonstrators gathered in Prague
on November 24 to demand an end to the party-state dictatorship and when a general strike
threatened to bring the whole country to a standstill, the government and party leaders all at
once resigned. Alexander Dubček, the hero of 1968, dramatically appeared on a balcony
alongside a new reform-minded Communist prime minister, who appointed opposition
The “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia exemplifi ed the nonviolent overthrow of late twentieth-century communist regimes in central Europe. Czech dissidents, including the playwright Vaclav Havel, had led anti-Soviet campaigns for human rights since the 1960s, so the upheaval in November 1989 reaffi rmed political aspirations that had fl ourished during the “Prague spring” of 1968. These two historical moments were linked in this photograph as the younger Havel took the hand of his predecessor Alexander Dubcek and made his way with the dissident singer Marta Kubisova toward a vast Prague rally against Czechoslovakia’s discredited Communist government. (Lubomir Kotek/AFP/Getty Images)
116. The Collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism998
leaders to his cabinet, pledged a free press and free elections, dissolved the secret police,
and abolished the compulsory teaching of Marxism-Leninism in the universities. The par-
ty’s 41-year monopoly on power was dissolved. Havel became provisional president and
led a new cabinet in which the Communists were a minority. Gorbachev took steps to
withdraw the 75,000 Soviet troops that had been stationed in the country since 1968. In the
The destruction of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 provided dramatic physical and sym- bolic evidence of the collapse of Communist regimes in eastern Europe. Young people shat- tered the Wall in a great celebration that released long-suppressed political anger and marked the culmination of a nonviolent revolution in East Germany. Within a year, the two postwar German states were united in a new, enlarged Federal Republic of Germany, which faced the social and economic challenges of bringing two different societies into an integrated national political system. (Robert Wallis/Sipa Press)
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999
A “velvet revolution” excitement someone exultantly observed: “’89 is ’68 upside down.” The
people had wrested control without bloodshed in a “velvet revolution” that
destroyed an “iron curtain” regime.
Of all the nations in the disintegrating Soviet bloc, Czechoslovakia had the strongest
democratic traditions. Despite long-standing ethnic tensions, it had developed a genuine
parliamentary democracy in the interwar years, and it was the last of the eastern European
states to fall under Communist dictatorship after the Second World War. Even though its
economy was one of the strongest among the Communist nations, it lagged far behind the
western Europeans and required large infusions of capital to modernize its older technol-
ogy. It moved rapidly toward a market-oriented economy and a pluralist democracy—
the kind of civil society that had been sought by dissidents such as Havel, who was now
elected president of the new republic. But an unexpected political sequel followed within
three years. The country came apart when Slovak political leaders pressed for an indepen-
dent Slovakia, which some had wanted since 1918. A negotiated settlement arranged for
the peaceful division of the country in January 1993 into two independent and sovereign
nations—the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Bulgaria’s Palace Revolution, Bloodshed in Romania
Even Bulgaria, considered the most docile of the Soviet client states, succumbed to the
new revolutionary contagion. Mass demonstrations in Sofi a demanded an end to the
Communist dictatorship, and pressure from within the party forced the resignation of
the party chief who had run the country for 35 years. His foreign minister, who replaced
him, pledged parliamentary elections, economic reforms, and an end to the party’s abso-
lute control of power. New political groups emerged, fragmented yet strong enough to
press for reform.
The revolution in Bulgaria was essentially a palace coup within the party, but it, too,
arose in response to deep national resentments. In a country that had known little freedom
even in the pre-Communist years, the question was whether the reform-minded former
Communists who, like many others elsewhere, renamed themselves Socialists, could work
together with the new opposition to create a true democracy.
Only in Romania did events take a violent turn in 1989. It seemed at fi rst as though
the revolution would not even reach Bucharest. Since 1965, the dictator
Nicolae Ceausescu had fi rmly controlled party and government, ruling with
the help of his wife and family and building a cult of personality around
himself. He remained isolated in a rigid autocracy with a large private secu-
rity force, which he favored over the regular army. His Stalin-like ambition was to trans-
form a largely agrarian society into a modern industrial society regardless of the human
cost. For his modernization program he borrowed heavily from Western institutions, but to
remain independent of the outside world he insisted that the country regularly pay the bur-
densome interest on its debt. He used state resources to build an enormous presidential pal-
ace. All dissent was kept under tight surveillance and control. What was distinctive about
Ceausescu was his break from Moscow and his independent position in foreign and military
affairs. Unlike the other members of the Warsaw Pact, he had supported Israel in the Arab-
Israeli wars and had refused to join the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Throughout the revolutionary autumn of 1989 Ceausescu ignored the
upheavals in central and eastern Europe. But in December protest riots
broke out in Timisoara, a key provincial capital. The military refused to
The Ceausescu regime
Ceausescu’s security
forces
116. The Collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism1000
fi re on the demonstrators, but the dictator’s security forces took over, killing hundreds.
Word of the brutality spread, sparking new protests. When the security forces attempted to
suppress demonstrators in Bucharest, angry crowds forced the dictator to fl ee the capital.
For days a battle raged between the security forces and regular army units support-
ing the revolutionists until the security forces were routed. Ceausescu and his wife were
apprehended in the provinces and executed by a fi ring squad. A National Salvation Front,
consisting of former offi cials of the Ceausescu regime and emergent opposition leaders,
took control. Although former Communists dominated the new regime and the strength of
the democratic forces remained limited, the party’s authority ended and the most repres-
sive dictatorship of the Eastern bloc came to an ignominious end.
The Revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe
Except in Romania, the eastern European revolutions of 1989 were carried out everywhere
by placards and candles, not by rifl es. Solidarity’s early struggle in Poland and Gorbachev’s
liberalization in the Soviet Union made it possible for revolutionary changes in central and
eastern Europe to take place as they did. With a suddenness that took even the closest
observers by surprise, smoldering discontents fl ared up all at once in a revolutionary fi re-
storm that transformed the region more decisively than the famous revolutions of 1848.
The long-sought goals of national independence and political democracy, which many
people in eastern Europe had been trying to reach since the nineteenth century, would
mostly become a political reality after 1989; and the fi restorm that “burned down” every
government in eastern Europe was all the more remarkable because almost no human lives
were lost in the confl agration. Gorbachev, committed to curtailing economic and military
obligations for the sake of the Soviet economy, accepted the end of the Communist regimes
that Stalin had imposed after the Second World War.
The groundwork for change had been prepared by the growing economic ties and
contacts with western Europe during the years of détente, the Helsinki Accords, the
stubborn challenge of Solidarity, and the courage of the dissidents. But
it was Gorbachev’s clear signal that the Soviets would not intervene out-
side their own borders that made the stupendous chain of revolutionary
events possible, toppling one regime after another. The dramatic fl ight of
the East Germans symbolized the desire of all eastern Europe to escape
from behind the iron curtain. The revolutionists, armed only with a moral cause, would
have found it diffi cult to prevail if any of their own governments had chosen to use the
full power of the army and police. During this same year, in June 1989, the Communist
government of China violently repressed pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen
Square in Beijing, and such repression might have been repeated in eastern Europe. But
the ruling elites, without Soviet support to bolster them, yielded; they simply lacked the
will to govern under a system that had lost legitimacy and credibility, even among those
who controlled it.
117. THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION
Before the stunning developments in eastern Europe could be fully absorbed, an even more
epochal event occurred. An all but bloodless revolution brought the collapse of commu-
nism in 1991 in the very epicenter of world communism, undoing the Russian Revolution
Gorbachev’s decisive
role
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1001117. The Collapse of the Soviet Union
of 1917 and ending three-quarters of a century of Communist Party rule. The Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics, heir to the one-time tsarist empire, dissolved into its compo-
nent republics. Russia reemerged.
How did this collapse of a seemingly impregnable regime with a heavy apparatus of
military and police security occur? We have already seen how Gorbachev in the years after
1985 opened up Soviet society to revitalize the system but avoided the more decisive mea-
sures that might have ended the hegemony of the Communist Party. Gorbachev vacillated
between the reformers and the hard-line conservatives. A superb political tactician—few
leaders could have brought the party and the system as far as he had within fi ve years—
he nonetheless gave the impression that he did not know how thorough a transformation
he would ultimately permit. The old guard became further embittered as they witnessed
the loss of Soviet control over eastern Europe. Meanwhile the economy worsened, and by
1990 production was in steep decline. Gorbachev tried plan after plan, but the economic
structure remained virtually unchanged. In addition, not only the Baltic republics, as might
have been expected, but the Russian republic itself and all the other component republics
of the U.S.S.R. were pressing for sovereignty—self-government and control over their
political and economic fortunes.
The “Creeping Coup d’État”
In the autumn of 1990 Gorbachev again was maneuvering. He replaced reform-minded
ministers and other key offi cials with old-guard appointees unsympathetic to his reform
program. He summarily abandoned an important “500-Day” economic plan that would
have freed prices and moved more swiftly to a market economy. The plan would also have
curtailed the military budget and given broad economic powers to the republics. It now
appeared that military force was to be deployed against the secessionist Baltic republics,
which earlier, in the spring of 1990, had proclaimed their independence. In January 1991
Soviet troops, apparently taking matters into their own hands without Gorbachev’s prior
approval, used military force against demonstrators in Lithuania, with a loss of lives; and
there was anxiety about where the military might move next.
The democratic reformers grew alarmed by the turn of events. Some
spoke of “six wasted years of reform communism” and of a “creeping coup
d’état.” They had concluded that the country’s economic problems could
not be resolved short of demolishing the entire central planning structure,
and also that each republic must be allowed to work out its own destiny. To the reformers
Gorbachev seemed a barrier to further change, and he in turn grew increasingly hostile to
them, convinced that he alone knew the proper pace of reform.
The democratic reformers turned to a political fi gure who on the surface seemed an
unlikely choice as their leader. Boris N. Yeltsin was blunt and outspoken, not by any
defi nition an intellectual. His personal style made a striking contrast to the suave, smooth,
and urbane Gorbachev, but Yeltsin knew the Communist Party well, and all its secrets.
He had been party boss in Moscow and a member of the Politburo. When in 1987 he
openly attacked the privileges, perquisites, and downright incompetence of Communist
Party offi cials, he had been dismissed from his posts, vilifi ed in the press, and sent off into
the political wilderness. Humiliated by Gorbachev and the party, he found allies among
the democratic reformers, who saw in him a populist fi gure around whom they could rally
public support. They helped polish some of his rough edges, undertook his political reedu-
cation, and converted him into an opposition leader of stature.
Uneasiness of
reformers
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism1002
Elected to the Soviet legislature in M arch 1989, he soon played a key
role in the opposition. With the encouragement of his political allies, how-
ever, he turned to a new, and seemingly unpromising, power base, the
Russian legislature, that is, the legislature of the Russian constituent repub-
lic. Elected to it in 1990, he became chairman and used his position to step up his attacks
on Gorbachev, the party, and the central government. Then, benefi ting from a Gorbachev
concession permitting the constituent republics to choose their presidents in direct popular
elections, he won election in June 1991 as president of the Russian republic in an over-
whelming victory over his Communist opponents—the fi rst president in Russian history to
be elected by popular vote. It was a distinction that Gorbachev, elected president of the
U.S.S.R. solely by the Soviet Congress, could not claim. (It was at the time of Yeltsin’s
election that Russia’s second largest city voted to change its name from Leningrad back to
St. Petersburg, as it had been called before 1914.) From his new position of strength Yeltsin
demanded immediate independence for the three Baltic states and self-government for
Russia and the other Soviet constituent republics.
Gorbachev, intent on keeping the country and the union intact, began negotiations
with the presidents of the republics. He agreed to surrender considerably more autonomy
to the 15 republics, including substantial control over the economic and fi nancial resources
that Moscow had always tightly guarded. The three Baltic republics, insisting on full inde-
pendence, refused to participate in the negotiations, as did Georgia, now embroiled in its
own internal turmoil. But in August 1991 the Russian republic and eight other constituent
republics agreed to sign Gorbachev’s “union treaty,” which created a framework for the
republics to share power within a new political federation.
The Failed August Coup
For the old-guard hard-liners in the party, the military, and the secret police the treaty was
the fi nal straw—the end of the union as originally created by Lenin in 1922 after the
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing civil wars. Despite lip service to the sover-
eignty of the republics and the federal structure set forth in the Soviet constitution, the
Soviet Union was from the beginning, and increasingly under Stalin, a Russian-dominated
centralized nation, virtually the successor to the empire of the tsars. To abandon the union
was more than many of the old guard could tolerate. The day before the treaty was to
be signed, a small coterie of eight hard-liners acted to seize power. They included high-
ranking party and government functionaries, among them, the head of the KGB and the
commander of the Soviet land forces. All key fi gures were Gorbachev appointees. Several
of the plotters, including the chief of Gorbachev’s personal cabinet, arrived at Gorbachev’s
summer home in the Crimea, possibly hoping to win him to their side. When under forced
detention he refused to cooperate or yield to pressure, they proclaimed a Committee of
State Emergency to replace him.
The Putschists expected the coup to be a simple operation. Resistance in the country, they were convinced, could be overcome by a simple show of military strength. But they
miscalculated, underestimating the new political forces alive in the country. Gorbachev
disavowed the plotters. In Moscow Yeltsin gained additional stature when
he rallied the Russian legislature in defense of Gorbachev, warned that any-
one supporting the coup would be subject to grave criminal charges, and
appealed for popular support against any military show of force. But the
assault never came. At least one KGB unit disobeyed orders to attack; other tank units
Yeltsin becomes
opposition leader
The failed coup
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1003
advanced only half-heartedly. There was some sporadic street fi ghting, and three civilian
deaths. The coup failed within four days. The plotters turned out to be feckless and irreso-
lute bunglers. The Central Committee of the party did not speak out during these events,
but its silence seemed to sanction the attempted coup.
Gorbachev, his ordeal over, returned to Moscow. He had demonstrated with courage
that he was not the prisoner of the old guard and now went further. Because of the party’s
complicity in the affair, he resigned as general secretary. Yet he still failed to comprehend
how far matters had gone. He believed it suffi cient only to replace the traitors and “return
to the business of reform.” Once again he defended “socialism” as “the choice made in
1917” and stressed the need to preserve the unity of the U.S.S.R. so that the country would
not fall apart.
Yeltsin acted immediately and decisively on an entirely different agenda.
As president of the Russian republic, he issued a series of decrees, describ-
ing the Communist Party as “not a political party but an unlawful apparatus
that took over the Soviet state” and denouncing it as “one of the principal vil-
lains” in the attempted coup. Suspending its activities throughout the Russian
republic, he transferred to the state the party’s vast property, along with its fi les and archives.
The Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies meeting in Moscow soon validated the decrees
for the entire country before voting itself out of existence. In many ways what happened in
the aftermath of the failed coup was the culmination of the Gorbachev six-year reform era.
But the dissolution of the party-state regime, at Yeltsin’s hands, was the revolution.
All that remained of the earlier framework was a federation council consisting of the
presidents of the constituent republics, over which Gorbachev continued to preside. It
immediately recognized the independence of the three Baltic republics. For the country as
a whole Gorbachev still hoped to salvage his older idea, a “union of sovereign states,”
which, while granting self-government to the republics, would retain a central authority.
But the republics pressed for full independence; hostility toward central authority had
intensifi ed after the bungled coup. The very party leaders, as in the Ukrainian S.S.R., who
themselves once suppressed separatist movements, had by now taken over the leadership
of nationalist independence movements.
The Ukrainian S.S.R. proclaimed itself independent as Ukraine (never again to be
called the Ukraine) immediately after the August coup. In December, Yeltsin announced that Russia would not remain in the union without Ukraine. Thereupon the three Slavic
states—Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus (the new name for Byelorussia), the states that had
originally created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December
1922—dissolved it. Gorbachev resigned as president. Yeltsin at once occu-
pied his offi ce in the Kremlin.
The other republics of the Soviet Union also agreed to its dissolution.
A loose organization called the Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS) consisting of Russia and ten other republics came into existence. 1 The Baltic states
had already gone their separate ways. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, for close to
Yeltsin dissolves the
regime
The U.S.S.R.
dissolves
1 The 11 republics affi liating themselves with the Commonwealth of Independent States, created in December 1991,
as successor to the U.S.S.R. in order of population (with their capitals in parentheses) were as follows: Russian Fed-
eration (Moscow), Ukraine (Kiev), Uzbekistan (Tashkent), Kazakhstan (Alma-Ata), Belarus (Minsk), Azerbaijan
(Baku), Tajikistan (Dushanbe), Moldova (Chisinau), Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek), Turkmenistan (Ashkhabad), and Arme-
nia (Yerevan). Georgia (Tbilisi) joined in 1993, but withdrew in 2009. Turkestan and Ukraine were affi liated states
rather than offi cial members. Former Communist leaders retained control of most of the new governments until the
early twenty-fi rst century, when revolutionary, democratizing changes took place in several of the republics.
117. The Collapse of the Soviet Union
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism1004
seven decades the world’s largest multinational state, stretching over one-sixth the earth’s
surface and 11 time zones, with close to 300 million people, one of the world’s two super-
powers for over 40 years after the Second World War, simply disappeared as a geographic
entity. Russia, still the world’s largest nation in area and itself a mixture of many peoples,
succeeded to the Soviet Union’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
Gorbachev returned to private life, declaring “the main task” of his life to have been
accomplished. He has to be counted as one of the great reformers in his-
tory. The “Gorbachev factor,” as it has been called, made an immeasurable
difference. H is tragedy was that he failed to build a new system to replace
the communism that he had undermined. He unleashed powerful winds of
change that ultimately he could not direct or control. He drastically altered a totalitarian
system yet refused to recognize that the demolition of the entire structure was necessary.
Eventually he became a danger to the old order and an impediment to the new. Yeltsin,
Gorbachev’s legacy
Boris Yeltsin’s fi rm resistance to an attempted coup against the government of Mikhail Gorbachev by old-guard Communists in August 1991 confi rmed Yeltsin’s stature as the most popular political fi gure at the time. He is shown here waving to the huge crowd that gathered outside the Parliament building to show its support for the political reforms that were trans- forming the Soviet Union. Yeltsin was the fi rst popularly elected president of Russia when it was still part of the U.S.S.R., a position he continued to occupy after the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. (Reuters/Corbis)
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1005118. After Communism
who took undisguised satisfaction in the fall of his once all-powerful rival, said of him:
“We, like the world, respect him for what he did, especially in the fi rst years of perestroika beginning with 1985 and 1986.” After that, he said, the “errors” began. Russia, predicted
George Kennan, one of America’s preeminent diplomat-historians and Russian specialists,
would eventually regard Gorbachev as the “person who led it out of bondage” even if “he
was unable to reach the Promised Land.” But it was not yet time to render fi nal historical
judgments. For the vast lands and peoples that had once been the Soviet Union, and for
Russia and Yeltsin himself in 1991, the future held many uncertainties, a future in which
the entire world had an enormous stake.
118. AFTER COMMUNISM
Marxist-Leninist ideology as the undergirding for one-party dictatorship still persisted at
the opening of the twenty-fi rst century in the People’s Republic of China, the world’s most
populous country, and in the smaller states of North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba. Albania,
the last of the Communist regimes in Europe, and the most impoverished, threw off Com-
munist rule in 1991. Yugoslavia’s disintegration after the end of communism, as we shall
see, unfolded separately. In western Europe, most notably in France, Italy, Spain, and
Portugal, once strong Communist parties reexamined their beliefs, at times abandoned the
party name, and adapted to changed circumstances. Marxism, born in the mid-nineteenth
century in response to the instability and inequities of industrial capitalism, would survive
as a scholarly, analytical tool; but it held little or no popular appeal as a political philoso-
phy and program of political action. “Proletarian internationalism” likewise lost much of
its appeal because the term had often been used simply to support Soviet hegemony in
eastern Europe or in various international confl icts.
The revolutions of the late twentieth century in the Soviet Union and central and
eastern Europe seemed to herald the international triumph of the political
liberalism that had emerged in the late eighteenth century and shaped the
political cultures and institutions of the modern, western European democ-
racies. Like earlier advocates of political democracy (but with adjustments
to their own cultural contexts), the eastern European reformers sought free elections, polit-
ical and civil rights, individual liberties, and respect for human dignity. The peoples of
their various nations had too long been the pawns of totalitarian party-state regimes that
self-righteously demanded sacrifi ce and subservience in the name of an ultimate utopia.
The reformers objected to the centrally planned bureaucratic command economies, which
had deprived almost everyone of decent living standards. They envied the immeasurably
more prosperous economies of the United States, western Europe, and elsewhere, even if
these other nations also had their share of inequalities, economic insecurity, and social and
ethnic confl icts. The offi cial claim that all citizens in “socialist” societies enjoyed equal
rights and privileges had only concealed the realities of political repression, economic
stagnation, and social immobility. For many, the public revelation of the Communist Party
elite’s special privileges and luxuries proved the fi nal shock.
The revolutionary changes in 1989–1991 made possible, but did not guarantee, demo-
cratic and pluralist societies in which the citizens themselves through responsible govern-
ment could shape their political and economic future. The road to democracy and free
economies was not an easy one. If democratic governments failed to take root, new author-
itarian political parties and repressive governments could reemerge. The revolutionary
changes released many ugly currents, ominous for the future—anti-Semitism, xenophobia,
Triumph of liberalism
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism1006
chauvinistic nationalism, irredentism—all easily mobilized when discontented people
sought scapegoats for their frustrations.
Russia, the other former Soviet republics, and the countries of central
and eastern Europe thus entered a period of diffi cult transitions. In prin-
ciple, they were transforming their political systems into representative
democracies and their centrally planned economies into competitive market
economies. But bureaucrats and managers of the old order often remained
in control under new labels. Many, especially in Russia, used the knowl-
edge and networks of privileged positions in the older regimes to benefi t fi nancially from
the newly privatized enterprises. Despite infusions of international aid, the new regimes
struggled to cope with the disorienting challenges of a free market, capitalist economy,
new technologies, and a global fi nancial system.
The market economy could take many forms. The state had always played a large role
in central and eastern Europe. It was unlikely that the new regimes would turn to a pure
laissez-faire model of private enterprise, which did not actually exist in even the most capi-
talist Western economies. Governments would remain actively engaged, seeking to ensure
a protective network of social services. The ideals and policies of democratic socialism,
though only marginal in the United States, still had considerable appeal in much of western
and eastern Europe.
The Soviet experience had tarnished, even poisoned, the image of authoritarian social-
ism (or Communism); but the egalitarian message of many socialist policies retained an
attraction when the policies were clearly linked to respect for democracy and individual
rights by the various European Socialist and Social Democratic parties. Meanwhile all
countries with capitalist market economies and democratic political systems, in western
Europe and elsewhere, were challenged to create societies that could overcome economic
instability, individual insecurity, unemployment, and gross social and economic injustices.
Democracies and market economies offered a means toward desired ends, not fi nal goals
in themselves. It was now generally assumed, however, that prosperity and productivity
could do far more to overcome social inequities than the would-be utopias of repressive
Communist regimes.
Russia after 1991
At the close of 1991 the Russian fl ag replaced the Soviet hammer and sickle over the
Kremlin. As of January 1, 1992, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist.
The 15 Soviet republics were independent states. Offi cially, the Russia that emerged from
the Soviet Union was the Russian Federation, with 21 “federated republics” of its own and
with numerous additional ethnic-based territorial units. With almost twice the land area of
the United States and a population of almost 150 million, Russia, even if in desperate eco-
nomic straits, was still a signifi cant world power.
The most pressing international concern was the nuclear weaponry of the former
U.S.S.R. Yeltsin had worked out an agreement with the other former Soviet republics
whereby Russia alone was to retain nuclear weapons. Although four-fi fths of the nuclear
weapons were located on Russian soil, nuclear arms were positioned in
Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. The United States mediated an agree-
ment under which the three republics consented to dismantle their weapons
in return for generous fi nancial reimbursement. Russia for its part soon
began the initial stage of dismantling its vast arsenal of strategic weapons in accordance
with the arms reduction treaty that had been signed with the United States in 1991.
Diffi cult economic
and political
transitions
Nuclear arms
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1007
The new Russia, like the Soviet Union in its fi nal stages, faced separat-
ist threats. Several of its “federated republics” adopted their own constitu-
tions, fl ags, and anthems and before long enjoyed considerable de facto
independence from Moscow. Only in the southern Chechen Republic did the secessionist
threat become reality, and before long Russia was involved in a brutal, draining war to
prevent secession by Chechnya. Meanwhile 25 million Russians who had long made their
home in other parts of the former Soviet Union came to be regarded in those places as for-
eigners and in some instances were treated with hostility.
In domestic affairs Yeltsin faced severe economic problems. He and his succession
of prime ministers met with little success in making the transition to a market econ-
omy. In the fi rst four years of Yeltsin’s presidency production declined, the ruble fell
in value, standards of living sank, and new forms of corruption spread throughout the
country. Economic life at times seemed more trying for the average citizen than before
the collapse of communism.
Despite large infusions of capital from the United States and international lending
agencies, the Russian economy and fi nancial institutions remained in deep disorder. After
temporizing at fi rst, Yeltsin turned to a Western-oriented economist as his key adviser and
economics minister in the belief that a swift transition to a market economy would be the
least painful course. From late 1991, a fl ood of decrees deregulated prices, ended or
cut subsidies to state-owned industries, and moved forward with privatization. But most
Russians suffered a serious decline in living standards by the spring of 1992 while priva-
tization enriched others who bought into former state industries at bargain prices. An
industrial and fi nancial oligarchy of “robber barons” developed a system of crony capital-
ism; and a shadow economy run by mafi a-type gangsters appeared on the borderlines of
the legal system.
In the spring of 1993 a frustrated Yeltsin appealed to the country to support a new
constitution that would provide for “a strong presidential republic.” That September
Yeltsin dissolved the legislature and called for new elections as well as for a referendum
on his proposed constitution. For two weeks the lawmakers, denouncing
the dissolution as “a coup d’État,” refused to leave the parliament building.
Demonstrators, incited by the legislative leaders, threatened insurrection.
Yeltsin felt bound to act. On October 4 tanks fi red on the building and set it
ablaze. The legislators were evacuated and the leaders were arrested. Over
100 persons died in the confrontation and many more were injured. In fact, both sides
shared in the blame for the confl ict, but the violence showed that Russia was still going
through its revolution.
The new constitution, approved in December 1993, gave broad political authority to
the president, including the right to dissolve the legislature. A popularly elected lower
house, the State Duma, the old name deliberately chosen because of its pre-
Soviet roots, replaced the former Congress of People’s Deputies. In a sting-
ing rebuke to Yeltsin, the new Duma in one of its fi rst acts voted amnesty to
the legislative leaders arrested in October—and to the hard-line old-guard
plotters against Gorbachev in the failed coup of August 1991. Lacking the necessary polit-
ical support, Yeltsin’s ministers abandoned many of the economic reforms and restored
government controls on wages, prices, and profi ts. Yeltsin himself as president now pos-
sessed greatly expanded executive powers but diminishing authority.
Meanwhile, Yeltsin’s political troubles continued in the Chechen Republic. Chechnya,
in the oil-rich Caucasus, its population mostly Islamic, had a long tradition of rebellion and
stubborn resistance to Russian domination. In 1991, as the Soviet Union was collapsing,
Yeltsin’s new
constitution
Yeltsin’s problems
Separatist pressures
118. After Communism
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism1008
the Chechens had demanded independence, or at least equal partnership with Russia.
Militant guerrilla forces now proclaimed independence, but Russia was intent on retaining
control of its southern borderlands and the links to central Asia as well as strategic oil
resources and pipelines. The threat of a secessionist precedent for other federal republics
was also an ongoing concern.
For three years Yeltsin did nothing except to support covert efforts to overthrow the
rebel regime. Suddenly, toward the end of 1994, at the urging of his entourage who saw
an opportunity to make political capital out of a quick victory, Yeltsin gave
orders to invade Chechnya. In a grievous failure of military intelligence the
invasion led to disastrous results. For close to two years the Russian army
sank into a frustrating guerrilla war for which its poorly trained conscript
army was ill-prepared and ill-equipped. When the army failed to take the capital city of
Chechnya invaded
RUSSIAN FEDERATION IN 2000 The map shows the territories of the Russian Federation, the largest and most important of the republics to emerge from the breakup of the former Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.) in 1991. The hatched lines indicate the lands of the other former Soviet republics, which are clustered to the south and west of the Russian Federation. The Federation itself consisted of some 21 “feder- ated units,” including Chechnya, where the Russians waged a military campaign to suppress a Chechen independence movement. The vast lands of the Russian Federation made it territori- ally the largest nation in the world. Much of this land was sparsely populated, however, and Russia’s twenty-fi rst century population has been gradually declining. The Federation’s 142 million people ranked ninth on the list of the world’s most populous nations in 2010.
Former Soviet States
Boundary of former U.S.S.R.
0 500 miles250
A R C T I C O C E A N C as
p ia
n Se
a Aral Sea
Black Sea Sea of
Okhotsk
Lake Baikal
Y e n
ise y
R .
O b
R .
Volg a R
.
Lena R .
R U S S I A N F E D E R A T I O N
K A Z A K H S T A N
KYRGYZSTAN TAJIKISTAN
AZERBAIJAN
GEORGIA CHECHNYA
IRAN
AFGHANISTAN
ARMENIA
UKRAINE
MOLDOVA
BELARUS
RUS.
ESTONIA LATVIALITHUANIA
TURKM EN
ISTA N
U ZBEK
ISTA N M O N G O L I A
C H I N A
TURKEY
IRAQ
POLAND
FINLAND
SWEDEN DENMARK
GERMANY
J A P A N
NORTH KOREA
SOUTH KOREA
Sakhalin
Dushanbe
Ashgabat
Yerevan
Bishkek AlmatyTashkent
Baku
T’bilisi
Groznyy
Kiev
Minsk
Vilnius Riga
Tallinn
Moscow Chisinau
Okhotsk
Novosibirsk
Yekaterinburg
Donetsk
Astana
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1009
Grozny, the military resorted to air bombing and rockets, killing thousands of civilians.
In April 1996 Yeltsin, admitting that the military action in Chechnya was “the greatest
mistake” of his fi rst four years as president, withdrew the army. Chechen cities, towns, and
villages had been destroyed and some 20,000 to 40,000 of Russia’s Chechen citizens had
been killed. The war was widely criticized at home and abroad, and the Chechen indepen-
dence struggle was not yet over.
In the presidential elections of June 1996 Yeltsin, agile politician that he was, won
reelection but only after he was forced into a run-off with the Communist Party’s candi-
date. The economic stagnation and draining budgetary defi cits continued
well into Yeltsin’s second term, bringing further political instability. Yelt-
sin made a whole series of short-lived cabinet appointments and changed
his prime minister fi ve times in 18 months. Finally, in August 1999, he
appointed as his prime minister Vladimir V. Putin, a former intelligence
operative who had been stationed in East Germany and then served as head of the domestic
security agency, the reorganized KGB. It was transparent that Yeltsin was choosing his
successor to run in the presidential elections in 2000.
Suddenly trouble broke out anew in Chechnya. In the fall of 1999 mysterious explo-
sions in Moscow and nearby cities took the lives of some 300 civilians. Prime Minister
Putin at once blamed the explosions on Chechen terrorists and the government proceeded
to take drastic military measures. Intent on avoiding the costly Russian mistakes of the
Putin chosen as
successor
The Russian military campaign to suppress a secessionist movement in the Republic of Chech- nya during the 1990s led to a diffi cult war against Chechen guerilla forces. The Russian army eventually regained control of Chechen towns and the capital city of Grozny, but only after bombardments had killed thousands of civilians and forced people such as this woman in Grozny to fl ee from their homes and bombed-out neighborhoods. (Thomas Dworzak/Magnum Photos)
118. After Communism
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism1010
earlier war, the army launched large-scale air and artillery attacks on the Chechen cities
and countryside. The results for the Chechen population were deadly, with a minimal loss
of Russian troops. Over 4,000 deaths were reported and over 200,000 refugees were
forced to fl ee their homes. The Chechen capital was destroyed. The United States and its
European allies condemned the Russian response, but the government’s aggressive action
was popular in Russia and Putin’s decisiveness enhanced his political stature.
On the last day of December 1999 Yeltsin dramatically announced his resignation
and, in accordance with the constitution, appointed Putin acting president. The date of the
presidential elections was advanced by three months. Yeltsin had found his successor. In
the elections that followed in the spring of 2000 Putin readily won election.
Yeltsin left a mixed record. He had not been a pioneering champion of reform in
the U.S.S.R. as Gorbachev had been in 1985, but once ousted from the inner circles of
the party he allied himself with the reformers. He was the fi rst democratically elected
president of the Russian republic while it was still part of the U.S.S.R., and he supported
the independence movements of the other Soviet republics. He rallied the population to
reject the hard-liners’ coup against Gorbachev and became a chief architect of the Soviet
Union’s dissolution, but he was not able to stimulate a post-Communist expansion of the
Russian economy. Although his two terms as president often disappointed
his western European sympathizers and the democratic reformers within
Russia as well, he left the country with a constitutional system intact, and
the way was still open for democracy to take root.
Yeltsin’s historical legacy would depend in part on the policies and democratic com-
mitments of his successor. Putin’s proclaimed dedication to a “strong state” aroused con-
cerns, however, and his governing methods seemed to become more authoritarian over the
course of his fi rst term and after he won reelection to the presidency in 2004. Responding
in part to the continuing problem of Chechen terrorism (which included shocking terrorist
attacks on a large Moscow theater and a public school in a small town), Putin promoted
the centralization of state power and suppressed his opponents in the government, in the
media, and in elite business circles. He went on to serve as an exceptionally infl uential
prime minister during the presidential term of his own chosen successor, Dmitry Medve-
dev, who was elected in 2008 (when Putin was constitutionally barred from a third con-
secutive presidential term). In 2012 Putin was again elected to the presidency. The Russian
Constitution had meanwhile been amended to extend the presidential term to six years,
and after the election of 2012 Medvedev moved to the position of prime minister. By the
time Putin returned to the president’s offi ce for a third term, a growing anti-Putin “democ-
racy movement” was organizing large demonstrations and gaining support among disaf-
fected Russians who viewed him as a throwback to an earlier kind of Russian ruler who
would never voluntarily relinquish power. In international affairs, Putin sought to shape a
more independent and assertive Russian foreign policy, openly opposing American-British
military intervention in Iraq in 2003, for example, and steadily improving relations with
China. A gradually strengthening Russian economy enabled Putin to develop a more force-
ful assertion of Russia’s international interests, but his desire to sustain his own political
power raised questions about the country’s future political evolution, its role in interna-
tional confl icts, and its position in the global economy.
Almost two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the old Leninist-Stalinist
communism was gone. No one expected Russia to return to a command economy and the
rigidities of central planning or to put together the pieces of the old Russian Empire of the
tsars or the Soviets. Putin’s critics had good reasons to complain about growing threats to
An ambiguous legacy
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1011
democratic political institutions, but Russia did not go back to the dictatorial system that
Stalin had established in the 1930s. The Putin-era nation had a constitution, civil rights,
freedom of religion, and free, contested elections. That more was not accomplished in
Russian economic and political life after the disappearance of the Soviet Union had to be
balanced against the seven decades of twentieth-century dictatorship.
The Resurgence of Nationalism: The Breakup of Yugoslavia
Of all the explosive issues that confronted Europe after the downfall of communism in
1989, ethnic nationalism proved the most intractable. Nationalist passions resurfaced after
a long period of political suppression during the decades of Communist rule. Czecho-
slovakia, as we have seen, divided peacefully in 1993 in response to Slovak pressures.
But in Yugoslavia, the large multiethnic, multinational federation that had been created at
Versailles in 1919, politically ambitious leaders stirred up old national and even religious
tensions that tore the state apart and confronted Europe and the international community
with violence, armed combat, atrocities, fl oods of refugees, and civilian suffering not seen
in Europe since the Second World War.
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1980–2012
1980–1981 “Solidarity” labor movement leads campaign for reform in Poland
1985 Mikhail Gorbachev assumes leadership of the Soviet Union
1986 Nuclear accident at Chernobyl releases dangerous radioactivity in Ukraine
1989 Soviet Union withdraws its military forces from Afghanistan
1989 Berlin Wall is dismantled; Communist regime collapses in East Germany
1989 Communist regimes are dissolved in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria,
Hungary, and Romania
1990 German reunifi cation creates an enlarged Federal Republic of Germany
1991 Boris Yeltsin is elected president of Russia and leads resistance to attempted
coup by antireform faction of Communist Party
1991–1996 Yugoslavia breaks apart; Serbian and Croatian forces pursue “ethnic cleans-
ings” in Bosnia and Croatia
1992 The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is offi cially dissolved
1994–1996 Russia wages military campaign against secessionist movement in Chechnya
1999 NATO forces launch air attacks on Serbia to stop Serbian assaults on Muslims
in the province of Kosovo
2000 Vladimir Putin succeeds Yeltsin as president of the Russian Federation
2000–2001 Slobodan Milosevic is forced out of power in Serbia and sent to stand trial at
the war crimes tribunal in The Hague
2008 Kosovo proclaims its independent status as the “Republic of Kosovo”
2012 Vladimir Putin is elected to a third term as president of Russia
118. After Communism
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism1012
What happened in Yugoslavia was deeply rooted in historical animosities that were
awakened and exploited for selfi sh political purposes by nationalist political
leaders in the wake of communism’s collapse in eastern Europe. T o go back
in time, the Balkan Peninsula had been conquered by the expanding Otto-
man Turks in the fourteenth century. Serbia, once a powerful medieval king-
dom attached to the Eastern Orthodox Church, fell under Ottoman rule in
1389 and remained under Ottoman rule for close to 500 years. In 1878 it broke away from
the weakening Ottoman Empire and with the backing of the European Great Powers
regained its status as an independent kingdom. Its neighbors Croatia and Slovenia had also
been ruled by the Ottomans, but Croatia and Slovenia rejoined the Austrian Habsburg
Empire in the late seventeenth century and reaffi rmed their ties with Roman Catholicism
and central Europe. Bosnia (more precisely Bosnia and Herzegovina) long had a mixed
population of Serbs, Croats, and Muslims; many Bosnians of Slavic ancestry in the long
years of Turkish rule had adopted Islam. Bosnia also broke free from Ottoman rule in 1878
but was taken over by the Habsburg Empire.
When both the Austrian and Ottoman Empires collapsed at the end of the First World
War, Serbia together with other South Slav nationalists in 1918 proclaimed a “Kingdom
of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.” At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 it was permit-
ted also to annex Bosnia, Montenegro (also ethnically Serb), and other formerly Ottoman
territories. All were now joined together under the Serb monarchy in a large multinational
federation. For many years the nationalities held together in a somewhat uneasy alliance
under a kind of royal dictatorship. In 1929 King Alexander in a symbolic effort at achiev-
ing greater unity changed the country’s name to Yugoslavia (or South Slav state). Croat
separatism remained alive and a Croat nationalist assassinated King Alexander in 1934.
Yet many people spoke of themselves as Yugoslavs and regarded Belgrade as their capital,
and the outside world accepted a Yugoslav national identity.
During the Second World War, after the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, the
internal tensions in the Serb-dominated country reemerged. Croatia proclaimed its inde-
pendence and for a time was governed as a separate Nazi puppet state. A Croat fascist
organization, the Ustachi, collaborated with the Nazis in rounding up and brutally mis-
treating Serbs, Jews, and others. For the country as a whole the Yugoslav military resis-
tance to Hitler turned divisive and eventually evolved into a civil war between the royalist
(mostly Serb) army and guerrilla forces (mainly non-Serb) led by the prewar Communist
leader Marshal Tito. By his greater effectiveness against the Nazis, Tito won the support of
Churchill and Roosevelt and then triumphed in the civil war.
After its wartime ordeal, with some 2 million of its people dead, Y ugoslavia emerged
in the postwar years under a Communist regime headed by Tito, who soon
broke with Moscow. In 1946 he set up a federal republic with six compo-
nent “republics” (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and
Macedonia), along with two “autonomous provinces,” one of which was
Kosovo. Although himself a Croat, he suppressed all separatist movements with an iron
hand, but allowed each of the republics a degree of autonomy. In Bosnia he recognized the
Bosnian Muslims as a distinct “national group” and gave them equal status with the Serbs
and Croats. So long as Tito lived, Yugoslavia retained its national unity and identity. His
death in 1980, however, was soon followed by the reemergence of the latent separatist
movements. Tito’s successors tried various solutions, including a rotating federal presi-
dency, but separatist agitation continued. When in 1989 communism collapsed all over
eastern Europe, the regime in Yugoslavia collapsed as well. Yugoslavia’s reform Com-
munists (now calling themselves Socialists) relaxed the party’s authoritarian grip on the
country, faced up to its nationalities problem, and held open elections on the country’s
Political leaders and
historical animosities
Marshal Tito
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1013
NATIONALITIES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE AT THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The map shows national boundaries and the location of various peoples after the collapse of the Communist governments and the confl icts in the Balkans during the 1990s. East Germany was reunited with the rest of Germany. Czechoslovakia was broken into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The state of Yugoslavia lost control over Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia, all of which became independent nations. Yugoslavia itself dissolved into the separate states of Serbia and Montenegro in 2006. A large Serbian population remains in Bosnian territory, along with Croats and a large number of Slavic-speaking Muslims. The population in Macedonia includes many Albanians. The region of Kosovo has a preponderantly Albanian Muslim popula- tion; it remained under the control of NATO military forces for almost a decade after NATO intervened to stop Serbian suppression of a Kosovar separatist movement in 1999. Kosovo proclaimed itself to be an independent republic in 2008, but this change was not recognized by Serbia. There are many Hungarians in the countries that surround Hungary, and about 1 million Turks live in Bulgaria. Moldova has been an independent nation since 1991 (it was part of the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1991), but much of its population speaks Romanian. Although the region’s diverse ethnic groups often lived together peacefully for long periods of their history, the modern nationalist emphasis on cultural differences and identities, at times infl amed by political leaders, pro- duced strong ethnic hostilities and recurring cycles of violence.
0 200 miles100
Black Sea
North Sea
B a l t i c S e a
A driatic Sea
O der
R
.
Danube R.
Turks
Turks
Germans
Hungarians (Magyars)
Hungarians (Magyars)
Hungarians (Magyars)
Hungarians (Magyars)
Albanians
Hungarians (Magyars)
Czechs
Germans
Germans
Germans
Romanians
Slovaks
I TA LY
CROATIA
SLOVENIA
SWITZER- LAND
DENMARK
P O L A N D
A U S T R I A
HUNGARY
RUSSIA
LITHUANIA
B E L A R U S
U K R A I N E
LATVIA
R O M A N I A
BOSNIA- HERZEGOVINA
B U L G A R I A
YUGOSLAVIA
ALBANIA
CZECH REPUBLIC
SLOVAKIA
FORMER
EAST
GERMANY
Montenegro
Serbia
MACEDONIA
Kosovo
Germans
RUSSIA
M
O LD
O V
A
TU RK
EYGR EEC
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G E
R M
A N
Y
Warsaw
Bucharest
Sofia
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Belgrade
Budapest
Vienna
Prague
Berlin
Rome
118. After Communism
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism1014
future. Only Serbia and Montenegro (the two Serb states were always closely allied) voted
to maintain the federal republic. Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bosnia all voted for
parties committed to independence.
Former Communist leaders, like Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and Franjo Tudjman
in Croatia, seeing power slip away, placed themselves at the head of nationalist crusades.
Milosevic, the Serbian president, rallied Serbs in Bosnia, Croatia, and
Slovenia to fi ght to remain under Serb control whenever secession took
place. His fi ery speeches and tactics backfi red. Alarmed by Serb militancy,
both Croatia and Slovenia held a referendum and in 1991 proclaimed their
national independence. They received immediate recognition from the international com-
munity, which was persuaded that prompt recognition would forestall Serb military action.
In Bosnia, the situation was even more complicated. The Serbs and Croats together
comprised over half the population, but the Muslims, as the largest single national group,
dominated the government; over the opposition of the Serb and Croat representatives, the
Muslim nationalist leaders declared Bosnia’s independence. The secession of Croatia,
Slovenia, and Bosnia and their immediate international recognition infuriated Milosevic,
who now governed the former Yugoslavia as a rump state consisting of only Serbia and
Montenegro.
Open warfare broke out in mid-1991. Local Serb paramilitary forces, reinforced
by army units from Belgrade, proceeded to carve out enclaves in the secessionist states,
Nationalist secessions
After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, Serbs and Croats sought to create their own national enclaves in Bosnia by driving Bosnian Muslims from territories where they had lived for cen- turies. This violent process of “ethnic cleansing” led to Serbian massacres of Muslims in cities such as Srebenica and Sarajevo, where these people were marking the graves of victims in a Muslim cemetery. (Abbas/Magnum Photos)
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1015
where Serbs lived in signifi cant numbers, and to drive out non-Serbs. In the fi ghting in
Croatia and Slovenia Serb forces continued to seize territory until a temporary cease-fi re
was arranged.
Tudjman meanwhile goaded the Croat nationalists into action. The worst violence
occurred when both Serbs and Croats attempted to create enclaves for themselves in
Bosnia. For years the mixed population there, despite ethnic and religious differences,
had lived peacefully side by side and had even intermarried. In the war that ensued, the
Serb military forces brutalized the Muslim population. The barbaric deeds, labeled “ethnic
cleansing,” included large-scale expulsions, wholesale civilian slaughter, pillage, and rape.
A prolonged siege of Sarajevo took place. At Srebenica in eastern Bosnia Serb militia exe-
cuted some 8,000 Muslim men and buried them in mass graves. Europeans could scarcely
believe such events were occurring on their own continent in the closing decade of the
twentieth century.
But the international community could not agree on measures to cope with the situa-
tion. Given the historical complexity of the Balkans and the memories of earlier ferocious
confl icts, neither the European powers, which might have been expected to take the lead,
nor the United States would intervene with any meaningful show of force. The Security
Council, however, imposed economic sanctions against the former Yugoslavia (which, as
we have seen, consisted now of only Serbia and its historical ally, Montenegro), embar-
goed the shipment of arms, and made plans for war crimes trials at The Hague.
In 1994, to end the siege of Sarajevo, the United Nations (UN), the United States,
and NATO mediated a cease-fi re and threatened air strikes if it were vio-
lated. For Bosnia a partial diplomatic settlement was negotiated. Cro-
ats and Muslims agreed to create a Croat-Muslim federation in what
remained of Bosnian territory after the Serb conquests. The Serbs now
occupied two-thirds of Bosnia and one-third of Croatia, with no intention
of surrendering their gains. By 1994, 200,000 people were dead or missing, mostly in
the fi ghting in Bosnia since 1991; there were about 4.4 million displaced persons. And
still the fi ghting went on. In 1995 the Croatian army repulsed the Serb military and
recovered most of the territory it had lost to the Serbs four years earlier. The Croats
undertook their own ethnic cleansing program, expelling over 200,000 Serbs. In Bosnia
the Serb offensive failed as well. Finally, in 1996, Serbia agreed to terms mediated by
the United States at a meeting in Dayton, Ohio, accepting the new boundaries of Croa-
tia and Bosnia and agreeing that UN peacekeepers would supervise the settlement in
Bosnia.
An additional source of trouble soon developed, this time within Serbia itself in its
province of Kosovo, where a growing separatist movement alarmed the Serbs. As early as
1989 Milosevic, as part of his initial pro-Serb agitation throughout Yugoslavia, had
rescinded the province’s autonomy. Ethnic Albanians, Muslim in religion, had long lived
in Kosovo; through immigration from Albania and with large families, they had grown in
such numbers that they now made up 90 percent of the population of 2 million. The Kos-
ovars, as they were known, considered themselves related in religion, language, and cul-
ture to fellow Albanians in Albania. The Serbs were especially concerned because they
themselves viewed Kosovo as a kind of holy land, where their ancestors had fought and
lost the famous battle of Kosovo in 1389 to the Ottoman Turks.
The separatist movement grew at fi rst under moderate leadership, but
the Kosovars soon turned to their small but militant liberation army.
In 1998 Milosevic launched a military offensive aimed at wiping out the
UN and U.S.
mediation
Kosovar separatism
repressed
118. After Communism
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism1016
Kosovar forces. Serb military and police units blasted villages and towns to root out the
rebels, killing civilian men, women, and children as well. International efforts to mediate
failed. In 1998 the United States and NATO, acting not only because of the egregious
human rights violations but because of the threat to the stability of the wider Balkan region,
warned Milosevic that it would not allow the Serbs to do in Kosovo what they done in
Bosnia a few years earlier. Milosevic nonetheless continued the wholesale Serb offensive,
with mandates for ethnic cleansing that seemed intended to destroy the Kosovars or drive
them into exile. By that time over 800,000 Kosovars had been forced to fl ee; at least 10,000
were dead.
In March 1999 NATO, for the fi rst time in its 50-year history, under-
took a military offensive, launching large-scale air attacks against Serbia.
The bombing, led by the United States, continued for 78 days with severe
damage in Belgrade and elsewhere before Milosevic yielded. It was an
attack upon a sovereign European state not charged with external aggres-
sion, and it was controversial because it seemed to violate a fundamental principle of
national sovereignty. But the egregious abuses by Serbia and the violations of human
rights against its own citizens were viewed as illegal, murderous actions that required and
justifi ed what was described as “humanitarian intervention.” New international law was
being made. The United States and its European allies were compensating for the failure of
the international community to act against the mass killings in Bosnia (and in the African
state of Rwanda) a few years earlier; and the Europeans had decided that they could no
longer tolerate such brutal abuses of human rights within a European nation. In the end
Milosevic had to yield, but a Russian-backed UN Security Council resolution confi rmed
Yugoslav sovereignty over Kosovo even if Milosevic had to accept 50,000 armed NATO
troops as peacekeepers there.
Kosovars returned to their homes under international protection. NATO forces and
UN administrators moved into Kosovo, but they faced the diffi cult task of offering relief
and reconstruction and of providing security for both Kosovars and Serbs. The indictment
of Milosevic as a war criminal by the international court at The Hague and his international
isolation added to his unpopularity, but he did not give up power until he
unexpectedly lost an election in the fall of 2000 and was forced to resign
after massive demonstrations demanded the recognition of his opponent,
a respected law professor who had kept aloof from the regime. Vojslav
Kostunica took offi ce with broad popular and international support, but he faced enor-
mous economic problems as well as the unsettled future of Kosovo. Under international
pressure, Milosevic was handed over in 2001 to the war crimes tribunal at The Hague,
where he died in detention, in 2006, before the completion of his long trial for war crimes
Meanwhile, the Serbian political situation remained unsettled as die-hard nationalists con-
tinued to oppose those who favored closer economic and political relations with western
Europe. The campaign for new relations with Europe steadily gained support, however,
and Serbia applied for membership in the European Union (EU). In 2012 the EU offi cially
recognized Serbia as a candidate for future membership. There were still tensions, how-
ever, because of the situation in Kosovo, which remained under UN administration until
the Kosovars proclaimed an independent “Republic of Kosovo” in 2008. Although Ser-
bia, Russia, and other nations strongly objected to the creation of an independent state in
Kosovo, most members of the EU and NATO recognized the new republic and established
diplomatic relations.
The NATO air
offensive
Milosevic ousted
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1017
Central and Eastern Europe after 1989
But we must return to central and eastern Europe, where developments took place more
peacefully than in Yugoslavia. The former Communist nations were moving toward
democracy, the rule of law, and a free economy. Law and government had everywhere
fallen into disrepute during the more than four decades of Soviet control; crime, corruption,
and cynicism toward authority had become a method of survival. The later success in open
elections of former Communists, who had helped reconstruct their parties under various
names and with varying degrees of reform, resulted from the hard times associated with
the traumas of transition; but the new reform Communists, it must be said, learned to live
and work with the democratic parties. Virtually every country in the former Soviet bloc for
a time had either a head of state or head of government who had once been a Communist
political leader. Poland in 1993 had its fi rst ex-Communist prime minister and in 1995 an
ex-Communist president. Many of the post-Communist societies experienced a repetition
of the greed and rapaciousness of early Western capitalism. As in Russia, the former ruling
and managerial elites profi ted personally from the newly privatized state industries, accu-
mulating economic power and wealth.
Economic sanctions, military setbacks, and Serbia’s isolation from other European societies helped fuel the growing opposition to Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic. This crowd in the streets of Belgrade was part of a massive protest movement that demanded Milosevic’s resignation after he lost an election in the fall of 2000. The protests forced Milosovic to accept the electoral victory of his opponent, Vojslav Kostunica, thus demonstrating again the impor- tant infl uence of popular mobilizations in the former Communist states of central and eastern Europe. (Spasa Dakic/Sipa Press)
118. After Communism
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Chapter 25 The International Revolt Against Soviet Communism1018
Some observers judged the revolution of 1989 harshly, arguing that
despite its signifi cance in overthrowing a failed system and casting off for-
eign domination, the new regimes were bent mainly on emulating the mate-
rial successes of western European consumer societies. The goal of a
democratic, civil society to supplement the organized state seemed to have faded. Party poli-
tics and party maneuvering became the rule. Because the revolution was peaceful, some
speculated, a revolutionary catharsis may have been missing.
Yet there were also political efforts to reckon with the repressive state
institutions of the recent past. The former German Democratic Republic
conducted trials and purges and opened the fi les of the East German secret
security police, the Stasi, dramatically revealing wide networks of informers; and inves-
tigations of the Stasi continued after the completion of German reunifi cation. The Czechs
tried to ban men and women accused of serving as informers or collaborators from par-
ticipation in political life for stipulated time periods, but that led to abuses and was aban-
doned. The Poles at fi rst sought to draw a “thick line,” as they described it, between past
and present, but then they too conducted purges and opened police fi les. Some said the
Europeans might have benefi ted from “truth commissions,” as in Latin America or South
Africa, before which past offenders against human rights could come forward to admit
their misdeeds without necessarily expecting forgiveness.
Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic took the lead in the transition to democratic
freedoms, market economies, the rule of law, and pluralist societies, closely followed by
the three Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. They all looked forward to admis-
sion to the EU, which would eventually take place in 2004. The most prosperous eastern
European countries were those that adopted the most drastic economic measures, even
though the initial social consequences at the time were painful. Poland was the best exam-
ple of a country that benefi ted from such “shock therapy” and from the mid-1990s enjoyed
a vigorous expanding economy. Despite persistent problems, the overall economic balance
sheets showed progress throughout central and eastern Europe. The revolutionary upheav-
als of 1989 and their aftermath would long be remembered as the fi nal events in the Cold
War of the second half of the twentieth century.
More generally, the revolutions of 1989 helped to stimulate new cultural contacts,
economic exchanges, and migrations of people between eastern and western Europe. The
political and social differences that had often separated these regions of the continent began
to break down as the EU later expanded to include eastern Europe and as people in every
country increasingly identifi ed themselves as “Europeans.” New social and economic con-
fl icts emerged, but the long, violent history of warfare and military confrontations between
the major European nations seemed to have come to an end. At the beginning of the twen-
tieth century, in 1914, a crisis in the Balkans had swept the European powers into the cata-
strophic First World War. At the end of the twentieth century, by contrast, another crisis
in the Balkans led to a European-American collaboration that kept the confl ict within the
region, ended the violence, and ultimately brought countries such as Croatia, Serbia, and
Montenegro into new affi liations with the wider EU. Nobody could predict the future, of
course, yet the end of warfare within Europe had to be seen as one of greatest changes and
signs of progress in modern world history.
Confronting the past
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
The 1989 revolution
assessed
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1019
C h a p t e r 26 EUROPE AND THE
CHANGING MODERN
WORLD
T he demise of Soviet-style Communist regimes in Europe after 1989–1991 suggested to some observ-
ers that the history of the modern world would
henceforth evolve in only one direction. All modern
societies, according to such theorists, were in fact
already moving on their own erratic paths toward
a universal system of liberal democracies and free
market economies. But it soon became evident that
this imagined “end of history” was by no means the
only direction in which history could evolve. New
movements arose to challenge the global capital-
ist economy, the ascendancy of Western political
theories, the secularism of modern cultures, and
the powerful infl uence of the United States—which
had emerged from the Cold War as the world’s sole
superpower.
There were new and continuing confl icts
among competing religious or ethnic groups and
among nations that competed for power and commercial advantages in the global econ-
omy. Warfare itself changed when militant, extremist groups increasingly dramatized their
grievances or waged violent political campaigns through the indiscriminate tactics of ter-
rorist bombings. Facing such opponents, the most powerful national governments found
that traditional methods of international warfare—invasions, the surrender of enemy gov-
ernments, military occupations—could no longer achieve the decisive political and mili-
tary closure that modern nation-states expected to reach at the end of their wars.
No sooner had the Cold War receded into historical memory than global struggles
over natural resources, economic interests, and cultural values began to shape a new series
of international confl icts and wars. In the early twenty-fi rst century, various European
nations joined with the United States to become deeply involved in new confl icts in cen-
tral Asia and the Middle East. Responding to the attacks and continuing threats of radical
119. Western Europe after the
Cold War
120. Nation-States and
Economies in the Age of
Globalization
121. Intellectual and Social
Transitions in Modern
Cultures
122. Europe and International
Confl icts in the Early
Twenty-First Century
123. Social and Environmental
Challenges in the Twenty-
First Century
Chapter emblem: View of the planet Earth, photographed from Apollo 17 in December 1972. (Ingram Publishing)
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1020
terrorists, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies participated in extended
“peacekeeping” and military campaigns against Islamic groups in Afghanistan; and (in a
separate war) the British sent their army into Iraq as part of an American-led invasion of
that country in 2003. The much-anticipated post–Cold War “peace dividend” disappeared
almost immediately in a new cycle of military interventions outside of Europe, shadowy
intelligence operations, and deadly terrorist attacks.
Amid these cycles of international violence and confl ict, however, the deeper his-
torical patterns of human migration, global economic exchange, technological innova-
tion, transnational cultural interaction, and changing social mores continued to develop in
Europe and in every region of the world with which Europeans were involved during the
postcolonial era. Computer technologies and communications systems now moved infor-
mation around the globe with instantaneous speed; a global “culture industry” spread the
same music, fi lms, foods, and fashions throughout Europe and the wider world; evolving
conceptions of knowledge and scientifi c research reshaped intellectual debates as well as
artistic creativity; and new opportunities for the education, professional careers, and social
and political rights of women continued to expand in Europe and in most modern nations
everywhere. The pace of change seemed to be increasing in all spheres of modern life,
placing Europeans in a “global village” that was both united and divided by the processes
of contemporary globalization.
119. WESTERN EUROPE AFTER THE COLD WAR
Economic and Political Uncertainties in the New International Context
It was generally expected that the nations of central and eastern Europe would at fi rst suf-
fer in the post-Communist transition to democracies and market economies. What was
unanticipated was the burden of economic and political troubles that western Europe found
itself confronting. Buoyant and self-confi dent because of continuing prosperity during the
1950s and 1960s, the people of western Europe were fi rst jolted by the recession of the
1970s that combined economic stagnation with infl ation. By the mid-1980s the European
democracies had recovered, although with lower growth rates than in the past and with
discomfi ting levels of unemployment.
In Germany the economic situation after 1989 was complicated by
the reunifi cation with East Germany. The steep costs of absorbing East
Germany’s decayed economy and the decision to convert the East German
mark on an equal basis with the West German made infl ation a threat. To
combat it the German Bundesbank kept interest rates high. But tight money
choked off credit and investment when downturns occurred in the early 1990s, delaying
economic recovery for itself and its European neighbors and leading to currency devalua-
tions and instability. The German economy remained sluggish long after political unifi ca-
tion was completed.
Despite recovery, many West Europeans had remained unemployed. By the early
1990s unemployment rose to postwar highs. For the members of the European Union (EU)
the unemployment fi gure approached 19 million, or more than 12 percent of the work-
force. Long-term unemployment became a recognized phenomenon, as well as the discon-
certing corollary that many workers would never again be employed at their old skills.
Young people especially were hurt by shrinking job prospects, a structural problem that
persisted in the early twenty-fi rst century.
Costs of German
reunifi cation
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1021119. Western Europe after the Cold War
The Europeans slowly came to realize what had only been suspected
in the earlier recession, that the problem of unemployment was not tempo-
rary, limited to the business cycle, but was deep-seated and structural. High
labor costs that included generous welfare-state benefi ts for unemploy-
ment, disability, retirement, and extended paid vacations undercut western Europe’s abil-
ity to compete globally. An aging population raised health care costs as well as the expense
of state pension systems. Many European corporations, like their American counterparts,
began to restructure, sharply reducing employment rolls and introducing other econo-
mies. European multinational corporations shifted manufacturing operations to developing
countries in Asia and other parts of the world where labor costs and benefi ts were lower.
For the fi rst time in the years since 1945 the West European nations, echoing the British
example under the Thatcher government, took steps to roll back the welfare state as it had
evolved by consensus since the end of the Second World War.
Western Europe: Political Crises and Discontents
There was widespread dissatisfaction with the governing political parties of the center and
Center-Left, which were judged to have held offi ce too long and seemed incapable of pro-
viding innovative new plans for the future. Shocking revelations of scandal and corruption
tarnished the Christian Democratic and Socialist parties in several major countries.
The rising dissatisfaction with European political cultures could perhaps be seen most
clearly in Italy, where anger against the governing elite became symptomatic of the wider
European response to political cronyism. For years the Christian Democrats
had dominated the political scene, forming successive coalition govern-
ments, with the Right in the 1950s and with the Socialists and other parties
in the 1960s. By the 1970s in the midst of economic setbacks their popular
support shrank rapidly. In the 1980s the Socialists replaced them, heading a
cabinet for a record four years. Meanwhile the country’s second strongest party, the Italian
Communist Party, which had earlier demonstrated its independence from Moscow, was
excluded from government at the national level but won numerous mayoralties and control
of municipal councils. In 1989, with the collapse of communism and end of the Cold War,
the party renamed itself the Democratic Party of the Left and began a new quest for partici-
pation in the national government.
Over the years the Christian Democrats had kept a tight grip on power and patronage
and maintained close ties both to state-owned enterprises and private business. In good
part because the Christian Democrats projected themselves as Italy’s defenders against
communism they were shielded from scrutiny or criticism. But in the early 1990s the
Italian public learned of bribes, kickbacks, and payoffs for government contracts up to the
highest political levels. There had been illegal payments to the political parties and even
widespread collusion with organized crime. Former prime ministers, cabinet ministers,
and parliamentary deputies of all political parties as well as top business executives were
implicated. So tainted was the Christian Democratic Party that it returned to an earlier
name for itself, the Popular Party. The aroused electorate in 1993 approved a new electoral
system, one feature of which was to abandon proportional representation.
In the elections in 1994 both the former Christian Democratic Party
and the Socialist Party were routed. Three new parties won and formed a
Center-Right coalition. But the new parties inspired little confi dence and
their political leaders were unable to provide stability or serve as civic
Italy’s Christian
Democrats
New parties
Persistent
unemployment
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1022
models. All the governments inherited public defi cits, economic slowdown, unemploy-
ment, social tensions, and the continuing corruption inquiries. In 1998 the Popular Party
joined with the Democratic Party of the Left to form a cabinet, and Massimo d’Alema,
the head of the former Communist Party, became prime minister. The reconstructed Com-
munists were committed to fi nancial stability, private enterprise, and economic growth as
the best means of advancing social needs. But this cabinet lasted only briefl y. In 2001 the
conservative media magnate Silvio Berlusconi headed a coalition that won the elections;
its Center-Right majority promised stability but also aroused misgivings about the ambi-
tious prime minister and his assertive Forza Italia Party (the name itself derived from the championship soccer team that he owned). Berlusconi nevertheless remained in offi ce
longer than most of his predecessors. Fending off charges of corruption and criticism of
his support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, he overcame losses in a number of elections
and managed to retain power in the face of mounting domestic opposition. In 2005 he
reintroduced proportional representation in order to divide his opponents. Berlusconi was
widely criticized for his fl amboyant personal lifestyle and for his tendency to fuse his
private fi nancial interests with his political career, but he remained prime minister until
2011. Although Berlusconi was only one of the many European political leaders whose
self-absorbed lives and corruption seemed to undermine their ability to serve general
The populations of all European nations have become increasingly diverse as immigrants and mobile workers stream across national borders in search of better jobs, education, cultural freedom, and basic human rights. These children at a primary school in contemporary London represent the diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds of the people who live in the multicultural nations of modern Europe. Immigration is constantly changing the workforce, schools, food, music, and neighborhoods of European cities; it also at times provokes anti- immigrant political movements and affects the political culture of every nation. (Christine Osborne/Corbis)
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1023
public interests, his career exemplifi ed the kinds of leadership problems that discredited
political elites in numerous European countries as people struggled with new economic
challenges or with enduring unemployment. Berlusconi himself was not really a major
historical fi gure, but he represented and contributed to a historical pattern that reappeared
in much of Europe during the early twenty-fi rst century.
Europe’s Immigrants and Refugees
We have already seen how the infl ux of millions of immigrants and refugees since the
1960s was altering the nature of European societies. In the 12 years from 1980 to 1992,
15 million new immigrants arrived to make their home in western Europe; and the pat-
terns of immigration continued over the following decades. By the end of the fi rst decade
in the twenty-fi rst century, roughly 8 percent of the population in countries such as
Germany, France, Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands consisted of immigrants who were
born outside of Europe, and millions of other people in European nations were the children
of recent immigrants. By 2010, demographers estimated that more than 31 million people
living in EU countries had immigrated from non-European countries. The EU launched a
controversial new program in 2009 to provide “EU blue cards” for skilled workers who
came to Europe from other parts of the world, thereby recognizing the growing economic
role of highly educated persons who looked for professional opportunities in Europe (even
as some European professionals were also leaving for the Americas or Asia). There were
also large migrations of people within the EU, a pattern that appeared, for example, in
the movement of workers from countries such as Poland into Britain and other nations in
western Europe.
Some immigrants went to Europe in search of political asylum, but most moved
in search of economic opportunities that they could not fi nd in their own impoverished
countries. Many regularly sent part of their earnings back to families in the places from
which they had immigrated. They worked in both the private and the public sectors of the
European economy, often taking lower-paid, less desirable jobs that Europeans did not
want. When the Cold War ended, some eastern Europeans joined family members who had
earlier gone into exile to escape the repression of Communist regimes; and many refugees
streamed into western Europe from the former Yugoslavia during the era of intense ethnic
violence in the 1990s.
The steady fl ow of immigrants visibly changed the ethnic composi-
tion of Europe. In Germany Turkish workers settled in with their families
as permanent residents; many reared their children as Muslims. In France
in a population of 57 million in the mid-1990s, at least 4 million were
foreign-born—mainly Arabs from North Africa and immigrants from other former French
African colonies but also Vietnamese from Southeast Asia. In Britain, with a population of
56 million, at least 2.5 million could be counted as “ethnic minorities,” mainly from vari-
ous parts of Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Nations that had long sent emigrants to all
parts of the world now found themselves absorbing large new populations from abroad.
The xenophobic hostility that had manifested itself earlier in western Europe again
fl ared up. In Germany there were physical assaults on Turks, fi rebombings, and other acts
of violence. Neo-Nazis in Germany, “skinheads” in Britain (who dated from the 1950s),
neo-Fascists in Italy, and followers in France of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front agi-
tated the immigrant issue and even resorted to racist violence. Governments adopted laws
to reduce or eliminate further immigration. Germany in 1993 repealed a constitutional
Shifts in Europe’s
ethnic composition
119. Western Europe after the Cold War
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1024
provision that had offered asylum to “all persecuted on political grounds,” but it became
virtually impossible to distinguish between political and economic refugees. France moved
toward “near-zero” immigration and abandoned a tradition going back to the Revolution of
granting citizenship to any child born on French soil. Unemployment and troubled econo-
mies made the social tensions potentially explosive and fed prejudices of all kinds, includ-
ing anti-Semitism.
Western Europe seemed to be settling into an era of persistent gloom,
pessimism, and political frustration during the 1990s. The end of the Cold
War had not automatically ushered in peace, prosperity, and harmony.
Unemployment, especially for the young, marred the economic scene. In
the euphoria following the collapse of communism, few had anticipated
the resurgence of the explosive nationalism that brought bloodshed to the Balkans. West-
ern Europe, for all its announced commitment to democratic institutions and for all its
military strength, feared the entanglements of military intervention so much that until the
American-led air offensive in Kosovo it refrained from decisive action. On the political
scene conservative and centrist political leaders offered few new initiatives, and the Left
seemed in disarray. On the other hand, many still believed, or hoped, that western Europe
would reach out to central and eastern Europe, continue to work toward a united Europe,
and play a central role in the world’s economy and international affairs. But even the most
optimistic Europeans increasingly recognized that the pursuit of such goals would require
bold new economic or political initiatives.
120. NATION-STATES AND ECONOMIES IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION
Economic Recovery and a “Third Way” in Politics
In the 1990s the American president Bill Clinton helped to set the tone for a new type of
democratic politics in the Atlantic world. Taking his lead from Republican pro-business
policies, Clinton promoted a program that favored economic growth and productivity
but combined it with social issues such as health care and education and concern for
the disadvantaged and minorities. Clinton found a kindred political spirit in the buoyant
British Labour Party leader Tony Blair, who also adopted many conserva-
tive pro-business policies. Blair became the Labour leader in 1994 and soon
persuaded his party to abandon what still remained of its earlier socialist
and welfare-state platform. Neutralizing the party’s older trade union and
left-wing bastions, he projected an image of the party as “New Labour.” The best prescrip-
tion for prosperity was to encourage economic growth and industry but without satisfying
“pure selfi sh individualism” or neglecting social needs, which he argued that Thatcher and
the Conservative Party had done in their uncritical support for free-market capitalism. A
market economy, in Blair’s view, should also be linked to the social needs of people in all
the economic levels of British society. After four Conservative electoral victories since
1979 and 18 years of Conservative leadership, the country gave the Labour Party in 1997
its largest margin of victory since 1945.
As in the United States, the economy turned upward in Britain. Blair’s political
strength and popularity also enabled him to institute a number of constitutional changes.
The United Kingdom had long had a highly centralized government, with all power ema-
nating from the Westminster Parliament in London. The Labour Party with its large
Post–Cold War
gloom
Clinton and Blair
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1025120. Nation-States and Economies in the Age of Globalization
majority in the House of Commons took unprecedented steps toward a devolution of power
to a new parliament in Scotland, where the reform was intended to defuse a strong separat-
ist movement, and to a new legislative assembly in Wales. Each gained broad jurisdiction
over its internal affairs. Voters in Scotland for the fi rst time since the Act of Union of 1707
went to the polls to elect their own parliament, and in Wales voters elected an assembly for
the fi rst time ever. Critics saw the devolution of authority as the “undoing of Britain” and
an erosion of parliamentary sovereignty. Meanwhile, some Scottish nationalists pressed
for more autonomy and even, in some cases, for complete independence from Britain. Oth-
ers recognized that stability in both England and Scotland often required political change,
though they also wanted Scotland to remain within the United Kingdom. No one wished to
repeat the mistakes of earlier years when Britain’s resistance to home rule for Ireland had
led to continuing violence, partition, and prolonged strife.
In Northern Ireland matters seemed to be taking a more peaceful turn.
The Protestant and Catholic parties fi nally reached an agreement in 1998,
moving to end a violent confl ict that over the past 30 years had cost the
lives of over 3,000 people. The new arrangements authorized a legislative
council of representatives from Britain, Northern Ireland, and the Republic
of Ireland, and a sharing of power in a joint cabinet. Northern Ireland thus gained a new
opportunity for self-government, but the introduction of the new self-governing institu-
tions was delayed when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and other paramilitary groups
resisted calls for complete disarmament. By 2005, however, the IRA had in fact given up
its weapons. The recurring violence between Catholics and Protestants thus gave way to a
more peaceful era in politics and social life. Northern Ireland remained within the United
Kingdom, but subsequent political agreements somewhat revised the “Northern Ireland
Assembly” and the system for power sharing between Protestant and Catholic leaders.
Although political tensions did not disappear, problems were now managed through
the new institutional structures. The people of Belfast and other Northern Irish cities
accepted the political settlement, and in 2007 the British army ended its long deployment
in the region.
In another momentous break with tradition a reform bill in 1998 stripped the heredi-
tary peers in the House of Lords of their parliamentary seats. The hereditary seats, it was
widely recognized, represented a political anachronism, untenable in a contemporary
democracy. A reorganized House of Lords would consist only of lifetime peers. Many in
Britain were opposed, but others placed the reform in the established tradition of broaden-
ing the suffrage and other democratic innovations.
Tony Blair’s popular support declined after he joined with the U.S. president George
W. Bush to launch a war in Iraq in 2003. Many in Britain opposed the war, and approval
for Blair’s leadership fell rapidly as the country tired both of the war and of Blair’s appar-
ent deference to American foreign policy during the era of the Bush presidency. In 2007
Blair resigned his position as leader of the Labour Party, giving way to Gordon Brown,
who had served as Blair’s chief economic minister and whose own term as Labour leader
and prime minister was dominated by the pervasive fi nancial problems of a major reces-
sion. British voters, who became increasingly disenchanted with Labour policies and with
the bland personality of Gordon Brown, turned toward the Conservative
Party in new elections in 2010. The Conservatives were unable to win a
clear majority in the new Parliament, however, without the support of the
moderate Liberal Democrats—a third party, which joined an unusual coali-
tion government that would be led by a new Conservative prime minister,
The settlement in
Northern Ireland
Cameron and
the Conservative
coalition
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1026
David Cameron. The Conservatives introduced new austerity measures to balance the
British budget and to encourage more private investment in new economic enterprises.
The economic recovery nevertheless lagged, and Cameron’s domestic policies sparked
strong opposition from government workers, educators, and others who feared that the
budget cuts and other reforms would hamper an economic recovery. The British stead-
fastly kept their own currency and maintained their separation from other
aspects of European economic life, but they resembled the people of other
European countries in their disillusionment with the nation’s political elites.
Like many Europeans in the early twenty-fi rst century, the British often
expressed concern about their government’s ability to solve intractable eco-
nomic and social problems that threatened to diminish the infrastructure and welfare of
their modern national life. The British nevertheless reaffi rmed their collective national
identity during events such as the much-acclaimed London summer Olympics in 2012, and
nobody could doubt that Britain would continue to confront its problems within the stable
framework of its long-existing democratic political system.
In Germany and in France political leaders also represented the new politics of the
Left and Left-Center. In Germany the Social Democratic Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder,
replaced Helmut Kohl in 1998 after the Christian Democratic chancellor’s 16 years in
offi ce. Schröder, whose party’s moderate wing had triumphed over its more
radical elements, was committed to curbing the generous provisions of the
postwar welfare state, which had driven up labor costs and made it diffi cult
British economic
policies
Schröder
Women played an increasingly important role in twenty-fi rst-century European elections and national governments. Although she held different political views, German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed France’s Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal (on the left) to Berlin in the spring of 2007, thereby showing indirectly how women were everywhere asserting their rights to the highest levels of national political leadership. (Herbert Knosowki/AFP/Getty Images)
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1027
to hire new workers. He too spoke of his program as a “middle way,” and—despite the
problem of chronic unemployment—the Social Democrats held on to power in the elec-
tions of 2002. Subsequent elections in 2005, however, failed to produce a clear majority
for either of the major German parties, and a coalition government emerged after extended
negotiations. Angela Merkel, the leader of the Christian Democrats, became not only
Germany’s fi rst woman chancellor but also the fi rst chancellor to reach that offi ce from the
former East Germany. Half of the cabinet ministries went to Social Democrats, however,
creating an unusual Left-Right collaboration.
Merkel and her Christian Democratic Party went on to win the German elections in
2009, which gave her party an absolute majority and enabled her to lead the country with-
out the constraints of a coalition government. Much of her new term in
offi ce was devoted to the problems of the European recession and to the
crisis of the “euro debt.” Merkel and her German political allies favored a
strong euro zone economy, but they worried about infl ation and pushed for
austerity measures when EU countries such as Greece and Spain fell deeply into debt.
Drawing economic strength from reforms that they had made in both the labor wage sys-
tem and government spending, the Germans gained a new dominance in European affairs
on the basis of their economy. The old German militarism had disappeared, but the new
Germany still played a decisive role in the EU and contributed disproportionately to
Europe’s broader infl uence in the world economy.
In France Daniel Jospin, a long-time moderate Socialist leader who
hoped to continue President Mitterrand’s reformist policies, became prime
minister in 1997. Two years earlier he had lost the presidential elections to
his conservative Gaullist opponent Jacques Chirac, but the Socialists soon won a majority
in the legislature; under the now established practice of “cohabitation” the president
appointed Jospin prime minister. Jospin, though still resolutely committed to a large role
for government on social issues, believed in moderation and pragmatism, favored a market
economy, and moved forward with the privatization of state-owned industries. The consti-
tution meanwhile was amended to curtail the powerful role of the Gaullist-inspired French
presidency by reducing the term of offi ce from seven to fi ve years. The Socialist Party was
now so fragmented, because of its dissatisfaction with Jospin, that in the 2002 presidential
election it could not muster enough votes for Jospin even to remain a candidate in the sec-
ond round of the election. It was the extremist right-wing candidate Jean–Marie Le Pen
who faced Chirac. Leftist and other voters, to their consternation, had to rally to Chirac,
who easily won reelection.
Chirac’s government became mired in various scandals and political confl icts that
undermined his effectiveness during his second term as president, but his Gaullist party
found a new leader for the elections in 2007. Nicholas Sarkozy mobilized popular nation-
alist sentiments and distrust of the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, to win a narrow
victory. Royal’s candidacy marked another milestone in French politics, because she was
the fi rst woman to be nominated for the presidency by a major French political party. She
lost the election, but Sarkozy soon alienated much of the French electorate as he intro-
duced new austerity measures, attempted to reduce the infl uence of French labor unions,
and also came to be viewed as more concerned with the interests of wealthy supporters
than with the needs of workers or the lower classes. These issues, when
combined with ongoing economic problems and questions about Sarkozy’s
own mercurial personality, led fi nally to the election of another Socialist
president in 2012. François Hollande entered offi ce with plans to raise taxes
Merkel
Jospin
Sarkozy and
Hollande
120. Nation-States and Economies in the Age of Globalization
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1028
on the rich and to stimulate the French economy through new government initiatives, but
he was like other modern European Socialist leaders in that he advocated a mixed econ-
omy that was by no means truly “socialist” in its organization or distribution of wealth.
The “middle way” had become a familiar formula for Left-leaning political leaders, and
the modest leadership style of Hollande suggested that this middle course would continue
in France. Meanwhile, like most socialist politicians in Europe, he continued to support the
EU, even when he questioned the German emphasis on austerity.
Despite the cycles of victory and defeat in national elections, the political leaders who
advocated a “middle” or “third” way between conservatism and welfare-state socialism
continued to promote a moderate reform agenda in the early twenty-fi rst century. Although
they insisted that governments should play an active role in dealing with social and eco-
nomic problems, they also called for reduced public spending, budget balancing, limits on
regulation, and a climate of opportunity for business enterprise. Pragmatism and modera-
tion seemed to be triumphant over older socialist views and the welfare-state ideology that
had prevailed in the years after the Second World War.
The European Union: Economic Cooperation, the Euro, and the Debt Crisis
By the opening of the twenty-fi rst century European integration had made remarkable
progress since six West-European nations had created the Common Market in the 1950s.
The European Economic Community, established in 1957, became the European Commu-
nity in 1965, and it in turn became the European Union (EU) under the Treaty of
Maastricht signed in 1991. Having grown to 28 member nations by 2013 (with more coun-
tries seeking to join), the EU was an economic superpower in which the total annual gross
domestic product (GDP) was close to 13 trillion euros (or 17 trillion dollars) and thus
larger than the annual GDP of the United States. The EU had become the world’s
largest single economic market with over 500 million people, closely bound together in
noneconomic ways as well.
As agreed under the M aastricht treaty, the EU embarked in the 1990s on one of its
most ambitious enterprises, the voluntary adoption of a common currency.
Twelve EU nations began to use the new “euro” in 2002 for fi nancial trans-
actions and the cash payments of daily life, replacing such historic national
currencies as the franc, the mark, and the lira. The number of euro zone
countries gradually increased, reaching 17 by 2013 and creating new problems for the
stability of the currency when several national governments fell into fi nancial crises as
they struggled to pay their accumulating national debts. 1 The euro’s value fl uctuated in
global fi nancial markets, but it quickly became a major international currency and com-
peted strongly against the American dollar. Three EU members—Britain, Sweden, and
Denmark—chose not to adopt the euro, and many of the new states that joined the EU after
2002 remained outside the euro currency zone, pending further internal economic reforms.
In another unprecedented step a European Central Bank was established in Frankfurt with
the authority to set monetary policy for the member countries. The effects of this monetary
policy on each country’s social and economic policies became a new controversial issue in
European politics as the various national economies came under a more centralized system
of monetary management and as a “sovereign debt crisis” developed in 2009–2010.
A common currency
1 The 17 euro zone countries in 2013 were Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,
Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.
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1029
The debt crisis emerged as several euro zone countries, including Greece, Ireland, and
Portugal, accumulated debts that far exceeded the levels they could manage. Having bor-
rowed extensively during the expansive early years of the “euro era,” these countries now
faced escalating interest costs, diffi culties in procuring new loans, and a likely default on
their payments. T he problems of the euro zone, on the most basic political and economic
levels, resulted from the fact that all member nations used the same monetary system but
continued to follow their own fi scal policies for expenditures, borrowing, and taxation. In
short, the monetary union of different national states had never expanded
into the kind of fi scal union that would normally shape the government
budget within a single national economy. When countries such as Greece
seemed to be heading toward default on their loans, the whole European
economy was threatened because the major European and American banks had loaned
large amounts of money to governments that could no longer repay their debts or the accu-
mulating interest; the banks themselves could therefore collapse because of their own
fi nancial exposure. In earlier eras, a country such as Greece might have worked its way out
of such a crisis by devaluing its currency in ways that allowed for more fl exibility in mak-
ing repayments or in stimulating foreign trade, but the unifi ed Euro currency precluded
strategies of devaluation or infl ationary adjustments. The euro debt crisis thus spread from
Greece and Portugal into the broader European fi nancial system, even though Greece
itself, for example, accounted for less than 2 percent of the total euro zone economy.
The European Central Bank and other agencies of the EU began providing emergency
loans, or “bailouts,” worth hundreds of billions of euros to avert the defaults that might
have caused a collapse of the major European banks and a possible breakdown of the
entire euro system. European political and fi nancial leaders were determined to avoid such
a breakdown, but the emergency loans were provided with the condition that the countries
receiving such assistance must introduce rigorous austerity measures to bring down the
defi cits in their current and future government budgets. Such measures
inevitably meant reductions in salaries, pension benefi ts, and other support
for public sector workers; and the falling government expenditures, in turn,
reduced demand in the private spheres of national economic life. Unem-
ployment rose to very high levels, and the weakening economies undermined the secure
standard of living that most Europeans had come to expect. Protests spread across Greece,
Spain, and other countries where workers were faced with major cutbacks in salaries and
benefi ts; and some Europeans proposed that Greece should be expelled from the euro zone.
Meanwhile, many people in the most affected countries blamed Germany and Chancellor
Angela Merkel for the austerity measures that accompanied each bailout, but the Germans
were understandably hesitant to provide a large share of the emergency funds unless the
governments and populations in the most indebted nations also agreed to reduce their
expenditures.
The leaders of the European Central Bank, the EU, and private banking groups all
looked for new strategies to defuse the debt crisis, restore fi nancial stability, avoid a
deeper recession, and create a more reliable euro zone system for fi scal management.
Representatives of the various euro zone governments—spurred on by the Germans and
the French—thus negotiated a plan to create a European Stability Mechanism (ESM),
which was a new organization that would collect money from member
nations (and also raise funds by selling ESM bonds) and then provide
loans for indebted governments or for government-funded bailouts of
major banks that fell under extreme fi nancial stress. In return for receiving
Greek debts
Austerity measures
European Stability
Mechanism
120. Nation-States and Economies in the Age of Globalization
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1030
such loans, however, a national government had to show that it was adopting fi scal
reforms to ensure that its annual budget defi cit remained below a fi xed percentage of the
national GDP—that is, the defi cit in any year’s budget was not to exceed 3 percent of
the national GDP.
As this new “mechanism” went into operation in 2013, it was impossible to know if
the new system would actually be able to provide the loans and fi scal stability that would
be needed to ensure the long-term viability of the euro currency. The ESM was expected to
collect more than 500 billion euros for future bailouts or “fi rewalls” to protect vulnerable
governments, but it would not be easy to build such a large capital fund. It was nevertheless
apparent that Europe’s political and economic elites—and much of the population in their
various nations—remained strongly committed to the euro as an essential economic founda-
tion for the integrated European economy and as a symbolic affi rmation of the “European
project” that had been developing since the end of the Second World War. Although the debt
crisis became the greatest threat that had yet arisen to the campaign for greater European
integration, it seemed that Europe’s collective historical memories would help to ensure the
survival of the euro zone. To be sure, opinion polls showed that support for the EU fell
signifi cantly as people faced new austerities or considered the unattractive plan for divert-
ing their national resources into the collective funds of the European Stability Mechanism.
Neither austerity nor bailouts were popular political policies. Yet those many
Europeans who remembered the devastating history of the twentieth-century
world wars were not inclined to abandon their visions of a united, peaceful
Europe because of their concerns about a sovereign debt crisis. It was defi -
nitely a crisis, but the human suffering that accompanied this crisis could scarcely be com-
pared to the earlier European tragedies of the “Western Front” or the Great Depression or the
death camp at Auschwitz or the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia.
The European project, in short, seemed likely to survive the early twenty-fi rst-century
economic crisis, because the demise of a carefully constructed EU and common cur-
rency was a highly unattractive alternative. Indeed, the crisis itself was pushing Europe-
ans toward an increasingly integrated system of fi scal and political collaboration, despite
the national opposition of various political parties and the deep anger about government
austerity in every affected country.
The European Union: Politics and Transnational Collaborations
Meanwhile, amid the economic challenges of the debt crisis, more countries were apply-
ing for membership in the EU—countries such as Iceland, Montenegro, and Serbia. The
requirements for admission to the EU remained fi rmly attached to liberal political and eco-
nomic models. An applicant nation had to demonstrate its commitment to “liberty, democ-
racy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law,” which
meant, among other stipulations, that would-be members had to have abolished capital
punishment. A functioning free market economy was also required. In contrast to its slow
expansion earlier, the EU now welcomed all European nations meeting its specifi cations,
and it also considered the possible admission of Turkey.
The EU was also “deepening” in additional ways. The Maastricht treaty had called for
the continued development of common foreign and defense policies. The failure of the
Europeans to intervene decisively to stop the violence in Bosnia or in Rwanda in the early
1990s and the later failure to thwart Serbia’s assault on Kosovo had embarrassed Europe-
ans who strongly supported universal human rights. In June 1999 the EU foreign ministers
Commitment to EU
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1031
resolved to develop a capacity for collective military action of their own. The EU began to
move toward creating an armed force supplementary to but not supplanting NATO. The
Atlantic alliance would remain fi rm, but a new “European Defense Agency” came into full
operation after 2005. The new military cooperation signaled Europe’s intention to end its
long-term dependence on the United States and to reject the status of “an American protec-
torate.” These developments both pleased and disturbed American policy makers who
wanted Europe to play an independent role, especially in European matters, but did not
wish to see resources drained off from NATO.
The EU political and bureaucratic structures did not change as rapidly
as the evolving economic or defense policies. The European Commission,
with an extensive civil service bureaucracy in Brussels, served as its execu-
tive and administrative branch and had the right to initiate proposals for
legislation. The European Parliament, elected by a European-wide electorate, supervised
the budget and debated Commission proposals. This representative body never aroused
much enthusiasm, and voter turnout in the member nations at election time remained low.
Although the heads of government held regularly scheduled meetings, the foreign minis-
ters of the member-nations meeting as a council also convened frequently to discuss and
vote on matters of common interest. The meetings of this council provided an opportunity
for the EU to take positions on international issues that extended well beyond Europe
itself. It had not been anticipated that the ministers would evolve into the chief policy-
making body, but in some ways it tied the EU to democratic support in a way that the
European Commission had failed to do.
The early impetus for supranationalism in the Union faded, but what
remained was the close cooperation of the ministers representing the member-
states, discussing and making decisions on the basis of a half-century of
common values and experience and a large body of jurisprudence and legal
principles under the jurisdiction of the Union’s Court of Justice. Each nation saw its stabil-
ity, prosperity, and security enhanced by membership in the Union and recognized that the
loss of sovereignty had been less than feared.
But there was strong opposition to a proposed EU constitution that
would have created the framework for a more coherent, integrated politi-
cal union. Although a majority of EU countries supported the proposed
constitution, voters in France and the Netherlands rejected the proposal
in 2005, thus stopping the plan for a shared constitution and throwing open the whole
question of how the EU might proceed with further political integration. Many Europeans
favored the proposed constitution, particularly for its broad guarantees of social and eco-
nomic rights and entitlements, but many others expressed concern about perceived threats
to European living standards and social values or to specifi c national interests—especially
after the major expansion of the EU membership in 2004. The EU was therefore not likely
to develop in the near future as its more visionary advocates had anticipated, even if in its
present form it had become an unprecedented example of economic and political coopera-
tion that fundamentally altered Europe. After centuries of European warfare, as we have
noted, the continent had reached a historical turning point in which war between the lead-
ing European powers seemed unimaginable.
Recognizing the signifi cance of this historical transition, the Nobel Prize commit-
tee in Norway awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the EU for its multiple contribu-
tions to “the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in
Europe.” The EU faced multiple threats to its vitality and even its survival in the wake
Common foreign and
defense policies
Cooperation or
supranationalism?
Opposition to EU
Constitution
120. Nation-States and Economies in the Age of Globalization
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1032
of the debt crisis, but the continuing collaboration within the EU, as the Nobel Prize
committee suggested, still represented one of the major European achievements in the
era since 1945.
French-German cooperation, which had been the original driving force behind the
success of European integration, remained crucial. Many people in both countries looked
forward to an even closer French-German alliance, partly to give leadership to the newer
EU members from eastern Europe and partly to offset British infl uence. No one could pre-
dict, however, the future evolution of an enlarged and still growing EU that could con-
ceivably still unravel or that could become a potential rival to the global political and
economic power of the United States. In Europe the older strategic threat from the Soviet
Union was gone, but many Europeans now saw a threat to the European way of life in
American-led “globalization,” which Europeans criticized as a worship of
mass consumerism and a materialistic abandonment of social and cultural
values. To Europeans, even among admirers of American accomplish-
ments, the EU provided an essential balance to American hegemony in
world affairs.
The “New Economy”: The 1990s and Beyond
The global economy that reemerged after the Second World War seemed to enter a new
phase in the 1990s. Globalization was the key word. It meant the more rapid and effi cient
Uneasiness over
American-led
globalization
Europe’s transnational integration contributed to a collective “European project” in many spheres, including sports. The Euro Cup soccer tournament has taken place every four years since 1960, creating an intense, continent-wide interest and new national rivalries in which young men collided on athletic fi elds rather than battlefi elds. This photograph of the Dutch national team in a 2008 Euro Cup stadium suggests the intensity of modern European sports as well as the diversity of the athletes in contemporary European societies. (Laurence Griffi ths/Getty Images)
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1033
movement of capital and technology worldwide across all geographical and political
boundaries. T h e United States took the lead in globalization and in the development of
what came to be known as the “new economy,” but large multinational cor-
porations in Europe and Asia also had operations in all regions of the world.
The new economy was an information economy. At its base was the
computer revolution and the Internet, a word scarcely known at the decade’s
beginning. By the late 1990s it was in everyone’s vocabulary, and at the
disposal of tens of millions in offi ces and homes worldwide. It provided instant access to
information of all kinds. It was as if a new industrial revolution was setting in and at an
accelerated speed exceeding all previous industrial changes. Trade expanded. The fl ow of
private investment capital from the industrial nations to the developing countries quick-
ened. Living standards in many parts of the world rose, all tied to the growing trade and
investment that linked Europe to the global economy.
The processes of globalization often threatened salaries and employment in Europe,
however, as industrial production shifted to lower wage countries in Asia, Africa, and
Latin America. To enhance competitive power in the global marketplace
large corporations in the United States, Europe, and Asia were turning to
low-wage labor in poorer countries and buying other companies to become
even larger, within and across national lines. Multinational corporations
An information
economy
Multinational
corporations
The EU fostered political coop- eration as well as close economic collaboration among its mem- ber nations. This picture shows the president of the European Commission addressing mem- bers of the European Parlia- ment in Brussels—the city that served as headquarters for the European Commission’s often- criticized civil service bureau- cracy and as the site for regular meetings of the EU’s foreign ministers. (AP Photo/Thierry Charlier)
120. Nation-States and Economies in the Age of Globalization
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1034
grew in numbers and size everywhere, and there seemed to be little concern over for-
eign companies’ taking over domestic corporations. London regained much of its fi nancial
prestige and strength as the fi nancial center for European mergers and amalgamations,
which accelerated as never before.
Despite warnings from some quarters against “irrational exuberance,” stock values
and other speculative investments in real estate kept climbing in the late 1990s and early
years of the twenty-fi rst century. Although some believed that the new era of economic
expansion would continue in both America and Europe, others recalled past speculative
fever and manias in history: tulips in the seventeenth century; colonization schemes in the
eighteenth; canals, railroads, gold, and silver in the nineteenth. Persons with broad histori-
cal perspectives were thus not surprised when both the housing “bubble” and stock values
collapsed in America and much of Europe after 2007, setting off a major
recession.
The computer revolution and the emergence of the new computer
technology companies were meanwhile creating a new economy in many
ways. They helped the economy to grow through greater productivity and
helped fuel the rising prices in global stock markets. Computer wizards as well as brokers,
fi nancial executives, and entrepreneurs of all kinds often became extremely wealthy at the
same time that the older industrial infrastructure was declining in many European and
American cities.
The two most important developments in the computer revolution that
spread across the world during and after the 1990s were the Internet and the
World Wide Web. The Internet began from modest beginnings in the late
1960s in the United States as a government-sponsored project to enhance
communications. Computer scientists around the world enlarged its scope and made it
easier for individuals and companies to utilize in their daily work. The World Wide Web
was fi rst developed in 1980 at a nuclear physics research center near Geneva when the
young English physicist Tim Berners-Lee developed a program to process information
through electronic associations and linkages. For a time it remained neglected, but by 1990
he and others had revived and perfected it. By means of the Internet, the World Wide
Web became a mass medium navigated by hundreds of millions around the world every
day, and its users continued to multiply. It revolutionized communications; people could
send electronic mail to each other, negotiate fi nancial transactions, make purchases, tap all
kinds of sources for information and education, and use the Web for entertainment as well.
Many compared the signifi cance of the new computer technology to the invention of the
printing press in the fi fteenth century. So rapidly was the new technology developing in
speed, effi ciency, and versatility that new, more powerful computer models became avail-
able almost immediately after earlier ones had fi rst come into use.
Nearly half of the world’s Internet users at the beginning of the new century were to
be found in the United States, and English became the dominant language of the Internet;
but the use of computers and Internet communications also developed rapidly in Europe.
Some Europeans expressed concern that the Internet represented not only an immense
step toward globalization but also toward Americanization. However, global competition
continued. A Finnish company held an early lead in the cellular phone market, computer
specialists developed innovative software programs in India, and companies in Taiwan
manufactured many of the most advanced computer chips. But a serious gap opened up
between those who had the opportunity and means to avail themselves of the new com-
puter technology and those who did not. A “digital divide” emerged both within countries
and between the wealthy and poorer countries of the world.
The computer
technology revolution
The Internet
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1035
The worldwide faith in the market and market forces presented other challenges for
those who wanted to reduce the growing gap in the wealth of different countries around the
world. Faith in a kind of oversimplifi ed laissez-faire market economy spread in Europe
and in other industrialized countries. Europeans often referred to the new economic creed
as “neo-liberalism,” thereby evoking the classical era of nineteenth-century political econ-
omy. There was a kind of “market fundamentalism,” not unlike a religious faith. Global-
ization and the world’s market economy, its advocates claimed, made intervention by
governments much less necessary than the advocates of Keynesian theories or European-
style welfare states had assumed. The neo-liberal argument, however, was also opposed by
critics everywhere. In France, where unemployment was high, some argued that it was
immoral for corporations to earn large profi ts while at the same time laying off workers in
what were described as “abusive job cuts.”
Meanwhile the growth in world commerce led to the creation in 1994
of a more formal World Trade Organization (WTO) to replace the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in effect since 1948. GATT had
been immensely successful in lowering tariffs and enlarging world trade
through informal bargaining procedures and agreements. By 1986 it had grown to include
92 nations. In 1995 the United States succeeded in creating a permanent, more formal
organization. The WTO was based in Geneva, Switzerland, and authorized to draw up and
oversee agreements, enforce trade rules, and settle disputes. It grew to 157 members by
2012, but its large ministerial meetings often met with opposition and demonstrations in
the streets. All European nations as well as the EU as a whole belonged to the WTO and
The founding of the
WTO
The computer revolution of the 1990s transformed modern culture and education as well as the management of government and economic institutions. These students at a computer center were working in what had become a “virtual library” for the distribution of knowledge, information, opinion and entertainment in the contemporary world. (Bill Bachmann/Photoedit, Inc.)
120. Nation-States and Economies in the Age of Globalization
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1036
often appealed to the organization to mediate trade disputes with countries throughout the
world. The negotiated free trade agreements, in the view of protestors and other critics,
paid little attention to environmental and labor conditions, or even to the widespread
exploitation of child labor in the poorer, industrializing countries outside Europe and North
America. The poorer nations, for their part, saw themselves at risk of losing out on cheaper
labor costs, one of their chief competitive advantages in relation to Europe; and they point-
edly underscored the large share of ecological damage for which the industrial nations
were responsible. Subsidies to agriculture in Europe and other wealthier regions placed the
less industrial nations, dependent on either the export or import of food, at a disadvantage.
Critics of the new international trade system therefore rejected arguments for free trade as
a means of enhancing living standards for all. The violence of the popular protests at WTO
meetings in Europe and elsewhere offended many, but they aroused new sensitivities to
social issues worldwide.
Globalization, already visible in earlier periods of the world’s history, and especially
so in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, seemed to be the defi ning social and economic
theme for Europeans in the twenty-fi rst century. National boundaries, though not disappear-
ing, were increasingly transcended by cross-boundary transactions and global exchanges in
the world of communications, industry, culture, travel, food, popular entertainment, even
apparel. Some Europeans still viewed globalization as a form of “Americanization,” but
by the early twenty-fi rst century the global system was by no means simply an American
export. The giant multinational corporations, no longer exclusively European
or American but home-based in nations all over the world, depended as never
before on the movement of capital, goods, trained personnel, technology, and
ideas that fl owed across traditional national boundaries. A new global culture
that was never just “European” or “American” or “Asian” or “African” cir-
culated everywhere and drew on a vast, ongoing multicultural exchange among people and
social institutions.
121. INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL TRANSITIONS IN MODERN CULTURES
Intellectual and cultural life does not usually evolve through the dramatic public events or
confl icts that reshape politics or economic relations. Yet the transitions in modern intellec-
tual life and social mores have transformed modern history during all the years of interna-
tional confl ict and revolutionary change that we have discussed. People defi ne themselves
and their cultures in activities that go far beyond politics and economics. They constantly
develop new forms of knowledge, philosophy, religious belief, creative art, and social
life, all of which both infl uence and respond to the transformations of the modern world.
Although much of twentieth-century culture had its origins in the years 1871 to 1914, sci-
ence, philosophy, the arts, and religion crossed new frontiers or took new directions over
the course of the twentieth century and set the stage for new trends in the early twenty-fi rst
century. Even to single out a few of these developments will suggest the wide-ranging
changes of the contemporary era.
The Advance of Science and Technology
Science and technology expanded rapidly in the half-century before the First World War,
but the pace quickened in the following years. Scientifi c discovery advanced more rapidly
Critics of
globalization
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1037121. Intellectual and Social Transitions in Modern Cultures
in the years after 1919 than in all previous human history. For one thing, more scientists
were at work. At the opening of the twentieth century, about 15,000 scientists were explor-
ing scientifi c problems; in the latter half of the century, over a half-million scientists were
engaged in research around the world, more than in all previous centuries combined. Over
85 percent of all scientists who have ever lived have been at work in our own era.
The average person in Europe and other industrialized societies expe-
rienced the triumphs of science most dramatically in medicine and public
health. Nothing in previous medical discovery could equal the contributions
of sulfa drugs, antibiotics, cortisone, and other substances used to combat
formerly crippling or deadly diseases, including pneumonia and tubercu-
losis; hormones, adrenaline, and insulin were also available to promote health or relieve
suffering. Vaccines combated a number of dread diseases, including, after 1955, polio-
myelitis; by 1975 smallpox (a dreaded disease in early modern Europe) had been all but
eradicated worldwide. Remarkable accomplishments in surgery included the transplanting
of vital organs. Apart from the advances in medical science, Europeans benefi ted from
modern technology in almost every aspect of their daily lives. For entertainment, radio and
the motion picture were available and, after the Second World War, television. Washing
machines, freezers, frozen foods, and microwave ovens lightened household duties. After
1947 airplanes could fl y faster than the speed of sound; giant aircraft could traverse huge
distances in a few hours; tourist travel to distant parts of the earth became commonplace. A
world of electronics, robotics, rocketry, and space technology opened. Many people came
to believe that technological solutions could be found for every problem.
It was therefore a shattering experience when the fatal disease AIDS (Acquired
Immuno-Defi ciency Syndrome) appeared in the early 1980s and by the 1990s was assum-
ing global epidemic proportions. The fi rst case was reported in the United States in mid-
1981, but the disease seems to have originated earlier and elsewhere. Deaths from the
disease mounted, and it was estimated that as many as 2.3 million Europeans were liv-
ing with the HIV infection in 2010. The disease spread especially in Russia, Ukraine,
and some other countries of eastern Europe, but the new illness affected people in every
European society. While medical scientists worked in the early twenty-fi rst century to
devise a preventive vaccine or to prolong the lives of its victims, educational efforts to
stop its spread focused on sexual practices, intravenous drug use, and the protection of
blood supplies. Uncertainty and anguish increased as people struggled with a physiologi-
cal threat that was sometimes compared to the Black Death of the fourteenth century or the
deadly worldwide fl u pandemic of 1918.
Nuclear Physics
In pure, or theoretical, science the transformation of physics in the twentieth century could
be compared only to the scientifi c revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Early in the twentieth century scientists had discovered the natural radioactivity of certain
elements, German physicists such as Max Planck and Albert Einstein had developed quan-
tum physics and relativity theory, and Einstein had propounded his now famous formula
for the conversion of mass into energy ( e 5 mc 2 ). After 1919 a series of discoveries led to a deeper understanding of the atom. The cyclotron, developed by British scientists in 1932
at Cambridge University, made it possible to penetrate or “bombard” the nucleus of the
atom at high speed. The nucleus, scientists learned, consisted not only of protons but of
other particles like neutrons as well. In 1938 the German chemist Otto Hahn discovered
Medicine and public
health
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1038
that when he bombarded the atomic nucleus of the heavy radioactive element uranium
with neutrons, it became unstable and split into two, which meant that energy trapped
within the atom could be released. Additional scientists, including Lise Meitner, a
German-Jewish scientist who had been forced to fl ee Nazi Germany, helped to expand
upon these fi ndings. In 1939 Nils Bohr, a Danish physicist, brought word of these develop-
ments to American scientists.
The implications of this breakthrough in theoretical science were clear. If the atoms
in a large amount of uranium were split in a chain reaction, enormous amounts of energy
would be released. In the troubled atmosphere of 1939 the possibility arose of its use for
military purposes. When the war came, scientists in the United States, including Einstein,
who had fl ed the Nazis in 1934, prevailed upon the American government to explore its
military use before the Germans succeeded in doing so. In 1942 American
and British scientists and European refugee scientists such as the Italian
Enrico Fermi brought about the fi rst sustained nuclear chain reaction. This
in turn led to the secret preparation of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New
Mexico and to its use by the United States against Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
August 1945.
After the war even more staggering technical developments followed. The hydrogen
or thermonuclear bomb was built independently by the Americans and by the Soviets in
1952–1953; it involved nuclear fusion, or the joining together of hydrogen and other ele-
ments at great heat, using the atomic or fi ssion bomb as a detonator with a stupendous
chain reaction. Such thermonuclear fusion is responsible for the energy of the sun itself.
The fi rst use of nuclear energy was therefore for military purposes, but it held con-
structive peacetime potential; a tiny grain of uranium (or plutonium, another radioac-
tive element) could produce power equal to almost three tons of coal. By the 1990s over
15 percent of the world’s electricity was generated by nuclear power plants; in France, over
65 percent. At the same time the awesome explosive powers unleashed by the scientists
and the dangers of radioactivity were alarming. Accidents in nuclear power plants, includ-
ing the 1986 accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine, threatened the surrounding population
and environs with the release of radioactive gases; nor could nuclear meltdowns be ruled
out. Popular opposition to the building of nuclear power plants grew in many European
countries, as did concern over their proper design and the disposition of nuclear waste.
Concerns about nuclear power became most infl uential in Germany, where the government
announced plans, in 2011, to phase out all nuclear power plants within ten
years.
In later years of the twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-
fi rst century scientists used linear accelerators like the cyclotron and even
more powerful colliders and supercolliders as atom smashers to explore the nature of
the atom and the behavior of its subatomic particles. Theoretical physicists continued to
advance complex new concepts such as string theory and thus persisted in their search for
an overarching theory that would explain the interrelationship of gravity, electromagne-
tism, and nuclear force, all of which were to be found in the subatomic world and in the
cosmos as a whole.
Social Implications of Science and Technology
As in the case of nuclear physics, science in the contemporary age was closely allied with
technology and the organized effort to exploit new scientifi c fi ndings. Governments and
The fi rst atomic bomb
The nuclear danger
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1039
industries subsidized most scientifi c research. Laboratory equipment was expensive, and
complex investigation required large-scale collaborative efforts; the solitary scientifi c
investigator virtually disappeared. The subsidization of research for national purposes
raised fears that scientifi c discoveries might serve political goals rather than meet pressing
social or human needs.
Science had always affected the way people thought about themselves and their uni-
verse. The Copernican revolution had removed the earth from its central position in the
scheme of things; Darwinian evolution had demonstrated that Homo sapiens was biologi- cally a species that had evolved and survived. The philosophical implications of contem-
porary physics were only vaguely understood, yet they reinforced theories of relativism in
all spheres. Ironically, at the very time that the average person was awed by the capabili-
ties of science, scientists themselves recognized that they did not possess a magic key to
the nature of things. Generally they claimed no more than the ability to determine, or guess
at, relationships, which in the world of the atom (as in the cosmos itself) remained mysteri-
ous and uncertain.
Some thoughtful persons questioned scientifi c and technological
advance and asked whether modern technology had grown beyond human
control. Ecologists pointed to the wastage and despoliation of natural
resources and the threat to the environment, thus helping to shape the
political agendas of “Green” parties in various European nations. In another way the life-
preserving features of medicine and public health could contribute to overpopulation and
to perhaps unmanageable pressure upon the limited resources within Europe and around
the globe. The techniques developed to save or prolong human life also raised ethical and
legal issues, including new defi nitions of life and death, and the rights in such matters
of patients, families, hospitals, and physicians. Questions arose over test-tube fertiliza-
tion and other forms of artifi cial conception made possible in the late 1970s, and later
over stem-cell research using human embryos. Those who condemned modern technol-
ogy sometimes extolled the virtues of a prescientifi c and preindustrial age; others called
for sharper awareness of how scientifi c advances often posed new dangers or new ethical
dilemmas, even when the new science seemed to enhance human health or life expectancy.
In an age of destructive weaponry and threats to the environment, the advance of science
and technology was no longer unequivocally equated with the idea of progress.
Meanwhile, in the quest to understand nature the old divisions between the sciences
broke down and new sciences appeared. Biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, bio-
physics, astrophysics, geophysics, and other subdisciplines arose; and all made intensive
use of mathematics. In biology genetics made striking advances. While physicists discov-
ered new atomic particles, biochemists isolated the organic substance found in the genes
of all living cells, the chemical carriers of all hereditary characteristics. When scientists
deciphered the genetic “code” and synthesized the basic substance of heredity (DNA), it
became possible by splicing genes to alter the characteristics of plant and animal species
and to clone or reproduce in the laboratory an animal such as a frog or a sheep with desired
hereditary characteristics. The implications for the possibility of even human cloning at
some future date were staggering. Biotechnologists were also revolutionizing food produc-
tion by genetically engineering new varieties of crops, which provoked strong objections
from European critics who saw such modifi cations as a threat to safe food and human
health. European scientists meanwhile became deeply involved after 2000 in the interna-
tional research on the human genome—the more than 3 billion chemical units of DNA that
control the human body and also contribute to genetic-based illnesses.
Questioning scientifi c
advances
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1040
The other life sciences and social sciences also grew in importance as fi elds for
European research. Psychological exploration of human behavior, as well as the treatment of
mental and emotional disorders through psychiatry and psychoanalysis, expanded rapidly.
Freud, who had fi rst developed his theories of psychoanalysis before 1914, became more
widely known in the 1920s. His emphasis on the human sex drive and sexual repression was
later much modifi ed. Many students of human behavior argued that his contributions were
not universally or scientifi cally valid but refl ected the values of pre-1914, middle-class,
male-dominated Viennese society. A variety of schools emerged with different interpreta-
tions and techniques, and drugs were developed to treat psychological
depression and other mental illnesses. But the search, initiated by Freud, for
the unconscious sources of individual and collective human conduct remained
a hallmark of contemporary thought and culture.
Anthropologists and other social scientists increasingly stressed the relativism of all
culture. They denied notions of cultural superiority or hierarchies of cultural values, or
even that there were objective criteria of historical progress. If Western societies, they
noted, made notable progress in science and technology, other cultures accomplished more
in self-discipline, individual integrity, and human happiness. The adjective “primitive,” as
opposed to “civilized,” tended to disappear, and a cultural humanism emerged that recog-
nized and esteemed values that had evolved outside the European tradition. The French
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss exemplifi ed this tendency in a series of infl uential
books that developed the ideas of “structuralism” during the 1950s and 1960s. Arguing
that deep cultural structures and rituals in all societies serve common symbolic purposes
and help sustain social practices such as family life or respect for ancestors, Lévi-Strauss
emphasized the underlying similarities in human cultures—even when the specifi c content
of rituals varies widely in different places and times. Such theories spread from anthropol-
ogy into the humanities and challenged earlier hierarchical beliefs about Europe’s superi-
ority to non-European cultures.
Space Exploration
Among the most dramatic developments in science and technology in the second half of
the twentieth century was space exploration. In the 1950s the Soviets and
the Americans competed with each other as part of the Cold War; each
made important advances in rocket research. Both the United States and
the U.S.S.R. mastered multistage rocket launching. The Soviets opened the
space age when in 1957 they launched Sputnik, the world’s fi rst artifi cial satellite; in 1961 they sent the fi rst human, Yuri A. Gagarin, in orbital fl ight around the
earth. The Americans sent their own astronauts into space in 1961 and 1962. In the 1960s
both countries launched unmanned automated spaceships to probe and explore the moon
and then the planets of the solar system and their satellites. Early in the 1960s President
Kennedy responded to the Soviet advances in space exploration by pledging that Ameri-
cans would land on the moon before the end of the decade. In 1969 three American astro-
nauts, as planned in Project Apollo, made the quarter-million-mile journey to the moon,
and millions of viewers around the globe watched on television as Neil Armstrong took his
fi rst steps on the moon’s surface.
The Soviets also conducted impressive space probes to the moon, to Mars, and to
Halley’s Comet, whose behavior had been predicted in the seventeenth century and which
once again returned close enough for observation in 1986. The Soviets also built a
Impact of Freud
U.S.-Soviet
competition
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1041
permanent space station and set records in testing human endurance in weightless space.
As time went on, Cold War rivalries played less of a role in space exploration, but mili-
tary objectives were never completely absent. The United States and U.S.S.R., and other
countries in later decades, launched spy satellites for reconnaissance and
information gathering.
In the 1980s space enterprise showed promise of international coop-
eration and was no longer confi ned to the military superpowers. France,
Japan, China, and other countries became spacefaring nations, planning and
launching satellites and space probes of their own. The European Space Agency carried
out its own operations, launching communication satellites and also sending astronauts
to work with the Russians on orbiting space stations. After the Cold War the Americans
and the Russians began to cooperate in space, most notably in the development and joint
use of a Russian-built space station. On the other hand, the need for human expeditions
came under serious scrutiny. Dismayed by the human cost of several deadly accidents,
some critics contended that unmanned space fl ights might accomplish more, at less cost,
and at less risk to human life. Many objected to the enormous expense of space exploration
when acute social needs at home remained unfulfi lled. But its champions in Europe and
International
cooperation
European space missions provided another opportu- nity for international coop- eration in the late twentieth century. These cosmonauts were preparing for a rocket launch that would take them to an orbiting space station in 2001. Their mission was an example of transnational space programs, because the crew included a French woman and two Russian men, and they were launched on their fl ight from a site in Kazakhstan. (Mikhail Gaychyev/AFP/Getty
Images)
121. Intellectual and Social Transitions in Modern Cultures
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1042
elsewhere defended it as part of the continuing human effort to cross new frontiers, expand
horizons, and explore the unknown. The twentieth century may ultimately be remembered,
apart from the destructiveness of its terrible wars, as the century in which humans fi rst set
foot on the moon, and with robot spaceships devised and guided by human intelligence,
began to explore the universe.
Philosophy: Existentialism in the Postwar Years
In the early years after the Second World War, a new group of philosophers in Europe
developed a loosely organized body of ideas called “existentialism.” The existentialists
formed no one school of thought and held no coherent body of principles. There were reli-
gious and atheist existentialists. Yet all held some beliefs and attitudes in common. All
refl ected a troubled civilization, a world disturbed by war and oppression, a civilization of
material progress and moral uncertainty in which the individual could be crushed by the
very triumphs of science and technology, and in which human life itself seemed to have
lost higher purpose or inherent meaning.
Existentialist thought owed a debt to Pascal, Nietzsche, and others who had under-
scored the tragic element in human existence and the limitations on the power of human
reason. More directly it owed a debt to Søren Kierkegaard, the nineteenth-
century Danish religious philosopher. But it was French writers, and
especially Jean-Paul Sartre, who after the Second World War developed Jean-Paul Sartre
Existential philosophy attracted many adherents in Europe and North America during the decades after the Second World War, partly because it emphasized human freedom and affi rmed the signifi cance of individual actions in an impersonal, modern world that seemed to lack inherent meanings. The infl uential existential author Jean-Paul Sartre sits here in one of his characteristic philosophical and social places—alone at a Parisian cafe. (Dominique Berretty/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
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1043
existentialist thought in literature and philosophy in a form that for a time gave it a wide
popular following. In a hostile world, the existentialists contended, human beings had to
make choices and commitments on their own. They were “condemned to be free” and
were alone responsible for the choices and actions that defi ned their very existence; for
most existentialists, the nature of a human being’s existence was defi ned by what he or she
did rather than by some deeper spiritual essence. Authentic existentialists therefore had to
move beyond philosophical contemplation and take action in the world, even though they
were aware that human action might fail to change the world. Albert Camus, infl uenced
by the existentialists, drew upon the myth of Sisyphus, who was condemned continuously
to roll his stone uphill, though it always rolled back down again. The very humanity of
Sisyphus grew out of courage and perseverance at a hopeless and absurd task. Existential-
ism emphasized the anguish of human existence, the frailty of human reason, the fragility
of human institutions, and the need to reassert and redefi ne human freedom. Although its
popular following waned and Sartre himself was dislodged from his earlier lofty eminence,
existentialism never completely disappeared from contemporary philosophy or religion.
Philosophy: Logic and Language; Literary Criticism; History
Professional philosophy in the twentieth century seemed to contribute less to an under-
standing of contemporary problems than in the past. Always concerned with the origins
and nature of knowledge, it had also shared an interest in metaphysics and ethics. In the
early twentieth century it became highly analytical, focusing especially on the limits and
criteria of knowledge. In the formal study of logic, mathematical symbols replaced the use
of traditional language. On the eve of the First World War the English philosophers
Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead had explored logic and mathematics in their
monumental Principia Mathematica. In the 1920s an infl uential group of philosophers and mathematicians in Vienna, among them Ludwig Wittgenstein, sought to introduce the
methodology and precision of mathematics into the study of philosophy as a whole, in
what they called logical positivism. They rejected the ambiguities of language used in tra-
ditional speculation on morals and values, turning away from the nondemonstrable—that
is, “God, death, what is higher,” in Wittgenstein’s phrase. The Vienna group disintegrated
in the 1930s and Wittgenstein himself moved to England, but logical positivism remained
infl uential. Most professional philosophers continued to emphasize scientifi c rigor and lin-
guistic analysis. A smaller but growing number, responsive to contemporary ethical con-
cerns, devoted themselves to questions about moral choices and human responses to social
dilemmas.
New studies in philosophy, linguistic analysis, and semiotics (that is, the study of
signs and symbols in communication) drew attention to the complex relation between lan-
guage and reality. Philosophers also challenged many of the dualisms taken
for granted in traditional European thought. In literary studies “decon-
struction” or “poststructuralist” theory emerged after the 1960s to offer
new methods of analysis and criticism. Its proponents sought to analyze,
or “deconstruct,” a body of writing or “text” (which could be a painting or other kind of
cultural object as well as a traditional narrative) to examine its implicit cultural assump-
tions and its indebtedness to its cultural traditions. No single valid meaning was to be
attached to any individual work. According to its advocates, deconstruction made it pos-
sible to reveal the philosophical, class, racial, ethnocentric, or sexual assumptions hidden
in the language of a work. It also contested older hierarchical standards of literary quality,
Deconstruction
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1044
blurred distinctions between elite and popular culture, made less of a dichotomy between
fact and fi ction (and other dualisms), and broadened the existing canon of writings studied
in literature, history, law, religion, and other disciplines.
The work of the critic was said to be as much a creative enterprise as literary or artistic
creation itself. Propounded originally in the late 1960s in broad philosophical terms by the
French philosopher Jacques Derrida, and developed further by other writers and scholars of
various disciplines and nationalities, deconstruction also attracted a wide following in the
United States. Its opponents viewed it as abandoning traditional literary history and reject-
ing rational, critical standards that had shaped modern thought since the Enlightenment.
The writing of history also underwent a profound change. A group
of French historical scholars (called the Annales school, from a journal with which they were associated) gained wide infl uence after the Second
World War. They focused on long-term elements in historical change such
as population, economy, climate, and natural resources; relegated politics
to a lesser role; and avoided the traditional narrative of “events.” They studied also the
lives of ordinary people in the past and tried to reconstruct the collective outlook of social
classes. The newer social history in France, England, Italy, and Germany also paid special
attention to the inarticulate and illiterate and to all those with strong oral traditions, such
as the enslaved people whom Europeans had transported to the Americas, the English
working classes, the common people in Renaissance cities, or the bourgeois families in
German principalities. The goal of such historical work was to reconstruct the cultures
and everyday lives of people who left few written sources. There was also an important
expansion in the historical study of women from antiquity to the present, leading to cul-
tural and social reassessments of entire historical eras and a new interest in how ideas
or assumptions about gender shaped political systems and workplaces as well as the rela-
tionships within European families. A variety of social themes received new historical
attention as historians redefi ned their more traditional studies of politics and society: mar-
riage, divorce, the family, childhood, sexuality, even insanity and death through the ages.
The French historian and social theorist Michel Foucault, for example, helped to stimulate
new historical studies of psychology, education, and hospitals by stressing that the knowl-
edge of “experts” always became linked to the exercise of social power. For their part,
many traditional historians who had not been wholly insensitive to these concerns widened
their own narratives to include such social and cultural themes.
The Creative Arts
The revolution against older traditions in the creative arts assumed new dimensions. Ever
since the Renaissance, visual artists had followed certain norms of representation and
space perspective. But much of twentieth-century art prided itself on being nonobjective;
it rejected the idea of imitating or reconstructing nature, or mirroring it with realism or
photographic fi delity. The artistic revolution inaugurated in France before 1914 acceler-
ated in the interwar years and after 1945. It seemed to mirror the political turbulence of the
times and the disillusionment with rationalism and optimism. It refl ected the infl uence of
Freudian and other schools of psychology and the emphasis on the unconscious and irra-
tional, as well as the relativity of the new physics and its uncertainties about the nature of
matter, space, and time.
Artists in the contemporary era continued the pre-1914 experimentation in color,
form, and use of materials, but went well beyond, seeing the world around them in new
ways. The innovative work of earlier artists such as Picasso—whose cubist paintings
New interests among
historians
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1045
had systematically distorted and deformed material objects or human
fi gures—was followed by increasingly abstract artistic experiments dur-
ing the later twentieth century, as may be seen by comparing Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (see p. 633) with Matta’s Fabulous Race-Track of Death at the top of this page. Some artists expressed themselves through geometric form; others left reality behind and tried to represent their own unconscious fears or desires.
The results were fascinating but frequently baffl ing, as in the painting Family Life by the French artist Jean Dubuffet (see p. 1046). After the Second World War many European
artists worked in the United States, but new experimental painting and sculpture continued
to develop in Europe’s major cities and in creative artistic communities that were scattered
across the continent.
Seeing the world in
new ways
FABULOUS RACE-TRACK OF DEATH (INSTRUMENT VERY DANGEROUS TO THE EYE) by Matta (Chilean, lived in France, United States, Italy, 1911–2002)
This work is an example of the modern trend toward abstract art, though it also shows the infl u- ence of European surrealism. Painted in 1939 or 1940 by a Chilean artist who worked in Paris during the 1930s, moved to the United States to escape the Second World War, and later lived mostly in Italy, this picture suggests the sense of dread and dislocation that creative artists often expressed during and after the era of total war. The objects and fi gures in this painting cannot be identifi ed, but the artist uses forms, colors, and shapes to convey the chaos and disorder of a world that is racing toward destruction. Matta’s artistic abstractions as well as his migratory life on three continents represent recurring tendencies in both the work and personal experi- ences of many twentieth-century artists. (Scala/Art Resource, NY. Reproduced by permission of The Henry Moore Foundation)
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1046
Contemporary art resulted in original and striking expressions of form and color, but
the conscious subjectivism widened still further the gap between artist and public. The art-
ist, painter, and sculptor (and the poet, musician, playwright, and novelist, who were also
rejecting the older conventions) were conveying their own visions of the world, not an
objective reality that could easily be understood by others. Perhaps the greatest innovation
was that the public, baffl ed as it was by much of contemporary art, came to accept the
avant-garde as normal, even if on occasion it rebelled against it. Democratic societies
accepted the need for artistic experimentation and innovation, which had been frowned
upon or banned as degenerate and socially dangerous in totalitarian societies like Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union. Representational art, of course, never completely disap-
peared anywhere, and many artists reaffi rmed it, contributing to a growing pluralism in
contemporary artistic styles.
FAMILY LIFE by Jean Dubuffet (French, 1901–1985)
Dubuffet’s diverse images and patterns conveyed sensibilities, emotions or personal preoccupa- tions that viewers found both baffl ing and fascinating. He experimented with a wide range of col- ors and mysterious shapes in paintings such as this typical work of the early 1960s, which shows how modern European art had moved far beyond its Renaissance and neoclassical origins. (DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY)
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1047
The focus on subjectivism and the unconscious was refl ected in litera-
ture too. The reconstruction of lost time and the unfolding of the individu-
al’s innermost experience through a stream of consciousness and fl ood of
memories, which had appeared fi rst in the work of Marcel Proust and James
Joyce shortly after the First World War, remained important for a new gen-
eration of novelists and playwrights after 1945. Not only writers but also cinematogra-
phers experimented with probing the unconscious in evocative but mystifying ways. All of
this cultural experimentation contrasted with the popular entertainment provided through
the mass media, especially movies and daily diets of television “soap operas” and
“sit-coms.”
Sometime in the early 1970s the phenomenon of postmodernism
emerged in architecture, literature, and other art forms. In all areas the
postmodernists borrowed from the past and mixed the old and new, and
the popular and elite, to suit their tastes. Unlike modernists from the late nineteenth
century on, the postmodernists did not reject the commercialization and materialism of
contemporary culture but embraced it and incorporated it in new ways, often with humor.
The American architect Robert Venturi and his collaborators wrote a book called Learn- ing from Las Vegas (1972). American cities, in fact, represented a kind of postmodern landscape for many European theorists, such as the French writer Jean Baudrillard, for
whom the millions of speeding cars on Los Angeles freeways or the fl ickering advertise-
ments on American televisions expressed the anomie of fragmented, postmodern societies.
Postmodernism
Subjectivism and
the unconscious in
literature
Nonrepresentational art became as common in sculpture as it was in twentieth-century painting. This work by the infl uential English sculptor Henry Moore, Sculptural Object (1960), shows how the modern representa- tion of classical artistic themes radically altered Western sculp- tural traditions that went back to the Renaissance and even to antiquity. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1048
Composers introduced street noises (and silences) into their music. Repetition, as in the
commercial world of packaging, marketing, and television advertising, was adopted as
an artistic technique. The American artist Andy Warhol attracted attention in Europe by
painting serial pictures of Coca-Cola bottles and of the fi lm star Marilyn Monroe—notable
icons of popular culture on both sides of the Atlantic. In fi ction the postmoderns mingled
actual events and fantasy. A play by Harold Pinter, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature
in 2005, Samuel Beckett, or Eugène Ionesco challenged traditional theatrical conventions.
Indeed, a Pinter play such as The Homecoming or a Beckett play such as Waiting for Godot could be as baffl ing as the other postmodernist arts; and the dialogues and staging of contemporary plays created a postmodern theatrical culture that disoriented audiences
long accustomed to the classic works of Shakespeare, Molière, Ibsen, or Shaw. The
postmoderns rejected traditional ideas of structure, seeing no need in literature or art for
a beginning, a middle, and an end. Postmodernism was both a phase of the modernist
rebellion against traditionalism and a fragmented sequel to it with new messages. Where
modernism typically sought to convey an artist’s unique personal vision, postmodernists
insisted that writers inevitably expressed the language and values of their culture rather
than a distinctive individual consciousness. Because the writer’s life and personal experi-
ence were now deemed less important for the study of literature, it even became possible
to speak metaphorically of the “death of the author.”
Religion in the Modern World
Religion was in fl ux in modern Europe. With the continuing inroads of secularism, the
challenges of science, and the post-1945 advances of communism in eastern Europe, orga-
nized religion encountered many obstacles. Attendance and membership in Christian
churches declined almost everywhere in Europe, but the churches in eastern Europe
survived Marxist regimes and often retained their vitality as an alternative to the dominant
state institutions. Statistics on religious affi liation are never exact, but some fi gures on the
religions with the largest number of adherents in the opening years of the twenty-fi rst cen-
tury were clear. Islam, with well over 1 billion adherents worldwide, was the fastest-
growing faith in many European countries, but Christianity remained the largest religion
throughout Europe (and in the world as a whole). The historic divisions within Christianity—
Roman Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox—still followed the broad geographical pat-
terns that had emerged after the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Older confl icts
between Christian groups, however, gradually gave way to more collaboration and coop-
eration, perhaps because the growing secularism in European societies encouraged Chris-
tians to emphasize their shared beliefs more than their theological differences.
The ecumenical movement in Christianity, that is, the organized effort
to unite the many branches of Protestantism, and eventually all Christian-
ity, which began in the nineteenth century, made headway throughout the
half-century after the Second World War. A World Council of Churches
was founded in 1948. In historic breakthroughs toward the end of the cen-
tury Lutheran churches announced a reconciliation and alliance with the Episcopalian
churches, and Lutherans and Calvinists resolved theological differences over Luther’s
defi nition of salvation, “justifi cation by faith.” When in the 1960s the Roman Catholic
Church abandoned its insistence on a privileged position within Christianity, it too encour-
aged ecumenicism. All Christian churches also moved toward a closer dialogue with non-
Christian world faiths as well.
The ecumenical
movement
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1049
As in the late nineteenth century, tensions between modernism (in its
religious sense) and fundamentalism continued. Many of the Protestant
churches in the twentieth century for the most part reconciled their tradi-
tional teachings with science and Biblical scholarship, minimized the supernatural and dog-
matic aspects of their faith, and sought to adapt the teachings of the gospel to the social
needs of the contemporary world. But the two world wars and other social and cultural
upheavals dealt a blow to theological modernism and to the inherent optimism of the social
gospel. In the 1920s, not only did fundamentalism revive but an intellectual reaction also
set in among Protestant theologians who emphasized revealed religion and elements of
faith. The Swiss theologian Karl Barth in his writings from 1919 to the 1960s endeavored
to lead Protestantism back to the root principles of the Reformation. There was much inter-
est in Kierkegaard who, like Luther, had resolved his own deep anguish by a personal
commitment to religious experience. During the Second World War, the German Lutheran
theologian and activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer helped to sustain the small, anti-Nazi religious
resistance, a courageous expression of Christian faith for which he was imprisoned and
executed. After 1945, as a result of the work of Barth, Paul Tillich, and others, a powerful
movement in Protestantism reasserted its dependence on revealed religion and denied that
human reason could ever properly judge divine revelation. Some church writers, unable to
explain the wrenching experience of the Second World War and the Holocaust, spoke of
“post-Auschwitz theology” and of “God’s removal from history.” Evangelical Protestant-
ism, with its literal adherence to the gospel, spellbinding preachers, and revivalist emotional
appeal fl ourished much more widely in the United States than in Europe. Most European
Protestants accepted religious scholarship and the intellectual validity of modern scientifi c
knowledge, but this cultural reconciliation with modern science may have reduced religious
passions or commitments among the members of Europe’s main Protestant churches.
The Roman Catholic Church was passing through one of its great historic phases
beginning in the second half of the century. Although the church no longer actively sup-
pressed all forms of modernism, the Vatican in the early postwar years reaffi rmed dogmatic
training in the seminaries. In 1950 Pius XII (1939–1958), who headed the church during
the Second World War (and was criticized in some quarters for insuffi ciently opposing the
terrible Nazi atrocities against the Jews), proclaimed the Assumption, the literal, or bodily
ascent of the Virgin Mary into heaven, the only new Roman Catholic dogma to be promul-
gated in the entire twentieth century.
Pius XII was succeeded in 1959 by John XXIII. Although elected at the age of 77, and
reigning for only four years until his death in 1963, John proved to be one of the most inno-
vative popes of modern times, working to bring the church and its teachings into greater
harmony with the contemporary world. His powerful encyclicals gave a global emphasis to
the older social teachings of the church and called upon the wealthier nations to share their
resources with the less favored. The fi rst encyclical ever addressed to Catholics and non-
Catholics alike, Pacem in Terris (1963), appealed for peace and human rights. A champion of ecumenicism, he opened dialogues with other faiths. In 1962, against the advice of his
own theologians, he convened the Second Vatican Council, the fi rst such council since
1870, and as it turned out, the most important since the sixteenth-century Council of Trent.
Vatican II, as it came to be called, reshaped contemporary Catholicism.
John did not live to see the Council’s labors completed, but was the prin-
cipal inspiration for its reforms. His successor Paul VI (1963–1978) shared
John’s social concerns and encouraged ecumenicism, but was more conser-
vative in other ways. The Council completed its work in 1965. Accepting the principle of
Vatican II
Religious tensions
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1050
religious pluralism, it abandoned the older insistence on a Catholic monopoly on religious
truth. It affi rmed the principle of collegiality, which had gone into eclipse in the modern cen-
turies, the view that the pope must share his authority with the prelates of the church, thus
strengthening the authority of the national churches on substantive matters. It revised the lit-
urgy and various church practices. The Mass, henceforth, would be conducted in vernacular
tongues instead of in Latin, which had been the rule for centuries. The Council relaxed
restrictions on dress for priests and nuns. In one historic declaration, the Council explicitly
absolved the Jewish people from the charge of deicide that had fed and infl amed anti-
Semitism over the ages. John XXIII’s goal—the revitalization and updating of church teach-
ings and practices—was amply fulfi lled by the Council. There were limits to the changes, to
be sure. The Council reaffi rmed celibacy for the clergy and refused to sanction the ordination
of women as priests. Paul VI, meanwhile, upheld papal supremacy and took a fi rm conserva-
tive stance on moral issues, especially against all artifi cial means of birth control.
After Paul VI’s death in 1978 (and when a successor, John Paul I, died after only
34 days in offi ce), John Paul II, the archbishop of Cracow, became the
new head of the church, the fi rst Polish pope ever elected, and the fi rst
non-Italian pontiff in over 450 years. Robust, earthy, energetic, versatile
in languages, and with a keen sense of pageantry and papal majesty, he
John Paul II
Pope John Paul II combined a defense of the traditional values and institutions of Roman Catholic Christianity with the frequent use of modern travel and communications. He is shown here during a trip to Poland in 1979. This much-acclaimed papal visit to his native country was an early example of John Paul’s determination to speak out on public issues, promote social justice, and assert the importance of religious life in Communist countries. (Forum/UIG/Getty Images)
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1051
brought an added dynamism to the church. Not only did he encourage the Christian ecu-
menical movement, but he also reached out to non-Christians as well, traveling widely in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America. During the Cold War years he entered into diplomatic
negotiations with the Soviet Union and the Communist countries of eastern Europe to
improve the status of the church and contributed much to the revolutionary transformation
of his own country and eastern Europe in the 1980s.
In his indefatigable global travels John Paul presided over Mass for millions of Roman
Catholics, and he offered apologies for past wrongs going back to the Crusades and includ-
ing the abuses of the Inquisition, whose archives he opened to historians. He apologized
for the Inquisition’s condemnation of scientists like Galileo. In formal statements and
documents he offered specifi c apologies to the Jews for abuses they had suffered over the
centuries and especially for the ordeal of the Holocaust, and in a historic visit to Jerusalem
he prayed at the Western Wall.
Although on global, social, and economic issues John Paul held progressive views and
was sharply critical of unbridled capitalism and irresponsible materialism, in matters of
church doctrine and governance he favored orthodoxy and papal supremacy. He appointed
conservative archbishops, bishops, and cardinals, silenced dissenting theologians, and
curbed the growing assertiveness of national churches. He would not countenance marriage
for the clergy, the ordination of women as priests (an innovation accepted by the Church of
England in 1994), rights of divorce (or of remarriage for the divorced), or homosexuality.
John Paul’s stance on many issues engendered protest against the “new
Roman centralism,” the failure to modernize the church more thoroughly, and
the unwillingness to respect the spirit of shared authority promised by the
Council. His defenders argued that in upholding tradition he was restoring a
balance upset by overly rapid changes in the church introduced by Vatican II.
Although weakened by declining health in his later years, John Paul remained active in setting
church policies and in defending his theological principles until the last days of his life in
2005. The church cardinals quickly chose a 78-year-old German theologian who had been a
close aide of John Paul to serve as the next pope. Entering offi ce as a well-known spokesman
for his predecessor’s policies, the new pope, Benedict XVI, undertook to defend the ideas and
administrative system that the Vatican had promoted during the long and momentous pontifi -
cate of John Paul II. Benedict also reaffi rmed the church’s continuing opposition to the ordina-
tion of women priests and strongly opposed the developing European campaigns for same-sex
marriages. He thus sought generally to uphold Catholic traditions rather than to push the
church toward major theological or institutional reforms, but he also broke with tradition when
he became the fi rst pope to resign from the papacy since the early fi fteenth century. He was
succeeded, in 2013, by Pope Francis, who had been a cardinal in Argentina.
Judaism was haunted in the years after 1945 by the traumatic experience
of the Holocaust. At the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century there were about
14 million Jews in the world, including 5.8 million in the United States, 4.6
million in Israel, and 2.4 million in Europe. The earlier trend to secularism persisted, but more
striking was the vitality of all its branches, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. Jews every-
where, including many who were not Zionists, lent moral and fi nancial support to the state
of Israel, although many were troubled by Israeli militancy and intransigence and by the role
in Israeli domestic politics of ultraorthodox religious groups that refused to accept a secular
state. Anti-Zionism, not only in the Arab world but elsewhere as well, at times served as a thin
screen for anti-Semitism. In the former Soviet Union and in some parts of eastern Europe, Jews
had met harassment and persecution and, when permitted, emigrated in large numbers. The
collapse of communism also reignited some older currents of anti-Semitism in eastern Europe.
Objections to
Vatican centralism
Judaism
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1052
Other world religions, including I slam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, attracted new
adherents in Europe and also made efforts to adjust millennia-old doctrines to the secular
tendencies of the contemporary age. R eligious criticisms of modern secular societies, how-
ever, attracted signifi cant support within Europe’s growing immigrant communities—
especially among certain Muslim groups in the multicultural European
cities. Although Muslims became active in many commercial and social
spheres of modern European life, the rise of militant reform movements
(often called “fundamentalist” by outsiders) in the Islamic societies of
North Africa and the Middle East also infl uenced some Muslims in Europe. All such move-
ments condemned modern secularism and turned to what they took to be a literal reading
of the Qur’an for their own guidance and for the imposition of rules of
conduct on other Muslims. A few of the most radical Muslims organized
terrorist attacks within Europe, thereby trying (in their view) to express
solidarity with international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda.
Muslim terrorists set off deadly bombs on four Spanish trains in 2004, kill-
ing almost 200 commuters in Madrid. The following year, in July 2005, other terrorists
exploded bombs in the London subway and bus system, killing more than 50 people.
Such extremism evoked reactions against Muslims within various countries, though the
great majority of Muslims practiced their faith peacefully and constructively in the mosques
and Islamic community centers that were expanding across Europe. Some far-right groups
agitated against immigration from Muslim societies, and even mainstream political parties
sometimes pushed for new actions to regulate Muslim religious practices. These regula-
tory interventions in certain aspects of Muslim culture usually developed as the legislative
expression of broader assumptions about the “otherness” of Muslim communities rather
than as a reaction to specifi c events, so the debates about new laws also sparked wider
debates about religious and cultural diversity in European societies. In France, for example,
legislators asserted their support for French “secularism,” in 2004, by enacting a ban on
the wearing of Islamic head scarves by Muslim girls in the French public
schools; and in 2011 it became illegal for women in France to wear a face-
covering veil or burqa in public places. Meanwhile, voters in Switzerland,
also in 2011, approved a ban on the construction of new minarets at the
mosques in Swiss cities. Critics of this ban and of the ban on head scarves
in French schools charged that such laws violated religious freedoms, but supporters of the
new laws generally believed that regulations were needed because Muslim “fundamental-
ism” was hostile to European cultural traditions or conceptions of human rights.
Fundamentalism could also be found in evangelical Christian sects and in extremist
Orthodox Jewish quarters as well as among the radical Muslim groups. Although they
rarely became violent, fundamentalist movements easily bred intolerance and separat-
ism, and they ran counter to the secularism and blending of cultures in modern European
nations. The separation of political and religious authority had become so widely accepted
throughout contemporary Europe that it often became diffi cult for secular persons and
moderate religious believers to understand the strength and appeal of the new religious
ferment in other societies around the world.
Activism: The Youth Culture and Rebellion of the 1960s
In the second half of the twentieth century young people acquired a collective cultural and
generational identity that young people seemed not to have possessed in earlier historical
Islam
Radical Muslim
groups
New laws affecting
Muslims
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1053
periods. It was now possible to speak of a youth market, a youth culture, youth move-
ments. In part the phenomenon was demographic in origin, the result of the extraordinary
number of births in the decade and a half after the Second World War—the “baby boom.”
A large cohort grew up in a rapidly changing world, and they developed a generational
identity through a new popular culture that appeared in music, fashion, fi lms, and advertis-
ing. Youth culture became a key component of modern European and global culture.
In the 1960s a youth political activism made a startling appearance,
marked by a widespread student rebellion. A generation came to university
age and attended institutions of higher learning in larger numbers than ever
before. It was a generation that grew up in an era of global change and sci-
entifi c breakthroughs, to which their elders were not dependable guides. They took for
granted the scientifi c, technological, and other accomplishments of their world and con-
centrated on its defi ciencies—the fl agrant contradictions of wealth and poverty within and
Youth activism
The growing Muslim population in European countries became more visible and well estab- lished in the early twenty-fi rst century. Muslims entered widely into the workforce, devel- oped new social institutions, and built new mosques. This large mosque opened in the western German city of Duisburg in 2008 and immediately provided a gathering place for the region’s Muslim community as well as a prominent symbol of the expanding Muslim presence in mod- ern German society. (Juergen Schwartz/Getty Images)
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1054
among nations, racial injustice, discrimination, colonialism, the impersonal quality of
mechanized society and bureaucratized institutions (including colleges and universities),
the violence that destroyed human beings in continuing wars, and always the threat of
nuclear destruction. The rebelliousness extended beyond the traditional generation gap; it
was directed at all established society and reiterated romantic or utopian themes that had
infl uenced social criticism since the beginnings of modern history.
The revolt burst forth in the late 1960s in widely separate parts of the world, extend-
ing from North America and Asia to the main cities and universities in western Europe. At
the peak of the movement, in 1967–1968, students demonstrated and rioted
on campuses and battled police all over the world; American, Canadian,
Mexican, West German, French, Italian, and Spanish universities were
heavily involved.
France was one center of the storm. Demonstrations there reached near-revolutionary
dimensions in the spring of 1968 and, as we have seen, the protests threatened to over-
throw the de Gaulle government when 10 million workers also went out on strike, partly in
sympathy with students and partly for their own grievances. But the government eventu-
ally restored order, and many of the initial grievances in the overcrowded, impersonal uni-
versities were almost forgotten in the wider, but quickly passing, French upheaval. Other
large demonstrations and student strikes disrupted universities in West Germany, Italy,
and Great Britain, often pitting the younger generation of the “New Left” against the more
culturally conservative leaders of well-established leftist political parties. The American
war in Vietnam was one of the issues that mobilized student protestors, but the demonstra-
tions also focused on specifi c local concerns—ranging from inadequate urban housing or
social services to the traditional curriculum in European universities.
The rebelling students often defi ned their collective identities through rock music,
unconventional styles of dress, and a language of their own. Some activists also made icons
out of controversial revolutionary leaders who symbolized opposition to the established
1968
A global youth culture emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, creating distinctive styles of dress and an international market for new forms of popular music. Rock musicians such as this English band, The Rolling Stones, toured the world and wrote songs that helped to shape a genera- tional identity spanning nations and cultures. The band’s lead singer Mick Jagger is seen here with guitarist Keith Richards at a concert in Los Angeles in 1973. (Neal Preston/Corbis)
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1055
Western political order: Fidel Castro and his martyred Lieutenant Che Guevara, Ho Chi
Minh, Mao Zedong, militant American black leaders like Malcolm X, the heralds of the
colonial revolution such as Frantz Fanon (the West Indian author of The Wretched of the Earth ), and others. They read the neo-Marxist German philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who warned that the very tolerance of bourgeois society was a trap to prevent true protest against
injustice; they learned from him that the industrial working class, co-opted
by the existing system, was no longer a revolutionary force. The “New
Left” also dismissed older revolutionaries in the Soviet Union as stodgy
bureaucrats and affi rmed that future revolutionary leadership should come
from Maoist China or other places in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. They
attacked materialism, affl uence, and conformity, and the power structure of contemporary
society. Many believed in militant confrontations that recalled an older anarchism and
nihilism. They called on each other to transform or destroy various social, political, and
cultural traditions, assuming that their generation could overcome the social hierarchies
and injustices in modern democratic societies.
The rebellion in its mass phase faded by the early 1970s. Only a small number
of extremists carried on a kind of urban guerrilla war through underground terrorist
organizations—the Bader–Meinhof gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy. Mostly,
the rebels of 1968 moved on to places in established society. While many people shud-
dered at the attack on traditional institutions and orderly processes, others were shaken out
of their complacency about social or racial inequities. Efforts were made to reform univer-
sity administration and to provide more adequate teaching facilities. The youth movement,
even after its political radicalism subsided, had a continuing effect on all European age
groups in loosening older standards of language, dress, and sexual mores.
The Women’s Liberation Movement
The feminist, or women’s liberation, movement was another, but more enduring, mani-
festation of twentieth-century and contemporary social ferment. From the time of the
French Revolution, as noted earlier, a few advanced thinkers in France and England had
raised the question of equal rights for women, and a women’s political movement had also
developed in the United States by the mid-nineteenth century. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and a small group of associates in 1848, inspired in part by revolutionary developments
in Europe that year, had proclaimed a declaration of independence for women, demand-
ing the right to vote, equal compensation for work, legal equality in property and other
matters, and expanded educational opportunities. In Britain, later in the century, the suf-
fragettes raised similar demands in their militant campaign for the vote. Women won the
right to vote before the First World War in a few of the smaller European countries such
as Finland and Norway; after 1918, in many more nations, including Britain, Germany,
and the United States; and eventually after 1945, in all other European countries. But other
objectives went unrealized.
The militant twentieth-century phase of the women’s movement began in the United
States in the mid-1960s, partly as a parallel to the civil rights movement of the African-
American population, but it also spread across much of Europe over the following decades.
The women’s liberation movement, inspired by such books as Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, published in France in 1949, and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, which appeared in the United States in 1963, contended that women, half or more of the
human race, had always been and continued to be oppressed by a male-dominated society
Emergence of the New
Left
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1056
and that women were systematically denied access to positions of authority, leadership,
property, and power. Although the more blatant forms of legal discrimination, in such
matters as voting and property rights for example, had been or were being removed,
twentieth-century feminists demanded an end to all barriers to equal partici-
pation in the economy and society. Betty Friedan’s infl uential book, which
was translated into multiple European languages, described the frustrations
of women who were blocked from professional careers; and it strongly
encouraged women to move beyond traditional lives devoted mainly to
work within the home and family and to utilize their education, skills, and abilities in the
outside world as well. Large numbers of women entered the job market during and after the
1970s, making their way into new workplaces or professional positions and provoking
adjustments in family responsibilities, which were not always easily arranged or accepted.
Some women, more so than in the past (when only a few reigning women sovereigns
were able to exercise political power), came to hold positions of the highest authority in their
countries in the years after 1945. Among them were prominent women leaders in former
European colonies such as Indira Gandhi in India and Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. Women
also rose to the highest government positions in numerous European countries. Margaret
Thatcher in Britain and Angela Merkel in Germany became especially infl uential, but there
was also a growing list of women presidents, prime ministers, and cabinet ministers in
France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Poland, Finland, and almost every
other nation in Europe. Women were thus entering widely into modern political life, but it
was also true, as feminists and others continued to stress, that men still dominated legislative
assemblies and governments in general in most European countries in the early twenty-fi rst
century.
Meanwhile the development of advanced contraceptive technology, especially of the
birth control pill in the early 1960s, and the legalization and greater access to safer
Inspirations and
demands
The French writer Simone de Beauvoir, shown here in 1947, wrote about the social position of women in her widely read book The Second Sex (1949). Beauvoir analyzed the con- straints and myths that affected women in what she described as patriarchal societies and called for the independence or liberation of women in contem- porary social and political life. Her work became an infl uen- tial statement of themes and ideas that helped shape a new international women’s move- ment in the 1960s and 1970s. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
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1057
abortion procedures in most of E urope, provided a new biological freedom and autonomy
for women. Changing social mores tolerated more sexual freedom and fostered more
equality between women and men within marriages and other relationships. The cam-
paigns for women’s rights also led in many places to new calls for recognition of same-sex
relationships. Both women and men began to live more openly in same-sex
partnerships, and several European countries—including the Netherlands,
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, France, England, and Denmark—gave full legal
status to same-sex marriages in the fi rst decades of the twenty-fi rst century.
Other countries recognized “civil unions” and new legal or economic rights for same-sex
partners, thereby providing new security and social stability for women and men who did
not live within traditional marriages. Although the advocates and opponents of same-sex
marriages continued their debates in European courts, legislatures, and newspapers, there
was clearly movement toward more legal rights for gay women and men in European
political and cultural life.
In the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century women were fi lling a larger share of
places in higher education and in professional schools than ever before. As more women
New marriage laws
Ideas about marriage and family life changed rapidly in contemporary Europe, leading almost everywhere to more autonomy for women, more acceptance of same sex partnerships, and (in some countries) new marriage laws. These Spaniards celebrated in 2005 as the Spanish Parliament passed legislation giving same sex couples the equal legal right to marry and adopt children. (Pedro Armestre/AFP/Getty Images)
121. Intellectual and Social Transitions in Modern Cultures
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1058
became part of the labor force at all levels, a new wave of feminist activism demanded
not only equal compensation for equal work, still far from realized, but also better pay for
jobs that were poorly compensated because they had been traditionally fi lled by women.
Although there were disagreements within and outside the women’s liberation movement
on the methods and tempo of change, wide agreement existed on the need to utilize fully
all human resources in the economy and in all the institutions of public and private life. If
that could be accomplished, the changing social position of women would count among
the most signifi cant changes in contemporary European history.
122. EUROPE AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICTS IN THE EARLY TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
The end of the Cold War and the demise of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 transformed the founda-
tions on which international relations had rested since 1945. The end of the American and
European campaign to contain communism raised new questions about how the United
States would use its post–Cold War power with consideration for its allies and other
nations. International stability in Europe and other regions of the world would depend in
part on how the United States conceived of its responsibilities in world affairs and how it
shaped its relationships with its European allies, Russia, China, and other rising national
powers. A new confi guration of world affairs began to emerge, but peace and security
remained the world’s most pressing problems in this era of global economic exchanges.
Two new challenges appeared: the eruption of confl icts more frequently within nations
than between nations and the danger of terrorism, which spread into almost every region
of the world.
The twentieth century, heralded in its opening years for its promise of peace and prog-
ress, had seen more than 200 million people perish as victims of wars and brutal regimes.
It became clear that the end of the Cold War had not brought peace to the world, but the
older patterns of warfare between nation-states seemed to be breaking down by the early
twenty-fi rst century. The new wars tended to be confl icts between religious or ethnic
groups within a national territory or between guerrilla forces and high-tech national armies
that sought to suppress them. These new wars could last for years, in part because they
were no longer waged by opposing national governments that were able to negotiate a
truce or a peace settlement. European governments, like all others, struggled to redefi ne
their new role in such international confl icts.
Some close analysts of international affairs maintained that the new world order might
best be understood in the context of rivalries and confl icts between religion-based civiliza-
tions, not between nation-states. There was already some evidence of this. The Russian
offensive against Chechnya had anti-Islamic overtones, as did the Serb and Croat attacks
on Muslims in Bosnia and the Serb war against the Albanian Muslims in
Kosovo. In turn, Orthodox Christian Church leaders in Russia and Greece
condemned the Western air offensive against Serbia. The confl icts between
Israel and its Arab neighbors in the Middle East had distinctive religious
overtones. The wars launched by the United States and its European allies
against the Muslim countries of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early twenty-fi rst century also
took on religious meaning because some saw these confl icts as a battle between different
religious and cultural traditions and values.
But nonreligious factors remained preponderant in international affairs, and even in
religion-based civilizations there was marked diversity. The world’s religions were far
Religious divisions
could shape confl icts
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1059122. Europe and International Confl icts in the Early Twenty-First Century
from homogeneous, and all had been touched to some degree by secularism and globaliza-
tion. There were enduring confl icts between branches of the major religions—Catholics
and Protestants in Northern Ireland, for example, and Shiites and Sunnis in many Muslim
countries of the Middle East. The two great wars of the twentieth century had originated in
confl icts between nations in Christian Europe itself.
It was nevertheless important to call attention to the global diversity of
traditions, cultures, and religions if only to shed any illusions among people
in Europe and North America that they were destined to spread their ideas
and values across the world unchallenged. Western civilization, with its
Judeo-Christian heritage, had always been enriched by interaction with other civilizations.
By the twenty-fi rst century its global infl uence was undeniable, but people in the Western
countries also had to recognize the existence of deep-seated cultural allegiances in every
part of the world and to understand the enduring importance of cultural differences in dip-
lomatic affairs, economic exchanges, and political confl icts.
The United Nations
The much-used term “international community” was indispensable but defi ed precise defi -
nition. The closest approximation to it was the United Nations (UN). Here the Security
Council was the dominant institution. The original roster of fi ve permanent members of
the Council, the victors in the Second World War, had been modifi ed only in 1971 when
the People’s Republic of China replaced Nationalist China and in 1991 when Russia suc-
ceeded to the seat of the dissolved U.S.S.R. The political and economic changes in the
world spurred proposals for giving other large powers permanent seats, so that they might
exercise international responsibilities commensurate with their economic
and military resources. Even the veto power of the fi ve permanent powers
came into question.
The UN counted over 190 member nations by the fi rst decade of the
twenty-fi rst century, and even the smallest new nations were permitted to
join. The 80 smallest members of the UN, it turned out, represented less than 10 percent
of the world’s population.
Debate went on in the UN, the EU, and elsewhere over the interpreta-
tion of human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted
by the UN in 1948, had focused on political and civil rights, emphasizing
protection from arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and torture. Pressure later
mounted to broaden the largely political defi nition to include economic rights, the neces-
sity of meeting human needs within each country, and the right to international develop-
ment assistance for those purposes.
An even more complex issue troubled the United States, the UN, and the EU—which
had become a strong advocate for the modern legal defense of human rights. People in
other nations and cultures around the world at times contended that the political and civil
rights generally described as universal were really a specifi c aspect of Western political
or cultural traditions and should thus be modifi ed to fi t the culture, history, and religions
of other societies. Equality for women or the rights of children, in this interpretation,
could have different meanings in countries whose cultural traditions differed from those
of Europe. But many across the globe maintained that human rights, no matter how dif-
fi cult to defi ne, of European origin or not, represented a common core of values that should
protect every individual human being against enslavement, violation, or discrimination.
Recognizing global
diversity
UN membership
expands
Defi ning human
rights
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1060
CHRONOLOGY OF NOTABLE EVENTS, 1949–2011
1949 Simone de Beauvoir’s publication of The Second Sex helps to launch a new interna- tional campaign for women’s rights
1968 Youth movements in many nations press for political and social change
1969 American astronauts land on the surface of the moon
1978 John Paul II becomes Pope—the fi rst Pole ever elected to the papacy
1991 Treaty of Maastricht establishes the new European Union (EU)
1994 World Trade Organization (WTO) is established to mediate international trade
1997 Labour Party wins elections in Great Britain; Tony Blair becomes prime minister
1998 Political agreement in Northern Ireland offers plan to end violence between Protes-
tants and Catholics
1998 Social Democrats win elections in Germany; Gerhard Schröder becomes chancellor
2001 Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington; United States and its
allies overthrow Taliban regime in Kabul; NATO forces are authorized to enter
Afghanistan
2002 The euro becomes the common currency of 12 European nations
2003 American and British forces invade Iraq and overthrow the regime of Saddam
Hussein, but begin prolonged war against “insurgents”
2004 EU membership grows to 25 nations
2005 Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Party becomes the fi rst woman chancellor
of Germany
2007 Gaullist Conservatives win elections in France; Nicholas Sarkozy becomes president
2010 Conservative Party wins plurality in Great Britain; David Cameron becomes prime
minister
2011 British and American troops withdraw from Iraq
Respect for cultural pluralism or local traditions should not cover or excuse any form of
human indignity. European values, in short, were now seen as part of a universal cam-
paign, even in societies far outside Europe.
Although the UN was often criticized for its inability to prevent wars or act decisively
on global social problems, its broad goals remained as formulated in 1945: to control and
reduce the scourge of war, advance human rights, promote equality, protect the indepen-
dence of nations, encourage social progress, raise living standards, and work for peace and
security. But the world’s nations, large and small, were not ready to subordinate their
national interests or sovereignty to any international organization. Without armed power
of its own, the United Nations could not prevent powerful sovereign nations from going to
war or stop such wars or civil wars after they began.
The United States, as the sole superpower after 1991, exercised
the leading role in international affairs, though often in concert with its
European allies and other major powers. At times, however, it took initia-
tives that made it diffi cult to distinguish between American unilateralism
U.S. leadership in
international affairs
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1061
and international action. The Security Council in 1990 condemned Iraq’s invasion and
occupation of Kuwait, but it was the United States that assembled a formidable multi-
national military force that could take decisive action. This well-equipped international
army, which included over a half-million American troops along with deployments of
more than 70,000 troops from Britain and France (and smaller contingents from numer-
ous other countries), launched a massive assault in early 1991 that forced the Iraqi with-
drawal from Kuwait.
Although it was never easy to mobilize broad international coalitions, Europeans
joined with the United States in a number of global military interventions. As we have
noted earlier, the massive American-led air offensive by NATO against the
former Yugoslavia in 1999 set a precedent for multinational “humanitar-
ian intervention” within a sovereign state, although no ground troops were
used. The UN did not join the war, but played a major role in postwar
peacekeeping in Kosovo. International war crimes trials were held in The
Hague for political and military leaders charged with war crimes and
crimes against humanity in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia. An international mili-
tary force that included participants from several European countries also intervened to
protect the people of East Timor after they voted in a UN-sponsored referendum for
independence from Indonesia and then faced virtual butchery by Indonesian paramilitary
forces. It nevertheless remained a formidable challenge for Europeans and other mem-
bers of the UN to decide on the legitimate use of international force against sovereign
nations to protect threatened or abused populations.
Multinational
humanitarian
intervention
WHEEL MAN By Ernest Trova (American, 1927–2009)
Trova created a dehumanized, life-size bronze fi gure of no par- ticular sex, age, race, culture, or environment. Compressed between the two wheels, it seems to present humanity as the victim of its own compli- cated inventions. The wheels may also symbolize the rolling vicissitudes of human fortune in every part of the world and era of history. The date 1965 is inscribed on the base, and the whole faceless assemblage sug- gests that the wheels of human progress and civilization have not exactly carried human beings to the happy condition that an earlier, more optimis- tic age had expected in both Europe and the Americas. (Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, NY)
122. Europe and International Confl icts in the Early Twenty-First Century
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1062
NATO, Russia, and the New International Cooperation
The new American president, elected in late 2000, George W. Bush, son of the former
President Bush, reassessed the concept of humanitarian intervention, but soon initiated
other military actions when he decided that American interests were at risk. Meanwhile
the Europeans took steps to strengthen the independent military and defense role for
the EU. The French, following the precedent of de Gaulle in the Cold War years, called
for recognition of a “multipolar world,” in which the EU would be a more equal part-
ner, and they objected, if only in rhetoric, to the hegemony of the “American
hyperpower.”
The role of R ussia in the new world order was critical but not yet pre-
cisely defi ned. That it was still a major power and not ready to abandon
aspirations to an important role in world affairs was evident in its pro-Serb
stance in the Balkans. How to deal with an assertive Russia still armed with
thousands of nuclear weapons was a major challenge. NATO, meanwhile, at American ini-
tiative, admitted Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic as full members in 1999; and
seven other countries of formerly Soviet-controlled central and eastern Europe joined in
2004. The Central and East European nations not only wished to be full partners in Europe
but also saw their membership in NATO as the best guarantee of their future security.
The admission of several states on the very borders of Russia, however, was regarded by
many Russians as a provocation. On the other hand, Russia’s president became a member
of what was now the Group of 8, the heads of government of the major industrial democ-
racies; and there were regular consultations with NATO through a council established in
2002 to facilitate cooperation on various international issues.
Nuclear disarmament loomed as another key issue in the post–Cold War interna-
tional order. The collapse of the U.S.S.R. promised to end the “balance of terror” that had
resulted from the nuclear buildup of the two superpowers. Despite some initial obstacles,
the United States and Russia agreed on the voluntary reduction of nuclear arms. The num-
ber of nuclear warheads in the world, of which the largest number were held by the United
States and the U.S.S.R., was reduced in the 15 years between the mid-1980s and 2000.
Nonetheless the head of the UN’s nuclear monitoring agency reported at the close of 2005
that there were still 27,000 nuclear warheads in various parts of the world, which, he said,
could mean “the destruction of entire nations in a matter of minutes.”
The threat of nuclear proliferation persisted, keeping the issue high on the interna-
tional agenda. By the end of the twentieth century 187 nations had signed the 1968 Non-
Proliferation Treaty. At one of the periodic meetings held to review the status of the treaty,
in May 2000, the fi ve major nuclear powers—the United States, Russia, Britain, France,
and China—in the fi rst such declaration ever made pledged themselves “unequivocally”
to the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons. There was satisfaction and reassur-
ance also that since August 1945 no nuclear bomb had been exploded in warfare. That
additional nations such as North Korea and Iran might be developing nuclear arms nev-
ertheless gave cause for continuing concern. A major setback to the progress of nuclear
arms control was the refusal of the United States Senate in late 1999 to ratify the Com-
prehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty because the United States insisted that the nation’s
security and the security of other states required periodic testing of the American nuclear
arsenal. Almost all other countries ratifi ed this treaty, which would have prohibited all
nuclear weapons testing. Negotiations for nuclear arms reductions continued in the early
twenty-fi rst century, however, and a later American president, Barack Obama, eventually
Russia’s role
undefi ned
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1063
signed a new START treaty with Russian president Medvedev. The new treaty, which
was narrowly approved by the United States Senate in 2010, carried provisions for verifi -
able and signifi cantly reduced new limits on the numbers of Russian and American mis-
siles and nuclear warheads, thus marking another milestone in the long transition away
from the earlier Cold War nuclear arms race. President Obama, who was reelected to a
second term in 2012, made the reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons a key for-
eign policy objective of his administration. Speaking in Prague during a European tour in
2009, Obama had declared his aspiration to reduce and even eliminate nuclear weapons in
all parts of the world. “We must stand together,” Obama emphasized to his large audience
in a Czech public square, “to live free from fear in the twenty-fi rst century”—a distant,
perhaps elusive, goal that, he said, could ultimately be achieved through “the peace and
security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
Terrorism and Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq after September 11, 2001
We have seen how the United States and the western European countries became steadily
more involved in the Middle East during the latter part of the twentieth century—in the
Persian Gulf War that drove Iraq out of Kuwait in 1991 and in other episodes; but involve-
ments of Americans and Europeans entered a new phase of extended mili-
tary confl ict in the new century, when on September 11, 2001, radical
Islamic terrorists carried out a surprise attack against the United States.
Dispatched to America by the extremist Islamic organization known as
al-Qaeda, committed terrorists from the Middle East set out on a carefully prepared suicide
mission. Fifteen of the 19 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. They had spent considerable
time in the United States, where several had even undergone fl ight training. The terrorists
hijacked four large American commercial airliners, each loaded with passengers, and
September 11, 2001
The United States remained deeply involved in European affairs after the Cold War. European- American trade, travel, and cultural exchanges were infl uential on both sides of the Atlantic, and the NATO military alliance continued to shape national defense policies. This picture shows President Barack Obama during one of the many post-1945 American presiden- tial visits to Europe. Obama was speaking in 2009 to a large crowd in Prague, where he called for the interna- tional reduction of nuclear arms and also proposed a long-term, future campaign for the global elimination of such weapons of mass destruction. (Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images)
122. Europe and International Confl icts in the Early Twenty-First Century
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1064
crashed two of the planes into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York; the third
plane crashed into the Pentagon in northern Virginia; the fourth crashed to the ground in
rural Pennsylvania without reaching its intended target.
There had never been a terrorist attack of this kind or on this scale in the whole deadly
history of terrorism throughout the world. Almost 3,000 people died in the attacks, which
stunned Europeans almost as deeply as the Americans. An article in the
French newspaper Le Monde, for example, proclaimed on September 12, “Today we are all Americans,” expressing a solidarity that most Europeans
reaffi rmed in the following months. Many saw the terrorist attack in
September 2001 as a turning point in modern American history, in part
because it destroyed the assumption that wide oceans protected the United States from the
kinds of direct assaults that had long threatened the nations and peoples of Europe.
President George W. Bush received authorization from the American Congress to use
all necessary resources to mount a counterattack against the terrorist al-Qaeda organization
and its supporters. The al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, had lived for many years outside
his native Saudi Arabia. He found welcome support from the radical Islamic Taliban regime
in Afghanistan, yet he controlled no government or armies or industrial infrastructure that
might be attacked in conventional military operations. The al-Qaeda organization had
emerged in the aftermath of the 1991 American-European Gulf War against Iraq, when bin
Laden had vehemently condemned the permanent stationing of American forces near
Islamic holy sites in Saudi Arabia and when he had also begun to organize terrorist
operations.
European support for
United States
Terrorists linked to the extremist Islamic organiza- tion al-Qaeda crashed hijacked commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in northern Virginia on Sep- tember 11, 2001. This picture shows the World Trade Tow- ers just after the crash of a sec- ond aircraft. The United States responded to these devastating attacks by launching a global “war on terror” that would also bring European nations into long, American-led mili- tary campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Sean Adair/Reuters/Corbis)
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1065
The United States immediately received strong support from its
European allies in NATO, whose members had always pledged to defend
other member nations if they were attacked from abroad. American forces
therefore launched an air assault on Afghanistan with NATO assistance,
and by working also with Afghan forces opposed to the Taliban, the United States quickly
brought about the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Kabul. A large number of al-Qaeda
militants were captured or killed, but bin Laden escaped and remained at large until he was
eventually killed, in 2011, by American special forces in Pakistan. A new Afghan govern-
ment was established in Kabul, and a large NATO force moved into Afghanistan to conduct
peacekeeping operations, support the development of Afghan police forces, and fi ght Tali-
ban guerillas, who soon launched an insurgent campaign against the foreign troops as well
as the new government.
The Afghan war would continue for more than a decade, and even then it was diffi cult
to see a clear resolution emerging. The NATO deployment in Afghanistan, which was
offi cially called the International Security A ssistance Force (ISAF), was authorized by the
UN in late 2001 and composed of troops from almost every NATO country. The largest
contingent came from the United States, but over the following years there were always
signifi cant forces from Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, and other European
nations as well as Canada and Australia. All participating forces suffered signifi cant casu-
alties, and there were thousands of Afghan deaths during every phase of the war. Although
much of the public in both Europe and the United States gradually turned against the war,
the NATO forces constantly introduced new strategies to stabilize the political and mili-
tary situation.
Many in Europe complained that NATO, which had been created to
defend against Soviet threats in post-1945 Europe, was now being used
inappropriately to maintain a far-distant peacekeeping force and to wage a
counterinsurgency war against Muslim fi ghters in Afghanistan. Even after
a decade, however, there were still thousands of European troops stationed in Afghani-
stan and working closely with the Americans—whose 70,000 soldiers formed roughly
70 percent of the total ISAF/NATO deployment. The NATO countries and the United
States all announced plans to withdraw from the Afghan campaign by the end of 2014,
but nobody could predict the fi nal outcome of the longest confl ict in the history of NATO.
It was nevertheless clear that the European-American alliance had entered a new and
very different military phase after the long Cold War.
Meanwhile, the NATO alliance faced other challenges as the American and British
governments launched a campaign to remove “weapons of mass destruction” from Iraq
and to overthrow the regime of the brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. President Bush
and British prime minister Tony Blair successfully pushed for UN resolutions demanding
that teams of UN-appointed inspectors be allowed to enter Iraq to search for weapons.
When the inspectors could not fi nd chemical stockpiles or other weapons of mass destruc-
tion, the American and British governments insisted that the Iraqis were concealing evi-
dence and that the UN should sanction military action to enforce compliance
with UN resolutions. Britain was the only permanent member of the Secu-
rity Council to support the United States. France, Germany, and Russia all
refused to support the resolution that would have authorized an invasion of
Iraq, but President Bush and Prime Minister Blair resolved to go to war
without a UN resolution and (in contrast to Afghanistan) without the endorsement of the
NATO alliance. The governments and populations in France and Germany, where support
European troop
deployments
U.S.-British view
of Iraq
NATO role in
Afghanistan
122. Europe and International Confl icts in the Early Twenty-First Century
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1066
and sympathy for the United States had been strong and widespread after the terrorist
attacks in 2001, became outspoken in their opposition to the American-British campaign
in Iraq—which they saw as unconnected to the war on terrorism and as a destabilizing
intervention in a sovereign nation that had not attacked members of NATO. Some
European countries, notably Spain and Italy, contributed small contingents to the “allied”
forces, but strong public opposition led them to withdraw their troops well before the main
American and British armies had completed their military campaigns.
The American-British invasion began in March 2003 and rapidly destroyed Saddam
Hussein’s regime in Baghdad. Hussein himself was captured by American troops and exe-
cuted by a later Iraqi government. It appeared that the military intervention had achieved
a complete success, but no weapons of mass destruction were ever discovered, thus call-
ing into question the main rationale for the invasion. Meanwhile, a violent
insurgency erupted as Iraq’s multiple religious and ethnic groups sought
to protect their diverse, often confl icting interests by opposing the military
occupation of their country. American and British forces found themselves
mired in a protracted war as they struggled to establish a new government,
restore the production of oil and electricity, and also contain the escalating confl ict between
Sunni and Shiite groups that struggled for ascendancy within the fragmented Iraqi society.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis died in the violence, and casualties steadily mounted in the
American and British armies.
As the number of deaths rose on all sides, support for the war declined in the United
States, in Britain, and in most of Europe, where public opinion had never really favored the
American-British invasion. The war provoked even more international criticism when it
was revealed that American soldiers had humiliated and tortured Iraqi prisoners. Such
revelations further undermined support for the war, especially in Britain—where, as we
have seen, approval of Tony Blair plummeted in public opinion polls. Indeed, Blair him-
self resigned from offi ce in 2007, having sacrifi ced much of his former popularity to his
close alliance with President Bush and to the Iraqi war. President Bush continued the quest
for a stable solution to the political problems in Iraq, but the American army gradually
withdrew its main forces to military bases that were built up around the country.
The extreme internecine violence, suicide bombings, and roadside attacks on
American-British forces slowly subsided. A somewhat more stable Iraqi government con-
solidated its political control after parliamentary elections enabled Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki to organize a new administration. Sunni groups
and the autonomous northern Kurds remained alienated from al-Mailiki’s
Shiite-led government, however, and sectarian confl icts continued to divide
the population. Meanwhile, new leaders took control of American and
British policies after elections brought Barack Obama and David Cameron to power in
2009 and 2010. Both the Americans and the British set timetables for the withdrawal of
their military forces, and by the end of 2011 they had moved their armies out of Iraq.
The Iraq War by no means ended the involvement of the United States and European
countries in the Middle East, but there was a growing reluctance to commit ground forces
in later confl icts. When rebels rose up against Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi in
2011, for example, countries such as Britain and France joined the United States in an air
campaign against Qaddafi ’s forces; but the NATO countries would not
send ground troops to support the insurrection that ultimately overthrew
the Qaddafi regime. Similarly, a violent uprising by opponents of the
Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad attracted sympathy, weapons,
Iraq War
U.S.-British
withdrawal from Iraq
Intervention in Libya
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1067123. Social and Environmental Challenges in the Twenty-First Century
and political support from the European and American governments, but the NATO alli-
ance refused to intervene with more direct military assistance for the Syrian rebels. Most
Europeans also favored opposition groups in other Arab countries, where political move-
ments during the “Arab spring” overturned authoritarian governments in 2011 and con-
tinued to push for democratic reforms in the following years; yet even the most
sympathetic European governments did not send military support as the new movements
challenged “old regime” authorities and institutions.
European governments were thus engaged in numerous international confl icts during
the early twenty-fi rst century, though European populations were generally more skepti-
cal of warfare than in any previous era of their modern history. New wars were fought
outside Europe by relatively small professional armies, but these confl icts never resembled
the “total wars” that European powers had once fought between them-
selves. Although Europe’s role in future international confl icts could not
be known, it seemed likely that most Europeans would support only cer-
tain kinds of “humanitarian interventions” or specifi c campaigns for human
rights. The legacy of imperialism and the memory of the costly world wars,
however, had shaped a broad-based European resistance to most contemporary wars and
military interventions, including the American-British invasion of Iraq and the lingering
NATO involvement in Afghanistan.
123. SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
The Population Explosion
Of all the social developments in the late twentieth century one of the most spectacular
was the growth of the world’s population. From about 1950, as a result of medical discov-
eries, improved health and sanitation measures, declining infant mortality, and more effi -
cient food production and distribution, death rates declined dramatically while birth rates
rose. In India, for example, the death rate in 2000 was half the 1950 fi gure and its popula-
tion rose from 350 million in 1950 to over to 1 billion at the beginning of the twenty-fi rst
century. Globally, the number of human beings grew so rapidly that demographers spoke
of a population explosion. In 1950, when the contemporary takeoff began, world popula-
tion totaled 2.5 billion; at the end of the century it exceeded 6 billion. Never before had
human beings lived through a doubling of the world’s population in their own lifetime;
nor had they ever faced the kinds of environmental changes that accompanied this huge
population increase.
It took the world millions of years for its human population to reach the quarter-billion
mark some 2,000 years ago. Not until about 1650 did the population double
to a half-billion. It then doubled in less than two centuries to reach its fi rst
billion about 1830. By about 1930, in only one century, it again doubled to
reach 2 billion. By 1960, in a little over 30 years, it grew to 3 billion; 14
years later, in 1974, to 4 billion; 13 years later, by 1988, to 5 billion; in
1999 after only 11 years, it passed the 6 billion mark; and by 2012 demographers reported
that the world’s population had reached 7 billion. The time required to add a billion people
to the world’s population, and for the population to double in size, had grown shorter than
ever before in history. The annual growth rate for much of this time, close to 2 percent,
meant the addition of well over 80 million people annually.
European views of
war
Growth in the late
twentieth century
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1068
Although predictions were never certain, demographers began to fi nd indications of a
slowdown in the rate of growth. Sometime between 1965 and 1970 the global annual
growth rate seems to have peaked at about 2 percent, and then the rate began to decline,
unevenly and irregularly, to about 1.5 percent. Nonetheless, because of the huge popula-
tion base demographers still pushed well into the future the time and estimated fi gure at
which stabilization might be achieved. Even with a reduced growth rate, the world popula-
tion fi gure was projected for 2050 at a range between 8 to 12.5 billion; some believed that
it could peak at just over 11 billion. A debate continued over the “carrying capacity” of the
earth, the maximum number of humans that the earth’s resources could sustain.
The population growth rate after about 1965 was showing signs of decline because
of declining birth rates, a pattern manifesting itself not only in the industrial world but in
the developing world as well. The population increase in the second half of the twentieth
century took place largely in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where three-
fourths of the world’s population lived and where birth rates were highest.
By contrast, in North America and especially in Europe birth rates were
already lower. Industrialization, urban life, education, and social pressures
for smaller families had begun to reduce birth rates ever since the late nineteenth century.
In the industrially developed countries of western Europe growth rates were now below
Changing birth rates
The deployment of NATO forces in Afghanistan marked a new era in the long-established European-American military alliance. The Afghan War was the fi rst confl ict in which NATO troops were sent to wage war in a country far outside Europe, but this mission was orga- nized and sustained as the central Asian component of a broad European-American campaign against terrorist groups. These German soldiers were part of a NATO detachment that was guarding sites such as this Afghan gasoline station in 2009, eight years after the war had begun. (Michael Kappeler/AFP/Getty Images)
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1069
the population replacement rate of 2.1 children. Italy and Spain had the lowest rates with
an average of 1.2 children per woman of child-bearing age, and Italy was expected to
decline in population over the next 25 years unless considerable immigration took place.
In the United States the population was still growing, in good part because of immigra-
tion and immigrant families. Europe and North America in general, however, were expe-
riencing a shrinking share of world population as the number of people in Asia, Africa,
and Latin America continued to grow. Several of the world’s major religions still forbade
artifi cial birth control measures, numerous societies restricted educational and vocational
opportunities for women, and traditional patterns of life in many parts of the world, espe-
cially the poorest, encouraged large families for the sustenance and support of the elderly.
The impact of the global population explosion in the second half of the twentieth century
would therefore be felt in Europe and the whole world far into the future.
The Environment
In addition to the environmental challenges that emerged from the sheer growth of the
world’s population, other dangers grew with the worldwide expansion of industry, auto-
mobile and truck transportation, coal-burning power plants, and deforestation. From 1950
This photograph of British soldiers on patrol in a southern Iraqi city in 2004 suggests the chal- lenges that European and American troops faced as they tried to discern the social, political, and religious complexities of an unfamiliar Middle Eastern society during the second Iraq War. As military outsiders in this cultural context, heavily armed British troops often pro- voked suspicion or resistance, even when they sought to promote humanitarian goals. (Marco di Lauro/Getty Images)
123. Social and Environmental Challenges in the Twenty-First Century
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1070
THE GLOBAL POPULATION EXPLOSION The world’s population has more than tripled in size since 1930, but the growth has been most rapid over the last fi ve decades, especially in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Before the twen- tieth century, world population had never before doubled in any half-century, so the recent increase can truly be called an “explosion.” The world’s population passed the 6 billion mark in 1999 and reached 7 billion in 2012. Although wealthy societies have lower growth rates than most poor nations, the wealthy societies consume the largest portion of the world’s resources. Future population growth is expected to occur mainly in the less industrialized regions of the globe, but demands on the earth’s limited resources will continue to grow in both the wealthy and poor nations. The question is whether the growth of population and the growing demand for resources can be slowed in ways that will protect the earth’s increasingly overstrained environment. (United Nations Demographic Yearbook)
M il li o
n s
o f
in h
a b
it a n
ts
1930 1950 1980 2000
2,013
1,073
155 109 176
135
355
2,486
1,355
217
162
180
168
392
5,280
3,100
646
445
288
278
496
6,366
3,688
805
517
290
306
729
Asia (except former U.S.S.R.)
Africa
Latin America
Former U.S.S.R.
Australasia United States and Canada
Europe (except former U.S.S.R.)
0
1,000
500
1,500
2,000
2,500
3,000
3,500
4,000
4,500
5,000
6,000
5,500
6,500
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1071
to 2000 world industrial production grew more than fi vefold, burning vast amounts of oil,
coal, wood, and natural gas and steadily increasing the atmospheric carbon dioxide, meth-
ane, and other “greenhouse gases” that trap heat in the atmosphere. Although the full
implications remained a subject of political debate and controversy, almost all scientists
and environmentalists were certain that the increasing modern emission of
these gases was causing temperatures to rise. The decade of the 1990s was
the warmest in 600 years, and the global warming trend continued in the
new century. The effects of greenhouse gas emissions over the course of
the twenty-fi rst century were projected (on the basis of current trends) to bring about
increases of at least 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit in the earth’s mean surface temperatures.
Some projections suggested that temperature increases could possibly go as high as 10 or
11 degrees Fahrenheit—a change that would produce highly dangerous ecological effects.
Although nobody could predict the precise consequences of global warming, the
changing climate was expected to alter agricultural production, water supplies, and coast-
lines. There was already clear evidence that polar ice caps were melting, glaciers were
receding, sea levels were rising, and weather patterns were becoming more turbulent.
European societies would face major economic challenges as these changes continued to
develop. Wheat-producing areas in France, for example, would have lower yields as the
French climate became warmer and drier; and some of the soils that support the vineyards
for Europe’s diverse wines would no longer be hospitable for the delicate
grapes that have been cultivated for centuries in Spain or Italy or France.
The European Environmental Agency, a component of the EU, collected
extensive information on the continent’s climate and developed recommen-
dations to cope with the various environmental threats. Greenhouse gases
and rising temperatures could well pose a much greater long-term threat to the European
economy than the sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone. Recognizing these dangers, Euro-
pean governments tried to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, expand public trans-
portation, protect forests, and sustain the productivity of traditional farmlands.
Europeans also made new efforts to reduce the pollution of their air and water. Indus-
trial pollution caused the acid rain that laid waste to many forests, lakes, and rivers in the
industrial nations. Severe environmental damage in the former Soviet Union, the former
Communist nations in eastern Europe, and the People’s Republic of China confi rmed that
pollution was not confi ned to any single economic system; central planners had pressed
development with little regard for the ecological consequences. Many other nations in both
the wealthier and poorer regions of the world long paid little attention to their environ-
ment. Under the pressure of expanding population and rapid urbanization, they permitted
the slashing and burning of forests for ranching, timber exports, urban expansion, and
resettlement.
From the 1970s on a newly sensitized international community began to speak of sus-
tainable growth rates, growth that could be maintained without the destruc-
tion of humanity’s natural habitat. Alternative forms of energy, some as old
as the sun and the wind, others new, like nuclear energy (with proper safe-
guards, to be sure) were proposed. Emissions from industrial factories and
from vehicles came under stricter controls. A number of industrial nations,
including all the countries of Europe, agreed to stop production of chlorofl uorocarbons,
which were widely used in air-conditioning and in aerosol propellants and which damaged
the earth’s ozone by releasing dangerous amounts of chlorine into the upper atmosphere.
Other UN-sponsored meetings and treaties followed. In 1992, at the fi rst “Earth Summit”
Climate change
Economic effects of
climate change
Sustainable economic
growth
123. Social and Environmental Challenges in the Twenty-First Century
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Chapter 26 Europe and the Changing Modern World1072
meeting in Rio de Janeiro, representatives of 178 countries pledged to protect plant and
animal species and to take steps in a “climate treaty” to halt global warming. In 1997 rep-
resentatives from 150 countries met at Kyoto, where they agreed to reduce the emission of
so-called greenhouse gases by 50 percent.
As awareness of ecological dangers grew, grass-roots environmental organizations
multiplied, and in several countries emerged as “Green” political parties. Despite the
numerous pledges and measures to counter the threat of environmental deterioration, there
was opposition to strict environmental regulations in some poor countries and in industri-
alized countries, including China, India, Australia, and the United States (which withdrew
from the Kyoto agreement in 2001).
Population growth and the threat to the environment added to Europe’s concerns at
the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century and the new millennium. Many of the most press-
ing concerns, however, were not new: the social implications of contemporary science and
technology, the sovereignty of nations, peace among nations, and the quest within nations
for freedom, dignity, and economic well-being. All were aspects of one overriding prob-
lem. How could human beings in each generation, regardless of sex, color, creed, religion,
nationality, or ethnic background—beings said by some to be made in the image of God,
by others to have a natural right to life, liberty and happiness, by still others to have the
freedom to create meaning in a meaningless universe—live out their lives in peace, fulfi ll
their destiny, and pass on their heritage to future generations?
The constant changes and upheavals in contemporary human history might be com-
pared to cataclysms in the natural world. A cataclysm is not a time of downfall only.
Mountains crumble, but others are thrust up. Lands vanish, but others rise from the sea. So
it is with the political and social cataclysm of our times. Old landmarks are worn down.
Empires pass away; new nations arise in their place. Subjugated peoples regain indepen-
dence; rigid ideologies collapse. The ascendancy of Europe and the European nations
closes; they learn to negotiate with others, not to rule them. There is a
greater fl uidity in social relationships. Women and minorities struggle for
equal places in society. But social justice and peace remain elusive goals.
The gap between rich and poor among nations, and within nations, is not
easily overcome. Old and new diseases, natural catastrophes, and armed confl icts exact
their toll. Resurgent nationalism feeds on intolerance and hatred. Never has war been so
potentially destructive; the menace of a nuclear war that would blight much of civilization
wanes but does not disappear. Uncontrolled economic development threatens the envi-
ronment, and population growth presses on natural resources. International cooperation
and intervention are needed to protect human rights, end or prevent wars, and sustain the
earth’s billions.
But there is a growing global recognition of all these concerns. To close this long
history on a note of placidity would indeed be inappropriate, but it would also be wrong
to close on a note of doom. The history of Europe and the modern world shows the aston-
ishing range of human imagination and ingenuity, and there are good historical reasons
to believe that people will continue to confront future problems and challenges with the
determination, creativity, and new ideas that lead to social progress.
Change across time
For suggested further readings and useful Web sites, interactive exercises, glossary, chronologies,
and more, go to the Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e.
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A1
APPENDIX, INDEX, SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING www.mhhe.com/palmerhistory11e
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A2
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
Habsburg Line
Maximilian I, 1493–1519
Charles V, 1519–1556
Ferdinand I, 1556–1564
Maximilian II, 1564–1576
Rudolph II, 1576–1612
Matthias, 1612–1619
Ferdinand II, 1619–1637
Ferdinand III, 1637–1657
Leopold I, 1658–1705
Joseph I, 1705–1711
Charles VI, 1711–1740
Charles VI was succeeded by a daughter, Maria
Theresa, who as a woman could not be elected
Holy Roman Emperor. French infl uence in 1742
secured the election of
Bavarian Line
Charles VII, 1742–1745
On Charles VII’s death the Habsburg control of
the emperorship was resumed.
Lorraine Line
Francis I, 1745–1765 (husband of Maria
Theresa)
Habsburg-Lorraine Line
Joseph II, 1765–1790 (son of Francis I and
Maria Theresa)
Leopold II, 1790–1792
Francis II, 1792–1806
The Holy Roman Empire became extinct in
1806.
AUSTRIAN DOMINIONS
The rulers of Austria from 1438 to 1740, and at
least titular kings of Hungary from 1526 to 1740,
were the same as the Holy Roman Emperors.
After 1740:
Habsburg Line (through female heir)
Maria Theresa, 1740–1780
Joseph II, 1780–1790
Leopold II, 1790–1792
Francis II, 1792–1835
In 1804 Francis II took the title of Emperor,
as Francis I of the Austrian Empire. Austria
was declared an “empire” because Napoleon
proclaimed France an empire in that year, and
because the demise of the Holy Roman Empire
could be foreseen.
Ferdinand I, 1835–1848
Francis Joseph, 1848–1916
Charles I, 1916–1918
The Austrian Empire became extinct in 1918.
BRITISH ISLES
Tudor Line
Kings of England and Ireland
Henry VII, 1485–1509
Henry VIII, 1509–1547
Edward VI, 1547–1553
Mary I, 1553–1558
Elizabeth I, 1558–1603
A p p e n d i x
RULERS AND REGIMES In Principal European Countries since 1500
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Appendix Rulers and Regimes A3
In 1603 James VI of Scotland, a great-great-
grandson of Henry VII, succeeded to the English
throne.
Stuart Line
Kings of England and Ireland, and of Scotland
James I, 1603–1625
Charles I, 1625–1649
Republican Interregnum
The Commonwealth, 1649–1653
The Protectorate
Oliver Cromwell, 1653–1658, Lord Protector
Richard Cromwell, 1658–1660
Restored Stuart Line
Charles II, 1660–1685
James II, 1685–1688
In 1688 James II was forced out of the coun-
try, but Parliament kept the crown in a female
branch of the Stuart family, calling in Mary, the
daughter of James II, and her husband William
III of the Netherlands. Mary died in 1694.
William III and Mary II, 1689–1702/1694
Anne, 1702–1714
In 1707, through the Union of England and
Scotland, the royal title became King (or Queen)
of Great Britain and Ireland. The Stuart family
having no direct Protestant heirs, the throne
passed in 1714 to the German George I, Elector
of Hanover, a great-grandson of James I.
Hanoverian Line
Kings of Great Britain and Ireland
George I, 1714–1727
George II, 1727–1760
George III, 1760–1820
George IV, 1820–1830
William IV, 1830–1837
William IV having no heirs, the British throne
passed in 1837 to Victoria, a granddaughter of
George III. Though the British family has con-
tinued in direct descent from George I, it has
dropped the Hanoverian designation and is now
known as the House of Windsor. From 1877 to
1947 the British rulers bore the additional title of
Emperor (or Empress) of India.
Victoria, 1837–1901
Edward VII, 1901–1910
George V, 1910–1936
Edward VIII, 1936
George VI, 1936–1952
Elizabeth II, 1952–
FRANCE
Valois Line
Louis XI, 1461–1483
Charles VIII, 1483–1498
Louis XII, 1498–1515
Francis I, 1515–1547
Henry II, 1547–1559
Francis II, 1559–1560
Charles IX, 1560–1574
Henry III, 1574–1589
In 1589 the Valois line became extinct, and the
throne passed to Henry of Bourbon, a remote
descendant of French kings of the fourteenth
century.
Bourbon Line
Henry IV, 1589–1610
Louis XIII, 1610–1643
Louis XIV, 1643–1715
Louis XV, 1715–1774
Louis XVI, 1774–1792
The Republic
Convention, 1792–1795
Directory, 1795–1799
Consulate, 1799–1804
The Empire
Napoleon I, 1804–1814, Emperor of the French
and King of Italy
Restored Bourbon Line
Louis XVIII, 1814–1824
(Royalists count a Louis XVII, 1793–1795, and
date the reign of Louis XVIII from 1795.)
Charles X, 1824–1830
The Revolution of 1830 gave the throne to the
Duke of Orleans, descendant of Louis XIII.
Orleans Line
Louis-Philippe, 1830–1848
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Appendix Rulers and RegimesA4
Second Republic
1848–1852
Second Empire
Napoleon III, 1852–1870, Emperor of the French
Third Republic
1870–1940
Vichy Regime
1940–1944
Provisional Government
1944–1946
Fourth Republic
1946–1958
Fifth Republic
1958–
PRUSSIA (AND GERMANY)
A continuous Hohenzollern line ruled until 1918.
Electors of Brandenburg and Dukes of Prussia
George William, 1619–1640
Frederick William, 1640–1688, the “Great Elector”
Frederick III, 1688–1713
In 1701 Frederick III was permitted by the
Holy Roman Emperor to entitle himself King in
Prussia, as Frederick I.
Kings of Prussia
Frederick I, 1701–1713
Frederick William I, 1713–1740
Frederick II, the “Great,” 1740–1786
Frederick William II, 1786–1797
Frederick William III, 1797–1840
Frederick William IV, 1840–1861
William I, 1861–1888
In 1871 William I took the title of German
Emperor.
German Emperors
William I, 1871–1888
Frederick III, 1888
William II, 1888–1918
The German Empire became extinct in 1918. It
was succeeded by the
Weimar Republic
1919–1933
(The Weimar Republic is an unoffi cial title for
what was still called the Deutsches Reich, a
phrase not easy to translate accurately.)
The Third Reich
1933–1945
(The Third Reich is an unoffi cial title for the
Deutsches Reich under Adolf Hitler.)
Allied Military Government in 1945 was
followed by
German Federal Republic (West Germany)
1949–1990
German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
1949–1990
The two Germanys were united in 1990.
German Federal Republic
1990–
SARDINIA (AND ITALY)
In 1720 Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, took
the title of King of Sardinia, having acquired
the island of that name. The kingdom was often
called Piedmont because of the king’s older
mainland domain.
Kings of Sardinia
Victor Amadeus II, 1720–1730
Charles Emmanuel III, 1730–1773
Victor Amadeus III, 1773–1796
Charles Emmanuel IV, 1796–1802
Victor Emmanuel I, 1802–1821
Charles Felix, 1821–1831
Charles Albert, 1831–1849
Victor Emmanuel II, 1849–1878
In 1861 Victor Emmanuel II took the title of
King of Italy.
Kings of Italy
Victor Emmanuel II, 1861–1878
Humbert I, 1878–1900
Victor Emmanuel III, 1900–1946
Humbert II, 1946
In1946 the Kingdom of Italy became extinct and
was succeeded by the
Italian Republic
1946–
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Appendix Rulers and Regimes A5
SPAIN
Ferdinand and Isabella, 1479–1504/1516
Isabella died in 1504, but Ferdinand lived
until 1516, whereupon the Spanish thrones
were inherited by their grandson Charles, who
became Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire,
but was known in Spain as Charles I.
Habsburg Line
Charles I, 1516–1556
Philip II, 1556–1598
Philip III, 1598–1621
Philip IV, 1621–1665
Charles II, 1665–1700
With Charles II the Spanish Habsburg line
became extinct, and the throne passed to the
French Bourbon grandson of Louis XIV of
France and great-grandson of Philip IV of Spain.
Bourbon Line
Philip V, 1700–1746
Ferdinand VI, 1746–1759
Charles III, 1759–1788
Charles IV, 1788–1808
Bonaparte Line
Joseph, 1808–1813 (brother of Napoleon)
Restored Bourbon Line
Ferdinand VII, 1813–1833
Isabella II, 1833–1868
In 1868 Isabella abdicated; after a regency, and
a brief reign by Amadeus I (Savoy), 1871–1873,
there was a short-lived First Republic, 1873–
1874, succeeded by
Alfonso XII, 1874–1885
Alfonso XIII, 1885–1931
In 1931 a republican revolution unseated
Alfonso XIII.
Second Spanish Republic
1931–1936
Spanish Civil War
1936–1939
Regime of General Francisco Franco
1939–1975
Upon the death of Franco the Bourbon family
was restored.
Juan Carlos I, 1975–
RUSSIA (AND U.S.S.R.)
Grand Dukes of Moscow
Ivan III, the “Great,” 1462–1505
Basil III, 1505–1533
Ivan IV, the “Terrible,” 1533–1584
In 1547 Ivan IV took the title of Tsar of Russia.
Tsars of Russia
Ivan IV, the “Terrible,” 1547–1584
Theodore I, 1584–1598
Boris Godunov, 1598–1605
Time of Troubles
1604–1613
Romanov Line
Michael, 1613–1645
Alexis, 1645–1676
Theodore II, 1676–1682
Ivan V and Peter I, 1682–1689
Peter I, the “Great,” 1689–1725
Catherine I, 1725–1727
Peter II, 1727–1730
Anna, 1730–1740
Ivan VI, 1740–1741
Elizabeth, 1741–1762
Peter III, 1762
Catherine II, the “Great,” 1762–1796
Paul, 1796–1801
Alexander I, 1801–1825
Nicholas I, 1825–1855
Alexander II, 1855–1881
Alexander III, 1881–1894
Nicholas II, 1894–1917
In 1917 the tsardom became extinct.
Provisional Government
1917
Communist Revolution
1917
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
1922–1991
In 1991 the Communist regime ended and the
U.S.S.R. dissolved into its component republics
(Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, etc.), loosely asso-
ciated with each other in a Commonwealth of
Independent States.
Russian Federation
1991–
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Dates given after names of rulers and popes are the years of reigns or pontifi cates; those given for all others are the years of birth and death.
Pronunciation is indicated where it is not obvious. With foreign words the purpose is not to show their exact pronunciation in their own language but to suggest how they may be acceptably pronounced in English. Fully Anglicized pronunciations are indicated by the abbreviation Angl. Pronunciation is shown by respelling, not by symbols, except that the following symbols are used for vowel sounds not found in English: ø indicates the sound of ö as in Göttingen. To form this sound, purse the lips as if to
say o, and then say ay as in ate. U indicates the sound of the French u, or of German ü. To form this sound, purse the
lips as if to say oo, and then say ee as in eat. aN, oN, uN, iN indicate the sounds of the French nasal vowels. Once learned, these are
easily pronounced, roughly as follows: For aN, begin to pronounce the English word on, but avoid saying the consonant n and “nasalize” the ah sound instead. For oN do the same with the English own; for uN, with the English prefi x un-; for iN, with the English word an.
The sound of s as in the word treasure is indicated by zh. This sound is common in English, though never found at the beginning or end of a word. igh always indicates the so-called long i as in high. The vowel sound of hoot is indicated by oo, that of hood by ŏo.
Compared with English, the European languages are highly regular in their spelling, in that the same letters or combinations of letters are generally pronounced in the same way.
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I1
Abelard, Peter (1079–1142), 42
Abolitionists, 565
Absolutism, 137, 162; defi nition, 179; in France,
176–179, 370; of James I of England, 160–
161; and natural law, 262; in Russia, 222,
227, 556
Acadia (Nova Scotia), 190
Acid rain, 1071
Activism, social, in 1960s, 1053–1054
Act of Settlement of 1662, 166
Act of Settlement of 1701, 171, 287
Act of Supremacy, 88
Adams, John Quincy (1767–1848), 486
Adenauer, Konrad (1876–1967), 908, 910
Adriatic Sea, 195
Aehrenthal, Alois von (air-en’-tall)
(1854–1912), 695
Afghanistan, 678; Islamic fundamentalism, 947;
NATO forces in, 1068; Soviet Union invades,
981, 991; United States invades, 1065
Africa. See also African Revolution; Africans; Belgian Congo; South Africa; Sub-Saharan
Africa; West Africa: Berlin conference of
1885, 664, 665; colonial, 644, 654–655,
662–671; communism, 941; Congo Free
State, 664; contemporary (map), 938; conti-
nent of, 936; Dutch Republic, 155; economy,
eighteenth century, 278–280; exports, 592;
First World War, 708; German colonies, 668;
Italian colonies, 847, 860; Maasai peoples,
942; 1914 (map), 670; Muslims in, 936,
937, 947; nationalism, 936–937; population,
573, 936, 1068; Portuguese in, 667, 926,
946; post–WWII, 889; precolonial, sites and
peoples (map), 667; Second World War, 860,
864–866; and the Soviet Union, 946
African Americans: post–Civil War, 566; post–
Revolutionary War, 356; Second World War,
862; in slavery, 564–565
African Financial Community, 945
African Revolution, 936–947
Africans: in Europe, 112; slavery and slave trade,
104, 105, 191, 192, 264, 280, 301; Western-
ized, 666
African states, diversity in, 936–947
Afrika Korps, 860
Afrikaners, 669, 670
Age of Enlightenment, 234, 266, 309–361; and
American Revolution, 358, 360; Great Britain,
345; literacy, 312–313; Philosophes, 312–315;
religion and, 310–311, 317–318; and revolu-
tion, 368; social institutions and culture in,
322–323; social mobilty and, 333; women in,
312–314, 320
Agnosticism, 626–627
Agricultural depression, 803–806
Agricultural revolution, 452–453
Agriculture: collective, Soviet Union, 767–769;
eighteenth century, 276–277, 280, 282,
366–368; France, 366–368; mechanization of,
768, 805; and population growth, 29–32; and
technology, 7–8, 29–32
AIDS (acquired immuno-defi ciency syndrome),
1037
Aix-la-Chapelle (eks-la-sha-pell’), Congress
of, 481
Akbar, Emperor of India (1556–1605), 303
Alaska, 566, 926
Albania, 204, 781, 1005
Albany Plan of Union, 352
Albert of Brandenburg, 83
Alcohol, distillation of, 270
Alexander, King of Serbia (1888–1921), King of
Yugoslavia (1921–1934), 1012
Alexander I, Tsar of Russia (1801–1825), 230,
338, 413–418, 437–438; dies, 487; post-
Napoleon, 475, 483, 486
Alexander II, Tsar of Russia (1855–1881): assassi-
nated, 562, 737; reforms of, 557, 560–562
Alexander III, Tsar of Russia (1881–1894), 737
Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.), 13
Alexander VI, Pope (1492–1503), 55
Alexandra, Tsarina of Russia (1894–1917), 749
Alexis (son of Peter the Great), 229
Alfonso XIII, king of Spain (1886–1931), 847
Algebra, 22
Algeria, 905, 937, 938; FLN (National Liberation
Front), 939
All-African People’s Congress, 941
Allies. See First World War, allies; Second World War, allies
All-India Muslim League, 675
Almanacs, 273
Alsace, 187, 190; and Treaty of Versailles, 726
I n d e x
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IndexI2
Alva, Duke of (1508–1583), 125, 128
Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 613
American Revolution, 343, 345, 348, 352–361;
Boston Tea Party, 353; British reaction, 348;
and Enlightenment thinkers, 358; and France,
355–356, 360–361; infl uence of, in Europe,
359–361; signifi cance of, 356–361; taxation
without representation, 352–353; War of
Independence, 355–356
Americas. See also Canada; Latin America; United States: British colonies, 159–160, 190, 192,
235, 280, 284, 306–308; colonization and
exports, 592; discovery of, 102–104; and
eighteen-century economy, 280; French
colonies, 190, 306–308; Seven Years’
War, 301; Spanish Empire in, 76, 104–108,
483–486
Amin, Idi (1925–2003), 943–944
Amsterdam, 127, 132, 155
Anabaptists, 77, 82
Anarchism, in Russia, 562
Anatomy, study of, 240
Andropov, Yuri V. (1914–1984), 988
Anglican Church (Church of England), 88, 91, 97;
Age of Enlightenment, 311, 344; threatened,
by James II, 168
Anglo-German industrial competition, 692–693
Anglo-Saxons, 24
Angola (ang-go’la), 946
Annales school, 1044 Anne, Queen of England (1702–1714), 193, 287
Anschluss, 836, 846, 850. See also Austria; Nazi Germany
Anselm, Saint (1033–1109), 42
Anthony, Saint (1195–1231), 43
Anthony, Susan B. (1820–1906), 618
Anthropology, 622, 623–624, 631
Anti-Corn Law League, 494–495
Antisemitism, 53, 75, 635, 1005. See also Holo- caust; Nazi Germany; condemnation by Vati-
can, 1050; of Hitler, 827, 829; Soviet Union
(U.S.S.R), 918
Antwerp, 127, 131, 132
Apollo space capsule, 1040
Applegarth, Robert (1834–1924), 615
Aquinas, Thomas (a-kwine’-us) (1225–1274), 42,
44, 263; Summa Theologica, 44, 45 Arabic numerals, 221
Arabic world: early Middle Ages, 20–23; infl uence
of, 42
Arab-Israeli wars, 951–952, 970
Arab League (League of Arab States), 947, 952
Arab states: confl ict with Israel, 951–953;
geographical territory, 946
Arab world, modern (map), 946
Aragon, 75
Archangel, port of, 220, 224
Architecture, England, seventeenth century, 160
Arch of Triumph, Paris, 426, 429, 507, 857
Argentina, industrialization, 719
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), 12, 13, 42, 45, 237;
Politics, 12 Arithmetic, Russian, 221
Arkwright, Richard (1732–1792), 454
Armenia, 1003
Armenians, 655, 657, 708
Armies: standing, 213, 215; technological limita-
tions of, 210
Arminius, Jacobus (1560–1609), 153
Arms race, 960, 961–962, 969, 983–985; Non-
Proliferation Treaty, 1062–1063
Armstrong, Neil (1930-2012), 1040
Art: Baroque style, 152; Depression era, 808–810;
modern, 1044–1048, 1061; modernist, 809,
810; nineteenth century, 626–631; non-
representational, 1045–1046; Renaissance,
59–62, 71; 1920s, 810; seventeenth century,
151–154, 156, 174–175; Soviet Union
(U.S.S.R), 764, 771
Artifi cial conception, 1039
Artists, Dutch masters, 112
Artois, Count (later Charles X of France) (ar-
twah’) (1757–1836), 386, 476
Asia, 100, 101. See also under individual coun- tries; individual countries; anti-Imperialism, 790–802; colonization and exports, 592;
containment policy in, 895–896; economy,
eighteenth century, 278–280; economy, twen-
tieth century, 1033; imperialism in, 671–678;
independent nations of, 929–933; nationalism,
685–687, 792; population growth, 1068; west-
ernization, 792, 793
Asiento (ah-syen’-to), 191 Asquith, Herbert (1852–1928), 601
Assad, Bashar al- (1965–), 1066
Assignats (sh-see-nyah’), 381, 382 Astrology, 235
Astronomy, 151, 221, 240–241
Astrophysics, 1039
Atatürk, Mustapha Kemal (1881–1938), 795,
796, 947
Atheism, 259
Atlantic Alliance, 894–895
Atlantic Charter, 876, 877
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Index I3
Atlantic Migration, 579–583
Atlantic Ocean, opening of, 100–108
Atlantic Revolution, 343–345
Atlantic World after the Peace of Utrecht
(map), 192
Atomic bomb, 873–875, 883, 887, 1038
Attila the Hun (att-i’-la) (406?–453), 20
Attlee, Clement (1883–1967), 880, 881, 902
Augustine, Saint (aw’gus-teen or aw-gus’-t’n)
(354–430), 18; City of God, 18 Aung San Suu Kyi (1945– ), 929–931
Aurungzeb, Emperor of India (aw’-rung-zeb)
(1658–1707), 303
Australia, 568, 579, 609, 815; Second World
War, 861
Austria: Cold War, 960; EU membership, 977;
independence, 921, 960; post–WWI, 714,
781, 782; united with Nazi Germany,
846, 850
Austria-Hungary: collapse of, 714–716; dual mon-
archy, 554–555, 607; First World War, 690,
694–697, 702, 712
Austrian Empire, 206–210, 508–515; centraliza-
tion attempted, 331–332; diets, 208; domin-
ions of, 206–208, 508–509; and enlightened
despotism, 329–332; fall of, 508–515; and
the French Revolution, 388, 412; growth of
(map), 209; Italian War of 1859, 542; and
Napoleonic Europe, 412, 413, 415, 418;
nationalities in, 508–509; and partition of
Poland, 337, 338; religious oppression,
209; rise of, 200; serfs, eighteenth century,
329–330; War of Austrian Succession, 294,
295–299; and War of Spanish Succession, 188
Austrian Succession, War of, 294, 295–299; Peace
of Aix-la-Chapelle, 297
Austrian War of Liberation, 418
Austro-Prussian War, 547, 548
Autocracy, 556
Automobile: invented, 583; mass produced,
802–803
Axelrod, Paul (1850–1928), 740–741
Axis powers, Second World War. See also Nazi Germany; Second World War, Italy; Second
World War, Japan: alliance of Germany,
Italy, and Japan, 849–450; Japanese neutrality
treaty with Soviet Union, 861; threat to Medi-
terranean and Middle East, 860
Azerbaijan (a-zer-bigh-jan’), 1003
Aziz, Abdul, Sultan of Turkey (a-zeez’, ab’dool)
(1861–1876), 656
Aztecs, 103
Babeuf, “Gracchus” (1760–1797), 401
Baby boom, 901, 904
Babylonian Captivity, 52, 53
Bach, Alexander (1813–1893), 514–515
Bach, J. S. (1685–1750), 311
Bach family, 197
Bach system, 514–515
Bacon, Francis (1561–1626), 236–238, 251;
Advancement of Learning, The, 238; New Atlantis, The, 238; Novum Organum, 237
Bader-Meinhof gang, 1055
Badoglio, Pietro (bah-do’-lyo) (1871–1956), 866
Bahia, Brazil, 155
Bakunin, Michael (ba-koo’-nin) (1814–1876):
Catechism of a Revolutionist, 562; People’s Justice, 562
Balance of power, 150, 157, 158
Baldwin, Stanley (1867–1947), 814
Balfour, Arthur (1848–1930), 708
Balfour Declaration, 708
Balkans, 698. See also Albania; Bulgaria; Croa- tia; Greece; Serbia; Yugoslavia; ethnic and
religious divisions, 694; First World War,
692–695; independence, 487–488; 1600s,
204, 207; Second World War, 858–859
Baltic states, 990. See also Estonia; Latvia; Lithuania
Bangladesh, 929
Banking industry: credit system, 531; eighteenth
century, 288–289; interest payments and,
114–115; nineteenth century, 530–532, 584–
586, 588–589; seventeenth century, 155, 173
Bank of Amsterdam, 155
Bank of England, 173, 189
Baptists, 77
Barbados, 159
Barbary pirates, 130, 132, 481
Baroque style, 152
Barth, Karl (bart) (1886–1968), 634, 1049
Bastille, storming of (Angl. Bass-teel’), 373–374; commemoration, 382
Batavia (Jakarta), 155
Baudrillard, Jean (1929-2007), 1047
Bayle, Pierre (1647–1706), 174, 252; Historical and Critical Dictionary, 252; Thoughts on the Comet, 252
Bay of Pigs invasion, 963
Beauty, Greek concept of, 17
Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–1986): The Second Sex, 1055, 1056
Beccaria, Marquis di (beck-a-ree’-a)
(1738–1794), 315
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IndexI4
Beckett, Samuel (1906–1989): Waiting for Godot, 1048
Becquerel, Antoine Henri (1852–1908), 625
Beer hall Putsch, 828, 829 Behaim’s globe (be-hime’), 102, 255
Bekker, Balthasar (1634–1698), 151
Belarus, 1003, 1006
Belgian Congo, 663–664, 945–946; and the Cold
War, 945
Belgian Socialist Party, 615
Belgium, 131, 296, 389, 400; democratic advances,
608; First World War, 708; Industrial Revo-
lution, 584; post–WWII, 914; revolution of
1830, 489–491; same-sex marriage, 1057;
Second World War, 854, 855; and Treaty of
Versailles, 727
Bellini, Giovanni (bell-lee’-nee) (1430–1516), 62
Benedict, Saint (480–543), 24
Benedict XVI, pope (2005–2013), 1051
Benelux countries, 914–916
Bentham, Jeremy (1748–1832), 465
Bering Strait, 2
Berlin airlift, 890–894
Berlin Decree, 416
Berlin Wall: constructed, 963, 964; torn down,
996, 998
Berlusconi, Silvio (1936–), 1022, 1023
Bernard of Saxe-Weimar (sakse-vihmar)
(1604–1639), 142
Berners-Lee, Tim (1955–), 1034
Bernstein, Eduard (bairn’-stighn) (1850–1932),
775; Evolutionary Socialism, 617 Bessemer steel-making process, 585
Beveridge, William Henry (1879–1963), 902
Bhutto, Benazir (1953–2007), 1056
Bible, 24, 81, 82, 263; and chronology, 257; and
evolution, 622, 631–632
Biblical criticism, 257–259, 631–632
Big business, 591–593, 638–639, 1020–1021,
1033–1034
Bill of Rights, English, of 1689, 171, 265
Bin Laden, Osama (1957–2011), 1064
Biochemistry, 1039
Biophysics, 1039
Biotechnology, 1039
Birth control, 575, 618, 1056–1057, 1069
Birth rates, 575
Bismarck, Otto von (1815–1898), 523, 545–547,
604–606, 613, 690; and African colonies,
664; resigns, 606, 608; and Russo-Turkish
War, 659
Black Death, 50–51
Black Hand, 696–699
Black Hole of Calcutta, 305
Black Hundreds, 747
Blackshirts, 822–823
Blair, Tony (1953–), 974, 1024, 1025, 1065
Blanc, Louis (blaN’ or Angl. Blahnk) (1811–1882), 503, 612; Organization of Work, 467, 498; Revue de Progrès, 467
Blenheim, battle of, 188, 190
Blum, Léon (blUm) (1872–1950), 819, 820
Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–1375):
Decameron, 63 Bodin, Jean (1530–1596), 136
Boer War, 647, 669–671
Bohemia, 138, 139, 206; Revolution of 1848, 511;
War of Austrian Succession, 295–299
Bohemian Mountains, 195
Bohemian War, 140
Bohr, Niels (1885–1962), 625, 1038
Boileau, Nicolas (bwah-lo’, nee-ko-la’)
(1636–1711), 175
Boleyn, Anne (bo-lin’) (1507–1536), 88, 90
Bolívar, Símón (bo-lee’-vahr) (1783–1830),
484, 485
Bolsheviks, Bolshevism, 743–744; anti-
imperialism, 792; fear of, 732; vs. Menshe-
viks, Menshevism, 617, 710, 742; opposition
to, 754, 756; purged, from Communist Party,
773–774; return from exile, 710; seize power,
751–752; Third International, 775–778; vs.
totalitarianism, 838
Bonaparte, Joseph (1768–1844), 484
Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III). See Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon Bonaparte),
Emperor of the French
Bonaparte, Napoleon. See Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte), Emperor of the French
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1906–1945), 1049
Boniface VIII, Pope (1294–1363), 52, 55
Bon Marché department store, 595
Bonnie Prince Charlie, 288
Books, popular: Age of Enlightenment, 312–313;
eighteenth-century Europe, 273
Borgia, Cesare (bor’-ja) (1475–1507), 55
Borgia, Lucretia (1480–1519), 55
Bosnia and Herzegovina, 204, 658, 1012, 1061;
declares independence, 1014; ethnic and reli-
gious divisions, 1014–1015
Bossuet, Bishop (boss-way’) (1627–1704),
178–179
Boston Tea Party, 353
Botany, study of, 240
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Index I5
Boulanger, General (boo-laN-zhay’)
(1837–1891), 597
Boulton, Matthew (1728–1808), 454
Bourbon kings (Angl. Boor-bn), 136, 184–185. See also under individual monarchs; individual monarchs; restoration of, 439–441; rule Spain, 285; War of Austrian Succession, 297;
War of Spanish Succession, 189
Bourdichon, Jean (1457–1521), 99
Bourgeois revolution, 344–345
Bourgeosie, 118–119, 495, 496. See also Middle class; eighteenth-century Europe, 283; and the
French Revolution, 365–366, 371, 379, 381
Boxer Uprising, 684
Boyle, Robert (1627–1691), 248
Brahe, Tycho (1546–1601), 242
Brandenburg, 211–212. See also Prussia; and Thirty Years’ War, 212
Brandenburg house. See Hohenzollerns Brandt, Willy (1913–1992), 910, 977, 994
Braque, Georges (1882–1963), 629
Brazil: discovered, 104; Dutch Republic in, 155;
independence, 483; industrialization, 719
Brazza, Pierre Savorgnan de (1852–1905), 663
Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of (brest-lee-toffsk’), 710,
754, 755
Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, conference,
912–914
Brezhnev, Leonid I. (brezh’-neff) (1907–1982),
921, 966
Brezhnev Doctrine, 967
Briand, Aristide (bree-aN’) (1862–1932), 789, 790
Brienne, Loménie de (Archbishop of Toulouse), 370
Brissot, Jacques-Pierre (bree-so’) (1754–1793), 387
British colonies, 159–160, 264, 301, 441–442. See also East India Trading Companies; in Africa, 669, 939–944; in the Americas, 190, 192; in
Asia, 675–678, 926, 929, 930, 932; in India,
304, 308, 673–675, 814, 926; in Middle East,
707–708, 814, 889
British East India Company, 116, 160, 279, 351,
353, 680
British Empire, 679; and the Mediterranean, 6; and
overthrow of Napoleon, 439–440; War of
Spanish Succession, 188; as world power, 441
British Labour Party, 601, 613, 614
British North America Act, 567
British reform movement, 343–352
Bronze Age, 11
Brooke, Rupert (1887–1915), 721
Brousse, Paul (broos’) (1844–1912), 615
Brown, Gordon (1951–), 1025
Brownshirts, Nazi, 829
Bruegel, Pieter (1564–1638): Carnival on the Feast Day of Saint George, 274
Bruni, Leonardo, 58
Bubbles, South Sea and Mississippi, 288–289
Buddha, 16
Buddhism, 1052
Buffon, Georges, comte de (1707–1788), 314
Bulgaria, 609, 658–659, 781; fall of communism,
999–1000; Second World War, 858, 869, 881
Bulls, papal, 52
Bureaucracy, Austrian monarchy, 331
Burke, Edmund (1729–1797), 341, 348, 349,
379, 475; Refl ections on the Revolution in France, 386
Burma (Myanmar), 861, 928, 929–931
Burschenschaft (boor’shen-shaft), 477 Burton, Antoinette M., 654
Bush, George H. W. (1924–), 992
Bush, George W. (1946–), 1064–1066; war in
Iraq, 1025
Byelorussians, 220. See also Belarus Byron, Lord (1788–1824), 461
Byzantine Empire, 19–20, 22, 49
Cabinet Government, in Great Britain, 293
Cabot, John (1450–1499), 104
Cabot, Sebastian (?1474–?1557), 104
Cabral, Pedro (ka-brahl’) (1468–1520), 104
Cadets (Russian Constitutional Democrats), 738
Caesaropapism, 19
Calas, Jean (ka-lass’, zhaN) (1698–1762), 317
Calculus, invented, 240
Calcutta, 305
Calendars, various, 197, 221
California, 565
Callot, Jacques (1592–1635): The Hanging Tree, 141
Calonne (French director of fi nances) (ka-lunn’)
(1734–1802), 370
Calvin, John (1509–1564), 70, 85, 87, 115; Insti- tutes of the Christian Religion, 85
Calvinism, 77–78, 125. See also Huguenots; and democracy, 87–88; doctrines of, 85–86; in the
Dutch Republic, 153; and ecumenical move-
ment, 1048; in Germany, 139; in the Nether-
lands, 127, 131; opposition to, 134; spread of,
86–87, 133, 139
Cambacérès, Marquis de (kaN-ba-say-ress’)
(1753–1824), 407
Cambodia, 967
Cambridge University, 41, 90, 121, 166, 1037
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IndexI6
Cameralists/cameralism, 321, 329
Cameron, David (1966–), 1026, 1066
Camp David, 960
Campion, Thomas (1567–1620), 160
Camus, Albert (ka-mU’) (1913–1960), 937, 1043
Canada, 486, 567–568; British, 307, 567, 815;
Dominion of, 567; French, 174, 302–304,
567; Second World War, 866
Canning, George (1770–1827), 485–487
Canossa, 40
Canton system, of recruitment, 217
Cape Horn, 155
Cape of Good Hope, 155
Capet, Hugh (ka-pay’) (987–996), 30
Capital: accumulation, 586; export of,
586–588, 590
Capitalism, 460. See also Free trade; Laissez-faire economics; advent of, 113–115; and big busi-
ness, 591–593; eighteenth century, 281–282,
288–293; vs. industrialism, 450; paternalistic,
466; post–WWI, 716; United States, 884–885
Capitulations, in Turkey, 205, 655
Carbonari (kar-bo-nah’-ree), 470–471
Caribbean Islands: Dutch Republic in, 155
Carinthia, 206
Carlsbad Decrees, 478
Carnegie, Andrew (1835–1919), 593
Carniola, 206
Carnival, eighteenth-century Europe, 274
Carolina colonies, 159
Carter, Jimmy (1924–), 981
Cartier, Jacques (1491–1557), 104
Cartography, 2–3, 71
Caspian Sea, 220
Cassat, Mary (1844-1926), 628; The Boating Party, 631
Castiglione, Baldassare (1478-1529): Book of the Courtier, 66
Castile, 75
Castro, Fidel (1926– ), 962, 1055
Catalonia: Catalan war, 133, 142, 189; indepen-
dence movement, 847
Catherine II (The Great), Tsarina of Russia
(1762–1796), 230, 314; domestic program,
334–335; foreign policies, 336–338, 340; and
the French Revolution, 386
Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536), 88
Catholic Church (Roman Catholic Church). See also French Revolution; Gallican Church; Holy Roman Empire; Papacy: Age of
Enlightenment, 331; and Austrian Empire,
509, 514; Babylonian Captivity, 52; Catholic
Reformation, 93–98; celibacy, 40, 94; cor-
ruption, 55; and Democratic Revolution, 344;
and ecumenical movement, 1048; educational
institutions, 96–97, 121, 507; in fascist Italy,
825; in France, 596, 598; and the French
Revolution, 364, 381, 383–385; in German
Empire, 605; Great Schism of the West,
53–54; Index of Prohibited Books, 97; in
Italy, 542, 544, 607, 634; Middle Ages, 38,
39–41, 52–54; and Napoleon’s Empire, 422,
424; nineteenth century, 634; in Palestine,
655; in Poland and Hungary, 922; Renais-
sance, 67, 75–76; in Spain, 75–76, 124–125;
twentieth century, 1048, 1049–1051; Vatican
Council, 634; women in, 92–93, 1051
Catholics: in the Balkans, 694; civil rights for,
491; repression of, 172, 350, 602–605
Cato Street Conspiracy, 479
Caucasus Mountains, 859
Cavaignac, General Louis-Eugene (ka-vay-nyack)
(1802–1857), 505, 506
Cavour, Camillo di (ka-voor) (1810–1857),
541, 543
Ceausescu, Nikolae (sho-shess’-coo) (1918–1989),
999–1000
Cell biology, 1039
Censorship, 97, 478; Age of Enlightenment, 313,
369; post-Napoleonic Britain, 479; post-
Napoleonic Germany, 478; and totalitarian-
ism, 836–837
Central and Eastern Europe, 198–199; nationalities
(map), 1013
Cervantes, Miguel de (Angl. ser-van’-teez) (1547– 1616): Don Quixote, 124
Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 928
Cézanne, Paul (1839–1906), 629, 635
Chador, 955, 956
Chagall, Marc (1887–1985): Autour d’Elle, 809 Chamberlain, Joseph (1836–1914), 642,
650–651, 691
Chamberlain, Neville (1869–1940), 650, 814, 845,
850–851
Chancellor, Richard (d. 1556), 220
Charlemagne (768–814), 26–27
Charles I, King of England (1635–1649), 161–162;
defeated, 163; executed, 163, 165
Charles I, King of Spain (Charles V, Holy Roman
Emperor) (1516–1556), 77, 81–84, 88, 93,
111, 124
Charles II, King of England (1660–1685), 165,
167–168; alliance with Louis XIV, 166, 187;
favors Catholicism, 167
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Index I7
Charles II, King of Spain (1665–1700), 148
Charles IV, King of Spain (1788–1808), 417
Charles IX, King of France (1560–1574), 134
Charles of Lorraine, Duke, 207
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (Charles I of
Spain) (1500–1558), 77, 79, 81–84, 93,
111, 124
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor (Charles III of
Hungary (1711–1740), 210, 218
Charles X, King of France (1824–1830), 477, 488;
as Count of Artois, 386, 476
Charles XII, King of Sweden (1697–1718),
211, 225
Charter of 1838, 499
Chartism, 499–500, 505, 506
Chateaubriand, René (1768–1848), 461
Châtelet, Emilie du (sha-tuh-lay’, ay-muh-lee’ dU)
(1706–1749), 312
Chechnya, 1007, 1008–1010
Cheka, 754, 757
Chemistry, modern, 583
Chernenko, Konstantin U. (1911–1985), 988
Chernobyl disaster, 989, 1038
Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975), 801
Child labor laws, 494, 576
Children: born out of wedlock, 270; declining
numbers of, in nineteenth century, 578
China, 47–48, 101. See also Chinese Revolution; People’s Republic of China; anti-imperialism,
791, 800; Boxer uprising, 684; chronology,
257; First World War, 708; geographical ter-
ritory, 678–679; imperialism in, 680–681;
Japan invades, 847, 849–850; nationalism,
679, 685–687; Northeast, and adjoining
regions (map), 683; Opium War of 1839–
1841, 680; pre-Western, 678–680; thirteenth
century, 47–48; trade with, 108
Chinese language, transliteration of, 798
Chinese Revolution, 798, 800
Ch’ing (Qing) dynasty, 678, 679. See also Manchu dynasty
Chirac, Jacques (shee-rak’, zhak) (1932–),
975, 1027
Christian calendar, 257
Christian Democrats, 996; France, 902; Germany,
1026, 1027; Italy, 911, 1021; West Germany,
908, 910, 996
Christianity, 16–19. See also Catholic Church (Roman Catholic Church); Greek Orthodox
church; Protestant Reformation; Russian
Orthodox church; conversion, of barbarians,
26; Crusades, 45–48; ecumenical movement,
1048; emergence and spread of, 16–17; in
the Enlightenment, 310–311; and the French
Revolution, 395–396; and humanists, 70–71;
in Middle Ages, 38–48; Middle East, 654;
monasteries, 24, 27; Papacy, 24, 26
Christians, persecution of, 17
Christina, Queen of Sweden (1632–1654),
166, 211
Chronology: defi nition, 256; differing, by culture,
256–257
Churchill, John, Duke of Marlborough
(1650–1722), 188, 190
Churchill, Winston (1874–1965), 669, 856, 860,
902; “iron curtain” speech, 888, 889; meets
with Allies, 876–878, 880
Church of England, 88, 91, 97; seventeenth cen-
tury, 161, 162
Church of Ireland, 91, 602
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 890
City-states, of Italy, 56–61, 67
Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 383, 384
Civilization: indices of advancement, 570–571;
Western ideals, 570
Civil unions, 1057
Civil War, United States, 564–566; and Europe,
565–566; and nationa-building, 566; Northern
prosperity, 566; slavery and, 564–565
Classes, social, 117–124; Age of Enlightenment,
311; and British reform movement, 344;
eastern vs. western Europe, 123–124; and
education, 121; eighteenth-century Europe,
268–275; and etiquette, 272; and the French
Revolution, 365–366; Germany, 436; and
government regulation, 121–122; and health,
272; and language, 268–269; living standards,
269–270; and Napoleonic Europe, 422; nine-
teenth century, 495–496, 498; nobility, 122;
Prussia, 332–333; and religion, 271–272, 311;
Russia, 738; and social mobility, 281–283;
Soviet Union (U.S.S.R), 760–761, 771; and
totalitarianism, 838, 839
Classical Liberals, 463–464
Class solidarity vs. nationalism, 771
Class war, 504–506, 526–530, 639–640. See also Russian Revolution; Soviet Union (U.S.S.R),
766, 767
Clay, Henry (1777–1852), 472
Clemenceau, Georges (kluh-maN so’)
(1841–1929), 725–726, 729
Clement VII, Pope (1478–1574), 88
Clergy: as First Estate, 364; post-Reformation, 119
Climate, 6, 7; global warming, 1071, 1072
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IndexI8
Clinton, William J. (1946–), 1024
Clive, Robert (1725–1774), 305
Clocks, 221
Cloots, Anacharsis (kloats) (1755–1794), 387
Cloth industry, 111, 113–117; English
woolens, 160
Clovis, King of Franks (466–511), 24
Cluniac reform movement, 39–40
Coal industry, 454–455, 588
Coffee and coffeehouses, 270, 271
Coins, minting, 51, 155; study of, 256
Colbert, Jean-Baptiste (kole-bair’) (1619–1683),
183, 184
Colbert’s commercial code, 183
Cold War, 884–897, 960–970; Berlin airlift, 890–
894; containment, 888–890, 960; détente,
960, 969; ends, 988, 992; Germany, 908; iron
curtain, 888–889; Kennedy years, 961; and
national sovereignty, 884–885; nature and
legacy of, 982–983; and nuclear weapons,
884, 889, 959, 983–985; Reagan years, 981,
983–986; and science, 884; superpowers and,
959–960; and the Third World, 926, 928,
941, 945
Coligny, Gaspard de (ko-lee-nyee’)
(1519–1672), 135
Colonialism. See also Imperialism: vs. imperial- ism, 645–646
Colonial wars, 647; Africa, 667–668; France, 905
Colonies. See under individual countries; indi- vidual countries
Columbus, Christopher (1446–1506), 102–103
Combination Act of 1799, 613
Comets, 252
Cominform (Communist Information Bureau), 890
Comintern (Communist International), 775–778,
792, 819
Commercial capitalism, 115
Common Market, 915–916
Commonwealthmen, 346
Commonwealth of Independent States (formerly
U.S.S.R), 1003
Communards, 594, 596
Communism, 460. See also Bolsheviks; Cold War; Communist Party; People’s Republic of
China; Vietnam War; Africa, 941; Chinese,
778, 800–802, 883, 888; collapse, in Eastern
Europe, 992–1000; containment, 888–890,
968; Cuba, 964–965; and fascism, 777; and
First World War, 775; France, 816–817; inter-
national impact, 775, 784; and labor unions,
776, 818–819; North Korea, 889, 895–896;
and peasant mir, 739; vs. socialism, 775–777,
780; Soviet Union (U.S.S.R), 884; vs. totali-
tarianism, 838–839; war communism, 754,
761; Yugoslavia, 889, 895
Communist China. See People’s Republic of China Communist League, 523
Communist Party, 816; Czechoslovakia, 890;
France, 816, 902, 903; Indonesia, 933, 934;
Italy, 902, 911, 1022; U.S.S.R, 760–761, 772
Communist uprisings, Germany, 786
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, 1062
Computers, 1020, 1034–1035
Comte, Auguste (koNt) (1798–1857), 522
Concentration camps, Nazi, 833, 840, 871
Conciliar movement, for Church reform, 54–55
Concordat of Bologna (kon-kor’-dt of bol-lo’-nya)
(1516–), 75, 93
Condorcet, Madame de (Sophie) (1764–1822),
314, 387
Condorcet, Marquis de (koN-dor-say’) (1743–
1794), 468; Progress of the Human Mind, 391 Confederation of the Rhine, 415
Confucius (551–479 B.C.), 16
Congo, 663–664, 945–946
Congo Free State, 664
Congress of Berlin, 659
Congress of People’s Deputies, 990
Congress of Vienna, 442–444
Congress system, ends, 486–487
Conquistadores, 103 Conscription, military. See Draft, military Conservatism, 460, 475, 972–973
Conspiracy of Equals, 401
Constant, Benjamin (1767–1830), 463
Constantine, Emperor of Roman Empire (306–
337), 17, 19, 487
Constantinople, 19, 20, 49
Constitution, United States, 264; Nineteenth
Amendment, 781
Constitutionalism, 262, 344, 460; and American
Revolution, 358–359; and French Revolution,
379–381
Constitutional monarchy, 600–601, 607
Consulate, French (1799–1804), 406–410; and
religion, 408–410
Contemporary history, beginning of, 884
Continental System, 416–418, 425–431; failure of,
428–431, 437
Continuity and change, 246
Contraception, 575, 618; and overpopulation,
1069; and women’s rights, 1056–1057
Copernican revolution, 1039
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Index I9
Copernicus, Nicholas (1473–1543), 71, 242–244;
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs, 242 Copley, John Singleton (1738–1815), 354
Corneille, Pierre (kor-nay’) (1606–1684), 174
Corn Laws, 478, 492; repealed, 495, 584
Corporate liberties, 34
Corporations, 591–593; multinational, 1033–1034
Corporative state, 825
Cortés, Hernando (kor-tez’, er-nan’-do)
(1485–1547), 103
Cossacks, 220, 222
Cottage industry, 111, 113, 276–277
Cotton cloth industry, 279, 453–455; cotton lords,
457–458
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, 922
Council of Ancients, 400
Council of Blood, 128
Council of Constance, 54–55, 80
Council of Five Hundred, 400
Council of Trent, 93–95, 97
Council of Troubles, 125, 128
Counter Reformation (Catholic Reformation),
93–98, 141, 143; fi nancing, 105
Courbet, Gustave: Burial at Ornans, 524 Cowley, Malcolm: Exile’s Return
(1898–1989), 810
Craft unions, 34–35
Cranach, Lucas, the Elder (1472–1553), 81
Craxi, Bettino (1934–2000), 976
Crédit Mobilier (kray-dee’ mo-bee-lyay’), 531 Creoles, 484
Crimean War, 533–534, 537–539, 541; and Otto-
man Empire, 656; signifi cance, for consolida-
tion of nations, 537
Critical methods, literary, 64–65, 1043–1044
Croatia, 206, 1012, 1014–1015
Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658), 163–165, 346
Crosby, Alfred W. Jr., 107
Cross-cultural exchanges, 107
Crusades, 45–48, 76
Cuba, 1005. See also Castro, Fidel; Cold War, 962; missile crisis, 921, 964–965
Cultural relativism, 1039
Culture: of civilization, chronology, 256–257;
contemporary, 1036–1058; and custom,
251–252; elite vs. popular, Age of Enlight-
enment, 311; elite vs. popular, eighteenth-
century Europe, 268–275; and geography, 2;
German, 432–435; and globalization, 100,
108, 251, 257; and human rights, 1059–1061;
material, 269–270; and natural law, 261–262;
origins, of twentieth century, 1036; political,
368–369; seventeenth century, 173–176; and
written language, 269; youth, 1053–1054
Culture system, 672
Cunard, Samuel (1787–1865), 496
Curie, Marie (1867–1934), 625
Curie, Pierre (1859–1906), 625
Currency, 51; European Union (EU), 1028–1030;
fl oating, 917–918
Customs, cultural, 251–252
Cyprus, 659
Czechoslovakia (Bohemia), 138–140, 714, 729;
anti-Communist rebellion, 967–968, 997,
998–999; communist, 890, 921; democratic
reforms, 1018; EU membership, 1018; NATO
membership, 1062; post–WWI, 782, 783–784,
790; Second World War, 850, 851, 892
Da Gama, Vasco (?1469–1524), 101–102
Daladier, Edouard (1884–1970), 820, 851, 852
d’Alema, Massimo (da-lay’-ma mas-see’-mo)
(1949–), 1022
D’Alembert, Jean le Rond (dal-laN-bair’)
(1717–1783), 314
Danilevsky (da-nee-levs’-kee) (1822–1885):
Russia and Europe, 658–659 Dante (1265–1321): Divine Comedy, 63 D’Anville’s globe, 255
Darnton, Robert, 322
Darwin, Charles (1809–1882), 620–623; Decent of Man, 621; Origin of Species, 620, 621
Darwinian evolution, 1039
Dating, chronological, 257
Daumier, Honoré (1808–1879): Big Investments, 497
David, Jacques-Louis (dah-veed’) (1748–1825),
201, 378
Da Vinci, Leonardo (1452–1519), 61, 234–235
Dawes, Charles G. (1865–1961), 788
Dawes Plan, 788
Death: legal defi nitions of, 1039; rates, 571
Debts, national: England, eighteenth century, 289,
291; France, eighteenth century, 291, 381
Decembrist Revolt, 487
Declaration of Independence, 264, 355, 356, 987
Declaration of Pillnitz, 387, 412
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens,
344, 375, 987
Declaration of Verona, 401
Deconstruction, literary, 1043–1044
Deductive reasoning, 237–238
De Gasperi, Alcide (de-gah’-spe-ree)
(1881–1954), 911
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De Gaulle, Charles (1890–1970), 903, 905–907,
910, 915, 916, 939, 951, 961, 965
De Grazia, Victoria, 834
Delacroix, Eugène (1798–1863): Liberty Leading the People, 490
Democracy: advance, twentieth century,
779–784
Democracy and Calvinism, 87–88; advance,
nineteenth century, 593
Democratic Republic of Congo, 945
Democratic Revolution, 343–352; and religion,
344; and social class, 344–345; and women,
376–377
Denmark, 85; alliance with Russia, 225; Austro-
Prussian War, 547, 548; same-sex marriage,
1057; Second World War, 854
Department stores, 593, 595
Deportment, social, Renaissance, 65–67
Depression era, 802–810, 812–814; art and lit-
erature, 808–810; France, 815–817; and free
market economy, 808; Great Britain, 807,
814; international monetary exchanges, 808;
labor unions, 812–814; precipitants of, 805,
806; stock market crash, 805; unemployment,
805–806, 812, 818–819; United States, 811;
Western Europe, 821
Derrida, Jacques (der’-ee-da, zhak)
(1930–2004), 1044
Descartes, René (day-kart’) (1596–1650),
174, 236, 238–240, 251; Discourse on Method, 239
Détente, Cold War, 960, 969
Developing nations, 925–927. See also Third World; birth rates, 1068–1069
Devis, Arthur (1712–1787): The Duet, 284 Dialectical materialism, 527
Diderot, Denis (dee-de-ro’) (1713–1784),
Encyclopédie, 314, 335, 338, 368 Dien Bien Phu, battle of, 935
Diggers, 165
Digital divide, 1034
Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, 299
Directory (1795–1799), 400–405
Disease, eighteenth-century Europe, 272
Disraeli, Benjamin (1804–1881), 600, 601, 657
Dissenters, 166, 171
Divine right of kings, 160, 161, 262, 263
Divorce, legalized in France, 377
DNA, 1039
Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter, 246
Doenitz, Karl (1891–1980), 871
Dollfuss, Engelbert (1892–1934), 840, 846
Dominion status, of nations in former British
Empire, 567, 815
Donation of Constantine, 24
Don Juan, 128
Dostoevski, Fyodor (doss-to-effs’-kee)
(1821–1881), 658, 737
Doubt, principle of systematic, 238
Dover, Treaty of, 166
Draft, military, 712, 717; Second World War, 858
Drake, Sir Francis (1540–1696), 130
Drang nach Osten (drahng nach ohst’-en), 212 Dreyfus, Alfred (dray’-fuss) (1859–1935): Dreyfus
affair, 598–599, 635, 636
“Dropping the pilot,” 606, 608
Dualism, Cartesian, 238, 251
Duality, of religion and state, 17–18
Dubcek, Alexander (1921–1992), 966, 967,
997–998
Dublin University (Trinity College), 172
Dubuffet, Jean (1901–1985), 1045, 1046; Family Life, 1046
DuCange, Carolus (dU-kaNzh’) (1610–1688), 255
Duma, Russian, 747
Dupleix, Joseph-François (du-play’)
(1697–1763), 305
Dupont de Nemours, Pierre Samuel
(1739–1817), 320
Durham, Earl of (1792–1840), 567
Dutch Barrier, 190
Dutch-Belgian union, 489
Dutch East India Company, 117, 132
Dutch East Indies, 671, 672. See also Indonesia; dissolution of, 933–934
Dutch painters, 112, 151–153, 156
Dutch Republic, 127, 129, 132, 150, 151–157. See also Holland; Netherlands; after the Peace of Utrecht, 285; allied with England, 157, 168,
170; eighteenth century, 277–278; explora-
tions and settlements, 155; religion, 153, 155;
and Thirty Years’ War, 141; wars with Eng-
land, 157; wars with France, 157
Dutch West India Company, 155
Earth, planet, 1
Eastern Europe, 195–231; collapse of communism,
992–1000; communist, 921–923; feudalism,
782–784; Helsinki accords, 969; industrial-
ization, 571, 573; industrialization, barriers
to, 782–784; land reform, 784; nationalism,
473–474; post-Communist, 1017–1018; post–
WWI, 779, 781–782; resistance, to Soviet
rule, 923–924; Second World War, 877;
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social stratifi cation, 332–333; weaknesses, of
empires, 196
Eastern Front, WWII, 865–867, 869–870
East Germany. See German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
East India Company, 155
East India Trading Companies, 132, 155; England,
160; France, 183; Great Britain, 116; and
Seven Years’ War, 304
East Timor, 1061
Ecclesiastical Reservation, 84
Eckhart, Meister (1260–1327), 72
Ecology, 1039
Economic nationalism, 638, 639
Economists, 320–323; and laissez-faire econom-
ics, 381–382
Economy. See also Global economy; Planned economy: commercial revolution, 108–117;
government regulation, 121–122; informa-
tion-based, 1033, 1034; medieval, 32–36
Edict of Nantes (naNt), 137, 138, 185
Edict of Restitution, 141, 142
Education: in the arts, 174–175; and the Catholic
Church, 96–97, 507; compulsory, 576; early
Middle Ages, 27; fi rst universities, 41–42;
later sixteenth century, 121–122; public, 601;
and religious discrimination, 172; Renais-
sance, 65–67; state of, in Russia, 221; for
women, 65, 121, 151, 1056, 1057
Edward I, King of England (1272–1307), 52
Edward VI, King of England (1547–1553), 88–89
Egypt, 936; ancient, 10–11; Arab-Israeli wars,
951–952; Eisenhower and, 951; indepen-
dence, 947; and Ottoman Empire, 660, 661;
Second World War, 860, 865
Einstein, Albert (1879–1955), 611, 624–626, 1037
Eire, 815. See also Ireland Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1890–1969), 864, 867,
920, 935, 951, 960, 965
Eisenstein, Sergei (1898–1948): Potemkin, 764 Elector of Brandenburg, 212
Electricity, use of, 583
El Greco (1541–1614), 125
Elites, social, 268–275. See also Nobility; Age of Enlightenment, 311, 320, 331, 344; defi ning,
268; eighteenth-century Asia, 281
Elizabeth, Tsarina of Russia (1741–1762), 334
Elizabeth I, Queen of England (1558–1603), 90,
97, 125, 126, 128, 135, 646; aid to the
Netherlands, 128, 129; dies, 160; and
Huguenots, 138
Elliott, J. H., 107
Emancipation Proclamation, 564
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803–1882), 435
Emigration, from Europe, 579–583
Eminent property rights, 366–367, 375
Ems dispatch, 550
Enclosure acts, 452
Encomiendas, 105 Encyclopédie (Diderot and others) (aN-see-klo-
paydee’), 314, 368
Energy crisis, 970
Energy industry. See also Oil production: Nigeria, 942
Engels, Friedrich (1820–1895), 467, 523, 525,
612; on capitalism, 766; Communist Mani- festo, 467, 524, 525, 614; Condition of the Working Classes in England, 526
England. See British colonies; Great Britain; United Kingdom of Great Britain
English Bill of Rights, of 1689, 171, 265
English constitution, 265
English law of evidence, 254
English Poor Laws, 116, 119, 166
English Revolution, 169
Enlightened Despotism, 324–333; Austria,
329–332; defi nition of, 324–326; failures of,
326–329, 331–332; of Frederick the Great,
332–333; of Joseph II, 331–332; limitations
of, 338–339; of Maria Theresa, 329–332;
of Napoleon, 406; roots of, 325; Russia,
333–339
Enlightenment, Age of. See Age of Enlightenment Entertainment, eighteenth-century Europe, 272,
273–274
Entrepreneurs, 110
Environmental concerns, 1069–1072
Episcopalians, 1048. See also Anglican Church (Church of England)
Equality, principle of, 344
Erasmus of Rotterdam, Desiderius (1466–1536),
70, 72–73; On Civility in Children, 73; Hand- book of a Christian Knight, 73
Erzberger, Matthias (1875–1921), 829
Escorial (ess-kor’-i-al), 125
Estates, three, 37, 364–366
Estates General, 176, 177, 372; and the French
Revolution, 370–373
Estonia, 781, 921, 990
Ethics, 1039
Ethiopia, 665, 668; independence, 936; Second
World War, 847
Ethnic cleansing, 1014–1016
Ethnic diversity, global, 1022
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Ethnocentrism, 2–3; and imperialism, 651,
653, 791
Etiquette: eighteenth-century Europe, 272–273;
Renaissance, 65–67
Eugene of Savoy, Prince (1662–1736), 188, 207
Eugenics, 840
Eugénie, Empress (U-zhay-nee’)
(1826–1920), 531
Eurocentrism, 570, 573, 673–674; and
imperialism, 651, 653, 791
Eurocommunism, 911
Euro Cup soccer tournament, 1032
Eurodollars, 916
Europe, 31. See also Eastern Europe; Western Europe; individual countries; bodies of water, 6–7; boundaries of, 6; climate, 6, 7; demo-
cratic advances, 607–609; early Middle Ages,
23–28; 1815 (map), 446–447; 1871 (map),
558–559; emigration from, 579–583; ethnic
diversity in, 1023–1024; 1526 (map), 79;
immigration, twentieth century, 1023–1024;
Indo-Europeans, 11; infl uence of, 3, 6–10;
languages of, 473; Middle Ages, 9–48; migra-
tion from, 579–583; 1923 (map), 730–731;
1942 (map), 864; population distribution, 140;
post-Napoleonic, 475–479; post-Wars of Reli-
gion, 146; prehistoric, 11; rise of, 45–48; Sec-
ond World War (map), 868; 1740 (map), 327;
1648 (map), 144–145; social class, eighteenth
century, 268–275; topography (map), 4–5;
and United States Civil War, 565–566; war
debts, 719; wealth and knowledge, 267–268
European Central Bank, 1028, 1029
European Coal and Steel Community, 915
European Commission, Brussels, 1031, 1033
European Community (EC), 914–916, 977
European Court of Human Rights, 914
European Defense Agency, 1031
European discoveries, 101
European Economic Community, 905, 914–916
European Parliament, 1031
European population: growth, 573–575; stabiliza-
tion, 575–576
European Revolutions, 512
European Stability Mechanism (ESM),
1029–1030
European Union (EU), 977, 978–981, 1028; com-
mon currency, 1028–1030; constitution, 1031;
Court of Justice, 1031; economic policies,
1029; membership, 977, 1018; military forces,
1030–1031; unemployment, 1020–1021
Evangelical Protestants, 1049
Evidence: defi nition, 253; English law of, 254; and
historical scholarship, 253–257
Evil, and good, 17
Evolutionary theory, 620–623, 640; and religion,
631–632
Existentialism, 1042–1043
Exploding the diet, 202
Explorer I (satellite), 961 Explosives, invented, 583
Export industries, 592; Western Europe in
1960s, 916
Fabian socialism, 616, 928
Factory Act, 458
Fairfax, Thomas (1612–1671), 163
Faisal I, King of Iraq (1885–1933), 707, 729
Falkland Islands (Malvina Islands), 973
Falloux Law of 1850 (fa-loo’), 507
Family patterns, European, 575–576
Fanon, Frantz (1925–1961): The Wretched of the Earth, 939, 1055
Fascism, 780; appeal of, 827; and communism,
777; defi nition, 821; France, 818; Italy,
821–827; and totalitarianism, 833
Fascist state, 825–827
Fashoda crisis, 669
Faust (fowst), 71
February Revolution of 1848, 502–505
Federalism, and American Revolution, 358–359
Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany),
894–897, 899, 908, 909–910, 915, 960, 977;
denazifi cation, 907; Nuremberg Trials, 906,
907; reconstruction, post–WWII, 899–902
Feminism, 460. See also Women; Women’s rights; British feminists and ‘The Indian Woman,’
654–655; and liberalism, 638; nineteenth
century, 467–469, 618–620, 636–637; Soviet
Union (USSR), 764; twentieth century,
1055–1058
Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria (1835–1848),
513, 514
Ferdinand, King of Aragon and Spain
(1474–1516), 75
Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor (1556–1564),
77, 124
Ferdinand VII, King of Spain (1808–1833),
417, 483
Fermi, Enrico (1901–1954), 1038
Festung Europa (Fortress Europe) (fess’-tung oi-ro’puh), 856, 862, 866
Feudalism, 30–32; abolished, 511–512, 520, 557;
decline of, 35–36; dissolution of, 166, 422,
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436–437, 452; eastern Europe, 123, 195, 217,
329, 332; eighteenth century, 329–332, 366–
367; France, 366, 367–368; postmedieval,
133, 176, 217; Russian, 222, 226, 229, 556
Fichte, J. G. (fi k’-tuh) (1762–1814), 435;
Addresses to the German Nation, 435; Closed Commercial State, 435
The Fifteen (Scottish Uprising), 288
Fifth Monarchy Men, 165
Final Solution, 870, 871. See also Holocaust Finland, 609, 728, 781, 921; EU membership, 977;
Second World War, 853, 881
First Coalition, 412
First International (International Working Men’s
Association), 615
First World War, 200; Africa, 708; Allies, 699,
706–707; armistice, 713; Austria-Hungary,
696–699, 702, 712; Balkan crises, 692,
694–695; battle of Jutland, 705; battle of the
Marne, 701–702; battle of the Somme, 702;
battle of Verdun, 702; Belgium, 708; British
isolation, 696; casualties, 713, 844; causes of,
697, 698–699; Central Powers, 699; China,
708; and Communism, 775; consequences
of, 844–845; cultural pessimism, 710–723;
cultural responses to, 722–723; diplomacy,
706–709; effects on capitalism, 716–719;
France, 697, 713; Germany, 696, 699, 701–
702, 705, 708–710, 713, 717; Great Britain,
692, 696; Greece, 793; India, 792; inevitabil-
ity of, 689; Italy, 706, 712, 822; Japan, 708;
land battles, 700–704; map, 700; Middle East,
792; Moroccan incident, 692; national debt
and, 719; naval blockade, 705, 711; Ottoman
Empire, 692, 694–695, 706, 707–708, 792,
793; Persia, 792; planned economy and, 716,
766; propaganda, 720, 723; reparations, 787,
788, 815, 828; Russia, 692, 694–696, 698,
702, 709–710; and the Russian Revolution,
749–751, 754, 755; Schlieffen Plan, 699, 700;
selective service (draft), 712; and socialism,
775; submarine warfare, 705, 711; Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk, 710; Triple Alliance, 690–691;
Triple Entente, 692; United States, 699, 706,
710–712; Versailles, Treaty of, 724, 725;
western front, 712, 713; Zimmerman tele-
gram, 706, 711
Five Great Farms, 183, 184
Five Year Plans, Soviet Union, 765–767; social
consequences, 770–772
Flagellants, Order of (fl a-jell’-nts), 53, 54
Flanders galleys, 100
Flaubert, Gustave (1821–1880): Madame Bovary, 520
Fleury, Cardinal (fl ur-ree’) (1653–1743), 286, 290,
293, 296
FLN (National Liberation Front), Algeria, 939
Florence, Italy, 57–58, 63
Flu epidemic of 1918, 713
Fontana, Lavinia (1552–1614), 66
Ford, Gerald (1913–2006), 969
Ford Motor Company, 587
Forster Education Act, 601
Fortress Europe (Festung Europa), 856, 862, 866
The Forty-Five (Scottish Uprising), 288
Forum, 14
Forza Italia Party, 1022 Fossils, 2
Foucault, Michel (1926–1984), 1044
Fouché, Joseph, Marquis de (foo-shay’)
(1759–1820), 407, 408
Fourier, Charles (foo-ree-yay’) (1772–1837), 466
Fourteen Points, 724, 725
Fourteenth Amendment, United States
Constitution, 566
Fox, Charles James (1749–1806), 348, 402
Fox, George (1624–1691), 164
France: absolutism, 176, 178–179; after Napoleon,
440–442; after the Peace of Utrecht, 285–293;
Age of Enlightenment, 360; and the American
Revolution, 355–356, 360–361; army, under
Louis XIV, 179–180; arts and culture, 173–
176; birthrates, 575; Catholic Church in, 507;
civil wars, 135–136, 138; climate and agri-
culture, 1071; colonial wars, 905, 934–935,
939, 940; colonies of, 174, 301–302, 304,
306–308, 394–395, 934; Communist Party,
816, 902, 903; Consulate, 405–410; Crimean
War, 533–534; Depression era, 818–821;
Directory, 400–401, 405; dominates Europe,
361; Dutch War, of 1672, 187; East India
Trading Companies, 304, 305; economy, eigh-
teenth century, 277–278, 288–290; economy,
under Louis XIV, 181, 183, 184; enlightened
despotism, 326–329; as EU member, 1032;
in European Coal and Steel Community, 915;
expansion of, 149; export of capital, 586;
fascism, 818; February Revolution of 1848,
502–505; feminism in, 468; feudalism, 366,
367; Fifth Republic, 905–906; First World
War, 698, 699, 701–702, 714; Fourth Repub-
lic, 903–904; Franco-Prussian War, 550–551;
free trade with Britain, 532; the Fronde,
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176–178; Huguenots, 126, 134; Hundred
Years’ War, 52; in India, 304; Industrial Revo-
lution, 584; invades Spanish Netherlands,
186; July Monarchy, 489, 496, 502; labor
strikes, 818, 820; labor unions, 617; from last
years of Louis XIV—1789 (map), 184; under
Louis XIV, 148–150, 157–158, 173–186;
Louis XIV and, 179–181, 186–193; medieval,
30, 33, 35, 42, 52; Napoleonic, 409–410; Nazi
Germany invades, 855–856; nuclear nonpro-
liferation treaty, 1062; opposition to Spain,
139, 142; pacifi sm, post–WWI, 844–845;
Paris Commune, 594; parlements, 176, 184;
Popular Republican Movement (MRP), 903;
population, eighteenth century, 277, 364–365;
postmedieval feudalism, 133, 176; post-Napo-
leonic, 488–489; post–WWI, 787, 815–819,
903–906; Protestant Reformation, 84; public
debt, 369; Revolution of 1789, 361; Revolu-
tion of 1830, 488–489; Revolution of 1848,
502–505; Second Empire, 531–532; Second
Republic, 507–508; Second World War, 844,
854–857, 867, 901; seventeenth century,
173–176; Seven Years’ War, 301–302, 304,
306–308; socialism, 594, 599–600, 615, 617,
904, 974–975, 1028; Spain invades, 135, 142;
Third Republic, 593–599; in Thirty Years’
War, 138, 142; and Treaty of Versailles, 726;
universal male suffrage in, 521; universal
monarchy, 285; University of Paris, 42; and
War of Austrian Succession, 296–297; and
War of Spanish Succession, 189–191; Wars of
Religion, 133–138; white terror, 476; wom-
en’s rights, 609, 975, 1056; youth
movement, 1054
Franche-Comté (fraNsh-con-tay’), 148, 149,
187, 190
Francis Ferdinand, Archduke of Austrian Empire
(1889–1914), 696–699
Francis I, King of France (1515–1547), 75, 84,
93, 134
Francis II, Emperor of Austrian Empire (1792–
1835), 332, 388
Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austrian Empire
(1848–1916), 514, 554, 607
Franco, Francisco (1892–1975), 840, 848
Franco-Prussian War, 550–551; French defeat at
Sedan, 551
Franco-Russian Alliance, 691
Frankfurt Assembly, 518–520, 545
Franklin, Benjamin (1706–1790), 312
Franks, 26
Frazer, Sir James (1854–1941): The Golden Bough, 623
Frederick I, King of Prussia (1701–1713), 213
Frederick II (The Great), King of Prussia
(1740–1786), 218, 295, 314; enlightened
despotism, 332–333; military triumphs, 218,
300, 308; and Voltaire, 317, 332
Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg
(1688–1701), 213
Frederick III, German Emperor (1888), 606
Frederick V, King of Bohemia (1596–1532), 140
Frederick William (the Great Elector)
(1640–1688), 212–213
Frederick William I, King of Prussia (1713–1740),
217, 295
Frederick William III, King of Prussia
(1797–1840), 516
Frederick William IV, King of Prussia
(1840–1861), 516, 518, 519
Freeholders, 118
Free market, 321
Freemasonry (Masons), 312, 470
Free trade, 532, 584–586. See also Laissez-faire economics; and liberalism, 638–639
Free Woman (journal), 468 French-Algerian War, 939, 940
French and Indian Wars, 294
French Calvinists. See Huguenots French Congo, 945
French East India Company, 183
French General Confederation of Labor, 617
French imperialism, 680–682; in Asia, 680
French Imperial System (Napoleonic), 412–420
French North Africa, 937–939
French Republic and its satellites, 404
French Resistance to Nazi Occupation, 855,
867, 901
French Revolution of 1789–1799, 320, 332, 344,
361; and the Church, 367, 383–385, 408–410;
Committee of Public Safety, 393–394; com-
parison, with Russian, 735–736, 755; consti-
tution, 379–381; Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizens, 375; and the Enlighten-
ment, 368; Girondins, 385, 388, 390; Great
Fear of 1789, 374–375; impact on Europe,
385–389, 411–412; Jacobins, 379, 387–388,
390; and labor unions, 381–382; legacy of,
447; and the lower class, 370–371, 388, 390,
394; and the middle class, 365–366, 370–371,
379, 380–381; military triumphs, 396–397;
National Convention, 389–391; nobility and,
365–366, 370–371, 377–378, 389; political
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Index I15
and social signifi cance of, 399; political
culture, 368–369, 382–383; Reign of Terror,
391–397; and religion, 367, 383–385, 395–
396, 408–410; sans-culottes, 390; “second” revolution, 388–389; storming of the Bastille,
373–374; and taxation, 369–370; Thermi-
dorian Reaction, 397–400; violence, 389
French sub-Saharan Africa, 944–945
Freud, Sigmund (froyd) (1856–1939), 624, 625,
1040; Civilization and Its Discontents, 823; Interpretation of Dreams, 624
Friedan, Betty (1921–2006): The Feminine Mystique, 1055, 1056
Frisians, 216
Fronde (frond), 176–178
Fructidor, coup d’etat, 402
Fugger, Johann, 111
Fugger family (foo-gr), 110–111
Fulton, Robert (1765–1815), 454
Fussell, Paul, 722
Futurism, 607
Gagarin, Yuri A. (ga-ga’-reen, you-ree)
(1934–1968), 1040
Gainsborough, Thomas (1727–1788), 347
Galen (c. 130–c. 200), 13, 240
Galicia, 337, 340
Galileo (1564–1642), 233, 243, 244
Gallican Church, 78, 93; alienation from interna-
tional Catholicism, 134; under Louis XIV, 185
Gallipoli, 702
Gama, Vasco da (?1469–1524), 101–102
Gandhi, Indira (1917–1984), 1056
Gandhi, Mohandas K. (1869–1948), 795, 796,
799, 927, 928
Gapon, Georgy (Father Gapon) (1870–1906), 745
Garibaldi, Giuseppe (ga-ri-ball’-dee, joo-sep’-pee)
(1807–1882), 541–544
Gaskell, Elizabeth (1810–1865): Mary Barton, 525 GATT (General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade),
912, 1035
Gauguin, Paul (1848–1903), 627; La Orana Maria, 628
Gay partnerships, 1057
Gaza Strip, 951, 955
Geffels, Franz (1635-c. 1699), 208
Gellner, Ernest, 540
Genetics, 623, 1039
Geneva, Switzerland: Calvin in, 86; diplomatic
summits, 960
Geneva Accords, 967
Geoffrin, Madame de (1699–1777), 313, 315
Geographical determinism, 7
Geographical knowledge, growth of (maps), 255
Geography: and culture, 2; and history, 1; and
politics, 7–8, 133
Geometry coordinate, 238, 240
Geophysics, 1039
George I, King of Great Britain and Ireland
(1714–1727), 198, 287, 288
George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland
(1760–1820), 307, 345, 346, 348, 443
Georgia (United States), 160
Georgia (U.S.S.R), 1003
German Democratic Republic (East Germany),
894, 908, 964; collapse, of communism,
992–997; communist consolidation, 923–924;
purges, 1018
German dualism, 516
German Empire, 552–553, 604–607; Catholic
Church in, 605, 606; collapse of, 714–716;
internal weakness, 697–698; socialism,
605–607, 615, 617
Germanic liberties, 197
German imperialism, 681
German Question, 549
German Social Democratic Party, 606, 607, 615,
785, 786, 1026
Germany, 893. See also Federal Republic of Ger- many (West Germany); German Democratic
Republic (East Germany); Nazi Germany;
Thirty Years’ War; Weimar Republic; African
colonies, 668; birthrates, 575; Christian Dem-
ocrats, 1026; class, social, 436; Cold War,
908, 964; communist uprisings, 786; decline,
sixteenth century, 139; and defeat of Napo-
leon, 440; Depression era, 829–830; early
commercialism, 123; early Middle Ages, 23,
26; economy of 1960s, 916; as EU member,
1032; export of capital, 586; First World War,
690, 692, 694, 696, 697–698, 701–702, 705–
706, 708–712, 714, 717; fragmented, after
Thirty Years’ War, 146, 197; Franco-Prussian
War, 550–551; imperialism, 650, 668; Indus-
trial Revolution, 584, 690; Locarno treaties,
789; 1919–1990 (map), 909; medieval, 30, 33,
40, 54; nationalism, 432–436, 478, 509, 544,
545; post-Napoleonic, 442–444, 478; post–
WWII, 881, 890–894; religious divisions,
138–139; Renaissance, 71–72, 76–77; repa-
rations, 890; reunifi cation, 996, 998, 1020;
Revolution of 1848, 509–511, 514, 516–620;
Social Democrats, 785, 786, 1026; Sude-
tenland, 727, 732; trade, with Soviet Union,
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787; and Treaty of Versailles, 726–728, 732,
786–787, 829; unifi cation of, 544–555; West,
976; women’s suffrage, 620
Germany, totalitarian. See Nazi Germany; Third Reich
Germany in Its Deep Humiliation (anonymous), 434–435
Gestapo, 833
Ghana (Gold Coast), 940–942
Ghent, 132
Gibbon, Edward (1737–1794): Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 315
Gibraltar, Strait of, 6, 188, 191, 285
Gide, André (zheed, aNdray) (1869–1951), 810
Gierek, Edmund (1913–2001), 993
Girondins (ji-ron-dins), 385, 388, 390, 391
Gladstone, William E. (1809–1898), 600–602,
613, 636
Glanville, Joseph (1636–1680), 251
Glasnost, 988, 989, 991
Global economy, eighteenth century, 275–284;
Africa in, 278–280; and the Americas, 280;
and Dutch Republic, 277–278; and France,
277–278; and Great Britain, 277–281; India
in, 279; and marriage, 283
Global economy, nineteenth century: and competi-
tion, 589, 591, 644; London’s role, 588–589;
monetary system, 588–589; world market,
589–591
Global economy, post–World War II, 912–918;
currency stabilization, 913–914, 916–918
Global economy, twentieth century, 970–981,
1032–1036; infl ation and recession, 971–972;
Japanese role in, 913; socialism, 974–975
Global economy, twenty-fi rst century, 1019–1020
Globalization, 9–10, 49; and common calendar,
257; critics of, 1035; and culture, 100, 251,
1020, 1032–1033, 1035–1036; world econ-
omy, 584–591, 644
Global warming, 1071, 1072
Glorious Revolution, 173, 266
Gneisenau, August (gnigh’-se-now)
(1760–1831), 436
Goebbels, Joseph (gøb’-lz) (1897–1945), 837, 906
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (gø’-tuh) (1749–
1832), 71, 425
Golan Heights, 951; map, 954
Gold Coast (Ghana), 940–942
Gold standard, 588–589; end of, 916–918; and the
Great Depression, 807
Gomulka, Wladyslaw (go-mool’-ka) (1905–1982),
923, 992
Gonzalez, Felipe (1942), 976
Goodman, Dena, 322
Gorbachev, Mikhail S. (1931–), 985, 988,
990–992, 1000–1002, 1004, 1010
Gouges, Olympe de (1755–1793), 467; The Rights of Woman, 376–377
Government, 160–163. See also Absolutism; Constitutionalism; and centralization of
power, 349; by representation, 344; separation
of powers, 316; seventeenth century, 160
Goya, Francisco de (1746–1828), 419
Gozzoli, Benozzo, 59
Graaf, Régnier de (grahf, ray-nee-ay’ de)
(1641–1673), 240
Grammar schools, 121
Grand Alliance, 188
Gravity, 245
Great Britain. See also American Revolution; British colonies; Parliament, English: after
the Peace of Utrecht, 285–293; allied with
Dutch Republic, 157, 158, 168, 170; ascen-
dancy, 191, 192; becomes United Kingdom,
601, 602; birthrates, 575; centralization, of
government, 349–350; civil war, 160–163;
and the Common Market, 914–916; as Com-
monwealth, 163; constitutional monarchy,
600–601; Depression era, 807, 814, 821; East
India Trading Company, 116, 160, 279, 351,
353; economic recession, 972–973; economy,
seventeenth century, 160; economy, eigh-
teenth century, 275–284; export of capital,
586–588; First World War, 692, 696, 705–
706, 711; free trade, 532, 584–586; and the
French Revolution, 386–387, 390; Hundred
Years’ War, 52; in India, 351–352, 646, 647;
Industrial Revolution, 431, 437, 453–458,
460, 584–586; industry, eighteenth century,
277–278; labor unions, 601, 613, 614, 812–
814; medieval, 30–31, 33, 35–37, 52; and
Napoleonic Europe, 425–431; Napoleonic
Wars, 412–414; national debt, 173; nation-
alism, 431–432; Navigation Act of 1651,
157, 164; Norman invasion, 30–31; nuclear
nonproliferation treaty, 1062; Pacifi sm, post–
WWI, 844–845; and Palestine, 708, 814;
Parliamentary reform, 1832, 492–493; popu-
lation, 158, 159, 277, 455; post-Napoleonic,
478–479; post–WWI, 812–814; as Protestant
bulwark, 130, 166; Protestant Reformation,
88–91; reconstruction, post–WWII, 902–903;
Reform Bill of 1832, 492–493, 600; reform
movement, 343; religious rebellions, 126;
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religious toleration, 491; Restoration, 165–
168; Revolution of 1688 (Glorious Revolu-
tion), 171, 265–266; rule of Ireland, 91, 158,
163, 164, 171, 350–351, 602–604, 815, 903;
and Russo-Turkish War, 657; Second Reform
Bill, 600; Second World War, 844, 854, 856–
858, 860, 864; seventeenth century, 158–165;
seventeenth century (map), 170; Seven Years’
War, 301–302, 304, 306–308; socialism, 601,
602, 613–616, 902–903; suffrage, 600, 780;
supports Huguenots, 135, 138; supports Neth-
erlands, 128; Tory regime, 491–493; Wars
of the Roses, 52; wars with Spain, 130–131,
164, 190, 293; in world economy, 586–589;
as world power, 455–458
Great Depression. See Depression era Great Elector (Frederick William), 212, 213, 215
Great Fear of 1789, 374–375
“Great Game, The,” 678
Great Moguls, 303
Great Schism of East and West, 28
Great Schism of the West, 53–54
Greece: civil war, 890; democratic advances,
609; as EU member, 977; First World War,
793; independence, 487–488; nationalism,
482–483; post–WWI, 728, 781, 784; Second
World War, 856, 859
Greece, ancient, 11–13; infl uence of, 13, 42; love,
concept of, 17; politics, 12; religion, 17;
written language, 13
Greek language, use of, 63
Greek Orthodox church, 50, 204, 218, 221, 223,
337, 655; in the Balkans, 694
“Greek project,” 337
Greenhouse gases, 1072
“Green” parties, 1039
Gregorian calendar, 257
Gregory VII (Hildebrand), Pope (1073–1085), 40
Gregory XIII, Pope (1572–1585), 197; Gregorian
calendar, 257
Grey, Sir Edward (1862–1933), 708
Grimm, Baron (1723–1807), 315
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, 471 Gromyko, Andrei (1909–1989), 988
Groote, Gerard (grote) (1340–1384), 72
Grosz, George (1893–1959), 880
Grotius, Hugo (gro’-shus) (1583–1645), 151;
Law of War and Peace, 262 Group of 8, 1062
Guadeloupe, 303, 307
Guam, 861
Guelph family, 198
Guesde, Jules (1845–1922), 615
Guest workers, 899–901
Guevara, Ernesto Che (gay-vah’-ra, chay)
(1928–1967), 1055
Guiana, 155
Guilds, 34–35, 110, 113; abolished, 382, 424;
opposition to, 115–116
Guillotine, 397, 398
Guise, Henry (1550–1588), 135, 136
Guise family (gheez), 135
Gulf of Aqaba, 951
Guns, eighteenth century, 294
Guomindang (National People’s Party), 798
Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden
(1771–1792), 141, 142, 211, 386
Gutenberg, Johannes (?1394–1468), 71
Habsburg, House of (Angl. Haps’-burg). See also under individual monarchs; individual mon- archs: after 1848, 553–554; alliance with Dutch Republic, 158; and Austrian monarchy,
188, 207–210, 285, 295; branches, 76–77, 79;
dominions (map), 79; French opposition, 140;
and the Holy Roman Empire, 76–77; infi rmi-
ties of, 148; Revolution of 1848, 513–514;
and Thirty Years’ War, 139–140; and univer-
sal monarchy, 149
Haeckel, Ernst (hay-kl) (1834–1919), 626
Hagia Sophia, 22
Hahn, Otto (1879–1968), 1037
Haiti, 395, 413
Halley, Edmond (1656–1742), 252
Halley’s Comet, 252
Hals, Frans (1580–1666), 151, 239
Hamid, Abdul II, Sultan of Turkey (hah-meed’)
(1842–1918), 657, 662, 695
Hamilton, Alexander (1755–1804), 376, 386
Handel, George Frederick (1685–1759): The Messiah, 311
Hanse league, 33
Hardenberg, Karl August von
(1750–1822), 436
Harper, John Lamberton, 982
Harvard College, 105
Harvey, William (1578–1657), 251; On the Movement of the Heart and Blood, 240
Hastings, Warren (1732–1818), 351
Hatt-i Humayun, 656
Haussman, baron, 533
Havel, Vaclav (1936–2011), 997
Hawaiian Islands, statehood, 926
Hawley-Smoot tariff (1930), 808
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Health. See also Medicine: eighteenth-century Europe, 272
Hébert, Jacques (1757–1794), 395
Hébertists (Angl. hay’-bair’-tists), 396 Hegel, Georg (hay-gl) (1770–1831), 471, 472,
524–525, 527, 545
Hegelian dialectic, 472
Hegira, 21 Heisenberg, Werner (1901–1976), 626
Helsinki accords, 969
Helvetic Body (Switzerland), 143
Helvétius, Claude Adrien (1715–1771), 313; On Man, 313; On the Mind, 313
Hemingway, Ernest (1899–1961), 810
Henry VII, King of England (1485–1509), 74, 116
Henry VIII, King of England (1509–1547), 88
Henry II, King of France (1547–1559), 134
Henry III, King of France (1574–1589), 134, 136
Henry IV, King of France (Henry of Navarre)
(1589–1610), 40, 135, 137
Herder, J. G. (1744–1803), 433, 434; Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind, 433
Hereditary subjection, 196
Herodotus (484–425 B.C.), 12
Herriot, Édouard (air-y-o’) (1872–1957), 789, 816
Herzegovina. See Bosnia and Herzegovina Herzen, Alexander (hairt’-sen) (1812–1870), 562
Herzl, Theodor (her-tzl) (1860–1904), 635, 636
High Commission (England), 162
Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII) (1073–1085), 40
Hilliard, Nathan, 90
Himmler, Heinrich (1900–1945), 872, 906
Hindenburg, Paul von (1847–1934), 831
Hindus: and British colonialism, 673–675; and
partition of India, 928–929; and Seven Years’
War, 303; twentieth century, 1052
Hiroshima, 873, 875, 884, 1038
Historical scholarship, 254–257; Age of Enlight-
enment, 318; Annales school, 1044; and Bib- lical criticism, 257–259
Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945), 215–216, 785, 817,
906; anti-Semitism, 827, 829, 830; early
career, 828, 829; early life, 827–828; Mein Kampf, 829, 845; named Chancellor, 831; quits League of Nations, 845; suicide, 871;
violates Locarno treaties, 846; violates Treaty
of Versailles, 846
HIV/AIDS. See AIDS (acquired immuno- defi ciency syndrome)
Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679), 262–263; Levia- than, 263
Hobsbawm, Eric, 982
Hobson, J. A. (1858–1940), 649
Ho Chi Minh (ho chee min) (1890–1969), 727,
935, 965, 1055
Hogarth, William (1697–1764), 270, 271; Gin Lane, 270, 271
Hohenheim (Paracelsus) (?1490–1541), 71
Hohenzollerns (Angl. ho-hn-zoll-rn), 198, 212; and Franco-Prussian War, 550; and Seven Years’
War, 299; territorial acquisitions, 212
Holland, 127–129. See also Dutch Republic; Netherlands
Hollande, François (1954 –), 1027
Holocaust, 871–874; maps, 870, 892; survivors, in
Palestine, 954
Holy Alliance, 445, 480, 486
Holy Roman Empire, 30, 83, 124, 138–139; after
1648, 196–200; after the Peace of Westphalia,
187; boundaries of, 196–199; decline of, 195,
415; dissolution of, 143; proclaimed, 39;
Renaissance, 76–77
Holy Synod, Russian Orthodox Church, 224, 227
Homan’s globe, 255
Homer: Iliad, 11; Odyssey, 11 Homo erectus, 1 Homo sapiens, 1 Honecker, Erich (1912–1994), 994
Hong Kong, 926
Hoover, Herbert (1874–1964), 806
“Horizontal” integration, 593
Horthy, Admiral Miklós (Angl. hor’-thee) (1868–1957), 782
House of Commons, 161, 173, 193, 287, 346, 348;
representation in, 492–493, 601–602
House of Lords, 161, 193, 287, 602; changes in
twenty-fi rst century, 1025
Hubertusberg, Treaty of (Angl. hyoo-bur’-tus- burg), 306–308
Hudson Bay territory, 190, 285
Hugo, Victor (1802–1885), 461
Huguenots (Angl. hyoo’-ge-notts), 126, 134; Edict of Nantes, 137, 138; under Louis XIV, 185,
186; rebellion of, 138
Human behavior, study of, 1040
Human cloning, 1039
Human genome, 1039
Humanism, 61–65
Humanists, 63–64, 70–72
Humanitarianism, 320, 460, 475
Human nature, views of, 263–264
Human rights, 981; defi ning, 1059–1060;
Universal Declaration of (UN), 1059
Humans, origins of, 1
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Hume, David (1711–1776), 313, 315
Hundred Years’ War, 52
Hungarians, 27
Hungary, 206, 207; battle of Mohacs, 77; dual
monarchy, of Austria-Hungary, 554–555,
607; NATO membership, 1062; 1956 revolt,
961; under Ottoman Turks, 205, 207; post
WWI, 714, 728; post–WWI, 781, 782; resis-
tance, to Soviet rule, 923, 924, 994; Revolu-
tion of 1848, 509–511, 514–515; Second
World War, 858, 870, 881, 893; and War of
Austrian Succession, 296, 297
Huns, 20
Hunt, Lynn, 399
Huss, John (1369–1415), 54, 55
Hussein, Saddam (1937–2006), 1065, 1066
Hussites, 54
Huxley, T. H. (1825–1895), 622
Huyghens, Christian (Angl. high’-gnz) (1629– 1695), 151, 245
Hyderabad, India, 303
Hydrogen bomb, 897, 1038
Hyndman, H. M. (highnd-mn) (1842–1921), 615
Ibsen, Henrik (1828–1906), 627
ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile), 961
Ice Age, 2
Iceland, and women’s rights, 1056
Ideals, Western, 570
Illuminati, 312
IMF (International Monetary Fund), 914
Immigration, 563–566, 579–583; Europe, 1023–
1024; post–WWII, 899–901; into various
countries (1850–1940), 580
Imperialism, 645–653; in Africa, 662–671; in
Asia, 671–678, 790–802; attitudes of, 638; in
China, 679–680; vs. colonialism, 645–646;
colonial wars, 647; as crusade, 652–653;
defi nition, 645, 791; demise of, post–WWII,
925–927, 936–937, 939–944; and the Indus-
trial Revolution, 645–647; motivations for,
648–652; neomercantilism, 648; opposition
to, 790–802; and politics, 650; rationales and
paradoxes of modern, 654–655; Russian, 650;
and socialism, 649–650; and the working
class, 651
Imports, and world economy, 916
Impressionism, 627–629
Incas, 103
India, 279, 351; anti-imperialism, 795–797, 799;
confl icts with Pakistan, 931; Congress Party,
928; economy, eighteenth century, 279;
economy, nineteenth century, 673–675; First
World War, 792; in the global economy, 929;
Great Britain in, 304, 308, 351–352, 646, 647,
673–675, 814; Great Moguls, 303, 646; inde-
pendence, 927–936; life expectancy, 571; par-
tition of, 928–929; religious divisions, 795,
796; rise in population, 1067; Second World
War, 928; Seven Years’ War, 304, 308; sub-
continent, 2000 (map), 931
Indian Mutiny (1857), 674
Indian National Congress, 675, 793
Indians, westernized, 675
Indians (Native Americans), 352
Indirect rule, 666
Individualism, 58–60, 460
Indochina, 934–936
Indo-Europeans, 11
Indonesia, 934–936
Inductive reasoning, 237–238
Indulgences, 80
Industrialism vs. capitalism, 450
Industrialization, zones of, 571–573
Industrial Revolution, 449–500, 583–586; Britain
before and after (map), 457; Germany, 584,
690; in Great Britain, 431, 437, 453–458; and
imperialism, 645–647; India and, 673; and
iron production, 496, 584; labor market, 498;
new (second), 583–584; paternalism, 466;
Russia, 737; social consequences, 455–458,
460; and social mobility, 450–451; and tech-
nology, 451, 454–455, 583–584; textile indus-
try, 454–458; transportation and, 455; United
States, 566; women and, 459; working condi-
tions, 455–458, 493–494, 526, 527, 601
Industrial society, organization of, 884–885
Industrial unionism, 613
Infant mortality, 571
Infl ation, price, 109, 118
Infl uenza epidemic of 1918, 713
Information economy, 1033, 1034
Inheritance laws, 576
Innocent III, Pope (1198–1216), 41
Innocent VIII, Pope (1488–1492), 55
Innocent XI, Pope (1676–1689), 207
Inquisition, Papal (Roman), 97
Inquisition, Spanish, 76, 97, 422
Instrument of Government (England), 165
Insurance industry, 585–586
Intellectualism, opponents of, 640–642
Intelligentsia, Russian
(Angl. in-tell-i-jent’-si-a), 739 Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), 961
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International Congo Association, 663, 664
International Council of Women, 618
International Monetary Fund (IMF), 914
International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF), 1065
International Working Men’s Association (First
International), 615
Internet, 1034
Interrogation of the Jews (painting, unknown artist), 78
Intolerable Acts, 353–355
Invisible exports, 586
Ionesco, Eugène (1909–1994), 1048
IRA (Irish Republican Army), 1025
Iran: nuclear weapons, 1062; revolution in, 956–
957; and Soviet Union, post–WWII, 889
Iraq, 947; First World War, 707; Persian Gulf
War, 1063; post–WWI, 728; prisoner abuse,
by U.S. forces, 1066; second war in, 1069;
United States invasion and war, 1066; weap-
ons of mass destruction, 1065
Ireland: and American Revolution, 351; English
rule, 91, 158, 163, 171, 350–351, 602–604,
815; home rule, 602; independence, 815;
“penal code” for, 172; potato famine of
1845–1849, 582
Irish Republican Army (IRA), 1025
Iron Age, 11
Iron curtain, 888, 889, 961
Iron production, 496, 583
Isabella of Castile (1474–1504), 75, 102
Islam, 21, 75, 252, 653, 655, 947–948; women
and, 955, 956
Islamic fundamentalism. See also Arabic world; Moriscos: in Afghanistan, 947; in Iran, 953;
spread of, 1052; terrorism and, 1063, 1064
Islamic identity, 947
Islamic Republic of Pakistan. See Pakistan Israel: after era of the British mandate (map), 954;
Arab-Israeli wars, 950, 951–952, 970; Arab
opposition to state of, 947–948; creation of,
950–951; Jewish support for, 1051; Law of
Return, 950
Israel and adjoining regions (map), 954
Isvolsky, Alexander (iz-vols’-skee)
(1856–1919), 695
Italia irredenta, 543, 822 Italian War of 1859, 542
Italy: African colonies, 847, 860; annexation of
Rome, 634; Christian Democrats, 911, 1021;
and the Church, 542, 544; Communist Party,
902, 911, 1022; as constitutional monarchy,
607; Crimean War, 538, 539, 541; in Euro-
pean Coal and Steel Community, 915; First
and French Revolution, 482; First World War,
690, 706, 712; Florence, 57–58, 63; medi-
eval, 33, 41; nationalism, 539; population
decline, 1068–1069; population growth, 575;
post–WWI, 728, 780, 822–825; reconstruc-
tion, post–WWII, 911–912; Renaissance,
56–70, 234; Revolution of 1848, 509–511,
513–515; ruled by Austrian Empire, 510–511;
Second World War, 881, 882; socialism, 976;
Socialist Party, 1021; unifi cation of, 542–543;
women’s rights, 609
Italy, Fascist, 821–827; and Catholic Church, 825;
Depression era, 825–827; March on Rome,
823, 824
Ivan III, Duke of Muscovy (1462–1505), 218
Ivan the Terrible, Tsar of Russia (1547–1584),
220, 221
Jacobites, 288
Jakarta (Batavia), 155
Jamaica, 159, 164
James I, King of England (1603–1625),
160–161
James II, King of England (1685–1688), 167, 168,
170–171, 266; allies with Louis XIV, 171;
loses throne to William of Orange, 168, 170;
returns to Catholicism, 168
James III (the Pretender), 288
Jamestown settlement, 159
James VI, King of Scotland (1566–1625), 160
Janisaries, 203
Jansenism, 185
Japan: atomic bomb, 873, 875; attacks Pearl Har-
bor, 861; Dutch Republic in, 155; First World
War, 708; industrialization, 719, 801; invades
China, 848, 849–850; militarism, 790; mod-
ernization of, 647; occupation of, post–WWII,
895; peace agreement, 896; post-WWII, 895;
Russo-Japanese neutrality, 861; Russo-Japa-
nese War, 685–687, 709, 879; Second World
War, 860–861, 879, 881; Western contact,
220; as world power, 959, 979
Japanese Americans, interned, 862
Japanese imperialism, 681; and Russo-Japanese
War, 685–687
Jaruzelski, Wojciech (1923–), 993
Jaurès, Jean (zho-ress’) (1859–1914), 615, 617
Jefferson, Thomas (1743–1826), 355, 386
Jehan, Shah (1628–1658), 303
Jerusalem, 950
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Jesuits, 96–97, 847; missionary work, 252; and
natural law, 262
Jesus Christ, birth of, 16
Jews, Judaism, 16, 46. See also Hitler, Adolf; Holocaust; Israel; Marranos; Palestine;
Zionism; anti-Semitism, 53, 75, 635, 814; civil
rights for, 331, 344; in Dutch Republic, 151,
153, 155; migration to Palestine, 814; migra-
tion to Poland, 202; in Nazi Germany, 831–
833, 839; nineteenth century, 635; in Ottoman
Empire, 204–205, 653; Russian pogroms,
737; Sephardic, 75; in Soviet Union, 771, 989;
twentieth century, 1051; twenty-fi rst century,
1051; and Vichy France, 855
Jinnah, Muhammad Ali (1876–1948), 927, 929
Joan of Arc (1412–1431), 52
Joffre, Joseph (1852-1931), 701
John of Leyden (1509–1536), 82, 83
John Paul I, Pope (1978), 1050
John Paul II, Pope (1978–2005), 993, 1050–1051
Johnson, Lyndon B. (1908–1973), 965
Johnson, Samuel (1709–1784), 315
John XXIII, Pope (1959–1963): Pacem in Terris, 1049
Jones, Ernest (1819–1869), 505
Jordan, 947, 951; West Bank, 951
Jordan River, 951
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (1765–1790),
296, 330–332
Josephine, Empress of France (1804–1809),
419, 421
Jospin, Lionel (jus-piN’) (1937–), 975, 1027
Joyce, James (1882–1941), 1047; Ulysses, 810 Julian calendar, 257
Julius II, Pope (1503–1513), 55
July Monarchy, 489, 502
July Revolution, 488–489
June Days, 505–506
Junkers (joong’-krz), 123, 216, 217, 332, 333, 437;
and unifi cation of Germany, 516, 546, 605
Justifi cation by faith, 80
Jutland, battle of, 705
Kádar, Jánós (kay-dare) (1912–1989), 923, 994
Kaiser, etymology of, 221
Kandinsky, Vasily (1866–1944), 629
Kapp Putsch of 1920 (khapp pootsh), 828
Karajich, Vuk (ka-rah-jich, vook) (1787–1864),
474; Popular Songs and Epics of the Serbs, 474
Kashmir, 929
Kautsky, Karl (kowts-kee) (1854–1938), 617, 775
Kay, John (1704–1764), 454
Kazakhstan, 1003, 1006
Kellogg, Frank B. (1856–1937), 790
Kemal, Mustapha (ke-mahl’, muss-ta-fuh)
(1881–1938), 793
Kempis, Thomas à (1370–1471), 72
Kennan, George (1904–2005), 1005
Kennedy, John F. (1917–1963), 961, 962,
964–965, 1040
Kenya, 942
Kenyatta, Jomo (?1893–1978), 942
Kepler, Johannes (1571–1630), 242–243
Kerensky, Alexander (ke-rens’-kee) (1881–1970),
751–752
Keynes, John Maynard (kaynz) (1883–1946):
General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, 814
Keynesian economics, 972
KGB (Soviet secret police), 774, 918, 989; and
attempted coup, 1002–1003
Khomeini, Ayatollah Rohollah (1900–1989), 953
Khruschev, Nikita S. (kroosh’-tchoff) (1894–
1971), 919–921, 923, 960, 962, 964–965;
Cuban missle crisis and, 921
Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855), 1042, 1049
Kikiyu people, East Africa, 942
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. See Yugoslavia
King George’s War, 294
Kings in medieval Europe, 30–31, 51
Kipling, Rudyard (1865–1936): White Man’s Burden, 653
Kirov, Serge (1888–1934), 773
Kissinger, Henry (1923–), 968
Kitchener, Herbert (1850-1916), 669
Knights, 46, 212
Knowledge, and wealth, 267–268
Kohl, Helmut (1930–), 910, 977, 978, 996, 1026
Koonz, Claudia, 834
Köprülu family, 205
Korean War, 895–897
Kosciusko, Thaddeus (Angl. kosky-os’-ko) (1747–1817), 340, 432
Kosovo (kus’-so-’vo), 1015
Kossuth, Louis (ku-sooth’) (1802–1894), 510, 513
Kostunica, Vojislav (1944–), 1016
Kristallnacht, 832 Kruger, Paul (1825–1904), 669
Kulturkampf (kool-toor’-kahmpf), 605 Kun, Béla (koon’, bay-luh) (1886–1939), 782
Kurds, 1066
Kuwait, 1063
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IndexI22
Kyoto agreement, 1072
Kyrgyzstan, 1003
Labor, organized, 593, 639. See also Labor strikes; Labor unions
Laborde, Jean Joseph (la-bord’)
(1724–1794), 284
Labor market, 498
Labor productivity rates, 571, 617
Labor strikes, 382, 532, 613–614; coal
miners, 813; France, 818, 820; Russian
Revolution, 746
Labor unions, 34–35, 381–382, 499, 529–530; and
communism, 776; Depression era, 812–814;
Great Britain, 601, 613, 614; industrial union-
ism, 613; legalized, 601, 613; Nazi Germany,
833; nineteenth century, 498, 529–530, 532,
601, 613–616; Polish Solidarity, 992–994;
post–WWI, 812–814, 820; prohibition, 613;
and socialism, 612–616; unskilled, 613
Labour Party, Great Britain, 601, 613, 614, 812,
813, 902–903, 973, 974
Lafayette, Marquis de (la-fay-et’) (1757–1834),
374, 387, 488
La Fontaine, Jean de (la foN-tenn’)
(1621–1695), 174
Lagrange, Joseph-Louis (la-graNzh’)
(1736–1813), 394
Laissez-faire economics (less-say fair’), 381,
458–460, 591, 601, 602; and liberalism, 638,
640, 642; working-class view, 612
Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste de Monet de (la-mark’)
(1744–1829), 394
Lamartine, Alphonse (la-mar-teen’) (1790–1869),
503, 506
Land rights. See also Feudalism: eminent property, 366–367, 375; France, 366–368; private prop-
erty, 166, 173, 263, 381, 452
Langland, William (1332–1386): Piers Plowman, 53
Language: and dialect, 268–269; national vs.
regional, 268–269; written, 269
Languages. See also Books, popular; Literature: in Europe, 473; Indo-European, 11; Romance,
14; written, 11, 13, 27, 61–65
Laos, 934, 967
La Rochefoucauld, Duke of (la rush-foo-co’)
(1613–1680), 174
Las Casas, Bartolomé de (1484-1566), 105
Lassalle, Ferdinand (la-sall’) (1825–1864), 548,
606, 612
Lateran accord, 825
Latin, use of, 62–63
Latin America, 76, 104–108, 387; economic assis-
tance, 962; independence, 483–486; popula-
tion growth, 1068
Latin Christendom, 23
La Tour, Maurice-Quintin de (1704–1788), 316
Latvia, 781, 921, 990
Laval, Pierre (1883–1945), 855, 903
Lavater, J. C. (1741–1801), 311
Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent (la-vwah-zuyay’)
(1743–1794), 394
Law, John (1671–1729), 286, 289, 290, 370
Law of nations, 262
Law of War and Peace (Grotius), 262 Lawrence, Saint (? –258), 125
Lawrence, T. E. (1888–1935), 707
Lay investiture, 40
Lay religion, 71–72
League of Arab States (Arab League), 947, 952
League of Augsburg, war of, 187
League of Nations, 726, 733, 787, 789, 790, 814,
845, 947; expels Soviet Union, 853; Germany
quits, 845; ineffectiveness, 847; Soviet Union
joins, 845
League of Schmalkald, 84
League of Women Voters, 781
Lebanon, 947
Lebrun, Marquis de (luh-bruN’) (1739–1824), 407
Le Chapelier, Act of 1791 (lu sha-pe-lyay’), 613
Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre (1807–1874), 506
Leeuwenhoek, Antony van (lay-vn-hook) (1632–
1723), 151, 240
Legal system: England, seventeenth century, 161–
162, 254; evidentiary laws, 254; international
law, 261–262; Middle Ages, 33–34, 36–38,
51–52; Napoleonic Codes, 409–410; Renais-
sance, 74–76; Roman Empire, 15–16; use of
torture, 254
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716), 197, 240
Lemonnier, Anicet Charles Gabriel
(1743–1824), 315
Le Nain, Louis (?1593–1648), 191
Lend-Lease Act, 858, 866
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich (1870–1924), 617, 710,
741, 743–744, 752–754; death, 764; Imperial- ism, the Highest Stage of World Capitalism, 649; on nationalism, 774; and Third Interna-
tional, 775–778
Leningrad, 227, 765, 1002
Leninism. See Bolsheviks, Bolshevism Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), 61, 234–235
Leopold I, King of Belgium (1831–1865), 491
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Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor (1790–1792),
332, 386, 412
Leopold II, King of Belgium (1865–1909),
663, 664
Leo X, Pope (1513–1521), 55, 75, 80
Leo XIII, Pope (1878–1903), 598; Rerum Novarum, 635
Le Pen, Jean-Marie (1928–), 975, 1023, 1027
Lesbian partnerships, 1057
Lespinasse, Julie de (1732–1776), 314
Levellers, 164
Levi, Primo (1919–1987), 872–873
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1908–2009), 1040
Liberalism, 460, 461, 487–488; and feminism,
636–638; freedom of movement and, 582;
and free trade, 638; and laissezfaire econom-
ics, 642; opponents of, 613; and religion,
637–638; and revolution, 487–495; waning
of, 636–642; and the welfare state, 638–639
Liberals, classical, 461, 463–464
Liberia, 665, 936
Liberum veto (lee’-b-rom vee’-to), 202 Libraries, early, 256
Libya, 947; independence, 938; Second World
War, 860
Liebknecht, Karl (leeb-knekt) (1871–1919), 785
Liège (map), 129
Life, legal defi nitions of, 1039
Life expectancy, 571
Lilburne, John (1614–1657), 164
List, Friedrich (1789–1846): National System of Political Economy, 472, 638
Literacy, 121, 312, 314–315, 571, 1056
Literary critical methods. See Critical methods, literary
Literature: Age of Enlightenment, 312–315, 320;
Depression era, 808–810; Dutch Republic,
151; eighteenth-century Europe, 273; English,
159–160; German, 432; modern, 1047–1048;
nineteenth century, 627; popular books, 273;
Renaissance, 61–65, 71–72; Russian, 737,
919; seventeenth century, 174; Soviet Union
(U.S.S.R), 771; Spanish, 124–125; witchcraft
and magic in, 273
Lithuania, 202, 728, 781, 921, 990
Little Entente, 790, 850
Little Russians, 220
Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 455
Living standards, and culture, 269–270
Livingstone, David (1813–1873), 663
Lloyd George, David (1863–1945), 601, 725,
726, 729, 732
Lloyds of London, 586
Locarno treaties, 789; Hitler violates, 846
Locke, John (1632–1704), 173, 259, 288, 317,
319, 358, 636; defense of constitutionalism,
263–265; Essay Concerning the Human Understanding, 259; Letter of Toleration, 259; portrait, 265; Reasonableness of Chris- tianity, 259; Two Treatises of Government, 259, 264
Locomotive, steam, 456
Logarithms, 240
Lollards, 53–54
London Stock Exchange, 917
Long March, the, 801, 802
Long Parliament, 162, 163
Lope de Vega (1562–1635), 124
Lorrain, Claude (lo-riN’) (1600–1682), 174
Lorraine, 187; and Treaty of Versailles, 726
Lorraine, Cardinal of, 135
Los Alamos, New Mexico, 1038
Louis Philippe (Duke of Orleans) (King of the
French 1830–1848), 489, 502, 503
Louis XI, King of France (1461–1483), 75
Louis XIII, King of France (1610–1643), 138
Louis XIV, King of France (1643–1715), 147–
149, 173–186; and absolutism, 176, 178–179;
alliance with Ottoman Turks, 206; allies with
Charles II, 166; allies with James II, 171;
ambitions of, 148–150; government of, 179–
181; invades Dutch Republic, 157; invades
Spanish Netherlands, 157; as personifi cation
of state, 178; religious intolerance, 185; visits
Royal Academy of Sciences, 249; and War
of Spanish Succession, 188–189; wars of,
186–193
Louis XV, King of France (1715–1774), 286;
enlightened despotism, 320, 324–326
Louis XVI, King of France (1774–1774), 299,
328–330; attempts escape, 380; executed,
390; and the French Revolution, 369, 370–
373, 380, 386; imprisoned, 387
Louis XVIII of France (1814–1824), 401, 441,
444, 476, 481
L’Ouverture, Toussaint (?1743–1803), 395,
413, 414
Love, concept of, 17
Low Countries, 129
Loyola, Ignatius, Saint (1491–1556): Spiritual Exercises, 95–96
Ludendorff, Erich (1865–1937), 715, 829
Luftwaffe, 853 Luisitania (British ship), 705
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IndexI24
Lumumba, Patrice (1925–1961), 945
Luther, Katherina (von Bora) (1499–1552), 81
Luther, Martin (1483–1546), 70, 80–85
Lutheranism, 80–85, 139; and ecumenical
movement, 1048
Luxembourg: post–WWII, 914; Second
World War, 854
Luxemburg, Rosa (1871–1919), 785
Lvov, Prince (l-vof’) (1861–1925), 751,
752–753
Maasai peoples, 942
Maastricht treaty, 1028, 1030
Mabillon, Jean (ma-bee-yoN’) (1632–1707): On Diplomatics, 255
Macao, 926
MacArthur, Douglas (1880–1964), 895–897
Macaulay, T. B. (1800–1859), 674
MacDonald, Ramsay (1866–1937), 789, 813, 814
Macedonia, 1012
Machiavelli, Niccolò (ma-kee-a-vell’-lee) (1469–
1527), 68, 69; Prince, The, 68, 260; The Prince, 69
Mack, Phyllis, 169
MacMahon, Marshal (mak-ma-oN’)
(1808–1893), 596
Madeleine (temple), 430
Magellan, Ferdinand (1480–1521), 104
Maghreb, 937
Magic, magicians: Age of Enlightenment,
311–312; eighteenth-century Europe, 273; in
literature, 273
Maginot Line (ma-zhee-no’), 844, 854, 855
Magna Carta, 36
Magyars, 27, 297, 473, 474, 514–515, 554
Mahan, Alfred Thayer (1840–1914), 691
Major, John (1943-), 974
Malaya, 861
Malaysia, 931–933
Malcolm X (1925–1965), 1055
Malesherbes, Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon
de (1721-1794), 313
Maliki, Nouri al- Assad, (1950-), 1066
Malpighi, Marcello (mal-pee’-ghee)
(1628–1694), 240
Malthus, Thomas R. (1766–1834), 458
Manchester, England, 455, 478
Manchester School, 458, 496, 498
Manchu dynasty, 679, 680
Manchuria, 681, 685
Manhattan Island, 155, 157
Manila Galleons, 108
Mann, Thomas (1875–1955): The Magic Mountain, 723
Manners, social: eighteenth-century Europe,
272–273; Renaissance, 65–67
Mao Zedong (mow, as in how, tse-dong’)
(1893–1976), 801, 802, 895, 1055
Mapmaking, 2–3, 71
Marchand, J. B., 668, 669
March Laws, 510
Marconi, Guglielmo (1874–1937), 583
Marcuse, Herbert (mar-koo-ze) (1898–1979), 1055
Mardi Gras, eighteenth-century Europe, 275
Maria Theresa of Austria (ma-ree’-a te-ress’-a)
(1717–1780), 210, 218, 295–296, 298; and
enlightened despotism, 325, 329, 330; Schön-
brunn Palace, 300
Marie Antoinette (1755–1793), 299, 320, 332,
386, 387, 393
Market economy, 498. See also Capitalism; Laissez-faire economics
Marlowe, Christopher (1564–1593), 71
Marne, battle of, 701–702
Marranos, 76 Marriage: as civil contract, 377; and divorce, 377;
eighteenth-century Europe, 283; Protestant
ideal, 92; Renaissance, 67; same-sex, 1057
Marseillaise, The (mar-say-yez’) (song), 389 Marshall, George C. (1880–1959), 861, 890, 898
Marshall Plan, 890, 898
Martinique (mar-ti-neek’), 303, 307
Martin V, Pope (1368–1431), 55
Marx, Karl (1818–1883), 118, 467, 523–529, 562,
612, 614–616; Capital (Kapital), 524, 526, 614–615; Communist Manifesto, 467, 524, 526, 614
Marxism, 460, 524–529, 617, 742. See also Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich; Marx, Karl; Socialism; appli-
cation of, 765; and class war, 640, 774; and
the individual, 836; revisionist, 785; Russian,
710, 740–742
Mary I, Queen of England (1553–1558), 89
Mary II, Queen of England (1689–1694), 168, 170
Maryland, 159
Mary Queen of Scots (Mary Stuart) (1542–1568),
128, 157, 170–171
Masons (Freemasons), 312, 470
Massachusetts: abolishes slavery, 356; witch
trials, 235
Material culture, 269–270
Materialism, 522–523
Mathematics, 22; advances in, 240; and astron-
omy, 240, 242–245; and chronology, 257;
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Index I25
Russian, 221; and the scientifi c method, 238,
240; and technological advances, 247–248
Mathmatics, 13
Matta Echaurren, Roberto Sebastian (1911–2002),
1045; Invasion of the Night, 1045 Matteotti, Giacomo (1885–1924), 825
Maupeou, René Nicolas Charles Augustin de
(1714–1792), 370
Maupeou parlements (mo-poo’), 328, 330
Mauritania, 936
Maximilian (Austrian Archduke) (1832–1867), 550
Maximilian I, Emperor of Holy Roman Empire
(1493–1519), 76
Max of Baden, Prince (1876–1929), 715
Mayakovsky, Vladimir (1893–1930), 764
Mazarin, Cardinal (ma-za-riN’) (1602–1661),
176–178
Mazzini, Joseph (mats-zee’-nee) (1805–1872),
471, 507, 514, 515, 539, 541, 615; Duties of Man, 471
Mecca, 21
Medical technology, 1036–1037, 1039–1040
Medici, Catherine de’ (med-i-chee) (1519–1589),
134, 135, 270
Medici, Lorenzo de’ (the Magnifi cent), 60
Medici, Marie de’ (1573–1642), 137, 138
Medici family, 57–58, 110
Medicine, 70, 71; eighteenth-century Europe, 272,
273; nineteenth century, 584; twentieth cen-
tury, 1036–1037
Mediterranean Sea, 6; Great Britain in, 191, 192;
and Philip II of Spain, 124, 130; pirates,
piracy, 130, 132, 481; port of Trieste, 207
Mediterranean World, A.D. 400, 25, 26
Medvedev, Dmitry (1965-), 1010, 1063
Meitner, Lise (1878–1968), 1038
Mendel, Gregor (1822–1884), 623
Mendês-France, Pierre (maN-dez)
(1907–1982), 904
Mennonites, 77, 155
Mensheviks, Menshevism, 617, 710, 742
Mercantilism, 115–117; Russia, under Peter the
Great, 227
Mercantilist regulations, and Seven
Years’ War, 302
Mercenaries, 140–141, 146; eighteenth century,
294; Russian army, 226; sepoys, 305
Merchant class, 32–36
Merkel, Angela (1954–), 1026, 1027, 1029, 1056
Mesmer, F. A. (1734–1815), 311
Mestizos, 105 Methodists, 311
Metternich, Clemens von (mett’-ter-nick) (1773–
1859), 418, 475, 478, 482, 509, 510
Mexico, 105, 484; independence, 566
Mickiewicz, Adam (1789–1855), 474, 477
Microscope: invented, 151; use of, 240
Middle Ages, 9, 19–48; agriculture, 29–30; Cru-
sades, 45–48; early, 19–28; feudalism, 30–31,
35; guild system, 34–35; high, 29–48; legal
system, 36–38; population growth, 29–36;
taxation, 36; timespan of, 10; towns, 32–36;
trade, 31–32
Middle class, 118–119. See also Bourgeosie; eighteenth-century Europe, 283
Middle East, 11. See also Islamic fundamentalism; Palestine; individual countries; Christian-
ity, 653; Cold War, 952; confl icts, and the
West, 1019–1020; democracy in, 1067; First
World War, 707–708, 792; Great Britain in,
707–708, 814, 889; imperialism in, 678; oil
production, 952, 970; post–WWI, 728; post–
WWII, 889
Midhat Pasha (1822–1884), 656, 657
Migration, from Europe, 579–583
Milan, 188, 189
Milan Decree of 1807, 428
Militarism: defi nition, 211; of Prussia, 213–218
Military forces. See also Armies; Weaponry: cost of maintaining, 369; draft, 712, 717; technol-
ogy and, 210
Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873), 463, 636, 637; The Subjection of Women, 468
Miller, Christopher L., 654
Millerand, Alexandre (meel-raN’)
(1859–1943), 617
Millet, Jean-Francois (1814–1875), 577; The Gleaners, 577
Milosevic, Slobodan (mee-lah’-sa-vitch)
(1941–2006), 1014, 1016, 1017
Milton, John (1608–1674), 160, 242; Paradise Lost, 160; Paradise Regained, 160
Mines Act of 1842, 499
Mining: coal, 454; coal miners’ strikes, 813; of
precious metals, 105, 109, 124
Minorca, 189, 191, 285
Miranda, Francisco de (1750-1816), 387
Mir (meer), 738, 739; dissolution of, 748 Mississippi bubble, 289
Mississippi Company, 289–290
Mitterrand, François (mee-te-raN) (1916–1996),
974–975, 1027
Mobutu, Joseph Désiré (Mobuto Sese Seko) (mo-
bootoo) (1930–1997), 945
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Modern, modernity, 10
Modernist art, 810
Mogul Empire, 303, 646
Moldavia, 205, 538
Moldova, 1003
Molecular biology, 1039
Molière (mull-yair’) (1622–1673), 174, 175
Moltke, Helmuth von (1848–1916), 701
Monarchies, 36–38. See also Enlightened despo- tism; and absolutism, 137; and centralization
of power, 349, 369; English, 74–76; French,
75, 133; new, 113, 133; and the Protestant
Reformation, 83–85; Renaissance, 70–71,
74–77; and sovereignty, 136
Monarchism, 460
Monasteries, 24, 39
Monet, Claude (1840–1926), 572, 628, 629
Monetary exchanges, Depression era, 808
Money, 51, 155. See also Currency; Gold standard Mongols, 49
Monnet, Jean (1888–1979), 905, 914, 915
Monroe, James (1758–1831), 485
Monroe, Marilyn (1926–1962), 1048
Monroe Doctrine, 485–486
Montagnards, 392, 393
Montaigne, Michel de (moN-tenn’) (1533–1592),
235, 251
Montenegro, 659, 1012, 1015
Montesquieu (moN-tes-kyuh’) (1689–1755), 314,
315–316, 323–324; The Spirit of Laws, 316 Moore, Henry (1898–1986), 1047
Moors, 76
Moral and Scientifi c Union (Tugendbund), 435
Moravia, 206
Moravian Brothers, 77
More, Sir Thomas (1478–1535), 70; Utopia, 88 Moreelse, Willem (1620–1666), 241
Moriscos, 76, 125, 126, 132
Morisot, Berthe (1841–1895): Little Girl Reading, 628–630
Morocco, 936; First World War, 692;
independence, 938
Moscow, 226
Mostaert, Jan, 103
Mountebanks, 274
Movies, invented, 583
Mozambique, 946
Muhammad (c. 570–c. 632), 16, 21
Munich Crisis, 850–852
Municipal Corporations Act (1835), 493
Murillo, Bartolome (moo-reel’-yo)
(1617–1683), 125
Muscovy, Muscovites, 203, 218, 220
Music, 197; Age of Enlightenment, 311; England,
seventeenth century, 160; Russian, 737
Muslim faith. See Islam Muslim lands, in Eastern Europe, 196, 653,
655–656
Muslim League, India, 927
Muslims. See also Islam; Moriscos; Pakistan: in the Balkans, 695; in Bosnia, 1014; in India,
303, 675, 927–929; North Africa, 937; Sunni
vs. Shiite, 947; Wahabi sect, 673
Mussadegh, Muhammed (mo-sa-deg)
(1880–1967), 953
Mussolini, Benito (moo-so-lee’-nee, be-nee’-to)
(1883–1945), 780, 811, 824; attacks France,
856; falls from power, 866; invades Africa,
847, 860; invades Greece, 856; political phi-
losophy, 825, 827; seizes power, 821, 823
Myanmar (Burma), 928, 929–931
Mysticism, 71–72
Mythology, 13
Nagasaki, Japan (na-ga-sah’-kee), 873, 1038
Nagy, Imre (najh) (1896–1958), 923, 924, 994
Nanking, Treaty of, 680
Napier, John (nay’-pur) (1550–1617), 240
Naples, 189, 482
Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte), Emperor of
the French (1804–1814), 401, 402, 406. See also Napoleonic Codes; Napoleonic Empire; Napoleonic Europe; abdicates, 440; and the
Church, 408–410; exiled, 441; genius of, 406,
407; and hereditary succession, 419–420;
invades Russia, 438–439; and Josephine, 419,
421; overthrown, 439–441; takes control, 405;
and taxation, 410; at Waterloo, 444
Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon Bonaparte),
Emperor of the French (1852–1870),
506–508, 530–531, 550, 551; Crimean War,
542; economic developments, 532–533, 613;
Extinction of Poverty, 508; Napoleonic Ideas,
508; opposition to, 532
Napoleonic Codes, 409–410, 421–422,
424, 576
Napoleonic Empire, 420–425, 431–432; and
Bonaparte family, 420; Grand Army, 438;
and Great Britain, 425–431; organization, of
states, 420–421; overthrow, 439–441; religion
and, 422, 424; resistance, 431–432
Napoleonic Europe: anti-British sentiments,
425–427; coalitions, 412, 413–414; Continen-
tal System, 416–418; 1810 (map), 422, 423;
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Germany (map), 425; stages, of French occu-
pation, 421–422
Napoleonic Legend, 507–508
Napoleonic wars, 230, 333
Nasser, Gamal Abdul- (1918–1970), 947, 951
National American Woman Suffrage
Association, 618
National Assembly, France, 370–371, 594
Nationalism, 294, 460; Africa, 936–937; anti-
French, 431–432; and anti-Semitism,
635–636; Asian, 685–687, 793; Chinese,
680, 798; vs. class solidarity, 771; Eastern
Europe, 473–474, 513, 694; East Indian, 673;
economic, 638, 808; Egyptian, 662; German,
432–436, 477–478, 509, 544, 545; Italy, 539;
Jewish, 635–636; Magyars, 514–515; and the
nation-state, 536–537, 544–547; and racism,
837–838; repression of, 514–515; and revo-
lution, 320, 367, 382–383; roots of modern
movement, 540–541; and Rousseau, 320; and
secret societies, 470; Soviet Union (U.S.S.R),
758, 759; and totalitarianism, 836; United
States, 565; Western Europe, 470, 471; Yugo-
slavia, 1011–1012
Nationalist movements, 990
National Security Council (U.S.), 890
National sovereignty, and the Cold War, 884–885
National Workshops, 503, 505
Nation building, 544–545
Nation-states, 535–537; characteristics of,
536–537
Native Americans, 352, 573
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 894,
897, 960, 1015, 1062; in Bosnia, 1015, 1016;
and the European Union (EU), 1031; France
withdraws, 961; Helsinki accords, 969; mem-
bership, 1062; and post–U.S.S.R, 1062
Natural law, philosophy of, 250, 261–262, 434
Natural right. See Natural law, philosophy of Nature, 622
Naval blockade, 705
Naval blockade, First World War, 705
Navigation Act of 1651, 157, 164, 166
Nazi Germany, 831–833, 835, 839. See also Nazi Party; art, 1046; bombed, 863; collabora-
tors, 855, 856, 1012; dominates Europe,
856; “Final Solution,” 870; government, vs.
U.S.S.R, 835; invades Africa, 860; invades
Balkans, 858–859; invades Czechoslovakia,
852–853; invades France, 855–857; invades
Norway, 854; invades Poland, 854; invades
Soviet Union, 859, 861, 865–866; invades
Western Europe, 855–856; naval forces, 862,
863; Nazi-Soviet Pact, 853, 858; quits League
of Nations, 845; racism, 840; resistance move-
ments, 855, 867, 901; surrenders, 871; united
with Austria, 846, 850, 852; women in, 863
Nazi Party: Beer Hall Putsch, 828, 829; denazi- fi cation of West Germany, 907; neo-Nazis,
1023; origins, 828
Necker, Jacques (neck’-r, zhak)
(1732–1804), 370
Nehru, Jawaharlal (nay’-roo, ja-wah’-har-lal)
(1889–1964), 675, 796, 927–929
Nelson, Lord Horatio (1758–1805), 415
Neomercantilism, 648
Netherlands, 72, 126–128, 854. See also Dutch Republic; Antwerp, 127; as EU member,
1031; partition of, 131; under Philip II, 126,
127–128; post–WWII, 914; Protestant Refor-
mation, 127; revolt, 126–129; same-sex mar-
riage, 1057; Twelve Years’ Truce, 131; Union
of Utrecht, 129, 131
Netherlands Indies, 861. See also Indonesia Newcomen, Thomas (1663–1729), 248, 454
New Deal, 811–812
New England colonies, 159; slavery in, 280
Newfoundland, 190
New Guinea, 861
Ne Win, General, 931
New Industrial Revolution, 583–584
New Left, 1054
New Model Army, 163
Newton, Sir Isaac (1642–1727), 233, 240, 245,
246–247, 250–252, 317; Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 245
Newtonian system, 249
New Woman (journal), 468 New World. See also Americas: discovery of,
100–109; Dutch Republic in, 155; England in,
159–160; France in, 174
New York: England conquers, 159; settled, by
Dutch, 132
New York Stock Exchange, 805
New Zealand, 568, 579, 609, 815
Nicholas I, Tsar of Russia (1825–1855), 487,
490–491, 514, 538
Nicholas II, Pope (1058–1061), 40
Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia (1894–1917): abdica-
tion, 709, 750, 751; as antirevolutionary,
744–745; October Manifesto, 746; reforms of,
746, 748
Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), 71, 72
Nicholas V, Pope (1447–1455), 55
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IndexI28
Nietzsche, Friedrich (nee-chuh) (1844–1900), 627,
840, 1042
Nigeria, 942
Nightingale, Florence (1820–1910), 538, 539
Nimwegen, Treaty of (nigh’-me-gn), 158, 187
Nixon, Richard M. (1913–1994), 917, 920, 965,
968–970
Nkrumah, Kwame (en-kroo-muh) (1909–1972),
940–941
NKVD, 918
Nobility, 51, 52; Age of Democratic Revolution,
344; and Calvinism, 134, 137, 139; eighteenth
century, 283, 286–287; and the French Revolu-
tion, 365–366, 370–371, 386, 389; and Napo-
leonic Europe, 422; seventeenth century, 166
Nonconformists, 272
Non-Jurors, 287
Normans, 30–31
North Africa: geographical territory, 937; and
Ottoman Empire, 660, 661; religion and cul-
ture, 937; Second World War, 847, 860, 864
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). See NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
Northern Ireland, 815, 903, 1025
Northern War (1700–1721), 225–226
North German Confederation, 547–549
North Korea, 889, 895, 896, 1005; nuclear
weapons, 1062
Norway: democratic advances, 608, 609; Second
World War, 854
Nostradamus (1503–1566), 235
Nova Scotia (Acadia), 190, 285, 302
November Revolution, 744–749, 775
Nuclear physics, 1037–1038
Nuclear power plants, 1038
Nuclear weapons, 1038. See also Atomic bomb; arms race, 984–985, 1062; and the Cold War,
890, 897, 959–960, 969; European Atomic
Community, 915; nations in possession of,
984; Non-Proliferation Treaty, 1062; post–
Cold War, 1006; proliferation, 983–984;
testing, 983
Numbers, systems of, 221
Numismatics, 256
Nuremberg Trials, 906, 907
Nursing profession, 539
Nystadt, Treaty of (nU’-stah or Angl. nigh’-staht), 226
Oath of the Tennis Court, 371, 374
Obama, Barack (1961–), 1062–1063, 1066
October Manifesto, 746
October Revolution, 754
Offi ce for European Economic Cooperation
(OEEC), 898
Offshoring, of employment, 1021
Oil production: Middle East, 952, 970;
Nigeria, 942
Old Believers (in Russia), 223, 227, 335
Old Regime. See Bourbon kings Olivares, Count (1587–1645), 132
OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries), 970
Open Door Policy, China, 682
Ophuls, Marcel (1927–): The Sorrow and the Pity, 903
Opium War of 1839–1841, 680
Oral history, 11
Orbis terrarum, 14
Ordeal, trial by, 23
Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele (1860–1952), 725,
726, 729
Orleans, Duke of (1747–1793), 286
Orwell, George (1903–1950), 810; Down and Out in Paris and London, 810; The Road to Wigan Pier, 810
Ostend Company, 285
Ostpolitik, 994 Ottoman Empire, 203–206. See also Turkish
Republic; anti-imperialism, 791–793; collapse
of, 536, 653–662, 729; commerce and trade,
205; Crimean War, 537–539, 656; decline
of, 195; defeated in the Balkans, 487–488;
defeated in Vienna, 206–207; disunity in, 655;
First World War, 694, 695, 705, 707–708,
792, 793; geographical boundaries, 196, 203–
206, 694–695, 947; map, 200; in the Mediter-
ranean, 125; military forces, 203; post–WWI,
729; religions of, 49–50, 653; Russo-Turkish
War of 1877–1878, 658–660
Oudry, Jean-Baptiste: M. Bachelier, director of the Lyons Farms, 292
Outsourcing, 1021
Owen, Robert (1771–1858), 466, 467, 613
Owen, Wilfred (1893–1918), 721
Oxenstierna (oks’-n-steer-nuh) (1583–1654), 142
Oxford University, 41, 90, 121, 166, 252
Pacifi c theater, World War II, 860–862, 873–875;
map, 869
Pacifi sm: defi nition, 844; of post–WWI Western
countries, 844–845, 852
Paine, Thomas (1737–1809), 386; Common Sense, 355, 357; The Rights of Man, 375, 386
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Index I29
Pakistan, 928–929; confl icts with India, 931
Palacky, Francis (pa’-lat-ski) (1798–1876): His- tory of Bohemia, 474
Palatinate, 139, 140
Paleography, 255
Palestine, 655, 708, 728, 814; confl ict, with Israel,
951–952
Palestinian National Authority, 955
Panama Canal, 583
Pankhurst, Emmeline (1858–1928), 618, 619
Pan-Slav Assembly, 1848, 512
Pan-Slavism, 658
Pantheism, 259
Papacy, 24, 26, 38–41, 55; Babylonian Captiv-
ity, 52; and the Council of Trent, 94; and the
French Revolution, 384; infallibility of, 384,
605, 634
Papal Inquisition (Roman Inquisition), 97
Papen, Franz von (1879–1969), 831
Papin, Denis (pa-piN’) (1647–1712), 248
Paracelsus (par-a-sel-sus) (Hohenheim) (1493–
1541), 71, 235
Paris: Age of Enlightenment, 313; city design,
531, 533; Commune, 594, 597, 615; Franco-
Prussian War, 552, 594; liberated, WWII,
867; salons, 175–176, 312–314, 318
Paris, Treaty of (fi rst), 306–308, 441
Paris, Treaty of (second), 444
Parlements, France, 176, 184, 328; eighteenth
century, 286; and enlightened despotism,
328, 330
Parliament, English, 36–37, 51, 193; eighteenth
century, 286–287, 345–348; houses of,
160–162; Houses of (building), 464; Labour
Party, 812, 813, 902–903; Long Parliament,
162–163; nineteenth century, 600–601;
Pride’s Purge, 163; reform, 346, 347–348,
492–493, 499, 602, 1025; seventeenth cen-
tury, 160–163, 165–173; ship-money dispute,
162; Solemn League and Covenant, 163
Parliament, Scottish, 1025
Parliament Act of 1911, 602
Parliamentary socialism, 616
Parliaments, origin of, 36
Parma, prince of (Alexander Farnese) (1546–
1592), 128, 129
Parthenon, 12, 13; damaged, 207
Pascal, Blaise (1623–1662), 174, 240, 248, 249,
251, 257, 1042
Passchendaele, battle of (1917), 703
Pasternak, Boris (1890–1960): Dr. Zhivago, 919, 989
Paternalism, 466
Patronage, 345, 348
Paul III, Pope (1534–1549), 93, 95, 96
Paul the Apostle (Saint Paul) (died c. A.D. 67),
16, 43, 80
Paul VI, Pope (1963–1978), 1049, 1050
Pavlov, Ivan (1849–1936), 623
Pax Romana, 15 Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 297
Peace of Alais, 138
Peace of Augsburg, 84, 85, 124, 139
Peace of Belgrade, 207
Peace of Karlowitz, 207
Peace of Paris, 724–733. See also Versailles, Treaty of; China and, 800; failure of, 843;
principles of, 729
Peace of Prague, 142
Peace of Utrecht, 189, 190–193; sequelae,
285–293
Peace of Vienna, 445, 447
Peace of Westphalia, 99, 142–143, 146, 193, 195;
Alsace Lorraine, 187; sequelae, 157, 187,
193, 195, 211
Peacock Throne, 303
Pearl Harbor naval base, Japanese attack on, 861
Peasants, 118. See also Feudalism; Serfs; and the French Revolution, 372–373, 375, 381, 389,
393; rebellion of, 31, 35, 50–51, 77, 81–82,
222, 226, 746; and the Russian Revolution,
746; Soviet Union (U.S.S.R), 762–764
Peel, Robert (1788–1850), 458, 491, 495
Péguy, Charles (1873–1914), 721
Penal code, 172
Peninsular War, 417
Pennsylvania colony, 159
People’s Republic of China, 778, 885, 888, 895,
896, 921, 1005; cultural revolution, 1055;
and Ghana, 941; nuclear nonproliferation
treaty, 1062; as nuclear power, 984; and the
Soviet Union, 889, 892, 895, 921; United
Nations membership, 1059
People’s Will, 737
Perestroika, 988, 991, 1005 Persia, 953. See also Iran; anti-imperialism,
792, 795; First World War, 792; imperialism
in, 678; nationalism, 687; Second World
War, 953
Persian Gulf War, 1063
Peru, 105
Pétain, Marshal (pay-tiN’) (1856–1951), 712,
855, 903
Peterloo massacre, 478, 480
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IndexI30
Peters, Karl (1856–1918), 663
Peter the Apostle (Saint Peter) (died c. A.D. 67),
16, 24
Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia (1682–1725), 217,
218, 224–227; and Church reform, 223–224;
death, 229, 334; executes son, 229; exposure
to Western culture, 224; portrait, 225; secular-
ism, 229
Petrarch, Francesco (pee’-trark) (1304–1374), 63
Petrodollars, 916
Philip II, King of Spain (1554–1598), 89–90,
124–126; death of, 132; invasion of England,
130, 131
Philip IV, King of Spain (1621–1665), 132
Philip of Macedon (359–336 B.C.), 13
Philippines, 104; independence, 926; Second
World War, 861
Philip the Fair, King of France (1284–1314), 52
Philip V, King of Spain (1700–1746), 189, 285
Philosophes (fee-lo-zuff), 312–315; and the French
Revolution, 368, 392
Philosophical Radicals, 464, 468
Philosophy: inductive vs. deductive reasoning,
237–238; and mathematics, 238; modern,
1042–1043; of natural law, 250; and religious
faith, 259
Physics, 240, 624–626; social implications of,
1038–1040
Physiocrats, 320, 321
Physiology, study of, 240
Picasso, Pablo (1881–1973), 630, 632, 849, 1045;
Guernica, 849 Piedmont. See Sardinia (Savoy, Piedmont) Pinter, Harold (1930–2008): The Homecoming,
1048
Pinyin system, 798
Pirates, piracy, 130, 132, 481
Pissaro, Camille (1830–1903), 628
Pitt, Thomas (1653–1726), 283, 305, 306
Pitt, William (1708–1778), 302, 387, 390
Pitt, William (1759–1806), 283
Pius II, Pope (1458–1464), 55
Pius IX, Pope (1846–1878), 509; Syllabus of Errors, 514, 605, 634
Pius XII, Pope (1939–1958), 1049
Pizarro, Francisco (pi-zah’-ro) (1506–1548), 103
Plague, 50–51, 53
Planck, Max (1858–1947), 625, 1037
Planned economy: and First World War, 716, 766;
U.S.S.R (Union of United Soviet Socialist
Republics), 765–767, 770–772
Plantation system, 280, 282, 564
Plato (427–347 B.C.), 12; Republic, 12 Plehve, Vyacheslav K. (1846–1904), 745, 748
Plekhanov, Georgi (1857–1918), 740–741
Pobiedonostsev, Konstantin Petrovich (po-byay-
donost’-zeff) (1827–1907), 737
Pogroms, 737
Poincaré, Raymond (pwaN-ka-ray’)
(1860–1934), 816
Poland, 220; alliance with Russia, 225; geo-
graphical territory, 339; nationalism, 432,
473–474; NATO membership, 1062; parti-
tion of, 332, 337–338; post-Napoleonic, 444,
476–477; post–WWI, 726, 727, 781–782,
784, 790; resistance, to Soviet rule, 923;
revolution of 1830, 489–491; Second World
War, 853, 854, 878, 893, 895; since the eigh-
teenth century (map), 342; solidarity move-
ment, 992–994
Police force, professional, 491
Polish Republic, 6–7, 200–203; boundaries of,
196; classes, 200–202; decline of, 195, 225;
early commercialism, 123–124; government,
200–203; (map), 200
Polish underground, WWII, 867
Political theory, 260–265; defi nition, 260
Politiques, 135–136 Pollution, 1070–1072
Pomerania, 211, 226
Pompadour, Madame de (1721–1750), 317
Poniatowski, Stanislas (po-nee-a-toff-skee)
(Stanislaus II, King of Poland) (1764–1795),
313, 340
Poor, working, 119–120
Poorhouses, 498
Poor Laws, 116, 119, 166, 493, 498
Pope, Alexander (1688–1744), 249
Popes, Roman Catholic. See Papacy; specifi c popes
Popular Front, France, 819, 820–821
Popular Party, Italy, 1022
Population: estimated by continental areas, 574;
world, 1067–1070, 1072
Population distribution: of Europe, 140, 174;
seventeenth century, 159, 174
Population growth, 29–36, 109; causes of, 573–
575; Europe, 573–576; and the Plague, 50–51,
53; world, 573–575, 1067–1070, 1072
Populism, Russia, 740–741
Portsmouth,Treaty of (1905), 685
Portugal: EU membership, 977; regains indepen-
dence, 133, 143; same-sex marriage, 1057;
socialism, 976
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Index I31
Portuguese colonies: in Africa, 667, 926, 946, 947;
in Asia, 100–102; in Brazil, 483
Positive Philosophy (Comte), 522 Positivism, 522–523
Postmodernism, 1047–1048
Potemkin, Grigory (po-tyom’-kin)
(1739–1791), 338
Potosí silver mines (po-to-see’), 105, 110, 124
Potsdam conference, 880, 888
Poussin, Nicholas (poo-siN’) (1594–1665),
174, 177
Pragmatic Sanction of 1438, 75
Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, 210, 295
Prague spring (pragh), 966–968
Praise of Folly (Erasmus), 73 Pravda (Bolshevik newspaper) (prahv-duh), 748
Predestination, 86
Prehistory, 1–2, 11
Presbyterians, 163, 350–351
Pretenders, to English throne, 171, 288
Pride’s Purge, 163
Printing industry, 113
Printing press, fi rst, 71
Private property, 166, 173, 263, 281, 283, 381, 452
Procurator of the Holy Synod, 224, 227
Progress: concept of, 267, 268; faith in, 309,
310, 611
Proletariat, 527–528. See also Working class; Rus- sian, 738
Propaganda, and totalitarianism, 836–838
Property rights, 166, 173, 263. See also Feudalism; Prussia, eighteenth century, 333
Protestant, origin of term, 78
Protestant evangelicals, 1049
Protestant Reformation, 70, 77–93; and economic
development, 91–93; and education, 121–122;
in England, 88–91; Geneva, Switzerland, 86;
and social revolution, 81–83
Protestants/Protestantism, 91–93. See also Calvin- ism; Huguenots; Lutheranism; ecumenical
movement, 1048–1049; England as bulwark,
130; in Ireland, 350–351, 602, 604, 815, 903;
marriage and family, 92; nineteenth century,
632–633; repression, by Austrian monarchy,
209; return to Catholicism, 166, 167; twenti-
eth century, 1048–1049; and women, 92–93
Protestant wind, 131
Proust, Marcel (1871–1922), 1047; Remembrance of Things Past, 810
Prussia, 191, 200, 203; Austro-Prussian War, 547;
class system, 217; economy, 216; forma-
tion of, 210–218; under Frederick the Great,
332–333, 338, 340; and the French Revolu-
tion, 390; geography, 211–212; and German
nationalism, 436; growth of, 1415-1918
(map), 214–215; militarism, 333; Napoleon
conquers, 333, 434; and Napoleonic Europe,
415; North German Confederation, 547–548;
parallels with Russia, 217, 219–220; and
partition of Poland, 338, 340; and Pragmatic
Sanction, 210; reaction to Napoleon, 412;
Revolution of 1848, 510–511, 516–520; and
Seven Years’ War, 300, 308; social stratifi ca-
tion, 333; taxation, 216; and unifi cation of
Germany, 544–555
Prussian army, 213–218; recruitment, 217;
uniforms, 219
Psychology, 623–624, 640
Ptolemy, 13; Ptolemaic system, 241, 242
Puerto Rican independence, 925
Pufendorf, Samuel (poo-fn-dorf) (1632–1694):
Law of Nature and of Nations, 262 Pugachev, Emelian (poo-ga-choff) (1726–1775),
335–337
Punch (British magazine), 608 Punjab, India, 928
Purcell, Henry (1659–1695), 160
Puritan Revolution, in England, 164; and Ameri-
can Revolution, 346
Puritans, 158
Putin, Vladimir V. (poo-teen, vla-dee-meer’)
(1952–), 1009, 1010
Putsches, 506, 786; Beer Hall Putsch, 828, 829 Putting out system, 111, 113, 160
Pythagoras (pi-tha’-grus) (?569–?475 B.C.), 13
Qaddafi , Muammar al- (1942-2011), 1066
Qaeda, al-, 1063, 1064
Q’ing (Ch’ing) dynasty, 678, 680. See also Man- chu dynasty
Quadruple Alliance, 440, 445
Quakers (Society of Friends), 165, 167
Quebec, Canada, 304
Quebec Act of 1774, 353
Quesnay, François (kay-náy) (1694–1774), 314
Quisling, Vidkun (1887–1945), 856
Qur’an (Koran), 21, 22
Rabelais, François (?1490–1553), 70
Race: as cultural concept, 2; and equality, 10
Racine, Jean (ra-seen’) (1639–1699), 174
Racism, 263–264; and immigrant populations,
1023; and imperialism, 653; and nationalism,
837–838; and totalitarianism, 837–838
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IndexI32
Radicalism, 460, 464–465
Radio, invented, 583
Radioactivity, 625
Radiocarbon dating, 2
Radischev, Alexandr Nikolaevich (1749–1802):
Voyage from St. Petersburg to Moscow, 386 Railroads, 455, 532, 566, 567, 572, 577, 584;
fi nancing, 588; high-speed trains, 913; Trans-
Siberian Railway, 681
Ranke, Leopold von (rahn’-kuh) (1795–1886), 472
Rapallo, Treaty of, 787
Rasputin, Grigory (Angl. rass-pew’-tin) (1872– 1916), 749, 750
Rastadt, Treaty of (Angl. rah’-stat), 189, 207 Rathenau, Walter (1867–1922), 718, 829
Razin, Stephen (d. 1671), 222, 223, 335
Reading public, 312
Reagan, Ronald (1911–2004), 973, 981, 984, 985,
992
Realism, 60–62, 522–523, 810
Realpolitik (rah-ahl’-po-lee-teek’), 523, 547 Reason, and natural law, 261, 262
Reasoning, inductive vs. deductive, 237–238
Recusants, 90, 97
Red Army, 756, 757
Red Brigades, 1055
Red Shirts (Garibaldi’s Thousand), 542–544
Red Terror, 757, 758
Reformation. See Counter Reformation (Catholic Reformation); Protestant Reformation
Refractory clergy, 384–385, 389
Refugees: political, 900–901; Yugoslavian, 1023
Regiomontanus (John Müller) (re’-jee-o-mon-
tay’nus) (1436–1476), 71
Reichstag (rikes’-tahk), 604, 606
Relativity, theory of, 624–625
Religion. See also Catholic Church (Roman Catholic Church); Christianity; Islam; Jews,
Judaism; Muslims; Protestants/Protestant-
ism; Witchcraft: and Age of the Democratic
Revolution, 344; and anthropology, 623;
eighteenth-century Europe, 271–273; and the
Enlightenment, 310–311, 317–318; and the
French Revolution, 395–396; and liberalism,
637–638; modern world, 1048–1052, 1058–
1059; mysticism and lay religion, 71–72;
and natural law, 262; in Nazi Germany, 833;
nineteenth century, 631–636; and philosophy,
259; and scientifi c thought, 248–251, 257–
259; Soviet Union (U.S.S.R), 771; and totali-
tarianism, 835; and world confl ict, 1058–1059
Religions, state, in Europe about 1560 (map), 89
Religious fundamentalism, 1051. See also Islamic fundamentalism; spread of, 1052
Religious toleration: Age of Enlightenment, 317–
318, 325; and cultural relativism, 251–252;
Dutch Republic, 153; and global diversity,
1058–1059; Great Britain, 346; Ottoman
Empire, 204–205
Religious wars. See Wars of Religion Rembrandt (1606–1669), 112, 151, 152
Renaissance, 56–70; art, 59–62; Catholic Church,
67; education, 65; etiquette, 65–67; Germany,
71–72, 76–77; Holy Roman Empire, 76–77;
Italy, 56–70, 234; literature, 61–65; marriage
and family, 67; monarchies, 70–71, 74–77;
outside Italy, 70–73; politics, 67–70; religion,
71–72; Universities, 70–71
Renan, Ernest (rnaN’) (1823–1892), 632
Renoir, Pierre-Auguste (1841–1919), 628
Republicanism, 465–466, 598–600
Retail commerce, 593, 595
Revenue Act of 1764 (Sugar Act), 352
Revolution of 1848, 501–534; outcomes of, 520
Revolution of 1688 (Glorious Revolution), 171,
265–266
Reza, Shah Pahlavi, Muhammad (Shah of Iran)
(1941–1979), 953
Reza Shah Pahlavi (Shah of Iran)
(1925–1941), 795
Rhodes, Cecil (1853–1902), 669
Ricardo, David (1772-1823), 458
Richelieu, Cardinal (re-she-lyuh’) (1585–1642),
138, 142
Rigaud, Hyacinthe (1659–1743), 147, 180
Rights, natural, 263–264
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay
(1844–1908), 737
Robespierre, Maximilien (ro-bes-pyair’)
(1758–1794), 389, 396, 498; fall of,
396–398, 407
Robot (forced labor), 123 Rochefoucauld, Duke de la (1747–1827), 360
Rohan, Duke of (1579–1638), 138
Roi de Soleil (Sun King). See Louis XIV, King of France
Roland, Madame (ro-laN’) (1754–1793), 386
Rolling Stones, 1054
Roman Catholic Church. See Catholic Church (Roman Catholic Church)
Romance languages, 14
Roman Empire, 14–16; boundaries of, 14–15,
19–20; disintegration of, 19–20; later, 20, 24,
25; and religion, 17
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Romania, 205, 207, 538, 609, 714, 728, 781; fall
of communism, 999–1000; post–WWI, 784;
Second World War, 858, 869, 881, 893
Roman Inquisition, 97
Romanov, Michael, Tsar of Russia (Angl. ro’ma- noff) (1613–1645), 222
Romanovs, 222
Romanticism, 319, 432, 434, 461–463
Rome: occupation of, 544; sacked, 70
Rommel, Erwin (1891–1945), 860
Roosevelt, Eleanor (1884–1964), 886
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882–1945), 811;
meets with Allies, 876–878, 880
Roosevelt, Theodore (1858–1919), 639
Rose, Sonya O., 459
Roundheads, 163
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (roo-so’) (1712–1778),
314, 315, 318–320, 323; Considerations on Poland, 320; Discourse on Arts and Sciences, 319; Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men, 319; Emile, 320; and French Revolution, 320, 368; Héloïse, 320, 368; por- trait, 320; Social Contract, 319, 320, 368, 371
Royal, Segolene (1953–), 1026, 1027
Royal Academy of Sciences, 245–246, 249, 312
Royal African Company, 264
Royal Society of London, 245
Rubens, Peter Paul (1577–1640), 96, 153
Ruhr, Germany, 892
Rump Parliament, 163, 165
Rusk, Dean (1909–1994), 965
Russell, Bertrand (1872–1970): Principia Math- ematica, 1043
Russia. See also Russia, post-Soviet; Russia, under Peter the Great; Russian Revolution;
Soviet Union (U.S.S.R): anarchism, 562;
in Asia, 650; Bolsheviks, 617, 710; Cadets
(Constitutional Democrats), 738; Crimean
War, 533–534, 555; defeats Napoleon, 438–
439; early commercialism, 124; enlightened
despotism, 333–339; expansion of, 195;
First World War, 690, 695, 696, 698–700,
702, 709–710; geographical territory, 6–7;
growth of in the west (map), 230; Industrial
Revolution, 737–738; intelligensia, 739;
international trade, 114; joins UN Security
Council, 1004; legal system, 560; liberaliza-
tion, of tsarist, 555–557, 560–562; literature,
737; medieval, 49; and Napoleonic Europe,
413–416, 418; nationalism, 474; occupation
of Asia, 675–678; and Ottoman Empire,
658, 661; and partition of Poland, 338,
340; peasants in, 222, 226–227, 229–230,
335–336, 556–557, 560, 561, 738–739, 748;
before Peter the Great, 220–224; populism,
739–741; post-Napoleonic, 487; post–WWI,
728; Russo-Japanese neutrality, 861; Russo-
Japanese War, 879; science, 737; socialism,
562, 709–710, 738, 740; space program,
1040–1041; territorial expansion, 336–338;
United Nations membership, 1059; western-
ization of, 748–749; working class, 738
Russia, post-Soviet, 1005–1018; Chechen rebel-
lion, 1007; constitution, 1007; nuclear non-
proliferation treaty, 1062; nuclear weapons,
1006; privatization, 1006; role of, 1062
Russia, under Peter the Great, 224–227; absolut-
ism, 222, 227; alliance with Poland and Den-
mark, 225; army, 225–226; commerce and
trade, 219–220; defeats Sweden, 226; early
contact, with Europe, 220; government, 222,
227–229; invades Europe, 225–226; under
Ottoman Turks, 205; parallels with Prussia,
217, 219–220; peasant rebellion, 222, 223,
226; peasants, disenfranchised, 229–230;
Romanov dynasty, 222; social classes, 227–
229; social graces taught, 229; taxation, 227;
Time of Troubles (1604–1613), 222; western-
ization of, 218–231
Russian Federation, 1003
Russian Federation in 2000 (map), 1008
Russian Front, Second World War, 859
Russian imperialism: in Asia, 681, 682, 685–687;
and Russo-Japanese War, 685–687
Russian Orthodox Church, 223–224, 227, 737, 989
Russian Revolution, 563, 735–778; and anti-
imperialism, 792–793; background, 737–739;
Bloody Sunday, 745, 746; Bolsheviks seize
power, 753–754; civil war, 754–758; com-
parison, with French, 735–736, 755; Constitu-
tional Democrats, 744, 746; fi rst Duma, 747;
and First World War, 749–751, 754, 755;
labor strikes, 746; Leninism, 741–744; Marx-
ists, 710, 740–741; Nicholas II abdicates, 750,
751; October Manifesto, 746; party organiza-
tion, 742, 752–758; peasant rebellion, 746;
Red Terror, 757, 758; Revolution of 1905,
744–749, 775; Revolution of 1917, 749–758;
and Russo-Japanese War, 746, 747; Social
Democrats, 740–741, 745; Social Revolu-
tionaries, 754; soviets, 745–746, 751, 753;
Stolypin reforms, 748–749; terrorism, 563,
748, 756; totalitarianism and, 838, 839; war
communism, 754–758
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Russian Social Democratic Party, 615, 617
Russo-Japanese War, 685–687, 709, 791; and
Russian Revolution, 746
Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, 658–660
Ruthenians, 220
Rutherford, Ernest (Lord Rutherford)
(1871–1937), 625
Rwanda, 1061
Sacrament, defi nition, 41
Sahara Desert, 6
Saint-Simonians, 466, 468, 469, 531, 532
Sakharov, Andrei (1921–1989), 989
Salazar, Antonio (1889–1970), 840
Salons, Paris, 175–176, 312–314, 318
SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitation), 969
Salutati, Coluccio, 63–64
Same-sex partnerships and marriage, 1057
Sand, George (1804–1876), 461, 469, 471
Sanitation, eighteenth-century Europe, 272
San Martín, José de (1778–1850), 484
Sans-culottes (saN-cUl-ut’), 390 San Stefano, Treaty of (san steff’-a-no), 658
Sarajevo Crisis (sa-ra-yay-vo), 696–699
Sardinia (Savoy, Piedmont), 191, 541, 543;
Crimean War, 538; Revolution of 1848,
510–511, 513
Sarkozy, Nicholas (1955–), 1027
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–1980), 1042, 1043
Sassoon, Siegfried (1886–1967), 721
Saudi Arabia, 729, 947; terrorists, 1063
Savoy (Sardinia, Piedmont). See Sardinia (Savoy, Piedmont)
Saxons, 26
Saxony, 142
Say, J. B. (1767–1832), 463
Scharnhorst, General von (1775–1813), 436
Schiller, Friedrich von (1759–1805), 461
Schlegel, Friedrich (1772–1829), 461
Schleicher, Kurt von (shli’-ker)
(1882–1934), 831
Schlieffen Plan (shlee-fi n), 700
Schmidt, Helmut (1918–), 910, 976–977
Scholasticism, 42
Schönbrunn Palace, 300
Schöner, Johannes (shU-nr) (1477–1547), 255
Schröder, Gerhard (shrø-der, gehr-hard)
(1944– ), 1026
Science: advent of, 13; and the Cold War, 884;
and ethics, 1038–1039; faith in, 620, 626;
importance of, 233–234; nineteenth century,
620–626; Renaissance, 70–71; Russia, 737;
seventeenth century, 151, 174; before the sev-
enteenth century, 234–236
Scientifi c method, 237; mathematics and, 238, 240
Scientifi c revolution, 246–247; and politics, 250,
251; and religious faith, 248–251, 257–259;
and sense of evidence, 254, 257
Scientifi c societies, 245–248
“Scorched earth policy,” Russia, 859
Scotland: confl ict with England, 158, 162–163,
349, 350; joins with England, 171, 191; popu-
lation, eighteenth century, 277
Scott, Joan W., 459
Scottish Parliament, 1025
Sea of Galilee (map), 954
Secessionists, United States, South, 565
Second Industrial Revolution, 583–584
Second International, 616, 617, 775
Second World War, 216, 843–881. See also Cold War; France; Great Britain; Holocaust; Paci-
fi sm; Soviet Union (U.S.S.R); United States;
African Americans in, 862; air assaults, 858,
863; Allied invasion of Europe, 866–871;
Allies, 862; Allies meet, 876–881; appease-
ment, 852–853; atomic bomb, 873, 875;
Australia, 861; battle of Britain, 858; battle
of Stalingrad, 865–866; battle of the Atlantic,
861, 863; Belgium, 854, 855; Bulgaria, 869,
881; Burma, 861; Canada, 866; casualties,
Japanese, 873, 875; casualties, Polish, 867;
casualties, Russian, 866; the Caucasus, 859,
860; consequences of, 843–844; Czecho-
slovakia, 850, 852–853, 893; deportation
and resettlement, of populations, 892–893;
Eastern Europe, 878; Eastern Front, 865–867,
869, 870–871; Egypt, 860, 865; Europe
(map), 868–869; Finland, 853, 854, 881;
France, 844, 854–857, 867; Germany, after,
881; Great Britain, 857, 858, 860; Greece,
856; Hungary, 881, 893; India, 928; interven-
tion vs. isolationism, 856, 858; Italy, 881;
Japan, 860–861, 881; Japanese Americans,
interned, 862; Lend-Lease Act, 858; mobi-
lization, United States, 862; Nazis surren-
der, 871; North Africa, 847, 860, 864–865;
Pacifi c theater, 860–862, 868–869, 873; Pearl
Harbor, 861; Poland, 853, 854, 878, 893;
reconstruction, economic, 897–902; repara-
tions, 878, 881, 890–892; Romania, 869,
881, 893; Soviet Union (U.S.S.R), 760, 845,
853, 854, 859–861, 877–878, 881; United
States, after, 887–890; United States during,
856, 857–858, 867, 870; Western Pacifi sm,
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Index I35
844–845; Western-Soviet victory, 861–875;
Yugoslavia, 1012
Secularization, 49–50, 56, 58–60, 70, 143; and
Age of Democratic Revolution, 344; Age of
Enlightenment, 317–318, 331; and enlight-
ened despotism, 325; and scientifi c thought,
250–251; twentieth century, 1052
Selassie, Haile, Emperor of Ethiopia
(1930–1973), 847
Selective service, 712
Semiotics, 1043
Separation of powers, 316
Sephardic Jews, 75
Sepoy Rebellion, 674
Sepoys, 305
September 11, 2001, 1063, 1064
“September massacres,” 389
Serbia, 609, 696, 1012, 1015. See also Balkans Serbs, Bosnian, 1012, 1014, 1015–1016
Serfs, 30, 35, 521. See also Feudalism; eastern Europe, 123, 329–333; rebellion of, 50–51,
335–336; Russian, 222, 227, 229–230,
335–336
Servetus, Michael (ser-vee’-tus) (1511–1553), 86
Seurat, George (1859–1891): Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 603
Seven Weeks’ War, 548
Seven Years’ War, 283, 294, 299–303; and Colo-
nial America, 301, 352; in Europe, 299–300;
in India, 304; Peace Settlement of 1763,
306–308
Seymour, Jane (1509–1537), 88
Shakespeare, William (1564–1616), 159, 273;
Hamlet, 159; King Lear, 159; Macbeth, 159, 273
Shaw, George Bernard (1856–1950), 616
Sheeler, Charles (1883–1965), 587
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (1797–1851), 461
Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792–1827), 461
Shiite Muslims (shee-ite), 21, 947, 953
Ship money dispute, 162
Shipping industry, 585–586
Shoguns, 573
Siam (Thailand), delegations to Europe,
252, 253
Siberia, 220; deportation to, 918
Sicily, 189
Sick man of Europe, 655
Siegfried Line, 854, 867
Sieyès, Abbé (syay-ess’) (1748–1836), 405; What Is the Third Estate?, 371
Sikhs, 303, 928
Silesia, 206, 218, 295, 296, 332; Second
World War, 869
Silesian wars, 294, 295
Silk industry, 116
Silver mines, 105, 110, 124
Silverware, origins of, 270
Simon, Richard (see-moN’) (1638–1712): Critical History of the Old Testament, 258
Sinai Peninsula, 951, 952, 955; (map), 954
Single European Act, 979
Sinn Fein (shin fayn’), 815
Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life, 72
Six Acts, 479
Six-Day War, 951, 955
Skepticism, 251–253; defi nition, 251; rejected, in
Age of Enlightenment, 310
Skinheads, 1023
Slavery: abolished, in British colonies, 565; abol-
ished, in British Empire, 493; abolished, in
French colonies, 395, 503, 565; abolished, in
Spanish colonies, 565; Americas, 104–105,
191–192, 264–265; ancient Greece, 12; in
colonial Africa, 666; Eighteenth Century,
280; Middle Ages, 29; United States, 356,
565–566
Slave trade, 481; and African demographics, 573;
eighteenth century, 280
Slavic Revival, 474, 512–513, 694
Slovenia, 1012, 1014–1015
Smith, Adam (1723–1790), 321, 323, 458; Wealth of Nations, 321, 323, 359, 381
Smith, Anthony D., 540
Sobieski, John, King of Poland (1674–1696),
202, 207
Soboul, Albert, 399
Social Darwinism, 623, 626; and imperialism, 653
Social Democrats: Germany, 785, 787, 1027;
post–WWII, 902; Western Europe, 976; West
Germany, 910
Socialism, 460, 466–467, 498, 503, 612–614, 787;
vs. communism, 775–777, 780; Fabian soci-
ety, 616; and First World War, 775; France,
594, 599–600, 615, 617, 904, 974–975, 1028;
Germany, 548, 605–607; Great Britain, 602,
614–616; and imperialism, 649–650; Italy,
976; and labor unions, 612–616; of Napoleon
III, 531; Portugal, 976; post-WWII, 899, 901–
902; revisionist, 617; Russian, 562, 709–710,
738, 740; war, 718, 719; Western Europe,
976–977; West Germany, 908
Social mobility: Age of Enlightenment, 333; eigh-
teenth century Europe, 281–283; Germany,
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IndexI36
437; and the Industrial Revolution, 450–451;
Napoleonic Europe, 424
Social movements, 10; Europe, nineteenth
century, 460–475
Social stratifi cation. See Classes, social Social structure, defi nition, 117
Society of Friends (Quakers), 165, 167
Society of Jesus (Jesuits), 96–97, 252, 262, 847
Socrates (469–399 B.C.), 12
Soldiers. See also Mercenaries: eighteenth century, 294
Solemn League and Covenant, 163
Solidarity movement, 995
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander (zol-je-neet’-sin) (1919–
2008): Gulag Archipelago, 989; One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, 919
Somme, battle of (sum), 702, 703
Sorel, Georges (1847–1922): Refl ections on Vio- lence, 640, 821
South Africa, 568, 815
South African War (Boer War), 669–671
South Korea, 896
South Sea bubble, 289
South Sea Company, 290
Sovereign debt crisis, 1028
Sovereignty, modern theory of, 137, 143
Soviets, 745, 751, 753
Soviet Union (U.S.S.R), 758–765. See also Cold War; KGB (Soviet secret police); NKVD; and
Africa, 941, 946; agrarian policy, 990; anti-
Semitism, 918; art, 764, 771, 1046; classes,
social, 760–761, 771; collapse of, 987,
1000–1005; collectivization of agriculture,
767–769; Cominform (Communist Informa-
tion Bureau), 890; and Communist China,
800–802, 896, 921; Communist Party in, 760–
761; competition, 771; constitution of 1936,
772; coup, againt Gorbachev, 1002–1003;
crisis in, 988–992; declares war on Japan,
879; dissolution of, 227, 760, 1003; expan-
sion, post–WWII, 889; expelled from League
of Nations, 853; founding, 758, 760–761; and
Germany, 964; government, vs. Nazi Ger-
many, 835; industrialization, 768, 769–770;
invades Afghanistan, 981; invades Czechoslo-
vakia, 967–968; joins League of Nations, 845;
KGB (secret police), 774, 918, 989; literature,
764, 771, 919, 989; nationalism, 758, 760;
Nazi-Soviet Pact, 853, 858, 892; New Eco-
nomic Policy (NEP), 761–764; 1922–1991
(map), 762–763; nuclear weapons, 984; occu-
pies North Korea, 895–896; occupies postwar
Germany, 890, 893–894; party organiza-
tion, 760–761; planned economy, 765–767,
770–772; post–WWI, 845; post–WWII, 887;
promotes world revolution, 777; purges,
772–774; religion in, 771, 989; Second World
War, 845, 853, 856, 860, 865–867, 869–870,
877–878, 881; social organization, 884; space
program, 961, 1040; Stalinism, 918–919; as
superpower, 887; totalitarianism, 772–774;
trade, with Germany, 787; in United Nations,
885, 896; women in, 764, 780; world impact,
777, 786
Space programs/space race, 961, 1040–1042; mili-
tary objectives, 1040; Sputnik, 961, 1040 Spain: after the Peace of Utrecht, 285; in the
Americas, 76, 104–108, 483; Catalan inde-
pendence movement, 847; Catalan war, 133;
decline of, 132–133, 148, 150; democratic
advances, 609; as EU member, 977; and
Franco-Prussian War, 550; Golden Age, 124;
invades France, 135, 142; in the Mediterra-
nean, 188; and Napoleonic Europe, 415, 416–
418, 421, 422, 424; nationalism, 432; under
Philip II, 124–126; population, 1068–1069;
post-Napoleonic, 483–486; Renaissance,
75–76; revolt of the Netherlands, 126–128,
139; revolution, nineteenth century, 481–482;
same-sex marriage, 1057; Twelve Years’
Truce, 131, 139; and War of Jenkins’s Ear,
293, 294; wars with Great Britain, 130–131,
164, 293
Spanish-American War, 647
Spanish Armada, 130, 131
Spanish Civil War, 820, 847–850
Spanish Inquisition, 76, 97; in the
Netherlands, 128
Spanish Netherlands, 189; become Austrian Neth-
erlands, 189; Louis XIV invades, 157
Spanish Succession, War of, 150,
188–189, 207
Spartacists, 786
Spencer, Herbert (1820–1903), 626–627
Spengler, Oswald (1880–1936): The Decline of the West, 723
Spice trade, 279
Spinoza, Baruch (spi-no’-zuh, ba-rook’) (1632–
1677), 151, 258; portrait, 260
Sputnik, 961, 1040 Sri Lanka (Ceylon), 928
St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, 135, 136
St. Petersburg, founded, 226, 228
St. Stephen, crown of, 206
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Index I37
Staël, Germaine de (stahl) (1766–1817), 314,
426, 468
Stagfl ation, 972
Stakhanovites, 771
Stalin, Joseph V. (1879–1953), 741, 765–774;
Gorbachev on, 989; meets with Allies, 877–
880; post–WWII, 888, 889; purges, 918–919,
922; Second World War, 859, 862, 867
Stalingrad, battle of, 865–866
Stalinism, postwar, 918–919
Stamp Act, 348, 352
Stanley, H. M. (1841–1904), 663
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady (1815–1902), 468,
618, 1055
Star Chamber, 74, 161, 162
State, defi nition, 178
Statute of Artifi cers of 1563, 115
Stavinsky, Serge Alexandre (1886–1934),
818, 819
Steam engine, 248, 454, 455; refi ned, 583; and
transportation, 456
Steel production, 584, 593; Bessemer process, 585
Stein, Baron (1757–1831), 436–437
Stein, Gertrude (1874–1946), 810
Stem-cell research, 1039
Stephenson, George, 455
Stock Exchange, 532
Stock market crash of 1929, 805
Stock markets, established, 197
Stolypin, Peter (sto-lee’-peen) (1863–1911), 748
Stolypin reforms, 748–749
Stonehenge, 11
Strabo (63 B.C.–A.D. 21), 13
Strauss, David Friedrich (1808–1874): Life of Jesus, 632
Streltsi, rebellion of, 226
Stresemann, Gustav (1878–1929), 789
Strikes, labor, 382, 532, 602
Structuralism, 1040
Struggle, popularity of, 640–642
Stuart monarchs, 160–161, 171, 189, 287–288. See also under individual monarchs; individual monarchs
Styria, 206
Suarez, Francisco (soo-ah’-rez) (1548–1617), 125
Sub-Saharan Africa: French, 944–945; geographi-
cal territory, 936; religious divisions, 936
Sudetenland (soo-day’-tn), 732, 850, 852, 893
Suez Canal, 6, 532, 583, 657, 658; nationalized,
659, 660, 951
Suffrage, 343–344; demands for, 348; female, 467,
600, 609, 618, 619, 780, 781, 1055; Great
Britain, 600, 780; post-Revolutionary War,
357; Revolutionary France, 380, 507; univer-
sal male, 465, 520, 594, 609, 772
Sugar, 270, 279
Suharto, General (1921–2008), 934
Sukarno (1901–1970), 933, 934
Suleiman the Magnifi cent (1520–1566), 203, 204
Sunni Muslims, 21, 947
Sun Yat-sen (1867–1925), 791, 798, 800; The Three People’s Principles, 798
Supply-side economics, 972
Suraja Dowla (soo-rah-ja dow’-la) (d. 1757), 305
Sustainable growth, 107–108
Suttee, 673
Swammerdam, Jan (1637–1680), 151
Sweden, 85; allied with Dutch Republic, 157;
invades Russia, 226; territorial victories, 211;
Thirty Years’ War, 140–142, 211
Switzerland, 143, 187; democratic advances,
608, 609
Syndicalism, 617; fascist Italy, 825
Syria, 947, 951, 952
Szlachta (shlahk’-ta) (Polish aristocracy), 202
Taff Vale decision, 614
Taille (tie) (land tax), 326, 328, 369 Taiping Rebellion (tigh-ping), 679, 680
Tajikistan, 1003
Taj Mahal, 303
Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de (1754–1838), 384,
407, 418, 420, 441, 444, 491
Tariffs, 808
Tartars, 46, 196, 205, 220
Tata family, 719, 796
Taxation: of British colonies, 352–353; eighteenth
century, 290–291; France of Louis XIV, 181,
183, 184–185, 326, 369–370; France of Louis
XV, 326, 369; France of Louis XVI, 369–370;
and French Revolution, 369–370, 375, 410;
Middle Ages, 36, 51, 52; Prussia, 216; Rus-
sia, under Peter the Great, 227; seventeenth
century, 162, 166
Tax farmers, 181, 183
Taylor, Harriet, 468
Taylor, Isaac (1829–1901): Ultimate Civilization, 570
Tchaikovsky, Piotr (chigh-koff’-skee)
(1840–1893), 737
Tea, 270, 271
Technology: advances in, and lifestyle, 620–621;
advances in, and mathematics, 247–248;
advances in, and wealth, 267; agricultural,
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IndexI38
7–8, 29–30, 453; computer, 1020, 1034–1035;
early Russia, 221; and the Industrial Revolu-
tion, 451, 454–455, 583; medical, 1036–1037,
1040; military, 210, 247–248; scientifi c, 151;
and unemployment, 971
Telephone, invented, 583
Telescope, invented, 151, 244
Ten Hours Act of 1847, 494, 499
Tennis Court Oath, 371, 374
Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), 95
Terrorism, 1052; Middle East, 1019–1020; and
Russian Revolution, 563, 748, 756; Septem-
ber 11, 2001, 1063, 1064
Test Act of 1673, 167, 491
Testelin, Henri (1616–1695): Founding of the Academy of Sciences, 249
Teutonic Order, 46, 83, 212
Textile industry: eighteenth century, 276–277,
279; and Industrial Revolution, 454–458
Thatcher, Margaret (1925–2013), 972–974
Theology, early, 42
Third Estate, and the French Revolution, 366–367,
370–371
Third International, 775–778, 792
Third Reich, 831–833, 835. See also Nazi Germany
Third Republic, France, 593–599
Third World, 643–644, 925–927; and the Cold
War, 926, 929, 936, 942, 945; women’s
rights, 1055
Thirteenth Amendment, United States
Constitution, 566
Thirty-Nine Articles, 91
Thirty Years’ War, 80, 138–146; armies, 210;
background, 139–140; Bohemian war, 140;
Brandenburg, 212; Dutch Republic, 151;
Peace of Westphalia, 142–143, 146; sequelae,
149, 196–197, 206, 236; Swedish-French
phase, 140–142, 211
Thompson, William: Appeal on Behalf of Women, 468
Thomson, J. J. (1856-1940), 625
Three-fi eld system, 30
Thucydides (471– 401 B.C.), 12
Thugs, 673
Tientsin, treaties of (1857), 680
Tillich, Paul (1886–1965), 1049
Tilly, Louise A., 459
Tilsit, Treaty of, 416
Timekeeping, 221
Time of Troubles (1604–1613), 222, 225
Titian (ca.1488–1576), 126
Tito, Marshal (1892–1980), 895, 922, 1012
Tobacco, 270
Tojo, Hideki (1884–1948), 861
Tokugawa shoguns (to-koo-gaw’-wuh), 573
Toleration Act, 171
Tolstoy, Leo (1825–1910), 737
Tories, 168, 193, 287, 345, 491–495
Torture, and legal system, 254, 570, 1066
Totalitarianism, 263, 835–840; and art, 1046; vs.
communism, 839; evolution of, 835–836; and
fascism, 833; and propaganda, 836, 837, 840;
and racism, 837–838; Soviet Union (U.S.S.R),
772–774, 835–840; violence and, 839–840;
youth movements, 840
Towns, growth of, 32–36
Townshend duties, 352
Trades Disputes Act of 1927, 812
Trade warfare, 427–428
Trafalgar, Battle of (tra-fal’-gar), 415
Transylvania, 139, 140, 205, 206
Treaty on European Union (1992), 980
Treaty system, imperialist, 800
Trevor-Roper, Hugh R., 169
Trickle-down economics, 972
Trinity College (Dublin University), 172
Triple Alliance, 157, 187
Triple Entente, 692
Tristan, Flora (1803–1844), 469
Triumvirs, 542
Troppau, Congress of (trop’-pow), 482
Trotsky, Leon (1879–1940), 741, 753, 754, 756,
765, 773
Trova, Ernest (1927-2009), 1061
Truman, Harry S. (1884–1972), 880, 888, 890, 896
Truman Doctrine, 890
Trumbull, John (1756–1843): Declaration of Inde- pendence, 360
Tsar, etymology of, 221
Tudjman, Franjo (tudge-man, fran-jo) (1922–
1999), 1014, 1015
Tudor monarchs, 74–75, 88–91
Tugenbund (Moral and Scientifi c Union) (too’- gntboont), 435
Tuileries, 531
Tunisia, 938
Turgenev, Ivan (too-gay’-nyeff) (1818–1883), 737
Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques (1727–1781),
314, 370
Turkestan, 1003
Turkey. See also Ottoman Empire: democratic advances, 609; nationalism, 687
Turkish Republic, 793, 796
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Turkmenistan, 1003
Turks. See Ottoman Empire Twelve Years’ Truce, 131, 139
Tyrol, 206
Tzara, Tristan (1896–1963), 723
U-boats, 861
Ukraine (Kiev) (yoo-krane’), 220, 760; Chernobyl
disaster, 1038; independence, 1003; nuclear
weapons, 1006
Ulfi las (ul’-fi -lus), 24
Ulster, plantation of, 159, 163, 171
Ulstermen, 603
Ultramontanism, 634
Union of United Soviet Socialist Republics
(U.S.S.R). See Soviet Union (U.S.S.R) Union of Utrecht, 129, 131
Unitarians, 163
United Kingdom of Great Britain: created,
171; rule of Ireland, 1025; welfare state,
1024–1026
United Nations, 10; in Bosnia, 1015; Cold War,
961; Declaration of Universal Rights, 886;
and Democratic Republic of Congo, 945;
founded, 862, 878, 885; General Assem-
bly, 885; headquarters, 885; membership,
885–886, 926, 936, 1059; peacekeeping role,
1061; Security Council, 879, 885, 896, 1004,
1015, 1065; Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, 1059
United Provinces. See Dutch Republic United States. See also Americas; Cold War:
birthrates, 575; Civil War, 564–566; corporate
offshoring, 1021; Depression era, 811; enters
Second World War, 861; environmental poli-
cies, 1072; and European capital, 588; expan-
sion westward, 565, 566; feminism in, 468,
609, 618–620; First World War, 699, 706,
710–712; immigration, 521, 564–566, 579–
583; infl ation, economic, 971–972; invades
Afghanistan, 1065; involvement in Asia, 895–
897; and Napoleonic Europe, 428; National
Security Council, 890; nuclear non-prolif-
eration treaty, 1062; Pacifi sm, post–WWI,
844–845; post–WWII, 887–890; relationship
to European Union (EU), 1031; renewal of
the draft, 981; Second World War, 844, 856,
857–858, 861–863, 870–871; Second World
War (map), 868–869; Security Council, 890;
social organization, 884–885; space program,
961, 1040–1042; Spanish-American War,
647; suffrage, 609; as superpower, 887, 1060;
terror attacks, 1063, 1064; and the Treaty of
Versailles, 732, 787; in United Nations, 885;
Vietnam War, 965; wars in Iraq, 1066; weap-
ons inspectors, in Iraq, 1065; World Trade
Center attacks, 1063, 1064
United States Constitution, 264
Universal monarchy, 93, 143, 149; demise, with
Peace of Utrecht, 285
Universities: early, 41–42; later sixteenth century,
121; religious toleration at, 252; Renaissance,
70–71
University of Basel, 71
University of Dublin (Trinity College), 172
University of Glasgow, 454
University of Heidelberg, 258
University of Jena, 435
University of Lima, 105
University of Mexico, 105
University of Paris, 42, 114, 252
University of Salamanca, 122
University of Utrecht, 252
U Nu, 930
Ural Mountains, 6, 220
Urban II, Pope (1088–1099), 46
Urbanization: eighteenth century, 276; nineteenth
century, 576, 578
Ursuline sisters, 121
Ussher, James, Archbishop (1581–1656), 256
U.S.S.R (Union of United Soviet Socialist Repub-
lics). See Soviet Union (U.S.S.R) Usury, 114
Utrecht, Treaty of, 189–193
Uzbekistan, 1003
Valois kings, 75
Van Hoogstraten, Samuel (1627–1678), 260
Van Schurman, Anna Maria (1607–1678), 151
Vatican. See also Papacy: authority of, 384; con- cordat with Napoleon, 408; and unifi cation of
Italy, 544
Vatican Council, Second (Vatican II), 93, 94,
1049–1050
Velázquez, Diego (vay-lass’-kayth)
(1599–1660), 125
Venturi, Robert (1925–): Learning from Las Vegas, 1047
Verdi, Giuseeppe (1813–1901): Aïda, 660 Verdun, battle of, 702
Vermeer, Jan (1632–1675), 151, 156; Geographer, The, 152, 156; Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, 152, 154
Verona, Congress of, 483
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Versailles, Treaty of, 725, 726–727, 786–787; fail-
ures of, 732–733, 788, 829, 843, 844; France
and, 788; Hitler violates, 846; reparations,
788; United States and, 732, 787
Versailles (vair-sigh’), 180, 182, 183; and the
French Revolution, 379; Siamese delegation
at, 253
Vertical integration, 593
Vesalius (ve-zay’-lee-us) (1514–1564): The Struc- ture of the Human Body, 240
Vespucci, Amerigo (1454–1512), 103
Vichy France, 855–856; collaborators, purged, 903
Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia and Italy
(1849–1878), 541, 543
Victoria, Queen of England (1837–1901), 465,
600, 657, 673
Vienna, 197
Vietnam (vyet-nahm), 897, 934–936, 1005; and its
neighbors about 1970 (map), 967
Vietnam War, 965, 966; opposition to, 966, 1054;
United States withdraws from, 967
Vikings, 100
Vincent de Paul, Saint (1581–1660), 95
Violence, glorifi cation of, 839–840
Virginia colonies: fi rst established, 132;
Jamestown settlement, 159; slavery in, 280
Virtú, 59 Virtues, classical, 12–13
Vladivostok (vla’-di-voss-tok’), 678, 681
Volga River, 220
Volksgeist (folx’-guy-st), 470, 477, 509 Voltaire (1694–1778), 196, 288, 314–318, 324,
368; Age of Louis XIV, 317; and Catherine the Great, 335; Elements of the Philosophy of Newton, 317; Essai sur les moeurs, 318; and Frederick the Great, 317, 332; Philosophical Letters on the English, 317
Voting rights. See Suffrage
Wahabi sect, of Islam, 673
Wales, 1025
Walesa, Lech (vuh-lenss-uh, lek) (1943–), 993
Wallachia (wa-lake’-i-uh), 205, 207
Wallenstein, Albert of (1583–1634), 140, 142
Walpole, Horace (1717–1797), 313
Walpole, Robert (1676–1745), 286, 290, 291, 293
War bonds, 862
Warburton, Bishop (1698–1779), 314
Warfare: eighteenth century, 294–295; trade,
427–428
Warhol, Andy (1928–1987), 1048
War of 1812, 428
War of Austrian Succession, 295–299; Peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle, 297
War of Jenkins’s Ear, 293, 294
War of the League of Augsburg, 187
War of the Polish Succession, 293
War of the Pragmatic Sanction, 295
War poets, 721
Warsaw Pact, 922
Warsaw Pact states, and détente, 969
Wars of Religion, 126, 127–142; France, 133–138;
Spain, 127–142
Wars of the Roses, 52, 74
Washington, George, 355
Water frame, 454
Waterloo, 444
Watt, James (1736–1819), 248, 388, 454
Watts, Isaac (1674–1748), 311
Wat Tyler’s rebellion, 50
Wealth, of Europe, 267–268
Weaponry. See also Nuclear weapons: eighteenth century, 294; scientifi c improvements in,
247–248; seventeenth century, 210
Webb, Beatrice (1858–1943), 616
Webb, Sidney (1859–1947), 616
Weimar Republic (vigh-mar), 215, 715, 781, 782,
786, 816; democracy in, 830; Spartacists,
785, 786; trade, with Soviet Union, 787; and
Treaty of Versailles, 786–787
Welfare state. See also New Deal: dismantling, 1021, 1026; and liberalism, 639–640; rise of,
594, 650; Western Europe, 901, 1021
Wellington, Duke of (1769–1852), 492
Wells, H. G. (1866–1946), 616
Wenceslas, Saint (d. 935), 206
Wesley, John (1703–1791), 311
West Africa, 939–942
West Bank, Jordan, 951
Western Europe, 147–193. See also specifi c country; after the Peace of Utrecht, 285–293;
capitalism, 281–284; death rates, 571; indus-
trialization, 571–573; infl ation, economic,
971–972; life expectancy, 571; literacy rate,
571; nationalism, 470, 471; post–WWII
reconstruction, 897–901; socialism, 976–977;
welfare state, 972
Westfall, Richard S., 246
West Germany. See Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany)
West Indies: and eighteenth-century economy,
280; and Seven Years’ War, 301, 306–308
Wheeler, Anne (1785–1848): Appeal on Behalf of Women, 468
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Index I41
Wheel Man (Trova), 1061 Whigs, 168, 193, 287, 345, 348
Whitehead, Alfred North (1861–1947): Principia Mathematica, 1043
“White man’s burden,” 653
White Russians, 220
White Sea, 220
White terror, 476
Whitfi eld, George (1714–1770), 311
Whitney, Eli (1765–1835), 454
Wiesel. Elie (1928–), 871
Wilhelm, Emperor of Germany (1871–1888), 553
Wilkes, John (1727–1797), 346, 348
William I, German Emperor (1797–1888):
Emperor of Germany (1871–1888), 604; King
of Prussia (1861–1888), 217, 604
William II, German Emperor (1888–1918), 608,
669, 691, 692, 694; abdication, 715
William III: as King of England (1689–1702),
158, 170, 173, 187, 189; as Stadtholder of the
Netherlands (1672–1689), 157
William the Conqueror, King of England (1066–
1087), 30
William the Silent (William of Orange) (1578–
1584), 128, 129, 150, 157
Wilson, Woodrow (1856–1924), 639, 709–711,
715, 724, 726, 728, 729
Witchcraft: debunked, 151, 310; and evidence,
254; in literature, 273; persecution of witches,
52, 54, 139, 235, 236
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889–1951), 1043
WMD (weapons of mass destruction), 1065
Wohl, Robert, 722
Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–1797): Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 377, 467
Women. See also Feminism; Women, in Islam; Women’s liberation movement: Age of
Enlightenment, 312–314, 318, 320; in the
Age of the Democratic Revolution, 376–377;
artists, 629–631; British feminists and “The
Indian Woman,” 654–655; and Catholic
Church, 92–93, 1051; in domestic service,
120; Dutch Republic, seventeenth century,
151; and early Christianity, 17; education
for, 65, 121, 151, 1056; in fascist Italy, 826,
834–835; in France, 609, 975; and gender
inequality, 10, 17; as guild members, 34; in
Iceland, 1056; in Islam, 955, 956; in Nazi
Germany, 834–835, 863; nursing profession,
538; persecution, as witches, 52, 139, 235,
236; in political life, 1056; Protestant, 92–93;
Renaissance, 59, 62, 65, 67; Soviet Union
(U.S.S.R), 764, 780; suffrage for, 467, 600,
780, 781; in twenty-fi rst European elections,
1026; in the workforce, 717, 718
Women’s liberation movement, 1055–1058
Women’s rights. See also Feminism; Suffrage, female: and contraception, 1056–1057; global
defi nition, 1059–1060
Women’s Social and Political Union, 618
Woolf, Virginia (1882–1941): To the Lighthouse, 810
Wordsworth, William (1770–1850), 386, 461
Workhouses, 498
Working class, 119–120, 381–382. See also Labor unions; confl icting values of, 529; and impe-
rialism, 651; Industrial Revolution, 455–460,
466–467, 493–494, 496, 498, 738; and Parlia-
mentary reform, 498–499; Russian, 738
World, in 1763 (map), 307
World about 1970 (map), 962–963
World Council of Churches, 1048
World Trade Center attacks, 1063, 1064
World Trade Organization (WTO), 912;
founding, 1035
World War I. See First World War World War II. See Second World War World Wide Web, 1034
Wren, Christopher (1632–1723), 160
Wright, Frances (1795–1852), 468
Written language, 11; and cultural change, 269;
popular books, 273
Wundt, Wilhelm (1832–1920), 623
Wyclif, John (wik’-liff) (1320–1384), 53, 54
Xenophobia, 1005
Yalta conference, 877, 879, 888
Yeats, William Butler (1865–1939), 723
Yeltsin, Boris (1931–2007), 1001–1004,
1007–1010
Yeomen, 118
Yom Kippur War, 951–952, 955
Young Hegelians, 524–525
Young Italy, 471
Young Turks, 657, 659, 662, 695, 791, 793
Youth culture, 1053–1054
Youth movements, 1052–1055
Ypsilanti, Alexander (ip-si-lan-tee) (1792–1828),
482–483
Yüan Shih-kai (shee-kigh) (1859–1916), 798
Yugoslavia, 714, 728, 1005; collapse of, 1012;
communist, 889, 895; nationalism, 1011–
1012; post–WWI, 784; resistance, to Soviet
rule, 922; Second World War, 859, 1012
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Zeeland, 127
Zemstvos (zemst’-voze), 749
Zenta, battle of, 207
Zhou Enlai (jo en-ly) (1898–1976), 802
Zhukov, Georgi (zhoo-koff) (1896–1974),
865–866, 869
Zimmerman, Arthur (1859–1940), 706
Zimmerman telegram, 706, 711
Zimmerwald program, 775
Zinoviev letter, 777, 792, 813
Zionism, 635–636, 707–708, 814, 954, 1051
Zola, Emile (1840–1902), 599, 627
Zollverein (tsoll’-fe-rine or Angl. zoll’-ve-rine), 516
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- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- List of Chapter Illustrations
- List of Chronologies, Historical Interpretations and Debates, Maps, Charts, and Tables
- Preface
- Geography and History
- Chapter 1 THE RISE OF EUROPE
- 1. Ancient Times: Greece, Rome, and Christianity
- 2. The Early Middle Ages: The Formation of Europe
- 3. The High Middle Ages: Secular Civilization
- 4. The High Middle Ages: The Church
- Chapter 2 THE UPHEAVAL IN WESTERN CHRISTENDOM, 1300–1560
- 5. Disasters of the Fourteenth Century
- 6. The Renaissance in Italy
- 7. The Renaissance Outside Italy
- 8. The New Monarchies
- 9. The Protestant Reformation
- 10. Catholicism Reformed and Reorganized
- Chapter 3 THE ATLANTIC WORLD, COMMERCE, AND WARS OF RELIGION, 1560–1648
- 11. The Opening of the Atlantic
- 12. The Commercial Revolution
- 13. Changing Social Structures
- 14. The Wars of Catholic Spain: The Netherlands and England
- 15. The Disintegration and Reconstruction of France
- 16. The Thirty Years' War, 1618–1648: The Disintegration of Germany
- Chapter 4 THE GROWING POWER OF WESTERN EUROPE, 1640–1715
- 17. The Grand Monarque and the Balance of Power
- 18. The Dutch Republic
- 19. Britain: The Civil War
- 20. Britain: The Triumph of Parliament
- 21. The France of Louis XIV, 1643–1715: The Triumph of Absolutism
- 22. The Wars of Louis XIV: The Peace of Utrecht, 1713
- Chapter 5 THE TRANSFORMATION OF EASTERN EUROPE, 1648–1740
- 23. Three Aging Empires
- 24. The Formation of an Austrian Monarchy
- 25. The Formation of Prussia
- 26. The Transformation of Russia
- Chapter 6 THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF THE WORLD
- 27. The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Bacon and Descartes
- 28. The Road to Newton: The Law of Universal Gravitation
- 29. New Knowledge of Human Beings and Society
- 30. Political Theory: The School of Natural Law
- Chapter 7 THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH AND EMPIRE
- 31. Elite and Popular Cultures
- 32. The Global Economy of the Eighteenth Century
- 33. Western Europe after the Peace of Utrecht, 1713–1740
- 34. The Great War of the Mid-Eighteenth Century: The Peace of Paris, 1763
- Chapter 8 THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
- 35. The Philosophes—and Others
- 36. Enlightened Despotism: France, Austria, Prussia
- 37. Enlightened Despotism: Russia
- 38. The Partitions of Poland
- 39. New Stirrings: The British Reform Movement
- 40. The American Revolution
- Chapter 9 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
- 41. Social and Cultural Backgrounds
- 42. The Revolution and the Reorganization of France
- 43. The Revolution and Europe: The War and the "Second" Revolution, 1792
- 44. The Emergency Republic, 1792–1795: The Terror
- 45. The Constitutional Republic: The Directory, 1795–1799
- 46. The Authoritarian Republic: The Consulate, 1799–1804
- Chapter 10 NAPOLEONIC EUROPE
- 47. The Formation of the French Imperial System
- 48. The Grand Empire: Spread of the Revolution
- 49. The Continental System: Britain and Europe
- 50. The National Movements and New Nationalist Cultures
- 51. The Overthrow of Napoleon: The Congress of Vienna
- Chapter 11 INDUSTRIES, IDEAS, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORM, 1815–1848
- 52. The Industrial Revolution in Britain
- 53. The Advent of the "ISMS"
- 54. The Leaking Dam and the Flood: Domestic
- 55. The Leaking Dam and the Flood: International
- 56. The Breakthrough of Liberalism in the West: Revolutions of 1830–1832
- 57. Triumph of the West European Bourgeoisie
- Chapter 12 REVOLUTIONS AND THE REIMPOSITION OF ORDER, 1848–1870
- 58. Paris: The Specter of Social Revolution in the West
- 59. Vienna: The Nationalist Revolutions in Central Europe and Italy
- 60. Frankfurt and Berlin: The Question of a Liberal Germany
- 61. The New European "ISMS": Realism, Positivism, Marxism
- 62. Bonapartism: The Second French Empire, 1852–1870
- Chapter 13 THE CONSOLIDATION OF LARGE NATION-STATES, 1859–1871
- 63. Backgrounds: The Idea of the Nation-State
- 64. Cavour and the Italian War of 1859: The Unification of Italy
- 65. The Founding of a German Empire and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary
- 66. Tsarist Russia: Social Change and the Limits of Political Reform
- 67. Nation-Building in the Wider Atlantic World: The United States and Canada
- Chapter 14 EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION, 1871–1914: ECONOMY AND POLITICS
- 68. The Modern "Civilized World"
- 69. Basic Demography: The Increase of Europe's Population
- 70. The World Economy of the Nineteenth Century
- 71. The Advance of Democracy: Third French Republic, United Kingdom, German Empire
- Chapter 15 EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION, 1871–1914: SOCIETY AND CULTURE
- 72. The Advance of Democracy: Socialism, Labor Unions, and Feminism
- 73. Science, Philosophy, the Arts, and Religion
- 74. The Waning of Classical Liberalism
- Chapter 16 EUROPE'S WORLD SUPREMACY, 1871–1914
- 75. Imperialism: Its Nature and Causes
- 76. The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire
- 77. The Partition of Africa
- 78. Imperialism in Asia: The Dutch, the British, and the Russians
- 79. Imperialism in Asia: China and Europe
- 80. The Russo-Japanese War and Its Consequences
- Chapter 17 THE FIRST WORLD WAR
- 81. The International Anarchy
- 82. The Armed Stalemate
- 83. The Collapse of Russia and the Intervention of the United States
- 84. The Collapse of the Austrian and German Empires
- 85. The Economic, Social, and Cultural Impact of the War
- 86. The Peace of Paris, 1919
- Chapter 18 THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE SOVIET UNION
- 87. Backgrounds
- 88. The Revolution of 1905
- 89. The Revolution of 1917
- 90. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
- 91. Stalin: The Five-Year Plans and the Purges
- 92. The International Impact of Communism, 1919–1939
- Chapter 19 DEMOCRACY, ANTI-IMPERIALISM, AND THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR
- 93. The Advance of Democracy after 1919
- 94. The German Republic and the Spirit of Locarno
- 95. Anti-Imperialist Movements in Asia
- 96. The Great Depression: Collapse of the World Economy
- Chapter 20 DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIPIN THE 1930S
- 97. Trials and Adjustments of Democracy in Britain and France
- 98. Italian Fascism
- 99. Totalitarianism: Germany's Third Reich
- Chapter 21 THE SECOND WORLD WAR
- 100. The Weakness of the Democracies: Again to War
- 101. The Years of Axis Triumph
- 102. The Western-Soviet Victory
- 103. The Foundations of the Peace
- Chapter 22 THE COLD WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR
- 104. The Cold War: The Opening Decade, 1945–1955
- 105. Western Europe: Economic Reconstruction
- 106. Western Europe: Political Reconstruction
- 107. Europe and the Global Economy
- 108. Communist Societies in the U.S.S.R.and Eastern Europe
- Chapter 23 DECOLONIZATION AND THE BREAKUP OF THE EUROPEAN EMPIRES
- 109. The Emergence of Independent Nations in South Asia and Southeast Asia
- 110. The African Revolution
- 111. Europe and the Modern Middle East
- Chapter 24 COEXISTENCE, CONFRONTATION, AND THE NEW EUROPEAN ECONOMY
- 112. Confrontation and Détente, 1955–1975
- 113. Collapse and Recovery of the European and Global Economy: The 1970s and 1980s
- 114. The Cold War Rekindled and Defused
- Chapter 25 THE INTERNATIONAL REVOLT AGAINST SOVIET COMMUNISM
- 115. The Crisis in the Soviet Union
- 116. The Collapse of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe
- 117. The Collapse of the Soviet Union
- 118. After Communism
- Chapter 26 EUROPE AND THE CHANGING MODERN WORLD
- 119. Western Europe after the Cold War
- 120. Nation-States and Economies in the Age of Globalization
- 121. Intellectual and Social Transitions in Modern Cultures
- 122. Europe and International Conflicts in the Early Twenty-First Century
- 123. Social and Environmental Challenges in the Twenty-First Century
- Appendix: RULERS AND REGIMES
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- X
- Y
- Z
