20th Century Britain

Instigating Factors of Change

• Historical context of the 18th and 19th centuries:
  • Brutal wars fought globally.
  • Unrest in established churches.
  • Re-emergence of man as the center of thought and exploration, contrasting with the Restoration and Victorian periods.
  • Maintained logic, order, and style in literature and art.
  • Society becoming more secular, despite a high percentage of citizens claiming belief in God (95%).
• Nationalism in the late 19th century: Pitted "peoples" against "peoples".
• World War I:
  • Technological advancements led to more powerful weapons and militarism.
  • No definitive answer to why the brutal war was fought, confronting Modern writers.
  • Unprecedented event that couldn't be accounted for by reason.

The Making of Modern Britain

• Britain no longer the leader of the world.
• Role of women evolving.
• Rise of cities and advancing technology.
• Dehumanization resulting from mechanization.
• Anonymity in the aftermath of WWI and industrialization.
• Changing class structure due to economic booms and swings.
• Influence of:
  • Einstein's theories
  • Quantum physics
  • Uncertainty principle

Impact of Intellectual Figures

• Marx and Darwin:
  • Unsettled men from their secure place at the center of the human universe.
  • Threatened humanist self-confidence, causing ideological uncertainty.
  • Marx: Revealed men’s dependence on laws and structures outside their control.
  • Historical and material determinism.
  • Darwin: Situated humanity as the product of natural selection.
• Nietzsche:
  • "God is dead and we have killed him."
  • Announcement accompanied by anguish, reflecting a decline in religious conviction and activity.
  • Morality being replaced with materialism and the quest for riches.
  • Inability to perceive God's presence in the structure and functioning of society.

Social and Cultural Context

• British Monarchs (1901 - present):
  • Edward VII (1901-1910)
  • George V (1910-1936)
  • Edward VIII (1936)
  • George VI (1936-1952)
  • Elizabeth II (1952 - present)

Technological and Social Developments

• 1897: Portable camera - Pocket Kodak.
• 1899: First motor bus service.
• 1902: Decline in church attendance to 20% of the population.
• 1907: Henry Royce and C.S. Rolls - Silver Ghost, the 1st Rolls-Royce.
• 1910s: Motor car becomes increasingly popular among the wealthy.
• 1911: Cinema for entertainment and news (News Reel).
• 1912:
  • The Titanic sinks on its maiden voyage.
  • Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychology spread in Britain.
• Power of the press – mass circulation.
• 1922: Formation of the British Broadcasting Company.
• 1926: Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin.
• 1930s-1950s: Film and television compete with the theatre.
• 1940s: Early models of electronic digital computers.
• 1953: Discovery of the structure of DNA by Francis Crick and James Watson.
• 1952: Introduction of the contraceptive pill (widespread from the 60s onwards).

Key Intellectuals and Their Theories

• Physicist Einstein on Relativity (1905).
• Physicist Planck on Quantum Theory (1900).
• Philosopher Nietzsche on the Will of Power.
• Philosopher Bergson on the Concept of Time.
• Psychologist William James on Emotions and Inner Time.
• Psychologist Freud on the Unconscious (The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900).
• Psychologist Jung on Collective Unconscious.
• Linguist De Saussure on Language.
• Anthropologist Frazer on Primitive Cultures.

Max Planck

• Founder of quantum theory.
• Discovered Quantum mechanics:
  • The study of the relationship between quanta and elementary particles.
  • Regarded as the most fundamental framework for understanding and describing nature.

Albert Einstein

• The Theory of General Relativity:
  • A metric theory of gravitation.
  • Einstein's equations link the geometry of a four-dimensional space-time with the energy-momentum contained in that space-time.
  • Phenomena ascribed to gravity in classical mechanics correspond to inertial motion within a curved geometry of spacetime.
  • The curvature is caused by the energy-momentum of matter.
  • Space-time tells matter how to move.
  • Matter tells space-time how to curve.

William James

• Pioneering American psychologist and philosopher.
• Introduced the term "stream of consciousness".
  • Denotes the continuous flow of thoughts, feelings, and impressions that makes up our inner lives.
• Theory of emotions:
  • Emotions feel different from other states of mind.
  • They have bodily responses that give rise to internal sensations.
  • Different emotions feel different because they are accompanied by different bodily responses and sensations.

Sigmund Freud

• Austrian psychologist and psychotherapist.
• Discovered a new method to investigate the mind through analysis of dreams and free associations.
• Known for theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression.
• Redefined sexual desire as the primary motivational energy of human life.
• Famous for therapeutic techniques:
  • Theory of transference in the therapeutic relationship.
  • Value of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires.

Carl Jung

• Swiss psychiatrist, influential thinker, and founder of analytical psychology.
• Emphasized understanding the psyche through exploring dreams, art, mythology, world religion, and philosophy.
• Developed the concept of collective unconscious:
  • Cultural memory containing myths and beliefs of the human race which work at a symbolical level.

Friedrich Nietzsche

• German philologist and philosopher.
• Key ideas:
  • Tragedy as an affirmation of life.
  • Eternal recurrence.
  • Reversal of Platonism.
  • Repudiation of Christianity.
  • Will to power as the motivation that underlies all human behavior.

Henri Bergson

• French philosopher, influential in the first half of the 20th century.
• Developed the theory of duration:
  • Time is mobile and incomplete.
  • For the individual, time speeds up or slows down.
  • To explore real time, explore the inner life of man.
  • Duration is neither a unity nor a multiplicity.
  • Duration is ineffable.
  • It can only be shown indirectly through images.
  • Images can never reveal a complete picture of Duration.
  • Duration can only be grasped through intuition and imagination.

James Frazer

• Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative Religion.
• His most famous work, The Golden Bough (1890), documents similar magical and religious beliefs across the globe.
• Maintained that human belief progressed through three stages:
  • Primitive magic.
  • Religion.
  • Science.

Ferdinand de Saussure

• Swiss linguist, widely considered as the 'father' of 20th-century linguistics.
• Main work: Course in General Linguistics.
• Central notion: language may be analyzed as a formal system of differential elements:
  • Linguistic sign.
  • Signifier.
  • Signified.
  • Referent.

World War I (1914-1918)

• Result of political, economic, and colonial rivalries between European Powers during the last decades of the 19th Century.
• Rampant colonialism, especially in Africa, backed by an armaments race.
• Web of secret diplomacy throughout Europe.
• Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by Serb nationalists at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914.

Impact on Britain

• Britain's military deaths were more than twice those of World War Two.
• Many killed fought for a state that denied them the vote (19th-century household suffrage).
  • Only men resident for 12 months prior to the election could vote, disenfranchising troops serving overseas.
• The war was fought by citizens - temporary soldiers anxious to return home.
  • They returned to less respect, no jobs, and injuries.
• WWI did not initiate democratic change, but weakened constitutional government temporarily.
• Britain entered World War One in the name of 19th-century liberal values - the rights of small nations and the rule of law.

Literary Reflection

• T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922: "These fragments I have shored against my ruins"
• W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919: "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold."

Inter-war Period (1918-1939)

• The Twenties and Thirties: markedly different concerns, attitudes, and characteristics.
• Coincidence of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 with the end of the decade.
• Election of an all-Fascist parliament in Italy.
• Nazi victory in elections in Bavaria.
• Changed priorities: the 1920s tried to lay the ghost of WWI, while the 1930s were hag-ridden with fear about a second one.

World War II (1939-1945)

• Failure of the League of Nations to police the peace.
• Illegal but unopposed rearmament of Germany and remilitarisation of the Rhineland (1936).
• German, Italian, and Japanese expansionist foreign policy in the late 1930s.
• The Spanish Civil War.
• Unpreparedness of France and Britain for war.
• Policy of appeasement.
• Atomic bombs and Holocaust.

Atomic Bombs

• Hiroshima bomb (August 6, 1945): "Little Boy", uranium-based.
  • Destroyed 5 square miles.
  • Fission uranium-235. Weight: 4400 kg. Power: 15,000 tons of TNT.
• Nagasaki bomb (August 9, 1945): "Fat Man", plutonium-based.
  • Annihilated 2.6 square miles.
  • Fission plutonium-239. Weight: 4535 kg. Power: 21,000 tonnes de TNT.
• Both names created by Robert Serber.

Post-War Britain

• Total war was one of the reasons for change.
• Major growth in population and rising lifestyle expectations.
• Increased demands for mobility (cars) and space (houses).
• Transformation of the population due to advances in medicine.
  • Higher life expectancy, static birth rate.
• Large-scale immigration from the West Indies, South Asia, and Eastern Europe.
  • Increased ethnic diversity.
  • 1970: About 375,000 Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs in Britain.
  • 1993: About 1,620,000, with a pronounced rise in the number of Muslims.
• Population became more individualistic and less deferential.
• Breakdown of the moral code that prevailed in 1945, formalized by legal changes in the 1960s.
  • Legalization of abortion and homosexuality.
  • Abolition of capital punishment.
  • Measures to improve the position of women.
• Changes in religious practice.
  • 1990s: only 1 in 7 Britons active in Christian churches.
• Overthrow of the authority of age and experience.
  • Emphasis on youth and novelty.
  • Lowering of the voting age to 18.
  • Rise of the youth consumer.
  • Marked changes in popular music.
  • The 1960s destroyed a cultural continuity that had lasted since the Victorian period.

Decline of the British Empire

• Irish independence begins as southern Ireland achieves free-state status in 1921.
• Britain grants Egypt formal but nominal independence - 1922.
• Statute of Westminster brings British Commonwealth of Nations into existence - 1931.
• In 1945, Britain still had the largest empire in the world, but its prestige and authority had been severely reduced.
• The empire had largely been granted independence by 1964, beginning with independence for India and Pakistan in 1947.
• British Nationality Act ascribes British citizenship to people of the United Kingdom - 1948, leading to the start of large-scale immigration to Britain.
• Fragments remained: War with Argentina in 1982 over the Falkland Islands.
• Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997.

Expansion of the British Empire

• Before the 19th century: 1492, 1650, 1754.
• During the 19th century: 1822, 1885, 1914.
• Decline of the British Empire during the 20th century: 1938, 1959, 1974.

Britain's Role in the World

• As empire receded, Britain seemed a diminished power.
• Nevertheless, became the third state to gain the atom bomb in 1952, followed by the hydrogen bomb in 1957.
• Britain became an active member of international organizations, including the United Nations and NATO.
• Entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 led to a marked erosion of national sovereignty.
  • Resulted in the BREXIT.

Multi-racialism in Britain

• Britain has always been a multi-racial society.
• However, what is new is the visibility of its racial diversity and the willingness to accept parity of esteem among all races.
• The creed of racial superiority was part and parcel of the culture of the empire.
• The British Empire was built on a theory of racial inferiority.
• Rudyard Kipling talked about "lesser breeds without the law".
• Alleged inferiority of non-white races supposedly legitimised taking over their countries.
• Europeans 'discovering' countries, disregarding the presence and knowledge of non-white people.
• Gandhi’s comment on British civilization: 'It would be a good idea'.
• Genuine equality of opportunity in education for all races and that the barriers for black and ethnic minority advancement in business and in the profession are taken down.
• Culture and literature have a role to play as well by showing recognition for artists and writers of non-white, non-European background.

The Role of Women

• Flora Sandes, who went to Serbia during WWI as a nurse but turned combatant, struggled to adjust to civilian life afterward.
• The inappropriateness of women in combat was summed up in a pamphlet (1916) which sold 75,000 copies in less than a week: women were "created for the purpose of giving life, and men to take it".
• Helen Mana Lucy Swanwick noted in 1915 that women supporting the war effort was due to their familial loyalty rather than patriotic desire.
• The power of middle-class women as domestic and moral arbiters depended upon their separation from the sordid world of money-making and life-taking.

Women's Suffrage

• The Woman's Journal linked the right to vote to fighting for one’s nation.
• Cartoon showed a woman holding a baby, declaring 'Votes for Women'. A soldier nearby declared that 'Women can't bear arms', to which a suffragist replied, 'No! Women bear armies'.
• In 1903, Emmeline and Christobel Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) to fight for female suffrage.
• Until 1914, the campaign became increasingly militant and violent.
• WWI led to immense new roles for women: they manned factories, invested in war bonds, harvested crops, and cared for troops. 80,000 women served in the three British women's forces as non-combatants.
• In 1918, the Representation of the People Act enfranchised women over 30, while all women over 21 received the vote under the Women’s Suffrage Bill of 1928.
• In 1918, 8.5 million women were enfranchised, or 40 per cent; in 1928, this was boosted to 15 million, or 53 per cent.
• Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929).
• Women served as magnifying mirrors 'reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power… the glories of all our wars would be unknown.'

Women in the Workforce

• Mrs Millicent Fawcett: 'The war revolutionised the industrial position of women - it found them serfs and left them free.'
• Increased opportunities in the paid labour market: 1914-1918 around 2 million women replaced men in employment, resulting in an increase in the proportion of women in total employment from 24% in 1914 to 37% by 1918.
• Hastened the collapse of traditional women's employment, particularly domestic service.
• Clerical work saw an increase from 33,000 in 1911 to 102,000 by 1921.
• Wartime equal pay regulations were circumvented by employing several women to replace one man or dividing skilled tasks into several less skilled stages.
• Contracts of employment during World War One included collective agreements decreeing that women would only be employed 'for the duration of the war'.
• Returning servicemen led to unemployment, resulting in anger towards women 'taking' jobs from men.

Continued Inequality

• A girl born in 1899 had little chance of evading the traditional role; forbears struggled for education.
• Millicent Fawcett and Elizabeth Garret Anderson carried out largely peaceful struggles to open professions to women.
• The suffragettes made a real difference through militant means, stopping short of any threat to human life.
• Wives and mothers wanted a renegotiation of the old order, arguing for a democracy in the home.
• They also wanted equal rights, equal opportunity, and equal pay in the workplace.

Second-Wave Feminism

• For a girl born in 1950, there was no equal access to education.
• The 1944 Education Act established the principle of free education for all, but at eleven plus there were quotas for admission to grammar school.
• The Hunts Post of 1954 published an article headlined "Girls Brainier Than Boys", revealing that educational authorities had limited numbers to grammar school.
• In 1968, came the second wave of feminism, where American women like Betty Friedan wrote of their dissatisfaction.
• In 1968 the women's liberation movement had its first major publicity when women demonstrated at the Miss America competition.
• In 1970 the first British conference of the Women's Liberation movement in Oxford resolved to press for employment legislation.
• Barbara Castle introduced the Equal Pay bill in 1970, enacted in 1975 together with the Sex Discrimination Act.

Gender Relations

• Relationships between men and women have frequently been stretched on the rack of unmatched expectations. Men have frequently been reluctant to embrace women's new found autonomy.
• Men at the end of the century still earn on average 30 per cent more than women. Research carried out in 1999 showed that this has nothing to do with part-time work.
• Jonathan Gershuny identified Allerednic - Cinderella backwards - among professional couples.
• Feminism has become too shameful to admit, with lots of women prefacing their opinions with 'I'm not a feminist but…..'
• Margaret Atwood says feminism means someone who believes women are human beings.
• Echo of what Rebecca West said in 1913, 'I myself have never able to find out precisely what a feminist is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.'