Western Civilizations – Chapters 22 & 23 (1870-1914)

Chapter 23 – Modern Industry and Mass Politics, $1870\text{–}1914$

New Technologies and Global Transformations

• Second Industrial Revolution ("Age of Steel, Electricity, and Chemicals")

  • Steel: Bessemer converter (Henry Bessemer, $1856$) ➜ open-hearth (Siemens–Martin) ➜ cheap, strong metal for rail, ship & skyscraper construction.

  • Electricity:

  • Generators/dynamos (Siemens, Gramme)

  • Thomas Edison’s practical light bulb ($1879$) & Pearl Street Station ($1882$)

  • Nikola Tesla’s alternating-current (AC) system; Westinghouse adoption ➜ long-distance power grids.

  • Chemical industry: synthetic dyes (aniline), fertilizers ($\text{Ca(NO}<em>3)</em>2$), explosives (dynamite, Alfred Nobel, $1867$), pharmaceuticals (aspirin, $1897$).

  • Internal-combustion engine: Nikolaus Otto (four-stroke, $1876$), Gottlieb Daimler & Karl Benz (gasoline automobile, $1886$); diesel engine ($1897$).

  • Communications: Transatlantic telegraph cable ($1866$); telephone (Alexander Graham Bell, $1876$); wireless telegraphy (Marconi, $1901$).

  • Transportation revolutions:

  • Suez Canal ($1869$) & Panama Canal (completed $1914$) shortened global sea lanes.

  • Steel-hulled steamships & refrigerated cargo hold global food market (Argentine beef, New Zealand mutton).

  • Rail mileage doubles every decade after $1870$; Orient Express ($1883$) links Paris–Istanbul.

• Finance & corporate reorganization

  • Gold Standard (international by $1879$) stabilizes exchange rates.

  • Joint-stock corporations, limited liability, modern stock exchanges (Dow Jones index, $1896$).

  • World trade value quadruples $1870\text{–}1913$; European capital exports ≈ $€40$ billion (current €).

• Global demographic boom & migration

  • European population: $c.270$ M (1850) → $c.460$ M (1914).

  • "Great Migration": $\approx50$ M Europeans leave for Americas, Australia, S. Africa (& return flow $\approx 1/3$).

Labor Politics & Mass Movements

• Urban proletariat expansion; factory discipline, "Taylorism" (scientific management).

• Trade-union growth

  • Britain: TUC membership $\approx 2$ M by $1914$; new unionism (dockers, gas workers).

  • Germany: free unions + SPD’s AfA ($Allgemeiner Arbeiter-Ausschuss$).

• Socialist parties

  • German SPD (founded $1875$) becomes Europe’s largest party ($\approx 4$ M votes, $1912$).

  • France: SFIO (Jaurès, Guesde); Italy: PSI; Russia: RSDLP (Bolsheviks vs Mensheviks, $1903$ split).

  • Revisionism vs orthodox Marxism (Eduard Bernstein’s "Evolutionary Socialism," $1899$).

• Anarchism & Syndicalism

  • Bakunin & Kropotkin theory; "propaganda of the deed" assassinations (e.g., McKinley $1901$).

  • Georges Sorel: mythic "General Strike" as creative violence.

• Landmark strikes & reforms

  • Great Dock Strike (London, $1889$); Cripple Creek miners (US, $1894$); Russian 1905 soviets.

  • Bismarck’s social insurance laws ($1883$ Health, $1884$ Accident, $1889$ Old-Age) prototype welfare state.

Demanding Equality – Suffrage & the Women’s Movement

• Suffrage expansion

  • UK Reform Acts $1867$ & $1884$ ➜ $\approx 60\%$ of adult males enfranchised; secret ballot ($1872$).

  • German Empire has universal male suffrage from $1871$ (though w/ unequal constituencies).

• Women’s suffrage campaigns

  • Britain: NUWSS (Millicent Fawcett) vs. WSPU (Emmeline & Christabel Pankhurst; militant tactics – window-smashing, hunger strikes).

  • US: NAWSA (Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt); western states (Wyoming $1869$, Colorado $1893$) grant vote pre-federal amendment.

  • New Zealand first sovereign state to grant women’s vote ($1893$); Australia $1902$; Finland $1906$.

• Broader feminist agenda

  • Property rights: Married Women’s Property Acts (UK $1870$, $1882$) allow women to own earnings.

  • Access to education & professions: first female doctors (Elizabeth Garrett Anderson – UK, $1865$; universities open by $1900$ in CH, FR, US).

  • Social purity & temperance alignments; "white slavery" panic; intersection with abolitionist legacy.

Liberalism & Its Discontents – National Politics circa $1900$

• Crisis of classical laissez-faire → "New Liberalism"

  • T. H. Green & L. T. Hobhouse: positive liberty, state-provided minimum welfare.

  • UK Liberal reforms (Asquith, Lloyd George): Old-Age Pensions ($1908$), National Insurance ($1911$).

• Conservatism & nationalist populism

  • Germany: Weltpolitik (global policy) under Wilhelm II; Naval Laws ($1898$, $1900$) challenge Britain.

  • France: Dreyfus Affair ($1894\text{–}1906$) – anti-Semitism, civil-military conflict, birth of modern Zionism (Herzl "Der Judenstaat," $1896$).

  • Italy’s fragile coalition politics ("transformismo"), defeat at Adwa ($1896$) then Libyan war ($1911$).

  • Austro-Hungarian nationality tension; Bosnian annexation crisis ($1908$).

• Ireland: Home Rule bills ($1886$, $1893$, $1912$); Ulster unionist militias; Sinn Féin emerges (Easter Rising follows in $1916$).

The Science and Soul of the Modern Age

• Biology: Charles Darwin’s "On the Origin of Species" ($1859$) & "Descent of Man" ($1871$) ➜ evolution, natural selection.

• Social Darwinism: Herbert Spencer – "survival of the fittest", racial hierarchies; Francis Galton pioneers eugenics.

• Physics/chemistry revolution

  • Wilhelm Röntgen’s X-rays ($1895$); Becquerel & Curies discover radioactivity ($1896$-); Planck’s quantum hypothesis ($1900$); Einstein’s special relativity ($1905$): $E = mc^2$.

• Psychology & the unconscious: Sigmund Freud, "Interpretation of Dreams" ($1900$); id/ego/superego.

• Sociology: Auguste Comte (positivism); Émile Durkheim (anomie); Max Weber (Protestant ethic, verstehen methodology).

• Existential/nihilist critique: Friedrich Nietzsche – "God is dead," will to power; Kierkegaard revival.

The Culture of Modernity

• Art movements

  • Impressionism (Monet, Renoir) ➜ Post-Impressionism (Van Gogh, Cézanne) ➜ Fauvism (Matisse), Cubism (Picasso, Braque), Expressionism (Kirchner).

  • Futurism (Marinetti $1909$ manifesto): worship of speed & machines; artistic link to Italian nationalism.

• Literature & Theater

  • Naturalism (Émile Zola, Ibsen); Symbolism (Mallarmé).

  • Stream-of-consciousness narrative (James Joyce "Ulysses" drafts); Proust "In Search of Lost Time" (begun $1909$).

• Architecture & design: steel-frame skyscrapers (Chicago school – Louis Sullivan); Art Nouveau (Gaudí, Horta); Eiffel Tower ($1889$, height $\approx300$ m).

• New mass media: cheap pulp newspapers (Pulitzer, Hearst), picture postcards, phonograph ($1877$), cinema (Lumière first public showing $1895$).

• Consumer culture: department stores (Le Bon Marché, Paris; Harrods, London), mail-order catalogs (Sears Roebuck) & advertising psychology.

• Leisure & sport: Bicycle craze; revived Olympic Games (Coubertin, Athens $1896$); football clubs & national leagues.

Conclusion (Chapter 23)

• Industrial technologies interlocked with mass politics: empowered workers & women yet unsettled liberal order.

• Scientific breakthroughs both inspired progress & undermined Victorian certainties (space, time, morality).

• Cultural modernism expressed exhilaration & anxiety of the new age → intellectual climate preceding World War I.

Chapter 22 – Imperialism and Colonialism, $1870\text{–}1914$

Imperialism – Definitions & Drivers

• "New Imperialism" (post-$1870$) distinguished by rapid, deliberate partitioning of planet.

• Motivations

  1. Economic: secure raw materials (cotton, rubber, copper), export capital, guaranteed markets (tariff walls at home & colonies).

  2. Strategic: coaling stations, Suez "lifeline to India," global naval bases.

  3. National prestige ("place in the sun" – Wilhelm II).

  4. Ideological: Social Darwinism & "civilizing mission" (mission civilisatrice / White Man’s Burden $1899$ poem by Kipling).

  5. Domestic diversion: jingoistic press distracts from class tensions (Disraeli’s "imperialism of sentiment").

• Enablers: steam gunboats, Maxim gun ($1884$, $\approx600$ rounds/min), breech-loading rifles, quinine prophylaxis (malaria), telegraph.

Imperialism in South Asia

• British Raj post-Revolt of $1857$

  • Government of India Act $1858$ ➜ Crown rule; Indian Civil Service (ICS) staffed by competitive exams (but UK-based, racist barrier).

  • Rail network > 50,000 km by $1914$; telegraph lines unify subcontinent.

  • Export agriculture: jute (Bengal), tea (Assam, Ceylon), cotton (Bombay) ➜ de-industrialisation of Indian handloom sector.

  • Recurring famines (e.g., Great Famine $1876\text{–}78$ – death toll $\approx 5$ M) linked to laissez-faire grain export & El Niño droughts.

• Rise of nationalism

  • Indian National Congress (INC, $1885$; moderate petitions – Dadabhai Naoroji, "drain theory").

  • Partition of Bengal ($1905$) sparks Swadeshi (boycott) & Hindu-Muslim tensions; reversed $1911$.

• Princely states (~$40\%$ territory) co-opted via subsidiary alliances.

Imperialism in China

• "Unequal Treaties" legacy (Nanjing $1842$, Tianjin $1858$) establish treaty ports & extraterritoriality.

• Self-Strengthening Movement (Li Hongzhang): limited industrial & military modernization.

• Sino-Japanese War $1894\text{–}95$: defeat ➜ Treaty of Shimonoseki (loss of Taiwan, Korea’s independence, $¥200$ M indemnity).

• "Spheres of influence": Russia (Manchuria), Germany (Shandong), Britain (Yangzi), France (southern provinces).

• Boxer Rebellion $1899\text{–}1900$: anti-foreign uprising – Eight-Nation Alliance; indemnity $\$333$ M silver; foreign legation quarter Beijing.

• Late Qing reforms ("New Policies," $1901\text{–}11$) – constitutional project; collapse in Xinhai Revolution ($1911$) ➜ Republic of China (Sun Yat-sen).

The French Empire & the Civilizing Mission

• North Africa: Algeria (conquered $1830\text{–}70$, settlers "colons"), Tunisia Protectorate ($1881$), Morocco sphere (Tangier Crisis $1905$, Agadir $1911$).

• West & Central Africa: federation of AOF (French West Africa) & AEF (Equatorial), forced labor (\textit{corvée}) builds RR Dakar-Niger.

• Indochina (Cambodia $1863$, Cochinchina $1867$, Tonkin & Annam $1883$, Laos $1893$): rubber & rice exports; French lycée model schooling; Code Civile adaptation.

• Ideology: assimilation vs. association – promise (rarely fulfilled) of French citizenship through cultural conversion.

The “Scramble for Africa” & the Congo

• Berlin Conference ($Nov 1884\text{–}Feb 1885$)

  • Principles: effective occupation, free navigation of Congo & Niger; Bismarck as "honest broker".

• Congo Free State (personal domain of King Leopold II)

  • Rubber quota system enforced by Force Publique; mutilations as terror; population decline est. $10\text{–}13$ M.

  • Exposed by E. D. Morel & Roger Casement (Congo Reform Association, $1904$) ➜ Belgian annexation ($1908$).

• British Empire expansion

  • Cecil Rhodes’ BSAC secures N & S Rhodesia; Cape-to-Cairo dream.

  • Boer/South African War $1899\text{–}1902$ – guerrilla, scorched earth, concentration camps (mortality $\approx 26,000$ Boer civilians).

• German colonies

  • Southwest Africa genocide: Herero-Nama revolt $1904$ – extermination order (von Trotha); casualties $\approx 80\%$ Herero population.

  • East Africa Maji-Maji rebellion $1905\text{–}07$ (prophetic war-medicine), repression kills $\approx 75,000$.

• Franco-British standoff: Fashoda Incident $1898$ shows near-war over Nile headwaters.

Imperial Culture

• Orientalism (exotic depictions; future critique by Edward Said $1978$).

• Missions & philanthropy: Livingstonian image of explorer-missionary; CMS, White Fathers, American Board.

• Popular culture

  • Colonial exhibitions: Paris $1889$ & $1900$ worlds fairs ("human zoos").

  • Adventure novels (H. Rider Haggard "King Solomon’s Mines" $1885$), Scouting (Baden-Powell, "Scouting for Boys" $1908$).

  • Imperial iconography on stamps, advertising (Pear’s soap: "cleansed the dark corners of the earth").

• Domestic politics: Tory "imperial preference" tariff debates; Radical critics (J. A. Hobson "Imperialism: A Study" $1902$ – under-consumption thesis).

Crises of Empire at the Turn of the Century

• Armed resistance

  • Mahdist Sudan (Khartoum $1885$, Omdurman $1898$); Ashanti wars $1895\text{–}96$; Philippine–American War $1899\text{–}1902$.

• Metropole backlash

  • Atrocities scandals (Congo, Herero) spark humanitarian & socialist opposition.

  • Financial burden calculations: Britain spends > £250 M on Boer War (~$2\%$ GDP).

• Intellectual critiques: Lenin (pamphlet $1916$ links stage of capitalism to imperial rivalry); Gandhi in South Africa formulates satyagraha ($1906$).

Ecological Consequences of European Migrations

• Environmental change

  • Plantation monocultures: tea (Ceylon), rubber (Malaya), coffee (Brazil) cause deforestation; introduction of cash-crop pests (coffee-rust, 1890s).

  • New animal species (European rabbit in Australia $1859$ – population explosion), Eucalyptus worldwide.

• Epidemiology: global pathogen exchange; rinderpest virus ($1890s$) kills $\approx 90\%$ East African cattle ➜ famine.

• Demography

  • European diaspora (\approx $11\%$ of world pop. by $1914$ lives outside Europe).

  • Indentured labor systems: > 1.5 M Indians & $\approx 500,000$ Chinese coolies to Caribbean, S. Africa, SE Asia (post-slavery labour replacement).

• Urban & industrial pollution: coal smoke blackens European & N. American industrial towns; beginnings of conservation movements (US National Parks, $Yellowstone\,1872$; Sierra Club $1892$).

Conclusion (Chapter 22)

• New Imperialism fused industrial might & nationalist competition, carving most of globe into colonial spheres within < 40 years.

• Colonies supplied raw materials & migrants but generated moral, fiscal and strategic dilemmas.

• Anti-colonial resistance, ecological disruption & racial ideologies laid groundwork for 20th-century decolonization & global conflict.