VI. Nation Building and Reform (Chapter 23)

A. “Russian” to Industrialize

  • Loss of Crimean War → Alexander II begins to modernize, emancipates serfs (1861)

    • Serfs freedom → pay the land owners for the “property” lost → tax the serfs

    • Newly freed serfs paying for their freedom, peasant lives worsened

  • Mirs collectively owed government money for land = unhappy/land starved peasantry

  • Zemstvos (local government) bettered infrastructure

  • Codified (wrote down) laws for equality and consistency in law

    • Needed local government (zemstvos) to enforce laws

  • 1881 People’s Will assassinated Alexander II, his son sees it → repressive Alexander III

B. Repression to Revolution in Russia

  • Alexander III: creates secret police to persecute liberals; martial law (military enforcement)

  • Radical Russification (Russians = 40% of population)

    • Nationalism

  • Sergei Witte’s massive industrial agenda = railroads, tariffs, foreign capital

    • Foreign capital = Russia loans money from France in WWI to industrialize

    • Explains Franco-Russian alignment; France wants Russia to succeed to pay them back

  • Industrialization = factories = workers = socialists

  • Weak government = vulnerable to socialist revolution

  • Jews hated Russia; Jacob Schiff, a Jew living in England, sent funds to Japan to build a navy

    • Sticking it to the Russians, who were treating Jews poorly

  • Russia loses against Japan in Russo-Japanese War; humiliated

    • Food shortages arise + soldiers upset = Revolution of 1905

  • Nicholas II issued October Manifesto

    • Civil liberties & Duma (Parliament equivalent)

  • 1907: Nicholas II leans on Rasputin and an inner circle to rule (army + bureaucracy)

    • Curtails Duma

C. Bismarckian 2nd Reich

  • Army and Bismark curtailed the Bundesrat/Reichstag

  • Bismarck centralized via Kulturkampf to consolidate German state; root out Catholicism in the name of unity

  • Weakened socialists via laws & social welfare

  • 1890: Kaiser Wilheim II fired Bismarck

D. France’s 3rd Republic

  • Napoleon III captured

  • German occupation of France

  • French humiliation

  • France votes in monarchists

  • Paris succeeds from France, creating a radical commune (March 1871 Paris Commune)

  • Paris Commune crushed, 20k killed, 10k exiled

  • 1875 bicameral republican government established (3rd republic)

    • Doesn’t make anyone happy (except Republicans)

    • Monarchists, Catholic clergy, army, communists, etc.

  • Rumblings of revenge against Germany drifted into the 1900s…

E. Victorian England

  • Economy growth → continued stability → functioning two-party system

    • Liberal & conservatives

  • Prime minister Disraeli → Torries increased suffrage, monarch power reduced

  • PM Gladstone → Liberal party democratized civil service

    • Democratized = up to the person with the best ability

    • Bureaucracy more functional (jobs based on ability → stable)

  • Irish demanded home rule (nationalism for homeland for Irish people)

    • Decision delayed until after WWI

F. Austria’s Hungry Pains

  • Austria loss to Prussia in war (1866) → chaos

    • Renamed empire: Austro-Hungarian Empire (Ausgleich, 1867)

      • Includes the Hungarians to give them more representation

      • More Hungarian autonomy via congress (home rule)

      • However, Hungarian king = Austrian emperor; same empire…

  • Dualism angered other nationalities (Poles, Croats, etc…)

    • Accidentally leads to more nationalism

    • Neglect other minorities → more outrage

  • Nationalities problem

    • Non-Germans demanded change

    • Austrian Germans didn’t

  • “Unity”

    • Emperor Francis Joseph rules by decree

    • Leans on Catholicism

    • Insulated imperial bureaucracy (civil service)

  • Hungarians attempted Magyarization to unify

    • Making themselves more Hungarian

    • Discrimination against everyone else

G. Emergence of Zionism

  • Judunstadaat = Jewish state

  • Austria & Germany’s Christian Socialists → extreme Anti-Semitism

    • Want socialism and equality only for Germans…

    • Lueger (mayor of Vienna): spread negativity about Jews

  • Jews had worse treatment in Russia → pogroms (mainly Ukraine)

    • Pogroms = state-sponsored terrorism

    • In the name of Russification

    • Mass murders (do not miscontextualize to the Holocaust!)

  • Theodor Herzl called for a Jewish state in Palestine facilitated via Dreyfus Affair in France

    • Realized that French government was outwardly anti-Semetic

    • Dreyfus facilitated Zionism

  • 3k annually migrated to Palestine between 1904-1914

    • Life was bad in Europe, Ottoman generally more tolerant