Unit 12: Age of Progress

Emergence of mass society

• Mass education

• Mass culture

• Mass media

• Mass migration

• Mass leisure

• Mass tourism

• Mass consumption

• Mass politics

The Second Industrial Revolution

• Emergence of steel, electricity, chemicals, and gas

• Expansion of markets

  • Manufactured goods and food cheap due to low transportation cost

  • increased competition

  • department store

• Larger Factories due to steel, new machinery, etc

• 1895-WW1 economic boom

• Germany replaces GB as industrial leader

Inventions and Advancements

• Thomas Edison: Lightbulb

• Alexander Graham Bell: Telephone

• Guglielmo Marconi: Radio wave across Atlantic

• Henry Ford: Car (Model T)

• Orville and Wilbur Wright: First flight with an engine powered by gas

• Samuel Morse: Morse code

Women in the Workplace

• Focus of domestically

• Sweatshops and slop work

• The expansion of factories and government allowed for white-collar jobs

  • typists, secretaries, teleoperators

• teaching and nursing accessible to women

• shift from industrial to white-collar jobs, not an increase of women in the workforce

Working Classes Organize

• Socialist movement

  • German social democratic party

  • Marxist social democratic labor party in Russia

• evolutionary socialism: imminent collapse of capitalism and need for socialist ownership of the means of products

• Nationalism and Marxism

  • “Working men have no country” WRONG!!!!

• Anarchism

  • prominent in less industrialized nations

  • Initially was not violent

  • Spain, Portugal, Russia, and Italy looked for radical ways to achieve it

  • ASSASSINATIONS 😵

Emergence of a Mass Society

• Large population

  • rising birth rates, lower death rate

• Improved living

  • sanitation, running water, public parks

“The Women Question”

• Women's role in society

• Focus domesticity

• Mentality of women in the workplace for both middle and working classes

Mass education

• universal elementary education (6-12) needs skilled laborers in schools

• Girls separated by boys

  • Girls: no math, less science, domestic skills

  • Boys: Military drill, carpentry

• New technology, business, practices, and transportation advance leisure

• Music and dancing halls

• Team sports

• Soccer and rugby

• Mass tourism increased wages and allowed for vacation

• Expanded markets=wider variety of goods

• Factory system allowing for faster production

• Catalogs and department stores

Advancements in Science

• Marie Curie - French scientist who discovered radioactivity. A discovery that would eventually take her life

Advancements in Science 

• Albert Einstein- German-born scientist who discovered relativity

• The Theory of Relativity - Space and time are not absolute to the observer, and both are interwoven into what Einstein called a 4th-dimensional space-time continuum

Friedrich Nietzsche

• Nietzsche- German philosopher. Focused on amoralism and irrationalism

• “God is dead”

• Ubermensch- Overman (superman)

Dangers of Nietzsche’s Philosophy

• There are always unintended consequences to anything we publish

• The term Ubermensch will be used numerous times by Hitler and the National Socialist Party (NAZI) in Germany. But used to justify racial Aryan superiority

• Untermenschen or underman

• Even though Nietzsche stood up against racism and anti-Semitism, the damage was done

Sigmund Freud

• Austrian doctor who strays from rationalism when studying the mind

  • Believed behavior was determined by the unconscious

  • the ID, Ego, and Superego

    • ID-Passion, primal

    • superego-morality

    • Ego-reason, rationality

Evolutionary vs. Revolutionary Socialism

• Evolutionary (revisionism)-

  • Key Figure: Eduard Bernstein-Believed due to increasing suffrage and public pressures, governments would be forced to take a more active role in society

• Revolutionary (Reactionary)-

  • Key Figure: Georges Sorel, Karl Marx; advocated violent action to achieve socialism. Believed a small, elite, oligarchy would rise to rule the masses.

• Evolutionary - Most of the industrial world (even the US)

  • Mainly resulted in government regulation of business

• Revolutionary - Russia (USSR), China, Cuba, Vietnam

  • Mainly resulted in government takeover of business (Communism)

Impressionism vs. Post-impressionism

• Impressionism-Artistic movement in which artists rejected museums and studios to go out into the world and paint

• Post-impressionism - another artistic movement that used color and structure to convey a statement of reality over an imitation of objects and nature

Women’s Rights Movement

• Suffrage-the right to vote

  • some militant efforts

• Pacifists-warning against armament

• in the US-prohibition movement

• higher education.

• By 1890, most industrialized countries had universal male suffrage. None of them granted women that right

• Emmeline Pankhurst - a militant suffragette (women who wanted to vote), led GB movement for full suffrage

  • Used hunger strikes when imprisoned, some died for the cause

• British women would finally vote in 1918 and in the USA in 1919

Anti-semitism

• Anti-semitism: Hostility and discrimination against Jewish people

• The combination of racism and extreme nationalism lead to an increase in anti-semitism

  • Vienna, Austria - center of German Nationalism. Blamed Jews for corrupted German culture

• Russian Pogroms - Organized violence against Russian Jews. It was started by Alexander III and counted by his son, Nicholas II

  • Hundreds and thousands of Jews emigrated from Russia to Poland, USA, Canada, Palestine

• Zionist movement

  • Theodor Herzl looked to re-establish permanent residence in Palestine

  • land controlled by Ottomans did not want Jewish settlement

Transformation of Liberalism

• Great Britain

  • David Lloyd George-Liberal, leaves laissez faire policies for social welfare programs

• Italy-Transformism

  • Movement of politics to the center away from extremes

• France-third republic struggle

  • Dreyfus Affair-Alfred Dreyfus, wrongly convicted jew, brings light to anti-semitism throughout western Europe.

• Germany

  • Bismarck fired b Wilhelm II. Although Germany was the military power in Europe, the Alliances formed by Bismarck crumpled under Wilhelm arrogance

• Austria-Hungary - TOO MANY NATIONALITIES!!!

Russia and the U.S

• Russia- quest for industrialization

  • Revolution of 1905-Jan 22nd, food shortage leads to organized strike at czar’s winter palace in St.Petersburg. Troops open fired on the peaceful demonstrators

    • “Bloody Sunday”

    • Leads Nicholas II to allow the formation of the Duma

• The USA- The progressive Era

Imperialism

• When a stronger nation takes weaker nation politically, socially, economically

  • direct and indirect rule

• Type of imperialism

  • Colony

  • Protectorate

  • sphere of influence

  • economic imperialism

• Racism and Social Darwinism

  • Darwin’s ideas of evolution, applied to race, claiming that survival depended on how strong the race is, and other races of people are inferior

  • economic and religious motives.

• The main reason was for profit

To prevent war Europe meets in Berlin to create a treaty in which country should get what in Africa, with no African represented.

Scramble for Africa

• Berlin Conference 1884-1885

• No representations for African countries

• Decisions and rules on how Africa should be split up

• 1876 = 11% European rule of Africa 1902 = 90% European rule of Africa

• Utilizing military strength and new technology

Imperialism in Asia

• China imperialized by Britain

• Open Door Policy

• Japan and Korea attempt to avoid Western intrusion

• French Indochina: Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam

• American Imperialism

• Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, the Philippines 

Impact of New Imperialism

• Most countries in Africa and Asia have colonial rule over them

• Exceptions: Thailand, Ethiopia, Japan, Afghanistan, and Persia

• Increase of competition over lands —> tensions