European Civ Final

08/20/24


everything is due friday this week


special focus on religion and culture


The Great Chain of Being


God

Angels

Kings and Queens - render unto ceaser what is ceasers

Commoners

Animals

Plants

Nonliving Things



Midweek readings



08/22/24


finish assigned chapter and learning curve before tuesday lecture

after tuesday, read the additional assigned material. 

complete map quiz and summative quiz by friday @5pm (ideally complete before discussion section)


Chapter 15

  • state-building

  • European social and religious life

  • three estates

  • the great chain of being

  • protestant reformation and state control of churches (kings took supervision of churches, putting themselves above the authority of the church. Rulers became heads of national churches) throne+altar = blending of church and rulers

  • the throne (Book of revelation/apocalupse scene) (image in slide)


before 1600, rulers were somewhat limited in their powers by constitutions or documents. Absolutist monarchy being added to the great chain of being was a relatively new idea. They had unlimited authority. unity is the perfection of all things. As god is the sole ruler of all creatu=ion, there should be only one rulser over nations on earth (James I) Charles I dont believe that the citizens couldn’t have a share in government, claiming that good laws will protect their liberty and freedom


Louis XIV

absolutism was very prominent in France and Prussia. Louis called himself the “Sun King’ 


state building- France and England created the ability to tax their subjects to collect more money. They centralized courts and court jurisdiction. Some societies tolerated religious minorities (France) others did not (Spain) Governments also created large standing armies for two reasons. External: to protect from external threats, or to beat up their neighbors. Internal: kings and rulers wanted armies to suppress internal rebellion, either from aristocrats or commoners


the great rebellion- Brief republic in England

head of rebellion: Oliver Cromwell

Oliver’s son abdicated as leader, realizing things were going downhill

one of the victorious armies resummoned the English parliament and brought back the monarchy. 

Time of terrible disorder ‘world turned upside down’ it broke the great chain of being

Shakespeare often remarks on the great rebellion, showing the bad effects of disorder. Ulysses' speech on “degree” (authority and hierarchy) Without social order there is no political order, and without political order, there would be no moral order. 


Pilgrim’s Progress

completely different from the great chain of being. Bunyan was arrested for being a Puritan. the central metaphor is not a ladder, but a journey. life is a journey with a destination (the celestial city/salvation) pilgrim's Progress was enormously popular in England and America, the second most popular book after the bible. The most important thing for the individual soul to do is pursue salvation. Jesus said He will set parent against child. Bunyan has to leave his family to pursue salvation. Pilgrim's progress helps us understand the English Civil War. “Low Church”: they believe that the bishops and monarchs were more like the Babylonians and less like sanctioned leaders appointed by God. 


The idea that somehow God blesses/sanctifies the powers that be, whether that be a monarch, Lord protector, or other republic leaders. 







Discussion Group (8-23-24)


How to take notes

prioritize things written on the screen

write down any big themes or patterns that consistently reoccur

use symbols, abbreviations, and bullet lists

mark new topics clearly


Reading Retention

Before reading a source, ask these questions:

  • Is this primary (part of history) or secondary (commenting on history)? this affects how to analyze it 

  • what was happening when this was written?

  • Why did the author write it?

  • What keywords should I look out for? 


While Reading:

  • Identify major themes and motivations

  • Highlight topic indicators, major points, and quotes that would be good for a paper

  • Log a short summary and your thoughts/reaction (annotate)

08-27-24


Liberalism: Hobbes and Locke


1650s English civil war


Quakers and Puritans were part of the emerging low church movement


Rebellion against the kingw as overlaid with rebellion against the church. Parliment switches up the monarchs rather rabidly. This is called the Glorious Revolution. 


the principle of dissent of the governed became introduced at this time. 


hobbes and locke were the two most important philosophers during this time. Hobbes believes in divine rule, he wrote the Leviathan. Locke had a much more peaceful vision- that government was created by the consent of many peoples to create a governing body. He believed that if a government should become tyrannical, the people had the right to overthrow that government. 


Unit 1 Final Remarks


  • Civilizations

  • Europe

  • Christendom 

  • Great Chain of Being

  • Traditional society; three estates

  • State building

  • Absolutism

  • English Civil War

  • High vs Low Churches

  • English constitutionalism - Bill of Rights

  • Hobbes, Locke, and their liberalism



Scientific Revolution


Background


Began with science in ancient Greek days. These were very speculative theories. There was also a quest for power, such as alchemists attempting to make gold or communicate with spirits. Lords and kings also tried to gain power over nature, their subjects, and their enemies using science. Alchemy and magic were distinct from science. Science used to be more like a philosophical interpretation of things found in nature. 



Galileo


He improved the telescope to observe the surface of the moon. Galileo formulated ideas from careful observation. He didn’t think it mattered what old perceived info from the ancients was since he was able to observe and find the truth himself. He believed the natural phenomenon that happened on the earth also happened on the moon. He argued for the heliocentric view of the Earth. He was forced to recant his teaching of this view towards the end of his life. 



Bacon


Francis Bacon was an English lawyer, he lived from 1561-1626. He developed a new relationship with nature which would bring mankind useful power over nature. Bacon was very impressed with Galileo. He didn’t really care to know things, he more cared about how this information could be useful. He said they should stop talking about vague ideas and focus on what can be proved. 


Hobbes was Bacon’s secretary. Their motives were similar- they sought to improve the world. 


“Superstition and Virtue of Science”



Republicanism, Royalism, Oxford University, and the Royal Society


The republicans pushed the royalists out of oxford and replaced them with republican forces. The new republican professors tended to lean more towards the new scientific method and supported the scientific revolution. 



William Harvey


He was an English physician. He worked on anatomy and discovered blood circulation. He described the heart as a pump. He published his ideas in 1628 in a book titled ‘An anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals’. 



Robert Boyle


First modern chemist. He is famous for Boyle’s law, which describes the inversely proportional relationship between absolute pressure and volume of a gas. He also developed the first vacuum. 

He believed that the study and dominion of nature is a duty that God has given to humankind. “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” -Genesis 1:28



Isaac Newton


Most famous scientist from the Scientific Revolution. He is well known for his Laws of motion and his observations from the light. He invented calculus. He constructed a telescope (Newtonian telescope) He formulated the idea that the world operated through mathematical laws- this is the essence of the scientific method. Newton did not explain gravity, he only measured it. 



08-29-24


by 1640, the work of brady and galileo were generally accepted by the scientific community. 



Enlightenment: the idea that reality is opened up by science. 


It builds on, but is not the same as the scientific revolution. They collected data and tried to figure out how things act/behave, instead of philosophic interpretations about the world. It was a radicalization of the scientific method, and applied it to everything. 


They developed a notion of the “stages of development”. the idea that early human society is primitive, and modern society is more advanced. 


progress in medicine, technology, education, etc. 

Critique. Englightened thinkers saw things that had bad foundations, and sought to reform them. “the perfectibility of man is unlimited” -Condorcet


The enlightenment thinkers wanted to understand everything about society. 


Hobbes- Society is dangerous. Kingdom of darkness

Locke- likewise re-imagine the foundations of society

Rousseau

Voltaire



Deism


Deists believe that God created the universe, but then left it alone. God does not interact with humans, and does not cause good or bad things to happen to us. If God is a perfect being, he would not make an imperfect world that required constant intervention. “God is like a clockmaker”


Most scientists were devout protestants. 



Comparativism


Europeans see things that are different and compare those things with what they know and try to ascertain which one is better. 


The age of exploration or colonialism helped with the movement because of the discovery of so many new things and the development of more accurate maps. 



Voltaire


He wrote a “dictionary” he critiques war


What does Voltaire think is good about Christianity?

What does he think is bad about religion exactly? What, where, which?

What does he hold up as an alternative?



Did all Enlightenment thinkers believe progress was good? No…

Consider Rousseau’s argument in his Discourse on Inequality, or what Voltaire thinks of religious institutions around him…



Immanuel Kant


“Have courage to use your own reason” “by falling a few times they would finally learn to walk alone”


The Kantian Dinner Party - sociable among free and equal persons, rational discussion, polite, a rational procedure, for discovering truth throught the examination of opinion




08-30-24 (Discussion section)


The reformation led to the scientific revolution. The printing press helped spread information, which also fueled the movement. 


Protestantism and the scientific revolution are related because they were both frustrated with censorship from the Catholic church.

9-03-24


History Department scholarships in Warwick England (for history majors, minors, and cognates)


European trade empires


game theory - first mover advantage (the first mover of a game gains an advantage)


Mercantilism - maximize the revenue of the state and minimize waste. profits the king, merchants, and other wealthy subjects. Very nationalistic ideology. 


Jamestown (1607) 


Plantations - highly organized and regimented production, labor, transportation. 


Anglo-French Rivalry 


Major Wars: war of the spanish succession (1701-1713), War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763)


Triangle Trade System



Quantity


the scientific revolution caused an explosion of exploration and exploitation in european empires

 people are starting to realize there are large quantities of things they didn’t realize existed

09-05-24


The Smith Scholarship


Domestic Commerce and Political Economy


  • The Background: food in europe before c. 1600. Religion Malthus


  • New food sources. why important. physical effects  (people live longer, food is diversified in england, and starvation decreases) and effects on ideas (the concept of new foods was a culture shock for europeans. 

Food from the outside: things brought from other lands (chocolate, coffee, cane sugar, tobacco) 


Potatoes


“What a superbly featured room and what excellent boiled potatoes.”

Potatoes last for a while and can feed a lot of mouths. 



The dutch learned how to re-nitrogenize agriculture to make more properous crops


Enclosure of the Commons


enclosure laws allowed landowners to fence off land formerly used as common pasture 




  • Changes in rural industry and life. Putting-out system / cottage industry


  • Infrastructure planning. Turgot, colbert, cameralism. Resources


  • Financial Revolution


  • Liberalism (the political philosophy of freedom. Has many variations but generally champions individual freedom)  and capitalism (a system of political economy based on liberalism, holding that free markets and free enterprise are best able to produce the greatest possible aggregate wealth for a nation)


  • Adam Smith 

empires employed beurocrats to perform administrative roles. They believed the love of money was the root of all evil. But they also knew that money is the sinews of war. It is neccessary for war, so for a state like france or england to survive, they needed money for an army. They used taxes to get money. They believed as servants of the state, they were preventing their country from being taken over. Thus, the ends justified the means. THis is how central banking was invented. After the glorious revolution, king william the third needed lots of money to wage war against france. to service the debt, they agreed to give the bank a certain amount of the local tax revenues. Tradeable bonds and the stock market eventually were developed as a result of this. 


The Pin Factory - each worker specializes in a specific job in the assembly line. 17 people working together can produce more than 17 people working alone. The cost of labor stays the same, but the output increases. Ergo, profit. 



there were laws that citizens had to work in agriculture or shepherding. The concept of the Great Chain of Being enforced these regulations. 


Thomas Malthus 

He proposed that there is a cyclical pattern in the economy, that the more the population increases, the more food is consumed, and war, famine, disease are inevitable. Then population decreases, and cycle begins again

09-10-24


Mercantilism 


Higher education is encouraged to imporve the training and knowledge of the citizenry. This was an attempt to produce “human capital”


Economic Growth


The Middle Class → not lords, not farmers, but in between. They specialized in commerce… doctors, lawyers, etc. They learned reading and writing and arithmetic to make a living. They were the backbone of capitalism



Adam Smith & Capitalism


Adam smith first conceived of what we basically call capitalism. He called it “the system of natural liberty” her imagined “an expansive universe, full of opporunity for the individual or nation to exercise initiative, to accumulate wealth and serve others in the process” (Rogers)


Humans by nature have “a certan propensity… to truck, barter, and exchange on thing for another”


The interdependence of humans is not based on seeking help or good will from others. Instead, each person offers others something of value. 


His concept of the division of labor was similar to the pin factory theory


“The Invisible Hand” 


Marcantilists see commerce as a zero-sum game (only one person can win). Adam smith saw it more as a bond of union and friendship


Competition is adventageous to great majority of people


Smith was not against social welfare, he did not hate poor people, and he did not advocate “laissez-faire” (radical libertarianism)



Community vs Society → a trusting small village compared to a large city


Illegitimacy rises during this time, as a result of working freedom and a fall in the economy



Patterns of Consumption


Spread of elementary schools. mostly parish schools (run by the church)


The rise of the novel → it allowed the common people to be exposed to enlightenment ideas throught pamphlets


Epistolary → Gothic → Historical


Populuxe goods 


This is important because the middle class can buy things that make them seem like members of the higher class. You can buy your way up the social ladder. 



09-12-24


Changes in Religion

  • how we think and talk about religion in Western Civ classes usually

  • State supervision of religion in the 18th century

  • Protestant complacency


John Wesley and Methodism


preaching without a license


is Methodism against or for the enlightenment?


Methodists endorsed female preachers



09-19-24


  • The guillotine 

  • the “terror” - they killed anyone who opposed the re

  • The jocobin radicals percieved that the more radical they got, the less supporters they garnered. 




Progressive liberalism

  • The revolutionaries saw their actions as the progress of Light struggling against darkness. Creatures of the Enlightenment, they believed that man’s reason could critique and improve on existing institutions, regroujnding them on principles of reason. thus the Revolution produced a supposedly rational form of government (democracy0 and a supposedly rational form of religion (unitariant universalism in the Cult of the Supreme Being).. Theirs was a vision of a new, rationally-ordered society based on clear ideas and consent


Conservatism

  • Conservatism is a more subtle ideology, if it can properly be called that. It is not a substantive ideology obut instead a mood of antipathy toward rapid or ratuionalistic change, not through toward change as such. Existing institutions are to be more trusted and only slowly altered . For that reason, conservatives tend to say that the institutions of the present status quo have greater value than new untested ideas for future change. As such, present institutions should be trusted. But the conservative gives a philosophical reason for why existing institutions are good; it’s not just that he has arbitrary affection for them. The reason they are good is that they are seen as having evolved slowly over time in a more or less rational fashion, even if the reasons for various things are not always any longr understood. Edmund Burke is the classic conservative. 


Reaction

  • Reaction is different from conservatism and is like the opposite twin of ither ideologies



  • Gnosticism

    • The world is wicked, human existence is a prison

    • They await a day when the world would end by a cleansing fire

    • They seek a utopian transformation


The Directory: a group of five men appointed as leaders

  • They restore rights to the clergy

    • they did this because most frenchman were Christian



Napoleon shows up


After 1815…

The French monarchy was restored after 22 years


Revoltionaries believed that society could and should be changed very quickly. THis was a new concept that came with the french revolution. 





Industrial Revolution 


  • A revolution - 

    • in Energy

    • in Transportation

      • The Steam Engine

      • You can move heavy things farther and faster than you used to. 


  • Based on the idea that things can be changed and accomplished using science

    • The french revolution showed people that things can be changed


  • The i.r. was a great technological leap

    • Over the course of only a few decades, there is a great increase in productive capacity, population, income, etc.


  • Why did the i.r. happen when it did, not elsewhere but rather in europe?

    • There were several European-specific sources of success

    • Autonomy, method, and routinization

    • Europe knew how to get things done methodically


  • Why did the I.R. happen in England first? Societal characteristics ideal for growth and development. Favorable institutions

    • hired people based on skill

    • had apprenticeships and ways to teach skills to others

    • encouraged competition and initiative

    • Allowed people to enjoy and employ the fruits of their labor and enterprise

    • Provided a stable government


  • Why did progress in other European countries lag behind Britian?]



Utilitarianism arguments

10/01/24


  • Restoration Europe post 1815

    • The Concert of Europe

      • the conservative “Concert of Europe” is dedicated to preventing another french revolution. It keeps all states conservative and monarchical

      • But then, Uporisings in many european states between 1820 and 1848

      • Concert of europe ended effectively in 1833 with greek independence

      • Revolutions were nationalist because they claimed to fight in the name of the nation, sometimes for national self revolutions

    • Revolutions

      • Greek revolution of 1820, ended the concert of europe

      • Belgian revolution of 1830, finally recognized as independent fron the netherlands in 1839

      • Polish rebellion of 1830 (“November Uprising”). It failed, being suppressed by Tsar nicholas in 1831

      • These revolutions freak out the rulers of their respective countries

    • Liberal revolutions

      • French revolution of 1830

      • Provoked by extreme, conservative royalism of 1815-1828

      • King Charles X further suppressed civil liberties, franchise, press

      • Mass demonstrations in Paris

      • King abdicates

      • King Louis Philippe “The Citizen King” “The Bourgeois Monarchy”

      • Restores civil liberties, expands franchise, allows for the dis-establishment of the roman catholic church

    • Why was religious establishment so important?

      • When state and church intermingle, the church has a lot of power over education

    • Britain had a reform, not a revolution

      • Whigs and Tories

      • Not a nationalist revolution, but rather liberal reform

      • Repeal of some laws favoring the Anglican “establishment”

      • Expansion of franchise

      • The Great reform bill of 1832

      • Free trade - protectionism is ended

      • Important step for progress, so a lot more people can vote


  • The Revolutions of 1848

    • Often set off by economic crisis

    • Kings abdicate in favor of a successor, resulting in protesters declaring popular government

    • These events usually follow the model of the OG french revolution

    • Revolution turns viral - spreads from country to country throughout Europe

    • French started it, king louis-philippe quits so his head doesn’t get chopped off

    • Socialists play a (minor) role 

    • Significant female participation

    • Napoleon’s nephew is elected president

    • There are similar revolts in Germany, Hungary, Bohemia (czechs), and Italy

    • Frankfurt Parliament, which tries to create a new constitutional monarchy for Germany

    • Only Britain and France had achieved lasting liberal reform by 1848

    • In other countries, the conservative establishment prevailed

  • New Idealogies in the 19th century

    • Liberalism

    • Conservatism

    • Nationalism

      • A child of the French Revolution

      • A nation should be ruled by itself, not by foreigners

      • Political boundaries of state should coincide w/linguistic, cultural boundaries

      • Played out in liberal and conservative variants in the 19th century

    • Socialism (and communism)

      • redistribution of society’s wealth to help the poor and downtrodden

      • equality

      • collective popular ownership of the “means of production”

      • Centrality of workers/working class in society

      • Only two classes: workers and capitalists

      • Over-class (bourgeoisie) exploits under-class (the workers, the proletariat)

      • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels


  • Liberalism and the middle classes

    • The middle class are more socioeconomically mobile than farmers

    • The middle class tend to be more conservative because they are worried that they’ll lose what they have

    • Garmany after 1815 was a conservative reactionary to the old forms

    • The concept of a university came from the German universities that were founded in the 1810s and 1820s

  • The elite and the model civil subject

  • Where is religion in all of this?

    • Radical ideology is like a new religion

    • Middle-class conservatism becomes open to reformation within religion

      • Maybe women should have rights

      • Maybe the Bible should be analyzed as a historical document

      • Maybe the sexes and the races are equal

      • Maybe the church should not be fully in charge of educations

      • Maybe there should be some religious tolerance

  • Romanticism

    • champtioned emotional exuberance, unrestrained imagination, and spontaneity in both art and life - power of emotions like love and despair

    • valued intuition and nostalgia for the past over the scientific method and progress

    • sought inspiration of religious exstasy instead of secularization

    • most saw modern industry as an ugly, brutal attack on their beloved nature and venerable traditions

    • great indicidualists, the romantics believed that the full development of one’s unique potential was the supreme purpose in life

    • romanticism references the conservatism of this era

  • Toward revolution again

  • Marxism

    • Marxist communism thought itself scientific

    • Believed there were two classes: Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat

    • Marx predicted a catastrophic demise of capitalism

      • Olden days: people were farmers  and everyone had the means of production

      • The bourgeoisie then appeared and tried to steal the means of production. Then the farmers had to work for wages with the means of production supplied by capitalists

      • Since capitalists all want to make as much money as possible, any way they can, competition between them for market share between it ferocious

      • So they drive down costs (resource costs and labor costs) They pay the workers as little as possible. The lowest amount that a worker can be paid is the scientifically determinable minimum it costs to feed and clothe a person so he can work without dying. 

      • That’s awful and will eventually lead workers (the proletariat) to rise up in revolution agains tthe capitalists (the bourgoisis) 


  • Walter Bagehot

    • Editor of the Economis magazine

    • Lived and expressed the classical liberal metanarrative.. the view of the direction of history and what history shows to be right or wrong

    • East vs West, custom vs reason, fixity vs progress.

    • Benefits bestowed by colonizer upon colonized “constant [English] disposition to change or… improvement.”

    • “the age of choice”

      • A free state - a state with liberty - means a state, call it republic or call it monarchy, in which the sovereign power is divided between many persons, and in which there is a discussion among those persons

    • Displays tolerance - which is also learned in discussion

    • Representative of a highpoint of British classical liberalism - the belief that freedom coincides with reasonablenesss and prosperity

  • Public Health Issues

    • considerably increase in the 19th century

    • lots of people are packed into cities

    • not enough sewage and sanitation

    • Diseases begin to increase and spread

    • Public Health Movement

      • 1848 - first public health law 

      • Louis Pasteur


  • Technology

    • The steam engine permitted people to build mills and factories in places outside of water sources

    • They put their factories in places with high population density

  • Geology

    • Evidence found that the Earth might be much older than originally thought

    • Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species

      • upset the great chain of being

  • Disenchantment of the World (Max Weber)

    • Science has removed the plausibility of magic

    • The story of secularization

  • Renee Descartes

    • Cogito ergo sum ( I think, therefore I am)

  • Urban Planning

    • Re-design and new building in paris-why?

    • Georges Haussmann

      • French baron who worked with the french ruler napoleon III

      • in charge of an urban renewal project in Paris

      • Ruthlessly tear down old neighborhoods (“slums, ghettos”)

      • New wide roads, parks, public spaces 

      • makes way for new ways of transportation

      • New names - why?

        • to commemorate events that happened after something was initially built

      • Other examples - Vienna, Cologne, Chicago


  • Public Transportation

    • why public transportation?

      • Makes it possible for people to live farther away from their place of work

    • Horse-drawn streetcars

      • by 1910, the electric streetcar became more popular

    • What is the connection with urban planning and streets in particular?

    • How is this connected with the First Industrial Revolution?

    • How is this connected with the Second Industrial Revolution?

  • The distribution of income

    • By 1850 real wages were rising for the masss of the population, helping ordinary people take a major step forward in the centuries-old battle against poverty

    • Greater economic rewards for the average person did not eliminate hardship and poverty or equalize the wealth of the rich and the poor

    • The arisocracu retained its position at the top of the ladder, followed closely by the new elite, composed mainly of the most successful families from banking, industry, and commerce

    • Prominent families of the commercial elite tended to marry in to the old aristocracy, a development welcomed by much of the aristocracy, whch experienced a sharp decline in its relative income in the course of industrialization

    • In almost every advanced country around 1900, the richest 5 percept of all households in the population received about at hird of all national income, and the bottom 30 percent of all households received 10 percent or less of all income

    • The middle classes, accounting for less than 20 percent of the population, were much wsmaller than they are today.

  • The people and occupations of the middle class

  • Class, nation, and church

  • Biblical criticism

  • Radical critics of religion

  • Scientific naturalism and scientism

  • Imminentism - making the religious secular



Modern Imperialism and Colonialism (1850-1914)


  • The Great Divergence

  • Asia, gunboat diplomacy around the world, Africa

  • Reform and revolution in colonies 


New Era of Imperialism

  • First British Empire was 1497-1783. Lost much of its holdings with the end of the American Revolution

  • Spanish and Portuguese empires diminished considerably with Latin American independence movements of the 19th century

  • “Second British Empire” is name for new imperialist period circa 1783-1945 (or 1997). Focus on Africa, Asia.

  • Formerly British colonies in North America, Oceana become independent “British nations” (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand)

  • Scramble for Africa and Asia in 19th century


Growth of the British Empire

  • 1588: the beginning of british naval dominance

  • 1600: the establishment of the East India Company

    • was given special privileges from the government

  • 1757-: The age of plassey, a period of british dominance in india

    • The battle of plassey: fought between british east india company, led by rovert clive, and the forces of sirag-ud-daulah, the last nawab of Bengal, and his French allies

  • 1775-1783: The American Revolution and its aftermath. Contraction of scope of british global rule

  • 1807-1833: the abolition of the slave trade and slavery

  • 1857-1885: the indian mutiny and the scramble for Africa

  • 1899-1902: the Second Boer War

  • 1914-1947: World wars and decolonization


International Financial and Monetary System/ Era of the Gold Standard

  • all countries practiced economic nationalism. favor domestic groups over foreigners

  • most policies do not simply favor home group at expense of foreign group (consider tariffs)

  • Britain's major protectionist acts were Corn Laws (1815-1846) and Navigation Acts (1651-1849)

  • Free Trade movement led by Cobden and Peel. In 1846-1848 abolished such protectionism and created free trade. Influence of utilitarianism. “Throwing away the ladder” Ultimately bad for working class and farmers

  • New era of free flow of international capital (=money, investment). Not as such designed by any single architect or plan. An evolved system with London at the center. (Formerly Amsterdam was center, then Paris and London rivals, finally just London, before New York arrived)

  • Gold standard: meant that all commercial paper transactions were readily settled in gold. Bank of ENgland developed into an exemplar of practice of settling all transitions with gold. Any institution which could not pay is debts folded. No one was “too big to fail” (banks rose and fell)

  • Era of GOld Standard thus meant free flow capital, goods, and people. Secure international use of paper financial instruments and public debt. International securities markets (stocks, bonds). And everything cleared in gold on demand

  • Germany began playing catch-up after 1871, U.S. after 1914. European self-destruction after 1914 and concurrent American self0enrichment at Europe’s expense permitted U.S. to jump ahead to become world financial leader after 1918


Empire, Adventure, and the Exploration of Ancient Mysteries

  • The empire is a society of noble adventurers exploring the mysteries of ancient civilizations

  • A “lost world” and the later whole “lost-world genre” Rudyard Kipling, The Man who would be king (1888), Arthur Conan Doyle, he Lost World (1912), Edgar Rice Burroughs

  • Indiana Jones; orientalism (men of european universities discovering thibgs from eastern societies)

  • “part of the literary reaction against the domestic realism that has been called a romance revival”

  • Monumental, oriental, supernaturalist art. Paintings here are the work of Franz Kupka (Czech, 1871-1957). Late realism, orientalism, Orphic Cubism, abstract art movement

    ← Consumers liked this stuff


  • Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden”

    • Kipling was a champion of imperialism in every sense

    • this poem was addressed to the US upon our conclusion of the Spanish-American War (1898-1899) and conquest of the philipines

Egyptology

  • A European enterprise of late 18th century onward

  • Amazing discoveries in 19th century (and still today)

  • Other countries caught the fever. Example of Ottoman Turkey in late 1800s, who were inspired to investigate their own history


The Rosetta Stone


Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days (1872)

  • British empire

  • Progress, technology, freedom

  • English and French imagination

  • Fogg as “everyman” 

  • Conquest of time and distance

  • The spatial premise of the entire novel itself is that the characters can, like the Passpartout’s name implies, go anywhere as Britons: The British subject can travel around the globe, with the sun as it were, and never be outside of the great, free, secure space of imperial power. It is a space of free trade and free travel. This novel shows us how Europeans imagined empire










Empire as the march of civilization

  • What is a civilization again? - a regional society or political structure consisting of a web of cities

  • But of course civilization means not so much this web of cities as the way of life which high urbanites have developed, leveraged, promulgated, and imposed

  • Schools, literacy, conversion to Christianity, moral reform incl. abolition of slavery and savage customs of domination, even simply the act of saving of old civilizations. 

  • Dr. Wilder’s colleague Dinyar Patel - his writing about crumbling sources in India - to dust in dry stone buildings


Sati 

  • initially the EITC prohibited evangelical christians to find indian converts

  • the british government attempts to stamp out “barbaric” customs of the Indians


Christian Humanitarianism

  • how does progress happen?

  • moral reforms happened mostly as a result of Christian pushes for moral change

The Great War


Europe before the war

  • “First age of globalization”

  • A continent of nationalistic states

  • periodic violence of revolutionary socialism

  • Democracy and liberalism growing in the European countries

  • Strong, simple idea of progress - more tech, more democracy, more freedom

  • “Second Industrial Revolution”

    • steel, synthetic materials, biology, physics

    • Enormous power and means of transportation, propulsion. Aircraft. Subs.

    • The Crimean war, American Civil War, Franco-Prussian War showed how deadly and destructive war was becoming with industrial technology


Diplomatic relationships before the war

  • The European states have foreign empires in Africa and asia, from which they draw natural resources and troops

  • dual alliance of Germany and Austria

  • became a triple alliance in 1879 when Italy joined

  • reinsurance treaty: Germany and Russia agree not to attack one another

  • new german emperor kaiser wilhelm 2 dismisses bismark, lets reinsurance treaty lapse. France uses opportunity to make treaty with russia

  • intertwined defensive/protective alliances

    • britain + france+ russia

    • Germany + Austria

  • russia as protector and patron of other slavic states

    • The small slavic states like serbia


WW1 from start to finish

  • assasssination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian anarchist in June 1914. entanglement of alliances triggered

  • states fought for hegemony in Europe, and over oceans and out of obligations from their defensive alliances

    • not fought for “democracy”

  • outbreak of fighting in august 1914

  • major battles - meat grinders - battles of marne, somme

  • british, french stop german advance

  • russia experiences revolution and withdraws from war; german-russian peace treaty; now central powers can focus entirely on western front…

  • … but US joins war on side of britain, france Central powers exhausted. Everyone starving and grim. Surrender


Major events

  • Trench warfare, 1914-1918 (All Quiet on the Western Front)

  • Battle of the Somme, July-November 1916

  • U.S. joins the war in April 1917

  • Russia: popular revolution in February 1917. Bolshevik revolution, october

  • March 1918: German victory in the East. Treaty of Brest-Litvosk

  • November 1918: Germany surrenders


Major fronts

  • “front” - area of fighting - line between two opposing powers

  • Western Front: trench warfare

  • Eastern Front: invasion and retreat. War in Ukraine. Nationalist revolution of Poles and Ukrainians against the Russian empire. Mutiny in the Russian army and navy. 

  • War in the Middle East. T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) leads Arab guerilla revolt against the Turks


Contrast of expectations and reality

  • Men expected quick, honorable confrontation, like a duel. War as a duel between two powers/parties

  • Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916: Mass death, at a distance, shivering and dying in the cold wet ditches of northern france

  • Almost the opposite of a duel - impersonal. Seemingly little honor


Ernst Juenger, Storm of Steel


The Western Front

  • German Schlieffen plan foiled at outset

  • trench warfare - because machine guns thwarted attacks

  • front was immobile for years - men essentially lived in mud, under fire, for years on end

  • shelling, gas attacks

  • owen’s poem “Dulcet et decorum est”


Technology of warfare in WW1

  • bayonets

  • rifles

  • revolvers

  • machine guns

  • flamethrowers

  • grenades

  • mortars

  • mines

  • artillery

  • tanks

  • submarines

  • barbed wire

  • torpedoes


Defense and Offense

  • Defensive technology outpaced offensive technology

  • Defense: machine gun (in barricaded nest)

  • Offense: Massed attack on foot, artillery barrage

  • Defense: trenches provided good defense against artillery

  • So in effect, attackers were massively killed with little ability to strike serious blow at defenses. Stalemate

  • Tank had yet to be deployed on large scale or developed to high sophistication (it will in WW2)

  • Very different than naval warfare


War in Numbers

  • men mobilized in war: 65 million

  • 8.5 million killed in fighting (6,000 per day of the war) 37 million casualties total

  • 6.6 million civilian deaths (2 million in Russia alone)

  • Western front: 466 miles long. Contained 2,500 miles of trenches

  • In Battle of the Somme alone, 1.2 million casualties


Art and the Great War

  • Erich Maria Remarque

  • Ernst Juenger

  • Wilfred Own, “Dulcet et decorum est”

  • William Butler Yeats, “An Irishman Foresees his Death”

  • Ernst von Salomon, It Cannot Be Stormed

  • Scholarship about the literature: Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War

  • Major themes: excitement, nationalism, surprising senselessness, devastation, “lost generation”


World War One and Production

  • Industrialized warfare

  • War socialism

  • At home: World upside down

  • Reproduction

  • Comradeship


Many Faces of the German Home Front

  • Lot of agricultural work


Propaganda


Kennedy Thesis

  • The argument of Yale historian Paul Kennedy in his influential book, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. The book is not only about great-power relations from the 16th-20th centuries. 


  1. Technology and economics base drive the dynamic of change in the international arena. They also impact on social structures, political systems, and empires

  2. Uneven growth (among nations) has a long-term impact on relative military power. A state’s economic condition and the strength of its army are always intertwined

  3. Economic prosperity does not always bestow military power

  4. Germany could have risen higher in military success- but only if it had better allies!


Russian Civil War


Initiallly the Bolsheviks only controlled center of russian empire. Wuickly concluded treaty of brest litovsk to “Buy time for space” and cosolidate/secure their hold on power. Utterly ruthless and murderous. Lenin was probably worse than Stalin. Trotsky the most idealistic and fanatical but was pushed out by stalin after lenin’s death in 1923. Counter-revolutionary coalition (white) of army, aristocracy fought against the Bolsheviks (red) in long and bloody civil war. Reds ultimately triumph over White forces in 1922.


Summary of what happened in WW1

  • Millions of men killed millions of other men

  • GOvernments turned societies into factories for killing

  • After 250 years of limited warfare, once again no holds were barred - it was now ok to kill civilians, attack neutrals, declare enemy to be a “foe” or “criminal” (submarine warfare, kaiser)

  • Governments treat some population groups as internal enemies and seek to expel or kill them 

  • domestic world turned upside down (female workers)

  • Millions of soldiers returned home to find a very changed home


Early Years after WW1

  • Societ revolutions

    • Bolsheviks = russian communist revolutionaries

    • soviet (russian) = workers council local name for mushrooming russian-style communist revolutions in Eyrope

    • Munich, Vienna

    • Assassinations

    • suppressed by verean paramilitaries

  • Paramilitaries

  • Instability


Freikorps (free corps)

  • disbanded soldiers

  • motto “und doch” (“and yet…”)

  • nationalist

  • more rightwing than left: typically anti-bolshevik

  • but often socialist too


Peace Treaty

  • Treaty of Versailles

  • war-guilt clause

  • League of Nations

  • self determination = disintegration of empires. many new, small, wear states, bitterness for lost grandeur of old empires


Peace as seen from different sides

  • End of war

    • capitulation

    • germany and austria are exhausted

    • “undefeated in the field” - sort of, not exactly

    • Failed big pushes in field. “stab in back” why the pressure? because…

  • View from….

    • France - embittered

    • Britain - thought peace was too strict; worried now about Russia

    • Germany - embittered


The Total State Rises

  • Governments take complete control over society - production, prices, freedom (or lack thereof), ideas, schooling, public order, everything

  • All must serve the united, national effort

  • Trust the government unconditionally

  • Disobedience beans at best disloyalty, very possibly hurting the nation, possibly treason… (“Loose lips sink ships!”)

  • Who rules the total state? Not really the kings of yesteryear. Rylers elected democratically, in US, Britain, Germany, France, etc., but they assume power and isolation from democratic processes unlike anything really known before

Faustian striving as the European essence?

  • “pertaining to or resembling or befitting Faust or Faustus; especially in insatiably striving for worldly knowledge and power even at the price of spiritual values”

  • “a single main theme is evident throughout both parts of Faust and provides a unifying structure for the entire work. This is Faust’s dissatisfaction with the finite limits on man’s potential - the driving force that motivates him in all his adventures as he strives to find a way to pass beyond the boundaries set on human experience and perception.”

  • “according to Spengler, western or faustian culture is characterized by its restless t


The great hopes before WW1

  • the old mechanic arts, controlling new forces, build new highways for goods and men, override the ocean, and make the very ether carry human thought

  • the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose…

  • freedom, fairest of all. THe daughters of time and thought. fire, greatest of discoveries, enabling man to live in various climates, use many foods, and cmel the forces of nature to do his work

  • Electricity, carrier of light and power, devourer of time and space, bearer of human speech over land and sea, greatest servant of man, itself unknown, thou hast put all things under his feet.


Radical critics of religion

  • Nietzsche

    • he ‘recognized that the real implication of atheism was that it would undermidn the very moral and societal constructs of society. We are”beyond good and evil” he maintained, and have to create a new world through courageous self-authorization: “morality will gradually perish now: that great spectacle in a hundred acts that is reserved for Europe’s next two centuries, the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps the most hopeful of all spectacles” Nietzsche imagined himself the prophet of a new age, the age of the iibermencsch (great man) whose “will to power” would construct a new kind of human race. He particularly challeneged Christianity, which seemed to glory in the weakness of the cross’

    • Earlier enlightenment writers like voltaire were moderate bourgeois atheists, content to quietly criticize corrupt christian institutions and point out apparent contradictions in Christian beliefs, THey had not realized, said ni


Scientific naturalism and scientism

  • scientific naturalism (huxley): in this view, science ought never to appeal to anything other than natural phenomena to explain scientific causation or correlation. Everything in science should remain within the confines of the scientific method, itself devoted to physical properties, repeatable experimentation, and so on… everything has to be based on physical evidence… religion which is based on revelation, seems to have lost its explanatory power.”

  • Scientism: it is immoral to believe “something without sufficient evidence… to hold a view without adequate evidence compromises one's duty to seek the truth and leads others astray  So it is not simply bad form, it's a moral and cultural evil.: this implied that, if religious identity is based on something called faith, which is different from science, then religion must be, considered on its own, in the wrong.


Loss of belief in worldly progress after WW1

  • After ww1, “it became increasingly difficult to believe that hte whole point of the cosmic story was to produce the civilized society of europe in the twentieth century… One searches contemporary European literature in vain for evidence of hope for the future; rather…. it sis characterized by cold despair, loss of vision, resignation, and cynicism

  • anomie: “a state in which publicly accepted norms and values have disappeared” - Newbigin


The throne

  • Great chain of being redux

  • The throne sits empty. THe emperors have fled or been killed. The king is a man like any other. Anyone can be killed

  • So, have societies mved past worhsipping thrones and God?

  • No not really. We will always find something to worship and obey. The question is, Whome or what?

  • Communists, socialists, scientific materialists say: Mankind is enough

  • Fascists: have no read answer, only a pastiche of myth.


Mass society, capitalism, and control


Mass movements and fanaticism: Eric Hoffer’s analysis

  • "One of the most potent attractions of a mass movement is its offering of a substitute for individual hope. This attraction is particularly effective in a society imbued with the idea of progress. For in the conception of progress,

"tomorrow" looms large, and the frustration resulting from having nothing to look forward to is the more poignant. Hermann Rauschning says of pre-Hitlerian Germany that "The feeling of having come to the end of all things was one of the worst troubles we endured after that lost war." In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling. The despair brought by unemployment comes not only from the threat of destitution, but from the sudden view of a vast nothingness ahead. The unemployed are more likely to follow the peddlers of hope than the handers-out of relief. / Mass movements are usually accused of doping. their followers with hope of the future while cheating them of the enjoyment of the present. Yet to the frustrated the present is irremediably spoiled.

Comforts and pleasures cannot make it whole. No real content or comfort can ever arise in their minds but from hope."


A look ahead to the next three weeks of lectures

  • hitler’s race myths

  • the nai and communist ideologies and aesthetics were selective configurations of elements of older history and tradition. (for that matter so were the revolutionary ideologies of the glorious revolution, the american revolution, and the french revolution. People want to believe such things, though the new 20th century movements were weird enachromisms of older symbols and ideas. Why would people want to believe> Because they were desperate for coherent, strong, palliative, protective beliefs

  • Freud and CS Lewis on psychology and morality

  • Lewis, tolkien, howard, lovecraft on European myth



Violence, chaos, and fear in Germany

  • War has swept away the “old order”

  • Versailles treaty seen as a lie, insult, attack 0 not the way war is supposed to work

  • Large masses of veterans understood military, combat

  • Democracy, socialism were seen as radical decapitations of pre-war society (how can we have govt without the emperor?)

  • Home front to which soldiers returned seemed to be social chaos

  • Culture seemed to “degenerate” ever further in the 1920s

  • Coincided with advance of socialist and communist parties. “Soviet” revolutions in Bavaria, hungary, italy - communist revolution was/seemed imminent

  • And to the east, the Russians consolidated power… a looming threat (polish-soviet war of 1919-1920)


“Weimar” period

  • “weimar” name. But beyond just germany- common characteristics, A name for cultural, economic, social period in many countries between world war one and world war two

  • Economy: War reparations. Great depression. Dawes-young plan. Hyperinflation

  • Culture: Jazz age. Wild abandon. “Degeneracy”

  • Society/social: Uncertainty, fear, anxiety about past and future. Search for stability


Consolidation of the Russian Revolution

  • Russian civil war (1917-1922, reds vs whites)

  • Russian support for “soviet” revolutions in other countries0 international communist revolution everywhere

  • New economic policy (1922-1928)

  • Death of lenin (1924) rise of stalin, exile and later assassination of trotsky

  • “Dekulakisation” (making rich peasants disappear…), collectivization, and industrialization (1927-1931)

  • Turn toward policy of “socialism in one country”

  • Communist-nazi street violence in germany, elsewhere


Fascism - a new idea in Italy

  • Benito Mussolini - originally a socialist journalist

  • welded several political elements together

  • Militarism 0 vitality (lively excitement) of combat, importance of many honor for nation

  • Socialism - care for well-being of all members of society

  • corporatism

    • succor of traditional occupational, social groups like guilds, labor unions, social groups like church, etc. - as “bodies” (corpora) in society

    • Society is made up of such groups - state should protect them

    • opposite of individualism

    • March on Rome (1922)

    • Italism fascists in power, starting october 29, 1922

    • “We have created a myth, this myth is a belief, a noble enthusiasm; it does not need to be reality it is a striving and a hope, belief and courage. Our myth is the nation, the great nation, which we want to make into a concrete reality for ourselves…”


National Socialism (nazis)

  • Internally

    • Fusion of nationalism and socialism

    • Reactionary (conservatice) + modern/technological/forward-looking at the same time

    • National recovery and regeneration. Rebuild and advance society. Put nation back to work. Get nation out of trouble and fit and healthy again. Strong, honorable, etc., after this abyss and trough nation has been in

  • Why did Germans become Nazis?

  • Externally

    • Followed nationalist-military model

    • Serve ambitions, needs of own nation

    • Unite fellow nationals (other germans) in other countries (austria, poland, etc.) into a single state

    • Fight foreign aggressors - nazis identified communists as jews, jews as (often) communists


Major themes

  • Political infighting and instability

  • street fighting

  • inability of parties to form stable coalitions

  • End of optimism

  • national health. Progressivism; eugenics

  • New media in the arts

  • Themes of artistic works of period

    • cultural pessimism

    • expressionism

    • value confusion



World War 2


Background

  • Fascist triumphant in Italy. National socialism in Germany. Soviet Russia industrializing fast

  • Propaganda, both internal within societies, and external to other countries, means that very few people really know what is going on. Brutal policies are actions of elite minority. Some people suspect other stuff. States want to control information and what their populations think. (like today!)

  • Bitter antagonism in many countries between fascists sympathizers and “popular front” types - brown vs. red… fighting…


Major Events

  • Hitler becomes chancellor of germany in 1933

  • Germany followed by Russia invade poland in 1939

  • Battle of Britain, 1940. First major defeat for German armed forces

  • 1941: Operation “Barbarossa” the ill-fated german invasion of russia

  • 1942: Three important defeats for axis powers: Midway, El Alamein, Stalingrad

  • Allied invasion of Italy begins, 1943

  • 1944: D Day landings in Normandy

  • 1945: VE (Victory in Europe) Day = official German surrender

  • US drops 2 atomic bombs in Japan. Japan surrenders.


Major events in the European theater of War

  • German rearmament

  • Anscluss (annexation) of Austria

  • Munich Agreement, Invasion of Sudetenland, rest of Czechoslovakia (March 1939)

  • Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact → German-Russian conquest of Poland, Sept. 1, 1939. France and Britain declare war on Germany on Sept 7

  • 1940 saw France, Holland and Belgium becom overwhelmed by German “Blitzkrieg”

    • Blitzkrieg is a German word meaning “lightning war”

    • Relied not so much on speed as maneuverability and tactical imporvisation at battle front- as opposed to back in headquarters.

    • an offensive tactic, not a defensive tactic

    • classic case of blitzkrieg was Battle of France, when the german army conquered northern france in 6 weeks, outflanking Maginot Line and routing both Brtish and French forces

    • development of new aircraft and tank technology in interwar period

    • High mortality rate of German generals

  • 1940: Following Neville Chamberlain’s resignation on 10th May 1940, Churchill became prime minister. 

  • May 1940 saw the evacuation of British Expeditionary Forces from Dunkirk. THe operation was put in place after British, French and Belgian troops found themselves surrounded and cut off by the Germans, during the Battle of France

  • Hitler began Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the codename for the invasion of the Soviet Union

  • 1941: Allies take Tobruk. 

  • 1941: The Japanese military strike on the US naval base Pearl Harbor, was a turning point in WW2 as it led to America’s entry into war


The Simple version

  • After german invasion of france britain declares war, now its a big multi state war. Germans try to invade britain by sea and also destroy Britain by air; both are insufficient/unsiccessful

  • War in Europe is called the European theater of the war

  • Germany and japan are allies, mutual respect at a distance


Battle of Britain


A modern air war


Einsatzgruppen - german police intentionally killing people






The Abolition of Man


C.S. Lewis

  • Education

  • Career at Oxford

  • From philosophy to theism to Christianity (1929-1931)

  • The Inklings. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

  • Lewis’ other non-fiction

  • Lewis’s fiction. Narnia

  • Influence - on other fiction like harry potter and the golden compass

  • C.S. Lewis center on campus