part seven global diversity and dominance,...

PART SEVEN

Global Diversity and Dominance, 1850–1945

CHAPTER 26The New Power Balance,1850–1900

CHAPTER 27The New Imperialism, 1869–1914

CHAPTER 28The Crisis of the ImperialOrder, 1900–1929

CHAPTER 29The Collapse of the Old Order,1929–1949

CHAPTER 30Striving for Independence:Africa, India, and LatinAmerica, 1900–1949

In 1850, despite centuries of global contacts, the world still embraced ahuge diversity of societies and cultures and of independent states. During

the century that followed, much of the world came to be dominated by a fewEuropean nations, along with the United States and Japan.

After 1870, the industrializing nations used their newfound power todominate Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific in a wave of con-quest we call the New Imperialism. Their domination was more than militaryor economic, for their agents—soldiers, administrators, missionaries, teach-ers, and merchants—tried to convert their new subjects to their own cul-tures, business practices, and ways of life. They were partly successful, as thespread of Western religions, languages, clothing, and political ideas testifies.

By 1900, Europe had been largely at peace for almost a century. As mem-ories of war faded, the rise of nationalism and the awesome power of mod-ern armies and navies made national rivalries dangerously inflammable.Germany, a latecomer to national unity, found its imperial ambitions frus-trated by the earlier conquests of France, Britain, and Russia. Mountingtensions between the great powers led to the devastating Great War of 1914–1918. Far from settling issues, this war destabilized the victors as much as the

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vanquished. Russia and China erupted in revo-lution. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire ledto the emergence of modern Turkey, while itsArab provinces were taken over by France andBritain. In the 1920s, the European powers strug-gled to maintain a precarious peace.

By the 1930s, the political and economic system theyhad crafted after the Great War fell apart. While the capitalistnations fell into a deep economic depression that their gov-ernments seemed helpless to stop, the Soviet Union industrial-ized at breakneck speed. Social disruption in Germany andJapan brought to power extremist politicians who sought to solvetheir countries’ economic woes and political grievances by mili-tary conquest. Nationalism and industrial warfare assumed theirmost hideous forms in World War II, leading to the massacre of mil-lions of innocent people and the destruction of countless cities.

World War II weakened European control of their overseas em-pires. Leaders of liberation movements in Asia, Latin America, and Africawere inspired by Western ideas of nationalism and communism and by thedesire to acquire the benefits of industrialization. After decades of struggleIndia gained its independence in 1947. Two years later, Chinese communistsled by Mao Zedong overthrew a government they viewed as subservient to theWest. In Latin America, leaders turned to nationalist economic and socialpolicies. Of all the once great powers, only the United States and the SovietUnion remained to compete for global dominance. In the face of their militaryand economic might, other nations continued to assert the diversity of their culturesand political aspirations.

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26 The New Power Balance,1850–1900

CHAPTER OUTLINENew Technologies and the World Economy

Social Changes

Socialism and Labor Movements

Nationalism and the Unification of Germany and Italy

The Great Powers of Europe, 1871–1900

Japan Joins the Great Powers, 1865–1905

ENVIRONMENT AND TECHNOLOGY: Railroads and Immigration

DIVERSITY AND DOMINANCE: Marx and Engels on Global Trade and the Bourgeoisie

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On January 18, 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors of thepalace of Versailles, King Wilhelm I of Prussia

was proclaimed emperor of Germany before a crowdof officers and other German rulers. This ceremonymarked the unification of many small German statesinto one nation. In the center stood Prussian chancel-lor Otto von Bismarck˚, the man most responsible forthe creation of a united Germany. A few years earlier,he had declared: “The great issues of the day will bedecided not by speeches and votes of the majority—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but byiron and blood.” Indeed it was “blood”—that is, victo-ries on the battlefield—rather than popular participa-tion that had led to the unification of Germany. The“iron” was not only weapons but, more importantly,the industries that produced weapons. Thus, after1871, nationalism, once a dream of revolutionariesand romantics, became ever more closely associatedwith military force and with industry.

In the late nineteenth century a very small num-ber of states, known as “great powers,” dominated theworld. Great Britain, France, and Russia had been rec-ognized as great powers long before the industrial age.Russia began industrializing in the late nineteenthcentury, as did Germany, the United States, and Japan.The rise of the United States was covered in Chap-ter 23; in this chapter we will turn to the other greatpowers of the age. In the next chapter, which dealswith the era of the “New Imperialism” (1870–1914), wewill see how these nations used their power to estab-lish colonial empires in Asia and Africa and to controlLatin America. Together, Chapters 26 and 27 describean era in which a handful of wealthy industrializednations imposed on the other peoples of the world adomination more powerful than any experienced be-fore or since.

As you read this chapter, ask yourself the follow-ing questions:

● What new technologies and industries appearedbetween 1850 and 1900, and how did they affect theworld economy?

● How did the societies of the industrial countrieschange during this period?

● How was nationalism transformed from a revolu-tionary to a conservative ideology?

● How did China and Japan respond to the challengeof the Western powers?

NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND

THE WORLD ECONOMY

The Industrial Revolution marked the beginning ofa massive transformation of the world. In the nine-

teenth century the technologies discussed in Chap-ter 22—textile mills, railroads, steamships, the telegraph,and others—spread from Britain to other parts of theworld. By 1890 Germany and the United States had sur-passed Great Britain as the world’s leading industrialpowers. Small companies, like those that flourished inBritain, were overshadowed by large corporations, someowned by wealthy capitalists, others (especially in Russiaand Japan) by governments.

Industrialization did not consist only of familiartechnologies spreading to new areas, but also of entirelynew technologies that revolutionized everyday life andtransformed the world economy. The motive force be-hind this second phase of industrialization consisted ofdeliberate combinations of business entrepreneurship,engineering, and science, especially physics and chem-istry. The first Industrial Revolution that you read aboutin Chapter 22 also involved the interactions of science,crafts, and business through the friendships of peoplewith different interests, as in the Lunar Society. By themid-nineteenth century this potent combination wasinstitutionalized in the creation of engineering schoolsand research laboratories, first in Germany and then inthe United States. Electricity and the steel and chemicalindustries were the first results of this new force. Let usturn first to the diffusion of earlier technologies, and thento the newer industries of the late nineteenth century.

By the mid-nineteenth century,steam engines had become theprime mover of industry and

commerce. Nowhere was this more evident than in thespread of railroads. By 1850 the first railroads hadproved so successful that every industrializing country,and many that aspired to become industrial, began to

Railroads

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build lines. The next fifty years saw a tremendous expan-sion of the world’s rail networks. After a rapid spurt ofbuilding new lines, British railroad mileage leveled off ataround 20,000 miles (over 32,000 kilometers) in the1870s. France and Germany built networks longer thanBritain’s, as did Canada and Russia. When Japan beganbuilding its railway network in the 1870s, it importedseveral hundred engineers from the United States andBritain, then replaced them with newly trained Japaneseengineers in the 1880s. By the early twentieth century,rail lines reached every city and province in Japan (seeMap 26.3).

The largest rail network by far was in the UnitedStates. At the end of its Civil War in 1865 the United Statesalready had 35,000 miles (over 56,000 kilometers) oftrack, three times as much as Britain. By 1915 the Amer-ican network reached 390,000 miles (around 628,000kilometers), more than the next seven longest networkscombined.

Railroads were not confined to the industrializednations; they could be constructed almost anywherethey would be of value to business or government. Thatincluded regions with abundant raw materials or agri-cultural products, like South Africa, Mexico, and Ar-gentina, and densely populated countries like Egypt. TheBritish built the fourth largest rail network in the worldin India in order to reinforce their presence and developtrade with their largest colony. Before the opening of thePanama Canal in 1915, a railroad across the isthmus car-ried freight between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Railroads consumed huge amounts of land. Manyold cities doubled in size to accommodate railroad sta-tions, sidings, tracks, warehouses, and repair shops. Inthe countryside, railroads required bridges, tunnels, andembankments. Railroads also consumed vast quantitiesof timber for ties to hold the rails and for bridges, oftenusing up whole forests for miles on either side of thetracks. Throughout the world, they opened new land toagriculture, mining, and other human exploitation ofnatural resources, whether for the benefit of the local in-habitants, as in Europe and North America, or for a dis-tant power, as in the colonial empires.

Steam-powered ships datedback to the 1830s but were ini-tially too costly for anythingbut first-class passenger traffic.

Then, by midcentury, a series of developments radicallytransformed ocean shipping. First iron, then steel, re-placed the wood that had been used for hulls since ship-building began. Propellers replaced paddle wheels.

Steamships andTelegraph Cables

Engineers built more powerful and fuel-efficient engines.By the turn of the century a marine engine could convertthe heat produced by burning a single sheet of paper intothe power to move one ton over half a mile. The averagesize of freighters increased from 200 tons in 1850 to 7,500tons in 1900. Coaling stations and ports able to handlelarge ships were built around the world. Most of all, theSuez Canal, constructed in 1869, shortened the distancebetween Europe and Asia and triggered a massive switchfrom sail power to steam (see Chapter 27).

The steamers of the turn of the century were socostly they had to be used as efficiently as possible. Asthe world’s fleet of merchant ships grew from 9 milliontons in 1850 to 35 million tons in 1910, new organiza-tions developed to make the best use of them. One suchorganization was the shipping line, a company that of-fered fast, punctual, and reliable service on a fixedschedule. Passengers, mail, and perishable freight trav-eled on scheduled liners. Most ships, however, weretramp freighters that voyaged from one port to anotherunder orders from their company headquarters in Eu-rope or North America.

To control their ships around the globe, shippingcompanies used a new medium of communications:submarine telegraph cables laid on the ocean floor. Ca-bles were laid across the Atlantic in 1866, to India in 1870,to China, Japan, and Australia in 1871 and 1872, to LatinAmerica in 1872 and 1873, to East and South Africa in1879, and to West Africa in 1886. By the turn of the cen-tury cables connected every country and almost everyinhabited island. As cables became the indispensabletools of modern shipping and business, the public andthe press extolled the “annihilation of time and space.”

Steel is a special form of iron,both hard and elastic. Until thenineteenth century it could bemade only by skilled black-smiths in very small quantities

at a very high cost and was reserved for swords, knives,axes, and watch springs. Then came a series of inven-tions that made steel the cheapest and most versatilemetal ever known. In the 1850s William Kelly, a Kentuckyiron master, discovered that air forced through moltenpig iron by powerful pumps turned the iron into steelwithout additional fuel. In 1856 the Englishman HenryBessemer improved Kelly’s method, producing steel atone-tenth the cost of earlier methods. Other newprocesses permitted steel to be made from scrap iron, anincreasingly important raw material, and from the phos-phoric iron ores common in western Europe. As a result,

The Steel and ChemicalIndustries

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world steel production rose from a half-million tons in1870 to 28 million in 1900, of which the United Statesproduced 10 million, Germany 8 million, and Britain 4.9million. Steel became cheap and abundant enough tomake rails, bridges, ships, and even “tin” cans meant tobe used once and thrown away.

The chemical industry followed a similar pattern.Until the late eighteenth century chemicals were pro-duced by trial and error in small workshops. By the earlynineteenth century soda, sulfuric acid, and chlorinebleach (used in the cotton industry) were manufacturedon a large scale, especially in Britain. In 1856 the Eng-lishman William Perkin created the first synthetic dye,aniline purple, from coal tar; the next few years wereknown in Europe as the “mauve decade” from the palepurple color of fashionable women’s clothes. Industrybegan mass-producing other organic chemicals—com-pounds containing carbon atoms. Toward the end of thecentury German chemists synthesized red, violet, blue,brown, and black dyes as well. These bright, long-lastingcolors were cheaper to manufacture and could be pro-duced in much greater quantities than natural dyes.They delighted consumers but ruined the natural-dyeproducers in tropical countries, such as the indigo plan-tations of India.

Chemistry also made important advances in themanufacture of explosives. The first of these, nitroglyc-erin, was so dangerous that it exploded when shaken. In1866 the Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel found a way toturn nitroglycerin into a stable solid—dynamite. This

and other new explosives were useful in mining andwere critical in the construction of railroads and canals,including the all-important Suez Canal. They also en-abled the armies and navies of the great powers to armthemselves with increasingly accurate and powerful ri-fles and cannon.

The growing complexity of industrial chemistrymade it one of the first fields where science and technol-ogy interacted on a daily basis. This development gave agreat advantage to Germany, which had the most ad-vanced engineering schools and scientific institutes ofthe time. While the British government paid little atten-tion to science and engineering, the German govern-ment funded research and encouraged cooperationbetween universities and industries. By the end of thenineteenth century, Germany was the world’s leadingproducer of dyes, drugs, synthetic fertilizers, ammonia,and nitrates used in making explosives.

Industrialization affected entire regions such as theEnglish Midlands, the German Ruhr, and parts of Penn-sylvania in the United States. The new steel mills werehungry consumers of coal, iron ore, limestone, and otherraw materials that were extracted from the ground.They took up as much space as whole towns, belchedsmoke and particulates, and left behind huge hills ofslag and other waste products. Railroad locomotives andother steam engines polluted the air with coal smoke.The dyestuff and other chemical industries left behindtoxic wastes that were usually dumped into nearbyrivers. This phase of industrialization, unrestrained by

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C H R O N O L O G YEurope and United States East Asia

1851 Majority of British population living in cities1856 Bessemer converter; first synthetic dye1859 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species1861 Emancipation of serfs (Russia)1866 Alfred Nobel develops dynamite1867 Karl Marx, Das Kapital1860–1870 Unification of Italy1871 Unification of Germany1875 Social Democratic Party founded in Germany1879 Thomas Edison develops incandescent lamp1882 Married Women’s Property Act (Britain)1894–1906 Dreyfus affair (France)1905 Revolution of 1905 (Russia)

1853–1854 Commodore Matthew Perry visits Japan

1862–1908 Rule of Dowager Empress Cixi (China)

1868 Meiji Restoration begins modernization drive in Japan

1894 Sino-Japanese War1900 Boxer Uprising (China)1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War1910 Japan annexes Korea

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environmental regulations, caused considerable damageto nature and to the health of nearby inhabitants.

No innovation of the latenineteenth century changedpeople’s lives as radically as

electricity. At first, producing electric current was socostly that it was used only for electroplating and teleg-raphy. In 1831 the Englishman Michael Faraday˚ showedthat the motion of a copper wire through a magneticfield induced an electric current in the wire. Based on hisdiscovery, inventors in the 1870s devised efficient gener-ators that turned mechanical energy into electric cur-rent. As an energy source, electricity was more flexibleand much easier to use than water power or the station-ary steam engine, which had powered industrializationuntil then. This opened the way to a host of new applica-tions.

Arc lamps lit up public squares, theaters, and stores.For a while, homes continued to rely on gas lamps,which produced a softer light. Then in 1879 in the UnitedStates Thomas Edison developed an incandescent lampwell suited to lighting small rooms. In 1882 Edison cre-ated the world’s first electrical distribution network in

Electricity

New York City. By the turn of the century electric lightingwas rapidly replacing dim and smelly gas lamps in thecities of Europe and North America.

Other uses of electricity quickly appeared. Electricstreetcars and, later, subways helped reduce the trafficjams that clogged the large cities of Europe and NorthAmerica. Electric motors replaced steam engines andpower belts, increasing productivity and improvingworkers’ safety. As demand for electricity grew, engi-neers learned to use waterpower to produce electricity,and hydroelectric plants were built. The plant at NiagaraFalls, on the border between Ontario, Canada, and NewYork State, produced an incredible 11,000 horsepowerwhen it opened in 1895.

World trade expanded tenfoldbetween 1850 and 1913. Eu-rope imported wheat from theUnited States and India, wool

from Australia, and beef from Argentina, and exportedcoal, railroad equipment, textiles, and machinery to Asiaand the Americas. Because steamships were much moreefficient than sailing ships, the cost of freight droppedbetween 50 and 95 percent, making it worthwhile to shipeven cheap and heavy products over very long distances.The advantage that steamers had over sailing ships was

World Trade and Finance


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especially pronounced close to industrial countries thatproduced coal, such as Britain and the United States. Onseas and oceans to which coal had to be shipped halfwayaround the world, such as the Pacific Ocean, sailingships retained a competitive advantage until the earlytwentieth century.

The growth of world trade transformed the econo-mies of different parts of the world in different ways. Theeconomics of western Europe and North America, thefirst to industrialize, grew more diversified and prosper-ous. Industries mass produced consumer goods for agrowing number of middle-class and even working-classcustomers: soap, canned and packaged foods, ready-made clothes, household items, and small luxuries likecosmetics and engravings.

Capitalist economies, however, were prey to suddenswings in the business cycle—booms followed by deepdepressions in which workers lost their jobs and in-vestors their fortunes. For example, because of the closeconnections among the industrial economies, the col-lapse of a bank in Austria in 1873 triggered a depressionthat spread to the United States, causing mass unem-ployment. Worldwide recessions occurred in the mid-1880s and mid-1890s as well.

In the late 1870s and early 1880s Germany, theUnited States, and other late-industrializing Western na-tions raised tariffs to protect their industries from Britishcompetition. Yet trade barriers could not insulate themfrom the business cycle, for money continued to flow al-most unhindered around the world. One of the maincauses of the growing interdependence of the globaleconomy was the financial power of Great Britain. Longafter German and American industries surpassed theBritish, Britain continued to dominate the flow of trade,finance, and information. In 1900 two-thirds of theworld’s submarine cables were British or passed throughBritain. Over half of the world’s shipping was Britishowned. Britain invested one-fourth of its national wealthoverseas, much of it in the United States and Argentina.British money financed many of the railroads, harbors,mines, and other big projects outside Europe. Whileother currencies fluctuated, the pound sterling was asgood as gold, and nine-tenths of international transac-tions used sterling.

Nonindustrial areas also were tied to the worldeconomy as never before. They were more vulnerable tochanges in price and demand than were the industrial-ized nations, for many of them produced raw materialsthat could be replaced by synthetic substitutes (likedyestuffs) or alternative sources of supply (like coffeefrom Brazil). Electricity created a huge demand for cop-per, tying Chile, Montana, and southern Africa to the

world economy as never before. Even products in con-stant demand, like Cuban sugar or Bolivian tin, weresubject to wild swings in price on the world market. Nev-ertheless, until World War I, the value of exports from thetropical countries generally kept up with the growth oftheir populations.

SOCIAL CHANGES

The technological and economic changes of thelate nineteenth century sparked profound social

changes in the industrial nations. A fast-growing pop-ulation swelled cities to unprecedented size, and mil-lions of Europeans emigrated to the Americas. Strainedrelations between industrial employers and workersspawned labor movements and new forms of radicalpolitics. Women found their lives dramatically altered,both in the home and in the public sphere.

The population of Europe grewfaster from 1850 to 1914 thanever before or since, almostdoubling from 265 million to

468 million. In non-European countries with predomi-nantly white populations—the United States, Canada,Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina—the increasewas even greater because of the inflow of Europeans.There were many reasons for the mass migrations of thisperiod: the Irish famine of 1847–1848; the persecution ofJews in Russia; poverty and population growth in Italy,Spain, Poland, and Scandinavia; and the cultural tiesbetween Great Britain and English-speaking countriesoverseas. Equally important was the availability of cheapand rapid steamships and railroads serving travelers atboth ends (see Environment and Technology: Railroadsand Immigration). Between 1850 and 1900, on average,400,000 Europeans migrated overseas every year; be-tween 1900 and 1914 the flood rose to over 1 million ayear. From 1850 to 1910 the population of the UnitedStates and Canada rose from 25 million to 98 million,nearly a fourfold increase. The proportion of people ofEuropean ancestry in the world’s population rose fromone-fifth to one-third.

Why did the number of Europeans and their descen-dants overseas jump so dramatically? Much of the in-crease came from a drop in the death rate, as epidemicsand starvation became less common. The Irish faminewas the last peacetime famine in European history. Asfarmers plowed up the plains of North America and

Population andMigrations

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Why did so many Europeans emigrate to North Americain the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

The quick answer is that they wanted to. Millions of peoplelonged to escape the poverty or tyranny of their home coun-tries and start new lives in a land of freedom and opportu-nity. Personal desire alone, however, does not account for themigrations. After all, poverty and tyranny existed long beforethe late nineteenth century. Two other factors helped deter-mine when and where people migrated: whether they wereallowed to migrate, and whether they were able to.

In the nineteenth century Asians were recruited to buildrailroads and work on farms. But from the 1890s on, theUnited States and Canada closed their doors to non-Europeans, so regardless of what they wanted, they could

not move to North America. In contrast, emigrants from Eu-rope were admitted until after the First World War.

The ability to travel was a result of improvements intransportation. Until the 1890s most immigrants came fromIreland, England, or Germany—countries with good railtransportation to their own harbors and low steamship faresto North America. As rail lines were extended into easternand southern Europe, more and more immigrants came fromItaly, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.

Similarly, until the 1870s most European immigrants toNorth America settled on the east coast. Then, as the rail-roads pushed west, more of them settled on farms in thecentral and western parts of the continent. The power ofrailroads moved people as much as their desires did.

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planted wheat, much of which was shipped to Europe,food supplies increased faster than the population. Fer-tilizers boosted crop yields, and canning and refrigera-tion made food abundant year-round. The diet ofEuropeans and North Americans improved as meat,fruit, vegetables, and oils became part of the daily fare ofcity dwellers in winter as well as in summer.

Asians also migrated in large numbers during thisperiod, often as indentured laborers recruited to workon plantations, in mines, and on railroads. Indians wentmainly to Africa, Southeast Asia, and other tropicalcolonies of Great Britain. Chinese emigrated to South-east Asia and the East Indies. Indian and Chinese work-ers were brought to the Caribbean to work in the sugarplantations after the emancipation of African slaves.Japanese migrated to Brazil and other parts of LatinAmerica. Many Chinese, as well as Japanese and Fil-ipinos, went to Hawaii and California, where they en-countered growing hostility from European-Americans.

In 1851 Britain became the firstnation with a majority of itspopulation living in towns andcities. By 1914, 80 percent of itspopulation was urban, as were

60 percent of the German and 45 percent of the Frenchpopulations. Cities grew to unprecedented size. Londongrew from 2.7 million in 1850 to 6.6 million in 1900. NewYork, a small town of 64,000 people in 1800, reached 3.4million by 1900, a fiftyfold increase. Population growthand the building of railroads and industries allowedcities to invade the countryside, swallowing nearbytowns and villages. In 1800 New York had covered onlythe southernmost quarter of Manhattan Island, some 3square miles (nearly 8 square kilometers); by 1900 it cov-ered 150 square miles (390 square kilometers). Londonin 1800 measured about 4 square miles (about 10 squarekilometers); by 1900 it covered twenty times more area.In the English Midlands, in the German Ruhr, andaround Tokyo Bay, towns fused into one another, fillingin the fields and woods that once had separated them.

As cities grew, they changed in character. Newlybuilt railroads not only brought goods into the cities on apredictable schedule but also allowed people to live far-ther apart. At first, only the well-to-do could afford tocommute by train; by the end of the century, electricstreetcars and subways allowed working-class people tolive miles from their workplaces.

In preindustrial and early industrial cities, the poorcrowded together in tenements; sanitation was bad; wa-ter often was contaminated with sewage; and darkness

Urbanization and UrbanEnvironments

made life dangerous. New urban technologies and thegrowing powers and responsibilities of governmentstransformed city life for all but the poorest residents. Themost important change was the installation of pipes tobring in clean water and to carry away sewage. First gaslighting and then electric lighting made cities safer andmore pleasant at night. By the turn of the twentieth cen-tury municipal governments provided police and fireprotection, sanitation and garbage removal, buildingand health inspection, schools, parks, and other ameni-ties unheard of a century earlier.

As sanitation improved, epidemics became rare. Forthe first time, urban death rates fell below birthrates. Thedecline in infant mortality was especially significant.Confident that their children would survive infancy, cou-ples began to limit the number of children they had, andancient scourges like infanticide and child abandon-ment became less frequent. By the beginning of thetwentieth century middle-class and even working-classcouples began using contraceptives.

To accommodate the growing population, builderscreated new neighborhoods, from crowded tenementsfor the poor to opulent mansions for the newly rich. Inthe United States planners laid out new cities, such asChicago, on rectangular grids, and middle-class familiesmoved to new developments on the edges of cities. InParis older neighborhoods with narrow crooked streetsand rickety tenements were torn down to make room forbroad boulevards and modern apartment buildings.Brilliantly lit by gas and electricity, Paris became the “cityof lights,” a model for city planners from New Delhi toBuenos Aires. The rich continued to live in inner citiesthat contained the monuments, churches, and palacesof preindustrial times, while workers moved to the out-skirts.

Lower population densities and better transpor-tation divided cities into industrial, commercial, andresidential zones occupied by different social classes.Improvements such as water and sewerage, electricity,and streetcars always benefited the wealthy first, then themiddle class, and finally the working class. In the com-plex of urban life, businesses of all kinds arose, and theprofessions—engineering, accounting, research, jour-nalism, and the law, among others—took on increasedimportance. The new middle class exhibited its wealth infine houses with servants and in elegant entertainment.

In fast-growing cities such as London, New York, orChicago, newcomers arrived so quickly that housingconstruction and municipal services could not keep up.Immigrants who saved their money to reunite their fami-lies could not afford costly municipal services. As a result,the poorest neighborhoods remained as overcrowded,

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unhealthy, and dangerous as they had been since theearly decades of industrialization.

While urban environments improved in many ways,air quality worsened. Coal, burned to power steam en-gines and heat buildings, polluted the air, creating un-pleasant and sometimes dangerous “pea-soup” fog andcoating everything with a film of grimy dust. The thou-sands of horses that pulled the carts and carriages cov-ered the streets with their wastes, causing a terriblestench. The introduction of electricity helped alleviatesome of these environmental problems. Electric motorsand lamps did not pollute the air. Power plants were builtat a distance from cities. As electric trains and streetcarsbegan replacing horse-drawn trolleys and coal-burninglocomotives, cities became cleaner and healthier. How-ever, most of the environmental benefits of electricitywere to come in the twentieth century.

In English-speaking countriesthe period from about 1850to 1901 is known as the “Vic-torian Age.” The expressionrefers not only to the reign ofQueen Victoria of England (r.

1837–1901) but also to rules of behavior and to an ideol-ogy surrounding the family and the relations betweenmen and women. The Victorians contrasted the mascu-line ideals of strength and courage with the femininevirtues of beauty and kindness, and they idealized thehome as a peaceful and loving refuge from the dog-eat-dog world of competitive capitalism.

Middle-ClassWomen’s“SeparateSphere”

Victorian morality claimed to be universal, yet it bestfit upper- and middle-class European families. Men andwomen were thought to belong in “separate spheres.”Successful businessmen spent their time at work or relax-ing in men’s clubs. They put their wives in charge of rear-ing the children, running the household, and spendingthe family money to enhance the family’s social status.

Before electric appliances, maintaining a middle-class home involved enormous amounts of work. Notonly were families larger, but middle-class couples en-tertained often and lavishly. Carrying out these tasks re-quired servants. A family’s status and the activities andlifestyle of the “mistress of the house” depended on theavailability of servants to help with household tasks.Only families that employed at least one full-time ser-vant were considered middle class.

Toward the turn of the century modern technologybegan to transform middle-class homes. Plumbing elim-inated the pump and the outhouse. Central heating re-placed fireplaces, stoves, trips to the basement for coal,and endless dusting. Gas and electricity lit houses andcooked food without soot, smoke, and ashes. In the earlytwentieth century wealthy families acquired the firstvacuum cleaners and washing machines. These tech-nological advances did not mean less housework forwomen. As families acquired new household technolo-gies, they raised their standards of cleanliness, thus de-manding just as much labor as before.

The most important duty of middle-class womenwas raising children. Unlike the rich of previous eraswho handed their children over to wet nurses and tutors,Victorian mothers nursed their own babies and show-


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ered their children with love and attention. Even thosewho could afford nannies and governesses remainedpersonally involved in their children’s education. Girlsreceived an education very different from that of boys.While boys were being prepared for the business worldor the professions, girls were taught such skills as em-broidery, drawing, and music, which offered no mone-tary reward or professional preparation but enhancedtheir social graces and marriage prospects.

Victorian morality frowned on careers for middle-class women. Young women could work until they gotmarried, but only in genteel places like stores and of-fices, never in factories. When the typewriter and tele-phone were introduced into the business world in the1880s, businessmen found that they could get betterwork at lower wages from educated young women thanfrom men, and operating these machines was typecastas women’s work.

Most professional careers were closed to women.Until late in the century few universities granted degreesto women. In the United States higher education wasavailable to women only at elite colleges in the East andteachers’ colleges in the Midwest. European women hadfewer opportunities. Before 1914 very few women be-came doctors, lawyers, or professional musicians.

The first profession open to women was teaching,due to laws calling for universal compulsory education.By 1911, for instance, 73 percent of all teachers in Eng-land were women. They were considered well suited toteaching young children and girls—an extension of theduties of Victorian mothers. Teaching, however, wasjudged suitable only for single women. A married womanwas expected to get pregnant right away and to stayhome taking care of her own children rather than thechildren of other people.

A home life, no matter how busy, did not satisfy allmiddle-class women. Some became volunteer nurses orsocial workers, receiving little or no pay. Others organ-ized to fight prostitution, alcohol, and child labor. Bythe turn of the century a few were challenging maledomination of politics and the law. Women suffragists,led in Britain by Emmeline Pankhurst and in the UnitedStates by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony,demanded the right to vote. By 1914 U.S. women hadwon the right to vote in twelve states. British women didnot vote until 1918.

In the new industrial cities,men and women no longerworked together at home orin the fields. The separation of

work and home affected women’s lives even more thanmen’s lives. Women formed a majority of the workersin the textile industries and in domestic service. Yetworking-class women needed to keep homes and raisechildren as well as earn their living. As a result, they ledlives of toil and pain, considerably harder than the livesof their menfolk. Parents expected girls as young as tento contribute to the household. Many became domesticservants, commonly working sixteen or more hours aday, six-and-a-half days a week, for little more than roomand board. Their living quarters, usually in attics or base-ments, contrasted with the luxurious quarters of theirmasters. Without appliances, much of their work wasphysically hard: hauling coal and water up stairs, wash-ing laundry by hand.

Female servants were vulnerable to sexual abuse bytheir masters or their masters’ sons. A well-known case isthat of Helene Demuth, who worked for Karl and JennyMarx all her life. At age thirty-one she bore a son by Karl

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Marx and put him with foster parents rather than leavethe family. She was more fortunate than most; the ma-jority of families fired servants who got pregnant, ratherthan embarrass the master of the house.

Young women often preferred factory work to do-mestic service. Here, too, Victorian society practiced astrict division of labor by gender. Men worked in con-struction, iron and steel, heavy machinery, or on rail-roads; women worked in textiles and the clothing trades,extensions of traditional women’s household work. Ap-palled by the abuses of women and children in the earlyyears of industrialization, most industrial countriespassed protective legislation limiting the hours or for-bidding the employment of women in the hardest andmost dangerous occupations, such as mining andfoundry work. Such legislation limited abuses but alsoreinforced gender divisions in industry, keeping womenin low-paid, subordinate positions. Denied access to thebetter-paid jobs of foremen or machine repairmen, fe-male factory workers earned between one-third andtwo-thirds of men’s wages.

Married women with children were expected to stayhome, even if their husbands did not make enough tosupport the family. Most working-class married womenhad double responsibilities within the home: not onlythe work of child-rearing and housework but also that ofcontributing to the family’s income. Families who hadroom to spare, even a bed or a corner in the kitchen, tookin boarders. Many women did piecework such as sewingdresses, making hats or gloves, or weaving baskets. Thehardest and worst-paid work was washing other people’sclothes. Many women worked at home ten to twelvehours a day and enlisted the help of their small children,perpetuating practices long outlawed in factories. Sinceelectric lighting and indoor plumbing cost more thanmost working-class families could afford, even ordinaryhousehold duties like cooking and washing remainedheavy burdens.

SOCIALISM AND LABOR

MOVEMENTS

Industrialization combined with the revolutionaryideas of the late eighteenth century to produce two

kinds of movements calling for further changes: social-ism and labor unions. Socialism was an ideology devel-oped by radical thinkers who questioned the sanctity ofprivate property and argued in support of industrialworkers against their employers. Labor unions were or-ganizations formed by industrial workers to defend their

interests in negotiations with employers. The socialistand labor movements were never identical. Most of thetime they were allies; occasionally they were rivals.

Socialism began as an intel-lectual movement. By far thebest-known socialist was KarlMarx (1818–1883), a German

journalist and writer who spent most of his life inEngland and collaborated with another socialist,Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), author of The Conditionof the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845). To-gether, they combined German philosophy, French rev-olutionary ideas, and knowledge of British industrialconditions.

Marx expressed his ideas succinctly in the Com-munist Manifesto (1848) (see Diversity and Dominance:Marx and Engels on Global Trade and the Bourgeoisie)and in great detail in Das Kapital˚ (1867). He saw historyas a long series of conflicts between social classes, thelatest being between property owners (the bourgeoisie)and workers (the proletariat). He argued that the capital-ist system allowed the bourgeoisie to extract the “surplusvalue” of workers’ labor—that is, the difference betweentheir wages and the value of the goods they manufac-tured. He saw business enterprises becoming larger andmore monopolistic and workers growing more numer-ous and impoverished with every downturn in the busi-ness cycle. He concluded that this conflict wouldinevitably lead to a revolution and the overthrow of thebourgeoisie, after which the workers would establish acommunist society without classes.

What Marx called “scientific socialism” provided anintellectual framework for the growing dissatisfactionwith raw industrial capitalism. In the late nineteenthcentury business tycoons spent money lavishly on man-sions, yachts, private railroad cars, and other displays ofwealth that contrasted sharply with the poverty of theworkers. Even though industrial workers were not be-coming poorer as Marx believed, the class struggle be-tween workers and employers was brutally real. WhatMarx did was to offer a persuasive explanation of thecauses of this contrast and the antagonisms it bred.

Marx was not just a philosopher; he also had a directimpact on politics. In 1864 he helped found the Interna-tional Working Man’s Association (later known as theFirst International), a movement he hoped would bringabout the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. However, it at-tracted more intellectuals than workers. Workers found

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other means of redressing their grievances, such as thevote and labor unions.

Since the beginning of thenineteenth century, workershad united to create “friendly

societies” for mutual assistance in times of illness, unem-ployment, or disability. Anticombination laws, however,forbade workers to strike. These laws were abolished inBritain in the 1850s and in the rest of Europe in sub-sequent decades. Labor unions sought not only betterwages but also improved working conditions and insur-ance against illness, accidents, disability, and old age.They grew slowly because they required a permanentstaff and a great deal of money to sustain their membersduring strikes. By the end of the century British laborunions counted 2 million members, and German andAmerican unions had 1 million members each.

Just as labor unions strove to enable workers to sharein the benefits of a capitalist economy, so did electoralpolitics persuade workers to become part of the existingpolitical system instead of seeking to overthrow it. Thenineteenth century saw a gradual extension of the rightto vote throughout Europe and North America. Univer-sal male suffrage became law in the United States in1870, in France and Germany in 1871, in Britain in 1885,and in the rest of Europe soon thereafter. Because therewere so many newly enfranchised workers, universalmale suffrage meant that socialist politicians could ex-pect to capture many seats in their nations’ parliaments.Unlike Marx, who predicted that workers would seizepower through revolution, the socialists expected work-ers to use their voting power to obtain concessions fromgovernment and eventually even to form a government.

The classic case of socialist electoral politics is theSocial Democratic Party of Germany. Founded in 1875with a revolutionary socialist program, within two yearsit won a half-million votes and several seats in the Reich-stag˚ (the lower house of the German parliament).Through superb organizing efforts and important con-cessions wrung from the government, the party grewfast, garnering 4.2 million votes in 1912 and winningmore seats in the Reichstag than any other party. In pur-suit of electoral success, the Social Democrats becamemore reformist and less radical. By joining the electoralprocess, they abandoned the idea of violent revolution.

Working-class women, burdened with both job andfamily responsibilities, found little time for politics andwere not welcome in the male-dominated trade unions

Labor Movements

or radical political parties. A few radical women, such asthe German socialist Rosa Luxemburg and Emma Gold-man in the United States, an anarchist who believed inthe abolition of all governments, became famous but didnot have a large following. It was never easy to reconcilethe demands of workers and those of women. In 1889the German socialist Clara Zetkin wrote: “Just as themale worker is subjected by the capitalist, so is thewoman by the man, and she will always remain in subju-gation until she is economically independent. Work isthe indispensable condition for economic indepen-dence.” Six years later, she recognized that the liberationof women would have to await a change in the positionof the working class as a whole: “The proletarian womancannot attain her highest ideal through a movement forthe equality of the female sex, she attains salvation onlythrough the fight for the emancipation of labor.”1

NATIONALISM AND THE

UNIFICATION OF

GERMANY AND ITALY

The most influential idea of the nineteenth centurywas nationalism. The French revolutionaries had

defined people, who had previously been considered thesubjects of a sovereign, as the citizens of a nation—aconcept identified with a territory, the state that ruled it,and the culture of its people.

Language was usually the cru-cial element in creating a feel-ing of national unity. It wasimportant both as a way tounite the people of a nation

and as the means of persuasion by which political lead-ers could inspire their followers. Language was the toolof the new generation of political activists, most of themlawyers, teachers, students, and journalists. Yet languageand citizenship seldom coincided.

The fit between France and the French language wascloser than in most large countries, though some French-speakers lived outside of France and some Frenchpeople spoke other languages. Italian- and German-speaking people, however, were divided among manysmall states. Living in the Austrian Empire were peo-ples who spoke German, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Pol-ish, and other languages. Even where people spoke acommon language, they could be divided by religion or

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I n 1848 the German philosophers Karl Marx (1818–1883)and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), who were living in Eng-

land at the time, published a small book called Manifesto ofthe Communist Party. In it, they tried to explain why ownersof manufactures and business—the “bourgeoisie”—had be-come the wealthiest and most powerful class of people inindustrializing countries like Britain, and why urban and in-dustrial workers—the “proletariat”—lived in poverty. In theirview, the dominance of the European commercial and indus-trial bourgeoisie was in the process of destroying the diver-sity of human cultures, reducing all classes in Europe and allcultures to the status of proletarians selling their labor.

In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels did not limit them-selves to publicizing social inequities. They also called for asocial revolution in which the workers would overthrow thebourgeoisie and establish a new society without privateproperty or government. Their Manifesto was soon trans-lated into many languages and became the best-known ex-pression of radical communist ideology.

Whatever one may think of their call to revolution, Marxand Engels’s analysis of class relations has had a lastingimpact on social historians. Their ideas are especially inter-esting from the perspective of global history because of theway in which they connect the rise of the bourgeois withworld trade and industrial technology. The following para-graphs explain these connections.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history ofclass struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf,guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and op-pressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carriedon an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fightthat each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitu-tion of society at large, or in the common ruin of the con-tending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywherea complicated arrangement of society into various orders, amanifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we havepatricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the middle ages, feu-dal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices,

serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gra-dations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from theruins of feudal society, has not done away with class antag-onisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions ofoppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, how-ever, this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class an-tagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting upinto two great hostile camps, into two great classes directlyfacing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the middle ages sprang the charteredburghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the firstelements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape,opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America,trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of ex-change and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, tonavigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, andthereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudalsociety, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, under which industrial pro-duction was monopolised by close guilds, now no longersufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. Themanufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters werepushed on one side by the manufacturing middle-class; divi-sion of labour between the different corporate guilds van-ished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand,ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon,steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production.The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, ModernIndustry, the place of the industrial middle-class, by indus-trial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, themodern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world-market, forwhich the discovery of America paved the way. This markethas given an immense importance to commerce, to naviga-tion, to communication by land. This development has, in itsturn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion

D I V E R S I T Y A N D D O M I N A N C E

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as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in thesame proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased itscapital, and pushed into the background every class handeddown from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itselfthe product of a long course of development, of a series ofrevolutions in the modes of production and of exchange. . . .

[T]he bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment ofModern Industry and of the world-market, conquered for it-self, in the modern representative State, exclusive politicalsway. The executive of the modern State is but a committeefor managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolu-tionary part. . . .

It has been the first to shew what man’s activity can bringabout. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptianpyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it hasconducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exo-duses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolu-tionising the instruments of production, and thereby therelations of production, and with them the whole relationsof society. Conservation of the old modes of production inunaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition ofexistence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolu-tionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of allsocial conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation dis-tinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed,fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venera-ble prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formedones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that issolid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is atlast compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditionsof life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its prod-ucts chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of theglobe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establishconnexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production andconsumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Re-actionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry thenational ground on which it stood. All old-fashioned nationalindustries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.They are dislodged by new industries, whose introductionbecomes a life or death question for all civilised nations, byindustries that no longer work up indigenous raw material,but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industrieswhose products are consumed, not only at home, but inevery quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satis-fied by the productions of the country, we find new wants,requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant landsand climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion

and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction,universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, soalso in intellectual production. The intellectual creations ofindividual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and moreimpossible, and from the numerous national and local litera-tures there arises a world-literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instru-ments of production, by the immensely facilitated means ofcommunication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nationsinto civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are theheavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls,with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate ha-tred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, onpain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of produc-tion; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisationinto their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In aword, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule ofthe towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly in-creased the urban population as compared with the rural,and has thus rescued a considerable part of the populationfrom the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the countrydependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nationsof peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West. . . .

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundredyears, has created more massive and more colossal produc-tive forces than have all preceding generations together.Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, applicationof chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation,railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents forcultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations con-jured out of the ground—what earlier century had even apresentiment that such productive forces slumbered in thelap of social labour?

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS1. How did the growth of world trade since the European

discovery of America affect relations between socialclasses in Europe?

2. What effect did the growth of trade and industry haveon products, intellectual creations, and consumer tastesaround the world?

3. Why does Marx think the bourgeoisie requires constantchanges in technology and social relations? How welldoes that description fit the world you live in?

4. Can you think of recent examples of the Western bour-geoisie’s creating “a world after its own image”?

Source: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, AuthorizedEnglish Translation: Edited and Annotated by Frederick Engels (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr& Company, 1906), 12–20.

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institutions. The Irish, though English-speaking, weremostly Catholic, whereas the English were primarilyProtestant; and in the United States, different economicsystems and the issue of slavery divided the south fromthe north.

The idea of redrawing the boundaries of states to ac-commodate linguistic, religious, or cultural differenceswas revolutionary. In Italy and Germany it led to theforging of large new states out of many small ones in1871. In central and eastern Europe, nationalism threat-ened to break up large states into smaller ones.

Until the 1860s nationalism was associated withliberalism, the revolutionary middle-class ideology thatemerged from the French Revolution, asserted the sov-ereignty of the people, and demanded constitutionalgovernment, a national parliament, and freedom of ex-pression. The most famous nationalist of the early nine-teenth century was the Italian liberal Giuseppe Mazzini˚(1805–1872), the leader of the failed revolution of 1848in Italy. Mazzini not only sought to unify the Italianpeninsula into one nation but also associated with like-minded revolutionaries elsewhere to bring nationhoodand liberty to all peoples oppressed by tyrants and for-eigners. Although the governments of Russia, Prussia,and Austria censored the new ideas, they could not bequashed. To staff bureaucracies and police forces tomaintain law and order, even conservative regimes re-quired educated personnel, and education meant uni-versities, the seedbeds of new ideas transmitted by anational language.

Although the revolutions of 1848 failed except inFrance, the strength of the revolutionary movementsconvinced conservatives that governments could notforever keep their citizens out of politics, and that masspolitics, if properly managed, could strengthen ratherthan weaken the state. A new generation of conserva-tive political leaders learned how to preserve the socialstatus quo through public education, universal militaryservice, and colonial conquests, all of which built a senseof national unity.

The Austrian statesman PrinceMetternich had famously de-scribed Italy as “a geographi-cal expression.” By midcentury,however, popular sentiment

was building throughout Italy for unification. Opposingit were Pope Pius IX, who abhorred everything modern,and Austria, which controlled two Italian provinces,

The Unificationof Italy,1860–1870

Lombardy and Venetia (see Map 26.1). The prime minis-ter of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, Count CamilloBenso di Cavour, saw the rivalry between France andAustria as an opportunity to unify Italy. He secretlyformed an alliance with France, then instigated a warwith Austria in 1858. The war was followed by uprisingsthroughout northern and central Italy in favor of joiningPiedmont-Sardinia, a moderate constitutional monar-chy under King Victor Emmanuel.

If the conservative, top-down approach to unifica-tion prevailed in the north, a more radical approach wasstill possible in the south. In 1860 the fiery revolutionaryGiuseppe Garibaldi˚ and a small band of followerslanded in Sicily and then in southern Italy, overthrewthe Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and prepared to founda democratic republic. The royalist Cavour, however,took advantage of the unsettled situation to sidelineGaribaldi and expand Piedmont-Sardinia into a newKingdom of Italy. Unification was completed with theaddition of Venetia in 1866 and the Papal States in 1870.The process of unification illustrates the shift of nation-alism from a radical democratic idea to a conservativemethod of building popular support for a strong cen-tralized government, even an aristocratic and monar-chical one.

Because the most widely spo-ken language in nineteenth-century Europe was German,the unification of most Ger-man-speaking people into a

single state in 1871 had momentous consequences forthe world. Until the 1860s the region of Central Europewhere people spoke German (the former Holy RomanEmpire) consisted of Prussia, the western half of the Aus-trian Empire, and numerous smaller states (see Map26.2). Some German nationalists wanted to unite all Ger-mans under the Austrian throne. Others wanted to ex-clude Austria with its many non-Germanic peoples andunite all other German-speaking areas under Prussia.The divisions were also religious: Austria and southwest-ern Germany were Catholic; Prussia and the northeastwere Lutheran. The Prussian state had two advantages:(1) the newly developed industries of the Rhineland, and(2) the first European army to make use of railroads,telegraphs, breechloading rifles, steel artillery, and otherproducts of modern industry.

During the reign of King Wilhelm I (r. 1861–1888)Prussia was ruled by the brilliant and authoritarian aris-

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tocrat, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898). Bis-marck was determined to use Prussian industry and Ger-man nationalism to make his state the dominant powerin Germany. In 1866 Prussia attacked and defeated Aus-tria. To everyone’s surprise, Prussia took no Austrian ter-

ritory. Instead, Prussia and some smaller states formedthe North German Confederation, the nucleus of a fu-ture Germany. Then in 1870, confident that Austriawould not hinder him, Bismarck took advantage ofFrench Emperor Napoleon III’s hostility to the North

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German Confederation to start a war with France. Prus-sian armies, joined by troops from southern as well asnorthern Germany, used their superior firepower andtactics to achieve a quick victory. “Blood and iron” werethe foundation of the new German Empire.

The spoils of victory included a large indemnity andtwo provinces of France bordering on Germany: Alsaceand Lorraine. The French paid the indemnity easilyenough but resented the loss of their provinces. To theGermans, this region was German because a majority ofits inhabitants spoke German. To the French, it wasFrench because it had been so when the nation of Francewas forged in the Revolution and because most of itsinhabitants considered themselves French. These twoconflicting definitions of nationalism kept enmity be-tween France and Germany smoldering for decades. Inthis case, nationalism turned out to be a divisive ratherthan a unifying force.

The Franco-Prussian War of1870–1871 changed the politi-cal climate of Europe. Francebecame more liberal. The

kingdom of Italy completed the unification of thepeninsula. Germany, Austria-Hungary (as the AustrianEmpire had renamed itself in 1867), and Russia re-mained conservative and used nationalism to maintainthe status quo.

Nationalism and parliamentary elections madepoliticians of all parties appeal to public opinion. Theywere greatly aided by the press, especially cheap dailynewspapers that sought to increase circulation by pub-lishing sensational articles about overseas conquestsand foreign threats. As governments increasingly cameto recognize the advantages of an educated populationin the competition between states, they opened publicschools in every town and admitted women into public-

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service jobs for the first time. The spread of literacyallowed politicians and journalists to appeal to theemotions of the poor, diverting their anger from theiremployers to foreigners and their votes from socialist tonationalist parties.

In many countries the dominant group used nation-alism to justify imposing its language, religion, or cus-

toms on minority populations. The Russian Empire at-tempted to “Russify” its diverse ethnic populations. TheSpanish government made the Spanish language com-pulsory in the schools, newspapers, and courts of itsBasque- and Catalan-speaking provinces. Immigrants tothe United States were expected to learn English to safe-guard national unity.

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Nationalism soon spread. By the 1880s signs of na-tional consciousness appeared in Egypt, Japan, India,and other non-Western countries, inspiring anti-Westernand anticolonial movements.

THE GREAT POWERS OF EUROPE,1871–1900

After the middle of the century, politicians and jour-nalists discovered that minor incidents involving

foreigners could be used to stir up popular indignationagainst neighboring countries. Military officers, im-pressed by the awesome power of the weapons that in-dustry provided, began to think that the weapons wereinvincible. Rivalries over colonial territories, ideologicaldifferences between liberal and conservative govern-ments, and even minor border incidents or trade dis-agreements contributed to a growing atmosphere ofinternational tension.

International relations revolvedaround a united Germany be-cause Germany was located inthe center of Europe and had

the most powerful army on the European continent.After creating a unified Germany in 1871, Bismarck de-clared that his country had no further territorial ambi-tions, and he put his effort into maintaining the peace inEurope. To isolate France, the only country with a grudgeagainst Germany, he forged a loose coalition with Aus-tria-Hungary and Russia, the other two conservativepowers. Despite the competing ambitions of Austria andRussia in the Balkans, he was able to keep his coalitiontogether for twenty years.

Bismarck proved equally adept at strengtheningGerman national unity at home. To weaken the influ-ence of middle-class liberals, he extended the vote to alladult men, thereby allowing Socialists to win seats inthe Reichstag or parliament. By imposing high tariffs onmanufactured goods and wheat, he gained the supportof both the wealthy industrialists of the Rhineland andthe great landowners of eastern Germany, traditional ri-vals for power. Though he repressed labor unions, hegained the acquiescence of industrial workers by intro-ducing social legislation—medical, unemployment,and disability insurance and old-age pensions—longbefore other industrial countries. His government sup-ported public and technical education. Under his lead-ership, the German people developed a strong sense of

Germany at theCenter of Europe

national unity and pride in their industrial and militarypower.

In 1888 Wilhelm I was succeeded by his grandsonWilhelm II (r. 1888–1918), an insecure and arrogantman who tried to gain respect by using bullying tactics.Within two years he had dismissed Chancellor Bismarckand surrounded himself with yes men. Whereas Bis-marck had shown little interest in acquiring coloniesoverseas, Wilhelm II talked about his “global policy” anddemanded a colonial empire. Ruler of the nation withthe mightiest army and the largest industrial economy inEurope, he felt that Germany deserved “a place in thesun.” His intemperate speeches made him seem farmore belligerent than he really was.

France, once the dominant na-tion in Europe, had difficultyreconciling itself to being insecond place. Though a pros-perous country with flourish-

ing agriculture and a large colonial empire, the Frenchrepublic had some serious weaknesses. Its populationwas scarcely growing; in 1911 France had only 39 millionpeople compared to Germany’s 64 million. In an agewhen the power of nations was roughly proportional tothe size of their armies, France could field an army onlytwo-thirds the size of Germany’s. Another weakness wasthe slow growth of French industry compared to Ger-many’s, due in part to the loss of the iron and coal minesof Lorraine.

The French people were deeply divided over the verynature of the state: some were monarchists and Catholic;a growing number held republican and anticlericalviews. These divisions came to a head at the turn of thecentury over the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewishofficer falsely convicted of spying for the Germans in1894. French society, even families, split between thosewho felt that reopening the case would only dishonorthe army and those who believed that letting injustice gounchallenged dishonored the nation. The case reawak-ened the dormant anti-Semitism in French society. Notuntil 1906, after twelve painful years, was Dreyfus exon-erated. Yet if French political life seemed fragile andfrequently in crisis, a long tradition of popular participa-tion in politics and a strong sense of nationhood, rein-forced by a fine system of public education, gave theFrench people a deeper cohesion than appeared on thesurface.

Great Britain had a long experience with parliamen-tary elections and competing parties. The British gov-ernment alternated smoothly between the Liberal andConservative Parties, and the income gap between rich

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and poor gradually narrowed. Nevertheless, Britain hadproblems that grew more apparent as time went on. Oneproblem was Irish resentment of English rule. National-ism had strengthened the allegiance of the English,Scots, and Welsh to the British crown and state. But theIrish, excluded because they were Catholic and predom-inantly poor, saw the British as a foreign occupying force.

Another problem was the British economy. Once theworkshop of the world, Great Britain had fallen behindthe United States and Germany in such important in-dustries as iron and steel, chemicals, electricity, andtextiles. Even in shipbuilding and shipping, Britain’s tra-ditional specialties, Germany was catching up.

Also, Britain was preoccupied with its enormousand fast-growing empire. A source of wealth for investorsand the envy of other imperialist nations, the empire wasalso a constant drain on Britain’s finances. The revolt of1857 against British rule in India (see Chapter 24) wascrushed with difficulty and kept British politicians wor-ried thereafter. The empire required Britain to stationseveral costly fleets of warships throughout the world.

For most of the nineteenth century Britain turned itsback on Europe and pursued a policy of “splendid isola-tion.” Only in 1854 did it intervene militarily in Europe,joining France in the Crimean War of 1854–1856 againstRussia (see Chapter 25). Britain’s preoccupation with In-dia and the shipping routes through the Mediterraneanled British statesmen to exaggerate the Russian threat tothe Ottoman Empire and to the Central Asian ap-proaches to India. Periodic “Russian scares” and Britain’sage-old rivalry with France for overseas colonies di-verted the attention of British politicians away from therise of a large, powerful, united Germany.

The forces of nationalism weak-ened rather than strengthenedRussia and Austria-Hungary.Their populations were farmore divided, socially and eth-nically, than were the German,French, or British peoples.

The ConservativePowers: Russiaand Austria-Hungary

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Nationalism was most divisive in south-central Eu-rope, where many different language groups lived inclose proximity. In 1867 the Austrian Empire renameditself the Austro-Hungarian Empire to appease its Hun-garian critics. Its attempts to promote the cultures ofits Slavic-speaking minorities did little to gain theirpolitical allegiance. The Austro-Hungarian Empire stillthought of itself as a great power, but instead of seekingconquests in Asia or Africa, it attempted to dominate theBalkans. This strategy irritated Russia, which thought ofitself as the protector of Slavic peoples everywhere. TheAustrian annexation of the former Turkish province ofBosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 worsened relations be-tween the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. Aswe will see in Chapter 28, festering quarrels over theBalkans—the “tinderbox of Europe”—eventually pushedEurope into war.

Ethnic diversity also contributed to the instability ofimperial Russia. The Polish people, never reconciled tobeing annexed by Russia in the eighteenth century, re-belled in 1830 and 1863–1864. The tsarist empire also in-cluded Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine,the very mixed peoples of the Caucasus, and the Muslimpopulation of Central Asia conquered between 1865 and1881. Furthermore, Russia had the largest Jewish pop-ulation in Europe, despite the harshness of its anti-Semitic laws and periodic pogroms (massacres), whichprompted many Jews to flee to America. All in all, only 45percent of the peoples of the tsarist empire spoke Rus-sian. This meant that Russian nationalism and the state’sattempts to impose the Russian language on its subjectswere divisive instead of unifying forces.

In 1861 the moderate conservative Tsar Alexander II(r. 1855–1881) emancipated the peasants from serfdom.He did so partly out of a genuine desire to strengthen thebonds between the monarchy and the Russian people,and partly to promote industrialization by enlarging thelabor pool. That half-hearted measure, however, did notcreate a modern society on the western Europeanmodel. It only turned serfs into communal farmers withfew skills and little capital. Though technically “emanci-pated,” the great majority of Russians had little educa-tion, few legal rights, and no say in the government. AfterAlexander’s assassination in 1881, his successors Alexan-der III (r. 1881–1894) and Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917) re-luctantly permitted half-hearted attempts at socialchange. Although the Russian government employedmany bureaucrats and policemen, its commercial mid-dle class was small and had little influence. Industrial-ization consisted largely of state-sponsored projects,such as railroads, iron foundries, and armament facto-ries, and led to social unrest among urban workers.Wealthy landowning aristocrats continued to dominate

the Russian court and administration and succeeded inblocking most reforms.

The weaknesses in Russia’s society and governmentbecame glaringly obvious during a war with Japan in1904 and 1905. The fighting in the Russo-Japanese Wartook place in Manchuria, a province in northern Chinafar from European Russia. The Russian army, which re-ceived all its supplies by means of the inefficient Trans-Siberian Railway, was soon defeated by the bettertrained and equipped Japanese. The Russian navy, after along journey around Europe, Africa, and Asia, was metand sunk by the Japanese fleet at the Battle of TsushimaStrait in 1905.

The shock of defeat caused a popular uprising, theRevolution of 1905, that forced Tsar Nicholas II to grant aconstitution and an elected Duma (parliament). But assoon as he was able to rebuild the army and the police,he reverted to the traditional despotism of his forefa-thers. Small groups of radical intellectuals, angered bythe contrast between the wealth of the elite and thepoverty of the common people, began plotting the vio-lent overthrow of the tsarist autocracy.

JAPAN JOINS THE GREAT POWERS, 1865–1905

S ince the seventeenth century Europeans had cometo regard their continent as the center of the uni-

verse and their states as the only great powers in theworld. The rest of the world was either ignored or used asbargaining chips in the game of power politics. The latenineteenth century marked the high point of Europeanpower and arrogance, as the nations of Europe, in afrenzy known as the “New Imperialism,” rushed to gob-ble up the last remaining unclaimed pieces of the world,as we will see in Chapter 27.

Yet at that very moment two nations outside Europewere becoming great powers. One of them, the UnitedStates, was inhabited mainly by people of European ori-gin. As we saw in Chapter 23, its rise to great-power sta-tus had been predicted early in the nineteenth centuryby astute observers like the French statesman Alexis deTocqueville. The other one, Japan, seemed so distant andexotic in 1850 that no European had guessed that itwould join the ranks of the great powers.

After 1850 China and Japan—the two largest countries inEast Asia—felt the influence ofthe Western powers as never

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before, but their responses were completely opposite.China resisted Western influence and became weaker,while Japan transformed itself into a major industrialand military power. One reason for this difference wasthe Western powers’ heavy involvement in China and thedistance to Japan, the nation most remote from Europeby ship. More important was the difference between theChinese and Japanese elites’ attitudes toward foreigncultures.

China had been devastated by the Taiping˚ Rebel-lion that raged from 1850 to 1864 (see Chapter 25). TheFrench and British took advantage of China’s weaknessto demand treaty ports where they could trade at will.The British took over China’s customs and allowed thefree import of opium until 1917. A Chinese “self-strengthening movement” tried in vain to bring aboutsignificant reforms by reducing government expendi-tures and eliminating corruption. The Empress Dowa-ger Cixi˚ (r. 1862–1908), who had once encouraged theconstruction of shipyards, arsenals, and telegraph lines,opposed railways and other foreign technologies thatcould carry foreign influences to the interior. Govern-ment officials, who did not dare resist the Westerners out-right, secretly encouraged crowds to attack and destroythe intrusive devices. They were able to slow the foreignintrusion, but in doing so, they denied themselves thebest means of defense against foreign pressure.

In Japan a completely different political organizationwas in place. The emperor was revered but had no power.Instead, Japan was governed by the Tokugawa shogu-nate—a secular government under a military leader, orshogun, that had come to power in 1600 (see Chapter20). Local lords, called daimyos, were permitted to con-trol their lands and populations with very little interfer-ence from the shogunate.

When threatened from outside, this system showedmany weaknesses. It did not permit the coordination ofresources necessary to resist a major invasion. Shogunsattempted to minimize exposure to foreign powers. Inthe early 1600s they prohibited foreigners from enteringJapan and Japanese from going abroad. The penalties forbreaking these laws was death, but many Japanese ig-nored them anyway. The most flagrant violators werepowerful lords in southern Japan who ran large and verysuccessful pirate or black-market operations. In their en-trepreneurial activities these lords benefited from thedecentralization of the shogunal political system. Butwhen a genuine foreign threat was suggested—as when,in 1792, Russian and British ships were spotted off theJapanese coast—the local lords realized that Japan wastoo weak and decentralized to resist a foreign invasion.

As a result, a few of the regional lords began to developtheir own reformed armies, arsenals, and shipyards.

By the 1800s Satsuma˚ and Choshu,˚ two large do-mains in southern Japan, had become wealthy and ambi-tious. They enjoyed high rates of revenue and populationgrowth. Their remoteness from the capital Edo (nowTokyo) and their economic vigor also fostered a strongsense of local self-reliance.

In 1853 the American Commodore Matthew C. Perryarrived off the coast of Japan with a fleet of steam-powered warships that the Japanese called “black ships.”He demanded that Japan open its ports to trade and al-low American ships to refuel and take on supplies duringtheir voyages between China and California. He prom-ised to return a year later to receive the Japanese answer.

Perry’s demands sparked a crisis in the shogunate.After consultation with the provincial daimyos, the sho-gun’s advisers advocated capitulation to Perry. Theypointed to China’s humiliating defeats in the Opium andArrow Wars. In 1854, when Perry returned, representa-tives of the shogun indicated their willingness to sign theTreaty of Kanagawa,˚ modeled on the unequal treatiesbetween China and the Western powers. Angry anddisappointed, some provincial governors began to en-courage an underground movement calling for the de-struction of the Tokugawa regime and the banning offoreigners from Japan.

Tensions between the shogunate and some provin-cial leaders, particularly in Choshu and Satsuma, in-creased in the early 1860s. When British and Frenchships shelled the southwestern coasts in 1864 to protestthe treatment of foreigners, the action enraged theprovincial samurai who rejected the Treaty of Kanagawaand resented the shogunate’s inability to protect thecountry. Young, ambitious, educated men who facedmediocre prospects under the rigid Tokugawa class sys-tem emerged as provincial leaders. In 1867 the Choshuleaders Yamagata Aritomo and Ito Hirobumi finally real-ized that they should stop warring with their rivalprovince, Satsuma, and join forces to lead a rebellionagainst the shogunate.

The civil war was intense butbrief. In 1868 provincial rebelsoverthrew the Tokugawa Sho-gunate and declared the youngemperor Mutsuhito˚ (r. 1868–1912) “restored.” The new lead-ers called their regime the

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Taiping (tie-PING) Cixi (TSUH-shee)Satsuma (SAT-soo-mah) Choshu (CHOE-shoo)Kanagawa (KAH-nah-GAH-wah) Mutsuhito (moo-tsoo-HE-toe)

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“Meiji˚ Restoration,” after Mutsuhito’s reign name (Meijimeans “enlightened rule”). The “Meiji oligarchs,” as thenew rulers were known, were extraordinarily talentedand far-sighted. Determined to protect their countryfrom Western imperialism, they encouraged its transfor-mation into “a rich country with a strong army” withworld-class industries. Though imposed from above, theMeiji Restoration marked as profound a change as theFrench Revolution.

The oligarchs were under no illusion that they couldfend off the Westerners without changing their institu-tions and their society. In the Charter Oath issued in1868, the young emperor included a prophetic phrase:“Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world andthus shall be strengthened the foundation of the impe-

rial polity.” It was to be the motto of a new Japan, whichembraced all foreign ideas, institutions, and techniquesthat could strengthen the nation. The literacy rate inJapan was the highest in Asia at the time, and the oli-garchs shrewdly exploited it in their introduction of neweducational systems, a conscript army, and new commu-nications. The government was able to establish heavyindustry through the use of judicious deficit financingwithout extensive foreign debt, thanks to decades of ex-perimentation with industrial development and financ-ing in the provinces in the earlier 1800s. With a conscriptarmy and a revamped educational system, the oligarchsattempted to create a new citizenry that was literate andcompetent but also loyal and obedient.

The Meiji leaders copied the government structureof imperial Germany. They modeled the new Japanesenavy on the British and the army on the Prussian. They


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introduced Western-style postal and telegraph services,railroads and harbors, banking, clocks, and calendars.To learn the secrets of Western strength, they sent hun-dreds of students to Britain, Germany, and the UnitedStates. They even encouraged foreign clothing styles andpastimes.

The government was especially interested in West-ern technology. It opened vocational, technical, andagricultural schools and founded four imperial universi-

ties. It brought in foreign experts to advise on medicine,science, and engineering. At the newly created ImperialCollege of Engineering, an Englishman, William Ayrton,became the first professor of electrical engineering any-where in the world. His students later went on to foundmajor corporations and government research institutes.

To encourage industrialization, the government setup state-owned enterprises to manufacture cloth and in-expensive consumer goods for sale abroad. The first

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Japanese industries, some of which had been founded inthe early nineteenth century, exploited their workersruthlessly, just as the first industries in Europe andAmerica had done. Peasant families, squeezed by risingtaxes and rents, were forced to send their daughters towork in textile mills. In 1881, to pay off its debts, the gov-ernment sold these enterprises to private investors,mainly large zaibatsu˚, or conglomerates. It encouragedindividual technological innovation. Thus the carpenterToyoda Sakichi founded the Toyoda Loom Works (nowToyota Motor Company) in 1906; ten years later hepatented the world’s most advanced automatic loom.

The motive for the transforma-tion of Japan was defensive—to protect the nation fromthe Western powers—but themethods that strengthenedJapan against the imperial am-

bitions of others could also be used to carry out its ownconquests. Japan’s path to imperialism was laid out byYamagata Aritomo, a leader of the Meiji oligarchs. Hebelieved that to be independent Japan had to define a“sphere of influence” that included Korea, Manchuria,and part of China (see Map 26.3). If other countries con-trolled this sphere, Japan would be at risk. To protect thissphere of influence, Yamagata insisted, Japan must sus-tain a vigorous program of military industrialization,culminating in the building of battleships.

Meanwhile, as Japan grew stronger, China was grow-ing weaker. In 1894 the two nations went to war overJapanese encroachments in Korea. The Sino-JapaneseWar lasted less than six months, and forced China toevacuate Korea, cede Taiwan and the Liaodong˚ Penin-sula, and pay a heavy indemnity. France, Germany,Britain, Russia, and the United States, upset at seeing anewcomer join the ranks of the imperialists, made Japangive up Liaodong in the name of the “territorial integrity”of China. In exchange for their “protection,” the Westernpowers then made China grant them territorial andtrade concessions, including ninety treaty ports.

In 1900 Chinese officials around the Empress Dowa-ger Cixi encouraged a series of antiforeign riots known asthe Boxer Uprising. Military forces from the Europeanpowers, Japan, and the United States put down the riotsand occupied Beijing. Emboldened by China’s obviousweakness, Japan and Russia competed for possession ofthe mineral-rich Chinese province of Manchuria.

The Birth ofJapaneseImperialism,1894–1905

Japan’s participation in the suppression of the BoxerUprising demonstrated its military power in East Asia. In1905 Japan surprised the world by defeating Russia inthe Russo-Japanese War. By the Treaty of Portsmouththat ended the war, Japan established a protectorate overKorea. In spite of Western attempts to restrict it to therole of junior partner, Japan continued to increase its in-fluence. It gained control of southern Manchuria, withits industries and railroads. In 1910 it finally annexed Ko-rea, joining the ranks of the world’s colonial powers.

CONCLUSION

After World War I broke out in 1914, many people, es-pecially in Europe, looked back on the period from

1850 to 1914 as a golden age. For some, and in certainways, it was. Industrialization was a powerful torrentchanging Europe, North America, and East Asia. Whileother technologies like shipping and railroads increasedtheir global reach, new ones—electricity, the steel andchemical industries, and the global telegraph network—contributed to the enrichment and empowerment of theindustrial nations. Memories of the great scourges—famines, wars, and epidemics—faded. Clean water, elec-tric lights, and railways began to improve the lives ofcity dwellers, even the poor. Goods from distant lands,even travel to other continents, came within the reach ofmillions.

European society seemed to be heading toward bet-ter organization and greater security. Municipal servicesmade city life less dangerous and chaotic. Through laborunions, workers achieved some measure of recognitionand security. By the turn of the century, liberal politicalreforms had taken hold in western Europe and seemedabout to triumph in Russia as well. Morality and leg-islation aimed at providing security for women and fam-ilies, though equality between the sexes was still beyondreach.

The framework for all these changes was the nation-state. The world economy, international politics, evencultural and social issues revolved around a handful ofcountries—the great powers—that believed they con-trolled the destiny of the world. These included the mostpowerful European nations of the previous century, aswell as three newcomers—Germany, the United States,and Japan—that were to play important roles in thefuture.

The strength of the dominant countries rested notonly on their industries and trade, but also on the enthu-siasm of their peoples for the national cause. The feelingzaibatsu (zye-BOT-soo) Liaodong (li-AH-oh-dong)

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of unity and identity that we call nationalism was a two-edged sword, for it could also be divisive for multiethnicstates like Russia and Austria-Hungary, and even GreatBritain. It was also a Western concept that did not spreadeasily to other cultures. Thus Japan and China reactedvery differently to the Western intrusion. China, long incontact with the West, was ruled by a conservative elitethat associated modern technology with Western inter-ference and resisted both. Japan, after a period of tur-moil, accepted not only Western technology but also thenationalist and expansionist ideology of the West.

The success of the great powers rested on their abil-ity to extract resources from nature and from other soci-eties, especially in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In aglobal context, the counterpart of the rise of the greatpowers is the story of imperialism and colonialism. Tocomplete our understanding of the period before 1914,let us turn now to the relations between the great powersand the rest of the world.

■ Key Termsrailroads

submarine telegraph cables

steel

electricity

Thomas Edison

Victorian Age

“separate spheres”

socialism

labor unions

Karl Marx

anarchist

nationalism

liberalism

Giuseppe Garibaldi

Otto von Bismarck

Empress Dowager Cixi

Meiji Restoration

Yamagata Aritomo

■ Suggested ReadingMore has been written on the great powers in the late nine-teenth century than on any previous period in their histories.The following are some interesting recent works and a fewclassics.

Industrialization is the subject of Peter Stearns, The IndustrialRevolution in World History (1993), and David Landes, The Un-bound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Devel-opment in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (1969). Twointeresting works on nationalism are E. J. Hobsbawm, Nationand Nationalism Since 1780 (1990), and Benedict Anderson,Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread ofNationalism (1991).

Barrington Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorship andDemocracy (1966), is a classic essay on European society. OnEuropean women see Renate Bridenthal, Susan Mosher Stuard,and Merry E. Wiesner, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in Euro-pean History, 3d ed. (1998); Patricia Branca, Silent Sisterhood:Middle-Class Women in the Victorian Home (1975); Louise Tillyand Joan Scott, Women, Work, and Family (1987); and TheresaMcBride, The Domestic Revolution: The Modernization ofHousehold Service in England and France, 1820–1920 (1976).The history of family life is told in Beatrice Gottlieb, The Familyin the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age(1993). Albert Lindemann, A History of European Socialism(1983), covers the labor movements as well.

There are many excellent histories of individual countries. OnGermany in the nineteenth century see David Blackbourne,The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780–1918(1998), and Gordon A. Craig, Germany, 1866–1945 (1980). Thestandard works on Bismarck and the unification of Germany areOtto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany (1990),and Lothar Gall, Bismarck, the White Revolutionary (1986). OnBritain see Donald Read, The Age of Urban Democracy: Eng-land, 1868–1914 (1994), and David Thomson, England in theNineteenth Century, 1815–1914 (1978). On France Eugen Weber,Peasants into Frenchmen (1976), and Roger Price, A Social His-tory of Nineteenth-Century France (1987), are especially recom-mended. For Austria see Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of theHabsburg Empire, 1815–1918 (1989). Two good introductions toRussian history are Hans Rogger, Russia in the Age of Modern-ization and Revolution, 1881–1917 (1983), and Gregory L.Freeze, ed., Russia: A History (1997).

There are several interesting books on Japan, in particular PeterDuus, The Rise of Modern Japan, 2d ed. (1998), and Tessa Mor-ris-Suzuki, The Technological Transformation of Japan (1994).Two fine books that cover the history of modern China: JohnKing Fairbank, The Great Chinese Revolution, 1800–1985 (1987),and Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (1990).

■ Notes1. Quoted in Bonnie S. Anderson and Judith P. Zinsser, A His-

tory of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to thePresent, vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 372, 387.

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DOCUMENT 4Emmeline Pankhurst Under Arrest (photo, p. 689)

DOCUMENT 5Marx and Engels on Global Trade and the Bourgeoisie(Diversity and Dominance, pp. 692–693)

DOCUMENT 6The Doss House (photo, p. 699)

How would Marx and Engels view Documents 1, 2,and 6? What additional types of documents wouldhelp you understand changing perceptions of classand gender in the late nineteenth century?

Document-Based QuestionClass and Gender in the LateNineteenth CenturyUsing the following documents, analyze thechanging perceptions of class and gender inindustrialized nations in the late nineteenthcentury.

DOCUMENT 1Silk Factory in Japan (photo, p. 680)

DOCUMENT 2Emigrant Waiting Room (Environment and Technology, p. 686)

DOCUMENT 3Separate Spheres in Great Britain (photo, p. 688)

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