Impact of the Revolutions of 1848
- Attempted revolution from lower classes failed
- Reaction of governments was to increase the centralization of power to control the masses
The Crimean War
Fought over the “Eastern Question”: What would the great powers do in response to the decline of the Ottoman Empire (6th power)
- England, France, Austria and Russia all had ambitions to increase their sphere of influence in the region
- Russian ambitions sought to expand their sphere of influence throughout the Balkans and the Black Sea
- Sought control over the Bosporus Straight, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles Straight
Why?
1. Needed a warm water port with access to the Med.
2. Ottoman Empire in decline
3. Traditional sphere of influence (Eastern Orthodox Christianity)
1852: France was granted rights over Roman Catholics in the Ottoman Empire
1853: Russians claimed the right to rule over Eastern Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire and a rejection of the French
- Turks rejected the Russian claim
- Russians invaded the Danubian Principalities and sink the Turkish fleet at the Battle of Sinope
- The Russians attempted to direct the terms of peace, Eng. / Fr. Rejected the terms and declared war on Russia
- Why?
1. GB wanted an independent and weak Turkey to protect their interests in India
2. Fr. Wanted to increase their prestige in international relations and to protect their regional interests
3. Piedmont-Sardinia entered the war to try to earn independence and unification of Italy
- Sept. 9 1854, Eng. / Fr. Landed troops in Crimea
- 322 days of siege to take Sevastopol
- War ended with the Peace of Paris 1856
- Danube went back to the Turks
- Black Sea was to be neutral
- Western Allies gained prestige at a high cost
Cost of the War
- 750,000 dead, bulk of which were Russian
- Terrible medical conditions, Florence Nightengale introduced sanitation
- Charge of the Light Brigade
Impacts:
- Further isolated Russia from European politics
- Helped Prussia expand into Central Europe
- Concert of Europe was definitively ended
- Piedmont-Sardinia realized that unification would only come by force
Italian Unification
Risorgimento: cultural / political movement to reunify Italy
- Met with failure throughout the first half of the 19th Century
Camillo Benso di Cavour (1810-1861): Driving force of Italian unification, political realist who used diplomatic maneuvering and military success to unify Italy
- Premier of Piedmont-Sardinia for King Carlo-Alfonso and King Victory Emmanuel II
- Cavour secured a defensive alliance with France against Austria in 1858
- Treaty of Plombieres
- 1859 Cavour provoked Austria to attack
- French troops promptly defeated the Austrians
- Piedmont-Sardinia claimed Lombardy and parts of northern Italy
- By 1860 Piedmont-Sardinia joined with the rest of northern Italy
- Garibaldi was leading an uprising starting in Sicily and moving north into the kingdom of Naples
- “Red Shirts”
- Cavour, fearing a rival, pushed his troops into Naples from the north
- Garibaldi yielded to Cavour and Emmanuel II, remembered as a great nationalistic patriot of Italy
1866: Prussia defeated Austria
- Italy claimed the Venetian provinces
1870: Prussians defeated the French
- Italy claimed the Papal States
KEY: Cavour used international events to prepare the way for unification
- Realists accept given conditions and make the best of them
- Opportunistic
German Unification
Otto Von Bismarck: Architect of German Unification
- Realpolitik: Politics of based on realism and practical nature of reality
o Ruthless pursuit of one’s rational interests by any means necessary
- Rose to power in the United Diet of Prussia as a reactionary
- Believe that the traditional elites must join with the nationalists to survive
o Used common ground of nationalism to manipulate and weaken the liberals
1862:
Kaiser Wilhelm I attempted to reorganize the military
- Met strong reaction by the traditional elites
- To quell the crisis Wilhelm appointed Bismarck as Minister-President of the Prussian Cabinet and Foreign Minister
1864:
Bismarck established an alliance with Austria
- Sought to regain traditional German territory of Holstein and Schleswig
- Won easily, Austria got Schleswig, Prussia got Holstein
o Settlement created administrative problems for Austria
1866:
7 Weeks War
- Began over administrative disagreements between Austria and Prussia over the territory of Schleswig
- Bismarck negotiated favorable conditions, other great powers were neutral
- Prussian victory
- Transportation, training, homogenous forces, guns
- Peace terms removed Austria from German unification
- Piedmont-Sardinia gained the Venetian territories
- Austria had to deal with nationalist uprisings
- Established the Dual Monarchy, still did not settle all of their problems
1870: Franco-Prussian War
- Southern German states feared unification around Prussian power
o Religion, militarism and authoritarianism
- Napoleon III of France also opposed a strong Prussia for French interests
- Bismarck used the issue of Spanish Succession to create a crisis between the French and German peoples
o Leak info to both nations newspapers
- French declared war
- Southern German and Prussians united and won easily
o Railroads, organization, planning, military intelligence
o French were poorly led and poorly trained
1871:
German Empire (Second Reich) under the leadership of Bismarck and the Prussian King
- Proclamation of Empire signed 21 January 1871 at Versailles
- Created the Reichstag – extremely weak national leg. – all power remained with the emperor
o Bismarck wanted a weak parliament to show the problems of parliamentary govt.
Note on Bismarck: Without exception he sought to avoid war, in war the outcome is always uncertain. Bismarck sought to exert control and mastery over every situation, used war as a last option.
Impact of German Unification
- Became the greatest industrial empire in Europe over night
- Shifted the balance of power
- Created a yearning for national prestige in Germany
Nationalism between 1850 and 1870
- States constructed new national identities through ideology and symbolism
- Monarchs were still important, but no longer the all encompassing representation of the nation
- Nationalism occurred through the leadership of the realists, not the liberals
- Conflict and war were accepted extensions of domestic politics under the realists
- Nationalism became tied to conflict and violence (Italian / German unification both revolved around warfare)
Realism:
Art: see Powerpoint notes
Literature:
Charles Dickens: Hard Times (1854), looked at the harsh realities of urban life
Gustava Flaubert:
Dictionary of Accepted Ideas (1881): Criticized Western Intellectual History
Bouvard et Pẻcuchet (1881): Satirized modern application of enlightenment ideas
Madam Bovary (1856): Recounts the story of a young bourgeois wife who seeks adventure and ends in ruin
- Illustrated the hypocrisy of the bourgeois
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment (1866)
- Developed the idea that god no longer existed, man must shape his own morality
- Shifting of the focus onto the failures of an arrogant “smug” bourgeois
- Progress could only occur through struggle
Realism in Science:
Charles Darwin (and Alfred Wallace)
- Naturalist, observed and studied nature to understand it better
- On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)
- Evolution was a continual process based upon mutation, competition for food supply and survival of the “fittest” (best adapted) animal
- Tied to realist movement: progress based upon struggle
Realism in History:
Marx as a realist:
- Historical progress was the result of class struggle for change
- Das Kapital (1867): Marx’s indepth analysis of capitalisms cyclical nature resulting in a collapse of the system
- Applied realists methodology to understanding history
- Evolutionist approach to historical analysis
Paris Commune- the continued struggle of Parisians after the fall of Paris to the Prussians
- Embraced a Marx like govt., really a rejection of nationalism
- Quickly collapsed
- Demonstrated the growth of Patriotism and state power
Reforming European Society
Three different models appeared in the second half of the 19th Century:
- France: Second Empire 1852-1870
- Use of technocrats to run and reform French Society
- Technocrat: person of extreme skill and expertise in government affairs
- Napoleon III used Central Bureaucracy (merit)
- Used public opinion to eventually gain support
- Promised every group reform and a better life to get elected in 1848
- 1851 Coup d etat
- Image of success critical
- Supported industrialization, private banking system and state sponsored public works
- Provide social reform by increasing the standard of living among all peoples
- Paris
- Baron Georges Haussmann transformed Paris into a “city of lights”
- Typical technocrat, “the Attila of the straight line”
- Gentrified Paris – pushed the working classes into the suburbs and built up the ascetics of the city
- Broadened the streets of Paris (prevent barricading of the streets)
- Changed Paris from a city of radicals to a conservative cultural center of Europe
- Changes referred to as the “Haussmannification of Paris” became a model throughout Europe
- Foreign Policy: attempt to restore French prestige
- Crimean War and wars of Italian unification successful
- Suez Canal coupled with the Chevalier-Cobden Treaty (liberal trade policies)
- Mexico became a massive failure
- Rise of Prussia presented a massive threat to France
- Lost in the Franco-Prussian War
- Napoleon had failed to reform military with technocrats
2. England: Liberal Parliamentary Democracy facilitated reform
- Two common perceptions of British life in the 19th Century:
1. Massive industrial expansion
2. Social Harmony
* Reality was that England faced massive social issues as a result of unchecked industrialization and urbanization
- Victorian Society: defined by the compromise between industrials demand for liberty and workers demands for government intervention
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881): Tory leader (Conservative party)
- Supported government intervention on behalf of the weak and poor
- Supported the traditional institutions of British politics as a means for effecting change
- 1867 expanded electorate to include the middle class
- expected them to vote with the Tories (wrong)
William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898): Liberal party leader
- Classical liberal, opposed to state intervention
- 1868 – 1874 Great Ministry
- Abolished Tariffs, cut defense spending, lowered taxes, reformed the military and bureaucracy based on merit (replaced the patronage system), increased education for the electorates
- In general the Liberal party agenda was an attack on privilege by encouraging the individual
-1874-1880 Tory Democracy
- Reaction to liberalism, embraced protectionist patterns
- Kept worker rights as a central platform
- 1880 – Liberals back in power
- Extended franchise to agriculture workers
- By 1884: universal male suffrage
Liberals and Tories continually increased democratic participation to gain electoral support – result avoid revolt through democratic reform
3. Russia
- Began as unreformed semi-feudal autocracy
- Tsar had absolute power
Problem of serfdom in the 19th Century:
- Moral
- Economic stagnation
- Social threat of landless workforce
- How do to end it?
Alexander II “Tsar Liberator”
- Crimean War motivated him to embrace reform
- Ended Serfdom (impact roughly fifteen times more people than the Proclamation of Emancipation):
- Freed serfs and granted them land (they pay govt. for land over time)
- Govt. give landowners lump sum payment
- Problems:
o Landowners gave up worst land at high prices
o Diminished living standards of average citizen
- Govt. increased in size and scope to handle the problems
- Economic reforms cleared the path for political reforms
- Great Reforms: Created Zemstovs (locally elected assemblies to govern local areas) 1864
- Populist movement: led by the intelligentsia, demanded popular participation in politics
- Alexander II oppressed them with force
- “Will of the People” Movement developed into the “Emperor Hunt”
- Alexander II killed by an assassin (legs blown off)
Russia began econ. Liberalization – spurred political liberal demands
