Chapter 23 - State Building and Social Change in Europe 1850-1871

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 (6^th 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

1. Sought control over the Bosporus Straight, the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles Straight

Why?

• Needed a warm water port with access to the Med.
• Ottoman Empire in decline
• 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 19^th 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
• 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

1. 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

1. 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

1. Established the Dual Monarchy, still did not settle all of their problems

1870: Franco-Prussian War

• Southern German states feared unification around Prussian power

1. 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

1. Leak info to both nations newspapers

• French declared war
• Southern German and Prussians united and won easily

1. Railroads, organization, planning, military intelligence
2. 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

1. 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

1. 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

1. Conflict and war were accepted extensions of domestic politics under the realists
2. 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)

1. 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 19^th Century:

 

France: Second Empire 1852-1870

 

• Use of technocrats to run and reform French Society

1. 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

1. 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”

1. 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)

1. Changed Paris from a city of radicals to a conservative cultural center of Europe
2. 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 19^th 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

1. Abolished Tariffs, cut defense spending, lowered taxes, reformed the military and bureaucracy based on merit (replaced the patronage system), increased education for the electorates
2. 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 19^th 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

1. Problems:

• Landowners gave up worst land at high prices
• Diminished living standards of average citizen

1. Govt. increased in size and scope to handle the problems

• Economic reforms cleared the path for political reforms

1. 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