LATE 19TH CENTURY

EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
UNIT 1

SYLLABUS
EUROPE AND ITS OFFSHOOTS

BACKWARD REGIONS

EUROPEANS FELT THE MOST ADVANCED

BRANCH OF MANKIND

CIVILIZED WORLD
MATERIALISTIC STANDARDS: clothes, food, sleep,
sanitary facilities, transport, communication,
electricity.

INTELLECTUAL STANDARDS: scientific knowledge,

geographical knowledge.

OTHER QUANTITATIVE INDIXES: death rate, life

expectancy rate, literacy rate, productivity of labour.

INTANGIBLE PARAMETERS: how people used their

minds, their attitudes towards others, or towards the
planning of their lives.

CIVILIZED WORLD
TWO EUROPES (The Inner zone and the outer
zone)

INNER ZONE: Great Britain, Belgium, France,

Germany, Northern Italy and the western
portions of the Austrian Empire.

All heavy industry was located there.

THIRD ZONE: Africa and Asia, except Japan.

THE ZONES OF CIVILIZATION

1650 to 1980:

Increase of world population

Europeans - A third of world population
Three reasons:
Decrease in death rates,
The retreat of illnesses,
Migration,

1910 onwards:
STABILIZATION OF EUROPEAN POPULATION

Population started to grow less rapidly (contraception, idea of modern

family, inheritances, housing issues, cease of child labour, rise of
dependancy upon parents, civilized woman)

SOCIETY
CITY LIFE

Impersonal and anonymous

Less tied to home and church

Lacked a feeling of deference for aristocratic families and

feeling of self-help

Disrespect for tradition

Reception to new ideas

SOCIETY
ATLANTIC MIGRATION 1840-1940 (except those who
moved to Asiatic Russia)

New countries welcomed migration

Australia, New Zealand and the USA limited immigration
The steamship and railroad network made this process
simpler and cheaper
Economically, people could afford a long journey
To escape from ruin, military service
Liberalism
The possibility of taking their savings with them

SOCIETY
It entered a new phase
Improvements:
steam power was refined and improved,
textile industry was revolutionized with the production of synthetic
fabrics (rayon),
metallurgical industries (steel was the key product of this phase),
electricity came to be used,
 diesel and gasoline engines gave the world automobiles,
new fertilizers were discovered,
high explosives were discovered and used to build tunnels,
Communication revolution (telephone, wireless signals transmitted
across the Atlantic, the radio and the moving picture appeared),
Medicine (X rays, anesthetics, disappearance of the yellow fever)

NEW INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The European balance of payments

What does it mean?

How did they manage to do it?

 INVISIBLE EXPORTS (shipping, loans and

insurance services rendered to foreigners)

ECONOMY
AN INTERNATIONAL MONEY SYSTEM: THE
GOLD STANDARD

All currencies were freely exchangable

Disadvantages

hard on countries which lacked gold

produced a fall of prices

ECONOMY
Creation of a world market

Brought distant regions into competition and high insecurity for

producers

To combat the insecurity of private capitalism, protective

tariffs, social insurance and welfare legislation were adapted

Trade unions and socialist movements grew

ALL THESE SIGNALLED THE DECLINE OF NINETEENTH

CENTURY UNREGULATED LAISSEZ FAIRE CAPITALISM

ECONOMY
 THE ADVANCE OF DEMOCRACY

 1871-1914: Liberal objectives (constitutional

government, guarantee of individual liberties) not fully
achieved

Democratic extension of the vote to the working men

(male suffrage)
Creation of mass parties
Welfare state

A way to stop the growth of socialism

POLITICS
 Welfare state laws

A minimum wage
Restrictions on strikes were removed
Sickness, accident, old age and
unemployment insurances were adopted
State-supported public education

POLITICS
 To bargain with
To abolish capitalism capitalists
 This  Thisled to the formation of
led to socialism.
labour unions.

 Socialismmeant the  Trade unionism meant that

extinction of the the working man had every
private employer as reason to keep his
employer prosperously so
such. that bargaining with him
 middle class and would produce more
educated people results.
 Working men

Before and after obtaining the ballot, working people resorted to

other devices for the improvement of their position.
To Marx

ANARCHISM was abhorrent / repugnant

It was only a product of economic
conditions, a tool in class struggle
The TRUE target for revolutionary action
had to be the capitalist economic system,
not the state

SOCIALISM
The first International (Association) 1864.
Disappeared in 1872.
1880: Socialist parties appeared in many countries.
1889: The 2nd International was founded. (Up to
1914)
Revisionism (Jaures FRANCE and Bernstein
GERMANY) considered capitalism might be
gradually transformed in the workers’ interests.
With the vote they could get their aims through
democratic channels without the DICTATORSHIP
OF THE PROLETARAIT.

SOCIALISM
By 1914: No revolutionary mood

Capitalism had raised workingmen’s living

standards
Workers had the vote and participation in
state and had little to gain by its
overthrow
Their interests were watched over by
powerful unions

WORKING CLASS
The impact of Evolution

The Origin of species (1859)Darwin (THE SURVIVAL OF THE

FITTEST THROUGH NATURAL SELECTION)
Hegel introduced the evolutionary conception into metaphysics
Hegel and Marx into the theories of human society.
Descent of Man (1871) Darwin (SPECIES ARE MUTABLE –
ORGANISMS WITH THE BEST CHARACTERISTICS TENDED TO
SURVIVE AND THOSE CHARACTERISTICS WERE PASSED ON TO
OFFSPRINGS UNTIL THE WHOLE SPECIES GRADUALLY
CHANGED).
God was not mentioned in his work.
Social Darwinism developed and appplied the ideas of struggle
for existence to human society. SOME PEOPLE WERE SUPERIOR
TO OTHERS. THAT WAR WAS A NORMAL GOOD THING.

SCIENCE
SOME SIGNIFICANT IDEAS:

THE CONCEPTION OF NATURE WAS CHANGED.

IT WAS NO LONGER SEEN AS HARMONY.
BUT RATHER AS A SCENE OF STRUGGLE.
STRUGGLE AND ELIMINATION OF THE WEAK
WAS NOT ONLY NATURAL BUT GOOD.
A GOOD ORGANISM WAS ONE THAT SURVIVED.
ADAPTATION REPLACED VIRTUE.
THE FIT WERE THE SUCCESSFUL.

SCIENCE
The newer sciences (anthropology and psychology) developed
very rapidly in the 19th C
Accepted biological evolution
Both avoided standards of right and wrong
Set themselves to find out and explain the mere facts of human
behaviour
Physical vs Cultural anthropologists
Physical anthropologists focused on human physical diifferences
(superiority of some human races)
Cultural anthropologists argued that no culture was better than
another. They were just adaptations to an environment.
Impact of anthropology on religion (religious rites were present in
primitive societies). Only a thin line separated magic from
tradition.

SCIENCE
 Psychology

Pavlov (conditioned responses) Automatic

responses, not through choice or conscious
reasoning.
Freud (By revealing the wide aereas of human
behaviour outside conscious control,
psychoanalysis suggested humans were not
essentially rational creatures.

SCIENCE
 The New Physics

Theory of relativity (Einstein)

Time and space were not absolute but

were all relative to the observer and the
observer’s own movement in time

SCIENCE
Trends in Philosophies and the Arts

Agnosticism (science was the only means of certain knowledge)

Nietzche

Realistic literature (portraying prostitution, strikes, industrial

strife, divorce, insanity, among others).

The Arts reflected attitudes of relativism, irrationalism, social

determinism and interest in the subsconscious.

It became incomprehensible

SCIENCE
Religion was displaced.

For the first time, philosophy and science addressed existence

so directly.

Darwinian evolution challenged the picture of creation.

Anthropologists questioned the uniqueness of the most sacred

Christian beliefs.

There developed a “higher” criticism of the Bible.

RELIGION
Catholicswere more succesful protecting their membership from the
desintegrating effects of the age.

Protestants’ attendance to churches decreased.


Protestants (Modernists vs Fundamentalists). Fundamentalists denied
the findings of science.

Jews – In the 19th C there was a trend towards emancipation and

assimilation. Towards the end of the century, there were 2
tendencies. 1 cultural and political nationalism. Some feared Judaism
would disappear. 2 Barrier to assimilation (the rise of antisemitism).

RELIGION