COLLEGE - LIMASSOLBUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

European HistoryLecture 2

Domestic Reforms and Social Strife: Rise of Unions, Socialism, Syndicalism and Anarchy.

Great Britain after 1850: The Glastone- Disraeli Era.

France after 1870: The Birth of the Third Republic.

Germany after 1870: The New German State.

Russia: Political Reaction and Economic Progress. The Revolution of 1905.

The German Empire was created in the great gallery of mirrors at Versailles.

The newly appointed emperor William I, was incensed at not having the title he wanted.

He refused to shake hands with Bismarck who was the empire’s founder.

Despite this, Bismarck continued to serve him.

In Paris, during the months of the siege a dreadful and bloody workers’ revolt had broken out.

France was powerless, and the French were forced to make peace.

They had to hand over a large part of their country to Germany (Alsace and Lorraine) together with a large sum of money.

The French dismissed Napoleon III and founded a republic.

Bismarck was now prime minister of the unified German empire.

He was an opponent of the socialist action recommended by Karl Marx, but he knew about the appalling conditions of the workers.

To stop the spread of Marx’s teaching, he created organizations to give support to workers who were sick or had accidents, who would otherwise have died from lack of assistance, and did his best to ensure that the worst poverty was avoided.

1. A political and economic theory that a country’s land, transport, natural resources and chief industries should be owned and controlled by the whole community or by the State and that wealth should be equally distributed.

2. A policy or practice based on this theory: the struggle to built Socialism.

Marxist theory: social mores, values, cultural traits and economic practices are social creation, and are not the result of an immutable law.

Freeing the individual from the necessity of performing alienating work in order to receive goods would allow people to pursue their own interests and develop their own talents without being coerced into performing labor for others.

Syndicalism is a French word meaning ‘‘trade union’’.

It is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivized trade unions or industrial unions.

It is a form of socialist economic corporatism that advocates interest aggregation of multiple non-competitive categorized units to negotiate and manage an economy.

Anarchism: political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, that the state can not be used to establish a socialist economy and proposes a political alternative based on federated decentralized autonomous communities.

Individual anarchism and social anarchism.

By 1850, Britain had become the first industrialized country in the world, with over half of its people living in cities.

However, outside Britain, industrial factories were few and far between.

There were several reasons for this:1. The competition of cheaper British

goods drained the capital needed for investment in industry from other countries and toward Britain.

2. Internal tolls and political disunity prevented the integration of national economies needed to industrialize.

3. Coal and iron deposits were usually far from each other.

4. Britain itself actively worked to keep its technical knowledge from leaking beyond its shores.

5. Resistance to industrialization. People feared of the loss of jobs because of the machines used, and saw the pollution and squalor of Britain's cities at that time.

Great Exhibition in 1851: to show off its technological achievements.

Britain's were the centerpiece of the show.

Completion of Britain's industrialization and the beginning of the spread of industry in other parts of Europe and the world.

Five main factors pushed even harder Western Europe and the United States to industrialize.

1. To industrialize in order to survive.2. British businesses found ready and

cheaper opportunities for building railroads and industries in foreign countries.

3. Europe and America shared a common cultural heritage with Britain, including an aptitude for machines extending all the way back to the clocks and waterwheels of the Middle Ages.

4. Britain was geographically close to the rest of Europe.

5. Constant contact with Britain meant that its knowledge could not be kept secret. Designs for steam engines and locomotives were bound to leak out, and they did with incredible impact.

Benjamin Disraeli was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and a literary figure.

He played an instrumental role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party after the Corn Laws of 1846.

Gladstone was a British Liberal statesman.

He served as a Prime Minister four separate times, more than any other person.

He also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times.

Gladstone is famous for his oratory, for his rivalry with the Conservative Leader Benjamin Disraeli and his poor relations with Queen Victoria.

There is no doubt that the two statesman hated each other.

When Sir Robert Peel, British statesman and Prime Minister won the elections of 1841,Gladstone, was given an office, but, Disraeli, who had expected a government post, was not.

In 1846 a rare convulsion in parliamentary life occured that shaped politics for a generation.

Peel repealed the Corn Laws, who protected British agriculture from cheap foreign imports of grain.

Disraeli found a chance to revenge Peel by a series of brilliant attacks.

Peel resigned. Gladstone, in 1852, became

Chancellor of the Exchequer and finance and the Derby/ Disraeli government fell.

Conservatives abandoned protection and the free trade triumphed.

Gladstone joined the Liberals in 1859. Disraeli exploited the Liberal divisions

and became Prime Minister in 1868. In the elections of the end of 1868

the two leaders were face to face. Gladstone won the elections and

proceeded to a system called ‘‘modernization’’.

In 1874 Disraeli won the first clear Conservative victory since Peel.

Disraeli cared for foreign and imperial policy and was a strong supporter of empire and English nationalism.

Gladstone was the protagonist of an ethical foreign policy that sometimes meant compromise over some of Britain’s interests.

In the general election of 1 April 1880, the Conservative party under Disraeli was crushingly defeated by the Liberals under Gladstone.

After the disaster of Sedan (1870) and the capitalization of the Emperor and the whole French army, the Republic was proclaimed in Paris without violence on 4 September 1870.

A National Defense Government of National Defense (11 members) was formed.

The Legislative Corps and the Senate were abolished.

The new government decided to carry the war against Prussia.

Most representatives considered the Republic as provisory and expected a rapid monarchic restoration.

The Assembly ratified peace with Germany on 1st March.

The insurrection known as La commune broke out in Paris and lasted until the ‘Bloody Week’ of May 1871.

Bismarck was the most powerful man of the empire and completely dominated the government of the Reich.

Prussia dominated the new Germany that was called the Second Reich. It covered two thirds of the land area and contained the same proportion of the population.

It had practically all the industry. The new constitution drawn by Bismarck

was a Federal system. Each of the twenty-five states had

considerable control over their affairs and decided their own form of government.

Under the constitution there were three branches of the Federal government:

1. The Presidency was held by the King of Prussia as German Emperor.

2. The Federal Council represented the different states of the Empire.

3. The Parliament or Reichstag was elected by Universal Male Suffrage (all males over 25 could vote) and Secret Ballot.

The Russian liberals formed the Union of Zemstvo Constitutionalists (1903) and the Union of Liberation (1904) which called for a constitutional monarchy.

In the autumn of 1904, liberals started a series of banquets celebrating the 40th anniversary of the liberal court status and calling the political reforms and establishment of a constitution.

On 13 December the Moscow city Duma passed a resolution, demanding establishment of an elected national legislature, full freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.

Tsar Nicholas II issued a manifesto promising the broadening of the Zemstvo and local municipal councils’ authority, insurance for industrial workers, the emancipation of Inorodtsy, and the abolition of censorship.

The crucial point of representative national legislature was missing in the manifesto.

The Russian Revolution (1905) started in Saint Petersburg, when troops fired on a defenseless crowd of workers, who, led by a priest, were marching to the Winter Palace to petition Tsar Nicholas II.

This ‘bloody Sunday’ was followed in succeeding months by a series of strikes, riots, assassinations, naval mutinies, and peasant outbreaks.

Disaster of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5): revealed the corruption and incompetence of the tsarist regime, forced the government to promise the establishment of a consultative duma, elected by limited franchise.

In a manifesto issued in October the tsar granted civil liberties and a representative duma to be elected democratically.

Octobrist party: They were satisfied with the manifesto.

Liberals: they wanted more power for the duma consolidated in the Constitutional Democratic party.

The Social Democrats, who had organized a soviet, or workers’ council, at St. Petersburg, attempted to continue the strike movement and compel social reforms. The government arrested the soviet and put down a workers’ insurrection in Moscow.

When order was restored, the tsar promulgated the Fundamental Law, under which the power of the duma was limited.

Tsar’s minister Stolypin, suppressed the revolutionary movement.

When World War I broke out in 1914, most elements of Russia (except the Bolsheviks) united in supporting the war effort.

However, the repeated military reverses, the acute food shortages, the appointment of inept ministers, and the intense suffering of the civilian population created a revolutionary climate by the end of 1916.

Gombrich, E., H. A little history of the world.2nd edition, 2008. Siege of Paris SD. 1870 Jean Ernest

Meissonier (1815-1891) oil on canvas. Tonge, S., Bismarck’s Domestic Policies

1871-1890. Carr, W. A history of Germany. Salles, S., La III Rebuplique, a ses debuts:

1870- 1893. Histoire de France Illustree (Larouse, 1988).

Russian Revolution: The Revolution of 1905 — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0860856.html#ixzz1m63dEdQM