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Chapter 22: The Coming of Mass Politics: Industrialization, Emancipation, and Instability, 1870-1914 |
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The Coming of Mass Politics: Industrialization, Enfranchisement, and Instability, 1870-1914
Ideological competition among conservatism, liberalism, socialism, and nationalism directed the Western political culture. After 1870, economic developments further heightened tensions. More and more individuals demanded the right to political participation. Economic improvements and the emergence of mass politics failed to ensure complete democratic success. Conflicts between those who demanded a voice in government and those who wanted to prevent their accession into politics proliferated during this time period.
Europe's political life in the period from 1870-1914 was transformed by several economic developments, including technological advancements in industrialization and the globalization of production, trade, and consumption. These developments affected Europe's demographics and further aggravated social tensions.
The Great Depression in Trade and Agriculture lasted from 1873 until the 1890s in Europe. Despite continual rise in production and investment, the falling of interest rates, prices, and profits occurred. The depression was caused by cheaper transportation costs and the expansion of the railroad network. The agricultural sector was the hardest hit. Business was also hit hard with as much as a 50- percent decline in prices for finished goods, while labor costs remained high.
The start of the economic depression was closely linked to expansion of industrialization to new regions. While in 1870 many people in the periphery of Europe continued to live barely touched by industrialization, by 1914 their isolation was disappearing because of the expansion of the railroad network. For example, in the 1890s Russia underwent rapid industrialization under the leadership of Sergei Witte, who doubled the size of the railroad network. By 1914, Russia supplied 50 percent of the world's oil and was ranked the fourth industrial power in the world.
The 1870s also witnessed the introduction of new techniques and technologies, which historians label the "Second Industrial Revolution." New innovations in steel production ensured that inexpensive, high-quality steel was widely available to expand the railroad networks. In construction, the introduction of steel, cement, plate glass, and the mechanical crane permitted the building of the first skyscrapers. The development of electric power and the light bulb created a new energy-producing industry to provide power to shops and homes.
A number of new features distinguish the Second Industrial Revolution from the first. In the Second Industrial Revolution, the state played a greater role in developing and operating the railroad networks and providing financial assistance and tariff protection to industry. Another innovation was the much larger business organizations. The new technique of vertical integration allowed owners to buy up the companies that produced the raw materials and those who distributed the finished products. Another business method was horizontal integration, which linked up companies in the same industry to control prices. Another new change was the introduction of the department store, which began replacing the small retailer as the distributor of goods.
As the depression hit agricultural regions hard, it increased immigration from the village to the industrialized city. In the 1890s, most of the immigrants came from the surrounding countryside and eventually returned to the village. By 1910, large percentages of immigrants were coming from the industrially underdeveloped regions of Europe to the more developed ones, and many were leaving Europe altogether, heading to North and South America.
The rapid economic changes brought by the depression and urbanization increased social tensions. As business owners attempted to protect their profits by cutting labor costs, the workers became increasingly hostile. Lower prices and profit declines encouraged middle-class hostility to workers' demands. The new lower middle class found it harder to maintain their class status and also became hostile to the working class. The dramatic increase in population through immigration also increased social and ethnic tensions.
The hostile encounters between rival social groups changed the nature of European politics. The period saw the introduction of mass politics as men from outside the upper and middle class sought to participate in the political process.
While political leaders acknowledged the necessity of making ordinary Europeans feel like a part of political life, they also sought to maintain their dominant position in society and politics and to divert the growing challenge socialism posed to their authority.
One method to staying in power was to share power. Britain provides the best example of this. In the first half of the nineteenth century, aristocrats allowed the middle class more political influence. Aristocrats continued to be leading forces in the Liberal and the Conservative parties, but both parties pushed for industrialization and policies that favored the middle class. By the last third of the nineteenth century, British politics included working-class men. Gradual franchise extensions convinced working-class men that they played an active role in politics. Similar patterns occurred across Europe, as political elites saw that franchise extension was a way to prevent socialist revolution. They also realized that the extension of the franchise did not necessarily mean radical change. In Germany, for example, all adult males could elect representatives to the Reichstag, but real power remained in the hands of the emperor and the chancellor. Still, the extension of the franchise was an integral part in the creation of mass politics, as more and more politicians realized the necessity of having to appeal to new voters.
Political parties initiated social welfare measures to attract new voters, to ensure working-class loyalty, and to weaken socialism's appeal. In the 1880s, Germany's chancellor, Bismarck, enacted some of Europe's most progressive social welfare legislation including sickness benefits, accident insurance, and old age pensions. Bismarck outlawed the German Socialist Party (SPD) in 1878, which helped attract the support conservative landlords, Roman Catholics, and liberal businessmen. Bismarck ran the risk, however, of alienating the urban working class. Instead, Bismarck encouraged working-class support and weakened the appeal of the SPD by implementing social welfare legislation. In the 1870s in Britain, Conservative prime minister Benjamin Disraeli led the government's increase of trade union rights, initiation of a public housing program, expansion of programs that investigated factories, and involvement in regulating food and drug sales. Britain's most dramatic welfare reforms occurred between 1906 and 1912 under a Liberal government. These included school lunches, old age pensions, and sickness and unemployment benefits. In Italy, the liberal leader Giovanni Giolitti legalized trade unions, nationalized the railroads, created public health and life insurance programs, restricted child labor, and began the six-day workweek.
After the 1870s most European governments concluded that they needed to create a sense of national identity to overcome regional, social, and political divisions. One of the key institutions in creating this new identity was the school system. Schools taught the children to read and write in the national language and taught history lessons that increased the sense of national superiority. Schools also ensured that the children participated in nationalistic rituals, many based on newly invented traditions that celebrated the greatness of the country.
School children were not the only participants of the newly created traditions. Policymakers created national holidays intended to inspire feelings of nationalism and loyalty to the nation. Parades, flag raisings, special services, and emphasis on the head of the state characterized the celebrations, all designed to link the masses together and to their ruler.
Following Germany's example of unification and industrialization, other European countries realized the importance of domestic unity to build a strong nation and to prevent revolution. The examples of France, Russia, and Ireland demonstrate the necessity and complexity of nation making.
Although France had been unified for centuries, the Third Republic lacked legitimacy because it was born out of defeat. The revolutions of the nineteenth century made a unified political consensus impossible, as each faction had a different vision of the type of France it wanted. The split became most visible in the Dreyfus Affair. Captain Dreyfus was convicted of treason based on hearsay evidence. The Pro-Dreyfusards supported a vision of a secular, egalitarian France. The Anti-Dreyfusards favored a traditional, Catholic identity for France. In 1906, Dreyfus was declared not guilty. To counterattack the strength of anti-republicanism, the republican-supported government placed the army under civilian control and removed the political and educational significance of the Catholic Church. The Radical Party came to dominate politics and drew its support from the lower middle class of rural areas and small towns and so failed to establish social welfare programs to benefit the working class, which increasingly turned to violence.
In Russia, the tsarist regime continued absolutism and failed to develop a national identity to build a sense of loyalty to it. In the late nineteenth century, Russia underwent rapid industrialization, and social tensions increased as the growing middle class began to demand some participation in the political process. The government responded to their demands with repression but could not stop the social unrest. Rapid industrialization measures failed to have a strong foundation, and in the factories the workers endured terrible conditions. In 1905, tensions turned into a revolution when over 100,000 workers demanded economic and political rights from the tsar. Government troops responded by killing 70 people and wounded 240 more. Horrified, Russians across the empire continued the struggle, went on strike, revolted against tsarist rule, and middle-class liberals demanded representational government. Tsar Nicholas II relinquished under pressure and introduced limited representative government. By 1910, the tsar had recovered from the Revolution of 1905 and refused to carry out many of the promised reforms.
In Ireland, two forms of national identity emerged and nearly led to civil war. Poverty and Catholics' grievances against their religious and political repression encouraged revolutionary sentiment against British rule. In 1867, the Fenian movement tried to overthrow the British government but failed. Britain responded with martial law but also tried to accommodate peasants' demands. These efforts were not enough to stop Irish nationalism. In 1898, the Sinn Fein movement appeared and grew rapidly. By 1914, it commanded a force of 180,000 fighters and showed that Irish Catholics formed their own national identity. Irish Protestants, who were the minority in Ireland but the majority in the northernmost province of Ulster, remained fiercely loyal to Britain. By 1914, Ulster "Unionists" set up their own paramilitary organizations to prevent Irish independence from succeeding. The outbreak of World War I temporarily prevented civil war.
At the end of the nineteenth century, many European states gave the working class the right to vote. Mass communication and the extension of the franchise combined to create the era of mass politics, which represented the rise of socialist parties on the left and racist, radical nationalist parties on the right.
The period that extended the vote to the working class saw an increase in class conflict and an expansion of the socialist parties. The new technologies such as the electric tram allowed the middle class to move to the suburbs. The result was that the classes became increasingly separated and hostile towards each other. The economic crisis and industrial expansion created large working-class communities in the cities. These communities were structured by strict gender relations in which the woman stayed at home with the children and managed the family life and income. To escape from the confining atmospheres of their jobs and homes, men participated in working-class institutions, such as corner pubs, music halls, and football clubs. These places of leisure helped create a cohesive male working-class identity.
Marxist theories and the responses of the owners to the depression assured workers that they were engaged in a struggle against their boss. The workers turned to the socialist parties in large numbers. The German SPD became the largest socialist party in Europe and the model for other socialist parties. The introduction of social welfare legislation produced a debate within the socialist parties. On the one hand were those who favored revolutionary action and on the other the socialist revisionists who advocated working within the existing political system to bring benefits to the working classes. Although the revisionist position was condemned by the party congresses, the socialists' parliamentary leadership focused its efforts in making the political system more responsive to the needs of the working class.
Many workers at the end of the nineteenth century turned to radical trade unions that unionized industrial workers and not just the skilled as earlier unions had done. The radical trade unions used large-scale strike and violence.Frequently, governments responded to their activities with violence. Another movement that attracted workers was syndicalism. It sought to overturn the existing social and political order by using general strikes and violent revolutionary means. Syndicalism was based on the ideas of Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) and influenced by anarchism. The anarchists sought to destroy the entire state.
The rise of the socialist parties and the radical labor movement fostered fear in the middle and upper classes. In response, right wing movements emerged that used nationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism to attract the lower classes.
The Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires were multiethnic, religiously diverse, and industrially underdeveloped, which hindered the creation of a cohesive national identity. By the 1870s, nationalism tore apart the Ottoman Empire's eastern territories, but the Ottoman sultan attempted to hold on to what was left of his European territories. In 1875 and 1876, he fiercely suppressed nationalist uprisings in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria. Russia came to the Slavs' aid in the Balkans in the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878), and Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia achieved independence. Bulgaria achieved independence in 1908. Ottoman defeats seemed to strengthen Austria-Hungary, but a stagnant economy and various ethnic groups competing for political power hindered stability. The franchise was extended in the 1880s and 1890s, and the competing parties focused on ethnic identity and language rather than economics. The dominant German and Magyar nationalism ignited conflicts over national language, as both pushed the use of their language at the expense of the languages of the minority ethnic groups. Nationalist struggles prevented any party from gaining a majority. The growth of the Jewish population provided politicians with a common enemy that could overcome societal divisions and secure election victories.
Anti-Semitism played a major role in nationalist politics. Nationalists saw race as determining who belonged in the state. The nationalistic climate caused "Jewishness" to be seen as a race, and consequently Jews came to be seen as outsiders. The Jews had been emancipated in the early nineteenth century and began to move into the new economic areas, professions, and regions. In Germany, Jews owned almost all of the department stores. Jews were seen as part of economic modernity and thus seen as a threat by small business owners and artisans. Although Jews were equated with corporate capitalism, they were also equated with socialism. Many newly enfranchised voters blamed economic misfortunes upon Jews.
As a reaction to the growing anti-Semitism, Jews under the leadership of Theodor Herzl developed their own brand of nationalism called Zionism. The movement called for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine.
The extension of voting rights to the working classes led middle-class women to demand voting rights. The feminist movement also demanded that they be allowed to enter the public sphere and that many of the distinctions between the public and private spheres be obliterated.
The role of middle-class women became more public in the late nineteenth century. Middle-class women began to raise smaller families. Unmarried middle-class women found work in local bureaucracies, voted in local elections, and served in local office positions. They also gained new opportunities in retail jobs and as telephone/telegraph operators and typists, as a result of the Second Industrial Revolution. They assumed government roles in the areas of social reform, particularly in poorhouses, running schools, and serving on school and welfare boards. By the 1880s, an international middle-class women's movement worked through organizations, printed materials, and correspondence networks to challenge the concept of separate spheres and to alter private and public relations between men and women. The movement consisted of four main aims: the legal restrictions of married women, employment and education opportunities of women, the double standards of sexual conduct, and national women's suffrage.
Law codes in the early nineteenth century made the wife and children dependent on the husband. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the feminist movement sought to improve the legal position of women. In the 1880s, English women won the right to own property and control their income.
The feminist movement also worked to improve the education of women. The push to educate women struggled against the popular notion that women's brains were too delicate to withstand the strain of an intellectual education. France introduced state-funded secondary education for girls in the 1880s. But only a few women were allowed to enter French universities. In 1906, Marie Curie became the first woman to hold a university faculty position in France. Women were allowed to enter German universities in 1901. In the U.S., women accounted for one-third of university students in the 1880s.
The campaign to win women's rights and expand opportunities helped women move into the public sphere. However, ending the double standard of sexual conduct proved much harder. Attempts to eradicate the double standard took several forms. One attack on the double standard was to attack legislation regulating prostitution. By 1914, regulations on prostitution had been abolished in most western countries. Another attack on the double standard was to push for legislation attacking the problem of heavy male drinking. In the U.S. prohibition was enforced from 1919 to 1933.
The slow progress in attaining change in the social and moral position of women convinced feminists that they needed the right to vote. In Britain, the National Society for Women's Suffrage was founded in 1867. Before 1914 only Finland and Norway gave women the right to vote. The dramatic changes caused by World War I brought the right to vote for women in Britain, the Netherlands, Russia, the U.S., Germany, and Austria. French and Italian women had to wait until after World War II. In eastern Europe, economic underdevelopment meant that the middle-class base of feminism was too small. In Catholic countries, women found more possibilities for emotional expression and intellectual satisfaction with Catholicism's veneration of the Virgin Mary and female saints, exaltation of family, and opportunities for religious vocation as nuns. In contrast to these examples stood Britain, which had a large middle class and as a result developed the strongest women's suffrage movement in Europe. However, slow results led British feminists to begin using radical tactics. Suffragettes interrupted political meetings, chained themselves to the steps of parliament, broke windows, and burned churches. Once in jail, they engaged in hunger strikes.
The Age of Mass Politics involved many violent reactions by those seeking a share in political power and by those who tried to prevent such gains. The expansion of industrialization and urbanization served as catalysts for many of these conflicts. Out of these conflicts emerged questions about the definition of "the West." Geographically, where did it begin and end? Did skin color affect membership? Is "the West" democratic, and if so, who should get to vote? The introduction of emotional nationalist politics challenged Western faith in human rationality, while industrial and technological developments reinforced the idea of rational progress. The concept of "the West" had grown even more complex.
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