Civilization in The West 7e Ch23

STATE BUILDING AND
23
CHAPTER
SOCIAL CHANGE IN
EUROPE, 18501871
THE CRYSTAL PALACE EXHIBITION OF 1851

SYMBOL OF A NEW AGE
On 1 May 1851, Queen Victoria inaugurated the first worlds try, and their enterprise to the guardianship of some fifty po-
fair in history. The Great Exhibition of Works of Industry of licemen, armed with no better weapon than a wooden baton.
All Nations was an extraordinary international display of sci- Day after day and night after night passed on, and no added
ence and technology combined with industry and commerce. force was requisite for the safety of the almost countless wealth
Nations sought to highlight their achievements with submis- deposited within these fragile walls. In no other country of the
sions that included everything from looms to reapers to enve- world could such an exhibition of the industrial arts have
lope folders. Labor-saving devices for the kitchen stood along- taken place. Yet the French won more medals for design and
side steel-making displays. style than any other country.
Perhaps the greatest display of all was the Some subsequent commentators consider the Crystal
THE very building in which the Exhibition of Palace Exhibition a defining event in the history of the nine-
1851 was housedthe Crystal Palace, so teenth century. Not everyone agreed. Karl Marx denounced
VISUAL named because its walls and roof were made the Crystal Palace Exhibition as the worst kind of capitalist
of clear glass, held in place by iron girders. fetishism. But it was Prince Albert, Victorias consort, who
RECORD The building was a third of a mile long with captured the essence of the Crystal Palace when he character-
800,000 square feet of floor space. Designed ized the 1851 event as a new starting point from which all na-
by Joseph Paxton, a gardener and landscaper, the Crystal tions would be able to direct their further exertions.
Palace resembled a giant greenhouse dedicated to the fruits of
industrial civilization. Trees and statuary stood within the gi-
ant pavilion, which housed exhibits off a central avenue and LOOKING AHEAD
in upstairs galleries. Twelve thousand fountains surrounded
In this chapter we will examine the period between 1850 and
the Palace in open park space. In the five and a half months in
which the Exhibition was open, it welcomed over six million 1871, when unification of territories was an important part of the
visitors. The Crystal Palace was hailed as an unprecedented process of building a nation in both Germany and Italy. Successful
marvel of engineering and excess, all the more impressive be- statesmen were diplomats who used alliances to further national
cause it was a temporary structure, taken down from its site in interests. They were also realists willing to use force to further na-
Londons Hyde Park in 1852. tional interests. The existing nation-states of France, Great Britain,
In hosting such an exhibition, Great Britain made clear to the
and Russia, with little in common save their commitment to
world its role as industrial leader. It also showcased its new em-
pire with exhibits from India, Australia, and New Zealand. progress, pursued different paths to state reform and consolida-
Products from all regions of the world were represented. tion of national power.
Following two difficult decades of political and social upheaval The changing values and force of new ideas so evident in the
in Europe, the Exhibition gave viewers the sense that a corner symbolic power of the Crystal Palace also characterized the
had been turned and that technology promised a rosy future. changing world of politics, home and family. Just as realism was a
Spectators were dazzled by what they saw. On a self-con-
dominant force in politics, realism in arts and sciences became a
gratulatory note a British magazine of the time reported:
Seventeen thousand exhibitors, who like the visitors were of means of promoting material progress. With the convergence of
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
almost every nation and kindred under heaven, entrusted the these changes in a variety of realms, Europeans witnessed the birth
most valuable evidences of their wealth, their skill, their indus- of the modern age in the third quarter of the nineteenth century.
684
Civilization in the West, Seventh Edition, by Mark Kishlansky, Patrick Geary, and Patricia OBrien. Published by Longman. Copyright 2008 by Pearson Education, Inc.
The main entrance to the central exhibit hall of the Crystal Palace, built in Hyde Park, London,
1851.
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
685
686 Chapter 23 State Building and Social Change in Europe, 18501871
In 1853, the Russian government demanded that the

CHAPTER OUTLINE Turkish government recognize Russias right to protect Greek
Orthodox believers in the Ottoman Empire. The Russian ac-
BUILDING NATIONS: THE POLITICS OF UNIFICATION
tion was a response to measures taken by the French govern-
The Crimean War Unifying Italy Unifying

ment during the previous year, when France had gained from
Germany The United States: Civil War and

Reunification Nationalism and Force

the Turkish government rights for Roman Catholic religious
orders in certain sanctuaries in the Holy Land. In making its
REFORMING EUROPEAN SOCIETY claims as protector, Russia demanded that the rights granted
The Second Empire in France, 18521870 Victorian Roman Catholic orders also be rescinded. The Turkish gov-
Political Reforms Reforming Russia The Politics of

ernment refused Russian demands and the Russians, feeling
Leadership that their prestige had been damaged, ordered troops to enter
the Danubian Principalities held by the Turks.
CHANGING VALUES AND THE FORCE OF NEW IDEAS In October 1853, the Turkish government, counting on sup-
The Politics of Homemaking Realism in the

port from Great Britain and France, declared war on Russia.
Arts Charles Darwin and the New Science Karl Marx

Russia easily prevailed over its weaker neighbor to the south. In

and the Science of Society A New Revolution?

a four-hour battle, a Russian squadron destroyed the Turkish

fleet off the coast of Sinope. Tsar Nicholas I (18251855) drew
up the terms of a settlement with the Ottoman Empire and
BUILDING NATIONS: THE submitted them to Great Britain and France for review.
The two western European powers, fearing Russian aggran-
POLITICS OF UNIFICATION dizement at Turkish expense, responded by declaring war on
The revolutions of 1848 had occurred in a period of experi- Russia on 28 March 1854, a date that marked a new phase in
mentation from below. Radicals enlisting popular support the Crimean War. Both Great Britain and France, like Russia,
had tried and failed to reshape European states for their own had ambitions in the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean.
nationalist, liberal, and socialist ends. Governments in Paris, Great Britain feared Russian expansion as a threat to its trade
Vienna, Berlin, and a number of lesser states had been swept and holdings in India and had a vested interest in an indepen-
away as revolutions created a power vacuum but no durable dent but weak Turkey presiding over the straits. The French
solutions. To fill that vacuum, a new breed of politician hoped that by entering into a partnership with the British to
emerged in the 1850s and 1860s, men who understood the defeat the Russians, they would be able to lay claim to greater
importance of the centralized nation-state and saw the need power and status in European international politics. The
of reforms from above. They shared a new realism about Italian kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia joined the war on the
means and ends and about using foreign policy successes to side of the western European powers in January 1855, hoping
further domestic programs. to make its name militarily and win recognition for its aim to
unite Italy into a single nation. Although Great Britain,
France, and the Italian state of Piedmont-Sardinia did not
The Crimean War have explicit economic interests, they were motivated by am-
After 1815 Russia, as the greatest military power in Europe, bition, prestige, and rivalry in the Balkans.
honored its commitment to preserving the status quo by act- British and French troops landed in the Crimea, the
ing as police officer for the continent. Russia supported Russian peninsula extending into the Black Sea, in
Austria against Hungary and Prussia in 1849 and 1850. But September 1854, with the intention of capturing Sevastopol,
Russia sought greater power to the south, in the Balkans. The Russias heavily fortified chief naval base on the Black Sea. In
Bosporus, the narrow strait connecting the Black Sea with the March 1855, Nicholas I died and was succeeded by his son
Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles, which con- Alexander II (18551881), who wanted to bring the war to a
nects the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea, were con- speedy end. His attempts to negotiate a peace in the spring
trolled by the Ottoman Empire. Russia hoped to benefit from of 1855 repeatedly failed. In battle, the Russians continued
Ottoman weakness caused by internal conflicts and gain con- to resist as the allies laid siege to the fortress at Sevastopol,
trol of the straits, which were the only outlet for the Russian which fell only after 322 days of battle, on 11 September
fleet to the warm waters of the Mediterranean, Russias south- 1855. The defeated Russians abandoned Sevastopol, blew up
ern outlet to the world. their forts, and sank their own ships. Facing the threat of
Austrian entry into the war, Russia agreed to preliminary
The Eastern Question. Each of the Great Powers peace terms.
including Russia, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and France In the Peace of Paris of 1856, Russia relinquished its claim
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
hoped to benefit territorially from the collapse of Ottoman as protector of Christians in Turkey. The British gained the
control. In 1853, Great Power rivalry over the Eastern ques- neutralization of the Black Sea. The mouth of the Danube was
tion, as the anticipated disintegration of the Ottoman Empire returned to Turkish control, and an international commission
was termed, created an international situation that led to war. was created to oversee safe navigation on the Danube. The
Building Nations: The Politics of Unification 687
The Human Costs of the

MAP DISCOVERY War. The Crimean War had the
highest number of casualties of
any European war between 1815
and 1914. Three-quarters of a
BE
Taganrog
million soldiersRussian, French,
SS
CRIMEAN
AR
AUSTRIAN British, and Turkishdied. Be-
PENINSULA
AB
EMPIRE MOLDAVIA cause no sanitary practices were
IA
1853
observed in caring for the
RUSSIAN
Sevastopol EMPIRE wounded, four out of five suc-
WALLACHIA 1854 1855
DANUBIAN Balaklava
cumbed to disease, especially ty-
PRINCIPALITIES 1854 phus and cholera. The English
D a nube
R.
nurse Florence Nightingale
Varna
Black (18201910) brought medical re-
Sea Sinope forms to the theater of war, intro-
1853 Batum
duced sanitation, and organized
O Constantinople
barracks hospitals, all of which
T Bosporus saved the lives of countless British
T
O Sea of Marmara soldiers. (See A Closer Look: A
M
A Dardanelles Working Woman, pp. 688689.)
N
E
Russians suffered disproportion-
M ately, claiming two-thirds of all
P
I R dead and wounded; 450,000
GREECE E
Russian soldiers died. Of those
who died in battle, many died
needlessly, under poorly prepared
leaders. A typical example oc-
curred during the battle of
Balaklava when 600 troops of the
Russian troops British Light Brigade were or-
Mediterranean dered into battle by incompetent
British and French troops
Sea and confused commanders.
NE
British soldiers charged down a

S TI
Turkish troops
NEJD narrow valley flanked by Russian
LE
PA
Major battles guns on the heights on both sides

and into the teeth of yet another
0 200 Miles battery at the head of the valley.
0
The battlefield became known as
200 Kilometers
the Valley of Death and was com-
memorated in Alfred Tennysons
The Crimean War poem, The Charge of the Light
The Crimean War, which was Russias war against the Ottoman Empire, Great Brigade. When the dust of the
Britain, France, and Sardinia, ended Russias influence over southeastern Europe. fighting had settled, the battlefield
What was the strategic importance of control of the Dardanelles Straits for Russia? lay strewn with the bodies of
Why did Russia fear Turkish control of its access to the Mediterranean Sea? Russia nearly two-thirds of the soldiers
controlled a naval base at Sevastopol and resisted French, British, Turkish, and of the Light Brigade. Their horses,
Sardinian attacks for over 11 months during the Crimean War. In excluding Russian slain too, lay beside them.
influence from southern Europe, why was defeat in the Crimean War such a cata- It was a war no one really won,
strophe for Russia? Finally, why did a dispute among Christians in the Holy Land re- a war over obscure disagreements
sult in a war in the Crimea? in a faraway peninsula in the
Black Sea. Nevertheless, it had
dramatic and enduring conse-
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
Danubian Principalities were placed under joint guarantee of quences. Russia ceased playing an active role in European af-
the powers, and Russia gave up a small portion of Bessarabia. fairs and turned toward expansion in central Asia. Its with-
In 1861, the Principalities were united in the independent na- drawal opened up the possibility for a move by Prussia in
tion of Romania. central Europe. The rules of the game had changed. The
A WORKING WOMAN
Women have always worked, but how woman of her age, among the most em- the inequity of married life: A man
society has valued womens work has inent of Victorians. A highly visible and gains everything by marriage: he gains a
changed over time. After 1850, women outspoken reformer, Nightingale devi- helpmate, but a woman does not. Her
were expected to retire from the work- ated from womans unpaid role as nur- memoirs are filled with what she called
place upon marrying. Womans proper turer in the private sphere. How could her complaints against the plight of
role was that of wife and mother in the she be an example to the women of her women.
home, caring for her husband and fam- time? Nightingale was not a typical work-
ily, watching over her children. Young Florence Nightingale was hailed as a ing woman. She struck out on her ca-
women worked before they married to national heroine because of her work reer as a rebel. Because of her wealth,
help their parents and to save for during the Crimean War in organizing she did not need to work, yet she felt
dowries. There is no doubt that many hospital care at Scutari, a suburb out- driven to be useful. Her choice of nurs-
women continued to work for wages side Constantinople on the Asiatic side ing much alarmed her family, who
because they had to; they were too poor of the Bosporus. In the Crimea, she en- considered the occupation to be on a
to live by societys norms. But mid- tered her own field of battle, attacking level with domestic service. For them,
nineteenth-century European culture the mismanagement, corruption, and nursing was worse, in fact, because
reinforced the idea that a womans lack of organization characteristic of nurses worked with the naked bodies
place was in the separate domestic medical treatment for British soldiers. of the sick. Thus nurses were either
sphere of private pleasures and unpaid She campaigned for better sanitation, shameless or promiscuous, or both.
labor. To be a public man was a hygiene, ventilation, and diet, and in Nightingale shattered those taboos. She
valued trait. The same adjective applied 1855 the death rate plummeted from visited nursing establishments
to a woman 42 percent to 2 percent thanks to her throughout Europe, traveling alone
meant that efforts. The London Times declared, another feat unheard of for women in
A she was a There is not one of Englands proud- her dayand studied their methods
CLOSER harlot.
Yet it is this
est and purest daughters who at the
moment stands on as high a pinnacle
and techniques. She conceived of her
own mission to serve God through car-
LOOK culture that as Florence Nightingale. ing for others.
immortalized It was a pinnacle not easily scaled. As with any exceptional individual,
Florence Blocked by her family and publicly ma- character and capabilities must figure
Nightingale, a woman who valued what ligned, Nightingale struggled against in an explanation of achievements.
she called my work above home and prevailing norms to carve out her occu- Nightingale was a woman of drive and
family. She was a single woman in an pation. She was the daughter of a discipline who refused to accept the
age when more and more women were wealthy gentry family, and from her fa- limited choices available to Victorian
making the choice to remain unmar- ther she received a mans classical edu- women. She possessed, in her sover-
ried; but it was also an age in which cation. Women of her milieu were ex- eigns words, a wonderful, clear and
spinster was a term of derision and a pected to be educated only in domestic comprehensive head. Yet her unique
sign of failure. Miss Nightingale, as she arts. The fashion of the day emphasized talents are not enough to explain her
was known, received the British womans confinement to the home: success. In many ways, Nightingale was
Empires Order of Merit for her achieve- crinolines, corsets, and trains restricted not a rebel, but rather an embodiment
ments. Queen Victoria, the most mater- movement and suggested gentility. That of the changing values of her age. In
nal and domestic of queens, hailed her was the life of Nightingales older sister, 1860, she established a school to train
as an example to our sex. Nightingale a life that the Angel of the Crimea nurses, just as similar institutions were
was widely regarded as the greatest fiercely resisted. Nightingale railed at being created to train young women as
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
688
teachers. Those occupations were ex- and by society. It may also be true that After midcentury, gender differ-
tensions of womens roles from the she, like many of her middle-class fe- ences, socially defined virtues for men
arena of the home into society. In male contemporaries, experienced de- and women, became more set.
keeping with their domestic roles, bilitation or suffered from hypochon- Individualism, competition, and mili-
women remained nurturers in the dria in direct proportion to the tarism were the values of the world of
classroom and at the sickbed. limitations they experienced. men. Familial support, nurturance,
Florence Nightingale spent a good New occupations labeled womens and healing were female virtues. Those
part of the last 45 years of her life in a work were essential to the expansion were the separate and unequal worlds
sickbed suffering from what she called of industrial society. A healthy and lit- created by the factory and the battle-
nervous fever. During that period she erate population guaranteed a strong field. The virtues of the private sphere
wrote incessantly and continued to citizenry, a strong army, and a strong were extended into the public world
lobby for her programs, benefiting, one work force. As helpmates, women en- with the creation of new forms of
of her biographers claimed, from the tered a new work sector identified by poorly paid female labor. In that sense,
freedom to think and write provided by the adjective service. Women were ac- Florence Nightingale was not a rebel.
her illness. It may well be true that her cepted as clerical workers, performing The Lady with the Lamp, whom
invalidism protected her from the the housekeeping of business firms fever-ridden soldiers called their
claims on her time made by her family and bureaucracies. mother, was another working woman.
Florence Nightingale, known as the Lady with the Lamp, is depicted in this contemporary
drawing helping soldiers injured in the Crimean War.
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
689
concert of Europe so carefully crafted by European statesmen in Europe. And he saw that a united Italy could be achieved
in 1815 came to an end with the Crimean War. With the Peace only through the manipulation of diplomacy and military
of Paris of 1856, the hope that goals could be achieved by victory. He understood that international events could be
peaceful means also died. Piedmont-Sardinia, an empty- made to serve national ends.
handed victor, realized that only the force of the cannon could As premier for Piedmont-Sardinia from 1852 to 1859 and
achieve the unification of Italy. again in 18601861, Cavour was well placed to launch his cam-
paign for Italian unity. The kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia had
made itself a focal point for unification efforts. Its king, Carlo-
Unifying Italy Alberto (18311849), had stood alone among Italian rulers in
Italy had not been a single political entity since the end of the opposing Austrian domination of the Italian peninsula in 1848
Roman Empire in the West in the fifth century. The move- and 1849. Severely defeated by the Austrians, he was forced to
ment to reunite Italy culturally and politically was known as abdicate. He was succeeded by his son Victor Emmanuel II
the Risorgimento (literally, resurgence) and had its roots in (18491861), who had the good sense to appoint Cavour as his
the eighteenth century. Hopes for unification encouraged by first minister. From the start, Cavour undertook liberal adminis-
reorganization during the Napoleonic era had been repeat- trative reforms that included tax reform, stabilization of the cur-
edly crushed throughout the first half of the nineteenth cen- rency, improvement of the railway system, the creation of a
tury. Revolutionary movements had failed to cast out foreign transatlantic steamship system, and the support of private enter-
domination by Austria in 1848. prise. With these programs, Cavour created for Piedmont-
Sardinia the dynamic image of progressive change. He involved
Cavours Political Realism. Both Giuseppe Mazzinis Piedmont-Sardinia in the Crimean War, thereby securing its sta-
Young Italy movement and Giuseppe Garibaldis Red Shirts tus among the European powers.
had as their goal in 1848 a united republican Italy achieved Most important, however, was Cavours alliance with
through direct popular action. But both movements had France against Austria in 1858. Cavour shrewdly secured the
failed. Mazzini had been a moralist; and Garibaldi was a French pledge of support, including military aid if necessary,
fighter. But Camillo Benso di Cavour (18101861) was an op- against Austria in the Treaty of Plombires, signed by
portunistic politician and a realist. He knew that only as a Napoleon III in 1858. The treaty was quickly followed by an
unified nation could Italy lay claim to status as a great power arranged provocation against the Habsburg monarchy. Austria
Soldiers battle during the Crimean War, ca. 1855. This was the first war to be documented by pho-
tographers.
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA-HUNGARY the Italian mainland to expel Francis II from Naples. Garibaldi
SAVOY
VENETIA next turned his attention to the liberation of the Holy City,
(to France, LOMBARDY
1860) Milan
Venice Trieste where a French garrison protected the pope. After his defeat in
Turin
FRANCE Rome in 1849, Garibaldi had never lost sight of his mission to
A
Genoa PARMA
EN
NICE Bologna
OTTOMAN free all of Italy from foreign rule, even in the 1850s when he
OD
KING
EMPIRE
(to France, had lived on New Yorks Staten Island as a candlemaker and
M
Zara
1860) Florence Ancona had become a naturalized citizen of the United States.
DOM OF SAR
TUSCANY
PAPAL Ad As Garibaldis popularity as a national hero grew, Cavour
ria
Corsica STATES tic Ragusa became alarmed by his competing effort to unite Italy and
Se
(to France) Rome a took secret steps to block the advance of the Red Shirts and
Gaeta Bari
their leader. To seize the initiative, Cavour directed the
Sardinia Naples Piedmontese army into the Papal States. After defeating the
D
Taranto popes troops, Cavours men crossed into the Neapolitan state
IN
Tyrrhenian
and scored important victories against forces loyal to the king
IA
Sea KINGDOM
of Naples. Cavour proceeded to annex southern Italy for
OF THE Victor Emmanuel II, using plebiscites to seal the procedure.
Palermo Messina
Kingdom of Sardinia,
to 1859 TWO SICILIES A King for a United Italy. At this point, in 1860,
Acquisitions by Sardinia, Sicily Garibaldi yielded his own conquered territories to the
1859 Piedmontese ruler, making possible the declaration of a
Annexed by Sardinia, 1860; Mediterranean Sea
established Kingdom of Italy united Italy under Victor Emmanuel II, who reigned as king
To Kingdom of Italy, 0 200 Miles of Italy from 1861 to 1878.
1866
To Kingdom of Italy,
The new king of Italy was now poised to acquire Venetia, still
0 200 Kilometers
1870 under Austrian rule, and Rome, still ruled by Pope Pius IX, and
he devoted much of his foreign policy in the 1860s to those ends.
The Unification of Italy. By 1860, the majority of the Italian boot
was under the rule of Piedmont-Sardinia. By 1870, the unification
was complete.
In this British cartoon of 1860, Garibaldi surrenders his power to
Victor Emmanuel II, king of Piedmont-Sardinia (soon to be king of
a united Italy). The caption reads Right Leg in the Boot at Last.
declared war in 1859 and was easily defeated by French forces

in the battles of Magenta and Solferino. The peace, signed in
November 1859 at Zrich, joined Lombardy to Piedmont-
Sardinia. Cavour wielded the electoral weapon of the
plebiscitea method of direct voting that gives to electors the
choice of voting for or against an important public question
to unite Tuscany, Parma, and Modena under Piedmonts king.
Cavours approach was not without its costs. His partnership
with a stronger power meant sometimes following Frances lead.
French bullying provoked fits of rage and forced Cavour to re-
sign from office temporarily in 1859 over a war ended too early
by Napoleon III. The need to solicit French support meant en-
riching France with territorial gain in the form of Nice and
Savoy. However, Piedmont-Sardinia gained more than it gave
up. In the summer of 1859, revolutionary assemblies in Tuscany,
Modena, Parma, and the Romagna, wanting to eject their
Austrian rulers, voted in favor of union with the Piedmontese.
By April 1860, those four areas of central Italy were under Victor
Emmanuel IIs rule. Piedmont-Sardinia had doubled in size to
become the dominant power on the Italian peninsula.
Southern Italians took their lead from events in central
Italy and in the spring of 1860 initiated disturbances against
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
the rule of King Francis II (18591861) of Naples. Uprisings

in Sicily inspired Giuseppe Garibaldi to return from his self-
imposed exile to organize his own army of Red Shirts, known
as the Thousand, with whom he liberated Sicily and crossed to
In 1866, when Austria lost a war with Prussia, Italy struck a deal cation because he understood that the world had changed
with the victor and gained control of Venetia. When Prussia pre- dramatically in the first half of the nineteenth century. He ap-
vailed against France in 1870, Victor Emmanuel II took over preciated the relationship between national and international
Rome. The boot of Italy, from top to toe, was now a single na- events and was able to manipulate it for his own ends. Both
tion. The pope remained in the Vatican, opposed to an Italy Cavour and his counterpart in Germany, Otto von Bismarck,
united under King Victor Emmanuel II. The new national gov- considered themselves realists who shared a recognition of
ernment sought to impose centralization with a heavy hand and diplomacy as an instrument of domestic policy.
had little interest in preserving regional differences and regional
cultures. Cavours liberal constitutional principles, combined
with moderately conservative stands on social issues, produced Unifying Germany
alienation, especially in southern Italy, among both the peas- Seldom in modern history does an individual emerge as a
antry and the nobility. chess master, overseeing international politics and domestic
Cavour did not live to see the united Italy that he had affairs as if the world were a great board game with movable
worked so hard to fashion. He had succeeded where poets and pieces. Otto von Bismarck was such an individual. He was
revolutionaries had failed in preparing the ground for unifi- aware that he was playing a game of high risks and high
IMAGE DISCOVERY
The Proclamation of Kaiser Wilhelm I by Anton von Werner

In this painting, the German painter Anton von Werner portrays the declaration of the
German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on 18 January 1871. Why was such a mo-
mentous event in German history taking place on French soil? Otto von Bismarck stands in
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
the center in a white military jacket. Why is he not the one making the proclamation, al-
though the painting has him at its center? Why is such a political event accomplished with
such military pomp and circumstance?
stakes. His vision was limited to the pragmatic pursuit Bismarck was a Junker, an aristocratic estate owner from
of preserving the power of his beloved Prussia. For east of the Elbe River, who entered politics in 1847. As a mem-
him the empire was not an end in itself but a means of ber of the United Diet of Prussia, he made his reputation as a
guaranteeing Prussian strength. In an age of realistic reactionary when he rose to speak in favor of hunting privi-
The Unification politicians, Bismarck emerged as the supreme practi- leges for the nobility: I am a Junker and I want to enjoy the
of Germany
tioner of Realpolitik, the ruthless pursuit by any advantages of it. In the 1850s, he became aware of Prussias
means, including illegal and violent ones, to advance the in- future in the center of Europe: he saw that the old elites must
terests of his country. be allied with the national movement in order to survive. The
problem was that nationalism
was the property of the liberals,
MAP DISCOVERY who had been defeated in 1848.
Bismarck appropriated it.
DENMARK
Liberals and Junkers shared an
interest in unification, but for
a
different political ends. As a
Se
North
Ba
l t i c politician, Bismarck learned
Sea Knigsberg
SCHLESWIG how to exploit their common
Gdansk
HOLSTEIN ground.
MECKLENBURG
Hamburg
Bremen Prussias Seven Weeks War
HANOVER POSEN with Austria. In 1850, Prussia
Magdeburg
NETHERLANDS
Berlin
POLAND had been forced to accept
A (RUSSIAN
SI Austrian dominance in central
US EMPIRE)
Europe or go to war. Throughout
PR Dresden
Cologne
the following decade, however,
BELGIUM THURINGIA SILESIA
NY Prussia systematically undermined
XO
SA
Austrian power by wielding the
E
SS
Prague
trade agreements of the Zollverein
HE
LUX.
BAVARIA BOHEMIA
as a tool to exclude Austria from
LORRAINE MORAVIA German economic affairs. In

EN
WURTEMBURG HUNGARY
1862, at the moment of a crisis
BAD
Strasbourg
Munich Vienna provoked by the new king,
ALSACE AUSTRIA Wilhelm I, over military reorga-
Buda
FRANCE Pest nization, Bismarck became min-
AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN
SWITZERLAND EMPIRE
ister-president of the Prussian
TYROL cabinet as well as foreign minis-
ter. He overrode the parliamen-
VENICE Trieste tary body, the Diet, by reorga-
(to Italy, 1867)
ITALY nizing the Prussian army
without a formally approved
budget. In 1864, he constructed
an alliance between Austria and
Prussia, With Prussia, formed Prussia for the purpose of
1815 1866 German Empire, 1871 invading Schleswig, a predomi-
Annexed by Prussia, Ceded to German nantly German-speaking terri-
1866 Empire by France, 1871
North German
tory controlled by the king of
German Confederation,
Confederation, 1866 1815 1866
Denmark. Within five days of
the invasion, Denmark yielded
the duchies of Schleswig and
The Unification of Germany Holstein, to be ruled jointly by
In this map, regard the diversity in size and type of political entities that were com- Austria and Prussia.
bined to form the new state of Germany. What annexation did the War of 1866 make Ascertaining that he had a
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
possible? How did the peace settlement with France affect the creation of the free hand in central Europe,
German state? Why was the North German Confederation so important in determin- Bismarck skillfully provoked a
ing the formation of the new German Empire? crisis between Austria and
Prussia over management of the
territories. Counting on the neutrality of France and Great nated deployment with the new technology of the railroad.
Britain, the support of Piedmont-Sardinia, and good relations Although French troops had the latest equipment, they were
with Russia, Bismarck led his country into war with Austria in sent into battle without instructions on how to use it. Finally, the
June 1866. In this Seven Weeks War, Austrian forces proved to Prussian-led German army was superior, outnumbering French
be no match for the better-equipped and better-trained troops 450,000 to 260,000. All those factors combined to spell
Prussian army. Bismarck dictated the terms of the peace, disaster for the French. Within a matter of weeks, it was obvious
which demonstrated that he had no desire to cripple Austria, that France had lost the Franco-Prussian War, and its eastern
only to exclude it from a united Germany in which Prussia territories of Alsace and Lorraine. The path was now clear for
would be the dominant force. Austrias exclusion from the Proclamation of the German Empire in January 1871.
Germany forced the Austrian government to deal with its own
internal problems of imperial organization. In 1867, in re- Prussian Dominance of United Germany. The newly
sponse to pressures from the subject nationalities, the established Second Reich, successor to the Holy Roman
Habsburg Empire transformed itself into a dual monarchy of Empire, united the German states into a single nation. After
two independent and equal states under one ruler, who would years of foreign wars and endless wrangling among the heads
be both the emperor of Austria and the king of Hungary. In of the 38 German states, Bismarck obtained what he wanted: a
spite of the reorganization, the problem of nationalities per- German Empire under the leadership of the Prussian king.
sisted, and ethnic groups began to agitate for total indepen- The Proclamation of the German Empire was signed on 18
dence from imperial rule. January 1871 in a ceremony in the French palace of Versailles.
Bismarck, always the pragmatist, understood clearly that
The Franco-Prussian War. Bismarcks biggest obstacle to Europe was not the same place that it had been a decade or
German unification was laid to rest with Austrias defeat. The two earlier. Anyone who speaks of Europe is wrongit is
south German states, however, continued to resist the idea of nothing but a set of national expressions. That understand-
Prussian dominance, but growing numbers of people in ing was the key to his success. In unifying Germany, Bismarck
Baden, Wrttemberg, Bavaria, and the southern parts of built on the constitution of the North German Confederation
Hesse-Darmstadt recognized the necessity of uniting under formed in 1867, which guaranteed Prussian dominance.
Prussian leadership. Bismarck used the bureaucracy as a mainstay of the emperor.
Many French observers were troubled by the Prussian vic- The new Reichstagthe national legislative assemblywas
tory over Austria and were apprehensive over what a united to be elected by means of universal male suffrage, a conces-
Germany might portend for the future of French dominance sion to the liberals. Yet the constitution was not a liberal one,
in Europe. Napoleon III attempted unsuccessfully to contain since the Reichstag was not sovereign and the chancellor was
Prussian ambitions through diplomatic maneuverings. accountable only to the emperor. Policy was made outside the
Instead, France found itself stranded without important domain of electoral politics. The federal structure of the con-
European allies. In the spring of 1870, Bismarck decided to stitution, especially with regard to taxation, also kept the cen-
seize the initiative and provoke a crisis with France. tral parliament weak. Most liberals supported the constitu-
Bismarck recognized that war with France could be the tion, but a minority persisted in a tradition of radical dissent.
dramatic event needed to forge cooperation and unity among Critics believed that true constitutional government had been
all German states. The issue of succession to the Spanish sacrificed to the demands of empire. As one liberal remarked,
throne gave him the opportunity he sought. Bismarck skill- Unity without freedom is a unity of slaves. Bismarck spoke
fully created the impression that the French ambassador had in confidence of his aim to destroy parliamentarianism by
insulted the Prussian king, then leaked news of the incident to parliamentarianism. According to that formula, Bismarck
the press in both countries. Enraged and inflamed French and hoped that a weak Reichstag would undermine parliamentary
Prussian publics both demanded war. institutions better than any dictatorial ruler.
As a direct result of this contrived misunderstanding,
France declared war on Prussia in July 1870. As Bismarck
hoped, the southern German princes immediately sided with
The United States: Civil War and
the Prussian king. For years before hostilities broke out, the Reunification
Prussians had been preparing for war. They had been sending In the 1860s, another crisis in statebuilding was resolved
Prussian army officers disguised as landscape painters into across the Atlantic. The United States cemented political unity
France to study the terrain of battle. French troops carried through the use of force in its Civil War (18611865). The
maps of Germany but were ignorant of the geography of their president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln
own country, where the battles were waged. Sent into battle (18091865), mobilized the superior resources of the indus-
against the Germans, French troops roamed around in search trial Northern states against the heavily agrarian, slave-own-
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
of their commanders and each other. ing South. The United States worked to achieve national unity
The Germans had learned new deployment strategies from and territorial integrity in another sense through ongoing ex-
studying the use of railroads in the American Civil War of pansion westward by eliminating and subduing Native
18611865. Unlike the Germans, the French had not coordi- American peoples.
Reforming European Society 695
With the emancipation of the slaves, republican democ- ity. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, Europes lead-
racy appeared to triumph in the United States. Newly created ers recognized that reforms were needed to build dynamic and
European nation-states followed a different path: plebiscites competitive states. Three different models for social and political
were manipulated by those in power in Italy, and a neo-abso- reform developed in France, Great Britain, and Russia after
lutism emerged in Germany. Yet the Civil War in the United 1850. All three sets of reforms took place in unified nation-
States and the successful bids for unification in Italy and states. The three societies had little in common with each other
Germany shared remarkable similarities. In all three coun- ideologically, but all reflected a commitment to progress and an
tries, wars eventually resulted in a single national market and awareness of the states role and responsibility in achieving it.
a single financial system without internal barriers. Unified na-
tional economies, particularly in Germany and the United
States, paved the way for significant economic growth and the The Second Empire in France, 18521870
expansion of industrial power. One model was that of France, where the French emperor
worked through a highly centralized administrative structure
Nationalism and Force and with a valued elite of specialists to achieve social and eco-
nomic transformations. The French model was a technocratic
It is commonplace in the Western historical tradition to speak one that emphasized the importance of specialized knowledge
of nations as if they were individuals possessing emotions, to achieve material progress. Reform in France relied on both
making choices, taking actions, having ideas. Russia turned autocratic direction and liberal participation.
inward; Germany chose its enemies as well as its friends;
France vowed revenge; Great Britain took pride in its Napoleon III. Napoleon III ruled France from the middle
achievements. On one level, to attribute volition, feeling, and of the century until 1870. His apprenticeship for political
insight to an abstract entity such as a nation is nonsense. But leadership had been an unusual one. Louis Napoleon
on another level, the personification of nation-states was one (18081873) was a nephew of the emperor Napoleon I. The
of the great achievements of statesmen throughout Europe child Louis, born at the peak of French glory, was old enough
between 1850 and 1870. The language and symbols they put to remember the devastation of his uncles defeat in 1815. He
in place created the nation itself, a new political reality whose dedicated his exiled youth to preparing for his familys
forms contained a modern political consciousness. The na- restoration as rulers of France. With the death of Napoleons
tion-state became an all-knowing being whose rights had to son, the duc de Reichstadt, in 1832, Louis was aware that the
be protected, whose destiny had to be assured. mantle of future power and the family destiny fell to him.
The nation was above all a creation that minimized or de- In comparing Louis Napoleon with his uncle, Napoleon I,
nied real differences in dialect and language, regional loyal- Karl Marx observed that history happens the first time as
ties, local traditions, and village identities. The crises in state
tragedy and the second time as farce. There was much that
building in Italy and Germany had been resolved finally by vi-
passed as farcical before Louis Napoleon established Frances
olence. No power was acknowledged to exist above the na-
Second Empire in 1852, as one attempt after another to seize
tion-state. No power could sanction the nations actions but
power failed. Yet those who viewed Louis Napoleon as a figure
itself. Force was an acceptable alternative to diplomacy. War of derision were misled: by 1848 he understood the impor-
was a political act and a political instrument, a continuation
tance of shaping public opinion to suit his own ends. He
of political relations. Violence and nationalism were inextri- wielded the Napoleonic legend to play on the dissatisfaction
cably linked in the unification of both Italy and Germany in of millions. He understood that to succeed in an electoral sys-
the third quarter of the nineteenth century. tem, he had to promise something to everyone. He spoke of
National unification had escaped the grasp of liberals and prosperity, order, and the end of poverty, slogans that sent dif-
radicals between 1848 and 1850 with the failure of revolution- ferent and incompatible messages to a bourgeoisie who
ary and reform movements. In the 1850s and 1860s, those wanted social peace, workers who wanted jobs and social jus-
committed to national transformations worked from within tice, and peasants who wanted land and freedom from taxes.
the existing system. The new realists subordinated liberal na- As the dark-horse candidate, he swept the field and in
tionalism to the needs of conservative state building. Military December 1848 became Frances first president elected by
force validated what intellectuals and revolutionaries had not universal manhood suffrage. The politicians were sure that he
been able to legitimate through ideological claims. could be managed, so insignificant did he seem. They and the
rest of France were literally caught sleeping before dawn on 2
December 1851 when the nephew of the great Napoleon
REFORMING EUROPEAN seized power in a coup dtat and became dictator of France.
Exactly one year later, he proclaimed himself Emperor
SOCIETY
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
Napoleon III and set about the tasks of establishing his dy-
After the revolutions of 1848, government repression silenced nasty and reclaiming French imperial glory.
radical movements throughout Europe. But repression could Napoleon IIIs regime has been condemned for its deca-
not maintain social harmony and promote growth and prosper- dence and its spectacle. On the surface, the world of the
Second Empire glittered like a fancy-dress ball, with men in

sparkling uniforms and women in full-skirted, low-necked
gowns waltzing to gay tunes. Courtesans in open carriages,
parading through the newly landscaped Bois de Boulogne, be-
came as famous as cabinet members. But to judge the empire
on superficial criteria alone would be a mistake. The Second
Empire achieved significant successes in a variety of areas.
Napoleon III supported economic expansion and industrial
development. During his reign, the French economy pros-
pered and flourished. The discovery of gold in California and
Australia fueled a demand for French products in interna-
tional markets and initiated a period of sustained economic
growth that lasted beyond Napoleon IIIs reign into the 1880s.
A new private banking system, founded in 1852 by financiers
and key political figures, enabled the pooling of investors re-
sources, small and large, to finance industrial expansion.
Stable authoritarian government encouraged increased in-
vestment in state public works programs.
Napoleon III surrounded himself with advisers who saw in
prosperity the answer to all social problems. Between 1852 and
1860, the government supported a massive program of rail-
road construction. Jobs multiplied and investment increased.
Agriculture expanded as railroad lines opened new markets.
The rich became richer, but the extreme poverty of the first
half of the nineteenth century was diminishing. Brutal misery Inauguration of the Boulevard du Prince-Eugne during the re-
in city and countryside did not disappear, but on the whole, building of Paris. The renovations were carried out under the direc-
the standard of living increased as wages rose faster than prices. tion of Baron Georges Haussmann, who was called the Attila of
the Straight Line for the ruthless manner in which his pencil cut
through city neighborhoods on the map.
Rebuilding Paris. The best single example of the energy
and commitment of the imperial regime was the rebuilding of
the French capital. As Sir Edwin Chadwick (18001890), as the middle classes took over the heart of the city. The
Britains leading public health reformer, put it, Napoleon III process was very different from the development of other ur-
found Paris stinking and left it sweet. Before midcentury, Paris ban areas such as London, where the middle class fled to the
was one of the most unsanitary, crime-ridden, and politically suburbs, leaving behind the problems of urban life.
volatile capitals in Europe. Within 15 years it had been trans- Much has been made of the policing benefits of rebuilding
formed into a city of lights, wide boulevards and avenues, the city of Paris. Wider streets facilitated the movement of
monumental vistas, parks, and gardens. Napoleon III was the troops, which could more easily crush revolutionary distur-
architect of the idea for a new Paris, something his uncle never bances. While the control aspect of urban reconstruction was
had the time or resources to accomplish. But the real credit for not lost on Haussmann and Napoleon III, it was not the pri-
carrying through the municipal improvements should be at- mary purpose of the vast public works project that lasted for the
tributed to Baron Georges Haussmann (18091891). whole regime. Napoleon wanted Paris to be the center of
As Prefect of the Seine from 1853 to 1870, Baron Western culture and the envy of the world. Its wide, straight av-
Haussmann typified the technocrat in power. He was called enues served as the model for other French cities. The new Paris
the Attila of the Straight Line for the ruthless manner in became an international model copied in Mexico City, Brussels,
which his protractor cut through city neighborhoods, de- Madrid, Rome, Stockholm, and Barcelona between 1870 and
stroying all that lay in his pencils path. Poor districts were 1900. American city planners of the City Beautiful movement
turned into rubble to make way for the elegant apartment were also influenced by the Haussmannization of Paris. In
buildings of the Parisian bourgeoisie. The new housing was spite of financial scandals that plagued the reconstruction near
too expensive for workers, who were pushed out of Paris into the end of the regime, few disputed that Napoleon III had trans-
the suburbs. The boundaries of the city expanded. As workers formed Paris into one of the worlds most beautiful cities.
from all over France migrated to the capital in search of jobs,
the population nearly doubled, increasing by just under one The Foreign Policy of the Second Empire. Just as a new
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
million in the 1850s and 1860s. A poor and volatile popula- Paris would make France the center of culture, Napoleon III
tion encircled the city of monuments and museums. Paris as intended his blueprint for foreign policy to restore France to
the radical capital of France was being physically dismantled its pre-1815 status as the greatest European power. By involv-
and a new, more conservative political entity rose in its place ing France in both the Crimean War and the war for Italian
unification, Napoleon III returned France to adventurous for- was crowned in 1863, the new Mexican emperor struggled to
eign policies. The emperor had undertaken both wars with rule in an enlightened manner, but he was stymied from the be-
the hope of further increasing French economic and diplo- ginning by his ineptitude and lack of popular support.
matic prominence on the Continent. Napoleon III supported Following the recall of the 34,000 French troops that, at consid-
Piedmont-Sardinia not out of any sense of altruism, in spite erable expense, were keeping Maximilians troubled regime in
of his claim that he was doing something for Italy. The ac- place, Maximilian was captured and executed by a firing squad
cession of Nice and Savoy increased French territoryand re- in the summer of 1867. The Mexican disaster damaged the pres-
versed the settlements of 1815. tige of Napoleon IIIs regime in the international arena.
The Italian campaign complicated relations with Great Intensely aware of public criticism, the emperor undertook the
Britain, which feared a resurgent French militarism. French reorganization of the army and a series of liberal reforms, in-
construction of the Suez Canal between the Red Sea and the cluding increasing parliamentary participation in affairs of state,
Mediterranean also created tensions with Great Britain, pro- and granting to trade unions the right of assembly.
tective of its own dominance in the Mediterranean and the The Prussian victory over Austria in the Seven Weeks War
Near East. Nevertheless, the free-trade agreement between the had dramatically changed the situation on the Continent.
British and the French in 1860the Chevalier-Cobden Pundits in Paris were fond of saying that the Austrian loss re-
Treatywas a landmark in overseas policy and a commit- ally marked the defeat of France. Frances position within
ment to liberal economic policies. Europe was threatened, and Napoleon III knew it. In 1870, the
The Second Empires involvement in Mexico was a fiasco. humiliatingly rapid defeat of French imperial forces in the
The Mexican government had been chronically unable to pay its Franco-Prussian War brought to an end the experiment in
foreign debts, and France was Mexicos largest creditor. liberal empire.
Napoleon III hoped that by intervening in Mexican affairs he In 1870, France remained a mixture of old and new.
could strengthen ties with Great Britain and Spain, to whom the Although industrial production had doubled between 1852
Mexicans also owed money. The emperor planned to turn and 1870, France was still an agricultural nation. Foreign
Mexico into a satellite empire that would be economically prof- trade expanded by 300 percent, growing faster than that of
itable to France. The United States, occupied with civil war, did any other nation in Europe. Six times as many miles of rail-
not interfere in 1861 when Napoleon III sent a military expedi- road track crisscrossed France at the time Napoleon III went
tion to pacify the Mexican countryside. With the backing of into exile as when he came into power. Napoleon III did not
Mexican conservatives who opposed Mexican president Benito create the economic boom from which all of Europe benefited
Jurez (18061872), Napoleon III supported the Austrian arch- between 1850 and 1880, but he did build on it, using the state
duke Maximilian (18321867) as emperor of Mexico. After he to stimulate and enhance prosperity. His policies favored
Edouard Manet, The Execution of the

Emperor Maximilian (1868). The
United States pressured France to
withdraw support for the Mexican
imperial venture, which led to disas-
ter for Maximilian and the reinstate-
ment of Benito Jurez as president
of Mexico.
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
business and initiated a financial revolution of enduring ben- serious social problems. British slums rivaled any in Europe.
efits. However, the technocratic model of rule by specialists Poverty, disease, and famine ravaged the kingdom. Many
was not applied to the army in forcing it to modernize. Nor feared that British social protests of the 1840s would result in
had foreign policy benefited from the careful calculations em- upheavals similar to those in continental Europe. Yet Great
ployed in domestic administration. The empire had become Britain avoided a revolution. One explanation for Britains
the victim of its own myth of invincibility. relative calm lay in the shared political tradition that empha-
sized liberty as the birthright of English citizens. Building on
an established political culture, the British Parliament was
Victorian Political Reforms able to adapt to the demands of an industrializing society.
Great Britain provided another model of reform, which was Adaptation was gradual, but as slow as it seemed, a compro-
fostered through liberal parliamentary democracy. In govern- mise was achieved among competing social interests. The
ment by amateurs, with local rather than a highly central- great compromise of Victorian society was the reconciliation
ized administration, British legislation alternated between a of industrialists commitment to unimpeded growth with
philosophy of freedom and one of protection. But reforms workers need for the protection of the state. The British polit-
were always hammered out by parliamentary means with the ical system was democratized slowly after 1832.
support of a gradually expanding electorate. The Reform Bill of that year gave increased political power
to the industrial and manufacturing bourgeoisie, who joined
Parliamentary Reforms. Contemporaries were aware of a landed aristocracy and merchant class. Yet, the property
two facts of life about Great Britain in 1850: first, that Britain qualification meant that only 20 percent of the population
had an enormously productive capitalist economy of sus- was able to vote. The next step toward democracy was not
tained growth, and second, that Britain enjoyed apparent so- taken for another 35 years. In 1867, under conservative lead-
cial harmony without revolution and without civil war. As ership, a second Reform Bill was introduced. Approval of the
revolutions ravaged continental Europe in 1848, the British bill doubled the electorate, giving the vote to a new urban
took pride in a parliamentary system that valued a tradition population of shopkeepers, clerks, and workers. In 1884, farm
of freedom. British statesmen were not reluctant to point out laborers were enfranchised. Women, however, remained dis-
to the rest of the world that Great Britain had achieved indus- franchised; they were not granted the vote until after World
trial growth without rending the social fabric. War I. Through parliamentary cooperation between Liberals
The political rhetoric of stability and calm was undoubt- and Conservatives, the male franchise was slowly imple-
edly exaggerated. Great Britain at midcentury had its share of mented without a revolution.
William Gladstone rides in an om-

nibus in this painting titled One of
the People by Alfred Morgan. This
mode of transport was thought of as
a social leveler because all classes of
people could afford the fares.
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
Gladstone and Disraeli. The lives and careers of two

men, William Ewart Gladstone (18091898) and Benjamin
Disraeli (18041881), exemplify the particular path the
British government followed in maintaining social peace.
Rivals and political opponents, both men served as prime
ministers and both left their mark on the age. From different
political perspectives, they contributed to British reform in
the second half of the nineteenth century.
William Gladstone was an example of a British statesman
with no counterpart elsewhere in Europe: he was a classical
liberal who believed in free enterprise and was opposed to
state intervention. Good government, according to Gladstone,
should remove obstacles to talent, competition, and individ-
ual initiative but should interfere as little as possible in econ-
omy and society. Surprisingly, the leader of the Liberal party
began his long parliamentary career at the other end of the
political spectrum, as a Tory. The son of a successful merchant
and slave trader, Gladstone enjoyed the benefits of wealth and
attended Eton and Oxford, where he studied classics and
mathematics. Discouraged by his father from a career in the
Church of England, Gladstone used his connections to launch
a parliamentary career in 1832. He gradually left behind his
conservative opposition to parliamentary reform and his sup-
port of protective tariffs. In 1846, as a member of the govern-
ment, Gladstone broke with Tory principles and voted in fa-
vor of free trade. The best government, he affirmed in true
liberal fashion, was the one that governed least.
Those who knew Gladstone in the early years were struck This Punch cartoon, Rival Actors, depicts William Gladstone (left)
not by his brilliance but by his capacity for hard work and as- as popular character William Tell exiting the stage, while Benjamin
siduous application to the task at hand. He chopped wood for Disraeli (right), as farcical character Jeremy Diddler, sulks in the
relaxation. In his spare time he wrote a three-volume study on wings.
Homer and the Homeric age. He practiced an overt morality,
targeting prostitutes in the hope of convincing them to
change their lives. Gladstone was not blind to social prob- The reforms added up to a liberal philosophy of govern-
lems, but he considered private philanthropy the best way to ment. Liberal government was, above all, an attack on privi-
correct them. lege. It sought to remove restraints on individual freedom and
Many of the significant advances of the British liberal state to foster opportunity and talent. Liberal government sought
were achieved during Gladstones first term as prime minister to protect democracy through education. Voting men must be
(18681874). Taking advantage of British prosperity, educated men. As one Liberal put it, We must educate our
Gladstone abolished tariffs, cut defense expenditures, lowered masters. Liberals governed in the interests of the bourgeoisie
taxes, and sponsored sound budgets. He furthered the liberal and with the belief that what was good for capitalism was
agenda by disestablishing the Anglican Church in Ireland in good for society. Tariffs, therefore, were kept low or elimi-
1869. The Church had been the source of great resentment to nated to promote British commerce. Gladstone believed that
the vast majority of Irish Catholics, who had been forced to all political questions were moral questions and that fairness
pay taxes to support the Protestant state church. and justice could solve political problems. In spite of his
Gladstone reformed the army, in disrepute after its poor moral claims, his programs made him enemies among special
performance in the Crimea, so that commissions no longer interests, including farmers and the Church of England, be-
could be purchased. Training and merit would have to justify cause his policies undermined their security and privileges.
all future advancements. Similarly, Gladstone reformed the During those years, another political philosophy also left its
civil service system by separating it from political influence and mark on British government. It was conservatism. Under the
seniority. A merit system and examinations were intended to flamboyant leadership of Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative
ensure the most efficient and effective government administra- party supported state intervention and regulation on behalf of
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
tion. The secret ballot was introduced to prevent coercion in the weak and disadvantaged. Disraeli sponsored the Factory
voting. Finally, the Liberals stressed the importance of educa- Act of 1875, which set a maximum of 56 hours for the factory
tion for an informed electorate and passed an education act work week. The Public Health Act established a sanitary code.
that aimed to make elementary schooling available to everyone. The Artisans Dwelling Act defined minimum housing
standards. Probably the most important conservative legisla-

tion was the Trade Union Act, which permitted picketing and
other peaceful labor tactics. Over 55%
Disraelis personal background and training were very dif- 3655%
ferent from Gladstones and made him unique in British par-
Less than 36% or no data available
liamentary politics. He was known primarily as a novelist, so-
cial critic, and failed financier before he entered the political
arena in 1837. His father was a Jewish merchant descended
from a family of Spanish refugees in Venice. The senior
Disraeli became a British subject in 1801, three years before
a
Benjamins birth. In embracing English culture, the senior
Seea
ltcicS
Disraeli had his children baptized in the Anglican Church.
Balti
Ba
The split between Disraeli and Gladstone was clearly appar-
Moscow
ent in 1846 when they, both Tories, disagreed over the issue of
R..
free trade versus tariffs. Disraeli moved on to champion protec-
aR
VVoollgga
tion and throughout the early 1860s consistently opposed
Gladstones financial system. Unlike the Liberals, Disraeli in- Kiev
sisted on the importance of traditional institutions including the
monarchy, the House of Lords, and the Church of England.
Caspian
Caspian
Queen Victoria named him the First Earl of Beaconsfield for his Sea
Sea
strong foreign policy and social reforms.Dizzys real cleverness DaD
naun
bueb
and contribution to British politics were in an area that few con- eR.R .
temporaries appreciated at the time. Disraelis work in organiz- BlackSea
Black Sea
ing a national party machinery facilitated the adaptation of the
parliamentary system to mass politics. His methods of cam-
paigning and building a mass base of support were used by suc- Russian Serfs. Serfdom was created in the sixteenth century as a
cessful politicians regardless of political persuasion. system of virtual enslavement of Russian peasants. Its greatest
The terms liberal and conservative hold none of the meaning density was in areas with a strong presence of landed gentry.
today that they did for men and women in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Classical liberalism has little in common with its twenty-
first-century counterpart, which favors an active interventionist
through a bureaucracy and a police force. Russia was a semifeu-
state. Disraeli is a far more likely candidate for the twenty-first-
dal agrarian economy with a class of privileged aristocrats sup-
century liberal label than is Britains leading nineteenth-century
ported by serf labor on their estates.
liberal statesman, Gladstone. Disraeli placed value in the ability
of the state to correct and protect. Because of his interventionist
A Serf-Holding Nation. For decadessince the reign of
philosophy, he may be compared with the Continental states-
Alexander I (18011825)the tsars and their advisers realized
men Bismarck and Napoleon III.
that they were out of step with developments in western Europe.
In spite of Liberal hopes, Great Britain never had a purely
An awareness was growing that serfdom was uncivilized and
laissez-faire economy. As the intersecting careers of Gladstone
morally wrong. The remnants of feudalism had been swept
and Disraeli demonstrate, the British model combined free
away in France in the Great Revolution at the end of the eigh-
enterprise with intervention and regulation. The clear issues
teenth century. Prussia had abolished hereditary serfdom begin-
and the clear choices of the two great partiesLiberal and
ning in 1806. Among the European powers, only Russia re-
Conservativedominated parliamentary life after midcen-
mained a serf-holding nation. Russian serfs were tied to the land
tury. In polarizing parliamentary politics, the parties also in-
and owed dues and labor services in return for the lands they
vigorated it.
held. Peasant protests mounted, attracting public attention to
the plight of the serfs. A Russian aristocrat, Baron N. Wrangel
Reforming Russia (18471920), recounted in his memoirs a story from his child-
hood in the 1850s, when he was about ten years old, that exem-
Russia offered a third model for reform in the nineteenth cen-
plifies the growing social awareness of the problem:
tury. Like Britain, Russia had avoided revolution at midcentury.
Like Britain, it hoped to preserve social peace. Yet the Russian One day we were sitting quietly on the terrace listening to the
model for reform stands in dramatic contrast to Britains. Russia reading aloud of Uncle Toms Cabin, a recently translated book
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
was an unreformed autocracy, a form of government in which that was then in fashion. My sisters could not get over the hor-
the tsar held absolute power. Without a parliament, a constitu- rors of slavery and wept at the sad fate of poor Uncle Tom. I
tion, or civil liberties for its subjects, the Russian ruler governed cannot conceive, said one of them, how such atrocities can be
tolerated. Slavery is horrible. But, said Bunny, in her shrill lit- industrial development. Alexander interpreted rumblings
tle voice, we have slaves too. within his own country as the harbinger of future upheavals
similar to those that had rocked France and the Austrian
In spite of growing moral concern, there were many rea- Empire. He explained to the Muscovite nobility, It is better to
sons to resist the abolition of serfdom. Granting freedom to abolish serfdom from above than to wait until the serfs begin
all serfs was a vastly complicated affair. How were serf-holders to liberate themselves from below.
to be compensated for the loss of labor power? What was to be In March 1861, the tsar signed the emancipation edict that
the freed serf s relationship to the land? Personal freedom liberated the serfs. Serfdom was eliminated in Poland three
would be worthless without a land allotment. Yet landowners years later. Alexander II, who came to be known as the Tsar-
opposed loss of land as strongly as loss of their work force. A Liberator, compromised between landlord and serf by allot-
landless work force would be a serious social threat, if western ting land to freed peasants, while requiring from the former
European experience could be taken as an example. serfs redemption payments that were spread out over a period
of 49 years. The peasant paid the state in installments; the
Alexander II and the Emancipation of the Serfs. state reimbursed the landowner in lump sums. To guarantee
Hesitation about abolition evaporated with the Russian defeat repayment, the land was not granted directly to individual
in the Crimean War. The new tsar, Alexander II (18551881), peasants but to the village commune (mir), which was re-
viewed Russias inability to repel an invasion force on its own sponsible for collecting redemption payments.
soil as proof of its backwardness. Russia had no railroads and Emancipation of the serfs, Alexanders greatest achieve-
was forced to transport military supplies by carts to the ment, was a reform of unprecedented scale. It affected 52 mil-
Crimea. It took Moscow three months to provision troops, lion peasants, more than 20 million of them enserfed to pri-
whereas the enemy could do so in three weeks. Alexander II vate landowners. By comparison, Abraham Lincolns
believed in taking matters into his own hands. Russia must be Emancipation Proclamation less than two years later freed
reformed. Abolition of serfdom would permit a well-trained four million American slaves. However, beneath the surface of
reserve army to exist without fear of rebellion. Liberating the the Russian liberation, peasants soon realized that the repay-
serfs would also create a system of free labor so necessary for ment schedule increased their burdens and responsibilities.
THE RUSSIAN EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, 1861

Aleksandr Vasilievich Nikitenko, a former serf who had managed through luck and talent to gain an education and a
place in the Russian bureaucracy, recorded the joy and excitement he and others felt when Alexander II freed Russias
serfs. Many hoped, and some feared, that the change would revolutionize Russian agriculture and society.
citizens. Announcements from the governor-general were

Focus Questions posted at all crossways, and knots of people were gathered
How do you explain the joy of this state bureaucrat in around them. One would read while the others listened. I
learning of the emancipation of the serfs? Why was the encountered happy, but calm faces everywhere. Here and
manor serf who is quoted here indignant about the ongo- there people were reading the proclamation aloud, and, as
ing obligations of the manor serfs? I walked, I continually caught phrases like decree on lib-
erty, freedom. One fellow who was reading the an-
5 March. A great day: the emancipation manifesto! I re- nouncement and reached the place where it said that
ceived a copy around noon. I cannot express my joy at read- manor serfs were obligated to their masters for another
ing this precious act which scarcely has its equal in the two years, exclaimed indignantly The hell with this paper!
thousand-year history of the Russian people. I read it aloud Two years? Ill do nothing of the sort. The others re-
to my wife, my children and a friend of ours in my study, mained silent. I ran into my friend, Galakhov. Christ has
under Alexander IIs portrait, as we gazed at it with deep risen! I said to him. He has indeed! he answered, and we
reverence and gratitude. I tried to explain to my ten-year- expressed our great joy to each other.
old son as simply as possible the essence of the manifesto Then I went to see Rebinder. He ordered champagne
and bid him to keep inscribed in his heart forever the date and we drank a toast to Alexander II.
of March 5 and the name of Alexander II, the Liberator.
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
I couldnt stay at home. I had to wander about the

streets and mingle, so to say, with my regenerated fellow From Aleksandr Nikitenko, The Diary of a Russian Censor (1861).
The peasants resented being forced to pay for land they con- That was a significant reduction from the 25 years of active
sidered rightfully theirs. An old peasant saying reflected that service that peasant and lower-class conscripts had formerly
belief: We are yoursthey acknowledged to the landlords served. Although length of service was reduced according to
but the land is ours. It was not an accident that the mir educational level, the military reforms were, on the whole, de-
arrangement prevented mobility; Alexander had no intention mocratizing because they eliminated an important privilege
of creating a floating proletariat similar to that of western of the wealthy.
Europe. He wanted his people closely tied to the land, but In spite of the vast array of Great Reformsemancipat-
freed from the servility of feudal obligations. ing the serfs, creating local parliamentary bodies, reorganiz-
The abolition of serfdom did not solve the problem of ing the judiciary, and modernizing the armyRussia was not
Russian backwardness. Farming methods and farming imple- sufficiently liberalized or democratized to satisfy the critics of
ments remained primitive. Russian agriculture did not autocracy. Between 1860 and 1870, a young generation of in-
become more productive. Nor did emancipation result telligentsia, radical intellectuals who benefited from the de-
in a contented and loyal peasantry. Frustrations festered. mocratization of education and were influenced by the
A large proportion of peasants received too little land to rhetoric of revolution in the West, assumed a critical stance in
make their redemption payments. Many peasants in the protest against the existing order. Although not itself a class,
Russian Serfs south received smaller plots of land than they had many members of the intelligentsia shared a similar back-
farmed under serfdom. The commune replaced the ground as the student sons and daughters of petty officials or
landowner in a system of peasant bondage. Redemption pay- priests. Young women, who often sought the education in
ments were finally abolished in 1907, but not before exacerbat- Switzerland that was denied to them at home, were especially
ing social tensions in the countryside. active in supporting ideas of emancipation.
The Great Reforms. The real winner in the abolition of serf- The Populist Movement. In 1873, the imperial govern-
dom was not the landowners, and certainly not the peasantry, ment considered the Western liberal and socialist ideas of the
but the state. A bureaucratic hierarchy and a financial infra- intelligentsia so threatening that it ordered Russian students
structure were expanded. Other reforms in the system of credit studying in Switzerland to return home. Many returning stu-
and banking contributed significantly to rapid economic dents combined forces with radical intellectuals in Russia and
growth. With the help of foreignespecially Frenchinvest- decided to go to the people. About 2500 educated young
ment, railway construction increased dramatically, from 660 men and women traveled from village to village to educate, to
miles of track in 1855 to 14,000 by 1880. Thanks in large part to help, and, in some cases, to attempt to radicalize the peasants.
the new transportation network, Russia became a world grain The populist crusaders sought to learn from what they con-
supplier during the period, with exports increasing threefold. sidered to be the source of all morality and justice, the Russian
But development was uneven and remained uncoordinated. The peasantry. They paid dearly for what proved to be a fruitless
coexistence of the old alongside the new, combined with the commitment to populism in the mass trials and repression of
speed of change, created friction and promised future unrest. the late 1870s.
Alexander II, a man conservative by temperament but Some of the tsarist regimes critics fled into exile to reemerge
aware that Russia must move forward, did not stop there. In as revolutionaries in western Europe, where they continued to
1864, he introduced zemstvos, local elected assemblies on the oppose the tsarist regime and helped shape the tradition of rev-
provincial and county levels, to govern local affairs. The three olution and dissent in Western countries. Other educated men
classes of landowners, townspeople, and peasants elected rep- and women who remained in Russia chose violence as the only
resentatives who were responsible for implementing educa- effective weapon against absolute rule. Terrorists who called
tional, health, and other social welfare reforms. Similar themselves Will of the People decided to assassinate the tsar;
statutes governing towns were passed in 1870. In the spirit of in the emperor hunt that followed, numerous attempts were
modernization, the state also undertook judicial reforms. made on the tsars life. Miraculously, Alexander II escaped even
New provincial courts were opened in 1866. Corporal punish- the bombing of his own living quarters in the Winter Palace.
ment was to be eliminated. Separate courts for peasants still The tsarist state responded with stricter controls, but repression
endured, however, preserving the impression that peasants only fanned the flames of discontent.
were a lower class of citizens subject to different jurisdiction. In response to attempts on his life and the assassination of
With the military triumph of Prussia over France in public officials, which were intended to cripple the
18701871, the tsar found the excuse he had been looking for central regime, Alexander II put the brakes on reform
in the 1860s to push through fundamental military reforms. in the second half of his reign. The Great Reforms
Alexander II had admired the Prussian military model since could not be undone, however, and they had set in
his childhood. In 1874 he used that model to require that all motion sweeping economic and social changes. The Growth of
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
young men upon reaching the age of 20 be eligible for con- state encouraged capitalist growth and witnessed the Russia to 1914
scription in defense of the fatherland. Fifteen years of ser- rise of a professional middle class and the formation
vice were specified, but only six were served in active duty. of an embryonic factory proletariat. Serfdom was dead for-
Russian peasants at a village meet-

ing. With the abolition of serfdom in
1861, village leaders gained consid-
erable power.
ever. Yet reforms had increased expectations for an equally Divine authority was an archaic idea to the growing numbers
dramatic political transformation that failed to materialize. In of those who spoke of democratic principles and rallied to
the end, the Will of the People movement succeeded in its banners that represented new concepts of liberty and equality.
mission. A terrorist bomb killed Alexander II, the Tsar- In the first half of the nineteenth century, men and women
Liberator, in St. Petersburg in 1881. had learned that those in power could be questioned. The good
of the people was the primary justification for government.
Power now flowed upward from the citizenry to their ap-
The Politics of Leadership pointed and elected representatives. The new power brokers
Modern politics emerged in Europe only after 1850. Until that were those who could control and direct the flow, not merely
time, traditional political categories had prevailed. When be carried along or swept away by it. The new political men
faced with revolutionary upheavals, regimes aimed for stabil- were realists in the same tradition as Machiavelli and reflected
ity and permanence. Only after 1850 did a new breed of polit- the new political culture of the nineteenth century.
ical leader appear who understood the world of politics and Political realists such as Cavour, Bismarck, and Louis
directed it to their own ends. Three statesmen typified the Napoleon understood the importance of public opinion.
new approach to the public world of power: Camillo di Public opinion had been a central fact of political life from the
Cavour, Otto von Bismarck, and Louis Napoleon. eighteenth century, but as revolutionary events in France
demonstrated, public opinion proved unreliable building ma-
The Demise of Royal Authority. In Old Regime Europe, terial for a stable government. The new political leaders ap-
power flowed downward from the monarch, who was perched preciated public opinion for what it wasan unreliable guide
atop a hierarchically organized social system often depicted as for policy making, often a dangerous beast that had to be con-
a pyramid. The source of royal power was both timeless and trolled and tamed. But above all, it was a tool for the shaping
historic. As Gods appointed agents, the sovereigns of Europe of consensus, the molding of support. The new political real-
reinforced their right to rule with the continuity of their dy- ists also understood the power of the press. Cavour achieved
nasties. Men of great political acumen ministered to their royal first prominence and then power by founding his own news-
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
masters and were legitimated by royal power. In the years be- paper, Il Risorgimento. Louis Napoleon ran Europes first
tween 1789 and 1850, that system was challenged as kings were modern political campaign, manipulating the printed word to
displacedsometimes restored to power, sometimes executed. shape his image and tailor his message to different audiences.
Bismarck used public opinion and fashioned an image of down. In the period between 1850 and 1870, a materialist sys-
German power that served his political ends. tem of values emerged as behaviors changed. That was as true
for the private world of the home as it was for the public
The Supremacy of the Nation-State. The new world of high politics.
political men also shared, to varying degrees, a disre- In any age, changes in material life find their way into liter-
gard for traditional morality in decision making. As ature, philosophy, science, and art. Changes in the environ-
Bismarck succinctly put it at the end of his long career ment affect the way people look at the world. In turn, intellec-
A Letter from in public life, Politics ruins the character. The new tuals can have a profound effect on values and behavior. Truly
Bismarck political men forged their own standards by which they great thinkers not only reflect their times, they also shape
judged the correctness of decisions and policies. them. The third quarter of the nineteenth century was espe-
The nation-state was the supreme justification for all ac- cially rich in both the creativity and critical stance that shaped
tions. Cavour, Bismarck, and Louis Napoleon saw struggle as modern consciousness. Amid the tumult of new ideas in the
the central fact of life. Nation-states were inherently competi- period after 1850, two titans stand out. Not artists, but scien-
tive, with conflicting objectives. Realpolitik meant that states- tistsone of biology, the other of societythey sought regu-
men had to think in terms of military capability, technological larity and predictability in the world they observed and mea-
dominance, and the acceptable use of force. Without a tradi- sured. The ideas of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx both
tional morality of right and wrong, the leaders recognized reflected and changed the world in which they lived. People
that there could be no arbiter outside the interests of the na- alive during the third quarter of the nineteenth century called
tion-state. From exile in England following his military defeat themselves modern. They were, indeed, modern, since in
and his abdication, Napoleon III placed the welfare of France their values and view of the world they were closer to their
above his failed ambitions. At the former emperors funeral, twentieth-century progeny than they were to their eighteenth-
his son led a cheer, not for the empire but for France. century grandparents.
Modern European statesmen did not, however, share a
common ideological outlook. Cavour leaned toward liberal
ideas, while Bismarck was unquestionably conservative and The Politics of Homemaking
Louis Napoleon held a blend of liberal and conservative views. At the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, the achievements
Yet the leaders willingly enacted similar policies and spon- of modern industry were proudly displayed for all the world
sored similar legislation, not from any shared political com- to see. Engineering marvels and mechanistic wonders dwarfed
mitment, but because of their desire to strengthen and pro- the thousands of visitors who came to the Crystal Palace to
mote their nations. In order to maintain power, they adapted view civilization at its most advanced. In the midst of the ma-
to circumstance; they did not insist on principle. As Bismarck chinery of the factory, household items took their place.
explained it, he always had more than one arrow in his quiver. Modern kitchens with coal-burning stoves were showcased,
The new political men were risk takers. They acted without and the artifacts of the ideal home were carefully displayed.
the safety net of tradition or political legitimacy. Bismarck saw Predictably, mechanical looms, symbols of the new age, were
himself on a tightrope, but one he felt prepared to walk. Just as exhibited; but inkstands, artificial flowers, thermostats, and
Jeremy Bentham, earlier in the century, had figured the relation- cooking utensils were also enshrined. Visitors did not find
ship between actions and outcomes in terms of profits and strange the juxtaposition of the public world of production
losses, the new statesmen were calculators; they weighed levels of with the private world of the home in an exhibition celebrat-
risk appropriate for the ends they sought to achieve. Realpolitik ing British superiority.
was less the invention of a particular statesman and more a The world of the home, not immune to changes in society
characteristic of the new age of gamesmanship in statecraft. and the economy, was invested with new power and meaning
in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. Home was glorified as the
locus of shelter and comfort where the harsh outside world
could be forgotten. In 1870, an article in a popular Victorian
CHANGING VALUES AND THE magazine explained that the home functioned as a haven:
Home is emphatically mans place of rest, where his wife is
FORCE OF NEW IDEAS his friend who knows his mind, where he may be himself
Like the political world, the material world was changing without fear of offending, and relax the strain that must be
rapidly after 1850. The world of ideas that explained the place kept out of doors: where he may feel himself safe, understood,
of women and men in the new universe was rapidly changing and at ease.
as well. The railroad journey became the metaphor for the Throughout Europe, the home served another function, as
new age. The locomotive hurtling forward signified the a symbol of status and achievement. Objects of a proper sort
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
strength, power, and progress of materialism. Yet the passen- indicated wealth, upward mobility, and taste. In the belief that
ger was strangely dislocated, the landscape between one point the more objects that could be displayed the better, the mid-
and another a blur seen through a carriage window. New dle-class home of the third quarter of the nineteenth century
points of reference had to be found; new roots had to be put was usually overdecorated. Drapes hung over doors and win-
Changing Values and the Force of New Ideas 705
dows, pictures and prints covered the walls, and overstuffed her readers, The functions of the mistress of the house resem-
furniture filled the rooms. All were intended to convey gentil- ble those of the general of an army or the manager of a great
ity and comfort. business concern. Home economics was invented during
this period. As the marketplace had its own rules and regula-
Womans Place. Industrialization had separated the work- tions that could be studied in the dismal science of econom-
place from the home. Protective legislation before midcentury ics, so too, women were told, the domestic sphere could bene-
attempted to ease women out of the work force. Middle-class fit from the application of rational principles of organization.
women were expected to assume primary responsibility for Women were targeted by popular literature about how to
the domestic goals of escape and status. Just as the workplace get a man and keep him. Manuals cautioned women not to be
was mans world, the private world of the home was womans too clever, since women with opinions were not popular with
domain. After 1850, magazines, handbooks, and guidebooks men. Mrs. Beetons advice centered on food as the way to a
that instructed women on how to fulfill their domestic duties mans heart. A wifes duty, she explained, was above all to pro-
proliferated. The most famous of the instruction manuals in vide her husband with a hot meal, prepared well and served
Britain was Mrs. Beetons Book of Household Management punctually. Meals became elaborate occasions of several
(1861). The title is instructive. The business concept of man- courses requiring hours of work. Womens magazines bom-
agement could now be applied to the home. Mrs. Beeton told barded a growing readership with menus and recipes for the
careful housewife. Status was communicated not by expensive
foods, but by extravagant preparation. Meal planning was an
art, women learned, one whose practice required and as-
The cover of the 1890 edition of Mrs. Beetons Everyday Cookery sumed the assistance of household servants. Before that time,
and Housekeeping Book. Preparing an elaborate table like that
shown in the cover illustration was one of womens principal do-
women had produced in the home products they could now
mestic duties, according to Mrs. Beeton. buy in the marketplace. Purchases of bread, beer, soap, and
candles saved housewives hours of labor every week. But with
rising expectations about the quality of life in the home,
women had more rather than less to do each day. Handbooks
prescribed rules on etiquette and proper manners. The rituals
of domestic life, from letter writing to afternoon visits and
serving tea, were minutely detailed for middle-class audi-
ences. The woman of the house was instructed in the care and
education of her children; in health, cleanliness, and nutri-
tion; and in the management of resources. Thrift, industry,
and orderliness, the virtues of the business world, had their
own particular meaning in the domestic sphere.
To the Victorian mind, gentility and morality were inextri-
cably interwoven. A woman who failed in her duty to main-
tain a clean and comfortable home threatened the safety of
her family. An 1867 English tract warned:
The man who goes home on a Saturday only to find his house in
disorder, with every article of furniture out of its place, the floor
unwashed or sloppy from uncompleted washing, his wife sloven-
ly, his children untidy, his dinner not yet ready, or spoilt in the
cooking, is much more likely to go on a spree than the man
who finds his house in order, the furniture glistening from the
recent polishing, the burnished steel fire-irons looking doubly
resplendent from the bright glow of the cheerful fire, his well-
cooked dinner laid on a snowy cloth, and his wife and children
tidy and cheerful.
Working-Class Wives and Mothers. The ideal was

very far from the experiences of most families throughout
Europe after the middle of the century. The science of
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
homemaking presupposed a cushion of affluence out of reach

to the men, women, and children who made up the vast ma-
jority of the population. Working-class wives and mothers of-
ten had to earn wages if their families were to survive. One
MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE

Mrs. Beetons Book of Household Management was first published in 1861 and in less than a year sold 60,000 copies.
Isabella Beeton was 23 years old when the book first appeared and she died at the age of 28 before she saw its vast success
as one of the most published and reissued guidebooks of all time. The book is filled with practical advice on a wide vari-
ety of subjects ranging from wet-nursing to care of a sick child, etiquette, fashion, and cooking. Mrs. Beeton also pro-
vided a strong rationale for the importance of the domestic sphere in the modern world. The sections below are from
Chapter 1: The Mistress.
Early rising is one of the most essential qualities which

Focus Questions enter into good Household Management, as it is not only
What is Mrs. Beetons purpose in using military and busi- the parent of health, but of innumerable other advantages.
ness comparisons to describe the housewifes role? What is Indeed, when a mistress is an early riser, it is almost certain
Mrs. Beetons view of servants and of the mistresss respon- that her house will be orderly and well-managed. On the
sibility as their manager? Why is an orderly household so contrary, if she remain in bed till a late hour, then the do-
important to the author? mestics, who, as we have before observed, invariably par-
take somewhat of their mistresss character, will surely be-
As with the commander of an army, or the leader of any en- come sluggards. To self-indulgence all are more or less
terprise, so it is with the mistress of a house. Her spirit will disposed, and it is not to be expected that servants are freer
be seen through the whole establishment; and just in pro- from fault than the heads of houses. The great Lord
portion as she performs her duties intelligently and thor- Chatham thus gave his advice in reference to this subject
oughly, so will her domestics follow her path. Of all those I would have inscribed on the curtains of your bed, and
acquirements, which more particularly belong to the femi- the walls of your chamber, If you do not rise early, you can
nine character, there are none which take a higher rank, in make progress in nothing.
our estimation, than such as enter into a knowledge of
household duties, for on these are perpetually dependent
the happiness, comfort, and well-being of a family. . . . From Mrs. Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management (1861).
Englishwoman, Lucy Luck (18481922), began her working Troubles at Home. The haven of the home was not insu-
career in a silk mill at the age of eight. By law allowed to work lated from the perils of the outside world. Nor was every
only half a day, the child Lucy returned to her foster home at home a happy one. Venereal diseases rose dramatically in
the end of her shift to labor late into the night plaiting straw Western nations, belying the image of the devoted couple. By
for baskets. In her reminiscences, she looked back over her the end of the nineteenth century, 14 to 17 percent of all
life: I have been at work for forty-seven years, and have never deaths in France were attributable to sexually transmitted dis-
missed one season, although I have a large family of seven eases. The diseases were blind to class distinctions.
surviving children. Lucy, who married at the age of 18, Illegitimacy rates rose in the first half of the nineteenth cen-
learned that on her own she could not survive without a tury and remained high after 1850 among the working classes,
mans income or without resorting to the bad life of crime defying middle-class standards of propriety. Illegitimate births
and prostitution. In the marriage, the couple could not sur- were highest in urban areas, where household life assumed its
vive without Lucys wages. own distinctive pattern among working-class families, with
Like Lucy Luck, many women held jobs outside the home couples often choosing free union instead of legal marriage.
or did piecework to supplement meager family incomes. In Because virtue was defined in terms of womans roles as
1866, women constituted a significant percentage of the wife and mother, working women were regarded as immoral.
French labor force, including 45 percent of all textile workers. Social evils were, according to that reasoning, easily attributed
At the height of the rhetoric about the virtues of domesticity, to the unnatural phenomenon of women leaving the home
as many as two married English women in five worked in the to work in a mans world. Women continued to work and, in
mills in industrial areas such as Lancashire. Working women some cases, to organize to demand their rights. Women like
often chose the sweated labor that they could perform in Lucy Luck did not and could not accept the prescription that
their home because it allowed them to care for their children good mothers should not work, since their wages fed their
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
while being paid by the piece. Home workers labored in the children. The politics of homemaking defined women as
needle trades, shoemaking, and furniture making in their mothers and hence legitimated the poor treatment and poor
cramped living quarters under miserable conditions; and they pay of women as workers. Yet the labor of women outside as
worked for a third or less of what men earned. well as inside the home remained the norm.
Nor did all middle-class women accept approved social cal figures of his day. He may have been painting a landscape,
roles. Increasing numbers of middle-class women in western but contemporary political life crowded in; a starving Irish
Europe protested their circumscribed sphere. Critics argued peasant and her child crouch beneath his easel. Of his unre-
that designating the home as womans proper domain stifled lenting canvases, none more fittingly portrays the harsh real-
individual development. Earlier in the century, Jane Austen, ism of bourgeois life than the funeral ceremony depicted in
one of Britains greatest novelists, had to keep a piece of Burial at Ornans (18491850) or better depicts the brutality
muslin work on her writing table in the family drawing room of workers lives than The Stone Breakers (1849) (see below).
to cover her papers lest visitors detect evidence of literary ac- Other artists shared Courbets desire to reject the conven-
tivity. In the next generation, Florence Nightingale refused to tions prevailing in the art world in favor of portraying reality
accept the embroidery and knitting to which she was rele- in its natural and social dimensions. Jean-Francois Millets
gated at home. That period in Western society witnessed both paintings of peasants and workers (see p. 653) sought for a
the creation of the cult of domesticity and the stirrings of truth deeper than a surface beauty. Images of ordinary people,
feminism among middle-class women, whose demand for the working classes, and the poor populated realist art. Realist
equal treatment for women was to become more important artists often strove to make a social commentary such as that
after 1870. Patterns of behavior changed within the family, of Honor Daumiers Washerwoman, which shows a woman
and they were not fixed immutably in social practice. of the lower classes, clearly weary, climbing up a flight of stairs
Womans place and womans role proved to be much-disputed with a small child in tow. Daumier captures scenes from the
questions in the new politics of homemaking. daily life of the poor that would not have been considered a fit
subject for art a generation before.
Realism in the Arts Realist Novels. After midcentury, idealization in romantic

Realism in the arts and literature was a rejection of romantic literature yielded to novels depicting the objective and unfor-
idealism and subjectivity. The realist response to the disillu- giving social world. Through serialization in journals and
sionment with the political failures of the post-1848 era char- newspapers, fiction reached out to mass audiences, who ob-
acterized a wide array of artistic and literary endeavors. tained their facts about modern life through stories that of-
Realists depicted the challenges of urban and industrial ten cynically portrayed the monotony and boredom of daily
growth by confronting the alienation of modern life. existence. In Hard Times (1854), set in the imaginary city of
Coketown, Charles Dickens (18121870) created an allegory
The Social World of the Artist. The term realism was that exposed the sterility and soullessness of industrial society
first used in 1850 to describe the paintings of Gustave through fact, fact, fact everywhere in the material aspect of
Courbet (18191877). In The Artists Studio (1855), Courbet the town; fact, fact, fact everywhere in the immaterial.
portrayed himself surrounded by the intellectuals and politi-
Gustave Courbet
(18191877), The
Stone Breakers
(1849). Courbet real-
istically portrays me-
nial labor with the
two laborers faces
obscured.
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
Gustave Flaubert (18211880), the great French realist

novelist, critiqued the Western intellectual tradition in his un-
finished Dictionary of Accepted Ideas (1881). In the novel
Bouvard et Pcuchet (1881), Flaubert satirized modern mans
applications of Enlightenment ideas about the environment
and progress by showing that they were foolish and often at
odds with common sense. The main characters of the novel
know everything there is to know about theories and applied
sciences, but they know nothing about life. His best-known
work, Madame Bovary (1856), recounts the story of a young
country doctors wife whose desire to escape from the bore-
dom of her provincial existence leads her into adultery and
eventually results in her destruction. Flaubert was put on trial
for obscenity and violating public morality with his tale of the
unrepentant Emma Bovary. The beautifully crafted novel is
marked by an ironic detachment from the hypocrisy of bour-
geois life. Mary Ann Evans (18191880), writing under the
pseudonym George Eliot, was also concerned with moral
choices and responsibilities in her novels, including
Middlemarch (18711872), a tale of idealism disappointed by
the petty realities of provincial English life.
The problem of morality in the realist novel is nowhere
more apparent than in the works of the Russian writer Fyodor
Dostoyevsky (18211881). Dostoyevskys protagonists wrestle
with a universe where God no longer exists and where they
must shape their own morality. The impoverished student
Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment (1866) justifies his
brutal murder of an old woman that occurs in the opening
pages of the novel. Realist art and literature addressed an edu-
cated elite public but did not flinch before the unrelenting
poverty and harshness of contemporary life. The morality of
the realist vision lay not in condemning the evils of modern Calotype of the Adamson family, ca. 1844, by pioneer photogra-
life and seeking their political solutions, as an earlier genera- phers Robert Adamson (shown at far right) and David Octavius
tion of romantics did, but in depicting social evils for what Hill of Scotland. The new technology of photography enabled mid-
they were, failures of a smug and progressive middle class. dle-class families to have their portraits taken, a luxury once only
available to those wealthy enough to commission artists.
The New World of Photography. It is perhaps difficult
for us to imagine a world before the accurate visual images
that modern photography and the media revolution of the The fascination with photography in the nineteenth cen-
twentieth century made an integral part of our daily lives. Yet tury can be observed in its use for portraits by growing num-
it was not until 1839 that Western men and women saw the bers of ordinary people, just as in an earlier time the wealthy
first modern photographs. and powerful sat for oil portraits. With the achievement of
Nineteenth-century photography was the result of wed- greater portability and precision, the camera, still a cumber-
ding art and science. Although various techniques that made some object, was used for country landscapes, urban land-
it possible to capture images and landscapes on paper existed marks, and recording the horrors and glory of battle. Within a
in the early decades of the nineteenth century, Louis generation, cameras altered the way people understood the
Daguerre (17891851) can be credited as a pioneer in the world around them and how they recorded human life. An in-
photographic process with the invention of the daguerreo- creasing emphasis on the real world, reflected in literature, art,
type in 1839. Daguerre was both a French scene painter and and discoveries in science was fueled by the altered worldview
a physicist, and he brought both his sensibilities and scien- and the new consciousness that photography made possible.
tific training to the process of capturing images on silver-
coated copper plates treated with iodine vapor. The images
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
were often clouded and not able to be reproduced, as from a Charles Darwin and the New Science
negative. Successive discoveries of new techniques allowed Science had a special appeal for a generation of Europeans
for the creation and reproduction of lasting images in still disillusioned with the political failures of idealism in the revo-
photography. lutions of 1848. It was not an age of great scientific discovery,
ganic evolution. Darwin did not use the word evolution in the
original edition, but a positivist belief in an evolutionary
process permeated the 1859 text.
Evolutionary theory was not new, nor was materialism a
new concept in organic biology. In the 1850s, others were
coming forward with similar ideas about natural selection,
including most notably A. R. Wallace (18231913), who
stressed geographic factors in biological evolution. Darwins
work was a product of discoveries in a variety of fieldsphi-
losophy, history, and science. He derived his idea of struggle
from Malthuss Essay on Population and borrowed across dis-
ciplines to construct a theory of the preservation of favored
races in the struggle for life (part of the books subtitle).
The publication of On the Origin of Species made Darwin
immediately famous. Scientific theory was the stuff of front-
page headlines. Like Samuel Smiles, a businessman who
published the best-seller Self-Help in 1860, Darwin spoke of
struggle and discipline, though in nature, not in the market-
place. In the world of biology, Darwins ideas embodied a
new realist belief in progress based on struggle. Force ex-
plained the past and would guarantee the future as the fittest
survived. Those were ideas that a general public applied to a
whole range of human endeavors and to theories of social
organization.
Karl Marx and the Science of Society

Charles Darwin as a young man. Darwin was only 22 years old in Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic
1831 when he signed on for a five-year cruise as the official natu- nature, Marx discovered the law of development of human
ralist aboard the Beagle. By this age he had already tried and re- history. So spoke Friedrich Engels (18201895), longtime
jected careers in medicine and the ministry. friend of and collaborator with Karl Marx (18181883), over
Marxs grave. Marx would have been pleased with Engelss eu-
logy: he called himself the Darwin of sociology. Marx foot-
noted as corroborating evidence Darwins epoch-making
but rather one of synthesis of previous findings and their work on the origin of species in his own masterwork, Das
technological applications. Science was, above all, to be useful Kapital, the first volume of which appeared in 1867. As the
in promoting material progress. theorist of the socialism that he called scientific, Marx
Charles Darwin (18091882), the preeminent scientist of viewed himself as an evolutionist who demonstrated that his-
the age, was a great synthesizer. Darwin began his scientific ca- tory is the dialectical struggle of classes.
reer as a naturalist with a background in geology. As a young The son of a Prussian lawyer who had converted from
man, he sailed around the world on the Beagle Judaism to Christianity, Marx had rejected the study of the law
(18311836). He collected specimens and fossils as the and belief in a deity. In exile because of his political writings,
ships naturalist, with his greatest finds in South Marx was the most brilliant of the German young Hegelians,
America, especially the Galpagos Islands. He spent the intellectuals heavily influenced by the ideas of Georg Friedrich
On Darwin next 20 years of his life taking notes of his observations Hegel (17701831), which held sway over the German intellec-
of the natural world. In chronically poor health, Darwin tual world of the 1830s and 1840s. By the mid-1840s, Marx was
produced 500 pages of what he called one long argument. On in rebellion against Hegels idealism and was developing his
the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) was a own materially grounded view of society.
book that changed the world. The philosophy that evolved in the years of collaboration
Darwins argument was a simple one: life forms originated with Engels was built on a materialist view of society. Human
in and perpetuated themselves through struggle. The outcome beings were defined not by their souls but by their labor.
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
of the struggle was determined by natural selection, or what Labor was a struggle to transform nature by producing com-
came to be known as survival of the fittest. Better-adapted in- modities useful for survival. Their ability to transform nature
dividuals survived, while others died out. Competition between by work differentiated men and women from animals.
species and within species produced a dynamic model of or- Building on that fundamental concept of labor, Marx and
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, 1859

For the 20 years prior to the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin gathered data in support of his
theory of evolution. He was not alone in advancing a theory of natural selection, but he was unique in basing his conclu-
sions on carefully compiled data. On the Origin of Species was based on his scientific observations resulting from a five-
year cruise aboard the Beagle, which took him to the Galpagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador.
sterility is a special endowment and sign of creation. The

Focus Questions belief that species were immutable productions was almost
How did Charles Darwin construct his case and deploy his unavoidable as long as the history of the world was
thesis for the evolution of the human species without using thought to be of short duration; and now that we have ac-
the word evolution? What words did he use? What did he quired some idea of the lapse of time, we are too apt to as-
mean by the term species, and how did he see species as sume, without proof, that the geological record is so per-
interrelated? fect that it would have afforded us plain evidence of the
mutation of species, if they had undergone mutation.
I have now recapitulated the chief facts and considerations But the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to ad-
which have thoroughly convinced me that species have mit that one species have given birth to other and distinct
changed, and are still slowly changing by the preservation species, is that we are always slow in admitting any great
and accumulation of successive slight favorable variations. change of which we do not see the intermediate steps. The
Why, it may be asked, have all the most eminent living nat- difficulty is the same as that felt by so many geologists,
uralists and geologists rejected this view of the mutability when Lyell [Sir Charles Lyell (17971875), English geolo-
of species? It cannot be asserted that organic beings in a gist] first insisted that long lines of inland cliffs had been
state of nature are subject to no variation; it cannot be formed, and great valleys excavated, by the slow action of
proved that the amount of variation in the course of long the coast-waves. The mind cannot possibly grasp the full
ages is a limited quantity; no clear distinction has been, or meaning of the term of a hundred million years; it cannot
can be, drawn between species and well-marked varieties. add up and perceive the full effects of many slight varia-
It cannot be maintained that species when intercrossed are tions, accumulated during an almost infinite number of
invariably sterile, and varieties invariably fertile; and that generations.
Engels saw society as divided into two camps: those who own denies workers the profit of their work by refusing to pay
property and those who do not. Nineteenth-century capitalist them a decent wage. Instead, the employer pockets the profits.
society was divided into two classes: the bourgeoisie, those Workers are separated, or alienated, from the product of their
who owned the means of production as their private prop- labor. But more profoundly, Marx believed that in a capitalist
erty, and the proletariat, the propertyless working class. system all workers are alienated from the creation that makes
them human; they are alienated from their labor.
The Class Struggle. This materialist perspective on soci- Marx predicted that capitalism would produce more and
ety was the engine driving Marxs theory of history. For Marx, more goods but would continue to pay workers the lowest
every social system based on a division into classes carries wages possible. By driving out smaller producers, the bour-
within it the seeds of its own destruction. Marx and Engels geoisie would increase the size of the proletariat. Yet Marx was
used a biological metaphor to explain the destruction: the optimistic. As workers were slowly pauperized, they would be-
growth of a plant from a seed is a dialectical process in which come conscious of their exploitation and would revolt.
the germ is destroyed by its opposite, the plant. The mature
plant produces seed while continuing its form. For Marx and Marxs Legacy. The force of Karl Marxs ideas mobilized
Engels, the different stages of history are determined by dif- thousands of contemporaries aware of the injustices of capi-
ferent forms of the ownership of production. In a feudal- talism. Few thinkers in the history of the West have left a more
agrarian society, the aristocracy controlled and exploited the lasting legacy than Marx. The legacy has survived the fact that
unfree labor of serfs. In a world of commerce and manufac- much of Marxs analysis rested on incorrect predictions about
turing, the capitalist bourgeoisie are the new aristocracy ex- the increasing misery of workers and the inflexibility of the
ploiting free labor for wages. capitalist system. Marx was a synthesizer who combined eco-
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
Marx was more than an observer: he was a critic of capital- nomics, philosophy, politics, and history in a wide-ranging
ism. His labor theory of value was the wedge he drove into the critique of industrial society.
self-congratulatory rhetoric of the capitalist age. Labor is the Marxism spread across Europe as workers responded to its
source of all value, he argued, and yet the bourgeois employer message. Marx did not cause the increase in the organization
Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views sometimes tend to fill up very wide intervals between ex-
given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no isting orders. Organs in a rudimentary condition plainly
means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose show that an early progenitor had the organ in a fully de-
minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, dur- veloped state; and this in some instances necessarily im-
ing a long course of years, from a point of view directly oppo- plies an enormous amount of modification in the descen-
site to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such ex- dants. Throughout whole classes various structures are
pressions as the plan of creation,unity of design, etc., and formed on the same pattern, and at an embryonic age the
to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a species closely resemble each other. Therefore I cannot
fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more doubt that the theory of descent with modification
weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of embraces all the members of the same class. I believe that
a certain number of facts will certainly reject my theory. animals have descended from at most only four or five
A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number.
mind, and who have already begun to doubt on the im- Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the
mutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but belief that all animals and plants have descended from some
I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide.
naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the ques- Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in the
tion with impartiality. Whoever is led to believe that species chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular
are mutable will do good service by conscientiously ex- structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. We see
pressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of preju- this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison
dice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed. . . . often similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison
It may be asked how far I extend the doctrine of the secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous growths on the
modification of species. The question is difficult to answer, wild rose or oak-tree. Therefore I should infer from analogy
because the more distinct the forms are which we may that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on
consider, by so much the arguments fall away in force. But this earth have descended from some one primordial form,
some arguments of the greatest weight extend very far. All into which life was first breathed.
the members of whole classes can be connected together by
chains of affinities, and all can be classified on the same From Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London, 1859), pp.
principle, in groups subordinate to groups. Fossil remains 480490.
of workers that took place in the 1860s, but his theories did first. The regimes liberal critics in Paris seized the initiative to
give shape and focus to a growing critique of labor relations in proclaim France a republic. If a corrupt and decadent empire
the second half of the nineteenth century. Political parties could not save the nation, then Frances Third Republic could.
throughout Europe coalesced around Marxist beliefs and pro-
grams. Marxists were beginning to be heard in associations of The Siege of Paris. In mid-September 1870, two German
workers, and in 1864 they helped found the International armies surrounded Paris and began a siege that lasted for
Working Mens Association in London, an organization of more than four months. Only carrier pigeons and balloon-
French, German, and Italian workers dedicated to the end of transported passengers linked Paris with the rest of France. In
all class rule. The promise of a common association of work- the beginning, Parisian heroism, unchallenged by battle,
ers transcending national boundaries became a compelling seemed festive and unreal. Bismarcks troops were intent on
idea to those who envisioned the end of capitalism. The im- bringing the city to its knees not by fighting but by cutting off
portance of the international exchange of ideas and informa- its vital supply lines. By November, food and fuel were dwin-
tion cannot be underestimated as a means of promoting labor dling and Parisians were facing starvation. Undaunted, they
organization in western Europe. In 1871, Marx and his follow- began to eat dogs, cats, and rats. By December, famine threat-
ers turned to Paris for proof that the revolution was at hand. ened to become a reality. Most people had no vegetables and
no meat. Rationing was ineffective, and a black market pre-
vailed in which the wealthy could buy whatever was available.
A New Revolution? Horses disappeared from the streets and the zoo was emptied
Soundly defeated on 2 September 1870, Napoleon III and his as antelope, camel, donkey, mule, and elephant became desir-
fighting force of 100,000 men became Prussias prisoners of able table fare. The Bois de Boulogne, the citys largest park,
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
war. With the emperors defeat, the Second Empire collapsed. was leveled for timber to build barricades and for fuel. But the
But even with the capture of Napoleon III, the French capital wood was too green and would not burn. The bitter cold of
city of Paris refused to capitulate. The dedication of Parisians one of the centurys most severe winters heightened the hor-
to the ongoing war with the Prussians was evident from the ror. Yet the population was committed to fighting on. Men
rest of France. Through four months as a besieged city, they

had sacrificed, suffered, and died. Parisians believed that they
R. were defenders of the true republic, the true patriots. Among
ine
Se
Parisians, disparities of wealth were more obvious than ever
before. Some wealthy citizens had abandoned the city during
MONTMARTRE
the siege. The wealthy who did stay ate and kept warm. Poor
BELLEVILLE
women who stood in food lines from before dawn every day
Right Bank
Tuileries
to provision their families knew that there was foodbut not
Bois de Pre
Boulogne Palais Royal Lachaise for them.
Cemetery
Htel de Ville The Paris Commune. The war was over, but Paris was not
Left Bank
Palais de Justice at peace. The new national government, safely installed out-
MONTPARNASSE side Paris at Versailles, attempted to reestablish normal life.
The volatility of the city motivated the governments attempt
Point
du Jour in March 1871 to disarm the Parisian citizenry by using army
Se
ine
troops. In the hilly neighborhood of northern Paris, men,
R.
women, and children poured into the streets to protect their
General route of the Major areas

Army of Versailles of fighting
Major Communard Major buildings burned
barricades by Communards
0 1 2 3 Miles
CHRONOLOGY
0 1 2 3 Kilometers
State Building and Social Change
18531856 Crimean War
The Paris Commune. French troops, under the direction of the 1859 Austria declares war on Kingdom of
French government sitting in Versailles, penetrated the fortifica- Sardinia; France joins forces with
tions ringing the city of Paris, and within one Bloody Week, Italians
crushed the Parisian Communards.
1860 Piedmont-Sardinia annexes duchies
in central Italy; France gains Nice and
and women became part of the citys citizen militia, the Savoy
National Guard, and trained for combat against the Germans. 3 March 1861 Emancipation of Russian serfs
Siege fever swept the city. In spite of dire conditions, there
were moments of euphoria. Collective delusions, perhaps in- 14 March 1861 Kingdom of Italy proclaimed with
tensified by empty stomachs, convinced Parisians that they Victor Emmanuel II as king
were invincible against the enemy. Citizens joined clubs to 18611865 American Civil War
discuss politics and preparedness, and probably to keep
warm. Patents on inventions to defeat the Germans prolifer- 1863 Maximilian crowned emperor of
ated. Most of them were useless and silly, like the musical ma- Mexico
chine gun that was intended to lure its victims within firing 1863 Prussians and Austrians at war with
range. The enemy at their gates absorbed the total attention of Denmark
the urban population. There was no life other than the war.
1866 Seven Weeks War between Austria
Apparently with the goal of terrorizing the population, the
and Prussia; Italy acquires Venetia
Germans began a steady bombardment of the city at the be-
ginning of January 1871. The shells fell for three weeks, but 1867 Emperor Maximilian executed
Parisian resistance prevailed. However, the rest of France
July 1870 Franco-Prussian War begins
wanted an end to the war. The Germans agreed to an armistice
at the end of January 1871 in order that French national elec- 2 September 1870 French Second Empire capitulates
tions could be held to elect representatives to the new govern- with Prussian victory at Sedan
ment. In the elections, French citizens outside Paris repudiated
20 September 1870 Italy annexes Rome
the war and returned an overwhelmingly conservative major-
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
ity to seek peace. 18 January 1871 German Empire proclaimed

Thus the siege came to an end. Yet it left deep wounds that MarchMay 1871 Paris Commune
still festered. Parisians believed they had been betrayed by the
Discovering Western Civilization Online 713
cannons and to defend their right to bear arms. In the fighting State building in Western societies went hand in hand with
that followed, the Versailles troops were driven from the city. growth in the social responsibilities of government. The na-
Paris was in a state of siege once again. tional powers that would dominate world politics and econ-
The spontaneity of the March uprising was soon succeeded omy in the twentieth century all underwent modernizing
by organization. Citizens rallied to the idea of the citys self- transitions in the 1860s. The powers included the United
government and established the Paris Commune, as other States, France, Great Britain, and Germany. The Austrian
French cities followed the capitals lead. Karl Marx hailed the Empire, too, undertook programs to modernize its govern-
event as the beginning of the revolution that would overthrow ment and economy, and the Russian Empire established social
the capitalist system and saw in it the beginning of the dicta- reforms of unparalleled dimensions. New nations came into
torship of the proletariat. But what occurred between March existence in this period through the limited use of armed
and May 1871 was not a proletarian revolution. Rather, it was force. With the establishment of the German Empire, Otto
a continuation of the state of siege that had held Paris von Bismarck, the most realistic of politicians, was intent on
through the fall and early winter months. Parisians were still preserving the peace in Europe by balancing the power of the
at war. It was not war against a foreign enemy, nor was it a great European states. Europeans prided themselves on being
class war. It was a civil war against the rest of France. both modern and realistic in the third quarter of the nine-
The social experiment of self-defense in the Commune teenth century. Peace was possible if it was armed and vigi-
lasted for 72 days. Armed women formed their own fighting lant. Reform, not revolution, many were sure, was the key to
units, the city council regulated labor relations, and neighbor- the future progress of European societies.
hoods ruled themselves. In May 1871, government troops
reentered the city and brutally crushed the Paris Commune. In
one Bloody Week, 25,000 Parisians were massacred and QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW
40,000 others were arrested and tried. Of the 10,000 rebels 1. How did the process of creating nation-states in Germany
convicted, 5000 were sent to a penal colony in the southwest- and Italy differ?
ern Pacific Ocean. Such reprisals inflamed radicals and workers 2. What social and political circumstances explain the differ-
all over Europe. The myth of the Commune became a rallying ent reforms undertaken in France, Britain, and Russia?
cry for revolutionary movements throughout the world and 3. How did industrialization change womens lives, and how
inspired the future leaders of the Russian revolutionary state. did such changes depend on a womans social class?
The Commune was important at the time, but not as a rev- 4. What were the connections between Darwins ideas about
olution. It offered two lessons to men and women at the end of nature and Marxs ideas about society?
the third quarter of the nineteenth century. First, it demon- 5. What forces inspired the creation of the Paris Commune,
strated the power of patriotism. Competing images of the na- and what did its fate suggest about the possibility of revo-
tion were at stake, one Parisian and the other French, but no lution in the late nineteenth century?
one could deny the power of national identity to inspire a
whole city to suffer and to sacrifice. Second, the Commune
made clear the power of the state. No revolutionary movement KEY TERMS
could succeed without controlling the massive forces of repres-
dual monarchy, p. 694 realism, p. 707
sion at the states command. The Commune had tried to re-
capture a local, federal view of the world but failed to take suf- Eastern question, p. 686 Realpolitik, p. 693
ficient account of the power of the state that it opposed. In Haussmannization, p. 696 Reichstag, p. 694
writing of the episode two decades later, Friedrich Engels won- natural selection, p. 709 Risorgimento, p. 690
dered if revolution would ever again be possible in the West.
Paris Commune, p. 713 zemstvos, p. 702
Peace of Paris of 1856, p. 686
CONCLUSION Proclamation of the German Empire, p. 694
Western societies had crossed the threshold into the modern

age in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Strong DISCOVERING WESTERN CIVILIZATION
states from Great Britain to Russia were committed to creat-
ing and preserving the conditions of industrial expansion.
ONLINE
The machine age, railroads, and metallurgy were spreading You can obtain more information about state building and
industrial development much more widely through western social change in Europe between 1850 and 1871 at the
and central Europe than had been possible before 1850. Websites listed below. See also the Companion Website that
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
Italians and Prussians, in attempting to join the ranks of na- accompanies this text, www.ablongman.com/kishlansky,
tion-states, realized that the road to a strong nation could only which contains an online study guide and additional
be achieved with industrial development and social reforms. resources.
Building Nations: The Politics of Unification The Darwin Page

web.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhatch/pages/
The Crimean War (18531856) 02-TeachingResources/readingwriting/darwin/
www.hillsdale.edu/oldacademics/history/war/19Crim.htm 05-DARWIN-PAGE.html
Electronic texts of officers and soldiers accounts of the bat- Web page of Professor Robert Hatch of the University of
tles of the Crimean War. Florida, which provides links to bibliographies, texts, and
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: 19th Century Italy other resources on Charles Darwin.
www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook23.html Paris Commune Archive
This site focuses on documents relating to the unification of dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/pariscommune/
Italy and the Risorgimento. Pariscommunearchive.html
Modern History Sourcebook: Documents of German A Pitzer College political studies site providing summaries of
Unification, 18481871 the major players and events of the Paris Commune as well as
www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/germanunification.html an extensive bibliography.
This site provides translations of major primary documents Internet Womens History Sourcebook
concerning the unification of Germany. www.fordham.edu/halsall/women/womensbook.html
This section of the Modern History Sourcebook focuses on
Reforming European Society womens history from antiquity to the present. The subchap-
The Victorian Web ter on modern European womens history provides links to
www.victorianweb.org texts on the structure of working womens lives as well as
A comprehensive collection of links to Victorian England. texts on feminism and the suffrage movement.
Age of Liberalism: 18481914

campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/WestEurope/ SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
LiberalAge.html
A collection of links to chronologies for the Age of Building Nations: The Politics of Unification
Liberalism, 18481914.
David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of
Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Russian Germany, 17801918 (New York: Oxford University Press,
Revolution 1998). This book examines the emergence of Germany from
www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook39.html the late eighteenth century through the First World War in
This site, a repository for links to the Russian Revolution, pro- terms of politics, economics, and culture.
vides links to documents on nineteenth-century tsarist Russia.
John A. Davis, ed., Italy in the Nineteenth Century, 17961900
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). The essays of nine
Changing Values and the Force of New Ideas
specialists provide an historical analysis of Italian society,
Florence Nightingale politics, and culture.
www.kings.edu/womens_history/florence.html
Annotated bibliography of literature on Florence Peter H. Hoffenberg, An Empire on Display: English, Indian,
Nightingale. and Australian Exhibitions from the Crystal Palace to the
Great War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon The author examines over 30 colonial exhibitions from three
csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1852-18brum/ different continents.
The electronic text of Karl Marxs Eighteenth Brumaire of
Napoleon. Dieter Langewiesche, Liberalism in Germany (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2000). This study traces the roots
1851 Project: The Great Exhibition of German liberalism to the late eighteenth century and em-
www.nal.vam.ac.uk/projects/1851.html phasizes the role of individual German states, with a special
This site draws upon the collection of the National Library of chapter on the local influences on the formation of the na-
Art in London to chronicle the Great Exhibition of 1851. tion-state between 1815 and 1860.
ISBN 0-558-43641-2
Suggestions for Further Reading 715
Lucy Riall, The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society, and Press, 1998). Victoria is examined as a monarch, a symbol,
National Unification (New York: Routledge, 1999). Riall ex- and a wife and mother and as a key to British culture.
amines the historiography of Italian unification and presents
Alain Plessis, The Rise and Fall of the Second Empire,
the turbulent period of resurgence as a turning point in
18521871, tr. Jonathan Mandelbaum (Cambridge:
Italian history.
Cambridge University Press, 1985). Discusses the Second
Denis Mack Smith, Cavour (London: Weidenfeld and Empire as an important transitional period in French history,
Nicolson, 1985). Smith contrasts Cavour and his policies with when the conflict was between traditional and modern values
those of Garibaldi and Mazzini and considers the challenge of in political, economic, and social transformations.
regionalism to the unification process.
Changing Values and the Force of New Ideas
Reforming European Society Jenni Calder, The Victorian Home (London: B. T. Batsford,
Jane Burbank and David Ransel, eds., Imperial Russia: New 1977). A cultural and social history of Victorian domestic life
Histories for the Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University in which the author describes both bourgeois and working-
Press, 1998). A collection of essays using new methodologies class domestic environments.
for understanding Russian history in the eighteenth and
Katharine Anne Lerman, Bismarck (Longman, 2004). A new
nineteenth centuries.
introduction to the life of the man who unified Germany.
Judith Flanders, Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of
Bonnie G. Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises
Domestic Life in Victorian England (New York: W.W. Norton
of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ:
& Co., 2004). This examination of the daily lives of ordinary
Princeton University Press, 1981). Explores the impact of in-
people reconstructs the drudgery of Victorian domesticity
dustrialization on the lives of bourgeois women in northern
and the different mental world of that era.
France and demonstrates how the cult of domesticity
Catherine Hall, Keith McClelland, and Jane Rendall, Defining emerged in a particular community.
the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the British
Robert Tombs, The Paris Commune, 1871 (London:
Reform Act of 1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Longman, 1999). A synthetic overview of the events of the
2000). This co-authored study presents a cultural, social, and
Commune and their impact on the course of French and
gender history of the extension of the vote in 1867, accompa-
European history.
nied by strong bibliographic aids.
Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for
Sudhir Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen: The Second
Single Women, 18501920 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Empire and the Emergence of Modern French Democracy
Press, 1985). Chronicles the choices that Victorian women made
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). In showing
to live outside the norms of marriage and domesticity in various
the relationship between the local and the national, the au-
womens communities, including sisterhoods, nursing commu-
thor provides a reevaluation of the emergence of republican
nities, colleges, boarding schools, and settlement houses.
citizenship in the Second Empire.
Margaret Homans, Royal Representations: Queen Victoria and For a list of additional titles related to this chapters topics,
British Culture, 18371876 (Chicago: University of Chicago please see http://www.ablongman.com/kishlansky.
ISBN 0-558-43641-2

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STATE BUILDING AND

THE CRYSTAL PALACE EXHIBITION OF 1851

In 1853, the Russian government demanded that the

Reunification Nationalism and Force

Russia easily prevailed over its weaker neighbor to the south. In

a four-hour battle, a Russian squadron destroyed the Turkish

The Human Costs of the

British soldiers charged down a

Major battles guns on the heights on both sides

declared war in 1859 and was easily defeated by French forces

the rule of King Francis II (18591861) of Naples. Uprisings

The Proclamation of Kaiser Wilhelm I by Anton von Werner

Second Empire glittered like a fancy-dress ball, with men in

Edouard Manet, The Execution of the

William Gladstone rides in an om-

Gladstone and Disraeli. The lives and careers of two

standards. Probably the most important conservative legisla-

THE RUSSIAN EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, 1861

citizens. Announcements from the governor-general were

I couldnt stay at home. I had to wander about the

Russian peasants at a village meet-

Working-Class Wives and Mothers. The ideal was

homemaking presupposed a cushion of affluence out of reach

MISTRESS OF THE HOUSE

Early rising is one of the most essential qualities which

Realism in the Arts Realist Novels. After midcentury, idealization in romantic

Gustave Flaubert (18211880), the great French realist

Karl Marx and the Science of Society

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, 1859

sterility is a special endowment and sign of creation. The

rest of France. Through four months as a besieged city, they

General route of the Major areas

ity to seek peace. 18 January 1871 German Empire proclaimed

Western societies had crossed the threshold into the modern

Building Nations: The Politics of Unification The Darwin Page

Age of Liberalism: 18481914

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