The world around 1900

People and society

 Old world
• Diversity
• Isolation/separeteness of small communities
• Variety of technological/economic
development
• Variety of calendars (gregorian/western,
julian/orthodox/ Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim,
Chinese)
Industrialization per capita
 Population
• Total: 1 608 000
• Asia – 915 mln
• Europe and Asiatic Russia – 423 mln (most
densely populated area)
• Africa – 81 mln
• North America – 81 mln
• Latin America – 63 mln
• Australia, New Zealand - 6 mln
 Death in infancy (number of children who died
before the age of one out of every 1000 born
alive
• Sweden – 96
• Great Britain – 145
• France – 149
• Japan – 151
• USA – 162
• Spain – 195
• India – 232
• Russia – 260
• Chile - 265
 Life expectancy (average)
• Western Europe/USA – 50
• Russia – 30
• India - 23
 Urbanization (number of workers
making their living from farming)
• The world’s average: 7 out of every 10
• S-E Asia, Russia – 8 /10
• E Europe – 9/10
• W Europe – 5/10
• GB – 1/10
French peasant
 England
• 1801 – 17% living in cities
• 1891 – 72%
 The world
• 1900 – 15 %
 Cities over one million inhabitants
• Europe: London, Berlin, Vienna, Paris
• W Russia: Skt Petersburg, Moscow
• Asia,China: Beijing, Shanghaj
• America: New York, Chicago, Philadelphia
London 1870s
London tube under construction
(1860s.)
Westminster, 1890s
1909
Paris, Boulvard de Montmartre
(Pissarro)
 Economy (world’s manufactured
goods)
• USA – 36%
• Germany – 16%
• Great Britain – 14%
• Heavy industry, large factories
Krupp gunworks, Essen, Germany
 BASF chemical factories,
Ludwigshafen, Germany, 1881
Cotton mill Lancashire
 Main producers
• Coal (USA – UK – Germany)
• Steel (USA – Germany – UK)
• Railway (USA – Germany – UK)
Ford assembly line
 International market (transport)
• Steam locomotive
• Steamship
• Motor-cars
• Refrigeration
• City-transport (electric tram, underground)
• airplanes
Locomobile
Steam engine
Peugeot, 1891
Berliet, 1905
Ford (model T), 1910
First electric tram (Siemens, 1881)
Wright brothers, 1908
 Economic interdependencies
• Underdeveloped countries: food, raw
materials, minerals, cheap labor
• Developed countries: manufactured goods,
technologies, capital (investments, loans)
• World market/economy growing
• „gold standard” (proces, curriences linked to
gold) – benefiting the well-off countries
• London – the centre of the world’s financial
system
 People’s mobility - migrations
• Within the country: from village to city
• From country to country
• Overseas: from Europe to: Americas, Australia
• From China to: Malaya, Singapore, Hawaii,
USA (western coast), Australia
From Norway to US
Singer sewing machine
 Women
• The purpose of life: marriage, bear and rise
children
• Influences and activity restricted to home
 Change coming (the West)
• Industrialization, urbanization, modern state
growing: women employed outside home
(factory, office, school, medical service, shops)
• Artificial techniques of contraception
• Education offer
• Modern domestic appliances (gas cookers,
sewing machine)
• Feminist movement: struggle for legal equality
and the right to vote
Sewing training course
Women’s suffrage parade, New York,
1912
Emmeline Pankhurst, 1914
• Australia, New Zealand, Finland - universal
suffrage introduced before 1910 (voting right
to all adult persons)
 Communication
• Telephone
• Telegraph
• Cable-telegraph
• Wireless communication (radio)
Telegraph lines
Telegraph key
A. G. Bell
 Mass culture
• Mass media (press, early 20th c. radio,
cinema), advertisement (consumption growth
– large stores)
• Cheap books
• Sport activities (footbal league, olimpic
games)
• City entertainment (theater, cabaret, street
theater, revue, vaudeville)
Harrods, London
1895
Royal engineers, 1870s
 A promotional poster for the Sandow Trocadero
Vaudevilles (1894), showing dancers, clowns, trapeze
artists and costumed dogs, singers and costumed
actors
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Dancing at
Moulin-Rouge, 890
Moulin Rouge, 1900
 New (mass) society
• Unified, urban, strong middle-class, social
mobility, integrated
• Obligatory primary school
• Compulsary military service (universal
conscription)
The world around 1900

Politics
• Dominating – colonial empires
• Plus in Europe – Austria-Hungary – a power (?)
without colonies
 Colonialism – why?
• Food
• raw materials
• cheap labor
• space for settlement
• Investments
• selling market
• prestige/hegemony
• strategic security – trade routes
• „christian mission”, „civilization mission”
The Indian Empire (1910)
World empires and their colonies
(1914)
British empire 1910
French empire
French colonies (a post card)
Scramble for Africa
 Romanticized image of natives and
exotic locales (New Guine) - postcard
 New powers
• United States – western hemisphere
 Monroe Doctrine (1823)
• US policy of opposing European colonialism in
the Americas.
• all European efforts to take control of any
independent state in North or South America
would be viewed as unfriendly act toward the
United States.
• the U.S. would recognize and not interfere
with existing European colonies nor meddle in
the internal concerns of European countries.
• open door policy in China
• free market
• free navigation
 "Putting his foot down" Uncle Sam in 1899 demands an "open door" while
major powers plan to cut up China for themselves; Germany, Italy, England,
Austria, Russia & France are represented by Wilhelm II, Umberto I, John Bull,
Franz Joseph I (in rear) Uncle Sam, Nicholas II, and Émile Loubet.
• Japan – pacific area; Asian mainland (China,
Korea, Russia)
Chinese generals surrendering to the
Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War of
1894–1895
International conflicts around 1910
• Great Britain – Germany (hegemony over seas,
Africa, Middle East)
• France – Germany (hegemony in Europe,
Alsaçe-Lorrain lost in 1871, Africa)
• Russia – Austro-Hungary (Balkans)
Alsaçe-Lorrain
 Emotions
• Nationalism („we are better than others!”)
• Militarism („every conflict should be solved by
war!”)
A British cigarette-card, early 20thc.
 Political system: the way in which a
state is organized
• Who/what institution is ruling?
• How is it created?
• What power (competences) does in have?

• What are the relations between the rulers and

the people/individual (what liberties/rights do
the people have)?
Leading political systems in the world,
1906
• Parliamentary
democracy/system/representive democracy
• monarchy: Great Britain, Denmark, Norway,
Belgium, Netherlands, Italy
• republics: France, US – the presidential
system)
Characteristic – main features
 Parliamentary system
• a political system for choosing and replacing the
government through free and fair elections;
• the government (the executive branch) has the
direct or indirect support of the parliament
• this support is usually shown by a vote of
confidence
• responsible government – on parliamentary
demand, the government resigns.
 Democratic system
• citizens exercise power directly or elect representatives
from among themselves to form a governing body
(parliament)
• The separation of powers between the executive and
law making branches: balance
• the active participation of the people, as citizens, in
politics and civic life (political freedom)
• protection of the human rights of all citizens
• a rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply
equally to all citizens (legal; equality)
• civil society outside the government
 Human rights
• fundamental rights (inborn rights) "to which a
person is inherently (natural) entitled simply
because she or he is a human being„
• which are "inherent in all human beings"
regardless of their nation, location, language,
religion, ethnic origin or any other status.
• The right to life
• The right to be free: (freedom from unlawful
imprisonment, freedom from slavery, freedom for
movement)
• Freedom of thought, conscience and religion
• Freedom from torture
• The right to be equal before the law; to fair trial
• The right to property
 Civil liberties (personal freedoms)
• personal guarantees and freedoms that the
government cannot abridge, either by law or
by judicial interpretation, without due process
• freedom of conscience
• freedom of press
• freedom of religion
• freedom of expression
• freedom of assembly
• the right to security and liberty
• the right to privacy
• the right to equal treatment under the law
and due process, the right to a fair trial
• the right to own property
• the right to defend oneself
• and the right to bodily integrity
 Political freedom
• The right to assembly (create parties,
organizations, associations)
• The freedom of the speech (no censorship)
 Limited (constitutional) monarchy
• German Empire, Russia (from 1905), Austria-
Hungary, Japan Empire, Sweden, Spain
 Characteristic
• a monarch is the head of state
• must follow a constitution
• The monarch decides about the government
• The governemnt is responsible to the king (not
the parliament)
• The king has influence on the parliament
• Republican dictatorships (Latin America)
 Absolutist regime
• Russia until 1905
• China until 1912
• The entire power in the hands of the
king/emperor
 Ideologies (political)
• Explain how the state sholud work and look
like
• Explain how the society shold look like
• Present methods: the most appropriate ways
to achieve the ideal arrangement
• From the end of 19th century: mass ideologies
(appeal to the masses)
 Ideologies
• Collective: masses (society, class) more
important than individual; - mass-party
(large number of members, focus on
mobilizing the masses in political activity;
manipulation)
• Individualistic: individual person more
important than the group; politics in the
hands of elites
 Mass ideologies (collective):
Nationalism
• Core values: national integrity, identity,
national bond as most valuable for a human
• National state as most perfect form
• The expansion needed for survival (social
darwinism)
• The feeling of superiority; hostility toward
national minorities); antisemitism
 Social darwinism
• various ways of thinking and theories that
emerged in the second half of the 19th
century and tried to apply the evolutionary
concept of natural selection to human society
• There is a struggle for survival of human
societies: Survival of the fittest
Niederwald memorial
Niderwalddenkmal – a detail
The Britsh Empire (propaganda poster)
„Black hundreds”, Russia 1907
Pogrom, painting, late 19th c.
Antisemitic agitation in Paris, 1890s.
 Mass ideologies (collective):Socialism
• Core values: focus on working class interests, solidarity
of workers all over the world; social justice, social and
economic equality; pacifism; democracy – people’s
participation;
• main enemy – „the international capital” exploiting the
workers
• Critics of capitalistic economy system
• Critics of „bourgeosie democracy” as a system serving
the ruling class
• Critics of churches and religion
• Critics of nationalism and liberalism
The pyramide of capitalism
Two roads to socialism
 Revolutionary (marxism, after I WW:
communism)
• proletarian revolution
• radical rejection of capitalism (abandon
private property)
• idea of workers dictatorship as a transitional
period (Russian bolsheviks)
 Marxism
• As capitalism develops – the social injustice is
growing: bourgeosie becomes more rich, the
workers are more exploited
• The more developed a country is – the more
revolutionary moods
• Finally the world wide socialist revolution will
come, starting in the highly developed industrial
countries (f. ex. USA, GB or Germany)
• After the victory, the workers will build socialism
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!,
1889
 Reformist (social democracy):
• parliamentary reforms
• universal suffrage
• mass, legal party
• strong trade unions
• no violence
• respecting parliamentary democracy
• respecting parts of market economy (British
Labour Party, German SPD, Russian Miensheviks
Labour Party election poster
Non collective (individualistic)
ideologies
 Liberalism:
• freedom (personal, of consciousness, speech,
economic activity); some restriction of free
market economy – social protection of the
workers and poor; feminist; parliamentary
democracy.
 Conservatism:
• strong, monarchial state (king-emperor as
father of the land), leading position of social
elites; privileged position of the Church;
patriarchal model of family; traditional vision
of woman’s role
Three emperors
International situation
 Two Power Blocks
The Central Powers (Tripple
Entente (Tripple Entente) Alliance)
• military alliance of France • Alliance of German Empire
and Russia (1892, 1893) and Austria Hungary
• an alliance (Entente • Italy joining
Cordiale) of UK and France
(1904)
• an alliance of UK and Russia
(1907)
The Power Blocs