StudySpace: Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, 2 e.

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1. Progress, Upheaval, and Movement
1. Some benefited from changes in the years before 1914; others faced social and economic frustration
1. In Europe and the United States, left-wing radicals and middle-class reformers sought political and social change
2. In places colonized by Europe and the United States, resentment grew toward colonial rulers and indigenous collaborators
3. Revolutions in China, Mexico, and Russia toppled autocratic regimes
2. New industries drove economic growth and urbanization
1. Growing capitalism also led to rising inequalities
2. Industrialization changed how and where people worked
3. Widespread rural-to-urban migration
4. Cities gained magnificent new cultural institutions such as museums and libraries, which at least a minority of residents had the leisure time and disposable income to enjoy
5. Cities also housed millions in crowded, disease-ridden slums
1. Conflicts between the rich and the poor abounded, particularly when city administrations tried to improve or beautify urban blight
3. European and North American intellectuals worried about the world's future; they wrote about the downside of progress
1. The writings of intellectuals of the type labeled modernism
2. Modernist ideas circulated the globe including European and North American colonies
4. Peoples in Motion
1. Mass emigration took place globally
1. Europeans moved to America and Australia
2. Indians moved to other parts of South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean
3. Chinese moved to North and South America, New Zealand, Hawaii, and West Indies, and Southeast Asia
4. Many migrated within their own country
2. Varied reasons why people emigrated
1. Mine workers
2. Colonial officials and soldiers
3. Missionaries
4. Merchants and traders
3. Emigration was risky and could bring isolation in the new land
1. Male migrants outnumber females
2. Social and labor problems abounded as cities tried to accommodate the growing migrant population
4. Few restrictions anywhere until 1914
1. U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act, 1892
2. Most viewed immigrants as a positive force in the economy
5. Cities boomed and led to the idea of city planning
6. Urban life transformed women's lives
1. More jobs available
2. Increased literacy and cheaper reading materials
3. Ready-made clothes and goods allowed women more leisure time
2. Discontent with Imperialism
1. Although Europeans had quashed initial local resistance to their colonial rule, animosity to their rule in Asia and Africa continued after 1890. Indeed, Europeans found themselves suppressing unrest in their colonies with more force and bloodshed
2. Unrest in Africa
1. African resistance, whether organized or not, continued into the twentieth century
1. This resistance made thoughtful Europeans uneasy as to why Africans would resist the "benefits" of the European civilizing mission
2. The most devastating colonial war in Africa during this time was the South African (Boer) War (1899-1902), which pitted Britain against the Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch settlers living in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State in southern Africa
1. The war revolved around control of gold resources
2. Ultimately the British won, but not without enormous expenditure in men, matériel, and prestige
1. British tactics of confining civilians to concentration camps were publicized throughout the world
3. German genocidal treatment of the Herero and San peoples in German Southwest Africa between 1904 and 1906 also aroused public revulsion in the Western world
4. Equally troubling was the Maji-Maji revolt in German East Africa in 1905-1906
5. Westerners tried to rationalize these incidents
1. They argued that the Africans were fanatics
2. Other times they were critical of other imperial countries' colonial administrations whose brutality and incompetence had provoked this rebelliousness
3. For the most part they argued that rebellions were aberrations and seldom questioned the overall thrust of colonialism
3. The Boxer Uprising in China
1. Forces within and without unsettled China at the turn of the century
1. Overpopulation strained resources
2. Inertia constrained the Qing dynasty from responding to social and economic problems
1. The court was divided between conservatives and reformers
1. In 1898, conservatives seized control
2. After the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-1895, the Japanese and other Western powers pushed for "spheres of influence" in China
3. The United States proposed an "open door" policy that would keep all of China open to all traders but demanded that China adhere to Western political and economic conventions
2. Out of this unsettlement emerged the Boxer Uprising
1. Boxers were peasants and landholders who blamed Western Christian missionaries and their Chinese converts for the country's condition
1. The movement flourished in northern China, an area hit hard by natural disasters and harsh economic conditions
2. Women also participated in the movement as "Red Lanterns"
2. Boxers believed that they possessed super powers that protected them from earthly weapons
3. The Qing court threw its weight behind the uprising
4. In 1900, the Boxers harassed and sometimes killed Christians, destroyed railroad track and telegraph lines, and besieged foreign embassies in Beijing
5. A multinational foreign army crushed the Boxers and further undermined the Qing dynasty's capability of ruling China
3. Worldwide anxieties
1. Imperial rivalries come home
1. The creation of a European-centered world deepened rivalries within Europe and promoted instability
1. The unification of Italy and of Germany smashed the old balance of power
2. New alliances appeared pitting Britain, France, and Russia against Germany
3. An arms race ensued as conflict heightened
2. Financial, industrial and technological insecurities
1. Small-scale, laissez-faire capitalism had given way to an economic order dominated by huge firms
2. Instead of smooth progress, the economy of the West bounced between booms and busts
3. Financiers became important as borrowing and lending became instrumental in industrial growth
1. Banks in London were at the center of global finances
4. Journalists in the United States increasingly exposed the skullduggery that many of these financial and industrial giants committed to enrich or empower themselves
1. Reformers soon called for greater governmental regulation
2. Wealthy industrialists such as J. P. Morgan used their money to make banks solvent
3. In 1913, the United States created the Federal Reserve System to oversee the nation's money and bankers
5. National economic matters increasingly became international affairs
1. In 1907, a financial crisis in the United States provoked similar crises in Canada, Mexico, and Egypt
6. Industrialization spread to places such as Russia, but remained uneven
1. Southern Europe and the American South lagged behind northern regions
2. Most colonies lacked industrial enterprises except mines and railroads
7. Economic progress came at a cost
1. Trains and ships connected local communities to the wider world, but often destroyed local customs
2. Factories produced cheaper goods but polluted the countryside
3. "Scientific management" often left workers as nothing more than cogs in a machine
4. Cities also housed millions in crowded, disease-ridden slums
1. Conflicts between the rich and the poor abounded, particularly when city administrations tried to improve on or beautify urban blight
3. The "woman question"
1. Women in Western countries increasingly challenged the idea of separate spheres
1. At century's end, women were increasingly employed as teachers, secretaries, typists, department store clerks, and telephone operators and thus gained some social and economic independence
2. Women also gained greater access to education and many of them entered previously all-male professions
3. Other women became involved in public reform movements
4. Many women began to limit the amount of children they had
1. Contraceptives were illegal in most countries, but women found ways around the laws
2. The push for women's suffrage increased, but had very limited success
1. Middle-class women were not seeking gender equality, despite seeking a greater public role
2. Radicalized women, however, did challenge the established order
3. Westerners argued that colonialism benefited women
1. Colonial regimes did not support veiling, footbinding, widow-burning, etc.
2. In reality, colonialism often added to women's burdens
1. As male workers were drawn into the export economy, the responsibility for domestic production fell on women
2. In Africa, the growth of mining and large estate production meant that men were often gone for much of the year
3. European schools excluded women as did many European property-law practices
4. Class conflict in a new key
1. Although living conditions improved, growing inequality of incomes produced sharper class conflict
1. Most of this conflict remained peaceful and moderate
1. The popularity of the Labour Party in Britain and the Social Democratic Party in Germany epitomized this development
2. In conservative regimes with less openness, however, radicalism grew and often turned violent
1. Russia and Latin America witnessed the growth of radical movements
3. The United States did not see the emergence of a successful labor party or radical factions. Instead it saw workers attempt, often unsuccessfully, to form unions
2. A few upheavals succeeded in overturning the status quo from below
1. The temporary success of the 1905 Russian Revolution gave rise to a representative government that used workers' soviets, which were groups of delegates, to represent particular industries
2. The Mexican Revolution in 1910 saw peasants overthrow the Díaz regime and brought about a new regime by 1920 that respected democracy, the sovereignty of peasant communities, and land reform
1. Nearly 1 million Mexicans died in the conflict
2. The new regime used new national myths to rejuvenate the new republic based on the heroism of rural peoples, Mexican nationalism, and a celebration of the Aztec past
3. In other areas, conservative regimes agreed to piecemeal reforms to stay in power
1. Germany enacted social welfare measures in the 1880s
2. The United States experienced a burst of reforms in the early twentieth century that supporters labeled "Progressive"
1. These reforms attacked political and corporate corruption as well as urban vices
2. 1906 Meat Inspection Act
3. Europe saw similar patterns
5. Cultural modernism
1. Modernism appeared in the arts and sciences in the early twentieth century
1. Modernism explored the power of the irrational
2. Modernist movements trafficked in multiple directions internationally
3. Modernism was less elitist and more democratic
4. Modern artists abandoned harmonic and diatonic sound and representational art
5. Modernism replaced the certainties of the Enlightenment with the unsettledness of a new time
2. Popular culture comes of age
1. Popular culture changed in the late nineteenth century
1. New forms appeared such as dance halls, vaudeville, and sports
2. Publishers catered to different markets, especially as more and more people could read
1. Newspapers such as the English Daily Mail and the New York World had circulations of over one million and appealed to readers with little education
2. Books increased in number and fell in price
1. The Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada developed a forerunner of comics
3. The kind of culture one consumed became a reflection of status or desired status
4. Artists, scholars, and writers in different regions tried to adapt to social, political, and economic changes all around them and produced new variations on old forms of work
3. Europe's cultural modernism
1. In intellectual and artistic terms, Europe at the turn of the century experienced perhaps the richest age it had experienced since the Renaissance
1. Durkheim, Freud, and Le Bon studied and theorized about human behavior and focused on irrational behavior
2. Primitivism, or the new appreciation for non-Western art, emerged in the art world
1. Picasso led the way in incorporating non-Western themes into his art
2. Antibourgeois attitudes also affected art
3. Composers such as Richard Wagner stretched the limits of conventional harmonies. Arthur Schoenberg abandoned them altogether
4. Isadora Duncan pioneered free form, expressive dance
2. Scientists challenged the ideas of progress and reason
1. Darwin claimed that progress could not be achieved without a "struggle for existence"
2. James Maxwell described the law of entropy
1. Scientist began to abandon the Enlightenment idea that man could control nature
2. In physics, probabilities began to take the place of certainties
3. Overall, faith in rationalism declined
1. Nietzsche argued that rationality without passion led to machinelike idiocy
2. Freud introduced sexual longings and childhood traumas to explain human behavior
3. Cultural modernism in China
1. Intellectuals in China offered different answers to the question of modernity
1. As in the West, Chinese authors could now write for a wider audience
2. In many ways, they presented competing modernities
1. They offered critical reflection on Chinese traditions and ambivalent reactions to Western culture
2. The Shanghai School of painting incorporated indigenous and foreign traditions
3. Photography studios opened in southern treaty ports
4. Fantasy novels drew on Western science and indigenous beliefs
3. Chinese artists struggled to find a balance between Western thought and traditional Chinese learning
4. Rethinking race and reimagining nations
1. Despite the reshuffling of ideas and people at the turn of the century, people and nations defended the idea of identities as deeply rooted and unchangeable
1. The Linnaean classification system became the means for ranking whole nations
2. Racial roots became a crucial part of cultural identity
3. Who one was became increasingly defined by biology
4. In the West, science was used to sanction racial inequalities
1. Scientists spoke of separate white, black, yellow, and red races
2. Doctors warned against racial mixing, believing that mixed types were weak and likely to become prostitutes, criminals, and homosexuals
5. Race was discussed worldwide as people looked for stability in a rapidly changing world
6. This voice produced new national movements
2. Nation and race in North America and Europe
1. At the turn of the century, Americans worried that they had exhausted what had once been an inexhaustible supply of land and resources with the "closing" of the frontier in 1890
1. President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) established many conservation policies, such as the National Forest Service
2. Roosevelt also expanded national parks and wildlife reserves to give Americans a chance to "play pioneer"
2. White Americans also were anxious about the changing complexion of American society
1. In the South, racial segregation and inequality were codified through Jim Crow laws
2. In the West, Chinese immigration was curtailed
3. White Americans also worried about immigrants from eastern and southern Europe and colonial subjects in the Philippines and Puerto Rico
3. Europeans shared similar anxieties as Americans. Millions became obsessed with racial purity
1. Racial identities hardened in colonies where racial mixing became discouraged
2. In Europe and America, schoolboys were encouraged to play sports to strengthen the nation
3. Jews were blamed for "decadence" in society, especially in Austria, Germany, France, and Russia
3. Race mixing and the problem of nationhood in Latin America generated special anxieties
1. In an age of acute nationalism, the mixed racial composition of Latin Americans worried elites
1. Indians were often viewed as an obstacle to change in Mexico
2. In Brazil and Cuba, observers made the same claim about African Americans
3. Poor European migrants to booming cities complicated an already complicated picture
2. Leaders and writers promoted unity by evoking a mythic past
1. In Mexico General Díaz exalted Father Hidalgo and Aztec grandeur
1. José Vasconcelos, an opponent of Díaz, also promoted Mexico's Indian past, arguing that Mexico's greatness flowed from its mixture of cultures
4. Sun Yat-sen and the making of a Chinese nation
1. As elsewhere, the pace of change generated the desire to trace one's roots back to secure foundations
2. The Chinese looked back before the Qing dynasty to Han China for inspiration
3. Sun Yat-sen blasted the Manchus and trumpeted the image of a "true" Chinese political community
1. Sun, who was from Canton and Western educated, lived much of his life overseas because of political persecution
2. He envisioned and promoted a democratic China, free of Manchu rule, with an economic system based on equalized land rights
1. He believed that in this manner China could join the world community of nation-states on a more equal footing
3. At first, his ideas appealed to Chinese living overseas
4. When the Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1911-1912, Sun returned to China to promote his ideas
5. Eventually, China would be reconstituted, based largely on his ideas
6. Sun believed the problem that faced China after the overthrow of the Qing was assimilating minorities into the nation
5. Nationalism and invented traditions in India
1. British colonialism increasingly turned unified territory into a "nation" in many minds
2. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a resistance movement emerged that talked of Indians as "a people" with a "national" past and traditions
1. The leaders of this movement were Western educated
1. They had developed colloquial languages into standardized literary forms
2. This development allowed for the publication of journals, magazines, newspapers, etc. in indigenous languages
3. The growth of print cultures went hand in hand with the growth of a new public sphere where the intelligentsia discussed and debated social and political matters
1. Voluntary associations proliferated in big cities
2. Eventually urban professionals founded the Indian National Congress
1. They demanded greater representation of Indians in administrative and legislative bodies
2. They also criticized government policies
4. Underlying political assertiveness was cultural nationalism
1. Nationalists claimed Indians were a people based on their unique culture and common history, especially a colonial history
2. As in Latin America, Indian nationalists delved into the past and rewrote histories in order to establish a modern but non-Western identity
3. Intellectuals reconfigured Hinduism so that it resembled Western religion
5. In the process of fashioning this identity, Indian revivalists often became narrow in their vision
1. Muslim tradition was deemphasized as Hindu traditions were exalted
6. Hindu revivalism became a powerful political force by the close of the nineteenth century
1. When British authorities partitioned Bengal into two territories-one predominantly Hindu, the other Muslim-Hindu militants protested and boycotted British goods
1. Activists formed voluntary organizations (Swadeshi Samitis) to promote the indigenous manufacturing of soap, cloth, medicine, iron, and paper
1. Although most failed, these enterprises symbolized a desire for autonomy
2. The Swadeshi Movement swept aside moderates in the Indian National Congress
3. The Congress began a much broader mass mobilization to assert political and cultural autonomy
4. Hindu revivalists were not the only nationalist movements to emerge
1. Others based on religion or regionalism generated support
1. The Indian National Muslim League was formed in 1906, dedicated to the advancement of political interests of Muslims
5. Unlike leaders of the Rebellion of 1857, these nationalists imagined a modern national community, something the British found more difficult to control
6. The pan movements
1. Besides India and China, activists elsewhere imagined new states based on ethnic communities
2. These movements threatened multiethnic and multireligious polities such as the Ottoman and Habsburg empires
1. Pan-Islamism, founded by Jamal al-Din Afghani, urged Muslims to overcome their differences and unite against the West
1. Muslims were confronted with many identities at this time
1. Many in Syria and Lebanon turned to the nation-state idea as a means of imitating the West and gaining more autonomy
2. Pan-Germanism gained followers across central Europe
1. German-speaking elites in Slavic lands were alarmed by the assertion of Slavic nationalism
1. Pan-Slavism in eastern and central Europe demanded greater autonomy, if not independent states, for this region's growing Slavic majority
2. As Russian persecution drove Jews westward, German resentment increased
2. Georg von Schönerer founded the League of German Nationalists in 1882 after the Habsburg empire failed to favor German nationals
1. Elected to the upper Austrian house, he tried to pass anti-Jewish legislation
2. He ultimately aimed to bring Austrian Germans into the German empire
3. Pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism gave rise to militant groups that brought about World War I.
5. Conclusion
1. Urbanization, industrialization, and colonialism led many in the world to question the Enlightenment idea of "progress"
2. To many ruling elite, the "people" were developing the means to unseat them
1. Socialist and right-wing leaders were learning how to exploit modern ideas and identities through popular movements
3. The world economy seemed unbalanced
1. Disparities in wealth abounded
2. Integrated world markets increasingly interrupted traditional economies
3. Powerful corporations and banks threatened small firms and individuals
4. Anxieties produced creative energies in the arts and sciences
1. Non-Western artists used Western forms to present anti-Western ideas
5. This process was far from complete when Europe blew up as the Great War began in 1914

 

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