StudySpace: Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, 2 e.

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1. Economic and Political Modernities
1. World War I shook the foundations of the Euro-centered world
1. Conflict in Africa and elsewhere fostered new ideals about freedom and self-determination
2. War led to accelerated mass production and consumption
3. Postwar leaders had to deal with the changes in production, consumption, culture, and politics wrought by the war
4. Postwar events challenged liberal regimes and paved the way for authoritarian ones
2. Becoming modern meant different things to different segments of society
1. Mass production and mass consumption
1. Henry Ford's automobile
2. Three competing political visions of modernism emerged
1. Liberal
2. Authoritarian
3. Anticolonial
3. United States and several European countries modeled modernisms
1. Women's suffrage
2. Mass production and consumption
3. Popular entertainment
4. Great Depression undermined faith in American model of liberal government
5. Great Depression's effects led some on the right and left to turn to authoritarianism
6. European and American colonials began to reject colonialism and pushed for political independence
2. The Great War
1. The causes of the war were complex
1. Tension could be traced to conflict over colonial territories
2. The decline of the Ottoman empire in southeastern Europe heightened international tension between Russia and Austria-Hungary
3. Economic and naval rivalry between Britain and Germany further fueled tension
2. By 1914, international rivalries had led to the formation of military alliances
1. The Central Powers were Germany and Austria-Hungary
2. The Triple Entente affiliated Britain, France, and Russia
3. The assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria by a Serbian terrorist proved to be the spark that set the alliances off against each other
4. The fighting
1. Instead of a quick war, vast armies fought a defensive war
1. Trenches on the Western Front went from the English Channel to the Alps
1. Machine guns and barbed wire guarded the trenches
2. Life in the trenches proved tedious, damp, dirty, and disease-ridden
2. By 1915 the war had grown into a stalemate
1. The Battle of Ypres in 1915 and the Somme in 1916 saw hundreds of thousands of casualties with little gain for either side
3. Stalemate forced governments to enlist more and more men so that millions were serving in each belligerent army
1. Thousands of women served in auxiliary units
2. Women replaced men in occupations on the home front
3. Food shortages led women to rebel against the state for food for their children
4. By 1918, casualties exceeded 8 million, with another 20 million wounded
1. Civilians suffered from aerial bombardment, food shortages, and disease
5. Empire and War
1. The horror of war reached across continents
1. The Ottoman Empire, which joined the Central Powers, battled the British and Russia in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus
1. Ottoman forces massacred over 1 million ethnic Armenians, claiming they were cooperating with the Allies
2. Britain and France conscripted millions of soldiers from their colonies and dominions in Asia and Africa
1. In some colonies, subjects revolted as the war dragged on
1. John Chilembwe led a revolt in British Nyasaland
2. The war destroyed the Russian, Austria-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires
3. The Russian Revolution
1. In Russia in 1917, military and civilian elites overthrew the tsar in light of growing unrest
2. Bolsheviks in turn overthrew them later that year and then signed a peace treaty with the Germans
1. Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky
4. The Fall of the Central Powers
1. The United States' entry into the war in 1917 tipped the balance in favor of the Allies
2. In 1918, Germany was on the verge of civil war and German generals agreed to an armistice
1. The kaiser fled the country and the empire became a republic
6. The peace settlement and the impact of the war
1. The victors imposed a punitive peace on Germany at the "peace conference" held at the Palace of Versailles in 1919
1. The treaty assigned Germany sole blame for the war, forced it to pay reparations, and gave its colonies to the victorious powers to be administered as "mandates"
2. The American president Woodrow Wilson had hoped for a more harmonious and peaceful settlement
1. His ideas for a League of Nations and national self-determination did see partial adherence in the peace treaty
1. Many new nation-states emerged in eastern and central Europe but not beyond
2. The U.S. Senate ended up refusing to ratify the treaty and thus kept the United States out of the League of Nations
2. Russia was also excluded from the talks and the League
2. The war ushered in other changes
1. Women did not retreat from new responsibilities
1. In Russia, Britain, Germany, and the U.S., women gained the right to vote in all elections
2. Increasingly, young unmarried women expressed their sexuality in public
3. Mass culture
1. The war politicized cultural activities and broadened the audience for nationally oriented information and entertainment
1. Propaganda campaigns attempted to mobilize entire populations using public lectures, theatrical productions, musical compositions, and newspapers, film, and radio
2. After the war, this mass culture became institutionalized
1. Nonelites had more time and money to spend on entertainment
2. Mass culture became synonymous with national culture
3. Radio
1. During the 1920s radio broadcasts could reach the whole nation
1. Programs targeted special audiences such as women, children or the whole family
2. Radio also provided for national advertising campaigns
3. Politicians used radio for mass mobilization
1. Benito Mussolini pioneered such efforts
4. Film and advertising
1. Hollywood emerged as the movie-making capital of the world
1. Many criticized its films as vulgar and decadent
2. Politicians used film as well
1. The Nazis employed Leni Riefenstahl to propagandize their message
2. Radio and film became big business
1. In the U.S. advertising became a major industry that exploited these mediums
2. The American entertainment industry also grew global in its reach
4. Mass production and mass consumption
1. World War I spurred the development of mass production techniques to supply huge quantities of war material
2. The war also reshuffled the world's economic balance of power
1. The United States became the world's economic powerhouse, producing one-third of all industrial goods by 1929
2. The United States, with its mass production and mass consumption (personal income increased 25% in the 1920s), became the epitome of modernity
3. Mass production of the automobile
1. Henry Ford of the U.S. pioneered the mass production of automobiles
1. In the 1920s, his assembly lines dramatically lowered the cost of an automobile so that millions could afford them
2. Ford also paid workers twice the national average, recognizing that mass production required mass consumption
3. The automobile industry caused the American economy to roar
1. Four million out of 25 million workers were connected to the automobile industry
4. The Great Depression
1. Many people and industries did not fare well in the new "modern" economy
1. Farmers suffered throughout the 1920s from declining staple prices
2. The Great Depression began in 1929
1. Its causes went back to the war
1. European nations were left with huge debt and huge rebuilding priorities
2. In the 1920s, Europeans borrowed from the only available source-American banks
3. When many investors defaulted on their loans toward the end of the decade, the U.S. Federal Reserve tightened credit, provoking bank failures in Europe and eventually the stock market crash on Wall Street in October 1929
2. World trade suffered as financial turmoil spread
1. To protect domestic producers, governments abandoned free trade and raised protective tariff barriers
2. By 1935, world trade was one-third of its level in 1929
3. Primary producers in the nonindustrial world suffered the most as commodity prices dropped precipitously
3. The Depression forced many to lose faith in the idea of unregulated free markets
1. Many advocated state intervention to alleviate the crisis
1. John Maynard Keynes, a British economist, published The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money that spawned a revolution in government economic policy in many countries in the ensuing decades
5. Mass politics: Competing visions of becoming modern
1. World War I completed the discrediting of the liberal order-the belief in progress, free markets, and societies guided by the educated few-that had begun at the turn of the twentieth century
1. Everywhere, the masses wanted to share in the modern world's prosperity
2. The Great Depression only heightened this tension
2. Liberal capitalism under pressure
1. In Europe, the war fueled anxieties about modernization, already underway before 1914
1. The appeal of Josephine Baker and Oswald Spengler expressed declining confidence in urban industrial society
2. Many states had experimented with illiberal policies during the war
1. Germany went as far as instituting "war socialism"
3. The war also broadened the size and scope of governments
3. British and French Response to Economic Crisis
1. After the war, many governments tried to return to previous patterns but the masses were impatient with free market policies
2. The mobilized public demanded that governments address their concerns about jobs, housing, etc.
3. Many people turned to socialism, communism, or radical right movements to express their frustrations
4. The Depression forced even the most die-hard liberals to rethink their ideas
1. Many countries abandoned liberalism altogether in favor of right-wing authoritarian rulers
2. Britain and France sustained their parliamentary systems, but rethought their liberal ideas
4. The American New Deal
1. Strong labor parties and socialist movements did not appear in the United States after World War I
1. Americans elected conservatives to office who promised to retreat from the government activism of recent decades
2. While overall economic growth was spectacular, farmers and African Americans were left behind
1. African Americans began migrating to urban northern cities during the war. In the 1920s they formed a vibrant cultural scene
2. The Great Depression swept away conservative leadership and led to the election of Franklin Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932
1. Roosevelt's New Deal, while ideologically vague, enlarged the role of government in the United States through regulation and regulatory agencies, relief measures, public works, and pension schemes
2. While unemployment remained high throughout the 1930s, Roosevelt's policies restored confidence in government, and the United States avoided authoritarian solutions
1. Roosevelt set out to save capitalism's essential features, not destroy them
5. Authoritarianism and mass mobilization
1. All the postwar dictatorships, whether on the right or the left, claimed they strove to mobilize the masses to create dynamic yet orderly societies
1. They treated the masses as an army that needed to be commanded if the problems of liberal capitalism were to be overcome
2. They claimed to protect the people's well-being better than liberal regimes while delivering on the promises of modernity without enduring its costs-class divisions, unemployment, etc.
2. Soviet Russia
1. The Bolsheviks survived a bloody civil war and foreign intervention between 1918 and 1921
1. Grain requisitioning and military maneuvering created a horrible famine from 1921 to 1923, in which 7 to 10 million died
2. After their victory in 1924, the Bolsheviks enacted the New Economic Policy that allowed for the reemergence of trade and private property that they had confiscated during the war
3. In the latter part of the decade, after Lenin's death, Stalin seized control of the Communist Party
1. Stalin moved aggressively to build socialism, which the leadership believed was the road to communism
2. They defined socialism as the opposite of capitalism
1. They banned private property, political parties except theirs, and markets in favor of economic planning and full employment
4. Early efforts to create socialism were violent
1. In the countryside, collectivization efforts compelled farmers to join state-managed cooperatives
1. Many peasants resisted by burning their crops, killing their livestock, and destroying their equipment
2. The regime labeled resisters "kulaks" or wealthy peasants and deported them to remote areas
1. This turmoil created another famine that killed millions
3. Eventually those living on cooperative farms were allowed individual plots of land and the right to sell their individual harvests at peasant markets
2. In the cities, the regime launched a five-year plan to "catch and overtake" capitalist countries
1. The regime purchased advanced technology from capitalist countries
2. The regime built dams, automobile factories, and heavy machinery plants
3. Millions moved to these new or revived industrial centers
3. At the party level, persecution accompanied industrialization and collectivization
1. The regime arrested millions of party members and others as class enemies
2. New officials and administrators were brought in to run the planned economy
3. Italian fascism
1. Peasant and worker unrest gripped Italy after World War I and many elites feared a Bolshevik-style revolution
2. Benito Mussolini seized the initiative and gained power in 1922
1. Mussolini, a former socialist, organized veterans into a mass movement he called fascism
1. His early philosophy mixed nationalism with social radicalism
1. He demanded territorial expansion and greater rights for women, workers, and peasants
2. After he attracted thousands of followers, he organized a march on Rome in 1922 and seized power
1. King Victor Emmanuel III refused to send the army against them
2. When the government resigned in protest, he asked Mussolini to form a government
3. Using fraud and intimidation, fascists won election in 1924
4. Mussolini than banned all parties and created a one-party dictatorship
3. Although he never instituted a sweeping radical agenda, Mussolini used modern media to gain support and credibility and he became a model to others
4. German Nazism
1. Germany, like Italy, seemed on the verge of revolution after the war
2. Like Mussolini, Adolf Hitler formed a movement that blended socialist and nationalist ideas
1. During the 1920s, despite an attempted coup and a widely read autobiography, Hitler failed to attract much support
2. The Nazis' fortunes soared after the onset of the Great Depression
1. The economic catastrophe led millions to abandon faith in the Republic and seek more radical alternatives
3. Hitler came to power "peacefully" and legally
1. In 1932, thinking he could control Hitler and use the Nazis against the communists and socialists, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed him as chancellor
2. Hitler manipulated fears of communist conspiracy (and intimidation) to force parliament to grant him dictatorial powers
4. The Nazi regime soon won broad support
1. Rearmament programs absorbed the unemployed
2. State direction of the economy, which remained in private hands, reduced economic anxieties
1. The state sponsored public works and organized leisure activities and vacations for low-income people
5. Germany reemerged as an international power
5. Militarist Japan
1. Japan benefited from the war
1. Without European and American competition, Japan expanded its Asian trade
1. The economy expanded tremendously in the 1920s
2. Postwar Japan initially headed down the liberal road
1. Mass political parties emerged
2. Suffrage expanded
2. The Great Depression interrupted these trends
1. Japanese trade plummeted and unemployment surged
3. The Japanese military increasingly meddled in the nation's politics
1. The armed forces were free of civilian control and used "patriotic" organizations to pressure prime ministers to resign, often through violent intimidation
2. These organizations professed loyalty to the emperor and the nation
3. In 1931, military officers staged an explosion on the Japanese-owned Southern Manchurian Railroad and used it as a pretext to conquer Manchuria, a Chinese province and add it to the empire
4. At home, patriotic organizations continued to agitate against opponents of the military and its expansionist goals
1. They promoted the traditional Shint? religion, which revered the state
2. In 1940, political parties were banned and the military effectively ruled an authoritarian state
6. Common features
1. Russia, Italy, Germany and Japan shared many traits
1. Economically, all believed in strong state intervention
1. In Japan, the state fostered the growth of the zaibatsu
2. All employed mass organizations for state purposes
1. All sought to rally youth through organizations such as the Hitler Youth and Soviet Communist Youth League
3. All but Japan adopted large-scale social welfare policies
4. All were ambivalent about women in public roles
1. They urged women to stay at home and produce healthy offspring
2. Women had greater access to professional careers, partly out of necessity because of the rise in the number of single women stemming from World War I
5. All used terror and violence against their citizens, colonial subjects, or "foreigners" living under their regime
1. The Nazis singled out Jews
6. Despite their brutality, during the 1930s, these regimes attracted many admirers and would-be imitators in other countries
6. The hybrid nature of Latin American corporatism
1. Latin American countries avoided fighting in the war, but economic disruptions caused their exports to plummet
1. Radical agitation emerged at home and oligarchic political regimes fell
2. The Depression hammered Latin America's trade and financial system
3. Latin American governments responded by creating regimes that blended aspects of authoritarianism and democracy
1. The state sponsored economic strategies that looked to the domestic market, not foreign buyers, as an engine of growth
2. Elites formed mass parties that organized workers, peasants, and ethnic minorities under the tutelage of the state
3. These "corporatist" states used social and occupational groups to bridge elites and the rank and file
4. In Brazil, Getúlio Vargas created a strong following which he rode to power in the 1930s
1. He created social welfare programs and sponsored public works
2. He encouraged blacks to organize
1. His regime supported samba schools (organizations that taught the popular dance and raised money for public works)
3. He also squelched political rivals and dissent, banning political parties in 1937 and creating national representation along corporatist lines
1. While individuals lost political rights, excluded groups such as unions gained more political power.
4. He used "modern" propaganda campaigns to extend his support
7. Anticolonial visions of modern life
1. The war reshuffled European empires
1. France and Britain acquired Arab lands from the Ottoman empire and Germany's colonies in Africa
2. In 1926, Britain rechristened its empire the "Commonwealth" and granted white settler colonies "dominion" status-independence in return for loyalty to the crown
1. Nonwhites were deemed not yet ready for self-government
2. After the war, anticolonialism emerged as the path to modernity in Asia and Africa
1. Various nationalist movements emerged or gained stronger support
2. The nationalist movements often disagreed on how nations should be governed once they gained independence and how citizenship should be defined
1. The competing visions of democracy and radical authoritarianism appealed to different leaders and groups
2. Most often looked to indigenous religious and cultural traditions for inspiration
3. Anticolonialism differed depending on whether the area had been formally colonized, for how long, or how threatened it was by colonization
3. African stirrings
1. Anticolonial nationalist movements got under way after the war, later than in areas colonized for longer periods of time
2. With some minor exceptions, Africans were excluded from representation in imperial governments
3. As a result, many Africans began to experiment with various forms of protest
1. In southeastern Nigeria, Ibo and Ibibio women protested taxes by refusing to deal with local chiefs and by boycotting foreign merchants
2. Many of these protests resembled modern political strategies in Europe
4. Imagining an Indian nation
1. Opposition in India to British rule was more advanced than in Africa
2. After the war, the British expanded the franchise and granted more power to Indians in local government
3. During the 1920s and 1930s, Mohandas Gandhi transformed the Indian National Congress Party into a mass party and an anti-colonial movement
1. Gandhi was Western-educated
2. He developed a philosophy of satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance, that he employed against the British while living in South Africa
4. In 1919, the British massacred hundreds of Indians protesting policies at Amritsar
1. Gandhi and others called for non-cooperation and boycotts
2. He began to turn the Indian National Congress away from an elite institution by opening it to anyone who could pay dues
5. In 1930, Gandhi organized an act of civil disobedience over the government monopoly of salt
1. He and supporters marched to the sea to gather salt for free
2. Journalists covered the march extensively
6. Gandhi's efforts inspired many other acts of noncooperation and nonviolent protest
1. He urged people to spin, make their own cotton textiles, and boycott British-manufactured cloth
7. Not all in the Congress Party or in other anticolonial organizations shared his views
1. Although he supported Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, a National Congress leader, wanted India to become a powerful nation-state by embracing science and technology
2. Radical activists wanted revolution, not peaceful protests
3. Muslims did not believe that the National Congress Party squarely guaranteed their rights
4. Hindu nationalist movements such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) campaigned to organize Hindus as a militant modern community and spewed hatred against Muslims
5. Women demanded suffrage and other political rights that the National Congress did not embrace
8. Still, by 1937, the Indian National Congress had mobilized the masses onto the stage in order to overthrow British rule
1. Indians saw themselves as different from the West, even if they disagreed what their new nation would be.
5. Chinese nationalism
1. China was not formally colonized but its sovereignty was compromised
1. Chinese nationalists thus identified ridding the nation of foreign domination as their number one priority
2. The fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 led to high hopes among nationalists that a new modern nation would emerge
1. Quickly, the new Chinese government disintegrated as military men competed for power
3. In 1919, the May Fourth Movement blossomed in urban areas to protest the Paris Peace Conference's award of Germany's concession rights in Shandong to Japan
4. The beneficiaries of this emerging nationalism were the Guomindang, founded by Sun Yat-sen
1. Looking to the Russian Revolution as an example, Sun allowed Chinese Communists to join the Guomindang
2. The Guomindang also began to organize workers' unions, peasants, and women's associations
5. After Sun's death in 1925, leadership of the Guomindang passed to Chiang Kai-shek
1. Chiang launched a military campaign to unify the country under Guomindang leadership
2. His efforts were a partial success, and he formed a national government in Nanjing
3. In 1927 he broke with the Communists
6. Chiang attempted to mobilize the Chinese masses behind his efforts into the 1930s
1. The New Life Movement, launched in 1934, attempted to instill discipline and moral purpose in the citizenry
6. Peasant populism in China: The White Wolf
1. Guomindang leadership viewed the peasantry as backwards and bereft of revolutionary potential.
2. Nevertheless, a peasant movement emerged in 1913-1914 that challenged the existing order.
1. The White Wolf movement had more than 20,000 members and devoted itself to raiding trade routes and market towns in order to rob from the rich and aid the poor.
2. The White Wolf movement gained its greatest support in rural areas where peasants were experiencing the disruption of new market forces.
3. The Guomindang never bridged the differences between the urban-based movement and peasants, something Communists would take advantage of later.
7. Post-imperial Turkish nation
1. The Treaty of Sèvres reduced the Ottoman Empire to a part of Anatolia, and survival of this truncated state was uncertain
2. Mustafa Kemal and other army officers organized resistance to this outcome
1. In 1920, they reconquered most of Anatolia and the European territory surrounding Istanbul
2. European powers agreed to renegotiate the Treaty of Sèvres
3. The new Peace of Lausanne abrogated reparations in return for the Turks relinquishing claims to Arab lands and several Aegean islands
1. A massive transfer of Greek and Turkish nationals then took place between each country
3. Kemal, who took on the name Ataturk-father of the nation-went on to proclaim a republic and set the nation on a crash course to modernization
1. He aimed to create a European-style secular state
2. He also borrowed several anti-liberal models such as state economic planning and the use of radical racial theories to foster Turkish economic development and identity with the state
8. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
1. Elsewhere in the Middle East, anticolonial movements emerged
1. In Egypt, after the war ended, Sa'd Zaghlul pressed for an Egyptian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference
1. He hoped to present a case for Egyptian independence
2. British officials arrested him and exiled him to Malta
3. The country quickly burst into revolt
2. In 1922, Britain proclaimed Egypt's independence but retained many rights, such as the right to station British troops on Egyptian soil and to use these troops in order to protect foreign residents and the Suez Canal
3. In 1924, the British refused to let the Wafd, Zaghlul's political party, come to power
4. Anticolonialism in Egypt soon turned antiliberal
1. During the Depression, a fascist group called Young Egypt had wide appeal
2. The Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928, attacked liberal democracy as a facade for middle-class, business, and landowning interests
1. They wanted more than independence, urging the people to return to a purified form of Islam
6. Conclusion
1. The Great War and its aftermath accelerated the trend toward mass society while shaking confidence in modernization
2. Competing visions of modernity-liberal, authoritarian, and anticolonial-emerged after the war
3. Authoritarianism seemed best positioned to satisfy the masses during the Great Depression
4. Most anti-colonial movements also viewed liberalism as discredited and looked to socialism and fascism for models
5. While the rise of authoritarian regimes combined with the Great Depression generated intense dislocation, the worst days of modernity were about to come with the outbreak of World War II

 

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