1. Europe on the eve of World War I
On the cusp of modernity?

2. Competing images: Belle epoch (golden era),
peaceful and prosperous vs. poor and shedding its huddled masses
Or seething with conflicts?

3. Europe in transition 2nd industrial revolution ,scientific advances
Growth of iron and steel, electrical, chemical industries
Growth in scale – advent of mass production
Greater spread of industry – further from factors of production
growth of literacy, newspapers
urbanization
Increased interconnectedness via railroad, telegraph

4. Some trends Increased prosperity for middle and upper classes
But also increased mobilization and increasing class tensions ---
Organization of trade unions and working class parties
Demand better conditions, political rights, and increasingly redistribution of wealth and power --- Socialist Parties organizing for an inevitable revolution
Ongoing emigration of ‘huddled masses’ from southern, eastern, northern Europe

5. Growing questions: What kind of Europe? Liberal and constitutional?
Conservative, maintaining the position of the upper classes?
Socialist, with economic and political equality emerging from an inevitable Europe?
States and empires v. national self-determination?

6. Nationalism
View that each people – defined by some combination of common history, language or religion – should have its own nation
In Europe, either
Developed as a construct to weld existing political entities together or
Used as argument to carve new ones out of older multinational entities

7. Political order
A Europe of states and multinational empires – fewer than today
Varying degrees of mobilization and popular involvement
Growing interaction and involvement with each other
Balance of power politics
Race for colonies
Growth of state apparatus
Increased government involvement in economic life, provision of welfare

8. Full map of Europe AD 1900

9. Constitutional states
Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Scandinavia…
governments responsible to parliamentary majorities
In many, broader enfranchisement – shift (incomplete), from property-based suffrage toward universal manhood suffrage
In many, challenge of organized working classes
Yet, continued predominance of upper-classes

10. Autocratic states Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia
Preservation of earlier bases of power sometimes (but not always) in modern guise
Contrast between Imperial Germany with universal but unequal suffrage and Russia with incipient parliamentary institutions

11. Britain Industrial society – cradle of industrial revolution
Parliamentary government
Competition between Conservatives and Liberals (Labour established only in 1900)
Liberals: a party of political and social reform, willing to grant home rule to Ireland
Conservatives: willing to accept certain reforms, yet still anxious to preserve older order

12. Sources of conflict in Britain
Position of the House of Lords, its ability to veto the budget or social reforms
Women’s suffrage
Home Rule for Ireland
Economic issues: distribution of wealth

13. France A republic but a divided society Divided about
Politically fragmented, with a large number of political parties, for the most part weakly organized
Divided about
Political authority: monarchy v. republic
Separation of church and state
Centre (Paris) vs periphery
Distribution of wealth
Stalemated society with weak, assembly dominated cabinets

14. Germany Unified under Prussia in 1871
Federal system – dominated by Prussia
Monarchy – an empire, with substantial power exercised by kaiser and his chancellor
Universal but unequal suffrage
System fundamentally autocratic despite mass-based political parties

15. Political cleavages in Imperial Germany
Position of nobility
Role of upper middle classes
Position of Catholics
Position of working classes, increasingly organized under a Marxist Party (SPD, Social Democratic Party of Germany), advocating an inevitable revolution
Transformation as a result of rapid industrialization

16. Austria-Hungary (Hapsburg Empire)
Multinational state, containing large number of peoples:
Germans
Hungarians (Magyars)
Czechs
Slovaks,
Slovenes
Poles
Ukrainians
Serbs, Croats, Romanians
Limited parliamentary gov’t: predominance of emperor and those around him

17. Russia A more traditional autocracy
Police state with limited scope for political participation or activity or upper or lower classes
Primarily agrarian – and backward -- less involved with or engaged with the rest of Europe