Transcript for:
AP European History Exam Comprehensive Review

Title: (Historical Summary) AP European History Exam Review URL Source: blob://pdf/7b63a068-73c7-4f96-a2d2-02ce3617bd64 Markdown Content: # Unit 1: Renaissance and Exploration # Philosophy During the Renaissance - The Italian Renaissance was the rebirth of interest in classical antiquity (Greco-Roman) that impacted education, culture, and art. Capitalism (not yet free-market) and modern banking techniques began to develop during this time, catapulting the city-state of Florence to cultural and economic prominence. - Francesco Petrarch was the father of humanism , the main intellectual component of the Renaissance. Humanists believed that human nature and achievements, evident in the classics, were worthy of admiration and contemplation. Humanists believed in liberal arts educational curriculum that focused on the study of classical history, philosophy, and literature, with the goal of producing individuals fit for civic leadership positions. - The humanist revival of Greek and Roman texts, spread by the printing press, challenged the institutional power of universities and the Catholic Church. This shifted education away from a primary focus on theological writings toward classical texts and new methods of scientific inquiry. - A facet of humanism was civic humanism , which encouraged scholars to read ancient Greco-Roman documents that educated them on how to become a better citizen. These documents encouraged democracy. - Humanism also stressed individualism , the optimism and self-confidence in ones own achievements and pursuit of knowledge. - The development of the printing press resulted in the mass production of classical texts, weakening the Catholic Churchs control over information and promoting secularism . This resulted in the Church having less control over intellectual life. - Pico della Mirandola s Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496) asserted that humans were at the center of divine creation because of their unique gift of free will. His Oration was in line with Renaissance humanism and was the first printed book ever banned by the Catholic Church. # Art and Literature During the Renaissance - As opposed to the mainly-religious art of previous centuries, the Renaissance leaned toward naturalism . - patronage : Wealthy and influential Italians, such as the Medici family, used their wealth to support the art. Commissioned art was used to glorify these families and their cities. The papacys extensive patronage of the arts rebuilt the Vaticans prestige after years of decline after the Avignon Schism , a period in which bishops in both Rome and Avignon claimed to be the true pope. - The School of Athens , Raphaels fresco of famous ancient philosophers, included famous philosophers Plato (philosopher-led republic) and Aristotle (science and reasoning). This painting was a reflection of the Renaissances inspiration taken from Greek and Roman philosophers. # 1- Niccol Machiavelli wrote The Prince , which encouraged leaders to learn from the shrewd and ruthless tactics of Roman emperors. He believed that leaders should neither be loved, nor hated, but feared. - Baldassare Castiglione wrote The Courtier , which became a manual of proper behavior for upper-class men and women. It also influenced the separate spheres model of gender inequality. # The Northern Renaissance - The Northern Renaissance retained a more religious focus, which resulted in more human-centered naturalism that considered individuals and everyday life appropriate objects of artistic representation. - Pieter Bruegels Northern Renaissance piece The Harvesters depicts both men and women working in the fields. - Christian humanism , embodied in the writings of Desiderius Erasmus , employed Renaissance learning in the service of religious reform. Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched, rejecting both the notion of predestination and the absolute power of the Catholic church. # The Spanish Inquisition - Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille, the king and queen of Spain in 1480, were new monarchs , meaning that they limited the power of the nobility and the clergy in order to centralize their power. They agreed to make Catholicism the national religion of Spain in return for the Popes allowance of them to appoint every church official in their country. - Anti-Semitism had already become worse in Europe after the Black Death , and Ferdinand and Isabella chose to target Jews in order to centralize their power. In the Spanish Inquisition , they ordered Spains Jewish population to either convert to Catholicism (and become conversos ) or leave the country. Under suspicion that many conversos had not truly become Catholic, the monarchs eventually forced as much of the Jewish (and Muslim) population as they could to leave entirely. # The Columbian Exchange and the Slave Trade - In the 1492 Treaty of Tordesillas , Spain and Portugal made an agreement through the Catholic Church over who can claim which areas in the New World . Spain had the right to the (at the time undiscovered by Europeans) areas west of the imaginary line, and Portugal had the lands to the east . During this time, Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator funded and encouraged exploration. He sponsored numerous West African expeditions. In West Africa, Portuguese traders in pursuit of riches partnered with local guides and merchants to connect the European and African economies. - The Spanish Empire , in contrast, focused on colonization. The Spanish crown ( Ferdinand and Isabella ) wanted to control the natives who lived in discovered lands and extract wealth from them. Christopher Columbus pioneered the Spanish domination of South America; Spain conquered the rather advanced Aztec and Inca empires due to the more advanced European # 2weaponry. However, the largest factor contributing to European success was the Columbian Exchange . - The Columbian Exchange brought the deadly European disease of smallpox to the Americas. It decimated hundreds of thousands of indigenous Americans and greatly contributed to the success of Spanish colonization. However, because of smallpoxs effectiveness, colonizers from Europe switched from enslaving natives to importing slaves from Africa to work on their plantations in the West Indies. This brought about the Atlantic slave trade , in which enslaved peoples were bought in Africa and sent to American plantations, in which the fruits of their labor was sent to Europe. # Unit 2: Age of Reformation # The Protestant Reformation - 16th-century Europeans increasingly began to criticize the Catholic Church after the Renaissance and the invention of the printing press in 1450. They were angered by the corruption within the Church, including simony, nepotism, pluralism/absenteeism, and the selling of indulgences. - Protestant leaders Martin Luther and John Calvin called for separation from the Catholic Church, bringing about the Protestant Reformation . - Martin Luther , the most famous figure of the Protestant Reformation and founder of Lutheranism and Protestantism , believed that salvation is initiated by God (not the Church), authority is rested in the Bible alone, and that the Church should not be a hierarchical clerical institution. Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli had reform ideas very similar to Luthers. - John Calvin was a believer in predestination , the concept that men cannot actively work to achieve salvation; God already decided who would be saved and who would be damned. - The decentralized states of the Holy Roman Empire allowed for reform movements to gain traction, however, Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had ambitions for an entirely Catholic empire. After much conflict between Catholics and Protestants and the Augsburg Confession from the German Protestant princes , Charles V and the princes came to an agreement called the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. - Under the Peace of Augsburg, each territory in the Holy Roman Empire would be able to decide whether it was Catholic or Protestant. These Protestant ideas (specifically Lutheranism and Calvinism ) brought about religious change in central, northern, and eastern Europe. Protestant ideas were appealing to peasants and city governments alike, and the development of Protestantism as well as English King Henry VIII s formation of the Church of England caused more and more people to depart from Catholicism. # 3The Catholic Reformation - In an attempt to purify its image and take back supporters, the Catholic Church launched its Catholic Reformation (also known as the Counter-Reformation ). The church drove for internal reform, removing corrupt policies and establishing new religious orders such as the Jesuits . - Pope Paul III s mid-16th century Council of Trent addressed what reforms had to be made in the Church. The Council laid a solid basis for the spiritual renewal of the Catholic Church and its faith, organization, and practice. - The mannerism (twisting proportions) and baroque (dark backgrounds; high contrast) styles of art were grand, emotional, and visually interesting Catholic propaganda used to reclaim Catholic support. - Even after both Reformations, religious violence between Catholics and Protestants continued to occur, especially in France. In France, a civil disconnect between the monarchy and civilians allowed for civil violence and war. Yet, despite their disagreements, both Catholics and Protestants saw pagans as agents of Satan, both ruthlessly trying and executing thousands of women accused of witchcraft . # The War of the Three Henrys - The costs of the Habsburg-Valois wars (in which the Spanish Habsburgs won) forced the French to increase taxes and heavily borrow. So, the Concordat of Bologna had King Francis I agree to recognize the supremacy of the papacy over a universal council. In return, the French crown gained the right to appoint all French bishops, which allowed for economic growth for the French crown. - Strong religious fervor combined with a weak French monarchy led to civil violence between Catholic royalist lords and Calvinist anti-monarchical lords, all while ordinary men and women demonstrated iconoclasm by destroying religious images. - Henry of Guise plotted to assassinate the current French king Henry III and replace him, but he was killed himself before being able to act out his plot. - At the Saint Bartholomews Day Massacre in 1572, thousands of Protestants were killed by Catholic mobs who thought they were doing Gods and the kings will. This massacre took place at the Protestant Henry of Navarre s wedding. Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot and next in line to the French throne, realized after being crowned Henry IV in 1589 that the only way to save France was to sacrifice religious principles for political necessity. He sacrificed his Protestantism in order to lead effectively, reigning as a politique . - Other politiques include the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England and the Catholic King Philip II of Spain. These two clashed in 1588, in which Elizabeth destroyed Spains Spanish Armada . # The Thirty Years War ## Bohemian Phase (1618-1625) - Started with the defenestration of Prague in 1618, when Calvinist rebels threw Bohemian royal council members out of a window (though they survived). Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II # 4got the support of king Maximilian I of Bavaria to invade Bohemia. Ferdinand and Maximilians forces were led by Baron Tilly . They won against Frederick V , king of Bohemia, at the Battle of White Mountain . ## Danish Phase (1625-1629) - King Christian IV of Denmark supported the Protestants, but was defeated in 1626 when Albrecht von Wallenstein joined the fight on the Catholic side. As a result, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II occupied Holstein. The Treaty of Lubeck in 1629 restored Holstein to Christian. The Edict of Restitution gave the Holy Roman Empire back all of the German states that were secularized with the Peace of Augsburg . ## Swedish Phase (1630-1635) - France and Sweden signed an alliance, and France entered the war against the Habsburgs . The Swedes killed Baron Tilly , the HRE imperial commander, in 1632. At the Battle of Lutzen , the Swedes defeated Albrecht von Wallenstein , who had replaced Tilly. However, Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus died in warfare. Wallenstein was assassinated after being caught secretly working with Sweden and France. The emperors army defeated the Swedes at Nrdlingen in southern Germany. - The Treaty of Prague was enacted in 1635 after the deaths of both Adolphus and Wallenstein. It strengthened Habsburgs and weakened the German Princes. ## French/International Phase (1635-1648) - Cardinal Richelieu , the chief minister of child-king Louis XIII , wanted to reclaim Alsace and weaken the power of Spain and its Habsburg king Philip IV . He sent large forces to Germany after succeeding against Spain, tipping the balance in the Protestants favor. - Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II died in 1637, and his son Ferdinand III succeeded him. Peace negotiations began in 1641, but little progress was made until Richelieus death in 1642 and the French occupation of Bavaria in 1646. ## Peace of Westphalia (1648) - The Peace of Westphalia was a series of treaties that concluded the Thirty Years War. - France acquired Alsace, and both France and Sweden acquired nearby territory. - The Dutch Republic and Switzerland were given independence from Spain. The German princes were given independence from the HRE by the Habsburgs. - Renounced the Edict of Restitution (which had renounced the Peace of Augsburg ) and expanded the Peace of Augsburg to include Calvinists in addition to Catholics and Lutherans. Once again the rulers of each state could determine its religion. # 5Unit 3: Absolutism and Constitutionalism # Absolutism - Austria (Ferdinand II, III), Prussia (Frederick William I), and Russia (Peter the Great) strengthened their national unities and state authorities most notably by establishing a permanent government system and military roster. - Austria and Prussia both increased their monarchical powers by building large armies , increasing taxation , and suppressing representative institutions . Ferdinand II and III of the Austrian Habsburgs and Frederick William I of Prussia made deals with nobles to gain political authority. - In Russia, Peter the Great built up the state, expanded his territory, and Westernized Russia. ## French Absolutism Henry IV and the Fronde - Henry IV (past Henry of Navarre; r. 1589-1610) defused religious tensions and rebuilt Frances economy after inheriting a France wrecked from religious wars. He founded the Bourbon dynasty . - His Edict of Nantes (1589) allowed Huguenots (French Protestants) the right to worship in 150 traditionally Protestant towns throughout France. - Cardinal Richelieu became the first minister of France on behalf of Henrys young son, Louis XIII . - Richelieus most important goal was to secure French pre-eminence in European power politics, doing everything he could to weaken the Habsburgs . - His policies were designed to strengthen royal control. He used intendants to do this. - The Fronde occurred in 1648-1653 as a result of the failure of Cardinal Jules Mazarin , first minister of Louis XIIIs son, Louis XIV , and wealthiest man in French history, to meet the costs of the Thirty Years War . During these uprisings, the nobles of the robe (members of the Parlement of Paris ) encouraged violent protests by commoners, since Mazarin was going to forgo their pay for 4 years. Louis XIV - Louis XIV , the Sun King, based his authority on the concept that kings were Gods rulers on Earth. He formed national policies on war, taxation, law, and religion and removed most of the nobles of the sword (traditional warrior families) from power. - His court of Versailles was the location of government where he made Frances noble families stay at all times to jockey for power and favors from the King. - Louis revoked king Henry IVs Edict of Nantes with his own Edict of Fountainbleu in 1685, causing 200,000 Protestants to flee from France. - Jean-Baptiste Colbert was Louiss controller general from 1665 to his death in 1683. He applied mercantilist policies to France. # 6- mercantilism : A system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state based on the belief that a nations international power was based on its wealth, specifically its supply of gold and silver. - A country always had to sell more goods abroad than it bought. Colbert didnt want citizens buying foreign products; they must buy domestic when applicable. Every bit of usable land must be used to grow food. - Louis could pursue his goals without massive tax increases or creating a stream of new offices during Colberts tenure as controller general, however the warfare after Colberts death undid many of his economic achievements. - The War of Spanish Succession (1701-1713) was caused by Louis XIV s unwillingness to abide by a previous agreement that divided Spanish possessions between France and the Holy Roman Emperor upon the death of the heirless Spanish king Charles II . The Peace of Utrecht ended the war, allowing Louiss Bourbon grandson Philip to remain king of Spain on the understanding that the French and Spanish crowns would never be united. - Rococo was a fantastical noble-oriented style of art displayed in salons and at the palace of Versailles. # English Constitutionalism ## The English Civil War - Stuart Absolutism leads to the English Civil War (1642-1651). English citizens were debating taxing authority, state religion, and sovereignty. - James I believed in the divine right of kings and attempted to rule as an absolutist monarch. He wanted religious uniformity (everyone has to belong to the Church of England). In opposition to this were the Calvinist groups Puritans and Separatists . They wanted to purify and separate from the Catholic Church respectively. - Then Charles I attempted to make England even more absolutist; he tried to implement ship money, a tax without parliamentary approval. Parliament responded with the 1628 Petition of Right in response to Charless abuse of power. He accepted this, but went through a period of personal rule in which he did not call parliament for over a decade. Finally, in 1640, Charles called parliament, which initiated the English Civil War - In the English Civil War , the Cavaliers supported the king, while the Roundheads (which included Oliver Cromwell) supported Parliament. - Charles I was beheaded in 1649 and Oliver Cromwell established the Protectorate , a strict Puritanical military dictatorship. Cromwell expelled the Rump Parliament in 1648, leaving only his supporters behind. His government was tolerant of Protestants and de-Catholicized the Anglican Church. The Protectorate also banned Christmas and other celebrations. ## The Restoration/Glorious Revolution - Charles II issued the Declaration of Indulgence , the non-enforcement of laws against Catholics in England. Parliament, seeing that Charles was becoming a bit too tolerant, issued the Test Acts , which required all office holders to be Anglican. # 7- Charles II makes the Treaty of Dover with his ally Louis XIV, which has England engage in the Franco-Dutch war for financial compensation. - James II was an open Papist (Catholic). He dismissed his Lord of the Treasury after he refused to convert to Catholicism. James II also believed in absolutism and the divine right of kings, revoking the Test Acts and other laws Parliament passed. - William of Orange was invited to rule alongside Mary Stuart , James IIs daughter. They governed England in a joint monarchy and signed the English Bill of Rights , establishing the first constitutional monarchy . # Unit 4: Scientific, Philosophical, and Political Developments # The Scientific Revolution - Nicolaus Copernicus developed the idea of heliocentrism : the Sun, rather than the Earth, was the center of the universe, and the stars and planets revolved around it. Copernicus published his theories in On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543. His heliocentric theory destroyed the basic idea of Aristotelian physics, which had a geocentric model with perfect heavenly bodies. - Johannes Kepler developed the 3 laws of planetary motion : the orbits of the planets around the sun are elliptical (rather than circular), planets do not move at a uniform speed in their orbits, and the time a planet takes to make its complete orbit is precisely related to its distance from the Sun. He proved this mathematically. - Galileo Galilei developed the law of inertia : motion, not rest, is the natural state of an object, and that an object continues in motion forever unless stopped by some external force. - Isaac Newton developed the law of universal gravitation : all objects are attracted to one another and the force of attraction is proportional to the objects quantity of matter and is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Newton explained the ideas of his predecessors in his Principia Mathematica , published in 1687. Newtons ideas were popularly accepted until Albert Einstein challenged them in the early 20th century. # The Consumer Revolution - In the Industrious Revolution , families in northwestern Europe focused on earning wages rather than producing goods for household consumption. This allowed them to purchase consumer goods , which were targeted particularly at women. These new patterns of labor and consumption established important foundations for the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries. # The Enlightenment - Thinkers of the Enlightenment believed in progress, freedom of thought and expression, education of the masses (including women), liberty to all men (battle against absolutism), and individualism. Enlightenment thought, which focused on concepts such as empiricism, skepticism, human reason, rationalism, and classical sources of knowledge, challenged the # 8prevailing patterns of thought with respect to social order, institutions of government, and the role of faith. - The philosophes were French philosophers who applied scientific reasoning to human nature. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau : wrote The Social Contract , which argued for equal rights (excluding women and nonwhite races) and that government policy should reflect the general will of the people. Rousseau believed that man needs a strong absolutist centralized power and he attacked private property. - Montesquieu believed in separation of political powers in government. He believed there were only 3 types of government (monarchy, republicanism, and despotism). - Ren Descartes was a champion of rationalism , a secular, critical way of thinking in which nothing was to be accepted on faith and everything was to be submitted to reason. His Cartesian dualism and rationalism is summarized by his most famous quote I think, therefore I am. - Voltaire : Religious toleration and contempt for the power of the Catholic Church. - Diderot : Co-author of the Encyclopedia , the combined manifesto of the French philosophes. - John Locke wrote The Social Contract , which states that the government is created to protect its citizens natural rights of life, liberty, property. He believed that the divine right of kings was illegitimate. - Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan to argue that only an absolutist government is able to save man from his natural state of savagery. - The Scientific Method uses a combination of deductive and inductive reasoning to come to conclusions. - deductive reasoning (Ren Descartes): rationale based on pattern recognition and facts - inductive reasoning (Sir Francis Bacon): rationale based on observation and experimentation - Marquis de Condorcet : Equal rights (including women and all races), constitutional government, liberal economy - Mary Wollstonecraft : proto-feminist and author of A Vindication on the Rights of Woman , which approached feminist ideas based on liberal theory. Wollstonecraft advocated for womens education especially - utilitarianism : the idea of Jeremy Bentham that social policies should promote the greatest good for the greatest number. - Secularism was a concept popularized during the Enlightenment. It argued that government and other institutions should exist entirely separate from religion and the Catholic Church. Religious tolerance also became more widespread. - neoclassical art : return to Greco-Roman romanticization, such as in Jacques-Louis David s Oath of the Horatii . - deism : the belief in a distant God but denial of organized religion, basing ones belief on the light of reason ## Enlightened Despotism - The Enlightened despots were authoritarian leaders who used their political power according to the principles of the Enlightenment . # 9- The War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748) began when Frederick the Great of Prussia seized Silesia from Austrias Maria Theresa . The wars inconclusive end helped set the stage for the Seven Years War . - In Prussia , Frederick the Great expanded religious toleration (but still preferred Protestantism). He also allowed non-noblemen to fill government roles. A friend of French philosophe Voltaire , Frederick was also the first servant of the state. - The Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II was extremely tolerant, even of Jewish worship. However, at this time, the position of Holy Roman Emperor lacked real power, and the multi-ethnic population of the Empire made it hard for Joseph II to centralize. - Catherine the Great of Russia significantly expanded Russian territory. She was a champion of the arts and Enlightenment ideals, though she still practiced serfdom and authoritarianism. # Unit 5: Conflict, Crisis, and Reaction in the Late 18th # Century # The Seven Years War (1756-1763) - France aided Austria in winning back Silesia from the Prussians, who had formed an alliance with England. Not religious like previous wars, the Seven Years War was a colonial/global balance of power war. At its end in the Treaty of Paris of 1763, France gave all of its North American colonies to England, and the balance of power shifted toward Britain. # The French Revolution of 1789 ## Liberal Phase (1789-1792) - The Liberal phase of the French Revolution established a constitutional monarchy, increased popular participation, nationalized the Catholic Church, and abolished hereditary privileges. During the Liberal Phase, the bourgeoisie dominated the reform conversation. Liberal reformers advocated for a constitutional monarchy, liberal reform, and abolition of eccleastical/aristocratic privilege. Its main influences were John Locke ( liberalism ) and Montesquieu (constitutionalism ). The National Assembly and Legislative Assembly were governing during this period. - Frances loss in the Seven Years War and investment in the American Revolution caused a financial crisis for the Ancien Regime . The royal family, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI , lived in the luxurious palace of Versailles and the First (clergy) and Second (aristocracy) Estates were exempt from taxation while the Third (common masses) Estate starved. However, wealthy bourgeoisie members of the Third Estate were more focused on gaining political power and a liberal constitution than bread. - Emmanuel Joseph Siyes s What is the Third Estate? (Answer: Everything) describes the Third Estate's oppression pre-Revolution. # 10 - Louis XVI was forced to call the Estates General , but its failure forced him to allow the National Assembly to meet in 1789. - The Marquis de Lafayette , who fought in the American Revolution, wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man , which championed equality and other natural rights seen in the American Declaration of Independence . - Olympe de Gouges wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman to attack Rousseaus homemaker view of women. - The Fall of the Bastille , demonstrating the Great Fear mentality of the French peasantry, was sparked by the starvation and economic concerns of the Third Estate. A similar event was the Womens March to Versailles . - After taking the symbolic Tennis Court Oath , in which the legislative representatives of the National Assembly promised to ratify a constitution, the First French Constitution was ratified in 1791, giving all lawmaking power to the National Assembly . - Political Spectrum of the National Assembly (left to right): Montagnards (socialist-leaning), sans-culottes (emerging middle class), Georges Dantons Jacobins (liberal), Centrists, Girondists (center-right), Monarchiens (monarchist) ## Radical Phase (1793-1794) - The Radical phases main influence was Jean-Jacques Rousseau ( general will ). The National Convention and Committee of Public Safety were governing during this period. - Louis XVI was convicted of treason and beheaded in 1793. After the execution of Louis XVI, the radical Jacobin republic led by Maxamilien Robespierre responded to opposition at home and war abroad by instituting the Reign of Terror , fixing prices and wages and pursuing a policy of de-Christianization. Robespierrre formed the Committee of Public Safety , which held dictatorial power and was allowed to use whatever force necessary to defend the Revolution. - Facing moderate opposition, Robespierres Committee sought to impose republican unity across the nation. The Committee collaborated with the sans-culottes and created a planned economy with egalitarian social overtones. Though the state was too weak to enforce all its price regulations, it did fix the price of bread in Paris at levels the poor could afford. - The Reign of Terror was the period from 1793 to 1794 during which Robespierres Committee of Public Safety tried and executed thousands suspected of treason and a new revolutionary culture was imposed. While the radical economic measures furnished the poor with bread and the armies with supplies, this event enforced compliance with republican beliefs and practices. The liberal Constitution of 1793 was indefinitely suspended in favor of a revolutionary government . Presented as a necessary measure to save the republic, the Terror was a weapon directed against all suspected of opposing the revolutionary government. ## Directory Phase (1795-1799) - The Thermidorian Reaction occurred after the violence of the Reign of Terror in 1794, resulting in the execution of Robespierre and the loosening of economic controls. The middle-class, who had led the liberal Revolution of 1789, reasserted their authority. They proclaimed an end to the revolutionary expediency of the Terror and the return of representative government, the rule of law, and liberal economic policies. # 11 Napoleonic Phase (1799-1815) - Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Directory in 1799 in a coup dtat . From 1799 to 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte was the emperor of France. Creating a Grand Empire through his military proficiency, Napoleon had control over much of Europe. He put into motion several revolutionary ideas, such as the abolishment of serfdom, but at heart he was still a military dictator . As he upset the balance of power among European leaders, multiple alliances were made to try to stop him. Napoleon can be considered the father of nationalism ; he used patriotic propaganda to encourage the French spirit for centralization . - Jacques-Louis David s Napoleon Crossing the Alps is a neoclassical piece glorifying Napoleons conquests. It is not to be confused with Paul Delaroche s Bonaparte Crossing the Alps , which depicts them more realistically. - Napoleons Concordat of 1801 restored Catholic worship in France. It was extremely popular among the French people. Napoleon also bargained with the liberal middle class with his Napoleonic Code . It reasserted the 1789 principles of the equality of all male citizens before the law and the absolute security of wealth and private property, as well as restricting rights accorded to women by previous revolutionary laws. - In 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French . Interestingly, in the beginning of his rule, he never referred to himself as the Emperor of France , only of the French . His dictatorial reign employed secret police and censorship, but it was also liberal at times, like in the Napoleonic Code. This begs the question: did Napoleon betray the French Revolution, or did he complete it? - After 1806 Napoleon attempted to create the Continental System , which was meant to halt all trade between Britain and continental Europe. If it had succeeded, it would have destroyed the British economy and its military force. In the 1807 Treaties of Tilsit , Alexander I of Russia pledged his support for Napoleon and his Grand Empire . - By 1808, Napoleon had conquered much of Europe. However, Spain resisted when he attempted to place his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne . - Napoleons Spanish Ulcer was displayed in Francisco Goya s Romantic piece The Second of May . - Napoleon turned on Alexander I of Russia, who had opened Russian ports to British goods in December 1810. Napoleons invasion of Russia began in June 1812. Napoleon recklessly pressed on toward Moscow even when winter started. Alexander ordered the evacuation of Moscow, which the Russians then burned in part, and finally, after 5 weeks in the scorched and abandoned city, Napoleon ordered a retreat, one of the greatest military disasters in history. The Russian army, the Russian winter, and starvation cut Napoleons army to pieces. - Austria and Prussia abandoned Napoleon and joined Russia and Great Britain in the Treaty of Chaumont in 1814. Together, these powers formed the Quadruple Alliance and defeated the French emperor. Napoleon abdicated in 1814, and the Bourbon dynasty returned under Louis XVIII . The new monarchs Constitutional Charter accepted many of Frances revolutionary changes and kept the guaranteed civil liberties that Napoleon established. - Napoleon took back power from Louis XVIII in February 1815. After the frantic period of the Hundred Days , the allies crushed his forces at Waterloo in June. Napoleon was # 12 imprisoned in St. Helena, a remote Atlantic island. Louis XVIII returned to the throne, and the allies dealt with the French more harshly. # The Congress of Vienna - It took the alliance of Austria , Prussia , Russia , and Great Britain to force Napoleon to abdicate his throne. It wasnt until after trying to seize power once again in 1815 that he was finally stopped for good. Major European leaders met in Austria in 1815 to re-establish order and undo the French Revolution after Napoleons defeat. - The Quadruple Alliance (Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria) defeated Napoleon and led the Concert of Europe, which sought to uphold peace through conservative policies. - Metternich : Austrian foreign minister and conservative. He wanted stability within and between states, traditional institutions and aristocracy. He defended his elite class and its rights and privileges, as he and other conservatives regarded tradition as the basic foundation of human society. He believed that under a conservative government, the Austrian Empire would be saved, while under liberalism (each national group had a right to establish its own independent government), central Europe would be revolutionized and it would be destroyed. - The German Confederation was established after Napoleon abolished the Holy Roman Empire . The Holy Alliance (Austria, Prussia, Russia), a symbol of repression of liberal/revolutionary movements, issued the Karlsbad Decrees in 1819 to repress the German Confederation. These Decrees required the German states to outlaw liberal political organizations, police their universities and newspapers, and establish a permanent committee with spies and informers to clamp down on liberal or radical reformers. - In Russia, the 1825 liberal Decembrist Revolt was utterly crushed by troops loyal to Tsar Nicholas I . Through censorship, military might, secret police, imprisonment, and execution, conservative regimes in central Europe used the powers of the state to repress liberal reform wherever possible. # Unit 6: Industrialization and Its Effects # The Industrial Revolution and Its Consequences - The Industrial Revolution (1760-1830) started in England because of its natural resources (coal, water) and liberal constitution that valued capitalism . The enclosure movement marked the beginning of the end for the long-used open-farming system, and the rise of capitalist market-oriented estate agriculture and the emergence of a landless rural proletariat. - The cottage industry was a stage of industrial development in which rural workers used hand tools in their homes to manufacture goods on a large scale for sale in a market. Before urbanization and the spread of factories, rural workers would be supplied materials to process by capitalist merchants. In this putting-out system , these supplier merchants would take a cut of the profit without having to do any labor themselves. - Jethro Tull s seed drill significantly improved the farming process. James Hargreaves s spinning jenny and Richard Arkwright s water frame helped the growth of the cotton textile # 13 industry. James Watt improved upon the steam engine in 1763, and George Stephensons Rocket , the first modern steam-powered railroad, revolutionized transportation. - The 1815 Corn Laws placed high tariffs on imported grain, benefitting the aristocracy but making food prices high for ordinary workers. The Corn Laws, coming at a time of post-Napoleon distress, triggered protests by urban laborers and radical intellectuals. At the Peterloo Massacre (named in reference to British victory at Waterloo), 18 anti-Corn Law demonstrators were killed. The British parliament then passed the infamous Six Acts , placing controls on a heavily taxed press and eliminated practically all mass meetings. - In 1799 Parliament passed the Combination Acts , which outlawed unions and strikes, favoring capitalist business people over skilled artisans. Bitterly resented and widely disregarded by many craft guilds, the acts were repealed by Parliament in 1824. Robert Owen advocated for the Factory Act of 1833 , which successfully limited the workday of women and child laborers and set minimum hygiene and safety requirements. - During this time, the sexual division of labor began to evolve. Separate spheres of work developed; husbands were seen as wage-earners and wives as homemakers . - For some people, the Industrial Revolution brought improvements, such as new technology and more accessible foods , but living and working conditions for the poor stagnated or even deteriorated until around 1850, especially in overcrowded industrial cities. In Great Britain , industrial development led to the creation of new social groups and intensified long-standing conflicts between capital and labor. A new class of factory owners and industrial capitalists arose, which strengthened the wealth and size of the middle class, which had previously been made up mainly of merchants and professional people. The demands of modern industry regularly brought the interests of the middle-class industrialists into conflict with those of the people who worked for them: the working class . ## Intellectual Developments in the 1800s - Charles Darwin s theory of evolution , published in his 1859 work On the Origin of Species by the Means of Natural Selection , states that chance differences among the individual members of a given species that prove useful in the struggle for survival are selected naturally, and they gradually spread to the entire species through reproduction. Darwins theory was controversial, and it had a powerful and many-sided influence on European thought and the European middle classes. Because his ideas seemed to suggest that evolution moved along without Gods intervention, and that humans were simply one species among many others, some conservatives accused Darwin of anti-Christian beliefs. - English philosopher Herbert Spencer saw the human race as driven forward to ever-greater specialization and progress by a brutal economic struggle that determined the survival of the fittest . The poor were the ill-fated weak; the prosperous were the chosen strong. Spencers Social Darwinism gained adherents among nationalists and imperialists , who viewed global competition between countries as a grand struggle for survival . Social Darwinism most directly justified the natural rule of the supposedly more civilized West over its African and Asian colonial subjects, but later was a strong influence on Nazi Germanys anti-Semetic policies. - Louis Pasteur, a French microbiologist, was the father of vaccination. His germ theory and pasteurization significantly advanced medicine in Europe. Pasteurs early vaccination practice # 14 paved the way for the antimalarial drug quinine , which allowed for European imperialism in Africa. - Georg Hegel s nationalistic philosophies deeply influenced his student Karl Marx . In his magnum opus, Das Kapital , published in 1867, Marx applied social-scientific analysis to economic problems, like Adam Smith, though he pushed these liberal ideas in radical directions. He criticized his socialist predecessors for their fantastical utopian ideals, claiming that his version of scientific socialism was realistic. Marx believed, like Hegel, that history moved purposefully in patterns toward an ultimate goal. Marx argued that class struggle over economic wealth was the great engine of history. One class had always exploited the other, and the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat was more apparent than ever with the progression of modern industry. Using his historical patterns theory, Marx believed that the working class would soon reach class-consciousness (consciousness of their oppression) and overthrow the bourgeoisie in a violent class war , resulting in the end of class struggle and the arrival of communism , a classless, stateless, communal society. - Together with his close friend and financial patron Friedrich Engels , Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto on the eve of the revolutions in 1848. Though widely ignored during his time, Marxist socialism profoundly reshaped left-wing radicalism. After the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, applied (and slightly edited) Marxism would be used by Lenin, Stalin, and all Russian leaders until the fall of the Soviet Union . # The Second Industrial Revolution - The Second Industrial Revolution (1815-1914) introduced an increase in automated factory work. While water, coal, and steam engines were still in use, petroleum and electricity emerged as new power sources. Similarly, steel (heavy industry ) began to replace textile production (cottage industry) as the dominant product. Automobiles , chemicals , railroads (prevalent), and the telegraph , telephone , and radio set the stage for imperialism and the First World War. - Since the First Industrial Revolution, industrial countries had urbanized significantly. Urban workers lived in horrendous conditions, but increased sanitization , advocated by English utilitarian Edwin Chadwick , improved the average workers quality of life . Both the urban factory worker and the factory owner classes increased in size. Because of the factory job opportunities in cities, rural peasants migrated away from the countryside and into cities. Some even went to distant lands like the United States. - In 1851, the Crystal Palace in London showcased Englands enormous success in industrializing. Sponsored by the British royal family for the Great Exhibition industrial fair, the Palace was made entirely of glass and iron, both of which were now cheap and abundant. - Max Weber s sociology cast a bleak light on urban industrial society. While sociologists acknowledged some benefits of rationalization and modernization, they bemoaned the accompanying loss of community and tradition, like Romantics . # The French Revolution of 1830 - In the Bourbon Restoration of 1814 , Louis XVIII granted the Constitutional Charter , a limited liberal constitution. The charter protected economic and social gains made by sections of # 15 the middle class and the peasantry in the French Revolution, permitted some intellectual and artistic freedom, and created a parliament with upper and lower houses. Louiss charter was indeed liberal, but it was hardly democratic. Only the richest men had suffrage rights. However, the old aristocracy, with its pre-1789 mentality, was a minority within the voting population. - Charles X , Louis XVIIIs successor and a reactionary , wanted to establish the old order in France. Increasingly blocked by the opposition of the deputies, Charless government turned in 1830 to military adventure in an effort to rally French nationalism and gain popular support. A French military force conquered Algeria in 1847, marking the rebirth of French imperial expansion. - Charles rejected the Constitutional Charter in an attempted coup in July 1830, emboldened by victories in Algeria. The immediate reaction, encouraged by the liberal middle class, was capital insurrection. The upper middle class then seated Charless cousin Louis Philippe on the vacant throne. Louis Philippe accepted the Constitutional Charter of 1814, but popular demands for thorough demand went unanswered. The revolution seemed for naught. # The Revolutions of 1848 - A full-scale revolution broke out in France in February 1848, and its shock waves rippled across the continent. Elsewhere across Europe, such as in Austria and Prussia, governments toppled, as monarchs bowed or fled. Inspired by nationalist ideas , democratic constitutions , social reform , and other lofty aspirations of liberal reformers seemed within reach, yet in the end, the revolutions failed due to the determination of conservatives and monarchists. - Neither Britain (already reformed) nor Russia (oppressive and undeveloped) experienced revolutions. ## The French Revolution of 1848 - The governments failures under Louis Philippe united a diverse group of opponents against the king, including bourgeois merchants, opposition deputies, and liberal intellectuals who all shared a sense of outrage with middle-class shopkeepers, skilled artisans, and unskilled working people. Widespread discontent eventually touched off a popular revolt in Paris. - A provisional republic was proclaimed by the revolutionaries with heavy democratic influences. Louis Blanc urged the creation of the permanent government-sponsored cooperative workshops he had advocated in The Organization of Work. Such workshops would be an alternative to capitalist employment and a decisive step toward a new, noncompetitive social order. Moderate republicans, willing to provide only temporary relief, wanted no such thing, and the resulting compromise was to set up National Workshops , which became little more than a vast program of pick-and-shovel public works. This satisfied no one. Moderate liberals opposed these measures, and radical republicans, influenced by utopian socialism, were committed to socialism. These two clashed in the June Days , and the conflict ended with a constitution favoring a strong executive. ## Revolution in the Austrian Empire - The revolution in the Austrian Empire began in Hungary in March 1848, when nationalistic Hungarians demanded national autonomy , full civil liberties , and universal suffrage . Peasant # 16 disturbances broke out in the empire, and the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I gave in and promised reforms and a liberal constitution. However, Metternich refused to compromise and was forced to flee to London. - The old absolutist order seemed to be collapsing, yet conflicting national aspirations weakened and ultimately destroyed the revolutionary coalition. The Hungarian revolutionary leaders pushed through an extremely liberal, almost democratic constitution for the Kingdom of Hungary. They also wanted to centralize the numerous provinces. But the ethnic minority groups that formed half the population (Croats, Serbs, and Romanians) rejected this unification, each group feeling entitled to political autonomy and cultural independence . - Thus desires for national autonomy within the Austrian Empire enabled the monarchy to maintain power by playing the ethnic groups against each other. The determination of the Austrian aristocracy and the loyalty of its army sealed the triumph of reaction and the defeat of revolution. ## Revolution in Prussia - Since the Napoleonic Wars, liberal German reformers had sought to transform absolutist Prussia into a constitutional monarchy, hoping it would lead the German Confederation into a unified nation-state. The agitation that followed the fall of Louis Philippe, on top of several years of crop failure and economic crises, encouraged liberals to press their demands. - Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV promised to grant Prussia a liberal constitution and to merge Prussia into a new national German state. An elected Prussian Constituent Assembly met in Berlin to write a constitution for the Prussian state, though urban workers wanted much more radical reforms and the Prussian aristocracy wanted much less. - By early 1849, however, reaction had rolled back liberal reforms across the German Confederation. Prussian troops had already crushed popular movements across the German Confederation, and Friedrich Wilhelm had reasserted his royal authority and disbanded the Prussian Constituent Assembly. He contemptuously refused to accept the crown from the gutter offered by the Frankfurt Parliament . By May 1849 all but the most radical deputies had resigned from the parliament, and in June Prussian troops forcibly dissolved what remained of the assembly . - Friedrich Wilhelm wanted to be emperor of a unified Germany, but only on his own authoritarian terms. He tried to get the small monarchies of Germany to elect him emperor, but supported by Russia, the Austrians forced Prussia to renounce all schemes of unification in late 1850. The German Confederation was re-established in 1851. In an echo of the Karlsbad Decrees , reaction followed; state security forces monitored universities, civic organizations, and the press throughout the confederation. German liberals gave up demands for national unification. Attempts to unite the Germans, first in a liberal national state and then in a conservative Prussian empire, had failed completely. # 17 Unit 7: 19th-Century Perspectives and Political # Developments # Political Philosophies in the 1800s - conservatism : aristocracy/landowner gentry, tradition, privilege, institutions - Edmund Burke : British statesman who derived from the first French Revolution that abstract ideas of liberty and rights only cause problems; inherited traditions and privileges are bastions of social stability. - Klemens von Metternich : Austrian foreign minister that dominated discussion at the Congress of Vienna. He believed that authoritarian, aristocratic government was necessary to protect society from the lesser elements of human behavior, which were easily released in a democratic system. Organized religion was another pillar of strong government; Christian morality was a vital bulwark against radical change. - nationalism : national unity based on common language, culture, ethnicity, religion, and shared history - Giuseppe Mazzini : Italian author who wrote The Duties of Man , which asserted that language, historic traditions, unification based on harmony and brotherhood, and divine purpose defined a national people. - Brothers Grimm : German literary siblings who wrote Grimms Fairy Tales for both nationalistic and Romantic motivations. - Romanticism : artists/authors/poets, anti-Enlightenment, sociology, nostalgia, conservatism/nationalism, beauty in nature, religion - Mary Shelley : English author and daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft who wrote Frankenstein as a criticism of Scientific and Industrial Revolution advancements that were destroying spiritualism and the natural world. Romantics, like Shelley, revolted against the emphasis on rationality and order that characterized the Enlightenment. Valuing emotion, intuition, tradition, and nature, Romanticism stood for everything opposing Enlightenment thought. - Eugne Delacroix : French artist who painted Liberty Leading the People in 1831, a romanticized characterization of the French Revolutionary concept of Liberty during the July Revolution. - liberalism : bourgeoisie/middle class, limit Church and state power, laissez-faire capitalism, economic freedom, constitutionalism, civil liberties, privatization, individualism, representative government - Adam Smith : Scottish Enlightenment leader who argued that the guild system, state monopolies, and privileged companies were too restrictive. He preferred free competition , which would protect consumers from price gouging and give all citizens an equal right to do what they did best. He advocated for a division of labor that separated craft production into individual tasks to increase efficiency. He argued that the government should only provide defense against foreign invasion, maintain civil order with courts and police protection, and sponsor public works and institutions that could not profit private investors. His theory of the invisible hand argued that the pursuit of # 18 self-interest in a competitive market would be sufficient to improve the living conditions of citizens. - socialism : working classes, justice, equality between classes, fairness, cooperation, collectivization - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels : Early advocates and fathers of socialism. Their piece, the Communist Manifesto , predicted that the proletariat would reach a point of class-consciousness and overthrow the bourgeoisie in a violent class war. This would result in the arrival of communism, a classless, stateless, communal society. - Louis Blanc : French socialist who wrote Organization of Work to argue for government-sponsored cooperative workshops. Such workshops would be an alternative to capitalist employment and a decisive step toward a new, noncompetitive social order. - republicanism : universal democratic voting rights (for males), radical equality for all, democracy, violent upheaval # Second French Empire (1852-1870) - Louis Napoleon (later crowned Napoleon III ), nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte , won the presidential election in 1852 after the French Revolution of 1848 and went on to establish a semi-authoritarian regime. Napoleon IIIs nationalism was authoritarian, unlike early nationalism, which was liberal or radical. Napoleon IIIs ability to rally voters support for a strong central state and an emperor rather than a republic and an elected leader showed that popular nationalism was compatible with authoritarian government, even as France moved in an increasingly democratic direction. Napoleon III enjoyed popularity because of the bourgeoisies fear of socialisms influence in the 1848 Revolution. Napoleon III promoted a vision of national unity and social progress, in which the government represented all the people, rich and poor, and gave them economic and social benefits. - However, Napoleon III illegally dismissed the highly conservative legislature and seized power in a coup dtat. Louis Napoleon restored universal male suffrage and proclaimed the arrival of the Second French Empire. Emperor Napoleon III was greatly supported by the public, especially the working class. He granted workers the right to form unions and the right to strike in the 1860s. - Napoleon III believed that rebuilding much of Paris would provide employment, improve living conditions, limit the outbreak of cholera epidemics, and testify to the power and glory of his empire. He hired Baron Georges Haussmann to modernize the city. A capable city planner, Haussmann bulldozed both buildings and opposition. Aided by the technology that made improved urban planning and living possible, Haussmann and public authorities after him rebuilt cities in ways that would tackle urban living . Paris was completely transformed in 20 years. Small parks, new streets (designed to prevent the construction of barricades by revolutionaries), better housing, and improved sewers beautified Paris. # 19 Crimean War (1853-1856) - Fought between over Russian desires to expand into Ottoman territory and concluded in Russian defeat by France, Britain, and the Ottomans. It was the first testing of modern weaponry. Russia lost, established in the Treaty of Paris in 1856. - Russias military failure informed Tsar Alexander II that Russia needed to undergo industrialization and social change. Alexander abolished serfdom in 1861, though it didnt help the serfs that much. His governmental reforms were also halfway measures (such as his zemstvos /local governing councils), but economic industrialization was successful. # The Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918) - After being defeated by Prussia in the 1866 Austro-Prussian War and losing northern Italy, Austria agreed to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise and established the dual-monarchy (Ausgleich) in 1867, which divided the Austrian Empire into two. Each half of the empire from this split onwards dealt with its own ethnic minorities, and the two states, called the Austro-Hungarian Empire (or Austria-Hungary) shared the same monarch and common finance, defense, and foreign affairs ministries. The Magyar nobility in 1867 Hungary restored the 1848 constitution and used it to dominate the Magyar peasantry and the minority populations until the First World War. Only the top 25% of adult males were given suffrage rights, which made the parliament the mechanism of the Magyar elite. Unlike the other major countries that used nationalism to strengthen their state after 2872, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was weakened by nationalism ; while Magyar extremists advocated for complete separation from Austria, the radical leaders of their subject nationalities wanted independence from Hungary. # Italian Unification (1870) - Italy was reorganized into a patchwork of states at the 1914 Congress of Vienna . Many Italian nationalists in the 1850s focused on the promise of a national federation led by Victor Emmanuel II , the autocratic king of Sardinia-Piedmont , which boasted one of the most industrialized, wealthy, and socially advanced territories on the Italian peninsula. Victor Emmanuel retained the liberal constitution granted by his father under duress during the revolutions of 1848. This constitution combined a strong monarchy with a fair degree of civil liberties and parliamentary government. - The struggle for Italian unification under Victor Emmanuel II was supported by Count Camillo Benso di Cavour , a brilliant statesman who served as prime minister of Sardinia-Piedmont from 1852 until 1861. Cavour had realistic unification goals. In early 1860, Cavour regained Napoleon III s support by ceding Savoy and Nice to France. The people of central Italy then voted overwhelmingly to join the kingdom under Victor Emmanuel, and northern Italy was united in one state. - The super-patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi and his guerrilla band of Red Shirts believed the unification of just the north left the task half done. Cavour controlled Garibaldi and turned popular nationalism in a conservative direction., allowing for Italian unification The kingdom of Italy , established in 1860, was a parliamentary monarchy under Victor Emmanuel II . # 20 - However, even after unification under a parliamentary monarchy , Italy faced troubles. A majority of men couldnt vote. Northern Italy was very urban and industrial, while the South was agricultural and poor. # German Unification (1871) - Kaiser Wilhelm I employed Otto von Bismarck as Prussian prime minister in 1871. Bismarck was the most successful champion of Realpolitik : politics based on Machiavellian power rather than ideals. Bismarcks foreign policy was called Blood and Iron , which reflected this idea. To prepare to consolidate power, Bismarck reorganized the Prussian army and created a nationalistic conservative constitution for the North German Confederation . - The Austro-Prussian War (Seven Weeks War) established Prussia as the dominant German state. - The Franco-Prussian War united Northern and Southern Germany. Bismarck goaded French Emperor Napoleon III into war with the Ems dispatch . At the wars end, Germany was proclaimed as an empire in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. This caused the Second French Empire to fall, and France ceded Alsace-Lorraine to Germany and had to pay reparations. France established the relatively stable Third French Republic . - The united Germany became the most powerful state in Europe in less than a decade, and most Germans were enormously proud of Bismarcks genius and Prussias invincible army. Semi-authoritarian nationalism and a new conservatism , based on an alliance of the landed nobles and middle classes, had triumphed in Germany. - After uniting Germany, Bismarck made steps to strengthen the new state. His Kulturkampf , which tried to put the Catholic Church under governmental control, failed. Bismarck also banned the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Socialist political propaganda. However, he hoped to avoid a German Socialist revolution by implementing state socialism policies, which included old age pensions, accident insurance, and health insurance. This made Bismarcks Germany the first modern welfare state. # The Third French Republic - The Franco-Prussian war forced France to surrender Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871, and the patriotic Parisians proclaimed the Paris Commune , its radical leaders wanting to establish a revolutionary government in Paris and rule without interference from the conservative French countryside. They wanted workplace reforms, the separation of church and state, press censorship, and radical feminism. Adolphe Thiers , leader of the National Assembly, ordered the French army into Paris and brutally crushed the Commune, killing 20,000 people during the fight. - The National Assembly under Thiers legalized trade unions, and between 1879 and 1886 a series of laws greatly broadened the state system of public, tax-supported schools and established free compulsory elementary education for both girls and boys. Free compulsory elementary education became secular republican education, unlike in the past when secondary education took place in Catholic schools. - the Dreyfus affair , a case in which Alfred Dreyfus , a Jewish captain in the French army, was falsely accused and convicted of treason, reestablished the conflict. mile Zola published # 21 JAccuse!, accusing the army of a mistrial and cover-up, and he was sentenced to a year in prison. Conservatives and the Catholic Church sided with the anti-Semites against Dreyfus, while liberals and republicans defended him; after Dreyfus was declared innocent, the French government severed all ties between the state and the church between 1901 and 1905. Without financial support from the government, Catholic schools lost of their students, and the state school systems reach grew, and so did its power of indoctrination. # New Imperialism in Africa and Asia - In the 1884 Berlin Conference , 10 major Western powers (including the United States) set standards for Western occupation of Africa. In the late 19th century, these powers nearly completely conquered Africa, leaving only Ethiopia and Liberia independent. - With heavy industrialization in the West, industrialized countries needed the raw materials from new colonies. Also, in a time of increasing military budgets and capabilities, the European powers set up tactful naval bases in areas of the East Indies. Nationalism had become more aggressive and less Romantic. Christian missionaries also encouraged imperialism (and the civilizing mission ). Missionaries argued that they were leading their converts to salvation and away from Pagan barbarism. - Dutch King Leopold II and his private army, the Force Publique , terrorized the Congo Free State until 1908, when public outrage over the Congolese oppression reached Europe. Leopold forced the Congolese to harvest African ivory and rubber for Dutch economic gain. - The Boer War between Afrikaners (Dutch settlers) and the British resulted in British victory, but not after the forcing of Afrikaners and some native Africans into concentration camps. - European nationalism and racism justified these exploits; Social Darwinism , which applied Charles Darwins concept of survival of the fittest to race, was popular within imperialists. Rudyard Kipling s poem The White Mans Burden describes the civilizing mission that Europeans took upon themselves to exploit nonwhite countries under the guise of helping their inhabitants. - Additionally, the concept of Orientalism was a bit contradictory by nature; Europeans had a fascination with the Oritental stereotype of non-Western peoples, but were also perfectly fine with oppressing them. They believed the West was modern, white, rational, and Christian, while the non-West was primitive, colored, emotional, and pagan or Islamic. But as part of this view, Westerners imagined the Orient as a place of romance and mystery, populated with exotic, dark-skinned peoples where Westerners could have exciting experiences of foreign societies and cultures - The technological gap between the West and non-Western regions of the world was immense. The rapidly firing Maxim machine gun was an ultimate weapon in unequal battles. The newly discovered quinine was effective in controlling malaria , which was previously an issue for whites in the tropics when they ventured in mosquito-infested lands. The steamship and international telegraph permitted Western powers to quickly concentrate their firepower in a given area when it was needed. # 22 Unit 8: 20th-Century Global Conflicts # World War I (1914-1918) - The First World War was caused by militarism , alliances , imperialism , and nationalism . - In Serbia, nationalism was extremely popular. Self-determination on the basis of ethnicity caused Gavrilo Princip from the Serbian nationalist group the Black Hand to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife during their trip to Bosnia. Balkan peninsula nationalists like Princip wanted to liberate Slavic groups from Austro-Hungarian Empire rule and establish their own countries. ## England, France, Russia (Allied Powers) - Before the First World War, England was debating its foreign policy . In 1859, the Whig Party merged with other groups and formed the Liberal Party , which advocated for laissez-faire economics and social reform . The Second Reform Bill of 1867, done by Benjamin Disraeli , extended suffrage rights to all middle-class males and the highest-paid workers to broaden their base of support beyond the landowning class. Disraeli supported a strong foreign policy. The Third Reform Bill of 1884, done by William Gladstone , gave suffrage to nearly all adult men. Unlike Disraeli, Gladstone supported a cheap foreign policy. The Liberal Party , inspired by Welshman David Lloyd George , enacted the Peoples Budget and substantially raised the taxes on the rich, helping the government pay for national health insurance , unemployment benefits , old-age pensions , and other social measures. Between 1906 and 1914 social welfare measures were passed very rapidly, and Charles V ruled during WWI. - England , France , and Russia formed the Triple Entente in 1907. France, though the long-standing historical enemy of England, sought revenge over its loss in the Franco-Prussian war. ## Germany, Austria, Italy (Central Powers) - After establishing the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy in 1882, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck believed Germany was a satisfied power. Bismarck was the architect of the Alliance System in Europe, however he believed the alliances would lead Europe to peace, not war. Bismarck was fired by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1890 because Wilhelm II had greater ambitions for German expansion. - Germany had been building up its military; the H.M.S. Dreadnought battleship outperformed every other ship in history. ## Total War - Despite their immensely advanced and destructive weaponry, Germanys first move failed. The Schlieffen Plan , which planned for German forces to march through neutral Belgium, quickly defeat France, and turn and defeat Russia, was disintegrated when Belgium fought against the invading German forces. This failure on the Western front marked the beginning of trench warfare , in which fighting produced little movement and progress, but massive casualties. # 23 - These wartime casualties were more immense than in any previous war due to the Second Industrial Revolution . The chemical weapons , planes , and tanks used in World War I were made possible because of industrial advancements. - The ongoing stalemate and heavy casualties caused each combatant country to desperately need men and weapons. National leaders aggressively intervened in society and the economy to keep the war going. In total war , new government ministries mobilized soldiers and armaments and established rationing programs. Censorship offices controlled news about the course of the war, and government planning boards temporarily abandoned free-market capitalism and set mandatory production goals and limits on wages and prices. The government management of highly productive industrial economies worked; it yielded an effective and immensely destructive war effort on all sides. - In 1915, Italy abandoned the Central Powers and joined the Allies . In 1917, the United States , the worlds largest manufacturing power (followed distantly by Germany), entered the First World War. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson created his Fourteen Points , a set of principles which called for open diplomacy, a reduction in armaments, freedom of commerce and trade, national self-determination , and the establishment of the League of Nations . - The 1918 Armistice failed to bring a true end to the fighting. It wasnt until the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that the war could officially be declared over. ## The Treaty of Versailles (1919) - The Treaty of Versailles was a part of a larger series of treaties known as the Peace of Paris . It stripped Germany of its colonies, imposed upon it a massive penalty for warmongering, and forbade Germany from rebuilding its army to larger than 100,000 men. It also established the war guilt clause , which officially blamed Germany for the war. - Prime Ministers Lloyd George of Great Britain and Georges Clemenceau of France were primarily concerned with punishing Germany, leaving the League of Nations as a second priority. Though he wanted to form a Rhineland buffer state between France and Germany, Clemenceau settled for French military occupation of the region for 15 years and a formal defensive alliance with the U.S. and Great Britain. - Additionally, the League of Nations , which Wilson had heavily advocated for, was founded. It was a permanent international organization designed to protect member states from aggression and avert future wars. An important League of Nations policy was national self-determination , which was the notion that peoples should be able to choose their own national governments through democratic majority-rule elections and live free from outside interference in nation-states with clearly defined borders. - Despite being part of the production of the self-determination concept themselves, Britain and France expanded their empires to the Middle East after its assistance during the war. - Despite being U.S. President Wilsons idea, the United States never joined the League of Nations , which weakened its ability to accomplish much on a global scale. - The agreements signed at Versailles redrew European borders at the expense of the wars losers. The new independent nations of Poland , Czechoslovakia , Finland , the Baltic states , and Yugoslavia were carved out of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. The Ottoman Empire was also partitioned among the control of the victors. # 24 - Post-Treaty, combatant countries were extremely war-weary. The Kellogg-Briand Pact , signed in 1928 by Germany, France, and the United States was meant to eliminate the use of war to resolve conflicts. It was unsuccessful; the Second World War started 11 years later. ## Womens Rights Advancements After World War I - Women on the home front took up industrial jobs while men were on the front line. A particularly popular employment for women was in munitions factories . - Emmeline Pankhurst : womens suffrage activist who was key in the United Kingdoms suffragette movement and helped U.K. women earn the right to vote - In the English Representation of the People Act (1918), all men and women over 30 could vote. In the Reform Act of 1928 , all English women over 21 could vote. # The Russian Revolutions ## First Russian Revolution (1905): Constitutional Monarchy - The Russo-Japanese war was the first victory of a non-Western power over a European power. This was an embarrassment and financial disaster for Russia. - Bloody Sunday Massacre : Russian military fired into a crowd in St. Petersburg, resulting in hundreds of casualties and arrests. - October Manifesto : Tsar Nicholas II authorized a constitution and the creation of the Duma (parliament). However, the tsar still retained executive authority and complete veto power over all legislation. ## February/October Revolutions (1917): Constitutional Republic/Bolshevik Regime - The February Revolution resulted in Nicholas IIs abdication and the establishment of a Russian provisional republic, which attempted to keep fighting in the First World War. - Kerensky s provisional government after Tsar Nicholas IIs abdication was weak, and he refused to take Russia out of World War I. - The October Revolution (Bolshevik Revolution) resulted in the Bolshevik takeover of Russias provisional government and the eventual establishment of the Soviet Union. Lenins government ceded land to Germany in order to exit the First World War in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk . - Vladimir Lenin and his co-revolutionary Leon Trotsky adapted Marxism to an authoritarian regime. With War Communism , the Leninist regime completely centralized and collectivized business and agriculture. - This was an economic disaster, and Lenin had to establish the New Economic Policy (NEP) , which allowed for petty capitalism and private enterprise in Russia. Similar to Bismarcks socialist policies, Lenin was willing to dabble in the economic policy he was in opposition to (capitalism; in Bismarcks case: socialism) in order to preserve his country. # 25 Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Science in the Early 1900s - Impressionism blossomed in Paris in the 1870s. Impressionists such as Claude Monet painted neither to glorify the monarchy nor to capture a photo-realistic scene, but to evoke emotion through quick brushstrokes and peaceful colors. Notable Monet pieces include Impression, Sunrise ; Woman with a Parasol ; and Luncheon on the Grass . Many Impressionist paintings depicted the life of the emerging middle class. Post-Impressionism also utilized color and emotion. Vincent Van Gogh s Starry Night is probably the most famous post-Impressionist piece. - Edvard Munch s The Scream is an Expressionist painting. Cubism , like Expressionism , turns the post-World War I feelings of uncertainty, disillusionment, and interest in the subconscious into abstract, geometric art. Pablo Picasso was a Spanish Cubist. Salvador Dal s Surrealist painting The Persistence of Memory depicted melting clocks in an unreal, barren landscape. Even more abstract is Dadaism , which challenged the established rules of art through absolutely absurd pieces often containing subliminal political statements. - The stream-of-consciousness style of writing, championed by Virginia Woolf, William Faulker, and James Joyce, displayed the confusion and uncertainty of the West after the Treaty of Versailles. - Nihilism and existentialism emerged in the post-World War I landscape as well; disappointed after total war, Friedrich Nietzsche attacked Enlightenment philosophy: democracy, nationalism, Christianity, and rationalism. He famously claimed that God is dead and was murdered by Christians who no longer truly believed in him. Franz Kafka s The Metamorphosis exemplifies the disillusionment and shock ordinary people felt in the 1920s. - Sigmund Freud , father of clinical psychiatry, concluded in 1900 that human behavior was basically irrational and governed by the unconscious. His id (animalistic desire), ego (logic), and superego (conscience) attempted to categorize this unconscious. - Albert Einstein s theory of relativity postulated that time and space are relative to the viewpoint of the observer and that only the speed of light is constant for all frames of reference in the universe. This greatly challenged the previously-accepted Newtonian physics . Furthermore, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle postulated that nature itself is ultimately unknowable and unpredictable. He suggested that the universe lacked any absolute objective reality and that everything was relative, or dependent on the observers frame of reference. - Racist anti-Semitism had become wildly popular on the far right-wing of European politics in the decades surrounding the First World War. These irrational beliefs were given pseudoscientific legitimacy by 19th-century developments in biology and eugenics. - Ernest Rutherford , a leading pioneer of discovery in the science of physics, called the 1920s the heroic age of physics . In 1919 he showed that the atom could be split, and by 1944 seven subatomic particles had been identified, the most important being the neutron . This discovery was fundamental to the subsequent development of the nuclear bomb , which the United States used to reign catastrophic destruction upon Japan in World War II . # 26 The Great Depression - Beginning in 1929, a massive economic downturn caused by the United Statess stock market crash struck the entire world. The United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and the rest of the international market faced devastating economic failure and unemployment rates. The prolonged economic collapse shattered Frances fragile political stability of the mid-1920s and encouraged the growth of extremists on both ends of the political spectrum. - French President Lon Blum led France through the Great Depression. His Popular Front made an attempt to deal with the social and economic problems of the 1930s in France. Inspired by U.S. President Roosebelts New Deal, the Popular Front encouraged union movements and launched a far-reaching program of social reform, complete with paid vacations and a 40-hour work week. Though supported by workers and the lower middle class, these measures were sabotaged by inflation and accusations of revolution from right-wingers. ## The Weimar Republic - The Weimar Republic made its first reparations payment in 1921, but didnt pay the following year due to rapid inflation, political assassinations, and pure hostility and arrogance. German leaders proposed a moratorium on reparations for 3 years, implicating that thereafter the payments would either be drastically reduced or eliminated entirely. Unsurprisingly, the French were not willing to accept a moratorium. - France occupied the German Ruhr district , Germanys head of industrial production. The German government began to print money to pay its bills, causing catastrophic inflation , which mocked the old middle-class virtues of thrift, caution, and self-reliance. - The 1924 American Dawes Plan was an attempted solution for Germanys economic crisis. It had the U.S. loaning money to Germany, in which Germany would use to pay reparations to Great Britain and France. Then, Britain and France would distribute the money back to the United States. - In a time of political instability, Adolf Hitler , then an obscure politician, proclaimed a national socialist revolution in his Beer Hall Putsch (violent attempt to overthrow the government). His attempt was crushed by the emerging republican government, and during his prison sentence, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf , which outlined his plans for future Nazi terror. - So, in the late 1920s liberal democracy seemed to take root in Germanys Weimar Republic . Elections were held regularly, and the support for republican democracy was growing among the German populace. However, Germany still had sharp political divisions, and Hitlers Nazi party attracted support from fanatical anti-Semites, ultranationalists, and disgruntled WWI veterans. # Totalitarianism and Fascism ## The Soviet Union - Communism : left-wing totalitarianism (total control over citizen life), classless society - Joseph Stalin (r. 1922-1952) # 27 - Socialism in one country : Stalin intended to strengthen Communism within the Soviet Union, rather than the Marxist and Bolshevik intention for the international spread of communism. - Rapid industrialization : State-supported industrialization of Russia through the implementation of five-year plans (Gosplan ) of centrally-planned production. - Collectivization of agriculture : Stalin forced peasants onto collective farms (socialist communal farming collectives). He was resisted by kulaks (land-owning peasants) who he intentionally starved and sent to gulags (Siberian labor camps). - Cult of personality : Stalin idolized both the deceased Lenin and himself. His status as the leader was proclaimed everywhere, and he and Lenin were seen favorably depicted on propaganda posters. St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad and Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad . - Political Repression : Great Purge in the late 1930s when Stalin purged his political opponents in the military, bureaucracy, and landowning peasants, resulting in around 1 million deaths ## Fascist Italy - Fascism : right-wing totalitarianism (total control over citizen life), nationalism, militarism, glorification of the state, hierarchy of classes - Benito Mussolini (r. 1922-1943) seized power from King Victor Emmanuel III during a political crisis - Corporatist economy : Private corporations continue to own the means of production, which are at the command of the government to be used for the common good. - Aggressive nationalism : The nation is the fundamental unit of organization. - Class cooperation : Rejection of socialist class conflict ideals in favor of nationalist ideals of class cooperation for the common good. - Rejection of liberalism : Fascism was not individualistic and does not believe in economic liberalism, checks and balances, or civil liberties. - Revival of national greatness : Mussolini based his ideas on the revival of the Roman Empire. - Militarism : Mussolini engaged in Ethiopian conquests. - Cult of the Leader : Mussolinis image as Il Duce. ## Nazi Germany - The Great Depression damaged Germany for longer than it did the other powers. When it first came about in Germany, Adolf Hitler promised German voters economic as well as political salvation. His appeals for national rebirth appealed to a broad spectrum of voters, including middle and lower-class groups. In the election of 1932, the Nazis became the largest party in the Reichstag , where Nazi deputies began to establish the foundations of totalitarian control. - On January 30, 1933, Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party , the most popular political party in Germany, was appointed chancellor in a coalition government by President Hindenburg . The conservative politicians in power thought they could use Hitler to # 28 resolve the political crisis and to clamp down on leftists, controlling him for their benefit. They were wrong. - Hitlers Enabling Act , passed through the Reichstag in 1933, gave Hitler dictatorial power for 4 years. The Nazis eliminated their enemies: Communists, Social Democrats, and trade-union leaders. They outlawed the Communist Party after blaming the Communists for a fire that his own Nazis started that partially destroyed the Reichstag building. Hitler outlawed strikes and abolished independent labor unions, which were replaced by the Nazi-controlled German Labor Front. - The main components of Nazism were nationalism and anti-Semitism . The Nazis persecuted a number of groups in order to build their Aryan ethnostate , mainly Jews , but also including Slavic peoples, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and Jehovahs Witnesses. Nazi bureaucrats inventented more cateogies targeted for racial hygiene : the hereditarily ill and asocials. - Nazis also championed a return to traditional family values . Nazi Germany outlawed abortion, discouraged women from holding jobs or obtaining higer education, and glorified domesticity and motherhood. - Hitlers elite personal guard, the SS , grew rapidly under its leader Heinrich Himmler , and it took over the political police and the concentration camp system. - In 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed a nonaggression pact . This Nazi-Soviet NAP was surprising to the other powers, as both Hitler and Stalin had vowed to fight against Communism and Fascism respectively. In the pact, each dictator promised to remain neutral if the other became involved in hostilities. A secret attachment divided Poland and the Baltic nations into German and Soviet spheres of influence . # World War II (1939-1945) - Adolf Hitler absorbed Austria into Greater Germany in 1938. Under the policy of appeasement , British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and the French agreed that Germany should take over the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia , as it contained many ethnic Germans. Soon after, Hitlers armies invaded and occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia. - Chamberlains policy of appeasement , motivated by the intense pacifism felt after World War I , allowed for Nazi Germany to complete huge conquests uncontested. - It wasnt until when German armies attacked Poland from 3 sides in 1939 that Britain and France finally declared war on Germany. The Second World War had begun. - Hitler used the Blitzkrieg , or Lightning War, strategy with tanks and planes for quick conquest. The Blitzkrieg was like a successful Schlieffen Plan , taking Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and France. Hitler ruled practically all of continental Europe by July 1940. At the same time, imperial Japan expanded rapidly, promising Western-colonized Asian territories freedom, when in fact, these colonies just shifted to the control of the Japanese. - Together, Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy formed the Axis powers . Later, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria joined the Axis; the Soviet Union, Spain, and Sweden were friendly neutrals. Only the Balkans and Britain remained unconquered. - England faced numerous bombings a day in the Battle of Britain , but British Prime Minister Winston Churchill s order to increase aircraft production forced the Nazis to turn away and # 29 refocus their assault on other nations. Additionally, the English development of radar technology and the breaking of the Enigma code gave them a significant advantage in aircraft warfare. - Hitler broke his nonagression pact with Stalin in 1941, sending German armies into the Soviet Union . The Soviets held their ground until winter, and German armies retreated. ## The Holocaust - Despite failures in England and the Soviet Union, Hitler now ruled over a European empire stretching from eastern Europe to the English Channel. Hitler, the Nazi leadership, and the loyal German army were positioned to accelerate the construction of their so-called New Order in Europe. Hitlers New Order was based on the guiding principle of National Socialism : racial imperialism . Occupied peoples were treated according to their place in the Nazi racial hierarchy . All were subject to harsh policies dedicated to ethnic cleansing and the plunder of resources for the Nazi war effort. - Nazis sought to build a vast colonial empire on the eastern front where Jews would be exterminated and Poles , Ukranians , and Russians would be enslaved and forced to die out. In walled-off ghettos , hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews lived in crowded and unsanitary conditions; over 500,000 people died in these ghettos, the most important being in Warsaw and Lodz. The surviving residents of the ghettos were loaded onto trains and taken to camps. The Jews of Germany and occupied western and central Europe were rounded up, put on trains, and sent to the camps. In Auschwitz-Birkenau alone, over 1 million people were murdered in gas chambers . According to the New Order, ethnic German peasants were planned to resettle the resulting abandoned lands. ## The Grand Alliance - While the Nazis and the Japanese built their empires, Great Britain , the United States , and the Soviet Union joined together in a military pact Churchill termed the Grand Alliance . The United States entered the Second World War in 1941 after imperial Japan preemptively attacked the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor , Hawaii, destroying the American battleships stationed there. - While the Western powers opposed U.S.S.R. premier Joseph Stalin s totalitarian Communist government, the Grand Alliance agreed on a policy of Europe first , meaning that the Allies would worry about the political questions of the peace settlement only after they defeated Hitler. This policy also stated that the Allies would target Hitler first, and later Japan. The principle of the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan encouraged immediate mutual trust. - At this point in the final stretch of the war, total war policies had been reintroduced for a few years in all participating countries. This was known as War Communism in the Soviet Union. - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill collaborated on the Atlantic Charter , the prerequisite for the United Nations (which would be formed after the wars end) in 1914. The Charter went over the Alliess goals for peace, which included self-determination for nations and economic and social international cooperation. # 30 Allied Victory - The United States and Britain now collectively did massive bombing raids on German urban cities to maim industrial production and break morale on the home front. The Soviet Red Army absolutely decimated the German forces at the Battle of Stalingrad in late 1942; it was the beginning of the end for Germany. In 1943, the larger, better-equipped Soviet forces pushed the German army back along the entire eastern front. - American and British forces under General Dwight D. Eisenhower landed in Normandy, France in D-Day , historys greatest naval invasion. In 100 days, more than 2 million soldiers and half a million vehicles broke through the German lines and pushed inland. Eisenhower moved forward cautiously, and American troops crossed the Rhine and entered Germany in spring 1945. The Allies had forced the Germans out of the Italian peninsula, and Mussolini was captured in northern Italy and executed by members of the Communist party . - After crossing through Poland and setting the stage for Soviet Polish occupation, the Red Army met the American forces on the Elbe River; the Allies had closed in on Germany. As Soviet forces fought their way into Berlin, Hitler committed suicide, and on May 8 the remaining German commanders surrendered. - To end the brutal naval war in the Pacific , American planes dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan on August 6 and 9, 1945. The mass bombing of cities and civilians, one of the terrible new practices of World War II, now ended in the most destructive bombing in human history. The Japanese announced their surrender on August 14, 1945. The Second World War , which had claimed the lives of more than 50 million soldiers and civilians, was over. # Unit 9: Cold War and Contemporary Europe # East-West Rivalry After World War II - The United Statess Marshall Plan in 1948 was designed to fund the post-WWII economic miracle in Europe. Unlike the series of loans that was the post-WWI Dawes Plan , the Marshall Plan just granted money to war-devastated European countries. This plan was meant to discourage Western Europe from embracing the Soviet Union and Communism . - Winston Churchill proclaimed that an Iron Curtain had divided Europe into the East Bloc , which was Communist, and the West Bloc , which was capitalist. - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established in 1949. NATO was an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western governments meant to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. Similarly, the Warsaw Pact , a military alliance among the U.S.S.R. and its Communist satellites (including Poland , Czechoslovakia , etc.), was created in 1955. In both political and military terms, most of Europe was divided into two hostile blocs. # 31 The Cold War (1947-1991) - The Cold War is defined by its arms race (including American and Soviet accumulation of nuclear weapons ), covert actions (the U.S. establishment of the CIA), and anti-Communist and anti-Western propaganda on both American and Soviet fronts respectively ## The Soviet Union and its Satellites After Stalin - Stalin died in the 1950s and was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev , who privately denounced Stalins cult of personality and launched a program of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union. He laid back the Soviet system of Terror, eventually disbanding the gulags. Khrushchev also de-Stalinized Soviet foreign policy . He said that peaceful coexistence with capitalism was possible, and war was not inevitable. Cold War tensions relaxed considerably between 1955 and 1957. - In October 1956, Hungary elected Imre Nagy , a liberal Communist reformer , as the new prime minister. He never renounced Communism, but he demanded open elections , the relaxation of political repression, and other reforms. When Nagy announced that Hungary would leave the Warsaw Pact and asked the United Nations to protect the countrys neutrality, the Soviets grew alarmed that Hungarys independent course would affect the other East Bloc countries. Soviet troops moved in on the capital city of Budapest on November 4. Help from the U.N. never came, as the Western powers were preoccupied with the Suez crisis . - During the 1958 Prague Spring , the long-time Czechoslovak Stalinist leader was voted out of office. Alexander Dubek was his replacement. Dubek was a dedicated Communist, but he believed that he could reconcile genuine socialism with personal freedom and party democracy. He relaxed state censorship and replaced rigid bureaucratic planning with local decision making by trade unions , workers councils, and consumers. The reform program, Socialism with a Human Face was enormously popular. Remembering that the Hungarian revolution revealed the difficulty of reforming communism from within, Dubek constantly proclaimed his loyalty to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact . - After failing to stop the flow of disgruntled East Germans into the West, the East German authorities built the Berlin Wall between East and West Berlin in 1961. This violated the existing agreements between the Great Powers, but newly-elected U.S. President John F. Kennedy did nothing to prevent its construction, privately hoping the wall would ease Cold War tensions. - Emboldened by American acceptance of the Berlin Wall, Premier Khrushchev secretly ordered missiles with nuclear warheads installed in Fidel Castro s Communist Cuba in 1962. When the U.S. discovered missile sites under construction, this caused the Cuban missile crisis . Khrushchev agreed to remove the Soviet missiles in return for American pledges not to disturb the Cuban regime. In a secret agreement, Kennedy also promised to remove U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey . - The reformist Khrushchev was displaced in Leonid Brezhnev s coup in 1964. Brezhnev began a period of limited re-Stalinization and economic stagnation . Soviet leaders launched a massive arms buildup in the mid-1960s all while cautiously avoiding direct confrontation with the United States. - Dubek s reforms threatened hard-line Communists where leaders lacked popular support. Moreover, Soviet authorities feared that the liberalized Czechoslovakia would be drawn to # 32 neutrality or even to NATO . So the East Bloc leadership launched a concerted campaign of intimidation against the reformers. In August 1968, Soviet and East Bloc troops occupied Czechoslovakia . The Czechoslovaks made no military attempt to resist, and the experiment in humanizing communism from within came to an end. - After the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia , Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev announced that the U.S.S.R. would now follow the Brezhnev Doctrine , under which the Soviet Union and its allies had the right to intervene militarily in any East Bloc country whenever they thought doing so was necessary to preserve Communist rule . The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia was the crucial event of the Brezhnev era: it demonstrated the determination of the Communist elite to maintain the status quo throughout the Soviet bloc. ## Cold War Tensions Thaw - Chancellor Willy Brandt in West Germany became the first Social Democratic West German chancellor. His Ostpolitik was part of a general relaxation of East-West tensions, called dtente , that began in the early 1970s. Though Cold War hostilities continued in the developing world, diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union grew less strained. The superpowers agreed to limit the testing and proliferation of nuclear weapons and in 1975 mounted a joint U.S.-U.S.S.R. space mission . The dtente movement reached a high point in 1975 when the U.S., Canada, and the U.S.S.R., and all European nations met in Helsinki to sign the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Under the Helsinki Accords , the 35 participating nations agreed that Europes existing political frontiers could not be changed by force, accepting numerous provisions guaranteeing the civil rights and political freedoms of their citizens, and the agreement helped diminish Cold War conflict. - In Czechoslovakia in 1977 a small group of citizens, including future Czechoslovak president Vclav Havel signed a manifesto known as Charter 77 . The group criticized the government for ignoring the human rights provision of the Helsinki Accords and called on Communist leaders to respect civil and political liberties . They also criticized censorship and argued for improved environmental policies . The group challenged passive acceptance of Communist authority and voiced public dissatisfaction with developed socialism. - In Poland , Lech Wasa , a Lenin Shipyards electrician and devout Catholic , led workers to organize a free and democratic trade union called Solidarity . As in Czechoslovakia , Solidarity worked cautiously to shape an active civil society. Supported by the Catholic Church, it became a large national union with 9.5 million members. Cultural and intellectual freedom blossomed in Poland. Solidaritys leaders pursued a self-limiting revolution, meant only to defend the concessions won in the Gdansk Agreement , which gave workers the right to form trade unions free from state control, freedom of speech, release of political prisoners, and economic reforms. Solidarity practiced moderation , refusing to directly challenge to Communist monopoly on political power, but the ever-present threat of calling a nationwide strike gave it leverage in negotiations with Communist leaders. # 33 The Revolutions of 1989 - In 1988 widespread strikes, raging inflation, and the now-outlawed Solidarity s refusal to cooperate with the military government had brought Poland to the brink of economic collapse. Polands Communist leaders offered to negotiate with Solidarity if the unions leaders could get the strikers back to work and resolve the political crisis, resulting in an agreement in April 1989. This agreement legalized Solidarity and declared that a large minority of representatives to the Polish parliament would be chosen by free elections that June. The Communists lost all but one seat in the free elections, and the Solidarity government eliminated the secret police, the Communist ministers in the government, and the Communist Party leader slowly to avoid confrontation with the army or the Soviet Union. The Solidarity government applied an intense amount of neoliberal economic policy designed to quickly break from state planning and move to market mechanisms and private property. - Polands Solidarity inspired other separaratist movements in the Balkan peninsula, and Hungary and Czechoslovakia (Velvet Revolution ) drifted toward open elections. ## Germany Unites and the Soviet Union Dissolves - West German chancellor Helmut Kohl presented a 10-point plan for reunification in cooperation with both East Germany and the international community. East Germans immediately fled across the border after the Berlin Wall fell, and their passage marked the beginning of unification. He then promised the struggling citizens of East Germany an immediate economic blessing , a generous yet limited exchange of East German marks into much more valuable West German marks. This offer popularized the Alliance for Germany , a well-financed political party established in East Germany with the support of Kohls West German Christian Democrats . The Alliance won almost 50% of the East German parliamentary votes in March 1990, and the Alliance for Germany quickly negotiated an economic and political union on favorable terms with Kohl. In July 1990, in a historic agreement signed by Gorbachev and Kohl , Kohl affirmed Germanys peaceful intentions and pledged never to develop nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. The Germans promised enormous loans to the hard-pressed Soviet Union . East Germany merged into West Germany in October 1990, forming a single nation under the West German laws and constitution. - After the Communist Party s country-wide defeats in 1990, Gorbachev ratified a new constitution that formally abolished the Communist Partys monopoly of political power and expanded the power of the Congress of Peoples Deputies. Boris Yeltsin , a radical reform Communist, was elected parliamentary leader of the Russian Soviet Republic in May 1990. He announced that Russia would put its interests first and declare its independence from the Soviet Union, broadening the base of the anticommunist movement by joining the patriotism of ordinary Russians with the democratic aspirations of big-city intellectuals. Locked in a political duel with Gorbachev , Yeltsin declared Russia independent, withdrew from the Soviet Union , and changed the countrys name from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Russian Federation . All the other Soviet republics followed, and the Supreme Soviet dissolved itself on the next day, marking the end of the Soviet Union . The independent republics of the old Soviet Union then established a loose confederation: the Commonwealth of Independent States . # 34 Globalization - After the fall of Communism and the Iron Curtain , European states were able to lead the way to globalization . Globalization is a broad concept, but it contains multinational corporations that use outsourcing to cheap labor markets, allows for the rapid exchange of information through the internet , and through this connects every economy. The Western upper middle class benefits from globalization, however it is hard for the working class due to the decrease in industrial factory jobs. - The new conservatives of the 1980s followed neoliberalism because of its roots in the free market and laissez-faire policies. Neoliberal theorists argue that governments should cut support for social services (housing, education, and health insurance), limit business subsidies, and retreat from all regulation. Neoliberals also called for privatization . - Neoliberalism is the dominant philosophy in the United Nations (UN) , European Union (EU) , and World Trade Organization (WTO) . - The United Nations was formed after World War II . It was mainly an instrument of decolonization during the Cold War , but continues to deal with issues such as world hunger and poverty today. The UN also sends troops in attempts to preserve peace between warring parties, as in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. - The Maastricht Treaty of 1991 formed the standards for the European Union . The EU is meant to enforce peace and unity and promote economic competition with the U.S. and China. It removed the member nations traditional currencies in favor of the Euro , the centralizing currency of the EU. Some Europeans are in favor of the EU, while others are not. People favoring the European Union enjoy its establishment of basic political unity. The opposition fears that it promotes Eurocrats and strips European nations of their traditions and national identities. - Nearly every country in the world is part of the World Trade Organization . The WTO is one of the most powerful supranational financial institutions. It sets trade and tariff agreements for over 150 member countries, helping manage a large percentage of the worlds import-export policies . # 35