Transcription
Welcome back to our lecture series for Western Civilization 102. Today we are going to learn about, basically, the years between 1871 and 1914, which was the, 1914 was the beginning of World War One in the summer of 1914. And your lecture is titled, "Democracy and Despotism, 1871-1914."
Um, yeah, this encompasses quite a lot of material. Between the years 1871 and, and 1914, there was actually a Second Industrial Revolution that occurred in Europe at the time. And this, this Second Industrial Revolution actually spreads to places like Russia and Japan after 1871. In fact, women will be impacted by this Second Industrial Revolution. Um, they found places in, in careers such as nursing and teaching. There was a higher standard of living after 1871 with this Second Industrial Revolution. There were more newspapers, in fact, you know, newspapers were being sold in a, in a massive kind of way, more literacy, more time for leisure activities during these years, such as dance halls and, and team sports like soccer and baseball and rugby. Um, sewers, of course, being built, which would help, of course, with hygiene.
Now, you know, when you take a look at the different countries in Europe after 1871, you'll see that with France. And France, of course, has obviously recently had a very turbulent history. Louis Napoleon will not survive. He will not continue to rule over France. Remember that during the Franco-Prussian War, France lost to Prussia. Bismarck, with his home unification and actually making Prussia the dominant force for unification of the German states, he, he managed to get Austria excluded. Uh, France lost that war and to the Prussians, and Louis Napoleon will also lose power as well. And France will no longer be known as an Empire. Once again, it will become a republic, and it will be called the Third Republic. And, uh, this period of the Third Republic will last up until 1940. And when you think 1940, you're thinking World War II, so that's quite a long time for this type of government in France.
Of course, you know, in Germany, Germany has been united under the direction of Otto von Bismarck, very important key figure. He, uh, he will actually, as long as Bismarck is in power, um, he manages, you know, one of Bismarck's greatest fears was that there would be a two-front war. Two-front war that Germany would be stuck in the middle of, for example, France in the, uh, in the west and maybe Russia in the east, and both France and Russia would be enemies of Germany. And so Bismarck, even though he managed to obtain his goal of unification, Bismarck's main focus is to make sure that Germany is in a good spot, that they will not have to be forced into, you know, this middle between two enemies. And as long as he's in power, it seems like everything's fine. He manages to, to negotiate and diplomacy, and he manages to juggle everything. Problem is, of course, William II, the, the king or the Kaiser, as they call in Germany, um, will basically get rid of him, get rid of Bismarck. And once that happens, here between the years 1871 and 1914, you'll see that World War I is not too far away. All of these systems of alliances that Bismarck had created will just collapse and fall, and we'll learn more about that, of course, in a future lecture.
In Russia, um, Russia's has got a kind of a turbulent history here during, in between these years of 1871-1914. Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. Alexander III actually will start to, uh, expand the powers of the secret police. And when he dies in 1894, he leaves his son, Nicholas II, the Romanov Dynasty in charge. And of course, you probably have heard of Nicholas II and the Romanovs. Um, very, you know, Russia is not too far away from their Bolshevik Communist Revolution, and of course, the death of not only Nicholas but his whole family before a firing squad, which people still write controversial books about.
There were, of course, uh, numerous other events happening, and, you know, you'll learn more about the different regions of Europe and what's going on during these years. And eventually, when we come back, we'll also talk about imperialism. And, you know, when I say imperialism, that's aggressive expansion. And, you know, imperialism leading up to World War I was rampant. Europe was basically carving out Africa, carving out little areas of Africa and Asia. But that, of course, will be another lecture.
All right, so let's learn about democracy and despotism from 1871 to 1914.
Between 1870 and 1914, Europe witnessed a move towards more democratic and representative forms of government in most of Western and Central Europe, although despotism continued to survive in the easternmost parts of Europe. As a rough rule of thumb, the further east you go, the more despotic government was. The further west you go, the more democratic it became. Certainly on the extremes, this is true. Britain, at the far western end of the European continent, was the most democratic state in many respects, whereas Russia on the opposite end was the most authoritarian.
In Britain, there was still a monarchy, but it was by now a constitutional monarchy. Queen Victoria ruled in Britain from 1837 to 1901, the longest reign in British history. In 1842, she married Prince Albert, and the two of them had nine children. But after the death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861, she largely withdrew from public life for many years. Real power, in any case, had passed to Parliament by this time, and in Britain, there was a very strong two-party system. Moreover, in the period between 1870 and the end of the 19th century, the British Parliament was dominated by two of the most talented individuals ever to hold the office of Prime Minister in Britain: Benjamin Disraeli, the leader of the British Conservative Party, and William Gladstone, the leader of the British Liberal Party. Both of them, in a very real sense, created the modern Conservative and Liberal parties in Britain. Both were gifted politicians, both were known for their integrity, and both were committed reformers. The question was not really whether reform would go forward, but how, how far it would go, and how fast.
Benjamin Disraeli was Prime Minister twice, briefly in 1868, and again between 1874 and 1880. Even before he took office as Prime Minister, he was one of the leading forces behind the Reform Bill of 1867, which enfranchised most of the lower middle class in Britain after the Reform Bill of 1832 had enfranchised the upper middle class. He also was a reformer in a number of other respects. He was particularly a patron of legislation improving conditions in factories, improving conditions in housing, and improving in conditions where public health is concerned. So, although he was a conservative, he was very much a reformer as well. In foreign policy, he had a number of distinctive achievements. One of these was that in 1875, Britain acquired controlling interest in the Suez Canal, which connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and gave the British easier access to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. He was also responsible for pushing through the Royal Titles Act in 1876, which led to Queen Victoria being given the title of Empress of India, one which raised her up to a level equivalent to the other emperors in Europe at the time. And in 1878, he helped to maintain peace in Europe by his critical role in the Congress of Berlin, which may well have avoided a continental-wide war.
His counterpart, William Ewart Gladstone, was actually Prime Minister no less than four times: 1868-74, 1880-85, 1886 very briefly, and again from 1892 to 95. He too was a reformer. In particular, he carried out reforms having to do with the term of enlistment in the army, thereby boosting enlistment substantially. He also carried out civil service reform, which saw to it that people who worked for the government were better qualified for the jobs that they had. And he carried out a number of reforms in the judiciary, which made the court system more user-friendly and fairer to people who came before it. He also was responsible for pushing through the Ballot Act in 1872, which introduced the secret ballot into elections in Britain. And just as Disraeli had played a critical role in pushing through the 1867 Reform Bill, Gladstone played a big part in the 1884 Reform Bill, which enfranchised many of the working class in Britain, in fact, leaving only a handful of adult males unenfranchised, as well as, for the time being, women, although that would come soon as well.
On the other hand, Gladstone did have some problems that became more apparent, uh, during the latter parts of his career. One is that he was associated in 1885 with one of the most significant foreign policy embarrassments that Britain suffered in the 19th century. Britain had troops in Khartoum along the border with Sudan. Those troops were under threat in 1885, and Gladstone sent Charles George Gordon, a British general, to evacuate the population. Gordon, on his own, decided to stay and fight instead and got himself into a serious jam, which was very much his own fault. But when he sent for assistance from Gladstone, Gladstone hesitated just long enough to allow Gordon and those in the town to be massacred, and Gladstone wound up suffering politically for what was only partly his fault.
Another issue that that came to dogging him was that Gladstone sought to reform the education system to make it less denominational. In the, the previous era, the Anglican Church had controlled most schools in Great Britain, and there were a substantial number of non-uh Anglican Protestants, as well as Catholics, who objected to paying taxes to support Anglican schools. Gladstone tried to spread this out a bit more so that the tax money also went to support more secular or non-Anglican schools. But as is often the case, he wound up satisfying neither side. Anglicans were unhappy about losing their exclusivity, whereas non-Anglicans didn't feel that Gladstone's programs went far enough.
Another issue where politics and religion intersected in Britain had to do with Temperance. William Gladstone was very much a moralist. In fact, in his younger days, he devoted a great deal of time to trying to lure people away from lives associated with prostitution and addiction. Later on, he took up the cause of temperance, trying to reduce the number of pubs in Britain and to reduce the consumption of alcohol. This, of course, ran afoul of the brewing industry, the distilling industry, the wine importing industry, and perhaps most significantly, British drinkers. And once again, he found himself caught in the middle. Although he did, in fact, reduce the number of licensed houses selling distilled spirits and beer, at the same time, he didn't reduce it enough to satisfy the really hardcore temperance advocates.
Finally, the most serious problem that Gladstone faced was the question of Irish Home Rule. Ireland had been incorporated into the United Kingdom back in 1801, and a substantial number of the Irish population had been resistant to that ever since. There was, by the late 19th century, a strong movement for independence for Ireland, which Gladstone came slowly to support. But when he tried to introduce Irish Home Rule legislation, this frequently came back to cause him trouble.
Gladstone and Disraeli were adversaries for a number of years, but after Disraeli's demise in 1881, leadership of the Conservative Party was assumed by the third Marquis of Salisbury, who was Prime Minister three times himself: from 1885 to 86, from 1986 to 92, and then from 1895 to 1902. Salisbury, more than anybody else, was an advocate of the idea of "splendid isolationism," of the notion that Britain should concentrate on the affairs of its empire and leave the continent to itself. He had plenty to deal with at home, however. Uh, in 1887, he had to back the Irish Coercion Act, which he saw as necessary to control rebellious elements in Ireland. Uh, in 1888, he was responsible for pushing through the Local Government Act, which created elected councils and, in most people's view, more democratic local government in Britain. In 1889, he oversaw the passage of the Naval Defence Act, which led to the rapid build-up in the military might of the British Navy leading up to World War I. And in 1899 to 1902, he was in power during the unpopular Boer War.
Meanwhile, when Gladstone finally stepped down as leader of the Liberal Party, he was briefly followed by the fifth Earl of Rosebery, who had a brief period as Prime Minister in 1894-95, but found himself crippled by the Home Rule issue and forced to resign. Right at the turn of the century, just, just after, in fact, in 1901, Queen Victoria died and was replaced by her son, who became King Edward VII, a man sometimes known as the "Uncle of Europe" because so many of his siblings had married into the royal houses on the continent. And in a lot of ways, Edward VII's reign really represents the end of the 19th century in Britain more than the year 1900 or 1901. Indeed, you could argue that we don't really begin this, the, the 20th century for most of Europe until the outbreak of World War I.
Now, another figure of major importance in British politics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was Joseph Chamberlain, father of both Austin and Neville Chamberlain, who would later figure prominently in interwar politics. Joseph Chamberlain had begun his career as a very radical politician, uh, but by the, the late 19th century, he had begun to move a bit more towards the center and eventually moved even further to the right. He has the rather unique distinction of having split both major political parties. While he was a member of the Liberal Party, he came to oppose the whole idea of Irish Home Rule. In short, he became what is known as a Unionist, someone who favored continuing the union between Ireland and Great Britain, and he and a number of Liberal Unionists actually left the Liberal Party late in the 19th century. Later on, in, in the early 20th century, while a member of the Conservative Party, he became the advocate of a new protective tariff, something that the British had not had since before the middle of the 19th century, and that wound up splitting the Conservative Party. So, quite an achievement there.
Salisbury, when he stepped down as Prime Minister in 1902, was replaced by his nephew, the bachelor Arthur James Balfour, who wound up inheriting a number of important problems that he proved to be unable to satisfactorily resolve. One of these was labor relations, and in 1901, the Conservative Party suffered considerable damage when the House of Lords ruled on the, ruled against labor in what's known as the Taff Vale decision, making individual members of unions responsible for, or rather, making unions responsible for the individual behavior of its members. A 1902 Education Act ran into some of the same problems that Gladstone had faced, not going far enough for some people, going too far for others, but most particularly by removing some local control from local school districts. And in 1904, he introduced a licensing act for public houses, that is pubs, and this too antagonized people on both sides of the question.
Meanwhile, in addition to the Conservatives and Liberals, another force had begun to emerge in British politics, and that is Labor. In 1892, a Scottish labor leader named James Keir Hardie had founded, had become the first Independent Labor Member of Parliament, and the following year founded what came to be known as the Independent Labor Party. This went through several name changes. In eight, in 1900, it became the Labor Representation Committee. In 1906, it assumed its modern name, the Labor Party. And early on, the Labor Party was not sufficiently powerful to, to run a full field of candidates of its own, so it wound up aligning with the Liberal Party in what came to be known as the Lib-Lab Alliance. This was particularly successful in the elections of 1906.
In 1905, Balfour, unable to maintain a majority in the House of Commons, stepped down and was replaced by the Liberal Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The next year, Bannerman called new elections, and the Liberals, with their Labor allies, won an overwhelming victory, a real landslide in that year, which came as something of a surprise since the Conservatives had controlled the government for the previous 10 years. This was a government that would have some success and some failure. Uh, in 1906, Bannerman pushed through something called the Trade Disputes Act, which, uh, greatly increased the rights of labor again. But on the other hand, Balfour, now elevated to the House of Lords, began using the House of Lords to block Liberal legislation, since the majority of the Lords were, in fact, Conservatives. So much was this the case that Liberals began to refer to the House of Lords as "Mr. Balfour's poodle," that is, as a dog that did whatever he wanted it to do. And in particular, Mr. Balfour's poodle blocked Liberal initiatives on education and licensing. This sort of thing was bound to come to a head sooner or later, but not during the lifetime of Bannerman, who died in 1908.
He was followed as the next Liberal Prime Minister by Henry Asquith, or Herbert Henry Asquith, who would serve as Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916. And early on in Asquith's tenure, one of the members of his cabinet, David Lloyd George, introduced a very radical budget in 1909, known as "The People's Budget." Now, I say it was radical, it was radical for 1909. It might not seem that way to us today. By this time, uh, Asquith's government was very dependent upon both the Irish Home Rule supporters in Parliament and Labor, and had to make a fair number of concessions to both, and that shows in the People's Budget. Well, the House of Lords turned it down, and this created a constitutional crisis in Britain because historically, all financial bills emerged from the House of Commons, and the House of Lords rather rarely did anything except agree to them. The upshot of this was the passage in 1911 of a parliamentary reform act known as the Parliament Act, which significantly reduced the power of the House of Lords, essentially allowing the House to delay legislation passed in the House of Commons, but not to prevent it on a permanent basis. And at this juncture, if not sooner, the House of Commons clearly assumed the upper hand in British government.
A couple of other important developments in Parliament. In 1911, a man who was then a member of the Liberal Party and of the cabinet, Winston Churchill, introduced two important measures, uh, designed to promote the public welfare: the 1911 National Health Act, which provided health care coverage for the poorest portion of the population, and the 1911 National Insurance Act, which provided unemployment benefits for the poorest element in the population.
Asquith, in the years leading up to World War I, had several significant domestic challenges, not to mention the problems that eventually led to the war. One of these is that there was a growing women's suffrage movement in Britain, which was hostile to Asquith, who was not seen as sufficiently supportive of women's suffrage. The second was that the labor movement began to reassert itself in this period, making more demands, calling a number of strikes. And indeed, it seems likely that, but for the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Asquith would have had to make significant concessions to both women's suffrage and to the labor movement. A third issue, of course, was the continuing matter of Irish Home Rule, and again, it seems likely that this would have come to a head, but for the outbreak of the war. All three issues would come back after the war was over.
Finally, in 1910, Edward VII died and was replaced by his son, who is in many ways really the first real 20th-century monarch in Britain, George V. A man who provided backing for the Parliament Bill in 1911, a man who made a very smart and, uh, effective trip to India in 1911 to win support over there, and who was going to be very popular indeed during World War I.
Meanwhile, in France, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, or Napoleon III as he was by then, was overthrown during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. Early in 1871, there was further rebellion in Paris that led to the setting up of a radical left-wing Paris Commune in the city of Paris, one that was controlled by the workers and the French National Guard. However, by the end of the spring, the Paris Commune had been suppressed, and the labor movement in France temporarily decimated. And over the next decade, there would be a vigorous debate in France as to whether France should return to monarchy or go back to being a republic. The majority of the elected assembly in France was, in fact, monarchist, but they couldn't agree on what sort of monarchy they wanted. Some of the monarchists were what we call Legitimists. The Legitimists wanted to bring back a member of the Bourbon family. There also were a fair number of Orleanists, who wanted to bring back someone who was a descendant of Louis Philippe. And there was even a little group, sort of marginalized now, of Bonapartists in the assembly, as well as a minority of people who were Republicans.
In 1871, there was actually a compromise that was supposed to bring about the creation of a French monarchy that would have put the Count of Chambord, one of the descendants of the Bourbons, on the throne. However, he refused to be king unless he could rule effectively as an absolutist, and therefore the decision was made that France would continue to function temporarily, supposedly, as a republic until such time as Chambord died and a more amenable candidate became available. But in fact, what wound up happening is that it was the Republic which became permanent instead. In 1875, despite considerable resistance, the assembly passed a series of laws known as the Constitutional Laws, which basically created what we think of as the Third Republic. Now, creating the office of President, a, or establishing more firmly the office of President, a Senate that was indirectly elected, a Chamber of Deputies that was directly elected, and what we call a responsible ministry, that is, a cabinet that had to answer to the assembly as well as to the President.
There were several instances over the rest of the 19th century in which republicanism and the growing move towards democracy were threatened. One of these happened during the presidency of Patrice de MacMahon, who was President of France from 1870 to 1879, and made a concerted effort in 1877 to try to revive the monarchy. This backfired, however, and led two years later, in 1879, to the triumph of French republicanism, in which the President himself became a mere figurehead who was no longer capable of dismissing the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house in the assembly. The government was moved from Versailles, a symbol of monarchy, to Paris, a symbol of democracy, and the Marseillaise, the old anthem of the French Revolutionary Republic, became the national anthem.
In under the Republican program, the government relaxed laws restricting assembly, freedom of the press and of print distribution. It eased central control over regional and local government. It granted amnesty to all members of the old Paris Commune. It gave more rights to the trade unions. It restricted the role of the church in public affairs and actually expelled the Jesuits from France, the second time they'd been expelled. And, uh, did more to make education secular, free, and open to everyone. The Republic was also very, very pro-business and did a number of things to encourage business with government contracts, tax breaks, tariffs, and so on.
Another threat to the government came in 1889 with the rise to prominence briefly of a general named George Boulanger, who was not only an army general but a reactionary who became the avatar of something called Boulangism, which fed on the fact that during the 80s, France was caught in an economic depression. And indeed, France came very near a coup d'état in 1889 before Boulanger was stopped.
Another issue that divided Frenchmen in the 1890s was what's called the Dreyfus Affair. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was charged with treason in 1894 on the grounds that he had been selling secrets to the Germans. As it turned out, it was not Dreyfus who was selling the secrets, but one of his accusers. And as a matter of fact, he was eventually exculpated after being found guilty initially and spending some time in prison. But this raised another troublesome issue for the French, which became a very pronounced one in France and much of Europe in the 1890s, and that is the issue of rampant anti-Semitism as part of a more general ethnic hostility that we see elsewhere.
One of the problems that France faced in the 19th century, and that continued to beleaguer it down to and beyond World War I, is that it lacked a strong two-party system. Now, there are advantages and disadvantages to having a two-party system, but generally speaking, a two-party system gives you alternatives, and you're going to have one party or the other holding a majority in government and therefore able to govern. In France, there were so many parties that what you really had was an assemblage of splinter groups, and almost every single government in the period between 1870 and 1914 was a coalition of several parties that broke down fairly quickly. Another problem is that the French did not invest very much in industry in this period, and they fell behind other countries like Britain, Germany, even Belgium, and of course, the United States, in terms of the Industrial Revolution. And despite the fact that monarchy had gone out the window in 1871, there continued to be debates between monarchists and Republicans right down to the eve of the war.
In Italy, there was a constitutional monarchy beginning with Victor Emmanuel II, the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, who became King of Italy in 1861, uh, who oversaw the annexation of Venetia in 1866 and Rome in 1870. And under him, as well as under his successors, Italy faced much the same problem. Uh, Victor Emmanuel's great, uh, political leader, Count Cavour, died right after the unification of Italy, and over the, the next 50 years, basically what happens is the same thing as in France. There are multiple parties, uh, there are frequent changes in the ministry with one coalition after another. Uh, Victor Emmanuel was succeeded by Umberto I in 1878. This problem continued under, under him. There was a certain polarization between left and right in Italy in this period, with the right becoming more and more irredentist or or nationalistic, and the left leaning more towards socialism. But in between, there was a group of political leaders, some on the left, some on the right, who practiced an approach to politics called "transformismo," which involved building personal coalitions that sometimes crossed ideological boundaries. Finally, Umberto was succeeded by Victor Emmanuel III in 1900, and it was under him that Italy drifted towards war. One, of course, uh, would bring about, in the long run, the end of the Italian Republic and the rise of the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini.
In Spain, Queen Isabella II had been overthrown in 1868 and replaced when the Cortes in 1870 elected in her place the Italian King Amadeo, who was, in fact, the son of the Italian King Victor Emmanuel II. Amadeo did not have a smooth time in office. Almost immediately upon taking office, he had to deal with the Ten Years' War with Cuba. Cuba had declared independence in 1868, and Spain fought a 10-year war with Cuban revolutionaries. Ultimately, the revolution failed, but this sapped a great deal of money and men from Spain at the time. Also, in 1872, there was the outbreak of the third so-called Carlist War, this time in support of a pretender to the throne known as Carlos VII. This was accompanied by, uh, uprisings in several parts of the kingdom, most notably in the north. And in 1873, Amadeo was overthrown. But he was not, in fact, replaced by "Carlos VII." Instead, a brief-lived Spanish Republic now emerged. It only lasted from 1873 until the end of 1874. There were actually four different presidents in the first 11 months before things settled down a little bit, and ultimately, by the end of 1874, the Republican experiment in Spain came to an end with the return of monarchy under Alfonso XII, and then Alfonso XIII. So, there, the attempt at a democratic republic, or a quasi-democratic republic, was very short-lived.
Next door, in Portugal, we begin the period with King Luís I, a man who is quite cultured and intellectual, an artistically minded man, but not very good at politics. And that's unfortunate because he had to balance his regime between a group known as the Progressistas, or liberals, and a group known as the Regeneradores, or conservatives. He was followed later on by Carlos I, a man who is clearly not popular with Portuguese Republicans. Carlos came to the throne in 1889. He left the throne in 1908 after being assassinated by Portuguese Republicans, and his successor, Manuel II, within a couple of years, was in fact deposed by revolution, and the Portuguese set up their first and more lasting Republic in 1910, a republic that would last until significantly after World War I.
We move to Central Europe. In Austria, there continued, of course, to be on the throne an emperor, the Emperor Francis Joseph, who had come to the throne at the age of 18 in 1848 and would remain on that throne until 1916, almost finishing out World War I. But as I mentioned previously, in 1867, Austria had taken a significant step towards recognizing the rights of its non-German subjects in Hungary with the Ausgleich. The Ausgleich, if you recall, had set up the dual monarchy where Hungary and Austria essentially function as separate states that have in common only the emperor. Nevertheless, all non-Hungarians, um, in the, the regime were still recognized as Austrians and were represented in the, the Reichsrat, as it's called, that is, the legislature of Austria at the time. And indeed, uh, Francis Joseph granted his people a constitution, which at least on paper looks pretty progressive compared to what had come before. The Constitution of 1867 and the Austrian Empire granted equality to all nationalities. It said that each nationality would be allowed to preserve its own culture. It granted a Bill of Rights, which included, among other things, equality before the law, freedom of speech, the press, and assembly, an independent judiciary, and a responsible ministry. And in 1907, Austria also adopted universal manhood suffrage. All of which sounds pretty good, except for the fact that it wasn't always observed in practice. In practice, German members of the Austrian state tended to have a disproportionate number of seats in the Reichsrat, or assembly. Francis Joseph tended to ignore the whole issue of ministerial responsibility, that is, choosing his ministers without regard to what the Reichsrat saw. He thought he could rule by decree when the Reichsrat was not in session, and he frequently did. And he was fearful and somewhat combative towards the Reichsrat, which was full of German liberals who were more sympathetic to Otto von Bismarck of the German Empire than to Francis Joseph, the Austrian emperor.
Speaking of the German Empire, after the unification of Germany, William Orville, William I, was the first Kaiser of the German Empire, which was, of course, the creation of Otto von Bismarck. The German Empire also had a constitution, which provided for a fair amount of participation, at least on paper. Germany, as it was created in 1871, was a federal union of the previously existing German states, minus Austria. The basis of this was treaties among all of these states. The states each kept their own separate identity, all had a lot of local autonomy, all had financial independence. Indeed, it was not unlike the situation in the North German Confederation. The Kaiser, William I, was also the King of Prussia. He appointed all imperial officials. He was responsible for foreign policy. He was commander of the army. He initiated legislation through his Chancellor. And what this meant, in fact, was that Bismarck did much of the actual work of government because Bismarck was William's Chancellor, both for the Empire and for Prussia, technically two separate offices, but both occupied by the same man. And in reality, is that on a day-to-day basis, the real government of Germany was in the hands of Bismarck.
The German Parliament was divided into an upper house called the Bundesrat and a lower house called the Reichstag. In the Bundesrat, each of the German states was represented on the basis of size and population. The Bundesrat could initiate legislation, usually Bismarck introduced government bills there, and it was dominated by Prussia, which meant that the only time it ever approved bills was if Prussia approved the bills. Two, the Reichstag, the lower house, was elected by universal manhood suffrage, and one of its great powers was that, like the House of Commons in Britain, it controlled appropriations. It also included all extraordinary funding, like for the military, and it too could initiate legislation. Both houses could veto legislation, that is, nothing passed unless it passed both houses, and therefore it was important for Bismarck as Chancellor to maintain a majority in both houses.
The administration of this federal union of Germany was rather complicated. Each state had its own administration, each had its own, uh, bureaucracy. Much of the legislation carried out in the German Parliament was for individual states and did not apply to all of them. The Empire itself had no separate bureaucracy but used the civil servants of the individual states, whereas the military was essentially just an extension of the Prussian Army. William had no cabinet. The Chancellor, Bismarck, was his only minister, and Bismarck was not really responsible to Parliament, although he was dependent to some extent on Parliament to vote for his legislation. The problem with this is that while Bismarck was extremely capable, nobody else got any experience. So if Bismarck was ever to leave office, which inevitably is bound to happen, there would be nobody with adequate experience to take his place.
One of the more notable episodes in Bismarck's career as Chancellor, which lasted from 1871 to 1890, was a conflict with the Roman Catholic Church in Germany known as the Kulturkampf. Now, contributing to this was the fact that Bismarck himself was a Protestant and a native of Prussia, a historically Protestant state. Bismarck saw the Catholic Church as anti-national, and in fact, Bismarck had problems with the Roman Catholic Church, and he had problems with the Socialist movement for what he saw as exactly the same reasons. Now, be clear, I'm not equating the Roman Catholic Church and socialism in the 19th century. What I'm saying is that Bismarck objected to both for the same sort of reasons. He saw both as having loyalties that went beyond the German nation. In the case of the Roman Catholic Church, this loyalty was to the Pope and to the international church. In the case of socialism, it was to the international socialist movement. But what Bismarck feared in both cases was that the non-nationalistic loyalty trumped the nationalistic loyalty of both German Catholics and German socialists. He also was concerned about the influence in Germany of Austria and France, both of which were Catholic nations, and he wanted government control over religion, which he believed could be used as a unifying force. He also got involved in a conflict with the church over the whole issue of papal infallibility, which was actually articulated by the Pope during this period, and there was tremendous hostility, uh, between Bismarck and the Catholic Church. There was also a split within the German Catholic Church, where some more liberal Catholics supported Bismarck, and a group of Old Catholics, uh, strongly opposed him.
When it came to socialism, of course, socialism was gaining appeal in Germany because of Germany's very success in the Industrial Revolution. Germany was rapidly catching up to Great Britain as the industrial leader of the world, still well ahead of the United States at this point. And that meant a bigger working class and more appeal to socialism, which was a working-class movement. Bismarck tried to find ways to put a stop to this. On the one hand, he attempted some measures of repression against the socialist movement, but in other ways, he co-opted a lot of the socialist issues and turned them in a more conservative direction. Bismarck, like the socialists, rejected laissez-faire capitalism, not from a socialist perspective, but from a perspective of governing, uh, the economy for the state. He also, in a sense, stole some of the socialist issues by instituting a state system of welfare that provided a degree of unemployment insurance, a degree of health care, and so on, and therefore took away one of the socialists' biggest issues. On the other hand, Bismarck did nothing to regulate hours and working conditions, and therefore socialism in Germany continued to have an appeal because of that. So, there's a very broad political spectrum here, uh, in Germany at the time, and Bismarck has to figure out how to manage that.
Towards the end of William I's reign, there began to develop something of a succession crisis. Uh, there were, there was fear, uh, on Bismarck's part and on the part of many of his supporters as to what would happen when William died. Uh, William, or rather, Bismarck wanted the Reichstag to agree to a long-term military budget to ensure, uh, that there would be continued funding even after the Kaiser was dead. But the Reichstag refused. Bismarck called new elections, put together a coalition of National Liberals and moderate conservatives, and was able to win, uh, over a majority of the Reichstag to his position. But just as he was enjoying the fruits of victory, in 1888, William I died. Now, William I was followed onto the throne of Germany by his son, Frederick William, but Frederick William at this point was already a gravely ill man. He had, was dying of throat cancer, basically, and died only three months after his father, bringing to the throne the very young Kaiser William II, who was only about 20 at the time and very little experience. He also had personality issues that immediately put him into conflict with Bismarck. He was enormously arrogant and self-important. He disliked Bismarck, who he saw as kind of an old fogy giving him advice that he didn't want, and in 1890, he dismissed him.
William II had illusions of making himself into an absolutist monarch. Although he had no real military experience or experience of war, he saw himself as a military man. He had a great deal of faith in technology without necessarily understanding technology very well, and although at first he enjoyed the support of a lot of the German middle class, as they got to know him better, they came to like him less and less. He was a very restless man, perhaps not 100% mentally well. He traveled a great deal. His governments were beset by scandals, and he became more and more prone to engaging in very dangerous adventures as leader of the state as time went on. Uh, in short, what winds up happening is that with the passing of Bismarck and his generation, you have a whole generation in Germany running the government who have never experienced war and who regard war in a very romantic way and see it as something to be desired. And of course, in 1914, they will get it.
William II, uh, did not get along well with the German Parliament. He tended to treat his chancellors as civil servants. Uh, he had difficulty in getting the parties in Parliament to cooperate in order to make things work. What he really needed was the support of conservatives, of national liberals, and either the Center Party or the Progressive Party, and that was very difficult to get because those parties tended to disagree about economic problems, about agriculture, about industry, and about foreign policy.
Now, moving to Scandinavia. In Denmark, Christian IX, who ruled there from 1863 to 1906, was himself an authoritarian sort of figure, but he faced a growing demand for democracy that would eventually find an outlet when Christian IX died and his son Frederick VIII became king in 1906. Frederick was much more liberal than his father, much more prone to sharing power, uh, with his subjects, but he proved to be short-lived and was succeeded by his own son, Christian X, in 1912. Christian X, like his grandfather, was initially rather authoritarian, although much later down the road, during World War II, he would become a popular hero in Denmark for his role in that war.
At the beginning of our period, Norway and Sweden were still linked politically under a king named Oscar II, who was, if not particularly democratic, at least a patron of arts and learning. But during his reign, or towards the end of it, Norway and Sweden in fact separated into two distinct kingdoms. He was succeeded in Sweden by his son Gustav V, a conservative who disliked democracy and workers and later was a Nazi sympathizer in the 1930s and 40s, and followed in Norway by Haakon VII, who was a much more popular figure who again later resisted the Nazis.
That brings us to Russia, the, the most despotic of the European regimes there. The fairly liberal Tsar Alexander II, the Tsar Liberator, as he was known, who had allowed at least some popular participation in government, was replaced in 1881 after being assassinated, uh, by his son Alexander III, who believed that his father had been assassinated because he had been too easy on the Russian people and was determined not to do that. So he implemented a much more repressive regime that was topped off by the fact that Alexander III himself was vehemently anti-Semitic. And of course, after his reign, he was succeeded by his son Nicholas II, who married a German princess, Alexandra of Hesse. Both proved to be reactionary, self-indulgent, and incompetent, and became the targets of revolution, first in the Revolution of 1905, and then in the much more serious Revolutions of 1917.
A significant aspect of their regime was the prominent role played in it by the self-styled Russian mystic Gregory Rasputin. Rasputin claimed to be both a, a spiritual man of God and a healer. He happened to be in the presence of Nicholas and Alexandra's son, Alexei, who was a hemophiliac, on a couple of occasions when Alexei was injured but survived, and Rasputin, as con men often do, took the credit for that. In fact, he was a man who was more characterized by drunkenness, by excessive promiscuity, by corruption, and by hygienic standards that were low even for the early 20th century. He wound up being murdered during World War I, not by the left, as a matter of fact, but by the Russian aristocracy, who poisoned him, shot him, and then ultimately drowned him.
Finally, the last of the regimes I want to mention is that in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire, by the late 19th century, was coming to be known as the "sick man of Europe" because, in fact, it was falling apart. Pieces of the empire had broken away, beginning with Greece during the Greek Revolution, and various states in the Balkans were seeking independence. By the later 19th century, moreover, the, the Sultans of this period, for, for the most part, not very competent. Uh, an exception perhaps was Abdul Aziz, who ruled from 1861 to 1876, a very cultured man, friendly to France and Britain, a man who modernized the Ottoman Navy somewhat, but who was deposed for his trouble in 1876 to be followed by Murad V, a man who almost certainly was mentally ill and who was deposed later in the same year. He was followed by Abdul Hamid II, under whom the power of the Sultans continued to decline, and who himself became the target for a Turkish revolution in 1908, led by a group of Turkish nationalist Republicans called the Young Turks. The Turks overthrew the Sultan, replaced him with a figurehead Sultan, Mehmed V, who's better known as a poet than as a Sultan, and proceeded to establish what was, for all intents and purposes, a quasi-republic. It was not, however, a democratic sort of government. Within the Turkish state, there continued to be a number of non-Turkish elements, and the Young Turks were not only nationalistic but tended to look down upon other ethnicities. So they, in fact, were not included.
Therefore, on the eve of World War I, Europe remained an interesting mix of states that had moved much closer towards democracy and states that remained despotic to one degree or another. World War I, of course, would change the entire political landscape.
All right, so we learned quite a lot about different aspects of the years between 1871 and 1914. When we come back for our next lecture on the New Imperialism, the New Imperialism, basically, you know, leading up to World War I, you'll learn, of course, about countries like Great Britain and France and Germany and Italy and Belgium and Portugal and Spain. All of these countries will carve out areas, especially in Africa and Asia. And, you know, there will obviously also be consequences to this. And, you know, we'll find out, of course, why we're seeing this new imperialism taking place right there, leading up into World War I. Until next time.