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HI 112Raffael ScheckColby College
A Survey of Modern Europe
5
The Rights of Women
Background
Many women had more rights in pre-modern Europe, but patriarchal notions in culture and law codes become stronger after 1500. Context: Reformation, Renaissance, persecution of witchcraft
The predominance of men is based on widespread arguments against women’s rights that assume women’s inferiority
Six Common Arguments for Women’s Inferiority1. Women have a smaller brain
2. Women are not educated
3. Women are more emotional, like children
4. Women are not independent because they are subject to their husbands
5. Women are not citizens
6. Women’s “natural” place is the home
Contempt for Women’s Rights Activists They just have not found a man. They are
“unnatural,” old, unloved.
Counterarguments:
Every man AND woman is endowed with reason. Therefore, women should be citizens and be allowed to vote (natural rights argument)
Most differences between women and men are culturally conditioned. The “inferiority” of women rests on a circular argument
Even if women are different from men, they should participate in politics. They will make society and politics more humane, more complete. Women “by nature” bring precious values to society through actual or potential motherhood
Variations in the Struggle for Women’s Rights Arguments for women’s rights often appear in a
revolutionary context (1789, 1848, socialist movements)
Some women’s movements focus on suffrage, equality, and natural rights, others on the difference of women and on education
Liberals across Europe fear that women’s enfranchisement will benefit conservative parties (feminization of religion)
Many women oppose women’s rights Anxiety about dissolving gender roles
The Origins of World War I
Long-Term Causes
The reshuffling of alliances 1890-1907
Anglo-German rivalry Franco-German
antagonism Rivalry between Russia
and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans
The Austro-Hungarian powder keg
Cultural mood?
… the British perception
Alliances Before 1890: France Isolated; Germany Allied with Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Italy
Alliances After 1890: Germany Allied with Austria-Hungary; France with Britain and Russia
1894 Franco-Russian Alliance
1902 British-Japanese Alliance
1904 Franco-British Alliance (Entente Cordiale)
1907 British-Russian Alliance
Crises 1898-13
1898 Fashoda Incident between France and Britain
1904-5 Russo-Japanese War
1905 First Moroccan Crisis
1908 Bosnian Annexation Crisis
1911 Second Moroccan Crisis
1912-13 Balkan Wars
War as Surgical Operation?
A righteous and necessary war is no more brutal than a surgical operation. Better give the patient some pain, and make your own fingers unpleasantly red, than allow the disease to grow upon him until he becomes an offence to himself and the world and dies in lingering agony.
British publicist Sidney Low at the Hague peace conference, 1899
Cure for a Decadent Society?
War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophize With A Hammer
The Pacifist Response
War continues to exist not because there is evil in the world but because people still hold war to be a good thing.
Bertha von Suttner, Austrian peace activist, 1912
Short-Term Causes
Murder of Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, 28 June 1914
Panic reaction of Austria-Hungary and Germany?
The short-war illusion
German War Guilt or Accident?
Militarism and boasting of Emperor Wilhelm II (r. 1888-1918)
Fear of loosing the last German ally
But also much responsibilty of Austria-Hungary and Russia
Franco-British military agreements
The Step into the Dark …
The First World War
World War I Facts:
Entente: Great Britain, France, Russia, Serbia, Italy (1915), Romania (1916), USA (1917)
– 258 million inhabitants (without colonies) in 1914; 5.7 million troops (before 1917 - without USA)
– 690 million people in 1918 (colonies included)
Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria (1915)– 118 million
inhabitants; 3.5 million troops
The Course of the War
On land: Indecisive huge battles in
the west (Verdun, Somme, Ypres) after the failure of the Schlieffen Plan
Defeat of Russia in the East, 1917-18
Collapse of Germany and its allies after failed offensive in the West, fall 1918
American intervention breaks the stalemate
At sea: British Blockade German U-boat war Battle of Jutland, 1916 German navy becomes
hotbed of socialist-revolutionary acitivities
German revolution triggered by suicidal attack order; November 1918
The Home Front
Women, youngsters, and old people work long hours
Propaganda to keep the home front united
Propaganda to break up the enemy’s home front
Disintegration of the state in Russia leads to Revolutions of 1917
Starvation in the Central Powers
Conclusions
First “total war” Weakens all European
powers Leaves an unsettled
and tense situation
The Russian Revolution
Communism
The Bolsheviks: conquest of power through violent revolution under the leadership of a tight-knit hierarchical party operating in the underground
Lenin: appeal to the peasants as a proletariat
Commitment to a dictatorship of the proletariat (meaning the party) after victory
The Year 1917
The overthrow of the Russian monarchy, March 1917
Democratic regime under Kerensky continues the war
The Bolshevik coup, November 1917
Consolidation of Power
Civil War, 1918-1921 New Economic Policy
(NEP) Stalin ousts Trotsky in his
bid to succeed Lenin Collectivization of
Agriculture and Five-Year Plans (1929)
War on the Kulaks The Gulag system
Tsar and Tsarina in the Grip of Rasputin
Citizen Romanov under House Arrest
Lenin Speaks
The Human Cost of the Civil War
Foreign Intervention
No Comrades: Execution of a Red Army Prisoner by the Whites
Deportation and Murder of Peasants by the Red Army
Instrument of Victory: The Red Army
The Decisive Force in the Civil War: Russian Peasants
Re-educating the Peasants
The “New Woman” in the Russian Revolution
A Cultural Revolution
A Victory of Mythic Proportions?