Revolutionary Ideologies

HUM 2052: Civilization IISpring 2014Dr. Perdigao

February 28, 2014

Contextualizing Texts1760s—Watt’s steam engine

1768—Hargreaves’ spinning jenny

1787—Cartwright’s power loom

1793—Whitney’s cotton gin

1808—John Dalton formulated modern atomic theory

1831—Michael Farady discovered principle of electromagnetic induction

1840—Penny post

1844—First telegraphic message sent from Baltimore to Washington, D.C.

1847—Hermann von Helmholtz formulate law of conservation of energy

Contextualizing Texts1848—Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto

1859—Darwin, The Origin of Species

1861—Emancipation of serfs in Russia; Louis Pasteur’s vaccines

1861-1865—American Civil War

1864—Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

1866—Transatlantic cable

1869—Dmitri Mendeleev constructed periodic table for the elements

1871—Darwin, The Descent of Man

1874—Impressionism launched with Monet’s painting

1876—Telephone

Contextualizing Texts1884-1885—European Acquisition of African territory (by 1914 all Africa

[except Ethiopia and Liberia] succumbs to European rule)

1887—Heinrich Hertz discovered electromagnetic waves (radio, television, radar); Eiffel Tower built for 1889 Paris World’s Fair; Daimler’s internal combustion engine for automobile

1895—X-rays discovered

1898—Radium discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie; Spanish-American War erupts

Industrializing• Industrial Revolution—shift from agrarian, labor-intensive economy to

economy “dominated by machine manufacture, specialization of tasks or division of labor, factories and cities, and a worldwide market for goods, services, and capital” (Perry 500)

• Conceiving the Industrial Revolution, multiple versions:• 1750-1850: western Europe• Mid-nineteenth century that included the United States• Another in first half of twentieth century called modernization• Within last fifty years as globalization

• Industrial Revolution modernizing Europe like the French Revolution

• Rural Europe—isolated from developments as a result of the Enlightenment; religious faith, clerical authority, ancient superstition continuing

• Changes begin in England in the mid 1700s; delay in France due to political and social conflict after French Revolution (Perry 500); resistance to change traditional methods; peasants’ small plots of land difficult to use new methods; Netherlands—had wealth, transportation system, navy, technical knowledge but lacking natural resources (coal); Britain—labor pool, coal and iron, private enterprise, stable environment of “law, order, and protection of private property” (503)

Redefining Classes• Social and economic changes

• Transportation systems—railroads and steamships; communication systems

• Urbanization—before 1800, 10 percent of European population living in cities (20 percent in Great Britain and Netherlands); halfway through nineteenth century, 52 percent of the English lived in cities, 25 percent of the French, 36 percent of the Germans, 7 percent of Russians, 10 percent of U.S. inhabitants (Perry 508)

• Development of commerce—bourgeoisie of middle class people to replace old division of society into clergy, nobility, and commoners (511)

• Idea of middle classes due to divisions—wealthiest as bankers, factory, and mine owners but included merchants, shopkeepers, managers, lawyers, doctors (Perry 511)

• Growth of middle class

• Increased distinction between middle and laboring classes (themselves distinct as rural laborers, miners, city workers)

• Political action, call for reform, with development of trade unions, mutual aid societies, cooperatives, political organizations (Perry 513)

Industry, Empire, Revolution• Age of industry and empire, transforming Europe and the world,

leads to “social question”—concern about social and economic changes as a result of industrialization and urbanization

• Global expansion of European culture—to new imperialism

• “Humanitarian commitment”—giving way to the “heart of darkness”?

• Attempts by workers for improved conditions yet new divisions and breaks within society

• “Liberty,” “science,” “progress,” and “evolution” as nineteenth century concepts

• Intellectual currents—Realism, positivism, Darwinism, Marxism, and liberalism reacting against romantic, religious, and metaphysical interpretations of nature and society and focused on the empirical world; movements deriving from and expanding the Enlightenment tradition (Perry 573)

• Liberalism, nationalism, socialism

• Racism, anti-Semitism, ethnic chauvinism

Liberalism• Roots in John Locke (17th century) and Enlightenment philosophy

(18th century); continuation of democratic practices and rational outlook of ancient Greece; work of French philosophes (Montesquieu’s separations of powers and checks and balances, religious toleration and freedom of thought); American and French Revolutions; Bill of Rights; French National Assembly of 1789 (Perry 534)

• Constitutional guarantees of personal liberty and free trade in economics, leading to social improvement and economic growth; Adam Smith’s laissez-faire theory

• Support of Industrial Revolution but opposing violence and state power promoted by French Revolution, repudiated Jacobin radicalism; called for end to legacy of Middle Ages and aristocracy

• Middle class—manufacturers, merchants, professionals support liberalism

Liberalists• Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), Democracy in America (1835-

1840), advocated destruction of aristocracy (Perry 537)

• Thomas Paine (1748-1832), The Rights of Man (1791-1792) following Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France

• Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), utility as reform, pain and pleasure, philosophical radicals (Perry 539)

Socialism• Following liberalism

• “liberties advocated by liberals benefited only the middle class—the owners of factories and businesses—not the workers” (MW: 675)

• Sought to reorganize society

• Critique of Industrial Revolution for creating two classes: new middle class (capitalists who own the wealth) and working class

• Early socialists as “romantics,” dreaming of a “New social order, a future utopia, where each individual could find happiness and self-fulfillment” (Perry 540), did not advocate class warfare

• Charles Fourier (1772-1837), phalansteries, communities; Robert Owen (1771-1858)—Welsh—factory town in Scotland, then Indiana (New Harmony, 1920s) (Florida?) (Perry 540-541)

• Emancipation of women

• New collectivism emphasizing equality: Christian or romantic motivations, scientific and revolutionary (Marx) (998)

Realism and Naturalism• Realism—art and literature in mid 1800s; opposition to Romanticism,

privileging of passion and intuition, inner life

• Realists focused on external world, social conditions, contemporary manners, everyday life (Perry 573)

• Romantic poetry vs. realist novel depicting human behavior and social conditions

• Honoré de Balzac (1799-1950); Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880; [Madame Bovary (1856)]); Charles Dickens (1812-1870); Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910 [War and Peace (1863-1869), Anna Karenina (1873-1877)])

• Naturalism: demonstrating causal relationship between human character and social environment; law of cause and effect; influence of scientific method (Perry 576)

• Émile Zola (1840-1902), the “experimental novel”

• Accurate portrayals of human behavior and social conditions in both realism and naturalism, showing effects of science, industrialism, and secularism

• Developments in philosophy mirror these ideas in art and literature

Realism and Naturalism• Realism as accepted literary and artistic slogan in the 1850s but uses

date to turn of the nineteenth century (999)

• As objective methodology

• Author disappears into background, world seen “as it is” (999)

• Rejection of Romantic creed