HI 112 Raffael Scheck Colby College

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HI 112Raffael ScheckColby College

• A Survey of Modern Europe
• 5

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The Rights of Women
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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 womens rights that assume
  womens inferiority

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Six Common Arguments for Womens Inferiority

1. 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. Womens natural place is the home

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Contempt for Womens Rights Activists

• They just have not found a man. They are
  unnatural, old, unloved.

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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

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Variations in the Struggle for Womens Rights

• Arguments for womens rights often appear in a
  revolutionary context (1789, 1848, socialist
  movements)
• Some womens movements focus on suffrage,
  equality, and natural rights, others on the
  difference of women and on education
• Liberals across Europe fear that womens
  enfranchisement will benefit conservative parties
  (feminization of religion)
• Many women oppose womens rights
• Anxiety about dissolving gender roles

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The Origins of World War I
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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?

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the British perception
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Alliances Before 1890 France Isolated Germany
Allied with Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Italy
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Alliances After 1890 Germany Allied with
Austria-Hungary France with Britain and Russia
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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
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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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The Step into the Dark
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The First World War
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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

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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-revolution
  ary acitivities
• German revolution triggered by suicidal attack
  order November 1918

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The Home Front

• Women, youngsters, and old people work long hours
• Propaganda to keep the home front united
• Propaganda to break up the enemys home front
• Disintegration of the state in Russia leads to
  Revolutions of 1917
• Starvation in the Central Powers

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Conclusions

• First total war
• Weakens all European powers
• Leaves an unsettled and tense situation

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The Russian Revolution
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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

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The Year 1917

• The overthrow of the Russian monarchy, March 1917
• Democratic regime under Kerensky continues the
  war
• The Bolshevik coup, November 1917

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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

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Tsar and Tsarina in the Grip of Rasputin
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Citizen Romanov under House Arrest
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Lenin Speaks
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The Human Cost of the Civil War
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Foreign Intervention
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No Comrades Execution of a Red Army Prisoner by
the Whites
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Deportation and Murder of Peasants by the Red Army
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Instrument of Victory The Red Army
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The Decisive Force in the Civil War Russian
Peasants
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Re-educating the Peasants
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The New Woman in the Russian Revolution
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A Cultural Revolution
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A Victory of Mythic Proportions?