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?