Western III Notes

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period of rapid technological change that took
place from around 1750 to 1914 (18th to mid-19th centuries). It began in Great
Britain before quickly spreading to Europe and other parts of the world. Huge
developments in farming and manufacturing changed not only the way things
were produced and sold, but also how people lived and where they worked. The
changes were significant as they revolutionized many societies, transitioning
them from agrarian economies to industrialized nations.

[It was an increase in production brought about by the use of machines, and
characterized by the use of new energy sources].

Pre-Industrial Era (1700-1760) & The First Industrial Revolution (1760-

1840):
Britain:

An agricultural society. Around 80% of people at the time lived and worked on
small farms in rural areas. Despite the small scale of most English farms,
agriculture was still the main economic activity in Britain.

Manufacturing: Small and localized. Tools used in the manufacture of most goods
(such as carts, mills and looms) were basic and powered by people, animals or
waterwheels that harnessed the power of fast-flowing rivers and streams.

Infrastructure: Roads linking villages were poor and most people travelled on foot
or by horse as towns and villages at the time were small and self-contained.
Britain’s first road system had not improved much since the fall of the Roman
Empire, around 1300 years earlier. As a result, most people rarely travelled far
from the places where they lived and worked.
Working Hours & Health Conditions: In most cases, the working day began at
sunrise and ended at sunset. People’s diets were inadequate and average life
expectancy was short. Illness was common because of poor hygiene, bad or non-
existent sewage systems, and polluted water supplies.

Society: The British society was divided into strict social classes according to
wealth and position based on birth. The aristocratic/noble families made up only
1% of the population but controlled about 15% of Britain’s wealth. Noble
gentlemen did not involve themselves in farming, trades or professions. Instead,
they invested much of their wealth on in land.

Agricultural Revolution: Improvements in farming techniques and equipment,

such as Jethro Tull's seed drill, led to increased agricultural productivity.

Jethro Tull was an English agriculturist who perfected a horse-drawn seed drill in 1701
that economically sowed the seeds in neat rows. Prior to his invention, sowing seeds
was done by hand, by scattering them on the ground or placing them in the ground
individually, such as with bean and pea seeds. Tull considered scattering wasteful
because many seeds did not take root.

Tull also developed the horse-drawn hoe or hoe-plow which dug up the soil, loosening
it for planting while also pulling up unwanted weed roots.

Textile Industry: The production of natural, synthetic, or artificial fibers to make

fabrics, yarns, and various finished products.

The textile industry creates fabrics from natural materials such as cotton and wool
or artificial fibers like nylon and polyester. The industry was created because of
the demand for clothing. As the population increased, the supply could not meet
the existing market. This led to inventions that rapidly increased production and
made it possible to meet demand.

Cotton & Wool Production:

The British had always woven cloth out of wool and flax (to make linen). From the
seventeenth century, the country had been importing bales of cotton cloth from
India at great cost. As the East India Company’s political control of parts of India
was established, it began to import, along with cloth, raw cotton, which could be
spun and woven into cloth in England.

Till the early eighteenth century, spinning had been so slow and laborious that 10
spinners (mostly women) were required to supply sufficient yarn to keep a single
weaver busy. Therefore, while spinners were occupied all day, weavers waited idly
to receive yarn. But a series of technological inventions successfully closed the gap
between the speed in spinning raw cotton into yarn or thread, and of weaving the
yarn into fabric. To make it even more efficient, production gradually shifted
from the homes of spinners and weavers to factories (the factory system).

The Factory System: A way of producing goods on a large scale using many
workers and specialized machinery on one site.

Before the introduction of the factory system, manufacturing often took place in
small workshops or in local workers’ cottages. Local trades and crafts people such
as blacksmiths, millers and weavers used their skills, muscle power or water
power to largely hand-make items. In contrast, the factory system brought
together large numbers of workers in a single site or factory. Few of these workers
were skilled because most of the manufacturing was done by machines. Instead,
the many workers performed tasks that were repetitive and required little skill.
[The first factories of the Industrial Revolution were cotton mills].
Raw cotton had to be entirely imported and a large part of the finished cloth was
exported. This sustained the process of colonization, so that Britain could retain
control over the sources of raw cotton as well as the markets. The industry was
heavily dependent on the work of women and children in factories which
exemplified the ugly face of early industrialization.

There were several inventions that paved the way for mass production, namely
the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, water frame and Crompton’s mule.

The Flying Shuttle:

Invented by John Kay in 1733.

Facilitated the weaving of considerably
broader fabrics, enabling the production
of wider textiles. Moreover, its
mechanical implementation paved the
way for the introduction of automatic
machine looms.

The Spinning Jenny:

Invented by James Hargreaves in 1765.

Helped increase the supply of yarn. It
could spin eight threads at once,
whereas the traditional spinning wheel
could only spin one thread at a time.

The Water Frame:

Invented by Richard Arkwright in 1768.

A spinning frame that improved on
James Hargreaves’s invention, as it could
be powered by waterwheels and
produce any type of yarn.
Crompton’s mule:

Invented by Samuel Crompton in 1779.

Combined the spinning jenny’s carriage and the
water frame’s rollers, allowing a single power source
to spin multiple machines, and work with wool or
cotton yarns. However, it still required a skilled
weaver to operate, but was later further developed
so it could be operated by unskilled workers.

Steam Power:
The Steam Engine (1769):
Coal supplies were vital to fuel the Industrial Revolution, and the ever-increasing
demand for coal led to the opening of new mines and the deepening of older
mines. The digging of deeper mines in turn required better pumping systems to
keep water from flooding lower levels.
The first model of the steam engine was introduced by Thomas Savery in 1698,
called the Miner’s Friend, to drain mines. These engines worked slowly, in shallow
depths, and the boiler burst under too much pressure.
Another steam engine was built by Thomas Newcomen in 1712 to pump water
mines. This had the major defect of losing energy due to continuous cooling of the
condensing cylinder.
James Watt realized he could greatly increase the Newcomen engine efficiency;
he did not invent the steam engine, but he developed an improved version that
was more practical and powerful. Watt’s invention converted the steam engine
from being a mere pump into a ‘prime mover’ capable of providing energy to
power machines in factories
In 1775/1776, Watts formed a partnership with Matthew Boulton to manufacture
the new engines which were not only used in the mining industry, but also in
cotton-spinning factories, flour mills, breweries and sugar cane crushing mills
around the country.
After 1800, steam engine technology was further developed with the use of
lighter, stronger metals, the manufacture of more accurate machine tools and the
spread of better scientific knowledge. In 1840, British steam engines were
generating more than 70% of all European horsepower.

Coal and Iron:

Before the Industrial Revolution, iron procedures had to heat (smelt) the iron ore
(rock) to extract the raw metal (pig iron) from it. Generating the necessary heat to
smelt the iron ore required charcoal, but making charcoal was time-consuming
and demanded large quantities of wood. Because of this, wood supplies across
Britain were dwindling. In 1709, Abraham Darby ,an Iron producer, found a new
way to bake coal to make a substance known as coke. Coke was a new, smokeless
fuel that burned much hotter than ordinary coal. Quickly, coke replaced charcoal
as the fuel used to smelt iron ore. Foundries were established near coal fields
rather than forests, and the iron and coal industries became strongly linked.
Other innovations also made the smelting process more efficient. In 1784, iron
producer Henry Court was able to combine two processes known as “puddling”
and “rolling”, which made the large-scale production of big iron possible. As
production increased, new uses were found for iron. Iron utensils such as knives
and forks became common, as did iron pots and pans for household kitchens. Iron
was also used as a building material in factories and houses, transforming the
design of buildings.
The British iron industry quadrupled its output between 1800 and 1830, and its
product was the cheapest in Europe. By 1848, Britain was smelting more iron than
the rest of the world put together.

Canals and Railways:

Canals were initially built to transport coal to cities. This was because the bulk and
weight of coal made its transport by road much slower and more expensive than
by barges on canals. The demand for coal, as industrial energy and for heating and
lighting homes in cities, grew constantly. The making of the first English canal, the
Worsley Canal (1761) by James Brindley (1716-72), had no other purpose than to
carry coal from the coal deposits at Worsley (near Manchester) to that city; after
the canal was completed the price of coal fell by half.
The first steam locomotive, Stephenson’s Rocket, appeared in 1814. Railways
emerged as a new means of transportation that was available throughout the
year, both cheap and fast, to carry passengers and goods. They combined two
inventions, the iron track which replaced the wooden track in the 1760s, and
haulage along it by steam engine. The invention of the railways took the entire
process of industrialization to a second stage.
In the 1830s, the use of canals revealed several problems. The congestion of
vessels made movement slow on certain stretches of canals, and frost, flood or
drought limited the time of their use. The railways now appeared as a convenient
alternative. They used vast amounts of coal and iron, employed large numbers of
workers and boosted activity in the construction and public works industries. Most
of England had been connected by railway by 1850.

The Second Industrial Revolution (1840-1870)/(1850-1914):

The Second Industrial Revolution was as period of tremendous economic,
industrial, and technological advancement taking place between the end of the
American Civil War and the start of World War I.
The Second Industrial Revolution also gave rise to the first workplace safety and
work hours laws, including the prohibition of child labor.
Steel:
In 1856, Henry Bessemer developed a process for converting pig iron into steel
by speedily removing the impurities in the iron. Such process allowed for the
mass-production of steel. Stronger and cheaper to produce, steel soon replaced
iron in the building industry. By making it cost-effective to build new rail lines,
steel enabled the rapid expansion of America’s railroad network. It also made it
possible to build larger ships, skyscrapers, and longer, stronger bridges.
In 1865, William Siemens and the brothers Pierre and Émile Martin developed
the open-hearth process, which enabled the production of steel cable, rods,
plates, gears, and axels used to build the higher-pressure steam boilers needed for
more powerful factory engines. With World War I on the horizon by 1912, steel
made it possible to build larger, stronger, and more powerful warships, tanks, and
guns.

Electrification:
In 1879, famed American inventor Thomas Edison perfected his design for a
practical electric lightbulb. By the late 1880s, the first efficient commercial
electrical generators made large-scale transmission of electrical power to the
public possible. Electric lighting greatly improved working conditions and
productivity in factories. By replacing the fire hazards of gaslighting, the initial cost
of converting to electric lighting was quickly offset by reduced fire insurance
premiums. In 1886, the first DC (direct current) electric motor was developed, and
by 1920, it powered passenger railways in many cities.
Electrification was called "the most important engineering achievement of the
20th century" by the National Academy of Engineering. It also allowed the
inexpensive production of electro-chemicals, such as aluminum, chlorine, sodium
hydroxide, and magnesium.
Railroads:
The increase in steel production from the 1860s meant that railways could finally
be made from steel at a competitive cost. Being a much more durable material,
steel steadily replaced iron as the standard for railway rail, and due to its greater
strength, longer lengths of rails could now be rolled.
Steel rails lasted over ten times longer than did iron, and with the falling cost of
steel, heavier weight rails were used. This allowed the use of more powerful
locomotives, which could pull longer trains, and longer rail cars, all of which
greatly increased the productivity of railroads. Rail became the dominant form of
transport infrastructure throughout the industrialized world, producing a steady
decrease in the cost of shipping seen for the rest of the century.
The Telegraph:
The telegraph allowed text messages to be transmitted long distances without the
need to physically deliver a letter. Telegraphs were sent using a coded system of
sounds to represent the alphabet, namely, the morse code.
In 1851, London and Paris were linked by an undersea cable and by 1858, the first
transatlantic cable was laid, stretching from Europe to North America. By 1866,
the transatlantic cable allowed rapid communication between Britain and the
USA. The telegraph helped to bind together the distant parts of the British Empire
and was an important part of the development of Australia. From 1858, the
Australian capital cities were all linked by telegraph. This, together with undersea
cables, provided an instant communication channel between Australia, Britain and
Europe for the first time.

Most Significant Inventions:

The telephone – 1876
The internal combustion engine – 1886
The automobile – 1886
The airplane – 1903
The radio – 1895
The typewriter – 1867
The camera – 1888
The phonograph – 1877
The moving picture – 1895
Europe:
Belgium:
One of the first countries abroad to be affected by the industrial. Developments in
Great Britain was Belgium. Belgium was similar to Great Britain in many ways,
with a strong textile trade and many potential investors. It also benefited from the
large reverses. Reserves. Of coal as a source of energy. Belgium 's iron exports to
the rest of Europe grew as it built blast furnaces, furnaces for melting or to
produce metals such as iron. And developed railways to transport goods. France's
development was slower.
France:
The Industrial Revolution in France followed a particular course as it did not
correspond to the main model followed by other countries; hence, its
development was slower. It had a primarily agricultural economy until much later
in the 1800s. In coastal areas such as Normandy, however, the textile industries
modernized in reaction to competition from Britain and Belgium.
Germany:
Unlike the situation in France, the goal was the support of industrialization which
led to its dominance in the world's chemical industry in the late 19th century.
Germany also had large deposits of coal and iron ore, and these were quickly
exploited using the new technologies. Between 1870 and the start of WWI in
1914, Germany developed at such a rate that its manufacturing output
outstripped Britain’s.
Germany's political disunity—with three dozen states—and a pervasive
conservatism made it difficult to build railways in the 1830s. Lacking a
technological base at first, the Germans imported their engineering and hardware
from Britain, but quickly learned the skills needed to operate and expand the
railways. In many cities, the new railway shops were the centers of technological
awareness and training, so that by 1850, Germany was self-sufficient in meeting
the demands of railroad construction, and the railways were a major impetus for
the growth of the new steel industry. Observers found that even as late as 1890,
their engineering was inferior to Britain's. However, German unification in 1871
stimulated consolidation, nationalization into state-owned companies, and further
rapid growth.
The U.S. :
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries when the UK and parts of Western
Europe began to industrialize, the US was primarily an agricultural and natural
resource producing and processing economy. The building of roads and canals, the
introduction of steamboats and the building of railroads were important for
handling agricultural and natural resource products in the large and sparsely
populated country of the period.
American industry, however, began to grow rapidly, especially in the Northeast of
the USA. By 1900, the USA had a larger percentage of world manufacturing than
Britain. The USA was rich in natural resources, and as settlements expanded into
the western regions of the country, more and more of these raw materials
became available to American manufacturers. American inventors and inventions
proved to be as important. As any in Britain in moving the world into the modern
era. The United States would also transition from a largely agrarian society to an
increasingly urbanized one, with all the attendant problems.
The United States followed its own path to industrialization, spurred by
innovations “borrowed” from Britain as well as by homegrown inventors like Eli
Whitney. Whitney’s 1793 invention of the cotton gin (short for “engine”)
revolutionized the nation’s cotton industry (and strengthened the hold of slavery
over the cotton-producing South). By the early 20th century, the U.S. had become
the world’s leading industrial nation.
[A major U.S. contribution to industrialization was the development of techniques
to make interchangeable parts from metal].
Japan:
The Industrial Revolution began about 1870 as Meiji period leaders decided to
catch up with the West. The government built railroads, improved roads, and
inaugurated a land reform program to prepare the country for further
development. It inaugurated a new Western-based education system for all young
people, sent thousands of students to the United States and Europe, and hired
more than 3,000 Westerners to teach modern science, mathematics, technology,
and foreign languages in Japan.
Initially, large quantities of goods were imported from Europe and the Americas.
Over time, however, Japan became the first country in Asia to become
industrialized, as it swiftly adopted Western ideas and inventions. Japanese goods
became highly sought after overseas, particularly tea, silk, cotton fabrics and
buttons. Japan also imitated the West in its adoption of an aggressive policy of
overseas expansion, seizing territory in China and Korea in the late 19th century.
The Impact of/Response to the Industrial Revolution:
Society:
Landed property was still the principal form of wealth, and large landowners
continued to exercise political power. From England to Russia, families of landed
wealth (often the old noble families) still constituted the social elite. European
society remained overwhelmingly rural; as late as the midcentury, only England
was half urban. Nonetheless, contemporaries were so overwhelmed by
industrialization that they saw it as a sudden and complete break with the past:
the shattering of traditional moral and social patterns.
The Industrial Revolution destroyed forever the old division of society into clergy,
nobility, and commoners. The development of industry and commerce caused a
corresponding development of a bourgeoisie: a middle class, comprising people of
common birth who engaged in trade and other capitalist ventures. The wealthiest
bourgeois were bankers, factory and mine owners, and merchants, but the middle
class also included shopkeepers, managers, lawyers, and doctors. The virtues of
work, thrift, ambition, and prudence characterized the middle class as a whole, as
did the perversion of these virtues into materialism, selfishness, callousness, and
smugness.
Industrialization may have reduced some barriers between the landed elites and
the middle class, but it sharpened the distinctions between the middle class and
the laboring class. Like the middle class, the proletariat encompassed different
economic levels: rural laborers, miners, and city workers. Many gradations existed
among city workers, from artisans to factory workers and servants. Factory
workers were the newest and most rapidly grow ing social group; at midcentury,
however, they did not constitute most of the laboring people in any major city. For
example, as late as 1890, they made up only one-sixth of London’s population.
Urbanization:
Prior to the industrial revolution, the majority of people lived in rural areas and
were engaged in agriculture. As businesses grew and more people moved to
cities, the population of urban areas exploded. This led to a number of problems,
such as overcrowding and pollution. To deal with these problems, cities began to
grow and develop at a rapid pace. New transportation systems, such as subways
and buses, were developed to help move people around. And new buildings and
skyscrapers were built to accommodate the growing population.
The industrial revolution also created new opportunities for social mobility, and
many middle-class families were able to improve their economic status. As a result
of these factors, the middle class became an increasingly important force in
society during the second industrial revolution.

Working Conditions:
Without much in the way of safety regulation, factories of the Industrial
Revolution could be horrifyingly hazardous; workers faced the constant risk of
losing a hand in the machinery.
For skilled workers, their quality of life decreased in the early Industrial
Revolution. Machines replaced the skills that weavers were previously paid well
for. However, eventually the middle-class would grow as factories expanded and
allowed for managers and higher wages for workers.
Gradually, a middle-class did emerge in industrial cities toward the end of the 19th
century. Until then, there had only been two major classes in society; aristocrats
born into their lives of wealth and privilege, and low-income working-class
commoners. New urban industries eventually required more “white collar” jobs,
such as businesspeople, shopkeepers, bank clerks, insurance agents, merchants,
accountants, managers, doctors, lawyers, and teachers.
The workers lived in constant fear of unemployment and hunger. Their
desperation often exploded into bloody acts of rebellion. Machine-breakers tried
in vain to put a brake on developments, but the new inventions fitted together like
cogs in a wheel.

Pollution/Health Issues:
The Industrial Revolution was powered by burning coal, and big industrial cities
began pumping vast quantities of pollution into the atmosphere. Air pollution
continued to rise in the 1800s, causing respiratory illness and higher death rates in
areas that burned more coal. Worse yet, the burning of fossil fuel pumped carbon
into the atmosphere. A study published in 2016 in Nature suggests that climate
change driven by human activity began as early as the 1830s. The lack of clean
water and gutters overflowing with sewage from basement cesspits made workers
and their families vulnerable to infectious diseases such as cholera.
The densely packed and poorly constructed working-class tenements in cities
contributed to the fast spread of disease. Neighborhoods were filthy, unplanned,
and had muddy roads. Tenement apartments were built touching each other,
leaving no room for ventilation. These apartments often lacked toilets and sewage
systems, and as a result, drinking sources were frequently contaminated with
disease. Cholera, tuberculosis, typhus, typhoid, and influenza ravaged new
industrial towns, especially in poor working-class neighborhoods.
Child Labor:
While children worked prior to the Industrial Revolution, the rapid growth of
factors created such a demand that poor youth and orphans were plucked from
London’s poorhouses and housed in mill dormitories, while they worked long
hours and were deprived of education. Compelled to do dangerous adult jobs,
children often suffered horrifying fates.
Discrimination Against Women:
The Industrial Revolution helped establish patterns of gender inequality in the
workplace that lasted in the eras that followed. Women were expected to work
just as hard for less pay, especially in the collieries and textile factories, based on
the false assumption that women didn’t need to support families, and were only
working for “pin money” that a husband might give them to pay for non-essential
personal items.
Discrimination against and stereotyping of women workers continued into the
second Industrial Revolution. The myth that women had ‘nimble fingers’ and that
they could withstand repetitive, mindless work better than men led to the
displacement of men in white collar jobs such as office work, and the assignment
of such jobs to women after the 1870s when the typewriter was introduced.
Capitalism:
Arguably, the factory systems developed during the Industrial Revolution are
responsible for creating capitalism and the modern cities of today.
Both the idea of capitalism and the capitalist system as we know it first emerged
during the long nineteenth century, because that's when Enlightenment
philosophers were talking about it. They described an economic system with these
two main ideas:
 Private individuals or groups of individuals invest their money
(“capital”) in assets or in companies, making them owners or part
owners
 Labor, raw materials, and finished products are exchanged on a free
market where the buyer and seller agree on prices.

Imperialism:
The period of industrial revolution and British imperialism was from 1750 to 1850.
The role of imperialism was to maximize the country's profits. In order to do so,
these industrialized countries went out to discover countries that they could
exploit natural assets and cheap labour from as a result leading to imperialism.
By the late nineteenth century, ¼ of earth’s territory was redistributed amongst
less than 12 industrialized countries. All of these nations were scrambling to get
satisfactory natural assets to fuel their factories, developing populations, and
financial growth caused by industrialization.
[This also led to loss of self-sufficiency].
Reforms:
The Factory Acts (1833 & 1844):
In 1833 the Government passed a Factory Act to improve conditions for children
working in factories. Young children were working very long hours in workplaces
where conditions were often terrible. The basic act was as follows:
 no child workers under nine years of age.
 employers must have an age certificate for their child workers.
 children of 9-13 years to work no more than nine hours a day.
 children of 13-18 years to work no more than 12 hours a day.
 children are not to work at night.
 two hours schooling each day for children.
 four factory inspectors appointed to enforce the law.
However, the passing of this act did not mean that the mistreatment of children
stopped overnight.
The regulation of working hours was then extended to women by an Act of 1844.
 Women and young people now worked the same number of hours. They
could work for no more than 12 hours a day during the week, including one
and a half hours for meals, and 9 hours on Sundays. They must all take their
meals at the same time and could not do so in the workroom.

 Children and women were not to clean moving machinery.

 Accidental death must be reported to a surgeon and investigated; the result

of the investigation to be reported to a factory inspector.

The Factory Acts also included regulations for ventilation, hygienic practices, and
machinery guarding in an effort to improve the working circumstances for mill
children.
The Reform Acts/Bills:
In the 19th century, the parliament was not representative of the population. To
be eligible to vote, a person had to own property or pay certain taxes, which
disenfranchised the majority of the working class. This meant the vast majority of
citizens were not eligible to vote.
The system was very uneven and severely limited the right to vote. It failed to
account for demographic movements and the rise of a new social class that
accompanied the Industrial Revolution. Only roughly 435,000 individuals out of a
population of over 24 million in the British Isles, including Ireland, were eligible to
vote.
Pocket boroughs owned by the Crown or big landholders, and rotten boroughs
whose populations had dwindled, were well represented, yet major industrial
towns like Birmingham and Manchester, which had risen during the previous 80
years, had no representatives in parliament.
1) The Representation of the People Act, 1832, often known as the Great Reform
Act or the First Reform Bill, was the result of a lengthy public and parliamentary
campaign. It was a bill passed by Parliament that altered the British electoral
system and effectively gave middle class men the right to vote, rectify the uneven
distribution of seats, and abolish rotten boroughs. However, these changes
accomplished little for the working class. Approximately 90% of the British
people still lacked the right to vote (including all women).
The immediate consequences of the reform were two-fold. First, it redistributed
parliamentary seats from the “rotten boroughs” to the large and fast growing
industrial cities and to the counties. Second, it granted voting rights to resident
householders with property valued at ten pounds or more per year in the
boroughs and to fifty pound renters in the counties.
2) The Representation of the People Act 1867, known as the Reform Act 1867 or
the Second Reform Act, is an Act of the British Parliament that enfranchised part
of the urban male working class in England and Wales for the first time.
By the mid-1860s, Parliament was in the process of extending the vote to the
working class.
In 1866, all voters had to be male adults over 21 years of age. The right to vote
was still based upon a property qualification.
The 1867 Reform Act:
 granted the vote to all householders in the boroughs as well as lodgers who
paid rent of £10 a year or more.
 reduced the property threshold in the counties and gave the vote to
agricultural landowners and tenants with very small amounts of land.
Men in urban areas who met the property qualification were enfranchised and the
Act roughly doubled the electorate in England and Wales from one to two million
men.
There was no question of campaigning for the right to vote for women too. They
were still excluded.
The most important change was the granting of the vote to occupiers in the
boroughs (people who rented properties rather than owning them) and as a result
the electorate in some of the newer towns in England and Scotland increased
dramatically.
However, the Act did not alter the balance of political power in Britain. The
middle classes still dominated the electorate in both towns and boroughs.
3) The Ballot Act 1872 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that
introduced the requirement for parliamentary and local government elections in
the United Kingdom to be held by secret ballot.
Prior to the Ballot Act 1872, voters would give a show of hands, stating their
choice out loud, or mark their paper in public, while onlookers and candidates’
agents cheered or jeered. The name and choice would be noted down in a public
poll book, which newspapers could publish.
As a consequence of open voting, men who rented their homes, or relied on a
local employer for work, had to vote as the property owner or employer wished
them to vote. If they didn’t, they would risk losing their home and the job that
fed their family. Bribery with money and liquor, drunken fights and threats from
candidates, were also common. The Ballot Act 1872 gave voters the right to
privacy, away from the prying eyes of employers and landlords.
4) The Representation of the People Act 1884, also known as the Third Reform
Act and the Redistribution Act of the following year were laws which further
extended the suffrage in the UK. These acts extended the same voting
qualifications as existed in the towns to the countryside (enfranchised rural
workers).
All men paying an annual rental of £10 and all those holding land valued at £10
now had the vote.
The 1884 Reform Act did not establish universal suffrage as all women and 40% of
men were still without the vote.
Positive Changes:
The Industrial Revolution had many positive effects. Among those was an increase
in wealth, the production of goods, and the standard of living. People had access
to healthier diets, better housing, and cheaper goods. In addition, education
increased during the Industrial Revolution. Due in part to the Edward Jenner’s
invention of the smallpox vaccine and Louis Pasteur’s discovery of bacteria, health
care increased, and people began to live longer. The middle and upper classes
benefited immediately from the Industrial Revolution. For workers, it took much
longer. However during the 1800s, workers formed labor unions and gained higher
wages and better working conditions. As a result, they began to see the benefits
of the Industrial Revolution as well.
Women also began leading reforms to change their conditions. As women became
more involved in politics, some began to demand suffrage, the right to vote. By
1918, Great Britian granted women over 30 the right to vote. The United States
granted women suffrage with the passing of the 19th amendment in 1920.

The History of Prussia + Otto Von Bismarck

There were several German-speaking states spread all over Europe for centuries.
The most significant of which were Prussia, Austria and parts of Poland.
Prussia was originally populated by Baltic Old Prussians who were Christianized
and Germanized, and became a preferred location for immigration by (later
mainly Protestant) Germans. Prussia was predominantly a Protestant German
state. This explains in part why the Catholic South German states, especially
Austria, resisted Prussian hegemony for so long.
There were substantial Roman Catholic populations in some Prussian regions. The
Kingdom of Prussia acquired these areas from countries with a Catholic majority:
the Kingdom of Poland and the Austrian Empire.
In 1525, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach, a member of a cadet
branch of the House of Hohenzollern, became a Lutheran Protestant and
secularized the Order's remaining Prussian territories into the Duchy of Prussia,
which was still a Polish fief (‫)إقطاعية‬.
 [Duchy: A duchy, also called a dukedom, is a medieval country, territory, fief,
or domain ruled by a duke or duchess, a ruler hierarchically second to the
king or queen in Western European tradition].

 [Brandenburg-Ansbach: a free imperial principality (a state ruled by a

prince) in the Holy Roman Empire].

 [The House of Hohenzollern is a formerly royal German dynasty whose

members were variously princes, electors, kings and emperors of
Hohenzollern, Brandenburg, Prussia, the German Empire, and Romania].
During the Thirty Years' War, however, Frederick William managed to obtain a
discharge from his obligations as a vassal (a holder of land by feudal tenure on
conditions of homage and allegiance) to the Polish king by taking advantage of his
friendly relations with Russia during a series of Russo-Polish wars. He was finally
given full sovereignty over Prussia in 1657.
[The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) began as a religious war, fought between
Roman Catholics and Protestants in Germany. It developed into a political struggle
between the Catholic Habsburgs of the Holy Roman Empire (Austria, most of the
German princes, Portugal and Spain). They were opposed by Denmark, Sweden,
England, Catholic France and the Protestant princes of Germany. The war ended
with Catholic victory].
In 1701, Prussia was upgraded from a duchy to a kingdom under the rule of King
Frederick I. Later on, Frederick II, later nicknamed "Frederick the Great,"( king in
Prussia: 1740-1772 / king of Prussia: 1772-1786) got into several wars with the
Austrians; from these wars onwards the German dualism dominated German
politics until 1866.
 [German Dualism primarily denotes the rivalry between the Habsburgs and
Hohenzollerns (or simply Austria and Prussia)].

 {The Silesian Wars began more than a century of rivalry and conflict
between Prussia and Austria as the two most powerful states operating
within the Holy Roman Empire (although, ironically, both had extensive
territory outside the empire)}.
19th Century Prussia
In 1806, Prussia suffered a devastating defeat against Napoleon's troops, leading
King Frederick William III and his family to flee the state temporarily. Under the
Treaties of Tilsit in 1807, the state lost about one-third of its area. Beyond that,
the king was obliged to let the French troops throughout Prussia, effectively
making the kingdom a French satellite.
[This marked the end of the First Reich (empire) of the Holy Roman Empire. It
began with the reign of Charlemagne in 800 and lasted until the abdication of
Francis II in 1806].
After the defeat of Napoleon in Russia, Prussia quit its alliance with France and
took part in the Sixth Coalition during the "Wars of Liberation" against the French
occupation. The Prussian troops contributed crucially (alongside the British and
Dutch) to the final victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Prussia's reward at the Congress of Vienna (1815) was the recovery of her lost
territories. The recovered western lands were of vital importance because they
became the center of Germany's fledgling industrialization, especially in the
arms industry. Prussia emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as the dominant
power in Germany, overshadowing her long-time rival Austria. Prussia also
became part of the German Confederation.
[The German Confederation was an association of 39 predominantly German-
speaking sovereign states in Central Europe. It was created by the Congress of
Vienna in 1815 as a replacement of the former Holy Roman Empire, which had
been dissolved in 1806].
[Bismarck was born in 1815 as well].
The Confederation (1815-1866) consisted of the representatives of the member
states, and was presided over by the representative of Austria. The most
important issues had to be decided on unanimously (all states much reach the
same agreement), which weakened the Confederation’s structure as its
functioning depended on the cooperation of the two most populous member
states, Austria and Prussia which in reality were often in opposition.
The first half of the nineteenth century saw a prolonged struggle in Germany
between liberals, who wanted a united, federal Germany under a democratic
constitution, and conservatives, who wanted to maintain Germany as a
patchwork of independent, monarchical states, with Prussia and Austria
competing for influence.
Revolutions broke out in many European countries in 1848, most notably, the
German Revolutions of 1848–1849. They were a series of loosely coordinated
protests and rebellions in the states of the German Confederation, including the
Austrian Empire. The revolutions, which stressed pan-Germanism, demonstrated
popular discontent with the traditional, largely autocratic political structure of the
thirty-nine independent states of the Confederation that inherited the German
territory of the former Holy Roman Empire after its dismantlement as a result of
the Napoleonic Wars.
 [Pan-Germanists (pan: all inclusive) originally sought to unify all the
German-speaking people – and possibly also non-German Germanic-
speaking peoples – in a single nation-state known as the Greater Germanic
Reich].
 [In 1487, the Vereinigter Landtag (First United State Parliament), a general
assembly of the provincial estates of all eight provinces of the Prussian
empire, was called by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Although the
Vereinigter Landtag could not solve the Kleindeutsches Reich (the German
 question), it was of considerable importance for the lead-up to the
revolution of 1848 in Prussia and in Germany as a whole. Bismarck, aged
thirty-two, was chosen as a representative to the Vereinigter Landtag.
There, he gained a reputation as a royalist and reactionary politician with
a gift for stinging rhetoric; he openly advocated the idea that the monarch
had a divine right to rule].

 [The "German question" was a debate in the 19th century, especially during
the Revolutions of 1848, over the best way to achieve a unification of all or
most lands inhabited by Germans. From 1815 to 1866, about 37
independent German-speaking states existed within the German
Confederation. The Großdeutsche Lösung ("Greater German solution")
favored unifying all German-speaking peoples under one state, and was
promoted by the Austrian Empire and its supporters. The Kleindeutsche
Lösung ("Lesser German solution") sought only to unify the northern
German states and did not include any part of Austria (either its German-
inhabited areas or its areas dominated by other ethnic groups); this
proposal was favored by the Kingdom of Prussia].
The revolutions attempted to transform the Confederation into a unified German
federal state with a liberal constitution (Frankfurt Constitution). The
Confederation was dissolved in 1848, but was re-established in 1850 after the
revolution was crushed by Austria, Prussia, and other states.
[The Frankfurt Constitution of 1849, was an unsuccessful attempt to create a
unified German nation state in the successor states of the Holy Roman Empire
organized in the German Confederation. Adopted and proclaimed by the Frankfurt
Parliament after the Revolutions of 1848, the constitution contained a charter of
fundamental rights and a democratic government in the form of a constitutional
monarchy].

The Frankfurt Parliament was forced to dissolve in 1849, and king Frederick
William IV issued Prussia's first constitution by his own authority in 1850. This
conservative document provided for a two-house parliament. The lower house
(the Landtag) was elected by all taxpayers, who were divided into three classes
whose votes were weighted according to the amount of taxes paid. [Women and
those who paid no taxes had no vote. This allowed just over one-third of the
voters to choose 85 percent of the legislature, all but assuring dominance by the
more well-to-do men of the population]. The upper house ("House of Lords"),
was appointed by the king. He retained full executive authority and ministers
were responsible only to him.
The liberal movement perished by the end of 1848 amid internal fighting.
Meanwhile, the conservatives regrouped, formed an inner group of advisers
around the king, and retook control of Berlin. Although a constitution was
granted, its provisions fell far short of the demands of the revolutionaries.
BISMARCK
In 1849, Bismarck was elected to the Landtag, the lower house of the new
Prussian legislature. At this stage in his career, he opposed the unification of
Germany, arguing that Prussia would lose its independence in the process. He
accepted his appointment as one of Prussia's representatives at the Erfurt
Parliament, an assembly of German states that met to discuss plans for union, but
only in order to oppose that body's proposals more effectively. The Parliament, in
any event, failed to bring about unification, for it lacked the support of the two
most important German states, Prussia and Austria.
In 1851, Frederick William IV appointed Bismarck as Prussia's envoy to the Diet
(assembly) of the German Confederation in Frankfurt. Bismarck gave up his
elected seat in the Landtag, but was appointed to the Prussian House of Lords a
few years later.
Bismarck's eight years in Frankfurt were marked by changes in his political
opinions. No longer under the influence of his ultraconservative Prussian
friends, Bismarck became less reactionary and more pragmatic. He became
convinced that to countervail Austria's newly restored influence, Prussia would
have to ally herself with other German states. As a result, he grew to be more
accepting of the notion of a united German nation. He gradually came to believe
that he and his fellow conservatives had to take the lead in creating a unified
nation to keep from being eclipsed.
In 1858, Friedrich Wilhelm IV suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed and
mentally disabled. His brother, Wilhelm I of Germany, took over the government
of Prussia as regent. Shortly thereafter, Bismarck was replaced as the Prussian
envoy in Frankfurt; he was instead made Prussia's ambassador to Russia. This
was a promotion in his career as Russia was one of the two most powerful
neighbors (the other being Austria). Despite his lengthy stay abroad, Bismarck
was not entirely detached from German domestic affairs; he remained well-
informed of all Prussian affairs. The regent became King Wilhelm I upon his
brother's death in 1861.
In May/June 1862, he was sent to Paris to serve as ambassador to France.
Despite his lengthy stay abroad, Bismarck was not entirely detached from
German domestic affairs; he remained well-informed of all Prussian affairs.
King Wilhelm I was often in conflict with the increasingly liberal Prussian Landtag.
A crisis arose in 1862, and the king's ministers were unable to assert dominance
over the Landtag. Wilhelm I believed that Bismarck was the only politician capable
of handling the crisis, but was ambivalent about appointing a man who demanded
unfettered control over foreign affairs. However, in September 1862, when the
House of Deputies overwhelmingly rejected any sort of compromise, Wilhelm was
persuaded to recall Bismarck to Prussia. On September 23rd, 1862, Wilhelm I
appointed Bismarck prime minister-president and foreign minister of Prussia.
[The Landtag refused to authorize funding for a proposed re-organization of the
army, and the King's ministers could not convince legislators to pass the budget].
On September 30th, 1862, Bismarck made a famous speech to the Budget
Committee of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies in which he expounded on the
use of "iron and blood" to achieve Prussia's goals:
Prussia must concentrate and maintain its power for the favorable moment
which has already slipped by several times. Prussia's boundaries according to
the Vienna treaties are not favorable to a healthy state life. The great
questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions –
that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by iron and blood.
Bismarck was intent on maintaining royal supremacy which led to intensifying his
conflict with the legislators in the coming years. In 1863, the House of
Representatives resolved that it could no longer come to terms with Bismarck; in
response, the king dissolved the Landtag, accusing it of trying to obtain
unconstitutional control over the ministry—which, under the constitution, was
responsible solely to the king. Bismarck then issued an edict restricting the
freedom of the press, an edict that even gained the public opposition of the
crown prince. Despite (or perhaps because of) his attempts to silence critics,
Bismarck remained a largely unpopular politician. The House made repeated
calls for Bismarck to be dismissed, but the king supported him, fearing that if he
did dismiss the Minister President, he would most likely be succeeded by a
liberal.
Invasion of Denmark
On February 1st, 1864, Prussian and Austrian forces, representing the German
Confederation, invaded Denmark and crossed the border into Schleswig. This
came to be known as the Second Schleswig War, also sometimes known as the
Dano-Prussian War or Prusso-Danish War. The war ended on October 30th, 1864,
with the Treaty of Vienna and Denmark's cession of the Schleswig and Holstein
duchies, among others, to Prussia and Austria. In the aftermath of the war,
Bismarck induced Austria to agree to sign an agreement (the Gastein Convention
of August 20th, 1865) under which Prussia received Schleswig, while Austria
received Holstein.
The Austro-Prussian War
In 1866, Austria reneged on the agreement and demanded that the Diet
determine the Schleswig–Holstein issue. Bismarck used this as an excuse to start
a war with Austria by accusing them of violating the Gastein Convention.
Bismarck sent Prussian troops to occupy Holstein. Provoked, Austria called for
the aid of other German states, who quickly became involved in the Austro-
Prussian War (Seven Weeks' War/German Civil War).
[Bismarck had also made a secret alliance with Italy, who desired Austrian-
controlled Veneto. Italy's entry into the war forced the Austrians to divide their
forces].
The Unification of Germany
In July 1866, the Kingdom of Prussia defeated the Austrian Empire. As a result,
Austria and Prussia signed the Peace of Prague in August 1866. Subsequently,
Austria lost Veneto to Italy, The Habsburgs were permanently excluded from
German affairs (Kleindeutschland), Prussia annexed Holstein, the German
Confederation was dissolved, and the North German Confederation was
established in August 1866. This marked the beginning of the Unification of
Germany.
[North German Confederation: a military alliance between Northern German
states under the leadership of the Kingdom of Prussia, which excluded Austria
and other Southern German states. The Confederation transformed the Kingdom
of Prussia into a confederated state on July 1st,1867. This began what historians
refer to as "The Misery of Austria" in which Austria served as a mere vassal to the
superior Germany, a relationship that was to shape history until the end of the
First World War].
The Confederation was governed by the North German Constitution, largely
drafted by Bismarck. Executive power was vested in a president who was assisted
by a chancellor responsible only to him. As president of the confederation,
Wilhelm I appointed Bismarck as chancellor of the confederation.
The Franco-Prussian War
Prussia's victory over Austria led to the questioning of France's status as the
dominant power of continental Europe, which increased the already existing
tensions with France. The Emperor of France, Napoleon III, had tried to gain
territory for France as a compensation for not joining the war against Prussia.
Bismarck, at the same time, did not avoid war with France, though he feared the
French for a number of reasons. First, he feared that Austria, hungry for revenge,
would ally with the French. Similarly, he feared that the Russian army would assist
France to maintain a balance of power. Still, however, Bismarck believed that if the
German states perceived France as the aggressor, they would then unite behind
the King of Prussia.
A suitable pretext for war arose in 1870, when a German Prince (Leopold of
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen) was offered the Spanish throne (vacant since a
revolution in 1868). France pressured Leopold into withdrawing his candidacy.
Not content with this, Paris demanded that King Wilhelm I assure that no
Hohenzollern would ever seek the Spanish crown again.
To provoke France into declaring war with Prussia, Bismarck published the Ems
Dispatch, a carefully edited version of a conversation between King Wilhelm I and
the French ambassador to Prussia. This conversation had been edited so that each
nation felt that its ambassador had been slighted and ridiculed, thus inflaming
popular sentiment on both sides in favor of war.
France mobilized and declared war on July 19th, 1870. The German states saw
France as the aggressor, and—swept up by nationalism and patriotic zeal—they
rallied to Prussia's side and provided troops. The war was a great success for
Prussia as the German army won victory after victory. Napoleon III was taken
prisoner after the Battle of Sedan (1–2 September 1870), which effectively
decided the war in favour of Prussia and its allies, though fighting continued under
a new French government.
The remainder of the war featured a Siege of Paris (September 19th, 1870 -
January 28th, 1871). The new French republican regime then tried, without
success, to relieve Paris with various hastily assembled armies and increasingly
bitter partisan warfare. The siege was the culmination of the Franco-Prussian
War.
Bismarck acted immediately to secure the unification of Germany. He negotiated
with representatives of the southern German states, offering special concessions
if they agreed to unification; the negotiations succeeded.
On January 18th, 1871, The proclamation of the German Empire was issued after
the joint victory of the German states in the Franco-Prussian War. The
Proclamation concluded the Unification of Germany, and marked the beginning
of the Second Reich. On the same day, the new Constitution of the German
Confederation came into force, thereby significantly extending the federal
German lands to the newly created German Empire. According to the
constitution, the empire was a federation of 25 German states under the
permanent presidency of Prussia, the largest and most powerful state. The
presidency of the confederation was a hereditary office of the King of Prussia,
who had the title of German Emperor. The Emperor appointed the Chancellor,
the head of government and chairman of the Bundesrat, the council of
representatives of the German states.
  [The Constitution of the German Empire was the basic law of the German
Empire (1871-1918), from 16 April 1871, coming into effect on 4 May 1871.
German historians often refer to it as Bismarck's imperial constitution].

 [The Day of the founding of the German Empire, January 18, became a day
of celebration, marking when the Prussian King Wilhelm I was proclaimed
German Emperor at the Palace of Versailles].
The Kulturkampf
In 1871, Bismarck was raised to the rank of Fürst (Prince). He was also appointed
as the first Imperial Chancellor of the German Empire, but retained his Prussian
offices, including those of Minister-President and Foreign Minister. Because of
both the imperial and the Prussian offices that he held, Bismarck had near
complete control over domestic and foreign policy.
In the following years, one of Bismarck's primary political objectives was the
reduction of the influence of the Catholic Church in Germany. Prussia (with the
exception of the Rhineland) and most other northern German states were
predominantly Protestant; however, many Catholics lived in the southern German
states (especially Bavaria). In total, Catholics accounted for around one third of
the population. Bismarck believed that the Roman Catholic Church held too
much political power, and believed the Catholics to be enemies to the state as
they were only loyal to the pope; moreover, he was concerned about the
emergence of the Catholic Centre Party (organized in 1870). Accordingly, he
began an anti-Catholic campaign known as the Kulturkampf (culture
struggle/conflict between civil government and religious authorities especially
over control of education and church appointments).
[The Catholic Centre Party: a Christian democratic political party in
Germany. Christian democracy is a political ideology inspired by Christian social
teaching to respond to the challenges of contemporary society and politics].
The conflict began in July 1871, when Bismarck, supported by the liberals,
abolished the Roman Catholic bureau in the Prussian Ministry of Culture (i.e.,
ministry of education and ecclesiastical affairs) and in November forbade priests
from voicing political opinions from the pulpit (‫)المنبر‬. Moreover, the Jesuits
(Society of Jesus) were expelled from Germany in 1872. Kulturkampf became part
of Bismarck's foreign policy, as he sought to destabilize and weaken Catholic
regimes, especially in Belgium and France, but he had little success.
More severe anti-Roman Catholic laws passed in 1873 allowed the government to
supervise the education of the Roman Catholic clergy, and curtailed the
disciplinary powers of the church. These efforts, however, only strengthened the
Catholic Centre Party. Largely unsuccessful, Bismarck abandoned the
Kulturkampf in 1878.
Foreign Affairs and Colonialism
In foreign affairs, Bismarck’s goal was a peaceful Europe, based on the balance of
power, so that the strength of the German Empire would not be threatened. He
was, however, forced to contend with French revanchism—the desire to avenge
the loss in the Franco-Prussian War. Additionally, Bismarck feared that a hostile
combination of Austria-Hungary, France, and Russia would crush Germany. If two
of them were allied, then the third would ally with Germany only if Germany
conceded excessive demands. The solution was to ally with two of the three.
[The balance of power theory in international relations suggests that states may
secure their survival by preventing any one state from gaining enough military
power to dominate all others. If one state becomes much stronger, the theory
predicts it will take advantage of its weaker neighbors, thereby driving them to
unite in a defensive coalition].
In 1873, he formed the League of the Three Emperors, an alliance of the Kaisers
of Germany and Austria-Hungary and the Tsar of Russia. Together they would
control Eastern Europe, making sure that restive ethnic groups such as the Poles
were kept in control. It aimed at neutralizing the rivalry between Germany's two
neighbors by an agreement over their respective spheres of influence in the
Balkans and at isolating Germany's enemy, France.
 [The first League of the Three Emperors was in effect from 1873 to 1878.
The alliance ended because of continued strong conflicts of interest
between Austria-Hungary and Russia in the Balkans].

 [Bismarck was extremely Polonophobic; polonophobia/anti-Polonism:

negative attitudes, prejudices, and actions against Poles as an ethnic group,
Poland as their country, and their culture. These include ethnic prejudice
 against Poles and persons of Polish descent, other forms of discrimination,
and mistreatment of Poles].
In 1879, Germany and Austria-Hungary formed the Dual Alliance, which became
the Triple Alliance when Italy joined in 1882. For Bismarck, the purpose of these
agreements was to isolate France by ensuring the three Empires resolved any
disputes between themselves; when this was threatened in 1880 by British and
French attempts to negotiate directly with Russia, he reformed the League in
1881, which was renewed in 1883 and 1885. After the agreement lapsed in 1887,
he replaced it with the Reinsurance Treaty, a secret agreement between Germany
and Russia to remain neutral if either were attacked by France or Austria-Hungary.
At first, Bismarck opposed the idea of seeking colonies, arguing that the burden
of obtaining and defending them would outweigh the potential benefits. During
the late 1870s, however, public opinion shifted to favor the idea of a colonial
empire. In this regard, Germans were not unique; other European nations also
began to acquire colonies rapidly. During the early 1880s, Germany joined other
European powers in the Scramble for Africa as Bismark led the Berlin Conference.
Final Years
In 1888, Wilhelm II ascended the Prussian throne. The new emperor opposed
Bismarck's careful foreign policy, preferring vigorous and rapid expansion to
protect Germany's "place in the sun." Early conflicts between Wilhelm II and his
chancellor soon poisoned the relationship between the two men. Bismarck
believed that Wilhelm was a lightweight who could be dominated, and he showed
scant respect for Wilhelm's policies in the late 1880s. Both men conflicted gravely
about matters of colonialism and anti-socialism, which eventually led Bismark to
resign in 1890.
[Bismarck was an anti-socialist. Socialism is a political and economic theory of
social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution,
and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. In
Marxist theory, it is a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism
and the realization of communism. Coming to 1870’s, socialism was at its peak
thus far in Germany and looked to grow within the parliament. Both the liberals of
west Germany and monarchists of east Germany (core Prussian territories) saw
the socialist rise as a danger that needed to be dealt with as swiftly as possible. An
assassination attempt on Kaiser Wilhelm I gave Bismarck the opportunity to go
for a full scale attack on socialists. He immediately passed a series of laws
banning socialist newspapers and journals and purging socialists from the
parliament. The main political wing of the socialists, Social Democratic Party,
responded to this attack by forming an underground resistance movement based
in Switzerland. Quickly understanding that suppressing the socialists by force
wasn’t going to work permanently, Bismarck developed the idea of a state
socialism. The idea was simple; whatever the socialist party offered to its voters,
the state was going to offer the same with its own resources. To keep the balance
between the expectations of his own voter base and those of the socialist voters,
Bismarck’s plan was to implement these socialism-inspired reforms with minimum
value. This way capitalists wouldn’t be in such a loss to complain about and the
workers would be somewhat satisfied. First of these laws, the Health Insurance
Law, passed in 1883. It was, a year later, followed by the Accident Insurance Law,
which compensated workers injured by work accidents. Another significant one
was the Old Age and Disability Insurance Law of 1889, which provided the old
and the disabled with state funded pensions. Even though these reforms didn’t
stop the eventual rise of the Social Democratic Party in the long run, they surely
helped Germany in becoming a “welfare state”].
Bismarck viewed peace with Russia as the foundation of German foreign policy
but after his retirement, Wilhelm II was persuaded not to renew the Reinsurance
Treaty by his new Chancellor, Leo von Caprivi. This provided France an opportunity
to counteract the Triple Alliance by signing the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1894,
followed by the 1904 Entente Cordiale with Britain. The Triple Entente was
completed by the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention.
He died in 1898.

Emile Durkheim
Early Life & Career
Durkheim was born in 1858 in France, to a long lineage of devout Jewish Rabbis.
He began his education in a rabbinical school. However at an early age he
switched schools, deciding not to follow in his family's footsteps. In fact Durkheim
led a completely secular life, whereby much of his work was dedicated to
demonstrating that religious phenomena stemmed from social rather than divine
factors. Subsequently, his controversial beliefs that religion and morality could be
explained in terms purely of social interaction earned him many critics.
Nevertheless Durkheim did not sever ties with his family nor with the Jewish
community.
[A rabbi is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism].
In 1885, he left for Germany, where he studied sociology for two years.
Durkheim's period in Germany resulted in the publication of numerous articles on
German social science and philosophy, which gained recognition in France and
earned him a teaching appointment at the University of Bordeaux in 1887. This
was an important sign of the change of times and the growing importance and
recognition of the social sciences. From this position, Durkheim helped reform the
French school system and introduced the study of social science in its curriculum.
Sociological Theories
1) The Division of Labor
In his book, The Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim attempted to determine
what the basis of social solidarity in society is and how this has changed over
time. This book began Durkheim’s study of how society is an entity of its own
beyond the mere sum of individuals.
[Social solidarity emphasizes the interdependence between individuals in a
society, which allows individuals to feel that they can enhance the lives of others.
It is a core principle of collective action and is founded on shared values and
beliefs among different groups in society].
In Durkheim’s view, there are two types of social solidarity: these are mechanical
and organic solidarity.
Mechanical Solidarity
People in pre-industrial societies generally lived in small rural village communities
characterized by mechanical solidarity. This means that people within social
groups strongly identified with each other, and their social integration was very
strong.
[Social integration means that people have a strong sense that they belong within
society. There is a sense of community].
Before the Industrial Revolution, people were successfully socialized into the rules
of societies by their families and religious leaders. Moreover, they had such a
great sense of belonging to society, and conformity to the greater good was
valued more than individualism, which was viewed as dangerous and deviant.
Early societies tended to be small scale settlements localized in villages or rural
areas with a limited division of labor, usually based on age or sex. In this type of
society, people are similar to each other. Because people carry out similar tasks,
people can share the type of work that they carry out and mutually support one
another.
Conformity to social norms and values was also strengthened by fear of social
controls, such as the extremely harsh punishments when members of society
broke the rules of society.
In these early societies bound by mechanical solidarity, Durkheim argued that
legal codes or the system of law tend to be either repressive or penal law. If there
is a crime in society, that is to say, that the crime is an offense to all because it is
an offense to the common morality – the shared system of values that exist.
Because most people are offended by this offense, severe punishment is likely to
result regardless of how serious the crime actually was. Punishment can consist of
death or dismembership. The moral obligation and duty is not stated in the
punishment because it is generally understood and unsaid.
Organic Solidarity
Modern industrial urban societies were characterized by organic solidarity, and
social cohesion was based upon the interdependence individuals have on each
other. Consequently, both value consensus and social integration have grown
weaker. People are less likely to agree and identify with one another.
[The term value consensus refers to the extent to which individuals within
a social structure share the same values. In other words, value consensus is a
measure of the agreement within a group on what is seen as, say, virtuous,
heinous, or evil (social norms)].
Durkheim believed that the complex development of the division of labor meant
that the collective consciousness would decline in a society. In this situation, each
individual begins to have a different set of tasks that they are engaged in.
[Collective consciousness is the set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes
which operate as a unifying force within society. In general, it refers to a shared
understanding of social norms].
There are now thousands of jobs in urban society, and although individuals
perform different tasks and often have different values and interests, the order
and social solidarity of society depend on the reliance of each individual to
perform their specified tasks. The common individual reads books written by
others, rides cars manufactured by others, and so on.
These different and specialized tasks lead to a different set of experiences for each
individual. The homogeneity of individuals, which created the common collective
consciousness and mechanical solidarity, is disturbed, and individuals no longer
feel connected through common experiences, such as work, family, or religious
beliefs. Instead, they have different settings that each lead to a different individual
consciousness.
Nonetheless, there are still commonly shared values within societies, but they
become generalized. Durkheim notes value consensus continues to exist in
modern societies but in a weaker form because industrialization resulted in
people having greater access to a greater variety of knowledge and ideas, e.g.
through the mass media and science.
Such societies rely on restitutive Law instead of penal law. In such civilizations,
crimes are more likely to be seen as being done against a specific society or group
of people rather than the moral code itself. Since common morality is weak, most
individuals do not emotionally respond when the law is broken. Therefore,
offenders in organic solidarity are likely to be requested to pay restitution to those
hurt by their conduct rather than harshly punished for every violation of common
morality. Specific repressive/penal laws, such as the death sentence, still exist in a
society with organic solidarity, but restitutive laws prevail, particularly for minor
transgressions.
Durkheim suggested that modern industrial societies were consequently
characterized by moral confusion or “anomie”.
Anomie/Anomy
Anomie is a sense of alienation and hopelessness in a society or group that is
often a response to social upheaval. This causes the breakdown of an individual’s
usual social or ethical standards.
Without a sense of social solidarity, society can fall into anomie, a normlessness
where a person doesn’t know what it means to be normal within society.
This means that some members of society were more likely to challenge and
reject shared values and norms of behavior, and this normlessness often resulted
in crime and deviance.
Durkheim considered anomie to be itself the widespread lack of commitment to
shared values, standards, and rules needed to regulate the behaviors and
aspirations of individuals. When this commitment is not enforced and social
disorganization results, individuals become distressed and more likely to commit
deviant behavior.
2) The Rules of Sociological Method
Durkheim's The Rules of Sociological Method was an attempt to establish
sociology as a science. Durkheim proclaims sociology as the science of social facts
which can be studied as objects.
Durkheim establishes society itself as an object of scientific inquiry, in a sense
turning humanity's inquisitive gaze towards nature on itself. Durkheim holds that
if nature presents itself to science in the form of phenomena, then the same can
be said about society. Both nature and society can be observed, analyzed and
studied through science.
For Durkheim, the methodology of sociology must be made objective and society
must be studied "from outside" in order to gain a scientific account of it.
Social Facts
For Durkheim, social facts are everything of social or cultural nature which work to
determine an individual's life. Social facts can be social norms, values,
conventions, rules and other social structures. In addition, they exist outside and
regardless of the individual which only works to sustain them by yielding to their
power on him.
Social facts are quite simply the things one does like voting, shopping, going to
church, paying taxes, and so on and so forth. None of these things are done on
one’s account, they are done because they are social facts that must be abided by
and therefore have real power over individuals. The way we manage our lives is
always related to the workings of elaborate networks of social facts.
3) Suicide
In Suicide, Durkheim offered an examination of how suicide rates at the time
differed across religions. Specifically, he analyzed differences between Protestants
and Catholics. He found a lower rate of suicide among Catholics and theorized
that this was due to stronger forms of social control and cohesion among them
than among Protestants.
According to Durkheim, suicide is not a personal act; it is caused by a power
beyond the individual. After defining the phenomenon, Durkheim rejected the
psychological explanation. Many doctors and psychologists theorize that the
majority of those who take their lives are in a morbid state. However, Durkheim
emphasized that the power to drive suicide is social rather than psychological. He
concluded that suicide results from social turmoil or lack of social integration or
social solidarity.
In Durkheim’s view, there are four types of suicide, based on the degree of
imbalance between the two social forces of social integration and moral
regulation. Durkheim pointed out the impact of various crises on social groups.
Types of Suicide
A. Anomic suicide is an extreme response by a person who experiences
anomie, a sense of disconnection from society and a feeling of not
belonging resulting from weakened social cohesion. Anomie occurs during
periods of serious social, economic, or political upheaval, which result in
quick and extreme changes to society and everyday life. In such
circumstances, a person might feel so confused and disconnected that they
choose to commit suicide. In this condition, people do not know whether
they are suitable for society. Durkheim explains that anomie suicide is a
state of moral disability in which people are unaware of the limits of their
desires and are always in a state of disappointment. Since anomie prevailed
 in capitalistic societies which heavily promoted individualism, excessive
freedom, skepticism and atheism, Durkheim concluded that more
industrialization/capitalism led to higher suicide rates.

B. Fatalistic suicide occurs when a person is over-regulated, their future is

constantly hampered, and repressive discipline causes intense choking of
passion. It is the opposite of anomie suicide, which happens in an
oppressive society where its inhabitants want to die rather than live. For
example, some prisoners may want to die rather than live in prisons with
constant abuse and over-regulation. Unlike the other concepts he
developed, Durkheim thought that fatalistic suicide was only a theoretical
concept and highly unlikely to exist in reality.

C. Egoistic suicide is a profound response executed by people who feel totally

detached from society. Ordinarily, people are integrated into society by
work roles, ties to family and community, and other social bonds. When
these bonds are weakened through retirement or loss of family and friends,
the likelihood of egoistic suicide increases. This absence of social chains, or
“excessive personalization,” can lead to meaninglessness, indifference, and
depression. Durkheim found that suicide is more common among
unmarried people, especially unmarried men, as well as elderly people as
there is a less need to restrain them or tie them to stable social norms and
goals.

D. Altruistic suicide occurs in a society where the needs of individuals are

considered less important than the needs of society as a whole. In such
social circumstances, people are so strongly integrated into social
expectations and society itself that they will kill themselves in an effort to
achieve collective goals. An example is someone who commits suicide for
the sake of a religious or political cause such as military service or terrorist
attacks.

The Dreyfus Affair

Social Context
19th Century France was marked by the rise of nationalism and antisemitism. The
growth of antisemitism, virulent since the publication of Jewish France by
Édouard Drumont in 1886, went hand in hand with the rise of clericalism.
[Clericalism is a policy of maintaining or increasing the power of a religious
hierarchy in matters of either the church or broader political and sociocultural
import].
In 1892, it had become clear that there was a mole in the French artillery leaking
technological secrets to the Germans—though nobody could figure out who or
how. Drumont, however, confidently placed the blame on Jews. He gave
reassurances that that Jews were biologically too weak and unpatriotic for military
service, and if anything, they should be subjected to abuse and ridicule for not
serving and praised the army for supposedly resisting Jewish participation.
Antisemitism did not spare the military, which practised hidden discrimination
with the system of irrational grading. However, while prejudices of this nature
undoubtedly existed within the confines of the General Staff, the French Army as a
whole was relatively open to individual talent, allowing some Jews to rise through
the ranks and even become distinguished officers.
The Build-Up
In September 1894, a French asset inside the German Embassy in Paris discovered
a handwritten note “the bordereau” on French artillery schematics intended for
the Embassay’s German military attaché (a member of staff in an embassy),
Colonel Maxmilian von Schwartzkoppen.
The French head of military counterintelligence, Jean Sandherr immediately
initiated two secret investigations. To find the culprit, using simple though crude
reasoning, the circle of the search was arbitrarily restricted to suspects posted to,
or former employees of, the General Staff – necessarily a trainee artillery officer.
Seemingly instantly, Sandherr considered only one possible suspect: Captain
Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus, an artillery engineer, was born in Alsace-Lorraine which
had been lost to Germany in 1871, and spoke German as his first language. He was
also a graduate of the hated civilian university, Ecole Polytechnique, and an
avowed supporter of the equally hated Republic. But most importantly, Dreyfus
was Jewish.
To condemn Dreyfus, the writing on the bordereau had to be compared to that of
the Captain. Major de Clam, an expert in graphology, concluded immediately,
upon comparing Dreyfus’s handwriting to the bordereau, that Dreyfus was the
probable author of the bordereau. However, other experts who had examined the
bordereau were torn apart regarding the identity of its author.
Disappointed, Mercier, the Minister of War, then called in Alphonse Bertillon
despite him not being a handwriting expert. Bertillon was initially no more
positive than other experts, but he did not exclude the possibility of it being
written by Dreyfus. Later, under pressure from the military, he argued that Dreyfus
had autocopied it and developed his theory of autoforgery.
[Autoforgery is when someone pretends to forge their own signature so that they
can contest the validity of the check or document].
Arrest & Propaganda
That October, Mercier and Du Clam ordered Dreyfus to either sign a pre-written
confession or commit suicide. Refusing to do either, Du Clam accused him of
conspiring with the enemy and arrested him to be put on trial. The prosecution
rested completely on the writing on a single piece of paper on which experts
disagreed, and on vague indirect testimonies.
Later the same month, the affair was revealed in an article in La Libre Parole, the
antisemitic newspaper owned by Drumont. This marked the beginning of a very
brutal press campaign until the trial. In a later publication he wrote, "What a
terrible lesson, this disgraceful treason of the Jew Dreyfus."
During the two months before the trial, antisemitic press saw the scandal as an
opportunity to justify their previous campaigns against the presence of Jews in the
army on the theme "You have been told!" This long delay above all enabled the
General Staff to prepare public opinion and to put indirect pressure on the judges.
Contending opinions arose in the press on whether or not the court should be a
closed one. The majority of the press surmised the closed court to be a low
maneuver to enable Dreyfus’s acquittal. Conversely, others deemed the close
court necessary to avoid war with Germany.
The Trial
The trial opened in December and a closed court was immediately pronounced.
As expected, the emptiness of the prosecutors’ case appeared clearly during the
hearings. Detailed discussions on the bordereau showed that Captain Dreyfus
could not be the author. At the same time Dreyfus protested his innocence and
defended himself and his statements were supported by a dozen defence
witnesses. Finally, the absence of motive for the crime was a serious thorn in the
prosecution case. Dreyfus was indeed a very patriotic officer highly rated by his
superiors, very rich and with no tangible reason to betray France.
Bertillon, however, advanced his theory of autoforgery during the trial. This
theory, although later regarded as bizarre and astonishing, seems to have had
some effect on the judges. However, the outcome of the trial remained uncertain.
The judges took leave to deliberate, but the General Staff still had a card in hand
to tip the balance decisively against Dreyfus.
Secret documents were presented to the jury revealing that General
Schwartzkoppen was having an illicit affair with his Italian counterpart which
contained mentions of someone with the initials “D.” and “A.D.” The prosecutors
presented Dreyfus’s alleged affair with Schwartzkoppen as his main motif for
treason.
Conviction, Degradation and Deportation
By the end of December, the verdict was reached. The judges unanimously
convicted Alfred Dreyfus of collusion with a foreign power, to the maximum
penalty of permanent exile in a walled fortification (prison), the cancellation of his
army rank and military degradation. Dreyfus was not sentenced to death, as it had
been abolished for political crimes decades earlier.
For the authorities, the press and the public,
antisemitism peaked as people deemed the capital
punishments as the only proportionate verdict to
such a crime.
In January 1895, the ceremony of degradation took
place in the court of a Military School in Paris. While
the drums rolled, Dreyfus was brought before an
officer of the state who read the judgment. A
Republican Guard tore off his badges, thin strips of gold, his stripes, cuffs and
jacket sleeves. As he was paraded throughout the streets, the crowd chanted
"Death to Judas, death to the Jew." Witnesses report the dignity of Dreyfus,
who continued to maintain his innocence while raising his arms: "Innocent,
Innocent! Vive la France! Long live the Army." The guard broke his sword on
his knee and then the condemned Dreyfus marched at a slow pace in front of his
former companions.
By February, Dreyfus was the sole prisoner on Devil’s Island, one of the tiny
salvation Islands off the coast of French Guiana.
Counterpropaganda and Truth
Dreyfus’s older brother, Mathieu, convinced of his brother’s innocence, managed
to rally a handful of Dreyfusard journalists and politicians. Paradoxically, this was
initially counterproductive to public opinion: the more people became aware of
the affair, the more they assumed Dreyfus was guilty for lack of any further
evidence.
In July 1895, Colonel Sandherr stepped down as head of counterintelligence in
favour of Georges Picquart. In March 1896, it was revealed to Picquart that
French artillery secrets were still being leaked to Germany in spite of Dreyfus’s
conviction. Later the same month, he discovered a document called the "petit
bleu": a telegram that was never sent, written by von Schwarzkoppen and
intercepted at the German Embassy. It was addressed to a French officer, Major
Walsin-Esterhazy. In another letter, Schwarzkoppen revealed the same
clandestine relationship with Esterhazy.
Immediately, Picquart began comparing letters written by Esterhazy to the
bordereau, and it was a perfect match. He then procured the sealed files used to
convict Dreyfus, only to discover that they contained nothing relevant to Dreyfus,
or the leaks. At this point, however, Picquart was obstructed by his own deputy,
Major Henry, who spent months pressuring the higher ups to remove Picquart.
He then claimed that Picquart had forged the correspondence between
Schwartzkoppen and Esterhazy, placing picquart under a retaliatory investigation,
and ultimately forcing him to resign from the army entirely.
In November 1897, Mathieu Dreyfus was informed of Esterhazy’s complicity with
the Germans. Subsequently, Mathieu made a complaint to the minister of war
against Esterhazy. The controversy was now public and the army had no choice
but to open an investigation. As a result, the Dreyfusard movement gained
momentum and the affair occupied more and more discussions.
Trial and Acquittal of Esterhazy
During the investigations, thanks to the General Staff's skillful manipulation,
Picquart was framed as the real culprit, responsible for forging evidence against
Esterhazy. The investigation was moving towards a predictable conclusion until
Esterhazy's former mistress published letters in which, ten years earlier, Esterhazy
had expressed violently his hatred for France and his contempt for the French
army. However, the militarist press rushed to the rescue of Esterhazy with an
unprecedented antisemitic campaign.
In response to such a scandal, the General Staff’s idea to stop the noise and allow
a return to order was to require Esterhazy to demand a trial and be acquitted.
During the trial, three handwriting experts decided that the writing in the
bordereau was not Esterhazy's. Subsequently, Esterhazy was acquitted
unanimously the next day.
Response to Esterhazy’s Acquittal
Outraged by the acquittal of Esterhazy, Emile Zola published an article titled
J'Accuse...! The article had the effect of an explosion. It was a direct attack,
explicit and clear, and denounced all those who had conspired against Dreyfus,
including the minister of war and the General Staff. Zola laid out a full timeline of
the affair, the nonsensical case against Dreyfus, and the proof that they prejudged
his guilt on the basis of being Jewish. As a result, Zola was tried and convicted for
libel.
In 1898, antisemitic disturbances and riots broke out in cities across France. The
demonstrators threw stones, chanted slogans, attacked Jewish property and
sometimes Jewish people.
The longer the Dreyfus affair dragged on, the more the public became convinced
of Dreyfus’s innocence. Moreover, although public opinion doesn’t and shouldn’t
dictate criminal justice, more and more information about the case was
continuing to filter through, further pressurizing the General Staff to proclaim
Dreyfus’s innocence.
Justice and Pardon
Finally, in August 1898, Major Henry was exposed for the forgeries he used against
Dreyfus and Picquart. He was arrested and later committed suicide in custody.
Upon Henry’s death, Esterhazy confessed of his treason, adding that he had been
part of a pro-German spy ring led by Major Henry and Colonel Sandherr.
Consequently, Mathieu Dreyfus and his team had successfully appealed to the
Supreme Court to declare a mistrial, and order Alfred back to Paris for a new
court-martial. However, the military judges overseeing the case were still loyal to
the anti-Dreyfusards, and allowed no new evidence to be entered.
Faced with the military’s stubbornness against the evidence and the public will,
President Loubet proposed a compromise: to pardon Dreyfus and issue a blanket
amnesty for everyone involved in the affair on both sides.
Dreyfus accepted the pardon and returned to his family. In July 1906, the Supreme
Court overturned Dreyfus’s conviction and ordered him to be restored to the army
with all his previous ranks and honours. Captain Alfred Dreyfus resumed his duties
and went on to serve vigorously in the first World War.
Impact on the French Society
The Third Republic was evidently accepted by the vast majority of the electorate
as the only regime possible for France. Additionally, it assured its dominance over
the army and destroyed all hopes for the monarchists and militarists who longed
for the restoration of the monarchy. The affair modified politics on the whole, it
reinforced the democratic parliament and predominantly announced the defeat of
the reactionary forces, and the victory of the Republic over the army and clerical
movements (the two main anti-Dreyfusard motors). The victory of the republic
was sealed in 1905 by the separation of the church and state, from that point,
religion lost its place in the realm of politics. However, the prospect of amnesty for
the conspirators killed any possibility of military reform in the near future.
The Affair further widened the gap between the anti-republic (right-wing)
movement and the pro-republic (left-wing) movement. The left-wing movements
needed to prove, against all odds, that Dreyfus was innocent and that it was the
army that was corrupt. On the other hand, the Vichy Government’s collaborations
with Nazi Germany was a manifestation of right-wing revanchism due to their
failure to topple the republic during the affair.
[The far right nationalists which included Drumont’s Antisemitic League, were by
far the most outspoken against Dreyfus; they were joined in their antipathy by the
Monarchists. On the other hand, the center-left Radicals/Republicans were the
loudest voices in favour of Dreyfus; they were also supported by socialists such as
Durkheim].
[Vichy France, officially the French State, was the French rump state headed by
Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II].

The Boer Wars

The First Boer War (December 1880 – March 1881)
Following the Battle of Blaauwberg (1806)
Britain had officially acquired the Cape of Good
Hope in South Africa from the Dutch in 1815
after the Napoleonic Wars. Certain groups of
Dutch-speaking settler farmers (Boers) resented
British rule, even though British control brought
some economic benefits. Successive waves of
migrations of Boer farmers (known as Trekboers
which literally means "travelling farmers"),
probed first east along the coast away from the
Cape toward Natal, and thereafter north toward
the interior, eventually establishing the
republics that came to be known as the Orange
Free State and the Transvaal.
The British did not try to stop the Trekboers from moving away from the Cape.
The Trekboers functioned as pioneers, opening up the interior for those who
followed, and the British gradually extended their control outwards from the Cape
along the coast toward the east, eventually annexing Natal in 1843.
The Trekboers were farmers, gradually extending their range and territory with no
overall agenda. The formal abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834, led
to more organized groups of Boer settlers attempting to escape British rule. This
became known as the Great Trek, and those who took part in it are called
Voortrekkers. The Great Trek also led to conflicts that resulted in the displacement
of the Northern Ndebele people, and conflicts with the Zulu people that
contributed to the decline and eventual collapse of the Zulu Kingdom.
Indeed, the British subsequently acknowledged two new Boer Republics in a pair
of treaties. The independence of the Transvaal Republic was recognized in 1852,
and that of the Orange Free State was recognized in 1854.
The discovery of diamonds in 1867 near the Vaal River, some 550 miles (890 km)
northeast of Cape Town, ended the isolation of the Boers in the interior and
changed South African history. The discovery triggered a diamond rush that
attracted people from all over the world, turning Kimberley into a town of 50,000
within five years and drawing the attention of British imperial interests. In the
1870s the British annexed West Griqualand, site of the Kimberley diamond-
discoveries.
In 1875 the Earl of Carnarvon, the British Colonial Secretary, in an attempt to
extend British influence, approached the Orange Free State and the Transvaal
Republic and tried to organize a federation of the British and Boer territories
modelled on the 1867 federation of the French and English provinces of Canada.
However the cultural and historical context differed entirely, and the Boer leaders
turned him down. Successive British annexations, and in particular the annexation
of West Griqualand, caused a climate of simmering unease in the Boer republics.
In 1877, the British annexed the Transvaal, which was bankrupt, and under threat
from the Zulu.[3] The president of the Transvaal Republic from 1872 to 1877 was
T.F. Burgers. Lord Carnarvon thought that the annexation of the Transvaal would
be the first step in creating a British confederation.
With the defeat of the Zulus, and the Pedi, the Transvaal Boers were able to give
voice to the growing resentment against the 1877 British annexation of the
Transvaal and complained that it had been a violation of the Sand River
Convention of 1852, and the Bloemfontein Convention of 1854.
The Boers revolted on 16 December 1880 and took action at Bronkhorstspruit
against a British column of the 94th Foot who were returning to reinforce Pretoria.
After the Transvaal formally declared independence from the United Kingdom, the
war began on 16 December 1880 with shots fired by Transvaal Boers at
Potchefstroom. From 22 December 1880 to 6 January 1881, British army garrisons
all over the Transvaal became besieged.
The fiercely independent Boers had no regular army; when danger threatened, all
the men in a district would form a militia organized into military units called
commandos and would elect officers. Commandos being civilian militia, each man
wore what he wished and brought his own weapon, usually a hunting rifle, and his
own horses. On the other hand, the British infantry uniforms at that date were red
jackets, dark blue trousers which stood in a stark contrast to the African
landscape. Thus, the Boer marksmen could easily snipe at British troops from a
distance.
Although the Boers exploited their advantages to the full, their unconventional
tactics, marksmanship and mobility do not fully explain the heavy British losses.
Historians lay much of the blame at the British army’s poor intelligence and bad
communications. The British forces had not only underestimated the Boer
capabilities, but had also been misinformed of, and surprised by, the strength of
the Boer forces.
The British Army’s decision to initiate the attack at Majuba Hill when truce
discussions were already underway appears to have been foolhardy, particularly
as there was limited strategic value. Once the Battle of Majuba Hill had begun,
British Commanders’ understanding of the dire situation seemed to deteriorate as
the day went on, as they sent conflicting signals to the British forces, first
requesting reinforcements and then stating that the Boers were retreating. Thus,
poor leadership, intelligence and communications resulted in the deaths of many
British soldiers and commanders. Unwilling to get bogged down in a distant war,
the British government ordered a truce.
The First Boer War was the first conflict since the American War of Independence
in which the British had been decisively defeated and forced to sign a peace treaty
under unfavorable terms.
An armistice was signed to end the war on March 6th, and subsequently, a peace
treaty was signed on March 23rd,1881, bringing the war to an official end. In the
final peace treaty, the Pretoria Convention, signed on 3 August 1881, the British
agreed to complete Boer self-government in the Transvaal under British
suzerainty. The Boers accepted the Queen's nominal rule and British control over
external relations, African affairs, and native districts.
When in 1886 a second major mineral find was made at an outcrop on a large
ridge some 30 miles (48 km) south of the Boer capital at Pretoria, it reignited
British imperial interests. The ridge contained the world's largest deposit of gold-
bearing ore. This discovery made the Transvaal, which had been a struggling Boer
republic, potentially a political and economic threat to British supremacy in South
Africa at a time when Britain was engaged in the scramble for African colonies
with France and Germany.
In 1896, Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, attempted to overthrow
the government of Paul Kruger who was then president of the South African
Republic or the Transvaal. The raid, known as Jameson Raid, failed.
By 1899, tensions erupted into the Second Boer War, caused partly by the
rejection of an ultimatum by the British. The Transvaal ultimatum had demanded
that all disputes between the Orange Free State and the Transvaal (allied since
1897) be settled by arbitration and that British troops should leave. The lure of
gold made it worth committing the vast resources of the British Empire and
incurring the huge costs required to win that war. However, the sharp lessons the
British had learned during the First Boer War – which included Boer
marksmanship, tactical flexibility and good use of ground – had largely been
forgotten when the second war broke out 18 years later. Heavy casualties, as well
as many setbacks, were incurred before the British were ultimately victorious.
The Second Boer War (1899 – 1902)
The discovery of gold in the South African Republic (SAR) in 1886 raised the
stakes. A large influx of English-speaking people, called Uitlanders (literally
'Outlanders') by the Afrikaners, were attracted by the goldfields. This worried the
Boers, who saw them as a threat to their way of life.
The Jameson Raid (29 December 1895 – 2 January 1896) was a botched raid
against the South African Republic (Transvaal) carried out by British colonial
administrator Leander Starr Jameson, under the employment of Cecil Rhodes.
The raid was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British Uitlanders in
the Transvaal but it failed. However, the raid was ineffective, and no uprising took
place. The results included embarrassment of the British government; the
replacement of Cecil Rhodes as prime minister of the Cape Colony; and the
strengthening of Boer dominance of the Transvaal and its gold mines.
In 1899, the SAR offered an extension of the franchise to the Uitlanders. This was
in return for British agreement not to interfere in the SAR's internal affairs. Kruger
also demanded that Britain drop its claim to rule the SAR and allow external
arbitration of other unresolved disputes between the two governments. Confident
that the Boers would be quickly defeated, The British rejected Kruger's proposals.
Recognizing that Britain was not seeking a peaceful settlement, the SAR and its
ally the Orange Free State resolved to strike first. On 9 October, the SAR issued an
ultimatum demanding the withdrawal not only of British troops from their
borders, but of all reinforcements sent to South Africa since 1 June 1899. This
ultimatum was rejected and on 12 October the allied republics invaded Cape
Colony and Natal.
The Boers soon laid siege to the towns of Kimberley, Mafeking and Ladysmith and,
in December 1899, defeated British attempts to relieve them in several battles.
“Black Week,” as the period of these defeats became known, was a major shock
to the British public who were used to hearing of victories throughout the Empire.
British tactics, which had generally proved successful against poorly armed
opponents, turned out to be disastrous when used against the Boers. The British
launched frontal attacks on concealed Boer positions. These were ineffective and
led to several defeats in December 1899. Although the Boers only had 88,000
soldiers and relatively few artillery pieces, they were led by outstanding generals
such as Louis Botha, Jan Smuts and Christiaan de Wet.
After several reverses, the British mobilised their superior resources and sent
more men to South Africa. These included troops from across the Empire,
especially from Canada and Australia.
At home, the population volunteered in great numbers to serve in South Africa.
The war was the first campaign in which British people from all sectors of society
took up arms. It was a forerunner of the patriotic fervor that inspired volunteers
during the First World War. In addition, although the British made a tacit
agreement with their Boer enemies that both sides would not arm the black
population. As the war progressed, however, this stance proved difficult to
maintain and they began employing armed blacks as scouts.
Shortly after the SAR's ultimatum expired on 11 October 1899, 7,500 Orange Free
State troops crossed the border into Cape Colony with the intention of capturing
Kimberley. They wished to gain control of the diamond mines, the railway and the
supplies in the town. On 15 October, Kimberley was cut off by the Boers. But their
bombardment of the town did not begin until 6 November, as his garrison refused
to surrender.
Following the end of the sieges, the war gradually turned Britain's way. By the end
of May 1900, the British had overrun the Orange Free State. And by October, the
Transvaal had been annexed. Yet the British found that they only controlled the
ground their columns physically occupied. As soon as the troops left a town or
district, their control of that area faded away.
Many Boers fought on and 18 months of cruel guerrilla warfare were to follow the
annexations. To control the countryside the British built stone and corrugated iron
blockhouses that were manned by permanent garrisons, connected by telephone
and barbed-wire fencing.
[Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of
irregular military, such as rebels, or armed civilians use ambushes, raids, petty
warfare or hit-and-run tactics in a war to fight against regular military, police or
rival insurgent forces. Guerrilla tactics focus on avoiding head-on confrontations
with enemy armies, typically due to inferior arms or forces, and instead engage in
limited skirmishes with the goal of exhausting adversaries and forcing them to
withdraw].
To prevent the guerrillas from obtaining supplies, information and assistance, the
British burnt thousands of farms and destroyed crops. The burnings were also
undertaken as a punishment to the locals for supporting the guerrillas.
The British also confined Boer families and black Africans in a network of
concentration camps. As well as removing a means of support for the guerrillas, it
was believed the presence of Boer families in the camps would make soldiers in
the field surrender. Accommodation in the camps was poor. Water and food were
in short supply, and medical and sanitary facilities almost non-existent. Sickness
became widespread. In all, 28,000 Boers, mainly women and children, died in the
camps. Around half that number of black Africans died in separate camps.
The policy proved to be counter-productive. It aroused widespread criticism at
home and abroad because of the fatalities. Emily Hobhouse was instrumental in
raising public awareness of the camps. She also organized a relief effort to aid the
victims. Her campaign forced an embarrassed government to act. Milner’s civilian
authorities took over the camps’ administration from the Army and conditions
slowly improved.
While regular troops swept the countryside in a ‘scorched earth’ policy, mounted
infantry units tracked down the remaining mobile Boer guerrillas, engaging in
small skirmishes and ambushes. Eventually, these policies forced the Boers to seek
terms. On 31 May 1902, the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed and the Boers
accepted British sovereignty but with limited self-government. The Boer republics
were fully integrated into the Union of South Africa in 1910.
[A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy of destroying everything that allows
an enemy military force to be able to fight a war, including the deprivation and
destruction of water, food, humans, animals, plants and any kind of tools and
infrastructure. Its use is possible by a retreating army to leave nothing of value
worth taking to deter the attacking force or by an advancing army to fight against
unconventional warfare].
The Second Boer War is considered to be the first modern war. The British Army
used a variety of technological innovations during the war. Although some had
been used in previous campaigns, it was the scale of their employment in South
Africa which was exceptional. The distances involved in South Africa led to the
extensive use of the electric telegraph and field telephone. Hydrogen-filled
balloons were used for observation and directing artillery. Railways played an
important part in the campaign and were frequently attacked by the Boers. To
counter this threat, armored trains regularly patrolled the main routes.
Searchlights, powered by mobile generators, were used to light up the railway and
facilitate track repairs at night. Steam traction engines were used to move heavy
loads along roads and across countryside.
The war not only involved large numbers of men, animals and machines operating
over an enormous area, it also resulted in physical destruction on a massive scale.
The farm burnings, railway sabotage and devastation in the countryside created
difficulties in maintaining food supplies, particularly for the British Army who
could not live off the land like their enemy.

World War I
Lighting the Fuse:

On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-

Hungarian throne, was assassinated on his visit to Sarajevo, capital of the recently
annexed provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The assassination team was helped
by the Black Hand, a Serbian secret nationalist group.

The July Crisis 1914:

5 July: Germany gave Austria-Hungary the famous "Blank Cheque," meaning that
Germany supported any political decision Austria-Hungary decided to make.
23 July: Austria-Hungary delivered a humiliating ultimatum to Serbia, with only 48
hours to accept.
26 July: The United Kingdom offered to mediate the conflict, but this offer was
ignored by both Germany and Austria-Hungary.
28 July: Despite Serbia agreeing to almost all demands in the ultimatum, Austria-
Hungary declared war on Serbia anyway.
30 July: Russia (Tsar Nicholas II) began mobilizing its troops.

1 August: Germany (Kaeser Wilhelm II) declared war on Russia.

3 August: Germany invaded Belgium (Battle of Liege) and France declared war on
Germany.
4 August: Britain declared war on Germany for invading Belgium.
6 August: Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia.

 The Ultimatum: Serbia’s response effectively accepted all terms of the

ultimatum but one: it would not accept Austria-Hungary’s participation in
any internal inquiry, stating that this would be a violation of the
Constitution and of the law of criminal procedure.

 Invading Belgium: the Schlieffen Plan was a strategic military plan to allow
Germany to wage war on two fronts. The plan was proposed in 1905, 11
years before the outbreak of the Great War, by Alfred von Schlieffen, the
former chief of the German general staff. The Schlieffen Plan aimed to fight
the French (and as such the British) in Belgium, France’s backdoor, rather
than near German borders.

 Britain’s War Entry: according to the 1839 Treaty of London, Belgium was
to remain neutral, and its neutrality was to be inviolable by any European
power. But the German invasion of Belgium prompted the United Kingdom
to declare war on Germany for violating the Treaty as well as aiding France
in the war against Germany.

 Alliances:
 The Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire
& Bulgaria.
 The Allies: France, Britain, Russia, Serbia, Canada, Japan, Italy & the
U.S.A (from 1917)
Battle of Tannenberg (23-30 August 1914)
The Battle of Tannenberg, also known as the Second Battle of Tannenberg, was
fought between Russia and Germany in the first month of World War I. The battle
resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army.
The battle is particularly notable for fast rail movements by the German Eighth
Army, enabling them to concentrate against each of the two Russian armies in
turn, first delaying the First Army and then destroying the Second before once
again turning on the First Army days later. It is also notable for the failure of the
Russians to encode their radio messages, broadcasting their daily marching
orders in the clear, which allowed the Germans to make their movements with
the confidence they would not be flanked.
[Although the battle actually took place 30 km to the west of Tannenberg, it was
given that name in order to avenge the Teutonic Knights' defeat at the First Battle
of Tannenberg 500 years earlier].

The First Battle of the Marne (5-12 September 1914)

The German army invaded France with a

plan for winning the war in 40 days by
occupying Paris and destroying the
French and British armies
(Allies/Entente). In what is called the
Great Retreat, the Germans pursued the
retreating Franco/British forces more
than 250 km southward. The French and
British halted their retreat in the Marne
River valley while the Germans advanced
to 40 km from downtown Paris.

On September 4th, the Franco-British forces launched a counteroffensive. The

battle took place between Paris and Verdun. By September 9th, the success of the
Franco–British counteroffensive left the German 1st and 2nd Armies at risk of
encirclement, and they were ordered to retreat to the Aisne River. The retreating
armies were pursued by the French and British. The German armies ceased their
retreat after 65 km on a line north of the Aisne River, where they started digging
trenches on the heights and fought the First Battle of the Aisne.
The German retreat from 9 to 12 September marked the end of the German
attempt to defeat France quickly. Both sides next commenced reciprocal
operations to envelop the northern flank of their opponent in what became
known as the Race to the Sea.

The Race to the Sea (17 September – 19 October 1914)

After Germany had been stopped
from capturing Paris in the events of
the First Battle of the Marne and the
First Battle of the Aisne, both the
Germans and the Allied nations of
France and Britain ‘raced’ north as
they tried to gain a flank on each
other. British and French forces
countered the German push north
throughout September and October
until the two sides reached the North
Sea in Belgium on October 19th. The
Race to the Sea involved several
smaller conflicts between the
German Army and the Allied forces,
but neither side gained a decisive
advantage. What resulted was a line
of trenches that extended
throughout much of Belgium and
northern France. It was along this line
of trenches that some of the most
significant battles of the war took
place; Battle of the Yser (16 October-2
November) and the First Battle of
Allies: red. Germany: blue.
Ypres (19 October-22 November).
Furthermore, this led to the stalemate on the Western Front, which resulted in
years of trench warfare and bloody conflict. By the end of November, a 700 km
trench system snaked across the Western Front, from the Swiss border to
Belgium’s North Sea coast.
Trench Warfare
Background
Trenches have a long history in warfare, beginning in the ancient world. Roman
legions surrounded their camps with trenches for protection. In the American Civil
War (1861–65), the increased firepower of small arms and artillery forced both
sides to dig trenches. The use of trenches, although sometimes only rudimentary
and shallow ditches, continued during the Boer War (1899–1902) and the Russo-
Japanese War (1904–05).
WWI
Shortly after the First World War began in August 1914, trenches were needed
due to the widespread use of machine guns and the increased lethality of artillery.
Artillery was the real killer, accounting for 60 percent of all deaths and injuries
during the first three years of the war. This was due to larger-caliber ammunition,
increased range and accuracy, timed fuses and improvements in high explosive
and shrapnel rounds.
Design and Construction
Eventually, trenches consisted of three
parallel lines at least 1.5 km in depth:
fire/forward, support/secondary and reserve.
Trenches were not dug in a straight line, but
rather in a zigzag or stepped pattern of
alternate fire bays and traverses. This was to
prevent the blast and shrapnel effects of
artillery fire travelling along a straight path. It
also stopped any enemy that got into a
trench line from firing straight along it.
Trenches were built as narrow as possible to
limit the blast radius of artillery air bursts.
Trenches were normally dug to a depth of about two meters but were shallower in
wet ground. Wood and corrugated tin were used to help prevent trench walls
from collapsing. Duckboards, consisting of several wooden slats joined together,
were placed along the muddy bottom of trenches to form a path. Sandbags were
piled in front of the trench, known as the parapet, to almost a meter high for extra
protection. A similar wall of
sandbags was built along the
back of the trench, called the
parados, to protect against
friendly fire from soldiers in
the rear, as well as to prevent
parts of a soldier’s body
being silhouetted against the
skyline.
The area between the
forward trenches of both armies was known as No Man’s Land and was usually
300 to 400 m wide. It contained long strands of thick barbed wire placed in depth.
Gaps were left in places to allow patrols or raids to cross no man’s land at night.
Such gaps were always covered by machine-gun fire in case of an enemy attack.
Shallow communication trenches zigzagged at right angles from the front-line
trenches to the rear and were used to move soldiers and supplies. Deep,
protected dugouts were in the front and support lines and also branched off from
communications trenches. Initially limited to officers and medical staff, soldiers
were later allowed to sleep in them.
Illnesses
The unsanitary conditions in front-line trenches meant disease was widespread.
Sickness in the trenches gave its name to three specific conditions.
Trench foot was caused by standing in water for too long, which resulted in a loss
of circulation. If not treated in time, gangrene set in and amputation of toes or
even feet followed. Trench mouth was caused by poor oral hygiene, lack of fresh
fruit, heavy smoking and continual stress. It caused bleeding and very bad breath
and, if left untreated, required all teeth to be pulled from rotting, discolored
gums. Trench fever was a common flu-like illness, marked by fever, chills, fatigue
and shin pains. Serious cases could sideline soldiers for a week to three months.
The Second Battle of Ypres (April 22 - May 25, 1915)
The German attack at Ypres was a diversionary action. It concealed the movement
of German forces away from the Western Front to Galicia, for the Gorlice-Tarnow
Offensive that began in May.
[The Gorlice–Tarnów offensive during World War I was initially conceived as a
minor German offensive to relieve Russian pressure on the Austro-Hungarians to
their south on the Eastern Front, but resulted in the Central Powers' chief
offensive effort of 1915, causing the total collapse of the Russian lines and their
retreat far into Russia].
Gas was not a new weapon in 1915 but the Second Battle of Ypres was the first
time chlorine gas was used and the first time it was employed on such a scale. The
shock of the gas and its effects resulted in a breach of the Allied line. In the weeks
that followed, successive attacks and counterattacks by German and Allied forces
resulted in further territory lost for the Allies and high casualties on both sides.
The Allies were left holding a line just outside Ypres.
The advent of the use of gas on the battlefield (the British Army employed gas at
the Battle of Loos in September) prompted both sides to begin developing more
effective gas protection.
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
“Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen

Following the gas attack at Ypres, Allied forces were initially provided with cotton
pads to cover their mouths, soaked in chemicals or sometimes urine, and goggles.
Over the course of the war, more effective respirators were developed.
Submarine Warfare
Britain's blockade across the North Sea and the English Channel cut the flow of
war supplies, food, and fuel to Germany during World War I. Germany retaliated
by using its submarines to destroy neutral ships that were supplying the Allies.
The formidable U-boats prowled the Atlantic armed with torpedoes. They were
Germany’s only weapon of advantage as Britain effectively blocked German ports
to supplies. The goal was to starve Britain before the British blockade defeated
Germany.
On May 7, 1915, German submarine U-20 torpedoed the Lusitania, a Cunard
passenger liner, off the coast of Ireland. Thousands, including 128 Americans, lost
their lives. The Allies and Americans considered the sinking an act of
indiscriminate warfare. The Germans asserted the Lusitania was carrying war
material and was therefore a legitimate target.
Faced with the possibility that the U.S. might go to war over the incident,
Germany backed down and ordered its U-boat fleet to spare passenger vessels.
The order, however, was temporary.
The Serbian Campaign (6 October 1915)
The Serbian campaign was a series of military expeditions launched in 1914 and
1915 by the Central Powers against the Kingdom of Serbia.
The first campaign began after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July
1914. The campaign ended after three unsuccessful Austro-Hungarian invasion
attempts were repelled by the Serbians and their Montenegrin allies.
The second campaign was launched, under German command, when Bulgarian,
Austro-Hungarian, and German forces successfully invaded Serbia from three
sides. This resulted in the Great (Serbian) Retreat through Montenegro and
Albania, the evacuation to Greece, and the establishment of the Macedonian
front.
[The Macedonian front, also known as the Salonica front (after
Thessaloniki), was a military theatre of World War I formed as a result of an
attempt by the Allied Powers to aid Serbia against the combined attack of
Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria].
[In warfare, a theater is an area in which important military events occur or are in
progress. A theater can include the entirety of the airspace, land and sea area that
is or that may potentially become involved in war operations].
The defeat of Serbia gave the Central Powers temporary mastery over the
Balkans, opening up a land route from Berlin to Constantinople, allowing the
Germans to re-supply the Ottoman Empire for the rest of the war.
The end of the campaign was declared on 24 November 1915. Serbia was then
occupied and divided between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Bulgaria.
[Serbia was later liberated by French forces on 1 November 1918].
Battle of the Somme (1 July – 18 November 1916)
After failing in 1914-15 to break the muddy stalemate of trench warfare, the
Allies developed a new plan. A ‘Big Push’ on the Western Front would coincide
with attacks by Russia and Italy elsewhere.
The British wanted to attack in Belgium. But the French demanded an operation at
the point in the Allied line where the two armies met. This was along a 40km front
on the River Somme in northern France.
Aiming to wear down the French in a battle of attrition, the Germans attacked at
Verdun (21 February – 16 December 1916). In order to assist their ally, the
British launched their attack on the Somme earlier than planned. Originally the
French role was much greater, but the desperate situation at Verdun reduced
their role in the operation.
[The bulk of British troops involved in the Battle of the Somme were
inexperienced volunteers of the 'New Armies' recruited in 1914-15].
The plan was that the British Fourth Army would break through in the center,
while the Third Army in the north and the French Sixth Army to the south made
diversionary attacks. If successful, the Reserve Army would then exploit this gap
and roll up the German line.
On 24 June 1916, the British began a seven-day preliminary bombardment. The
British artillery was expected to destroy German defenses and guns, and cut the
barbed wire in front of the enemy lines. When the attack began, it would provide
a creeping barrage behind which the infantry could advance. The Allies also used
mines to destroy the German lines before the battle.
The opening day of the attack, 1 July 1916, saw the British Army sustain 57,000
casualties, the bloodiest day in its history.
On 15 September, the British used tanks for the first time. However, the tanks
were still early in their development stages, and many of them broke down
before making it to the front line.
On 18 November, with the weather deteriorating, The British Army shut down the
offensive. The Allies had only advanced seven miles (12 km) and there was still no
breakthrough in sight.
A more professional and effective army emerged from the battle. And the tactics
developed there, including the use of tanks and creeping barrages, laid some of
the foundations of the Allies’ successes in 1918. The Somme also succeeded in
relieving the pressure on the French at Verdun.
The Allied victory at the Somme—despite its horrific costs—inflicted serious
damage on German positions in France, spurring the Germans to strategically
retreat to the Hindenburg Line in March 1917 rather than continue battling over
the same land that spring.
The February Revolution (8–16 March 1917) [Julian Calendar: 23 February – 3
March]
By 1917, most Russians had lost faith in the leadership ability of the czarist
regime. Government corruption was rampant, the Russian economy remained
backward, and Nicholas II repeatedly dissolved the Duma, the Russian parliament
established after the Revolution of 1905, when it opposed his will. However, the
immediate cause of the February Revolution was Russia’s disastrous
involvement in World War I. Militarily, imperial Russia was no match for
industrialized Germany, and Russian casualties were greater than those
sustained by any nation in any previous war. Meanwhile, the economy was
hopelessly disrupted by the costly war effort, and moderates joined Russian
radical elements in calling for the overthrow of the czar.
Revolutionary activity lasted about eight days, involving mass demonstrations and
violent armed clashes with police and gendarmes, the last loyal forces of the
Russian monarchy. On March 15th, Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in favor of
his brother Michael, whose refusal of the crown brought an end to the czarist
autocracy.
The new Provincial Government, tolerated by the Petrograd Soviet, hoped to
salvage the Russian war effort while ending the food shortage and many other
domestic crises. Meanwhile, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik
Revolutionary Party, left his exile in Switzerland and crossed German enemy lines
to return home and take control of the Russian Revolution. One of Lenin’s first
actions as leader was to call a halt to Russian participation in the war.
[The Bolshevik Revolutionary Party: a far-left faction of the Marxist Russian Social
Democratic Labour Party].
The Provisional Government proved deeply unpopular and was forced to share
dual power with the Petrograd Soviet. Alexander Kerensky, Russia’s minister of
war, became the head of the government. He was unable to resolve Russia's
immediate problems, including food shortages and mass unemployment, as he
attempted to keep Russia involved in the ever more unpopular war.
[Dual power refers to the coexistence of two governments as a result of
the February Revolution: the Soviets (workers' councils), particularly the Petrograd
Soviet, and the Russian Provisional Government].
The failures of the Provisional Government led to the October Revolution (7
November 1917, J.C. 25 October ) by the communist Bolsheviks later that year.
The February Revolution had weakened the country; the October Revolution
broke it, resulting in the Russian Civil War (7 November 1917 — 16 June 1923)and
the eventual formation of the Soviet Union (1922 to 1991).
Suspension of Submarine Warfare (24 March 1917)
After sinking of the passenger ship, Sussex, Woodrow Wilson again threatened
breaking off relations with Germany. To avert the threat of America entering the
war on the side of the Allies, the Germans called off their campaign of
unrestricted submarine warfare.
The Zimmermann Telegram
On March 1, 1917, the American public learned about a German proposal to ally
with Mexico if the United States entered the war. Months earlier, British
intelligence had intercepted a secret message from German Foreign Minister
Arthur Zimmermann to the Mexican government, inviting an alliance (along with
Japan) that would recover the southwestern states Mexico lost to the U.S. during
the Mexican War of 1846-47.
The reason behind sending the telegram was Zimmermann’s anticipation of
resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, an act the German government
expected would likely lead to war with the U.S. Zimmermann hoped tensions
with Mexico would slow shipments of supplies, munitions, and troops to the
Allies if the U.S. was tied down on its southern border.
Some suspected the telegram might be a forgery to manipulate America into the
war. However, on March 29, 1917, Zimmermann gave a speech in the Reichstag
confirming the text of the telegram and so put an end to all speculation as to its
authenticity.
The Zimmermann Telegram galvanized American public opinion against
Germany once and for all. The telegram was considered perhaps Britain’s
greatest intelligence coup of World War I and, coupled with American outrage
over Germany’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, was the tipping
point persuading the U.S. to join the war.
Sinking the S.S. Aztec (1 April 1917) & The U.S. War Declaration on Germany (6
April 1917)
The American steamer, S.S. Aztec was torpedoed without warning by a German U-
boat as it entered British waters. Tens of Americans drowned.
The news of the torpedoing of the Aztec was passed on to the United States
Congress as deliberations were ongoing as to the declaration for war on Germany,
as President Woodrow Wilson had asked congress to declare war on Germany on
April 2nd.
On April 6th, the Congress approved a resolution declaring war with Germany.
The Nivelle Offensive (April 16, 1917 – May 9, 1917)
By April 1917, the Allies and the Central Powers had been locked in the stalemate
of trench warfare for nearly three years. Numerous offensives had failed to break
through at a terrible cost in men. New tactical and technological innovations were
developed with some success. General Robert Nivelle, the French commander in
chief, was convinced that he’d developed the ‘formula’ to break the deadlock.
Nonetheless the offensive he planned was destined to fail from the beginning,
with catastrophic consequences for the French Army.
Nivelle built on his experiences of fighting at Verdun, where he had carried out
meticulously planned, small scale surprise attacks that struck at the weak points
in the enemy line, with overwhelming violence.
He believed his method could rupture the German lines and achieve a
breakthrough within 24 to 48 hours, with casualties expected to be around 10,000
men. Assaulting on a narrow front, an artillery barrage would blow a passage
through the German lines. The infantry would then pour through the gap into
open ground, outflanking the Germans.
However, since the end of February 1917, the Germans began the process of
shortening their defenses, pulling back to the infamous Hindenburg Line, leaving a
trail of destruction in the former occupied territory.
This changed the whole make-up of the French offensive, as they now had to
attack much stronger positions on the Chemin des Dames ridge-line, over 600 foot
up the Aisne valley. Intelligence on the new positions was poor so the French had
no idea what awaited them. The meticulous planning that characterized the
Verdun attacks was now gone.
Surprise was also lost. The Germans launched a trench raid on 4 April and
captured details of the plan. In all likelihood the Germans had got wind of the
offensive long before that.
Much of this was pointed out to the French commander at two separate meetings
with his generals, but he talked the dissenters round. Neville interpreted the
German withdrawal as a victory and that he had them on the run. He also pointed
out that only the offensive could give victory.
The French Army had continuously been in search of a “messianic” figure since
Napoleon, to deliver something fantastic. They wanted to believe that Nivelle’s
plan, for all its faults, would win the war for France.
There was also growing unrest at home and in the ranks, as war weariness
increased, fueled by German propaganda. The government wanted to end the
war before France followed Russia into revolution. Neville’s charisma and
enthusiasm managed to instil hope once again in the French Army, after it had
endured the meat-grinder of Verdun.
The start of the offensive was delayed by appalling weather, however by 16 April
1917 it could not be delayed any longer. The British had launched diversionary
attacks at Arras and would be left in an impossible position if the French did not
attack as planned.
Hampered by driving rain and spread over too wide an area, the artillery barrage
only destroyed the front line German trenches. It failed to destroy their reserve.
The French troops had to slog uphill, through mud, barbed wire and machine
guns. In many sectors they were completely pinned down and where they
advanced were subject to ferocious German counter attacks from every
direction.
It is estimated that the French suffered over 130,000 casualties, for the sake of
modest territorial gains and a few thousand captured Germans. The offensive
dragged on until Mid-May, but it was clear from the first day that the offensive
had failed and with it, the last hope of the French Army went.
No longer willing to die in pointless attacks, French soldiers began to mutiny.
Although they continued to hold their positions at the front, troops resting in the
rear refused to go back up the line and rioted; soldiers remained in trenches and
were willing to defend but refused orders to attack.
The catalyst for the mutinies was the extreme optimism and dashed hopes of the
Nivelle offensive, pacifism (stimulated by the Russian Revolution and the trade
union movement) and disappointment at the non-arrival of American troops.
French soldiers on the front had unrealistically been expecting US troops to arrive
within days of the U.S. declaration of war. The mutinies were kept secret from the
Germans and their full extent was not revealed until decades later. The German
failure to detect the mutinies has been described as one of the most serious
intelligence failures of the war.
[ Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription
and mandatory military service) or violence.]
[The first American Troops would land in France on June 25th, 1917].
The disorder continued from May until the end of June 1917. When Pétain, who
had replaced Nivelle, regained control, he shot the ringleaders, but introduced
reforms that improved the conditions of the troops. However, the French never
mounted a full scale offensive again.
Total War
Folkestone, England was bombed by German airplanes on May 25th, 1917, leading
to 95 civilian casualties. The concept of strategic bombing of civilians introduced
the reality of a “Total War.”
In addition, France's new Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau declared: "We
present ourselves in the single aim of total warfare… My foreign policy and
my home policy are the same. At home I wage war. Abroad I wage war… I
shall go on waging war."
Total war is a type of warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated
resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, mobilizes all of the
resources of society to fight the war, and gives priority to warfare over non-
combatant needs.
In a total war, the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants
diminishes due to the capacity of opposing sides to consider nearly every human,
including non-combatants, as resources that are used in the war effort.
The Fourteen Points (8 January 1918)
The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used
for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined
in a speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress by
American President Woodrow Wilson. Most importantly, Wilson advocated for
“peace without victory.”
Wilson’s proposal called for the victorious Allies to set unselfish peace terms
with the vanquished Central Powers of World War I, including freedom of the
seas, the restoration of territories conquered during the war and the right to
national self-determination in such contentious regions as the Balkans.
The devastation and carnage of the First World War grimly illustrated to Wilson
the unavoidable relationship between international stability and American
national security.
At the same time, he sought to placate American isolationists by stating that the
world must “be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made
safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own
life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by
the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression.”
The Points, Summarized:
1. Open diplomacy without secret treaties.
2. Economic free trade on the seas during war and peace.
3. Equal trade conditions.
4. Decrease armaments among all nations.
5. Adjust colonial claims.
6. Evacuation of all Central Powers from Russia and allow it to define its own
independence.
7. Belgium to be evacuated and restored.
8. Return of Alsace-Lorraine region and all French territories.
9. Readjust Italian borders.
10.Austria-Hungary to be provided an opportunity for self-determination.
11.Redraw the borders of the Balkan region creating Roumania, Serbia and
Montenegro.
12.Creation of a Turkish state with guaranteed free trade in the Dardanelles.
13.Creation of an independent Polish state.
14.Creation of the League of Nations.
[Self-determination law: states that peoples, based on respect for the principle
of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity, have the right to freely choose
their sovereignty and international political status with no interference].
Wilson’s Fourteen Points played an essential role in world politics over the next
several years. The speech was translated and distributed to the soldiers and
citizens of Germany and Austria-Hungary and contributed to their decision to
agree to an armistice in November 1918.
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918)
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a separate peace treaty signed by the Soviet
Russia and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman
Empire, and Bulgaria), by which Russia withdrew from World War I.
An armistice was reached in early December 1917 and a formal cease-fire was
declared on 15 December, but determining the terms of peace between Russia
and the Central Powers proved to be far more complicated.
In mid-February, the talks broke down when Russia deemed the Central
Powers’ terms too harsh and their demands for territory unacceptable.
Fighting resumed briefly on the Eastern Front, but the German armies
advanced quickly, and both Lenin and Trotsky, Russia’s foreign minister, soon
realized that Russia, in its weakened state, would be forced to give in to the
enemy terms. Negotiations resumed later that month and the final treaty was
signed on March 3rd, 1918.
By the terms of the Treaty, Russia recognized the independence of Ukraine,
Georgia and Finland; gave up Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia
and Estonia to Germany and Austria-Hungary. The total losses constituted
some 1 million square miles of Russia’s former territory; a third of its
population or around 55 million people; a majority of its coal, oil and iron
stores; and much of its industry. Lenin bitterly called the settlement “that
abyss of defeat, dismemberment, enslavement and humiliation.”
[With the November 11th, 1918, armistice ending World War I and marking
the Allies’ victory over Germany, the treaty was annulled. By the terms of the
1919 Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forced to give up its territorial gains
from the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk].
The German spring offensive/Kaiserschlacht “Kaiser's Battle" (21 March – 18
July 1918)
Known as the Ludendorff Offensive, the Kaiserschlacht was a series of German
attacks along the Western Front. Following American entry into the war, the
Germans decided that their only remaining chance of victory was to defeat
the Allies before the United States could ship soldiers across the Atlantic and
fully deploy its resources.
There were four German offensives; Michael was the main attack, which was
intended to break through the Allied lines, outflank the British forces and
defeat the British Army. Once that was achieved, it was hoped that the
French would seek armistice terms. The other offensives were subsidiary to
Michael and were designed to divert Allied forces from the main offensive
effort on the Somme.
Despite some apparent successes, the Germans suffered heavy casualties in
return for land that was of little strategic value and hard to defend; the
offensive failed to deliver a blow that could save Germany from defeat. In July
1918, the Allies regained their numerical advantage with the arrival of
American troops. In August, they launched a counteroffensive. The ensuing
Hundred Days Offensive (8 August – 11 November 1918) resulted in the
Germans losing all of the ground that they had taken in the Spring Offensive
and the capitulation of Germany that November.
The Second Battle of the Marne (15 July – 18 July 1918)
The Battle was the last major German offensive on the Western Front during
the War.
When the Germans began their advance after an initial artillery
bombardment, however, they found that the French had set up a line of false
trenches, manned by only a few defenders. The real front line of trenches lay
further on, and had scarcely been touched by the bombardment. This
deceptive strategy had been put in place by the French commander-in-chief,
Philippe Pétain.
 As the Germans approached the “real” Allied front lines, they were met with
a fierce barrage of French and American fire. Trapped and surrounded, the
Germans suffered heavy casualties.

November 1918
 The Kiel mutiny: On October 28, 1918, sailors in the German High Seas
Fleet refuse to obey an order from the German Admiralty to go to sea to
launch one final attack on the British navy.
The revolt triggered the German Revolution (29 October 1918 – 11 August
1919) which was to sweep aside the monarchy, as Kaiser Wilhelm II was
forced to abdicate, and declare the country a republic on November 9. It
ultimately led to the end of the German Empire and to the establishment of
the Weimar Republic.

 On November 11, Austrian Emperor Charles I, renounced all participation in

affairs of state after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian armies on the
Italian front. However, he did not abdicate.

 Armistice of 11 November/ Armistice of Compiègne: The Armistice ended

fighting on land, sea, and air in World War I between the Entente and their
last remaining opponent, Germany. Previous armistices had been agreed
with Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary. It was concluded
after the German government sent a message to American president
Woodrow Wilson to negotiate terms on the basis of a recent speech of his
and the earlier declared "Fourteen Points." The Armistice marked a victory
for the Allies and a defeat for Germany, although not formally a surrender.

The actual terms included:

 The cessation of hostilities on the Western Front.
 The withdrawal of German forces from west of the Rhine.
 Allied occupation of the Rhineland.
 Eventual reparations.
Paris Peace Conference (18 January 1919 – 21 January 1920)
The Paris Peace Conference was the international meeting that established the
terms of peace after World War I. Although the Armistice of 11 November 1918
ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris
Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty.
Peacemaking occurred in several stages, with the Council of Four, also known as
the Big Four—Prime Ministers Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges
Clemenceau of France, Vittorio Orlando of Italy and U.S. President Woodrow
Wilson—acting as the primary decision-makers for the first six months. Turkey
and the other losing nations were not given a voice in the deliberations; this
later gave rise to political resentments that lasted for decades.
Everything had to be reconstructed; with the fall of the great empires, European
borders had to be redrawn, and economic and commercial channels recreated.
The food situation and political instability resulting from the Bolshevik Revolution
were also constant worries for the “peacemakers.”
Its major decisions were the creation of the League of Nations, the five peace
treaties with the defeated states and the Treaty of Versailles. Main arrangements
agreed upon in the treaties were, among others, the transition of German and
Ottoman overseas possessions as "mandates" from the hands of these countries
chiefly into the hands of Britain and France; the imposition of reparations upon
Germany; and the drawing of new national boundaries.
The Treaty of Versailles (28 June 1919)
Main Terms:
 Article 231 of the Treaty required that Germany take the blame for
starting the First World War.
 Germany could not have over 100,000 soldiers and could not force men to
join the army via conscription.
 Germany was not allowed to own submarines or aircraft and its Navy could
only have six ships.
 The Rhineland was to be demilitarized.
 Germany was stripped of her colonial possessions and they were given to
the League of Nations instead.
  Germany was to pay a total of £6.6 billion reparations for war damage.
However, the U.S. Congress failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, and later
concluded a separate peace treaty with Germany.
The treaty's terms against Germany resulted in economic collapse and bitter
resentment which powered the rise of the Nazi Party, and eventually the
outbreak of a second World War.
The League of Nations (10 January 1920 – 20 April 1946)
The League of Nations has its origins in Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech. Wilson
envisioned an organization that was charged with resolving conflicts before they
exploded into bloodshed and warfare.
The American Congress did not ratify the treaty, and the United States refused
to take part in the League of Nations. Isolationists in Congress feared it would
draw the United Sates into international affairs unnecessarily.
In other countries, however, the League of Nations was a more popular idea. In
1919, the structure and process of the League were laid out in a covenant
developed by all the countries taking part in the Paris Peace Conference.
A precursor to the United Nations, the League achieved some victories but had a
mixed record of success, sometimes putting self-interest before becoming
involved with conflict resolution, while also contending with governments that did
not recognize its authority.
The League effectively ceased operations during World War II.
Impact and Consequences
 Social Upheaval:
 Women Empowerment: Millions of women entered the workforce to
replace men who went to war and those who never came back.

 Rise of the Working Class: The upper classes suffered proportionately

greater losses in the fighting than any other class. The decline of the
upper classes was further hastened by the introduction of broad
universal suffrage in Europe. The extension of the franchise, coupled
 with an explosion in trade unionism, afforded the working classes
greater political and social representation.

 Medical Advances:

 The Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918: The War helped to spread one of
the world’s deadliest global pandemics which killed an estimated 20
to 50 million people.

 Modern Surgery: Civil and military hospitals acted as theatres of

experimental medical intervention as those who survived the war
were left maimed, mutilated and disfigured.

 Blood banks were developed after the discovery in 1914 that blood
could be prevented from clotting.

 Psychological Impact: The War led doctors to start to study the

emotional as opposed to the physical stress of war. Shell shock and
traumatic shock were identified as common symptoms.

 Military & Warfare Creations:

 The First Modern War: Many of the technologies now associated with
military conflict—machine guns, tanks, aerial combat, chemical
weapons and radio communications—were introduced on a massive
scale during World War I.
• Economic Pains:
 The Great Depression: It was a worldwide economic slump that began
as an American crisis. It affected most countries across the world, most
evidently, Germany. European nations suffered from famine and
collapse of stock market prices. (Turkey’s Bread Lines & the Wall Street
stock market crash)
• Political Changes:
 Destruction of Empires.
 Creation of numerous new nation-states. (Hungary, Yugoslavia and
Czechoslovakia gained independence)
 Encouragement of independence movements in Europe’s colonies.
(Ireland’s Easter Rising 1916)
 The United States to become a world power.
 Leading directly to Soviet communism and the rise of Hitler.
 Introducing the concept of universal military service (without the
adoption of universal adult male suffrage).
 The making of propaganda films, some designed to help enlist US
support for the Allies. (Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms)
[Propaganda films would later be perfected under the Nazis].