Mid-Year Exam Review Reading

Overview of the Development of the Modern World

The concept of “modern” involves a lot of ideas about how the world works. Typically, when people define the “modern world” they think of concepts like personal freedom, democracy governments, social equality and a comfortable quality of life. Most people understand that the concepts that are associated with a modern world have not existed throughout human history. The reality is that for most of human history there were no personal freedoms, people had no say in their government and people lived short impoverished lives. In the first half of this year, you have learned how the world became “modern”. It was a long and complicated process that began and developed in Europe and then spread to the rest of the world. This process often involved conflicts over values that people held about the relationship of the individual to society and about what was best for the both individual and society. This reading is an overview of the whole process, running from the sixteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century, through which the concepts associated with the modern world were developed and became the dominant ideas.

Absolute Monarchs & Enlightenment

The process of modernization began in sixteenth century Europe with the formation of countries like France, Spain, and England that had centralized governments. It was during this period that a group of kings, known as the absolute monarchs, began to unite the different lands they ruled into countries that were directly under their control. The absolute monarchs, like Louis XIV of France, built powerful armies and magnificent palaces to show off the wealth of their countries. For example, Louis XIV built his palace of Versailles, with the Hall of Mirrors and acres of gardens, to show off his wealth an power. However, these kings often cared little for the condition in which their people lived because they saw them as a tool for building their own power. Essentially, people living under these monarchs had no individual rights and the government had all the power. Louis XIV summed up this view when he said, “I am the state”. These absolute monarchs justified their rule by saying that if they did not rule their countries with complete power then the countries would fall into civil war and chaos. The thinker Thomas Hobbes supported this view in his book, The Leviathan, which compares the power of the government to that of a sea monster. Hobbes argued that the government had total power over its people because it needed to protect its people from the chaos of civil war. Under the rule of these absolute monarchs, these countries became powerful and wealthy as the government controlled the economy through a policy of mercantilism where the government tried to make the country self-sufficient by building roads, canals and supporting manufacturing. This can be seen with Louis XIV building the Canal de Medi to encourage trade across France. It was during the period of the Enlightenment in the seventeenth century that many of the ideas that define the “modern world”, such as individual rights, democracy, rule of law and capitalism, were developed in Europe. In general, Enlightenment thinkers believed that societies based on personal freedom, democracy, rule of law and capitalism would be happier, wealthier and more successful. These Enlightenment ideas ideas were a direct challenge to the absolute monarchs. The Enlightenment thinkers were inspired by the work of Isaac Newton and other early scientists of the Scientific Revolution. These early scientists showed that events in the world were guided by laws of nature - such as the Law of Gravity discovered by Newton. The Enlightenment thinkers said that human society was also guided by natural laws and that these should be used to make a better society. The British thinker John Locke with his idea of people had natural rights to "life, liberty and property" and people were justified in overthrowing any government that violated their natural rights. Locke's thinking influenced the development of the English Bill of Rights, which was a set of laws that protected the rights of the people of England and limited the power of the British monarch - this was a crucial development in making England a democracy. The French thinker Montesquieu believed that power should not be held by one person, but should be divided into three branches of government so as to give people the most freedom. The Scottish thinker Adam Smith challenged mercantilism by proposing the idea of capitalism, which said that if people had the right to trade freely and keep the profits the result would be a hard working and wealthy society.

The core idea of the Enlightenment was that people should be free to control their own lives and that the government should not have all of the power. A society with more freedom would be more successful. The Enlightenment thinkers tried to spread their ideas to common people through books, newspapers and meetings because they thought that ideas such as democracy and capitalism could only work if they were understood and supported by large parts of society. The best example of this work was Denis Diderot, who wrote the Encylopedie to "to further knowledge and, by so doing, strike a resounding blow against reactionary forces in church and state." While some kings, known as “enlightened despots”, adopted some of the Enlightenment ideas, most of the European leaders were against the ideas of the Enlightenment because they threatened their power. These leaders tried to stop the spread the ideas the Enlightenment. As a result, the right to freedom of speech became a major issue for the Enlightenment thinkers. This is best show by the French writer Voltaire who said, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” The Enlightenment had its first impact in England, where many Enlightenment thinkers lived and where people had legal rights and the power of the king was limited by a democratic Parliament. The American Revolution in 1776 was the first time ideas of the Enlightenment were first put in to practice as governing principles for a society. For example, Thomas Jefferson used Locke’s ideas in the Declaration of Independence and Montesquieu’s ideas for the basis of the government describes in the Constitution. The success of the United States and England after adopting the Enlightenment ideas helped spread these ideas to France.

French Revolution

The French Revolution in 1789 was the event where the ideas of the Enlightenment came into direct conflict with the absolute monarchy in France. This revolution began when the people of France, tired of having no rights and living with a government that cared little for their well-being, rose up and overthrew the king of France with the goal of creating a new government based on the revolutionary ideas of “liberty, equality and fraternity”. The French Revolution began when the people representing the common people at the meeting of the Estates General broke away and, in the Tennis Court Oath, swore to create a new government for France. The moderate leaders of the early part of the of the French Revolution, like the Marquis de Lafayette, were inspired by the Enlightenment and the American Revolution and wanted to turn France into a country where everyone had equal rights. These revolutionary leaders successfully challenge the king at the Louis XVI and described the ideals of the revolution in the document The Declaration of the Rights of Man. However, France began to spin out of control with people of Paris challenging the power of the king in the violent siege of the Bastille. After this, the revolutionaries had problems in forming a new government because the process of forming a new government based on the ideas of liberty and democracy lead to conflicts between the different revolutionary groups. The moderate leaders, such as Lafayette, only wanted to work with King Louis to make France a limited monarchy, like England. More radical revolutionaries, like Maximilian Robespierre, radical revolutionaries wanted to get rid of the monarchy and make France a republic (democracy without a king). The process of forming a new government was made more difficult because the revolutionary government faced rebellions from within France and invasion from other European countries opposed to the French Revolution. The failure of the moderate revolutionaries to deal with these crises allowed the more radial revolutionaries to take power. Robespierre and his followers were able to take over the Revolutionary French government and begin a Reign of Terror in which anyone he saw as an enemy was put to death by the guillotine. This included the French King and Queen, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and tens of thousands of other people The violence of the Terror was effective in dealing with the revolts and invasion. However, Robespierre wanted to go further and make France into a perfect democracy, which he called a “Republic of Virtue”. He was willing to kill anyone who opposed him - including many supporters of the revolution. For example, Lafayette was forced to flee France to save his life. The Reign of Terror ended when the revolutionary government turned on Robespierre and executed him by guillotine. The revolutionary government was not able to make France into a stable democracy.

At this point, Napoleon Bonaparte, a military leader in the revolutionary armies, overthrew the French Revolutionary government and made himself Emperor of France. As Emperor, Napoleon reorganized France based on Enlightenment ideas and was popular with the people of France because he created order in the country by establishing a single legal system for the whole country, a new form of money and national bank and public schools that offered opportunities to anyone in society to improve themselves. These changes supported many ideas of the Revolution and helped France develop into a stable country in the long-run. However, Napoleon also fought endless wars with the other countries of Europe. Napoleon was generally a good military leader and he often won his wars. At one point, Napoleon built a French Empire that controlled large parts of Europe. Napoleon's conquest spread many of the ideas of the French Revolution to other countries. However, in 1812, he over reached and invaded Russia. This invasion was a major failure and he lost most of his army. After this, he faced steady defeats until he lost power and was exiled far from Europe. In the end, he was defeated by the united powers of the other European countries and France was again put under the rule of a king. Despite this, the ideals of the French Revolution and the changes Napoleon had made to France had influenced people to want a republic. As a result, over the next sixty years France swung back and forth between having a king and a democratic government. This was a period of intense conflict that resulted in several rebellions that overturned governments. The French writer Victor Hugo described the conflicts between the supporters of the king and those of democracy in his famous novel Les Misérables or "The Miserable Ones". The first major revolt was in 1830, when the French people overthrew a repressive king and replaced him with Louis-Phillippe, who was a member of the royal family and also a supporter of the French Revolution. Louis-Phillippe was called the "Citizen King" because he adopted many symbols of the revolution (like the tri-color flag) and allowed for limited democracy. Many French people, including Victor Hugo, wanted a more democratic government and in 1848, they overthrew Louis-Phillippe and elected Napoleon III, Napoleon’s nephew, to be the president of a new French Republic. Similar to his uncle, Napoleon III ended the republic and made himself emperor. Unlike his uncle, Napoleon III did not spend his time fighting wars against other countries. Instead, he rebuilt the city of Paris, built a system of railroads across France and slowly changed France into a constitutional monarchy. Only in the 1870’s, after Napoleon III lost power during the Franco-Prussian War, did France develop a stable democratic government called the Third Republic.

Industrial Revolution

At the same time as the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution began in England. Similar to the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution had a deep and lasting impact on the world. While the French Revolution introduced the ideas of a republic (democracy without a king) and nationalism, the Industrial Revolution introduced the idea of modern economic growth (this is where societies began to improve technology, became more productive and enjoy more material wealth). The idea of capitalism that drove the Industrial Revolution was developed by Adam Smith during the Enlightenment. In the Industrial Revolution, business people (called capitalists) in England invested money to build factories that made clothing, machines and almost everything else. The British inventor Richard Arkwright developed the factory system which was productive than any other way of making goods. This development made Arkwright, and other factory owners, very wealthy. Many people in England were motivated to invent new technologies and start businesses because of the opportunity that capitalism provided to build and invest in businesses so as to profit from their success. James Watt, who developed an efficient steam engine that could power factories, trains and ships, is an example of this type of business man. Watt’s steam engine became the power source that drove the factories, trains and steamships of the Industrial Revolution. The combination of the steam engine and factory system made England a wealthy country that was called “the workshop of the world”.

However, not everyone in England became wealthy. A lot of the workers in the factories did not share in the wealth and often worked long hours and lived in poor housing. The writer Charles Dickens described the hard life city life of these industrial workers in his books Hard Times and Oliver Twist. It took decades for these people to feel the material improvement brought by the Industrial Revolution. Many of these people thought that capitalism was an unfair system that only benefited capitalists owners of industry and hurt workers. The philosopher Karl Marx developed the idea of communism that argued that the poor workers would rise up and kill the capitalist owners of the factories. Marx thought the workers would then run the factories for their own benefit and share the wealth equally among themselves. Marx’s writing, such as The Communist Manifesto in which he wrote, "Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains." inspired revolutionaries across Europe in the nineteenth century and communist governments in the twentieth century. However, there were also liberal thinkers, like John Stuart Mill, who supported capitalism but thought that it would be better if the government regulated businesses (such as limiting hours of work and ending child labor) and used some of the profits of the businesses to help the workers. Over time, many of these liberal ideas did come into practice as governments began to educate children in public schools and improve the industrial cities by building sewer systems and parks. Over the second part of the nineteenth century, the productivity of the Industrial Revolution began to benefit the working class and their lives became longer and more comfortable. In the long-run, the technologies developed during the Industrial Revolution (engines to drive machines, electricity to light up the night and long distance communication) became the building blocks for the modern world.

The Industrial Revolution had the result of turning Europe into the most powerful part of the world by the middle of the nineteenth century. Many European countries used this new power to take over other parts of the world – particularly in Africa and Asia – and build world-wide empires. This period of empire building is called “Imperialism”. England, under the rule of Queen Victoria, used its industrial power to build the largest empire in history – one that spanned the globe, so that it could be said that, “the sun did not set on the British Empire”. It was through these empires that many of the ideas developed in Europe were spread to the rest of the world.

Nationalism

The French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon introduced the idea of nationalism to Europe. The idea of nationalism held that everyone in a country should speak the same language, have the same culture and share a common history. The French Revolutionaries and Napoleon used nationalism to motivate the people of France to support the revolution and fight against the other European countries. During the Napoleonic Wars, people across Europe saw how powerful this idea was and began to use it to build their own powerful countries. For example, in the region of Germany, the Brothers Grimm began to collect folk tales and write a German language dictionary to show the people of Germany that they were held together by a common national identity. However, Germany was united through a series of wars. In Germany, Otto von Bismarck, the leader of Prussia had Prussia fight a series of wars that brought the whole region of Germany together under Prussian leadership. However, this idea of nationalism also tore apart countries like the Austrian Empire, which was populated by people of many nationalities. One of the leaders of the Austrian Empire, Klemens von Metternich opposed the nationalism and was able to get the larger countries of Europe to work together prevent the spread of nationalism and democracy. However, after he lost power, this system broke down and in the early twentieth century the power of nationalism to build and destroy countries would result in the outbreak of World War One in 1914.

World War One

World War One was second worst war ever fought. In the course of the four-year war about 16 million people were killed and 20 million more were wounded. The war was mostly fought in Europe and the reasons for the war were based in the complex balance of alliances that developed between the major countries of Europe. This complex balance of alliances between countries made it so a single act of terrorism – the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria – sparked a series of events that led to war between all of the major countries of Europe. The war began when Germany attacked France in August 1914, which caused the other European powers to side with either France or Germany in a general war. The large European colonial empires meant that a European war became a World War. Still, while this was a global conflict, the most important and worst fighting in the war was on the Western Front, in the area between France and Germany. On the Western Front, the Allied armies of France and England fought against the German army in horrific trench war. The soldiers on this front dug defensive positions in the dirt (trenches) that protected them from attack and bombardment. In the four years of the war, despite massive amounts of fighting and millions of deaths, the front line of trenches moved less than 20 miles. The battles of the Marne, Somme and Verdun demonstrated the willingness of both sides of the war to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of soldiers for little gain. The brutality and pointlessness of this war was captured in the writing and paintings of the soldiers who fought in the war. This can be seen in the Eric Maria Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Wilfred Owen's poem Dulce Decorum Est and Otto Dix's drawings collected into The War.

The horrors of the trench warfare in World War One was because both sides in the war were strong industrial powers which could suffer the terrible losses and continue to re-equip and supply their armies. They strong enough to fight for years, but were not strong enough to win a clear military victory on the battlefield. World War One was a total war that required the warring countries to commit the productive power of their industry to fighting in the war. This meant drafting men into the army and having women go to work in factories and on farms to produce materials for the war. The importance of using the support of the entire country in the war effort is shown by the term “home front” to describe this work – it was just as important as the “fighting fronts” where battles were fought. Total war meant that a country could only be defeated when it has lost the willingness and ability to fight. In this way, military victories did not matter much as long as the other side could continue to fight. Winning the war meant totally defeating the enemy country. Both England and Germany tried to win the war by hurting the other side's home front. England used is powerful nave to blockade Germany and prevent food shipments from reaching Germany and causing starvation in Germany. Germany used its submarines to sink ships carrying supplies to England and planes to bomb British cities, killing British civilians. Both sides used propaganda to motivate its populations to support their country's war effort. The terrible cost of the war on the whole populations was described by Vera Brittain in her book Testament of Youth that detailed how she lost her brother and fiancé in the war. This was the case in World War One. It only ended when the home fronts of Russia, Austria, and Germany collapsed because their populations were starving and could no longer feed and arm their armies – and in the case of Germany, they were running out of young men to be soldiers. In November 1918, the fighting of World War One came to an end with a cease fire known as the Armistice. The Germans had asked for this cease-fire because the country was exhausted from the war that had killed an entire generation of young men (the Allies were almost equally exhausted). The Allied side in the war (which was England, France and the United States) punished Germany in the Versailles Peace Treaty at the end of the war by making Germany take responsibility for the war and forcing Germany to pay $33 billion for the damages caused by the war. This peace treaty angered the Germans and was a direct cause for World War Two.

Interwar Years

The twenty year period of time between World War One and World War Two was called the 'Interwar Years'. World War One ended badly with England and France greatly weakened by the war, Germany angry and wanting revenge and with Russia involved in a bloody civil war that would created the Soviet Union, the first communist country in the world. All of these things would cause World War Two.

One of the most important positive developments to come out of World War One was women winning the right to vote in many countries in Europe and North America. Winning the right to vote was a crucial step in women being recognized as full legal people who could fully participate in government. Emmeline Pankhurst described this when she said that "We are here in our effort to become law-makers." Women, known as suffragettes, had been fighting for the right to vote in the decades before World War One. Some of them, such as the WSPU led by Pankhurst, carried out radical political protests and endured prison to bring public attention to their cause. They used the slogan, "Deeds, not words!" It was during World War One, when women went to work in factories and farms to support the war effort of their countries, that women demonstrated that they could do any job that men could do. However, the years after World War One were not easy years. In 1929, the Great Depression began in the United States and spread across the world. This economic downturn caused massive unemployment and poverty. Many people thought that the Great Depression was a sign that capitalism had failed and they began to turn against democracy and capitalism in favor of more radical governments like the communism and Nazism, where the governments took away freedom and promised to end poverty. However, the British economist John Maynard Keynes said that both capitalism and democracy could work if the government would use its power to control the business cycle. Keynes' ideas were used by American president Franklin Roosevelt to fight the Great Depression through his program of the New Deal.

Communism - Rise & Fall

The first country to become communist was Russia. Russia was driven to revolution because of World War One, in which it lost 8 million men. Popular anger over the hardships created by the war caused a revolt in February 1917 (even before World War One ended) that forced absolute monarch of Russia to abdicate (resign being the king). A weak democratic government took power, but it was soon overthrown in the October Revolution by a group called the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were communists and they wanted to radically change Russia into a communist society. Communists want to create a society where the government owns everything and people do not work for personal gain, but instead for the improvement of society. In theory, the government of a communist society would collect the entire wealth of a society and divide between everyone in society so no one is poor. However, in practice, communist governments brutalized and impoverished the societies they ruled. After taking over Russia, Lenin and the Bolsheviks renamed the country to the Soviet Union. Lenin died soon after the Soviet Union was established. Joseph Stalin took over the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin. Stalin ruled the Soviet Union as a totalitarian dictator, which meant that he had full control over the people who lived in the country. This meant he controlled where people lived and worked. He also controlled all sources of information in the Soviet Union. He used this power to build a “cult of personality” in which the people of the Soviet Union saw him as an all-powerful force – which had to be obeyed. He used this power to make sweeping changes to the country that took away private property (like land and houses) and forced people to work on government projects to make the country an industrial power. For example, farmers were forced to turn their private firms into giant collective farms owned by the government and they were ordered grow food for the government. If they did not grow enough food, then they would not be given any food. It is estimated that 7 million farmers were starved to death because they could not grow enough food. Stalin also forced people to build industrial projects, like factories, railroads and hydroelectric dams, across the country. This made the Soviet Union an industrial power, but it came at a terrible price in human lives. In order to make people obey his rule, he used a secret police force to called the NKVD to kill anyone who showed any opposition to his rule and to force millions more to work in prison labor camps called the GULAG. It is estimated that 20 million people died under Stalin’s rule.

Over the course of the second part of the twentieth century, it became clear that the communist countries could not compete with the democratic countries. Quite simply, people in the democratic capitalist countries in Europe, North America and Asia (Japan and “Asian Tigers”) were freer and enjoyed a higher quality of life than people in the communist countries. This inability to keep up economically slowly eroded the ability of the Soviet Union to keep up with the United States in the military stand-off of the Cold War. All across the communist world, governments tried to reform, but the communist system could not be fixed. In the Soviet Union, the leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to power with the goal of reforming the Soviet Union. He carried out the policies of Glasnost and Perestroika. Glasnost gave people in the Soviet Union freedom of speech and Perestroika tried to reform the economy by letting people run their own businesses. However, his efforts to fix the communist system in the Soviet Union result in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Quite simply, when people were given a choice about communism, they chose to get rid of communism. In 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and country of Russia was reborn.