HIST 1016

LECTURE 3

Europe and Africa

in the 19 Century
th
 Part One

Nations, Nationalism, and the State

in 19 Century Europe
th
 Nationalism and Democracy
• For most of human experience, states did not usually coincide with the
culture and language of a particular people
• All the great empires and many smaller states governed culturally
diverse societies
• It was widely accepted to be ruled by foreign rulers
• After the experience of the French Revolution, emergence of the ide
that the ruler should be expression of (chosen by) “the people” (the
nation).
• The rise of both nationalism and of democratic political system was
intertwined.
 Nationalism: a Modern Phenomenon

• Nationalism: a political programme which holds that the political and

ethnic unit should be congruent (Ernest GELLNER)
• 1 nation = 1 state
• Ethnic, national unit  in Europe often (not always) defined by a
common culture, especially a common language
• Nations do not make states and nationalisms, often it is the other way
round.
 Max Weber’s Definition of Ethnic Group

“[T]hose human groups that entertain a subjective belief in

their common descent because of similarities of physical type
or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization
and migration; this belief must be important for group
formation; furthermore it does not matter whether an
objective blood relationship exists”
(from Economy and Society)
 As this map shows, there was no
coincidence between states and “nations”
(linguistic groups) in late 19th century /
early 20th century Europe.
 Cultural, Economic and Political
Features of the Nation

“Nations exist not only as functions of a particular kind of territorial state

or the aspiration to establish one - broadly speaking, the citizen state of
the French Revolution - but also in the context of a particular stage of
technological and economic development.
Most students today will agree that standard national languages, spoken
or written, cannot emerge as such before printing, mass literacy and
hence, mass schooling.”

(Eric HOBSBAWM)
 When Does a Nation “Exist”?

• Sometimes, as in Ireland, the spread of national

consciousness occurs before the creation of a
national state.
• Much more often it occurs afterwards, as a
consequence of that creation
• Sometimes, outside of elites, national
consciousness does not fully emerge even after
the foundation of a state and local identities
remain more relevant.
 The “Invention of Traditions”
• Printing and the publishing industry standardized a variety of dialects
into a smaller number of European languages, a process that allowed
a growing reading public to think of themselves as members of a
common linguistic group, or nation.
• Cultural and political leaders articulate an appealing idea of their
particular nations
• Idea of the “nation” constructed  but presented as a reawakening
of older linguistic or cultural identities (“invention of tradition”).
• Public schools, “public rituals”, national military service, and mass
media, have all been tools for creating national traditions.
 The Idea of the “Nation” in the 19th Century
• National identities had existed in Europe well before the 19th century:
Spanish, Portuguese, French, English and Dutch found the origins of their
national identities in the conflicts that characterized their early modern
history.
• The Protestant Reformation contributed to shape a particular national
identity in Germany, even though the south of the German-speaking world
remained Catholic.
• Centuries of political fragmentation, instead, long-hindered the emergence
of a shared Italian national identity beyond the perception of a vaguely
defined common cultural identity.
• In virtually all the European cases, the emergence of a definite vernacular
literal tradition constituted a key step in the formation of national identities.
• Vienna Congress of 1814 to reform The Congress of Vienna and
Europe after 25 years of revolutions and the “European Restoration”
wars.
• End of the “revolutionary republics”
and the “Napoleonic monarchies” in
Europe.
• Restoration of the pre-Napoleonic
kingdoms, with some relevant changes
in Central and Eastern Europe.
• End of the Holy Roman Empire in
Germany, and creation of the Empire of
Austria under the House of Habsburg.
• Creation of a loose German
Confederation of hundreds of political
subjects.
 The Restoration
• The 1815 Congress of Vienna was a conscious attempt to “turn back the
clock” of European history, restoring the political and social order which
existed before the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
• The historical period immediately successive to the Congress is thus known
as the “Restoration”, a period of political and social repression throughout
the continent.
• However, an entire generation of bourgeois Europeans had been fascinated
with the rhetoric and the ideals of the Revolution.
• These bourgeois came of age and were educated in the French client states,
influenced by the same social and political innovations which occurred in
revolutionary and Napoleonic France.
 The Quest for Liberty and the Quest for a Nation

• The five decades following the Congress of Vienna were marked by two
intertwined revolutionary movements.
• A bourgeois revolution for “liberty”: equality, freedom of speech and
opinion, political representation. These aspirations were summed into the
demand for “constitutions”, a legal document that would guarantee these
liberties against the tyranny of the monarch and symbolize the country’s
social compact.
• A national revolution among those peoples who were deprived of a nation
by the Congress of Vienna: Germans, Italians, Polish, Belgians, Greeks.
 The Carbonari (Coal Makers),
the secret society for a liberal
and independent Italy

A free Italy – It’s God’s will!

 The Greek War of
• The Greek revolutionary forces initially defeated Independence
the Ottoman Empires in the first four years of the 1821-1832
conflict.
• The Ottomans were able to re-conquer most of
Greece with a counter-offensive.
• But ultimately, with the support of Great Britain,
Russia and France the Greeks gained their
independence.
• The Ottoman Empire had the decisive support of
the ruler of Egypt Ali Pasha, who would then
wage war against Istanbul.
• This chain of events would ultimately lead to the
opening of Ottoman markets to British trade in
1838.
 An Emerging “Contraposition” from the Common Legacy
of the French Revolution
Constitutional Liberalism vs. “Republicanism”

• A bourgeois vision of a constitutional

monarchy with only selected access to
political power and representation.
• This system appeared the best to
guarantee both change and continuity.
• But the “price to pay” was the
exclusion of the “illiterate” masses.
• A radical, popular vision of a
democratic republic with universal
suffrage which would follow the path
marked by the French Revolution.
• Socialist and Communist political
movements would rapidly emerge
from these ideas.
 The 1848 Revolutions
• Background: suppression of first wave of liberal revolution in continental European
in 1830  European societies reached a point of unsustainable pressure.
• The political systems of the Restoration were not able to withstand both the
pressure of the bourgeoisie and the enormous social and economic upheavals of
the industrial revolution which had arrived in the continent from Great Britain.
• The urban masses of the industrial revolution, and the socialist movements which
aimed to interpret their discontent, became increasingly relevant in European
politics, even though the 1848 insurrections remained predominantly bourgeois
on a continental level.
• The unresolved national questions in Italy and Germany contributed to fuel
discontent.
 Italian and German Independence
• The liberal Kingdom of Sardinia
(based in Northern Italy) unified all
the Italian peninsula and its main
islands with a series of conflicts
and political maneuvers between
1848 and 1870.
• The main adversary to Italian
unification were the Austrian
Empire and the Papal States.
• The Kingdom of Italy was
proclaimed in 1861.
• The authoritarian Kingdom of
Prussia unified Germany with a
series of political maneuvers
between 1834 and 1871.
• The main adversary to the
Prussian unification of Germany
were the Austrian Empire and
France.
• Prussia defeated the first in 1866
and the second in 1871.
 The British Exception
• While national and liberal constitution enraged continental Europe
throughout the first half of the 19th century, the British social and political
system endured the storm.
• British parliamentary monarchy was able to absorb the shocks provoked by
the industrial revolution, the rise of the bourgeoisie and new wave of
nationalism sentiment that spread in the continent.
• The political system was particularly flexible. The Reform Act of the
Parliament of 1832 and the repealing of the Corn Laws with the Importation
Act of 1846 were testament to the exceptional character of Great Britain.
• The end result was that Britain avoided the domestic political violence that
characterized the rest of Europe.
The Second- • Great Britain was already industrialized by 1850
Wave
• 1870-1914  at times called “Second Industrial
Industrialization Revolution” or the “Technological Revolution”:
globalization of industrialization.
• Central role of applied science in the industrial
development.
• Electrification and widespread diffusion of machine
tools in the industry; major innovations in the
production of iron and steel; birth of the petroleum
and chemical industry; global expansion of railways,
seaways and telecommunications.
• The requirements for second-wave industrialization
was a strong state, determined to create the
economic prerequisites for powerful armies
• With industrialization the arena of competition in the
European state system expanded to the world
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), a pioneer in the field
of applied sciences and electromagnetism
• Metallurgy was one of the driving sectors of
the second industrial revolution. Germany and
• The 1856 Bessemer Process (right) was an
oven which facilitated the production of steel
Industrialization
in great quantities.
• Innovations in large-scale business
organization (Krupp Industries).
• Linking their universities to industrial research
• Development of whole new chemical and
electrical industries.
• Science became systematically applied to
industrial development.
• The newly unified German Empire, in
particular, rapidly became one of the global
leader in steel production, and more broadly,
in industrial production.
• German rapid economic rise threatened the
stability of post-Vienna Congress Europe.
 France
and Industrialization
• France lacked large and easily worked coal deposits like in
England.
• The country also experienced periodic revolutionary upheavals
and wars.
• French industrialisation was a gradual process which occurred
between the Second Empire of Napoleon III (1852-1870) and
the Third Republic (1870-1940).
• Key role of the central government in industrial development.
The government decided to build a national railroad system
(1842-1860s). It provided the capital to build it, then privatized
it on 99-year leases.
• Stimulated by the national market made possible by railroads,
other parts of France’s economy outside of Paris industrialized.
Tsarist Russia •Last absolute monarchy in Europe
•In 1900 no legal political parties, no parliament,
no countrywide elections
•Tsar ruled by the “grace of God”, Russian society
dominated by nobility
•85% population was rural
•Economic centrality of agriculture: export of
grain (Ukraine, Odessa)
•Vast natural resources attracting European
investors
•Largest army in Europe.
•1880s  Government push for industrialization
•1892  count Sergei Witte (1849-1915) minister
of Finance, key actor behind industrialization.
 Tsarist Russia
• Massive railroad-building program followed by heavy industry
• 1860 – 700 miles of railroads
• 1894 – 21,000 miles
• 1900 – 36,000 miles
• Massive foreign investment
• By 1900 Tsarist Empire ranked 4th in the world by steel production
• Average factory larger than in Western Europe
• By 1914 the Tsarist Empire was 5th in the world in terms of overall
output
 Socialism and Revolution
in Tsarist Russia
• Factory workers only 5% of the Empire’s population  radical class
consciousness based on harsh conditions and the absence of any legal
outlet for grievances
• 1897: 13 hours working day was common
• Socialist movement grows  1898 creation of an illegal Russian
Social-Democratic Party  workers’ education, union organizing,
revolutionary action
• 1905 revolution after the defeat against Japan  workers in Moscow
and St. Petersburg created their representative “councils” (“soviet” in
Russian)
 The “Dark Side” of the “Nation”
• European nationalisms became increasingly competitive and toxic in
the second half of the 19th century due to two factors:
• 1) “New imperialism”: the inter-state colonial rivalry for the conquest
of Africa, Asia, and Oceania (“new imperialism”)
• 2) Widespread (and misread) enhancements in scientific knowledge,
especially in the field of biology, which led to the understanding of
nations as “organisms” competing with each other.
• These development reinforced pre-existent and deeply-seated ideas
on the racial superiority of European peoples  white supremacism.
 The New Imperialism

A British
officer in India,
c. 1900
 A New Imperialism

• The industrial revolution made possible to export

to the globe the conflictual “European state
system”
• The European nation-states had then the power
to “carve” up the non-industrialized world: Africa,
Asia, Oceania.
• But different pattern of European dominance in
South America.
• In North America the United States followed
instead their own process of industrialization and
territorial expansion.
• Colonial empires as badge of
great power status for European
states. A Global Competition
• Great Britain: limited natural
resources after first-wave of
industrialisation.
• Imperialism seemed politically
and strategically necessary in the
international competition
• Key linkage between nationalism
and imperialism.
 What Type of Imperialism?

• Africa, and Southeast Asia: continents divided up among European

states.
• Latin America , China, Persia: commercial imperialism (“informal
empires”) by Western Powers (and Japan in China).
• North America, Australia, New Zealand: settler imperialism with
mass migration from Great Britain and Ireland (and from Europe
later).
• Indian subcontinent: very specific pattern
 Technological Supremacy and
Imperial Conquests

• The European Scramble for Africa

• 1830  first conquest: French invasion of Algeria
• 1876  10% of Africa in European hands
• 1902  90% in European hands
• 1869: Construction of the Suez Channel, no more need to
circumnavigate Africa to reach the Indian Ocean (and Asia).
• Maxim guns (1880s)  military superiority.
• Steamboats and railways: European traders could break the
monopolies of African coastal elites and their inland allies.
• Underwater telegraphs allowed instant communication with far
outposts.
• Trade and technological superiority at the service of the European
empires. Victoria, Queen of the United
Kingdom, 1837-1901, the
• Queen Victoria became “Empress of India” (1874) “Victorian Era”
 The Berlin Congress of
• European powers previously retained direct
control of only strategic locations. 1884-85 and the Scramble
• By the end of the 19th century, European for Africa
states were finally able to strive for
effective and direct control of the African
continent.
• Substantial increase in the exploitation of
the local populations and in the plundering
of the continent’s natural resources.
• The political and social consequence of the
scramble for Africa are still evident
nowadays, as contemporary African states
emerged as artificial creations from the era
of colonialism, often lacking of ethnical and
social cohesion.
British Imperial Interests
at Home
• Development of finance (London): easier than before to raise the sums
needed to push a speculative advance into little-known terrain
• Actual fact of mineral abundance in parts of Africa (diamonds, gold in
South Africa)
• Careerist activism of officials and soldiers; appointment for aristocratic
second sons
• Often central governments arrived after the initial impulse  the case
of Cecil Rhodes
• Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) was one of the key figures of British
imperialism at the head of a powerful coalition of investors and
lobbies.
• Prime minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896, and an
ideologue of white supremacism.
• Rhodes lobbied for the construction of a Cape to Cairo Railway through
African territory controlled by Britain.
The British Empire in 1901
 Heart of Darkness:
The Horrors of Belgian Colonial Rule
in Congo
• Following the Conference of Berlin, Congo had become a
personal property of the King of the Belgians Leopold II,
under the fictional name of Congo Free State.
• The personal rule of Leopold II was characterized by the
extreme exploitation of the natural resources and of the
population of Congo, first for ivory, and then, starting
from 1890 for rubber.
• The gendarmerie force of the Congo Free State
established a terrorist regime which reduced the local
population to slave-like conditions.
• Rubber quotas, bullet-saving and severed hands: the
horrors of Congo.
 The South African
• Dutch colonists arrived in southern Africa around 1700. War
• Two independent Boer republics (Swellendam and Graaff- (1899-1902)
Reinet) established before the arrival of the British in the late
1700s.
• 1800s: progressive British encroachment against the Boers
and expansion of the Cape Colony.
• South African War: Boer guerrilla against the British Empire.
• British response: internment of Boer population in
concentration camps (28,000 Boer civilians died).
• Unique conflict in the history of new imperialism: a European
colonial empire fighting against European settlers.
• The British response would be also applied by the Germans in
contemporary Namibia.
• Harbinger of Nazi policies against “racial enemies” and
political opponents.
 German Colonialism:
The Herero and Nama Genocide

• Having unified only in 1871, Germany started late to join to the

scramble for colonies and was essentially sidelined by the other
colonial powers in Asia.
• Berlin ultimately carved colonial possession in Africa:
Cameroon, Tanganyika, and “South West Africa” (Namibia).
• In South West Africa, between 1904 and 1907, the German
colonial forces perpetrated the first “genocide” of the 20th
century.
• It followed a widespread rebellion against German rule and the
massacre of 100 German settlers.
• German colonial forces conducted the systematic extermination
of the Herero and the Nama people first by constraining them
to the Namibian desert and later via concentration camps.
 The Causes of Imperialism
Power and Prestige Politics
• Colonial expansionism was driven by a conception of politics which valued power
and prestige as an end rather than as a means.
• The colonial adventures of this period contributed to shape the national (and,
consequently, racist) collective identities of Western countries, not only
European, but also American and Japanese.
• Thus, colonial adventures helped maintain social cohesion in a period of
enormous social tensions.
• The industrial working force demanded increasing political representation and
the emergence of socialist parties in Europe put in danger the political order of
virtually every state of the continent.
 Ideological Justifications

• Development of “scientific racism” in Europe

throughout the 19th century.
• “White Man’s Burden” and Mission Civilisatrice
(Civilizing Mission): empire as a duty to guide the
progress of “backward peoples”.
• Religious justifications: global spread of Christianity
through missionary service.
• Domestic reasons: colonies useful to absorb the
“excess population” of unemployed at home, a new
foray for avoiding social conflict.
Drawings from Josiah C. Nott and George Gliddon's “Indigenous
Races of the Earth” (1857), which suggested black people
ranked between white people and chimpanzees in terms of
intelligence
 Imperialism and Capitalism
• The extremely low-cost extraction of natural resources in the colonies
created enormous margins of profit in the production of
manufactured goods in the West.
• Infrastructure investment in the colonies and the construction of
railways, apart from inherently easing the flowing of material
resources from the colonies to the metropoles, ensured considerable
profits.
• Examples of “imperialist” infrastructures : Channel of Suez, Channel
of Panama, Cape to Cairo Railway, Berlin to Baghdad Railway.
 Imperialism and Capitalism
• Driven by the imperial politics of the Western powers, the expansion
of global capitalism came to an end in the beginning of the 20th
century.
• The interstate tensions which were fuelled by colonial competitions
led to the beginning of World War I.
• After WWI, the international economy would then be plagued by a
series of crisis of overproduction.
• These would lead, especially after the October Revolution in USSR and
the diffusion of Lenin theses, to interpret imperialism as the “final
stage of capitalism”.
• Hobson and Lenin imperialism with the power of cartels The First Critics of
(integration), companies seeking markets, and areas for Imperialism:
capital investment. John A. HOBSON,
• But reality was more complex  colonial investment Vladimir I. LENIN
was quite limited.
• Only 10% of French capital was invested in colonies:
more French investment in Russia than in French
colonies
• Britain exported almost two-thirds of cotton-cloth
production in 1840, 46% to Latin America, 31% to
Europe, 23% to India
• By the early 20th century it had become clear that
colonial empires were not beneficial financially:
• Even Britain finds most colonies are financial drains
The World in 1914