Idea Transcript
The Later Twentieth Century
Classical Greece The Romans The Early Middle Ages The High Middle Ages The Late Middle Ages The Sixteenth Century The Seventeenth Century The Early Twentieth Century
IN PREPARATION, VOLUMES COVERING
The Nineteenth Century edited by T. C. W. Bianning
The Eighteenth Century edited by r c. W. Blanning
NOW AVAILABLE
General Editor T. C. W. Blanning
The Short Oxford History of Europe C. W. Blanning
UNIVERSITY PRESS
OXFORD
Edited by T. C. W.
Blanning
Europe 1789-1914
The Nineteenth Century
General Editor T.
The Short Oxford History of Europe
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The problems of writing a satisfactory general history of Europe are many. but the most intractable is clearly the reconciliation of depth with breadth. The historian who can write with equal authority about every part of the continent in all its various aspects has not yet been born. Two main solutions have been tried in the past: either a single scholar has attempted to go it alone, presenting an unashamedly personal view of a period, or teams of specialists have been enlisted to write what are in effect anthologies. The first offers a coherent perspective but unequal coverage, the second sacrifices unity for the sake of expertise. This new series is underpinned by the belief that it is this second way that has the fewest disadvantages and that even those can be diminished if not neutralized by close co-operation between the individual contributors under the directing supervision of the volume editor. All the contributors to every volume in this series have read each other's chapters, have met to discuss problems of overlap and omission. and have then redrafted as part of a truly collective exercise. To strengthen coherence further, the editor has written an introduction and conclusion, weaving the separate strands together to form a single cord. In this exercise, the brevity promised by the adjective 'short' in the series' title has been an asset. The need to be concise has concentrated everyone's minds on what really mattered in the period. No attempt has been made to cover every angle of every topic in every country. What this volume does provide is a short but sharp and deep entry into the history of Europe in the period in all its most important aspects. T. C. W. Blanning Sidney Sussex College
General Editor's Preface
10
23 28
33
The triumph of liberalism Landmarks The political bedrock Politics and change Ideologies and institutions
Diverging paths Geopolitics Conclusion
47 51
Conceptualizing change Liberalism, the 'middling strata', and the competitive society Socialism, the workers. and the cooperative society Conservatism, the 'upper strata', and the hierarchical society Conclusion
Quantifying growth Explaining growth: labour supply Capital
Apocalyptic visions
Niall Ferguson
61
47 Society Colin Heywood
45
39
15
12
10
xi
Politics Robert Tombs
3 The European economy, 1815-1914
2
1
Introduction: the end of the old regime T. C. W. Blanning
List of contributors
Contents
CONTENTS
Ideology and scholarship in the study of imperialism The European empires in 1815 1870: The struggle for the mastery of the world Europe and the world overseas in 1914 Conclusion
A. G. Hopkins
6 Ove.rseas expansion, imperialism) and Empire, 1815-1914
The Vienna system The system undermined and overthrown. 1848-1861 The creation of PrussiaAGermany, 1862- 1871 The Bismarckian system in operation, 18]1-1890 Imperialism and world politics, 1890-1907 The descent into the maelstrom, 1908-1914
5 International politics, peace, and war, 1815-1914 Paul W. Schroeder
126
Modern culture Institutions Secularization Science History Systems Modernism
232 239
224
218
211
210
159 165 175 183 188 200
152
147
140
134
130
127
126
uS
97 104
95
4 Culture lames f. Sheehan
The spirit of capitalism Other sectors The geography of change Consequences
viii
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Europe in 1789 Europe in 1815 Europe in 1914 European possessions 1830 European possessions 1878 The World 1914 Index
Maps
Further Reading Chronology: the 'Long Nineteenth Century', 1]89-1914
T. C. W Blanning
Conclusion: into the twentieth century
CONTENTS
241
is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus
is Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at
European Politics 1763-1848 (1994), a volume in the Oxford History of Modern Europe series.
PAUL W. SCHROEDER is Professor Emeritus of History and Political Science at the University of Illinois. He is the author of several books and many articles on the history and theory of European and world international politics. His most recent work is The Transformation of
the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy. His publications include An Economic History of West Africa (1973) and (with P. J. Cain) British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688-1914 and British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction '9'4-'990 (1993).
A. G. HOPKINS
COLlN HEyWOOD
is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Nottingham. His publications include Childhood in Nineteenth-Century France (1988) and The Development of the French Economy (1995). He is currently working on a history of childhood, and a study of the town of Troyes in the nineteenth century.
College, Oxford. His books include Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927 (1995), The Pity of War (1998), and The World's Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild (1998). He has also edited the best-selling collection of essays Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (1997).
NIALL FERGUSON
Germany 1750-1850 (1999).
T. C. W. BLANNING
is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy. His recent works include loseph 11 (1994), The French Revolutionary Wars 1787-1802 (1996), and The French Revolution: Class War or Culture Clash? (1997). He has also edited The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe (1996) and The Rise and Fall of the French Revolution (1996); as well as (with David Cannadine) History and Biography: Essays in Honour of Derek Beales (1996) and (with Peter Wende) Reform in Great Britain and
List of contributors
•
to tea-had brought the exotic to town and countryside alike. It is scarcely surprising that contemporaries were impressed by their own exploratory energy and astonished by its consequences, or that they quickly developed a fascination with distant lands, as the immediate success of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) clearly shows. Despite the magnitude of these developments, they were overtaken and eventually eclipsed in the nineteenth century. The application of science, especially new technology, to the means of production, communication, and coercion, gave Europe a penetrative capacity far in excess of anything available to merchant venturers and conquistadors. It became possible to convert mastery of the sea to ascendancy on land in new and decisive ways, and to move the frontiers of
imports-from spices to silver, from potatoes to tobacco, from sugar
influenced by what they read and by what they consumed. Colonial
enced European conquest and rule. Europeans, in turn, had been
called 'the Great Map of mankind'. Travellers from Marco Polo onwards had created a rich and often fandfulliterature depicting the lives of noble and ignoble savages in varying states of nature. Parts of the world, notably the Americas and the Indies, had already experi-
sion. Extraordinary voyages of discovery in previous centuries had enabled cartographers to inscribe other continents on what Burke
The nineteenth century was a period of unparalleled imperial expan-
A. G. Hopkins
Overseas expansion, imperialism, and empire, 1815-1914
6
211
day. Eminent scholars, such as Seeley, Fraud, and Leroy- Beaulieu, placed the study of modern empires on a professional footing for the
ated throughout the nineteenth century-and beyond to the present
ations of the causes and consequences of imperialism that reverber-
intense scrutiny and debate. The intellectual giants of the period, from Adam Smith to Lenin, and including, en route, James Mill, Karl Marx, and J. A. Hobson among many others, formulated interpret-
If the broad dimensions of Europe's expansion overseas are uncontroversial, every other aspect of the subject has been exposed to
Ideology and scholarship in the study of imperialism
innocence, like Paradise, had been lost.
heightened expression and achieved popular appeal. But Conrad's world, as described in Heart of Darkness (1902), was very different from that of Defoe. By the time Kurtz met his end in the depths of Leopold's Congo, the colonial mission had been found, and
The peculiar combination of attraction and repulsion that had long characterized Europe's encounter with non-European societies found
had been obliged to acknowledge the suzerainty of the great powers.
Latin America. Even the penguins of the Antarctic, the last continent,
influence' established over much of the Middle East, the Far East, and
ent. By the close of the century, however, exploration had been overtaken by partition, and partition, in turn, by occupation. Large segments of other continents had been annexed, and 'spheres of
source of the Nile was still disputed and Stanley had yet to keep his fateful rendez-vouswith Livingstone in the middle of the Dark Contin-
though it was, must have seemed a logical extension of the paths being cut by explorers in the real world, where, at that time, the
Journey to the Centre of the Earth in 1864, the expedition, fantastic
speculation. When Jules Verne invited his readers to embark on a
European influence deep into the still-uncharted interior of vast continents. Since art mimics life, and life was changing with astonishing rapidity, it is no coincidence that the growth of the new science was accompanied by the rise of science fiction as a novel field of literary
OVERSEAS EXPANSION, IMPERIALISM, AND EMPIRE, 1815-1914
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
struggle for control of the world was not confined to the acquisition of colonies: it culminated, in Lenin's view, in the First World War. Imperialism, like capitalism, knew no frontiers: it arose not only where there were visible constitutional ties but where economic integration created what Lenin called 'semi-colonies' . Although capitalism was everywhere aggressive and exploitative, it was also inescapably progressive in 'showing the face of the future' (as Marx put it) to the rest of the world. The spread of capitalism through the agency of imperialism was destined, in dialectical fashion, to throw up the forces that would eventually engineer the downfall of
Beyond this point, however, hostilities took the form of a war of attrition that has lasted almost to the present day. One camp, drawing on radical intellectual sources, and typically (though not necessarily) on Marx, linked nineteenth-century imperialism to the development of industrial capitalism. According to this interpretation, the process of capital accumulation generated internal contradictions that found expression during the last quarter of the century in new and all-encompassing forms of imperialism. The
requiring explanation: the causes of empire-building, the means of control, the effects of European rule, and the future of imperialism.
ground if the main contours of the subject are to become intelligible. On this basis, and with other numerous reservations implied. it can be said that scholarly opinion was split from the outset into two camps. Although both contained multiple internal divisions, each was united in recognizing the superiority of its own objective scholarship and the ideological bias of its opponents. They agreed, exceptionally, on drawing a line of battle under the main problems
ent century alone, any historiographical generalization is hound to dispense injustice. Yet it is necessary to put some signposts in the
first time, though, since they were public figures as well as academics, their knowledge served political purposes too. As the subject began, so it continued-in energetic controversy kept in vigour by the changes in the shape of the international order and of the empires contained within it. This potent mixture of scholarship and ideology has left a permanent imprint on the historical literature: studies of the greatest subtlety jostle with work of the most blatant axe-grinding; beams of illumination meet shafts of darkness. Given the diversity and individuality of the many thousands of contributions made in the course of the pres-
212 213
colonialism and usher in a new, socialist order. This line of argument, much elaborated and refined by its advocates, was appealing because it offered both a coherent view of the modern world and a plan of action for changing it. The other camp, larger in number but less focused in purpose, was grouped around a liberal--conservative banner. Critics and defenders of empire here found common cause in rejecting Marxism and elaborating a range of alternative accounts of empire and imperialism. Against mono-causal economic analysis (with its alarming predictions about the demise of capitalism) was ranged a multiplicity of diplomatic, political, social, and cultural, as well as economic, explanations of empire-building; against the determinism of impersonal forces was set the role of individuals and of chance. Eurocentrism was countered by the 'ex-centric' thesis, which shifted causation to the periphery by emphasizing the role of sub-imperialists, or men-onthe-spot, such as Rhodes, Peters, and Pavie. The notion of informal empire (a liberal variant of Lenin's concept of semi-colonies) was deployed against the Marxists to demonstrate that Europe's expansion was not identified exclusively or even mainly with the 'new imperialism' that was supposed to have characterized the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Lenin's belief that capitalism was inherently aggressive was met by Schumpeter's argument that it was pacific by nature and assertive by default. The claim that imperialism was exploitative provoked alternative exercises in historical accounting to show that it brought benefits. The prediction that European influence would be overthrown by revolution was countered by the argument that evolution would produce devolution in the shape of independent states within a wider union of Commonwealth or Community. The long-running debate between the two camps has been repeatedly surveyed and summarized, and no purpose is served by picking over it again here. This is a case where familiarity breeds respect, but also boredom. The issues in dispute remain very much alive and on the agenda, but current approaches are no longer derived, however indirectly, from the conflict between capitalism and socialism. Changes in the world at large combined with shifting intellectual interests within the scholarly community have opened the subject to new ideas and given it a new lease of life. These recent developments, some of which remain prospective, are of much greater interest today
OVERSEAS EXPAN SION, IMPERIALISM , AND EMPIRE, 1815-1914
I
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
I 215
too, and still have considerable potential. Cultural history has also
the credibility of radical assessments of capitalism and imperialism. By the close of the twentieth century, decolonization had ceased to be a contemporary struggle and had become history. It is salutary to
the environment, the labour force, and transnational corporations, which have helped to revive interest in business history. Political and
diplomatic history, the traditional staples of the subject, are being recast in a number of ways: one involves a reconsideration of the
This is not to say that we have reached 'the end of ideology' and will bask henceforth in the warm rays of capitalist triumphalism. The
future is likely to play tricks on the present generation of soothsayers and historians, just as it has in the past, and ideological commitment will not be eliminated from the study of imperialism or from the
The problem is to some degree contained in the difficulty of general-
izing about an entity called 'Europe', given the diversity of the
be the study of kings and princes or even mainly of constitutional
a civil society, and the 'policing' of subject peoples. These developments present a problem and an opportunity.
beyond the study of battles, and now encompasses matters such as the social basis of recruitment, the cultivation of a combative ethos in
and the exercise of colonial authority. Finally, though the illustrations could be multiplied, fresh thought is being given to the overt coercive power of the state. Military history, for example, has expanded
and political issues. The alternative 'history from below' has itself
with shifting scholarly priorities (with which they are entwined). In this matter, the study of the non-European world has reflected developments in European historiography. History has long since ceased to
ideological debate on topical issues. These sweeping changes in the international order have merged
important slice of world history, not to be obliged to take sides in an
study the history of imperialism and empire is now to investigate an
impetus from studies of the relationship between disease, medication,
result of this development. The history of science has received new
'unofficial mind' of imperialism. The study of Christian missions is one example of a field of research that is experiencing a revival as a
the study of decision-making down to the domestic roots of politics and into the analysis of the pressure groups that formed the
creation of 'nation' states at home and abroad; another seeks to carry
has been extended into the non-European world through studies of
ment, but it ought to assist detachment.
study of history in general. Nevertheless, the end of the great age of empires undoubtedly has profound implications for the way in which the subject will be treated in future. Liberated from the heavy censorship of their times, which obliged them to choose between alienating either colonial peoples or the warriors shielding the Free World, scholars can begin to formulate fresh views on an old subject. To
economic theme in empire-building has been rethought in ways that cut across traditional boundaries between Marxists and others, and
recall that India celebrated fifty years of independence in 1997: the younger generation and the middle-aged have no first-hand knowledge of colonial rule. Distance does not necessarily lend enchant-
and gender. Work in other branches of history is less immediately appealing at present, but arguably is at least of equal importance. The
joined with social history to stimulate new thinking about ethnicity
sively fashionable, but other contributions to cultural history, such as studies of propaganda) education, and sport, have made an impact
collapse (and decolonization) of the Soviet empire. The socialist experiment did not wither away: it imploded, taking with it much of
decolonized world. The second important external influence was the
world. The most prominent current influence is that of cultural history, which has led to a rash of studies of European images of other societies. This particular interest is now in danger of becoming exces-
reconsideration of European perspectives on the non-European
the end of the Cold War, have begun to stimulate a fundamental
been joined by forms of history that cut vertical rather than horizontallines: the history of the environment, of demography, of gender, and of culture are examples of dimensions of the past that can now be put together to create a new histoire totale. These intellectual trends, allied to the liberating consequences of
OVERSEAS EXPANSION, IMPERIALISM, AND EMPIRE, 1815-1914
of newly independent states. Doubt was cast on the desirability as well as the possibility of continuing to write imperial history in a
than the older, stereotyped debate, especially to readers who live in a post-imperial age. The first important external influence was the end of the European empires in the 19605, an event that broke up the subject as well as the constituents. As attention moved from the centre to the periphery, Eurocentric perspectives lost impetus and were overtaken by research on indigenous peoples and by the production of