Feb. 25: Despite the failure of many reformers and revolutionaries to realize their goals, a whole range of ideas and movements outlived the 1848 Revolution itself. Utopian Socialism, which had its origin in the early nineteenth century, gave way to Marx's "scientific" version, which called for a revolutionary struggle of the working class ("proletariat") against "bourgeois" capitalists and against systems of government that supported the rule of the "bourgeoisie," i.e., owners of capital. Consult the annotated and excerpted version of the Communist Manifesto at Washington State University.

Submit one hour in advance of the class meeting notes discussing the issue: How, and how adequately, did the Manifesto explain the uprisings?

Introduction to The Emergence of the European Order: Nationalism, Industrialization, and the Rise of the Masses, 1848-1914

Eduoard Manet's "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" (Luncheon on the grass) was rejected when Manet submitted it for showing at the Salon in 1863; Manet then exhibited it himself. It occasioned an uproar at the time even as it inspired a new generation of French artists who would call themselves Impressionists. You can find a good discussion by Nicolas Pioch, curator of the Web Museum, here. Time has not dulled the picture's ability to inspire controversy. Present-day feminist critics often cite it as a notorious example of what they call the "masculinist gaze." "Olympia," also painted in 1863 but not shown until 1866, occasioned a similar uproar even though it was accepted for exhibition in the Salon. PBS devoted one of four programs on Culture Shock to "Olympia."

However we characterize "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe," it is clear that it is NOT the work of a romantic artist. Manet clearly sought ironic distance, not emotional immediacy. Nor is there a grand theme, such as Liberty. Nor is the figure of the artist glorified.

On April 15, 1874 Paris was the scene of the first Impressionist art exhibition, recreated online here . You will find reproductions of the paintings exhibited along with contemporary reactions, often quite hostile, and helpful comments. If you would like to see the moment when "modern" art began, this is an indispensable site.

Czech composer Antonin Dvorak epitomizes much of the musical development of the later nineteenth century, not least the infusion of national elements. Earlier composers had freely incorporated folk tunes and traditional songs into their work, but Dvorak and his contemporaries sought to give expression to a national music. Smetana, for example, wrote "Ma Vlast" (My Land); Sibelius wrote "Finlandia"; and Wagner sought, in his "Ring" cycle, to create a purely German art form. This was Romanticism of a new type, one wedded to notions of peoplehood, although Wagner, for one, never abandoned the notion of individual genius. Composers who clung to the old, pan-European idea of music found themselves criticized by their contemporaries. Tchaikovsky had to defend his love for Mozart and respond to charges that his music was not sufficiently "Slavic." Paul Halsall has a helpful discussion of "Music and Nationalism."

Dvorak was, for a period of several years, director of the New York Philharmonic. His Ninth Symphony, "From the New World," was written during those years and immediately became, and remains, his most popular work. Some listeners claimed he had incorporated American Indian or African-American elements into it, a view Dvorak himself described as nonsense. He was, on the other hand, a great admirer of African-American music:

I am satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed into a settled conviction. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. . . they are American . . . they are the folksongs of America, and your composers must turn to them. All the great musicians have borrowed from the songs of the common people.

In this, as we will see, Dvorak was correct.

SOME THEMES:
While liberalism and industrialization continued to be galvanizing forces in the last half of the nineteenth century, nationalism, initially awakened by the French Revolution, became increasingly important. Liberals were the original proponents of the notion that every "people" was entitled to a state of their own, an idea they associated with the notion that governments properly rested upon the consent of the governed. However, once the liberals in the German states, Hungary, and elsewhere failed to realize their nationalist dreams in 1848, conservative monarchial regimes, particularly in Prussia and northern Italy, stole the initiative for nation-building from the liberals. For them, nations did not rest upon the consent of the governed but upon some notion of cultural or racial unity. Conservatives used war and diplomacy, rather than reform, as the means for constructing new territorial arrangements, and succeeded in Germany and Italy where the liberals had failed.

The Great Western locomotive

The growth of the nation-state took place amidst a second Industrial Revolution. Building on the first, the second tapped into new sources of power -- electricity and chemicals -- and extended its influence far beyond Great Britain to continental Europe, the United States, and the rest of the world. With Europe as its base, an integrated world market of manufacturing, trade, and finance flourished in a free-wheeling capitalist environment characterized by economic cycles of boom and bust.

With the Second Industrial Revolution came an even more accelerated population growth and an increasing migration to cities. Above is a Bessemer Converter which transformed the manufacture of steel.

Between 1870 and 1914 Europe's population increased from 293 million people to 490 million. Meanwhile, nineteenth-century cities grew in number and size, as did the problems of health, housing, crime, and poverty facing residents and officials in charge of urban planning. In the new "age of the masses," the governments of nation-states had to be overhauled to serve the interests of larger, denser and more complex agglomerations of people than had ever been seen in history. Social and economic problems that had initially troubled Great Britain in the first Industrial Revolution now challenged all modern nations. Complicating these challenges was the continuing legacy of the French Revolution. Even before the outbreak of 1848, Tocqueville had argued that the revolution's basic impulse was the destruction of privilege. This, he thought, led inexorably to some sort of socialism since it was private property which was the most important source of privilege. Hence his concern: Could equality and private property co-exist?

Conservatives and liberals both associated socialism first with the "June Days" of 1848 and then with the Paris Commune of 1871. The Commune arose in the context of the Franco-Prussian War. Louis Napoleon had blundered into a war with Prussia which Prussia easily won, capturing the Emperor in the process. Still another provisional French government came to power and accepted Prussia's demands for peace, including a large cash payment. Paris rebelled against both the new government and the peace. As in the "June Days" of 1848, the result was a bloody seige of the city by the French army. The "spectre" of the Commune, to use Marx's term for the fearsome image of a workers' revolt, would haunt the imaginations of liberals and conservatives alike until the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 supplanted it.

If the Commune offered proof of the threat the propertyless offered to the settled order, it also demonstrated yet again the need for finding ways of accommodating the demands of the masses and thus break the cycle of revolution and reaction. Most modern governments, even in nations well established for centuries, came to realize that they could not rule successfully without gaining the support of the people at large. As more adult males won the right to vote, politicians were forced to broaden the government's role in responding to popular demands for relief from social and economic grievances. For the most part, however, the political empowerment of the people eventuated in incremental rather than wholesale change. The corridors of power were still controlled by members of the property-owning classes (the landed aristocracy and the upper middle class) who had learned how to accept even dramatic changes so long as they still were in charge. Great Britain's gradual extension of the suffrage, Otto von Bismarck's social welfare reforms in Germany, and France's cautious acceptance of the Third Republic exemplify this trend.

Although the spokesmen for capitalism, whether they came from the ranks of liberalism or conservatism, still held center stage in European politics, emerging on the left were champions of socialism and trade unionism. Inspired by the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Marxists sought a revolutionary alternative to capitalism and political democracy. You can find their famous revolutionary hymn, "The Internationale," sung by Alistair Hulett here. However, by the end of the nineteenth century revisionist socialists and trade union members were inclined to follow a more moderate course of action that was compatible with capitalism and a parliamentary system of government. Realizing that violent or revolutionary acts might jeopardize gains already won (better wages, better working conditions, and an extension of the suffrage), movements on the left chose to work within the existing political systems. Only in those countries where there was no tradition of strong parliamentary government did workers follow a revolutionary course of action. "Moderation" is a relative term, however. Revolution on the order of the Paris Commune provides the point of comparision. The history of strikes and riots in Great Britain at the end of the nineteenth century should dispell any sense of calm or peace. Here are brief accounts of the Matchgirls Strike and the London Dockers' Strike.

Resources/Readings:
Barzun, "Things Ride Mankind"
the Matchgirls Strike and the London Dockers' Strike
Brief history on the Paris Commune (click on the image)
annotated chronology of the Franco- Prussian War and the Commune (click here)
John Leighton account of the final days of the Commune
newspaper accounts of the military suppression of the Commune
Gotha Program of the German Social Democratic Party (1875)
Richard M. Ebeling, National Health Insurance and the Welfare State (excerpted)

Mar. 2: For several generations, until the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, the Paris Commune was the model (if you were a revolutionary) or the nightmare (if you were not) of socialist revolution. For a brief history, click on the image.

Submit one hour in advance of the class meeting notes that will allow you to answer the following questions:

• What, according to John Leighton, was life in the last days of the Commune like?
• What, according to the newspaper accounts, was the military suppression of the Commune like?
• How does Barzun's discussion deepen, complicate and/or confuse your understanding of the Commune?

Mar. 4: Reports on the Matchgirls Strike and the London Dockers Strike; discussion of the Commune; introduction to Social Democracy and the Welfare State.

Leighton concluded his account with a variation of Blake's and Macauley's question: What is the price of experience?

I am now at home. Evening has come at last; I am jotting down these notes just as they come into my head. I am too much fatigued both in mind and body to attempt to put my thoughts into order. The cannonading is incessant, and the fusillade also. I pity those that died, and those that kill! Oh! poor Paris, when will experience make you wiser?

Many, including Otto von Bismarck, drew lessons from the Commune. Bismarck took the lesson that any organized socialist movement in the new Germany he had created must be crushed. Taking advantage of an unsuccessful assassination attempt upon the Kaiser, he pushed through a series of Socialist laws in 1878. These prohibited the party itself, banned its publications, and sought to prevent its advocates from speaking in public. An anomaly of the legislation is that Socialists could, and did, continue to run for office as Social Democrats.

Bismarck believed that it was not enough simply to outlaw the party. He explained his thinking in a speech on March 15, 1884 in which he defended his Workmen's Compensation plan:

Deputy van Vollmar then proceeded to the connection that he imputes between our proposal and the Socialist Law. It is not correct, as he conceives it, that we made our proposal in order to win more support for the Socialist Law. There is, indeed, a connection between the two, but it is quite different. At the time of the submission of the Socialist Law the government, and particularly His Majesty the Emperor and, if I am not in error, also the majority of the Reichstag, underwrote certain promissory notes for the future and gave assurances that as a corollary to this Socialist Law a serious effort for the betterment of the fate of the workers should go hand in hand. In my opinion that is the complement to the Socialist Law; if you have persistently decided not to improve the situation of the workers, then I understand that you reject the Socialist Law. For it is an injustice on the one hand to hinder the self-defense of our fellow citizens and on the other hand not to offer them aid [for] the redress of that which causes the dissatisfaction. That the Social Democratic leaders wish no advantage for this law, that I understand; dissatisfied workers are just what they need. Their mission is to lead, to rule, and the necessary prerequisite for that is numerous dissatisfied classes. They must naturally oppose any attempt of the government, however well intentioned it may be, to remedy this situation, if they do not wish to lose control over the masses they mislead.

. . . The whole problem is rooted in the question: does the state have the responsibility to care for its helpless fellow citizens, or does it not? I maintain that it does have this duty, and to be sure, not simply the Christian state, as I once permitted myself to allude to with the words "practical Christianity," but rather every state by its very nature. It would be madness for a corporate body or a collectivity to take charge of those objectives that the individual can accomplish; those goals that the community can fulfill with justice and profit should be relinquished to the community. There are objectives that only the state in its totality can fulfill [such as national defense]. . . . To these belong also the help of persons in distress and the prevention of such justified complaints as in fact provide excellent material for exploitation by the Social Democrats. . . .

If one argues against my position that this is socialism, then I do not fear that at all. The question is, where do the justifiable limits of state socialism lie? Without such a boundary we could not manage our affairs. Each law for poor relief is socialism. There are states that distance themselves so far from socialism that poor laws do not exist at all. I remind you of France. From these conditions in France the theories of the remarkable social politician Léon Say [Jean-Baptiste-Léon Say, finance minister of the Third Republic, 1872-82] . . . are quite naturally accounted for. This man expresses the French view that every French citizen has the right to starve and that the state has no responsibility to hinder him in the exercise of his right.

You see also that for many years, ever since the government of the July Monarchy [of Louis-Philippe, the Citizen King, 1830-48], social conditions in France have been unsettled, and I believe that in the long run France will not be able to avoid promoting somewhat more state socialism that it has up to now.

. . . In my opinion, a primary reason for the success of the leaders of the real Social Democracy have had with their never clearly defined future goals lies in the fact that the state does not promote enough state socialism; its allows a vacuum to form in a place where it should be active, and this is filled by others, by agitators who poke their nose into the state's business. . . .

Bismarck (a conservative) thought that the state should play a role in improving the lives of the people. He saw the chief danger to social progress as coming from the socialists, on the one hand, and from those who automatically opposed anything that the socialists advocated on the other. For their part, socialists in Germany and Great Britain (where they organized the Labour Party, a direct outgrowth of the trade union movement) continued to seek the people's betterment through state intervention. Richard M. Ebeling, National Health Insurance and the Welfare State (excerpted) is a helpful discussion.

Submit one hour in advance of the Mar. 16 class meeting notes that will allow you to answer the following questions:

• What did Bismarck dislike about the socialist approach to reform?
• How would he distinguish his conservative approach from that of the socialists as spelled out in the Gotha Program of the German Social Democratic Party (1875)?
• How does the Ebeling discussion deepen, complicate, and/or confuse your understanding of the origins of the Welfare State?

MAR. 8-12: SPRING BREAK

Mar. 16: WELCOME BACK! Discussion of Bismarck and the creation of the "welfare state."

Introduction to Racism, Slavery, and the Consolidation of the American Nation State, 1815-1877

H. Holmes, "New York Harbor," undated oil.

Holmes was a member of the so-called Hudson River School of 19th Century American artists. You can find lots of images at the Hudson River Reference Collection.

SOME THEMES:
The end of the War of 1812 ushered in an "Era of Good Feelings" highlighted by President Monroe's unanimous reelection in 1820. Many of the political issues that would rack Europe during the rest of the century, such as the extension of the franchise, were already largely settled in the U.S. On the other hand, divergent patterns of economic development in the North and the South culminated in a crisis to which U.S. political leaders could find no peaceful solution, and the country fell into civil war.

Southern and Northern interests diverged after 1815 in large measure because of their different patterns of economic growth. The South relied upon the plantation system of agriculture. The boom in cotton prices, occasioned by the industrialization of England and then of the northern U.S., permitted the South to expand without altering its basic social order. At the heart of that order, and of the plantation system, was racial slavery. Thus Southern expansion entailed the spread of slavery. Click here for Charles Joyner's "Slavery in the Antebellum South."

An abolitionist poster denouncing the traffic in slaves in the District of Columbia. For a larger version, click on the image.

Unlike the Southern planters, Northern entrepreneurs adopted the English model and began to industrialize. This development transformed Northern society and life, as it had England. It created new classes. It promoted new values. Crucially, it heightened northern objections to slavery. [Here is a discussion of the abolition movement.] By the mid-1850s a new political party, the Republicans, represented the interests of the "industrious" North.

In addition to sectional differences, the presence of the vast American West made the experience of the United States dramatically different from that of Western Europe during most of the nineteenth century. White males North and South turned their attention to the exploration and exploitation of the territory the United States owned, and whatever territory it could acquire. "Manifest Destiny" is the name given to the set of beliefs, held by white Americans generally, that Divine Providence intended the United States to control the entire continent, perhaps the entire hemisphere.

Westward expansion, however, posed significant risks for national unity. The sticking point was the issue of slavery in the territories. White Northerners wanted the "West" to be a "white man's country" while white Southerners wanted new land on which to work their black slaves. The Mexican War (1846-48) and the crisis with Britain over Oregon during the Polk administration (1845-49) marked the climax of this expansionist fervor. Refer to this map of territorial expansion (1860). Orange represents states, blue designates territories, and green marks "unorganized," i.e., Indian, territories. The Compromise of 1850 was the last major agreement between North and South over the issues raised by expansion. It fell apart in 1854 in the dispute over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. That measure divided what had been Nebraska into Kansas and Nebraska. The inhabitants of Kansas, under its terms, would decide whether or not to permit slavery in the territory — a formula called popular sovereignty. Rather than functioning as a way of peacefully resolving the dispute over slavery in the territory, popular sovereignty proved to be a recipe for conflict. Southerners and Northerners squared off against each other in a guerilla war. The territory became known as "Bleeding Kansas."

As the plantation system spread, more and more Southern wealth took the form of slave property. There were several reasons. One was that the ending of the international slave trade prior to the invention of the cotton gin. This meant that the supply of slaves grew more slowly than the demand. As the price of slaves increased, the proportion of Southern whites who owned them decreased. In a parallel development, the share of the South's total wealth owned by the "great planters," those with 50 or more slaves, grew. All of this meant the emergence of a sort of Southern "aristocracy" tied to slavery.

Northerners, led by the Republicans, initially engaged in the Civil War not to end slavery, but to preserve the Union. Southern secessionists, although they were fighting to preserve slavery, wrapped themselves in the constitutional banner of "states' rights." After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, however, the abolition of slavery became a key Republican objective. Further, once the war was won, most Northerners, including many who had remained Democrats, wanted guarantees that the South would never again be able to disrupt the nation. This, the overwhelming majority believed, meant an end of slavery. Beyond this point of consensus, Northerners disagreed over the extent to which the South needed to be "reconstructed." This was true even among Republicans.

Republicans made the most of the Southern secessionists' absence from Congress during the war to pass legislation to expand enormously the power of the central government. They raised the tariff, built a transcontinental railroad system, subsidized higher education, and organized much of the western territories. After the war, so-called Radical Republicans tried to safeguard the civil rights of the freedmen and freedwomen against the efforts of President Andrew Johnson and white southerners to undermine freedoms gained during the Civil War. By the end of the second Grant administration (1876), public support for the Republicans was ebbing, and the party took advantage of its control over the remaining "unreconstructed" southern states to attempt to steal the election of 1876. When Democrats — who also attempted to steal the election by blocking blacks from voting in "reconstructed" states — forced an investigation, the threat of exposure forced the Republicans to choose between their commitment to the civil rights of the former slaves and their goal of national re-consolidation. Faced with the prospect of a Democratic takeover of the White House and the end of their modernizing, national programs, the Republicans agreed to end their efforts on behalf of the freedmen in return for Democratic acquiescence in Rutherford B. Hays's tainted victory over Samuel J. Tilden.

MATERIALS:
McClymer, website on Tocqueville and sectional conflict
Eric Foner, A House Divided on-line exhibit
Electoral map for 1860
McClymer, website on Emancipation
W.E.B. DuBois, "The Freedman's Bureau"

Mar. 18: Prepare and submit notes which address the questions found on the Tocqueville website. Introduction to A House Divided

Mar. 23 : Oral reports on A House Divided on-line exhibit: "The Impending Crisis," "The Civil War," "War, Politics, and Slavery," and "Aftermath"

What, then, is the work before Congress? It is to save the people of the South from themselves, and the nation from detriment on their account. Congress must supplant the evident sectional tendencies of the South by national dispositions and tendencies. It must cause national ideas and objects to take the lead and control the politics of those States. It must cease to recognize the old slave-masters as the only competent persons to rule the South. In a word, it must enfranchise the negro, and by means of the loyal negroes and the loyal white men of the South build up a national party there, and in time bridge the chasm between North and South, so that our country may have a common liberty and a common civilization. The new wine must be put into new bottles. The lamb may not be trusted with the wolf. Loyalty is hardly safe with traitors. -- Frederick Douglass, 1867

W.E.B. DuBois's classic (1901) essay on the Freedman's Bureau begins:

THE problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line; the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War; and however much they who marched south and north in 1861 may have fixed on the technical points of union and local autonomy as a shibboleth, all nevertheless knew, as we know, that the question of Negro slavery was the deeper cause of the conflict.

Mar. 25: Prepare notes that address the questions posed on the McClymer Emancipation website.

WEB RESOURCES:

The American Civil War Homepage at the University of Tennessee Knoxville serves as a clearinghouse for on-line resources related to the coming, course, and consequences of the Civil War.

A similar site at Rutgers covers the entire period 1830-1890 and thus includes materials on Reconstruction not found at the Tennessee site.

The Library of Congress offers a year-by-year timeline of the Civil War along with relevant photographs, such as this from the battle of Chancellorsville.

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Introduction to A New Imperialism, 1869-1914

"Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room," a dining room originally designed and installed in a London townhouse by the American artist, James McNeill Whistler. Whistler said of his art that he was trying to achieve something similar to what classical composers sought -- to create mood, texture and feeling from the "tones" of light and shadow created by paint on the canvas. Although Whistler is a representational painter, he took a large stride in the direction of abstract art by insisting that art was not about accurately depicting external reality but about using the properties of color. A painting was, actually as well as literally, paint on canvas. In this he followed the lead of Turner. Whistler reflected another major trend in late nineteenth-century Western Culture. This was a fascination with the Orient and especially with Japan. One can see this in the Peacock Room which is now at the Freer Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. The peacocks, by the way, represent Whistler and his patron who had been outraged when he discovered how much Whistler had spent, and intended to charge, for decorating his house. Whistler refused, in the name of art, to change anything. He captured their battle in "Harmony in Blue and Gold." The notion of "harmony" is a play upon words. As noted above, it indicated Whistler's fascination with what he saw as the parallels between painting and music. But, by depicting the peacocks as about to do battle, he gives the word an ironic twist.

Here is another work of Whistler's influenced by the art of Japan, "Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen." You can find an on-line exhibit of Japanese Art and Architecture at the WebMuseum. There you can also find a good brief discussion of Whistler. A fuller discussion, including several views of the Peacock Room, a recounting of Whistler's squabble with the London millionaire for whom he designed it, the story of his legal battle with art critic John Ruskin, and numerous examples of his work, visit Mark Harden's Artchive. Scroll down the left frame and click on Whistler.

Gilbert and Sullivan turned to Japan for the setting of their most popular work, "The Mikado" (1885). You can find a plot summary, keyed to the lyrics of the songs, at the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive. You will also find pages devoted to each of the operas, materials about Gilbert, Sullivan, contemportary British theatre, and also information about the film, "Topsy Turvy," devoted to the creation of "The Mikado." Three years after "The Mikado" came the premiere of Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade." He set to music several of the tales of the "Arabian Nights," the stories told to a Shah who had resolved to put each of his wives to death after the wedding night. Scheherazade survived by telling him exciting and colorful tales, making sure to leave the story at a crucial point so he would keep her alive to hear how it came out. Finally the Shah relents, and Scheherazade lives. Surrounding the various orchestral settings of the tales is the violin solo that represents Scheherazade's voice.

The Italian opera, in the hands of Giacomo Puccini, also turned to the Orient for inspiration. "Madama Butterfly" (1904) tells the story of the American Naval Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton who "marries" Butterfly, impregnates her, and sails off. She remains faithful, raising their daughter and longing for the "One Beautiful Day" when he will return. When he does, it is with his American-born wife. Butterfly, in despair, commits suicide. "Turandot" (1926), Puccini's final opera, is set in ancient China where a prince seeks the hand of the Emperor's daughter. Suitors are required to answer a series of riddles. If one fails, he is executed. The princess (Turandot) has hit upon this bloody form of courtship to revenge a female ancestor who had been raped. Our hero answers the riddles, of course, but is unwilling to force himself upon Turandot. He gives her 24 hours to learn his real name. If she succeeds, he will forfeit his life. While awaiting his fate, he gets to sing the aria "Nessum Dorma" (Let No One Sleep). Turandot is wide awake herself, torturing one of his servants who, before she dies, gives up the name. All ends happily, however, when Turandot decides that the prince must truly love her. So, when asked if she knows his name, she replies: "You are Love." This, needless to say, is the plot of "Arabian Nights" only this time it is the princess who seeks revenge rather than the Shah.

This use of "exotic" materials is sometimes called "Orientalism." It is a sort of cultural plundering, according to critic Edward Said who coined the term. What makes it plundering, and not borrowing, is the western artist's total indifference to the meaning the materials had in their native setting.

SOME THEMES:
The last third of the nineteenth century saw a renewed imperial rivalry among the developed nations for control over previously unconquered portions of the globe. This included virtually the whole of Africa, all of Indochina, much of China, and the Philippines. 1869, the date of the completion of the Suez Canal, marks the opening of this new imperialism. Constructed by a French company that went bankrupt, the canal came under British control. Unrest in Egypt and areas to the south such as the Sudan threatened the security of the Canal. The British established a protectorate over Egypt, in part simply to prevent it from also going bankrupt, then moved into the Sudan to control the military activities of Muslim activists.

At the other end of Africa, the British sought to secure control of the region surrounding Cape Town. The Cape was, like Suez, a passageway to India, the most important possession in the British Empire. The discovery of gold and diamonds in southern Africa led to further British advances into land occupied by the Zulu nation and by the Boers, descendants of Dutch settlers. The British finally secured control of South Africa and Rhodesia (as it was then called) in the Boer War at the end of the nineteenth century.

As Britain extended its influence, other European states hurried to do likewise before the entire continent was gobbled up. The scramble for Africa threatened to lead to warfare among European powers in the late 1870s and early 1880s. Otto von Bismarck played peacemaker since Germany, under his leadership, disavowed interest in colonies and empire. The Berlin Conference of 1884-85 set the pattern for imperial competition. European nations participating in the conference agreed to recognize each others' conquests only if the colonizing nation established "effective occupation" of the territory in question. This meant political and police powers. Several technological developments made it possible for states to meet this standard. One was the steamboat which permitted penetration, via rivers, deep inland. A second was the development of new weaponry, especially repeating guns, which enabled small bands to kill much larger numbers of indigenous inhabitants. A third was the discovery of quinine drugs which protected Europeans against the otherwise lethal diseases, such as malaria, of the colonial territories.

By 1900 the United States and Japan had joined the race for colonies. So had Germany once a new Kaiser forced Bismarck to resign in 1890. The principal imperial powers had several important similarities. All had industrialized economies. All had strong central governments. In each a particular form of nationalism, a belief in the imperial destiny of one's own nation, coupled with the conviction that the state embodied the special virtues of its people, rallied popular support behind imperial projects.

"Can the Missionary Reach This Old Savage?" Minneapolis Journal (March 23, 1901). The missionary demands a retraction from Mark Twain of the parts of "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" that criticized missionary activities in China following suppression of the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers were Chinese nationalists who attempted to rid their country of Westerners and of western influence. During the "Great Cultural Revolution" of the 1960s, China would again turn against the West and western influences. Twain wrote "A War Prayer" in 1905. It was not published until 1923. It is set in a church where the pastor has just prayed for victory in the conflict in the Philippines. "I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!... He has heard the prayer of His servant, your shepherd, & will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause & think. "God's servant & yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused & taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken & the unspoken.... "You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed, silently. And ignorantly & unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord, our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is completed into those pregnant words. "Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! "O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. "O Lord, our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended through wastes of their desolated land in rags & hunger & thirst, sport of the sun-flames of summer & the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave & denied it -- for our sakes, who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask of one who is the Spirit of love & who is the ever-faithful refuge & friend of all that are sore beset, & seek His aid with humble & contrite hearts. Grant our prayer, O Lord & Thine shall be the praise & honor & glory now & ever, Amen." (After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! -- the messenger of the Most High waits." It was believed, afterward, that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 brought America onto the world stage as an imperial power. In what was ostensibly a war for Cuban independence, the first shot was fired halfway around the globe in Manila Bay in the Spanish-controlled Philippine Islands. After the defeat of Spain, Cuba became independent in name but in fact virtually an American protectorate. Spain was forced to sell Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and Hawaii was formally annexed by the U.S. America now had stepping stones to the trade of the Orient as well as possessions in the Caribbean. To keep the Philippines, Americans had to wage a bloody and costly war against Filipino independence forces. The new nationalism was deeply influenced by popular theories of race which held that the different peoples of the world were not only culturally but also biologically distinct. In a misapplication of Darwinian theory, these racialists believed that each nation (and people) were involved in an unending competition in which only the "fittest" would survive. This conveniently permitted successful imperial powers to point to their conquests as proof of their own "fitness" and to rationalize their empires as altruistic efforts to bring the benefits of their "superior" civilization to their "little brown brothers," as President McKinley referred to the Filipinos. Consider this ad for Pears Soap. Or these.

Detroit Journal. "The White Man's Burden." Literary Digest 18 (Feb. 18, 1899).

MATERIALS:
Josiah Strong, "The Anglo-Saxon and the World's Future" (1885)
Kaiser Wilhelm II's reaction to the Boxer Rebellion in China
McClymer, web site on "The White Man's Burden"

Mar. 30: Initial discussion on imperialism; prepare and submit notes which address these questions:

1. Strong's religious views were popularly known as "Muscular Christianity." As such they diverged sharply from the "turn the other cheek" message of the New Testament. How did Strong reconcile ideas of Christian civilization with notions of conquest by "Anglo-Saxons"? What did he mean by "Anglo-Saxon"? How did Twain regard such "Muscular Christianity?
2. How similar to Strong's arguments were those of Kaiser Wilhelm II? Use the ads, linked above, to illustrate these ideas.
3. How did Sen. Benjamin "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman attempt to turn "The White Man's Burden" into an anti-imperialist text?
4. How did Twain distinguish between the "American" and "European" games?

Class schedule continued