Themes in Modern European History, 1890-1945

Nicholas Atkin, Michael Biddiss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134222568
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Themes in Modern European History, 1890 – 1945 brings together an international team of scholars to address an eclectic range of developments and issues in European history in the period between 1890 and the end of the Second World War. This lively collection of essays adopts a thematic approach, in order to explore comprehensively a period of great change and upheaval in Europe.

Concentrating on the main powers in Europe, from Germany, Italy and Russia, to the UK and France, the book links together developments in society, the economy, politics and culture, and establishes them in their political framework. Specially commissioned chapters discuss key issues such as:

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• popular culture

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• the relationship between East and West

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• intellectual and cultural trends

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• the origins and impact of two world wars

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• communism, dictatorship and liberal democracy

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• the relationship of Europe with the wider world.
  

Including a chronology, maps and a glossary, as well as suggestions for further reading, this comprehensive volume is an invaluable and authoritative resource for students of modern European history.

1 West, East and Centre: patterns of governance in pre-1914 Europe

Detmar Klein

In 1914 the Central powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary embarked on a brutal war with the Western powers of Britain and France and the Eastern power of Russia. All five states proclaimed that they were fighting for the sake of civilization, and thought their cause just. At the beginning of the 1890s, when the autocratic and backward Tsarist Empire seemed separated from parliamentary Britain and republican France by a set of opposing values and interests, few would have predicted such a scenario. Yet, in the summer of 1914, ‘East’ and ‘West’ united to align themselves against the ‘Centre’.

By then, these three terms, which give shape to the present chapter concerning the governance of Europe’s leading regimes, were the principal coordinates used in discourse about its political geography. They continued to be applied until the mid-twentieth century, when a bipolar system emerged out of the catastrophe of World War Two. Historically, it was the West that had initiated the process of modernization and industrialization, thus serving as model for the whole continent. This was also where the idea of the nation-state was born and put into practice, linking nationality to state territory with the goal of promoting national integration. The idea of the nation-state was diametrically opposed to the geopolitical realities of the Centre and the East, where there existed the multinational Habsburg and Romanov empires. The West was also the cradle of economic progress and of liberal political ideologies, as epitomized by the parliamentary monarchies of Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Norway (since 1905 no longer in personal union with Sweden), and by the parliamentary republics of France and Switzerland. In these states, the executive was answerable to an elected body, which alone made the laws. In the Centre and East, there was a more complex picture. Although Germany, Austria-Hungary and eventually Russia possessed parliaments, these states essentially exhibited authoritarian, semi-absolutist, or even autocratic forms of governance.

Nowhere did parliamentary government equate with democracy in the sense that we understand it today. Most states had a restricted franchise, favouring the upper and middle classes. France, Switzerland, Denmark and Norway were the most democratic in so far as they had universal male suffrage; in 1913, Norway even introduced the vote for women. While there was also universal male suffrage for the election of the German national parliament, its powers were severely restricted. In 1907, the Austrian part of the Habsburg dual monarchy also introduced universal suffrage but, as in the case of Germany, parliamentary influence remained limited. Even Britain, although known as the ‘mother of parliaments’, had only half its adult male population enfranchised by 1914. A similar lack of democratic representation was true for the parliamentary monarchy of Belgium. Still, in terms of power, the decisive factor in the political life of parliamentary regimes was their claim to be representing ‘the people’.

The West: Britain and France

Britain was one of the two major model states of the West. Its proper name was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish, however, were striving for Home Rule, which (with the Ulster question still far from settled) was finally granted in 1914, but immediately suspended because of the war. Britain headed an empire on which ‘the sun never set’. It ruled directly over India and had many colonies, particularly in Africa; however, the empire was changing, as former self-governing colonies were upgraded in status to so-called dominions, such as Canada (1867), Australia (1901) and New Zealand (1907). Britain had a distinctive political framework, within which its constitutionalism depended not on a single written document, but on a combination of customary law and parliamentary statutes that had been evolving over centuries.

The British Parliament consisted of the Lords and the Commons, forming respectively the upper and lower legislative chambers. The Commons were elected representatives of their constituencies. The monarch, in turn, appointed as prime minister that politician whose administration could muster the majority most crucially needed in the Commons. The House of Lords was – aside from the senior Anglican clergy – a hereditary chamber, representing the interests of the nobility and the upper class at large. It was also the highest judicial power, acting as the supreme court of appeal for most cases. The power of the Lords, which had been losing influence from 1832 onwards, was severely curtailed by the Parliament Act of 1911. It stipulated that the chamber was empowered only to delay, but not to veto, the lower house’s legislation. This almost revolutionary act was the endpoint of a process that had started in 1906 with the landslide victory of the Liberals over the Conservatives, who until then had ruled for a decade. The two elections of 1910 kept the Liberals in power with the aid of the Irish nationalists and the emergent Labour Party, a reformist (rather than revolutionary) grouping. Liberals now embraced a progressive programme, which advocated that the state should intervene for the benefit of the weak. Outside of Parliament, the trade unions were growing stronger, and their ‘pressure tool’ of strikes was getting sharper, particularly after the 1906 Trade Disputes Act, which considerably strengthened their legal and financial standing. Due to the impact of the growing workers’ movement and Labour’s electoral success, the Liberals felt compelled to enact social welfare reforms. Much of the cost of these and of the accelerating arms race with Germany was to be borne by the big landowners, a policy to which the Lords objected; the ensuing fight with the Commons led to the peers’ defeat in 1911 and to further waning of their power. While the bourgeoisie had gained ground, it also felt threatened by the rising working class. Industrial unrest endangered the middle-class triumph. However, Britain was still in 1914 the industrial and trading powerhouse of Europe, and its decision to enter the war was not determined primarily by domestic factors. Rather, this stemmed from the need to counter an aggressive and economically expanding Germany that was threatening the balance of power.

The other model parliamentary state was the republic of France, born out of defeat by the nascent German Reich in 1870–71. The bicameral National Assembly was the decisive legislative power: its upper house (Senate) was chosen by electoral colleges in the departments, and its lower house (Chamber of Deputies) was elected nationally through universal male suffrage. The President of the Republic, selected by the Assembly, was the head of the executive; his power lay in directing foreign policy and in deciding who should form the cabinet. It was the prime minister (President of the Council of Ministers) who governed the country, so long as he retained the confidence of the Chamber of Deputies.

The survival of the new republic was in doubt well into the 1880s, as monarchists, Bonapartists and other critics of parliamentarianism questioned the system. However, the Right proved incapable of mustering enough support to overthrow it, and the army ultimately remained loyal. Therefore the republic survived even the Dreyfus Affair, which shook France for a decade from the mid-1890s onwards. In political terms, the regime became dominated by the bourgeoisie: the number of nobles in the Chamber of Deputies declined from 34 per cent in 1871 to only 9 per cent in 1914.¹ Although the nobility no longer had much political clout, their influence in the socio-economic realm remained considerable. Nobles participated in business, and they sought links with the rich bourgeoisie by means of marriage; on the eve of World War One, the moneyed bourgeoisie and the landed aristocracy had to a large extent amalgamated into a single plutocracy.²

From the turn of the century onwards, the Radicals – representing the republican, liberal and secularist Centre-Left – were the major force in French political life. Within the general context of mass politicization, in 1901 they created a genuine party: the Parti républicain, radical et radical-socialiste. The various socialist groups also decided to concentrate their forces into a unified Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière (SFIO: French Section of the Workers’ International). Collaboration between the Radicals and socialists tentatively started in 1899 when the former led the creation of a gouvernement de défense républicaine, which included the independent socialist Alexandre Millerand. This collaboration was intended to counteract the far-right threat to the republic and was the precursor of the Bloc des Gauches of 1902. French socialists were, in principle, Marxists, whose ultimate goal was the classless utopia of communism; but they were divided on one issue, namely, whether to participate in bourgeois governments. This question reflected their debate over the nature of Marxism and the path towards socialism – ones that also took place among left-wingers in countries such as Germany or Russia. The Guesdistes (followers of Jules Guesde) were classical Marxists and were opposed to any participation in bourgeois government; the followers of Jean Jaurès, however, propagated a more reformist, evolutionary line, and initially did not object to entering a coalition with the middle-class parties. The Bloc existed for only a few years until 1904, when the socialist ministers withdrew. It conducted strongly anticlerical policies and targeted the religious orders, resulting in the closure of over 2000 Catholic schools; ultimately this fight led to the 1905 laws separating church and state.

In the early twentieth century, such extra-parliamentary movements as the Ligue des Patriotes, the Ligue de la Patrie Française and Action Française extolled a ‘new’ nationalism of the Right, which was ethnic, racist and antisemitic, and which differed from the ‘old’ nationalism of the Left. Standard-bearers of this radical Right were Charles Maurras and the French novelist, journalist and politician Maurice Barrès. It influenced the Centre-Left by making the latter’s nationalism more focused on ethnicity and more aggressive towards Germany; in view of the domestic background and the worsening international situation, prominent liberal politicians such as Poincaré and Clemenceau also adopted an increasingly anti-German and anti-pacifist stance. Yet, despite the domestic troubles at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, this period is referred to as the Belle Epoque, signifying important achievements in the realm of science, culture and the arts. The main beneficiaries were the bourgeoisie. Mass politicization and the rise and threat of socialism after the turn of the century also brought improvements for the lower classes, notably in the realm of social welfare, albeit on a lesser scale than in Germany.

By 1914, the regime looked much more secure than ever before. France had managed to surmount various crises and the bourgeois republic seemed to cope well with domestic problems. Furthermore, it had achieved much in its foreign policy. It possessed a substantial colonial empire, and, in diplomacy, had managed to woo autocratic Russia. Since Germany had not renewed its alliance (the Reinsurance Treaty) with the tsarist regime in 1890, France had seen the possibility of breaking out of its international isolation (imposed earlier by Bismarck) and of initiating a rapprochement with Russia through the alliance of 1892 (finalized in January 1894). Additionally, the Republic soothed its colonial differences with Britain, securing the establishment of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. Although the latter was only a loose arrangement (Britain never liked to commit itself fully to automatic obligations), it still amounted to a form of coalition – one that was complemented by the Anglo–Russian Entente of 1907. This Triple Entente provided France with the security needed against Germany, its powerful ‘arch enemy’, and enabled the nation to stand up to the Reich when the moment came in 1914.

The East: the Russian empire

Whereas Britain and France were the leading forces in the West, Russia was the predominant power in the East. The tsar ruled over a huge, multinational empire with some 150 million or more inhabitants before 1914, which included Finland, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Caucasus and regions of Central Asia. Fewer than half of these peoples were ethnic Russians; if Ukrainians and Byelorussians are added into the mix, the ethnic tapestry looks even more complex.³ The peoples of the Western areas of the empire – in Poland, Finland and the Baltic provinces – did not consider themselves ‘Easterners’, not least because none of them shared in the Orthodox religious faith of the Russians. As for the ethnic Poles, who had suffered a threefold partition of their territory in the late eighteenth century, many of them were now under German or Austrian rule. ‘Congress-Poland’ had been given to Russia as a separate kingdom at the Congress of Vienna, with the tsar as its king; after an uprising its constitution had been abolished in 1832. Following a further insurgency in 1863–64, any remaining autonomous Polish institutions had been dismantled. From the 1880s onwards, the process of Russification affected the Poles also in the cultural realm: Russian became the only official language in administration and education, and the activities of the Roman Catholic Church were hindered. There was a short-lived reversal of this process due to the Russian Revolution of 1905, but after 1907 a policy of forceful Russification was taken up again with renewed vigour.

Finland fared only slightly better. It had been seized from Sweden in the Napoleonic era and, since then, the tsars were also its grand dukes. In the search for greater efficiency, Alexander II had granted Finland some autonomy, but in the early 1890s the first era of Russification started. The tsarist February Manifesto of 1899 decreed that Finland was under direct rule from St Petersburg, without involving the country’s Diet (an estates-based legislative assembly) or its Senate (the highest administrative body, consisting of Finns appointed by the tsar). There followed a purge of civil servants opposed to Russification, as well as decrees concerning tight censorship, mandatory service in the tsarist army, and dictatorial powers for the Russian governor-general. Although there was widespread resistance among all classes of Finnish society, real relief came only with the 1905 revolution in Russia, which led to the repeal of the February Manifesto and the suspension of the conscription law and other dictatorial measures. A parliament based on universal (male and female) suffrage was created; it had formal legislative rights, but no effective parliamentary regime developed and the tsar retained extensive powers. After 1908, with the Russian government having regained its strength, Finland was once again in the throes of Russification and lost most of its recently gained autonomy.

The short-lived reversal of Russification enjoyed by Poland and Finland was due to the 1905 revolution. This event was a major watershed in pre-1914 Russian history, even if the tsarist regime soon reverted to type. Until 1905, this was a fully fledged autocracy, backed by the nobility and by the Russian Orthodox Church with the tsar at its head. It was a police state, ruled with an iron fist by Nicholas II from 1894 to 1917. Until the turn of the century, the bourgeoisie and the working class were relatively limited in number, due to relatively low levels of urbanization and industrialization, although that situation was about to change. Peasants constituted the mass of the population. The tsar had full autocratic powers in the executive and legislative realms, administering the country through provincial governors; he was also entitled to overrule the judiciary. He appointed ministers who were all individually answerable to him; as there was no collective responsibility, they constantly intrigued against each other. On the one hand, this situation increased the autocratic power of the tsar; on the other, it caused problems for the effective government of the empire.

The problems were also reflected at the bureaucratic level. The administration of the huge empire, with the enormous distances to travel, would have been difficult even at the best of times. The major difficulty was the lack of an efficient, well structured and well staffed bureaucracy, working within a framework of strict legal and political accountability. The country was divided into provinces, each headed by a governor. Limited local self-government existed in Russia in three forms: duma, zemstvo and mir. Each city had a municipal council (duma), which was elected on the grounds of a restricted franchise based on property and wealth. The zemstvo system administered tasks such as health, education and poor relief in each province. It consisted of self-governing institutions, all of which had an executive board and an elected assembly comprising the three estates of nobility, town citizenry and peasantry; the franchise for the zemstvo assembly was limited, the provincial governor having the right to select the peasant representatives, which meant that the dominance of the noble gentry was guaranteed. Each district zemstvo sent delegates to a provincial one. Village communities had some administrative powers through the socalled mir. This acted as intermediary between the individual peasant and the state authorities, and it was also responsible for allocating land. At irregular intervals the village plots were redistributed among the major local families, according to the number of their male members. This system encouraged population growth, and caused hardship and even...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Maps
• Introduction
• 1 West, East and Centre: patterns of governance in pre-1914 Europe
• 2 Social and economic developments in Europe, 1890–1939
• 3 Intellectual and cultural upheaval, 1890–1945
• 4 Explaining World War One: debating the causes
• 5 World War One: conduct and consequences
• 6 The Soviet Union and Bolshevism abroad
• 7 Fascism: a ‘revolutionary right’ in interwar Europe
• 8 Withstanding extremes: Britain and France, 1918–40
• 9 The origins of World War Two in Europe
• 10 Experiences of Total War: 1939–1945
• 11 Europe and the wider world, 1890–1945
• Timeline