Chapter 24 - An Age of Modernity, Anxiety, and Imperialism, 1894-1914
Humans now understood that they could improve themselves. This included areas of the standard of living, technology, and education.
Science was one of the chief pillars supporting the positive views of the new world.
Albert Einstein was German-born and published a paper called The “Electro Dynamics of Moving Bodies”.
It contained his special theory of relativity. According to relativity theory, space and time are not absolute but relative to the observer, and both are interwoven into what Einstein called a four-dimensional space-time continuum. Neither space nor time had an existence independent of human experience.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, scientific theories were sometimes wrongly applied to achieve other ends.
Darwin’s principle of organic evolution to the social order came to be known as social Darwinism.
Rabid nationalists and racists also applied Darwin’s ideas in an even more radical way.
Extreme nationalists argued that nations, too, were engaged in a ‘‘struggle for existence’’ in which only the fittest survived.
The growth of scientific thinking, as well as the forces of modernization, presented new challenges to the Christian churches. Industrialization and urbanization had an especially adverse effect on religious institutions.
With the mass migration of people from the countryside to the city, the close-knit, traditional ties of the village in which the church had been a key force gave way to new urban patterns of social life from which the churches were often excluded.
This originated in the 1870s.
Their paintings utilized bright colors, dynamic brushstrokes, and a smaller, more private scale than that of their predecessors.
The first Impressionist exhibition included paintings by three women, one of whom was Berthe Morisot.
By the 1880s, a new movement known as Post-Impressionism had emerged in France and soon spread to other European countries.
Post-Impressionism retained the Impressionist emphasis on light and color but revolutionized it even further by paying more attention to structure and form.
Post-Impressionists sought to use both color and line to express inner feelings and produce a personal statement of reality rather than an imitation of objects.
The progress in politics in 1871 had stopped. Women and many other people were making demands on the right to vote, and tensions were rising.
By the 1840s and 1850s, the movement for women’s rights had entered the political arena with the call for equal political rights.
Many feminists believed that the right to vote was the key to all other reforms to improve the position of women. Many women took it into their own hands and tried working for their suffrage.
Women reformers took on other issues besides suffrage. In many countries, women supported peace movements. Bertha von Suttner became the head of the Austrian Peace Society and protested against the growing arms race of the 1890s.
Near the end of the nineteenth century, a revival of racism combined with extreme nationalism produced new right-wing politics aimed primarily at the Jews.
Since the Middle Ages, Jews had been portrayed as the murderers of Jesus and subjected to mob violence; their rights had been restricted, and they had been physically separated from Christians in quarters known as ghettos.
Between 1903 and 1906, pogroms took place in almost seven hundred Russian towns and villages, mostly in Ukraine.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews decided to emigrate to escape the persecution. Between 1881 and 1899, an average of 23,000 Jews left Russia each year. Many of them went to the United States and Canada, and some 25,000 went to Palestine.
The competitive national states and growing nationalism after 1870 led to the growth of imperialism.
As European affairs grew tense, heightened competition spurred European states to acquire colonies abroad that provided ports and coaling stations for their navies.
Great Britain expanded into new regions, colonies were chaos, and in all of this, the move for imperialism and nationalism began.
Before 1880, Europeans controlled relatively little of the African continent. In 1875, Europeans ruled 11 percent of Africa; by 1902, 90 percent.
For the most part, the Western presence in Africa had been limited to controlling the regional trade network and establishing a few footholds where the foreigners could carry on trade and missionary activity.
By 1900, almost all the societies of Africa and Asia were either under full colonial rule or, as in the case of China and the Ottoman Empire, at a point of virtual collapse.
Only a handful of states, such as Japan in East Asia, Thailand in Southeast Asia, Afghanistan and Persia in the Middle East, and mountainous Ethiopia in East Africa, managed to escape internal disintegration or subjection to colonial rule.
Humans now understood that they could improve themselves. This included areas of the standard of living, technology, and education.
Science was one of the chief pillars supporting the positive views of the new world.
Albert Einstein was German-born and published a paper called The “Electro Dynamics of Moving Bodies”.
It contained his special theory of relativity. According to relativity theory, space and time are not absolute but relative to the observer, and both are interwoven into what Einstein called a four-dimensional space-time continuum. Neither space nor time had an existence independent of human experience.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, scientific theories were sometimes wrongly applied to achieve other ends.
Darwin’s principle of organic evolution to the social order came to be known as social Darwinism.
Rabid nationalists and racists also applied Darwin’s ideas in an even more radical way.
Extreme nationalists argued that nations, too, were engaged in a ‘‘struggle for existence’’ in which only the fittest survived.
The growth of scientific thinking, as well as the forces of modernization, presented new challenges to the Christian churches. Industrialization and urbanization had an especially adverse effect on religious institutions.
With the mass migration of people from the countryside to the city, the close-knit, traditional ties of the village in which the church had been a key force gave way to new urban patterns of social life from which the churches were often excluded.
This originated in the 1870s.
Their paintings utilized bright colors, dynamic brushstrokes, and a smaller, more private scale than that of their predecessors.
The first Impressionist exhibition included paintings by three women, one of whom was Berthe Morisot.
By the 1880s, a new movement known as Post-Impressionism had emerged in France and soon spread to other European countries.
Post-Impressionism retained the Impressionist emphasis on light and color but revolutionized it even further by paying more attention to structure and form.
Post-Impressionists sought to use both color and line to express inner feelings and produce a personal statement of reality rather than an imitation of objects.
The progress in politics in 1871 had stopped. Women and many other people were making demands on the right to vote, and tensions were rising.
By the 1840s and 1850s, the movement for women’s rights had entered the political arena with the call for equal political rights.
Many feminists believed that the right to vote was the key to all other reforms to improve the position of women. Many women took it into their own hands and tried working for their suffrage.
Women reformers took on other issues besides suffrage. In many countries, women supported peace movements. Bertha von Suttner became the head of the Austrian Peace Society and protested against the growing arms race of the 1890s.
Near the end of the nineteenth century, a revival of racism combined with extreme nationalism produced new right-wing politics aimed primarily at the Jews.
Since the Middle Ages, Jews had been portrayed as the murderers of Jesus and subjected to mob violence; their rights had been restricted, and they had been physically separated from Christians in quarters known as ghettos.
Between 1903 and 1906, pogroms took place in almost seven hundred Russian towns and villages, mostly in Ukraine.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews decided to emigrate to escape the persecution. Between 1881 and 1899, an average of 23,000 Jews left Russia each year. Many of them went to the United States and Canada, and some 25,000 went to Palestine.
The competitive national states and growing nationalism after 1870 led to the growth of imperialism.
As European affairs grew tense, heightened competition spurred European states to acquire colonies abroad that provided ports and coaling stations for their navies.
Great Britain expanded into new regions, colonies were chaos, and in all of this, the move for imperialism and nationalism began.
Before 1880, Europeans controlled relatively little of the African continent. In 1875, Europeans ruled 11 percent of Africa; by 1902, 90 percent.
For the most part, the Western presence in Africa had been limited to controlling the regional trade network and establishing a few footholds where the foreigners could carry on trade and missionary activity.
By 1900, almost all the societies of Africa and Asia were either under full colonial rule or, as in the case of China and the Ottoman Empire, at a point of virtual collapse.
Only a handful of states, such as Japan in East Asia, Thailand in Southeast Asia, Afghanistan and Persia in the Middle East, and mountainous Ethiopia in East Africa, managed to escape internal disintegration or subjection to colonial rule.
