The Modern World, Part Two: Global History since 1910 -- Week 2 Video Lecture Summary

Video 1: Total States

WWI is an important event in world history because of how it changes the way modern societies are organized.

There's a different feeling to warfare in WWI. The devastation is worse than ever before because of the technology that is able to ravage the land: create holes in the ground that are so big soldiers drown in them; eradicate whole forests; blind soldiers from poison gas.

WWI sees the creation of "Total States":

• States are seeing themselves as large war-centric corporations
• Governments begin to control national money to make sure they have enough for warfare
• Government regulates staples
• The end of the gold standard -- self-reliance instead of international trade
• Conversion of plants and factories from civilian factories to war factories
• Creation of new factories for war supplies
• Governments take control of manpower and industrial resources, controlling which people and how many of them are allocated to factories, farming, and militaries.

Liberalism doesn't work so well during this era. Which ideological movement can serve this postwar climate best?

Countries are disseminating propaganda that they think will appeal to their people. For instance, in England, they encourage everyone to participate in the war effort. In Germany, they make efforts to collect metals from civilians to reuse in warfare. In the US there are enlistment posters portraying the Germans as brutes and encouraging the keeping of the peace against them.

This creates a more unified social class where the lower and management classes mostly merge into a single class that serves the state.

Previously, Democratic Socialists were focused on international unification of the working class, but the war mars the international aspect of their ideology.

By 1917-18 people are feeling like they're pawns, rather than partners of the state.

Large landowners find that the government is seizing their land and assets for the war effort.

Liberalism is about keeping the government small and that doesn't work during the war:

• In Russia, the war takes down the monarchy that stood for National Tradition
• In Britain, National Conservatives lead the war effort
• Germany essentially becomes a liberal dictatorship
• In the US, the federal government was a weak institution but the war really gives it more power as it has to make broader national decisions about resources

Video 2: Why Did the Allies Win?

In Early 1918, it's not clear that the Allies would win.

1917:

• An awful year for Britain and France
• France is coming up against the Central powers, beating themselves bloody
• Over 4,000 British soldiers die every day for weeks
• In more than three years of fighting, the Western front has barely changed in 3 years. The Germans are holding strong
• American soldiers are being trained; not fighting yet
• The Germans expand their control into the Russian empire
• The Germans+Austrians occupy most of the balkans
• The British move on Jerusalem against the Turks
• The Italians (an Allied power) are losing against Austria in the Alps and the Allies have to spend resources on helping them
• The Allied strategy is waiting for the Americans to join the war
• Political strife in Britain and France as people are hopeless regarding the war

In Germany, Ludendorff, who is heading the army, doesn't have a grand strategy. He has a tactic which is to fight a big war in the Western front using the soldiers released from the Russian front (which collapsed). It works and they capture some lands on this front. But this exhausts them. They feel spent in terms of resources and psychology. They don't have more energy but the Germans make a gamble and go all out on the offensive (instead of letting the Allies spend all their energies which would have been the wise thing to do). Now they're fully spent.

Now we are close to the end of the war. What advantages do the Allies have?

• In the summer of 1918, the Americans start coming into the war. 
• The entire world helps the Allies with raw materials, whereas only a sliver of the world is owned by the Germans
• The submarine offensives fail and the Allies control the seas
• The Brits and French have colonial support from their "white dominions" (Canada, NZ, Australia, Turkey, Palestine)
• The Brits and French colonists help source raw materials for the allies, many of them even coming to France to help
• The Allies' intelligence capabilities progress
• The Allies are able to use science to produce better poison gas
• The allied airforce is better than that of the Germans
• Allied leaders are gifted and resilient: Wilson, Clemenceau, George. They are able to articulate national objectives and rally people to a cause. On the other hand, Kaiser Wilhelm rarely speaks; same with the Austrian Emperor and the Ottoman Emperor.

In the summer and fall of 1918, the Central Powers just seem to fall apart. Their civilians revolt and seek peace quickly. In November 1918 it's over.

Video 3: The End of Empires?

Some, but not all empires, come to an end.

Woodrow had a vision of peace without victory. But for some countries, who suffered more from the war, not getting something out of it didn't seem fair or logical.

Five empires ended between 1910-1920:

• The Qing Empire. The Emperor dies, anarchy in China
• German Hohenzollern Empire
• German Hapsburg Dynastic Empire
• The Ottoman Empire. Ths last sultan abdicates
• Russian Empire. The Tsar is murdered during a civil war

This leaves a huge void. What takes the place of these empires? Who gets to be in charge? The modern tendency is to create republics but the infrastructure for the republics needs to be put in place. Some people call for score-settling.

There are attempts to make treaties in the 1920s. They don't work, but this makes sense because the war just ended and people are figuring out what they want.

It is decided that:

• Poland will be recreated on Russian and German lands
• Germany gives up lands they won from France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1871
• Germany would stay alive to keep the balance of power in Europe
• The French occupy Western Germany to make sure they can't use the region to rebuild the German army
• The German military powers would be restricted

Also:

• The AH empire barfs up a bunch of new countries. Romania is enlarged
• There's an attempt to create nation-states with each state representing an ethnic group but they are not neatly grouped together so that doesn't quite work.
• The Brits and French and Italians expand their empires into the middle east because they're winners
• International organizations are created. The League of Nations was created to:
• Adjudicate disputes
• All ethnicities deserve a nation of their own; some might not be ready for it yet so they need "imperial tutelage". Mandates are created: a French mandate in Syria, and a British mandate in Egypt.
• China and East Asia: in 1921-2 three treaties were negotiated in Washington DC by Charles Evans Hughes:
1. The political relationships between the great powers (instead of the 1902 treaty between the Britsh and the Japanese)
2. Arms control treaty to regulate the size of the naval force of the US, Britain, and Japan 5:5:3
3. All interested powers signed that they would respect the territorial integrity of China (until it could self-govern well). The Japanese aren't thrilled. They controlled at this point parts of Korea and China.

There's a lot of unrest 1919-21 Eastern Europe and the Middle East: Poland-Russia, a Communist Revolution in Hungary, a revolution in Germany. Britain+Turkey+David Lloyd George fight: Mustafa Kemal = Ataturk defends the creation of a new ethnically pure Turkish state, banishing the Armenians in an Armenian genocide. Also ethnic cleansing of Greeks. The Brits have to back down. In 1923 there's another treaty negotiated and it becomes a model for other anti-imperialists seeking to create ethnic nation-states with ethnic cleansing :(( 

The Brits have problems in Iraq and Jordan/Palestine. The French have problems in Syria and Lebanon.

The Russian Revolution also is a major story. Next time.

Video 4: Communism

Why was WWI so important to the rise of communism?

• Liberal institutions hadn't helped eradicate the horrors of war
• Organized cells are effective amidst the chaos in Russia

Pre-war, there's lots of Russification and anti-semitism. A ruling National Tradition party. Russia has very weak intermediary institutions (parliaments and other go-betweens the lower and ruling classes). This means they're good at oppressing but not at administrating. The politics are very polarized with even Democratic Socialists leaning towards violence to overthrow the rulers. With all of Europe moving towards Total Statehood, Russia can't keep up because of its weak intermediary institutions, failing to supply support to people affected by the war.

City names: St. Petersburg --> Petrograd during the war --> Leningrad later --> Now back to St. Petersburg.

In 1917 there's a revolution with the intent of making the government more effective. The revolutionaries want Russia to be better poised to win the war. They're headed by Alexander Kerensky and after the Tsar abdicates in 1917 there's a "provisional republic". Elections are held and lots of people vote. The parliament becomes comprised of Democratic Socialists: Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks. One of the major differences between democratic socialists and Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 was the fact that the democratic socialists wanted to redistribute private property to poor peasants, while the Bolsheviks wanted to abolish private property and put land under centralized state control. SRs were about violent opposition to the Tsar because they didn't see another way out. the Bolsheviks wanted to take owned land and redistribute it to peasants. But most of the people wanted to support the war.

The war against the Germans is not going well and is increasingly unpopular.

There's a Bolshevik coup in November 1917 headed by Lenin and they take over the government. He had a long history of revolutionary activism against the Tsar. When WWI began, he was in exile in Switzerland. The Germans sent him back into Russia in hopes that he would make trouble in Russia and take Russia who was an Allied power out of the war. It worked.

He was an international revolutionary. He begins organizing other exiles. His right-hand man was Leon Trotsky, Jewish, and a skillful organizer. 

Bolsheviks = “Reds”

Anti-Bolsheviks = “Whites”

Bolshevism is not a mass movement. Instead, they believe the masses need to be led by a highly organized revolutionary nucleus. The issues of the French revolution are still alive in St. Petersburg of 1917. Lenin with the red guards helps overthrow the party in power in St. Petersburg.

There’s a civil war by 1918 between the National Traditionalists = aristocrats and the Bolsheviks. Some of the Social Democrats attempt rebellion, trying to kill Lenin but failing. But there is no organized movement that meets its match against the Bolsheviks.

Foreign countries took interest in the war. The Bolsheviks wanted to get Russia out of the war, signing a treaty with the Germans. This scenario would be bad for the Allies, so the Allies side with the Whites so that they could get Russia back in the war. The Whites argue that the reds sold out Russia to the Germans.

The Bolsheviks intend to spread the revolution and their ideology internationally.

The Allied forces land troops in Russia to help the Whites. The Americans withdraw soon. The Brits and French become disillusioned with their efforts too. It’s a close call for the Bolshevik government. In 1919 they almost lose to the Whites. The Bolsheviks kill the Tsar which makes the Russians more polarized.

The Bolsheviks try to take over Poland. But they fail and a treaty is signed.

Denikin leads a threat from the South.

Admiral Kolchak from the Far East and his troops also get involved.

Sailors in Kronstadt lead a revolution against the Bolsheviks.

After an enormous loss of life, things start to settle down in Russia. But the Bolshevik ideology causes unrest in Hungary, Germany, Poland, Kronstadt (the Soviet Union). These states are briefly taken over by communist rule.

Communism was super powerful in 1919-20. As was the force of anti-communism.

Video 5: Anti-Communism

Communism is a new global force that has the world a-flutter in 1919-20. Anti-communism is a reactionary political movement. Communism is so threatening — war against organized religion, and for the redistribution of property — that anti-communism becomes an even more powerful force. It revives conservative movements.

Liberalism has a grip on almost every country: they all are republics with constitutions. But Liberalism is not as effective during these times because it is rather peaceful. This is a liability because communism was forceful and needed a forceful movement to counter it.

[The five political families explained: https://essaycemetery.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-modern-world-part-one-global_25.html]

 

The 1890s-1990s saw a 100-year struggle about how to organize states. Five main political families differed in terms of their ideologies as to how this should be done. The Revolutionary Socialists and the National Traditionalists are the extreme ideologies on both sides. The predominant movements are the more centrist ones: National Conservatives, Democratic socialists, and Liberals.

By the 1920s the global influence of the NT is gone. Fascism takes its place: belief in the purity of the nation. Fascism believes in a top-down revolution like the National Conservatives, and in nationalism like the Revolutionary Socialists. Benito Mussolini is a fascist. He created this movement, in fact. He is more fervent than the liberals who led Italy during WWI.

Revolutionary Socialism is increasingly replaced by Communism.

These replacement ideologies are named similarly, just characterized by different eras and different names.

All five movements are comparable in the 1920s in terms of their global political dominance (as opposed to pre-WWI, at which time the extreme movements were not as dominant).

Communism is an international movement.

Empires use liberal ideals to self-propagate. It's no longer fashionable to push economic colonial interests. Instead, it's more fashionable to "help" the colonies self-rule. This affected the colonialists and anti-imperialists.

Anti-imperialism morphs from a movement that wants to kick out foreigners into a movement that strives to claim or reclaim the foreign-influenced colonies including all of its influences. The colonies use a lot of national self-determination vocabulary to claim independence.

Rabindranath Tagore is a renowned Bengali writer and poet and political commentator. He wins the Nobel Literature prize in 1913. Gandhi is another renowned Indian. He was trained as a British lawyer and propagates anti-imperialist ideas. His ideology is a fusion of Western and Indian ideas. Both of these thinkers strive to merge old and new, emphasize Indian spirituality but believe that India ought to be organized along traditional Western liberal lines. They dress simply to communicate the importance of honoring Indian tradition. Gandhi is a leader in the effort to unite the Indians and replace British rule. They would like a Dominion status like Australia and Canada. But the Brits don't want to grant India the same autonomy. And by the time they might consider it, it's too late and the Indians are considering demanding total autonomy.

Back to Communism. Increasingly, the Russian Civil War is making waves internationally. In the US in 1919, the threat of Communism in both Russia and the US is making headlines. Americans are frightened by the prospect of private property being seized. Also lots of news of union unrest, including striker violence against non-strikers. 

Spain was neutral during the war, but in 1919 the workers organize and strike successfully. They increasingly organize into revolutionary militant groups. In 1923, there's an anti-revolutionary reaction headed by Primo de Rivera, in which the Spanish government essentially turns into a military dictatorship.

In China, in 1925 there is Anti-foreign unrest. Many Chinese boycotts Western goods. The new Chinese Republic is formed and many warlords align their armies with the new republic. They make their way North and establishes control in Shanghai. Chiang Kai-shek is a key military leader and influenced by the goings-on in Russia. There is an alliance between various nationalist forces and the Chinese communists. In 1927 Chiang organizes the non-communist part of the republic against the Communist portion of the republic in a civil war. Chinese communists are "purged". It is on and off for 20 years. This struggle between Communists and Anti-Communists is a defining theme in the creation of a new Chinese state.

Video 6: The Age of Uncertainty

After WWI, the certainties of the past seemed to be gone. 9-10 million were killed and tens of millions more mutilated. Other wars had millions of casualties. The sanitary conditions of the war produced an epidemic of Influenza from 1918-1919. There was also a sense of spiritual loss: a transition from a genteel society (the Victorian and Edwardian era) to a worse time. After the war, there was a loss of confidence in progress and in the sense that people knew what was right. Before the war, there were lots of missionary efforts, but post-war this dissipates because people are no longer so certain in their opinions, ideologies, that they know what's right.

There's uncertainty about rationality. People doubting reason. The conditions of the war were so far removed from what people wanted that people began looking for underlying reasons for the war, the subtle forces controlling it. Critical theory springs up trying to explain these. There's a rise of interest in the subconscious, with the theories of Freud and Jung rising.

Bauhaus rises post-war. It's a rational, functional architecture. A pure expression of the purpose of the building. Doing away with superfluous flourishes.

Another movement that rose pre-war is Futurism, which celebrates progress. Before the war, dynamism was celebrated, along with progress and nationalism: all of these signified hope, and Futurists were pro-war. 

Fascists considered themselves modern. Mussolini wrote about Fascism that it was something dynamic and virile people threw themselves into with a passion. In his view, the state recreates the nation. Individuals who identified with the state recreated the nation in turn. "Nothing ... exists, much less has value... outside the state". Fascism is thus totalitarian. The synthesis gives strength to peoples' lives. National force and togetherness. He writes that liberalism failed (I think mostly the characteristic of the liberal ideology in that it didn't want to give governments lots of power. But then suddenly governments needed power for the war. And they took over. So now Fascism is for a properly-led strong central government). Mussolini detested America: he saw it as a symbol of materialism.

The US becomes super strong starting with the 1920s, and it's not because of its military, but rather thanks to its economy, finance, and culture, and consumerism. America seemed to represent the production of an abundance of household goods and taking care of the well-being of the common people. Also, America represented cars which were awesome.

The Marconi set with its wireless transmission capabilities replaces telegraphs. Radios become common and made an impact in disseminating ideas. This was considerable because before the radio communities still felt mostly local and small. But now they had access to people thousands of miles away.

Also movies and Hollywood make a considerable splash in the world.

Video 7: Modern Women

In the 1910s and 1920s, there are debates going on about what it means to be a modern woman. In the 1800s, most women had traditional roles. In a legal sense, the roles of the women were subordinate in terms of the rights to property and to be treated equally. In China, the peculiar 11th-12th century fashion of binding feet became a ritualized mandatory custom for upper-class women. This of course made them unable to keep up with men.

In the late 1800s, there's a fight for women to get equal political rights. Why then? Liberal ideas were reaching popular acceptance by the 1860s. In the US, it made sense that if former slaves could vote then perhaps women could too. And also just general liberal egalitarian ideas pointed towards equality for women. The suffrage movement gained traction in the US, Europe, Japan. Women wanted to vote for principle but also to protect themselves. The need to self-protect rose because of cities: women wanted to ban saloons and restrict the sale of alcohol because all the husbands were getting drunk in saloons. They also wanted to protect their working conditions and defend against industrial abuse. Women are working as seamstresses and in other factories at the turn of the century. 

Most scholars place the origins of modern feminism around 1910-20s Britain and America. Women are talking about emancipation: freedom from being locked into traditional roles; the right to birth control (Planned Parenthood and birth control started during this period; Margaret Sanger is the founder of modern birth control); equal opportunity to enter professional roles. Women start wearing scantier clothing; in China they cease binding their feet. How is this happening all over the world? There are key cities in which these styles originate and from which they are disseminated. In the East, places like Tokyo, Shanghai, Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City. Many modern girls are into consumerism, but there's a counter-movement that supports doing away with consumerism (no makeup, no stylish clothing) as a modern female identity (like communist comrade women).

Video 8: The World of 1930

Many historians regard this period as the inter-war period and present WWII as inevitable. But at the time it didn't seem so. The world was slowly rebuilding.

Postwar:

• America is a great power but most great powers are still in Europe
• Europe: Cautious optimism. The French, British, and Germans have reconciled through the Locarno pact. "The Spirit of Locarno". Negotiated on the German side by Gustav Stresemann who was a moderate fellow.
• Germany is uneasy about borders with Poland
• The League of Nations, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland is meant to mediate disputes internationally. Hopes of managing disputes through "institutions of international cooperation" -- diplomacy.
• Treaty to regulate navies
• Revival of the Gold Standard with help of private US firms
• Europeans are maintaining their empires which are increasingly embattled. They are giving colonies more freedom and the colonialists are finding themselves playing umpire to disagreeing factions within colonies. Everybody's trying to figure out what they want their states to look like.
• Arabs are being given states (by whom?)
• The British play umpire to Arab-Jewish struggles in Palestine
• French the same in ethically-divided Syria
• Persia remakes itself into a new constitutional monarchy
• The Societ Union is cast out because it's dedicated to overthrowing the whole world
• The Dutch East Indies take an example from Russian Communism to create the Communist Party of Indonesia. They want an Indonesian nation-state organized by the values of Communism
• Turkey has remade itself into a nation-state under Ataturk. Ataturk is intent on wiping out Muslim habits from Turkish public life.
• Mussolini the fascist in Italy "now the trains can run on time"
• Primo de Rivera in Spain is a military dictator. He is a national conservative top-down modernized. He hosts an international architecture exhibition to show off Spanish strength
• German modernist architecture exhibition
• Some Germans dream of a happier united Germany with all the factions (various political ideologies) united
• A new Republic of China
• Chicago in 1928-1930: Corporatism: businesses trying to take better care of laborers. The local government tries to juggle the claims of different ethnic groups

A world under reconstruction.

Vocabulary: watershed, vanguard, provisional