This week, we dealt with what social upheaval meant for politics in Europe at the time, specifically with the rise in success of the Socialist parties and more specifically with their role in Russia. The spectrum of political leanings in Russia was wide, but eventually it was the far left that won out. The discussion seemed to become less about whether to have a revolution but when and how, and it turned into Mensheviks versus Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks, with the future on their side, won the debate in both classes. The organizational skill and urgency of revolution that the Bolsheviks had, as well as fortuitous circumstances, made them able to push out the Mensheviks, even if their position might have made more sense, as Jonathan posits. I agree with David's comment about the Octobrists, that reform from within is much more stable than a complete overthrow. It resembles a benevolent dictatorship, yes, but there is less bloodshed. However, the loss of respect and love for the tsar made this approach difficult: Without the strong authority figure the Octobrists needed, the reforms would have been harder to push through. The further destabilization of the country during World War I opened the way for revolutionaries, not reformists.

p. 837-844

Ireland is a perfect case study of what I wrote about in an earlier post, the tug of war between reformers and radicals in trying to achieve common goals, here independent from Britain. The better organized militant groups were more appealing because they promised immediate action. They proposed fighting the battle on their own terms, a nationalistic point of view that many believed could accomplish what they wanted without compromise. The slow pace legislative reform did not endear it to angry people who were suffering under British occupation. Radicalism promised speed and a movement that was truly Irish, directed by Irish people towards Irish goals. They would not have to work through another country's legal processes, waiting on Britain to bestow something that they saw as a right. The militant nature of groups such as Sinn Fein, however, only served to frighten the British more as the two countries struggled to come to a deal about home rule. By combining militancy and politics, this party had strong support in Ireland itself for presenting a forceful front , but made outsiders wary and made the British even more unwilling to negotiate. But if the reformers had won out, would the war in Ireland have continued for as long and bloodily as it did? The British may have been able to hammer out a deal with reformers that they saw had similar values, and Ireland would have been able to break away as a country in its own right while still maintaining a powerful ally.

p. 823-837

The problem with socialism seems to have been that despite a shared focus on the situations of working-class people, there was too wide variety of perspectives for the movement to coalesce into anything other than a fractured minority. Early socialist political strength lay in national mass demonstrations and strong shows of solidarity that could challenge the industrialists' hold over politics. Later socialists became Marxists, arguing for revolution and democracy, but not necessarily through an already established legal system. More radical still, the Anarchists supported workers' rights, but believed in a completely different method of going about provoking a revolution, using violence and deliberate contempt for state institutions. By presenting so many conflicting ideas of how to proceed, the previous exuberance that had carried socialist parties to success dwindled, especially as it became clear that the workers' loyalties themselves were divided. The extreme spectrum of views that socialism encompassed allowed for radicals and reformers to operate within the same party, meaning that there was bitter disagreement over strategy that hindered the movement's effectiveness and ability to present a united front that would be respected nationally.

In class this week, we've mostly been looking at the whys and hows of imperialism, but also justification. That European governments would see their mission as a civilizing one and still treat native Africans as brutally as they did shocks us: how could they be so hypocritical? Nate's post on cognitive dissonance brings this up as well. Though it seems that imperialism was not universally supported at home, it was supported enough for the governments to continue. Imperialists lived with conflicting world views, driven by nationalistic and moralistic superiority, which Jonathan mentions as well. This gave the colonizers separation from their actions; they could do things "for the greater good," perhaps, because they felt themselves to be so unlike the ones they subjugated.

Also, I look forward to reading Leigh's next post on pan-Africanism and its origins in Ethiopia.

p. 806-816

Our book states that "Joseph Conrad in his Heart of Darkness publicized the arbitrary brutality and the vast scale of suffering," regarding the Belgian Congo specifically (810). But his novel is general and could be applied to imperialism everywhere. I start to wonder, what made the lot of the Congo so radically different from that of all the other European colonies? Wars were fought over colonies and control was taken with no regard for the native populations: farmlands were destroyed and the slave trade was "abolished," only to be replaced by a system of labor that was just as bad. The Congo was a perfect example of imperialism gone wrong, the extreme of brutality, but what is imperialism gone according to plan? To solidify your holdings abroad, you cannot let the territory have its own functioning government, which means that the government you set up or the control, economically or directly, you maintain will only be incidentally in those people's best interests. The goal of imperialism, while ostensibly seems to be "civilizing," cannot be other than the desire to strengthen one's own country and culture by spreading it. The rivalry between the European states drove the "scramble for Africa," and the subjugation of the people was the priority, not proper treatment.

p. 793-806

The sheer size of the 19th century British Empire and the lengths the British were willing to go to solidify their hold on territories is astonishing. To protect their economic interests, they went to war with whomever they pleased, and often won. The opium trade is a significant example, as it was manipulated to reinforce British interests in two separate countries with two different relationships with Great Britain: India was directly colonized, while China suffered from it indirectly. By bringing three countries together, Britain strengthened their empire by creating a dependency on what became a British product. Their monopoly showed a British talent for systematic industrialization, as northeast India was converted into a opium-producing machine where thousands were employed either growing poppy or curing and rolling the opium. Britain's empire essentially was built on drug money; the book states that "opium provided British India with more revenues than any other source except taxes on land" (799). Opium sustained the East India Company and British control in India, but it also closely tied it to China in a way other countries could only envy. The power of opium was, of course, in its addictive qualities; nothing creates an economic bond quite like something people can't get enough of, and the British knew this. It provided an entrance into China that no one else had, a connection with a market that the Chinese government could do little to stifle, so the British had a more direct route to the Chinese customers, rather than an official trade agreement. An addictive product and a market open to smuggling were a winning combination for British revenue.

This week we continued our discussion of nationalism, this time with expansionism and the balance of power thrown in. Bismarck had manipulated all three to his advantage: he expanded the Prussian empire by using nationalism to deflect suspicion that he was upsetting the balance of power by unifying Germany. The Crimean War was also a particularly good example of how the two clashed. We looked at the balance of power between nation states, but especially in the case of Russia, a balance was also needed to maintain internal peace. Russia had to let off this internal pressure by putting the focus on outward expansion. As we see in the Crimean War, this internal balance of power set off fears about the external balance of power in France and Britain; Russia learned the importance of the external balance of power at a high cost. This forced them towards a third balancing act, that of the internal versus the external. They recognized that they could not expand with impunity and attempted to compensate with rapid internal industrialization, something that probably eventually increased internal pressure instead of relieving it.