Blood, Iron, and Brotherhood: The Making of Modern Europe

Europe in the nineteenth century was influenced by the developments in France. Klemens von Metternich, the Chancellor of Austria-Hungary, who formed a ‘Holy Alliance’ between the monarchies of Austria, Russia, Prussia and France to suppress democratic and nationalistic trends in Europe, famously said, “When France sneezes, Europe catches a cold.” France sneezed not once, but thrice in 1789, 1830 and 1848, when revolutions broke
out in France. The French Revolution of 1789 led to the emergence of the idea of liberalism expressed through its famous slogan, ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’. The revolutionary energies released and ideals fostered during the Era of Revolution were destroyed by Napoleon Bonaparte. For some years, Napoleon’s reign was a career of victory.

However, as he never won the command of the sea from the British, his fleets suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the British in 1805. Spain rose against Napoleon in 1808, and then a British army under Wellington
pushed the French armies out of the peninsula. In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with a great army of 600,000 men, but the French armies were beaten back. Napoleon abdicated (1814) and was exiled to Elba, but returned to France for one last effort to seize power in 1815. He was defeated by the allied forces of the British, Belgians and Prussians at Waterloo in Belgium. He was finally exiled to the remote island of St. Helena
in the West Atlantic until his death in 1821.

After the fall of Napoleon, an unstable peace lasted for nearly forty years. Two factors prepared the way for
the outbreak of wars between 1854 and 1871. The first one was the restoration of the monarchy and the unfair privileges abolished during the Revolution. On regaining their former position, forgetting past lessons,
the rulers almost immediately aimed at absolute power once more. The second was the unworkable system of boundaries drawn by the diplomats at the Congress of Vienna (1815), disregarding the principle of nationality.

The reactionary monarchical forces under the leadership of Metternich had begun to function despotically through the Concert of Europe. There was repression of the liberation movements. Popular revolts in Naples (1820) and Spain (1822) were suppressed with the aid of foreign troops, Austrian in the case of the former
and French in the latter case. There was little liberty in any European country. In spite of this, the American and the French Revolutions had made the ideas of democracy and political liberty known and appreciated by liberal thinkers. Progressive thinkers and liberals believed in the virtues of democracy and tried hard to achieve them. But democracy offered no solution to issues of poverty or class conflict. Europe in the nineteenth century was ‘a strange mixture of capitalism and imperialism and nationalism and internationalism and wealth
and poverty’.

The Industrial Revolution ended the domestic system of industry and necessitated that the workmen live near the factories. Long rows of tenement houses were built for their accommodation. Wages were abominably low.
Hours of labour were as high as fifteen or even eighteen a day. Women and children were employed in large numbers. The factories were owned by a small class of capitalists, whose main object was unbridled profit. The working classes were initially unorganised and therefore wholly at the mercy of their employers. Many, however, soon began to feel that without organisation and unity, no permanent improvement was possible.
So they strove to establish trade unions.

When trade unions arose, the government first declared these unions illegal. Many of the frontline leaders, as we have seen in the previous lesson, were imprisoned or banished. In 1824, however, labour unions were legalised. With the rise of trade unions, an alternate system to capitalism was conceived, and socialism was used as a
plank by many to attack the state and defend the interests of the working class. The working class organising into the Chartist Movement in England and later posing a serious challenge, as the Paris Commune did in France, to the capitalist order, and the unscrupulous measures adopted by the capitalists in connivance with the capitalist state to crush labour struggles are highlighted in this lesson.

Under Napoleon, Italy had been reduced to three political divisions. This step towards unity was destroyed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Eight states were set up, and the whole of Northern Italy was handed over to the German-speaking Austrians. Germany was organised into a confederation of thirty-eight states, governed by a Diet presided over by Austria. But the cause of nationality was not lost either in Italy or Germany. Both Italy and Germany unified and emerged as nation-states.

Rise of Socialist Ideas and Birth of Communism

Socialist ideas in
the modern sense came
to be articulated by
the Physiocrats or the
economists who were
making enquiries into
the production and
distribution of food and
goods. Étienne-Gabriel
Morally, the Utopian
thinker, in his Code de la Nature (1755),
denounced the institution of private property
and proposed a communistic organisation of
society. He was the precursor of various schools
of collectivist thinkers in the nineteenth century
who are categorised as Socialists. Francois
Babeuf, a political agitator of the French
Revolutionary period, felt that the Revolution in
France did not address the needs of the peasants
and workers, and argued in favour of abolition
of private property and for common ownership
of land.

Utopian Socialism

The earliest socialists in Europe were
not revolutionaries. They proposed idealistic
schemes for cooperative societies, in which
all would work at their assigned tasks and
share the outcome of their common efforts.
The term “Utopian Socialism” was first used
by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to describe
the ideas articulated by the socialists before
them. Utopian Socialists recommended the
establishment of model communities, where
the means of production would be collectively
owned. They promoted a visionary idea of
a socialistic society, devoid of poverty or
unemployment. Their influence led to the
establishment of several hundred model
communes (communities) in Europe and
USA. Claude-Henri Saint-Simon, Francois-
Marie-Charles Fourier and Robert Owen were
some of the prominent Utopian Socialists.

Claude Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825)

Fourier was
an early Utopian
Socialist. He believed
that social conditions
were the primary cause
of human misery.
Social and economic
inequality could be
overcome if everybody
had the basic minimum. Fourier believed in
the goodness of human nature and rejected
the dogma of “original sin”. He saw harmony
as the law of the cosmos and held that what
is true for nature must be true for society. He
envisaged a harmonious self-contained cooperative
society called phalansteres. It was
a community where there would be equal
distribution of profit and loss.

Robert Owen (1771–1858)

Among the factory owners of Manchester
there was a humanitarian by name Robert
Owen. Shocked by the condition of the factory
workers, he introduced many reforms in his
own factories and improved the condition of the workers. He did
not employ children
below the age of 10 in
his industries. Later
he criticised private
property and profit.
He began to advocate
the establishment
of new cooperative
communities that would combine industrial
and agricultural production. In his book A
New View of Society (1818), he advocated a
national education system, public works for
the unemployed and reform of the Poor Laws.
Thanks to his efforts, the British Parliament
passed the Factory Act of 1819. By the mid-
1820s Owen had developed a theory of
Utopian Socialism based on social equality
and cooperation. His other initiatives included
formation of the Grand National Consolidated
Trades Union (1834) and the Cooperative
Congresses (1831-1835).

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865)

Proudhon was a
French anarchist who
contributed significantly
to the development of
socialism. Unlike the
earlier Utopian socialists
who were drawn from
the middle class, he
belonged to the working
class. Drawing inspiration from the cooperative
communities, he and other anarchists were
opposed to the state and believed in revolution.
In his pamphlet titled “What is Property?” he
wrote that “All property is theft.” Proudhon
believed that labour should be the basis for social
organisation and that all systems of government were oppressive. He wanted to replace
nation-state with federations of autonomous
communes. In 1848-49, he was a member of the
National Assembly but was disillusioned by his
experience. His ideas became popular among
the working class of France by the middle of
the nineteenth century. In 1864, some of the
followers of Proudhon issued the Manifesto
of the Sixty. The manifesto declared that the
French Revolution of 1789 only brought about
political equality and not economic equality.
They wanted the working class to be represented
by themselves. In the 1863 elections, they
unsuccessfully sponsored three working class
candidates in the parliamentary elections of
France. His views, which influenced the Russian
anarchist thinker Michael Alexandrovich
Bakunin, sought to overthrow the state by a
general strike and replace it with democraticallyrun
cooperative groups.

Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc (1811-1882)

An influential
French socialist, Louis
Blanc, in 1839, started
the Revue du Progres,
a journal of advanced
social thought. His
most important
essay “Organisation
of Labour” serially
appeared in 1839. In his writings, he proposed a
scheme of state-financed but worker-controlled
“social workshops” that would guarantee work
for everyone and lead gradually to a socialist
society. Louis Blanc argued that socialism
cannot be achieved without state power. In 1848,
he became a member of the French provisional
government and was able to influence it to set
up workshops for the unemployed and provide
employment to all who needed it.

Karl Marx and Scientific Socialism

Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich
Engels (1820–1895) made the most profound
contribution to socialism. Eventually their ideas
came to be known as Marxism or Communism.
They called their views on socialism as scientific
socialism. On the eve of the 1848 Revolution,
Marx and Engels published The Communist
Manifesto. The most famous rallying cry in this
famous work is: “Workers of the world, unite!
You have nothing to lose but your chains.”
Marx believed that in just the same way
as capitalism replaced feudalism, so socialism
would eventually replace capitalism. Marx built
his theory on a belief that there is a conflict
of interests in the social order between the
prosperous employing classes of people and the
employed mass. With the advance in education,
this great employed mass will become more
and more class-conscious and more and more
firm in their antagonism to the class-conscious
ruling minority. In some way the class-conscious
workers would seize power, he prophesied, and
inaugurate a new social state.
In 1867 Marx published the first volume
of Das Kapital, a critique of capitalism. In this
work, he highlighted the exploitation of the
proletariat (the working class) by the bourgeoisie
(the capitalist class).
The International Working Men’s
Association, founded in 1864, was influenced
by his ideas. Its purpose was to form an
international working class alliance. Marx
worked hard to exclude the moderates from the
International and denounced other socialists
such as Ferdinand Lassalle and Bakunin. Despite
his efforts to consolidate the International it
declined by 1876. However, many socialist parties emerged in Europe: the German Social
Democratic Party in 1875, the Belgian Socialist
Party in 1879, the Paris Commune, 1871 and the
establishment of a socialist party in 1905. The
Second International was founded in Paris in
1889 which influenced the socialist movement
till the outbreak of the First World War.

Chartism in England

In England the working class lined up
behind the Chartist movement. The Chartist
movement was not a riot or revolt. It was an
organised movement. The impact of 1830
French Revolution in England was the outbreak
of militant labour agitation. Different streams of
agitation converged to give rise to the Chartist
movement. The chartists propagated their ideas
through newspapers such as The Poor Man’s
Guardian, The Charter, The Northern Star and
The Chartist Circular. Its principal paper, the
Northern Star, founded in 1837, soon equalled
the circulation of the Times. Articles published
in the Northern Star were read out for the
illiterates in workshops and pubs in every
industrial area.
Hundreds of
thousands of workers
attended mass meetings
held during 1838–39.
The People’s Charter,
prepared by William
Lovett of the London
Working Men’s
Association, detailing the six key points that the Chartists believed
were necessary to reform the electoral system,
was presented and deliberated in these meetings.
The six key points were:

Annual parliaments.
Panicked by rumours that there would be a
popular uprising, the government sent the army
to the industrial areas. In 1842 the workers
struck work in Lancashire and marched from
factory to factory stopping the work, and
extending and intensifying their action. In 1848,
in the wake of a wave of revolutions that swept
Europe, subsequent to the February Revolution
of that year in France, masses of workers
prepared again for confrontation. The state
stood firm with the backing of the lower middle
class. The Chartist leaders also vacillated, when
the 50,000 strong crowd at Kennington, south
London, began to melt away. In the meantime
the government arrested most of them and
turned half of London into an armed camp.
Chartism comprised a mixture of different
groups holding different ideas. Its leaders were
divided between those who believed in winning
over the existing rulers, and those who believed
in overthrowing them. Though Chartism was
not successful, its main demands, which were
not conceded in the 1832 Reform Act, were
later incorporated in the Parliamentary Reform
Acts of 1867 and 1884.

Universal suffrage.

Voting by ballot, to prevent intimidation.

No property qualification for candidates.

Payment of members elected to the House of
Commons, as it would enable the poor people
to contend for office and contest elections.

Equal electoral districts and equal
representation.

July Revolution (1830)

On 26 July 1830, the Bourbon king Charles
X issued four ordinances dissolving the Chamber
of Deputies, suspending freedom of the press,
modifying the electoral laws so that three-fourths
of the electorate lost their votes, and calling for new elections to the Chamber.
In protest, the Parisian
masses took to the streets
for the first time since

The royal forces
were unable to contain
the insurrection. Charles
X was advised to go into
exile and put in his place,
a relative, Louis Philip of Orleans who had the
backing of the middle class. The tactics worked in
France. But in other parts of Europe there arose a
number of risings. The revolution was successful in
the Netherlands, where Belgium was separated to
form an independent state. The Greeks, who had
been fighting for independence from Turkish rule,
attained independence in 1832, with the support of
the Great Powers. But the revolt of Poles against the
Russian Tsar was suppressed.

February Revolution (1848)

The French King, Louis Philippe, had
to abdicate and flee the country in February,
Louis Philippe
1848, when there was a
spontaneous rising in
Paris. Crowds chanting
“Vive de la reforme,” an
expression in French
to show patriotism,
stormed into the lines
of troops and swarmed
through the palaces and
the assembly buildings. The opposition rallied
behind the French revolutionary poet Lamartine.
Louis Blanc also joined. In the elections held in
April 1848, on the basis of universal manhood
suffrage, the moderates were elected in large
numbers. Only a few socialists were elected. The
newly elected Assembly decided to shut down the
workshops that had been started at the initiative
of Louis Blanc, as the workshops were seen as a
threat to social order. The workers retaliated and
braved the government repression. Between June
24 and 26, thousands of people were killed and
eleven thousand revolutionaries were imprisoned
or deported. The period came to be known as
the bloody June days. The Constituent Assembly
drafted a new constitution based on which
elections were held. Louis Napoleon, the nephew
of Napoleon Bonaparte, was elected President in
December 1848. Before long, in January 1852,
he crowned himself as the Emperor by holding
a plebiscite. He assumed the title Napoleon III.
The year 1848 was one of the distinct
triumphs for nationalism. Metternich, the
arbiter of Europe and enemy of nationality, was
forced to leave Vienna in disguise. Hungary and
Bohemia both claimed national independence.
Milan expelled the Austrians. Venice became
an independent republic. Charles Albert,
King of Sardinia, declared war against Austria.
Absolutism seemed dead for a while. But it
was not to be. By the summer, the monarchs
had begun their attacks on the revolutionaries
and succeeded in crushing the democratic
movements in important centres like Berlin,
Vienna and Milan. In the space of a year
counter-revolution was victorious throughout
the continent.

Nationalism in southern and eastern Europe

In Europe the countries that first achieved
national unity were France, Spain and England.
Italy which had made rich contributions to art
and letters was not part of this political change.
Cities in Italy like Rome, Florence, Venice,
Naples and Milan were the capitals of small
states. Hence she became the prey of powerful
kingdoms. Besides, the age of Renaissance
was an age of intellectual liberty and certainly
not an age of political liberty. The petty states
of Italy, though enlightened in many ways,
were mostly governed by tyrants, such as the
Medici in Florence, the cruel Visconti in Milan
and Caesar Borgia in central Italy. What was
true of Italy was true of Germany. The Holy
Roman Empire was an empire only in name.
In practice, Germany contained three of four
hundred separate States. It was their kings who
saved these countries from feudal anarchy and made them into nations. Conditions suitable for
the rise of Italy and Germany as nation states
developed only in the nineteenth century with
the spread of nationalism.

Unification of Italy

Italy before Napoleon’s
time was a patchwork of
little states and petty princes.
Under Napoleon Italy had
been reduced to three
political divisions. This step
towards unity was destroyed
by the Congress of Vienna. Eight states were set
up and the whole of Northern Italy was handed
over to the German-speaking Austrians. Italy
in the nineteenth century was a ‘patchwork
of about a dozen large states and a number of
smaller ones.’ Metternich described Italy as “a
mere geographical expression.” The empire of
Piedmont-Sardinia, in the northwest, bordering France, played a central role in unifying Italy.
To its east Lombardy and Venetia were under
the control of the Austrian Empire. It also
controlled a few smaller states such as Tuscany,
Parma and Modena. The Papal States were
located in the middle under the control of the
Roman Catholic Church. In the south was the
Kingdom of the two Sicilies or Naples and Sicily
was under the control of a family of Bourbon
dynasty.
The Napoleonic rule, for the first time,
provided Italy with a sense of unity through
uniform administration. The nationalistic
aspirations of the Italians were dashed when the
Congress of Vienna restored the old monarchies
in the various Italian principalities. The 1820s
witnessed the mushrooming of several secret
societies such as the Carbonari, advocating
liberal and patriotic ideas. They kept alive the
ideas of liberalism and nationalism. Revolts
broke out in Naples, Piedmont and Lombardy.
However, they were crushed by Austria.
In the wake of the 1830 Revolution in
France, similar rebellions broke out in Modena,
Parma and Papal States which were again
crushed by Austria. In 1848, following the
February Revolution in France, the people
again rose in revolt in several Italian states
including Piedmont-Sardinia, Sicily, Papal
States, Milan and Lombardy and Venetia. As
a result liberal constitutions were granted in
Sicily, Piedmont Sardinia and the Papal States.
King Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia,
under the influence of the Revolution, invaded
Lombardy and Venetia. However, the Austrians
defeated him with the help of Russian troops.
Charles Albert saved Piedmont-Sardinia from
Austrian occupation by taking the blame upon
himself for the war and abdicated in favour
of his son Victor Emmanuel II. However,
despite the defeat of Pidemont-Sardinia and
the suppression of revolution in various Italian
principalities, liberal and nationalistic ideas
survived.
Mazzini, Count Camillo di Cavour, and
Giuseppe Garibaldi were the three central
figures of the unification of Italy. Cavour was considered the brain, Mazzini the soul and
Garibaldi the sword-arm of Italian Unification.

Mazzini (1805–1872)

Giuseppe Mazzini
laid the foundations of
the Italian unification.
Born in Genoa in a
well-to-do family,
he graduated in law.
Attracted to politics
at a young age, he
advocated the freedom
of the Italian nation. He involved himself in the
insurrectionary activities of the Carbonari for
which he was arrested. He soon gave up the idea
of secret plotting and began to believe in open
propaganda against monarchy. He believed that
Italy was a great civilisation that could provide
leadership to the rest of the world. He started
the Young Italy movement in 1831 with the
aim of an Italian Republic. Exiled for working
for the cause of unification of Italy in 1848,
when revolts were breaking out all over North
Italy, Mazzini returned to Rome. The Pope was
driven away and a republic declared under a
committee of three, of which Mazzini was a
member. But with the failure of 1848 Revolution
and the restoration of Rome to Pope with the
support of the French, Mazzini carried on his
work by propaganda and preparing for the next
programme of action.

Count Cavour (1810–1861)

Count Cavour was
one of those inspired
by the idea of Italian
nationalism. In 1847
he started a newspaper.
The Italian unification
movement came to be
known after the name
of the newspaper as
Il Risorgimento. The
Risorgimento (the resurrection of Italian spirit)
was an ideological and literary movement that
helped to arouse the national consciousness of the Italian people. Cavour rose to become
the Prime Minister of Sardinia and played a
crucial role in the unification of Italy. He used
a combination of diplomacy and war to achieve
the unification under the leadership of Sardinia.
Cavour realised that Italian unification could
not be achieved without international support.
He needed the support of other Great powers
to expel Austria from Lombardy and Venetia.
Therefore, he involved Piedmont-Sardinia
in the Crimean War to draw international
attention and get the support of England and
France. In July 1858, he struck an agreement
with Napoleon III of France who offered to
support Piedmont-Sardinia in its conflict with
Austria.

War with Austria, 1859

Cavour then provoked war with Austria
by mobilising troops near the Austrian border.
When Austria issued an ultimatum to disband
the troops he allowed it to expire. As a result
Austria attacked Piedmont-Sardinia in April

The combined armies of Piedmont-
Sardinia and France defeated the Austrian
armies. They won a major victory at the Battle
of Solferino. Instead of continuing the war,
Napoleon III of France concluded a peace
agreement with the Austrian Emperor Francis
Joseph II at Villa Franca on 11 July 1859.
Cavour was disappointed at French withdrawal
and resigned. In November 1859, Piedmont-
Sardinia and Austria concluded the Treaty of
Zurich. Austria ceded Lombardy but retained
control over Venetia.
Cavour was reappointed as Prime Minister
in 1860. Parma, Modena and Tuscany were
merged with the Kingdom of Piedmont-
Sardinia through plebiscites. Similarly, Savoy
and Nice were annexed to France on the basis
of plebiscites.

Garibaldi and the Conquest of Southern Italy

Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882) played a
key role in the unification of Italy by waging
guerilla warfare. He joined Mazzini’s Young
Italy and was influenced by his ideas.
Garibaldi
Participating in Mazzini’s
rebellion in Piedmont,
he then fled to South
America as an exile. He
took up the cause of
revolutionaries there and
fought for the cause of
Rio Grande and Uruguay
against Argentinian occupation. Therefore, he
was called the ‘Hero of Two Worlds’. In 1843, he
started the Italian Legion. This force of
volunteers came to be known as the Red Shirts.
Garibaldi accepted the invitation of the
people of Sicily in their revolt against their
monarch. He left the port of Genoa with 1000
volunteers to Sicily. Landing unnoticed on the
coast of Sicily he and his volunteers defeated
the 20000 strong Neapolitan (Naples) troops
without any loss of life. He then crossed into
Naples and defeated the royal troops with the
help of the locals. However, Cavour, suspicious
of Garibaldi’s triumphant march, sent the
Piedmontese force to stop him from invading
Rome. Garibaldi submitted his conquest to
King Victor Emmanuel II and retreated to lead
the rest of his life in his home at the island of
Caprera.
Plebiscites held in Sicily, Naples and Papal
States led to their merger with Piedmont-
Sardinia. At the end of the war, Austria retained
control over Venetia and Pope held Rome.
The rest of Italy was unified under Piedmont.
In May 1861, King Victor Emmanuel II was
proclaimed by the Parliament as the ruler of
Italy. During the Austro-Prussian War in 1866,
Italy had allied itself
with Prussia and was
rewarded with Venetia.
In 1871, Italy took
advantage of the Franco-
Prussian War to annex
Rome as the French
forces withdrew. Thus,
the Italian Unification
was completed.

Unification of Germany

In spite of a common
language and many
other common features
the German people
continued to be split
up into a large number
of States. Intellectuals
such as Johann von
Herder (1744–1803) and
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) promoted the
idea of German nation by glorifying its past.
Herder believed that civilisation was a product
of the culture of the common people, the
Volk (folk) and promoted the idea of a unique
German spirit, the Volkgeist. J.G. Fichte (1762–
1814) delivered a series of Addresses to the
German Nation. He claimed the German spirit
was not just one among the many spirits but was
superior to the rest. This inspired and promoted
the idea of nationalism among the Germans.
Before Napoleon Germany consisted
of about 360 principalities. Napoleon
unconsciously gave an impetus to the spirit
of nationalism by forming a Confederation of
the Rhine. For the first time, it gave a sense of
unity to Germany. However, the Congress of
Vienna, which transformed it into the German
Confederation consisting of 39 states, placed it
under the control of Austria.
At the time of Fichte’s addresses Austria was
occupying the territories of Prussia, the largest
and the most powerful of the Confederation of
German States. It kindled in Prussia the spirit to
achieve its past glory. It rebuilt and strengthened
its army. Recruitment was based on merit and
not on old aristocratic standing. The zeal for
liberalism and modernisation combined with
nationalism in Prussia.
In 1834, Prussia was successful in
establishing the Zollverein (customs union). By
the 1840s it included most of the Germanic
states except those under the control of Austria
and provided economic unity to the Germanic
states. In 1848, popular pressure led to the
introduction of an elected legislative assembly.

In the same year the Frankfurt Assembly was
convened. Most of the elected members were
liberals who believed that a liberal national-
German state could be created. They were
divided on the question of what constituted the
German nation. The delegates who demanded
‘Great Germany’ believed that the German
nation should include as many Germans as
possible including Austria except Hungary and
the crown should be offered to the Austrian
Emperor. Some delegates put forward the idea
of ‘Little Germany’ which argued that Austria
should be excluded from the German nation
and the crown be offered to King of Prussia.
Eventually Austria withdrew from the
Assembly. A constitution was framed by the
Assembly and the Little Germans offered the
constitutional monarchy to King Frederick
William of Prussia. However, the latter declined
it as he did not want to accept the revolutionary
notion of the Assembly offering the crown
to him.
Otto von Bismarck,
Chancellor Prussia,
transformed it into a
powerful state with the
objective of uniting
the Germanic states
under its leadership.
He adopted a ‘blood
and iron’ policy to
achieve the unification. He realised that the
unification of Germany was not possible
without an armed conflict with Austria and
France. He sparked conflict with Austria and
France through diplomatic moves. Bismarck
opened negotiations with Russia and ensured
Russian neutrality in the event of a conflict
between Prussia and Austria. Bismarck had to
fight three wars to achieve the unification of
Germany.

Schleswig–Holstein Question

Schleswig and Holstein were Germanic
States under the control of Denmark. In 1863,
the King of Denmark merged these two duchies
into his kingdom. Bismarck proposed to Austria
a joint action against Denmark. In 1864, the joint
forces of Prussia and Austria defeated Denmark.
By the Treaty of Vienna, Denmark surrendered
the duchies to Prussia and Austria. Differences
arose on the fate of the Schleswig and Holstein.
While Austria wanted them to be made part of
the German Confederation, Bismarck wanted to
administer them separately. By the Convention
of Gastein in 1865 it was agreed that Holstein
would be under the control of Austria and
Schleswig under the control of Prussia. Holstein
had a large German population and was located
within Prussian territory making it difficult for
Austria to administer it. When Austria decided
to refer the matter to the Diet of the German
Confederation, it violated the Convention of
Gastein. Bismarck ordered the Prussian troops
to occupy Holstein.

Austro–Prussian War of 1866

Austro–Prussian War
By his diplomacy Bismarck had ensured
the neutrality of Russia and France. He also got
the support of Piedmont-Sardinia which wanted
to drive Austria out of Venetia. Thus ensuring
that Austria would not receive support from
any major power, he forced Austria to attack
Prussia. The Austro-Prussian war is also known
as the Seven Weeks’ War. Prussia defeated
Austria at the Battle of Sadowa or Konnniggratz
in Bohemia. While the Prussian army wanted
to march into Austria and capture Vienna,
Bismarck opposed it. The war was brought to an
end by the Treaty of Prague. Austria withdrew
from the German confederation. The northern
states were formed into a North German
Confederation under Prussia. Though defeated,
Italy was rewarded with Venetia for its support
to Prussia. The North German Confederation
consisted of 22 states north of river Maine. A
new constitution came into effect on 1 July 1867.
Bismarck followed a friendly policy towards the
southern states in an attempt to win them over.

Franco–Prussian War of 1870–71

Franco–Prussian War
Bismarck next turned his attention to
create a rift between Prussia and France to unite
the southern German states. The opportunity
came over the issue of succession to the Spanish
throne. After a revolution in Spain which drove
Queen Isabella out of the country, the throne was
offered to Prince Leopold, a relative of the King
of Prussia. France was agitated over the issue. A
threat of war was averted when Prince Leopold
declined the offer. Bismarck was disappointed.
However, a new opportunity arose when
Gramont, the French Foreign Minister met
the King of Prussia in Ems. He demanded that
Prussia promise that it would not claim the
throne of Spain in the future. The Prussian
King sent a telegram about the discussion to
Bismarck. He edited it in such a manner that
the French thought their ambassador had been
insulted while the Prussians thought that their
king had been humiliated. The Ems telegram
triggered the Franco-Prussian War.

France declared
war on Prussia. In
the Battle of Sedan
( 2 S e p t e m b e r
1870) France was
defeated. French
King Napoleon III
surrendered. Bismarck
however continued his
march to Paris and captured it. The war was
brought to an end by the Treaty of Frankfurt
in 1871. Bismarck imposed harsh terms on
France. France ceded Alsace-Lorraine and
agreed to pay a huge war indemnity. At the
Versailles Palace, King William I of Prussia
was declared the Emperor of Germany
which combined both the North German
Confederation and the southern states. Thus,
the Unification of Germany was achieved by a
combination of diplomacy and warfare.

The Founding of the Third Republic in France

After the Battle of Sedan Napoleon III
was taken prisoner, and later his government
was overthrown by a group of republicans in
Paris. A provisional government was set up
to rule the country until a new constitution
could be drafted. Elections were held in
February 1871 for a National Constituent
Assembly. A majority of the members were
monarchists. It is not that the French people
preferred a monarchy, but rather that they
longed for peace. The monarchists were
hopelessly divided and hence for almost
four years a definite decision as to the form
of government could not be taken. Finally,
in January 1875, the National Assembly
decided on a republican form of government.
This signaled the establishment of the Third
Republic in France.

Paris Commune, 1871

In its bid to exact huge financial payment
and to possess French Alsace and Lorraine
to Prussia, the Prussian army besieged Paris.
Paris held out through five months of siege in
conditions of incredible hardship with people
starving and without fuel to warm their homes
in winter. Workers, artisans and their families
bore the full brunt of the suffering as prices
soared. The Parisians grew bitter when bigger
numbers of monarchists were returned to the
National Assembly. Then came the betrayal
of the republic – the appointment of 71-yearold
Thiers. Paris was once again armed. As the
regular army had been disbanded under the
terms of agreement with Prussia, the Parisian
masses kept their arms. Along with National
Guards, now overwhelmingly a working class
body, they surrounded the soldiers. One of the
generals, Lecomte, gave orders to shoot at the
crowd three times. But the soldiers stood still.
The crowd fraternised with the soldiers and
arrested Lecomte and his officers. That day
Thiers and his government fled the capital. One
of the world’s great cities was in the hands of
armed workers.

The Commune set about implementing
measures in their interests – banning night work
in bakeries and handing over to associations of
workers any workshops or factories shut down
by their owners, providing pensions for widows
and free education for every child, and stopping
the collection of debts incurred during the siege.
In the meantime, the republican government
was organising armed forces to suppress
the commune. It succeeded in persuading
Bismarck to release French prisoners of war.
It gathered them in Versailles, together with
new recruits from the countryside. Both the
Central Committee of the National Guard and
the Commune were composed of Blanquists
and Proudhanists. Marx could not influence
events in Paris. Soon the defeat of Commune
was achieved by Thiers. Thereafter there was
an orgy of violence. Anyone who had fought
for the Commune was summarily shot. Troops
patrolled the streets picking up poorer people
at will and condemning them death. It is
estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 were
killed. Of the 40,000 communards (members
of the commune) arrested, 5000 of them were
sentenced to be deported and another 5,000 to
imprisonment.
Karl Marx had this to say on the Commune:
“It represented the greatest challenge the new
world of capital had yet faced and the greatest
inspiration to the new class created by capital in
opposition to it.”

The Long Depression (1873–1896)

The world witnessed an unprecedented
economic boom during 1865–1873. The
unification led to a phenomenal boom in
Germany between 1870 and 1873. During this
period 857 new companies were established.
It was unparalleled in the history of Germany.
The railway system almost doubled in size
between 1865 and 1875. Tens of thousands of
Germans invested in stock for the first time to
demonstrate both their patriotism and their
faith in the future of the new German Empire.
After the end of Civil War, the United States
too underwent an economic transformation,
marked by the proliferation of big business
houses, and the massive development of
agriculture attended with the rise of national
labour unions. The period from the 1870s to
1900 in the USA came to be called the Gilded
Age. The rapid expansion of industrialisation
led to a real wage growth of 60% between
1860 and 1890. The average annual wage per
industrial worker (including men, women, and children) rose from $380 in 1880 to $564
in 1890. However, the Gilded Age was also an
era of abject poverty and inequality, as millions
of immigrants – many from impoverished
regions – poured into the United States. The
high concentration of wealth in a few hands was
becoming more visible.
Then came the Depression. It was signalled
by the collapse of the Vienna Stock Market in
May 1873. The Depression was world-wide and
lasted till 1896, and is referred to as the Long
Depression. It affected Europe and the US very
much. American railroads became bankrupt.
German shares fell by 60 percent. Agriculture
was most affected, as there was a fall in prices.
Many countries responded by imposing
protective tariffs to prevent competition.
Panic of 1873
The Gilded age was also an era of intense
mass mobilisation of working classes. Socialist
and labour movements emerged in many
countries as a mass phenomenon. When
industrial capitalism was at its peak in the US,
nearly 100,000 workers went on strike each year.
In 1892, for example, 1,298 strikes involving
some 164,000 workers took place across the
nation. Trade Unions, aiming at protecting
workers’ wages, hours of labour, and working
conditions, were on the rise.
Capitalists who could not reconcile to the
rise of trade unions launched a counter offensive.
The socialists suffered persecution.The strike
at the Carnegie Steel Company’s Homestead
Steel Works in 1892 culminated in a gun battle
between unionised workers and men hired
by the company to break the strike. The state
supported the company management and as a
result the steelworkers ultimately lost the strike.
The Pullman Strike of 1894, a national railroad
strike, involving the American Railway Union,
was smashed by armed police and Pinkerton
private detectives were hired by the employers
to shoot down strikers.
Pullman Strike
In Germany, the Socialist Democratic Party
(SDP) emerged as a popular party. However,
Bismarck introduced anti-socialist legislations
to check the growth of socialism. Despite this
support for the party grew. With the repeal of
the anti-socialist laws after 1890, socialist trade
unions were able to function openly. SDP’s share
of Reichstag seats increased from 3 percent in
1887 to 20 percent in 1903.
In Britain, in the 1880s, the famous Match
Girls Strike by the women and teenage girls
working in Bryant and May Match Factory ended
in the victory of strikers. There was also a dock
strike (1889) in the port of London. Cardinal
Manning intervened and mediated on behalf of the
strikers with the dock owners. But, in the 1890s, British employers, following the examples of their
counterparts in the US, also destroyed many of the
new unions through professional strike breakers,
starving people back to work, lockouts and the like.