La Belle Epoque - gaudette-apeuro.com · Social Structure • Increased standard of living across...
Transcript of La Belle Epoque - gaudette-apeuro.com · Social Structure • Increased standard of living across...
• Materialism – Inner Zone = Britain, France, Belgium,
Germany, N. Italy & W. Austria – Outer Zone = Ireland, Iberian Peninsula,
Most of Italy & Central and Eastern Europe
• Demographic Change – Urbanization – Population Explosion – Migration
• 1850-1940 = 60 million people leave Europe
• Economic Changes – Industrialization creates corporate
society – Free Trade & Globalization
• Advance of democracy – Expanded voting rights – Birth of the “welfare state”
• New Developments in Science, Philosophy
Social Structure • Increased standard of living across the
board • Upper Middle Class
– Banking; industry; large-scale commerce • Middle Class
– Industrialists; merchants; doctors; lawyers • Lower Middle Class
– Shopkeepers; small traders; clerks • Lower Class (80% of population)
– Highly skilled= foremen; skilled machinests – Semi-skilled = craftspeople – Low skilled = day laborers; domestic servants
Social Structure • Increased Life
Expectancy • Public Health
Initiatives – Sanitation; Pollution
control • Germ Theory &
Antiseptics • Infant mortality
decreases
Social Structure Marriage and Family • Love triumphs over all • Fewer children
– Children viewed as objects of affection – Lower class children
less dependent on their parents than middle class
– Illegitimacy decreases • Economic concerns
– Men marry later • Increased prostitution
Social Structure Cult of Domesticity • Sign of prosperity if your wife &
children could stay at home • Sexual double standard
– Adultery was grounds for divorce for men but not for women
• Women began organizing
Science • The nineteenth century saw an explosive
growth in scientific studies and theory – Thermodynamics – Conservation of Energy – Atomic weight – Periodic Table (Dmitri Mendeleev) – Electrical energy – Quantum Physics – Theory of Relativity
• Union of careful experiment and abstract theory = only reliable route to truth
Science • Charles Darwin &
Natural Selection • On the Origin of
Species by the Means of Natural Selection (1859) – Built off the
evolutionary ideas of Jean Baptiste Lamarck
• “Newton of Biology” – Ideas reshape
European thought
Science
• Social Darwinism – Herbert Spencer =
human society progresses through competition
• Eugenics – Francis Galton
The “New” Sciences • Tried to apply the objective methods of
science to the study of society • Auguste Comte (Positivism)
– All intellectual activity progresses through predictable stages
– Applying scientific method to social study would reveal the eternal laws of human relations
• Sigmund Freud (Psychology) – Role of unconscious thoughts & motives – Interpretation of Dreams
• Anthropology; Archaeology
Philosophy • Agnosticism (Thomas Henry Huxley)
– We do not possess the requisite knowledge to either prove or disprove the existence of a deity
• Nihilism (Friedrich Nietzsche) – Emptying the world and human existence of
purpose, meaning and truth • God is dead. We killed him
– Ubermensche (super man) = “free spirit” the deconstruction of the values of society BY constructing your own values (active nihilism)
• Irrationalism – Instinct, feeling and free will over rationality – Reaction to the Age of Reason
Religion • Intellectual Skepticism
– Historiography = questions the historical legitimacy of Jesus & the Bible
• Political Manifesto?
– Science = questions the concept of Creation as outlined in the Bible
• Geology – the Earth is older than believed • Darwin – Evolution from primordial sludge
– Philosophy = questions the intolerant God presented in the Old Testament
Religion • Conflict Between Church and State • Syllabus of Errors (1864) = Catholic Church
officially disavows modern science, philosophy & politics
• Papal Infallibility (1869) = Pope can not be wrong on matters of morality or faith – Pius IX & First Vatican Council – Centralized Papal authority
• Rerum Novarum (1891) – Leo XIII – Condemns Socialism (but supports unions &
workers) – Promotes medieval social organization
Religion • Emancipation of the Jews (circa 1848)
– Varying degrees of equal citizenship in Western Europe
– Relaxation of discriminatory legislation • Rise of Anti-Semitism
– Economic stagnation of 1870’s blamed on Jews – Organized Anti-Semitism in France & Germany
by 1880’s – Pogroms in Eastern Europe
• Zionism (Theodor Herzl) – Reestablishment of a Jewish National State in
the lands of Palestine – Sponsored migration of European Jews to
Palestine to form settlements