THE SUICIDE OF EUROPE : 1914-1945

How was it possible that in thirty years, from 1914 to 1945, the mighty European Nation-States collapsed and disappeared from the World Front Stage? How could the insignificant States of the 15th century that in four centuries got to control the world, returned to insignificancy in such a short period. This is what we are going to analyze today from a very concrete perspective: to what extent this made clear the insufficiencies of the Nation-State model. 

We will start with apocalyptic conflict that was World War I. May be to this day the worst war in Human history, mainly because it was the first “total war”, meaning that every nation-state involved dedicated all resources, material and human, to exterminate the adversary. Al sustained by a deeply rooted xenophobic narrative nationally promoted that led in France, for instance, to the assassination of the Socialist leader Jean Jaurès (1859-31 July 1914) simply because he was a pacifist. 

 Before going further please listen to the song of the Belgian singer Jacques Brel (1929-1978) that bears the significant title of “Why they killed Jaurès” (Pour quoi ont-ils tué Jaurès?) released in 1977, in what was his last album, simply called “BREL”, before dying from cancer a few months later. 

After that you should see the Movie “Merry Christmas” (Joyeux Noël) of Christian Carion Released in 2005, and based on true events. And finally, as I guess you are developing a taste for reading, I would recommend you to read Pierre Lemaitre’s Novel “The Great Swindle” (Au revoir là haut) that enabled the author to receive in 2013 the most prestigious French Litterary price, the “Prix Goncourt.”

The suicide of the Great War led to the abrupt end of Liberalism and the return of authoritarian regimes, starting with Bolshevik Russia, and continuing with Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. Dreadful dictatorships brought by the aftermaths of the massive and absurd massacre that led the world to war again in 1939, leaving Europe in ruins. 

                                                                   Otto von Bismarck

 You would not understand the Russian Revolution, the Dictatorships of Mussolini of Hitler or the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) if you do not understand the social consequences of the expansion of big capitalism and the rising of “the Social question”. This is why a large part of the text of Teaching Guide 6 (pages 127-139) are dedicated  to this crucial aspect, including the “democratic solution” to the problem unexpectedly  invented by US President F.D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, that would lead to the Welfare State Model.  Something especially important considering the resurgence of inequalities worldwide, as a result of the Neoliberal policies started by the Western States in the 1980’s decade. In our today’s topic for discussion we will analyze if we are assisting today to a resurgence of the social question because of the overwhelming growing of inequality all over the Planet. 

F.D. Roosevelt (1933-1945)

  Please read carefully the chain of events triggered by the Russian revolution, that finally led to World War 2 (1939-1945) and to the Cold War (1948-1989). And consider if right now we are facing a resurgence of a New Cold war in which Western countries are increasingly facing Russia and China making the world really unstable. 

The most important idea you have to retain of Teaching Guide 6 is how the Nation-State model brought to the destruction of Europe in only three decades.

 

INSTRUCTIONS: First read the text included in your Materials (pages 124 to 161), before proceeding to answer the Concrete Questions, the Concepts and the General Questions. 

Concerning the Basic Chronology (pages 154-155) all 21 dates included are crucial.  

TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS: Are we facing a new “Social Question” today worldwide? 

Please consider the following aspects: 

1. Think about why the Liberal regimes of European Nation-States provoked the social question: the technological revolution, the demographic expansion, the growth of cities, and the changes in the European Social structure.  

2. Look at the emergence of the Socialist approach in its different stages: Romantic, Scientific, Revolutionary, Social democratic.

3. Analyze how conservatives (right wing) faced the Social question, starting with Bismarck’s Sozialpolitik, following with the reaction of the European oligarchies to the Soviet Revolution, and ending with the American New Deal, and its impact in Europe. 

4. Consider the essence of the Welfare State model. Why it appeared, its strengths and weaknesses. 

5. Figure out how could we face the problem that represents the rise of a huge mass of a class useless people –that is people who do not have a job, because the system does not need them- in the 21st century, resulting from the technological explosion and globalization.   

   

THE APOGEE OF EUROPEAN NATION-STATES

                                                                                 The Vienna Congress (1815)

19th century is the European century. In the first half the principle of the Nation-State through the Laissez-faire (liberal) regime extends all over Europe despite the resistance of the Absolutists sovereigns reunited in the Congress of Vienna and signatories of the Holy Alliance, and Metternich policy of counterrevolutionary military intervention.

                                                          Klemmens von Metternich (1773-1859)

 It is true that thanks to Metternich European sovereigns define a common policy to fight revolutions as the one started by Riego in Spain in 1820, that was followed by movements as the Decembrist Revolt in Russia. But the UK walks away from the Holy Alliance when the British decide to back the rebellion in Spanish America, and France with the 1830 revolution that brings the creation of the Belgian State and the crucial electoral reform of Lord Grey in 1832 that transform the nature of the English Parliamentary system.   

                                The 1830 French Revolution by Eugène Delacroix

The whole order established in the Congress of Vienna crumbles with the wave of revolutions of 1848 that brings liberal nationalism to Italy, Austria and Prussia. 

                                                                        The 1848 Revolution in Berlin

 The result is the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 and the German unification promoted by Bismarck, that thanks to the Prussian overwhelming victory over Napoleon III proclaim William I of Prussia as Kaiser of the Second Reich. Though the new German Empire, the North German Confederation headed by Prussia, is not a Parliamentary Regime as the Government is designated by the Kaiser and not by the Reichstag.

                                         Proclamation of the Second Reich in Versailles (January 18, 1871)

 It will be so until the foundation of the Weimar Republic in 1919. Imperial Russia would be the last bastion of autocracy, until the 1905 Revolution, provoked by the humiliating defeat of Tsarist Russia by Imperial Japan. Russia will have a sort of Liberal regime from 1906 to 1917.  

In the course of the 19th century all of European States have a constitution, a set of fundamental rights and a national narrative that consolidate the independence of every European State. The result of this rising nationalism is the amazing colonial expansion of these wealthy and powerful European Nation-States with the result of a growing tension that leads to the Armed Peace period and, finally to World War I.  

The most important idea you have to retain of Teaching Guide 5 is that a Europe of powerful states leads to war. An important lesson that proud European States will not learn until the end of World War II. 

INSTRUCTIONS: First read the text included in your Materials (pages 80 to 118), before proceeding to answer the Concrete Questions, the Concepts and the General Questions. 

Concerning the Basic Chronology (pages 119-121) the crucial dates are the following: 

1815, 1820-1823, 1830, 1832, 1848, 14 March 1861, 1862-1890 (Bismarck), 1868, 1870, 1871, 1904, 1905, 1906. 

TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS: Are the principles of the revolutionary liberalism still valid in our Western Democracies ? 

Please consider the following aspects: 

1. Think that the Liberal regime establishes severe limits to the government, through the Constitution, the Declaration of Fundamental Rights and the Parliamentary regime. Think of how everyone of these limits work. 

2. Look for the Concept of the “Rule of Law” (“Estado de derecho” in Spanish)

3. Do you think that the rule of law is really respected by Western governments? Provide some concrete examples. 

4. Do you think that there are questions that justify governmental authoritarianism?

5. “  Please explain what Churchill meant when he said that “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.”

   

                            Winston Churchill in 1941 by Yousuf Karsh

THE BIRTH OF THE NATION-STATE

"La Fête de la Fédération" (14 July 1790)

 The decadence of the Universal model was the direct consequence of the strengthening of the State, thanks to the nationalist narrative. We have already seen in Teaching guide 2 that during once kings turned into monarchs they could organize better their Realms creating administrative bodies that enabled them to collect taxes for paying the maintain a permanent army. They could impose a protectionist economic policy aiming at augmenting the wealth of the state by the way of increasing as much as possible the reserves of gold and silver. Something that could be reached by the way of establishing a favorable balance of trade, exporting more than importing and monopolizing as many trades as possible.  This economic policy was called “mercantilism”

Every monarch started competing with other monarchs in order to accumulate wealth and therefore power.  Part of the wealth was of course the result of having as many territories as possible and as many subjects that could pay taxes and join their armies. For this the kings developed step by step a “proto-national feeling.” 

Starting may be with Jeanne d’Arc (1412-1431) that helped his king Charles VII to get rid of the English soldiers that occupied a substantial part of French soil during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). Napoleon considered her the symbol of France. Beatified in 1909 ans canonized in 1920, Saint Joan of Arc became one of the patrons of France. 

Royal states during the absolutist period did not disdain to foment patriotic sentiments amongst their subjects during political and military conflicts. We cannot speak of proto-nationalism, as in Tudor England, Bourbon France and Habsburg Spain these feeling did not emanate from a loyal people who felt invested in, and identified with, their land and its institutions. In fact, according to Anderson (Lineages of Absolutist State, London: Verso, 2013) these “national passions” under absolutism, though they may have appeared to be significant, were in reality highly contingent and volatile, as power and political legitimacy were of a dynastic nature, constantly vulnerable to manipulation by grandees and sovereigns. (see pages 44 and 45 of your Materials).

Signing the Peace of Westphalia

But regardless of the abovementioned debate, it is quite clear that after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) the idea of a universal Christian Empire was replaced by an international order based on the struggle between different secular “national monarchies” that would struggle to impose their hegemony through successive wars during the next three centuries.   

To fight a war required money. A soldier is someone who received his pay. It comes from the latin word “soldatus” that is the one who receive solidus, a golden coin in the Latter Roman Empire. In Spanish salary is still designated as “SUELDO”. For a very long time armies were made of “mercenaries”. 

The Continental Congress 4 of July 1776

This changed in America for the first time when colons rebelled against the British Crown and declared their independence on July 4, 1776, starting a Revolutionary War of 7 years (until 1783). Patriotism was at the stake in George Washington’s Camp. British soldiers fought essentially for money, but American soldiers fought to have a country of their own. Of course not all of the Americans were for rebellion. Some wanted to keep on being British subjects: they were called Loyalists. If you want to really feel what was it like I strongly recommend the US TV Serie “Turn. Washington Spies” (2014) and of course the classic Mel Gibson’s Movie The Patriot (2000). You will enjoy them very much. 

Fighting for your own country and not for your king was a powerful narrative that lead you to be willing to die by patriotism. That was very clear under another Revolution: the French one. The French Revolution was such a mess that it may have disappeared if the Revolutionary Constituant Assembly had not had the brilliant idea of declaring the war to the kings of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria on the 20 of April 1792. Prior to this on July 14, 1790 delegations from all over France met in Paris in the Champ de .

 The conflict of the newborn United States of America with the UK between 1776 and 1783, and the conflict of Revolutionary France against Absolutist European kings of the Ancien Regime created a new type of State. The Nation-State in which sovereignty was not vested on the Monarch, but on the People, considered as Nation, that is a Political Body that govern themselves through the representatives elected (Representative democracy).

The crucial point is that “nationalism” became a very powerful narrative that consolidated the state and dissolved any rest of “universalism”. The Law for instance became “national” and the result was “codification”. Every State created its own ordered set of national laws. Including the Law that declared who was “national” of the state. 

In this Teaching Guide 4 we will see the origins of the “Nation State” idea through the American and French Revolution. And in the next Teaching Guide 5 we will see the apogee of the Nation-States during the period starting with Napoleon and leading to the Era of great colonialism that ended for European States with the holocaust of World War I. 

INSTRUCTIONS: First read the text included in your Materials (pages 54 to 78), before proceeding to answer the Concrete Questions, the Concepts and the General Questions. 

Concerning the Basic Chronology (pages 74 to 75) the crucial dates are the following: 

a) For the American Revolution: 1607, 1620, 1754-1763, 1773, 17775, 1776, 1777, 1783 and 1787

b) For the French Revolution: the periods of Constituant Assembly (June 1789 to September 1791); the Legislative Assembly (October 1791 to August 1792); the Convention (September 1792 to October 1795) and the Directory (October 1795 to November 1799). 

Crucial dates are : 1789 (17 June, 20 June, 27 June, 14 July), 1790 (July 14),  1792 (April 20; 10 August, 20 and 22 September); 1793 (21 January); 1794 (January until July: Robespierre). 1799, 9 November. 

 

TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS: How important is your country for you? 

Please consider the following aspects: 

1. Are you proud of being Spanish? 

2. Do you think that Spain is an arbitrary invention that does not make sense today?

3. Do you think that Catalonians and Basques should be independent Nation-States? Give reasons for and against. 

4. Do you feel more Spanish or more European?

5. What moves you more: your local soccer team or the Spanish National team?