A Short History of Europe: From Charlemagne to the Treaty of Europe (13 page)

European economic success led to a massive increase in the population of the continent during the nineteenth century. If Russia is included, it soared from 190 million in 1800 to 420 million by 1900. Fortunately, advances in the nineteenth century in agriculture, transport
and industry not only provided the means to feed the growing number of people, but also helped to improve living conditions for many. Public health improvements undoubtedly played a large part. Life expectancy rose dramatically in the developed areas of Europe although in areas such as Eastern Europe harsh living conditions persisted and the death rate remained very high. Migration, too, changed
populations as workers moved from the countryside to the towns in search of a better life and many even moved to a different country. Many Irish, for example, crossed to England, looking for work in building the new transport infrastructure as an escape from the disastrous potato famine and ensuing disease in 1845–6.

The new mode of transport, the railway, dramatically changed the way people
lived, giving them ready access to travel and allowing the movement of essential commodities. The railways also contributed to the increasing urbanisation of Europe with numerous cities surpassing populations of a million inhabitants. Although many European countries remained staunchly agricultural with a large percentage of the population living in the countryside, Great Britain had the largest urban
population with a huge percentage of people living in towns. Nonetheless, large cities across the continent were now becoming massive conurbations – London had 4.7 million inhabitants, Paris 3.6 million and Berlin 2.7 million. Industrialised regions – steel-producing areas such as the Ruhr in Germany or the cotton-producing area of Lancashire in England – also began to attract large numbers of
workers. The sleepy village of Essen, at the heart of the Krupp family’s steelmaking empire, had a population of 4,000 in 1800. A century later, some 300,000 people lived and worked there. This rapid explosion of towns and cities easily outpaced improvements in living conditions and social problems abounded. People lived in severely overcrowded conditions, without sanitation or access to clean water.
The result was disease, death and, to the dismay of those in power, social unrest.

As the century wore on, great advances were made in public health, and sanitary conditions in many towns and cities improved. In Paris in the 1860s, for instance, French civic planner, Baron Haussmann (1809–91), launched a plan to modernise the city, creating a Paris of wide boulevards. It was no coincidence, in
this city of revolutions, that the broad avenues he introduced were too wide for rebels to build barricades across. They certainly contributed to the quick suppression of the Paris Commune that snatched control of the capital for two months in 1871. Provision was also made for an efficient sewage system and water supply. It was a model that would be copied in other cities. Meanwhile, slum clearance
programmes were launched in many cities and model towns were built. Many families, however, still lived in sub-standard, overcrowded conditions and they struggled to be able to afford adequate food and clothing.

States introduced measures to alleviate the suffering. The German government made old-age and sickness insurance compulsory and, in the early years of the coming century, Britain set
up a retirement scheme. Although such measures were steps in the right direction, they remained inadequate in the face of the huge social problems that rapid industrialisation had brought.

There was some good news, however. Cures and treatments were found for many diseases. Previous killers that contributed to the high rate of infant mortality such as diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid and whooping
cough, could now be treated. Cholera, a killer of many thousands in London and Paris in the middle of the nineteenth century, had been almost eradicated by 1900. The German physician, Robert Koch (1843–1910), proved that different bacteria caused different diseases and isolated the bacterium that caused tuberculosis. X-Rays were discovered by the German physicist, Wilhelm Röntgen (1845–1923),
and the Curies, Pierre (1859–1906) and Marie (1867–1934), discovered radium and radioactivity.

The term ‘scientist’ was coined in 1833 by the English polymath and Anglican priest, William Whewell (1794–1866), the need for such a word displaying the growing importance of the new profession of science. There were huge advances in both science and scientific thinking.
The Origin of Species
by the
English naturalist, Charles Darwin (1809–82), introduced the concept of evolution by natural selection and stimulated debate on religious, philosophical and scientific grounds that carries on to this day. Frenchman Louis Pasteur (1822–95) was responsible for many discoveries in the field of chemistry and the Englishman Michael Faraday (1791–1867) and the Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79) significantly
changed the science of physics, especially in the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

The Industrial Revolution began late in the eighteenth century in Britain and would irrevocably change both Britain and then the rest of Europe as the nineteenth century progressed. Its beginnings could be traced back to the mechanisation of the English textile industry,
with ingenious inventions by men such as Richard Arkwright (1732–92), Samuel Crompton (1753–1827) and James Hargreaves (1720–78). Iron-making techniques were improved while the creation of the railways by the English engineer, George Stephenson (1781–1848), and the building of canals provided the infrastructure on which to transport the goods that were being produced in Britain’s new factories.
Vital improvements had been made to the steam engine by Scottish inventor James Watt (1736–1819) and his rotary steam engine was fundamental to the Industrial Revolution, leading to greater machine-based manufacturing and a consequent increase in production capacity. With its phenomenal industrial growth, Britain’s output far outstripped that of any other country and ‘the workshop of the world’, as
the country became known, was soon the wealthiest nation on the planet.

Coal and iron-ore were vital to the new technologies and it was in the regions where they were to be found in abundance – a slice of Europe stretching from Wales to the Ukraine, encompassing the Midlands and north of England, northeastern France, Belgium, the Ruhr and Silesia – that industrialisation became concentrated.
Belgium was the first place on mainland Europe to reap the benefits of industrialisation, in the coal-mines and iron and zinc factories of Wallonia in particular. With independence in 1831, the Belgian economy grew rapidly. Coal production, for instance, increased threefold between 1830 and 1850. The French textile industry in the northeast of the country also benefited from industrialisation. Linen
and silk production flourished and cotton was produced in factories. By 1870, twice as many people were employed in factories as in 1830, while coal and steel production increased by 300 per cent.

In Silesia, the Rhineland and the Ruhr, Germany produced high quality coal and industry began to spread north. Textiles, cotton, iron and coal were produced in the Wupper river valley in North Rhine-Westphalia,
while, at Essen, the small steel foundry established by the Krupps in 1811 was, by the 1840s, manufacturing cannons for the Turkish, Prussian and Russian armies. Industrialisation had spread across Europe and made industrial superpowers of Britain, Belgium, Germany, France and Switzerland. Spain, Portugal and southern Italy, meanwhile, had remained largely agricultural. But by the end
of the nineteenth century, Britain’s economic dominance had begun to wane as Germany overhauled it.

Many other technological advances were made. In the 1890s, the Italian Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) demonstrated wireless telegraphy; in France, following the pioneering work of the Lumière brothers, Auguste (1862–1954) and Louis (1864–1948), the first cinema opened in Paris in 1896; during the
second half of the century, various engineers worked on the combustion engine, but it was the Germans, Gottlieb Daimler (1834–1900) and Karl Benz (1844–1929), who became the ‘fathers of the automobile’.

Absolutism had had its day and by 1900, most European countries were governed by monarchies run on constitutional lines or, if they were republics, by presidents. Of course,
parliamentary democracy as we know it was still something of a dream. Britain, which had enjoyed a constitutional monarchy since the reign of William III as well as a long-established parliamentary system, probably came closest.

Politics were changing, however, and new political parties were beginning to emerge across Europe as people began to demand a bigger say in the way their country was
governed. Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95), for instance, published their
Manifesto of the Communist Party
in 1848 and socialism was on the rise throughout Europe. Social Democratic parties, based on the one founded in Germany by August Bebel (1840–1913) in 1875, were founded in a number of countries.

In Britain, activists such as the Scot, Keir Hardie (1856–1915), sought representation
for the working class in parliament and, in 1893, the Independent Labour Party held its first conference. It would be another 31 years, however, before the Labour Party would form its first government in the United Kingdom. Workers also began to be represented by trade unions that were legalised across Europe in the later part of the century. They used their power, too. Successful, large-scale
strike action was carried out by London dockers in 1889, their victory representing a milestone in the British labour movement. Strike action by coal miners in the Ruhr the same year also emphasised the growing power of the workers. It was a power that did not go unnoticed as governments responded to their calls for better working conditions. Laws were passed everywhere, apart from in Russia
and the Balkans, which restricted the length of the working day and introduced safety measures to protect workers. Child labour continued, however.

The changes brought by the Industrial Revolution were probably as great as anything that had ever happened in Europe. They altered the way people looked at the world as much as the new scientific and philosophical developments had shifted people’s
world-view at the time of the Renaissance. The economic benefits of industrialisation made people more optimistic about the future and the incredible new technologies of the nineteenth century led them to believe in progress and to think that anything was possible. For the first time, people were able to withdraw momentarily from the drudgery of everyday life and indulge in leisure pursuits. Mountaineering
became popular and many sports were codified, often by the British. Swimming became popular and the mass production of the bicycle helped to make cycling a popular pastime. The European colonial powers were able to spread their revolution across the world and soon the United States had become a major industrial competitor. Nonetheless, Europe had carved up the world and European culture
and values straddled the globe as the nineteenth century drew to a close.

Imperialism

Europeans had good cause for optimism at the start of the twentieth century. Europe, after all, was where the revolutionary technological and scientific discoveries and innovations of the previous century had been made and, although the United States was fast catching up, Europe was at the very heart of things. Wealth poured in, too, from the vast colonial
empires that the European superpowers had created, especially in Africa. In 1814, the Congress of Vienna took South Africa from Holland and gave it to Britain. France annexed Algeria after invading in 1830. A year later Tunisia also became a French possession. The Suez Canal opened in 1869 and had attracted a great deal of European attention ever since. In 1882, Britain sent a force to Egypt to put
down an anti-European uprising and remained there, much to the annoyance of the French who had been casting hungry glances in that direction for some time. As the ‘Scramble for Africa’ continued, a conference was held in Berlin in 1884–85 to come to some agreement on the division of the continent. France took most of West Africa; Britain took Kenya in the east and Nigeria in the west; Portugal
got Angola and Mozambique; Belgium took the Congo and Germany was given Cameroon, Togo, Tanganyika and Zanzibar.

Of course, the European annexation of Africa spelled disaster for Africans. There was extreme cruelty, as in Belgium’s treatment of the Congolese, and violence against men, women and children, as evidenced in Britain’s totally unprovoked aggression in the Zulu War of 1879 and attacks
on the Ndebele kingdom in Matabeleland in 1893. The British defeated the Boers in South Africa in the Boer War of 1899, but their treatment of their defeated foes – herding them into the world’s first concentration camps and burning their crops – excited anti-British feeling across Europe.

Imperial expansion did not stop with Africa. France colonised South East Asia and islands in the Pacific
were divided up between them and the other powers. Rivalry between the colonial powers became bitter and, in 1898, Britain and France almost came to blows over the town of Fashoda in the Sudan.

During this period, in spite of the nationalist tendencies displayed in the scramble for territory, important alliances were being formed that would have serious implications for the next century. In 1882,
Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy had formed the Triple Alliance, promising each other mutual support in the event of an attack by any two of the other Great Powers, or, in the case of Germany and Italy, an attack by France. In 1907, Russia, France and Great Britain formed a counter-balance to the Triple Alliance when they put their names to the Triple Entente.

As the new century dawned, Germany
and Britain were engaged in a furious arms race, competing with each other to construct the greatest number of battleships and the other powers were not far behind. Twenty-six states met at a Peace Conference in The Hague in 1899 to discuss disarmament, but nothing really came of it, apart from the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration to settle disputes. In 1946 it would become
the International Court of Justice. A further conference in 1907 established humane rules for war.