Brief reading summary

Modernism was born in a quickly changing time.  The so-called second industrial revolution (in steel, electricity, and chemical manufacture) changed lives on a worldwide scale.  The extreme individualism engendered by the ultra-capitalism of the new industrialism gave rise to radical thought of all colors, but especially feminism and Marxism.  Workers found themselves at increasingly violent (cf. Bloody Sunday) with their governments.  As in the so-called age of revolutions, the countries that suffered the least instability (e.g. Great Britain) were the ones that were already mostly democratic and were continuing in the spirit of liberal reform.

Darwin and Spencer

To Spencer's credit, he was an excellent writer.  Darwin had nothing on him in this regard.  In every other regard, though, the essential difference between Darwinism and Social Darwinism is the difference between science and junk.  Darwin records observable phenomena and invents a plausible mechanism to explain trends in his numerous data.  Spencer's belief system, mostly wishful thinking, lacks a basis of observable data as well as a plausible mechanism.  As the excellent William James mentions, Social Darwinists would have you believe that a man, having dined in a group of thirteen and, weeks later, slipped on a patch of ice and died, died because he dined in a group of thirteen, since it is no the cause that is responsible for the effect rather than the circumstances that engender the effect.  Just as with Mr. Smiles, Spencer's thought serves only to justify greed and vanity.

More dudes

I trace all the problems and solutions of the later half of the nineteenth century to the fact that there were simply more dudes (also:  ladies) getting involved.  The huge scope of the new industrialism in steel, electricity, and chemicals created even larger working classes with interests that were wholly different from those of their rulers.  Given voice by the self-glorifying jingoism of national imperialism, these workers assembled themselves to protect their interests.  In the ugly transition to almost-democracy, workers found themselves (as Marx would have loved to see) at odds with their bosses.

Imperialism summary

Fueled by racism and an economic imperative, Europeans used their technological superiority to subjugate the rest of the world, its resources and its peoples.  The currents that drove the mid-century wars (people-concern and state-interest in particular, but also a quest for realism, the exotic, and outlets for Victorian-era-suppressed sexuality) found their way into the drive for all that was different and valuable in Asia and Africa.

On Lenin and Wilhelm

Once upon a time I offered a dual nature of nationalism:  state-interested and people-concerned.  Both Lenin and WIlhelm share these zests.  They make similar economic arguments about the merits of imperial power.  Lenin is of course entirely people-concerned (admittedly in a non-sectional way), while Wilhelm is people-concerned to the extent that his interests collide with those of the people.  While Wilhelm is definitely nationalist and Lenin is definitely unattached, imperialism is definitely a nationalistic phenomenon.

I pity the fool (787-793 but especially Kipling)

Perhaps the greatest and most ridiculous conceit of all Europe's great and ridiculous conceits is the deep-rooted conviction, the illuminating conviction that overtakes men sometimes in daytime aspirations to godliness, that Europe is above all else selfless.  The illusion of selflessness is ridiculous in and of itself; more ridiculous still are the black-and-white, day-and-night terms by which Kipling proclaims himself Jesus-like:  "Take up the White Man's burden... To seek another's profit/ And work another's gain."  Kipling is easily persuaded, but it is a tragedy of humorous proportions that his drawing is at best totally wrong.  Less humorous and far more disturbing is the patronizingly racist language of the whole poem, which, like the hilarious illusion of selflessness, will become the leitmotif for Europe into the twentieth century.

The collision of sectionalism, conceit, and selfishness (also: summary)

Imperialism as a nationalistic phenomenon is enough of a counterexample to disprove the idea that a nation is fundamentally defined by its land, but the race hypothesis (that nationalism is racially driven) deserves at least some attention.  Racism as a tool serves the vital objective of nationalism (and imperialism especially) to both glorify the self and objectify the enemy.  The atrocities committed under King Leopold in the Belgian Congo, which would by no means be committed by Europeans on each other for some time, could only have been explained by a deep-rooted belief that humans only come in white.

The Eastern question

Continuation:  The distinction of my previous post makes clearer the essential characteristics of each nationalism, which we see to be very much a product of the people as well as the state, which are ineffably linked:  though the Crimean War was definitely motivated out of state-interest, it drew huge attention to the popular side of nationalism:  the people-concern.

Observation:  The Crimean War is the end of land-power.  My feeling about the Crimean War and its status as the so-called wake-up call for Russia is that everyone kinda assumed that because Russia was hella big (half a continent) it was powerful; throughout the medieval period and even continuing into the Renaissance, land indicated strength in its correlation to resources and the ability of the government to collect revenue.  The crushing of Russia by a small island (to be repeated in the Russo-Japanese War in the early 1900s) proved this assumption wrong.  Following its defeat, Russia (essentially admitting its mistake) emancipated the serfs, making land no longer a power-source and bringing Russia into the nineteenth century.

On nationalism again (767-787)

Once upon a time I claimed that nationalism's essence was in its exclusivity; now I have a better word:  sectionalism.  Sectionalism's rise to prominence corresponded to nationalism's.

In class the argument was put that nationalism comes in two varieties:  top-down (i.e. state-sponsored) and bottom-up (i.e. supported by the people).  Putting the relative merits of this distinction aside, I propose a dual nature of nationalism that defines a sort of continuum for evaluating nationalism's different manifestations, because in its best form nationalism is two-pronged, a champion of the people but also of the state.  People-concern is manifested most obviously in the realism of (for instance) Gustave Courbet or any man with a camera; state-interest is most obvious in the wars of expansion in the mid-nineteenth century (the Crimean War and everything almost-Germany did in the 1870s).  German nationalism is thus more state-interested than people-concerned, and Russian nationalism is closer to the middle of the road.