Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. *
and when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
~T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. *
and when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
~T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
Part of why the Great War came as such a surprise to everyone was because European Culture at the time was so cohesive and united. Everything was so dependent on everything else that war seemed nearly impossible. In 1910, economic interdependence in Europe caused Norman Angell in The Great Illusion to say that the threat of disruption of international credit would either prevent a war entirely, or bring it to a quick end if war did break out. Almost all informed opinion agreed with this.
The last two decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th were unlike any other that had been before, or quite possibly will be again. A twenty-year depression that began in the middle of the century was cushioned by a price decrease in raw and manufactured goods. The gasping economy was jolted to life again by new categories of manufactured goods, such as chemical dyes and internal combustion engines, to tempt consumers. Population increase in Europe, anywhere from 25% to 50% depending on the region, led to immigration to the Americas and Australasia. This, along with the expansion of empires, brought other inhabitants of the world into the international market. Between 1875 and 1913 the unification of trademarks, artistic property, accountancy, maritime law, weights and measures, and copyright conventions all came into being.
In addition to this came also two revolutions in transport, the steam ship, and the railway. People and products could now move around the world in a fraction of the amount of time they had before. South African gold and diamonds, Indian textiles, African and Malaysian rubber, Canadian wheat, Australian sheep, South American Cattle and everything that was being produced en masse in the United States (in 1913 the largest economy in the world) was moving around the world in record time, and most of it's capital passed through one place, London. The city of the world. London's international connections of its banks and insurance companies made it the standard medium for commerce for all civilized countries.
Internationalism, however, had become as much cultural as it was commercial. Much of Europe was united under the Holy Catholic Church as it had been since Roman times. The rest, while not Catholic, were some other flavor of Christian: Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinists, Anabaptist, Greek or Russian Orthodox, Armenian Christians and Egyptian Coptic. Europe was intensely Christian and had been for centuries. Out of this saturation of Christianity rose the abolition of slavery, and organisations protecting worker's rights and sanctioning child labor. Christian Europe was so indignant at the Ottoman Empire's (i.e. Muslim) treatment of its minorities that international intervention was prompted in Greece and Lebanon several times.
Religiously and Idealistically homogeneous, Europe was also culturally unified. The educated classes held all the same things at equal value. They all admired Italian Renaissance art and German Classical music. (Let me tell you, Germany has produced some of the best and most complex music humanity has ever seen.) Names like Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Honore de Balzac, Dickens, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe were familiar to every European high school child, and nearly all of them could speak French, German, or Italian, if not more than one of those. The classics, Homer, Plato and the like, were still studied by all as they had been since the Middle Ages. Although they were a small minority, university graduates of Europe held the same body of knowledge and philosophy among them that it could be identified as a single European culture. The unity of Europe at the time is now way better illustrated, however, than in its royal families, who were all, in one way or another related to each other. A thousand years of only being allowed to marry into one social class eventually leaves you with only relative to marry.
Nineteenth century Europe was no exception. All European rulers were cousins, and most were children or grandchildren of Queen Victoria. George V of England, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and his wife Alexandra, were all first cousins. (Nicholas and Wilhelm were also third cousins, I'll stop before this gets even more weird. Suffice to say, West Virginia has nothing on European Royalty.)
So, with all this unity and relative harmony and homogeneity, where did it all go horribly, horribly wrong? What happened to this golden age of prosperity to end not with a whimper, but an apocalypse of blood and fire? Well, all was unity and cooperation on the surface, under the surface was a different story. The arms race was picking up. The "Concert of Europe" which had been unintentionally established by Napoleon (an alliance of most of the countries of Europe against him), was beginning to wear thin. While the royal cousins were smiling at each other, back home they were each massing armies, just waiting for someone to make the first move. I will examine this further in my next piece.
*I am not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, I am a real German.
The last two decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th were unlike any other that had been before, or quite possibly will be again. A twenty-year depression that began in the middle of the century was cushioned by a price decrease in raw and manufactured goods. The gasping economy was jolted to life again by new categories of manufactured goods, such as chemical dyes and internal combustion engines, to tempt consumers. Population increase in Europe, anywhere from 25% to 50% depending on the region, led to immigration to the Americas and Australasia. This, along with the expansion of empires, brought other inhabitants of the world into the international market. Between 1875 and 1913 the unification of trademarks, artistic property, accountancy, maritime law, weights and measures, and copyright conventions all came into being.
In addition to this came also two revolutions in transport, the steam ship, and the railway. People and products could now move around the world in a fraction of the amount of time they had before. South African gold and diamonds, Indian textiles, African and Malaysian rubber, Canadian wheat, Australian sheep, South American Cattle and everything that was being produced en masse in the United States (in 1913 the largest economy in the world) was moving around the world in record time, and most of it's capital passed through one place, London. The city of the world. London's international connections of its banks and insurance companies made it the standard medium for commerce for all civilized countries.
Internationalism, however, had become as much cultural as it was commercial. Much of Europe was united under the Holy Catholic Church as it had been since Roman times. The rest, while not Catholic, were some other flavor of Christian: Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinists, Anabaptist, Greek or Russian Orthodox, Armenian Christians and Egyptian Coptic. Europe was intensely Christian and had been for centuries. Out of this saturation of Christianity rose the abolition of slavery, and organisations protecting worker's rights and sanctioning child labor. Christian Europe was so indignant at the Ottoman Empire's (i.e. Muslim) treatment of its minorities that international intervention was prompted in Greece and Lebanon several times.
Religiously and Idealistically homogeneous, Europe was also culturally unified. The educated classes held all the same things at equal value. They all admired Italian Renaissance art and German Classical music. (Let me tell you, Germany has produced some of the best and most complex music humanity has ever seen.) Names like Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Honore de Balzac, Dickens, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe were familiar to every European high school child, and nearly all of them could speak French, German, or Italian, if not more than one of those. The classics, Homer, Plato and the like, were still studied by all as they had been since the Middle Ages. Although they were a small minority, university graduates of Europe held the same body of knowledge and philosophy among them that it could be identified as a single European culture. The unity of Europe at the time is now way better illustrated, however, than in its royal families, who were all, in one way or another related to each other. A thousand years of only being allowed to marry into one social class eventually leaves you with only relative to marry.
Nineteenth century Europe was no exception. All European rulers were cousins, and most were children or grandchildren of Queen Victoria. George V of England, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and his wife Alexandra, were all first cousins. (Nicholas and Wilhelm were also third cousins, I'll stop before this gets even more weird. Suffice to say, West Virginia has nothing on European Royalty.)
So, with all this unity and relative harmony and homogeneity, where did it all go horribly, horribly wrong? What happened to this golden age of prosperity to end not with a whimper, but an apocalypse of blood and fire? Well, all was unity and cooperation on the surface, under the surface was a different story. The arms race was picking up. The "Concert of Europe" which had been unintentionally established by Napoleon (an alliance of most of the countries of Europe against him), was beginning to wear thin. While the royal cousins were smiling at each other, back home they were each massing armies, just waiting for someone to make the first move. I will examine this further in my next piece.
*I am not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, I am a real German.
No comments:
Post a Comment