The Russian Revolutions

I. The 1st Russian Revolution--weariness with the war, and the shortages of food and other materials, made Russian workers and their families willing to stand up to the state oppression to end the war and bring their loved ones homes.



A. February Revolution--began on February 23, which socialists declared Working Women’s Day

1. Distributed leaflets--the socialists in Petrograd (the Russianized version of St. Petersburg) marked the day by distributing leaflets to workers in the city, made speeches, and held meetings, but did not call for the workers to go on strike or take any action, for fear of government reprisal.

2. Spontaneous strikes--many women workers in the city, tired of seeing their families go to bed hungary every night, went out on strike, marching in the streets and calling their fellow workers out with them. Discontent was focused food, with shouts of “Bread for the workers!” and “Down with high prices! Down with hunger!”

3. Popular support--the next day, women workers in Petrograd were joined by approximately 400,000 workers in the city square, demanding an end to the war. Armed police attacked the unarmed crowd; soldiers in barracks in the city were used to assist police patrols, and a contingent of soldiers was recalled from the front to put down the rebellion--but instead fraternized with the crowd, and joined them, disarming the police and arresting politicians. The tsar’s advisors recommended that he abdicate the throne, which he agreed to do on March 1.

B. Provisional Government



1. Russian Duma--dominated by landowners and industrialists; few members of the small bourgeois class were members, and those who were largely followed the lead of the upper classes.

a) Duma leaders tried to maintain the monarchy until it became impossible for Nicholas to hang on. The tsar’s ineffectiveness was magnified because during the war he stayed close to the front, leaving his wife Tsarina Alexandria, to rule on domestic issues. The tsarina, unfortunately, had come under the influence of an allegedly debauched Russian Orthodox monk, Grigory Rasputin, who was able to bring comfort to her hemophiliac son.

b) Duma provisional government was dominated by large landowners and industrialists, and lead by a member of the royal family, Prince L’vov. The only figure involved with the provisional government with any revolutionary credentials was Alexander Kerensky, a lawyer who had defended revolutionaries in court.


2. Establishment of the Petrograd Soviet--the lesson learned from the aborted 1905 Revolution led to the re-establishment of the Petrograd Soviet. The worker-led soviets quickly became the focus of the revolution and the de facto government of the city. The elected executive board took over the responsibility of the day-to-day governing of the city--providing food for mutinying soldiers, overseeing the arrest of old police and government officials, arranging for each factory to provide volunteers for the revolutionary militia that maintained revolutionary order, and establishing a newspaper to keep citizens informed of events.


a) All of this was done without much guidance from previous revolutionary leaders, who had largely been exiled to Siberia--although most had subsequently escaped and were living elsewhere in Europe (or the United States, in Trotsky’s case).

3. Russian Social Democratic Labor Party--the main Marxist political party on the eve of the 1905 Revolution, but rent by factional splits.

a) Mensheviks--Menshevik means minority party in Russian. The Mensheviks argued for a broadly-based radical socialist party, but one that would cooperate with bourgeois political parties.


b) Bolsheviks--Bolshevik means majority party in Russian--but the Bolsheviks’ position as majority party was very short-lived, largely because of the belief of their leader, V.I. Lenin, that the socialist revolution would be best served by leadership provided by a small vanguard of dedicated revolutionaries, like himself, rather than relying on inexperienced leaders rising to the top in the chaos of a developing revolution.


c) Unattached radicals--some members of the RSDLP remained unaffiliated with either faction--most conspicuously Trotsky--until forced to make a choice in October 1917.

4. War of Revolutionary Defense

a) The Duma provisional government refused to pull out of the war, provoking great displeasure from the Petrograd Soviets (and much of the rest of the country as well).

b) Experienced radical leaders were still outside of the country at this point. The first two to arrive in Petrograd, Stalin and Molotov, had little expertise in Marxist revolutionary thought (Stalin, in fact, was little more than a hired thug at this point), and offered little guidance to the soviets.


c) Although the soldiers and workers had little confidence in the leaders of the Duma, but they had less confidence in their own ability to guide a revolution themselves, and therefore took little action against the Duma.

5. Failure of the Provisional Government--many blame the arrival of Lenin from Switzerland (courtesy of the German government, which transported him via rail to Sweden, then by ferry to Finland, and then by rail to Finland Station in Petrograd); but it was the government’s insistence on carrying on the war effort, and the growing disenchantment of the greatest number of Russians with this policy, that led to their downfall.

a) Tsarism without the Tsar--the Duma provisional government attempted to maintain the policies of the Tsarist regime without the Tsar as figurehead, not realizing it was the policies that made the Tsar unpopular.

b) Russia’s “colonies” were not overseas, but its governance of non-Russian peoples--fifty percent of the population--within its “empire.”

c) The continuation of unpopular policies quickly made the provisional government unpopular, and this more than any machinations on the part of Lenin led to its downfall.


d) The Kerensky Offensive--the straw that broke the camel’s back. Caving in to continued pressure from the allies, Kerensky (who came to power because of his own political skills, and the lack of such skills by nearly everyone else in the Duma) agreed to opening a new offensive in Austrian Silesia (part of the present-day Czech Republic). The military offensive was a disaster--horrendous casualties, along with mass desertions and mutinies. Kerensky vacillated between attempting to reassert tsarist military discipline, and co-opting militant leftist leaders within the ranks. Lenin had anticipated this development, and was ready to take advantage of the situation.



II. The Soviet Revolution

A. The Bolshevik Revolution--resulted from great number of Russians, dissatisfied with the vacillations and lack of success of the provisional government--and particularly its failure to end Russian involvement in the war--turned to someone who promised a new solution to their problems.


1. Lenin’s vision--his insistence upon building a revolutionary vanguard within the nascent (small and brand new) trade union movement within the small industrial sector gave the Bolsheviks a huge advantage over other groups.

a) Party organization--by the summer of 1914, the Bolsheviks had a substantial following in the factories of Petrograd, and a large contingent presenting the working class in the Duma--although many went to prison for refusing to support the war effort.


2. Trotsky’s vision--Trotsky argued that although the working-class in Russia was very small, because of the country’s “special circumstances” (mainly having to do with the working-class being concentrated in Petrograd and Moscow), that Russia could “skip” the bourgeois revolution and proceed directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

3. “Peace, Land, Bread”--Lenin’s political program, as it was presented to Russians, was simply stated, and appealed to the great mass of people. His speeches and pamphlets distilled Russian dissatisfactions in much the same way that Thomas Paine did for Americans in the Revolutionary War.

4. Kornilov Affair--dissatisfaction with the provisional government came not only from the left, but from the right as well. General Kornilov attempted to lead Russian troops against the workers’ militia in Petrograd, but the cossacks abandoned him, and the militia captured Kornilov and about 7,000 of his supporters with little trouble

5. Bolsheviks become increasingly popular, and during the summer won majorities in both the municipal and parliamentary elections in Petrograd.

6. The October Revolution-- “The Ten Days that Shook the World” The Bolsheviks were able to seize power in Petrograd with little difficulty, and practically no bloodshed. The Bolsheviks declared the dictatorship of the proletariat--distributing land to peasants, nationalizing the banks, seizing all church property (including bank deposits), seizing all private bank deposits, handing over control of factories to the soviets, and fixing the wage rate higher that it had been during the war, as well as declaring a standard 8 hour work day.
Scene from Reds



B. The Aftermath

1. Brest-Litovsk Treaty--Germany demanded (and eventually received) land concessions, which cost Russian most of the Ukraine--which included most of the country’s known coal reserves, and the best land for growing wheat. Trotsky attempted to forestall this development by refusing to sign the demands-- “neither war nor peace”--but Lenin, conceding the war weariness of the country, decided to make the concessions, while hoping that socialist revolutions in the rest of Europe would make the treaty moot.

2. Internal threats-- “white” (as opposed to “red”) Russians and Cossacks--mainly large landowners and their mercenaries--led the “white” forces. Bolsheviks forces eventually responded to the white atrocities with atrocities of their own, including the murder of the royal family.

3. External threats--Russia (or the Soviet Union, as it was known by now) was also invaded by Japan, Great Britain, and the United States in the years immediately after the end of the war--although only Japan stayed any length of time.

World War and World Revolution

I. The Causes of the Conflict

A. “Entangling Alliances”--the customary reason for the outbreak of hostilities was that the European powers (Great Britain and France on one side, Germany on the other) had made alliances with weaker powers (mainly Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, respectively) that necessitated them going to war against each other because their allies went to war.

1. Austro-Hungarian Empire/Germany--the Austro-Hungarian Empire was teetering on the edge of its demise, and had turned to Germany as an ally should the burgeoning nationalist movements within its borders (Serbs and Croats, in particular).

2. Russian/Great Britain/France--Russian, despite its internal political difficulties (see 1905 Revolution), was looking to expand its influence in southern Europe, largely at the expense of the two teetering empires, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. Great Britain and France had already pushed into some of those areas, particularly in Lebanon (France), Egypt (Great Britain, which with assistance from France had constructed the Suez Canal), and Palestine.

B. Rise of Nationalism


1. Resistance to Colonialism--being treated as second-class people in their own countries led many victims of colonialism to develop a sense of national identity where none had existed before.

2. Ethnic nationalism--as the old empires began to fall apart, ethnic enclaves within these empires began to think of themselves as nations, as well. In some cases, these ethnic groups were aided and encouraged by other nation-states hoping to benefit from the downfall of weakened empires--like Russia, which hoped to benefit from both the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, and began to encourage their “brother Serbs” to resist both imperial governments.

3. Wars of reconquest--the so-called “long peace” after the end of the Napoleonic Wars (lasting until the Franco-Prussian War of 1870) removed much of the conflict between the European powers from Europe--and made the drive for colonial conquest more fierce. Colonialism was largely driven by the capitalist thirst for raw materials and new markets for goods, but national pride was also in part responsible for this development.

a) The development of the “yellow” press, which provided its audience with sensationalist news and chauvanistic nationalism in a newspaper that only cost the reader a penny, also contributed to the tacit support colonialism enjoyed among the laboring classes.

4. The Non-Colonial World Power--Germany, alone among the European powers, had no overseas colonies in 1880. This colonial activity by Germany injected that country into increasingly tense relationships with other European colonial powers, which contributed to the formation of the alliance system.

a) Treaty port in China

b) Tanganika, Rwanda-Burundi, and South West Africa on the continent of Africa.

c) Maghreb (northwestern Africa), where Germany began challenging French and Spanish control of Morocco and Algiers, creating tensions with those two countries.

d) Middle East--via the Berlin-Baghdad Railway

II. The Socialist Alternative--socialism developed in response to the multiple difficulties that capitalism created for a number of people. Because socialism emphasized class alliance across national and ethnic boundaries. This ideology failed to halt the combined power of capitalism and nationalism, however.



A. Capitalism Economic Depressions--since capitalism emerged as the dominant economic system in 1800, it has been portrayed as creating wealth for everyone (although that wealth has been unequally distributed). This panglossian outlook overlooks some of the significant economic downturns that occurred, however.




1. The Long Depression--a world-wide period of price deflation, which began around 1873 and lasted until about 1888. While economists emphasize the good effect this trend had on prices of goods, for many workers it meant that they struggled to buy goods because they were unemployed, since capitalists would cut production in the hope that scarcity would inflate prices.


2. The “Business Cycle”--this term had largely disappeared from the economist’s vocabularly, although the current economic crisis has reintroduced it. Also known as the “boom and bust” cycle, which is perhaps a bit more descriptive. The “Long Depression” had various antecedents and successors: 1837-1840, 1858-1861, 1893, 1907-1915, 1921-1922, 1929-1941.

3. The Socialist Project

a) With the spread of the capitalist economic system to industries beyond textiles, more workers were drawn to the theories of Marx and Engels and other socialist thinkers; socialist thought ranged from the gradualism of Prudohn to the direct action anarchism of Mikail Bakhunin, among others.


b) The establishment of radical labor unions dedicated to overthrowing the capitalist system emerged by 1905



(1) Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

(2) Confederation General du Travail (CGT) followed similar syndicalist, direct action tactics of direct control by workers of the shop floor



(3) 1905 Russian Revolution--the Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 opened an opportunity for revolutionaries because of a crisis in confidence in the Tsar. Although still largely an agricultural society, Russia did have a thin layer of industrial workers in urban centers like Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the latter city, under the leadership of Lev Davidovitch Bronstein (or, as he is better know, Leon Trotsky) worker soviets (Russian for council) were formed to from factories in the city to do the work of government. After the Revolution was defeated, leaders like Trotsky and Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) were exiled from the country.

4. Socialists and the Drums of War—whether to support the calls for war or not split many socialist parties on the national level. Socialists had long maintained that wars were fought in order to advance the capitalist enterprise at the expense of the working-class. Gradualists, who worked inside the national political structure, argued that the war effort needed to be supported, or the socialist political movement would be rendered irrelevant and marginalized politically; socialist further to the left argued that this presented an opportunity to overthrow capitalism, because support for the war among workers was “soft” and could be overcome.


a) Germany—the German Social Democratic party voted to support the war effort, while individual socialists—among them Karl Kautsky, Karl Liebnecht, and Rosa Luxemberg, went underground to work against the war, although all three and many of their compatriots ended up in jail, anyway.

b) France—the socialist Guesde and the syndicalist Jouhaux both supported the war …

c) …as did the Marxist Plekhanov and the anarchist Kropotkin in Russia


d) United States—Woodrow Wilson ran for his second term in 1916 promising to keep the United States out of the conflict in Europe, but by late summer of 1917 the United States had declared war on Germany, and the first troops began arriving shortly after that. Socialists who spoke out against the war quickly found themselves in jail; Eugene V. Debs, the 5-time Socialist Party candidate for president, was arrested in Canton, Ohio, in October 1917, tried, convicted of sedition, and remained in prison until 1922; IWW members were also rounded up and put on trial in 1917-18.

III. Total War and Total Carnage




A. Total War—most government officials, military leaders, and participants believed that the war would be over in a matter of months, if not weeks—and that their side would prevail, of course. By 1916, it became obvious to many that all sides would need to devote all possible resources to fighting the war, even though this meant limiting the amount of food available for civilians, while still requiring a full-day’s work to produce war material.


B. Casualties—37 million dead or wounded, including both military and civilians

1. France—1.4 million military deaths, 300,000 civilians. 1 in 5 men of military service age killed; 4,266,000 military wounded.

2. Great Britain and Ireland—885,000 military dead, 109,000 civilian, 1.66 million military wounded

3. United States—116,708 military dead, 757 civilians, 205,690 wounded

4. Germany—2 million+ military dead, 426,000 civilians, 4.2 million wounded

5. Russia—1.8 million military dead, 1.5 million civilian, nearly 5 million wounded.



C. Treaty of Versailles—in the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month, germany agreed to surrender. Forced to abandon Alsace-Lorraine (gained in the Franco-Prussian War 1870), demilitarize the Ruhr Valley, give up overseas colonies (which were quickly snapped up by the victors), and pay huge indemnitities to the allies (except the new Soviet Union, which had quit the war in 1917) to allied powers.

1. League of Nations—Woodrow Wilson’s vision of an international body meant to adjudicate international disputes, and thereby end the necessity for war

2. Recognition of national aspirations for some European ethnic groups.

a) Poland

b) Czecholslavakia

c) Yugoslavia

d) Hungary

3. Denied national aspirations



a) Ireland (temporarily—until settlement of the Anglo-Irish War in 1921)

b) India

c) Vietnam

4. Protectorates—a special status given to some groups who aspired to nationhood, but were deemed “not quite ready” for that step (included many groups in the Levant or Middle East)

a) Palestine and Zionism

Capitalism Transformed

I. Advancement of Technology

A. Communications

1. Telegraph--although this was an older technology (it had been around since the late 1830s), the first successful continuous transatlantic cable went into operation in 1866 (an earlier cable began operation in 1858, but it failed fairly quickly). This sped communication between Europe and North America from several week by boat to several minutes by wire.

2. Telephone--provided even faster person-to-person communication.

B. Electrical power--although electricity had been discovered in the 1750s (Ben Franklin), it was not until the 1880s that the 1879 invention of the light bulb paid big dividends.


1. Water power--used to operate early mills (both grain and textile), which is why these early mills were built along swift-flowing rivers like in Manchester, England, and Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

a) The water wheel was used to provide power for the machinery in the mill. The power was conveyed to the machines by a series of shafts and belt, but the further removed from the power source the machine was, the less power it received.

2. Steam power--the conversion to steam power allowed factories to be built anywhere that a boiler could be supplied with a source of heat and a boiler to turn water into steam--so it meant that factories were no longer tied down by geology. These factories still suffered, however, from the belt transfer of power, meaning that machines further removed from the immediate source of power did not perform as efficiently.


3. Electric power--the initial benefit of electric power was to extend the work day via the electric light bulb; work in factories could now be carried on throughout the night. The factory could be operated 24 hours a day.

a) Electric motors--after the turn of the 20th century, individual machines within factories began being supplied with individual electric motors. This meant that each machine tool received the same amount of power, and could be controlled by management at a certain speed.

b) Electric motors and the pace of work--the advent of individual electric motors to run machine tools allowed factory managers to control the pace of work with minimal supervision. While this did not mean the end of foremen or other supervisors, it made the task of supervising greater numbers of workers with fewer foremen easier.

c) Scientific management--the advent of the electric motor made the implementation of theories of “scientific management” easier, because workers could be made to work at the pace of work the machine set.



C. Urbanization--the growth of the factory system around the world led to the growth of city populations, as well.

1. Factory size--factories grew larger during this time period, as well, which allowed companies to exercise greater “economies of scale”--producing commodities in greater numbers, which allowed them to further invest in machinery (capital) and to sell these commodities at lower and lower prices.

2. Commodification of Leisure--the growth of urban populations also led to the commodification of leisure.


a) Taverns, pubs, and saloons--many of these establishments were owned by the breweries that produced the product sold there. These establishments also provided meeting places, as well as a place to socialize.


b) Sports teams--many of the early semi-professional sports teams were sponsored by capitalists (Harman’s example of Arsenal, but also the Decatur Staleys--later Chicago Bears--and the Ft. Wayne Zollner Pistons--later Detroit Pistons).


3. Improved Sanitation and Living Standards--as more people moved to cities to take jobs in factories, the rich became aware that the living standards of the poor needed to be raised to provide labor for these factories--and because the diseases that ravaged the poor in these urban areas because of the lack of sanitation also tended to jump to the places that the rich lived, as well.

a) Construction of sewers and safe supplies of potable water--including projects like reversing the flow of the open sewer that had been the Chicago River, which polluted the drinking water of the city in Lake Michigan

b) Park systems--develop in Europe and North America to give city residents “places to breath” and an “appreciation for nature.”





D. Henry Ford and the Five Dollar Day--perhaps Ford’s greatest innovation (even greater than his application of the assembly line). The Five Dollar Day permitted Ford’s workers to buy the products that they made--an unusual occurrence in that day and age.

1. Rationale--the annual labor turnover in the Ford factory before the Five Dollar Day was greater than 350%--meaning that for every job in the Ford factory, the company had to hire and train three and a half employees each year. Despite the simplicity of most of the jobs, this greatly decreased the productivity potential of the other innovations in the factory.


2. Enticement--workers did not like the pace of work, or the fact that their interactions with other worker were restricted because they were tied to their machines, which operated continuously--and they voted with their feet, moving to other, more attractive jobs when they became available. The promise of the Five Dollar Day--twice the going wage rate of the automobile industry, which itself was a relatively high wage industry--was also an attempt to entice workers to stay at Ford’s, because workers only got the money after staying more than a year with the company.

3. Reward

a) Ford garnered an incredible amount of positive publicity for this innovation; it was probably one of the most important factors in creating the legend of Henry Ford


b) Workers were rewarded by a profit-sharing scheme that paid them the equivalent of Five Dollars a Day is they stayed with the company. And met numerous other requirements set forth by the company: that they be married, that no boarders stay in their house, that they stay away from too much alcohol, that they passed the muster when a representative from the Ford Sociological Department showed up to interview them, and that they take English classes if English was not their first language.

Imagined Communities

I. Imagined Communities--most of us from the United States take the idea of nationalism for granted, but national identity has not always been important in peoples lives--for much of history, local identity was of paramount importance.

A. Definition--nationalism is often difficult to define, but for our purposes we can define the term as the belief that persons living within a defined political boundary, sharing a common language and culture, who identify themselves and others as citizens of a political body.


B. Early examples

1. Monarchies--although the upper classes in a kingdom pledge fidelity to the monarch, others in this early imagined community were asked to view the king as the embodiment of the nation itself.


2. “Free-Born Englishmen”--the English were perhaps the first people to begin to re-imagine this idea of national identity, beginning with the English Civil War.

3. United States--in 1757, most white English speakers viewed themselves as Englishmen; by 1787, these same people viewed themselves as a citizen of a new nation, and a new people--Americans. Ruling elites in the United States also had to integrate non-English speakers into their “imagined community,” and which of these people would be allowed within the community, and who would be excluded.

a) Whiteness as a community marker--very quickly, white English speakers in the United States began to delineate who was a member of their imagined community by using a shifting standard of racial identity called “whiteness.”


b) How the Irish became white--when Irish Catholics began arriving in the United States in large numbers in the late 1840s and early 1850s, they were seen by native whites as “not quite white,” and questionably worthy of being permitted within the imagined community. The Irish were able to use their early ostracization against northern Protestants whites, however, by finding allies within the Democratic Party. By turning out in large numbers on election day, and largely voting as a bloc, they were able to swing votes in urban enclaves, helping the development of urban political machines.

c) Later immigrant groups used this model to carve out places of their own, especially in the larger urban centers. Irish politicians often fostered the growth of this practice, and often were the direct beneficiaries of the practice, winning political office and the benefits that came from that.




4. France--another shift in the ideology of nationalism. With the ending of the monarchy, revolutionary leaders realized that they needed to stir the population to keep foreign political and military leaders from re-establishing a monarchy in the country. They appealed to the people of France to fight the invaders of the homeland; later, that ideology shifts again to spread the benefits of the revolution. Later still, this ideology shifts a third time (under Napoleon), to fighting wars to further their own glory and the prestige of France.



C. Printing press--nationalist ideas were promulgated by the proliferation of affordable books, thanks to the printing press. The rise of the printing created a demand for more material printed in vernacular languages--the languages that people spoke everyday.

1. Histories of national greatness ... the most powerful nations in Europe began to produce histories that sought to explain how they came to their dominate political position--which inevitably portrayed this position happening because of their national superiority over other peoples.

2. ... and Histories of national oppression--minority language and ethnic groups within dominate political groups began to develop their own narratives to explain their inferior positions, narratives that often incorporated tales of betrayal by rival minority groups.

II. Growth of Nationalist Fervor

A. Ireland--the Emerald Isle was a very early colony, where England development many of the techniques of colonial control that they then used on other colonies they came to possess.

1. 1797 United Irishmen--group led by Ulster Protestant Theobold Wolfe Tone, but group itself was nonsectarian, promoted greater independence for Ireland and the re-establishment of full political rights for Roman Catholics in Ireland. This group was defeated by English appeals to Irish Protestants involved in the Orange Order, who were fearful that the rehabilitation of Catholics would undermine their own precarious position.


2. 1810-1847 Daniel O’Connell the Great Emancipator--O’Connell was a young lawyer in Dublin at the time of Wolfe Tone’s armed rising; although he sympathized with the movement’s political objectives, he contended that the objectives had to come from political reform rather than force of arms. Although O’Connell eventually won Catholic Emancipation (the right of Catholic who met other qualifications--largely having to do with the amount of property owned--to participate in political life), he was unsuccessful in other endeavors.


3. Charles Stewart Parnell and Home Rule--after O’Connell’s death in 1847, an Anglo-Irish politician by the name of Isaac Butt established an organization called the Home Rule League to agitate politically for greater Irish independance, while remaining a part of the British union. Parnell joined Butt’s organization, was elected to Parliament, but advocated harder-nosed political action (obstructionism)




a) Irish Republican Brotherhood--group that believed in direct actions to win Irish independence (predecessor of the Irish Republican Army). Also known as Fenians, although that group largely operated outside of Ireland itself. In 1867, the group attempted an armed uprising both in Ireland and in Canada, which failed. Parnell worked closely with the groups, although it is not clear whether he actually joined.



b) Gaelic League--by 1880, a group called the Gaelic Union was formed to “keep alive” the Gaelic language; by that time the number of speakers was limited to only a few pockets in the western regions of Ireland (to this day, the language is only spoken in a few pockets in the western region, although all school children in the country are taught the language). By 1893, the organization was called the Gaelic League, and was promoting “ancient” Irish sports like hurling and Gaelic football, in addition to language instruction.

c) Parnell’s brilliance as a politician, working in conjunction (if in secret) with direct force advocates, advanced the Irish political cause, principally by working with the Liberal Party and its leader, William Gladstone, to further that party’s agenda while also gaining concessions on Irish political concerns short of Home Rule. His involvement with married woman, Kitty O’Shea, ends his political career; Parnell dies shortly afterward.


4. Playing the Orange Card--the struggle for home rule continued without Parnell. The continued dominance of the Liberal Party in British politics led the opposition party, the Conservative (Tory) Party, to return to the Orange Order to disrupt the political cohesion between Liberals and the Irish Party. The Orange Order threatened to secede from a Home Rule Ireland in order to remain “loyal” to the king of England; this helped stall Irish Home Rule from being considered before World War I broke out.


5. Partition of Ireland



a) 1916 Easter Rebellion--radicals within the IRB decided to stage a coup d’etat in Dublin beginning Easter Sunday 1916. Small group managed to hold out in the Main Post Office for a week, but howitzer guns finally forced their surrender. In typical British fashion, they made martyrs of the rebels, who to that point had little public sympathy.


b) 1920 Anglo-Irish War--between British troops (the “Black and Tans”) and the IRB, who fought a guerilla war before accepting a peace treaty which provided most of Ireland with Home Rule--except for six counties in Ulster

Colonial Identities

I. Dress as an expression of nationalism


A. Zanibar--an island city-state on the African east coast, was an important trade port of the Indian Ocean.

1. By 1600s, Zanibar was populated by the Swahili people.

2. During the period in history, the kingdom of Oman began challenging the control the Portuguese exercised over the Indian Ocean; the Swahili of Zanzibar became an important ally in this endeavor, and Zanzibar increased in importance as a port city.

3. The Omani expansion of trade helped to create a multi-cultural society; the Omani expansion of the slave trade meant that class differences became expressed in the manner of dress.


4. When the slave trade was finally abolished, and the slaves emancipated, former slaves sought to express their new freedom by creating a new style of dress, which spurred the sale of imported cloth.

B. India

1. The early traders from the East India Company sought to learn about--and many emulated--Indian culture.

2. By the late 1700s, however, the British sought to distance themselves from through clothing.

3. Indians seeking to ingratiate themselves with the British therefore adapted various items of British clothing.


4. When the Indian independence movement began to gain momentum, allegiance to the movement was signified by the way one dressed oneself. Mohandas Gandhi personified this movement, with his insistence that his followers dress themselves in "homespun" in the "traditional" manner--which the nationalist movement re-defined.

Imperial Capitalism

I. Imperialism in Brazil

A. Early Portuguese Imperialism


1. Sugar--the early economic impetus for Portuguese imperial development in Brazil was the cultivation of sugar. This lead to the development of slavery in the colony, which provided labor for this endeavor, as well as later economic developments. More than 35% of all slaves taken from Africa were sent to Brazil. Slavery legally existed in Brazil until 1888; slaves are still being found in some places in the country to this day.

B. Later Portuguese Imperialism




1. Gold--the discovery of gold in Brazil gave the Portuguese economy a boost just as the price of sugar was dropping because of increased production from other sugar-producing areas (particularly the Caribbean Islands).


2. Cotton--Portugal, worried about the growing trade imbalance with England, began growing cotton in Brazil to start a domestic textile industry. Portuguese/Brazilian investors, seeing advantages to building factories in Brazil, where the cotton was grown. Eventually, the metropole saw this as a threat to their continuing rule, and demanded the halt of construction of new textile factories, as well as the dismantling of factories already constructed.

a) This policy did not help to maintain a viable textile industry in Portugal (which could not continue to compete as industrial development continued to drive down the price of textiles produced in England, and at the same time ended the chance to further develop textile industry in Brazil.




C. Brazilian independence--

1. In 1808, King Joao the VI fled Portugal to avoid capture during the Napoleonic Wars, governing from Brazil. The center of government remained in the colony until 1821, when the so-called “Liberal Revolution” in Portugal forced the king to return. Upon returning to Portugal, attempts to limit the independence of local governments in Brazil, which had been granted a great deal of autonomy while the king resided in Brazil, created feelings of resentment.

2. Brazilian underdevelopment--tensions this determined underdevelopment of Brazil caused among the Luso-Brazilians (those persons in Brazil of Portuguese descent) and the Portuguese government stirred many to develop the opinion that the interests of those living in Brazil would be best served by severing ties with Portugal

3. Independence--was declared in 1822, and by 1825 an agreement was signed by Portugal recognizing the independence of Brazil. While the revolution was not bloodless, it was far less bloody than many of the other Latin American revolutions.



II. Imperialism in South Africa


A. Cape Colony--after its “discovery” by the Portuguese in 1488, the Cape of Good Hope became an important place along the trade route between Europe and Asia.


B. Afrikaner settlement--during the period of Dutch dominance of the Asian trade, a number of Dutch farmers settled in Cape Colony (called Boers, Dutch for “farmers”). Although the land in southern Africa was occupied by nomadic peoples, the Dutch settlers claimed that the land was “unoccupied” (since it was not occupied as they wished to occupy it), and therefore legitimately theirs for the taking.




C. English settlement--as the English assumed greater dominance on the high seas, they also began dominating the settlement in Cape Colony. Feeling closed in by the British, the Afrikaners moved further inland, which brought them into further conflict with Africans already living there.



D. Exploitation of Colonial Minerals--the discovery of valuable minerals for exploitation brought huge amounts of investment into southern Africa--but this resulted in the displacement on impoverishment of the native peoples


1. Diamonds

2. Gold

E. Colonial Industrialization--mining for these valuable minerals was industrialized, which meant that the native people were hired as miners--but also humiliated and dehumanized.


1. Mining camps--African miners were forced to live in all-male camps as a condition of their employment.
2. Authorization--miners also were forced to carry cards identifying them as miners; not producing a card when required to do so often resulted in a severe corporal punishment.

3. Apartheid--this system of organizing labor for the mines in the region gradually led to the system of apartheid, which defined South Africa for much of the 20th century.