The Asian Exception

I. The Tokugawa Bakufu



A. 17th Century Japanese Society


1. Feudalism--Japanese society in the 17th and 18th century is best characterized as feudalistic. It should be noted that during this time most European countries were beginning to shed those same social characteristics.

a) The Han--the Japanese term for the feudal lords who controlled large areas of land, and had peasants working that land, and had samurai to control the peasants and to fight other Han groups when there were disputes.



2. First Contact with Europeans--when the Europeans first showed up on Japanese shores, they and their trade goods were initially welcomed. These trade goods proved to be problematic, however.

3. Social disruption--the disruption this exposure to European trade goods caused--particularly in regards to firearms, which upset the ritualized (and less deadly) style of fighting between samurai warriors.



B. Rise of the Tokugawa Bakufu--this disruption of Japanese society created a crisis in confidence in the leadership of the government, and presented the opportunity for new leaders to emerge.



1. Tokugawa Shogunate--the emperor of Japan was at this time merely a figurehead, but represented the fiction around which the whole government revolved. The Shogun was suppose to act much like a prime minister does in a parliamentary democracy; acting as the directing hand of the emperor. In reality, the Tokugawa Shogun ruled the country, and the emperor usually acquiesed to the wishes of the Shogun.

a) Edo--present-day Tokyo became the new capitol of the country. The other Hans were directed to spend at least part of the year in Edo, and to leave their families there year round, in order to insure that they remained on their best behavior.

b) Restriction of trade--after consolidating power, the Tokugawa restricted trade to a single port--and also insisted that the only trading partners were to be the Chinese and the Dutch



2. 1st Conservative Revolution--the Tokugawa regime intended their rule to return Japan to a “traditional” way of life. But while order was maintained, the Tokugawa regime could not stop the changes that were being made to Japanese society.

a) Urbanization--by forcing other Han leaders and there families to live in Edo, this created opportunities for peasant farmers to sell surplus food to the people living there--and also created the opportunity for craftsmen to take up residence nearby in order to make luxury goods for the nobles living there.


II. Japanese and Western “Free Trade”

A. Commerce in the Pacific



1. Trade--western countries were competing with each other to trade with countries in the Pacific, particularly China (because of its great size), but were also beginning to press other countries to trade, as well.

2. Fishing--the need to find more sources of fish led fishing fleets to move farther and father from home.


a) Whaling expeditions--we know whales are technically not fish, but for the first half of the 19th century they were considered as such. The largest whales, the sperm whale, was also a valued resource for for sperm oil and spermaceti (from which the whale derived its common name).



b) Sailors stranded because of Moby Dick-like encounters with the largest toothed mammal who were able to make it to the shores of Japan were treated like hostile invaders; it was for this reason that a three gunboat fleet from the United States showed up in 1852, and “asked” the Japanese to open their ports to trade. With promises to return in a years for the Japanese response, the Americans withdrew.

IF THAT double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851


B. Commodore Matthew C. Perry--the younger brother of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, he led a small fleet of four gunboats in the return of the American fleet. The Togukawa ruling elites realized that they did not have the capability to resist, and agreed to sign a treaty granting the US rights to trade in Japanese ports.

1. Convention of Kanagawa--the Japanese-style “unequal treaty” granted rights of extraterritorality (meaning foreign nationals were not bound by local laws), and being forced to grant European powers “most-favored nation” status (meaning lower tariffs for the goods they exported), while receiving nothing in return.



C. Fall of the Tokugawa--this development was a rude shock to Japanese pride, and undermined the confidence previously placed in the ruling regime.

1. Tokugawa betrayal--the treaty was portrayed as a betrayal of the emperor by the enemies of the Tokugawa, largely because they did not consult with the emperor before agreeing to the treaty.

2. Internal strife--other Han attempted to move into the power vacuum created by this development, setting off a low-key civil war that lasted until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.



III. Meiji Restoration



A. Role for the Emperor--the emperor remained largely a figurehead.



B. Modernization of society--the Japanese leadership quickly realized that they would need to modernize their society to compete with the West--or, at least, not end up in the position that China had fallen into.


1. Ending feudalism--the Han were largely done away with; while large landowners remained an important part of society, peasants for the first time were allowed to own land as well.

2. Creation of State Capitalism--to compete with the industries of the west, Japanese leaders realized that industries in the country would need state assistance to capitalize (acquire machinery and factories), which they then provided.


C. Acquiring Raw Materials--Japan is a country rich in people, but poor in natural resources; there are minimal sources for iron ore, zinc, tin, or coal--all necessary to begin industrialization at this early time. Realizing that their neighbors China and Korea had these resources, the Japanese modernized their military with an eye to acquiring these materials.

D. Modernizing the military

1. Acquiring western arms--not only firearms, but cannon and eventually ships, until they could build their own (which did not happen until near the turn of the 20th century).

2. Universal conscription--initially opposed by what was left of the samurai class (who saw the large presence of peasants as demeaning to their honorable profession), as these samurai moved into the developing officer corps, this development became more palatable.


E. Asian Imperialism--by the end of the 19th century, Japan was able to raise itself to become a military and industrial power equal to some of those in Europe--although Europe and the United States refused to recognize that that was the case

The Opium Wars and the Subjegation of China

I. Qing (Manchu) Dynasty--the final dynastic rulers in China, ruling during the period from 1644 to 1912 (with a brief reassertion of power in 1917). The Qing Dynasty originated in the Manchuria Province. The Qing followed most previous dynastic practices, except that they were more despotic and more insular. The Qing insisted on retaining all positions of power, and forbade intermarriage with Chinese.

A. Tributary Trade--the Qing Dynasty continued the Chinese practice of strictly controlling trade, insisting that trade would only take place with “barbarians” at certain ports, and would be supervised by government officials (“mandarins”).


1. The China Trade--with European contact with China, great attraction developed for Chinese trade goods: silk, porcelain, and tea--and trade was only allowed to take place at Canton. England was the last of the European powers to begin trading with China, but quickly became one the the country’s largest trading partners, particularly in regards to the trade in tea, which transformed English social practices.

2. The Chinese Trade Deficit--with Chinese officials controlling the trade relationship, the English were forced to trade silver for Chinese trade goods. Desperate for another commodity to trade for these goods (and worried about the amount of silver flowing out of the country), they turned to a plant that grew in India, and had provided powerful pain relief in Asia for hundreds of years.



3. The Opium Trade--opium was not unknown in China, but to the advent of the opium trade fostered by Britain, it was not used recreationally.


a) Effect of opium use--used recreationally, opium produces a state of euphoria, relieving stress, pain, stunting hunger pangs. Continued use creates the need to use larger and larger doses to reach these pleasurable states, however--and once addicted, opium users have a great deal of incentive to continue use of the drug.


b) Non-medicinal use of opium spread from China to parts of the rest of Asia (including back to India--and to parts of Europe, particularly France), particularly as economic conditions in China deteriorated and the Chinese diaspora took place.

c) Chinese attempts to halt trade--Chinese officials, greased with bribes paid by British opium merchants, had long allowed the opium trade to flourish. By the late 1830s, however, with an estimated 2 million opium addicts located in its port cities, Chinese government officials became alarmed and moved to act against the further importation of the drug. The seizure and destruction of a large quantity of opium “provoked” Great Britain into declaring war on China, in what became known as the Opium War.



B. The First Opium War (1839-1842)--Britain’s declaration of war did not concern China, since most members of the Qing court viewed them as an “inferior” race, interested only in acquiring wealth.

1. British technology--part of China’s lack of concern over these incidents was the fact that 7,000 miles of ocean lay between the two countries. However, that fact that Britain had made great leaps in naval technology, and could bring huge amounts of fire power to attack Chinese forts along the coast, and allowed them to even penetrate the interior of the county up navigable rivers.



2. Treaty of Nanjing--the first of the “unequal” treaties, granted Britain not only the right to continue trading opium for tea, but received the rights of ownership for a swampy island off the coast of China they had used for their base of operations while the war was being fought (Hong Kong--just given back to China in 2000, when their “lease” ran out), the right of access to other Chinese ports, the right of extra-territorality (that is, British citizens were exempt from the law of the land in China)--as well as demanding that the Chinese compensate the British for the cost of the war. These concessions to one European power soon had to be granted to other European powers, as well.

3. The Benefits of “Free Trade”--this “war” was about free trade--the right of Britain to freely trade a destructive substance to China for tea, so that British fears of impoverishment from the amount of silver flowing out of the country could be salved.


a) Tea and British society--tea has been portrayed as a “luxury” good in most accounts, but its use in Britain transcended the restrictions we usually think of when thinking about the people using luxury good. Tea was consumed by all levels of British society by the time of the First Opium War, including industrial workers, who regularly received “breaks” at work (in the morning at 10:00, and the afternoon at 4:00) to consume tea (along with another “luxury” item--sugar)


C. Second Opium War--China, in the midst of attempting to put down the Tai-p'eng Rebellion, boarded a ship called the Arrow suspected of smuggling and piracy. The British, claiming the fact that the ship had been registered in Hong Kong and therefore exempt from Chinese scrutiny under the Nanjing Treaty. Although distracted by the Sepoy Mutiny in India, the British launched the Second Opium War (or the Arrow War, as it is also known) in 1857, with assistance from the French, marching to Beijing and burning the Summer Palace and extracting further concessions and indemnities from the Chinese.


D. Tai-p’eng Rebellion--the internal weaknesses exposed by the First Opium War came to fruition in a popular rebellion led by a former school teacher (and former convert to Christianity) by the name of Hung Hsiu-ch’uan, who preached a doctrine of strict equality between people (particularly men and women), equal division of land, communal ownership of goods, and an end to social distinctions.

1. Rebels sense of purpose--and discipline led them to defeat those Chinese forces sent against them--initially. Success led many in command to develop a taste for the trappings of royalty; combined with the British and French aid to the Qing Dynasty to put down the rebellion (which they believed would undermine the growing European control of the country), led to the rebellion’s defeat in 1864--leaving the Qing in power for another 50 years.

Colonization and Empire

I. Transforming Colonization in India



A. Pre-Capitalist Colonies--before the linkage of India to maturing capitalism, British settlements existed at the pleasure of the princes who controlled the area around the colony--much like the slave factories on the African coast at the height of the slave trade remained open for business because some Africans found it profitable to exchange slaves for manufactured goods there.



1. Fall of the Mughal Empire

a) From the slow collapse of the Mughal Empire, power had devolved into six separate kingdoms that were usually at war with one another. This condition meant that there was little popular support for any of the six kingdoms. This situation was also detrimental, however, for the economic well-being of merchants, bankers, and tax-farmers (or peasants, for that matter, which is why popular support was lacking), who were under increased pressure to come up with the money to fund these wars, as well and the money necessary to maintain the opulent palaces and huge courts of these princes.



b) British East India Company--at the beginning of the 18th century, the East India Company was a marginal player in India, limited to redistributing the goods it bought in India to the rest of the world, and reliant upon remaining in the good graces of both the remaining Mughal princes and the Indian Merchants they traded with. In 1750 an official with the company in the province of Bengal saw on opportunity to advance the interests of the East India Company (as well as his own) by stepping into the power vacuum there and playing one claimant to the throne off another. After defeating French forces attempting the same technique, Robert Clive and his associates gained control of the government functions in Bengal, which was by far the richest province in India--but while still maintaining the prince as a figurehead, and supporting his retinue, as well. The Company collected taxes and ran the government, while the Indian official, called nawab, continued to hold the regalia of office. Britain gained a new control of its colonies in India just as it was losing control of its colonies in North America. The Company was able to do this cheaply because it skimmed money in return for collecting taxes from Indian peasants that they used a small portion of to employ upwards of 300,000 sepoy troops.



c) Success Breeds Success--other Indian rulers, seeing the efficacy of having the British East India Company run their government for them--enjoying all of the trappings of monarchy with none of the responsibilities--put up little resistance to “working with” the Company; and what resistance was put up was quickly overcome by force. Merchants welcomed the rise of the Company, because they bought much of textiles the company sold, and the power of the ruling elites was somewhat checked in regards to seizure of property. The Company further cemented its power among the uper classes in India by creating a new class of large landowners out of a portion of the old zamidars--but these landowners owed their alliegance to the East India Company, rather than to any Indian political leader.




B. Empire on the Cheap

1. Divide et impera--Divide and rule, the old Roman principle. Using bribery and violence in equal measure, the British were able to play one ruler against another, kingdom against kingdom, privileged class against privileged class, and caste against caste.

a) 1818 Maratha conquered

b) 1843 Sind

c) 1849 Sikhs

d) 1856 Oudh



2. Creation of British Wealth--colonization of India created wealth for those persons associated with British rule--particularly the British themselves, but including their Indian agents--became very wealth, while Indian peasants were increasingly impoverished.


a) Indian crop failure of 1769--set the stage for the rise of the East India Company. Famine brought on by crop failure is rarely a single year phenomenon. Mass starvation creates the conditions that continue to have detrimental effects for years afterward--particularly on non-mechanized societies that rely upon animal power to aid cultivation (the reason for the Vedic adoration of the oxen in the first place).

b) Impoverishment of the peasantry--the huge scale of Indian peasantry meant that they largely supported the superstructure of imperial government in India, largely by paying taxes (through turning over a large share of the crops that they raised).

c) Ruin of Indian textile industry--before the arrival of the British, most Indian cotton was utilized in the domestic Indian textile industry (textiles made by crafts people, however, rather than by machines). With the mechanization of textile manufacture in Britain (with machines), Indian cotton became an leading export item, that then made its way back as cotton cloth--cutting out Indian craft workers entirely, and impoverishing them as well.

(1) “Free Trade” at work--India was at this early period “de-industrialized” in order to advance British industry--while at the same time providing a huge market for cheaply-made British industrial goods.



3. 1857 Sepoy Mutiny--The prime example of the height of British arrogance. The Indian troops in the employ of the East India Company (called sepoys) mutinied because their officers insisted that they use ammunition lubricated with animal fat, both beef (an anathema to Hindus) of pork (Muslims). This caused the rank-and-file among the sepoy to rebel; eventually they took over control of much of northern India, and began to unravel much of the controls that the British had been able to install. Tellingly, the Hindu and Sikh sepoy in the region placed a Mughal Muslim heir to the throne of Delhi as the prince of the region. The mutiny was eventually put down with 40,000 British troops from outside India, as well as Sepoy from the southern region of the sub-continent. Some peasants who had joined the mutiny were publicly hung, other were publicly flogged (many sepoy avoided this fate as a condition of their surrender).





C. The Killing Fields of Capitalism--the Sepoy Mutiny marked a change in British colonial policy, and the British government began to assume greater control of the functions of the governing apparatus in India.



1. Thomas Malthus--On Population Control is the work Malthus is best known for. In this work, Malthus argues that the poor always have more children than they can support, because of their moral and spiritual failings--their lack of self-control is evidence of these failings, and the reason for their lack of wealth.

a) In combination with Adam Smith, the reasoning of Malthus led the British government in India to see the effects of famine in India (or at least to justify the inaction to those effects) as part of the moral failings of Indian peasants, who simply had too many children, and famine being a part of a “natural” thinning process on the human herd.

The American Civil War

I. What They Fought For

A. The South

1. For Their “Homeland”--many (perhaps most) poor whites saw the mobilization of Union troops as an “invasion” (or threat of invasion) of their homeland. Many people at this time felt that their first obligation of allegiance was to their state (which they considered their homeland), rather than to the United States.

a) Robert E. Lee-- “With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed, I hope that I may never be called upon to draw my sword ...”



2. Continued Expansion of Slavery--the main point of contention was the continued expansion of slavery, which slaveholders in the South saw as necessary for the continuation of the institution.

a) Even though only a small percentage of Southerners owned slaves--and an even smaller percentage owned more than 10 slaves--slavery was the means for white economic advancement, and a number of poor whites would have seen the possibility of sometime in the future being able to exploit the labor of slaves as a possible means for them to gain access to wealth (“Joe the Plumber?”)

b) Slavery in the South was not only a way to organize labor, but also an important social institution; it gave poor whites someone to look down upon, someone to dominate. Poor whites made up an important component of the slave patrols, and could therefore order slaves around who were not under their master’s immediate control; a Southern version of the “Wages of Whitemess.”



B. The North

1. To Save the Union--this was the states purpose, especially in the months after the volunteers from the South Carolina militia fired on Fort Sumter and forced its surrender; this mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers.


2. To End the Expansion of Slavery--many people in the North advocated a “free labor” ideology (“Free Labor, Free Soil, Free Men” was an early slogan of the Republican Party). To define oneself as an advocate of free labor, one needed an antithesis-- “slave labor,” which was highly undesirable.

a) The Slave Power--the slaveholding bloc held much political power in Washington. Eight of the first sixteen presidents owned slaves while they were in office--including 5 of the first 8. Because of the “3/5ths Clause” of the Constitution (each slave counted as 3/5ths of a person for electoral purposes), the South had more than their share of Representatives (since slaves were not voters). The Missouri Compromise of 1820, while limiting the spread of slavery above the Mason-Dixon line, also created the practice of pairing the admissions of slave and free states, maintaining the status quo and granting the slave states de facto veto power in the Senate, where they could filibuster any undesirable legislation.


b) Slave states used this veto power to keep taxes low (surprising to us today, the Democratic Party was the party of low taxes and free trade, while the Republicans--and their antecedents, the Whigs--were the party of higher taxes and protective tariffs)--which frustrated northern attempts to build infrastructure (particularly a transcontinental railroad), and to stave off passage of the hugely popular Morrill Act (authorizing the sale of public lands to finance agricultural/industrial universities in each state) and the Homestead Act--neither of which passes until 1862.


c) Abraham Lincoln was the personification of the Northern striver identifying with the Free Soil/Free Labor ideology. Born and spent early childhood in Kentucky, but father was frustrated with lack of opportunities for non-slaveholders; moved family to Indiana, and then to Illinois. Lincoln hated farm work, attempted to become a small businessman, then a more successful attempt at becoming lawyer. Moved into politics as a member of the Whig Party, but grow frustrated with that party’s seeming status as the permanent political underdog. Went back to law, became very successful railroad lawyer. Drawn back into politics as a result of Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which abbrogated the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and left the question of the expansion of slavery to “popular sovereignty.”

II. Two Economies



A. Slave Economy of the South

1. Colonial slavery--driven by the cultivation of tobacco and provisioning sugar plantations in the Caribbean.


2. The Cotton Gin--this simple invention made the cultivation of short staple cotton profitable, and resulted in transforming the institution of slavery from dying a slow death, as the Founding Fathers expected while debating the Constitution, to its revitalization and expansion into the newly acquired Southwest Territory (western Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana).


3. King Cotton--the industrialization of the textile trade increased the demand for cotton, which encouraged its cultivation and the demand for labor to carry this out--which led to the spread of slavery to the original Southwest. The spread of slavery meant limited opportunities for poor white men in the region, while making large plantation owners exceedingly wealthy

a) Encouraged plantation owners to spend this wealth on luxury goods in exchange for selling their cotton to British textile mills (as well as those mills being built in the northeastern part of the United States, where industrialization developed in this country earliest). This led southern politicians (who were often also southern plantation owners) to become advocates of low tariffs (“free trade”). Northern politicians, on the other hand, advocated high tariffs on imported goods, so that the goods they produced could be competitively priced--and allow these new industries to develop.



B. Free Labor Economy in the North--while income disparity was almost severe in the North as it was in the South, but the Northern economic system created more opportunities for economic advancement for the middle and lower classes than the Southern system of slavery did.

1. Industrialization of the economy--although most people lived on farms, the industrial concerns in the growing cities of the North became an increasingly important engine driving the economy in that region.




a) The McCormick Reaper--invented in western Virginia by Cyrus McCormick, but it was manufactured in Chicago--because McCormick saw that city being closer to the potential market for the product.



2. Free Labor, Free Soil--the market for farm implements was greater in the North, in part because there were not slaves to perform the labor, and the competition for labor with industries in the cities meant that northern farmers were receptive to using these new machines.


3. Free Men--the larger middle class in the North also created a larger--if less profitable--market for goods, which in turn provided the impetus for more goods to be produced.

Marx and Engels and Marxism

I. Marx and Engels


A. Karl Marx

1. Family--father was of Jewish ancestry, who apparently converted to Protestant Christianity--possibly to advance his career as a government official, since Jews were discriminated against even in the 1810s in Germany (and most of the rest of Europe).

2. Education--Germany was in the midst of forming the modern academy in the years before Marx began his education (which much of Europe and North America would soon copy). Received doctorate in Philosophy at 24.

3. Clashes with the Prussian government officials led to Marx being exiled to Paris by 1847, where he met Engels and other exiled German socialists.

B. Frederick Engels

1. Family--father was a prosperous manufacturer, with factories in Rhineland (western Germany) and Manchester (northern England).


2. Manchester--Engels was sent to Manchester by his father to manage the factory in Manchester, where Engels was introduced to the misery of the working-class first hand. As a result, Engels joined the Chartists and wrote The Condition of the English Working Class. Engels ended up in Paris by 1847, like Marx.

C. The Young Hegelians--Marx utilized the philosophy espoused by Georg Wilhem Hegel as the basis for his own new philosophy, particularly Hegel’s argument about the dialectic basis of history--but he also borrowed and adapted ideas from other Young Hegelians, who also reacted to the work of Hegel.

1. Bruno Bauer--turned Hegel’s notion that everything changes through contradiction into a liberal critique of the then-present German society.


2. Ludwig Feuerbach--developed the materialist philosophy (also known as Physicalism) that Marx and Engels relied upon to develop their own theory of historical materialism. Feuerbach argued that only physical objects possess reality, and in particular that spirituality was delusional. Feuerbach argued that man created god, rather than the other way around, and this resulted in man’s alienation. This philosophy goes hand-in-hand with atheism



D. The Communist Manifesto--became famous because of the events in the months after its publication (the various revolutions in 1848), but this work also laid out the work that Marx and Engels pursued the rest of their lives.

1. Alienation--the “market” was nothing more than the interaction or workers labor. A worker’s labor solidified into a thing, a product of that labor--but in capitalism, the object produced did not belong to the worker who produced it, but to the capitalist paying wages for the worker’s labor. The product of labor therefore became objectified, as Marx termed it, in exchange for a cash payment.

a) Alienation occurred because of the efforts of successive generations of people to wrest a livelihood from nature, and this led to differing relations between people, eventually forming into economic classes.

b) Marx and Engels argued that Feuerbach neglected the role of human agency in changing the physical world, which they set out to correct with their own arguments about alienation.

2. Historical materialism--Marx and Engels argued that every historical epoch was defined by the prevailing economic system (called the mode of production) determined the character of the social and political organization of that society.

a) Thesis--Antithesis--Synthesis--for Marx and Engels, society was continually undergoing a struggle for control, epitomized by the above formulation.


II. The Revolutions of 1848


A. The Specter Haunting Europe--Marx and Engels finished writing The Communist Manifesto in late 1847. In December of that year there was a brief civil war in Switzerland; that was followed by a brief uprising in Sicily in January. In February, there was an uprising by workers in Paris, forcing the king to flee and helping to create the establishment of the Second Republic.


B. Famine


1. Ireland and the Great Famine--the immiseration of the Irish peasant due to enclosure continued apace, and they were shunted to smaller and smaller plots and poorer land. This had resulted in the 1820s and 1830s in increased numbers of Irish leaving their homes to work in the factories of England and the United States, as well as building the transportation infrastructure.



a) Potato cultivation--despite increased emigration even before the advent of the potato blight, the population of Ireland increased exponentially during the early decades of the 19th century; according to the 1841 census, the population of the island was over 8 million people; in the 1851 census, the population dropped to about 6.5 million. An estimated million people died from starvation or disease during the Hunger; another million or so immigrated during those years.



b) The failure to counteract the Great Hunger--initially the British Prime Minister Robert Peel ordered that food be imported from the US and sold at market rates (which many of the poorest Irish could not afford); but under his successor, even these minimal efforts were abandoned, as the reliance upon the “invisible hand” of the market was going to deliver food to people who had no means to purchase it.

c) This same blight effected other areas of Europe, as well, but not with the same level of devastation and death. Other governments in Europe reacted in a similar fashion to that of Great Britain; this helped create a crisis of confidence in these governments, and to also create the political atmosphere that fostered support for the revolutions that followed.



C. Democratic reformers

1. Bourgeois protest--middle class protest stirred workers to take on the army and police in many cities in Europe in 1848.



2. Proletarian protest--just as in the earlier French revolution, when the lower class began to agitate for a voice in the forming government, the middle class (the bourgeois, in Marx’s term) allied with the upper class, and used armed force to crush the rebellion


Conclusion: From the results of the failed 1848 revolutions--the forces of reaction throughout Europe were largely able to regain political control, although feudalistic remnants of society were expunged, paving the road for capitalism to develop--the arguments of Marx and Engels and other socialists, that bourgeois democratic revolutions were a step on the way to control of governmental functions by the proletariat, gained a significant number of adherents.

The Industrial Revolution

I. Means of Production

A. Technology--the development of new technologies altered they way workers did their jobs, as Adam Smith had described the pin factory in Wealth of Nations.


1. Steam engine--this invention might be the best choice to epitomize the first Industrial Revolution, because it powered many of the other innovations. The “invention” of the steam engine has been credited to James Watt; in actuality, his machine was an incremental improvement on already existing steam engines. Steam engines began to be applied in a number of industries.


2. Coal mining--took on new importance with the refinement of the steam engine, because coal was the fuel of the new means of power. The earliest steam engines were used to pump water out of the ever-deepening coal mines. Within a relatively short time, steam engines were placed on vehicles called locomotives (which quickly became used for the distribution of coal); there also developed an increased production of steel, which was in part spurred by the expansion of railroads (rails, locomotives, rolling stock), and the fact that in England the need to find an alternative to charcoal (made from trees).

3. Steel manufacturing--made possible because much of England was denuded of trees by the turn of the 19th century--and peat (or “turf,” the source of heat for most of the rural poor) would not provide enough heat to make iron. Adding coal--and later, coke, a refined form of coal--not only transformed the iron into steel, but made the steel stronger and more flexible than was previously possible.



4. Textiles--steam engines quickly replaced water wheels to power machinery in the textile industry. At this early stage, the machinery in question was used to produce the yarn used to produce cloth--manufacturing cloth itself was at this early period was still left to handloomers in the countryside (although by the 1840s most of these workers would be replaced by the power loom.


B. The Transportation Revolution--contributed to the Industrial Revolution by facilitating access to raw materials, distributing manufactured goods, and providing the means to recruit workers.


1. Canals--not a new means of transportation, of course, but their development facilitated the distribution of goods and raw materials within in country. The disadvantage of canals in Northern Europe and North America was that they were out of operation for 3-5 months a year because of winter.



2. Railroads--had the advantage of the ability to operate all year long, which meant that railroads gradually replaced canals as the preferred means of moving goods and people.

3. Steam ships--the development of the steam ship with a screw propeller meant that the movement of goods and people across the oceans became both cheaper and faster. This facilitated the greatest movement of people across borders, and the transformation of colonies

II. Alienating labor


A. Enclosure of the Commons--the subsistence of peasants was fostered by their ability to use the commons to pasture livestock, collect firewood, gather nuts and berries.

1. With enclosure, activities that previously had been legal were made illegal--called “trespassing” and “theft.”

2. No pasture for livestock--enclosure prevented small farmers and their families from keeping their livestock, since they owned no property to pasture them.


B. New Landholding Patterns--before enclosure, peasant landholding was characterized by the ownership of several small strips of land. This pattern was changed by “rationalizing” landholding.


1. As peasants found it increasingly difficult to farm in this changing environment, many sold their parcels and moved to cities in the hope of being able to make a living.

2. Immiseration--economists and historians have long argued about the effect on the economic lives of those peasants who migrated from countryside to city (whether that was a short trip, or across an ocean). While conditions were less miserable in the city than in the countryside, conditions in the city were still miserable.

C. Early worker resistance



1. Luddism--workers attempted to resist industrialization by breaking the machines and burning down the factories that they concluded were making their lives more miserable. A nighttime visit from “Ned Ludd” to a factory owner’s house, or the mysterious breakage of machinery, were often “blamed” on this fictional character.




2. Chartist movement--after the repression of the Corresponding Societies, working people in the cities continued to agitate for political reforms that would create the opportunities to better their living conditions. Chartists organized huge demonstrations to agitate for the widening of suffrage rights (the “charter”), and annual parliamentary elections.

a) Chartists were strongest in the north and west of England, where industrialization had its earliest effects

b) British government responded by mobilizing the army to put down any further demonstrations (although there were none after the initial huge rallies)


D. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon--in France, the workers took to the streets for the first time since 1795 to protest similar conditions. In response, the restored Bourbon monarch, Charles X, abdicated the throne to the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and left the country.

Conclusion--the capitalist economic system is not some “natural” evolution, but a conscious choice made by humans. Many humans were not happy with this choice, and attempted to make reforms to change it. It was not until the latter 1840s, however, that these critiques gained a greater intellectual underpinning.