Strayer, Marx

There were a variety of ways that the working class addresses the monotony of industrial life. By 1815, the end of the Napoleonic Era, about one million workers, mostly artisans had created a series of societies that acted as self-help groups for workers. These organizations seem to be the framework for the notion of unions that would come about legally a few years later. The first labor unionists were mostly artisans. These unions at first weren’t fighting for labor rights, but merely helping the defray the shared costs of such things as insurance and paying for funerals. Others within the political spheres of influence joined to achieve lasting change in the areas of better working conditions and better wages for example, once the laws of England permitted unions to be legalized by 1824. Local strikes were fermented, but ultimately, national strikes in Britain were aimed for. The British upper classes were quite alarmed and not really understanding the union movements, first the newspapers perpetuated the believe amongst the upper classes that the unions were a threat to society even though the unions became more respectable organizations over time. Socialist ideas don’t seem to have began with Karl Marx interestingly. A textile mill owner named Robert Owen seems to have promoted the idea of a cooperative, in which the workers decided collectively by vote what the means and mode of production were in terms of conditions, hours and pay et cetera. He established a 10 hour work day, housing for workers, standardized wages, and even education for the workers children.

Marx, however would have a more last impact the trajectory of labor rights. Although he was German by birth, most of his life experience that dealt with the consequences of the industrial revolution occurred while he lived in England. He wrote extensively of these labor conditions that he witnessed as well as economic ideas and economic critiques that he formulated in his books such as the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. For Marx, religion had to be removed from the equation to realize that man’s trajectory wasn’t in God’s hands, but rather if there was no God then mans existence must therefore be based on the idea of class struggle. The hostilities began between the bourgeoisie who owned the industrial capital and the proletariat, his term for the industrial labor class. Class struggle was at the heart of socio-economic problems in society according to Marx. Marx felt that capitalist societies could never deliver utopian ideals of freedom, democracy, and equality that the working classes yearned for because in capitalism societies the division of labor, resources, property rights could never be equally distributed amongst the classes, which created hostility between the classes. He felt that capitalism was doomed to collapse inevitably. Marx thought that once revolutions overthrew the capitalist societies that the technological innovations of the Industrial Revolution would be implemented to serve the best interests of the entire labor force. By the later part of the 19^th Century radical trade unionists, intellectuals, from the middle class embraced Marx’s ideas. And as other European countries like German caught up with the Industrial Revolution, his ideas spread to those countries. And soon labor rights parties sprung up to address the problems of the industrial age, workers rights along the lines of Marx’ ideas. 

Strayer: The Industrial Revolution

It’s interesting to note that Gandhi said that he thought “Industrialization was a curse” and that he was concerned that adopting western style Industrialization would be bad for India. As if he thought that rapid industrialization would somehow encourage India to want imperialistic ambitions in which they might imperialize others as the British had imperialized them. Of course, India was also an industrial wasteland that looked like something out of a Charles Dickens novel due to the air and industrial pollution according to Strayer.  India had long been a center of cotton production and where the sugar industry originated in the past. But, China was were at least a proto version of the Industrial Revolution began circa 1200 A.D. But, it’s an enigma by many historians why the Industrial Revolution receeded into Chinese history nor spread beyond its borders. However, by the Industrial Revolution it began to spread to Japan, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, but not at the same times, and not equally distributed in terms of innovation and wealth. Britain was the place where it had all began. Amazingly between 1750 – 1900 there was a fiftyfold increase in industrial output and wealth that couldn’t have been imagined in previous eras. There were several innovations, especially in the textile industry that allowed the Industrial revolution to occur when it did. There was a large increase in the production of the telegraph, pottery, rubber, printing, and even a lot more agricultural production. The Industrial Revolution was coupled with charters and private enterprise contracts given by European powers to take trade expedition to the far reaches of the known world. Holland, England, Portugal, France, and Spain were some of these players on the world stage. Missionaries also went along with the trade expeditions. In the Americas Europeans exploited a lot of raw materials such as cotton, gold and silver. Britain was the most commercialized country in Europe at the height of the Industrial Revolution. Technological innovations such as crop rotations, selective breeding of animals, lighter plows increased food productivity, which in turn increased population growth and demand for raw materials. Because England was an island and hadn’t been invaded since the Norman Conquest, technological innovations weren’t halted. I hadn’t thought of that reason for the Industrial Revolution occurring in England before, but it makes sense because similarly, Ireland for a period during the Dark Ages had isolated islands with monasteries where the only books were being reproduced while the rest of Europe was under siege from barbarians. A decline in landownership aristocracy and the rise of power and influence of businessmen within the aristocracy also contributed to the increase in strength of the Industrial Revolution. The Middle Class also saw a rise in their stature, and could gradually join the aristocracy. They were shopkeepers, lawyers, doctors, intellectuals, that were liberals. Not liberals in the sense of Democrats vs. Republicans, but in the European sense, liberals who favored a stronger constitutional monarchy. Whereas, if one said they were a “conservative,” it meant they favored a stronger monarchy.

507 - 524 Strayer: Haitian and Spanish/Portugese New World Revolutions

It’s amazing that the French colonists in Haiti only numbered 40,000 compared to 500,000 slaves. It’s a wonder that the slaves didn’t overthrow their French oppressors sooner than they did. Like in the U.S. there were also couleur libres (‘mixed race’) or what we once referred to as mulato. Strayer implies that the timing of the revolution in Haiti coincided with the events of the French Revolution. Perhaps the African slaves felt with all the chaos in France that the French couldn’t send reinforcements to put down the revolt. I knew the revolt happened. I just never made the connection of the Haitian revolution with the events of the French Revolution. The poorer whites weren’t very supportive of the richer white aristocracy in Haiti, who held most of the wealth and the slaves.  But, the richer whites and the poorer whites in Haiti didn’t believe in the freedom of the slaves in Haiti. I recall that the U.S. put trade and travel restrictions on Haiti because they saw the thousands of plantations destroyed and whites massacred in Haiti, and feared the Black Haitians might inspire similar revolts in the United States. The Haitian blacks redistributed what was left of the infrastructure and lands amongst themselves, but in the malee they had destroyed so much of the plantation system, it’s crops such as coffee, sugar etc., that there wasn’t much left for the freed slaves to use to bring themselves up out of poverty..

The Spanish revolutions began in earnest between 1810 – 1825 mostly because there was a lack of fair and equitable land redistribution and inheritance rights amongst the creoles, the Spanish citizens born from  peninsulares heritage. The peninsulares tended to always get the best land rights, always going to them first in legal matters of inheritance. Unfortunately the Spanish inhabitants had little in the way of experience in that of self-government to create democratic institutions. The Creoles didn’t at first strongly desire revolutionary movements. The revolutions were events taken advantage of by Napoleon invading Spain and Portugal in 1808. The Portugese and Spanish monarchies either chose to be collaborators, in the case of the Portugese, they moved their royal court to Brazilia for a time. A lot of the revolutionary zeal amongst the Spanish colonies tended to relate to hunger for more land and high food prices. In other revolutions in history land and food prices often play a strong role in these movements. The Haitian and French Revolutions made the Spanish elites and Portugese elites more wary of it getting out of hand, so they didn’t support the revolutionary movements as emphatically as the poorer classes. 

Strayer, Part 5, pp 504 - 508: The French Revolution

The French Revolution can be thought of as a consequence of the American Revolution; if the American Revolution hadn’t occurred, maybe the French Revolution wouldn’t have transpired the way it had. Jefferson was sort of passive about the affair. He didn’t goad the French masses to overthrow the monarchy. He stayed out of history’s way. Ironically, if the French monarchy had known the American Revolution would inspire a revolution at home, one wonders if they’d have been as keen to support the American cause? The Third Estate met as a last hurrah to stave off the revolution, but they didn’t have the consent of the majority because the first two estates, the clergy & nobility left the peasantry out of the political process in writing a new political future for France.  Although, they still managed to come up with the Declaration of The Rights of Man, which was loosely based on American revolutionary codices. The French Revolution was a much more violent and bloody affair because unlike the American Revolution, the nobility were attacked closer to home rather than the peasantry attacking an incoming force they saw as invaders. The peasants, aside from being aggrieved by the lack of political representation were also angry about strict controls upon their movement that resembled Russian serfdom, and that they had to pay crushing taxes to the church and state. At first there was an attempt to keep the monarchy under constitutional authority, but once the king and queen were caught fleeing to Austria to get military help, they were seen as traitorous to the French people. So, that idea was pretty much taken off the table. Thus, much of the legal prohibitions and heavy taxation that permitted the serfdom to exist were swept away by measures undertaken by the national assembly. Perhaps one of the most profound changes from the old feudal order was the implementation of male suffrage (although women didn’t get the right to vote in France until 1945). There was also several regions or “departments” established to give areas more regional autonomy within the country, to weaken the absolute strength of the state. Streets and monuments were renamed and noble titles practically vanished overnight. A lot of citizens joined political clubs. And for a time the state replaced the church as the ultimate authority for registering births, marriages, and deaths. It was almost like a state-mandated Atheism; for example, the Cathedral of Notre Dame was for a time renamed “The Temple of Reason,” for example.” Although, the Catholic Church wasn’t completally cast out of society. It just became more subservient to the revolutionary ideals of the French Enlightenment. Napoleon didn’t start out trying to be an emperor, but rather he came into the foray of French politics by attempting to quell riots and social unrest. He was responsible for introducing things such as the Napoleonic Code, which was secular in nature, but he also suppressed some democratic elements of the French Revolution. He was instrumental in eliminating feudalism, and called for religious tolerance amongst many of the measures he implemented.

Strayer, Intro to Part 5, CH 17, pp 491 - 504

I’d never heard of a period defined between 1750 – 1914, nor had I ever heard of the period referred as “The Long Nineteenth Century.” Perhaps it’s called that because there were Proto-Industrial Revolution technologies , ideas, and institutions that didn’t really take off until the 19^th Century? Geography was re-written to be Euro-centric, with Europe at the heart of the world. For example, when refer to Asia as “The Far East,” you have to think of the term as “as far east from Europe as one can get,” for example. Europeans in a sense thought that they had to bring “God and civilization to the savages,” in order to set them straight upon a trajectory that modeled European development, or else they might perish. These ideas of Non-European civilizations persisted into the Mid-Twentieth Century. Eugenic ideas of racial superiority such as terms like “Aryan” were conveyed in geographical and historical terminologies from the mid 19^th Century to middle 20^th Century. It was only in the Post-WWII world that scholars began to counteract the Eurocentric views that had been imposed upon the rest of the world. The Greeks, the Indians, and the Chinese had their golden ages where their views and civilization were paramount certainly. Of course, it seems that the Euro-centric worldviews of this period really couldn’t have persisted as long as they had without the consequences of Colonialism, and how that colored Eurocentric notions of racial and cultural superiority.

Secondly, Strayer interestingly points out that the Eurocentric dominance of foreign spheres of influence such as India and China couldn’t have occurred as they did, had the supremacy of Chinese mercantile and naval powers hadn’t been reduced in those ocean trading routes pertinent to their respective regions of the world. The Scientific Revolution in Europe as well as resources from the New World allowed Europeans the power and influence to dominant Asia in ways that they could not have done so before. Whereas, it’s implied that Asian powers weren’t imported a lot of resources from elsewhere in the world, and their “scientific revolutions,” which allowed the examination system in China, had already come and passed for example.

Strayer notes that it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park for Europeans to imposed their collective colonial imperialism upon the Asian and African world; there was a significant amount of native resistance to their neo-mercantilist measures, such as the famous Mutiny of 1857 in India, for example. Although, Muslim powers still had enough sway for example to persuade Europeans to hold back their missionary efforts from some of their territories.

Strayer gives a fourth reason for Eurocentric power becoming dominant in Europe. The reason being that there were oppressed minorities in places such as Vietnam, where they saw colonial powers such as “liberators,” who helped them get out from under the thumb of groups in their native lands that were holding back their own progress. And some Asians even took advantage of European technologies. The Hindus in India would make pilgrimages to holy sites that would have been in the past, harder to get to. And Japan embraced the Industrial Revolution, borrowing European ideas that would allow the Japanese to flex their military muscle between the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 to the end of World War II, for example.