Romanticism 3

3. The French Revolution led to an increasingly conservative English government. After 1815, the aristocratic Tory party defended its ruling position by repressing every kind of popular protest. The selfish aristocracy worked to maintain their fat profits by passing the Corn Laws of 1815. These regulations prohibited the importation of foreign grain un-less the price in Britain was above 80 shillings, which was very rare. In 1817, the Tory government responded to the protests and demonstrations by temporarily suspending the rights of peaceable assembly and habeas corpus. In 1819, Parliament passed the Six Acts, which placed controls on a heavily taxed press and eliminated almost all mass meetings. An enormous and orderly protest occurred at Saint Peter’s Fields in Manches-ter, but was savagely broken up by armed cavalry, becoming the Battle of Peterloo.

4. The growing manufacturing group wanted a place for their wealth alongside the aristo-cracy’s by sharing political power and social prestige. The manufacturers called for reform of town government, organization of a new police force, more rights for Catho-lics and dissenters, and reform of the Poor Laws. In the 1820s, when Parliament was less frightened, it implemented better urban administration, greater economic liberalism, and civil equality for Catholics. The prohibition on foreign grain important was replaced by a heavy tariff.

5. After their victories, the middle classes pressed for reform of Parliament so they could have a larger say in government and perhaps repeal the latest revision of the Corn Laws. After the Reform Bill of 1832 passed, the House of Commons became the most important legislative body, the House of Lords could, from then on out, always be brought into line by the threat of creating new peers, and new industrial areas of the country gained representation while many old rotten boroughs were eliminated. The number of voters increased by 50%, giving 12% of the population the right to vote. Middle-class groups and some substantial farmers who leased their land could vote now. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846 to allow free imports of grain. The Ten Hours Act of 1847 was passed to limit the workday for women and young people in factories.

6. In 1838, the Chartists mainly demanded for universal male suffrage, what they saw as the means to a good and just society, but they also wanted economic reform for the working class. Their gigantic signed petitions calling for universal male suffrage were rejected by Parliament in 1839, 1842, and 1848. In 1839, the Anti-Corn Law League was founded in Manchester to work to repeal the tariff on imported grain and weaken the landed aristocracy. These liberals argued that lower food prices and more jobs in indus-try depended on repeal of the Corn Laws. Due to the threat of the Irish potato famine and high prices for food reaching England, Tory prime minister Robert Peel repealed the Corn Laws in 1846.


b.
1. Slavery had divided the United States since its birth and had resulted in growing regional tensions as economic development carried free and slave states in different directions. Plantation owners with twenty or more slaves dominated the economy and society, creating the Cotton Kingdom. By 1850, it was producing 5 million bales a year and satis-fied the insatiable demand from cotton mills in Great Britain, other European countries, and New England. Cotton revitalized slave-based agriculture and created great wealth for rich Southern slaveholders. It also accounted for two-thirds of the value of all Ameri-can exports by the 1850s, igniting rapid U.S. economic growth. The large profits from cotton led Southerners to defend slavery as well as contribute to Southern hospitality. The purchase of France’s Louisiana Territory and the acquisition of half a million square miles of territory following the Mexican-American War led to the question of slavery and violence.

2. The South was defeated in 1865 and the Union was preserved. The North had a much superior population, industry, and transportation as well as high morale and national purpose, while the South was divided between the slave-owning elite and the poor whites. Ordinary whites in the South felt that they were being unfairly taxed and drafted as big planters avoided these. Desertions from Southern armies increased rapidly after 1863 as soldiers became disillusioned. Slavery hurt the Southern war effort because owners mostly kept them on the plantations but helped the Union effort, as 200,000 black soldiers served in those armies. The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, but during the Reconstruction, Northern whites lose interest in continued sectional struggle, allowing Southern whites to regain control of the state governments. Land reform was not included in the Reconstruction, causing blacks to be forced to work as exploited sharecroppers.

c.
1. Russia, unlike Italy and Germany, did not need to build a single state out of many, as it was already an enormous multinational state that contained all the ethnic Russians and many other nationalities. Like the United States, the government’s challenge was to hold the existing state together, by either political compromise or military force. National self-determination was viewed as subversive. Modernization can either by broad and include most of the major developments of the last two or five hundred years or it can be narrowly defined as changes that enable a country to compete effectively with the leading countries at a given time. To me, modernization is when countries improve themselves to the best of their capabilities.

2. In the 1850s, Russia was a poor agrarian society where industry was little developed and about 90% of the population lived on the land. The open-field system was still used and serfdom was the basic social institution. Serfs were exploited economically and could be deported to Siberia by insubordination. Female serfs were often sexually abused by their lords. France and Russia argued over who should protect certain Christian shrines in the Ottoman Empire, causing Russia, who could not supply its armies, to be humiliated by France, Great Britain, Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire. Alexander II realized that Russia had fallen behind the industrializing nations of Europe and needed railroads, better armaments, and reorganization of the army.

3. The freeing of serfs and abolition of human bondage in 1861 allowed the freed peasants to receive half of the land. However, they had to rule the land collectively, which re-sulted in difficulty for individual peasants to improve agricultural methods or leave their villages. In 1864, the government established the zemstvo. This new local government had its members elected by a three-class system of towns, peasant villages, and noble landowners. The zemstvos dealt with local problems and allowed some popular partici-pation, but they remained subordinate to the bureaucracy and the local nobility. Reform of the legal system established independent courts and equality before the law. Educa-tion was liberalized, and censorship was relaxed. These reforms were not as effective as the abolition of serfdom.

4. Industrialization meant to Russia encouraging and subsidizing private railway compa-nies. The railroads enabled Russia to export grain and earn money. Domestic manufac-turing started up, allowing Russia to have a well-developed railway-equipment industry. Industrial suburbs grew around Moscow and St. Petersburg, and a class of modern fac-tory workers began to take shape. Because of these developments, Russia’s military was strengthened and Russia expanded to the south and east, exciting many nationalists and superpatriots. Industrial development contributed to the spread of Marxian thought and the transformation of the Russian revolutionary movement after 1890.

5. In 1881, Alexander II was assassinated by terrorists, amidst his reforms and industrialization. Alexander III became tsar, but he was a firm reactionary. The writings of Friedrich List stressed the negative consequences of a nation falling behind a rival nation. This was in accordance with Russia, who was falling behind the countries of western Europe in power and greatness. Sergei Witte, the minister of finance from 1892 to 1903, sponsored vast amounts of state-owned railroads, high protective tariffs to build Russian industry, and the gold standard to strengthen Russian finances. He encouraged foreigners to use their capital and advanced technology to build factories in Russia. This was greatly successful in eastern Ukraine, where modern steel, coal, and oil factories rivaled those of the other strong nations.

6. Russia’s loss to Japan in September 1905 was humiliating. The business and professional classes wanted to turn Russia’s absolutist monarchy into a liberal, representative re-gime. Factory workers were angry at the effects of early industrialization and had orga-nized. Peasants had gained little from the reforms and were suffering from poverty and overpopulation. Minorities in Russia were calling for self-rule and autonomy. On a Sun-day in January 1905, a huge crowd of workers and their families met at the Winter Pa-lace in St. Petersburg to present a petition to the tsar. The workers were led by a trade-unionist priest, Father Gapon, who was secretly supported by the police. However, Ni-cholas II had fled and troops suddenly fired on the crowd, killing hundreds. In the Bloody Sunday, ordinary workers turned against the tsar and outlawed political parties were re-vived. By the summer, there were strikes, peasant uprisings, revolts among minority na-tionalities, and troop mutinies. A general strike occurred in October 1905, causing the tsar to issue the October Manifesto. It granted full civil rights and a popularly elected duma with legislative power. All but the Social Democrats rejected it, leading to an uprising in Moscow in December that was put down by the government and the middle class. On the eve of the opening of the Duma in May 1906, the government issued the Fundamental Laws that allowed the tsar to retain his great powers such as absolute ve-to. The middle-class liberals in the Duma were upset, and when both sides failed to coo-perate, the Duma was dissolved. In 1907, a more hostile and radical Duma was elected, but after three months, it was dismissed. He and his advisors rewrote the electoral law to increase the weight of the propertied classes at the expense of the workers, peasants, and national minorities. Now, in 1907 and 1912, the government had a loyal majority in the Duma and was able to pass important agrarian reforms.