Western Europe at the End of the 19 th Century

Western Europe at the End of the 19th Century World History: 1750 - Present

Western Europe Britain

Britain • In the early 1800s, only 5% of British citizens had the right to vote • Catholics and Protestants that were not members of the Church of England could not vote or hold office

Britain • There were two main political parties in Britain: Whig and Tory • The Whig Party largely represented middle-class and business interests

Britain • The Tory Party represented nobles, landowners, and agricultural interests • The people of Britain pressured the two parties to pass the Reform Act of 1832

Britain • The Reform Act of 1832 gave all landowners the right to vote • It also took away religious restrictions

Britain • Some British citizens demanded more reform • The reformers were known as Chartists, because they created the People’s Charter

Britain • The People’s Charter called for universal male suffrage and a secret ballot • The Chartists tried 3 times to get their Charter passed, but each time it was rejected by the British parliament

Britain • In 1837, Britain crowned a new ruler: Queen Victoria • Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 to 1901 • Her reign was known as the Victorian Age

Britain • The Victorian Age was characterized by respectability and formality • It was not isolated to Britain, because the influence of Queen Victoria spread across the world • Why?

Britain • Britain was the largest empire in the world and had over 300 million subjects

Britain • Change came to Britain’s political parties in the 1860s • Under the leadership of Benjamin Disraeli, the Tories became the Conservative Party

Britain • The Whigs, led by William Gladstone, became the Liberal Party • Between 1868 and 1880, Gladstone and Disraeli alternated as Prime Minister

Britain • The Conservative Party worked to give industrial workers the right to vote • The Liberal Party countered by giving farm-workers the right to vote

Britain • By the end of the 19th Century (1800s), Britain had transformed from a monarchy to a parliamentary democracy

Britain • Parliamentary Democracy: a form of government in which a prime minister and his cabinet are voted on by the legislature

Western Europe Ireland

Ireland • The British had begun conquering Ireland in the 1100s • By the 1600s, British and Scottish settlers had colonized all of Ireland and owned the best farmland

Ireland • The Irish people resented the English settlers, especially absentee landlords • Absentee landlords: owners of large estates that lived elsewhere

Ireland • Most Irish peasants lived in poverty, while paying high rents to landlords living in England • Absentee landlords could evict tenants at will • British laws forbade to teaching and speaking of the Irish language

Ireland • Most Irish were Catholic, but were forced to pay tithes to support the Church of England • Also, Catholics could not vote or hold office

Ireland • Resistance and rebellion were common, but were always defeated • In 1829, the British Parliament passed the Catholic Emancipation Act, which allowed Catholic landowners to vote and hold office

Ireland • Also, most Irish crops were exported out of the country • The potato was the main source of food for most Irish people

Ireland • In 1845, a disease struck the potato crops in Ireland, destroying most of the potatoes • British landowners continued to ship the other crops out of the country, leaving little for the Irish

Ireland • The famine lasted almost four years • In that time, almost 1 million men, women, and children died of starvation and disease

Ireland • Many more Irish citizens immigrated to America and Canada • Irish resentment toward the British grew deeper

Ireland • In the 1870s, Charles Stewart Parnell, an Irish nationalist, began fighting for home rule • Home rule: rule in which the people of a country rule domestic issues, while another country rules foreign matters

Ireland • In 1914, the British Parliament passed a home rule bill for the Irish • Parliament delayed putting the new law into effect when World War I broke out later that year

Ireland • It was not until 1921, that the southern counties of Ireland finally became independent

Western Europe France

France • France’s history is littered with scandals • One of the most divisive scandals began in 1894

France • In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish, high-ranking army officer, was accused of spying for Germany • During his military trial, neither Dreyfus or his attorney were allowed to see the evidence against him

France • This injustice was rooted in anti-Semitism • Anti-Semitism: hatred against the Jewish people

France • Dreyfus was hated by many of the military elite because he was the first Jew to become a high ranking officer

France • He proclaimed his innocence, but was convicted and condemned to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, a French penal colony off the coast of South America

France • Two years later, in 1896, new evidence pointed to another officer, Ferdinand Esterhazy, as the spy • Still, the army refused to grant Dreyfus a new trial

France • This scandal, known as the Dreyfus Affair, scarred France for decades • Royalists and Church officials charged Dreyfus supporters with undermining France

France • Dreyfusards, supporters of Dreyfus, screamed of injustice, but were often met with public and political anger • Those who wrote against the army were charged with libel and some were forced into exile

France • Libel: the knowing publication of false and damaging statements • The Dreyfus case reflected anti-Semitic feelings across Europe

France • The Dreyfus Affair and other injustices against Jewish people stirred nationalist feelings • Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jewish journalist living in France, called for a separate Jewish state

France • This movement, which called for a Jewish state to be built in Palestine, was known as Zionism • In 1897, Herzl organized the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland

The End

Western Europe at the End of the 19 th Century