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The half century before the outbreak of World War I (1914–1918) established the foundations upon which much of Western civilization now rests. The interrelated growth of population, capitalism, production, and cities rapidly changed the European landscape. Another round of intense industrial development revolutionized the European world. Electricity, mass-produced steel, and petrochemicals spurred new industries based upon strategic resources and technologies. Cities gained population, and many were reconstructed. A new social consciousness emerged and was coupled directly with the maturation of an ambitious and energetic middle class. Women had more job opportunities, but they were low-skill, low-wage positions; married middle-class women rarely worked outside the home, but were acculturated to the cult of domesticity. Workers lobbied to enjoy a higher standard of living and higher social standing. In Britain, where compromise was already a popular mode of resolving conflict, Parliament sought change that at least moderately incorporated the ideas of the reformers. The French picture was clouded by the bitterness of the struggle with the Paris Commune in 1871 and the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the century. In Germany, Bismarck’s political maneuvers, including the first social security and workers’ compensation programs in Europe, managed to keep the Social Democrats off guard. Russian socialism emerged as Europe’s most radical, due in large measure to the country’s belated industrialization and agricultural reform. Conservative tsars managed to stay in power using techniques better suited to earlier decades and centuries — cultivating the nobility at the expense of the peasant masses, controlling the relatively small middle class, and ruthlessly quelling worker unrest. On the eve of World War I, despite efforts at suppression, socialism had managed to become a permanent part of the Western heritage. Jewish emancipation proved less permanent. After reading this chapter you should understand:
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