Economy, Culture, and Imperialism, 1850 to 1914: Society and Thought

This is Unit Twelve of Western Civilization Two, part two of two: the women's movement, anti-Semitism made modern, four procedures, and what mass society believed about itself. Part one ended with painters taking color and form apart before the war. This part is the two movements that the same decades produced, one asking for rights and one denying them, and it pays off the unit's governing idea: the first societies that could read, buy and count themselves believed in their own progress and feared their own degeneration with the same knowledge. In eighteen fifty a woman was classed with children and the criminally insane; by nineteen fourteen she had property, person and marriage rights nearly everywhere and the vote in two countries. In the same years the Jew who had been emancipated was recast as a race apart, by a league, a forgery, and a courtroom. Then the methods: a claim sorted by what would count against it, the unit on one line, Darwin read in his own sentence, and a feminist demand sorted by kind. By the end you will be able to describe the women's movement. To describe anti-Semitism made modern. To classify a claim and a demand. To sequence the unit and read Darwin. And to state the capstone.

Four entries on the women's movement: what a woman could not do in eighteen fifty, the vote and its opponents, the rights that came first, and the Suffragettes.

Classed with children and the criminally insane.

WC2 1118 What Women Could Not Do in 1850, and First-Wave Feminism Defined

In eighteen fifty women could not vote, seek divorce, keep custody, enter universities, open accounts, keep inherited property or wages, sue or witness; they were classed with children and the criminally insane. The Code Napoléon traded protection for obedience. First-wave feminism, the anchor says with Anderson and Zinsser, fought legal discrimination: property, children, the vote. The definition is Anderson and Zinsser's, attributed.

A mad, wicked folly, the queen said.

WC2 1119 The Vote: 1867, "Feminist" 1890, Finland and Norway First

Britain's National Society for Women's Suffrage formed in eighteen sixty-seven; the word feminist dates from eighteen ninety, with Hubertine Auclert refusing taxes without representation. Opposition ran from biologists to Victoria's mad, wicked folly. Before the war only Finland and Norway had granted the vote. Britain gave it to property-owning women over thirty in nineteen eighteen, France in forty-four, Switzerland in seventy-one.

Inspections for prostitutes, none for clients.

WC2 1120 Weapons of Self-Defense: Property, Earnings, Divorce, and Josephine Butler

Feminists asked for economic independence, property and earnings, with the vote and divorce as weapons of self-defense. Divorce became possible in Britain and France and stayed illegal in Russia. Josephine Butler fought the Contagious Diseases Act, which inspected prostitutes and not clients, and won repeal; the age of consent rose from twelve to sixteen. Anchor-only; the left feared women would vote conservative.

Deeds, not words.

WC2 1121 The Suffragettes: Deeds, Force-Feeding, and the Derby of 1913

The Pankhursts founded the Suffragettes in nineteen-oh-three; deeds, not words ran from heckling to stone-throwing, and half a million came to a London rally, the anchor says. Hunger strikers were force-fed. Emily Davison died under the king's horse at the Derby of nineteen thirteen. Other rights came first; the vote did not. The witness has Davison and the forced feeding; the Pankhursts are anchor-only.

Two entries on anti-Semitism: the medieval exclusions behind the stereotype and the modern doctrine of race by blood, then its politicians, its forgery, and Herzl's answer.

The scapegoat for modernity.

WC2 1122 Anti-Semitism: From Medieval Exclusion to Race by Blood

Medieval Europe accused Jews and barred them from land and most trades, leaving peddling and money-lending, the root of the greed stereotype. Emancipation was complete almost everywhere by nineteen hundred except Russia, where pogroms drove Jews westward, the witness says. Modern anti-Semitism made Jews the scapegoat for modernity and a race by blood. Taught as the record; the doctrine is false.

A league, a forgery, an answer.

WC2 1123 Marr, the Protocols, Dreyfus, and Zionism

Wilhelm Marr's Anti-Semitic League of the eighteen seventies coined the term; German anti-Semitic parties peaked at under three percent in eighteen ninety-three, when Jews were about one percent of Germans, the anchor says. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, nineteen-oh-three, was a Russian police forgery copied from a novel, described here and never quoted. Herzl's Zionism answered Dreyfus.

Four procedures: a claim sorted by method rather than subject, the unit's dates on one line, Darwin's own sentence, and a feminist demand sorted by what it asks for.

What would count against it?

WC2 1124 Classifying a Claim: Science, Social Science, Pseudo-Science

The anchor's test is method, not subject. Science starts from evidence and survives testing: Pasteur's microorganisms, Lyell's strata, Darwin's selection, Mendel's ratios. Social science applies method to people and institutions and admits it may not reach geology's certainty: Durkheim on ritual, Weber on bureaucracy, Ranke on documents. Pseudo-science starts from a conclusion and dresses it in the vocabulary of science: Spencer's fittest, the racial skull chains, eugenics, the so-called Jewish race. The trap is that pseudo-science quoted Darwin, so his name is no guide. Ask what the claim would accept as disproof. Darwin listed the difficulties for his theory in his own book; Spencer treated poverty as proof of unfitness and any survival as proof of fitness. Practice on six claims: germ theory, deep time, the demographic transition, survival of the fittest, the Protocols, and the sterilization of the unfit. Science answers the question; pseudo-science cannot. The three-way sorting is the anchor's; the witness sorts Spencer as pseudoscientific.

Discovery, diffusion, militancy.

WC2 1125 Sequencing Science and Culture, 1848 to 1913

Put the unit's dates on one line. Realism begins with eighteen forty-eight; Pasteur's experiments from fifty-four; Darwin's Origin in fifty-nine; Mendel's paper in sixty-five; Britain's suffrage society in sixty-seven; The Descent of Man in seventy-one; the first Impressionist show in seventy-four; Bell's telephone in seventy-six; Ferry's schools in eighty-two; the word feminist in ninety; Mendel rediscovered in nineteen hundred; the Protocols in nineteen-oh-three, the Suffragettes the same year; the Derby in thirteen. The pattern: the sciences came first, in the fifties and sixties; their misuse and the mass culture that spread them came in the seventies and eighties; the militant movements, feminist and anti-Semitic, came after eighteen ninety. Name the decade before checking the year. Dates are the anchor's and the witnesses'; the arts dates are the LibreTexts periods.

Malthus in nature, no plan, the difficulties admitted.

WC2 1126 Reading Darwin's Introduction

Read the Introduction to On the Origin of Species at Project Gutenberg. Darwin opens on the Beagle and the facts of South America, then names Wallace, who reached the same conclusion. The argument comes in one sentence: as many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive, and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. He calls this the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. He closes by rejecting the view that each species has been independently created, and calls natural selection the main but not exclusive means of change. Three things to notice: he claims no plan and no purpose; he grounds the argument in pigeon breeders before wild nature; and he warns that facts against him exist and promises to state them. Quoted within two sentences from the Gutenberg text; the anchor summarizes.

The vote was the last of four.

WC2 1127 Classifying a Feminist Demand: Suffrage, Property, Person, Marriage

The first wave asked for four kinds of thing. Suffrage is the vote and the offices that go with it: the society of sixty-seven, Auclert's tax refusal, the Suffragettes. Property is economic standing: keeping inherited property and wages after marriage, opening an account, suing in one's own name. Person is bodily and legal identity: the age of consent, Butler's fight against inspections that punished only women, the end of the assumption that a husband could not rape his wife, the right to witness. Marriage is the contract itself: divorce, custody, the Code's obedience for protection. The sorting matters because the order of victories was not the order of demands. Property, person and marriage rights came first in most countries by nineteen fourteen; the vote came last, in two Scandinavian countries. Practice on the Contagious Diseases Act, married women's earnings, custody, and the Derby of nineteen thirteen. The categories are the course's ordering of the anchor's list; Butler is anchor-only.

One capstone entry: the confidence that was earned, the fear that was the same knowledge turned inward, and the same paper and ink for both.

The same science cut deaths and sorted the living.

WC2 1128 Confidence and Fear: What Mass Society Believed About Itself

This unit's societies were the first that could read, buy and count themselves, and what they believed about themselves ran in two directions at once. The confidence was earned. Pasteur and Koch found the germs; sewers and water cut cholera; deaths from infection fell and children lived; steel, electricity and the telephone remade work; a French worker's buying power more than doubled, the anchor says, and the department store made luxury a habit. Literacy neared universal, and Darwin gave the first evidence-based account of life's history. The fear was the same knowledge turned inward. If nature killed the weak, then the poor, the drinker, the disabled and the stranger were the weak, and Spencer's phrase and the eugenists' scalpel followed. If the nation was a race, then the Jew who had been emancipated was a race apart, and Marr's league, the Protocols and the Dreyfus courtroom followed. If the home was woman's sphere, the woman who asked for property, person and the vote was a degenerate, and the force-feeding tube followed. Sixty million left Europe in these decades; the ones who stayed built the first mass culture and the first mass hatreds with the same paper and the same ink. The art witness shows painters leaving the Salon for light, then for feeling, then for broken form, as if they saw it coming. The same science that cut deaths sorted the living into fit and unfit. Demography and the arts are witness-built. Unit thirteen follows the confidence overseas, where the civilizing mission and the raw-material hunger met people who had not been consulted.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe what a woman could not do in eighteen fifty, the vote won first in Finland and Norway, the rights that came before it, and the Suffragettes' deeds. You can describe anti-Semitism from medieval exclusion to race by blood, Marr's league, the police forgery, and Herzl's answer. You can classify a claim by what would count against it, and a demand by suffrage, property, person or marriage. You can sequence the unit as discovery, diffusion and militancy, and read Darwin's one sentence for no plan and the difficulties admitted. And you can state the capstone: confidence and fear from the same knowledge, which is this unit's one idea. Unit thirteen follows the confidence overseas.