19th Century Europe

A Cultural History

Hannu Salmi

• Editorial: Polity
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745658599
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Historia
• Categoría: Historia del siglo XIX

Nineteenth-Century Europe offers a much-needed concise and fresh look at European culture between the Great Revolution in France and the First World War. It encompasses all major themes of the period, from the rising nationalism of the early nineteenth century to the pessimistic views of fin de siècle. It is a lucid, fluent presentation that appeals to both students of history and culture and the general audience interested in European cultural history.

The book attempts to see the culture of the nineteenth century in broad terms, integrating everyday ways of life into the story as mental, material and social practices. It also highlights ways of thinking, mentalities and emotions in order to construct a picture of this period of another kind, that goes beyond a story of "isms" or intellectual and artistic movements.

Although the nineteenth century has often been described as a century of rising factory pipes and grey industrial cities, as a cradle of modern culture, the era has many faces. This book pays special attention to the experiences of contemporaries, from the fear for steaming engines to the longing for the pre-industrial past, from the idle calmness of bourgeois life to the awakening consumerism of the department stores, from curious exoticism to increasing xenophobia, from optimistic visions of future to the expectations of an approaching end. The century that is only a few generations away from us is strange and familiar at the same time – a bygone world that has in many ways influenced our present day world.

1

Industrialization: Economy and Culture

In his short story ‘A Day in the Country’ (1881), Guy de Maupassant describes a bourgeois Parisian family on an excursion to the tranquillity of the countryside. After the city ruined by industry, the family enjoys the innocence of nature: ‘there was sweet content and salutary refreshment to be had now that they could at last breathe a purer air which had not swept up black smoke from the factories or fumes from the sewage-pits’.¹ Although industry brought material well-being, it affected people’s lives in many ways, even the manner in which surrounding reality was perceived and understood. Economic change affected not only the way in which people related to nature but also, as Maupassant’s short story indicates, their views on technology. The nineteenth century can be seen as the beginning of the industrial age, yet at the same time it was the starting point for our modern western emphasis on technology. Maupassant’s short story appeared, however, at a time when the effects of economic and technological changes had become readily observable and their relation to the production of material well-being had already become problematic.

When the short story was written in the 1880s, fin de siècle pessimism was already lifting its head. At that stage industrialization had a centennial history behind it, at least in the British Isles and in western Europe, for example in France and, to some extent, in Spain.² Industrialization can be seen to have started at the end of the eighteenth century but the structural changes it involved spread slowly on the European stage.³ They did not really arrive in eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Greece or Italy until the latter half of the nineteenth century, or even later.⁴ With industrialization, technological progress and research found an even more significant role in European societies than before and images associated with machines gained more ground. The picture was not just one of light and joy. The harmful effects of machines and of the tyranny of mechanization were also recognized. These dreams and fears concerning machine culture are part of the cultural inheritance left by industrialization.

Generally speaking, the so-called Industrial Revolution signifies a series of events beginning in eighteenth-century England that rapidly spread to continental Europe after the turn of the century. The term ‘the Industrial Revolution’ was not first used – as is often claimed – by Friedrich Engels in 1845 but probably by the French economist Adolphe Blanqui as early as 1837. For historians the term was late in coming, appearing first in Lectures on the Industrial Revolution (1884), an essay based on lectures given at Oxford in 1880–81 by Arnold Toynbee.⁵ As a concept ‘revolution’ is misleading, however, since it suggests suddenness and rupture. Industrialization had a long prehistory, and its spread across Europe and the entire globe has, in the end, been a long and multifaceted process.

A central theoretician of industrialism and advocate of free enterprise was the Scottish economist Adam Smith who presented his most important theory in his Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. According to Smith’s argument, economy is subject to laws akin to those of nature, which guide it regardless of the intentions of individual people. Supply, he argued, is defined by demand and the realities involved in production. The essential question in organizing economic activity was the division of labour. In his wellknown example, Smith illustrates the significance of the division of labour from the point of view of productivity. If the production of pins is organized so that a single employee carries out all the phases involved in the work, the worker will complete only twenty pins in a day. When the labour involved is divided into eighteen stages, ten employees can produce as many as 48,000 pins per day.⁶ The idea of dividing the work process has been extremely influ ential, and its application has not been limited to industrial activity. Cultural production was also to utilize this principle so that more goods could be produced than before with less labour involved. One is reminded of the elder Alexandre Dumas’s (1802–70) early ‘book factory’. Dumas managed a workshop, in which the author only indicated the main storylines and assistants completed the story.⁷

The pioneer of industrialization was England, whose political stability at the end of the eighteenth century provided better conditions for focusing on changes in the economy than those to be found in central Europe, still shaken by the Great Revolution in France. The decisive factor turned out to be investment in new kinds of technology, not only in new manufacturing solutions but also in new power sources. The progressive patent law in England also guaranteed suitable protection for technological advances. As early as 1709, Abraham Darby had found that coke could be used instead of wood as fuel in smelting iron. Considering the raw materials available on the island state, this was a significant discovery, greatly improving the conditions for producing metal as well as for exploring other technological solutions. In addition to the raw material question, the development of faster manufacturing processes was a central issue to economic life. In 1768, James Hargreaves invented the spinning machine Spinning Jenny. With it, an employer needed to employ only one person where ten had previously been needed. When technical solutions came to include a new power source – the steam engine built under the direction of James Watt – the conditions for fast industrial production were met. Technology had not, however, been the main impetus in this process. The market had grown quickly along with the flourishing economy, creating a need for more efficient production and thus a motive for the application of these technological innovations.

The industrial process gave workshop owners the opportunity of reducing the amount of employees to a minimum while at the same time making even quicker profits. In the long term, this meant less expensive commodities, wider markets and an increase in industrial employment. Employees began to gather in the early industrial centres: society began to take on a new form. An interesting description of the early industrial society is to be found at the beginning of French author Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables (1862). Hugo describes the small town of Montreuil-sur-Mer, where the glass industry began to bloom in the 1810s due to the efforts of a kindly factory owner, Father Madeleine:

Thanks to the rapid progress of the industry which he had so admirably re-constructed, M. sur M. had become a rather important centre of trade. Spain, which consumes a good deal of black jet, made enormous purchases there each year. M. sur M. almost rivalled London and Berlin in this branch of commerce. Father Madeleine’s profits were such, that at the end of the second year he was able to erect a large factory, in which there were two vast workrooms, one for the men, and the other for women. Any one who was hungry could present himself there, and was sure of finding employment and bread. Father Madeleine required of the men good will, of the women pure morals, and of all, probity. He had separated the workrooms in order to separate the sexes, and so that the women and girls might remain discreet. On this point he was inflexible. It was the only thing in which he was in a manner intolerant. He was all the more firmly set on this severity, since M. sur M., being a garrison town, opportunities for corruption abounded. However, his coming had been a boon, and his presence was a godsend. Before Father Madeleine’s arrival, everything had languished in the country; now everything lived with a healthy life of toil. A strong circulation warmed everything and penetrated everywhere. Slack seasons and wretchedness were unknown. There was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no dwelling so lowly that there was not some little joy within it.⁸

Although Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables depicts the unfortunates, the galley prisoner Jean Valjean and others rejected by society, he constructs an ideal of a benevolent, socially minded industrial tycoon at the beginning of the novel. For Hugo, industrialization had led to the restructuring of the world: the tiny Montreuil-sur-Mer could now compete even with London or Berlin. The old division into centres and peripheries was no longer valid since the new economy had made it possible to achieve prosperity anywhere. Father Madeleine represents the first generation of French industrialists that began to build well-being in a country ruined by the Napoleonic Wars. Madeleine is not, however, egotistically self-serving. He cares for his employees although his expectations are not limited to their labour: he expects moral and upright behaviour of them. To counterbalance this, Madeleine has built two schools and a safe-home for the town, as well as expanded the small infirmary. He has also established a subsidy for ‘old and infirm workmen’. Undoubtedly Hugo is correct in showing industry as having brought well-being to many regions, at least in the long run. Even so, Father Madeleine is an ideal only. In reality, few patrons looked after the community or their employees. Hugo’s description is correct in its focus on legal security: the workers in Montreuil-sur-Mer had no more legal rights than those elsewhere. In the end, everything depended on the kindness of the employer.

Perhaps it is Hugo’s aim at the beginning of Les Misérables to show the way the world could have been if those in charge had paid attention to the interests of the workers. Moreover, complete tyranny and pursuit of self-interest were likely as long as workers were so dependent on the goodwill of their employers. The amazing growth in production astounded even many contemporaries. Indeed, Hugo befittingly portrays this astonishment: Father Madeleine became immensely wealthy despite investing in the community.

According to the historian Eric J. Hobsbawm, a significant ‘take-off’ took place primarily in the 1780s, enabling a seemingly continuous, fast and unlimited increase of people, goods and services.⁹ From that moment, a steadily accelerating development commenced, characterized by faith in continuous growth and expansion. In its initial stages, this development came about so quickly that the social order could not accommodate the changes. Differing from Victor Hugo’s idealized picture, employees were made a passive part of the industrial machine. Labour did not need to be skilled. It was often poorly trained and disorganized. At the same time, the state refused to intervene in the determination of wages and – in the spirit of liberalism – permitted employers to decide matters to their own advantage. For this reason the social effects of industrialism were local. In Hugo’s imaginary Montreuil-sur-Mer things could well be cosy while the situation in an adjacent town might be completely different. In England, association – and with it the cooperation of the workers – was banned by law in 1799, by the so-called Combination Act, apparently due to fears brought on by the revolution in France.¹⁰

Workers could not get their rights recognized through legislation and counter-reactions appeared among workers in the new industrial jobs as well as those in more traditional occupations. Workers became aware of the means at their disposal. They could protest through strikes and, in extreme cases, by destroying the employers’ property. These means had been actively used by workers during the eighteenth century – albeit with varying success. In western England, for example, feelings became heated in the 1720s among textile workers. When weavers’ demands were not met, they broke into the houses of their masters, destroying wool and breaking looms. Similar ‘negotiations’ took place in the mining industry. In the 1740s, the miners of the Northumberland coalfields rioted, burning machines and finally managing to secure a pay rise. Machinery was destroyed and coal was burned in the riots of 1765 as well; these resulted in miners gaining the right to choose their employer at the end of their annual contracts.¹¹

The destruction of machinery was thus used as a means to pressure employers, although such a method could not lead far in contract negotiations. Violence was directed more at the machinery than the employers. The new technology, especially the ‘worksaving machinery’, was seen as a satanic threat that had to be forcefully countered. James Hargreaves, the pioneer of spinning technology, was the first to experience the magnitude of this fear. When Hargreaves began using his Spinning Jenny looms in 1768, the employees quickly realized that the new machine would reduce the manpower needed to one tenth of what it had been. Thus the workers broke into the factory at night to destroy the apparatus. Hargreaves was forced to begin again. He moved to Nottingham and established a new textile mill. He had, however, spent a great deal of his capital. Hargreaves was penniless when he died in 1778, despite the fact that looms had spread throughout England during the intervening ten-year period.¹²

Luddism, the more systematic destruction of machines, reached its peak in 1811–13. Luddism is usually taken to have begun in December 1811 when employers started to receive mysterious threatening letters from a person called Ned Ludd. Contemporaries associated the threats with the wave of loombreaking that erupted at the same time. As early as December 1811, The Nottingham Review called the culprits ‘Luddites’.¹³ When machine-breaking became a mass phenomenon, Great Britain had already long been at war with France and drifted into a severe economic recession.¹⁴ A central factor contributing to the rise of Luddism has been seen to lie in the conflict between the economic crisis and the mechanization of industry. At the time, economic planning had no holistic view that would have helped through the crisis. Industrialists imagined they could improve their situation by making major investments in the new technology and thus cutting labour costs.¹⁵ Thus Luddism may be seen as a reminder that the employer-side had gone too far in thinking of the workforce as simply a passive factor in production.

It needs to be kept in mind, however, that work in industrial society was significantly different from that of pre-industrial times. In the pre-industrial community production units were families, where a great varie...