19th-Century Perspectives and Political Developments, c. 1815 to c. 1914

Unit 7 runs over the same years as Unit 6 - c. 1815 to c. 1914 - but follows politics, empire, and ideas rather than industry. Three key concepts frame it:

• European states struggled to maintain international stability in an age of nationalism and revolutions.
• A variety of motives and methods led to the intensification of European global control and increased tensions among the Great Powers.
• European ideas and culture expressed a tension between objectivity and scientific realism on one hand and subjectivity and individual expression 主观性与个人表达 on the other.

That third tension is the unit's cultural thread, and it explains why Romanticism, realism, positivism, and modern art all belong in the same unit rather than in a separate art history.

Nationalists encouraged loyalty to the nation in a variety of ways, including romantic idealism 浪漫主义理想, liberal reform, political unification, and racialism - so nationalism has no single political colour and can be attached to very different programmes.

The turn that matters most: a new generation of conservative leaders, including Napoleon III 拿破仑三世, Cavour 加富尔, and Bismarck 俾斯麦, used popular nationalism to create or strengthen states. Before 1848 nationalism was mainly a revolutionary threat to the settlement of Vienna; after 1848 it became a tool of state-building in conservative hands. If you learn one thing from this unit, learn that reversal.

Two further points are examinable:

• While western European Jews became more socially and politically acculturated during the century, Zionism 犹太复国主义 - a form of Jewish nationalism - developed in response to continued exclusion.
• The creation of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary 奥匈二元帝国, which recognised the political power of the largest ethnic minority, was an attempt to manage nationalism within a multi-ethnic empire rather than to suppress it.

The Crimean War 克里米亚战争 demonstrated the weakness of the Ottoman Empire and contributed to the breakdown of the Concert of Europe - which is what made unification possible, because the system designed to prevent territorial change no longer functioned.

• Italy: Cavour's diplomatic strategies, combined with Garibaldi's 加里波第 popular military campaigns, led to unification. Diplomacy plus popular movement - two mechanisms, and the CED names both.
• Germany: Bismarck used Realpolitik 现实政治, employing diplomacy, industrialised warfare and weaponry, and the manipulation of democratic mechanisms to achieve unification under Prussia.

Then the diplomatic consequences, which run directly into Unit 8:

• After 1871 Bismarck attempted to maintain the balance of power through a complex system of alliances 联盟体系 aimed at isolating France.
• Bismarck's dismissal in 1890 eventually produced a system of mutually antagonistic alliances 彼此敌对的联盟 and heightened international tension.
• Nationalist tensions in the Balkans drew the Great Powers into a series of crises leading up to the First World War.

Charles Darwin 达尔文 provided a scientific and material account of biological change and of the development of human beings as a species.

His theory was then applied well beyond biology. Social Darwinism 社会达尔文主义 took the language of competition and selection and used it to justify racial, national, and class hierarchies - and, in the next topic, imperial expansion. Keep the distinction sharp in an essay: Darwin's biology and Social Darwinism are not the same claim, and the second does not follow from the first.

Positivism 实证主义 - the philosophy that science alone provides knowledge - emphasised the rational and scientific analysis of nature and human affairs, and represents the confident pole of the century's thinking.

Then, in the later nineteenth century, a new relativism in values 价值相对主义 and a loss of confidence in the objectivity of knowledge led to modernism 现代主义. The two together are the tension named in 7.1: the same culture produced both the belief that science would explain everything and the suspicion that objectivity itself was an illusion.

European nations were driven by economic, political, and cultural motivations in their new imperial ventures in Asia and Africa.

The CED then gives the enabling technologies separately, and there are exactly three:

• Advanced weaponry often gave European forces an advantage. It did not guarantee victory: Ethiopia defeated an Italian army at Adwa in 1896.
• Communication and transportation technologies 通信与运输技术 made empires possible to create and administer.
• Advances in medicine 医学进步 enabled European survival in Africa and Asia - the one students forget, and often the decisive factor.

Imperial endeavours significantly affected society, diplomacy, and culture in Europe, and created resistance to foreign control abroad.

Both directions matter. In Europe, empire fed nationalism, shaped popular culture, and turned colonial disputes into Great Power crises. Abroad, it produced organised resistance. An answer that treats imperialism as something Europe did to other places, with no return effect and no response, is incomplete on both counts.

The century's art tracks its intellectual tension exactly:

• Romanticism broke with Neoclassical forms and with rationalism, emphasising intuition, emotion, nature, individuality, and the supernatural; Romantic writers expressed the same themes while responding to the Industrial Revolution and to political revolution.
• Realist and materialist 现实主义与唯物主义 themes influenced art and literature, as painters and writers depicted the lives of ordinary people.
• Modern art - Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Cubism 印象派、后印象派与立体主义 - moved beyond the representational to the subjective, abstract, and expressive.

The unit's reasoning skill is causation.

Original worked example. For original short-answer practice, try "Explain one way in which nationalism contributed to the unification of Germany or Italy in the nineteenth century." An illustrative answer names the mechanism rather than the sentiment: "Bismarck used popular nationalist feeling as an instrument of Prussian state-building: by presenting wars against Denmark, Austria, and France as national causes, he made the smaller German states' rulers politically unable to resist unification under Prussia, and turned a dynastic expansion into a national one." Notice the shape: nationalism is shown doing something, not merely existing.

Each part needs only one or two sentences: answer the question, cite one specific piece of evidence, and explain how it supports the answer.

Answer (a), (b) and (c).

(a) Briefly describe ONE way nationalism changed Europe in the 1800s.

(b) Briefly explain ONE method Bismarck used to unify Germany.

(c) Briefly explain ONE source of diplomatic tension before 1914.

Model answer.

• (a) Italy was unified in 1861, combining many smaller states into one nation under Piedmont-Sardinia.
• (b) Bismarck used realpolitik and short wars against Denmark, Austria and France to unite the German states under Prussia by 1871.
• (c) Rival alliance systems divided the great powers into two camps, so a local crisis could become a general war.

• The reversal is the unit: before 1848 nationalism threatens the order; after 1848 conservatives use it to build states.
• The breakdown of the Concert of Europe after Crimea is what made unification possible. Name it as the enabling condition.
• Italy needed both Cavour's diplomacy and Garibaldi's campaigns. Germany needed Bismarck's Realpolitik. Different mechanisms, same outcome.
• Give three enabling technologies of imperialism - weaponry, transport and communication, and medicine.
• Keep Darwin and Social Darwinism apart. The second is a use of the first, not a consequence of it.
• Imperialism acted on Europe as well as abroad, and it produced resistance. Both are examinable.

Vocabulary card meanings

subjectivity and individual expression: Art that values a person's inner view over shared rules. romantic idealism: A belief that feeling and heroic will can reshape society. Napoleon III: The nephew of Napoleon who ruled France first as president, then as emperor. Cavour: The Piedmontese statesman who engineered much of Italian unification. Bismarck: The Prussian statesman who unified Germany through wars and diplomacy. Zionism: A late-nineteenth-century movement for a Jewish national home in Palestine. dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary: The 1867 arrangement that gave Hungary its own government under a shared monarch. Crimean War: The 1853-56 war in which Russia lost to an Ottoman-British-French coalition. Garibaldi's: The volunteer military campaigns of the Italian nationalist fighter. Bismarck used Realpolitik: Choosing policy by power and results rather than by ideology. complex system of alliances: The web of treaties that tied European powers together before 1914. mutually antagonistic alliances: Opposing blocs whose commitments made a local crisis into a general war. Charles Darwin: The naturalist who argued that species change by natural selection. Positivism: The view that real knowledge comes from scientific observation of facts. new relativism in values: The idea that moral and cultural standards are not fixed and universal. modernism: Art and literature that broke with traditional forms around 1900. Communication and transportation technologies: New tools such as railways, steamships, and the telegraph that shrank distance. Advances in medicine: Discoveries such as germ theory that cut death from infection. Realist and materialist: Art and thought that depicted ordinary life and explained the world by matter. Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Cubism: Painting movements from fleeting light to structured, fragmented form.