World History: Capitalism and Socialism

Today we're looking at two ideas which have shaped the world today: capitalism and socialism. We looked briefly at these ideas when we looked at the Industrial Revolution, but we will expand on them today. Some form of capitalism and socialism have existed for centuries across the world: Joyce Appleby joked that historians of capitalism have stated that it started repeatedly since the Roman Empire; Peter Marshall has stressed how ancient Daoism and Buddhism can anachronistically be described as leading themselves into being anarchist; and the Zapatistas in contemporary Chiapas, Mexico have stated that their socialist policies are in continuation with indigenous practices. This is important to bear in mind as today we'll largely be looking at the development of modern capitalism and socialism - this leads us to a focus on Europe and North America. However, when I can, I want to expand this to look at developments in capitalism and socialism outside the Euro-American world. Before we begin, I also want to preface this post by stating that I am a socialist, so I will likely be more critical of capitalism than some other histories which you might read - such as Appleby's history of capitalism referenced in this post.

From Mercantilism to Modern Capitalism

A French seaport in 1638 during the height of French mercantilism

A basic definition of capitalism is an economic and political system where trade and the way goods are produced, the means of production, are in the hands of private owners. This is a broad definition and describes many societies throughout history, and one of the main forms which this took was mercantilism and merchant capitalism. Merchant capitalism, in particular, we have seen throughout the World History series, and could be found in most regions of the world - especially India, China, and Japan. Mercantilism, meanwhile, is a form of capitalism which aims to see the maximisation of a state's exports - trade and consumption was seen as finite, so it was believed that to survive you needed a monopoly on trade. This led to the formation of large companies, as it was a safer investment for wealthier individuals to own shares in a company than entirely rely on your own capital as in the past. A major mercantilist in England, Thomas Mun, was influential in the formation of the English East India Company (EIC), and similar ventures opened with the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Hudson Bay Company in Canada to name two prominent ones. Mercantilism required state intervention in order to protect trade, so in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries protectionist policies were implemented to edge out competitors, and there were even wars - especially between the English and Dutch. However, by the late-eighteenth century mercantilism started becoming routinely criticised. The best known critic is that of Adam Smith. Smith was a Scottish economist and philosopher, and was highly influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment which led him in 1776 to write An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith did not live in a vacuum: it is no coincidence that his ideas of liberty were being repeated by other economists as American revolutionaries and Thomas Paine were calling for political liberty. In Wealth of Nations Smith broke from traditional narratives that humans were unpredictable and capricious, instead he argued that 'principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our condition, a desire which though generally calm and dispassionate, comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go into the grave'. Smith argued that the 'invisible hand' of the free market should govern economics; states should take a backseat and allow the supply/demand generated by markets, caused by human purchasing power, to govern economies. It was human nature to naturally lead to productivity and the best market solutions.

Adam Smith

Smith based his writings on economic developments in Britain since the 1600s, and this leads us back to a discussion we had when we looked at the Industrial Revolution, why did modern capitalism emerge in Europe? Max Weber argued that it was due to the 'Protestant work ethic' - this falls apart when we look at the rapid industrialisation of Japan in the 1870s. Modern, industrial capitalism primarily emerged in Britain and the Netherlands for several reasons. The first is weakened monarchical power - the long history of republicanism in the Netherlands and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in Britain resulting in the execution of Charles I gave their respective parliaments more power. This prevented possible restrictive laws on markets from being passed, and gave non-royals the ability to forge legislation - it is no coincidence that the UK and US quickly adopted aspects of Wealth of Nations. Changes in the countryside played a great influence - crop rotation and new crops from the Americas, like potatoes, allowed more crop production and population growth. Due to increasing crop yields this drove down the price of food which allowed people to have greater ability to purchase goods. In England, the Enclosure Acts, which Karl Marx placed great emphasis on for the formation of modern capitalism, placed common land in the hands of private owners which, in turn, forced tenant farmers off of land and into urban areas. Britain's easy access to coal, and the high numbers of waterways in the Netherlands and Britain allowing for easier transport, allowed for industrialisation to take place. The first chapter of Marx's Kapital explains well how this promoted the origins of industrial capitalism. He uses the example of a coat being made of 20 yards of linen, but is worth double due to the value of labour. As the factory owner owns the means of producing the coat they keep the profit after the value of the goods and labour has been taken out. To maximise profit you have to reduce the value of labour without overproducing - he uses diamonds in this case, they are valuable as they are hard to get, but if they were common their price would decrease. Mechanisation made the production of commodities faster and easier reducing the hours needed to produce our coat, so factories emerged to house the machinery and increasing urban populations created a workforce to work in the factories. Finally, modern capitalism could not exist without the exploitation of colonised peoples - as argued by David Landes, industry needed slavery. Britain and the Netherlands were deeply involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade and imperialism through the EIC and VOC. Raw materials could be produced abundantly and cheaply in India, Indonesia, and the Caribbean, and the colonised regions opened up markets for the selling of finished products.

The Capital Revolution

In 1848 Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote that the new capitalist, bourgeoisie class 'has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations...It has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades'. Wherever capitalism touched it greatly changed. The most notable example is the impact on the environment. Lands completely changed as they were uprooted for mining and construction - the construction of the Suez Canal managed to link two of the major seas. The burning of fossil fuels warmed global temperatures putting us, unfortunately, on the current path to climate catastrophe - smoggy cityscapes became common in late-nineteenth century art. Before 1811 the peppered moth in England was white, but soot from chimneys in northern England made the trees appear darker so they rapidly evolved to be black. Thanks to deindustrialisation since the 1970s these same moths are returning to their whiter colouration as trees are less sooty. Capitalism created new industries and made older ones more profitable creating demographic shifts. In Britain, cities like Glasgow, Birmingham, and Manchester dwarfed older seats of power, so much so, that several acts had to be passed in parliament redistributing where parliamentary seats were. Gold rushes in South Africa, California, and Australia saw booms in population as people rushed to make a fortune from gold, or from miners. In Australia 'bushrangers' preyed upon prospective gold miners, and some have become subject to folk legend, like Nat Kelly. These regions saw other demographic changes. California saw an influx of immigrants from China and Mexico, and Australia from Germany and China which today influences the demographics of the regions. Africans started moving to the cities, and in the South African gold mines different ethnic groups started interacting, and new ideas of sexuality even emerged. New groups, the bourgeoisie, started supplanting traditional elites. Although new capitalists in Japan were often from poorer samurai families, and intermarriage between poor samurais and wealthy merchants had happened before 1868, Japanese conservatives in the 1870s and 1880s feared capitalism believing it was disrupting the Confucian order of the country. There was a push and pull between old elites and the new: Prussian Junkers in Germany remained influential until World War Two but ceded ground to new industrialists; and while British aristocrats balked at the idea of allowing steel magnate Andrew Carnegie into their 'circle' they had to begrudgingly marry their children to American industrialists and allowing a Jewish banker, Lionel de Rothschild, into the House of Lords in 1858. However, this did not stop the Rothschilds from being subjected to intense antisemitic attacks - a topic for when we look at racism in a future post.

Japanese women in a basket weaving factory

The bourgeoisie were not the only class to emerge thanks to capitalism - there was also the working class. We see different cultures and identities emerge consequently. Prior to industrialisation, women could find some form of emancipation thanks to textile works - they could make their own textiles in their home. The factory saw the means of production taken out of their hands which limited their agency. We will explore the idea of 'separate spheres' more when we look at the origins of feminism in a future post, but it is important to reference it here. This was an idea, primarily in Europe and the US but it was also adopted in Japan, that there were two spheres: the public, of work and politics dominated by men, and the private, of the home and family dominated by women. This was less the case for working class women - working class women, and children, regularly worked in factories or other industries. In 1882, women comprised three-quarters of textile workers in Japan, and these figures were replicated across industrial societies. Factory life was hard regardless of age and gender - to save costs owners allowed poor and dangerous conditions to flourish. Injury and death was common, and reformers largely focused on child and female labour when criticising poor working conditions. In 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York burnt down killing 146 garment workers, of which 123 were women, which caused outrage and the laws passed in order to improve work conditions. Women were not passive in this. E. Patricia Tsurumi has discussed how women resisted sexual abuse and poor work conditions through go-slows, strikes, running away (over 60% of Kanebo mill workers between 1905 and 1915 did so), and singing insulting songs: The owner and I are like spinning machine thread/ Easily tied, but easily broken. 

New Cultural Worlds

Carnegie Hall in 1910

An emergence of a new class with purchasing power created a new and exciting world. As argued by Eric Hobsbawm, the home 'was the quintessential bourgeois world, for in it...could the problems and contradictions of his society be forgotten or artificially eliminated'. The domestic sphere emerged to ensure that the home remained central in society - this is especially prevalent in Japan when Meiji reformers after 1868 cast the nation as one family. In Britain, Christmas was redeveloped to be about family just as much as Christ; Christmas trees, songs, and dinners were meant to symbolise the warmth of the family. The public, both bourgeois and working, looked to Queen Victoria - firmly out of political life the royals served as something to emulate, so the German Prince Albert introducing the German tradition of Christmas trees to his family was adopted by everyone. Wealthier women could work before marriage in clerical employment, but they were expected to give this up when they got married. It is notable that these women also became reformers. City life was seen as breeding sin, vice, and poverty, so they formed organisations to tackle this. The Women's Christian Temperance Movement in the US is a good example. The first suffragettes, like Emmeline Pankhurst in the UK, were also moneyed women, and they aimed to use their position to gain the vote. Clothing has always been used to signify class, and capitalism continued this trend. However, new consumption allowed those who could afford it to dress like the wealthy. This was even the case at the fringes of capitalism. Jean and John Comaroff have discussed how, before colonial rule, Tswana royals in southern Africa controlled access to European clothing and wore it to meet with Europeans. Entertainment could now be purchased. Poor and wealthy went to shows, sometimes together to the scandal of society, and holidays emerged. The Rokumeikan in Japan became a scene where elite could sip drinks and do the waltz combining European and Japanese formal wear. New and old elites started making contacts for the first time - aristocrats had to allow nouveau riche into their circles, and they became the patrons of culture. Andrew Carnegie sponsored the construction of venues, like Carnegie Hall, and even expeditions to discover dinosaurs. 1916 saw oil tycoon John Rockefeller become the first billionaire, and financier J.P. Morgan, supposedly, joked that, when asked how much it costs to own a yacht, replied 'if you have to ask, you can't afford it'.

Empire and Capitalism

Khama III, Chief of the Bamangwato and Sir Albert Spicer, London Missionary Society Treasurer

Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin famously stated that imperialism was the final stage of capitalism, Hannah Arendt argued they marched hand in hand. Regardless, empire and capitalism were intrinsically linked. Colonial rule saw the economies of colonised societies to geared towards the export of raw materials and the import of finished goods - as late as the 1950s Britain tried to make nut production the crop of Tanganyika in east Africa. Although it is an exaggeration to say that Britain broke the thumbs of Bengali textile weavers, Britain did break Bengal's textile production to prevent competition. As we saw when we looked at British rule in India, key parts of the Indian continent was converted to the production of raw materials, primarily cotton, in what Romesh Chandra Dutt in 1902 described as the 'drain theory'. Britain had prevented the development of an Indian economy 'draining' it of resources. This had devastating direct consequences. When crops failed, as they were prevented from growing crops on land for cotton or saffron, it created devastating famines - a tenth of Orissa's population died in the 1865-6 famine, 3.5 million died in Madras and a million in Mysore in the devastating 1876-8 famine. While capitalism prevented famines during crop failure in Europe, it made it far worse in India. Capitalism was often used as a way for colonial expansion - Britain used opium to edge its way into China, and Britain and France used loans to Egypt in order to enforce their hegemony, and the US used companies to oust governments in Central America. Meanwhile, Leopold II of Belgium formed a company to rule the Congo for him. Today's Democratic Republic of the Congo has its shape due to traders setting up stations along rivers to best monopolise rubber and ivory. The Congo Free State, similarly, saw some of the worst atrocities in colonialism where Congolese were brutally enslaved, beaten, and killed in order to extract resources. A leather whip, the viboko, became the symbol of Belgian rule as Congolese were forced to work over 80 hours a week in poor conditions. Elsewhere, there were hopes to bring the colonised into a capitalist market. The work of the Comaroffs is especially interesting in this regards. The London Missionary Society (LMS) in southern Africa particularly tried to introduce consumerism, linking consumerism to Christian faith. Tswana were encouraged to buy European clothing as a sign of faith, and Tswana, in turn, adapted it for themselves - children and unmarried women wore pre-Christian clothing and wore European later. I want to discuss this more in our next World History post as we've just scratched the surface of colonialism and imperialism here.

The Origins of Modern Socialism

Marx and Engels

Conditions created by capitalism, although it brought benefits, it also brought intense suffering. Poverty, disease, and alcoholism were just some of the problems which capitalism either caused or accentuated. There were reformers who hoped to relieve the poor, such as York confectioner Seebohm Rowntree, but others rejected socialism entirely. Instead of private individuals owning means of production workers should own it - this was socialism. As we've already mentioned, some form of socialism have existed in some form across the world and history - Peruvian Marxists have argued that the Inca were 'feudal communists' as they did not use markets. Regardless, the first of the modern socialists emerged with the 'Utopian socialists' like Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, and Henri de Saint-Simon, although George Lichtheim describes them as 'doctrinaires' instead. These socialists argued that self-governing communities should be formed based on egalitarian ideas - Fourier is believed to have coined the term 'feminism' and advocated for homosexual emancipation. However, utopian socialists were later criticised by a new generation of socialists for being utopian. The most notable of these were the 'scientific socialists' of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Engels in particular in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880) argued that utopians created new ideas with no practical way in achieving them, whereas 'scientific socialists' looked at real world conditions and developed theory from there. Marx was born into a German Jewish family (which converted to Christianity to avoid antisemitic laws), and had a long history of radical politics. He was influenced by philosopher Georg Wilhelm Hegel and adapted his ideas of dialectical materialism. Human history was a conflict of classes driven by ideas, a thesis combats and antithesis before reaching a synthesis which, in turn, forms its own antithesis. Engels was the son of a German factory owner, and became upon seeing the horrific conditions of his father's Manchester factory became radicalised. Mary Burns, an Irish worker in his father's factory, greatly influenced his views, and in 1845 wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England. Marx and Engels became close friends and regularly worked together joining the Communist League. Inspired by the 1848 revolts Marx and Engels wrote their most influential piece - The Communist Manifesto - setting out their ideas in a way for workers to easily access.

In France, a different theorist emerged called Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who rejected the idea of the state entirely - Marx and Engels had advocated the proletariat, the producing class, seizing the state in order to bring about socialism. In 1840 his text What is Property? declared that 'Property is Theft', and that rejecting property and state could the proletariat be liberated. He declared, as well, that he was an 'anarchist', but, unlike later anarchists, he believed that markets could exist under socialism. Also, he was very antisemitic and sexist, so much so that he was denounced by many other anarchists, although he did state that 'In my ideal society I would be guillotined as a conservative'. Meanwhile, a Russian theorist, who became involved in the 1848 Czech Rebellion, made his way to France - Mikhail Bukanin. Bukanin was influenced by Proudhon but rejected the idea of having a market in any form. Louis Blanqui, meanwhile, controversially argued that a small cabal should take control of the state to aid the working peoples. Despite their clashes, Marx and Bukanin helped form the International Workingmen's Association, better known as the First International, in 1864 uniting all socialists and trade unions in order to plan out revolution. However, it was deeply divided and women were barred until 1865. In 1867 Harriet Law became the first female member, but she remained its only female member.

The Paris Commune

1871 proved to be the most important year in leftist history. Louis Napoleon declared war on Prussia but was roundly defeated and abdicated leaving France in disarray. The peoples of Paris rose up, and a crowd of women marched upon the local barracks seizing cannons and weapons. Leftist journalist Louis Delescluze and Polish officer Jaroslaw Dabrowski were elected to lead the newly formed Paris Commune. Proudhonists, Blanquists, libertarian socialists, and scientific socialists made up the ideology of the Paris Commune, and this is shown by their policies. Guillotines were symbolically burnt to show a break with the violent French Revolution, the Church and state were declared to be separate, the Louvre was turned into a arms factory, the Vendome Column depicting Napoleon was torn down, and workers given control over companies. Women were integral to the Commune where Louise Michel became one of the most influential figures in the revolt, and the Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés was formed by socialist bookbinder Nathalie Lemel and Russian exile Elisabeth Demitrieff. The Women's Union demanded women's education, divorce, suffrage, and an end to capitalism. The Commune was very international - French, German, Russian, Spanish, and even Algerian individuals joined together in protecting the Commune. However, when the French Third Republic got together intense street fighting began and the Commune was brutally crushed. Afterwards, the First International became heavily divided over why the Paris Commune failed. Marx in The Civil War in France (1871) argued that the communards were too quick to dismantle the state, if they had taken it over they could have better defended themselves. Meanwhile, anarchists like Bukanin argued that it failed as they left too much of the state intact - no one took over the Bank of France which then funded the French army. Marx kicked the anarchists out of the First International, and since then the left has been divided between Marxists and anarchists. Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck commented that 'Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the Black and Red unite!'

Developments with Socialism after 1871

A collection of Japanese anarchists including Osugi Sekae and Ito Noe

Anarchism and what would become Marxism would continue to develop after 1871. Marx and Engels continued expanding their ideas - Engels released his Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and Marx would eventually release his very influential Das Kapital. Marx's ideas were always changing and he rejected the term 'Marxism' as it implied that he had the answers - he believed people should start with his ideas. Marx and Engels were also keen to dispel cult of personalities which occasionally cropped up. However, the rift with the anarchists was never healed and anarchists were barred from the Second International when it was formed in 1889. Anarchism similarly developed - a Russian aristocrat Peter Kropotkin - would become the most influential anarchist thinker helping influence anarcho-communism, and Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta helped influence anarcho-syndicalism. Marxism and anarchism went beyond their roots with European male thinkers as new thinkers and activists applied their ideas to new situations. For example, Russian Marxist Alexandra Kollontai blended Marxism and feminism, and is seen as the founder of Scandinavian feminism for her activism in the region during World War One. Similarly, Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin in Germany would try and combat sexism in the labour movement, and try to apply class emancipation to the suffrage movement. Across the world activists blended local ideas with new ideas - Peter Marshall has argued that Mohandas Gandhi was even inspired by anarchism. Swami Vivekananda reinterpreted the Bhagavad Gita to craft it as a libertarian text which future anarchists, like Aurobindo Ghose, would build upon. Japanese censors prevented the translation of Marxist texts, but Kotuku Shusui managed to escape censors by translating anarchist texts - it took until the 1920s for Lenin to be translated into Japanese! Kotuku asserted that anarchism fit with Daoism and Zen Buddhism helping form the paper Heimin. Feminist Ito Noe was an influential writer for the paper Bluestockings calling for female and class emancipation. In the 1920s the anarchist movement was brutally crushed, Ito was strangled in prison, so Marxism replaced anarchism, but, even today, the Japanese Communist Party has strong anarchist leanings. In 1905 the influential 'One Big Union' the International Workers of the World (IWW) was formed in Chicago. Founded by figures like Irish socialist James Connolly, Jewish thinker Emma Goldman, and 'Big Bill' Haywood, among others, it was inspired by anarchist thought to unite the labour movement. Russia was a site of both Marxist and anarchist movements, but the most significant figure to come from this was Vladimir Lenin. A history of secret societies due to state repression influenced what would become Marxist-Leninism. Lenin argued that the workers had to be guided by a revolutionary vanguardist party, as Lenin would succeed in establishing the Soviet Union Marxist-Leninism would become the dominant Marxist thought among twentieth-century communist parties.

Conclusion
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been greatly shaped by the clash between capitalism and socialism. Capitalism broke the old feudal world and forged a new revolutionary system, but, in doing so, created suffering for the masses. Socialism emerged as a force to resist and liberate the masses. Joyce Appleby argued that capitalism was a cultural system just as much as an economic one - as we have seen this is accurate. Capitalism formed new identities and cultural practices, as argued also by Marx and Engels the means of production forms a superstructure which all things in society comes from. Equally, socialism developed its own culture - as seen in the Paris Commune egalitarian and emancipatory ideas influenced a desire to emancipate workers and women. The anarchist-Marxist divide continues to divide the left - they even fought one another during the Russian and Spanish Civil Wars. These ideas continue to shape our lives today, and many of the debates we have now have been argued for the last century and a half. When we see a pop-up ad on the internet its origin lies back with Adam Smith in 1776, and the means to critique it with Marx.

The sources I have used are as follows:
-Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875, (London: Abacus, 1975)
-Joyce Appleby, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism, (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010)
-Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (New York, NY: MetaLibri, 1776/2007)
-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, (London: Penguin, 1848/2015)
-Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Volume 1, (London: Redwood Press, 1887/1971)
-Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, (London: Progress Publishers, 1880/1970)
-John and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997)
-George Lichtheim, A Short History of Socialism, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970)
-Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987)
-T.C.W. Blanning, 'The Commercialization and Sacralization of European Culture in the Nineteenth Century', in T.C.W. Blanning, (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 120-147
-E. Patricia Tsurumi, 'Female Textile Workers and the Failure of Early Trade Unionism in Japan', History Workshop, 18, (1984), 3-27
-Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, (London: Fontana Press, 1993)
-Kristin Ross, Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune, (London: Verso, 2015)

Thank you for reading. Next time we will look at imperialism and colonialism, and how that affected colonised peoples. For other World History posts we have a list here. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

Left-Wing and the 'Other' History: The Easter Rising

During 1916's Easter Week, 24-29 April, armed Irish republicans rose up in Dublin taking over several key buildings, most importantly the General Post Office (GPO). Since 1916 the Easter Rising has remained an important historical event in Irish history, and whose memory has evolved over the last decade. Guided by principals of socialism and republicanism the Easter Rising has deeply influenced the Irish Left, in particular.

Ireland before 1916 - A Quick History

An Irish family being evicted during the Land War

For centuries Ireland had been dominated by England, and later Scotland (to an extent) and Britain. During the 1600s Protestants were encouraged to settle in Ireland, particularly the north and an area around Dublin called the 'Pale', and received greater rights than their Catholic neighbours. In 1800 the Act of Union came into effect formally uniting Britain and Ireland forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, however, Catholics remained in subordinated positions. It took until 1829 for restrictive laws on Catholics, but it did not stem the tide of Irish agitation. Almost three decades of protest against inequality seamlessly moved into discontent over the Act of Union. This protest manifested itself in two ways: parliamentary politics and radical movements. Often they worked together. In 1858 the Irish Republican Brotherhood, (IRB), popularly known as the Fenians, were formed as a revolutionary organisation. An abortive uprising in 1867 led to the imprisonment of many Fenians, so the Amnesty Association was formed. Led by a Protestant lawyer - Isaac Butt - who had become anti-Union after seeing the horrific consequences of British rule during the Irish Potato Famine. After defending nationalists Butt helped form the Home Government Association - a mostly Protestant Dublin-based pressure group - with the intention of bringing in 'Home Rule'. Home Rule was a policy of allowing Ireland to rule itself in everything bar defence and foreign policy. Butt's party evolved in the 1870s to the Irish Home Rule Party which saw the rise of two key nationalist figures - Joseph Biggar and Charles Stewart Parnell. In the 1870s bad harvests and an influx of cheap grain from the US saw the decimation of Irish agriculture; consequently landlords kept rent high, stopped credit, and evicted tenant farmers who could not pay. The 'Land War' superseded the need for Home Rule, and Parnell became a key figure in the Irish Land League calling for the 'three fs' - free sale, fair rent, and fixity of tenure. For his involvement Parnell was even briefly imprisoned in Kilmainham Jail. The Land War saw clashes between land lords and tenant farmers, as well as the development of the boycott. Named after Charles Boycott, the land agent supporting a land lord, who faced social ostracism for supporting the land lords. A series of Land Acts from the 1870s diffused the Land War, but not support for the Irish Parliamentary Party which became the third largest party in the UK.

Meanwhile, there was a growing radical movement in Ireland - both opposing and supporting Home Rule. English, both culture and language, had been attempted to be implemented in Ireland although it was not complete. In 1884 the Gaelic Athletic Association was formed to codify and regulate Gaelic sports, in 1893 the Gaelic League was formed to revive Irish as a language, and in 1892 the Celtic Literary Society to promote Irish literature. As they were not ostensibly political these groups gave Irish nationalists an ability to discuss their ideas and formulate plans. The Athletic Association became a front for the IRB, nationalist poet W.B. Yeats was a major figure in the Literary Society, and one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, Patrick Pearse, joined the Gaelic League. In 1905 a group of nationalist and republican groups came together to form Sinn Fein under journalist Arthur Griffith. Griffith was a nationalist, but not as hostile to republicanism as some of his colleagues. In The Sinn Fein Policy (1906) he set out the party's policies - take over local government bodies, contest elections while abstaining from Westminster, and assert Irish autonomy. However, in Ulster, the majority Protestant north, nationalism and republicanism were opposed. Not all Protestants and the 'Ulster Scots' (Protestants in Ulster) opposed this - one of the groups which formed Sinn Fein was the Dungannon Clubs from Ulster. Loyalty to the Union and a fear of Catholic domination made unionists oppose Home Rule. Since 1886 they had managed to block Home Rule, but in 1911 Herbert Asquith's Liberal Party made an alliance with the Irish Party, led by John Redmond since Parnell's death, bringing a Third Home Rule Bill to parliament. Unionists under Sir Edward Carson in 1912 joined Belfast stockbroker James Craig in signing the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant with a further 250,000 men. The next January a paramilitary group of unionists formed the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and prepared to violently secede from a Home Rule Ireland. 'If Protestant Georgie won't, Protestant Willie will' - a reference to possibly getting aid from the German kaiser Wilhelm II. In response, republicans formed this Irish Volunteers. Before violence broke out the First World War did - Home Rule was scheduled for after the war.

Socialism in Ireland

James Connolly

Socialism had a longer history in Ireland and nationalism before the Easter Rising. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had created links with the Fenians, and trade unions in both Britain and the US supported self-government. A common name to crop up, mostly due to his influence on Irish labour in the 1920s and 1930s, is that of James Connolly. Born in Cowgate, Edinburgh, hence why Connolly has further deeply inspired the Scottish left, in 1868 where he managed to get involved with the Land War. A Marxist and nationalist he was deeply involved with socialist movements, and his move to Dublin in the 1890s led him to help form the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP). As expected for socialist groups, the IRSP had its own publication, The Workers' Republic, of which Connolly was a major contributor. Connolly also criticised fellow nationalists, in an 1908 article for The Harp he wrote that 'How long it will be until the Socialists realize the folly and inconsistency of preaching to the Workers that the emancipation of the Working Class must be the act of the workers themselves, and yet presenting to those workers the sight of every important position in the party occupied by men not of the Working Class.' There were other key movements in Irish labour and socialism other than those directly overseen by Connolly. As early as 1871 a Fenian, Joseph McDonnell, was unanimously elected to the general council of the International Workingman's Association. In Belfast Liverpudlian Irish socialist Jim Larkin in 1907 organised dock workers and a strike crippled Belfast harbour. Strangely, a countess became a key, but unfortunately forgotten, figure in the labour movement. Countess Constance Markievicz had developed a strong desire to help the poor after seeing her father give out relief during a famine in her childhood, and growing up she became friends with Yeats. In 1903 she moved to Dublin and became involved in socialist, suffragist, and nationalist movements. In 1908, she joined both Sinn Fein and Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland), and later even took part in a Manchester by-election which prevented the election of virulently anti-suffrage Winston Churchill. Her position in society was helpful for socialist and republican movements, such as in August 1914 hiding Jim Larkin in her house in Rathmines, Dublin when a warrant for his arrest was issued.

Constance Markievicz

There was also the further intersection between republicanism and socialism. The rise of labour militancy influenced the IRB newspaper, Irish Freedom, to start commenting on the potency of a radicalise working class. Partially this had something to do with Thomas Clarke who, in the words of Adrian Grant, 'dragged the IRB away from devising conspiracies over a few pints in the local to engaging with mass political movements, albeit in a covert manner'. In 1910 the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) became increasingly involved with republicanism - so much so that Connolly, in charge of the ITGWU, was co-opted onto the military council of the Irish Volunteers in January 1916. The ITGWU actively encouraged counter-cultural activities seeing it as a way to enrich the lives of the working-class. Liberty Hall was used for language classes, dances, and songs; Croydon Park was used for sporting events; and a day before the Dublin lock-out in August 1913 playwright Patrick Wilson described a family day out in the park. The lock-out itself was important in the pre-war Irish labour movement. On August 16 20,000 workers went on strike about living conditions, the ability to unionise, and workers' rights so most employers responded with a lock-out - except for Guinness. British unions sent aid to their Irish counterparts to support the families of striking workers, but the Catholic Church blocked local aid seeing it as an avenue to spread Protestant and atheist ideas. It would last until January and Larkin fled to the US following a brief stint hiding at Markievicz's home. During the lock-out Connolly had formed the Irish Citizen Army (ICA) to protect workers - this would become very important during the Rising.

Ireland, the First World War, and Preparations

Like in the rest of Europe war was greeted with applause except from the left. Connolly opposed the war seeing it as an imperialist war sending the working-class to their deaths. However, sections of Irish society supported the war. John Redmond of the Irish Party encouraged people to volunteer for the war seeing it as a way to ensure that Home Rule would be passed after peace had come. A Dublin Volunteer recalled that 'The effect in Ireland was immediate. People who were what one would have thought rebels on Sunday were completely pro-British the following Sunday'. Protestants and Catholics both enlisted, but Protestants were disproportionately represented in the ranks of the British army - 40% of Irish soldiers were Protestant, despite making up 26% of the population. With the rise of the UVF and unionism Protestants saw themselves closer to Protestant Britain than their Catholic Irish neighbours. The council of the IRB - mainly Patrick Pearse and Sean MacDermott - planned an uprising to separate themselves from Britain. This small clique expanded to include other figures, such as Thomas Clarke. Due to a long history of infiltration, and a fear of rejection, the clique kept their movements a secret from even the IRB's President of the Supreme Council, Denis McCullough. With the collapse of the Dublin lock-out, and the war brutally crushing the labour movement, Connolly had started becoming interested in separatism. Connolly brought organisation to the planning, but he was not fully included in the plans in case the ICA took over. Seven individuals were brought together to plan the Rising: James Connolly, Patrick Pearse, Tom Clarke, Sean MacDermott, Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett, and Eamonn Ceanntt. 

In order to ensure an uprising took place they needed arms and possibly support. The IRB's American wing - Clan na Gael - sent Roger Casement, and later Plunkett, to Berlin to get German support for a rising. 'Protestant Georgie and Willie' now became a republican as well as a unionist phrasing. Casement hoped that 12,000 soldiers and 40,000 rifles could be landed in Limerick sparking a nationwide revolt - something the German General Staff and Foreign Office rejected. When Fenian Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa in New York in 1915 when his body was brought to Ireland for burial the funeral generated massive crowds, and saw a speech by Pearse ending with the words, 'Ireland unfree shall never be free'. All that was needed was the assurance that the Irish Volunteers would join an uprising but their leader, Eoin MacNeill, was fairly moderate and was reluctant to do so. However, a document, possibly forged by Plunkett, was produced stating that the British aimed to arrest key republicans which got MacNeill on board. Some arms had been secured from Germany, but just before the rising was to take place the ship was discovered by the British. Consequently, the Rising was postponed to Easter Monday and MacNeill, as well as other leading Volunteers, told others not to join the Rising. Despite this, the military council decided to press on regardless leading several historians, including Fearghal McGarry, to suggest that the council knew it was to fail. Instead of fighting to liberate Ireland they intended to become a blood sacrifice to inspire a future movement to liberate Ireland, 'action was preferable to inaction'.

The Rising

Monday 24 April, 1916 1,200 people from the ICA, Volunteers, and Cumann na Mban (the women's branch of the Volunteers) rose up in Dublin. For a good play-by-play of the Rising itself I would highly recommend Dublin 1916: The Siege of the GPO by Clair Wills (2009). Due to contradictory orders from Pearse and MacNeill not all Volunteers took part - in Galway, where the Volunteers was particularly strong, only a quarter turned out to fight. Regardless, by noon they had captured all the sites which they planned to occupy. The main command under Pearse and Connolly took the GPO; another took the Four Courts; 130 men under future Irish president Eamon de Valera took Boland's Mill and Westland railway station; Ceanntt's battalion took the 50-acre South Dublin Union site; and MacDonagh remained around the city centre. The sections taken were intended to give the rebels a vantage point over the main army barracks, and failures to capture main railway stations and telegraph offices were more due to a lack of manpower than improper planning. Dublin Castle, the heart of British rule in Ireland, could have fell, but as it was expected to be well defended the ICA soon abandoned their plans. Instead, the garrison under Sean Connolly captured City Hall but were ejected easily the next day. Outside Dublin, Volunteers tried to encourage rebellion in Wexford, Galway, Cork, and Meath, however, due to MacNeill's orders and a general fear of rising there was little turnout. In Galway, Volunteers managed to attack and besiege the Royal Irish Constabulary allowing them greater success. 

Women were present in the Dublin Rising. 200 members of Cumann na Mban took part in Dublin and the ICA had women in its leadership. However, with the exception of Markievicz who commanded at St Stephen's Green Garrison, women were barred from leadership from sexist colleagues. De Valera is infamous for directly ignoring Connolly and barring women from being near his garrison, although he did relent by making women couriers. Generally, women were expected to act as couriers, and many leaders barred female relatives from fighting - the only one to justifiably do this was Tom Clarke who barred his wife Kathleen from fighting as she was pregnant. No female rebels were killed, but Margaret Skinnider of the ICA was badly wounded by a British sniper. Furthermore, children even took part with the Fianna Eireann - republican boy scouts - including Connolly's 15-year-old son Roddy. Ironic considering his commitment to women's equality, Connolly barred his daughter Nora, who was in her twenties, for taking part. Fianna Eireann members did try and raid the Magazine Fort at Phoenix Park.

The aftermath of British shelling

On 29 April the Rising came to an end. British shelling, even in the countryside, had devastated rebel lines at the expense of Dublin. Around 54% of the 450 people killed during the rebellion were civilians - the youngest was a two-year-old called John Francis Foster who was killed in cross-fire. Intense street fighting led to between 2,000 and 3,000 people, (civilian, rebel, and soldier), to be injured. The army became well known for its brutal actions during the Rising - something which would continue during the Irish War of Independence. Fifteen civilians were killed by the army on North King Street, and on Easter Tuesday pacifist, a pro-suffrage journalist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington was arrested and shot on the orders of Captain John Bowen-Colthurst. Bowen-Colthurst was later court-martialled but deemed insane.

The Proclamation

This is perhaps the most important aspect of the Rising - if the rebels were to be martyred then they had to leave something to inspire future rebels. After taking the GPO on Easter Monday Pearse read the Proclamation to confused passers-by - the Rising had taken everyone by surprise. Written primarily by Pearse the influence of Connolly can be found across the document. One such notable example is the reference to 'Irishmen and Irishwomen', equal citizenship, equal rights, and firmly blaming 'an alien government' for dividing the 'minority from the majority'. In spite of Pearse's support for the Gaelic League, and Connolly criticising republicans for speaking English, only contained three Gaelic words, possibly to make it more accessible, which were 'Poblacht na j Eireann' - 'peopledom'. Two hundred thousand five hundred copies were printed of the Proclamation to be distributed by the ICA, but only 50 copies remain a century later. One is framed in Trinity College, and in 2008 one was bought for 360,000 Euros. Since then the Proclamation has become integral in influencing the policies of the Irish left.

Reaction

Unfortunately for the rebels, the Rising was not well received by all across Ireland. The ravaging of Dublin and the deaths of 200 civilians by the British was blamed on the rebels, especially as they had taken over the GPO. Families of soldiers received money to support them from the GPO - something cut off by the Rising. Class influenced reaction. Most of the ICA came from working class backgrounds, and military shelling destroyed significant sections of Dublin angering propertied classes. Furthermore, as most rebels were Catholic - despite calls for ending sectarianism by the Proclamation - it was seen as a Catholic rebellion. Hardly two months later the Battle of the Somme claimed the lives of many Irish Protestants creating a Protestant story of woe compared to the Easter Rising. Britain could have used the Rising to its advantage, but two factors ruined it for them. The first, the introduction of conscription was seen as British overrule. The second, was harsh British reaction to the rebels turning them into martyrs. Over 3,500 were arrested often on flimsy grounds of suspected Sinn Fein sympathies - 27 were arrested in Roscommon town despite having no involvement at all. 1,800 were interned in prison and their letters revealed to the Irish public the harsh treatment of the rebels. Sir John Maxwell, effectively the military governor, ensured that those who signed the document to rebel were to be executed. Between 3 and 12 May the seven signers were executed at Kilmainham Jail - in the end others followed so by August 16 were executed. De Valera escaped the noose based on his American citizenship and as his trial happened a while after the initial executions, so by then public opinion had soured. Markievicz was sentenced to hang but due to her sex she was spared. The way individuals were executed angered the public - Connolly had to be propped up to be shot by firing squad. By late-May Dublin stores were already selling memorobillia honouring the martyrs.

Legacy

Irish republicans in the War of Independence

In the short-term the Easter Rising had propelled Irish republicanism to the forefront. A mixture between the war, conscription, the Rising, and failure to implement Home Rule allowed Sinn Fein to replace the Irish Party as the major party. The 1917 by-election in Clare East swept de Valera in with 70% of the vote, and he would be followed by other Sinn Fein MPs. As to sit in the Westminster parliament MPs had to swear on oath of fealty Sinn Fein opted to abstain. In the 1918 election several Sinn Fein candidates won, including Markievicz becoming the UK's first elected female MP. In January 1919 Sinn Fein, inspired by the Proclamation, formed their own assembly as opposed to Westminster called the Dail Eireann. The Irish War of Independence began and when fighting finally ended in 1923, when the Irish Civil War ended, the independent Ireland that emerged lived in the shadow of Easter 1916. Many of those who fought in the new Irish Republican Army (IRA) had been members of Fianna Eireann so opposed the treaty leaving Ulster under British control. Eamon de Valera was a conservative giving Catholicism a 'special place' in Ireland - although he did resist urges to make Catholicism the state religion. Women were subordinated in Ireland where divorce, contraception, and abortion were made illegal - until 2018 abortion was illegal in the constitution. 

Since 1916 the Rising has gone through many shifting perceptions. It has regularly been evoked in Irish politics - most have claimed the legacy of 1916. Socialists emphasised Connolly's importance, nationalists have emphasised the calls of independence, and the Irish state has tried to support aspects of it. De Valera had anniversaries celebrated and for school children to re-enact it annually, however, the calls for liberating the working class and women were forgotten in favour of portraying it as a Catholic, nationalist rebellion. In Northern Ireland, republicans regularly celebrate the Rising, but different republicans remember different sections of the Rising. Sectarian republicans were keen to forget the egalitarian nature of the Rising. During the violence of the Troubles Ireland silently celebrated the Rising to avoid condoning sectarian violence in the North. Since the end of the Troubles debates continue about what aspects of the Rebellion should be remembered. During the centenary in 2016 Dublin council placed commemorations to the Rising everywhere they could - I visited during this time and saw the wide variety of ways in which it had been remembered. Local socialists and feminists emphasised the emancipatory nature of the Proclamation; a tour gave a watered-down history of the Rising; and the GPO produced a movie about the Rising playing in the basement. Although many will debate the Easter Rising it is clear that those who fought wanted a freer, fairer Ireland.

The sources I have used are as follows:

-Marie Coleman, The Irish Revolution, 1916-1923, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014)

-Fearghal McGarry, The Rising, Ireland: Easter 1916, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

-Clair Wills, Dublin 1916: The Siege of the GPO, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009)

-Adrian Grant, Irish Socialist Republicanism, 1909-36, (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012)

-Desmond Ryan, (ed.), The Workers' Republic: A Selection from the Writings of James Connolly, (Dublin: Sign of the Three Candles, 1951)

-James Connolly, 'Sinn Fein and Socialism', The Harp, (April 1908)

Thank you for reading and I hope you found it interesting. Please leave any comments and for other Left-Wing and the 'Other' history please see our list. For future blog updates please our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

World History: Reforming Russia

Repin, Volga barge haulers, 1873

Throughout the nineteenth century several states tried to undergo a nebulous process called 'modernisation'. This basically meant industrialising and adapting institutions from Western Europe and the US. However, states did this for different reasons with varying outcomes. Today we'll be looking at one of these attempts in Russia. Russia has always been seen as a land of autocracy whether it be under tsar, soviet, or president, but there has been a tendency to overlook limits to autocracy and how people lived in Russia. In the last few decades nineteenth century Russia has started going through a change of image - particularly the reign of, quoting Edvard Radzinsky, 'The Last Great Tsar' Alexander II (1855-1881). Today we'll be looking at how Russia faced its challenges to autocracy ending just over a decade before the collapse of Russian tsardom during the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Russia at the Start of the Century

1920 painting of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow

As we saw last time when we looked at Russia we discussed how diverse Russia actually was - stretching from Poland to Alaska within Russia's borders many. national identities existed. Naturally, Russians were at the top of society but other national identities could exercise power. With it being a Grand Duchy Finland had a measure of self-autonomy granting Finnish national identity to continue. Meanwhile, other identities were ruthlessly persecuted - antisemitism was commonplace and many Jews were confined to 'The Pale' (a section of land in Eastern Europe), Polish nationalism was brutally crushed, and Central Asian pastoralists were regularly dispossessed of their land. There was a large disparity between the culture of the Russian peasantry (the overwhelming majority of the population) and the nobility. There was a push-and-pull among the nobles between adopting 'Slavic' or 'Western' policies and cultural practices - this would continue until the nobility was abolished by the Bolsheviks. While the peasantry spoke their own languages - whether it be Russian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, or any other language - the nobles spoke French, it was even made language of the court by Catherine the Great. Large part's of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace was written in French to show how this. The Christianity of the peasantry in Russia was very different to that of the nobility - it was a blend of Russian Orthodoxy and local pre-Christian beliefs. Of course, there were many other beliefs including Islam, Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism, to name a few, present in the empire. Serfdom was very present in Russia - by the time of emancipation in 1861 there were over 10 million serfs. Russian serfdom was brutal - treated like slaves they could be sold, beaten, and sexually abused by landowners.

In 1801 a court coup deposed tsar Paul I for trying to limit the power of the nobility and issuing in land reform. His son, Alexander I, was crowned after helping conspire to overthrow his father who then proceeded to solidify his power. By overturning some of his father's despotic laws and bringing loyal friends, including his mother Marya Feodorovna, to key positions of court he found support among the public and could outnumber the other conspirators. However, he did appeal to conservative forces - with the exception of Marya women in court were curtailed and he hoped to act as a mediator to prevent Napoleon's expansion. One of Alexander's major allies, Mikhail Speranskii, started implementing further reforms which angered the nobility as he expelled corrupt nobles, supported financial policies which harmed their interests, and formed the State Council as a buffer to their power. To win back noble support Alexander exiled Speranskii to Siberia at the worst possible time. Speranskii could see that Napoleon was gearing up to invade Russia so was preparing the army - his exile weakened these efforts. When the Grand Armée, numbering half a million (twice the size of the Russian army), invaded on June 1812. Knowing that Russia could not stand against Napoleon generals, especially Mikhail Kutuzov, decided to let the land itself wear down Napoleon. The Russian army would retreat and burn fields and cities, including Moscow in September, depriving Napoleon of using local resources - a tactic he had used during the wars in Central Europe. In fact, around half of the Grand Armée was made of non-French conscripts. Through lack of supplies, Russian partisans, and the weather only 10% of Napoleon's forces escaped. The Congress of Vienna of 1815 left Russia as one of the three conservative 'policemen' of Europe - the other two being Prussia and Austria.

Reform and Revolt

The Decembrists

The rest of Alexander's reign has been characterised as intense conservatism and autocracy - this is not entirely inaccurate though. David Ransell has argued that we should instead see this period split into two - one of conservative reform and one of repression. As late as 1818 Alexander discussed how he wanted a constitutional order for Russia and in 1820, in private, expressed hopes for the constitution being drafted. Emancipation of serfs had been slowly developing since the reign of Catherine the Great and Alexander continued this trend, although all that came of it were rejected proposals. Immediately following the defeat of Napoleon literature helped expand Russian vernacular which would pave the way for Dostoevsky and Tolstoy decades later. The reformist ethos collapsed after 1820. With the nobility again disliking emancipation of serfs Alexander abandoned any pretence of reform. The semi-independent Polish diet, the Sejm, angered him so in 1821 he argued to the French envoy that it was 'unworkable' in 'less educated societies'. In 1825 Alexander died and his conservative son, Nicholas I, would come to power - two revolts would set Russia on the stage for conservative repression for the next few decades.

The first was the Decembrist Revolt in 1825. Not all of Russia's powerful were opposed to reform - secret societies were deeply upset by Alexander's abandonment of reform. Seeing the ideas of both the American and French Revolutions had inspired a younger generation, and the Napoleonic Wars inspired by a deeper patriotism in Russia and gave them an opportunity to see the rest of Europe. One Decembrist, Nikolai Bestuzhev, testified saying 'My five months stay in Holland in 1815, when a constitutional administration was being introduced there, gave me my first concept of the benefits of laws and civil rights; then two visits to France and a voyage to England and Spain confirmed my attitude.' The secret Union of Salvation wanted serfdom to be abolished and for Russia to become a constitutional monarchy - as Freemasons were influential in America and France their secrecy and hierarchy was based off of Masons. Seeing Nicholas become tsar scared the Decembrists into action who rose up in St Petersburg in December but were soon crushed; a second rising in Ukraine was soon crushed. 282 were hanged and the rest were imprisoned or exiled - in a trend in Russian history women eagerly joined their husbands in exile seeing themselves as supporting a new Russia. Their writings in exile would start a literary model for Russian exiles. Several years later, in November 1830, Russia planned to send troops to help crush the rebellions in France and Belgium which Polish secret societies strongly disliked. Polish nationals had long looked to France for inspiration and Napoleon had established a Polish, but puppet, state. In November the Polish army rose up and the Congress supported the rebellion - after a year the Imperial Army crushed the revolt and Poland was declared to be 'an integral part of Russia'. These two revolts made the conservative Nicholas even more willing to crush nationalist, liberal, or socialist opposition - the famous image of the 'Russian exile' properly began in this period. Russia has had a long history of secret societies, and the repression of Nicholas' reign influenced their continuation. Nicholas helped out abroad - in 1849 Russia helped crush revolution in Hungary, as an example. Thanks to his socialist writings, like Poor Folk (1845), Fyodor Dostoevsky was exiled to Siberia in 1849.

Crimea - A Turning Point

Russia had long seen itself as the defender of Slavic peoples and the Orthodox Church - Russian influence helped bring independence to Greece in 1830. By the 1850s the Ottoman Empire was undergoing its own attempts to reform - one of our future World History posts - which other European powers were exploiting. Both France and Russia had been putting pressure on the Ottomans to grant special rights for Christian communities in Palestine - France for Catholics and Russia for Orthodox. When the Ottomans refused to grant Russia its demands Nicholas declared war in 1853 and quickly took Moldavia and Wallachia, however, he did not realise that the Ottomans had refused due to them being supported by Britain and France. Thus the Crimean War began. Crimea was a disaster. Russia had issues mobilising due to a lack of railways and infrastructure, serfdom meant that a properly trained army was hard to create, and the navy and army proved to be very outdated. Quoting Edvard Radzinsky 'It turned out that his army was fighting the army of Napoleon III with weapons of the era of Napoleon I'. The war soon became unpopular with all combatants - Lord Tennyson's poem Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) laments Britain's ineptitude during the Battle of Cardigan. It was also the first major war to have photographs sent home which soured opinion - war could not be celebrated when it looked so bloody. It was even worse for Russia - Nicholas I lost his ego upon seeing the enemy navy from his villa in Alexandria. Demoralising the army Nicholas died in 1855, and his son, Alexander II, had to sign a peace in 1856. No one could avoid reform now - Slavophile Iurii Samarin wrote that 'We were defeated not by external forces of the Western alliance, but by our own internal weakness...Stagnation of thought, depression of productive forces, the rift between government and people, disunity between social classes and the enslavement of one of them to another'. 

Alexander II

Abolishing Serfdom

As mentioned earlier there had been reforms of serfdom, enacted or just planned, since the reign of Catherine. The question is, why was Alexander so eager to abolish serfdom? There have been several theories why: the triumph of liberal humanitarian ideas, Romanticist Vassily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was made chief tutor to the young heir; the economic decline of the nobility when debts grew and estates became less productive; and the fear of peasant revolt, 1796-1826 there had been 990 disorders which rose to 1,799 in 1826-1856. Emancipation had been promised to those who enlisted in the army, when those promises had started to be broken there was a fear of reprisal. Despite the title of 'Tsar Liberator' Alexander II was still conservative. Emancipation was to be from 'above' which would ensure the nobility remained in power. Loosening hold on the press allowed liberal voices for reform to spread and committees were formed to plan emancipation. It came in 1861 it was a let down for the peasants. Similar to how freed slaves in the US viewed their emancipation a few years later the 10 million serfs hoped they would now own the land they had been tied to. Alexander hoped to turn the serfs into small landowners, but not immediately - they were segregated into 'village societies', mirs, which answered to a self-rule administration called volosti, and they had to pay a redemption payment initially estimated to take 49 years to pay off. Furthermore, payments were increased by inflated evaluations of the land and nobles could keep parts of their old estate. As a result, the 'emancipated' serfs were subjected to their set of laws, where corporal punishment remained legal, and Alexander's new zemstvos had no say in them. Immediately disorders rose - from 126 in 1860 to 1,889 in 1861. 

Other Reforms

From peasants to workers

Alexander did not just focus on emancipating serfs - he wanted a 'Western' but distinctly Russian state. We have already mentioned the zemstvos which were formed in 1864, and were followed by municipal councils in 1870, to form a network of elective local government systems. They were both progressive and conservative. Non-nobles, and some peasants, could finally have a chance to influence local politics - doctors in zemstvos rose from 613 in 1870, to 1,558 in 1890, and 3,082 in 1910. However, peasants were still excluded and the municipalities were very elitist - in St Petersburg the richest 202 individuals, 705 middle-class, and poorest 15,233 all had the same number of seats. Defeat in Crimea made the military supportive of any reforms which started being reformed on Western lines. A massive standing army with no reserves was replaced by universal military training; new training on Western lines was implemented; and the Universal Training Act of 1874 established all-class conscription where education determined length of service. This encouraged greater education, wealthy students stayed in university for as long as possible to avoid conscription, and wealthier peasants sent their children to elementary education for two-years as it reduced terms of service from six to two years. Rural primary schools rose from 23,000 in 1880 to 54,416 in 1890, however, rural peasants often saw little education regardless. Censorship, to an extent, was reduced - if the Chief Censorship Committee of Ministry of the Interior could ban anything they disliked. Preliminary censorship in 1865 ended for newspapers, periodicals, and books over 160 pages to lighten the load on the strict system - hence why radical socialist Leo Tolstoy managed to publish so much, War and Peace definitely exceeded 160 pages. Alexander also amnestied many exiles, especially surviving Decembrists, although there were many limits - most famously anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakunin. Industry also began in this period although it was very sluggish - it would take until the time of Stalin to properly industrialise. As late as 1910 Russia imported in the vast majority of its machinery. A novel way to raise money Alaska was even sold to the US.

Russification

One thing that Alexander wanted to do, and that of his successors well into the twentieth century, was tie the people to Russia - he wanted a nation, not a state. Panslavism was a very important driving force in the ideas of the elite - leading newspaper editor Mikhail Katkov regarded Russian identity as a super-nation like British identity. As Britain was composed of English, Scottish, Welsh and some Irish he hoped that Russia could be the same; something Dostoevsky also advocated for. Russian was implemented in local schools and governments, the Imperial Army absorbed minorities hoping it would turn them into Russians, and nationalists were deported. In Central Asia Russian settlers were encouraged to colonise the region, albeit not a new policy, to displace local peoples. Following the emancipation of the serfs Polish szlachta (land-owners) hoped this could pave the way for Polish emancipation, and secret societies were formed to agitate for Poland. When the Imperial Army was going to conscript Poles in January 1863 an uprising began which, like the Decembrists, were crushed. Over 18,000 nationalists were deported to Siberia and 365 leaders were publicly executed. Polish was banned in administration and schools, the University of Warsaw was converted into a Russian institution, and only Russians could become local governors. Geoffrey Hosking has highlighted the destructive nature of Russification of Russia's Jews - as the Pale started seeing restrictions very slowly lifted between 1859 and 1879 antisemitism became weaponised for nationalism. Panslavist Ivan Aksakov argued that Jews continued to live by their own rules and were backed by foreign powers. In 1903 the Protocols of the Elders of Zion first appeared - a conspiracy theory stating that leaders of 'international Jewry' were using liberalism and the French Revolution to take over the world and, eventually, Russia. Antisemitic violence broke out during times of political turmoil - in Kishinev in 1903 blood libel accusations led to a pogrom killing 47 Jews. Only the semi-independent Finland managed to escape the brunt of Russification, in 1863 it even was awarded its own parliament. However, under the reign of Nicholas II it was attempted again - the 1899 February Manifesto declared that Russia had supreme power over Finland, and the 1900 Language Manifesto forbade Finnish.

Jan Matejko, Polonia, 1864

Russification was not formerly implemented and was actively resisted. Despite banning Polish it was continued to be taught, and spoke, and this was repeated with Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Finnish. Throughout the 1870s the state continuously clashed with intellectuals in Ukraine who promoted Ukrainian as a language, so much so it that Galicia became known as a 'Ukrainian Piedmont'. Nationalist groups continued to grow across the political spectrum - Josef Pilsudki of the Polish Socialist Party tried to obtain arms from Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, and the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania became Marxist. Meanwhile, Roman Dmowski of the National Democrats wanted Poland to be autonomous but in the empire. Persecution of Jews saw resistance - Zionism began growing in popularity (it would take until after this period for it to become a popular identity) and Jews disproportionally joined socialist and Marxist parties due to their emancipatory rhetoric. Leading Bolshevik Leon Trotsky was born to a Jewish family, as an example. This brings us neatly onto our next section.

The Left

Tolstoy organising famine relief in 1891

Despite most of Europe's socialist thought being directed at urban workers primarily rural Russia, but the Left became a strong force despite this and political repression. The lifting of some censorship restrictions allowed socialist papers to enter Russia - the 160 page limit even allowed Das Kapital to escape censorship for some time. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which was socialist at the time, regularly translated Marxist papers and sent them to Russia. That is not to say that Russia lacked its own radical population. The reform era, and its limits, inspired a new class who saw themselves as 'the new people' or the 'intelligentsia' - N.G. Chernyshevskii's What is to be Done? (1863), which inspired Lenin years later, reflected this. Agrarian socialism, suitable for overwhelmingly rural Russia, became a driving force on the Left. Leo Tolstoy was a proponent of aiding the rural poor, he organised several famine reliefs, and advocated for a blend of Christianity, spiritualism, and anarchism. Tolstoy's views would become highly influential to Gandhi - both would steep themselves in spiritualism and dress as peasants. We also saw a look at the urban poor. We have already mentioned Mikhail Bakunin - one of the major thinkers behind modern anarchism - who travelled around Europe advocating worker revolt, and clashing with a young Karl Marx over property. Perhaps the most influential anarchist is Pyotr Kropotkin. Born into a landowning factory he became disillusioned with society and in the 1870s joined a revolutionary society. Like many other radicals he was imprisoned and eventually escaped to live in exile. In 1892 he published the very influential Conquest of Bread which went beyond Bakunin's collectivism and instead advocated for mutual aid. There were also Marxists - the most famous being Vladimir Lenin. Like other radicals he had been exiled and spent years developing his theories. Alexandra Kollontai became an advocate for Marxist feminism and Finnish independence, and her time in exile helped establish feminism in Scandinavia. Furthermore, Kollontai helped lay the groundwork for International Women's Day.

Not all left-wing activity in Russia was theoretical. Violent secret societies - very much in line with previous movements - aimed to shape society. The most famous was Narodnaia volia, 'People's Will', which broke off from another group, Zemlia i volia, in 1879 after a disagreement. Their aim was to destabilise the government by assassinating key officials until the state could be overthrown, and following this a new regime could be put in place which would convene an assembly to represent the people. They believed it could work. Emerging radical Vera Zasulich in 1878 was acquitted by court, and got widespread public sympathy, after she had almost successfully assassinated Fyodor Trepov - who had help put down the 1830 and 1863 Polish rebellions and had recently had a political prisoner flogged. Narodnaia volia had one figure in mind - Alexander II. After several failed attempts on March 1 1881 a bomb was thrown at Alexander's carriage in St Petersburg - he died shortly after thanks to his wounds. The aftermath saw an antisemitic wave across Russia, outpouring of grief for the tsar, and the very conservative Alexander III becoming tsar. Leon Trotsky would denounce People's Will and individual acts of terror on the basis that it created martyrs out of the slain, and justified harsh reprisals.

Alexander II's funeral procession

Reaction

Wanted poster for Sergey Degayez

With the death of Alexander II and the crowning of Alexander III Russia went from a conservative reformer to an outright reactionary. Reaction did happen under Alexander II, we can see this with the reprisals against peasants and nationalists. Following the tsar's assassination a secret police known as the okhrana was formed - they were tasked with disseminating false information, infiltrating left-wing groups or trade unions, and disrupting the labour movement. It is quite possible that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was written by okhrana agents. There is an interesting case of leading inspector Georgy Sudeykin, who in 1879 had exposed the Kiev branch of People's Will, and was able to supervise all secret agents. Sudeykin arrested a key figure in People's Will, Sergey Degayez, and the two formed an agreement: Sudeykin would use the okhrana to eliminate Degayez's enemies in People's Will as Degayez would eleminate Sudeykin's enemies using People's Will. Together they arrested the group's leader Vera Figner. However, People's Will learnt of Degayez's betrayal and offered a new deal - kill Sudeykin or be killed. He killed his former ally and fled to the US. Meanwhile, jurist and adviser Konstantin Pobedonostsev was appointed to enforce conservative and reactionary rulings until his death in 1907. He managed to ensure that Alexander III heard his policies which included condemning elections and democracy, deviations from strict Christianity, a call for excommunicating Tolstoy in 1901, extensive Russification, and in 1882 he managed to implement the May Laws which persecuted Jews and reinforced the Pale of Settlement. When Alexander died in 1894 his son, Nicholas II, continued his father's reactionary politics - he himself had watched Alexander II bleed out. Bloody Sunday in 1905 saw his guard attack a protest killing hundreds and would set the stage for revolution.

Conclusion

Russia's nineteenth century was not a great time of liberalism which ended with a bomb, nor was it a time of overarching repression. Alexander II wanted reform that could keep the nobility in power but also create a new Russian, 'modern' state. Meanwhile, political repression, even under Alexander III and Nicholas II, was never total and saw resistance. The limits of reforms and changes in society would set the stage for the Russian Revolution in 1917. A question arises, would this post exist if it did not set the stage for 1917? Quite possibly. Russia was not the only state to attempt to 'modernise' in the 1800s - in future posts we'll also look at attempts in Japan, China, and the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. These ideas could be found across the world and were adapted or changed in each setting. We can see how malleable ideas and policies are by looking at this period. Of course, to understand the rise of the Russian Revolution we have to understand this time period. It has also becomes relevant in recent years - counteracting Soviet historiographies Alexander II in particular has been cast as 'The Last Great Tsar' or 'The Tsar Liberator' (a term also used during his life). Nicholas II has also seen a partial rehabilitation despite the political repression and antisemitism of his reign. Looking at the 1800s can we possibly discuss these narratives?

The sources I have used are as follows:

-Geoffrey Hosking, Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917, (London: HarperCollins, 1997)

-Gregory Freeze, Russia: A History, Third Edition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

-Edvard Radzinsky, Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar, Trans. Antonia Bouis, (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2005)

-Walter Moss, Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, (London: Anthem, 2002)

-Christopher Read, 'In Search of Liberal Tsardom: The Historiography of Autocratic Decline', The Historical Journal, 45:1, (2002), 195-210

-N.G.O. Pereira, 'Alexander II and the Decision to Emancipate the Russian Serfs, 1855-61', Canadian Slavonic Papers, 22:1, (1980), 99-115

-Herburtus Jahn, 'Politics at the Margins and the Margins of Politics in Imperial Russia', Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 14:1, (2013), 101-116

-Alexandra Kollontai, The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman, Trans. Salvator Attansio, marxists.org

Thank you for reading and I hope you found it interesting. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby. For other World History posts we have a list here. Next time we will be looking at the US Civil War, the Reconstruction era, myth, successes and failures.