William T. Walker - European History: 1848 to 1914 Essentials

Between 1848 and 1914 Europeans experienced revolutionary changes in their culture. These alterations were based on a new sense of reality and values in which materialism, and the notion of human progress, were manifested in the pragmatism of the era. Nationalism, science and technology, and the rapid expansion of the population were primary factors which contributed to these changes and to the further expansion of European culture throughout the world. The growth in the European standard of living was uneven. Western Europe developed most comprehensively; Central Europeespecially German urban centerswitnessed remarkable growth during the last decades of the period; and Southern and Eastern Europe lagged behind and, by 1914, the standard of living had not dramatically improved from that of the earlier century. Reaction to these changes varied from the development of Marxism, anarchism, and trade unionism in response to the adverse consequences of capitalism and industrialism, to the emergence of Impressionism, Expressionism, and Symbolism in reaction to the perceived intellectual sterility of mechanistic positivism. Nineteenth-century Europewhich was identified with hope, progress, and rationalitygave way to the uncertainty, violence, and irrationality of the twentieth century. Politically, economically, and culturally, Europe between 1848 and 1914 continued the process of accelerated change which had been initiated in the previous century with revolutionary developments in production, and in the fundamental concepts about the relationships of man and the state and of man and the economy.