Assignment Code: BHIC-114/ASST/TMA/2022-23

Course Code: BHIC-114

Assignment Name: History of Modern Europe-II (C. 1780–1939)

Year: 2022-2023

Verification Status: Verified by Professor

There are three Sections in the Assignment. You have to answer all questions in the Sections.

Section-I

Answer the following in about 500 words each. 20x2

Q1) Analyse political theory and theory of revolution developed by Karl Marx.

Ans) Marxism achieved public prominence in the mid-19th century and came into its own in the second half of the 19th century. It influenced and became linked with expanding workers movements and organisations, as well as those of other sections of society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels founded Marxism. Many languages translated their writings.

Just like Utopian socialism, this trend became known as Marxism only later in the analyses of various social scientists and political thinkers, after Karl Marx, the most prominent and path breaking individual who represented this trend and gave body and coherence to the various ideas of the time, upholding some and rejecting and critiquing others. Marx's worldview was dialectical materialism, based on the evolution of material life. Marxism combined materialism with dialectics. Marx's main contributions to understanding the peopled world were Historical Materialism and a new political economics theory.

Political Theory

Marx himself expanded his ideas on politics in his major work Das Kapital, in three volumes written over a number of years. The major themes in these volumes was the analysis of capitalism and the elements intrinsic to it: class exploitation that was built into it; class struggle that was the logical outcome of this exploitation; the tendency of accumulation and crisis, both of which emerged out of it; and the history of capitalism based on these elements inherent in the system.

Under capitalism, a worker spends half of the day covering the cost of maintaining himself and his family, and the rest of the day working without pay since he's creating more than he's compensated for. This creates surplus value, which profits the capitalist and denies the worker the full results of his labour. The worker can't avoid this since he sells his labour power, but what he and his co-workers make sells for far more than the cost of production, including raw material, machinery, maintenance, running costs, and pay.

Marx showed that capitalism is not simply an economic system but also a set of connections between the capitalist and the worker that is socially unjust and exploitative. Without labour, land, machinery, and capital would sit idle.

Theory of Revolution

Marx and Engels made the political conclusion that the downfall of capitalism is necessary and unavoidable, but it won't happen without a people's revolution. Working class would play a key role. As capitalism grows, manufacturing becomes collective, and the owner's profit is individual. Workers have no investment in the system, including private property in means of production, because they own nothing but their ability to labour. They also have no interest in perpetuating a system that hinders them from having meaningful lives and enriches a capitalist they may never see. Only the workers' collective battle can lead to shorter hours, better working conditions, improved living standards, more leisure, and cultural and educational access. With worker freedom, other groups could be freed.

The Communist Manifesto captured the workers' experience and boosted their support for socialism, leading to the development of working-class organisations and parties across Europe. In 1871, workers in Paris attempted to seize state authority. The first workers government was defeated after hundreds of workers died defending it. More lessons were learned, namely that the capitalist state must be destroyed, and a communist state created. Socialism and socialist groups popularised women's organisations and emancipation. Socialists founded the first women's mass groups. They also championed working women's issues and inspired and supported women's vote initiatives.

Q2) Discuss the link between Christian missionaries, education, and imperialism.

Ans) Imperialist nations attempted to sway the religious convictions of colonised peoples in the area of religion through missionary endeavours. Catholic missionaries, such as the Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans, helped spread Christianity throughout Asia and Africa throughout the sixteenth century, but they were most effective in the Americas. One might use the cultural effects of British colonisation in India to further elucidate the issue. Since "the natives were supposed to be unreliable interpreters of their own laws and culture, they began to try and create a homogenised concept of Indian religion from the variety of practises and beliefs, which had no single name or canon, spread throughout the country as the European Orientalists started to compose Indian history and religion.

By doing this, they forced a huge array of religious rituals and beliefs into a hierarchical system with a similar theology. This was accomplished in two ways: first, by discovering the foundation of Indian religiosity in some Sanskrit writings; and second, by an underlying propensity to describe Indian religion in terms of normative definitions of religion based on modern Western understandings of Judaeo-Christian traditions. They even identified a Hindu trinity that contained a god that the majority of Hindus allegedly did not pray to yet was purportedly recognised by all Hindus.

The expansion of western education and knowledge coincided with the emergence of colonial power in India. Guns, sophisticated technology, and railroads all arrived in India along with new modern schooling. Indians embraced the schooling that the British forced upon them despite their oppressive rule. The expansion of this education in India was aided by a number of organisations, including the British colonial authority, Christian missionaries, Indian social reformers, and nationalist leaders. There was a heated debate in the 1830s among British authorities on whether to promote western European knowledge and literature in English or to favour oriental knowledge in classical and vernacular languages.

For the newly developing middle classes, education was a significant source of employment. Gauri Viswanathan has demonstrated how British colonial education and its schools promoted ideas of western culture's superiority through their curricula. Indigenous languages lost value as a result of colonial linguistic policies. English became widely used around the world as a result of the British Empire's growth, and it is currently used everywhere. In order to assimilate to the culture of the colonists and give up certain aspects of their cultural heritage, colonial people were also forced to acculturate. People's minds are colonised as a result of this process, which is known as culture colonisation.

A conquered nation that embraced and loved western civilization, in the opinion of the colonial powers, would no longer be able to fend off their colonisation of the area. Since the educated elites absorbed western norms, the conquerors could rule with coercion-free agreement. The justification used by colonial powers to justify colonisation was that developing nations were inferior and need aid from the West to advance their moral standing and economic prosperity. The colonial discourse still contains racial stereotypes that refer to indigenous people as "uncivilised barbarians," and these stereotypes can be found in science and technology, literature, and the media.

Language imperialism, also known as linguistic imperialism, is the practise of imposing a dominant language on non-native speakers. Aspects of the dominant culture are typically conveyed along with the language, and the imposition was largely a show of authority. English was widely embraced by colonial Britain. English linguistic imperialism is described by R. Phillipson as "the domination established and continuously rebuilding of structural and cultural imbalances between English and other languages."

Section-II

Answer the following questions in about 250 words each. 10x3

Q1) Discuss the basic features of the Nazi regime.

Ans) A totalitarian regime, complete subordinate of society to state and to one party, all power in the hand of the Fuehrer, a conservative and discriminatory attitude towards women, total state control over art, literature and other forms of culture, education to be used only as Nazis propaganda, religious intolerance and above all, an attitude of utmost contempt for the Jews leading to their genocide. The most oppressive aspect of Hitler’s regime was a systematic persecution of the Jews. The ideology of the Nazi Party was formed by a strong hatred of the Jews and an obsession with maintaining the Aryan purity. The Nuremburg Laws of 15 September 1935 deprived Jews of German citizenship, confining them to “subject” status. Marital or extra-marital relations between Jews and ‘Aryans’ were forbidden. Three more laws over the next few years outcast them completely. In the year of the Berlin Olympic half of all Jews were unemployed. Social ostracism included blatantly vicious signboards and hoardings.

In his well-known biography Hitler, Joachim Fest suggests that “Hitler’s rule should not be regarded in isolation but viewed as the terrorist or Jacobin phase of a widespread social revolution that propelled Germany into the twentieth century and that has not reached its end to this day.” It was only with Hitler, he believes, that the nineteenth century in Germany came to an end. Despite has anachronisms; he was more modern than his conservative opponents because he grasped the necessity for changes. Under the demands of the totalitarian leader state, venerable institutions collapsed, people were wrenched out of their traditional slots. Privileges were done away with, and all authorities that were not derived from or protected by Hitler were smashed. At the same time, Hitler succeeded in muting those anxieties and fears of uprooting that generally accompany any breach with the past.

Q2) Write a note on the crises in the Post-World War II capitalist Economy.

Ans) The post-war economy is typically examined in the context of its two broad phases: the "Golden Years," roughly from the 1950s to the early 1970s, when the major European powers attempted and ultimately succeeded in overcoming the disastrous effects of the post-World War II economy; and the downturn and its characteristics, roughly from the early 1970s to 1989, which were characterised by the fall of the socialist states and their economies. Since the capitalist economy is a global one, the years of "high" and "low" coincided in practically all nations, albeit not to the same extent or in precisely the same way. The conflicts between colonial powers and the capitalist crises also came together.

Even though they were formerly colonies, many nevertheless maintained ties to imperialist nations through aid agreements that tied their own development or, one might argue, lack thereof to the success of capitalist economies. The crisis consequently had an impact on them. The advanced capitalist countries themselves experienced growing gaps during the crisis decades, as did the advanced capitalist countries' and the developing world's, with the former socialist countries being relegated to a worsening state than some of the emerging countries.

This culminated when many of the Latin American nations were unable to pay their debts and eventually refused to do so. If not for the advanced nations' decision to write off significant amounts of debt, this would have caused a serious crisis for the capitalism system. As they remained bound by the terms of their agreements and were unable to alter the course of their economic policies, the emerging countries of the capitalist system continued to experience poverty and declining nutrition standards for the majority of their populations. The advanced capitalist nations continued to collect interest payments of over nine percent from the emerging nations, leaving them bankrupt and still at the mercy of the developed nations.

Q3) “Realism is a departure from idealism and emotion of Romanticism”. Explain.

Ans) The idealism and emotion of Romanticism are contrasted with realism. Romantic notions were believed to be unfounded in reality. In a sense, romanticism, and the emergence of the bourgeoisie in Europe sparked the development of realism. The rise of democracy in Europe had an impact on realists, and everyday life became their focus. People from the middle class and lower classes began to value their ideas more. Realism in literature and the arts is thought to have begun in the second part of the nineteenth century. According to Hobsbawm, "Realism is the phrase that has most naturally entered the mouths of contemporary and subsequent commentators regarding this period, at any rate when dealing with literature and the visual arts." It means a quest for a precise equivalent of facts, images, thoughts, sentiments, or passions in order to describe, portray, or at the very least, to represent them.

Realisticism grew as a result of new material culture, social issues, and the spirit of resistance. By telling a narrative as truthfully as possible rather than dramatising or romanticising it, literary realism aims to achieve its goal. A larger cultural tendency to focus on common people and events outside of the romanticised world was known as realism. Realist authors attempted to capture the contrast between the aristocracy and the impoverished in both urban and rural settings. The end of the series of revolutions in 1848, the rise of Napoleon III in France and Bismarck in Germany, the emergence of nation-state movements, the expansion of imperialism and colonialism, the increase in population in urban centres as a result of industrialization, the oppressive working and living conditions of the urban poor, etc. are all events that can be found in the history of Europe since the middle of the nineteenth century. Numerous novels published in the second half of the nineteenth century depicted this historical reality, which was reflected in works of the time. It is believed that literary realism first emerged in France, where works like Flaubert and Balzac illustrated social realities.

Section-III

Answer the following questions in about 100 words each. 6x5

Q1) Explain the economic crisis of 1920s.

Ans) Beginning 14 months after the end of World War I, the Depression of 1920–1921 was a severe deflationary recession that affected the United States, the United Kingdom, and other nations. From January 1920 to July 1921, it lasted. In addition to being substantial, the deflation's scope was also substantial when compared to the concurrent decrease in real product. Immediately after World War I ended, there was a two-year post-war recession, which made it difficult for the economy to absorb millions of veterans. The transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy had not yet been fully implemented when the economy began to expand. A drop in labour union conflict, changes in fiscal and monetary policy, changes in price expectations, returning troops, who increased the civilian labour force and caused issues with veteran retention, are among the factors cited as contributing to the downturn. Between August 1921 through August 1929, the Roaring Twenties delivered an era of economic prosperity following the end of the Great Depression. This was one month prior to the stock market crash that set off the Great Depression.

Q2) Analyse the rise of Fascism in Italy.

Ans) Fascism in Italy was created by the convergence of certain existing trends. The split in the radical syndicalist Confederation of Trade Unions took place in 1914 over the issue of Italian participation in the war. The syndicalist believed in the ‘self-emancipation’ of the ‘producers,’ which could be achieved through ‘regulation at factory level,’ and not through ‘seizure of state power.’ The state would be replaced at an appropriate time by worker’s syndicates or associations, which would act as the instruments of self-government of the producers. The Syndicalist wing which moved towards fascism embraced extreme nationalism, and nations were described by it as proletarian or plutocratic. The futurists who rejected traditional norms and existing institutions and exalted violence, and were fascinated by speed, power, motors, and machines, or all the modern technological possibilities, were a second major ideological factor. Mussolini’s socialistic views and ideas on leadership, mass-mobilization and national revolution contributed the third major strand.

Q3) Write a note on Comintern.

Ans) For the Bolsheviks the Russian revolution was always inseparable from the world socialist revolution. Before they made their own revolution the Bolsheviks and other Russian revolutionaries thought that the revolution in Russia would follow the socialist revolution in Western Europe. Once they made their revolution ahead of Europe, they expected Europe to follow suit. This, together with the cardinal Marxist principal of the unity of the interest of working classes all over the world, and their socialist vision of an oppression free world, was the basis of their internationalism. This internationalism was given shape in the form of the Socialist International. Because of the atmosphere of international civil war in which the Comintern came into existence, its conditions of membership as well as policies reflected the Bolshevik position on national self-determination, the nationalities question in former Russian territory and the strategy for world revolution. It also reflected the experience of the Bolsheviks with the peasantry, particularly in relation to national-liberation movements.

Q4) Discuss in brief development of scientific knowledge.

Ans) The 19th century saw scientific breakthroughs. Philosophers and social scientists sought new perspectives on human nature and behaviour. At the same time, scientists explored the physical universe. William Whewell originally coined the word scientist to characterise scientists. Architect, astronomer, geologist, mathematician, physicist, etc. His three-volume history and philosophy of science opus is History of the Inductive Sciences. Other scientists besides those mentioned above have contributed greatly to science through research. Their efforts helped future generations' scientific spirit. 19th-century Europe produced exceptional minds whose research in physics, chemistry, life sciences, and medicine transformed our view of the world. Development of scientific knowledge teaches us scientific method and objectivity, which is crucial for mental growth. Scientific research and discoveries helped understand the physical world and solve medical problems, and also contributed to intellectual development. It's crucial to understand how famous scientists revolutionised science.

Q5) Explain the development of the ideology of race.

Ans) The race for Africa and portions of Asia in the late nineteenth century was a manifestation of Western imperialism, which was founded on the idea that Europeans had the right to govern over Africans and Asians. The idea that it was the responsibility of the white man to civilise the brown- and black-skinned siblings of the colonial nation intensified European racism. The classifications of race and ethnicity used by colonial authorities to conduct population censuses strongly reflect the racist ideologies of Europe. Racial distinctions were created a part of local belief systems through official paperwork and colonial schooling, and colonial peoples firmly embraced these notions.