INTST101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Otto Von Bismarck, Outdoor Recreation, Europe 1
17 Dec 2016
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Lecture 2:
Balance of Power and Imperial Rivalry in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries
1. Important trends and developments
• Liberalism
• Nationalism –assertion of rights, a Nation is a group of people
bounded my culture, history, kinship, and sense of territory…
• Socialism (Karl Marx the founder of socialism) everyone is radically
equal under socialism.
• Social Darwinism (has nothing to do with Charles Darwin) the view
associated with Herbert Spencer, countries, societies and nations at
analogism with species.
• (In the United States) Exceptionalism
Economics
• Timing and rates of industrialization
1. Britiain (started in the 18th century)
2. France (slow)
3. Germany (rapid)
4. United States (rapid)
5. Italy (moderate; in the north)
6. Japan (rapid) (modernize in the last 25 years of the 19th century)
7. Austria (slow & incomplete) did not have the spare resources to use
8. Russia (late and uneven)
2. Milestones
Political consolidation in Europe
1. Unification of Italy (1861) (Giuseppe Garibaldi)
2. Unification of Germany under Prussia (1871) (Prince Otto von
Bismarck) – was a Prussian, who deliberately engineered wars to
unify Germany.
Global diffusion of power
- Japan was the first to have been defeated by a non-European great power
- Russia had the biggest army (1900) but the least technologically advanced
- France and Germany had the same size army, about the same
technologically
- US. Very small army in the 9’s, they had no local enemies to bother with
3. Keeping the peace in Europe
The Bismarckian balance of power system
• Depended upon Bismarck’s persona skill at diplomacy
• Unstable after Bismarck’s ouster
4. The scramble for colonies
• What is imperialism?
o 19th Century version: attempt to occupy and control overseas
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