Culture, Science, and Technology, 1750-1900

Question 1

~Characteristics of Western culture

Answer 1

● Rapid evolution
● Increased literacy
● Greater access to culture
● More scientific and secular worldview
● FOrmation of modern political philosophies, which remain influential today

Question 2

~Enlightenment

Answer 2

● Cultural modernization is considred to have begun in the 1700s
● Also referred to as hte Age of Reason

Question 3

~Enlightenment thinkers

Answer 3

● Put great faith in the power of human logic and in the recent discoveries of the Scientific Revolution
● Pondered how to make society and governemnt more efficient and humane
● John Locke, Montesquieu, Voltiare, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
● Generally opposed tyranny, or arbitrary exercise ofmonarchical power and favored great respect of individual rights

Question 4

~Deism

Answer 4

● Belief in a divine being but not the literal truth of aspecific doctrine
● Some Englightenment thinkers adpted hte vaguer religious stance

Question 5

~Romanticism

Answer 5

● The principal cultural movement in the West from the late 1700s into the early 1800s
● Against the rational Englightenemtn
● Emphasized emtion, heroism, individuality, and the imagination

Question 6

~Realism

Answer 6

● Around 1840s, when romanticism started to decrease in prominance
● Concerned with everyday life, social problems, and the psychology of their characters

Question 7

~Modernism

Answer 7

● Started in 1870s, artist and writers (van Gogh and Picass) broke hte urles of traditional culture and experimented with a dazzling array of new styles
- Impressionism
- Post-impressionim
- Cubism
- Abstraction
● Asian and African art powerfully influenced this generation of artist

Question 8

~Cultural blending in Middle East

Answer 8

● Ottoman authors adopted European styles like romanticism and realism in the mid-1800s during the Tanzimat reforms
● At the same time, and partly in opposion to Westernizing trrends, a resurgence of Arabic culture–which had long been overshadowed by Turkish and Persian art and literature–began to make itself felt throughout the region

Question 9

~Cultural blending in Africa

Answer 9

● Oral tradition remained dominant, as witnessed by the continued popularity of griot storytelling and other forms of poetic and epic recitation
● As more of the continent fell under imperial control after the mid-1800s, foreign colonists and Christian missionaries imported Western culture on a much larger scale than before
● Non-representational art

Question 10

~Non-representational art

Answer 10

● Inspired innovative modernist style, such as primitivism and abstration in European and America
● Originated in Africa

Question 11

~Dream of Red Chamber

Answer 11

● Written by Cao Xueqin in the late 1700s
● Narrates the tragedy of two young lovers caught up in the decline of a wealthy and powerful clan
● One of the greatest novels in Chinese literature

Question 12

~Ukiyo-e

Answer 12

● Style of woodblock painting reached its highest peak of development during the first half of the 1800s in Japan
● Artists like Hokusai and Hiroshige both gained international reputations and influenced impressionist and post-impressionist painting in Europe

Question 13

~Westernization in South and Southeast Asia

Answer 13

● Influx of missionaries and colonial authorities, it experience a high level of westernization
● In India, Mughal culture did not fade away completely, but yielded much of its preeminence to the Compnay style
● Catholicism and Frenhc language were imported into Indochina during the late 1800s and Siam (Thailand) decided to Westernize thoroughly as a way to avoid foreign conquest and colonization

Question 14

~Company Style

Answer 14

● Art and architecture heavily conditioned by admixtures brought tot he subcontinent by the British East India Company

Question 15

~Gateway to India arch

Answer 15

● Built in early 1900s, Bombay (Mumbai) to celebrate British imperial control over India
● Cultural fusion

Question 16

~John Locke

Answer 16

● Argued during the late 1600s and early 1700s that hte governemnt’s power to govern should depend above all on the consent of the governed
● Favored freedom of religion and opinion and hte protection of private property
● The concepts of natural rights, the social contnract and hte separation of church and state became cornerstones of Enlightenment social and oliticla thought

Question 17

~Social contract

Answer 17

● The mutual obligations owed to each other by governemnts and their pwople

Question 18

~Baron Charles de Montesquieu

Answer 18

● Author of (1748)
● Proposed the separation of powers as a way to avoid tyranny
- Executive, legislative, and judicial

Question 19

~Voltaire

Answer 19

● Versatile playwright, novelist, and philosopher best remembered as a champion of freedom of expression
● Ememy of organized religion which he viewed as corrupt and hypocritical

Question 20

~Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Answer 20

● Philosopher who felt more strongly than many of his fellow cohorts htat ordinary people deserved more political power
● (1762), a forceful continuation of Locke’s thinking of the subject

Question 21

~America’s founding fathers

Answer 21

● Thomas Jefferson, George Washingotn, Benjamin Franklin, Thoman Paine, and others who led the American Revolution and designed hte US consitution
● FIrst to establish an entire political system on Enlightenemtn principles

Question 22

~Revolutionary documents

Answer 22

● Declaration of Indepence
● Declaration of the RIghts of Man and the Citizen
● Jamaica Letter

Question 23

~Conservatism

Answer 23

● Regarded the changes brought about by the Atlantic revolutions as completely undesirable or as having taken place too quickly and with too much violence
● Feared many of the social and political effects of industralization

Question 24

~Reaction

Answer 24

● THe more uncompromising form of conservatism

● Typified by leaders at the Congress of Vienna like Autria’s Klemens von Metternich

Question 25

~Moderate form of conservatism

Answer 25

● Argued for gradual reform rather than sudden cahnge

● Associated with thinkers like the Anglo-Irish philosopher Edmund Burke

Question 26

~Liberalism

Answer 26

● Favored hte extension of political privileges and individual freedoms, at least to the middle class, but not alwasy tot he lower classes or to women
● Faovr the free-market capitalism preached by Adam Smith and other classical economists
● John Stuart Mill of England

Question 27

~Repercussion of 1848 revolutions

Answer 27

● Pure capitalism could not remain as it was without causing severe socioeconomic stress
● Liberals and reformers worked to keep capitalism in place by gradually eliminating the worst of its abusesa nd sharin its benefits more fairly

Question 28

~Trade-union activism

Answer 28

● many members of hte working class turned to trade-union activism to gain concessions like pensions, better hours, and higher wages

Question 29

~Anarchism

Answer 29

● Rejected all forms of govenment

Question 30

~Socialism

Answer 30

● Appeared in many forms in during the 1800s

● All sharing the belief that economic competition is inherentl unfair and eventually leads to injustic and inequality

Question 31

~Utopian socialists

Answer 31

● Believed that governments and business owners hsould forego maximum profits to pay workers better and care for them more porperly
● Many of their demands and suggestions became standard policyduring the late 1800s and early 1900s
● Most practical was the Welsh businessman Rober Owen, foudned a number of factory-based communities along these cooperativist lines, both in the British Isles and hte US

Question 32

~Communism

Answer 32

● Originated by the Germna philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and most famously outlined in (1848) and (1867–1894)
● Argued that all historical development was driven by a class struggle
● An economic state of perfect justice, equality, and prosperity

Question 33

~Class struggle

Answer 33

● Between the upper class (controls capital or hte means of economic production) and the lower class (which is forced to labor for hte upper class)
● Marx predicted htat the age of industrial capitalism with its struggle between the bourgeoisie and the working-class proletariat was hte final stage of human history before hte realization fo socialism
● Society would then move on to communism

Question 34

~Revolution

Answer 34

● To achive socialism, Marx and Engels believed that revolution would most likely be needed
● Advocated force as a possibly necessary means to overthrow capitalism

Question 35

~Revisionists

Answer 35

● Many who agreed with Marx’s critique of capitalism began to question whether violent reovlution was desirable/necessary
● Began to seek legal ways to bring about socialism, such as trade-union activims and parliamentary politics
● Foudned social democractic parties

Question 36

~Social democratic parties

Answer 36

● Gained large followings in countries like France and Germany before WWI and which sometimes opposed communists who remained more radical
● Quarrel between Russia’s Mensheviks and Lenin’s Bolsheviks is typical of htis split

Question 37

~Mensheviks

Answer 37

● Communists who favored gradual chagne and workign within the system

Question 38

~Bolsheviks

Answer 38

● Communists who favored faster change and revolutionary action

Question 39

~Nationaslim

Answer 39

● Became a political force in Europe and the Americas in the late 1700s and early 1800s
● Related to the rise of nation-state

Question 40

~Nation-state

Answer 40

● Increasingly equated citizenship with belonging to a distinct ethnic/linguistic group
● Dominant form of political organization in the West

Question 41

~Militarism

Answer 41

● Encouraged by nationalism
● COntirbuting factor to Europe’s armed conflicts of the late 1800s (wars of Italian and German unification)
● Aroused feelings of ethnic and racial superiority

Question 42

~Ethnic and racial superiority

Answer 42

● Further reinforced by pseudo-scientific notions regarding racial difference and the interaction of peoples
● Social Darwinism

Question 43

~Social Darwinism

Answer 43

● A misguided interpretation of Darwin’s insight of natural selection
● Popularized by the English social scientist Herbert Spencer
● Used to justify numerous forms of inequality, including ethnic prejudice and colonical domination
● Regarded women as the provably weaker sex and felt that the poverty of the lower classes was a natural product of human competition

Question 44

~Young Turks

Answer 44

● Ardent nationalists in the Ottoman Empire, tying to keep their country on a technological par with Europe

Question 45

~National-liberation movemnets

Answer 45

● Grow increasingly potent in the twentieth century where foreign colonists ruled
● Began to emerge as a way to protest imperialism’s abuses or even to overturn it altogether

Question 46

~Jose Marti

Answer 46

● Poet-philospher who used his eloquence to awaken Cuba’s nationalist movemnet against Spain
● Launch its 1895-1898 war of independence

Question 47

~Katipunan

Answer 47

● The Filipino national-liberation society
● Fought against Spanish colonization in the 1890s, only to face US occupiers after Spain relinquished control over hte Philippines in 1898

Question 48

~Indian National Congress

Answer 48

● Consisting mainly of British-educated native elites
● Formed in 1885 to gain more rights for natives in British India
● Eventualy end colonial rule there

Question 49

~Boxer Rebellion

Answer 49

● Seen as a national-liberationist backlash agains thte West’s growing domination of CHinese ports and coastal territories in 1900

Question 50

~Social Darwinism in Japan

Answer 50

● As Japan industrialized, militarized and defeated neigjbors, many Japanese became convinced that they were not just more technologically advanced htan their fellow Asians, but innately supeiror to them
● Expressed in “Goodbye Asia”

Question 51

~Goodbye Asia

Answer 51

● Influential 1885 essay that foreshadowed hte “master race” thinking Jpana would later adopt
● Demonstrated racial superiority

Question 52

~Public education

Answer 52

● Greater access to it became a normal part of life in NA and most parts of Europea throughtout the 1800s
● Literacy rates rose as a result

Question 53

~Technological change

Answer 53

● Profound, rapid, and thorough in many parts of the world affected by industrialization
● National economics, transportation, networks, and personal lives were all influenced by constant and increasingly affordable innovations that involved machine power, fossil-fuel energy sources such as coal and oil, and near the end of the 1800s, electricity

Question 54

~Scientific, secular worldview

Answer 54

● Increasingly paramount during this era (at least in the Western world)
● Does not mean that religions lost teir political and social importance
● Separation of church and state became the norm and less risk and scandal was attached to deism or atheism
● Religion became less convincing to many as a justification for keeping certain rulers in power/maintaining social or gender-based hierarchies

Question 55

~Rosetta Stone

Answer 55

● Unearthed by Napoleon’s armies in Egypt
● Used to decipher hieroglyphs
● Improved archaeologicla nad linguistic research in the Middle East and Asia
● Revealed that certain cultures and ancient languages (Sanskrit) predated even the older described in the Judeo-Christian Bible

Question 56

~Charles Lyell

Answer 56

● Discovered fossils

● Indicated that the world was orders of magnitude older than the 10,000 years or less accounted for in the Bible

Question 57

~Evolution

Answer 57

● Came to be widely accepted among most scientists during the early 1800s, although explaining how evolution worked remianed a formidable challenge

Question 58

~Charles Darwin

Answer 58

● Explained the process of evolution with his theory of natural selection
● (1859)
● (1871)
● His ideas, along with discoveries in geology and archaeology, did much to erode faith in traditional religion and encouraged a more secular worldview in the West

Question 59

~On the Origin of Species (1859)

Answer 59

● Darwin caused a scientific and cultural storm by arguing htat evolution is a random process in which physical changes that incease an animal’s chance for survival are passed on to that animal’s offspring

Question 60

~The Descent of Man (1871)

Answer 60

● Applied the principles of natural selection to human beings and postulated htat humans and apes share a common evolutionary ancestry

Question 61

~Crisis of faith

Answer 61

● Scientific insights like Darwin’s made it harder to sustain a literal belief in the Christian Bible
● The crisis shook the Western mindset during the late 1800s and early 1900s
● German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proclained famously that “God is dead”, and argued that all systems of morality were valueless in the materialistic modern age

Question 62

~Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and Quantum theory

Answer 62

● Elaborated in 1905
● Opened up new and mathematically unsettling questions in the fields of physics for hte first time since the days of Isaac Newton

Question 63

~Sigmund Freud

Answer 63

● Early theories of hte Austrian doctor about dreams and the subconscious advanced the new science of psychology
● His insights into how poorly most individuals understand themselves mad emany people uneasy, both before and after WWI

Question 64

~What religion were Enlightenment thinkers and why?

Answer 64

● Some remained devoutly Christian
● Some adopted vaguer religious stances (deism)
● Some became atheistic
● Freedom of opinion and religion were important to Enlightenment thinkers

Question 65

~What did the Enlightenemt influence?

Answer 65

● American and French revolutions

Question 66

~How did women help shape Enlightenment culture?

Answer 66

● Organizaing salongs at which philosophicla deabte took place
● Participating directly as authors, activists, and political actors
- Mary Wollstonecraft of England
- Russia’s Catherine the Great

Question 67

~What did both romanticism and realism react strongly to?

Answer 67

● The process of industrialization in Europe and America
● William Blake’s poetic contrast of England’s “green and pleasant land” with the “dark Satanic mills” of industry
● Romantics tended to idealize nature and view industrialization as a blgiht upon it
- Authors like Victor Hugo and Charles Darwin disapprovingly protrayed the social misries of the industrial era
● Realist painters and writers regularly addressed themse such as poverty and inequality

Question 68

~How did Western forms of art and writing influence other parts of the worls?

Answer 68

● Western forms of art and writing often blended with indigenous styles, whether because of voluntary adoption or because they were imposed by colonial masters as they built empires in non-Western regions and trained native elites according to Western norms

Question 69

~How did social contracts help foster nationalism?

Answer 69

● Individual owed certain obligations to his or her nations
- Obedience, taxes and military service
● THe individual was owed certain things in return by his or her nation
- Makign the nation something worth belonging to and worth feeling pride in

Question 70

~Where did nationalism flare (not including existed nations)?

Answer 70

● Germans and Italians (each of whom would unify during the 1800s)
● Irish, Polish, East European and Balkan peoples who lived under Austro-Hungarian or Ottoman rule

Question 71

~What are examples of nationalist tendencies in non-Western parts of the world?

Answer 71

● Young Turks in Ottoman Empire
● National-liberation movements
- Poet-philospher Jose Marti -- Cuba
- Katipunan -- Philippines
- Indian National Congress -- India
- Boxer Rebellion -- China

Question 72

~What were hte Western feelings about the century’s scientific and technological developments?

Answer 72

● OScientific and technological progress and the rising economic prosperity that accompanied it infused Western culture with excitement and confidence
- This sense of optimism continued until the eve of WWI
● Particularly among intellectuals and artists, this was a time of growing uncertainty and anxiety
- Crisis of faith