Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables
- Preface
- INTRODUCTION
- I SOCIAL FORCES, INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION, AND CONFLICT IN EUROPE'S NINETEENTH-CENTURY MARKET SYSTEM
- II THE INTERREGNUM
- 6 The Polarization of European Society, 1918–1939
- 7 The Politics of Appeasement and Counterrevolution: International Relations in Europe, 1918–1939
- III THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
- Appendix 1 Europe Defined
- Appendix 2 A Sample of Europe's Class, Ethnic, and Imperialist Conflicts, 1789–1945
- Appendix 3 European (Regional and Extraregional) Wars, Insurrections, Rebellions, Revolutions, Uprisings, Violent Strikes, Riots, and Demonstrations, 1789–1945
- Works cited
- Index
6 - The Polarization of European Society, 1918–1939
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables
- Preface
- INTRODUCTION
- I SOCIAL FORCES, INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION, AND CONFLICT IN EUROPE'S NINETEENTH-CENTURY MARKET SYSTEM
- II THE INTERREGNUM
- 6 The Polarization of European Society, 1918–1939
- 7 The Politics of Appeasement and Counterrevolution: International Relations in Europe, 1918–1939
- III THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
- Appendix 1 Europe Defined
- Appendix 2 A Sample of Europe's Class, Ethnic, and Imperialist Conflicts, 1789–1945
- Appendix 3 European (Regional and Extraregional) Wars, Insurrections, Rebellions, Revolutions, Uprisings, Violent Strikes, Riots, and Demonstrations, 1789–1945
- Works cited
- Index
Summary
Wandering between two worlds, – one dead,
The other powerless to be born.
Matthew Arnold, Stanzas from the Grande ChartreuseThe crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
Gramsci 1971: 276During the expansion of industrial capitalism in Europe, attempts to maintain or eradicate restrictions on political rights and economic opportunities generated minority and class conflicts at home; efforts to secure protected markets abroad in lieu of developing internal markets generated imperialist conflicts abroad. These conflicts generated tensions that produced, in 1914, a massively destructive regional war.
During the interwar years, struggle between left and right in Europe was carried on in a more or less continuous round of violent strikes, demonstrations, riots, and street fighting, as well as coups, rebellions, and revolutions. As a result, over the course of the nineteenth century, the domestic and international relations of European states became increasingly polarized.
Before that, Europe had developed, over the course of several centuries, a three-fold social class structure: an upper class of noble landowners and administrators, a peasantry, and, set off from both of these by law (e.g., in Germany) or by custom (e.g., in England and France), an urban commercial and professional middle class.
- Type
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- Information
- War and Social Change in Modern EuropeThe Great Transformation Revisited, pp. 175 - 199Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003