IV. The Disintegration of the Kartell and the Politics of Bismarck's Fall from Power, 1887–90

1966 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. G. Röhl
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
German History ◽  
Standard Work ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Post War ◽  
German Reich ◽  
First World

Ever since the First World War, but especially during the Weimar period, Bismarck's dismissal has exercised a strong attraction on German historians, and has probably received more attention than any other event in the history of the Second Reich. In the troubled post-war years, 20 March 1890 seemed to stand out prominently as the fateful turning point of Germany's history. Wilhelm Schvissler, the first to exploit the unprecedented wealth of evidence available in consequence of the monarchy's collapse, did not hesitate to claim that ‘even at that time [1890] the downfall (Untergang) of the German Reich was written in the stars’. ‘Who would doubt’, he asked, ‘that our misfortune began there…and led to the catastrophe of the Imperial Monarchy and the German Reich—exactly 20 years after his [Bismarck's] death!’ This highly emotional approach to the subject was fully shared by Wilhelm Mommsen, whose standard work on the role of the political parties in the crisis appeared in 1924. Bismarck's fall, he wrote, ‘appears to us today as a turning point of German history, and it is only with deep feeling that we can recall the events of March 1890’. It is perhaps partly for this reason that these early writers tended to misinterpret the nature of Bismarck's relations with the parties in the crucial months before his fall. There was, for one thing, an inclination to idealize the bygone age in which ‘the State’ was thought to have stood incorruptibly ‘above the parties’, and as a result the party struggles of 1889 and 1890 were relegated to a self-contained compartment whence, it was held, they were able to influence the course of events only in the negative sense of providing no obstacle to the chancellor's dismissal. The influential work of Hans Rothfels probably typified this attitude, but even Mommsen warned his readers that his study of the parties could throw at best an oblique light on the crisis ‘since the parties had no direct and at any rate no significant effect on the course of those events’. According to Hans Herzfeld's summary of the present state of knowledge on the subject, this view is still widely accepted today.

De Brusselse vereniging De Veldbloem zoekt toenadering tot Hendrik Conscience. Twee pas ontdekte brieven

2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 276-289
Author(s):  
Luc Vandeweyer
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
De Man ◽  
First World

Het wordt in de historiografie van de Vlaamse beweging aanvaard dat Hendrik Conscience door de Brusselse progressieve vereniging ‘De Veldbloem’ in 1872 werd gevraagd om te kandideren voor de parlementaire verkiezingen. Conscience zou dat geweigerd hebben. Dit is uiteraard geen onbetekenend feit in de biografie van de man die ‘zijn volk leerde lezen’.Dit gegeven is terug te voeren op de geschriften van Antoon Jacob (°1889) van na de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Jacob werd beschouwd als een autoriteit inzake Conscience. Maar waar is het bewijs? Hij verwees daarbij naar “uitvoerige correspondentie” maar die is niet te vinden. Het ADVN slaagde erin om de archivalische nalatenschap van de in 1947 gestorven Jacob te verwerven. Daarin bleken heel wat brieven van en aan Conscience te zitten. De briefwisseling met ‘De Veldbloem’ was onderwerp van deze bijdrage. Daarin is geen spoor te vinden van de poging om Conscience op het politieke strijdtoneel te brengen in Brussel. Daarbij moet de vraag gesteld worden hoe Jacob deze archiefstukken verzamelde en wat ermee is gebeurd tijdens zijn turbulente leven en talrijke omzwervingen. Het is best mogelijk dat er een en ander is verloren gegaan. Toch is deze nalatenschap een belangrijke aanwinst voor de studie van de geschiedenis van de Vlaamse beweging en die van Conscience in het bijzonder. ________ The Brussels association ‘De Veldbloem’ seeks contact with Hendrik Conscience. Two recently discovered letters It is an accepted fact in the historiography of the Flemish Movement that the Brussels progressive Association ‘De Veldbloem’ [=the Wildflower] asked Hendrik Conscience in 1872 to be their candidate for the parliamentary elections. It is said that Hendrik Conscience refused the request. This is of course a very significant fact in the biography of the man ‘who taught his people to read.’ This information may be inferred from the writings of Antoon Jacob (°1889) from the period after the First World War. Jacob was regarded as an authority on Conscience. But where is the evidence of this? In his claim, he referred to ‘extensive correspondence’, but that correspondence is not extant. The ADVN managed to acquire the archival legacy of Jacob who died in 1947. It turned out that it included quite a number of letters to and from Conscience. The exchange of letters with ‘De Veldbloem’ was the subject of this contribution. It contains no trace of the attempt to bring Conscience into the political arena in Brussels. It raises the question how Jacob collected these archival documents and what happened to them during his turbulent life and his many peregrinations.  It is certainly possible that some documents have been lost. However, this legacy is still an important acquisition for the study of the history of the Flemish Movement and of Conscience in particular.

Empires of Antiquities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billie Melman
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Mandate System ◽  
First World

Empires of Antiquities is a history of the rediscovery of the imperial civilizations of the ancient Near East in a modern imperial order that evolved between the outbreak of the First World War and the decolonization of the British Empire in the 1950s. It explores the ways in which near eastern antiquity was redefined and experienced, becoming the subject of imperial regulation, modes of enquiry, and international and national politics. A series of globally publicized spectacular archaeological discoveries in Iraq, Egypt, and Palestine, which the book follows, made antiquity material visible and accessible as never before. The book demonstrates that the new definition and uses of antiquity and their relations to modernity were inseparable from the emergence of the post-war international imperial order, transnational collaboration and crises, the aspirations of national groups, and collisions between them and the British mandatories. It uniquely combines a history of the internationalization of archaeology and the rise of a new “regime of antiquities” under the oversight of the League of Nations and its institutions, a history of British attitudes to, and passion for, near eastern antiquity and on-the-ground colonial policies and mechanisms, as well as nationalist claims on the past. It points to the centrality of the new mandate system, particularly mandates classified A in Mesopotamia/Iraq, Palestine, and Transjordan, formerly governed by the Ottoman Empire, and of Egypt, in the new archaeological regime. Drawing on an unusually wide range of materials collected in archives in six countries, as well as on material and visual evidence, the book weaves together imperial, international, and national histories, and the history of archaeological discovery which it connects to imperial modernity.

scholarly journals The Local versus the Global in the history of relativity: The case of Belgium

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-250
Author(s):  
Sjang L. ten Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
First World War ◽  
Global History ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Pattern ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

ArgumentThis article contributes to a global history of relativity, by exploring how Einstein’s theory was appropriated in Belgium. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, yet the early-twentieth-century Belgian context, because of its cultural diversity and reflectiveness of global conditions (the principal example being the First World War), proves well-suited to expose transnational flows and patterns in the global history of relativity. The attempts of Belgian physicist Théophile de Donder to contribute to relativity physics during the 1910s and 1920s illustrate the role of the war in shaping the transnational networks through which relativity circulated. The local attitudes of conservative Belgian Catholic scientists and philosophers, who denied that relativity was philosophically significant, exemplify a global pattern: while critics of relativity feared to become marginalized by the scientific, political, and cultural revolutions that Einstein and his theory were taken to represent, supporters sympathized with these revolutions.

THE ROLE OF ENGLAND IN THE FORMATION OF THE PROTO-STATEHOOD OF THE IRAQI KURDS AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR (1918–1920) IN THE MANDATE TERRITORIES FORM

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-191
Author(s):  
Kirill V. Vertyaev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Iraqi Kurdistan ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
First World

The article develops the stadial formation thesis of the proto-statehood among the Iraqi Kurds. The concept of national identity of the Iraqi Kurds remains the subject of a complex and long-lasting discussion. The main obstacle for the emergence of the Kurdish integral nationalism is still the fact that the Kurds speak different dialects of Kurdish language, and still maintain political and inter-clan conflicts over the distribution of power (not to mention the futility of any attempts to define political boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan). Ironically, Great Britain faced practically the same contradictions during its occupation of Mesopotamia at the end of the WWI (following the Mudros armistice in October 1918), when British attempts to create an independent Kurdish state failed for a number of reasons, which are discussed in the article. In our opinion, this period was responsible for the formation of proto-statehood in Kurdish area (Kingdom of Kurdistan, for example, obtained classic characteristics of a chiefdom, but at the same time had a vivid anti-colonial, anti-imperialist orientation). The phenomenology of the British government’s political relations with such ‘quasi-states’ presents the subject for this article’s analysis.

Old and new diplomacy: a debate revisited

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sasson Sofer
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Term Functions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
First World

There are two popular claims about diplomacy in the modern history of international relations. According to the first, World War One constituted a decisive turning point in the modern era, marking the emergence of a new diplomacy, distinct in both essence and style from that which had existed previously. The second maintains that diplomacy is in a state of continuous decline. This study proposes that the distinction between old and new diplomacy is simplistic and inaccurate, and that the argument regarding the decline of diplomacy is not a valid one, Raymond Aron's observation that ‘diplomacy, in the traditional sense of the term, functions up to a certain degree between allies, but hardly any longer among enemies, or even between the blocs and the neutral nations’ is only partially correct, and reflects its time of writing at the height of the cold war.

“Why Can't I Have the Vote?”

2017 ◽  
pp. 117-144
Author(s):  
Argha Kumar Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Early Years ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Women's Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Differences ◽  
Political Conviction ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

The First World War came at a crucial time when British women's suffrage campaigns were gathering momentum throughout the country. The culmination of the movement during these years, in spite of various social and political differences, enhanced female solidarity and political consciousness to a considerable degree. Hectic political activism also witnessed a phenomenal rise and propagation of an exclusive and extraordinary women's culture. The onset of the Great War however, struck a fatal blow to such an unprecedented female camaraderie and political conviction. My proposed chapter traces and gathers evidences in women's verse written during this time period extending from the pre-war years of the suffrage movement to the early years of the post-war demobilisation correlating them with some of the major developments in women's socio-political history of the period.

The Transnationality of the Secular

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-74
Author(s):  
Clemens Six
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Family Resemblance ◽  
World War ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Degree Of Coherence ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

Abstract This essay discusses in how far we can understand the evolution of secularism in South and Southeast Asia between the end of the First World War and decolonisation after 1945 as a result of transimperial and transnational patterns. In the context of the growing comparative literature on the history of secularisms around the globe, I argue for more attention for the mobility of ideas and people across borders. Conceptually, I suggest to capture the diversity of 20th century secularisms in terms of family resemblance and to understand this resemblance less as colonial inheritance but as the result of translocal networks and their circuits of ideas and practices since 1918. I approach these networks through a combination of global intellectual history, the history of transnational social networks, and the global history of non-state institutions. Empirically, I illustrate my argument with three case studies: the reception of Atatürk’s reforms across Asia and the Middle East to illustrate transnational discourses around secularism; the role of social networks in the form of translocal women’s circles in the interwar period; and private US foundations as global circuits of expertise. Together, these illustrations are an attempt to sustain a certain degree of coherence within globalising secularism studies while at the same time avoiding conceptual overstretch.

On the Fence, Over the Fence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Schofield
Keyword(s):  
Military Training ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

Given the significance of military training in shaping early archaeological practice, and the enthusiasm with which archaeologists have explored the remains of early conflict (from the Roman and medieval periods especially), it is surprising how long it has taken archaeologists to develop interest in more recent conflict. It seems to have taken the fiftieth anniversaries of the Second World War to inspire interest amongst professional archaeologists and across the heritage sector, following a longer history of amateur endeavour. This chapter briefly reviews these earlier histories of the subject, before focusing on some recent examples that illustrate the breadth of research and the opportunities it provides for public engagement. The role of anniversaries appears particularly relevant at the time of writing, with the centenary of the First World War. Alongside archaeological activities along the former Western Front, and in Jordan, an archaeological survey of the UK Home Front is under way.

scholarly journals Nationalism, the First World War, and sites of international memory

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenda Sluga
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
World War ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World ◽  
Role Of Men

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to restore the history of internationalism to our understanding of the legacy of the First World War, and the role of universities in that past. It begins by emphasising the war’s twin legacy, namely, the twin principles of the peace: national self-determination and the League of Nations. Design/methodology/approach It focuses on the intersecting significance and meaning attributed to the related terms patriotism and humanity, nationalism and internationalism, during the war and after. A key focus is the memorialization of Edith Cavell, and the role of men and women in supporting a League of Nations. Findings The author finds that contrary to conventional historical opinion, internationalism was as significant as nationalism during the war and after, thanks to the influence and ideas of men and women connected through university networks. Research limitations/implications The author’s argument is based on an examination of British imperial sources in particular. Originality/value The implications of this argument are that historians need to recover the international past in histories of nationalism.

scholarly journals groot Nederlander

2020 ◽  
pp. 131-148
Author(s):  
Maarten J. Aalders
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
First World War ◽  
Personal History ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
First World

This article dives into a part of the life and personal history of J.P.Ph. Clinge Fledderus (1870-1946), consul of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, who played a crucial role in organizing relief for Hungary in the Interbellum and the organization of the possibilities for Hungarian children to recover from the effects of post-war famine and malaise after the First World War by giving them a holiday of some months in the Netherlands. A commemorative marble plaque for him still can be found on the front of the building at the Üllői út 4 in Budapest.

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