Hi I’m John Green and this is Crash Course

European History.

So, we’ve come a long way: Electric powered

street cars, gas lighting of urban avenues,

crowded railway hubs, vast outdoor cafés,

and workers in their Sunday best strolling

through parks and along broad new boulevards—all

of this signaled the arrival of modern life

in European cities.

And those cities swelled because of massive

internal migration from rural areas to capitals

such as Berlin, which grew to over four million

people by the end of the 19th century.

Today we’re covering the leap to modern

life and what exactly “modern life” meant--.

and as we’ve seen so many times in our study

of history, what it meant depends upon perspective,

both for those living in 19th century Europe

and for those of us today looking back on

it today
[Intro]

In 1885 German engineer Karl Benz invented

an internal combustion engine; six years later,

French manufacturer Armand Peugeot produced

a functioning automobile, bringing further

speed to everyday life in cities.

Initially doctors and their far-flung patients

were the people who benefited most from these

new cars, while bicycles gave ordinary people

a new-found sense of freedom and adventure,

and also an opportunity to break their wrists.

And alongside revolutions in transportation

and lighting and many other, there was also

a chemical revolution taking place around

1900, which led to synthetic drugs.

Like, German pharmaceutical company Bayer

produced the first aspirin to help alleviate

pain, did the globe just open?

GLOBE

It says right here on this bottle of Bayer

aspirin, #NOTSPON, “The Wonder Drug.”

And it really is!

So, before aspirin, pain was treated primarily

with opioids like morphine and codeine.

But aspirin differed from opioids in many

important ways.

For one thing it wasn’t addictive, but also,

it reduced fevers and inflammation.

But what’s most amazing about aspirin is

that even though it was one of the first synthetic

drugs, it’s still super useful.

It is an effective pain reliever even 120

years later.

OK, let’s turn our attention to the big

trends of early 20th century Europe.

So, across Europe, populations continued to

grow despite the emigration to distant continents

that we talked about last time, but populations

weren’t going up because people were having

more babies.

In fact, the opposite was true.

Europe experienced a “birth control revolution”

between 1880 and 1930.

With very few regional exceptions, in that

fifty-year period fertility rates dropped

some fifty percent because knowledge of birth

control expanded thanks to a few occurrences:

better understanding of women’s ovulatory

cycles, the vulcanization of rubber used in

condoms, and the invention of the cervical

cap or diaphragm.

But population rose due to lower child mortality

and increased longevity.

Breakthroughs like pasteurization and greater

understanding of germs were just two scientific

findings that helped extend life.

There was also better sanitation, such as
improved sewage systems, which made people

less likely to die of diseases like cholera,

which had ravaged European cities repeatedly

in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

But still, this decline in fertility gave

politicians an issue that they could use to

get votes: women, they claimed, were conducting

a birth strike which would lead to the decline

in the national strength.

It was true that women’s lives were changing,

as a “modern woman” began forging her

own way outside the confines of the household.

Working women had already been laboring long

hours for low wages, but now middle-class

women, supposedly too fragile and ignorant

of the world to work, began to take jobs.

As industry, communications, marketing, and

needed skills became more complex, women took

jobs in the new service sector.

They became secretaries, sales clerks, telephone

and telegraph operators, teachers and nurses.

And they had the skills necessary to do these

jobs thanks to the spreading system of public

schools, which taught literacy and basic mathematics.

If you wanna look for a single cause of why

life is better today than it was 50 or 200

or 500 years or 800 years ago….Public schools!

But despite gains in education and employment,

women were employed in the service sector

because they could be paid less since they

were seen as inferior and not as skilled as

men.

Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

1.

Obviously the reputation women had for being

inferior and less skilled was false.

2.

For instance, women entered universities in

the sciences and math -- which were open to

them in part

3. because at the time they were less prestigious

and lucrative than the Latin- and Greek-based

humanities dominated by men.

4.

Polish-born Marie Sklodowska-Curie was one

of these new, scientific women,

5.

although the French Academy of Science would

not grant her membership,

6. even after she’d won two Nobel Prizes--

7. one for physics and a second in chemistry,

making her the first person to win the prize

in different fields.

8.

It was widely believed that because she was

a woman, her husband Pierre must have done

the work for her.

9.

But for the record, Pierre Curie had been

dead for five years when Marie won her second

Nobel.

10.

She coined the term “radioactivity” and

discovered

11. two new chemical elements, Polonium and

Radium.

12.

She also helped pioneer radiation treatment

for cancer

13. before dying due to the high exposure

to radiation she experienced through her research.

14.

So called “Modern” women like Curie challenged

the established belief in women’s incompetence

and professional inferiority,

15.

although the myth prevailed;

16. in fact, it remains powerful today,

17.

moreso in the United States than in most other

wealthy countries,

18. as measured by UN and OECD statistics.

Thanks Thought Bubble.

So changes in sexuality accompanied the rise

of modern women.

And this led to massive scandals and the creation

of a new political tool, whereby politicians

sought support by haranguing the mostly male

electorate about sin and the purportedly declining

morals of the age, as exemplified by the rise

of women.

And the fact that the male electorate was

growing was another sign of modern life, indicating

the development of so-called mass society,

which broadened the number of people who had

power and somewhat diluted the power of elites.

Inventions like cheaper newsprint also facilitated

mass society, because more people had access

to more information.

But then as now, the amount of information

available was increasing, but not always the

quality of that information.

Also, then as now, sex scandals were big news.

Both true and fabricated stories abounded.

For example, successful author Oscar Wilde

was imprisoned and widely condemned because

of his relationship with a young man.

In members of the German Kaiser’s entourage,

meanwhile, high-ranking generals and other

aristocrats were found to be regularly cross-dressing

and engaging in male-male relationships.

The press dramatized that scandal so much

that royal publicists had to reassure the

German public that the Kaiser himself had

a healthy family life--code at the time for

heterosexuality.

In 1902, Friedrich Alfred Krupp, owner of

the famed arms manufacturer, committed suicide

when the press revealed his relationships

with young Italian men.

And Politicians spoke of a crisis of male

virility, much of it caused by “new women.”

In short, there’s nothing Innovative about

harkening back to an age of “traditional

values” that never actually existed.

It was true that women had been making demands

for change through the nineteenth century.

They wanted legal ownership of their wages

and other property and access to higher education.

(Increasingly young women could enter universities

and even rank higher than men in exams, but

places like Oxford and Cambridge would not

grant them degrees.

Cambridge did not until after World War II).

Women also wanted the right to divorce and

to have custody of their children after divorce

(by law, custody of children went to the father,

because children were considered his “property”).

By the early twentieth century, feminist movements

had developed across the globe and included

and extremely diverse group of activists.

In Europe, some organizations had begun with

interest in the abolition of slavery, while
others had greater concern for the situation
of women working in factories, or other low-wage

conditions, including their health, access

to good jobs, and personal safety.

Many pro-women advocates were also in favor

of temperance, given the prevalence of domestic

abuse that so often accompanied drunkenness.

Other groups lobbied to end the laws denying

prostitutes their civil rights: in many countries

from Britain and France to Austria-Hungary,

police could and did arrest and incarcerate

women found on the street and then subject

them to gynecological examinations on the

grounds that they might be prostitutes.

Austrian activist Marianne Hainisch defined

feminism broadly, as “the call of one half

of humanity for its civil rights,” But others

saw feminism’s goal as uplifting humanity

as a whole.

Because it was a diverse movement without

one single narrative.

So, feminists, literally hundreds of thousands

of them by the end of the nineteenth century,

were seeking to address a broad range of issues--which

makes sense of course because women, depending

on class and race and experience and profession,

were oppressed in a broad range of ways.

Some view the feminist movement as an entirely

middle-class project that was unconcerned

with working women.

But in fact, working women such as those from

the textile mills in northern England also

campaigned as feminists; other working women

wanted unions to be more active in supporting

women, while others wanted the Social Democratic

parties to do more for them.

But although women did operate within labor

movements, union men were generally opposed
to women having jobs in industry because their
presence would drag down wages.

Social Democratic parties at the time usually

took the Marxist position that middle-class

feminists were the enemy of working women,

and that the eventual overthrow of the industrial

owners by working class people would lead

to the liberation of women alongside the liberation

of everyone else.

Marxists argued that the private property

upon which capitalism was based necessarily

led to the oppression and regulation of women,

so once capitalism had been destroyed, freedom

would naturally follow.

Gradually, feminist activists did begin to

achieve gains under laws throughout much of

Europe, but one aspect of citizenship eluded

them: The right to vote.

In England, philosopher John Stuart Mill,

a classical liberal interested in principles

of personal freedom, spoke in Parliament on

behalf of women’s suffrage as early as 1866,

but that initiative went nowhere, and across

Europe other efforts to gain the vote were

thwarted as well.

Mill went on to publish On the Subjection

of Women in 1869, which drew on the ideas

of his wife Harriet Taylor Mill and became

one of the most translated books of its day.

But again, the actual vote for women was very

slow in coming.

In 1897, New Zealand granted women’s suffrage.

In 1902, Australia did, and in 1906, Finland

became the first European country where women

could vote.

Norway followed in 1913.

And I know i t’s easy to forget just how

recently that was, but for context, both of

my grandmothers were born before women who

didn’t own property could vote in Great

Britain.

In Britain, a group of women led by Emmeline

Pankhurst and her daughters Sylvia and Cristabel

decided to take forceful action.

In 1903, they founded the Women’s Social

and Political Union.

It sponsored mass mobilization in which thousands

of women paraded through the streets.

The reaction was brutal as men attacked the

marchers, grabbing and twisting their breasts

and generally assaulting them.

Other Feminists’ non-violent protests included

chaining themselves to the gates of Parliament

and refusing to eat when imprisoned for their

actions.

Authorities used the brutal tactic of force-feeding

those on hunger strikes.

Alongside non-violent activities, feminists

also blew up mailboxes, slashed works of art

in galleries and museums, and broke store

windows with hammers—all of this because

for men “it’s only property they love.”

In 1913, militant suffragist Emily Wilding

Davison cast herself in front of the king’s

horse at a horse race and was killed.

And so a lot of what we think of as contemporary

protest tactics have their roots in feminist

movements.

Misogynists struck back against these protests.

In Austria men declared that feminists had

been corrupted by “crude dark men of the

lower races”—combining racism with misogyny,

which has long been a tactic of dehumanization.

Feminists were also portrayed oversexed, and

unable to appreciate the “refined sexuality”

of the “heroic [white] races.”

These people argued that for gender order

and thus political stability to be maintained,

a man needed a woman “who looks up to his

intellectual superiority” and “wishes

to do nothing but subordinate herself.”

Women’s hands, the prime minister of Italy

said in the 1890s, were not meant for voting

but for kissing.

So OK, let’s go back to that question we

asked at the beginning.

How do we characterize the term “modern

life”?

Some maintain that technology is the key ingredient,

while others say there have been technological

advances across the millennia.

Some point to urbanization, or changes in

the role of women, or the control over reproduction

that appeared across Europe by 1900

I revealed my own bias in this episode by

talking about the modern practice of public

funding for education.

Still others note that the idea of “modern”

has been used across the centuries: the Roman

historian Tacitus, born in the first century

BCE was happy to have lived “in modern times.”

And so perhaps “modern” is just a term

to positively compare one’s own times to

other places and periods in history.

In that sense, to call one’s society “modern”

was mostly propaganda.

All of that leaves me wondering what makes

our contemporary world feel modern, and to

what extent that modernity is a judgement

on ourselves and others.

What does modern mean to you?

And who is included in that definition of
modern, and who is excluded by it?

Thanks for watching.

I’ll see you next time.