Colonialism During the Belle Époque

Here's my first forum post from the next course: Modern European History.

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The popular militarism of the Belle Époque is broadly expressed in cultural texts from the period. For the readings for the week, this militarism is expressed within the context of colonialism, but more specifically, the readings provide hints of the conflicts that will arise for the United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia over the course of the coming decades. Britain already ruled the seas and, by extension, an enormous empire by the Belle Époque, and its military supremacy would persist until it was supplanted by the United States during World War II. Russia and Germany, as relative latecomers to the "great game," saw their imperial destines lying in the east, although the specifics were different and their interests overlapped.

A common theme uniting the imperialistic anthems of the United Kingdom is that of divineright. Repeatedly in the songs excerpted in the reading are references to the imprimatur of God on Britain's colonial endeavors. This expression is perhaps most clear in "God Save the Queen," here referring to Victoria, under whose reign the empire reached nearly its greatest extent. More explicitly, "Land of Hope and Glory" in more than one line, addressing Britain, says that God has "made thee mighty,"[1] with the direct statement that the borders of the empire will be expanded with God's approval ("Wider still and wider / shall thy bounds be set").[2] The association between the imperial enterprise and divine favoritism comes to full fruition in "Jerusalem," with the United Kingdom cast in Blake's lyrics as so good a defender of Christendom that Britain approaches Biblical Jerusalem in its holiness.

The excerpt by Prince Ukhtomskii of Russia, written when the author accompanied the future Tsar Nicholas II on a diplomatic voyage to the Far East, is no less explicit in expressing a unique place for Russia in the family of nations, although unsurprisingly, the specifics of Russia's geopolitical role are quite different. Most importantly, the militarism of Ukhtomskii's thoughts often seem directed less toward those whom he sees as potential imperial subjects and more toward the European nations that have already colonized Indonesia (the Netherlands) and Indochina (France). He excoriates the greed and racism of European colonialists: "The natives are not brothers in humanity to them; for them the land is one of voluntary exile, and the people are considered as miserable and inferior beings."[3] Russia, owing to its massive intercontinental geography is different, Ukhtomskii maintains, not only in its greater respect for the people of Asia, but more importantly also in the esteem that Asians feel for Russia and its "White Tsar."[4] Unspoken but underlying the acknowledgement of Russia's particular role in Asian imperial rule is impending conflict with Japan, hinting toward the conflict with that country that Russia would fight less than twenty years later.

Friedrich von Bernhardi's Germany and the Next War was published in 1912 and is thus the latest of the readings for the week, as well as closest to World War I. Bernhardi's point of view is the clearest expression of Social Darwinism and the military conflict necessary for the further "evolution" of European civilization: "War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with, since without it an unhealthy development will follow, which excludes every advancement of the race, and therefore all real civilization."[5] In referring immediately before this passage to the Hague Peace Conference, Bernhardi seems to be suggesting that European conflict must be waged within certain restrictions, unlike Germany's recent colonial endeavors in present-day Namibia.[6] Nevertheless, it is clear that Bernhardi sees war as an important aspect of European development. Within the context of both the completed division of Africa among European powers at the Berlin Conference in 1885 and Bismarck's Drang nachOsten (drive toward the east), in so far as major conflict going forward will be largely imperial in nature, Germany's conflicts will be with Russia, as the war to come would show.

Thus, the readings from British, Russian, and German writers all engage the topics of militarism via colonialism, but the dimensions of the topics are country-specific. Britain envisions continued military supremacy and an ever-growing empire. Russia sees a manifest destiny of hegemony over Asia, with the realization that such supremacy must be maintained, if not imposed, militarily. Germany believes that militarism and the war that it engenders is a positive process and an innate human need, and its recent geopolitical posturing indicates that it sees its imperial and colonial future in Eastern Europe, under the concept of Lebensraum (living space). That these three countries' paths would greatly diverge in the coming decades is clear, but perhaps the readings will provide some indication of why they did.

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     [1] "British Imperialistic Anthems: Rule Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory, and more," Modern History Sourcebook, accessed June 12, 2016, http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/rulebritannia.asp

     [2] Ibid.

     [3] E.E. Ukhtomsky, "Prince Ukhtomskii: Russia's Imperial Destiny, 1891," Modern History Sourcebook, accessed June 12, 2016, http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1891ukhtomskii.asp, para. 6.

     [4] Ibid, para. 7.

     [5] Friedrich von Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, translated by Allen H. Powles, accessed June 12, 2016, http://www.gwpda.org/comment/bernhardi.html, chapter 1, para 7.

     [6] George Steinmetz, "The First Genocide of the 20th Century and its Postcolonial Afterlives: Germany and the Namibian Ovaherero," Journal of the International Institute 12, no. 2 (Winter 2005): http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jii/4750978.0012.201/--first-genocide-of-the-20th-century-and-its-postcolonial?rgn=main;view=fulltext;q1=Race+and+Ethnicity