BHIE 145
SOME ASPECTS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY 1789-1945
IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment July 2023 & January 2024
Q. 1. How did England become the first industrial nation? Explain.
Ans. Europe experienced economic growth beginning in the sixteenth century as a result of various developments. The foundations for current expansion were set, nonetheless, in the seventeenth century.
During this time, numerous European nations’ internal markets were unified. Raising tariff barriers protected domestic industries from the import of foreign goods.
In 1722, it became illegal in Britain to use any kind of foreign “printed, painted, stained and dyed calicoes.”
As early as 1686, a strict restriction on these imports was put in place in France. Additionally, legislation was passed in Spain and Prussia to ban imports from India.
To increase the supply of food to urban areas, export of manufactured goods was promoted and agricultural production was improved.
Active technological advancements were made to boost and improve industrial production. The Dutch historian Jan de Vries has referred to another significant change as the “industrious revolution.”
Family labour, which is focused on specific trades, was used more effectively under this system. Most European nations benefited from the European “voyages of discovery”, which enabled them to increase their wealth through trade and pillage.
They received cheap labour from the infamous slave trade to work on plantations around the globe. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
Another significant factor that accelerated Europe’s modernisation and industrialisation was the rise and development of modern science.
In addition to assisting in the development of novel technologies for the expansion of modern industry, it gradually changed the mindset of the majority of Europeans, facilitating innovations and their rapid acceptance.
Modern industrial production first became a reality in Britain, where it peaked in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The first industrialized country to maintain a balance between population and productivity was Britain.
The significant growth in population was the first time that per capita increased during the nineteenth century. Britain continued to lead the industrial world for more than 50 years.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
Britain was the world’s “only workshop, its only big importer and exporter, its only carrier, its only imperialist, practically its only foreign investor, its only naval force, and the only one which had an industrialisation 1750- 1850 genuine world policy” during this time, according to Eric Hobsbawm.
Britain’s unprecedented rise to power as a result of modern manufacturing encouraged or even forced other European nations to industrialise as well.
This time period saw changes in the economic structure, technological advancements and the way the manufacturing sector was organised-particularly in the cotton and iron industries.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
France and the Netherlands did not lag behind Britain during the 17th and 18th centuries, according to different growth metrics.
Therefore, some historians contend that the British success should not be seen as inevitable and that just because Britain began to industrialise first, it does not follow that this was always going to be the case.
Britain built its industrial economy and became the world’s most advanced industrial nation between 1750 and 1850. Its early industrialisation was primarily focused on the iron, mining, and cotton textile sectors.
Q. 2. Define colonialism and discuss the different stages of colonialism.
Ans. The practice of colonialism involves one country assuming complete or partial political control over another and settling there with settlers, in order to take advantage of that country’s resources and economy.
It might be challenging to tell colonialism from imperialism because both involve the political and economic dominance of a dominating country over a weak territory.
From the dawn of time until the beginning of the 20th century, strong nations fought openly for control of new territories through colonialism.
By the time World War I broke out in 1914, nearly every continent had been colonised by European nations. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
Although colonialism is not as actively implemented as it once was, there is evidence that it still has influence in the modern world.
- The process of a nation assuming whole or partial governmental authority over a dependent nation, territory, or population is known as colonialism.
- When people from one nation move to another, in order to take advantage of their population and natural riches, this is known as colonialism.
- The indigenous populations of the nations that colonise are often subjected to attempts by colonial powers to impose their own languages and traditions on them.
- Imperialism and colonialism, both involve the use of power and coercion to rule over another nation or people. By 1914, Europeans had colonised the vast majority of the world’s nations.
Marx described monopoly commerce and free trade as two stages of colonialism. R. Palme Dutt added a third stage, financial imperialism to India Today-based on Lenin.
Samir Amin and some say only the third step constitutes colonialism. There is no clear separation between stages. Timeframe varies by colony.
Some countries skipped one or two levels; the others atrophied. Colonialism was the complicated integration of a colony’s economy and society with global capitalism over nearly two centuries. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
Forms of subordination altered but colony subordination remained consistent. As excess appropriation or subjection changed, so did colonial policy: state, institutions, culture, ideas and ideologies. The stages were the product of capitalism’s global development.
They were also caused by the city’s shifting social, economic, and political trends and position in the world economy and polity. The stage also reflected the colony’s history.
First Stage: This stage has two goals:
(a) Monopoly of trade: The East India Company needed a trading monopoly in India to buy cheap commodities. Warfare kept European competitors out. Political conquest was used to discourage Indian commerce from participating.
(b) Direct appropriation of revenue or surplus through the use of state power: Warfare against European and indigenous monarchs cost a fortune. This money came from colony earnings. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
Colonial revenues also bought colonial products.
The metropolis produced nothing of worth and spending gold and silver to buy colonial commodities went against mercantilist wisdom.
The colony’s political takeover allowed pillage and surplus seizure. The colony’s revenues paid officials’ salaries and merchants’ and firms’ profits.
During the first stage, India sent a lot of money to Britain. It accounted for 2% to 3% of Britain’s national income.
No fundamental changes were made to the administration, judicial system, transportation, communication, agricultural or industrial output, business management or economic organisation, education, intellectual fields, culture, or social organisation.
Only military organisation, technology and revenue administration changed. This lack of intervention was because colonialism could be overlaid on the traditional economy and politics.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
As long as the villages’ economic excess was removed, deeper penetration wasn’t necessary. The colony’s economic or political structure didn’t need to be changed.
Second Stage: Second-stage colonisation is free trade. Industrial bourgeoisie, which had supplanted trading corporations as the leading class, condemned pillage as a form of surplus appropriation because it would kill the golden goose. The metropolis’ industrial bourgeoisie was interested in the colony’s markets.
To buy imported products, the colony needed to expand exports. The metropolitan bourgeoisie aspired to develop the colony as a raw resources producer to reduce empire dependence. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
I Increased exports would help compensate for merchants’ high salaries and profits. Trade would take the social surplus.
To permit new exploitation, economic, political, administrative, social, cultural and ideological structures needed to be changed.
Development and modernity were the slogans. The colony would join the global capitalist economy and the mother country. Foreign trade was to be tariff-free.
Plantations, trade, transport, mining and industries were opened to capitalists. Introduce capitalist farming.
Transport and communications were built to deliver raw commodities to ports for export. Colonialism and imperialism expanded railways and built a modern post and telegraph system.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
In administration, it was believed important to make it more precise and comprehensive so imports could reach communities and raw materials could be quickly removed. To enforce capitalist trade relations.
Improve the legal system to protect contract sanctity. Political ideology emphasised liberal imperialism. To train colonists for self-government.
Even if formal governmental control stopped, the economic link would persist. Modernisation entailed a critical evaluation of existing lifestyles. Development was the ideology.
Third Stage: Third-stage colonialism led to tighter colony rule. Ideology was reactionary. As control was tightened, the administration grew more bureaucratic, detailed and efficient. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
No longer was self-government discussed; instead, benevolent despotism was the new doctrine, which viewed colonials as children, who needed caretakers forever. Modernisation and Western education, the second stage’s watchwords, were gone.
One contradiction is external, between the colonial people and the system, which is manifested in the anti-imperialist movement.
The colony can no longer serve the urban capitalist class. Third- stage China can’t absorb metropolitan capital or enhance raw material exports.
To counter this, a limited modernisation policy was attempted but colonialism exposed itself and underdevelopment became a restraint on colony’s exploitation. Third stage took off seldom.
Older colonies exported capital. Colonialism damaged these colonies’ economies, so they couldn’t absorb capital investment.
Assignment II
Q. 3. Explain the role of bureaucracy in the modern state.
Ans. Direct rule was the first and possibly most essential basis of modern Europe. From the 15th century on, European rulers enforced direct rule and centralised power. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
They did this by removing power from feudal lords and estates and putting royal officials or lesser nobles directly under the monarch. The modern bureaucracy began then.
From the 15th to the 18th century, fierce confrontations between the state or monarch and feudal or regional lord in royal absolutism.
Ivan IV (the Terrible) and Peter I (the Great) of Russia, Frederick William and Frederick II of Prussia, Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV of France and Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell of England were notable state-builders.
Only the monarch could maintain armies, wage war, tax the populace, resolve disputes, punish offenders and execute subjects through his new royal bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy is an administrative hierarchy of officials with the following ideals: they are salaried professionals with no personal interest in the decisions they take or enforce; they carry out the orders of their superiors and issue orders to their inferiors; they act according to law, not personal whim or preference; they are selected for their expertise in the area concerned.
Max Weber dubbed this style of bureaucracy rational-legal. Practice departs greatly from the model, as it must but it gives us crucial insights into current administrative structures, whether of the state, a political party, a corporate organisation, a religious hierarchy like a Church, or even basic associations like clubs.
We rarely appreciate how different such bureaucracies are from other forms of governance because we live with them every day and because this is the standard we want the government to uphold.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
In fact, we often characterise other forms as being capricious and corrupt when we encounter them.
We typically dismiss such systems as irrational, corrupt and arrogant if officials were to be appointed based on their family connections or money they had paid, if they were to make decisions because it suits them personally or the mood takes them,
if they were to act against orders or against the law, if they were to be appointed without the necessary expertise for the job, or if everything depended on one person as if he or she were irreplaceable.
But before the modern era, such was completely typical for all governments or kinds of government;IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
it is only now that they seem undesirable. We have internalised this textbook ideal and evaluate all administrative practices in accordance with it, oblivious to the fact that these concepts were first presented in Europe less than two hundred years ago and later were universally recognised as standards.
Anything that isn’t “modern” in this sense is often referred to as “traditional” or another derogatory term.
Q. 4. Analyze the administrative and legal transformation of France under Napoleon during 1799-1815.
Ans. The old regime’s administrative system had to be reorganised after it fell. A new local administration structure, was needed to replace the provincial and municipal regimes dissolved on 4 August 1789.
This was also needed to manage food distribution and other public order issues.
1790’s reorganisation promoted national unity but prevented provincial rivalry. Each department had many districts and each district had two or more cantons and communes. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
From the municipal or rural council and mayor of a commune to the council, the directory and the procurator-general of a department, democratically elected authorities replaced strong royal officials like Intendants.
Elected officials were not always qualified. Napoleon’s civil administration was based on 1790’s administrative system.
Napoleon’s domestic reforms reconstructed France under a strong centralised government to restore order.
Executive power was distributed downwards through the administrative hierarchy, not upwards through elections. War, navy, interior, legislation and finance were policy-making departments.
The ministers were individually answerable to Napoleon’s council of State, not a cabinet.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
Consulate and Empire built a sophisticated police state. Fouche led the 1796 Police Ministry (1799-1810).
It controlled four regional police divisions responsible for the secret police, censorship, prison, surveillance, food prices and money market, while prefects and mayors of large cities retained distinct police authority.
Napoleon amended the National Assembly’s 1790 Department of Administration into arrondissements and cantons and it today rules France.
Appointed mayors, prefects and sub-prefects replaced elected judges, tax collectors and parish priests. The new centralised administration system helped the government better use the country’s wealth.
Paid officials under the central treasury collected taxes. Tax collection became efficient and methodical. No birth, status, or special rights tax exemptions. These 1789 reforms were adopted under Napoleon’s reign.
Napoleon’s legal reforms unified France and established the Consular and Imperial regimes. The monarchy lacked legal coherence before the revolution. French law has 300 systems. Roman and customary law ruled separately.
The Revolutionary Convention opposed Roman law’s authoritarianism and favoured customary law’s liberalism. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
When a discussion arose about parental authority, marriage contracts and free will, the Constituent Assembly began civil legislation.
Here, heirs had total equality of succession. The 1791 constitution established a civil code. In 1792, the Legislative Assembly secularised births, marriages, deaths and divorce.
In August 1793, the Convention requested Cambaceres prepare a legal code.
Napoleon’s code balanced the two laws.
His dictatorial attitude fitted Roman law. His code was more conservative in family affairs. Paternal control was restored and divorce was limited.
This code targeted women. Wives were submissive to their husbands and had no administrative or judicial power. Napoleon’s code denied the Convention’s proclamation of sex equality.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
Napoleon’s law rejected the 1793 concept but adopted the 1789 property and citizenship rights. Ending feudalism and feudal privileges was approved.
The Code Napoleon includes the civil code (1804), civic procedure code (1806) and criminal procedure code.
It established order and stability in interpersonal relations, swift court action, national uniformity in place of regional customs, civic equality, freedom of religion and a powerful nation-state.
The code reflected the tremendous social revolution from which it emerged. It was revolutionary and influenced social development in France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, etc.
In 1791, the National Assembly introduced the metric system of weights and measures for unity. Its impact was global.
Adopting decimal divisions gave much-needed order and regularity but implementation was delayed. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
The revolutionary regime failed to introduce a republican calendar. Napoleon abandoned this calendar, which contained new week, month and year titles, in 1806.
Q. 5. Discuss the significance of the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe.
Ans. Europe cautiously entered “the age of the masses” in 1848. In an effort to get over the constraints of the politics of secret societies that had dominated various episodes of political discontent earlier in the century, political mobilisations of all kinds started to gain popularity.
Uncertainty in the economy undoubtedly had a role in this mobilisation process. In general, poverty increased across the majority of the continent starting in the 1830s.
It was partially an unavoidable result of a more significant issue with the move from a market economy fitted with some type of industrial capitalism to a largely subsistence economy controlled by agriculture.
The peasants commonly complained about middlemen traders’ oppression and saw market- oriented agriculture as detrimental.
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The new large-scale enterprises were seen as dangers to the survival of the urban artisans who were losing out to cheaper factory goods.
The artisans and craftsmen in the weaving, building, and printing trades took part in sporadic strikes and protests between the two revolutions, and they eventually played a crucial part in the revolutionary upheavals in the metropolitan districts in 1848.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
Political turmoil was exacerbated by the economic crisis, which added to public dissatisfaction about a decline in living conditions.
The sharper political consciousness of Europeans, who in the middle of the 19th century were somewhere more educated than in earlier periods, was, nonetheless, an equally significant component of revolutionary politics.
Around the middle of the century, some people truly wrote about “an educational boom”, and many of their contemporaries did not fail to draw a connection between the rising literacy rate and a rebellious attitude.
Italian educator Giuseppe Mazzetti even advocated for a system that would stop “the movement of the masses, restrict the number of the literate, make them good and serene, which would exclude them from any training rendering them useless and detrimental” in a tract on educational reforms.
In their wake, political developments transpired. The conservative ministers in the Prussian and Bavarian monarchy were fired and liberals were installed in their place. The grand image of the previous order, Metternich, fled to exile in London.
Liberal ministers were grudgingly selected by Emperor Ferdinand at Vienna. Venice and Milan’s provisional governments declared their independence from Austrian authority and their desire to join a single Italian state.
The new administration in the capital of Hungary proclaimed its independence from the empire.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
AssignmenT – III
Q. 6. Liberalism.
Ans. Late 18th- to mid-19th-century liberalism is called ‘classical liberalism’. John Locke’s views contributed considerably to classical liberalism’s growth. Locke believed that people have natural rights to life, liberty and property.
Classical liberalism prioritised individual freedom by limiting state power and regarded property rights important to liberty. Lord Acton’s definition of individual liberty is relevant.
“By liberty, I mean the confidence that every individual will be safeguarded in fulfilling his duty against power, custom and opinion.” Acton believed liberty was the highest political goal. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
The Marxist historian E. J. Hobsbawm wrote, ‘for classical liberalism, the human world consisted of self-contained individual atoms with certain built-in passions and drives, each seeking above all to maximise his satisfactions and minimise his dissatisfactions, equal in this to all others and “naturally” recognizing no limits or rights of interference with his urges.
Rational behaviour ensures individuals’ duties and obligations to others. Liberals reportedly distrusted the state and government.
Liberals support private property. Classical liberals link liberty and private property. Freedom is using one’s labour and capital as one sees fit.
Q. 7. Role of Bismarck in German polity.
Ans. Otto von Bismarck, who assumed the office of Minister-President of Prussia in 1863 and later held the title of Imperial Chancellor after the unification of Germany in 1871, was the individual who was able to successfully lay down the fundamental principles of this policy.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
In fact, a beleaguered Prussian monarchy summoned Bismarck from his estate in East Prussia in 1863 to resolve a political and constitutional crisis brought on by a rift between the government and the liberal majority in the Prussian parliament (Landtag) over the highly contentious issue of army expansion.
The options were a dictatorship based on plebiscitary consent or a constitutional monarchy.
By portraying Bismarck as the charismatic leader of the German nation, the conservative landowners who were the monarchy’s main source of support finally chose the latter.
In order to save the monarchy from this predicament after being appointed the Prime Minister of Prussia, he immediately instituted an openly authoritarian administration, silenced the opposition, and ruled without seeking legislative approval of the budget. IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
The reward came in the form of a successful foreign policy that paved the way for the unification of Germany.
Q. 8. The Witte System.
Ans. Railways and heavy industries were designated by Count Sergei Yulyevich Witte (1849-1915), Minister of Finance (1892-1903) and first Prime Minister of the Russian Empire, as the origins of industrial power.
The Witte system was distinguished by tariff protection, financial reform, monetary stability, high taxes and support for foreign investment.
Witte believed that rapid economic expansion, the import of cutting-edge technology from Germany and the United States (rather than England) and the establishment of enormous factories with a vast labour force would make up for the delayed start to industrialisation.
All of these characteristics resulted from a lack of domestic capital, entrepreneurship and skilled labour, as well as concerns over Russia’s growing political gap with her adversaries.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
Q. 9. Rise of Fascism.
Ans. Fascism in Italy converged on existing trends. The radical syndicalist CTU split in 1914 over Italian war participation.
The syndicalist believed in ‘self-emancipation’ of ‘producers’ through ‘factory-level regulation’, not ‘state-power takeover”. Workers’ syndicates or associations would supplant the state as the producers’ self-government.
The fascist-leaning Syndicalist wing espoused radical nationalism, describing nations as proletariat or plutocratic.
Fasci di Combattimento (1919), the fascists inaugural agenda, advocated for a republic and extreme democratic and socialistic changes, including confiscation of wartime capitalist profits, suppression of giant joint-stock enterprises and land for landless peasants.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
Q. 10. The Cold War.
Ans. Following World War II, the world was divided into three groups: the Communist bloc, the anti-communist bloc and a few neutral states.
Churchill, the British Prime Minister, met with Roosevelt, the President of the United States and Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, at Yalta in the Crimea in February 1945.
The Allies’ agreement to defeat Germany and Japan was simple to come by. But when the subject of the future came up, disparities in interests, viewpoints and views became apparent.
Britain and the United States detested communism and were concerned about its spread in the devastated nations of Europe.
They were also concerned by Russia’s aggression during the conflict. In the East European nations that the Red Army had liberated, including Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania, the Allies had agreed to hold free elections. Stalin, however, forced communist regimes on these nations.
Stalin shifted the Russian border further west by exchanging Eastern Poland for German Silesia. Britain got involved in Greece and overthrew the communist regime there.IGNOU BHIE 145 Solved Free Assignment
Four zones were initially established in Germany. The divisions in Berlin, the capital of the Russian-controlled zone, were similar.
Without consulting the eastern zone, three western zones introduced a new currency in 1948, which led to a Soviet Union blockade of rail and road traffic for eight months, during which the British and Americans airlifted all supplies to Berlin.
The United States, Britain and France were at odds with the Soviet Union in every area.
The Soviet-ruled nations in Eastern Europe rejected American aid under the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of their economies.
The Cold War began in 1949 after the Soviet Union developed the atomic bomb, which led to an increase in antagonism.
In this open ideological conflict, where the great power blocs regularly engaged in conflict and threatened to use military force or nuclear weapons to wipe out the globe, peace remained elusive.