A foreign minister of Austria wrote in 1867 that Germany (not yet unified) would “sooner or later” decide “at the point of the sword” their “rivalry with France.”[1] This prophecy by Friedrich Ferdinand Count von Beust would indeed come true in 1870, the short Franco-Prussian War. But von Beust also jotted down Austria’s other pressing problems, and there were many. The revolutions of 1848 had awoken the masses filled with objections of Austria’s monarchial status quo. The Austrian Empire, however did not consist solely of Austrians. There existed dozens of ethnicities: Poles, Slavs, Magyars, Czechs, Bulgarians, Romanians – the list is as long as the empire was geographically large. The 1848 revolutions were particularly acute in Hungary. The nature of the revolution was also new – no longer workers demanding better working conditions and wages, but doing so under nationalistic tendencies. Expressions of various ethnic freedoms were expressed and, according to von Beust, brutally repressed by Julius Jacob von Haynau, an Austrian general, and Alfred Candidus Ferdinand, also known Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz. These names do not exactly roll off of History’s tongue, nor do many know where or what Windisch- Grätz is, but they are central to understanding the complexity and deep brewing troubles that Austria experienced as Europe realigned itself to growing German political prowess, crumbling Ottoman exigencies, and rising independence movements based on nationalistic tendencies.
Indeed, nationalism was the basis of the year-long Russo-Turkish War that led to the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. This treaty carved up the Balkans along religious and ethnic lines. Bulgaria, for example, was declared “autonomous,” though, at the same time, to remain a “tributary Principality” under the watchful eye of the Ottomans. Turks, along with a “European Commission,” were to give rule and guidance to “Eastern Roumelia.” And though Russia was given the port of Batum, it had to “constitute Batum a free port, essentially commercial” to all the powers. The Treaty of Berlin also attempted to institute religious freedoms. Romania, for example, was forced to give “freedom and outward exercise of all forms of worship” including Islam – something Romanian nationalists had fought against for years.[2] What the Treaty of Berlin represents is the complications of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious stew that portended coming troubles. In other words, the treaty solved little other than setting up dominoes to be knocked down later.
It is under this context that Great Britain then lay claim to occupying Egypt. “European Capital,” explained the Earl of Cromer, “has been sunk in the country.” Egypt was in debt, and Europe had made those loans. Further, Cromer pointed out that the Egyptian “army was in a state of mutiny; the treasury was bankrupt; every branch of the administration had been dislocated.” The idea of “Egypt for the Egyptians” was dead as far as Great Britain was concerned: “foreign occupation was inevitable.”[3] From this, one can gather that imperial ambitions were to some degree financially motivated. But Britain’s imperial ambitions faced off against a rise of Egyptian nationalism – a typical scenario which plagued much the Balkans and other regions of the quickly dissolving Ottoman empire.
Jules Ferry, the Minister of France, thought much like Cromer. France needed economic “outlets”. France, a “rich and hardworking country” (note the nationalism embedded in that statement) needed to expand beyond western-imposed protectionism and seek economic markets overseas. But Ferry went beyond economics declaring that Frenchmen ought to say openly that “the superior races have a right” and a “duty to civilize the inferior races.”[4] Enter the rise of Spencerism which used the ideals of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species to state that societies also evolve. Herbert Spencer, an Oxford-based biologist, used science to explain why Europeans were better than others. And it was to be the science of the French navy, steel, industrial might, and coal that would raise the stature of France among the nations of the world.
1900 - Krupp Industries successfully demonstrated how its cannon can be used aboard submarines (part of German Federal Archives).
In 1901, Kaiser Wilhelm II made a similar statement, Germany must use its newfound power, coal, and steel to develop navies and to conquer “new points where we can drive in the nail on which to hang our armor.”[5] German expansions upon East Africa were in reaction to French and British expansions overseas.
The United States later claimed religious zeal as justification for imperial ambitions. In taking the Philippines, President McKinley, in 1903, claimed that “there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them.”[6] Religion, science, and nationalism became a messianic brew of justifications – everything from small ethnic independence movements to outright imperial ambitions conducted by the larger Western powers.
Russia’ stature as a world power, if applied to that very formula – religion + science + nationalism – demonstrated why it failed to keep pace with other European imperialists. Russia’s inability to steer its navy to battle against Japan because of a lack of coal and colonies to support it was clearly laid out by Vladimir Semenoff, commander of the Russian battleship, Suvoroff. The French colonial port of Dakar refused him coal. Again at Vigo and Libreville, acquiring coal to power his ship to get to the Pacific proved farcical.[7]
In the Ottoman Empire, reports filtered in which showed a struggling kingdom. Gertrude Bell, a British spy (of sorts) wrote home that Abdul Hamid II, the Ottoman Sultan, complained that his empire was “surrounded by nations who are only desirous of eating up his kingdom.” Yet, emissaries representing those western powers claimed that Turkey’s problems lie in the fact that the Turks “no nothing of patriotism.”[8] A reminder then that patriotism, the germinating seed of nationalism, was a necessary element of maintaining stature among the great powers of the world.
Last, the rise of Germany, a new European power that only formed in 1871, now placed fear into the ‘religion + science + nationalism’ formula. Harold Baron, a Manchester University professor, wrote of how Germany had already “advanced beyond Britain in terms of economic output.”[9] Baron pointed to Bayer, a new German-based company which paved the way for an entirely new industry that of pharmaceuticals. He also highlighted new developments in that country’s chemical industry where a labor and talent pipeline existed from university laboratories directly beneficial toward companies in the chemical industries.
Religion, science, nationalism, and economic rivalry added tremendous fuel to long, complex, simmering jealousies that would soon explode into the World War. The treaties, detents, and alliances were not able to keep a lid on this troublesome brew.
[1] Memoirs of Friedrich Ferdinand Count von Beust (London: Remington and Co., 1887), pp. xix-xxv.
[2] “The Treaty of Berlin: Excerpt on the Balkans,” Modern History Sourcebook (Fordham University), https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1878berlin.asp
[3] “The Earl of Cromer: Why Britain Acquired Egypt in 1882,” Modern History Sourcebook (Fordham University), https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1908cromer.asp
[4] “Jules Ferry: On French Colonial Expansion,” Modern History Sourcebook (Fordham University), https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1884ferry.asp
[5] “Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Place in the Sun,” Modern History Sourcebook (Fordham University), https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1901Kaiser.asp
[6] General James Rusling, “Interview with President William McKinley,” The Christian Advocate, 22 January 1903, 17. Reprinted in Charles Sumner Olcott, The Life of William McKinley, Volume 2 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 109-111.
[7] “Commander Vladimir Semenoff: Coaling at Sea,” Modern History Sourcebook (Fordham University), https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1905coaling.asp
[8] “Gertrude Bell Archive,” Newcastle University, United Kingdom; http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/diary_details.php?diary_id=496
[9] “Harold Baron: The Chemical Industry on the Continent,” Modern History Sourcebook (Fordham University), https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/baron-chem.asp