Modern World HistoryChapter 10
Age of Democracy and Progress
Section 1Democratic Reform and
Activism
Political Reforms in Great Britain
• Britain had a constitutional monarchy• The British Parliament consisted of two houses (House of
Lords with inherited or appointed seats and House of Commons with members elected)
• Beginning in 1830 protests began to give more people the right to vote (particularly the new rising middle class)
• Reform Bill of 1832 eased property requirements for voting• Chartist Movement – popular movement of working class
people who also wanted the right to vote (they presented Parliament with a petition called the People’s Charter to demand this)
• These demands were initially rejected• Gradually over time reforms were passed until by the early
1900s there was universal male suffrage
Women Get the Vote
• No country allowed women to vote by 1890 (New Zealand in 1893 and Australia in 1902 were the first)• Women organized to gain rights in
the 1800s in Great Britain and the U.S.• Protests grew more militant in Great
Britain (more arrests, public protests, hunger strikes, etc.)• Women did not gain the right to vote
in either country until after WWI
Anti-Semitism• Democracy also took hold in France as a new constitution
was written in 1875 setting up a republic• This republic was threatened by aristocrats who favored a
monarchy who used people’s anti-Semitism (anti-Jewish prejudice) to attempt to create a crisis that would allow them to take over
• Dreyfus Affair – A Jewish officer in the French army was framed for giving military secrets to the Germans (he was found guilty, though late he was released)
• Anti-Semitism was strong throughout Europe (especially in Russia where organized campaigns of violence called pogroms were being carried out)
• Many Jews fled Europe and emigrated to the U.S.• Zionism – a movement to escape this violence whose goal
was the creation of a new homeland for Jews in their historical homeland that was now Palestine
Section 2Self-Rule for British Colonies
Canada Struggles
for Self-Rule
• Canada was originally colonized by the French • English settlers arrived in large numbers after the
English won the French and Indian War• Canada was divided into two colonies that each
elected an assembly and had a royal governor• Upper Canada (now Ontario) had an English-
speaking majority and was mostly Protestant• Lower Canada (now Quebec) had a French-
speaking majority and was mostly Roman Catholic and resented British rule
• Durham Report – called for a reunion of the two colonies into one, and for further British immigration to drown out the French population• Dominion of Canada – created in 1867 to give
Canada a central government; it remained a part of the British Empire but was self-governing in domestic affairs
Early History of Australia
• British sea captain James Cook claimed New Zealand and Australia for Great Britain in 1770• These territories were occupied by native
peoples (Maoris in New Zealand and Aborigines in Australia)• Britain began colonizing Australia as a penal
colony with convicted criminals in 1788 to relieve their overcrowded prisons• After serving their sentences these prisoners
could buy land and settle there • Free British settlers arrived in large numbers
after sheep herding and wool production made living there profitable• The British government encouraged settlement
there by offering cheap land
Great Famine in Ireland
• The English expanded into Ireland starting back in the 1100s and set up a new governing noble class that slowly took control of the land, impoverishing the Irish people• The Irish resented this greatly and fought to
restore their independence• Irish peasants depended nearly entirely on the
potato as their source of food• In the 1840s a fungus ruined the potato crops• Out of 8 million people, over 1 million died of
starvation and nearly 2 million moved, mostly to the U.S.• During the famine English landowners forced
the Irish to pay their debts, and even more lost their land
Ireland Struggles for
Self-Rule
• During the late 1800s the Irish were divided between Irish nationalists who wanted their independence, and those who sought home rule (local control over internal affairs)• The British refused to consider either as the Protestant British
living in Ireland (mostly in Northern Ireland) would be outnumbered by the Roman Catholic Irish people• Still, Parliament voted to give Ireland home rule, but World
War I delayed it• After WWI Irish nationalists formed an underground Irish
government and declared themselves independent, with their underground Irish Republican Army to fight on their behalf• The IRA staged attacks against British officials in Ireland, which
sparked a war between them and the British government• In 1921 Britain agreed to divide Ireland, keeping Northern
Ireland, and giving the rest of Ireland home rule (and eventually independence in 1949)
Section 3War and Expansion in the Unites
States
Americans Move West
• Manifest Destiny – an idea during the 1800s that the U.S. had the right to expand its territory west all the way to the Pacific Ocean• Ways territory was gained:• Louisiana Purchase• Texas gaining its independence from
Mexico and being annexed by the U.S.• Mexican War
• Native Americans were forced off of their land and pushed westward (Trail of Tears) and eventually onto reservations in the west
Issue of Slavery• The North had a diversified economy with
farms and industry that both depended on free workers• The South’s economy was based on cash crop
farming that was only profitable with slave labor• Ending slave labor would destroy the
Southern economy and impoverish the entire region• This led to disputes over states rights vs.
federal government authority• When anti-slavery candidate Abraham
Lincoln on the 1860 Presidential Election southern states began to secede from the union, and the Civil War started shortly afterwards
End of Civil War and
Reconstruction
• During the Civil War President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared all slaves in the Confederacy free• When the war ended the U.S. Congress passed 3
amendments related to slavery• 13th Amendment – ended slavery• 14th Amendment – gave citizenship to the
former slaves• 15th Amendment – gave them the right to vote
• Reconstruction – the time period following the Civil War when the southern states were reintegrated into the U.S.• When Northern troops left the South in 1876 laws
were passed there that limited the rights of African Americans (made it difficult to vote and set up segregation)
Industrialization Expands
• Need for mass production and distribution of goods during the Civil War sped up industrialization• Massive immigration starting
in the 1870s brought workers for factories and for railroad building• Railroads connected the
nation bringing raw materials to factories and finished goods to markets
Section 419th Century Progress
Inventions Make Life Easier• Thomas Edison – patented more
than 1,000 inventions including the light bulb, phonograph, and motion-picture projector• Alexander Graham Bell –
telephone • Guglielmo Marconi – radio • German inventors used gasoline
to power the first automobile• Wright Brothers – first airplane• Henry Ford – used assembly line
to mass produce Model T Automobiles
New Ideas in Medicine
• Louis Pasteur – developed the germ theory of disease (bacteria caused disease and infections)• Joseph Lister – developed antiseptics to
kill bacteria in his surgical ward (85% of his patients lived – far higher than rates for other doctors)• Cities built plumbing and sewer systems
to remove waste and prevent spread of disease• Researchers developed vaccines or cures
for deadly diseases like typhus, typhoid fever, diphtheria, and yellow fever• Life expectancies gradually rose
New Ideas in
Science
• Charles Darwin – English biologist who developed the theory of evolution that plants and animals evolve over time, and the fittest species survive in a process known as natural selection• Social Darwinism – application of Darwin’s theories to
economics and politics • free enterprise was natural selection in economics
(justifies why some are rich and some are poor)• It was used to justify colonization and racism (some
countries are more fit to rule others)• Gregor Mendel – Austrian whose study of inherited traits
began the science of genetics• John Dalton – English chemist who theorized that all
matter is made of atoms• Dmitri Mendeleev – Russian chemist who organized the
Periodic Table which lists elements in order of their weight• Marie and Pierre Curie – discovered missing elements that
had radioactivity (stored energy)
Social Sciences Explore Behavior
• Scientists began to study human society and behavior in the 1800s• Global expeditions led to more discoveries about ancient
civilizations and world cultures• These led to the development of modern social sciences of
archaeology, anthropology, and sociology• Psychology was another new social science which was the
study of the human mind and individual human behavior• Ivan Pavlov – studies stimulus/response trained
behaviors• Sigmund Freud – studies how the unconscious mind
drives how people think and behave (his studies led to a new type of therapy known as psychoanalysis which helps people deal with psychological conflicts created by suppressed memories, desires, and impulses)
Emergence of Mass Culture
• Mass culture – the appeal of art, writing, music, movies, and other forms of entertainment to large audiences• It was caused by: • greater public education which meant more people
could read books and newspapers• improvements in communication which made
publications cheaper and more accessible• inventions of the phonograph and records brought
music directly into people’s homes• shorter work days and weeks gave people more
leisure time to enjoy mass entertainment activities• Invention of motion-picture projectors led to the rise
of filmmaking with millions attending theaters each day by 1910
• Sports began to draw huge crowds (soccer in Europe, football and baseball in the U.S., cricket in the British Empire, and a revival of the Olympic Games in 1896)
