Мass Ideologies and World Wars
The First World War (1914-1918), like most wars, had multiple causes that included the rise and challenge of German industrial and military power, the ethnic conflicts between Germanic and Slavic peoples, and the existence of secret alliances. After the United States entered the First World War in 1917 and Russia left it in the same year, the war became a conflict between democracies and monarchies. President Woodrow Wilson expressed America's war mission as "making the world safe for democracy." He went further to elaborate an idealistic world order through his "Fourteen Points." One "point," in particular, self-determination for cultural nationalities living in the remaining European empires of that day, has resounded up to the present as a major democratic principle for various minorities wanting autonomy or independent statehood.
President Wilson argued that democracies were peace loving and that the Great War, as everyone once called the First World War, would not have happened if the peoples under the monarchies of Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Ottoman Turkey had played a role in the decision about war. As noted earlier, the victory of the major democracies over the monarchies appeared to prove the inherent worth of democracy. For a time after the war, many leaders enshrined democracy as the "touchstone" of good government, but democracy would soon encounter serious challenges by totalitarian dictatorships formed in Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union between the world wars. A totalitarian government is a severe form of authoritarianism and is fairly rare, with the chief examples being Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union.
The Role of Nationalism
Not only did authority finally transfer to the people, but passion sprang from them that empowered the state as well. Although Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) disrupted French republicanism when he crowned himself emperor of France in 1804, he still encouraged the fervor of French nationalism. This set of beliefs involves a special sense of identity and pride among a group of people that distinguishes them from other groups. Napoleon employed nationalism to raise an army of hundreds of thousands of men and marched them to far-flung places, including Egypt and Russia, all for the greater glory of France and, of course, Napoleon.
Nationalism today is not the fierce political force that it was in the Second World War or during the colonial independence movement following this war, but it remains an important political force in the world. A major concern of the Western democracies is that Russia could veer toward an extreme form of nationalism and try to rebuild the territorial base of the old Soviet Union. Although strong nationalistic feelings can engender hostility among countries, at the same time the sense of unity and loyalty nationalism brings to countries has become essential to hold states together as viable political units.
A viable state may have to have what French historian Ernest Renan (1823-1892) called a "spiritual principle." Renan examined, one by one, geography, religion, race, military needs, and language before he concluded that none of these are sufficient to unite a people within a state. He found that a population sharing a state's territory must have a strong sense of a shared past and must expect to share a future, regardless of whether these experiences bring glory or grief. A sense of unity such as that nationalism brings, then, is often the psychological "glue" that holds an ethnically divided people together. Nationalism does not always succeed in this task, however.
Task 5. Answer the following questions:
What motives did the acquisition of colonies have?
Was a primary objective to enhance or to decrease the wealth of the colonizing states?
What empires could be encountered in the 1500s?
Europeans were able to dominate other lands and civilizations, weren’t they?
What was the second colonial period known as? Why did it pretend more than to achieve wealth and power?
Task 6. Here you have got five sentences. You have to put as many questions as possible. They must be of various types.
A primary objective was to enhance the wealth of the colonizing state in a different way.
During the second colonial period, Europeans were able to establish far-flung empires through two important technological developments.
The planet had become a single geopolitical unit involving European competition over trade and colonies.
In Europe, only Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia retained powerful monarchies by the time of the First World War.
The institution of conference diplomacy became well established in the nineteenth century.
Task 7. Translate the following phrases and words into English using the texts and learn them by heart:
Много мотивов, цель первостепенной важности, колониальный период, середина XIX столетия, государственная система, Африканское побережье, богатая палитра ресурсов, преобладать над другими странами, важные торговые пути, сферы влияния, получить богатство и власть, дух, «бремя белого человека», технологическое развитие, неисследованная Африка, груз, во имя престижа, успешные переговоры, демократическое самоуправление, победить в войне, взаимодействовать, защищать независимость, включать в себя, международный порядок, равенство.