The story of modern progress : with a preliminary survey of earlier progress

Front matter

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ALLYN AND BACON'S SERIES OF SCHOOL HISTORIES

Foreword

My Modern History, of eighteen years ago, and its successor, The Modern World, taught insistently, and, for long in rather lonely fashion, the perils in Prussian militarism and autocracy. In 1902, when worship of Bismarckian "efficiency" was at its height in America and England, after presenting details, I ventured to sum up this matter thus (Modern History, page 477) :

The story of the making of Germany shows plainly enough that the process was one not merely of " blood and iron" but also of fraud and falsehood. It is hard to tell the story of such gigantic and successful audacity and craft without seeming to glorify it. . . . Bismarck's success has tended too, probably, to lower the tone of international morality ; and his policy of fraud and violence has left to Germany a legacy of burning questions which will grieve it long. The rule of the drill-sergeant and of the police officer, the hostility to the Empire felt by the Danes of Sleswig and the French of Alsace-Lorraine, the bitter jealousy between Prussia and Bavaria, and the immense armies of all Europe are among the results of his policy. It is too early yet to say that that policy is truly victorious}

Because of this anti-Prussianism, the book suffered heavily in the years before the war from both open and secret pro- German attacks. But when the war came, no hurried revision was necessary to justify the volume to American schools. Nor is any change of attitude on these matters needed now.

1 July 9, 1918, when the last German drive was still at its high tide of success, and Haig was fighting almost despairingly, "with our backs to the wall," the Kolnische Zeitung, in an exultant editorial, quoted this paragraph, and added :

"Don't think you are listening to Lloyd George or Wilson delivering one of their speeches dripping with hypocritical morality. No, this stuff is in a schoolbook of that country which we believed friendly to us ! Here are the roots of hatred to Germany. . . . We must change all this after the war."

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IV FOREWORD

But in all history textbooks there is now needed a change of emphasis and of distribution of time. The past six years bulk big ; and they throw searching light back over earlier years. For purposes of instruction, we must re-inventory all recent history. High-school classes will wish to give to the period since 1871 double the time which has been given heretofore. That means we must cut down somewhere else. The new two-book series, of which this is one volume, meets this need by moving forward several centuries the point at which serious study of Modern history is to begin.

At the same time, the Story of Modern Progress is not a revision of the Modern JVorld. I have taken glad advantage of the chance to write a new book, better suited, I hope, to elementary high-school students; and I have used the treatment in the Modem World only when I have found it simpler and clearer than any change I could make to-day.

Throughout, an unusual amount of space is given to English history. For American students a knowledge of that history is particularly essential. English history gains, however, by being presented, not in an insular way, but in its setting in the history of the continent of Europe. And time consideration makes this method more and more imperative. Seemingly, the high-school course in history' must content itself with three years. In that case, one year must go to a background of early human progress, down to the Reformation or later; a second year, to modern progress ; and the third, to American history and citizenship. But no such plan can meet the end desired, unless particular stress is placed in the second year upon England's part. With such arrangement, it is possible, I believe, to teach the valuable lessons of English history more emphatically, and with almost as much of detail, as in a separate year upon that isolated subject.

In any course, American history is sure of a place by itself. That is reason enough for omitting it in this volume, except where the connection of events demands its introduction. When

FOREWORD V

touched at all here, it is treatetl from the viewpoint of worlddevelopment, rather than from a restricted American position. The colonization of the seventeenth century is presented as an expansion of Europe, and especially of England, into New Worlds; the "Intercolonial Wars" of the eighteenth century are seen as part of the hundred-yiear struggle between France and England for world-empire and exclusive markets ; American industrial invention in the nineteenth century appears as part of the general Industrial Revolution ; the recent advance of America into world-polilics is presented as part of the new international relations and new trade relations that followed the partition of Africa and the opening of the Orient in the closing decades of the nineteenth century ; while the dominant attention given in these pages to America's part in the World W^ar, both in Europe and at home, corresponds merely to the new significance of our country in world development.

In my Modern World I gi\'e the first seventh of the book to a brief summary of earlier history. This has proved a popular and, I am assured, a helpful feature, and I use it again here. With the added five hundred years to be covered (including the supremely important Renaissance period), this introductory survey takes a sixth of the volume. It may be omitted, at the discretion of the instructor. If used, it may serve as a review of a first-year study. Or it may be used to give at least some background in a two-year history course concerned only with Modern and American history. Indeed, if high schools do find themselves forced to abandon their three-year history courses (for part of their students), some such feature in the text on Modern history becomes imperative. And even if the introductory survey is not used at all in class, it may perhaps still be justified as a means of convenient reference for the student. I have embodied in it here every historical event to which the later pages make any reference.

Long or short, the high-school course in history must leave no chasm between past and present. It must put the student

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into sympathetic touch with the social movements of to-day. It must give him robust interest in the world-struggle between democracy and reaction, in the "war upon poverty," in the threat of Socialism, and in the promise of labor organization. This volume will achieve its purpose if it helps x\merican youth, in this way, toward better citizenship.

Willis Mason West

. WiNDAGK) Farm

January 1, 1920

Table Of Contents

PAGE

1L.IST OF Illustrations xi

List of Maps xv

Part I. Age Of The Reformation, 1520-1648 Chapter

I. The Reformation upon the Continent . . .137

Lutheranism — Calvinism — the Counter-Reformation.

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CHAPTER PAGE

II. England and the Protestant Movement . . 153

III. A Century of Religious Wars .... 166

Spain and the Netherlands — Wars of the French Huguenots — the Thirty Years' War in Germany — Progress in Science.

Part II. England In The Seventeenth Century

IV. English Industry in 1600 181

V. Puritan England — under the First Two Stuarts 186

VI. The Great Rebellion and the Commonwealth . 201 VII. The Restoration and the Revolution of 1688 . 207 With excursus on development of cabinet government into the 18th century.

VIII. Expansion into New Worlds 217

Part III. The Age Of Louis XIV And Frederick II, 1648-1789

IX. French Leadership 229

X. Rise of Russia 235

XL Prussia in Europe — England in New Worlds 240

Part IV. The French Revolution

XII. On the Eve 252

The Abuses — the Spirit of Change — the Government's Attempts at Reform.

XIII. The Revolution before Foreign Intervention,

1789-1791 269

XIV. The Approach of War — Despots against Peoples 283 XV. The Revolution in War, 1792-1799 . . .288

Fall of the Monarchy and the Girondists — Jacobin Rule — The Directory.

XVI. The Rise of Napoleon 305

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CHAPTER

XVII. The Consulate, 1799-1804 .

XVIII. The French Empire, 1804-1814 .

PAGE

310 314

Part V. Reaction, 1815-1848

XIX. The Congress of Vienna 327

XX. Central Europe to 1820 334

XXI. The South of Europe — Revolutions of 1820 340

XXII. France and the Revolutions of 1830 . . 347

Part VI. England And The Industrial Revolution

XXIII. The Revolution in Methods of Work . . 352

XXIV. The Revolution in the Lives of the Workers 370 XXV. The Revolution in Ideas about Government 381

Part VII. Continental Europe, 1848-1871

XXVI. The Revolution of 1848 385

In France — in Central Europe (Austrian Empire, Germany, Italy).

XXVII. Western Europe from 1848 to 1871 . . 402

The Second Empire in France — the Making of Italy — the Making of Germany.

Part VIII. England, 1815-1914

XXVIII. The "First Reform Bill," 1832

XXIX. Political Reform in the Victorian Age

XXX. Social Reform in the Victorian Age

XXXI. England and the Irish Question

XXXII. English Colonies and Dependencies

XXXIII. Recent Reform in England to 1914

425 439 450 460 465 478

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTEK

XXXIV.

Part IX. Western Europe, 1871-1914 Page

France : Close of the Franco-Prussian War 485

XXXV. Establishment of the Third Republic, 1871

XXXVI. France under the Third Republic, to 1914

XXXVII. The German Empire, 1871-1918 .

XXXVIII. Italy since 1870

XXXIX. The Small States of Western Europe

XL. Switzerland

XLI. Expansion of Europe into Africa and Asia

XLII. The Promise of a New Age in 1914 .

Part X. Slav Europe To 1914

XLIII. Russia

XLIV. The Balkans : The Seed-plot for War

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