Age Of Hatred
History
Spring Semester 2015
The Age of Hatred
Authors
BV
NM
SR
TB
Introduction
This essay 's purpose is to investigate the causes of violence in the twentieth century. To do so,
Niall Ferguson 's The War of the World, History 's Age of Hatred was used as a basis for research.
Afterwards, it was complemented with different points of view from other authors such as Mazower,
Kershaw, Berghan and Hobsbawm, who trace similar roots to the unprecedented brutality.
The focus of this essay is mainly on events like modernization, economic volatility, different ideologies, religion and the fall of empires, given that several authors share the belief that these circumstances triggered - or at least had a huge role in - the violence in this era.
As …show more content…
we will see in this essay and as Yehudi Menuhim stressed, the twentieth century “raised the greatest hopes ever conceived by Humanity, and destroyed all illusions and ideals”1.
The Age of Hatred
The age of hatred. That is how Niall Ferguson describes the century known as the bloodiest in the modern history and “far more violent in relative as well as absolute terms than any other previous era”2. But what are the reasons for such outstanding levels of violence in the twentieth century?
During that period, many countries experienced significant progress in their economies, health, science and politics. People lived longer and better than ever with more free time and welfare.
Nevertheless, they were not omitted from the waves of strong violence and mass murder. Ferguson argues that such a murderous time cannot be simply explained by the class conflicts, the destructiveness of weaponry, the political fervor or the emergence of nation states. His theory is clear and lies in three different reasons: ethnic conflict, economic volatility and empires in decline.
With the advent of divisions of labor, people became less mobile and civilized settlements started to appear. Yet, intermixed populations are perfectly subjected to the existence of minorities, which leads to possible friction, strife, expulsion or even one-sided massacres. In Ferguson’s opinion, these advanced processes of assimilation might have been the prelude to the vilest ethnic violence that happened in 1940s in Central and Eastern Europe.
Secondly, Ferguson argues that the tensions resulting from ethnic conflicts were amplified by the economic volatility that the major industrialized economies experienced in that century. The twentieth century’s economic unpredictability caused strong changes in people’s behavior and created incentives for the majorities to pass the burdens of adjustment on to the minorities. Therefore, causing social conflict to further intensify.
The twentieth century violence was also in large part a consequence of the fall of the empires that were dominant in 1900. When empires fall, the economic order that they have created is questioned and the ones who contributed to their power are left vulnerable to retaliations. As western empires started
to fall, the Asian societies began to modernize themselves and challenge the Western power. Sadly, the ascendance of the Asian empires could not have been achieved without conflicts.
In the end, Ferguson reinforces his idea stating that “the reorientation of the world could not have been, and was not, achieved without conflict”3.
It is definitely crucial to analyze the reasons why a century with so much progress was so disturbed by massive violence. Even though Niall Ferguson points out some of the possible reasons for those superb levels of brutality, there are still other points of view that deserve our attention.
Modernization process: too fast, too furious
There are various books written on the subject of the twentieth century and many of the authors share some of Ferguson’s arguments. One of those mutual arguments is the existence of minorities and ethnicity. The sociologist Michael Mann, for instance, defends that the entry of different ethnicities in
Europe created conflicts, which was first noticed in the colonization as the colonies started to assimilate the European culture. As liberalism grew stronger in Europe, the states tried to undermine ethnic differences through the institutionalization of social classes. Thus, they interpreted differences not as being related to ethnicity but as contending “interests”. Nonetheless, in the early twentieth century, new ideologies such as nationalism generated movements that had the main objective of giving control of states to one prevailing ethnicity. All things considered, Mann refers that the ethnically-mixed territories allowed the majorities to become confident of their power and move into the direction of serious discrimination and even worse, the cleansing out of groups4. It is possible to illustrate this topic with reference to well-known cases such as the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe5.
Although Ferguson looks closely at the impact of ethnic conflicts, he does not address the modernization that took place in the twentieth century and worked as a way of further intensifying ethnic conflicts. As Norman Naimark puts it “ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century is a product of the most
‘advanced’ stage in the development of the modern state” 6. Albeit the engagement of the state and bureaucracy in banishing ethnic differences go centuries back, it was during the twentieth century, more specifically, during the First World War that was elevated to worldwide proportions.
Kershaw also argues that the modernity seen in the twentieth century constituted a great complement to the already violent environment. Thus, the improvement in bureaucracy, planning, science and technology helped to structure, organize and amplify violence. For instance, for the expansion of Nazi ideology all the organizational structures were necessary7.
The roots of evil
Although a subjective topic, the impact of religion in the twentieth century’s violence is still worth discussing. Paul Johnson, who is a conservative Catholic, has a contrary opinion when referring to the reasons for brutality8. He defends that the “evils” of the twentieth century appear as a consequence of the replacement of the traditional Judeo-Christian values with secular ideologies. That is, Johnson`s opinion about this period is related to religious and traditional issues. As religion lost its power and
Einstein’s theory of relativity in 1919 allowed moral relativism to grow stronger, mankind’s “roots of evil” started to show, decreasing the resistance to the use of violence as a way of imposing one’s ideas.
Ferguson does not agree with this point of view, as he has said in an article that “the rise of new ideologies or the decline of old values cannot be regarded as causes of violence in their own right”9.
He also defends that extreme belief systems had existed for a long time without being correlated to violence. From 8 to 80 and back again to 8
Economic volatility can certainly have strong consequences in social dynamism. During the twentieth century, as economies became more exposed to capitalism and states started to intervene more constantly in economic life, minorities were targeted to carry most of the burden of adjustment that was unevenly distributed among social classes.
Hobsbawm, in his book The Age of Extremes, looks at the impact of economic instability in a different way. In his book, he divides the so-called “short twentieth century” into three different periods that correspond to the century’s three economic cycles: Age of Catastrophe (1914-1945), Golden Age
(1945-1973) and the Landslide (1973-1991). This logical division is a proof of the importance of economics in the events that took place thereafter10.
In the Age of Catastrophe, the historian highlights the large effect that the Great Depression had in the strengthening of fascism. By looking at the period after the First World War, it is possible to see that as countries found difficulty in recovering economically from the war, they were put in an even more vulnerable position after the arrival of the Great Depression. This economic crisis aligned with the previous political instability made people reluctant about the advantages of liberalism. Thus, further contributing to the rejection of liberalism and making space for fascism to emerge, which would culminate in the Second World War.
The Golden Age, in which Europe entered a phase of unprecedented expansion was marked by the “long boom” which lasted for twenty five years and caused a rapid expansion of capitalism and output - world manufacturers’ output rose by four times between 1950 and 1970 - while international trade multiplied tenfold. The problem was not economic growth, but the distribution of wealth. Those who were in the relatively stagnant economic sectors of the economy would get the short end of the
stick while the few winners would profit from economic growth11. Here, inequality gives inevitable rise to political conflicts, which in turn applies pressure on ideologies to fix the problem12.
Ideologies that disrupted the world
Even though Ferguson does not assess the impact of ideologies as intensifiers of violence, the fact that they gained power in the twentieth century also played an important role as they blended in with the popular sovereignty. In Europe, as ideologies grew stronger, the mixed settlements were the main target of increasing pressure and violence. This is a topic discussed by many authors, namely
Berghahn, Kershaw and Mazower13. They mention ideologies such as liberalism, nationalism (including colonial imperialism and Nazism), socialism and soviet communism. For instance, in the book War and
Political Violence in the Twentieth Century, British historian and Professor Sir Ian Kershaw mentions the three main ideological currents that arose in the nineteenth century – nationalist thinking, colonial imperialism, and socialism – as a possible reason for the waves of violence during the twentieth century.
Hobsbawm in his book Age of Extremes also emphasizes the political causes of violence in this period and stresses the failure of the state, communism and capitalism.
Regarding nationalist thinking, Sir Ian Kershaw states that the ideology had its consequences in the First World War, after Europeans started to increase pressure upon minorities because of their feelings of superiority. On the other hand, the contribution of the imperialist thinking started from the moment that European powers began to repress colonies, even though they had non-violent behavior in their own nations. Socialism, which was based on an ideal of equality ended up having great influence in the use of terror by Lenin in Russia, as he used the doctrine of ends justifying means14.
Conclusion
Ferguson theorizes that the three main causes for violence in the twentieth century arose from the three E’s: ethnic conflict, economic volatility and empires in decline. However, the author leaves out important features, in which other authors seem to agree upon. Ferguson explained in great detail the decline of empires as an important aspect in this era. Nevertheless, he fails to mention other points such as modernization as an amplifier of ethnic conflict and ideologies as playing a role in the process.
In conclusion, we can observe that each author has a different explanation for the occurrence of such violence and it is necessary to complement their works to better understand the period in question.
However, one point seems to be recognized by all - the brutality in Europe was not accidental, but a developmental phase in the history of the continent. All in all, not only is important to recognize the large number of features that led to violence in the twentieth century but also to understand their dynamics and outcomes.
Bibliography
1
Hobsbawn, Eric, 2004, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, Abacus Publishing, …show more content…
London.
2
Ferguson, Niall, 2006, The War of the World: History 's Age of Hatred, Allen Lane, London, p.xxxiv
3
Ferguson, Niall, 2006, The War of the World: History 's Age of Hatred, Allen Lane, London, p.lxix
4
Mann, M., 2005, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Mazower, Mark, 2002, ‘Violence and the State in the Twentieth Century’, The American Historical
Review, Vol.
107, No. 4, pp. 1158-1178.
5
6
Naimark, Norman M., 2001, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic cleansing in twentieth-century Europe, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge.
Kershaw, Ian, 2005, ‘War and Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe’, Contemporary
7
European History, Contemporary European History, Vol. 14, Issue 01, pp. 107-123.
8
Johnson, Paul, 1992, Modern Times, Harper Perennial, New York.
Ferguson, N., 2006, ‘The Next World of War’, in Foreign Affairs, viewed 21 March 2015, from http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61916/niall-ferguson/the-next-war-of-the-world 9
10
Hobsbawn, Eric, 2004, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, Abacus Publishing,
London.
11
Ferguson, Niall, 2006, The War of the World: History 's Age of Hatred, Allen Lane, London.
12
Piketty, T., 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
13
Bloxham, Donald & Gerwarth, Robert, 2011, Political violence in the Twentieth century Europe,
Cambridge University Press, New York.
Kershaw, Ian, 2005, ‘War and Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe’, Contemporary
European History, Vol. 14, Issue 01, pp. 107-123.
14
Spring Semester 2015
The Age of Hatred
Authors
BV
NM
SR
TB
Introduction
This essay 's purpose is to investigate the causes of violence in the twentieth century. To do so,
Niall Ferguson 's The War of the World, History 's Age of Hatred was used as a basis for research.
Afterwards, it was complemented with different points of view from other authors such as Mazower,
Kershaw, Berghan and Hobsbawm, who trace similar roots to the unprecedented brutality.
The focus of this essay is mainly on events like modernization, economic volatility, different ideologies, religion and the fall of empires, given that several authors share the belief that these circumstances triggered - or at least had a huge role in - the violence in this era.
As …show more content…
we will see in this essay and as Yehudi Menuhim stressed, the twentieth century “raised the greatest hopes ever conceived by Humanity, and destroyed all illusions and ideals”1.
The Age of Hatred
The age of hatred. That is how Niall Ferguson describes the century known as the bloodiest in the modern history and “far more violent in relative as well as absolute terms than any other previous era”2. But what are the reasons for such outstanding levels of violence in the twentieth century?
During that period, many countries experienced significant progress in their economies, health, science and politics. People lived longer and better than ever with more free time and welfare.
Nevertheless, they were not omitted from the waves of strong violence and mass murder. Ferguson argues that such a murderous time cannot be simply explained by the class conflicts, the destructiveness of weaponry, the political fervor or the emergence of nation states. His theory is clear and lies in three different reasons: ethnic conflict, economic volatility and empires in decline.
With the advent of divisions of labor, people became less mobile and civilized settlements started to appear. Yet, intermixed populations are perfectly subjected to the existence of minorities, which leads to possible friction, strife, expulsion or even one-sided massacres. In Ferguson’s opinion, these advanced processes of assimilation might have been the prelude to the vilest ethnic violence that happened in 1940s in Central and Eastern Europe.
Secondly, Ferguson argues that the tensions resulting from ethnic conflicts were amplified by the economic volatility that the major industrialized economies experienced in that century. The twentieth century’s economic unpredictability caused strong changes in people’s behavior and created incentives for the majorities to pass the burdens of adjustment on to the minorities. Therefore, causing social conflict to further intensify.
The twentieth century violence was also in large part a consequence of the fall of the empires that were dominant in 1900. When empires fall, the economic order that they have created is questioned and the ones who contributed to their power are left vulnerable to retaliations. As western empires started
to fall, the Asian societies began to modernize themselves and challenge the Western power. Sadly, the ascendance of the Asian empires could not have been achieved without conflicts.
In the end, Ferguson reinforces his idea stating that “the reorientation of the world could not have been, and was not, achieved without conflict”3.
It is definitely crucial to analyze the reasons why a century with so much progress was so disturbed by massive violence. Even though Niall Ferguson points out some of the possible reasons for those superb levels of brutality, there are still other points of view that deserve our attention.
Modernization process: too fast, too furious
There are various books written on the subject of the twentieth century and many of the authors share some of Ferguson’s arguments. One of those mutual arguments is the existence of minorities and ethnicity. The sociologist Michael Mann, for instance, defends that the entry of different ethnicities in
Europe created conflicts, which was first noticed in the colonization as the colonies started to assimilate the European culture. As liberalism grew stronger in Europe, the states tried to undermine ethnic differences through the institutionalization of social classes. Thus, they interpreted differences not as being related to ethnicity but as contending “interests”. Nonetheless, in the early twentieth century, new ideologies such as nationalism generated movements that had the main objective of giving control of states to one prevailing ethnicity. All things considered, Mann refers that the ethnically-mixed territories allowed the majorities to become confident of their power and move into the direction of serious discrimination and even worse, the cleansing out of groups4. It is possible to illustrate this topic with reference to well-known cases such as the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe5.
Although Ferguson looks closely at the impact of ethnic conflicts, he does not address the modernization that took place in the twentieth century and worked as a way of further intensifying ethnic conflicts. As Norman Naimark puts it “ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century is a product of the most
‘advanced’ stage in the development of the modern state” 6. Albeit the engagement of the state and bureaucracy in banishing ethnic differences go centuries back, it was during the twentieth century, more specifically, during the First World War that was elevated to worldwide proportions.
Kershaw also argues that the modernity seen in the twentieth century constituted a great complement to the already violent environment. Thus, the improvement in bureaucracy, planning, science and technology helped to structure, organize and amplify violence. For instance, for the expansion of Nazi ideology all the organizational structures were necessary7.
The roots of evil
Although a subjective topic, the impact of religion in the twentieth century’s violence is still worth discussing. Paul Johnson, who is a conservative Catholic, has a contrary opinion when referring to the reasons for brutality8. He defends that the “evils” of the twentieth century appear as a consequence of the replacement of the traditional Judeo-Christian values with secular ideologies. That is, Johnson`s opinion about this period is related to religious and traditional issues. As religion lost its power and
Einstein’s theory of relativity in 1919 allowed moral relativism to grow stronger, mankind’s “roots of evil” started to show, decreasing the resistance to the use of violence as a way of imposing one’s ideas.
Ferguson does not agree with this point of view, as he has said in an article that “the rise of new ideologies or the decline of old values cannot be regarded as causes of violence in their own right”9.
He also defends that extreme belief systems had existed for a long time without being correlated to violence. From 8 to 80 and back again to 8
Economic volatility can certainly have strong consequences in social dynamism. During the twentieth century, as economies became more exposed to capitalism and states started to intervene more constantly in economic life, minorities were targeted to carry most of the burden of adjustment that was unevenly distributed among social classes.
Hobsbawm, in his book The Age of Extremes, looks at the impact of economic instability in a different way. In his book, he divides the so-called “short twentieth century” into three different periods that correspond to the century’s three economic cycles: Age of Catastrophe (1914-1945), Golden Age
(1945-1973) and the Landslide (1973-1991). This logical division is a proof of the importance of economics in the events that took place thereafter10.
In the Age of Catastrophe, the historian highlights the large effect that the Great Depression had in the strengthening of fascism. By looking at the period after the First World War, it is possible to see that as countries found difficulty in recovering economically from the war, they were put in an even more vulnerable position after the arrival of the Great Depression. This economic crisis aligned with the previous political instability made people reluctant about the advantages of liberalism. Thus, further contributing to the rejection of liberalism and making space for fascism to emerge, which would culminate in the Second World War.
The Golden Age, in which Europe entered a phase of unprecedented expansion was marked by the “long boom” which lasted for twenty five years and caused a rapid expansion of capitalism and output - world manufacturers’ output rose by four times between 1950 and 1970 - while international trade multiplied tenfold. The problem was not economic growth, but the distribution of wealth. Those who were in the relatively stagnant economic sectors of the economy would get the short end of the
stick while the few winners would profit from economic growth11. Here, inequality gives inevitable rise to political conflicts, which in turn applies pressure on ideologies to fix the problem12.
Ideologies that disrupted the world
Even though Ferguson does not assess the impact of ideologies as intensifiers of violence, the fact that they gained power in the twentieth century also played an important role as they blended in with the popular sovereignty. In Europe, as ideologies grew stronger, the mixed settlements were the main target of increasing pressure and violence. This is a topic discussed by many authors, namely
Berghahn, Kershaw and Mazower13. They mention ideologies such as liberalism, nationalism (including colonial imperialism and Nazism), socialism and soviet communism. For instance, in the book War and
Political Violence in the Twentieth Century, British historian and Professor Sir Ian Kershaw mentions the three main ideological currents that arose in the nineteenth century – nationalist thinking, colonial imperialism, and socialism – as a possible reason for the waves of violence during the twentieth century.
Hobsbawm in his book Age of Extremes also emphasizes the political causes of violence in this period and stresses the failure of the state, communism and capitalism.
Regarding nationalist thinking, Sir Ian Kershaw states that the ideology had its consequences in the First World War, after Europeans started to increase pressure upon minorities because of their feelings of superiority. On the other hand, the contribution of the imperialist thinking started from the moment that European powers began to repress colonies, even though they had non-violent behavior in their own nations. Socialism, which was based on an ideal of equality ended up having great influence in the use of terror by Lenin in Russia, as he used the doctrine of ends justifying means14.
Conclusion
Ferguson theorizes that the three main causes for violence in the twentieth century arose from the three E’s: ethnic conflict, economic volatility and empires in decline. However, the author leaves out important features, in which other authors seem to agree upon. Ferguson explained in great detail the decline of empires as an important aspect in this era. Nevertheless, he fails to mention other points such as modernization as an amplifier of ethnic conflict and ideologies as playing a role in the process.
In conclusion, we can observe that each author has a different explanation for the occurrence of such violence and it is necessary to complement their works to better understand the period in question.
However, one point seems to be recognized by all - the brutality in Europe was not accidental, but a developmental phase in the history of the continent. All in all, not only is important to recognize the large number of features that led to violence in the twentieth century but also to understand their dynamics and outcomes.
Bibliography
1
Hobsbawn, Eric, 2004, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, Abacus Publishing, …show more content…
London.
2
Ferguson, Niall, 2006, The War of the World: History 's Age of Hatred, Allen Lane, London, p.xxxiv
3
Ferguson, Niall, 2006, The War of the World: History 's Age of Hatred, Allen Lane, London, p.lxix
4
Mann, M., 2005, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Mazower, Mark, 2002, ‘Violence and the State in the Twentieth Century’, The American Historical
Review, Vol.
107, No. 4, pp. 1158-1178.
5
6
Naimark, Norman M., 2001, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic cleansing in twentieth-century Europe, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge.
Kershaw, Ian, 2005, ‘War and Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe’, Contemporary
7
European History, Contemporary European History, Vol. 14, Issue 01, pp. 107-123.
8
Johnson, Paul, 1992, Modern Times, Harper Perennial, New York.
Ferguson, N., 2006, ‘The Next World of War’, in Foreign Affairs, viewed 21 March 2015, from http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61916/niall-ferguson/the-next-war-of-the-world 9
10
Hobsbawn, Eric, 2004, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, Abacus Publishing,
London.
11
Ferguson, Niall, 2006, The War of the World: History 's Age of Hatred, Allen Lane, London.
12
Piketty, T., 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
13
Bloxham, Donald & Gerwarth, Robert, 2011, Political violence in the Twentieth century Europe,
Cambridge University Press, New York.
Kershaw, Ian, 2005, ‘War and Political Violence in Twentieth-Century Europe’, Contemporary
European History, Vol. 14, Issue 01, pp. 107-123.
14