A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

798 Ch. 20 • Responses to a Changing World

tion with more than a quarter of a million signatures calling for reform. As
more occupations opened up to women, the campaign for women’s suffrage
widened. The International Women’s Suffrage Alliance encouraged orga­
nizations in a number of countries. A more militant group of feminists
undertook a campaign of direct action. Emmeline Pankhurst (1858—1928)
founded the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1903. Members

protested the lack of female suffrage by breaking shop windows on London’s
fashionable Oxford Street, tossing acid on golf putting greens (a sport then
identified with aristocratic British males), and bombing the house of Lib­
eral Party leader David Lloyd George (1863—1945). Other “suffragettes,”
as they were called, went on hunger strikes upon being arrested. In 1907,
British women gained the right to serve in local government. In the most
dramatic incident, a suffragette carrying a banner proclaiming “Votes for
Women” hurled herself in front of a horse owned by King George V at the
1913 Derby at Epsom Downs and was killed.

Cultural Ferment

Europeans had many reasons to be optimistic at the turn of the century.

Since the fall of Napoleon in 1815, Europe had enjoyed a relatively long

period of peace broken only by short wars with limited goals, including the

bloody Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). Literacy had risen rapidly, par­

ticularly in western and northern Europe. Nation-states, increasingly secu­

lar in character, commanded the loyalty of their populations. Advances in

science and technology were transforming the way people lived. The stan­

dard of living had generally risen, and, at least in most of Europe, white­

collar jobs provided hope of better things for more people. Furthermore,

somewhat shorter working hours for employees, including many workers,

left more time for leisure activities.

During the 1850s and 1860s, scientific progress and social change was

reflected in the emergence of realism as the dominant cultural style for

artists and writers. Then, beginning in the last decade of the nineteenth cen­

tury, more technological advances and the emergence of a more urban world

brought both a cultural crisis of previously unparalleled dimensions and

remarkable achievements in the arts. More scientific discoveries and new

theories about the functioning of the universe continued to tear away some

of the old certainties. Social scientists tried to find explanations for the work­

ing of society and the inner world of the individual. At the same time, some

writers and artists began to turn away from rationalism, materialism, and

positivism. In France, Henri Bergson (1859—1941) emerged as the philoso­

pher of irrationality. Challenging materialism and positivism, Bergson popu­

larized the idea that each individual and each nation had a creative “dynamic

energy,” or vital force (elan vital), waiting for release. The “modernist” culture

of the avant-garde turned against the century-old acceptance of rationality as