Western Civilization - History Of European Society

518Chapter 26

gradual democratization existed in many of the smaller

states of western Europe. In Belgium, for example, a pe-

riod of reform in the 1890s led to the direct election of

the upper house of Parliament—a reform comparable

to French democratization of the Senate in the 1880s

and to the British restriction of the House of Lords in

1911. In 1899 Belgium became one of the European pi-
      oneers of proportional representation, an advanced
      form of democratic election in which smaller parties
      and minorities had a greater chance of being elected. In
      Scandinavia, the trend toward democracy was even
      stronger. Norway, which became independent from
      Sweden in a peaceful agreement of 1905, adopted uni-
      versal manhood suffrage and a pioneering form of
      women’s suffrage in 1907. The Swedes also adopted
      universal manhood suffrage and the Finns, women’s suf-

frage. Even Ottoman Turkey received a constitution

from the Sultan, creating a bicameral legislature, in

1876; Turkish democracy, like German or Russian

democracy, was limited yet a dramatic advance from

the government of earlier generations.

The pattern of evolving democracy could not hide

many European political problems, however. National-

ism was perhaps the most severe, troubling govern-

ments across Europe—from the Irish question in Britain

to the Polish problem in Russia and Pan-Slavic nation-

alism in the Balkans. No government faced a more

severe challenge than the dual monarchy of Austria-

Hungary, which had emerged from the Ausgleichof

1867. This empire was an anachronism in 1900, a
      multinational state held together by historic obedience
      to the Habsburg monarchy (see map 26.2). According

A

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INCIPALITIES

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AUSTRIA

UPPER

AUSTRIA

SALZBURG

CARINTHIA

ISTRIA CROATIA-SLAVONIA

BOSNIA

HERZE-

GOVINA

TRANSYLVANIA

BUKOVINA

GALICIA

RUSSIA

STY HUNGARY

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Budapest

Vienna

Belgrade

Prague

0 100 200 Miles

0 100 200 300 Kilometers

Germans

Poles

Croats

Czechs

Serbs

Italians

Little Russians

Magyars

Romanians

Slovaks

Slovenes

Boundary between

Austria and Hungary

MAP 26.2

Ethnic Groups in Austria-Hungary