Historical Ideologies - AP European History

Niccolo Machiavelli's 1513 treatise The Prince described how a ruler should maintain political power. Prior to Machiavelli, political theory typically described how rulers ought to rule based on specific moral and Christian principles. In The Prince, Machiavelli instead advocates for a more realistic mode of governance not restricted by such lofty concerns.

Quotation adapted from The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (1513; trans. Mariott 1908)

The Annales School of historiography developed in the first half of the twentieth century in France and is widely influential to the study of history to this day. It focuses on a long-term and comprehensive analysis of historical trends, particularly social and economic history, with a view to finding simple solutions to historical conundrums.

These two historical theories are each predicated on the West viewing the East through the lenses of racism and supposedly inherent Western superiority. Eurocentric interpretations of history give inordinate focus to European events, traditions, and interpretations of society in a global context, and Orientalist works eroticize the East and portray it as backwards and/or exotic.

Social Darwinism was an interpretation of the theory of natural selection that emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century. Social Darwinism essentially maintains that in human populations, just like in animal populations, natural selection is at work and only the fittest, smartest, and strongest will survive. It provided a convenient excuse for the abuses committed during the New Imperialism era, as it allowed European intellectuals to claim "natural superiority" over other races and defend their otherwise morally reprehensible actions. Of course, Social Darwinism was not universally propounded in this time period, but in the years since, it has come to be widely associated with Herbert Spencer. Spencer was one of the most famous philosophers of his time and an ardent believer in the benefits of competition.

The Enlightenment was in compliment to the Scientific Revolution. Where the Scientific Revolution catered to the "hard sciences" of math, chemistry, and physics, the Enlightenment brought about a major influx of people to the "soft sciences" of philosophy and social science. The major figures of the Enlightenment focused most of their work around the lives and social constructs of people.

Marxist history is based on the belief that history is one constant struggle between the economic classes. Marxist history considers factors like nationality, religious affiliation, ethnicity, and so on to be secondary to the competition between the classes, particularly the competition between the producers (the working class), the consumers (the middle class), and the owners (the upper class). It is based on the writings of Karl Marx.

The quotation reflects the central tenet of utilitarianism, the core philosophy of the extremely influential British thinker and social reformer Jeremy Bentham. Bentham’s philosophy holds that society, and by extension government, should work towards providing the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people possible. This is the core component of Bentham’s leading philosophy, utilitarianism. Bentham was considered a radical in his time; he advocated for, among other things, economic liberty, individualism, equal rights for women, the abolition of slavery, decriminalization of homosexuality, animal rights, and extensive social welfare.

Quotation adapted from Fragment on Government by Jeramy Bentham (1776)

The Chartist movement gained its name from the People's Charter of 1838, which was a large-scale petition effort that found particular success among the burgeoning working classes of Britain's expanding industrial cities. The Chartists fought for Parliamentary reform, as they believed that the previous century's reforms did not go far enough. The Charter contained six specific points about Parliamentary elections: universal male suffrage, a secret ballot, no property requirements for members of parliament, equal parliamentary constituencies, and annual parliamentary elections.

Absolutism, as exemplified by rulers such as Louis XIV of France, was a movement toward political centralization in Europe. As trade from overseas imperial holdings and expensive, gunpowder dependent-armies grew in importance, they increasingly transferred an edge to the crown in the old feudal struggles. Absolute rulers curbed the rights and privileges granted to smaller feudal nobles, and as a result contributed to the general breakdown of local variation and the rise of nationalism within Europe.

The ideology of Jacobitism was first and foremost centered on returning the male Stuart line to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland. While this touched on issues of religion (all the Stuart pretenders were Catholic and England and Scotland were officially Protestant) and saw its greatest support in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland, Jacobitism's only real unifying element was loyalty to the Stuart line.

The Hegelian Dialectic, developed by German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, states that in every historical time period there is a prevailing thesis and an opposing antithesis that compete for control and that eventually merge to form a “synthesis.” According to Hegel, this “synthesis” is then carried forwards as the dominant “thesis” (paradigm) of the next time period, where the process repeats itself. The Hegelian Dialectic has been massively influential in the fields of philosophy and cultural criticism.

In the years leading up to World War II, the militarization of Germany in conjunction with Hitler’s expansionist and racist rhetoric caused alarm throughout the nations of Europe. On the other hand, most governments were also heavily opposed to preemptively striking against Hitler and wanted to avoid war at all costs. The policy of appeasement conceded that it was better to give in to Hitler’s simpler demands if it preserved Europe's tenuous peace. The hands-off approach of appeasement led to the annexation of the Sudetenland (a German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia). Neville Chamberlain was the British Prime Minister at the time, and who was among the strongest advocates of the policy. Seeing that appeasement had failed as a policy, Chamberlain resigned his office shortly after the beginning of the war.

Romanticism, as an literary movement, emerged in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It was primarily focused on celebrating human emotions and the qualities of human nature. Early Romantic poets, most notably William Wordsworth, also emphasized a return to the common speech of lower-class people, as opposed to higher-flown "poetic" or courtly language. Romanticism sought to take the emphasis away from logic and scientific inquiry, and focus instead on the natural beauty of humanity and the world.

Slavs were one of the dominant ethnic groups in Eastern and Southern Europe and were ruled by the Austro-Hungarian empire throughout much of the nineteenth century. The rising influence of nationalism in this time period led to the Slavic people campaigning for self-government. Ultimately, however, two competing schools of thought emerged: Austro-Slavism, which sought to have the Slavic people protected by the might of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Pan-Slavism, which sought an independent Slavic state under the protection of the Russian Empire.

The Hegelian Dialectic says that in every time period there is a competing thesis and antithesis, and that these two forces eventually merge to form a “synthesis.” This “synthesis” is then carried forward to the next time period and the process begins again. Karl Marx, in his Communist Manifesto, attempted to apply the Hegelian Dialectic to the struggle between the economic classes in the nineteenth century. For Marx, the competing thesis and antithesis were capitalism and communism.

Existentialism arose originally as an offshoot of the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Existentialism holds that the universe as a whole is meaningless, and that the responsibility rests with the individual for giving meaning to his or her life and the world around him or her. Existentialism was advocated for and popularized by figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus in the mid-twentieth century. Sartre was among the most notable advocates of existentialism as a movement, in part because his works included both creative treatments of the philosophical tennets of the movement (in novels and plays) and academic explanations of these ideas.

Nihilism is the belief that life is essentially meaningless, particularly that religion, morality, and spirituality are fundamentally meaningless. Nihilists believe that even if meaning were to exist, it would be impossible to communicate this meaning between humans. As a philosophical tradition, Nihilism dates back to the ancient Greeks (most notably Gorgias). Many influential philosophers, if not full Nihilists, were substantially influenced by nihilistic thinking, including Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre, among many others.

Zionism first emerged in the late nineteenth century and picked up steam in the first few decades of the twentieth century. Zionists wanted a Jewish homeland, ideally located in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration, signed by the British government in 1917, promised to help provide a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This promise was eventually carried out after World War II, with the creation of Israel in 1948.

Fascism arose in the early nineteenth century and took power in Italy and Spain. Nazism is sometimes included under the umbrella of fascism and sometimes not; it depends on which historian you ask. The heart of the debate lies, basically, in the question of whether or not nazism is its own ideology, or a sub-category of fascism. In a fascist state, the rights of the workers are subjugated to the interests of nationalism and corporations. Fascism values nationalism and industry over any individual human rights.

Neocolonialism refers to the belief that colonialism never really came to an end. They argue that after World War II, and during the Cold War, the European powers stopped dominating nations with their military and instead dominated them economically through corporate and financial institutions and political pressure. Neocolonialism acknowledges the role of the military-industrial complex in the complicated nexus of financial and political measures used to exert pressure on weaker nations, but it sees the military itself as a small cog in the much larger, more complex machine of financial and political domination exerted by richer nations.