There were 5 to 6 generations (125 years) in the period between the French Revolution and the start of World War One in 1914.
In the previous post I described how middle classes evolved in Europe over that time. Those in the middle classes experienced higher overall living standards, far wider access to education, higher literacy levels, extension of the right to vote to all adult males, and due to hugely increased access to rail and sea transport, increased population dispersal and communication across the continent that would not have been possible in previous centuries.
Now it would be reasonable to expect that over those generations – and particularly after the upheavals of 1848 – the power of ordinary citizens in the (partially) democratic countries in Europe (at least outside of Russia) would have risen to the point where they’d at least have enough say in the running of the affairs of their countries to prevent a situation developing where tens of millions would be killed in horrific warfare in World War One (and World War Two that followed) in the 31 year span between 1914 and 1945.
Why, when the middle classes were garnering rights such as higher pay, shorter working hours, better housing and property rights, better literacy, welfare rights, medical and educational prospects, and equality in general, did they not include the right to life, or to put it another way, the right not to be killed in war?
The fact that they didn’t, or couldn’t (I believe anyway) speak volumes about where real power rested in society in Europe over the 125 years between 1789 and 1914 – and, in a way, continues to this day!
Now because the people who have most to lose in wars have least to gain from them, kings, queens and emperors throughout history told their subjects, (who were generally peasants with little or no education), that they (the kings and emperors that is) had God-like status and were pre-destined to be born into privilege and rank.
So convincing poor, uneducated people that they didn’t really have a right to life, and that they could be ordered to head off and die horrible deaths, and enslave and/or kill others in wars of conquest was relatively easy – it was achieved by a mixture of promise of material wealth from the new conquests and the fact that our God was happy with it.
And, as an aside, the material wealth was an illusion too. The rich and powerful know that the best way of staying rich – and getting richer – is to maintain the status quo. And if that means getting ordinary people in their countries, and particularly people who are poor and powerless, to fight and kill each other, so be it. (This is still going on).
Throughout centuries of colonial adventure, we, the enlightened Europeans, were spreading our God’s word to ignorant primitive peoples, enriching ourselves in the process, which was our right as we were superior, and God’s representative on Earth (our king or emperor) was carrying out his wishes.
Indeed, colonised populations in Africa and Asia were often referred to as the white man’s burden, further bolstering the belief in European countries that our brutal and unjust colonisation had a mandate from a Christian God, to convert those of other beliefs (pagans) to Christianity, and that the native people were the people with the problem, the problem being that they were of lesser intelligence and also ignorant of Christianity.
(In this respect, it is important to remember that the assumption that white people were superior to all other races, and entitled to more, including the right to enslave and/or eliminate other races at a whim if they got in the way of progress, began long before Nazism).
The same mandate from our Christian God was evident in our 1916 Proclamation of Independence which, though idealistic, well thought through and assertive, still, (to quote) placed the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no-one will dishonor it.
While God’s blessing on our weapons of death (arms) sounds very uplifting and noble to Irish ears, it is the same as the invoking of God to wage war for all sorts of reasons everywhere in Europe at that time – and nowadays the concept of Jihad, or Holy War in some Middle Eastern Countries.
And fast-forwarding to the 21st century, the extent of corporate closed-ness grooming is evident in the fact that we think that it’s okay that 4 or 5 so-called Superpowers throughout the world think that their population’s collective safety is enhanced by having weapons that could incinerate everyone in the world and destroy our planet many times over – and that those who oppose this kind of thinking are eccentric or even subversive – and dangerous to our security.
One wonders where ordinary peoples’ right to life is in all this!