Berkeley Model United Nations
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SIXTY-FIFTH SESSION hist BERKELEY MODEL UNITED NATIONS Introduction to Historical Crisis The history of the people in what is now known as Germany stretches back for thousands of years from the Germanic tribes that defeated the Romans to the incredible King Frederick I to the many intellectual and artistic achievements of the Northern Renaissance. However, we need to find a starting point for the committee background and I have chosen the Congress of Vienna because historians generally say it marks a turning point in Europe both politically and ideologically. The decisions made at the Congress literally and metaphorically set the stage for a nineteenth century that not only sees the unification of Germany but also Italy, and ultimately ends in the horror of World War I (or World War II if you’re willing to stretch the definition of “century”). However, in this committee you are charged with unifying Germany and that means more than conquering a certain area of land. It means creating a national sense of self and part of that is creating a national History, a narrative that helps define what a German is. So, although this synopsis will only focus on a 50-ish year span it will be good to have a vague idea of some medieval and ancient German history. 1 Historical Background Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) In 1789, the French people rebelled against King Louis XVI. The French revolutionaries had radical new ideas, like that all men are born free and have equal rights (French National Constituent Assembly). This belief led to them overthrowing the empowered elite of nobles and King Louis XVI and replacing it with a new government with officials elected by the common man (and I do mean man, women were still largely excluded from civic participation). This new democratically elected government that replaced the old order soon turned to violence when the Committee of Public Safety, headed by Maxime Robespierre, started questioning and executing hundreds of nobles. Robespierre’s self-described use of terror eventually turned on him and Robespierre was himself executed. Out of all this chaos rose a new, and in the minds of most Europeans, a far greater terror. In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in France. His armies swept across Europe conquering almost all of Western Europe until his defeat in 1814. The specific details of Napoleon’s rise and defeat, while interesting, are not that important to this committee. However, the rise and domination of Napoleon created two fears that would motivate the actions of the Congress of Vienna and many policy makers throughout the course of the nineteenth century. The first fear was that another country could rise to power and dominate all of Europe, like Napoleon’s France. So most of the territorial and diplomatic decisions made by the delegates at the congress were made to create a delicate balance of power in Western Europe. The Kingdom of the Netherlands was created to act as a buffer between the powerful and fearful army of 2 the French and Prussia. German speaking Saxony was split between the Prussia and the Austro Hungarian Empire. The idea was to unite smaller states to create more powerful states that wouldn’t be steamrolled by the grand powers of France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. This kept the great Continental powers in a tense but balanced geopolitical situation Perhaps the most important new organization that the Congress of Vienna created was the German Confederation. The German Confederation was an association of 39 states, the two biggest being parts of Prussia and Austria. The Confederation had no executive or judiciary body, but it did have a legislature where delegates of the participant states could vote on issues. However, this legislature had little actual authority. The structure of the Confederation was designed so that the member states could cooperate, but not work as one. Being the largest states, Prussia and Austria would dominate the German Confederation. But, after giving up claims to lands in German speaking areas in order to focus on claims in Northern Italy, Prussia was the most powerful physical presence in the Confederation. The creation of the German Confederation was largely a political decision made in part by foreign delegates who had little care for notions of uniting the German people, but it was still the first attempt to define Germaness. However, places not in the confederation were considered to be German and not all of the German Confederation was considered by anybody to be German. For example, the city of Trent, which is ethnically Italian, was part of the Confederation. The Confederation, a loose collection of a large number of people and countries, was an important piece of the fragile balance of power created by the Congress of Vienna. 3 The members of the Congress were also afraid of the rise of liberal ideas that caused the chaos of the French Revolution and the subsequent rise of Napoleon. Liberalism in the 18th and 19th century had a very different meaning than it does today. In the 19th century liberalism had radical ideas like all men are equal and therefore have the same rights under the law, regardless of religion or class. This idea, which is taken more or less for granted these days, was incredibly threatening to the ruling class of Europe. The way that Europe operated and had operated for a thousand years was that every person at each level of society had rights particular to their social class granted to them by God. For example, a king would have right to any land in his kingdom and be above the law. This attitude was best exemplified by Louis XIV declaration “ l’etat c’est moi’ (I am the state). Liberalism directly challenges that claim and therefore Louis XIV’s (and all subsequent King’s) power. Liberals believed that the power of the state is derived of the people and that all members of the state are subjected to the same laws and nobody has special privileges. This does not necessarily mean democracy as a constitutional monarchy would still be considered liberal. However, many members of the Congress of Vienna 4 feared that a rise of liberal ideas could result in losing their power and very possibly their lives. The leader of the anti-liberal (or conservative) movement in the Congress was Klemens von Metternich, the main architect of the balance of power (Eyck). The creation of strong states, besides serving ass buffer states, could also allow rulers to crush liberal movements wherever they arose, before they could spread to surrounding Kingdoms. The new order was quickly put to use. In 1819, after a popular playwright was assassinated by a radical liberal group, Metternich used the fear of liberalism to convince the newly formed German Confederation to pass a confederation wide series of rulings known as the Carlsbad decrees. Liberal and nationalist student groups were arrested. Inquisition bodies were established in order to weed out those with non- conservative values. Newspapers were put under censorship, but the sheer multitude of publications made true censorship impossible. For example, travelling carnivals that would move from town to town were hotbeds of nationalist tendencies with songs and acts that promoted German unity (Blackbourn). Despite the ruling elites best efforts liberalism and was growing. Industrialization (1800-1848) In the first half of the 19th century, the German Confederation went under huge economic, demographic and social changes. From 1800 to 1840 the population went from 24 million to 35 million people. This population increase was caused by an estimated doubling in the amount of food produced in that time period (Blackbourn). More people cultivated land and more animals were raised. But for the most part peasants survived on subsistence farming. The introduction of new crops like the 5 potato, which is calorie dense and will grow pretty much anywhere, made subsistence farming more profitable. This increase of profit allowed peasants to specialize in certain crops to a small degree. For example, in the 1820’s you begin to see the birth of towns with reputations for producing certain products. However, there wasn’t much of a population shift in terms of location. 75% of the population still lived in rural areas while the towns remained small. (Blackbourn) This created a class of vagabonds with no land looking for work. A large landless population is usually a necessary ingredient in industrializing. In the early 1800’s Germany was undergoing a process known as protoindustrialization. With more people at home and more money from increased crops people were able to make things at home rather than in large factories. By the 1850’s, Industrialization was in full swing. In Germany most of the industrial work was not getting done in huge factories of hundreds of people but rather it was done in small workshops of less than ten people. These small workshops still had a huge impact. In Prussia from 1850-1873 (committee starts in 1863) the overall economy grew 2.5%, coal production was up 800%, iron production went up 1400% and steel production went up a remarkable 5400%. These three goods were the drivers of industrialization. Coal provided the energy, iron the raw material and steel was strong enough to make new things like steel pipes or, more importantly to Prussian conquest, weapons. Though industrialization was making big changes, half of the population still worked in agriculture. With only half of the population working in agriculture, farmers had to produce more food to feed the half non-agricultural population. To make this increased quantity farmers were forced to specialize in certain goods that made farmers 6 livelihoods more tied to the market of whatever good they specialized in.