Question

1. What were three specific ways in which the concept of ‘social Darwinism’ shaped either late 19^th and early 20^th centuries’ European society, culture or politics?

             

2. Why can 1917 be viewed as the year that witnessed the decisive turning point of  the “Great War”? Discuss at least 2 significant points to support your answer.

Answer 1

1. Some sociologists and others picked up terms and concepts that Darwin used to characterize the biological universe, and applied them to their own concepts and hypotheses about the social world of man. Such Social Darwinists took up the language of evolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to construct an interpretation of the the gap between the rich and the poor as well as the many disparities between cultures all over the world.

Such social Darwinian vocabulary expanded into race and colonialism theories, eugenics, the alleged racial dominance of one group over another, and immigration law.
Some sociologists and political theorists turned to social darwinism to argue against government measures to support the poor, arguing that poverty was the product of inherent inferiority to be born out of the population.

Social Darwinism's pernicious values have influenced relationships between Americans and peoples of other nations. During the Second Industrial Revolution, when a large number of immigrants came to the United States, white, Anglo-Saxon Americans treated these refugees who differed from earlier immigrants in that they were less likely to speak English and more likely to be Catholic or Jewish rather than Protestant with disdain. Most whites claimed that these new immigrants, who came from Eastern or Southern Europe, were culturally inferior and therefore "less advanced" than those from Britain, Ireland or Germany.

2. Russia had fallen out of the war, despite the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Germany didn't have to fight a two-front war anymore, and now instead fought fighting on the western front. Everything looked fine for Germany now, but they made an awful mistake; the Zimmerman Note. This included the United States in the war, which eventually contributed to the defeat of Germany in 1918.