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After 1894 the growth of liberalism and democracy was slowed and even halted;new mass politics led to changes that the liberals found unacceptable- they wereforced to move in new directions

New right-wing politics also entered; based on racism. Workers who elected

socialists also tried to make demands. Women also made demands for suffrage;authoritarian governments refuse the demands of reformers and the United Statesbecomes a growing power.

In 1830s women in Europe and the united states sought improvements for womenby focusing on family/marriage laws, which made divorce difficult and makehusbands have almost complete control over their wives property: but these effortsto improve were not too successful. They did not gain rights to property until 1870in Britain, 1900 in Germany and 1907 in France. Britain legalized divorce in 1857,while France only permitted a limited degree in 1884 and in Spain and Italy it wasstill illegal.

Women also tried to move into the professions of men (first to fall was teaching),e.g. medicine with the development of nursing; Amalie Sieveking who founded theFemale Association for the Care of the Poor and Sick in Hamburg, Germany; alsoFlorence Nightingale, who worked during the Crimean War and Clara Barton, in theAmerican Civil war, who transformed nursing onto a real profession of trained,middle-class women.

By 1840 and 1850 womens rights had entered the political arena; they believedthat suffrage was the key to all other reforms for equal rights. British womensmovement was the most vocal and active in Europe but they were divided into a

moderate group who believed in responsible use of political power (MillicentFawcett) and a radical group who tried to use media and unusual publicity stunts tocall attention to its demands (Emmeline Pankhurst: Womens Social and PoliticalUnion in 1903). The suffragists main aim was full citizenship for women

Demands for suffrage were heard throughout Europe and the US but only Finland,Norway and some US states allowed it before WWI; it was only after WWI that somegovernments capitulated.

Some women also supported peace movements such as the Austrian Peace Societywith Bertha von Suttner, who protested against the 1890s arms race ( Lay Down

Your Arms), and lower class women also took up this cause

Suttner was only one of the new women who rose to prevalence during about 1900;these new women renounced traditional feminine roles; they sought freedomoutside the household and roles other than wives and mothers

Maria Montessori was one of the new women; she attended med school at U. of Rome and became the first Italian woman with a medical degree; she developed a

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school for the mentally retarded and eventually Montessori schools popped up allover the US and Europe

Near the end of the nineteenth century, racism + extreme nationalism produced anew right-wing politics aimed at the Jews. After the French Revolution and the

Enlightenment, Jews were increasingly granted legal equality in European countries,and after the revolutions of 1848, emancipation became complete for Jews; theycould enter parliaments and universities and become scientists, bankers, lawyers,etc. etc.

However, Alfred Dreyfus was a different side of the issue: he was a Jewish captain inthe French general staff. A secret military court found him guilty of selling armysecrets; the mobs during his trial yelled Death to the Jews but after he wassentenced to life imprisonment he was proven innocent and he was exonerated in1906

In Austria, the Christian Socialists combined agitation for workers with anti-Semitism; led by Karl Lueger. Vienna became the home of a German nationalismthat blamed Jews for the corruption of German culture: Adolf Hitler said that he gothis worldview from Vienna

Germany had its right-wing anti-Semitic parties like Adolf Stockers Christian SocialWorkers; who used anti-Semitism to win the votes the lower classes- Germanydisallowed Jewish conversion to Christianity end even denied the citizenship of the

Jews. But after 1898 the political strength of the anti-Semitic parties began todecline

Eastern Europe treated the Jews the worst; Russian Jews were admitted tosecondary schools and universities only under a quota system and were forced tolive in certain regions of the country; Persecutions and pogroms resulted inhundreds of thousands of Jews emigrating to the US and Canada as well asPalestine, which resulted in a Jewish nationalist movement called Zionism.

Though emancipation brought new opportunities for Jews, it brought dilemmas forothers due to the disruption of traditional Jewish life; many of the Jews becameinfected with nationalism (Zionism) and tried to go back to Palestine: Theodor Herzl.yishuvs, settlements in Palestine, were funded by Jewish banking families but thiswas difficult because Palestine was still owned by the Ottomans; and eventually a

few thousand moved there; but nothing else happened by the start of WWI

By dealing with the new mass politics, liberal governments followed policies thatundermined true liberalism. In Great Britain Liberals had to reform and move awayfrom their ideals because of trade unions and the Labour Part

Trade unions called for more radical change of the econ. system; collectiveownership. Also a movement for laborers called the Fabian Socialists stressed the

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need for workers to use their voting rights to overtake the House of Commons andpass legislation that would benefit the working class. The Fabians and laborers thenamalgamated into the Labour Party and by 1906 they managed to elect 29members to the House of Commons.

The Liberals, who gained control of the House of Commons thought that they wouldhave to enact a program of social welfare to keep the workers support. This policyof reform was advanced by David Lloyd George. The liberals abandoned classicallaissez-faire and brought in a series of social reforms; adding job insurance andpension for retirees and workers compensation; to pay for this, Lloyd Georgeincreased taxes for the wealthy classes.