Outline of 
Roberts, A History of Europe
Book Five - Part I

IV. Crumbling foundations

1."The Great War fell on cultures already undergoing profound change.[467]
a."The declining years of European world hegemony were accompanied by the questioning and qualifying within Europe of established ideas and values as never before." [467]
b."The trend seems to accelerate after 1918; as
(1) old systems of thought and old values were increasingly undermined,
(2)new claimants for adherence and intellectual acceptance appeared
c."Skepticism about the past grew refusal to admit the possibility of absolute standards at all."[467]
2."Difficulty distinguishing between
a.explicit utterances of intellectuals and educated minorities and
b.attitudes and behavior of society at large
3."Signs of what was to come were already apparent before 1914.
a.Disintegrating forces already at work within intellectual and liberal culture (product of high civilization of European age.)
b.Even in 19th c, some troubled by sense that the traditional culture was too limited
(1)because of its exclusion of the resources of emotion and experience in unconscious
4. Sigmund Freud - set out a language to explore this area
a.changed the way educated people thought of themselve
(1)new cultural mythology - terminology
(a)complex
(b)unconscious
(c)obsessions
(d)Freudian slip
(e)libido
(2)influence spread into
(a)literature,
(b)personal relations,
(c)education
(d)politics
b.Impact beyond science - new vision - highly corrosive[467] - laymen took message as
(1)unconscious is real source of much behavior [467-8]
(2)moral values and attitudes = projections of influences[468]
(3)therefore, idea of responsibility is a myth
(4)and perhaps rationality is an illusion.
(5) "Called into question the very foundation of liberal civilization, the idea of the rational, responsible, consciously motivated individual." - another kind of determinism [468]
c.Appeared to say that much previously thought good was, in fact, bad
(1)conscience could be source of danger to mental health
(2)Chaos of the arts H
(3)feebleness of twentieth-century Christianity W
(4)incomprehensibility of a world of science - Einstein
(5)search for new bearings
(6)Politically
(a)new irrationalisms - more violent statements of older ones (nationalism)
d.Arts - obvious symptoms of fundamental cultural change P
(1)3-4 centuries (since age of humanism) believed arts expressed aspirations, insights, and pleasures accessible in principle to ordinary men (though sometimes only educated men)
(2)Always thought possible "that a cultivated man, given time and study, could discriminate with taste among the arts of his time because they were expressions of a shared culture with shared standards."[468]
(3)Ideas was weakened in 19th c -
(a)artist as genius (Beethoven first)
(b) notion of the avant-garde
(c)"By the first decade of the twentieth century, it was already very difficult for even trained eyes and ears to recognize art in much of what was offered to them by contemporary artists, poets and musicians." [468]
(4) ex. dislocation of the image in painting
(a)tenuous link with tradition as late as Cubism
(b)the artists retired into less and less accessible chaos of private visions
(i)center after 1918 in [468]
a)Dada and [469]
b)Surrealism
i. notion of objective disappeared
c)Chance
d)Symbolism
e)Shock
f)Beyond consciousness itself
(5)1920s and 1930s art showed many in elites found the old foundations no longer firm.
(6) Many attended religious services - only a minority
(a)masses in industrial cities
i)in post-Christian world
ii)mass entertainment industry destroyed much of structure of traditional calendar of festivals and commemorations. - references became incomprehensible
(7)Intellectuals -
(a)liberal ideas had helped displace Christianity
i)now liberal ideas being displaced in their turn
a)autonomy of the individual
b)objective moral criteria
c)rationality
d)authority of parents
e)explicable mechanical universe

1.Europeans no longer felt so sure about the foundations of Europe's world power
a.Liberal certainties that values were universal had encouraged doubts about right to rule subject populations...
b.changing world realities
c.century opened talking of "Yellow Peril" and "dying empires"
d.emergence of Japan
e.German colonial empire disappeared in 1918
f.European troubles before 1939 made them less effective in other parts of the world
2.Asia - European power over by 1914
a.English made alliance with Asian nation
b.Russia lost war to Asiatic power
c.China -
(1)Boxer rebellion
(2)began modernization

1.Cultural interplay, economic power, promise of modernization led to anti- European reactions
2.1911 revolution in China - closed 2,0000 years of history
3.Japan seized German ports in China, etc. etc.

1.gradual recovery after war - return to gold standard
2.1929 world economic disaster [480]
3.role of US now creditor
a.1928 called back loans from Europe
b.October l929 stock market crash
4.by 1933 all curries except French "off" gold
5.unemployment - 30,000,000 in industrial world
6.abandonment of belief in non-interference with economy
7.Liberal civilization had lost its power to control events
a.further evidence of contingent, relative nature of its values
b.recovery only in horrific war
c.Liberal assumptions about human nature (rational self-control, potential for improvement) had all to be abandoned[481]