Student Paper SP002-03
Spring 2000, Section I

Reviewer Comments

The Dense Population and War

 

With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, people flocked to the cities in search of a job and a better life. Many conflicts arose because of this massive influx of people into urban areas.  Despite technology's influence on urban crowding, it was not alone.  Revolutionary economic ideas from men like Adam Smith also played a major role in enhancing the conditions in Europe for more conflict.  In The Wealth of Nations, 1776, Adam Smith argued for a free market because he believed that it would allow wealth to be created.  He continued to support his argument by showcasing various advantages such as increased "productive powers of labor", and "increased dexterity" (Adam Smith, p. 1).  At first glance, Adam Smith's economic theory seemed perfect; however, people soon learned of its downfalls in many areas: working conditions, emergence of the middle class, political generalization, and gender conflicts.

 

During these changing times, the working class had much strife.  Women and children became prime targets for capitalistic exploitation.  According to Women Miners in the English Coal Pits, "the girls as well as the boys [were found] stark naked down to the waist…their sex was recognizable only by their breasts" (great Britain Parliamentary Papers, p. 2).   In Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels claimed that "masses of laborers, crowded into the factory.. were slaves of the bourgeoisie... [and] enslaved by the machine" (p. 5).

 

Technological and economic changes also brought about a new kind of socioeconomic class- the middle class arose; thus, adding to the conflict cauldron.  The emergence of the middle class, or bourgeoisie, was one of the most notable contributors to the increased crowding conditions in modern Europe.  In Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engles argued that society as a whole [was] more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other-bourgeoisie and proletariat (p. 1) Also, Marx and Engles indicated they 'traced the more or less veiled civil war.. through their [depiction] of the most general phases of the development of [the classes]" (p. 7).

 

The influx of people moving to the cities also played a major role in altering the political powers of the people. The massive urban movement was characterized by the "doing away with the scattered state of the population" (Marx and Engels, p. 3) .  Individual political interests became ignored in the interest of the majority.  Specifically, "Independent, or loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class interest, one frontier, and one customs tariff" (Marx and Engles, p. 3).

 

In addition to political deindividuation, "the greatly increased urban population" also caused gender conflicts.  In Manifesto for the Communist Party, Marx and Engles claimed that "the more modern industry becomes developed, the more labor of men superseded by that of women" (p. 5).  However, for the most part, women were denied entry into respectable areas of the workforce.  As a result, many women, who didn't have an able bodied man to support them, turned to prostitution in order to earn a living for their children and themselves.  Women such as Olympe de Gouge noticed that prostitution was about the only profession in which women could utilize for survival; therefore, she advocated laws that would alleviate the problem   To illustrate₁ in Declaration of the Rights of Women, Olympe de Gouge argued that women should be enabled to "join... the activities of man [in order] to elevate the souls of women" (p. 2).

 

War, strife, and nationalistic pride has been embedded in mankind's history since the beginning of Time.  For many years, the fundamental basis behind the origin of conflict has been investigated.  Perhaps psychological studies have provided the best explanation of the underlying causes behind conflicts.  More specifically, John Freeman (1975) studied the association between crowding and mood behavior.  He found that moods, such as aggression, were inflated in more densely populated conditions.  As a result of his findings, Freeman created the density-intensity theory, in which he argued that more densely populated areas fuel hostility and aggressive behaviors.  Freeman's notion of aggression has been illustrated throughout the conflict-infested history of modern European societies.