Welfare States and Warfare States, Europ

What kind of protection does a state owe its citizens? In the early twentieth century, states across Europe and the United States developed a whole host of social benefits that sought to protect some citizens against the risks of modern industrial society: against accidents, old age, widowhood, motherhood, and illness. Yet any observer will immediately notice that this exact period of state expansion was also the era of high imperialism, in which labor markets were segregated by gender and race, citizenship rights were limited, fascism was on the rise, and the world waged global war. What, then, was the relationship between welfare states and warfare states in Europe and the United States? In this class, we will read about the evolution of social policies and social politics across the globe since the 1870s, from imperial expansion and welfare in the Boer War to migration politics in the contemporary European Union. We will examine how welfare states developed under pressure from new social movements and in response to new social and economic problems. We will interrogate whether welfare entrenched, or alleviated, social exclusions around race, gender, disability, and class. We will consider when states become invested in the health and wellbeing of their citizens and why. Finally, we will evaluate the impact of empire, war, and decolonization on the rise and, perhaps, the fall of welfare state. That is, in this class we will ask: if, as the famous phrase goes, war made the state, did war make the welfare state too?