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EUROPE (1815-1848)
1
...
After that Congress, The Austrian
diplomat Metternich would call several more congresses to try and preserve European stability: the
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), the Congress of Troppau (1820), and the Congress of Verona
(1822)
...

Revolution was brewing, however
...
All across
Europe, and especially in France and Britain, the rising Bourgeoisie class challenged the old
monarchical Reactionaries with their Liberal ideology
...
Ideologies such as
Radicalism, Republicanism, and Socialism rounded into coherent form
...
The Bourgeoisie was clearly the ascendant class between 1815 and
1848; the Proletariat began to gain a sense of similar unification
...
At the same time, Romantic thinkers,
artists, and writers posed powerful challenge to the Enlightenment emphasis on rationalism and
reason
...

Of all the "Isms" competing in this period, perhaps the greatest was Nationalism, an ideology, like
Romanticism, which reacted against the universalist claims of French enlightenment thought
...
The
Nationalist movements in Germany and Italy, which involved an effort at national unification, and
those in the Austrian Empire, which involved efforts to carve the Austrian Empire into ethnically or
linguistically defined states, created a great amount of instability in Europe
...
These revolutions began
when the Paris Mob, manipulated by the interests of the Bourgeoisie, deposed the Bourbon
monarchy of Charles X and replaced him with Louis Philippe
...

Britain notably escaped any outbreak of violence, but it by no means escaped change: the battle
between the formerly dominant landed aristocracy and the newly ascendant manufacturers led to the
passage of the Reform Bill of 1832, which partially remedied the Rotten Boroughs and gave the
manufactures an increased amount of Parliamentary representation
...
Often the aristocrats would
ally with the working class to act against the manufacturers, forcing the manufacturers, in turn, to
ally with the workers against the aristocrats
...
While this movement failed in the short- term, its demands were eventually
adopted
...
In 1848, the February

Revolution broke out in Paris, toppling Louis Philippe and granting universal suffrage to adult
French men, who elected Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon III) solely on name-recognition
...
Rebellion in Germany led to the establishment of the Frankfurt Assembly, which was
plagued by internal squabbling and was unable to unify Germany
...
Rioting in Vienna frightened Metternich so much he fled the city
...
However,
the events of 1848 frightened the rulers of Europe out of their complacency and forced them to
realize that gradually, they would have to change the nature of their governments or face future
revolutions
...
Context:
The years from 1815 to 1848 provided a much-needed respite from the endless wars of
the Napoleonic Era
...
When a coalition of European powers finally managed to defeat
Napoleon for the last time, all the rulers wanted to do was return Europe "to normal"
...
In short, they
wanted stability, and the reorganization of Europe undertaken at the Congress of Vienna was aimed
at creating that stability
...
In Great Britain,
the enclosure movement of the early 18th century had created a large, socially mobile labor force,
leading to the Industrial Revolution in British manufacturing during the 18th and 19th centuries
...
While
dramatically increasing the general power and wealth of England, the industrial revolution also
particularly brought new wealth to the Bourgeoisie class of entrepreneurs and manufacturers
...
The middle class also developed a liberal ideology
involving laissez faire economics, which they tried to make the dominant ideology in England
...

Also during this period, a young intellectual movement called Romanticism, which was a response
to French Enlightenment Rationalism, held sway in Germany, Britain, and to an extent France
...
Thus, it was also during 1815 to
1848 that the modern phenomenon of nationalism was explicitly formulated
...
The
various Italian states sought Italian unification
...
The possibility of nationalists achieving
their goals greatly frightened the reactionary rulers of Europe, who knew how destabilizing these
changes might be
...
On one side were the powerful and entrenched
members of the Old Regime, who opposed change of any kind
...
The struggle of ideas erupted in the form of
various small-scale revolutions, first in 1830 and then on a more widespread scale in 1848, the year

of revolutions
...
And what would replace the old guard? The new systems, which are the "old
regime" in our own time, owe a great deal to the then-revolutionary concepts developed in the era
immediately following the Napoleonic Wars
...
In some respects, the result of this battle between ideologies that
reached fever pitch in the early 19th century is still being resolved today
...
Important Terms, People, and Events:
Terms
Bourgeoisie - Term used to refer to the "middle class
...

Bund - A confederation of the various fragmented German states in the period after the Congress
of Vienna (1815)
...
These groups were expressions of German nationalism
...

Carbonari - Liberal, Nationalist secret society in Italy in the first half of the 19th century
...

Cato Street Conspiracy - Conspiracy of British Radicalism, plotting to assassinate the Tory
cabinet
...

Chartist Movement - Reform movement in Britain of the 1830s and 1840s that demanded
progressive political reforms like universal adult male suffrage and the right of working- class
people to serve in Parliament
...

Congress System - Term referring to the Reactionary method for maintaining political control;
Metternich called a series of congresses between conservative leaders during the years from 1815
and 1848
...

Conservatism - British reactionary philosophy supporting monarchy and old ways
...

Corn Law - First passed in 1815, these laws put high tariffs on grain coming into England
...
It is
important to realize that in the British usage here, "Corn" refers to grains in general, not the kind of
Corn (Maize) of which Americans usually think
...
This approach was pioneered by Hegel
...

However, it became a common name by which the reactionary Congress System was referred to as
a whole
...
This economic philosophy suggests that if
government interferes in the economy as little as possible (takes a "hands off" approach) markets
will equilibrate and the economy will run as smoothly as possible
...
19th century "liberalism" is a far cry from what
"liberalism" means today
...

Manchester - Industrial city in Northern England, which greatly increased in population during the
Industrial Revolution
...

Monroe Doctrine - American policy announced in 1823 in which President Monroe demanded that
Europe not interfere with goings-on in the Western Hemisphere
...

Nationalism - Modern movement in which countries engineer a sense of unity and common
purpose among a large nation
...
Though it seems automatoc to most people in the modern world, nationalism
really developed throughout Europe only in the early 19th century
...

Proletariat - In the 19th century, a term developed to refer to the working class
...

Radicalism - Anti-Church, anti-Monarchy reform group in 19th century England, largely based on
the ideas of Jeremy Bentham
...

Reactionary - Having to do with what is opposed to change and progress
...

Republicanism - French equivalent of British Radicalism, Republicanism glorified the social
leveling accomplished by the French Revolution
...
Romanticism criticized Reason, suggesting that it could not answer all
questions
...

Rotten Boroughs - In England in the 19th century, voting districts were so poorly drawn that a city
with half-a-million people like Manchester received only as much representation in Parliament as a
small village
...

Socialism - Economic ideology, opposed to Capitalism and Laissez Faire, that holds that key
industry and the means of production should be centrally controlled by the government, so that
workers will not be abused by bourgeoisie factory owners
...
Early in the Industrial Revolution, textiles were the mainstay
of British factory production
...
Although the
Tories comprised various factions, the party was opposed to Parliamentary reforms
...
It is often held that something
should be done if it will maximize the overall utility of society
...

Volksgeist - German Romantic idea, suggested by Herder, that each nation has its own particular
"special genius"
...

People
Alexander I - Russian Czar from 1801 to 1825
...
Though Alexander envisioned himself as an "enlightened despot", Metternich managed
to move him towards becoming a Reactionary after the Congress of Vienna in 1815
...
One example of
his unconventional nature: when he died in 1832, he had his body preserved and placed on display
in a cabinet in University College, London, where it remains to this day
...
He subsequently became a South American dictator, with hopes of uniting a
South American empire
...
He soon declared himself Emperor Napoleon III
...

Bourbon - European royal family, which had kings on the thrones of France, Spain, and Naples at
various times during the early 19th century
...

George Canning - British foreign secretary and champion of Liberalism in foreign affairs form
1822 to 1827
...

Castlereagh - British foreign secretary from 1812-1822
...

Charles X - Successor to Louis XVIII, Bourbon king of France from 1824 to his overthrow in the
July Revolution of 1830
...

Eugene Delacroix - French Romantic painter, who painted exotic scenes, and whose use of color
over line inspired the Impressionists
...

Charles Fourier - French theorist of Socialism who wanted to reorganize society into cooperative
"phalanxes"
...
In 1867 he divided the Empire
into Austria and Hungary, creating the "Dual Monarchy"
...
Considered one of the greatest German writers, Goethe was essential in the

Nationalist construction of a German Volksgeist
...
By
the 19th century, they only really controlled the Austrian Empire
...

Hegel - G
...
F
...
See Introductory
Lectures on History
...

Louis Philippe - Also called the Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe ruled France as King from 1830
to 1848, when his government toppled in the February Revolution
...

Louis XVIII - Bourbon king of France from 1815 to his death in 1824, during which time he
proved moderately Liberal, allowing an advisory Parliament to meet
...

Robert Malthus - Early British economist
...

Karl Marx - German economist and philosopher who, along with Friedrich Engels, wrote The
Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital while in living in England
...

Joseph Mazzini - Italian Nationalist from Genoa who founded Young Italy in 1832, a movement
that would inspire nationalist groups throughout Europe
...
He was a
leading architect of the balance of power developed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and he
called the great powers to various Congresses throughout the coming decade to put down European
rebellions wherever they started
...

Nicholas I - Succeeded Alexander I, serving as Russian Czar from 1825 to 1855
...

Robert Owen - Manchester manufacturer who grew upset by the conditions endured by workers in
Industrial Revolution Britain, and became a reformer
...

Peel oversaw the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, partially due to the ongoing Irish Famine
...
He was
responsible for formulating the "Iron Law" of wages, which stated that any attempt to improve
workers' lots would lead to such a population increase that the increased competition for labor
would ultimately bring workers' wages back down
...

Saint-Simon - French theorist of Socialism, he developed a concept of "Christian Socialism"
emphasizing the brotherhood of all men
...


Jose de San Martin - Much like Simon Bolivar, Jose de San Martin was a South American military
leader involved in the liberation of several South American countries from Spanish colonial rule
...

Karl Friedrich Schinkel - German Romantic architect who worked both in classical forms; a leader
in the Gothic Revival
...
Read
the SparkNote on Shelley's Poetry
...

Slavs - An ethnic and linguistic classification in Eastern Europe and Western Asia that includes
Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and
Macedonians
...
It also established censorship, and government control of universities
...

Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle - 1818 Congress in which the European powers agreed to withdraw
their armies occupying France
...

Congress of Troppau - 1820 Congress, dealing with collapse of the government in Naples
...

Congress of Verona - Congress called by Metternich to deal with revolutionary stirrings in Spain
and Greece
...
Although Alexander I
expressed an interest in putting down the South American revolutions of Simon Bolivar and Jose de
San Martin, Castlereagh promised British naval opposition
...

Congress of Vienna - 1814-1815 meeting of the Great powers that led to the reorganization of
Europe in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars
...
Constantine, the younger brother of Nicholas, received some support
because he was known to be the more Liberal of the two brothers
...

Enclosure Movement - 18th century movement among wealthy British landed aristocrats to
rationalize their farms
...
The
jobless poor ended up constituting the proletariat working class in the upcoming Industrial
Revolution
...
Along with overthrowing Louis Philippe's regime, the February Revolution sparked other
revolutions throughout Europe
...


Gothic Revival - 1830s movement in architecture when buildings in the Gothic (high medieval)
style became popular
...
This was
the architectural manifestation of Romanticism
...

Industrial Revolution - 18th and 19th century development, beginning in Britain, in which
manufacturing was increasingly done in factories by machines, rather than in small workshops by
hand labor
...

July Revolution - 1830 overthrow of Charles X's oppressive regime; ultimately, Louis Philippe
became the new French king
...
When some of the peaceful protesters were shot, the event was dubbed the "Peterloo
Massacre", likening the British government's shameful use of violence on a peaceful crowd to the
recent defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo
...
Most importantly, it partially corrected the problem of Rotten
Boroughs, giving a much larger amount of Parliamentary power to previously under-represented
manufacturers like those Manchester
...
Timeline:
1814-1815: Congress of Vienna
1815: Corn Law in Great Britain
December 1816: Corn Law riots in London
1817: Buschenschaft holds congress at Wurtburg
1818: Prussian Zollverein created
1818: International Congress held at Aix-la-Chapelle
1818: Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein
1819: Metternich initiates Carlsbad Decrees
1819: Peterloo Massacre
1820: Several members of Cato Street Conspiracy executed
1820s: British Radicalism gets underway
1820: Louis XVIII's nephew (the Duke de Berry) assassinated
1820: Te Congress of Troppau
1822: The Congress of Verona
1823: Munroe Doctrine
1824: Louis XVIII dies, Charles X becomes French king
1825: Decembrist Revolt put down in Russia, Nicholas I comes to power
1825: Robert Owen founds New Harmony, Indiana
1827: Anglo-French-Russian navy destroys Turkish fleet, helping Greek nationalists
1829: Nations of Europe recognize an independent Greece

1829: First truly successful locomotive tested
1830s: Gothic Revival in architecture
July 1830: Charles X passes "Four Ordinances" in France
July 1830: July Revolution in France
...
Britain's Industrial Revolution (1780-1850):
Summary
Although Western Europe had long had the basic trappings of capitalism (private property, wealth
accumulation, contracts), the Industrial Revolution fueled the creation of a truly modern capitalist
system
...
Britain led the way in this transformation
...
Manufacturing, business, and the number of wage laborers skyrocketed,
starting a trend that would continue into the first half of the 19th century
...

The economic transformation brought about the British industrial revolution was accompanied by a

social transformation as well
...
Because industrial
resources like coal and iron were in Central and Northern England, a shift in population from
Southern England northward took place
...
These
changes in social and demographic realities created vast pressure for political change as well
...
Pressure to
redress the lack of representation for the new industrial cities and the newly wealthy industrial
manufacturers also began to build
...
Based on
this, the discipline known as "economics" developed, largely to give the manufacturers a basis for
arguing for little or no regulation of industry
...

Britain, with its head start in manufacturing, its many world markets, and its dominant navy, would
dominate industry for most of the 19th century
...

Commentary
Among the Western European countries, Britain was the ideal incubator for the Industrial
Revolution because an "Agricultural Revolution" preceded it
...
The landholders tried to
rationalize their landholdings and started the Enclosure Movement to bring more and more of their
own land under tighter control, a process that went on throughout the 1700s
...
Thus, the first factories had a ready
labor- supply in Britain that was not available in other nations
...

The Industrial Revolution represented a shift in influence away from the traditional power-holders
in England
...
They
also employed a far greater percentage of the national economy
...
Often, the aristocracy, trying to take power away from the manufacturers,
would ally with the working class
...
In its impact on human societies, the industrial revolution
was probably the most important change in its era, more important, perhaps, than any events in the
last few thousand years
...

Though industrialization was most prominent in Europe, its transformative powers must be seen as
a theme through the period of 1815-1848
...
Many of the same principles
underlying the French Revolution were being developed via the Industrial Revolution in Britain
...
Further, the
Industrial Revolution would give Western Europe the economic system and technology to dominate
much of the world in the colonial period towards the end of the 19th century
...

It would be some time before workers developed a counter-ideology of their own
...
By 1825, the workers in the industrializing
nations would become a social and political force of their own
...
Europe After Napoleon:
Summary
After Napoleon's domination of Europe from around 1800 to 1814, the rulers of Europe wanted to
insure that no one would ever be able to come so close to taking over all of Europe again
...
There they reorganized European boundaries in hopes of creating a stable Europe
where coalitions of nations could always ally to defeat one nation that got out of hand
...
Louis XVIII, whose brother Louis XVI had been executed during the French
Revolution, certainly didn't want another revolution in France
...
Metternich, the foreign minister
in Austria, was willing to do anything to stabilize Europe and preserve Hapsburg power
...
On
both sides, Louis granted amnesties, hoping to "start over" in France
...
The reactionary element only increased after the King's nephew, the Duke of Berry, was
assassinated in 1820
...
Unlike the moderate Louis, Charles was a hard-core reactionary, and hated all the
changes taking place in France, even the ones Louis had initiated
...

Poland
Poland was a state recreated by the Congress of Vienna and ruled by Czar Alexander I
...
Alexander
considered himself an "enlightened despot" and spoke often of granting freedom to the people, but
he soon found that when he did give the people some self-government, they didn't always agree
with what he wanted them to do
...
As a result of its frustrated desire for selfrule, Polish Nationalism began to rise
...

Germany
In Germany, nationalists motivated by Romantic ideas such as the belief in a special German
Volksgeist hated the results of the Congress of Vienna, since the ongress split up into a loose
federation called the Bund
...
In 1817, the Burschenschaft held a national
meeting at Wartburg, convincing Metternich that German nationalism was a force to be reckoned

with
...
The decrees outlawed the
Burschenschaft and pushed them underground
...
The Carlsbad Decrees quieted the German nationalist movement for about a
decade
...
The high tariffs also raised prices beyond the reach of
the working class
...
Meanwhile, in
Manchester, the ascendant industrialists who dominated the city had been hoping to get
Parliamentary representation for some time
...
Peters Field against the Corn
Law and for universal male suffrage
...
The event became a national scandal, called the Peterloo Massacre
...
Not appeased, a group of workers decided to try and
assassinate the Tory cabinet
...
Several members were executed
...
Having swung so far one way
during the French Revolution and Napoleon's rule, the historical pendulum now swung back the
other way, as rulers tried to prevent the "excesses" of the French Revolution from happening again
...
Revolution was brewing throughout
Europe
...
He certainly wanted to rule, but he also wanted to change the world for the better
...
In 1815, the rulers of Europe were all worried about what Czar
Alexander might do
...

Why was Metternich so upset about possible German unification? He was afraid that a powerful
and unified Germany might upset the balance of power, not to mention pose a threat to neighboring
Austria
...

British Parliament designed the Corn Law (1815) to protect the profits of landed aristocrats in
Britain
...
The tariffs raised food prices, naturally affecting the poor
...
Whereas the poor had no political power,
and little tendency to political action, the wealthy manufacturers had both
...

Parliament's eventual recognition of this change can be seen in the Tory government's subsequent
passage of a high tax on newspapers as an attempt to limit the spread of ideas among workers
...


6
...
To this end, the Congress powers agreed
to meet whenever trouble should crop up in Europe to discuss how to fix it
...
This
meeting dealt with the coalition of European armies that had been occupying France since
Napoleon's defeat
...
Alexander I,
always a champion of "collective security", suggested the idea of an international military force,
made up of troops from all nations, that would be available to suppress revolutions wherever they
appeared
...

Alexander I's suggestion was not adopted
...
Metternich wanted to stop the revolution in Naples from
spreading
...
The Czar, who had seen that liberal reforms in Poland had
inevitably led his subjects to disagree with him, did not need much convincing
...
Britain, though anti-Revolutionary, did not
want to be bound by continental commitments
...

Despite the congresses, revolutionary hotspots continued to crop up
...
At the same time, Greek nationalists sought more
actively to establish a Greek nation in Turkey
...
The congress moved against the Greek revolutionaries, who really
did not have the military power to take over Turkey at this time anyway
...
The revolution
in Spain was quickly smashed
...
This system came to be called the Holy Alliance,
appropriating the name of the coalition of Christian values Alexander had wanted to set up at the
Congress of Vienna
...
The reactionaries believed that if
revolution cropped up in one part of Europe, it had to be destroyed, or else would spread like some
epidemic
...
First of all, why, only three years after Napoleon, did
the European powers so easily agree to withdraw their forces from France? For one, they wanted
the French to accept Louis XVIII, and if he was backed by foreign armies, it was almost certain that
the population would hate him
...
Second, why did the
British oppose an international "peacekeeping" force to put down revolutions throughout Europe?
Were they pro-revolutionary? The answer is a resounding no
...
However, they wanted to be able to decide British intervention in military
matters on a case-by-case basis
...


The Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle also continued the discussions over ending the Atlantic slave trade
that had began at the Congress of Vienna
...
However, if the
slavers ran up the flags of other countries, British naval vessels could not legally board them
...
The
British efforts went primarily for naught: the slave trade would continue throughout the period to
1848
...
Most slaves crossing
the Atlantic in the 19th century were destined for Cuba or Brazil
...
Simon Bolivar led independence
movements in Venezuela and Colombia, while Jose de San Martin fought for independence in
Argentina and Chile
...
At the Congress of Verona,
Alexander I suggested intervening to stop the New World revolts
...
Britain knew that free New World colonies
would be more likely to establish good trade relations with Britain than Spanish-dominated
colonies, so Britain acted out of economic self-interest rather than political liberal support
...
Furthermore, in 1823, the United States issued the Munroe Doctrine,
promising to fight against any European power that attempted to intervene in the New World
...

The 1822 Council of Verona was the last of the international reactionary councils
...
The congresses did help to create a clear definition of
the forces at work in Europe leading up to 1848: Reaction versus Liberalism and Revolution
...
Battling Ideologies (1815-1830):
Summary
The years between 1815-1830 saw the rise of a number of related and competing ideologies, each
holding a powerful influence in their own time
...
This section will outline those ideologies
...
Consisting of
businessmen and professionals, the liberals wanted modern, efficient self-government, although
they were not always for universal male suffrage
...
They wanted constitutions, and Laissez Faire economic policies, such as free trade
and low tariffs
...

Radicalism and Republicanism
Radicalism appeared in the 1820s in England as the "Philosophical Radicals"
...
The Radicals were anti-church and anti-monarchy, and

generally opposed the old ways
...
The European counterpart to Radicalism was usually referred to as
Republicanism, which grew out of the French Revolutionary tradition
...
Republicanism opposed monarchy and
the Catholic Church
...
Socialism looked at the free-market economies of
Western Europe in the midst of the Industrial Revolution and saw exploited workers leading
miserable existences while manufacturers profited enormously
...
Socialists, therefore, wanted to nationalize parts of the economy, such as industrial
and financial sectors, giving these areas of the economy over to government control
...
For example, Robert
Owen, a manufacturer in Manchester, grew upset at his worker's living conditions and began paying
higher wages then other manufacturers did, and he treated his workers well, counseling them
against drinking and other vices
...
Owen wanted to continue reform, and eventually he became frustrated
with the slow pace of change in Britain
...
Other leading socialist thinkers included the
Frenchmen Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier
...
Some phalansteries actually were set up in the United States
...
France and Great Britain's
strong nation-states had inspired jealousy throughout the rest of Europe; other nations, disorganized
as they were, wanted to unify
...
Soon, just about every European language group wanted to have their
own nation
...
These societies distributed propaganda leaflets
and plotted rebellions
...

In 1831, Joseph Mazzini founded "Young Italy" as a nationalist group, which soon tried to organize
a coup in the Italian state of Sardinia
...
Nationalism, though pushed underground by the Carlsbad Decrees, was still very much alive
in Germany in the 1820s and 1830s
...
Throughout the Austrian Empire, the various language groups revived the
study of their languages and hoped to carve their own nations out of the empire
...
All of these Eastern European groups began a renewed interest in their own
cultures
...
Championed by Edmund Burke, who had been horrified by the French

Revolution, Conservatism argued for prudent and gradual change to be made as slowly as possible
...
These various "isms" are still
around today
...
Many of the new movements therefore dealt with
ideas that had been around for a while; but it was only in this period that the ideas gained formal,
coherent structure
...

Liberalism in the early 19th century is not the same from what we think of as "Liberalism" today
...
Really, liberalism then was the ideology of the bourgeoisie (the
business and professional class), and was geared towards protecting bourgeois interests
...
The liberal tradition of the 19th century has confusingly become what is
"conservative" today in the United States
...
He argued against the preference given to the Anglican
Church and opposed monarchy in all forms
...
The ultimate unconventionalist, Bentham had his body preserved
and placed in a cabinet at University College, London, where it remains to this day
...
Isolated and
comprised of very committed socialists, these socialist experiments ended up, essentially, as dead
ends
...
Some German exiles in France, especially Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
combined the socialist ideas of Owen, Fourier, and Saint-Simon with Republicanism in the 1840s to
give rise to "Communism", an ideology aimed against the power of the liberal bourgeoisie
...
Since Austria contained dozens of subjugated language groups (including the Magyars,
Czechs, Slovaks, Slavs, Rumanians, Serbs, Croatians, etc
...
The Austrian government's position as prime reactionary was certainly due in
lart part to its fear of dissolution were nationalism to win out
...
"Of
course everyone loves their country," we think, "it's always been that way
...
Modern
nationalism on the wide scale it is seen today is actually a fairly new phenomenon, especially in
Eastern Europe
...
Only the advent of the ideology of nationalism led to the creation of "national identities"
and a "desire for self-government
...
In fact, this modern conception of
nationalism developed in large part between 1815 and 1848
...
Romanticism:

Summary
Romanticism, unlike the other "isms", isn't directly political
...
The term itself
was coined in the 1840s, in England, but the movement had been around since the late 18th century,
primarily in Literature and Arts
...
In France, the movement was led by men like Victor Hugo, who wrote
the Hunchback of Notre Dame
...

The basic idea in Romanticism is that reason cannot explain everything
...

This led the Romantics to view things with a different spin than the Enlightenment thinkers
...
The Romantics, on the other hand, idealized the Middle Ages as a time
of spiritual depth and adventure
...
Gothic novels increased in popularity,
and in art, paintings of various historical periods and exotic places came into vogue
...
Mary Shelley (the wife of Percy Bysshe
Shelley, published Frankenstein in 1818
...
In this story, a scientist is able to master life, animating an artificially
constructed person
...

In Germany art, Friedrich Schiller produced plays known for their sense of a German "Volk", or
national spirit
...
German romantic philosophy was dominated by W
...
F
...
He construed the development of the state as part of a historical process, or "teleology"
...
Hegel tied his philosophy into nationalism by
arguing for a German national dialectic that would result in synthesis into a state
...

Partially as a result of Hegel's influence, the idea developed that Germany's role was to act as a
counterbalance to France
...

The French had their Romantics too, though not in the same profusion as Germany
...
Delacroix painted historical
scenes, such as "liberty Leading the People" (1830) which glorified the beautiful spectacle of
revolution, perhaps construing it as part of the French national character
...

Commentary
Romanticism can be construed as an opposite to "classicism," drawing on Rousseau's notion of the
goodness of the natural
...

Despite a founding French influence, Romanticism was most widespread in Germany and England,
largely as a reaction to the French Enlightenment
...
The Romanticist emphasis on individualism
and self-expression deeply impacted American thinking, especially the transcendentalism of
Emerson
...

That is, they looked less for ultimate, absolute truth than did Enlightenment thinkers
...
Even in morality, the
Romantics began to question the notion that there even was such a thing as absolute good and evil
...
Romanticism also fueled
many "isms" with the basic idea that "genius" had the power to change the world
...

The movement of Romanticism encompasses several contradictory aspects: several ideas are
grouped into the movement, and they do not always fit together
...
Basically, as
long as romantic intellectual passion, not rationalism and strict reason, were the basic underpinning
of an idea, than it can be classified as "Romantic
...
Romanticism was most prominent in highly
Protestant countries like Germany, England, and the United States
...
Other solidly Catholic countries were even less impacted by Romanticism
...
Change in the 1830s (1827-1832):
Summary
Metternich's reactionary Congress System began to fail in the late 1820s and the early 1830s
...
Metternich would have liked to
suppress this movement, but Czar Nicholas I supported the Greek movement with the hope of
increasing Russian influence in the region
...
The result was an Anglo-French- Russian navy that
smashed the Turkish fleet in 1827
...

In addition to the Greeks, several Balkan states gained independence and Egypt broke out of
Ottoman rule
...

It would soon get worse
...
Charles X's reactionary policies antagonized much of the French population, who
were used to liberal and republican reforms
...

When the French Chamber of Deputies moved against these changes, Charles dissolved them,
passing the four "July Ordinances" in 1830
...
Second,
he censored the press
...

Fourth, he called for a new election, with the bourgeoisie no longer voting
...
The bourgeoisie and radical republicans from the lower
classes quickly took to the streets of Paris in the July Revolution, rioting and setting up barricades
to stop the military and end traffic and commerce
...
The revolutionary
leaders brought in the Duke of Orleans, known as Louis Philippe
...

The July Revolution rippled through Europe, starting revolutions in Belgium and Poland
...
The country ended up with self-government as long as it
remained a neutral state, and the other powers agreed not to invade it
...
Czar Nicholas

quickly crushed the Polish rebellion
...
Foreign
Minister George Canning and Robert Peel became more "liberal" Tories, trying to satisfy the middle
class, passing Laissez Faire laws, creating a more secular state, and even creating a police force
...
Most critical were the Corn Laws, which remained too high for
manufacturers' tastes, and the Rotten Boroughs, which furnished Southern England with far more
political representation than it deserved while neglecting populous manufacturing cities like
Manchester
...
Wellington's action led to rioting
...
The Reform Bill of 1832 simplified voting,
although maintaining a property requirement, and abolished the smaller boroughs, giving their seats
to the large industrial cities like Manchester
...
In 1847, a
Ten Hours Act passed into law, limiting the number of hours women and children could work per
day
...
For the most part, however,
those revolts resulted in little direct change
...

To the reactionary rulers of Europe the July Revolution of Louis Philippe (1830) seemed like a dire
thing
...
Working-class
Republicans wanted more, and they began to prepare for another revolt
...

It sent a message: the preemptive suppression of revolution by the Continental System was no
longer working very well
...
Russia had no problem crushing the Polish rebellion
...
Britain was facing its own reform movement, and Louis
Philippe did not want to appear to have Napoleonic ambitions
...
Britain and France, had they been able, might very well have placed the contingencies of
politics above the demands of conservative dogma
...
In large
part this change resulted from the societal transformation created by the Industrial Revolution
...
The French July Revolution showed
the British bourgeoisie that if there was a revolution by the lower classes, the bourgeoisie could
quickly assume control and use a working-class revolution to middle-class advantage
...

The British Reform Bill of 1832 was really a compromise, since the reformers did not get
everything they wanted
...
Especially since the manufacturing cities of the North finally had substantial
representation, the balance of power in British politics changed
...
Parties reorganized, and the Whigs, a few radical Tories, and the radical

industrialists formed the Liberal Party, while most of the Tories formed the Conservative Party
...
Interestingly, one aristocratic tactic to maintain power
involved allying with the workers to strike back at the wealthy liberal businessmen
...
Soon, the liberal industrialists caught on to this ploy, and allied
with workers on certain issues
...
Of
course, the abolition of the Corn Laws were not only out of interest for Laissez Faire, but also
because of a horrible famine in Ireland
...
Ultimately, these progressive concessions
allowed the British to avoid revolution, since those least represented in British society still felt as if
they had some means to bettering their situation
...
Bourgeoisie and Chartism (1830s and 1840s):
Summary
The 1830s and 1840s were a time of great industrial progress and growth in Britain and France, but
not everyone in the population shared in the new wealth
...
Poor houses represented the
beginnings of a welfare society, since they provided places for workers to go if they ran out of
money and work
...
Instead of
encouraging workers to find work, the wretchedness of the poor houses only further enraged
workers against the "bourgeoisie" government
...
Some started to seriously advocate the overthrow of the
wage-labor system, in order to replace it with Socialism
...
Writers like Louis Blanc began
to glorify the act of Revolution
...
A reform bill was drafted in 1838, called the Charter
...
Annual elections to the House of Commons
2
...
Secret ballots
4
...
Allowing poor workers to be elected to the House of Commons
6
...


Although it did not pass, the unfazed Chartists started collecting signatures
...
By 1842, the
Chartists reached 3 million signatures, but despite the millions of signatures and the possibility of
violence, Parliament continued to vote against the Chartist reforms
...

Commentary
The revolutions of 1830 and the Reform Movement of 1832 in Britain provided more political and
social power to the disenfranchised but wealthy bourgeoisie
...
In Britain, even after reforms, only an eighth of
adult males could vote
...
However, in Britain, the landed
aristocrats, though losing power to the manufacturers, could at least stop them from being totally
dominant
...
Thus, no violent revolution was needed in Britain for change to occur
...

In both countries, industry was growing rapidly by the 1830s, as capitalists made more and more
money, reinvested it, and continued the growth cycle
...
Previously, corporations had to be "chartered" to serve the
government in some way
...
Manufactures were also changing in emphasis at this time, from textile to iron
production
...

As workers continued to live in terrible conditions while the rich got richer, Laissez Faire
economists argued that the world had to be this way, because if the workers had easier lives and
higher wages, they would simply produce more children, glutting the labor market and driving
wages down and unemployment up
...
The idea of a totally disenfranchised, exploited proletariat class began to appear in the
1830s and 1840s
...

The Chartist Movement was very progressive, probably more forward-looking than any other major
movement at the time
...

Although it failed in its own time, the demands of the Chartist movement nearly all became law in
Britain eventually
...

The battle between the "isms" was continuing, and slowly the balance was turning towards more
inclusive, equal societies
...
The workers, who had only shared very little if at all in the vast economic growth of the
early 19th century, were now starting to enter the political fray
...
1848 Revolution: Paris
Summary
In France, Louis Philippe's government remained a bourgeoisie-dominated affair, disappointing to
the workers who had manned the barricades in 1830
...
Popular discontent finally resulted in
the February Revolution of 1848
...
The Radical Republicans then managed
to get the provisional government to pass socialist programs
...
In the National Workshops, however, there wasn't any real work for the
workers to do, since the government did not take their establishment very seriously
...
In May, the military turned against the lower class
agitators
...
The army
soon restored order, but the political landscape had changed
...
The constitution included
provisions for a strong president, who would be elected via universal male suffrage (all adult males
would vote)
...
The most
ambiguous candidate was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I's nephew
...
He merely said that his uncle, Napoleon, had been liberal, and
that he would be liberal
...

Though claiming to be liberal, the newly elected President was mostly interested in reestablishing
order
...
He encouraged religious influence in school teaching, and then, after becoming
confident of his support base, he declared himself Emperor Napoleon III
...

Like the July Revolution of 1830, the February Revolution of 1848 reverberated throughout Europe,
resulting in a series of revolutions, most powerfully in Germany and Vienna
...
In London, however, no barricades went up in London's
streets
...

Commentary
The years from 1815 to 1848, although free of major wars, were the site of a different conflict,
between Reaction and Revolution
...
" The boundaries established by the 1815 Congress of Vienna, if a little worse for the
wear, remained for the most part standing by the opening of 1848
...
The Revolutionary forces made a concerted push throughout the continent in even greater
force than in 1830
...
Was the simultaneity of the revolutions a
product of an international conspiracy? Probably not, though the revolutionary groups throughout

Europe were transnational and did communicate
...
Revolution in Paris served as
the signal for revolutions throughout Europe
...

Outside of Paris, the people in the countryside (the majority of France) were much more
conservative than the workers in the city, and were generally anti-socialist
...
Furthermore, by 1848 France had had so many governments
in the past 50 years that new governments were easy to bring down
...
In Britain, reforms would pass
gradually withinthe system rather than by violent rebellions
...
Today, in the age of tanks, civilians have no real hope fighting
against tanks, bombs, and rocket- launchers
...
Throughout Europe, rulers were tremendously
frightened by the revolution in Paris
...

Louis Napoleon appealed to the "Napoleon Legend" that was starting to take force in France around
this time
...
All France now remembered Napoleon as a great
hero, and Louis Napoleon cashed in on his family's "name recognition" to gain control of France
...
1848 Revolutions: The Austrian Empire
Summary
Vienna, the capital of the ethnically diverse Austrian Empire, was a leading cultural center in
Europe
...
Yet the various ethnic groups in Austria had become increasingly nationalist over the
preceding decades, and by now they all yearned to express their individual volksgeist and gain
independence
...

In March 1848, a radical Hungarian Magyar group led by Louis Kossuth began a vocal
independence movement
...
Metternich, monitoring the Revolutions throughout Europe, had
become fearful
...
The situation probably wasn't
as bad as he thought, but once news got out that Metternich had left, the Austrian revolutionaries
got truly excited
...
Some of the revolutionary excitement also spilled into Prussia, where, to ease the
pressure, the Prussian King Frederick William IV promised a constitution
...
The Czech movement in Bohemia soon
received the same status, and Italian states like Milan soon overthrew Austrian occupation
...
After all, it was a nonindustrialized country that did not have a well-developed middle class
...


In June 1848, in Prague, a group of Slavic nationalists held a Pan-Slavism conference in an attempt
to stop Bohemia from being swallowed by Germany
...
Emperor
Ferdinand of Austria smashed the Prague insurrection using the army, and he also sent his forces
against the rebellious Italian states of Lombardy and Milan, which were soon reconquered
...
The
Serbo-Croatians, who did not speak the Magyar language, rebelled and asked the Hapsburgs for
help
...
Franz Joseph quickly appealed to the Russians, who marched into
Hungary and crushed the Magyars
...

Commentary
The Austrian Empire was very large in 1848, and filled with around a dozen ethnicities, each with
its own language
...
Austria itself had a German majority, while the Magyars were the predominant ethnicity
in Hungary
...

With the first spark, these separate nationalist ethnicities exploded
...
The big
weakness of the Austrian revolutionaries lay in the structure of Austrian society
...
The Austrian revolutions, particularly in Vienna,
therefore had no powerful support base
...
The
army thus stayed loyal to the Hapsburgs and helped to suppress the revolution
...

With all of the revolutions suppressed, Austria became an even more autocratic state
...

Incidentally, during the revolutions of 1848, a small nationalist German minority in Bohemia, in the
area called the Sudetenland, made clear their desire to become a part of Germany
...


11
...
Frederick William IV, who was generally as weak and unskilled as his father,
similarly feared giving the people a constitution
...

In March 1848, rioting began in Berlin, as the 1848 revolution fever crossed from Austria into

Prussia
...
However, he surprised everyone by taking a liberal stance and allowing an election to
take place to elect a Prussian assembly
...
The Assembly also desired to
grant the Polish minorities living in eastern Prussia a right of self-government
...

Germany
The 1848 revolutions inspired a similar nationalist movement in Germany proper
...
The goals of the assembly included
creating a unified Germany that was Liberal and constitutionally governed
...

In December of 1848, the Frankfurt Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of the German
People, based on the Declarations of the Rights of Man in France and the Declaration of
Independence in the United States
...

In 1849, the Frankfurt Assembly offered Germany to Frederick William IV
...
He turned the offer down
...
Germany remained fragmented after
1848, and the small rulers of the various small German states came back to power
...
Furthermore, Prussia and Austria, who
combined to dominate Germany, liked a weak Germany, primarily because they feared the
possibility of a united, powerful Germany on their borders
...
They
were not particularly fiery revolutionaries, and were essentially unwilling to consider violent
revolution
...
Instead of harnessing the power of lower-class discontent, the Frankfurt
Assembly made the mistake of alienating the lower classes, and this anti-proletariat attitude doomed
the Frankfurt Assembly from the start
...
Furthermore, the Frankfurt Assembly was plagued by
difficult questions that it could not resolve
...
The ownership of Schleswig-Holstein,
officially the property of Denmark, was another contentious issue
...
However, they also knew that Russia and Great Britain would team up
against Prussia if it tried to take over Schleswig-Holstein
...
Just
as the Frankfurt Assembly was dominated by various minor squabbles, the 1848 revolutions were
filled with many nationalist groups, all of whom had different visions of the future of Europe
...
But the ideas animating the revolutions did not die with the
revolutions themselves
...
The year of
revolutions yielded little result, but in the following years the nationalist impulse to unify would
take on greater proportions, and the years between 1848 and 1871 could easily be termed an age of
unification
...
Although
the work did not greatly influence the revolutions of the time, its authors were
themselves influenced by the events of that year and the context of that period
...


Study Questions
Why was Britain an ideal place for the Industrial Revolution to begin?
First, it had capitalist property system that allowed the accumulation of wealth, making large-scale
investment possible
...

According to David Ricardo, what was the "Iron Law of Wages"?
Ricardo argued that increases in wages would ultimately not benefit workers, because increases in
wages would lead to workers having more children, who would then create an oversupply of laborers,
competing the level of wages back down
...
It is based on
several unreasonable assumptions, and is certainly not accepted by most economists today, except
perhaps in the very long run
...

Czar Alexander I was a complex character
...
Ultimately, he allowed himself to be swayed into the Reactionary camp by Metternich
...
In fact, Britain's Tory government was extremely
conservative
...
Instead, Britain preferred to make its decisions on a case- bycase basis
...
Above all, it wanted to keep government out of business
...
In fact, 19th century liberals were more like our
conservatives
...

Define Romanticism
...
According to Romanticism, Reason is insufficient in providing
answers and is flawed in many respects
...

Briefly describe Hegel's dialectic
...
Progress is made
when these opposites are then reconciled into a synthesis
...

What reforms did Chartism demand?
1
...
Universal Suffrage for adult males 3
...

An end to the Rotten Boroughs 5
...
The establishment of
salaries for members of Parliament (so poor members could afford to serve)
Why was France so revolution-prone and Britain not?
France had a long tradition of revolutions; its governments toppled every 10 to 20 years in this period
...
Also, France in the
1815 to 1848 period was dominated by a strong bourgeoisie with little opposition, and the working class
had little avenue for reform other than revolt
...
Because there were two powerful
competing forces in British government in this period, Parliamentary conflict drove reform without the
need for a violent revolution
...
The revolution mostly consisted of
intellectuals and university students, who are great at starting revolutions but bad at maintaining them
...
Furthermore, the Austrian
army was mostly made up of illiterate peasants who hadn't yet been exposed to the new ideas of
Nationalism
...




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