Download Reactionism, Liberalism, and Nationalism

Reactionism, Liberalism, and Nationalism
I. Intellectual Trends in Europe: Romanticism and Realism

Romanticism
o After Napoleon's defeat, the rationalism of the Enlightenment gave way to
Romanticism
o "The post-revolutionary world invited artists and thinkers to put down their books
and seek not to know but to feel"
 Given the violent excesses of the French Revolution, this repudiation of
rationalism should come as no surprise
o Romanticism in Art
 Eugene Delacroix (Liberty Leading the People, 1830) p. 137 in reader
 J.M.W. Turner (Shipwreck, 1823)
 These are good examples of the romantic style
 The Delacroix depiction of the 1830 uprising in France is full of
passion, as distinct from the much more controlled images of the
earlier French Revolution.
 And Turner's Shipwreck paintings (he made several on the same
theme) show a world in which man cannot necessarily reign in
the forces of nature, even with the power of his intellect.
o Romanticism in Literature
 William Wordsworth
 "Tables Turned" p. 140 of reader
 nature is more powerful than human intellect
 learn from nature by opening your heart, not your mind
 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
 Faust was his most celebrated work
 Faust, is based on the medieval legend of the man who sells his
soul in order to know the hidden mysteries of the universe.
 Germaine de Stael (1766-1817)
 essay "On the Influence of the Passions on the Happiness of
Individuals and of Nations," ("an artist must be of his own time")
is considered a fundamental statement of Romantic theory
 de Stael develops both a critique of the passions and a
sustained argument for both their inevitability and their moral
necessity as a preliminary ground for the moral sentiments she
extracts from philsophes such as Adam Smith
 from the negative example of the Reign of Terror Having she
declared that "the real obstacle to individual and poetical
happiness is the impulsive force of the passions,"
 de Staël nevertheless insists that the world is largely populated
by, and governments must exist to manage, "passionate
characters."
 These, she implies, constitute the real interest of life and society,
unlike those whose "existence is monotonous," who display "as
many tints as individuals, without a single real color in sight."
o Romanticism and religion
 With Romanticism also came a rejection of Enlightenment Deism, and
new support for organized religion
 William Blake
 Poem "Milton" p. 140-41 of reader


"I come in Self-annihilation and the grandeur of Inspiration, To
cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Savior"
 Blake totally rejects what he sees as the condescension of the
philosophes, arguing that all their so-called learning is really just
a cloak for their ignorance about the true nature of things
 Romantics were also nationalistic, often romanticizing their nation's past
and creating hero/epic mythologies
 Anit-Semitism
 This combination of religious zeal and nationalism led people in
some countries to withdraw from Enlightened principles of
religious toleration and freedom, and to move toward a new,
reinvigorated Anti-Semitism
 Hatred against Jews was further fueled by emerging pseudoscientific theories (phrenology being one of these new
"sciences") of race and racial inferiority, which had unfortunately
survived the Enlightenment and continued to gain adherents.
o Romanticism in America
 The Romantic writers were imitated by a generation of American writers
that came of age following the Revolution
 Most important among these were the Transcendentalists
 Like the Romantics, they focused more on a higher law, one
created by natural forces
 They turned away from rational thought and placed their
emphasis on the emotional and spiritual
 The main figures in the group were Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and
the Alcott family
 They even went so far as to establish a commune at Brook Farm
The Realist movement
o In the visual arts and literature, Romanticism began to give way to realism, frank
depictions and portrayals of ordinary people in everyday settings
o Art
 Jean Francois-Millet
 The artist Jean-Francois Millet exemplifies this movement
 1857 painting The Gleaners
 Photography
 Realism was very much aided by a new technology that had
become available during the 1830's: photography
 And as industrialization and urbanization accelerated,
photographers began to document visually the harsh conditions
faced by the poor and dispossessed
 photographer Jacob Riis, perhaps the best known photographer
to document the dark side of the Second Industrial Revolution
o literature
 Charles Dickens
 British writer (1812-1870)
 depicted "the squalor of the lives of the poor, the psychology of
industrial capitalists, and the experiences of neglected or
abandoned children."
 Works such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Hard Times, and
Bleak House echo these themes repeatedly
 Emile Zola
 France (1840-1902)
 also examined the lives of ordinary people, such as coal miners
(Germinal) and prostitutes (Nana)
o "Whereas Romanticism had resisted industrialization and retreated into nostalgia
and the celebration of nature, Realism faced it ruthlessly."
o
Disenchantment with the new world of industrialism
 Considering the harsh conditions faced by the urban poor in the
industrial age, and the sense of isolation and helplessness felt by many,
Realism inevitably led to disenchantment
 Nihilism and Anarchism
 Given this disenchantment, some intellectuals embraced nihilism
(belief in nothing), and promoted a violent attack on all authority
 Closely related to nihilism was anarchism, an ideology which
views government as complicit in social injustice
 The Russian intellectual Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) is
considered the father of the anarchist movement
 Although anarchism never gained many adherents,
because anarchists used terrorism as a means to
destroy government they had a profound psychological
impact on 19th century society
II. Challenge to the Congress of Vienna


The Congress of Vienna
o met between 1814 and 1815 to discuss the disposition of Europe following the
Napoleonic period.
o It was under the influence of Prince Metternich, who tried to undo the effects of
the French Revolution of which he profoundly disapproved, and who attempted to
reestablish the Old Order
 This initiated in Europe a reactionary period from which no country was
immune
 Metternich wanted to restore control to the so-called "legitimate"
monarchs as opposed to the self proclaimed emperor Napoleon and thus
put the Bourbons back on the throne of France
o He redesigned the map to surround France and prevent future French
aggression
 France was reduced in size from the Napoleonic period, but still treated
as a respectable power, unlike what happened to Germany after World
War I
o Metternich tried to keep a careful balance between the Big Four, Austria, Prussia,
Russia and Britain, but in so doing he ignored the national aspirations of
European nations like Poland, Italy and Germany, all of which remained
hopelessly DISUNIFIED against the people's desires.
o Metternich formed the Quadruple Alliance with the Big Four, but quickly admitted
France in 1818, making it the Quintuple Alliance
 Foreign occupying forces were removed from French soil and her
indemnity reduced to win her cooperation to concert diplomacy which
proclaimed that no action would be taken without the consent all of the
Big Five.
o Support for the return of the Old Guard was widespread
 They at least promised to keep the peace after decades of war, and the
revived church, both Catholic and Protestant, supported these legitimate
monarchs and associated themselves with the kings
 Large landowners, who were still the bulk of power of the continent
supported the return of the Old Order as safer than the attacks on their
property and social standing the French revolution had produced.
Challenges to the Congress of Vienna
o But the settlement at Vienna was weakened by various events, especially as
Britain moved away from concert diplomacy to adopt her usual role of balancing
the powers of Europe by supporting the underdog
o
o
British Actions
 One sees this first in Britain's support of the American Monroe Doctrine
in 1823, when Britain let it be known that she would enforce the ban
against further colonization or exchange of colonies the American
President had announced but was in no position to defend himself
 Britain also aided the Greek rebels when Greece rebelled against the
Turks in 1820, because that opened more trade for Britain.
July Revolution in France (1830)
 But the first real challenge to the Congress' settlement was the 1830
French revolution
 No where had Metternich provided for any country, let alone
France, to change its government without asking everyone else,
and yet the French did and got away with it
 Louis XVIII, the Bourbon put back on the French throne,
was relatively moderate, but many of his royalist
supporters wanted revenge for predations against their
families during the revolution
 From 1820 onward there was more censorship, but
things came to a head in 1830 when Louis' successor,
Charles X, had himself crowned with almost medieval
splendor at Reims, the coronation place of the absolutist
monarchs of old.

Charles openly professed his belief in divine rights of
kings and an alliance of church and state, and followed
up by gagging the press and limiting voting rights
 Paris revolted and took to the barricades
 Charles decided it would be healthier for him to abdicate and flee
 This is called the July Revolution.
 Government of Louis-Phillipe
 Now the French knew what they did not want, the Bourbons and
absolutism, but they did not know what they did want.
 The liberals wanted a new Republic based on the
republic of the French revolution, but that republic had
created the Reign of Terror and so the very idea of
republicanism was associated by many Frenchmen with
violence and bloodshed
 Thus the middle and upper classes wanted a
constitutional monarchy, but not under the recalcitrant
Bourbons
 They prevailed, choosing a new king, Louis-Philippe, the socalled citizen-king, who was pro-bourgeois
 His father had voted for the execution of Louis XVI and
so he came to the people with excellent liberal
credentials
 He was presented to the adoring Parisian crowds by
none other than the aged Lafayette himself.
 The 1830 French revolution was socially conservative
 The liberals who put Louis-Philippe in power showed little
concern or sympathy with the plight of the lower classes whose
concerns were economic in orientation, including job protection,
better wages, shorter working hours, etc
 Nor was this 1830 revolution provided for in the Congress
system, where no change was to occur without the Big Five's
approval


Metternich opposed it, but the French had demonstrated that a people
could change their government and get away with it, a lesson others
would learn later
o Peaceful Evolution in Great Britain
 Even Britain had immediately after the Napoleonic period undergone a
reactionary period
 The 1819 Peterloo incident and government moves to curb the
press and suspend habeus corpus are only a few examples
 But by the 1820s, England was back on her piecemeal reform track
 Equal voting rights for Catholics was enacted in 1829, labor
unions were recognized in 1824, and a police force was created
for London
 Capital punishment was abolished for some 100 offenses and
even the Corn Laws which had taxed incoming agricultural
products to subsidize inefficient English agriculture were relaxed,
thus lowering the price of food.
 Problems with suffrage
 Britain still had to deal with inequalities in voting rights. Rotten
boroughs existed where there was no or very little population but
which still sent members to Parliament
 Pocket boroughs controlled by political bosses like the landed
aristocracy were also an affront to English democracy
 And large industrial centers like Manchester and Birmingham
were not represented at all
 Reform
 A bill to reform these abuses passed the Commons but stalled in
the House of Lords
 King William IV of Britain then threatened the Lords that either
they would enact this Reform Bill of 1832 or he would create
enough new peers to sit in the House of Lords to pass the bill
 The king had been influenced by the 1830 French revolution and
feared the violence which plagued Paris
 The House of Lords, forced to choose between its social
exclusivity and political power, chose exclusivity and passed the
bill.
 The Reform Bill of 1832 did not enfranchise the workers, but it
did increase the number of voters by 50% by lowering property
qualifications to vote
 The net effect was to increase the representation of the industrial
north when 143 seats were reallocated
 But the Bill did not destroy the strength of the landed aristocracy,
a fact which probably encouraged some wavering Lords to vote
for it
 Reforms in the 1830s in England gradually increased the powers of the
non-aristocracy, but the reforms were evolutionary, not revolutionary, as
England rejected the violence urged by people such as the Chartists
whose Charter of Six Demands they were prepared to use violence to
obtain
 Revolution in England became unnecessary because those
seeking reform and change were actually part of the government
where they could legislate change in piecemeal fashion.
 The great hole in the British reform movement, however, was
Ireland, where the government failed to accommodate rising Irish
nationalism or to help the wretched Irish peasants.
Revolutions of 1848
o
o
o
In 1848, Europe exploded in revolution--except in Britain. There had been
severe food shortages since 1846, which in turn caused a severe commercial
and industrial downturn
 Once again, the desire for change was led by political liberals in the
aristocracy and middle class who wanted peaceful change
 They allied with the urban workers to put pressure on governments, but
these urban workers wanted more than just political reform like the
secret ballot or the right to vote
 Workers wanted to follow political reform with economic reform,
such as minimum wage, right to strike, etc. and were prepared to
use violence to get it.
 Liberals on the continent sealed their fate and caused the collapse of the
revolutions of 1848 when they failed to follow political reform with social
or economic reform.
France
 Once again, it was France who began the revolution
 Louis-Philippe seemed unaware that the industrial revolution in full swing
in France was creating vast inequalities of wealth and a politically
conscious proletariat at the same time
 The proletariat could not vote and hence was excluded from
power, so its desires were never addressed
 Widespread corruption in Louis' government made taxes
increase and lessened the king's prestige
 In February, 1848, Louis- Philippe was obliged to abdicate following
general rioting
 A provisional government created a second French Republic on the
basis of universal male suffrage, meaning all adult men could vote
 This government was beset with factionalism, however, in part
because the French still lacked the centuries-old tradition of self
government England had known
 Moreover, radicals and socialists were not content with the
republic, wanting basic economic reforms as well
 In June, a massive rebellion occurred in Paris with 10,000 dead
or injured
 The capital had never seen such violence, not even in
the Reign of Terror.
 The violence of the June days created a backlash
among the middle class and aristocrats
 the bourgoisie were angry the proletariat had not shown
sufficient "gratitude" when they had been "given" the
right to vote
 They sought out Louis Napoleon, the nephew of Bonaparte, to be the
president of the Second Republic
 The fear of proletariat violence united the middle class and
aristocracy against the workers whose needs they did not
understand
 Louis Napoleon was welcomed by the Catholic Church which
feared radicals as much as the aristocracy did, remembering the
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
 In 1852, Louis Napoleon abolished the republic and proclaimed himself
emperor
 The Second Empire had begun
 The rise of Louis Napoleon shows the power of the middle class
to make--and then break--a revolution, and it also shows that
proletariat desires were being ignored on the continent.
Germany


o
The Germans also revolted in 1848
Inspired by France, Germans revolted and created the Frankfurt
assembly to write a constitution for Germany
 But what exactly was Germany?
 Did it include all German speakers, in which case the crown
should go to the Hapsburgs in Vienna who had ruled a huge
empire for centuries
 This so-called greater Germany theory foundered on the fact that
the Austrians were backward and moreover had what some
Germans considered "mongrel" races in their empire, people like
Poles, Czechs, Slavs, etc
 The Little Germany theory preferred creating a new Germany, a
purified one, under Prussian leadership, giving the crown of the
new constitutional monarchy to the Hohenzollerns of Prussia
 The Frankfurt assembly constitution was a typically middle class and
liberal document offering the usual political reforms, but offering no
economic aid or reform to urban workers whose needs the writers of the
constitution did not appreciate.
 The problem arose when the assembly finally offered the crown to
Frederick William IV of Prussia who refused it
 He wanted a unified Germany but only on his terms
 If he took the crown from the assembly, the assembly might take
it back some day, and this he would not tolerate
 The assembly slowly melted away and was finally dispersed by
Frederick William's army
 Many German liberals who had been at the assembly gave up on
Germany and fled to the United States, especially to new areas then
opening up, like Texas, where they founded cities like Fredericksburg
and New Braunfels
 Frederick tried his own plan for unifying Germany under Prussian
dominance
 but the plan failed when Austria and Russia let it be known they
were prepared to use force to stop a unified Germany being
created at their doorstep
 Russian fears of a united Germany were well founded; a united
Germany invaded her twice in the twentieth century with
devastating loss of life
Failure of the revolutions of 1848
 All the revolutions of 1848 ultimately failed
 Reasons for failure
 One reason was lack of experience and realism among its
leaders
 More devoted to broad principles than practical results,
they tended, as in the case of Italy, to concern
themselves with writing the national anthem before there
was a safe government
 Nationalism moreover resulted in factionalism, pitting one state
against another
 Class consciousness pitted the middle classes against the
proletariat as well
 The former did not want to forgo their privileged economic
position and thought political reform was sufficient
 Finally, Austria and Russia were prepared to support reactionary
governments with military might while no one, including Britain,
was prepared to defend liberal governments with force if need be
o
o
o
As Europe reached the mid-century mark, Britain was developing an evolutionary
path to reform, creating more democracy but following it up with economic
reforms like increasing the food supply at lower cost
 She had already moved away from concert diplomacy, and France had
defied the Quintuple Alliance, twice, by changing her government in 1830
and 1848
After 1850, therefore, the Congress of Vienna concert diplomacy system would
not be able to deal with a new crop of leaders, hard-headed realists all, who
began to accomplish what the romantics of 1848 had failed to do
The unification of Italy and Germany was achieved, but the arrival of these two
countries on the world scene, especially the last, set the stage for World War I.