Words to know
conservatism
An ideology that values tradition, established institutions (monarchy, church) and gradual change.
liberalism (classical)
An ideology stressing individual rights, constitutional government, the rule of law and free markets; in the 1800s, liberals often wanted voting limited to property owners.
laissez-faire
French for "let do": the idea that governments should not interfere in the economy.
socialism
An ideology holding that society, not private owners, should own or control the main means of production, to reduce inequality.
proletariat
Marx's term for the industrial working class, who own nothing but their labour.
bourgeoisie
Marx's term for the capitalist class that owns factories, land and capital.
nationalism
The belief that people who share a culture, language or history form a nation that should govern itself.
Conservatism
The Irish-born British writer Edmund Burke attacked the French Revolution in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). He argued that institutions built up over centuries hold practical wisdom, and that tearing them down in the name of abstract rights leads to chaos. Conservatives such as Metternich defended monarchy, the established church and the social hierarchy, and feared revolution and nationalism. Conservatism was strongest among nobles, clergy and many rural people.
Liberalism
Liberals drew on the Enlightenment and on economist Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations, 1776). They wanted constitutions, elected parliaments, freedom of speech, religion and the press, equality before the law, and free trade with little government interference (laissez-faire). Most early liberals wanted the vote only for men with property. John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, 1859) defended freedom of thought and expression, and with Harriet Taylor Mill argued for women's equality. Liberalism was the ideology of much of the middle class.
Socialism
Socialists argued that liberalism protected the rich. Robert Owen ran a model cotton mill at New Lanark in Scotland with shorter hours, schools and better housing, and set up cooperative communities. Such early thinkers were later called "utopian" socialists.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848. They argued that all history is a history of class struggle. In industrial society, the bourgeoisie (owners) exploits the proletariat (workers), and the workers will eventually overthrow the system and create a classless society. The Manifesto ends with the call (in a literal English translation of the German): "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" (often rendered as "Workers of the world, unite!"). Marx's Capital (volume 1, 1867) analysed how capitalism works.
Anarchism
Anarchists such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin wanted to abolish the state itself and replace it with voluntary cooperation. They clashed with Marxists, who wanted workers to take over the state.
Nationalism and feminism
Nationalism held that each nation should have its own state. The Italian Giuseppe Mazzini linked nationalism with democracy and founded the movement Young Italy. Nationalism could be liberal (self-government for the people) or, later in the century, conservative (loyalty, power and expansion).
Feminism grew from the same roots. Mary Wollstonecraft argued in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) that women appear less rational only because they are denied education. Women's movements are covered in the lesson on new ideas and rights.
The revolutions of 1830 and 1848
The Vienna settlement held down liberals and nationalists, but not for long.
1830. In France, the July Revolution replaced the Bourbon king with a more liberal "citizen king", Louis-Philippe. Belgium broke away from the Netherlands and became independent. A Polish uprising against Russia was crushed.
1848. Bad harvests (including the potato blight that also caused the Great Famine in Ireland), an economic slump, unemployment, and frustration with conservative governments led to revolutions across Europe:
- France (February): Louis-Philippe was overthrown. The Second Republic introduced universal male suffrage, and in April it abolished slavery in the French colonies for good. But in June, troops crushed a workers' uprising in Paris. In December, voters elected Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon's nephew) president; in 1852 he made himself Emperor Napoleon III.
- Austrian Empire (March): Metternich fled Vienna. Hungarians, Czechs and Italians demanded self-government. Serfdom was abolished in Austrian lands. By 1849 the army, with Russian help against Hungary, restored imperial control.
- German states: an elected Frankfurt Parliament drafted a constitution for a united Germany and offered the crown to the King of Prussia. In 1849 he refused a crown "from the gutter", as he saw it, and the Parliament was dissolved.
- Italian states: revolts in Milan, Venice, Rome and elsewhere, and a war against Austria, were defeated.
Why did they fail? Revolutionaries were divided: middle-class liberals feared workers' demands; nationalities within empires competed with each other; and armies stayed loyal to kings. Yet many goals, such as constitutions, the end of serfdom and national unification, came within a generation, often imposed from above.