REFORM, REACTIONS,

AND REVOLUTIONAR

Y IDEASThe Revolution of 1848, Reform

Efforts, Suffrage, and New Cultural Currents

THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 The great dividing point in nineteenth-century

European political history is the Revolution of 1848

This was a massive disturbance that shook almost every country of Europe to its political roots

The events that set off the Revolution of 1848 took place in France

In the spring, the king, Louis-Philippe refused demands for electoral reform

Riots began and by, the summer, the king had been deposed

Over the next few months, a heated political struggle was waged throughout France

In the end, Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, Louis Napoleon, became France’s president

In the meantime, revolution spread from France to the rest of Europe (referring to the contagious nature of French revolutionary sentiments, Metternich was fond of commenting that every time France sneezed, all of Europe caught cold)

The only nations that remained immune during 1848 and 1849 were Britain, which was flexible and liberal enough to keep its people from feeling the need to revolt, and Russia, which punished liberals and radicals so harshly that revolution was too dangerous to consider

In Prussia, Austria, most of the German states, and a good number of Italian states (many of which were under Austrian control), revolution broke out, lasting sometime for months

In areas ruled by Austria, such as Czech Bohemia, Croatia, and Hungary, nationalist sentiment combined with political activism to cause further revolts

In the end, except in France, all of the revolutions were crushed or faded away

By late 1848 or early 1849, rulers who had been toppled briefly came back to power

One historian described 1848 as “the turning point that did not quite turn”

However, the revolutions of 1848 did have their effects

They compelled the king of Prussia and the emperor of Austria to grant certain constitutional reforms

They demonstrated the increasing importance of nationalism in European politics

They laid the groundwork for the unifications of Germany and Italy later in the century

Most of all, the revolutions demonstrated once and for all to rulers throughout Europe that at least some of the political, economic, and social demands of ordinary people had to be met, or at least listened to and taken seriously

THE UNDERLYING CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION Popular impatience with over three

decades of reactionary rule started by the Congress of Vienna and Prince Metternich’s efforts to restore the old regimes after the French Revolution

The social and economic effects of the Industrial Revolution

The growing sense of nationalism A long series of economic downturns and

bad harvests that caused much distress during the 1840s (the decade was popularly known as the “Hungry Forties” – The Irish Potato Famine was the best-known and most deadly)

THE GRADUAL MOVE TOWARD REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY Most European countries moved

closer to representative forms of government during the second half of the century

Part of this trend was due to the fact that industrialization, modernization, urbanization, and population growth had made government too difficult a task for one person or a small group of people to manage

Even in less democratic nations, political power began to spread outward to larger numbers of governmental advisers, agencies, ministries, and institutions

The two major nations that developed democratic forms of government – defined in nineteenth-century terms as a meaningful vote for all adult males – during these years were Great Britain and France

In Britain, during the reign of Queen Victoria, the two major parties in Parliament – the Conservatives, led by Benjamin Disraeli, and the Liberals, led by William Gladstone – became more willing to extend the vote to the middle and lower classes

This process took many years, and it was accomplished by means of the Second (1867) and Third (1885) Reform Acts

As a result of the latter, virtually all adult males could vote in parliamentary elections

The few remaining restrictions on male suffrage were removed over the next two decades

However, reform did not remove all problems from British life

The growing political clout of the lower classes was demonstrated by the fact that, during the early 1900s, a new political party, Labour, displaced the older, more middle-class Liberals as the primary Conservative party

Another problem that plagued Britain during the late 1800s and early 1900s was the question of Irish home rule: should Ireland be set free, and if so, should the north bitterly divided between Catholic and Protestant, remain in British or Irish hands

France’s progress toward democracy was less consistent and less gentle than Britain’s

After the 1848 Revolution, France briefly had a republic in which all adult males could votes

However, the president, Louis Napoleon, was not satisfied with his office

In 1851, he staged a coup and made himself Napoleon III, emperor of France

He was not as dictatorial as his more famous uncle, and during his twenty-year reign, he helped to industrialize and modernize France

Paris in its modern form took shape under his rule

Still, Napoleon III did curtail civil liberties and political rights

In 1870 and 1871, after losing the bitter Franco-Prussian War against the neighboring Germans, Napoleon III was deposed

From 1871 onward, France was a democratic republic, with universal male suffrage

As in Britain, democracy did not solve all of France’s problems

The Fourth Republic was rocked many times by corruption and financial scandal

The national controversy sparked by the Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906) – in which a Jewish officer was wrongly accused of selling military secrets to Germany – exposed not only an ugly streak of anti-Semitism within French society, but also deep divisions between the left (which maintained Dreyfus’ innocence) and the right (which remained convinced of his guilt)

THE UNIFICATION OF ITALY AND GERMANY Among the most dramatic

developments of late nineteenth-century politics were the unification of Italy and the unification of Germany, both during the 1860s and early 1870s

Both were examples of the growing power of the popular will, guided in this case by nationalism rather than the desire for greater democracy

In both cases, unification was brought about by a complicated combination of war and diplomatic intrigue

The prime movers of Italian unification were the statesman Camillo Cavour and the general Giuseppe Garibaldi

The country was partially united in 1861, then fully united in 1870

Under Victor Emmanuel II, Italy became a constitutional monarchy

Germany’s unification was spearheaded by Prussia, which defeated Austria in 1864 in a war for leadership of German states

The mastermind of unification was the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck

Germany joined together in 1871, following its decisive victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War

Prussia’s king became Kaiser (emperor) Wilhelm I, of the new German Reich (empire)

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY Austria, a multinational empire, also

had to make certain concessions to the dozens of ethnic minorities – Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, Italians, Hungarians, and others – it ruled

The pressures of nationalism were particularly strong, and Austria had an increasingly difficult time containing the desire of many minorities for greater autonomy, if not complete freedom

In 1867, the largest and most powerful minority, the Hungarians, forced the Austrian government to grant them equal status within the empire

The Augsleich (“compromise”) turned Austria into the Austro-Hungarian Empire

And previously, though more conservative than the west, the 1848 Revolution had driven out the archconservative Metternich

In 1861, the emperor, Franz Josef, agreed to the creation of an elected parliament, with which he shared power

Even the German government, ruled by the emperor and administered until 1890 by the highly conservative Bismarck, had to make concessions to its people

As Germany became an industrial powerhouse, its working class grew larger, and the appeal of trade unionism and socialism grew stronger

To prevent ordinary Germans from becoming attracted to left-wing ideologies, Bismarck allowed all adult males to vote in elections to the German parliament, or Reichstag (this universal male suffrage, however, was compromised by the fact that the voting system weighed the ballots of upper-class voters more heavily than those of the lower class)

Bismarck also passed a generous set of laws that granted workers many economic benefits: unemployment insurance, disability insurance, pensions, a shorter workday, and so on

Ironically, for a time, workers in late nineteenth-century Germany were better off than in more liberal nations such as France, Britain, or the United States

Nonetheless, the government, even after Bismarck’s dismissal by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1890, continued to be quite conservative

But of all Europe’s major nations, Russia remained the most autocratic

It had no constitution, and until 1905, no elected body with which the tsar shared power

But shocked by its embarrassing defeat in the Crimean War (1853-1856), Tsar Alexander II, a moderate liberal, attempted to modernize Russia with a series of Great Reforms

By far the most important was the emancipation of serfs in 1861

But unfortunately, Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 by radical terrorists

The tsars that followed him, including Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II (1894-1917), were extremely conservative

Not only did they abandon Alexander’s reforms, they did their best to undo as many of them as possible

Yet a series uprising in 1905 forced Nicholas II to create and share power with an elected, semiparliamentary body, the Duma

But the Duma was weak, and the tsar took every opportunity to avoid cooperating with it

WOMEN’S MOVEMENTS Mary Wollstonecraft, an English

writer, is consider the founder of modern European feminism

In her treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), she argued that Enlightenment thinking took account of the ideal that reason was an innate feature of all human beings, including women

She maintained that women therefore should be entitled to equal rights with men in education, as well as political and economic pursuits

During the French Revolution, Olympe de Gouges, a female playwright, argued in her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen that women be granted the same rights as men

The National Assembly, which had approved the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, dismissed de Gouges’s proposal

The “woman question” was the term used to describe the debate over the status of women

In nineteenth century society, women continued to remain in an inferior position to men inside and outside of the family

The “cult of true womanhood,” anchored in the middle classes of the Victorian era in England, posited that the ideal woman reflected the “virtues” of submissiveness, piety, domesticity, modesty, and femininity

Early feminists argued that women, like men, were individuals who had different strengths and abilities and should be permitted to develop them without social restrictions

The early women’s rights movement emerged in the 1830s among groups of women in Europe and the United States

Early on, women focused on reforming family and divorce laws to allow women to own property and file for divorce

SUFFRAGE By the middle of the nineteenth

century, women began advocating equal political rights, most notably, the right to vote (suffrage)

They saw suffrage as the initial step toward political equality and full citizenship

As a general rule, women’s movements in Europe and America were led by women of the upper classes

The women’s movement in Britain, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, was most vocal, although it suffered from disagreement over tactics for achieving equality

In 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, a group of women met to organize the Women’s Rights Convention

They agreed there that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are equal”

Major figures in the U.S. movement were Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

In the United States, suffragettes called for the right to vote and better working conditions for women in textile factories

However, on the whole, women were not granted the right to vote in high numbers in Western countries until after World War I

The exceptions included Norway, Finland, and a handful of U.S. states

INTELLECTUAL AND CULTURAL CURRENTS IN EUROPE If cultural and intellectual life in

eighteenth-century Europe had for decades been dominated by one major movement, the Enlightenment, nineteenth-century Europe (and America) experienced constant change and development in this area

One of the hallmarks of modern culture in the West has been the ever-increasing speed with which artistic styles and scientific theories shift and evolve

The principal cultural movement of the late 1700s and early 1800s was Romanticism

Romanticism represented a backlash against the logic- and reason-oriented outlook of the Enlightenment

Romanticism placed a premium on emotion and passion, the self-realization of the individual, heroism, and a love of the natural world

Among the many famous Romantics were William Blake, Lord Byron, J.W. von Goethe, Victor Hugo, J.M.W. Turner, Eugene Delacroix, Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner, and Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Although Romanticism did not die out, it yielded its place of prominence around the 1840s and 1850s

Realism rejected Romanticism’s idealized, dramatic outlook in favor of a more sober, critical view of life

Realists artists and writers concerned themselves with the details of everyday existence

They were interested in commenting on social problems such as poverty, social hypocrisy, and class injustice

Well-known realists included Charles Dickens, George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans), Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola, Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoevsky

Realism peaked from the 1840s to 1870s

The culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was characterized by diversity and innovation

Turning away from Realism, artists and writers began to break the rules of traditional culture and experiment with a dazzling array of new styles: Symbolism, Impressionism, Post-Impressions, Expressionism, Cubism, and even abstraction