Europe [individual assignment]
Europe in the nineteenth century
Between 1815 and 1848, most governments were convinced that even the slightest liberalism would lead to renewed political chaos. They attempted to minimize change or even undo what had transpired during the years of French revolution (1789). This arch-conservative stance, known as reaction, was the guiding principle of the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) which ended the Napoleonic wars and forged an informal agreement among Europe’s major powers to preserve order and prevent change. Monarchies were no longer absolute, but royal families were restored wherever possible, including France. Civil liberties were restricted, censorship was heavy, and secret police forces were common. Russia not only remained an absolute monarchy, but continued the practice of serfdom.
A key turning point came with the revolution of 1848 (“the Springtime of the Peoples”), whose causes included popular impatience with reactionary rule, socioeconomic stress caused by industrialization, and a series of bad harvests (like the Irish Potato Famine) that cause a decade to be known as the “hungry forties.” The revolution began in France, where the king was deposed and Napoleon’s nephew appointed president. Uprisings then spread to much of the rest of Europe (except Britain and Russia).These were crushed by the summer of 1849. They compelled Austria and German states like Prussia to grant constitutions. Also the uprisings demonstrated the growing political importance of nationalism, since they involved ethnic revolts against Austrian rule. Uprisings inspired Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to write the Communist Manifesto. Most of all, they hammered home for good the lesson of the French Revolution: the demands of ordinary people had to be taken seriously.
Economic concessions desired by the working class in any given country generally included all or most of the following: higher wages, shorter work-days and work weeks, safer working conditions, insurance in case of injury, and pensions for retirement. The right to form trade unions (labour organizations protecting workers’ rights) and go on strike (workers’ protest) was considered crucial as well.
During the second half of the century, most European governments expanded political representation and legislated the improvement of working conditions.
In Victorian Britain, the Parliament gradually extended the vote to middle- and lower-class males by means of the Second (1867) and Third (1885) Reform Acts, and also granted economic concessions and fairer labor laws to the lower classes. It wrestled with the question of women’s suffrage and Irish nationalism.
In after 1848 France, all adult males could vote, but in 1851, the president, Louis Napoleon, staged a coup and crowned himself Napoleon III. He was not an absolute dictator, and he helped to modernize Paris and industrialize the country, but his humiliating defeat during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) caused his abdication. After a short but bloody revolution, a new democratic republic arose in 1871 and lasted until 1940. Undfortunately, democracy did not solve all of France’s problems. Corruption, financial scandals, and party rivalries rocked France, and worst of all was the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906), in which the army and government falsely blamed a Jewish officer for the leaking of military secrets to Germany. This controversy divided the left (which maintained Dreyfus’s innocence) from the right (which was convinced of his guilt) and exposed the ugly streak of anti-Semitism in modern European society.
Nationalism affected politics in Italy, Germany, and Austria.
The unification of Italy as a parliamentary monarchy took place in the 1860s. Under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi in the south, young men pushed for an Italian nation, fighting a military campaign to unite the people behind this idea. In the north, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the prime minister to King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia, aligned with France and expelled Austria from northern Italy. In 1871, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, and Sardinia's king was chosen as its ruler.
The unification of Germany was spearheaded by Prussia in a series of three short conflicts, culminating in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The new German emperor William I shared power with a legislature called the Reichstag, and all adult males technically had the vote.
With Otto von Bismarck serving the emperor as chancellor (and also as Europe’s most skilled diplomat), Germany rapidly modernized, thanks to a policy of state-directed industrialization.
In Austria, post-1848 liberalization led to the creation of a parliament in 1861 and various concessions to the empire’s many minority populations. The Ausgleich (compromise) of 1867 granted equal status to Austria’s largest minority, the Hungarians, and the state was renamed the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
As in other parts of Europe, anti-Semitism became a major part of political life here.
In 1853–1856, autocratic Russia was shaken by loss in the Crimean War. Moderately liberal Alexander II modernized Russia with a series of “great reforms,” the most important of which was his 1861 emancipation of the serfs. The conservative tsars who succeeded him undid many of his changes. Nicholas II, who met with a terrible defeat during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), almost lost his throne during the 1905 Revolution. This compelled him to share power with a new and popularly-elected legislature, the Duma – but once the danger passed, Nicholas weakened the Duma and avoided cooperating with it.
Anti-Semitic persecution escalated, and pogroms, or anti-Jewish raids, were common in the Russian empire.
Questions for experts
1. What factors influenced on Europe’s history?
2. What were the main events in Europe’s history?
3. What distinguishes Europe from other regions considered in this topic? (Before answering read about other region in the topic 9).