Themes in Modern European History 1830-1890

Bruce Waller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9781138137011
• eBook ISBN: 9781134875801
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Providing a series of lively essays which reflect the skills that historians have to master when challenged by problems of evidence, interpretation, and presentation, this important new text covers the topics of France, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Russia, as well as analyzing the themes of political thought, cultural trends, the economy and warfare, international relations and imperialism.

Six distinguished scholars, all of whom are regularly involved in student teaching, provide an authoritative student guide to the main contours of nineteenth-century European history when the continent's standing was at its highest and its influence spanned the globe.

1
Revolutionary movements in nineteenth-century Europe

ROGER PRICE

Introduction

This essay seeks to explain the incidence of revolution in nineteenth-century Europe. The necessary reference point has to be the French Revolution of 1789 and the assault upon monarchy, the nobility and the church, and the long wars between 1792 and 1815. This experience promoted a polarization of opinion between conservative social and political élites and those groups, largely excluded from power, wanting political liberalism and social reform. Conservative fears and repression would greatly aggravate the hostility between these. Repression alone could never be totally effective, given the inherent weakness of the bureaucratic machines (particularly in comparison with twentieth-century models). Moreover, in addition to fear, it frequently inspired contempt and so served to stimulate opposition. Thus the conservative and governmental determination to crush liberal, democratic and national aspirations maintained a high degree of political and social tension. The situation was greatly exacerbated by a complex of factors including a continued suspicion of France. This reflected doubts about the stability of its internal political system and the sincerity of the French commitment to the 1815 territorial settlement. There was also a growing awareness of the unrest caused by population growth, which in many areas threatened to outstrip resources, and by the disruptive effects of industrial development, urbanization and the commercialization of agriculture.

Two major waves of revolution occurred in the first half of the century and threatened the internal and international order agreed on by the powers at Vienna in 1815. The first came in 1830–2, most notably in France and the Netherlands. As a result in France the Bourbon monarchy, closely associated with aristocratic political predominance, was replaced by a regime which extended political rights to wider groups of property owners and increased the authority of Parliament; in the Low Countries the independence of Belgium was recognized. Elsewhere, and especially in Britain and some German states, varying degrees of political liberalization were conceded. Events in one country clearly influenced those in others by stimulating hopes and fears. The search for common patterns should not be pursued too far, however, given differences in political traditions and social situations. 1848 saw revolution on a much greater scale—both geographically and in terms of the demands made for political and social reform. Encouraged by the partial success of 1830, reacting against the way in which governments had turned to repression subsequently, liberals and democrats were all the more determined, after the unexpected collapse of the French, Austrian and Prussian governments, to achieve far-reaching reforms. The hysterical fear of revolution which this promoted amongst conservatives was to lead to brutally repressive measures in the short term, and in the longer term to efforts to ensure social stability through reforms from above. These would have a decisive impact upon the development of social systems and on the political evolution of the various European states.

What was it about the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries that made these periods particularly susceptible to revolution? The obvious place to begin is with the causes of revolution. These must include discontent with existing political and/or social systems, and in relation to this such factors as the scale and location (social and geographic) of discontent. Thus, where mass unrest due to material deprivation coincided with the articulate and organized expression of grievances amongst the upper and middle classes the political situation was obviously more unstable than where the property-owning classes remained fundamentally united in support of a government believed to be committed to their vital interests. Discontent in a capital city was always more threatening than disorders in the provinces. Another major factor was governmental response to discontent. Timely concessions might reduce the likelihood of disorder; they were made in Britain in 1832 by means of the Parliamentary Reform Law and in 1846 through the repeal of the Corn Laws, and in many of the minor German states in both 1830 and 1848. On the other hand where such concessions gave the appearance of weakness they might encourage further demands. In contrast, the refusal to compromise might persuade opponents that the way to reform through legal, institutionalized channels was closed and that recourse to force was unavoidable. However, governments obviously determined to defend their position through the use of repressive violence might well succeed in persuading opponents that the likely cost of protest was too high to be risked. In this situation political demobilization could result, and this was one amongst a complex of reasons for the absence of revolution in many European states in both 1830 and 1848. The answers to the question posed above are thus likely to be both structural and political: structural in terms of the discontent caused by economic change and population growth, and political given the inability or unwillingness of some ruling groups to accept the diminution in their power that would result from the incorporation of aspiring interest groups into the political system.

Acceptable generalizations are not easy to make, given the great variety of economic, social and political systems to be found in nineteenth-century Europe, embracing Britain—the symbol of advanced industrialization, with its constitutional monarchy, and those other west European states evolving towards a capitalistic society; the monarchies of central and eastern Europe, progressively more absolute the further east one looks; the agrarian societies of the Mediterranean, plagued as in the case of Spain, Portugal and Greece by bitter, and often armed, conflict between conservatives and liberals; the Italian states, subject to various forms of absolutist government; and the Balkans, slowly throwing off Ottoman rule. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, with the exception of Britain and Belgium, and to a lesser degree France and parts of Western Germany, pre-industrial economic and social structures remained largely intact, preserved by poor communications and geographical fragmentation. In certain other crucial respects too the ancien régime survived well into the nineteenth century. Even in France, where constitutional monarchy had been established in 1815, the monarchy retained the substantial authority believed by élites to be essential for the preservation of order. Further east, absolute monarchy survived with little more than the force of custom, local privilege, and practical realities (small bureaucracies, limited tax revenues, poor communications, etc.) to enforce restraint. Furthermore landowners retained positions of social and political predominance, even in Britain and France where wealth, and the adoption of the appropriate life-style had allowed successful members of the professional and business class to accede to positions of influence. The further east one looked the more complete was aristocratic dominance, reinforced by the surviving institutions of serfdom and protected by absolute monarchy. The wealthy controlled access to scarce resources (particularly the land), to employment, and to charity, and, because of their virtual monopoly of key positions in representative assemblies, the bureaucracy and the army, dominated the process of law-making, controlled the means of coercion, and possessed multi-faceted means of exercising power. In spite of our present perception of accelerating economic and social change, it is important to stress continuity with the eighteenth century.

The causes of revolution

In an influential article published in 1948 the French historian Labrousse insisted on the importance of economic crisis as a cause of social unrest, and additionally on the fact that not all such crises led on to revolution. Discontent not only needed to be politicized, and governmental responses to the crisis judged to be inadequate, but conflict situations had to develop—in 1830 and 1848 in France by accident, rather than from a widespread desire for revolution.¹

Differing levels of economic development between countries, and regional variations within them, render hazardous generalizations about the impact of economic difficulties. Nevertheless the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 (and indeed that of 1789) were all preceded by major crises. In many respects, and in spite of rising agricultural productivity, these were typical pre-industrial crises, caused by two or three successive poor harvests in most regions between 1827 and 1829, and then again in 1845 and 1846. These greatly intensified the social problems caused by population growth, and by the transition to capitalistic production in both agriculture and industry. Harvest shortfalls resulted in a sharp rise in food prices and in a reduction of the income of most small farmers. Consumers were forced to spend increasing portions of their incomes on basic foodstuffs and correspondingly less on manufactured goods. As a result, the crisis spread to industry, causing widespread unemployment and short-term working. As their incomes declined, many workers were faced with increases of the order of 50 per cent in the price of such essentials as bread and potatoes. Such situations, together with the disorders caused by protests about high prices, led to a general loss of confidence throughout society; this further reduced demand for industrial products and services and resulted in a generalized economic and social crisis. The export of bullion to finance food imports had a further deflationary impact on the whole economy.

These situations were fundamentally similar to that which had prevailed before 1789, but in the late 1820s and especially 1840s there were also signs of change in the character of economic crises due to the accelerating development of international financial markets and a commercial and industrial economy. In this state of transition from pre-industrial structures, many regions suffered from the impact of both a pre-industrial crisis caused by poor harvests and a modern crisis which was due to loss of confidence in major financial markets together with industrial overproduction/under-consumption and commercial glut. Significantly both the most advanced economy (Britain) and some of the more backward, that is, those least integrated into inter-regional trade, were less severely affected by crisis than those undergoing structural change. These areas for this and other reasons did not experience revolution.

Where revolution occurred, it appears that economic and political crises coincided. To a degree the two were obviously interrelated, and governments were blamed for the misery and anxiety which affected most of the population. This situation also reinforced demands for constitutional reform, reawakening the liberal and democratic aspirations created in the aftermath of 1789 in favour of parliamentary institutions or an extension of the franchise. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, throughout western and central Europe, and particularly amongst the landowning and professional classes, a new participatory political culture had been created; it survived repeated waves of repression. The year 1830 both satisfied some of the more moderate reformist demands and encouraged more far-reaching proposals that would enjoy wider support. The disparate character of political opposition, then and later, should, however, be noted. It included both liberals interested in limited constitutional change to ensure the rule of law, and radicals committed to manhood suffrage and vague measures of social reform.

In France the accession of Charles X in 1824 would in any case have caused a crisis. He was not merely unwilling to contemplate liberal reforms, he also introduced a series of repressive measures; these culminated in the dismissal of a newly elected Parliament in 1830 and the use of emergency decree powers to issue ordonnances revising electoral procedures and reducing the size of the electorate. This seemed to confirm the worst fears of liberals that a reactionary coup d’état in favour of the aristocracy and the church was intended. In Paris and many provincial towns committees, which included liberal nobles but were mainly made up of non-noble landowners and professional men, called for resistance. They used rather ambiguous and universalistic terms, not wanting revolution, but which had the effect of mobilizing a disparate coalition determined to oppose the government.

Again in 1847 the government rejected an extension of the franchise beyond the levels established after the 1830 Revolution. This encouraged those active politicians who despaired of winning electoral victory under the existing system to seek the support of unenfranchised representatives of the professional classes. They organized protest in the form of a banquet campaign in order to evade laws prohibiting public meetings, and were able to mobilize substantial popular support. Yet again they were not revolutionaries, but they helped to create a situation in which violent conflict became a possibility because of the arousal of political passions. The limited nature of the reforms which had followed the 1830 Revolution, and the continued unwillingness of Louis-Philippe and his ministers to accept constitutional change, together with growing awareness of the ‘social problem’ created by urban-industrial development, had moreover reinforced support for democratic reforms, and, amongst a radical minority, for the re-establishment of the Republic.

Events in France, both in 1830 and 1848, provided a major stimulus to liberal demands elsewhere in Europe. Even where concessions had been made to liberalism, as in the Netherlands, or Baden and Bavaria after 1815 or in 1830, these had been extremely limited. By 1848 discontent was far more obvious throughout the German states and in the Austrian Empire. There the situation was further complicated by the emergence, again particularly amongst the educated landowning and professional classes, of national sentiment. In Germany this was expressed by demands for some form of unity, in the Austrian Empire by a growing will to question the decisions of a largely Germanic bureaucracy and in Italy, Hungary and Bohemia by the assertion of claims to linguistic and cultural equality.

The effect of growing political discontent to a large extent depended upon the way in which the various governments responded. Revolutions occurred, in both 1830 and 1848, when governments failed to make timely concessions which might have satisfied at least some opposition groups, and when they were at the same time unable to prevent the continued discussion of grievances. The inherent weakness of monarchical government, overtly dependent as it was on the character and qualities of individuals holding power often for long periods, was revealed by the inept crisis management of Charles X and his chief minister Polignac in 1829–30, of Louis-Philippe and Guizot in 1847–8, by William I’s feeble efforts to reduce discontent in the southern (Belgian) provinces of his kingdom, and the paralysis which affected both the Austrian and Prussian regimes in 1848 as the news of the February revolution in Paris encouraged internal discontents. Monarchs such as Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the Prussian king, convinced of their divine right to rule and dependent on the advice of a narrow circle of court nobles, were not likely to make timely concessions. In 1830–2 moderate constitutional reform in some of the states of northern and central Germany, in Denmark and in Britain, successfully conciliated middle-class liberals. However, in the German cases the subsequent withdrawal of most of these concessions only increased distrust of government and reduced the likelihood that subsequent protest would adopt, as in Britain, legal and institutional forms. There was widespread and growing resentment of the arbitrariness and petty tyranny exercised by state officials.

More than any other individual, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich has been associated with the political repression designed to preserve monarchical absolutism and aristocratic power against further revolution, both within the empire and the German states, throughout the period from 1815 to 1848. Indeed, convinced that a secret committee of revolutionaries was plotting to plunge the continent into another era of revolution and war, Metternich sought to persuade European governments to co-operate in maintaining the status quo. The effectiveness and influence of the imperial regime was however considerably reduced by its own continued lack of cohesion. Weak emperors were unable to impose a spirit of co-operation upon squabbling ministers. Constant financial difficulties made it impossible to sustain a strong and efficient bureaucracy and army. Whilst reforms that might have increased the efficiency of the administration were repeatedly postponed, efforts continued to reinforce administrative control over the disparate sections of the empire. This awoke growing resentment, especially in Hungary and Lombardy-Venetia. By late 1847 Radetzky, the military commander in northern Italy, was reporting that ‘the whole social order …[is]…about to collapse…the Revolution will only be kept in check by fear’. If in reality only very small groups actively favoured revolution, governmental inertia in the various countries undoubtedly had the effect of undermining the legitimacy of existing regimes, and reducing the strength of support for the status quo.

A revolutionary situation can be said to exist where opponents of a government resort to demonstrating their opposition on the streets, and enter into conflict with police and troops whose responsibility is precisely to control the public highway and assert the authority of the established government. The potential for violence in this type of situation might develop beyond the point of no return, owing to an, often accidental, triggering incident. The revolutionary overthrow of a regime will however only occur if its military forces are actively defeated; the circumstances in which this occurred in 1830 and 1848 are obviously on our agenda. Moreover, in order to overcome the resistance of governments backed by military force, substantial mass participation is necessary. Discontent in itself, however, is not sufficient to lead to a revolution, particularly where, as in most of the cases which concern us, hardly anyone, at least initially, was actively planning revolt. Secret revolutionary societies certainly existed, but were small, internally divided and usually penetrated by the police. Not surprisingly they were most common in those areas such as Italy, Spain or Poland in which repression had been most extreme.

When looking at the geography of revolutions an obvious characteristic is that they began in capital cities—the foci for political activity, but also sites of rapid economic change and population growth—and only subsequently affected other towns and rural areas. In both 1830 and 1848 violence began with clashes between the military and crowds of demonstrators, after which the latter erected barricades both as a form of protection and to secure control of the city. Successful use of the army by governments to assert mastery depende...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• 1. Revolutionary Movements In Nineteenth-Century Europe
• 2. France: The Search for Stability, 1830–90
• 3. Italy: Independence and Unification Without Power
• 4.Germany: Independence and Unification With Power
• 5. Explaining the Habsburg Empire, 1830–90
• 6. Russia: Tsarism and the West
• 7. Progress, Prosperity, and Positivism: Cultural Trends In Mid-Century
• 8. Shifting Patterns of Political Thought and Action: Liberalism, Nationalism, Socialism
• 9. Steam: Revolution In Warfare and the Economy
• 10. Relations Between States and Nations
• 11. Europe and the Wider World
• Chronology
• Contributors