Reform, Reactions, and Revolutionary Ideas

1. Reform, Reactions, and Revolutionary Ideas The Revolution of 1848, Reform Efforts, Suffrage, and New Cultural Currents

2. 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

3. 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)

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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)

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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)

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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

29. 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

30. 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