Lecture One: An Age of Reaction (1815-'36)
"A Spectre is Haunting Europe…" Karl Marx
In many ways the 19th C was a period of transition for Europe and its peoples. Massive forces - be they social and economic or political and military - effectively transformed region and the nations that comprised it. The Industrial Revolution began to rapidly spread beyond the borders of Great Britain and agrarian societies of peasants slowly gave way to urbanised masses of workers. The very landscape itself was irrevocably changed by industry as, fuelled by finance capital and powered by the pursuit of profits, factories, mines and railways came to dominate the countryside. The great locomotive of industry hauled the rest of society after it as rising literacy rates led to the development of mass politics, the rise of new social classes, and an explosion in population growth as mortality rates collapsed in the face of advances in medicine. In short the 19th C saw the establishment of the modern European society.
Yet change almost invariably brings conflict and the transformation of Europe was by no means peaceful. Indeed the sheer speed of this process - breathtaking when viewed from the perspective of macro-history - conspired to produce intense contradictions that would wrack the region throughout the century. Clergyman and atheists bellowed from their respective pulpits; republicans and autocrats waged wars over the right to rule; landowner and capitalist clashed over economic direction; revolutionaries and reactionaries rubbed shoulders in cafes and ballrooms; while old hegemonies were shattered by rising upstart classes. Out of these contradictions and clashes progress occurred, in fits and starts, as the very fabric of European society begin to contort itself into new shapes.
Change is never a simple linear progression however. Pressures tend to accumulate quietly, and with little notice, before slowly building into a thundering crescendo, and finally exploding violently. This is certainly true of the first half of the 19th C in which the defeat of Napoleonic France heralded in an apparent calm in European affairs. Unfortunately for those statesmen who tried desperately to turn the clock back to the previous century, foremost amongst them the Austrian Prince Metternich, their work on the political level was being constantly undermined by social forces below*. The defeat of Napoleon's armies and the restoration of a Bourbon monarch did little stem the tide of republican, radical Jacobin, and other, undesirable, ideals. The twin revolutions in the political and economic spheres could not be halted or, to use a modern analogy, it proved impossible to get the toothpaste back into the tube.
The political borders of Europe circa 1836. Far less obvious are the cultural and economic units
The continuing popularity of republican and liberal, to say nothing of socialist or communist, politics in the early and mid-19th C presented a dilemma for those absolute rulers throughout Europe. In general these autocrats could either give into reforming tendencies, and thus relinquish some degree of power, or do their utmost to suppress, often violently, those petitioning for or plotting change. The overwhelming response from the established elite was for the latter course of action. Amongst the Great Powers it was Russia and Austria, the self-proclaimed "Holy Alliance", which took the lead in quashing any perceived liberal movements. Both Metternich and Nicholas I abhorred any notion of reform. In Prussia the influence of the liberals, who had risen to the ascendancy following the shock defeat to Napoleon at Jena some two decades previously, had been on the wane since 1819 and German reformers had seen all hopes of a constitutional monarchy fade before Frederick William III. These bastions of the
Ancien Régime could offer no alternative order to the region and had proffered little but their refusal to contemplate a changing world.
It was in France, the very home of republicanism, that liberalism remained strongest as a political current. Charles X had been unceremoniously removed from power during the July Revolution of 1830 and was replaced by the constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe - the "Citizen King". Even here the forces of reaction were not defeated - struggling against popular republican sentiment, in 1835 Louis Philippe outlawed all republican societies and indeed all advocacy of a republic. As a result secret societies and radical philosophies proliferated at an alarming rate.** Affairs were considerably more tranquil in Great Britain which, despite being unique amongst the Great Powers in being ruled by a parliamentary government, remained governed by a tiny clique of rich landowners focused on the world beyond. Its European policies were somewhat vague and, at times, contradictory. Checking French ambitions in the Low Countries remained the only dominant theme during those decades***
It was not only the Great Powers who continued to be openly hostile to the ideals of liberalism. This period of deep reaction saw almost all European nations governed by absolute monarchies - in the Kingdom of the Netherlands the States-General existed solely to rubber stamp the monarch's decrees, and the determination of Spanish monarchs to retain their "divine right" would lead to over a century of almost constant internal conflict. Even the myriad petty comic-opera states of the German Confederation were increasingly swayed by Metternich's fear of liberalism. This picture of absolutism was only more pronounced in the divided states of the Italian peninsula. Even if Italy was "merely a geographical expression" its rulers were at least united by a loathing of popular rule and the absolute nature of their power. By 1836 the major political entities on the peninsula - Sardinia-Piedmont, Two Sicilies, and the Papal States - remained firm autocratic monarchies. Of these fiefdoms, none could match the reactionary nature of the Papal States under Pope Gregory XVI.
The Catholic Church remained very much, almost defiantly, a medieval institution
It should come as no surprise to learn that the Vatican remained at the forefront of the struggle against reform and liberalism - this was a position that the Catholic Church had occupied for centuries and arguably still does today. Across Catholic Europe the clergy formed a powerful political bloc dedicated to exercising more than mere spiritual guidance or authority. In France one of the more immediate aims of the Revolution, and hence the more immediate reversals of the Restoration, was the demolition of the Catholic Church's authority within the nation. Throughout the 19th C the primary aim of the Church would be to prevent a repeat of such damaging and costly reversals of fortune. To this end the autocratic monarchs of Europe, even those of Prussia and Russia, could rely on Rome for moral support in condemning the spread, legitimate or seditious, of liberal ideals and practices.
The picture that therefore emerges of the first half of the 19th C is a region in which the established rulers were still labouring to cope with the consequences of the French Revolution and transformation of politics that this event had unleashed. The Great Powers would struggle in the face a variety of threats - from French republicans to German philosophers to Italian nationalists – all intent on upsetting the status quo for better or worse. What was not apparent in the first half of the century was the magnitude, and ultimately futility, of the task facing the autocrats of Europe. This would become painfully obvious in the decades to come.
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* So prevalent was Metternich's reach that the period 1815-1845 is occasionally, if rarely these days, known as the "Age of Metternich". Few biographies of this statesman and diplomat extraordinaire surpass "von Srbik, H., (1925), Metternich, der Staatsmann und der Mench, Munich". It is unfortunate that no English translation has yet been published.
**See "Johnson, C.H., (1974), Utopian Communism in France: Cabet and the Icarians, 1839-1851, The American Historical Review" for an overview of the early socialist and communist movements emerging in France at the time.
*** "Seaton-Watson, R.W., (1938), Britain in Europe, 1789-1914, A Survey of Foreign Policy, Cambridge: University Press" serves as an excellent overview of British policies towards Europe and the world during those decades. Incidentally it also provides an insight into these same attitudes in 1938.