C HAP TER
22
Ideologies and Upheavals
1815–1850
CHAPTER LEARNING
OBJECTIVES
After reading and studying this chapter, students
should be able to:
• Explain how the victorious allies fashioned a
general peace settlement, and how Metternich upheld
a conservative European order.
• Discuss the basic tenets of liberalism,
nationalism, and socialism and identify groups most
attracted by these ideologies.
• Identify the major characteristics of the
romantic movement, including some of the great
romantic artists.
• Analyze how liberal, national, and socialist
forces challenged conservatism in Greece, Great
Britain, and France after 1815.
• Explain why revolutionaries triumphed briefly
throughout most of Europe in 1848, only to fail
almost completely.
ANNOTATED CHAPTER
OUTLINE
The following annotated chapter outline will help
you review the major topics covered in this chapter.
I.
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The Aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars
A. The European Balance of Power
1. In 1814 the Quadruple Alliance of Russia,
Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain finally
defeated France and agreed to meet at the
Congress of Vienna to fashion a general
peace settlement.
2. The first Peace of Paris gave to France the
boundaries it possessed in 1792, which
were larger than those of 1789, and
restored the Bourbon dynasty.
3. The Quadruple Alliance combined
leniency toward France with strong
defensive measures that included uniting
the Low Countries under an expanded
Dutch monarchy and increasing Prussian
territory to act as a “sentinel on the
Rhine.”
4. Klemens von Metternich and Robert
Castlereagh, the foreign ministers of
Austria and Great Britain, respectively, as
well as their French counterpart, Charles
Talleyrand, used a balance-of-power
ideology to discourage aggression by any
combination of states.
5. Napoleon undid this agreement briefly
when he escaped from Elba and reignited
his wars of expansion, but he was defeated
at Waterloo in 1815.
6. The second Peace of Paris, concluded
after Napoleon’s final defeat, was also
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
lenient with France, although this time
France was required to pay an indemnity
and to support an army of occupation for
five years.
7. The Quadruple Alliance then agreed to
meet periodically to discuss common
interests and to guard the peace in Europe.
8. This European “congress system” lasted
long into the nineteenth century and
settled many international crises through
international conferences and balance-ofpower diplomacy.
B. Repressing the Revolutionary Spirit
1. Within their own countries, the leaders of
the victorious states were much less
flexible.
2. In a crusade against the ideas and politics
of the dual revolution, the conservative
leaders of Austria, Prussia, and Russia
formed the Holy Alliance, which became
a symbol of the repression of liberal and
revolutionary movements all over Europe.
3. In 1820 revolutionaries succeeded in
forcing the monarchs of Spain and the
southern Italian kingdom of the Two
Sicilies to grant liberal constitutions
against their wills.
4. Metternich and Alexander I proclaimed
the principle of active intervention to
maintain all autocratic regimes.
5. Austrian forces then restored Ferdinand I
to the throne of the Two Sicilies in 1821,
while French armies in 1823 likewise
restored the Spanish regime.
6. Metternich continued to battle against
liberal political change, and until 1848 his
system proved quite effective in central
Europe, where his power was the greatest.
7. Metternich’s policies dominated the entire
German Confederation, which comprised
thirty-eight independent German states,
including Prussia and Austria.
8. In 1819 Metternich had the German
Confederation issue the infamous
Carlsbad Decrees, which required the
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thirty-eight German states to root out
subversive ideas and which established a
permanent committee to investigate and
punish liberal or radical organizations.
C. Metternich and Conservatism
1. Determined defender of the status quo,
Prince Klemens von Metternich (1773–
1859) was an internationally oriented
aristocrat who made a brilliant diplomatic
career as Austria’s foreign minister from
1809 to 1848.
2. Metternich’s pessimistic view of human
nature as prone to error, excess, and selfserving behavior led him to conclude that
strong governments were necessary to
protect society from the baser elements of
human behavior.
3. Metternich defended his class and its
rights and privileges with a clear
conscience and at the same time blamed
liberal middle-class revolutionaries for
stirring up the lower classes.
4. Liberalism appeared doubly dangerous to
Metternich because it generally went with
national aspirations and a belief that each
people, each national group, had a right to
establish its own independent government
and seek to fulfill its own destiny.
5. The multiethnic state Metternich served
was both strong and weak—strong
because of its large population and vast
territories and weak because of its many
and potentially dissatisfied nationalities
that included Italians, Romanians, and
various Slavic peoples, who were
politically dominated by a German and
Magyar (Hungarian) minority.
6. Metternich had to oppose liberalism and
nationalism, for Austria was simply
unable to accommodate these ideologies
of the dual revolution.
7. In his efforts to hold back liberalism and
nationalism Metternich was supported by
the Russian Empire and, to a lesser extent,
by the Ottoman Empire.
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C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
8. After 1815 both of these multinational
absolutist states worked to preserve their
respective traditional conservative orders.
II. The Spread of Radical Ideas
A. Liberalism and the Middle Class
1. In contrast to Metternich and
conservatism, the new philosophies of
liberalism, nationalism, and socialism
started with an optimistic premise about
human nature.
2. Liberalism—whose principal ideas were
liberty and equality—demanded
representative government as opposed to
autocratic monarchy, and equality before
the law as opposed to legally separate
classes.
3. Opponents of liberalism criticized its
economic principles, which called for
unrestricted private enterprise and no
government interference in the economy,
a philosophy known as the doctrine of
laissez faire.
4. In early nineteenth-century Britain this
economic liberalism was embraced most
enthusiastically by business groups and
thus became a doctrine associated with
business interests.
5. Labor unions were outlawed because they
supposedly restricted free competition and
the individual’s “right to work.”
6. As liberalism became increasingly
identified with the middle class after 1815,
some intellectuals and foes of
conservatism felt that liberalism did not
go nearly far enough.
7. These radicals called for universal
voting rights, at least for males, and
for democracy, and they were more
willing than most liberals to endorse
violent upheaval to achieve their
goals.
B. The Growing Appeal of Nationalism
1. Early advocates of nationalism were
strongly influenced by Johann Gottfried
von Herder, an eighteenth-century
philosopher and historian who argued that
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
each people had its own genius and its
own cultural unity.
In fact, in the early nineteenth century
such cultural unity was more a dream than
a reality, with an abundance of local
dialects that kept peasants from nearby
villages from understanding each other
and historical memory that divided the
inhabitants of various European states as
much as it unified them.
Despite these basic realities, sooner or
later European nationalists usually sought
to turn the cultural unity that they
perceived into political reality.
It was the political goal of making the
territory of each people coincide with
well-defined boundaries in an independent
nation-state that made nationalism so
explosive in central and eastern Europe
after 1815.
The rise of nationalism depended heavily
on the development of complex industrial
and urban society, which required much
better communication between individuals
and groups.
Promoting the use of a standardized
national language through mass education
created at least a superficial cultural unity
within many countries.
Many scholars argue that nation-states
emerged in the nineteenth century as
“imagined communities” that sought to
bind millions of strangers together around
the abstract concept of an all-embracing
national identity.
Between 1815 and 1850 most people who
believed in nationalism also believed in
either liberalism or radical democratic
republicanism.
Liberals saw the people as the ultimate
source of all government but agreed with
nationalists that the benefits of selfgovernment would be possible only if the
people were united by common traditions
that transcended local interests and even
class differences.
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
10. Early nationalists usually believed that
every nation, like every citizen, had the
right to exist in freedom and to develop its
character and spirit.
11. Yet early nationalism developed a strong
sense of “we” and “they,” to which
nationalists added two highly volatile
ingredients: a sense of national mission
and a sense of national superiority.
C. French Utopian Socialism
1. Early French socialist thinkers saw the
political revolution in France, the rise of
laissez faire, and the emergence of modern
industry as fomenting selfish
individualism and splitting the community
into isolated fragments.
2. They believed in economic planning and
argued that the government should
rationally organize the economy and not
depend on destructive competition to do
the job.
3. With an intense desire to help the poor,
socialists preached economic equality
among people and believed that private
property should be strictly regulated by
the government.
4. Count Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825)
optimistically proclaimed that the key to
progress was proper social organization in
which leading scientists, engineers, and
industrialists would carefully plan the
economy and guide it forward by
undertaking vast public works projects.
5. Charles Fourier (1772–1837) envisaged a
socialist utopia of self-sufficient
communities and advocated the total
emancipation of women.
6. Louis Blanc (1811–1882) focused on
practical improvements, and in his
Organization of Work (1839) he urged
workers to agitate for universal voting
rights and to take control of the state
peacefully.
7. In What Is Property? (1840) Pierre Joseph
Proudhon (1809–1865) argued that
property was profit that was stolen from
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the worker, who was the source of all
wealth.
8. The message of French utopian socialists
interacted with the experiences of French
urban workers, who became violently
opposed to laissez-faire laws that denied
workers the right to organize in guilds and
unions.
D. The Birth of Marxian Socialism
1. In 1848 Karl Marx (1818–1883) and
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) published
The Communist Manifesto, which became
the bible of socialism.
2. The atheistic young Marx had studied
philosophy at the University of Berlin
before turning to journalism and
economics, and he had read extensively in
French socialist thought before developing
his own socialist ideas.
3. The interests of the middle class (the
bourgeoisie) and those of the industrial
working class (the proletariat) were
inevitably opposed to each other,
according to Marx.
4. Marx predicted that the ever-poorer
proletariat, which was constantly growing
in size and in class-consciousness, would
conquer the bourgeoisie in a violent
revolution.
5. Marx’s socialist ideas synthesized not
only French utopian schemes but also
English classical economics and German
philosophy—the major intellectual
currents of his day.
6. Marx’s theory of historical evolution was
built on the philosophy of the German
Georg Hegel (1770–1831), who believed
that each age is characterized by a dominant
set of ideas that produces opposing ideas
and eventually a new synthesis.
7. Marx used this dialectic to explain the
decline of agrarian feudalism and the rise
of industrial capitalism while asserting
that it was now the bourgeoisie’s turn to
give way to the socialism of revolutionary
workers.
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C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
8. Thus Marx pulled together powerful ideas
and created one of the great secular
religions out of the intellectual ferment of
the early nineteenth century.
III. The Romantic Movement
A. Romanticism’s Tenets
1. The artistic change known as the romantic
movement was in part a revolt against the
emphasis on rationality, order, and
restraint that characterized the
Enlightenment and the controlled style of
classicism.
2. Romanticism was characterized by a
belief in emotional exuberance,
unrestrained imagination, and spontaneity
in both art and personal life.
3. Great individualists, the romantics
believed the full development of one’s
unique human potential to be the supreme
purpose in life.
4. The romantics were enchanted by nature,
and most saw modern industry as an ugly,
brutal attack on their beloved nature and
on the human personality.
5. In romanticism, the study of history was
the key to a universe that was now
perceived to be organic and dynamic, not
mechanical and static as the
Enlightenment thinkers had believed.
6. Historians such as Jules Michelet, who
focused on the development of societies
and human institutions, promoted the
growth of national aspirations.
B. Literature
1. Romanticism found its distinctive voice in
a group of British poets led by William
Wordsworth (1770–1850).
2. In 1798 Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge (1772–1834) published their
Lyrical Ballads, which was written in the
language of ordinary speech and endowed
simple subjects with the loftiest majesty.
3. Classicism remained strong in France until
Germaine de Staël (1766–1817), in her
study On Germany (1810), extolled the
spontaneity and enthusiasm of German
writers and thinkers.
4. Between 1820 and 1850, the romantic
impulse broke through in the works of
Lamartine, de Vigny, Dumas, George
Sand, and Victor Hugo (1802–1885).
5. Hugo’s powerful novels, including
Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831),
exemplified the romantic fascination with
fantastic characters, exotic historical
settings, and human emotions.
6. Renouncing his early conservatism, Hugo
equated freedom in literature with liberty in
politics and society, a political evolution that
was exactly the opposite of Wordsworth’s.
7. Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin (1804–
1876), generally known by her pen name,
George Sand, defied the narrow
conventions of her time both by wearing
men’s clothing and by writing on
shockingly modern social themes.
8. In central and eastern Europe, literary
romanticism and early nationalism often
reinforced each other: The brothers Jacob
and Wilhelm Grimm were particularly
successful at rescuing German fairy tales
from oblivion.
9. In the Slavic lands, romantics advanced
the process of converting spoken peasant
languages into modern written languages.
10. Aleksander Pushkin (1799–1837), the
most influential of all Russian poets, used
his lyric genius to mold the modern
literary language.
C. Art and Music
1. The great French romantic painter Eugène
Delacroix (1798–1863) was a master of
dramatic, colorful scenes that stirred the
emotions.
2. Notable romantic English painters
included Joseph M. W. Turner (1775–
1851), who often depicted nature’s power
and terror, and John Constable (1776–
1837), whose paintings depicted humans
amid gentle Wordsworthian landscapes.
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
3. Abandoning well-defined structures, the
great romantic composers used a wide
range of forms to create a thousand
musical landscapes and evoke a host of
powerful emotions.
4. The crashing chords evoking the surge of
the masses in Chopin’s Revolutionary
Etude and the bottomless despair of the
funeral march in Beethoven’s Third
Symphony plumbed the depths of human
feeling.
5. Music became a sublime end in itself,
expressing the endless yearning of the
soul, and made cultural heroes of
composers and musicians who evoked
great emotional responses.
6. The most famous romantic composer,
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), used
contrasting themes and tones to produce
dramatic conflict and inspiring
resolutions.
7. Even though Beethoven began to lose his
hearing at the peak of his fame and
eventually became completely deaf, he
continued to compose immortal music
throughout his life.
IV. Reforms and Revolutions Before 1848
A. National Liberation in Greece
1. Despite living under the domination of the
Ottoman Turks since the fifteenth century,
the Greeks had survived as a people,
united by their language and the Greek
Orthodox religion.
2. The rising nationalism of the nineteenth
century led to the formation of secret
societies and then to revolt in 1821, led by
Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek patriot and a
general in the Russian army.
3. At first, the Great Powers were opposed to
all revolution and refused to back Ypsilanti.
4. Yet many Europeans responded
enthusiastically to the Greek national
struggle, and as the Greeks battled on
against the Turks they hoped for the
support of European governments.
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5. In 1827 Great Britain, France, and Russia
yielded to popular demands at home and
directed Turkey to accept an armistice.
6. When the Turks refused, the navies of
these three powers trapped the Turkish
fleet at Navarino and destroyed it.
7. Great Britain, France, and Russia finally
declared Greece independent in 1830 and
installed a German prince as king of the
new country in 1832.
B. Liberal Reform in Great Britain
1. Eighteenth-century British society had
been both flexible and remarkably stable.
2. The common people had more than the
usual opportunities of the preindustrial
world, while basic civil rights for all were
balanced by a tradition of deference to
one’s social superiors.
3. Conflicts between the ruling class and
laborers were sparked in 1815 when the
landed aristocracy selfishly forced
changes in the Corn Laws, with the result
being that the importation of foreign grain
was prohibited unless the price at home
rose to improbable levels.
4. The revision of the Corn Laws during a
time of widespread unemployment and
postwar economic distress triggered
protests and demonstrations by urban
laborers.
5. The Tory government, completed
controlled by the landed aristocracy,
responded by temporarily suspending the
traditional rights of peaceable assembly
and habeas corpus.
6. Two years later, Parliament passed the
infamous Six Acts, which placed controls
on a heavily taxed press and practically
eliminated all mass meetings.
7. In the 1820s, a less frightened Tory
government moved in the direction of
better urban administration, greater
economic liberalism, civil equality for
Catholics, and limited importation of
foreign grain.
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C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
8. These actions encouraged the middle
classes to press on for reform of
Parliament so they could have a larger say
in government.
9. The Whig Party had by tradition been
more responsive to middle-class
commercial and manufacturing interests
and sponsored the Reform Bill of 1832.
10. A surge of popular support propelled the
bill into law and moved politics in a
democratic direction that allowed the
House of Commons to emerge as the allimportant legislative body.
11. The new industrial areas of the country
gained representation in the Commons,
“rotten boroughs” were eliminated, and
the number of voters increased by 50
percent to about 12 percent of adult men;
thus a major reform had been achieved
peacefully.
12. The principal radical program for
continued reform was embodied in the
“People’s Charter” of 1838 and the
Chartist movement, which demanded
universal male (but not female) suffrage.
13. In addition to calling for universal male
suffrage, many working-class people
joined with middle-class manufacturers in
the Anti–Corn Law League, founded in
Manchester in 1839.
14. When Ireland’s potato crop failed in 1845
and famine prices for food seemed likely
in England, a handful of Tories joined
with the Whigs to repeal the Corn Laws in
1846 and allow free imports of grain.
15. From that point on, the liberal doctrine of
free trade became almost sacred dogma in
Great Britain.
16. The Tories passed the Ten Hours Act of
1847, which limited the workday for
women and young people in factories to
ten hours, and they continued to champion
legislation regulating factory conditions.
17. This healthy competition between a stillvigorous aristocracy and a strong middle
class to gain the support of the working
class was a crucial factor in Great
Britain’s peaceful evolution.
C. Ireland and the Great Famine
1. The people of Ireland, most of whom were
Irish Catholics, did not benefit from the
political competition in Britain but remained
under the oppression of a tiny minority of
Church of England Protestant landlords.
2. The condition of the Irish peasantry
around 1800 was abominable, described
by novelist Sir Walter Scott as “the
extreme verge of human misery.”
3. Despite the terrible conditions, the
population of Ireland continued to grow,
from 3 million in 1725 to 8 million by
1840, a population explosion that was
caused primarily by the extensive
cultivation of the potato.
4. The decision to marry and have large
families made sense for peasants: rural
poverty was inescapable and better shared
with a spouse, while a dutiful son or a
loving daughter was an old person’s best
hope of escaping destitution.
5. As population and potato dependency
grew, conditions became more precarious,
and potato crop failures in 1845, 1846,
1848, and 1851 resulted in the Great
Famine, a period of widespread starvation
and mass fever epidemics.
6. The British government was slow to act,
and when it did, its relief efforts were
tragically inadequate.
7. Moreover, the government continued to
collect taxes, landlords demanded their
rents, and tenants who could not pay were
evicted.
8. The Great Famine shattered the pattern of
Irish population growth: fully 1 million
emigrants fled the famine between 1845
and 1851, and at least 1.5 million died or
went unborn because of the disaster.
9. The Great Famine also intensified antiBritish feeling and promoted Irish
nationalism, eventually leading to
campaigns for Irish independence.
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
D. The Revolution of 1830 in France
1. Louis XVIII’s Constitutional Charter of
1814 was a basically liberal constitution
that fully protected the economic and
social gains of the middle class and the
peasantry in the French Revolution,
permitted great intellectual and artistic
freedom, and created a parliament with
upper and lower houses.
2. Louis XVIII’s charter was anything but
democratic, however, allowing only about
100,000 of the wealthiest males out of a
total population of 30 million to vote.
3. Nevertheless, the “notable people” who
did vote came from a variety of
backgrounds and included wealthy
businessmen, war profiteers, successful
professionals, ex-revolutionaries, and
large landowners from the middle class
and the old aristocracy.
4. Louis’s successor, Charles X (r. 1824–
1830), wanted to re-establish the old order
in France but was blocked by the
opposition of the deputies, so in 1830 he
turned to military adventure in an effort to
rally French nationalism and gain popular
support.
5. In June 1830, in response to a longstanding dispute with Muslim Algeria, a
French force of 37,000 crossed the
Mediterranean and took the Algerian
capital city of Algiers in three short
weeks.
6. In 1831 tribes in the interior revolted and
waged a fearsome war until 1847, when
French armies finally subdued the country
and expropriated large tracts of Muslim
land.
7. Emboldened by the good news from
Algeria, Charles repudiated the
Constitutional Charter in July 1830,
stripped much of the middle class of its
voting rights, and censored the press.
8. After “three glorious days” of insurrection
in the capital, the government collapsed,
and Charles fled.
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9. Then the upper middle class, which had
fomented the revolt, seated Charles’s
cousin, Louis Philippe, duke of Orléans,
on the vacant throne.
10. Louis Philippe (r. 1830–1848) accepted
the Constitutional Charter of 1814 and
admitted that he was merely the “king of
the French people.”
11. The situation in France remained
fundamentally unchanged, however—
there had been only a change in dynasty to
protect the status quo for the upper middle
class—and social reformers and the poor
of Paris were bitterly disappointed.
V. The Revolutions of 1848
A. A Democratic Republic in France
1. The political and social response to the
economic crisis of the 1840s was unrest
and protest, with “prerevolutionary”
outbreaks all across Europe.
2. By the late 1840s, revolution in Europe
was almost universally expected, but it
took revolution in Paris—once again—to
turn expectations into realities.
3. For eighteen years Louis Philippe’s
“bourgeois monarchy” had been
characterized by a glaring lack of social
legislation and by politics dominated by
corruption and selfish special interests.
4. The government’s stubborn refusal to
consider electoral reform eventually
touched off a popular revolt in Paris on
February 22, 1848, when rebellious
workers and students, armed with guns
and dug in behind barricades, demanded a
new government.
5. When Louis Philippe refused to order a
full-scale attack by the regular army, the
revolutionaries proclaimed a provisional
republic, headed by a ten-man executive
committee, and immediately drafted a
constitution for France’s Second Republic.
6. They wanted a truly democratic republic
and so gave the right to vote to every adult
male while also freeing all slaves in
French colonies, abolishing the death
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C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
penalty, and establishing a ten-hour
workday in Paris.
Profound differences within the
revolutionary coalition in Paris reached a
head in 1848 in the face of worsening
depression and rising unemployment.
Moderate liberal republicans, having
conceded to popular forces on the issue of
universal male suffrage, were willing to
provide only temporary relief and were
opposed to any further radical social
measures.
On the other hand, radical republicans and
artisans hated the unrestrained
competition of cutthroat capitalism and
advocated a combination of strong craft
unions and worker-owned businesses.
The resulting compromise set up national
workshops, which were soon to become
little more than a vast program of pickand-shovel public works that satisfied no
one.
As the economic crisis worsened, the
number enrolled in the workshops soared
from 10,000 in March to 120,000 by June,
with another 80,000 trying unsuccessfully
to join.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), one
of the newly elected members of the
Constituent Assembly, observed that the
socialist movement in Paris aroused the
fierce hostility of France’s peasants, who
owned land, and of the middle and upper
classes.
The clash of ideologies—of liberal
capitalism and socialism—became a clash
of classes and arms after the elections.
Fearing that their socialist hopes were
about to be dashed, artisans and unskilled
workers invaded the Constituent
Assembly on May 15 and tried to
proclaim a new revolutionary state.
As the workshops continued to fill and
grow more radical, the fearful but
powerful propertied classes in the
Assembly dissolved the national
workshops in Paris, giving the workers the
choice of joining the army or going to
workshops in the provinces.
16. The result was a spontaneous and violent
uprising; barricades sprang up again in the
narrow streets of Paris, and a terrible class
war began.
17. After three terrible “June Days” of street
fighting and the death or injury of more
than ten thousand people, the republican
army under General Louis Cavaignac
stood triumphant in a sea of working-class
blood and hatred.
18. In place of a generous democratic
republic, the Constituent Assembly
completed a constitution featuring a strong
executive.
19. Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon
Bonaparte, won the election of December
1848, fulfilling the desire of the propertied
classes for order at any cost and producing
a semi-authoritarian regime.
B. The Austrian Empire in 1848
1. The revolution in the Austrian Empire
began in Hungary in 1848, where
nationalistic Hungarians demanded
national autonomy, full civil liberties, and
universal suffrage.
2. When the monarchy in Vienna hesitated,
Viennese students and workers took to the
streets, while peasant disorders broke out
in parts of the empire.
3. The Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I (r.
1835–1848) capitulated and promised
reforms and a liberal constitution, while
Metternich fled in disguise toward
London.
4. The coalition of revolutionaries was not
stable, however, and once the monarchy
abolished serfdom, the newly free
peasants lost interest in the political and
social questions agitating the cities.
5. Meanwhile, the coalition of urban
revolutionaries broke down along class
lines over the issue of socialist workshops
and universal voting rights for men.
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
6. In March the Hungarian revolutionary
leaders pushed through an extremely
liberal, almost democratic, constitution,
but they also sought to transform
Hungary’s multitude of peoples into a
unified and centralized Hungarian nation.
7. To the minority groups that formed half of
the population—the Croats, Serbs, and
Romanians—unification was
unacceptable, as each group felt entitled to
political autonomy and cultural
independence.
8. Finally, the conservative aristocratic
forces regained their nerve under the
rallying call of the archduchess Sophia,
Ferdinand’s sister-in-law, who insisted
that Ferdinand abdicate in favor of her
son, Francis Joseph.
9. On June 17, the army bombarded Prague
and savagely crushed a working-class
revolt.
10. At the end of October, the regular
Austrian army attacked the student and
working-class radicals barricaded in
Vienna and retook the city at the cost of
more than four thousand casualties.
11. After Francis Joseph (r. 1848–1916) was
crowned emperor of Austria, Nicholas I of
Russia (r. 1825–1855) sent 130,000
Russian troops into Hungary on June 6,
1849, and they subdued the country after
bitter fighting.
12. For a number of years, the Habsburgs
ruled Hungary as a conquered territory.
C. Prussia and the Frankfurt Assembly
1. When the artisans and factory workers in
Berlin joined temporarily with middleclass liberals in March 1848 in the
struggle against the Prussian monarchy,
the autocratic yet compassionate Frederick
William IV (r. 1840–1861) vacillated and
finally caved in.
2. On March 21, he promised to grant
Prussia a liberal constitution and to
merge Prussia into a new national German
state.
385
3. When the workers issued a series of
democratic and vaguely socialist demands
that troubled their middle-class allies, a
conservative clique gathered around the
king to urge counter-revolution.
4. In May, a National Assembly convened in
Frankfurt to write a German federal
constitution, but the members of the
Assembly were distracted by Denmark’s
claims on the provinces of Schleswig and
Holstein, which were inhabited primarily
by Germans.
5. The National Assembly called on the
Prussian army to respond, and Prussia
subsequently began war with Denmark.
6. In March 1849, the National Assembly
finally completed its drafting of a liberal
constitution and elected King Frederick
William of Prussia emperor of the new
German national state.
7. Frederick William reasserted his royal
authority, disbanded the Prussian
Constituent Assembly, and granted his
subjects a limited, essentially conservative
constitution.
8. When Frederick William, who really
wanted to be emperor but only on his own
authoritarian terms, tried to get the small
monarchs of Germany to elect him
emperor, Austria balked.
9. Supported by Russia, Austria forced
Prussia to renounce all its schemes of
unification in late 1850, and the German
Confederation was re-established.
10. Attempts to unite the Germans—first in a
liberal national state and then in a
conservative Prussian empire—had failed
completely.
CHAPTER QUESTIONS
Following are answer guidelines for the Review
Questions that appear in the textbook chapter, and
answer guidelines for the chapter’s Map Activity,
Visual Activity, Individuals in Society, Listening to
the Past, and Living in the Past questions located in
the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/
386
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
mckaywest. For your convenience, the questions and
answer guidelines are also available in the
Computerized Test Bank.
Review Questions
1. How did the victorious allies fashion a
general peace settlement, and how did Metternich
uphold a conservative European order? (p. 686)
• In 1814 the victorious allied powers sought to
restore peace and stability in Europe. The Quadruple
Alliance—Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great
Britain—dealt moderately with France by giving it
the boundaries it had possessed in 1792 and by not
assigning any war reparations. The peace settlement
also included strong defensive measures, resolved
the various disputes among the Great Powers, and
laid the foundations for beneficial international
cooperation throughout much of the nineteenth
century. Led by Metternich, the conservative powers
used intervention and repression as they sought to
prevent the spread of subversive ideas and radical
changes in domestic politics. The formation of the
Holy Alliance was the first step in this crusade
against the ideas and politics of the dual revolution.
2. What were the basic tenets of liberalism,
nationalism, and socialism, and what groups were
most attracted to these ideologies? (p. 691)
• After 1815 the ideologies of liberalism,
nationalism, and socialism all developed to challenge
the existing order in this period of early
industrialization and rapid population growth. The
principal ideas of the liberalism movement were
equality and liberty, which were expressed in
representative government, civil rights, and limited
government regulation of the economy. Nationalism
was based on the notion that each people had its own
genius and cultural unity; to this was then added the
idea that each people also deserved its own political
entity and its own government. The key ideas of
socialism were economic planning, greater economic
equality, and the state regulation of property. All of
these basic tenets in one way or another rejected
conservatism, with its stress on tradition, hereditary
monarchy and aristocracy, and an official church.
Business groups and the middle class were attracted
to liberalism; liberals and democrats were attracted
to nationalism, and workers and utopian theorists
were drawn to socialism.
3. What were the characteristics of the romantic
movement, and who were some of the great romantic
artists? (p. 697)
• The romantic movement, breaking decisively
with the dictates of classicism, reinforced the spirit
of change and revolutionary anticipation. The
romantic movement was characterized by a belief in
self-expression, imagination, and spontaneity in art
as well as in personal life. Among the most notable
poets and writers Wordsworth, Hugo, and Pushkin
stand out. So do two brilliant Frenchwomen,
Germaine de Staël and Amadine Dupin, known by
her pen name of George Sand. Famous romantic
artists included Turner with his turbulent seascapes,
Constable with his peaceful English countryside, and
Delacroix with his exotic scenes. In music romantic
composers, led by Beethoven, Liszt, and Chopin,
plumbed the depths of human emotions and virtuoso
performers became cultural heroes.
4. How after 1815 did liberal, national, and
socialist forces challenge conservatism in Greece,
Great Britain, and France? (p. 701)
• Inspired by modern nationalism, Greek
patriots rebelled against their Turkish rulers, and
with the help of the European powers they won their
national independence after a long struggle. In Great
Britain the liberal challenge to the conservative order
eventually led to fundamental reforms, as high tariffs
on imported grain were reduced and then abolished,
more men gained the right to vote with the Reform
Act of 1832, and the factory workday for women and
children was reduced to ten hours in 1847. In France,
a three-day revolution in 1832 replaced the
reactionary Charles X with the more moderate Louis
Philippe, but little else changed.
5. Why in 1848 did revolution triumph briefly
throughout most of Europe, and why did it fail
almost completely? (p. 707)
• In 1848 the increasing pressures of bad
harvests, unemployment, rapid population growth,
and a severe economic crisis exploded dramatically
across Europe as they culminated in liberal and
nationalistic revolutions. Monarchies panicked and
crumbled in the face of popular uprisings and
widespread opposition that cut across class lines, and
the revolutionaries triumphed, first in France and
then all across the continent. Yet very few
revolutionary goals were realized. The moderate,
nationalistic middle classes were unable to
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
consolidate their initial victories. Instead, they drew
back when artisans, factory workers, and radical
socialists rose up to present their own much more
revolutionary demands. This retreat facilitated the
efforts of dedicated aristocrats in central Europe to
reassert their power. And it made possible the
crushing of Parisian workers by a coalition of solid
bourgeoisie and landowning peasantry in France.
Thus the lofty ideals of a generation drowned in a
sea of blood and disillusion.
Map Activity
Map 22.1: Europe in 1815
Analyzing the Map: Trace the political boundaries
of each Great Power, and compare their geographical
strengths and weaknesses. What territories did
Prussia and Austria gain as a result of the war with
Napoleon?
• Russia: The Russian Empire extended from
what was once the Kingdom of Poland in the west
across all of northern Asia to the east. In the north
Russia is bound by Finland and the Baltic Sea and in
the south by the Black Sea. The empire’s northern
and southern borders gave it access to important
ports, like Riga and St. Petersburg. Not all of the
borders were easily defensible natural borders, as
with the part of Poland on the west of the Vistula
River, which could be vulnerable to attack.
• Prussia: Prussia was still centered on the city
of Berlin, but had gained control over Saxony. It also
had control over the region around Cologne, which
bordered France. Prussia’s northern border was the
Baltic Sea. To the south, Bohemia formed the border
with the Austrians. This region was a strong
emerging industrial state, but its borders were
discontinuous. The Prussians also had access to the
important port city of Danzig. Potential weaknesses
for the Prussians were their Austrian and Russian
borders, since there were no natural surroundings
like rivers or oceans to help them defend these
borders.
• Austria: The Austrian Empire extended from
Milan in the west, Galicia in the east, Bohemia in the
north, to Hungary and Croatia in the south. This gave
the Austrians major trading cities, like Venice,
Prague, and Budapest, which generated wealth for
the empire. The diverse populations over which the
Austrians ruled were a constant problem for the
387
ruling Habsburg dynasty. The Hungarians, in
particular, were a frequent source of civil unrest.
• Great Britain: Great Britain was made up of
the separate kingdoms of England, Scotland, Wales,
and Ireland. As Great Britain consisted of two large
islands, it shared no borders with the other Great
Powers. This made it easier for them to defend their
borders, and England based their military powers on
their superior navy. They were, however, the
smallest of the Great Powers and could not raise
armies as large as those of the continental powers.
• France: France was bordered by the
Netherlands and Prussia in the north, Switzerland
and Italy to the east, Spain to the south, and the
Atlantic Ocean to the west. They also ruled the
island of Corsica. These borders gave France access
to both Atlantic and Mediterranean ports, which was
beneficial for their world trade. They did not share
borders with some of their traditional enemies, the
Austrians and Russians; buffer states separated them
from those powers. The disadvantage was that the
Great Powers agreed to support those buffer states to
prevent France from starting any wars. France was
surrounded by states determined to keep them from
expanding again.
Connections: How did Prussia’s and Austria’s
territorial gains contribute to the balance of power
established at the Congress of Vienna? What other
factors enabled the Great Powers to achieve such a
long-lasting peace?
• Balance of power: The Congress of Vienna
created a ring of strong states around France, which
reduced France’s power on the continent. France was
not destroyed, however, for fear of making other
powers too strong. The congress also created two
strong powers in Central Europe, Prussia and
Austria, who served to balance France’s power as
well as each other’s. Russia remained a strong
Eastern European power to check the strength of
Austria and Prussia.
• Long-lasting peace: Aside from creating
strong European states, the Congress of Vienna
created a settlement to the Napoleonic Wars that
would guarantee many years of peace. The Great
Powers agreed to periodic meetings to resolve future
conflicts. They all agreed that revolutions had to be
prevented at all costs, and agreed to suppress liberals
and nationalists in their countries. They also
promised not to give support to revolutionary
movements in their rival’s territories.
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C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
Visual Activity
The Triumph of Democratic Republics
Analyzing the Image: How many different flags can
you count and/or identify? How would you
characterize the types of people marching and the
mood of the crowd?
• Flags: There are a number of different flags in
the crowd, but the most visible ones are the flags of
France (red, white, blue), Germany (black, red,
yellow), Italy (green, white, red), and Greece (blue
and white). Further in the background, there appear
to be four or five more flags, though they are too
distant to determine which countries they might
represent.
• Mood: The mood of the crowd seems upbeat
and happy. People are hugging each other, some are
dancing, and others are raising their hats in
celebration.
Connections: What do the angels, Statue of Liberty,
and discarded crowns suggest about the artist’s view
of the events of 1848? Do you think this illustration
was created before or after the collapse of the
revolution in France? Why?
• Symbolic images: The angels suggest a
blessing has ensured the success of the revolutions,
and the Statue of Liberty promises that equality will
now rule. The discarded crowns clearly indicate that
the monarchy is no longer needed. All three symbols
strongly suggest that the artist viewed the early
events of 1848 as a success for liberty and a blow to
tyranny.
• Before the collapse: It seems clear that the
image was painted before the collapse of the
revolution in France. The image is full of triumphant
celebration over the deaths of monarchies and the
success of republican equality. The painting would
probably not be as joyous if it were painted after the
revolution collapsed.
abandon traditional rules and classical models in art
and life. She believed that enthusiasm was the
necessary ingredient in expressing creativity and
reaching personal fulfillment.
• Emotional intensity: Lives of famous
Romantics were lived with great emotional intensity;
suicide, duels, madness, and strange illnesses were
not uncommon. Similarly, Staël’s life was one of
emotional extremes; she suffered a mental
breakdown at a young age, spent much of her adult
life taking lovers, experimenting with opium, and
attending great parties full of European intellectuals,
and carried with her a sustained sense of melancholy,
inspired by exile and disappointments in love, which
characterized much of her written work.
2. Why did male critics often attack Staël? What
did these criticisms tell us about gender relations in
the early nineteenth century?
• Gender in the early nineteenth century: In the
early nineteenth century, writing was generally
considered a male activity. Some of Staël’s critics
were likely worried that her talent challenged the
notion that women did not belong in a man’s world
of serious thought and action, and created more
serious competition for them. Even Staël’s
supporters believed that her talent as a writer was
simply an unusual accident. Staël’s experience shows
that the early nineteenth century was still a world in
which male chauvinism ruled.
Listening to the Past
Von Herder and Mazzini on the Development
of Nationalism
1. How, according to Herder, did European
nationalities evolve to create “the common spirit of
Europe”?
1. In what ways did Germaine de Staël’s life
and thought reflect basic elements of the romantic
movement?
• Intermingling: Herder believes that a key part
of the development of “the common spirit of
Europe” was the multitude of peoples and tribes who
intermingled. Without such cultural blending, this
common spirit could never have been awakened.
• Christianity: Herder also believes that
Christianity was key in creating this common spirit.
He states that the introduction of Christianity unified
Europe in a way that the Roman Empire could never
do through force.
• Emphasis on emotion: Much like the
unconstrained Romantics, Staël urged people to
2. Why, according to Mazzini, should Italian
workers support Italian unification?
Individuals in Society
Germaine de Staël
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
• Self-interest: Mazzini implores Italian workers
to support Italian unification on behalf of their own
self-interest. In order to change their unjust social
conditions, Italian workers must appeal to a common
consensus. Mazzini argues, however, that no
consensus can exist unless a nation consisting of
people similar in language, tendency, and tradition
also exists. Otherwise, the worker’s pleas for reform
will fall on deaf ears.
3. How are Herder and Mazzini’s views
similar? How do they differ?
• Similar: Both Herder and Mazzini believed
that language determined nationality, and that each
people had its own particular genius and traditions
that should be preserved.
• Different: Herder appealed to a common bond
and ancestry among all peoples in Europe. While he
advocated that unique traditions be preserved, he did
not support the creation of political entities or nationstates. Mazzini, on the other hand, argues that the
formation of nation-states is the most effective way
to preserve these traditions.
Living in the Past
Revolutionary Experiences in 1848
1. Examine the French newspaper. What does it
reveal about the rise of mass politics in 1848?
• Greater involvement in politics: The
triumphant image of the French newspaper, along
with its title (The Public Safety), point to the idea
that a great many people, particularly those from the
lower class who had been alienated from political
thought or discussion, were involved in the mass
politics of 1848. The eight-fold increase in daily
newspaper production allowed political ideas and
news to reach more people.
• Violent involvement in politics: The image
from the newspaper, which shows people storming a
barricade and carrying weapons, also suggests that
mass politics in 1848 was not a nonviolent
movement. Political disputes resulted in clashes
between central governments and protestors and
reformers.
2. The 1848 revolutions increased political
activity, yet they were crushed. How does the
scene of fighting in Frankfurt help to explain this
outcome?
389
• Well-trained and well-armed armies: The
street fighting in Frankfurt shows rows of
disciplined, heavily armed soldiers facing off against
an unruly mob crowded behind a makeshift
barricade. The training and equipment advantage
(like the heavy artillery mentioned in the feature)
shown in the picture tells us that armies still under
the control of the central government could crush
almost any revolution, unless it was extremely wellorganized.
3. Consider Meissonier’s Memory of the Civil
War. In what ways do societies transmit and revise
their historical memories?
• Historical memories: Though the feature states
that Meissonier was a French soldier, his painting
does not celebrate the destruction of the rebellion.
Instead, it sadly reflects on the loss of life, shown
through the ragged, bloody bodies painted on the city
street. Societies in the nineteenth century would have
transmitted or revised their historical memories
through paintings, novels, or poems. Modern
societies would use these methods, but would add
photographs, film/television, or Web content as ways
of preserving these memories.
LECTURE STRATEGIES
See also the maps and images for presentation in
Additional Bedford/St. Martin’s Resources for
Chapter 22, below.
Lecture 1: Pursuing Equilibrium: European
International Relations after 1815
War had punctuated Europe’s eighteenth century.
The nineteenth century was far more peaceful, at
least within the boundaries of Europe.After the
disasters of the Napoleonic Wars, European states
moved from an international system based on the
principle of balance of power to one that emphasized
equilibrium. It was a remarkably successful
transformation, one that maintained European
political stability for nearly a century.
For students interested in international relations,
this lecture provides an opportunity for a short
tutorial on the history of diplomacy. Originating
around 1500 in the Italian city-states, international
diplomacy blossomed after the Treaty of Westphalia
(1648). By the eighteenth century, the guiding
European diplomatic principle was to maintain a
balance of power, which (some historians argue)
created a structure that promoted war rather than
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C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
prevented it. Fiscal and military limitations, rather
than diplomacy, were the main reasons why more
wars did not occur in the eighteenth century.
But the Napoleonic Wars began to forge a new
international system. Recap the impact of the French
Revolution and Napoleonic Wars on Europe.
Napoleon’s armies transformed war into a total
affair, demanding the mobilization of whole
populations and aiming to destroy armies rather than
just occupy land. To ward off the French contagion,
European nations forged a series of coalitions,
including some unlikely alliances (e.g., Britain and
Russia) that paved the way for more coalition
building in the post-Napoleonic era. By 1813 the
coalition partners had shifted their goals from warmaking to peacemaking and their diplomatic
strategies from coercion to persuasion.
The Congress of Vienna was pivotal in forging
the new international system. Draw out the nuances
of the agreement: key provisions included the
congress system within the Concert of Europe; a
system of intermediate bodies as buffers and spheres
of influence; and the fencing off of Europe from
external conflicts (i.e., Europeans could penetrate the
rest of the world without having much effect on
intra-European politics).
Of course, inherent
weaknesses continued: Britain tended toward
isolationism; Austria-Hungary was threatened by
nationalist movements; Prussia grew increasingly
ambitious; and Russia was increasingly rigid. But the
system held together relatively well, regardless.
Sources: Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of
European Politics, 1763–1848 (1994); F. R. Bridge and
Roger Bullen, The Great Powers and the European
States System, 1815–1914 (1980); T. Chapman, Congress of Vienna: Origins, Processes, Results (1998).
Lecture 2: Competing for Legitimacy:
Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism
Political theory is not the most compelling topic for
history students, but this lecture can be enlivened with
references to vivid personalities and dramatic events.
Emphasize the enduring nature of the questions raised
in the post-1815 period: How best to create political
and economic stability? What should be the balance
between individual freedom and state authority?
Begin with the conservative agenda. Claiming
“legitimacy,” Conservatives believed the answers lay
in long-established political, economic, and cultural
systems: monarchy, aristocracy, and organized
religion (illustrate this principle by showing students
Heinrich Olivier’s The Holy Alliance [1815]). As the
case study, Metternich is a fascinating individual
who has left a vast correspondence revealing his
political convictions.
After explaining the conservative position,
explore the threats to Metternich’s vision. German
universities and student fraternities provide
interesting case studies in resistance, as do the
nationalist movements in Greece, Hungary, Italy, and
elsewhere. Help students see Metternich’s system
within a wider context of revolt and reform: in 1831–
1832, England was torn apart by riots in favor of the
Reform Bill; the election of President Jackson in the
United States signaled change; and South American
struggled for independence from Spain—these all
suggest that Metternich’s system was flowing against
the tide. But urge students to resist the tyranny of
hindsight and recognize that Metternich’s system
was not necessarily doomed from the start, and not
all monarchists were evildoers.
Liberalism is perhaps the easiest of the three to
explain, as students find it the most familiar, but
make sure they have their definitions straight.
Nineteenth-century liberalism is not the same as the
“l-word” so readily tossed around by today’s
political pundits. The life and commitments of John
Stuart Mill, in partnership with his wife Harriet, can
serve as one case study of liberalism (and allow you
to include a discussion of feminism as one piece of
the liberal creed). The British response to the Irish
famine is another.
Finally, because socialism is so misunderstood,
it is important to explain it carefully and with enough
detail so that students can understand its appeal, to so
many, for such a long time. Show students that
socialism’s early versions differed considerably from
the Stalinist versions they might know. Marx, of
course, deserves ample time, but so do other early
socialists: Pierre Proudhon’s assertion that “Property
Is Theft” bears close examination, as does Robert
Owen’s experiments in social harmony. Norman
Davies’s Europe: A History (1998) contains a very
useful chart labeled “The Pedigree of Socialism,”
which highlights socialism’s many variants.
Sources: Albert S. Lindemann, A History of
European Socialism (1983); Robert Gildea,
Barricades and Borders: Europe 1800–1914 (1996);
Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored (1973); Paul
Johnson, The Birth of the Modern (1991).
Lecture 3: The Bohemian Revolt
This topic is too good to skip. The artistic and
literary responses to the dual revolution are a delight
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
to teach and often strangely relevant to students’
worlds. Begin with the basics. Introduce the broad
historical context, exploring its birth within
Enlightenment thought (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) and
its growth during the French Revolution and
Napoleonic Wars. Lay out the geography: it was
particularly strong in Britain, France, and the
Germany confederation. Explore its social dynamics:
its adherents included both men and women and
from a variety of class backgrounds.
Then delve into the romantics’ key ideas and
attitudes: exuberance, imagination, spontaneity, and
strenuous living. One key idea was their rejection of
bourgeois values. Gustav Flaubert signed his letters
with the title “Bourgeoisophobus,” and claimed that
hatred of the bourgeoisie was “the beginning of all
virtue.” The romantics condemned the moneymaking bourgeoisie as dull, crass, conformist, and,
worst of all, unheroic. They flocked to run-down
neighborhoods, lived in garrets, wore beards and
long hair, and adopted flamboyant dress. One might
argue they were the first purveyors of a “lifestyle.”
Give examples of how, in their art, poetry and
music, the romantics often strove to shock: tell the
story of how poet Gérard de Nerval took a lobster on
a walk in the Tuileries gardens. The romantics wrote
about suicide and sometimes committed it. They
identified with the victims of the bourgeois order: the
poor, criminals, those struggling for nationhood.
Some elevated sex to an art form.
Of course, a critique is also necessary. Many of
the romantic artists were bourgeois themselves; they
were cultivated and sophisticated individuals who
were never as antimaterialist as their rhetoric
suggested. But they celebrated creativity, rebellion,
novelty, self-expression, anti-materialism, and
heroism nonetheless. Turn the lecture into a holistic
experience by sharing plenty of examples of the art,
poetry, and music of the movement. If slides are
available, the grandiose paintings of Theodore
Gericault (The Raft of the Medusa [1819]) and
Eugene Delacroix (Massacre at Chios [1824]) are
not to be missed.
Sources: Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism
(1999); Boris Ford, ed., The Romantic Age in Britain
(1992); Cwisfa Lim, Romanticism: Dawn of a New
Era (2002); Iain McCalman, The Oxford Companion
to the Romantic Age (1999; available online by
subscription).
391
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS
AND DIFFICULT TOPICS
1. Liberalism and the Corn Laws
The premise of the Corn Laws is simple—they were
import tariffs adopted in 1815 to protect British
agriculture (in British lingo, corn refers to wheat,
rye, and barley, not maize). But their application and
effects are more difficult to understand. The laws
prevented the importation of foreign-grown corn
until domestically grown corn reached a certain price
(initially £4 per quarter, with a quarter meaning a
unit of eight bushels). Perhaps more challenging for
students to understand is how the Corn Laws became
a tool of class warfare. They were designed to
protect large landowners, not the small tenant
farmers, and to keep the price of grain—and
therefore bread—high. In a defense of the Corn
Laws, Benjamin Disraeli argued that their repeal
would destroy the “territorial constitution” of Britain
by empowering commercial interests. The greatest
champion of repealing the Corn Laws, Prime
Minister Sir Robert Peel, saw it more as a way
heading off revolution than as an act of liberal
economic reform.
2. Early Nationalism
Given our familiarity with nationalism’s twentiethcentury versions, it is easy to misunderstand the origins
and nature of nationalism in the nineteenth century.
Nationalism was a doctrine invented in Europe during
the Napoleonic Wars that asserted that humanity is
naturally divided into nations, and that nations should
form the bases of states and state power. Prior to this
time, the monarch had most often embodied the nation
(e.g., Louis XIV’s “l’etat, c’est moi”). The roots of
nationalism can be found in the Enlightenment’s and
the French Revolution’s emphasis on liberal democracy
and fundamental human rights (i.e., nationalism as a
doctrine of “popular sovereignty”), but as time passed
nationalism increasingly became a tool for denying the
right of national self-determination (to Africans,
Asians, and revolutionary Europeans). Generally,
nationalism can take two different forms: (1)
nationalism as loyalty to an existing state (patriotism),
or (2) nationalism as liberation—the desire to create a
new state based on identities, whether religious, ethnic,
cultural, or linguistic.
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C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
Sources: Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds.,
Becoming National: A Reader (1996); Eric
Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780
(1990); Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (1960).
IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES
Using Film and Television in the
Classroom
When it first appeared, Civilization: A Personal
View by Lord Clark (1969) was labeled by one critic
as “the definitive documentary series of the last fifty
years” and “eternally significant.” Though now
dated, it still offers gorgeous visuals and useful
insights into the history of Western art, architecture,
and philosophy. For the nineteenth century, try
episode eleven (“The Worship of Nature”) on the
glorification of nature as a creative force and spark
behind the romantic movement. Other documentaries
on the romantic movement include Simon Schama’s
The Power of Art: Turner—Painting Up a Storm
(2007, 50 min.) and the three-episode series The
Romantics (Films for the Humanities and Social
Sciences, 2006, 60 min. each), which uses creative
reenactments to explore the lives and works of
William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William
Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and Percy and Mary
Shelley.
Many feature-length films on the romantic
movement seem to reflect the adage “don’t let the
facts stand in the way of a good story.” The premise
of the film Immortal Beloved (1994, 121 min.) is
speculative—that Beethoven’s enduring love interest
was his brother’s wife—and as one reviewer put it,
the whole question is “less a great mystery than a
minor curiosity.” But well-selected clips can help
introduce this temperamental genius and his music to
students. Look for the segment set against the Ninth
Symphony. Other films about Beethoven can be
found at http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Fictions/
FictionFilmsImmortalBeloved.html. Another option
is Impromptu (1999, 107 min.), about the romance
between Chopin and George Sand, but its
preoccupation with sexual promiscuity suffers from
historical anachronism and may disqualify it from
classroom viewing. Or check out the classic Chopin
biography, A Song to Remember (1945, 113 min.),
but keep an open eye for historical errors.
Paris continued to be at the center of the cultural
and political movements of the age. Paris: 1830
(1997, 14 min.) introduces students to the
monuments to France’s glory days (Arc de
Triomphe, the Pantheon, and the Place de Concorde),
as well as the romantic artists and musicians who
made Paris their home, while Victor Hugo: Les
Misérables (1997. 3 hrs. 48 min.) dramatizes Hugo’s
novel and provides a riveting social portrait of midcentury Paris. (Both films are available from Films
for the Humanities and Social Sciences.) Of course,
you might also show students portions of Les
Misérables (1998, 134 min.), which many
mistakenly believe to be set in 1789 but is actually is
set against the backdrop of the antimonarchist Paris
uprising of June 1832.
With its intrinsic drama, the Great Famine in
Ireland is surprisingly unrepresented on screen. On
the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the potato
blight, the BBC produced a documentary The Great
Irish Famine (1996), but if you use it, ask students to
compare its tone and slant to that presented by other
historians, such as Christine Kinealy and Cormac
O’Grada. Part one of the acclaimed PBS series The
Irish in America: Long Journey Home (1997, 86
min.) focuses on the emigration that resulted from
the potato blight.
Class Discussion Starters
1. What relationship does feminism have to
other mid-century “isms” and ideologies?
Modern feminism—a complex doctrine in itself—
emerged from within various ideological traditions.
While liberalism, with its emphasis on individual
rights, is often recognized as the main source of
feminism, socialist and nationalist movements also
brought women’s interests forward. Guide students
in a discussion of utopian socialists’ views of free
love or Frederick Engels’ writings on the family.
Point out women’s involvement in the nationalist
movements of 1848, and remind students of one,
often ignored “ism” that also shaped early feminism:
evangelicalism.
Sources: Jane Rendall, The Origins of Modern
Feminism: Women in Britain, France, and the
United States, 1780–1860 (1990); Bonnie Smith,
Changing Lives: Women in European History Since
1700 (1989); Sue Morgan and Jacqueline deVries,
eds., Women, Gender, and Religious Cultures in
Britain, 1800–1940 (1910).
2. Why did the revolutions of 1848 fail?
No simple response will suffice. Generally, you can
point to divisions among the revolutionaries as the
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
reason for the downfall—for example, splits between
bourgeois liberals and working-class street fighters—
but to answer the question well, students must
understand local variations. In Hungary, for example,
anti-Jewish riots sparked by the prospect of Jewish
enfranchisement, and Croatian opposition to
Hungarian rule, were significant factors. The
revolutions of 1848 demonstrated, once again, that it
is easier to bring down a regime than to build one up.
Historical Debates
The plight of the Irish during the Great Famine rarely
fails to capture the interest of students. Was the
disaster inevitable or avoidable? Should the British
have done more to relieve distress? If so, what could
have been done differently? How did prevailing
political and economic ideologies shape the
responses?
You might give students contrasting historical
assessments and have them decide which is more
convincing (F. S. L. Lyons, for example, called the
initial response “prompt and relatively successful,”
while others like historian Christine Kinealy are
more critical). However, a debate staged with
historical actors is more engaging (albeit timeconsuming) and can elicit nuances in the various
historical responses. As you prepare students for the
debate, urge them to remember the complexity of the
Irish situation in the 1840s. As William Thackeray
observed “To have an opinion about Ireland, one
must begin by getting at the truth; and where is that
to be had in the country? Rather, there are two truths,
the Catholic truth and the Protestant truth….Belief is
a party business” (Irish Sketch Book [1842].)
Students will quickly learn that there were, in
fact, more than two truths. For this debate to work,
students will need a thorough knowledge of AngloIrish politics and society. Among Irish landlords,
some behaved well (the Earl of Kingston spent half
his annual income relieving distress), while others
behaved badly (refusing to lower rents and evicting
tenants). Irish tenant farmers also responded
differently, depending on their region and relative
prosperity. Similarly, attitudes among the British
varied greatly, reflecting a range of perceptions and
prejudices. Sometimes ideology was to blame for the
ad hoc, haphazard, and ill-planned responses; at
other times it was basic incompetence. Make sure the
students draw out the ideological underpinnings
where applicable and address how the ideas of Adam
Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo played a
role. Students will have fun choosing parts: on the
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British side, Prime Minister Robert Peel, Lord John
Russell, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland, Queen Victoria, and some Quakers; on the
Irish side, Daniel O’Connell, John Mitchel (“Young
Ireland”), Lord Mayor of Dublin, some landlords,
and of course their tenant farmers.
Sources: Helen Litton, The Irish Famine: An
Illustrated History (2003); Christine Kinealy, A
Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in
Ireland (1997); Edward Lengel, The Irish Through
British Eyes: Perceptions of Ireland in the Famine
Era (2002); Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great
Hunger, 1945–49 (1991); various books by Cormac
Ó Gráda.
Using Primary Sources
Excerpts are always an option, but the full-length
versions of the era’s classics are well worth the
investment of time. Three that work well are Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus
(1818), Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in
America (1835), and Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848). As
students encounter these texts, give them background
on the authors’ lives, views, and motivations.
Discuss the forms of the texts, too: for example, both
Tocqueville and Marx were writing polemic works—
that is, writing to advocate causes. These texts were
not, nor were they intended to be, balanced scholarly
treatises. Polemic works usually promote an authors’
viewpoint and summarily dismiss opposing
arguments. Because of this, you might invite students
to “talk back” to these texts, making
counterarguments with historical evidence.
Cooperative Learning Activities
1. American Idol: The Romantics
Music is such a potent tool for teaching history that it
would be a shame not to engage students with the
masterpieces of romantic music. One alternative to
the “research and report” approach is a competition
in the format of American Idol. Ask students to come
to class as their chosen personas, introduce
themselves (with some personal details), and then
play a five- to ten-minute selection for a panel of
“judges.” They might choose to be Frederic Chopin,
Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz,
Johannes Brahms, Edvard Grieg, Clara Schumann,
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, or another composer or
394
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
performer from the period. The panel of judges can
applaud, hiss, and ask questions about harmony,
form, tonality, or something more personal. A
student who comes as Chopin and plays an excerpt
from the “Revolutionary Étude” (op. 10 no. 12), for
example, should be prepared to explain that it was
inspired by the Polish revolution of 1831.
Sources: Alex Zukas, “Different Drummers: Using
Music to Teach History,” Perspectives (September
1996).
2. Mapping the 1848 Revolutions
Like 1989, the year 1848 brought enormously
complex political changes. A series of liberal
revolutions exploded around Europe, in France and
Hungary, Milan and Sicily, and across the German
states. Some clamored for liberal constitutions,
others for nationhood, and still others for workers’
rights. But who can keep it all straight? Give
students a blank map of Europe and ask them to map
the revolts, indicating the central issues, key leaders,
and major turning points and outcomes.
Sources: Mike Rapport, 1848: Year of Revolution
(2009);
Jonathan
Sperber,
The
European
Revolutions, 1848–1851 (1994).
Web Resources
Delacroix (http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/delacroi/index.html)
Edgar Allan Poe Museum (www.poemuseum.org)
Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions (http://cscwww
.cats.ohiou.edu/~Chastain)
The History Place: Irish Potato Famine
(www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/
index.html)
Interpreting the Irish Famine, 1845–1850
(www.xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/sadlier/irish/
Famine.htm)
The Nationalism Project (www.nationalismproject
.org/)
Utopian Socialism Archive (www.marxists.org/
subject/utopian)
Victor Hugo Central (www.gavroche.org/vhugo)
The Walter Scott Digital Archive (www.walterscott
.lib.ed.ac.uk)
William Wordsworth: The Complete Poetical Works
(www.bartleby.com/145)
Additional Bedford/St. Martin’s
Resources for Chapter 22
Instructor’s Resource CD-ROM
The chapter-specific resources on this disc are useful
for presentation, handouts, and quizzing from within
lecture presentations. The disc includes a chapter
outline in PowerPoint format, multiple-choice
questions in Word and PowerPoint format for use
with the i>clicker classroom response system, as
well as the following maps and images from the
textbook, in both PowerPoint and jpeg formats:
• The Triumph of Democratic Republics
• Map 22.1: Europe in 1815
• Map 22.2: Peoples of the Habsburg Monarchy,
1815
• Spot Map 22.1: 1820 Revolts in Spain and Italy
The PowerPoint chapter outlines with embedded
images and maps are also available in the online
instructor’s resource section of the book companion
site at bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywest. These
maps and selected images are also available in jpeg
format from the Make History section of the book
companion site.
The Bedford Series in History and Culture
Volumes from the Bedford Series in History and
Culture can be packaged at a discount with A History
of Western Society. Relevant titles for this chapter
include:
• European Romanticism: A Brief History with
Documents, Warren Breckman, University of
Pennsylvania
• THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO by Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels with Related Documents,
Edited with an Introduction by John E. Toews,
University of Washington
To view an updated list of series titles, visit
bedfordstmartins.com/history/series.
Online Study Guide at
bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywest
The Online Study Guide helps students review
material from the textbook as well as practice
historical skills. Each chapter contains assessment
quizzes, short-answer and essay questions, and
interactive activities accompanied by page references
to encourage further study. The following map,
visual, and document activities, based on textbook
C HAPTER 22 • I DEOLOGIES AND U PHEAVALS
activities and special features, are available in the
Online Study Guide for this chapter as assignable
quizzes:
• Visual Activity: The Triumph of Democratic
Republics
• Map Activity: Map 22.1: Europe in 1815
395