The Napoleonic Wars created an independent European diplomatic system. The victorious states met in 1815 to create a stable European peace based on legitimacy, compensation, and balance of power.

The Four Powers of England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia determined the nature of the peace. In France the Bourbon monarchy was restored in the person of Louis XVIII, a brother of the slain Louis XVI. Treatment of the restored Bourbons was moderate. The allies then met at the Congress of Vienna to restore order to the rest of Europe. The object was to obtain a balance of power so that no country might dominate the diplomatic structure. Buffer kingdoms—the kingdom of the Netherlands and the kingdom of Sardinia—were created to contain France. The independent states of Italy were handed over to Austria. Even the Congress of Vienna could not remake the Holy Roman Empire. The German Confederation with its capital at Frankfurt consisted of Austria and thirty-eight smaller political units loosely bound together in a Federal Diet. Poland was a bone of contention between the eastern European powers, Russia and Prussia. After a series of secret negotiations, Poland was split between the two contenders. Prussia was also rewarded with other German territories and emerged as a contender with Austria for leadership in the new German Confederation. Of all the victorious allies, only Britain received no territorial advantages from the Congress of Vienna.

To secure the settlements of the Congress of Vienna, two alliance systems emerged. The Quadruple Alliance (later the Quintuple Alliance after the addition of France) simply guaranteed the status quo in post-Napoleonic Europe. The Holy Alliance consisted of Austria, Prussia, and Russia and vowed to preserve peace and Christianity. England acted to offset the conservatism of the other allies. The English prime government refused to support intervention to replace constitutional governments with more conservative monarchies.

Industrialization changed the basic social structure of western Europe. Men began to identify themselves according to the new technology and the means of production. In response, new ideologies—liberalism, nationalism, romanticism, conservatism, and socialism—arose.

Governments sought to establish a balance between state authority and individual liberty while preserving political stability. Conservatives stressed tradition and the necessity of corporate institutions. They valued slow evolution rather than traumatic revolutionary change. Politically, conservatives argued for the retention of monarchy. Under the leadership of the Austrian minister, Klemens von Metternich, conservatism took a reactionary turn. In eastern Europe, governments attempted to snuff out all constitutional reform or attempts to improve civil liberties.

Liberalism was based on two fundamental tenets: the freedom of the individual and the corruptibility of authority. Liberals embraced constitutional monarchy and the withdrawal of the government from intervention in private action. Liberals could be found in post-revolutionary France and in Great Britain. David Ricardo argued that government interference in setting wages only guaranteed the continuation of subsistence-level pay for the working class. Jeremy Bentham, another British liberal, created a social philosophy called utilitarianism. Governments could measure the benefits of their actions in the pursuit of social harmony while retaining protection of individual rights. James Mill embraced Bentham’s philosophy. Mill’s son, John Stuart Mill, however, rejected utilitarianism in favor of a more active social program. He argued for a more equitable distribution of wealth and for women’s equality.

Romanticism as a movement encapsulated a group of artistic and literary styles that tended to correspond to the political ideologies of the day. Among the founders of romantic poetry were William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. At the root of romanticism was an emphasis on emotion rather than intellect. Even in gardening, romantics rejected classical formalism in favor of the “natural.” Romantics embraced the concept of the inspired artist who created on the basis of the spirit rather than his understanding of classical models of color and balance. Representative of the French school of romanticism were Germaine de Stael and Victor Hugo. Both emphasized the necessity of subjective self-consciousness. Musicians, too, celebrated national heritages. Hector Berlioz, Frederic Chopin, and Franz Liszt incorporated the melodies of their native homelands into their compositions. Artists experimented with new colorations and compositions outside classical traditions. Romanticism embodied rebellion from authority.

Nationalism and liberalism, particularly on the Continent, were frequently interwoven political doctrines. Nationalism emerged from the desire to create constitutional governments free of tyranny and foreign domination. Nationalists sought to capture the national spirit in literature, art, or music. Frenchmen glorified the Revolution. Germans stressed a German folk culture as the source of national identity. The Italian Giuseppe Mazzini organized Young Italy for the purpose of unifying Italy under a republican government of Italian nationals. Germany also had a strong nationalist movement seeking to create a united German state. Georg Friedrich List rejected liberal economic theories and argued for a strong tariff system to protect and develop German industries.

Socialism was the political creation of industrialization. In the theories of the French utopian, Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon, industrialized society could be organized according to the hierarchy of productive work. Pierre Joseph Proudhon radicalized Saint-Simon’s industrialized society by arguing that people had the right only to that property that was the result of their labor. Capitalists, who profited from the labor of others, were not entitled to property. Another utopian, Charles Fourier, urged the formation of laboring groups called phalansteries. Members of phalansteries were mutually responsible for the welfare of the group. Work was distributed evenly and strictly limited. Curiously, Fourier’s phalansteries, the creation of industrialized society, were always rural. Socialist utopians differed in their approach to the position of women in society. While the socialist utopians hoped for peaceful social change, some socialists presented a revolutionary agenda for action. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proposed that the growing distance between the capitalists and the working class would lead inevitably to class struggle. Their theories were presented in The Communist Manifesto.

The radical changes experienced by European society in the early nineteenth century created new sources of exploitation and misery.

Internal immigration from the rural countryside to the cities accounted for a significant urbanization of Europe. Migrants frequently took up unskilled jobs at low pay. The situation was more desperate for women, who at times were forced into prostitution. Venereal disease became epidemic. Urban centers spawned surges in crime. In response, some cities formed police forces to suppress the criminal element. Crime was often associated with poverty as a social issue.

Provisions for the poor—whether deserving poor or the simply unemployed—became part of the legislation that states created to deal with the problems associated with industrialization. Various approaches to poverty were proposed. Some argued that disease and famine were necessary correctives to overpopulation and that governments should allow “natural” measures to take their course. Others felt that the state had aided in the creation of the new society and therefore should play a positive role in curing its ills. In Britain, Parliament issued a series of statutes aimed at resolving some of the worst abuses of industrialization: exploitation of women and child laborers. Legislation shortened working hours and improved working conditions in the factories.

Governmental failure to deal with harvest failures touched off revolutions in 1830. In France, Charles X attempted to restore conservative monarchy based on the old alliance with Roman Catholicism. The opposition to the reimposition of the Old Regime came primarily from bourgeois critics seeking a continuing liberalization of the constitution. As food prices rose, people took to the streets in Paris. Disorder and public disaffection with the government rapidly spread to other areas in France. Charles X abdicated. The urban revolutionaries urged the creation of a republic, but the politically empowered bourgeoisie established a constitutional monarchy, the so-called July Monarchy. The new constitution retained the political monopoly of the bourgeoisie.

In Britain, Germany, and Switzerland, rising food prices led to disturbances but not revolutions. Revolution against the Ottoman Empire’s overlordship broke out in Greece in the 1820s. Finally in 1827 England, Russia, and France agreed to support the cause of Greek independence, if only to restore stability to the region. Defeat of an Ottoman fleet achieved Greek separation from the Turks. Belgium also sought to gain its independence from the kingdom of the Netherlands on the basis of religious freedom and economic prosperity. Although the eastern monarchs wanted to crush the rebellion, England and France refused. In the end, a constitutional monarchy was established in Belgium on the condition that the new nation maintain political neutrality. Poland, partitioned on several occasions and occupied by both German and Russian overlords, also revolted to secure independence. When peasantry and landlords were unable to cooperate, the revolution was resolutely crushed. Polish nationalism and liberalism continued to exist only among exiles. Revolution also failed in Italy where the states of Modena and Parma attempted to free themselves from Habsburg Austria. Young Italy, Mazzini’s underground nationalist movement, continued to operate. The revolutions of 1830 demonstrated the continued vitality of the interlocking diplomatic system established at the Congress of Vienna. Great powers either crushed rebellions or compromised with mutual agreements for the establishment of new states. Maintaining internal stability was critical to the diplomatic balance of power. Finally, the revolutions of 1830 demonstrated a growing political consciousness among the working classes.

The English electoral system was unchanged since the Middle Ages. It did not reflect the social changes of industrialization. Urban areas were under-represented. Capitalists were hardly represented at all. The Reform Bill of 1832 extended the franchise to the industrial and commercial elite. The Reform Bill of 1832 did nothing for the working classes, who initiated a new reform movement summarized in the People’s Charter. The charter called for universal male suffrage, paid parliamentary representatives, the secret ballot, equal electoral districts, and annual elections. Chartism was popular among the working classes, particularly ethnic minorities in urban areas. Poor harvests led to periods of Chartist unrest and labor strikes that always stopped just short of violence. In 1848 a huge mob carried a petition in favor of the charter to Parliament. Despite the popularity of the charter, the English legislature refused further reforms and the movement withered away.

The technological mechanization of manufacturing was greeted by dismay and occasional violence by skilled labor. Craft workers banded together to prevent the erosion of skilled labor. Opposition to mechanization of production led to outbreaks of violence and machine breaking in England, France, and Germany. The English movement against machines was called Luddism. In England craftsmen tended to support the charter; in France they turned to riots and strikes during the 1830s. More radical members of the crafts turned to socialism and republicanism. Skilled craftsmen opposed women in the workforce, as female labor was inexpensive, unskilled, and “sweated.” Women labor leaders, such as Flora Tristan, argued that the only hope of equality with males lay in education and organization. Generally, however, women remained outside the labor movement.

Revolutions swept all of continental Europe in 1848. As was common, poor harvests and rising food prices preceded political violence. At the same time, working class agitation for reform of political systems became more widespread. Finally many ethnic groups in Europe began to demand political boundaries more consonant with ethnic homogeneity. In France the revolution of 1848 broke out between Parisian laborers and the bourgeois government of the July Monarchy. The militia, the National Guard, joined the revolution as did some of the army. Like his Bourbon predecessor, Louis Philippe abdicated. An uneasy coalition of revolutionaries under Alphonse de Lamartine formed an interim government, the Provisional Government of the Second Republic. To placate revolutionary laborers, the government set up national workshops that soon deteriorated into an inefficient program of public charity for the unemployed. When the workshops drew the jobless from all over France to Paris, the government abandoned them and attempted to suppress the working-class element of the revolution. Armies under General Cavaignac crushed an abortive revolt of craftsmen and laborers.

Demands for ethnic solidarity and constitutional reforms were repeated in all the German states, including Prussia and Austria. Even the Prussian monarch was forced to accede to the creation of a new constitution. Demands for German unity led to the formation of a Pan-Germanic conference at Frankfurt in 1848 to design a new German nation. Debate emerged over the wisdom of including the maximum area within the new nation, including non-German ethnic minorities, or restricting the new nation to a smaller region that would be predominantly German. In 1849 the Frankfurt meeting chose the small Germany option. The movement failed when Frederick William IV refused to accept the crown of the newly formed nation.

In Austria, revolution broke out in the capital of Vienna and in Budapest and Prague. Revolutions were led in these cities by German, Magyar, and Czech nationalists, respectively. Metternich resigned in the face of demands for constitutional reform.

Outside Austria, Italian revolutionaries renewed their demands for independence from Austria. Temporarily, Giuseppe Mazzini established a republic in Rome. The revolutionary government withered away before the assault of French troops sent to restore papal rule in Rome. Similarly, each of the revolutions in the Austrian homeland were defeated in the course of 1849. Austria forced Prussia to forego any plans for a unified Germany. Conservatism was maintained by military force.

The revolutions of 1848 weakened the political balance reached in the Congress of Vienna. Austria only barely survived the challenge to the status quo. Failure of the revolutions was due more to the inability of bourgeois liberals and working-class democrats to coordinate their efforts. The victors of the revolutions of 1848 were generally the middle class. Ignored were demands for national entities based on homogeneous ethnic populations. Democracy was not achieved anywhere. The revolutions of 1848 had few concrete results.