Chapter Summary

The liberal revolutions of 1848 failed to procure change. In their aftermath, powerful politicians crafted new centralized states to replace the weakened survivors of the Congress of Vienna. Reform came from within the new states, not from the unempowered revolutionary masses.

Russian foreign policy was dedicated to acquiring a warm water port in the Mediterranean. In order to do so, the Russians needed to benefit from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. After the Turks refused to recognize Russia’s claims to protect Greek Orthodox citizens of the Ottoman Empire, the tsar ordered troops into the Balkans. The Turks then declared war. Although the Russians were able to defeat the Turks without difficulty, their victory aroused the concern of the French and British who also had interests in the eastern Mediterranean. In 1854 the western European powers declared war on Russia, as did the Italian kingdom of Sardinia. The resulting conflict was the Crimean War. The Russians eventually conceded defeat and surrendered their claims within the Ottoman Empire. The Danubian Principalities that had been the original focus of Russian interests were combined into the new nation of Romania. The war was a monument to military incompetence and brutality, but it destabilized eastern Europe by causing the Russians to withdraw from the balance of power. The Concert of Europe had ended.

Italian unification failed in 1848. In the 1850s leadership in the Risorgimento fell to Camillo di Cavour, premier of Sardinia. Cavour began by liberal reforms within Sardinia and created an image of modern progressivism. He also brought the French into an alliance against the Austrian overlords of Italy. In the war that followed Cavour’s diplomatic maneuvers, Austria’s defeat delivered Lombardy to the kingdom of Sardinia. Other small northern Italian states were added through plebiscites. Central Italy followed in the same fashion. Under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi and his Thousand Red Shirts, the king of Sicily was overthrown. Cavour also invaded southern Italy, leading to the declaration of a united Italy under Victor Emmanuel II in 1861. By 1870 Victor Emmanuel also gained control of Rome and Venetia, completing the unification of the Italian peninsula.

Otto von Bismarck was the architect of German unity in the name of preserving the leadership of Prussia. He invented the practice of realpolitik, pursuit of national interests at all costs. Bismarck’s talent was his ability to join the conservative Junkers with the liberals in the pursuit of a united Germany. He utilized the Zollverein to isolate Austria economically, reorganized the Prussian army, and created a crisis between Austria and Prussia over management of the newly conquered territories of Schleswig and Holstein. In the Seven Weeks’ War, Bismarck’s new military forces destroyed the myth of Austrian dominance in central Europe. Austria withdrew from the emerging Germany. The Habsburg Empire divided itself into a dual monarchy—Austria-Hungary—under a single Habsburg ruler. With Austria removed as a potential rival, Bismarck was free to pressure the fragmented states of southern Germany into accepting Prussian leadership. French resistance to further gains in Prussian authority in central Europe led to the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Faced with a French threat, the southern German states joined Prussia, as Bismarck had planned. The war with France was swiftly concluded in Prussia’s favor. In the glow of victory, the new German Empire was created in defeated France at the palace of Versailles. The constitution was ostensibly liberal—it included universal male suffrage and a representative legislative assembly—but the government was responsive only to the chancellor and his professional bureaucracy. Unification led to the establishment of a single national market, a single financial system, and unified national economies that rapidly capitalized industrialization.

In the United States, the end of the Civil War led to the establishment of a single national market, a single financial system, and unified national economies that rapidly capitalized industrialization.

The statesmen of the second half of the nineteenth century created a new sense of what a nation was. Nations achieved mythical form complete with symbolic representation. Nations submerged regional differences and ethnic variation in the unity of the state. In the name of the state, force became an acceptable alternative to diplomacy. Violence and nationalism were simply two aspects of the modern state.

In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the newly centralized states took over the role of social reform. The end result was greater unity of the people around the nation state.

The architect of the Second Empire was Louis Napoleon, nephew of the first Napoleon. Elected president of the Second Republic because of his innocuous image and on the basis of promises to all classes of French society, Napoleon III became a dictator in 1851 and emperor in 1852. His reign was typified by economic growth fueled by greater demand for French products and the establishment of a private banking system. The state also invested in a railway system and rebuilt Paris under the direction of Baron Georges Haussmann, prefect of the Seine. The rebuilt center of the city was reserved for the bourgeoisie; the poor were relegated to the suburbs. Louis Napoleon’s grandiose foreign policy was less successful. France declared war on Russia in the Crimea and supported the ambitions of Italian nationalists against Austria. While these gained little for France, they did no harm. Napoleon also ordered construction of the Suez Canal and negotiated a free-trade policy with Great Britain. The French intervention in Mexico, however, was an abject diplomatic failure that damaged Napoleon’s prestige as a power broker. The military reputation of the French was demolished along with their armies in the Franco-Prussian War. Defeat brought the downfall of the Second Empire and autocratic liberalism.

Despite relative political tranquillity, Britain experienced serious social problems. What allowed Britain to avoid revolution was the ability of its representative body, Parliament, to balance industrial growth with protection of the working classes. Between 1832 and 1884, the vote was continually extended to more males, although females remained outside the electorate. Two politicians—the Liberal, William Gladstone, and the Conservative, Benjamin Disraeli—dominated English politics in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Gladstone fostered free trade through the elimination of tariffs, cut military costs, and lowered taxes. He also began the inflammatory policy of removing some of the most onerous symbols of British rule in Ireland by disestablishing the Anglican Church there. Gladstone’s Liberal policies also reformed the civil service, introduced the secret ballot, and began a state public education system. Disraeli sponsored more direct state intervention on behalf of the working classes. A new Factory Act limited working hours, the Public Health Act established standards for sanitation, and the Artisans Dwelling Act set regulations for public housing. Under Disraeli’s leadership, Parliament even sanctioned legal trade unionism. British political evolution combined free enterprise, a Liberal program, with active state intervention on behalf of the proletariat, a Conservative agenda. The lack of political rigidity within the British electoral system permitted both viewpoints to moderate the impact of industrialization.

Because of the autocratic nature of the Russian government, all reform had to initiate with the tsar’s government. The primary problem was the continued existence of serfdom in Russia. Tsar Alexander II began the process of abolishing serfdom within the agricultural system in response to the perceived need for modernizing the economy to compete with western rivals. In 1861 the tsar emancipated serfs in Russia, granting land to the former peasants in return for payments to be paid over forty-nine years. Land was assigned to peasant communes or mirs rather than individuals as a means of ensuring payment. The mirs also continued to tie peasants to the land and prevented landless mobility. Although a reform of unprecedented scale, the emancipation of the serfs did not resolve peasant grievances. The tsar was able to enact other reforms of the judiciary and the army and to create local parliamentary bodies, but he failed to quiet criticism of his regime. Reforms did not satisfy the Russian intelligentsia, who continued to protest the order of Russian society. The government attempted to suppress the student-led critics, who turned to radicalization of the peasantry as a means of overthrowing the state. The tsar’s government initiated trials that forced many of the intellectuals to flee to the West. A few of the radicals resorted to terrorism in the form of attempted assassination of public officials, including the tsar.

The practice of politics changed in Europe after 1850. Autocratic monarchy existed nowhere outside of Russia. The new source of political leadership were those who could harness the will of the empowered citizens. Molding public opinion became an important aspect of exercising power. One of the means of manipulating public opinion was careful use of the press. The new political leaders tended to view decisions strictly on the basis of the growth of the state, not on grounds of traditional morality. As states were permanently in a state of competition, the new breed of politicians always considered the use of force as a positive good. The final judgment of political success was the success of the nation, not the career of the individual. Political leaders at the end of the nineteenth century risked all to advance the interests of the state.

The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of materialist values and new ideas that sought to restore order to an industrialized society.

The domestic household reflected other social changes within European society, although the dichotomy between the bourgeoisie and the working class remained obvious. Home was both a shelter and a demonstration of status. Middle-class women, freed from the industrial workplace, achieved the position of guardian of domesticity. They were responsible for preparation of food and the maintenance of the quality of life within the home. Cleanliness was regarded as emblematic of virtue in the middle-class lifestyle. Working-class women remained in the nineteenth-century workforce and had little time to add to the objects of domestic status or to clean and cook. The working-class family did not share the moral standards of the bourgeoisie. Working women were still regarded as immoral for failing to care for their families. A few women refused to accept society’s prescribed roles. The nineteenth century saw the elevation of the cult of domesticity to a standard of middle-class virtue, but also witnessed the beginnings of feminism.

Realism rejected the romantic ethos of the arts and the bourgeois definition of morality. Realists attacked the more sordid aspects of industrialized society. Charles Dickens in England portrayed nineteenth-century society as soulless exploitation of the working classes. In France, Flaubert ridiculed the middle-class concepts of morality in Madame Bovary. Fyodor Dostoyevsky introduced realism to Russian literature. The development of photography provided a new way to record the reality of the world, people and events.

Charles Darwin, a biologist, offered a new explanation for change in the natural world—evolution through the principle of natural selection. Better adapted species survived to reproduce in greater numbers, thus outstripping less fortunate rivals in their ecological niche. Darwin’s theory became immediately controversial and popular. His ideas represented a realist conception of progress based on natural struggle. The “survival of the fittest” replicated the application of force in international relations. Darwin’s ideas were also applied to a wide range of theories of social organization.

Influenced in his early intellectual development by the work of Georg Friedrich Hegel, Marx was exiled from his native Prussia because of his political radicalism. In England he united with Friedrich Engels and developed the concept of dialectical materialism. All societies divided into classes were doomed to destruction as a result of internal conflict between social groups who owned property versus those who did not. Marx argued that labor was the source of all value, but capitalism alienated workers from the fruits of their labor. The constant impoverishment of the proletariat, according to Marx, would lead inevitably to revolution against the economic system. While much of Marx’s economic theory was flawed, it provided a focus for working-class political action. In 1864 the International Working Men’s Association was formed in London. It was intended to be an international alliance of workers dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism.

When Napoleon III and his army surrendered to Prussia in 1870, the citizens of Paris continued to resist. From September 1870 until the armistice in January 1871, the Parisians endured starvation and bombardment without capitulating to the German invaders. The rest of France, however, was eager for an end to the conflict. French national elections in 1871 established a new, conservative government dedicated to ending the war. The Parisians felt betrayed. Alienated from the new French government, Parisian citizens refused to disarm. When the government attempted to impose its authority on the city, Paris expelled the national army and founded the Paris Commune. Between March and May 1871, Paris was at war with the remainder of France. In the end, the national armies put an end to the social experiment, but the Paris Commune remained a symbol for revolutionary movements—including Marxism.