THE ADVENT OF “ISMS”
• After the Napoleonic Era ended, Central Europe needed to
restructure.
• Those interested in promoting the changes Napoleon
ushered in were called “Liberals.” Those interested in
returning Europe back to Divine Right Monarchies were
“Conservatives.” DO NOT CONFUSE THESE TERMS WITH MODERN
AMERICAN POLITICS….
• Generally, Middle classes argued for liberalism, while
landed nobility promoted conservatism. In most cases,
class warfare broke out between various factions in Europe,
resulting in new hybrid systems.
• It all started with the Congress of Vienna……
Assignment on Canvas (do along with reviewing
powerpoint):
Create a chart that lists the roots, key characteristics, and
heroes of each ism.
Conservativism
Liberalism
Romanticism
French
Socialism
Marxist
Socialism
Congress of Vienna
•
•
Napoleon Defeated by 1814
many questions remained unanswered, such
as what would happen in the vacuum
Napoleon’s defeat left in the governments of
Europe?
•
Quadruple Alliance
–
Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Great Britain
–
“First Treaty of Vienna”
•
restored the French boundaries of 1792
•
Restored the Bourbon dynasty to
France
•
No indemnity
Congress or Metternich System
•
Intervention and repression
– Under Metternich, Austria, Prussia, and
Russia led a crusade against liberalism.
• They formed a Holy Alliance to
check future liberal and
revolutionary activity.
• When liberals succeeded in Spain
and in the Two Sicilies, Holy Alliance
powers intervened to restore
conservatism.
• Metternich's policies also dominated
the German Confederation--through
which the Carlsbad Decrees were
issued in 1819.
–
These decrees repressed
subversive ideas and organizations
in the 38 German states
Metternich and Conservatism
• Metternich represented the view that
the best state blended monarchy,
bureaucracy, and aristocracy.
• claimed Liberalism stirred up the
lower classes and caused war and
bloodshed.
– Liberalism also stirred up national
aspirations in central Europe, which
could lead to war and the breakup of the
Austrian Empire.
– The empire, which was dominated by the
minority Germans, contained many ethnic
groups, including Hungarians and
Czechs, which was a potential source of
weakness and dissatisfaction.
The Advent of the “Isms”
The Age of Isms
Congress of
Vienna
1815
Congress
of Aix-laChapelle,
1818
Decembrist
revolt
Liberalism,
Romanticism,
Nationalism,
Conservativism,
1820
1825
1830
1838
1842
1846
Socialism,
&
Marxism
July
Revolution
Congress of
Verona, 1822
Burschenschaft
formed
Carlsbad Decrees
issued (1817)
Mines Act
Peterloo
Massacre
(1819)
Congress of
Troppau (1820)
Corn Laws
Repealed
Chartists
Movement
-Reform Bill
of 1832
-Factory Act
1833
-Poor Law of
1834
Ten
Hours
Act
(1847)
February
Revolution
(France)
1848 (Springtime of
Peoples)
-March Days
(Austria)
-Frankfurt
Assembly
Conservatism
•
Basic Tenets
–
A reaction against liberalism
–
Alternative to the violence and terror of French
Revolution
–
Supporter of restoration of “legitimate” monarchs
–
Support came from nobility, peasants, early
romantics
–
Loved order, stability, tradition, and religion
–
Hated notion of a Revolution (change)
• Reject idea of social contract
• History and God were sole sources of legitimate
power
– Heroes: Edmund Burke, All Kings, Hobbes
“Classic” Liberalism
• Rooted in Enlightenment
• Believed that the individual is a selfsufficient being
• The ism of the middle class &
bourgeoisie
• Favored written constitution
• Love Lockean notions of the right of
rebellion, and natural rights
• Favored Smithian Laissez-faire
economics
• Favored balance of power, free trade,
Education
• Heroes: Locke, Smith, Philosophes,
Romanticism
• Rooted in Plato, Rousseau and Kant
– Plato-innate ideas
• A reaction against ALL the arguing and instability in
Europe. Generally Middle-Class with enough $ to stay
out of mainstream.
• Favored imagination & spontaneity over classical
rules (art & literature)
Salisbury Cathedral from
the Meadows, John
• Highpoint from 1780s-1848
Constable
• Feeling & emotion over reason
• Rejected notion of “progress” & universal laws
– said each historical period & people were
unique, organic, and different
• At the forefront in fighting slavery, industrial evils
(Basically, romantics who wanted to ignore modern
changes in society by re-inventing classical scholarship
and ideas).
Neuschwanstein
Castle
Wanderer Looking over a Sea of Fog (1815
• Caspar David
Friedrich 1774 –
1840) century
German Romantic
painter
French Utopian Socialism
• Rooted in a reaction to the evils of the Industrial Revolution,
•
•
•
•
Believed in government economic planning
Hated cutthroat, selfish, individualistic and chaotic capitalism
Private property should be regulated or abolished.
Count Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825)
– Proposed that the “Doers” or Captains of Industry
(scientists, engineers, industrialists) should plan the
economy
– Public should own the means of production
– “Parasites” (monarchs, aristocracy, Church) should step
aside
• Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
– Proposed small units (phalansteries) containing 1,620
people
– communal societies where people worked at what they
were interested in
– Total emancipation for women
• Saw marriage as another form of prostitution
French Utopian Socialism
• Louis Blanc (1811-1882)
– Organization of Work (1839)
– proposed social workshops (state
supported manufacturing centers) where
workers labor for themselves without the
intervention of private capitalists
• Robert Owen (British) (1771-1858)
• Industrialist and cotton lord of Manchester
• Appalled by conditions of mill-workers
• Created a model community
– High wages
– Reduced hours
– Corrective against vice (drunkenness)
– Schools
– Housing
– Stores
• paternalistic capitalism turned him into a
social reformer
Nationalism
• A raised level of consciousness of a particular
peoples’ traditions, history, land, language,
culture that say they should be joined together as
a nation. Tired of other nations forcing them to
remain separate and weak.
• Rejected Congress of Vienna and its principle of
“legitimacy”
• Favor idea of popular sovereignty
• Promoted
– idea of nationalisms economic and
administrative efficiency
– A nation, like a person, is free & a creation of
God
• What peoples of Europe might begin to adopt
Nationalism based upon their history and the
description at the top of the slide?
Nationalism Continued
• Most influential in Germany
• Herder –Father of German Nationalism
– Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind
(1784)
– Volksgeist – “Spirit of the People”
– common people is where national character existed
– said each nation should develop their own way and
avoid distortions by outside influence
– didn’t think that German culture was better but different
• J. G. Fichte
– Closed Commercial state (1800)
• outlined a totalitarian system in which the state
planned and operated whole economy in isolationist
fashion, thus protecting national character
– Address To The German Nation, 1807
• there was an ineradicable German spirit, primordial,
to be kept pure at all costs, inner moral universe
• German spirit is better than others
Nationalism Continued
• Father Jahn:
– known as Turnvater Jahn, or the "father
of gymnastics"
– organized a youth movement (political
gymnastics clubs)
– suspicion of foreigners (Jews,
internationalists); things that might
corrupt the purity of German Volk
(Beginning of German purism).
– 1810- "Poles, French, priests, aristocrats
and Jews are Germany's misfortune."
– Organized book burnings
• Grimm’s Fairy Tales
•
In search of the Volk
• Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel
• Friedrick List
– Advocated Zollverein (free trade zones
within German states
Scientific “Marxist” Socialism
• Based on philosophy of Karl Marx (1818-1883) &
Friedrich Engles (1820-1895)
• Brutal and militant revolutionary vision of how the
working class would defeat bourgeoisie
• Dialectic Materialism –explains all human history
• All change comes through the clash of antagonistic
elements
– Historical development is the result of conditions
created by the interaction of such forces
• Economic causation to all human history/Class
struggle
– All human history is a story of a struggle over
material (resources) between haves and have nots
– Monarch v. Nobility
– Nobility v. Bourgeoisie
– Bourgeoisie v. Proletariat
Scientific “Marxist” Socialism
• Theory of Surplus Value
– the “stolen” portion of the value of the product the
proletariat labored over
• The profit of the capitalist
• Inevitability of Communist State
– Believed that history is scientific (predictable)
– Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction
– Bourgeoisie will exploit the proletariat until class
consciousness rises & workers destroy capitalism in
favor of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat
– A classless society
• Work according to one’s ability, take according to
one’s needs
• Communist Manifesto (1848)
– A call for revolution
– The proletarians have nothing to lose but their
chains. Workers of the world unite!
Print this out and fill in by hand, or make your own list and chart. Copies are
hanging on my office door as well!
Using your textbook, make a short list of reforms ushered into Europe by
Napoleon. It is these changes that will cause Europeans to question returning to
old systems after the Napoleonic War. After this, see the next page.
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