Nationalism, liberalism, socialism

Late Modern Era / 19th Century · ~1800 – 1914

Nationalism, liberalism and socialism were the three great political ideas of the nineteenth century. Nationalism held that peoples who share a language, history or homeland should govern themselves in states of their own. Liberalism stressed individual rights, written constitutions, free speech, representative government and, for most liberals, free markets. Socialism arose as a response to the new factory economy and called for common or collective ownership and a fairer share of wealth for working people.

All three grew out of the French Revolution of 1789 and the Napoleonic wars, and they spread across Europe and then the wider world between about 1800 and 1914. They drove revolutions in 1830 and 1848, the unifications of Italy and Germany, and the break-up of old empires. They also shaped labour unions, mass political parties and the extension of the vote. They often cooperated and often clashed, and their rivalry helped set the course of the twentieth century.

Things happened, and the rest is history

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
Event
What happened
In August 1789 the French National Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It states that men are born free and equal in rights, and that sovereignty rests in the nation. In 1791 France adopts a written constitution that sets up a limited monarchy.
The rest is history
The Declaration gave liberals and nationalists a founding text, and it was widely copied and debated. It excluded women and left slavery in French colonies in place, and these gaps were criticised at the time, for example by Olympe de Gouges in 1791. The monarchy fell in 1792 and the Republic followed. The principle that the nation, not the king, holds sovereignty became the base of later nationalist and liberal movements.
Sources
1. PrimaryDeclaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. French National Assembly, 26 August 1789.
2. BookHunt, Lynn. Inventing Human Rights: A History. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007.
Napoleon's conquests and the awakening of nations
Event
What happened
Between 1799 and 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte's armies conquer much of Europe. He spreads the Napoleonic Code, ends feudal privileges in many lands and redraws state borders, merging many small German states. In 1806 the Holy Roman Empire is dissolved. Resistance to French rule rises in Spain, Prussia and Russia.
The rest is history
French rule brought legal equality and reform, but also taxes, conscription and foreign domination. Historians widely see this combination as stirring national feeling in Germany, Italy and Spain. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the Congress of Vienna tried to restore the old order. The ideas of liberty and nation were not easily put back, however, and they drove the revolts that followed.
Sources
1. BookBroers, Michael. Europe under Napoleon, 1799-1815. London: Arnold, 1996.
2. BookBell, David A. The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
The Congress of Vienna and the conservative order
Event
What happened
From September 1814 to June 1815 the great powers meet at Vienna, led by Austria's Prince Metternich, to settle Europe after Napoleon. They restore many former rulers and redraw borders to balance power among Austria, Prussia, Russia, Britain and France. Later, the powers agree to meet to deal with revolts.
The rest is history
The settlement kept a general peace among the great powers for decades, but it ignored national and liberal demands. Germans and Italians stayed divided, and Poles, Belgians and others lived under rulers they had not chosen. Revolts in Spain, Naples and Greece in the 1820s and in France and Belgium in 1830 challenged the order. Belgium became independent in 1830 to 1831.
Sources
1. PrimaryFinal Act of the Congress of Vienna. Treaty signed 9 June 1815.
2. BookSchroeder, Paul W. The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
The Greek War of Independence
Event
What happened
In 1821 Greek revolutionaries rise against Ottoman rule. The war lasts for years, with heavy suffering on both sides, and attracts volunteers and public sympathy across Europe. In 1827 British, French and Russian ships destroy an Ottoman-Egyptian fleet at Navarino.
The rest is history
Greece became an independent kingdom under the London Protocol of 1830, the first new state to break away from the Ottoman Empire in Europe. The cause drew on both liberal and nationalist feeling, and the great powers stepped in partly for strategic reasons. Its success encouraged other national movements in the Balkans. Greece's first king, the Bavarian Otto, took the throne in 1832.
Sources
1. PrimaryLondon Protocol on the independence of Greece. Signed by Britain, France and Russia, 3 February 1830.
2. BookBrewer, David. The Greek War of Independence: The Struggle for Freedom from Ottoman Oppression and the Birth of the Modern Greek Nation. London: Duckworth, 2001.
The Great Reform Act in Britain
Event
What happened
In June 1832, after a long political crisis, the British Parliament passes the Reform Act. It removes seats from many tiny boroughs, gives seats to growing industrial towns such as Manchester and Birmingham, and widens the vote for men who own property of a set value.
The rest is history
The Act raised the share of adult men who could vote, to perhaps one in five in England and Wales, and shifted power towards the middle class. Many workers felt shut out, and this feeling fed the Chartist movement of the late 1830s and 1840s, which demanded the vote for all men. Further reform acts followed in 1867 and 1884. Britain's gradual path stood in contrast to the revolutions elsewhere.
Sources
1. PrimaryRepresentation of the People Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. IV c. 45). Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
2. BookEvans, Eric J. The Great Reform Act of 1832. London: Methuen, 1983.
The Communist Manifesto
Event
What happened
In February 1848, in London, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish the Manifesto of the Communist Party for the Communist League. It describes history as a history of class struggle, predicts that the industrial working class will overthrow the capitalist order, and ends with the call 'Workers of all countries, unite!'
The rest is history
The pamphlet had little immediate effect and was read by few at first. Its influence grew after the 1870s as socialist parties formed, and Marx's later work, Das Kapital (1867), gave the movement its main economic theory. Other socialists, including followers of Robert Owen, Saint-Simon and Fourier, as well as anarchists, held different views. The First International was founded in 1864 and the German Social Democratic Party became a large force by 1900.
Sources
1. PrimaryMarx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. London: J. E. Burghard, February 1848.
2. BookStedman Jones, Gareth. Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion. London: Allen Lane, 2016.
The revolutions of 1848
Event
What happened
In early 1848 revolts break out in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Milan, Budapest and other cities. In France the monarchy falls and the Second Republic is declared, with male suffrage. A German National Assembly meets at Frankfurt in May 1848 to draft a constitution for a united Germany.
The rest is history
Most of the revolutions were defeated by 1849, as armies loyal to the old rulers regained control and the revolutionaries split over social and national aims. The Frankfurt Assembly offered the imperial crown to the Prussian king, who refused it in 1849. Even so, serfdom ended in the Habsburg lands and some constitutions survived. Louis-Napoleon, elected president of France in December 1848, became emperor in 1852.
Sources
1. BookSperber, Jonathan. The European Revolutions, 1848-1851. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
2. BookRapport, Mike. 1848: Year of Revolution. London: Little, Brown, 2008.
The unifications of Italy and Germany
Event
What happened
In 1859 to 1861 Piedmont-Sardinia, with French help and the volunteers of Giuseppe Garibaldi, unites most of Italy, and Victor Emmanuel II is proclaimed king of Italy in March 1861. Prussia under Otto von Bismarck defeats Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870 to 1871). On 18 January 1871 the German Empire is proclaimed at Versailles.
The rest is history
Italy and Germany became major powers, changing the balance of Europe. Rome joined Italy in 1870. The German Empire was created through war and Prussian leadership rather than the liberal route of 1848, and it had a parliament with male suffrage but strong powers for the emperor and chancellor. Their unity was a model for other nationalist movements and a source of rivalry before 1914.
Sources
1. BookRiall, Lucy. The Italian Risorgimento: State, Society and National Unification. London: Routledge, 1994.
2. BookClark, Christopher. Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947. London: Allen Lane, 2006.
Garibaldi and the Thousand
Folk tale
The legend
In May 1860 Garibaldi sails from Genoa with a thousand red-shirted volunteers and conquers Sicily and southern Italy against a far larger royal army. He then hands his conquests to the king and goes home to his farm on Caprera with nothing but a bag of seed corn.
The rest is history
The core is true. About a thousand volunteers landed at Marsala on 11 May 1860, and Garibaldi took Palermo and Naples within months. He met Victor Emmanuel II at Teano in October 1860 and handed over the south. The story of an effortless victory by heroes is exaggerated. The expedition had quiet help from Piedmont's prime minister Cavour, local uprisings, and a weak and divided Bourbon army. The south voted to join the new kingdom in plebiscites of October 1860.
Sources
1. PrimaryGaribaldi, Giuseppe. Memorie autobiografiche. Italian memoirs, first published Florence, 1888.
2. BookRiall, Lucy. Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Marx as the father of Soviet communism
Popular belief
The legend
It is often said that Marx planned the communist states of the twentieth century, and that his writings are a blueprint for the Soviet Union and similar regimes.
The rest is history
Marx died in 1883, decades before the Russian Revolution of 1917. He wrote little about how a socialist society would be run and mostly analysed capitalism. He expected revolution first in advanced industrial countries, not in largely agrarian Russia. Later leaders such as Lenin adapted his ideas, and Engels, Kautsky and others shaped what was called Marxism. Many socialists, including the large German and British parties, pursued reform through elections and unions rather than revolution.
Sources
1. BookKołakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
2. BookSassoon, Donald. One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century. London: I. B. Tauris, 1996.
Adam Smith and the 'invisible hand' of laissez-faire
Popular belief
The legend
Adam Smith is often said to have taught that markets should be left entirely alone and that the 'invisible hand' guarantees good outcomes without government.
The rest is history
Smith uses the phrase 'invisible hand' only rarely, once in The Wealth of Nations (1776) and once in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), and not as a general law. He supported government roles in justice, defence, public works and education, and criticised merchants who sought privileges. Nineteenth-century liberals such as Richard Cobden and John Bright used free-trade ideas, as in the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and later writers turned Smith into a symbol of strict laissez-faire. John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty (1859), gave a different liberal case based on individual freedom.
Sources
1. PrimarySmith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776.
2. BookRothschild, Emma. Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
The Marseillaise and 'one people, one language'
Popular belief
The legend
It is often said that nations are ancient, natural communities, each with its own old language and character, and that nationalism simply awoke what had always been there.
The rest is history
Many historians argue that nations were largely shaped in the modern period. Eugen Weber showed that in 1870 many people in France did not speak French as a first language, and that schools, railways and conscription helped make 'peasants into Frenchmen'. Benedict Anderson called nations 'imagined communities', tied together by print and shared reading. Italian unity prompted the remark attributed to Massimo d'Azeglio, 'We have made Italy; now we must make Italians.' National traditions often drew on real older materials, but were selected and spread in the nineteenth century.
Sources
1. BookWeber, Eugen. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976.
2. BookAnderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

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Things happened, and the rest is history

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

Napoleon's conquests and the awakening of nations

The Congress of Vienna and the conservative order

The Greek War of Independence

The Great Reform Act in Britain

The Communist Manifesto

The revolutions of 1848

The unifications of Italy and Germany

Garibaldi and the Thousand

Marx as the father of Soviet communism

Adam Smith and the 'invisible hand' of laissez-faire

The Marseillaise and 'one people, one language'