Bourgeois Revolutions and Nationalism in 19th-Century Europe
Bourgeois Revolutions
The Restoration and the Revolution of 1830
The Congress of Vienna restored the borders prior to the French Revolution, swept away the monarchy and the French army, and created the Holy Alliance. However, the message of the French Revolution had spread among the European bourgeoisie, who saw liberalism as the best defense of their political ideology and interests.
In France, revolutions removed the power of absolute monarchs.
The French gentry ended Bourbon absolutism and implemented a parliamentary monarchy through census suffrage, where it controlled the political, social, and economic laws.
The Revolution of 1848
The petty bourgeoisie and popular classes strengthened their positions to protect their interests, leading Democrats and Socialists to face the new aristocracy. In 1848, a new revolution spread throughout Europe and dominated many countries. However, the reaction of the established gentry delivered moderate pressure. It gave more power to the bourgeoisie, which removed the rights of all citizens, including universal suffrage that allows the right to vote to all male citizens over a certain age.
The Principles of Liberalism
Liberalism had become the theory that the bourgeois revolutions followed in the 19th century. The struggles of the working classes were able to extend freedom to all layers of society and even greater social justice. Its basic principles are in the Declarations of Rights of American and French revolutionaries and the laws of each country, and among them are the following:
- The organization of political life through the Constitution.
- Equality before the law.
- National sovereignty.
- Separation of powers.
- The defense of individual liberties.
- The separation between public life and religion.
- The defense of private property.
- The greatest freedom in economic activities.
The Emergence of Nationalisms
The rule imposed by Napoleon and French superiority aroused patriotic sentiments expressed in the national consciousness, and the reclamation of defending individual liberties and freedoms of peoples, and the reclamation of a state for oppressed nationalities.
Nationalism presented various modalities addressing their political ideology and its purposes.
Nationalism is based on conservative German thinkers who defend the superiority of the people over individuals, facing the Liberals and claiming the right of any nation to build its own state.
Liberal nationalism sees the importance of holding individuals whose will is crucial to building an independent nation.
Unification of Italy
Italy had been divided into small independent states. The diffusion of liberal ideas and the appearance of an influential bourgeoisie solidified a national partnership project for Italians around the constitutional monarchy of Sardinia, King Victor Emmanuel II. This process was carried out in three phases:
- First, the union of northern Italy was achieved with the help of France against Austria-Hungary.
- Second, the fight went to the kingdom of Naples, which joined the march through the revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi.
- Finally, Rome joined and became the capital of the new kingdom of Italy.
Unification of Germany
In 1834, the first step toward German unity was taken with the creation of the customs union between the several states. Otto von Bismarck developed an aggressive policy against Denmark, Austria, and France to achieve the unification of all German territories, which ended with the proclamation of the Second German Reich.
Other National Processes
The fight of the Greek people to achieve their freedom from Turkish rule attracted Europeans, who saw a civilization alien to European traditions. This sentiment was used by Austria, Russia, France, and Britain to end the Turkish Empire in Europe, which was forced to recognize the independence of Greece.