Key Events: English Parliament, Enlightenment, and Revolutions
The English Parliament
England became the first country where the rigid social and political system of the former regime entered into crisis. This crisis developed during a revolution that faced, for over forty years, the supporters of absolute monarchy and supporters of real power limited by the representative of the kingdom or parliament. The civil war between them revealed the desire of the bourgeoisie to participate in political affairs.
The most important consequences of the agreement were:
- The implantation of the first parliamentary monarchy.
- The superiority of the law above the king’s will.
- The separation of the three powers.
- The victory of the idea of the political pact.
The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment refers to the intellectual current of thought that dominated Europe, especially France and England, for most of the 18th century. It stretched from the emphasis on rationalism in the 17th century until the 18th-century Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, and the rise of liberalism.
The French Revolution
In the mid-18th century, France faced a serious social and economic situation that was exploited by the bourgeoisie to seize power and establish what they would call the new regime. In 1789, several factors converged in France:
- A severe economic crisis: a financial crisis.
- An ideological crisis.
To remedy this situation, King Louis XVI asked the privileged classes to contribute to state spending, but when they refused, he convened the Estates-General (clergy, nobility, and commons or townspeople). The bourgeoisie, representing the people, seized this occasion to transform the reunion into a constituent assembly, designed to change the political organization of France, while the people stormed the Bastille prison on July 14th, a symbol of royal power. The frightened monarch accepted the new political reality.
The Revolutions of 1848
The small and middle classes, once excluded from political participation, radicalized their positions, resulting in the emergence of new political groups: Democrats and Socialists. In 1848, a new revolution of democratic character spread throughout Europe, capitalizing on the strong dissatisfaction of the population due to the harsh economic crisis. The revolt initially triumphed in many European countries, but the reaction of the bourgeoisie, with the support of the army, would impose moderate liberalism again. However, popular pressure forced the bourgeoisie to yield power and establish democratic constitutions, among which would be universal suffrage.
The Statement of Liberalism
Since the French Revolution, liberalism had become the theory that inspired the bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century (1820, 1830, 1848). This ideology constitutes a pillar of Western civilization. Its principles are basically two statements found in the specifications and French and American revolutionaries and the laws of each country.
- The organization of political power through a constitution.
- Equality before the law for all citizens and national sovereignty.
- The separation of powers.
- Defense of individual liberties.
- The separation between religion and public life.
- The defense of private property.
- The maximum freedom in economic activities.