THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM IN 1820

Radical Democrat

Moderate Liberal

Conservative Reactionary, or Ultra-royalist

French Jacobins, English Chartists,German Burschenschaften

Karl vom Stein, British Whigs,Louis Philippe,Tsar Alexander I

Edmund Burke, Lord Castlereagh, perhaps the young Metternich?

Old Metternich,Ferdinand VII,Charles X, Tsar Nicholas I

Universal and equal manhood suffrage, Unicameral legislature,Popular sovereignty

Separation of powers, Limited suffrage, Parliamentary control of royal power, Faith in progress

Separation of powers, Limited suffrage, Parliamentary checks on royal power, Admiration of tradition

Alliance of throne and altar; The will of the monarch is the sole legitimate source of law

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AS A FACTOR IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Metternich is often criticized for ignoring the spread of nationalism, but he had reason to believe that this “moral gangrene” only afflicted the educated middle class, who made up no more than 10% of the European population.

Eloquent philosophers of nationalism had arisen in Germany, but universal literacy, standardized school curricula, and geographic mobility are preconditions for popular nationalism.

Metternich DID ignore the implications of the Industrial Revolution in England. He favored agrarian society for political stability, as did Louis XVIII & Charles X.

Prussia, the July Monarchy, and the Kingdom of Sardinia promoted industrialization vigorously.

Differing rates of economic growth became the most powerful force undermining Metternich’s balance of power.

THESES FROM JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER,Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Man

(1784-91)

“The noblest investigation of history…would be a philosophical comparison of languages, because they express the mentality and character of a people.”“Living human powers are the driving force in human history; and since man originates from and in a race, therefore his character, education, and mentality are inherited…. But since human beings are not firmly rooted plants, they were able to change their location over time and settle in other more or less different regions…. Therefore, even with unmixed peoples historical analysis is so complicated by geographical and political factors that the mind must free itself from all presuppositions or else lose the thread. The thread is most likely to be lost if one adopts a particular tribe as a favorite and despises everything that does not belong to it. The historian of humanity must see with eyes as impartial as those of the Creator of the human race and judge dispassionately.”“Just as everything well ordered and beautiful must lie between two extremes, so too must the finer sort of reason and humanity find its place in this temperate middle region” [i.e., Europe].

Johann Gottlieb Fichte,Addresses to the German Nation (Berlin, 1807/08)

“We call a People [ein Volk] men whose organs of speech are influenced by the same external conditions, who live together, and who develop their language in continuous communication with each other.”

“The Teutons [who conquered Gaul] believed that the only possible way to get rid of barbarism was to become Romans. The immigrants to what was formerly Roman soil became as Roman as they possibly could. But in their imagination the term ‘barbarous’ soon acquired the secondary meaning of ‘common, plebeian, and loutish,’ and in this way ‘Roman,’ on the contrary, became synonymous with ‘distinguished’.” [Hence their language was cut off from its living roots, unlike that of the Teutons who remained in what is today Germany.]

“The people with a living language will possess diligence and earnestness and take pains in all things, whereas the people with a dead language will rather look upon mental activity as an ingenious game.”

[Fichte concludes in his 8th lecture] “that only the German… really has a people and is entitled to count as one, and that he alone is capable of real and rational love for his nation.”

A FRUSTRATED NATIONALIST:Karl vom Stein to Friedrich Gentz, July 29, 1809

“The appearance of an English army in northern Germany could have enormous consequences if public opinion is aroused and the armed forces already there are united…. We must arouse emotions with pamphlets, leaflets, speeches, and festivals of every kind, and win over the lazy or indifferent with the promise of rewards and the threat of punishments. We must arm the people and conduct extensive recruitment in order to expand the existing armed forces into new armies….

“Examining the spirit of the various classes of civil society in northern Germany: the prosperous nobility is dominated by the wish to enjoy its property in peace; the poor will be influenced by the chance to find employment in the new military formations; the commercial class desires the restoration of free trade as long as it can be obtained without great sacrifices; while the artisans and peasantry hold true to Germany, to their old rulers and to the old state of affairs. This last class must be honored…. The most despicable are the civil servants; they are dominated by the mercenary spirit, and we will need to supervise them strictly. All the petty princes have the same spirit because of their egotism and sense of weakness…. We will need to expel them all.”

Andreas Hofer is elected leader of the Tyrolean peasant rebels of 1809 (but their enemy was

Bavaria)

THE GREEK REVOLUTION:

Religious crusade or nationalist uprising?

“Germanos, Metropolitan of Patras, Blessing

the Flag of Revolution” (southern

Greece in 1821):

Delacroix, “The Massacre

at Chios” in 1822:

The Turks murdered

50,000 Greeks on the Island

of Chios

“Lord Byron on his Death-Bed” (Missologhi, Greece, 1824)

“The Battle of Navarino,” September 8, 1827,where the Ottoman/Egyptian navy was destroyed

by the combined squadrons of Russia, France, and Great Britain

THE SLOW DISSOLUTION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

J.-B. Mauzaisse, “Napoleon, an Allegory” (1833):The dead Emperor as lawgiver and victorious

conqueror

The Invalides: Church of St. Louis, built under Louis

XIV (1706-10)

Church interior: dome, baroque altar, and the

crypt of Napoleon

Napoleon, surrounded by figures representing his victories

Water pitchers in the form of Napoleon & Josephine (1830s)

WHAT WAS REVOLUTIONARY ABOUT THE INDUSTRIAL

REVOLUTION?

1. To replace animate sources of energy (muscles, wind, water) with inanimate (coal)

2. To develop large-scale units of production (factories)

3. To redeploy labor power, so that workers in manufacturing outnumber those in agriculture:

• In England by the 1820s

• In Germany by the 1890s

• In France by the 1920s; Russia, 1930s; Italy, 1950s

By 1784 James Watt’s steam engine could yield rotary motion

James Hargreave’s “Spinning Jenny” (1769)

The first were most often powered by

water wheels. When

powered by a steam

engine, one such

machine could spin as much thread

as 200 spinsters.

The Jacquard Power Loom (France, 1804)

British textile factory, 1840s: Note the prevalence of women &

children

“View of a Forge near Chatillon-sur-Seine,” 1823:An old-fashioned, charcoal-based iron forge

Interior of this charcoal-burning forge

A modern, English,

coke-fired blast furnace

to produce pig iron

Blast furnaces at the new Königshütte Ironworksin Prussian Silesia, ca. 1830

Manchester in 1750 (population: 25,000)

Manchester in 1850 (population: 400,000)

The Industrial Economy in England, ca. 1850:

During the Napoleonic Wars

Britain industrialized rapidly while Continental economies stagnated

THE INDUSTRIAL “TAKE-OFF” IN THE UNITED KINGDOM:

The growth curve kinks upward around 1780

YEARTons of raw

cotton consumed

Tons of pig iron forged

1750 1,000 23,000

1770 1,500 32,000

1780 3,000 40,000

1790 15,000 80,000

1810 56,0001,000,00

0

1850 300,0002,285,00

0

Estimate by N.F.R. Crafts of average annual growth of British industrial

output

1700-1760

0.71%

1760-1780

1.51%

1780-1800

2.11%

1800-1830

3.00%

BARRIERS TO INDUSTRIALIZATION ON THE CONTINENT:Prussia & the July Monarchy in France embraced “laissez-faire” economics to fight these problems:

• Low agricultural productivity & the open-field system, where the village manages agriculture collectively (suppressed in England by 1750)

• High costs of transportation (until the spread of canals & railroads)

• Internal tolls or tariffs (abolished in France in 1789, in the German Zollverein in 1834)

• Artisanal guilds (suppressed in France in 1791, gravely weakened in Prussia by 1818)

• Illiteracy (eliminated in Prussia by 1790; France created a free school in every village in 1834)

The German Zollverein of 1834, created by Prussia, a free trade zone for 23.5 million people

Harkort Steam Engine Factory, Burg Wetter on the Ruhr, 1834

A CAPTAIN OF GERMAN INDUSTRY:

August Borsig (1804-1854) and the first Borsig

locomotive, made in Berlin in 1841

FRANCOIS GUIZOT (1778-1874): Louis Philippe’s minister of education, 1832-34, and chief minister,

1840-48

This Protestant history professor led the campaign for universal literacy and championed laissez-faire economics, increased spending on highways and bridges, and government support for railway construction. To those who complained that only a small minority of men had enough property to vote, he replied:“Enrichissez-vous!”

One of the first steam locomotives built in France, in Rouen in 1843 (still running in the 1950s)

Le Creusot Ironworks, East Central France, ca. 1850

Continental Industrialization, ca. 1850: The huge Ruhr coal deposits were given to Prussia by the

Vienna Congress