Chapter 13: Revolutions and Nationals States

Popular Sovereignty: is the idea that legitimate political authority resides not in kings, but rather in the people who make up society.

The Social Contract was published in 1762 by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). He argued that members of a society were collectively the sovereign. All individuals would participate directly in the formulation of policy and the creation of laws. In the absence of royalty, aristocrats, or other privileged elite, the general will of the people remained the most important element.

John Locke (1632-1704): wrote the Second Treatise of Civil Government and held that government was based on a contractual agreement between individuals of a civil society. Rulers are appointed to protect and promote the common interest of the people. Any ruler who violated these rights was subject to deposition. "Father of Enlightenment thought". 

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who identified with the working people and in his book, The Social Contract (1762), argued that all members of a society were collectively the sovereign. In an ideal society, he felt, all individuals would participate directly in the running of the government.

Candide was a humorous novel written by Voltaire in which the main character travels around Europe, the Americas and even the Middle East in search of the “best of all possible worlds.”  What Voltaire really does is indirectly expose the corruption, hypocrisy of Europe’s nobility dominated society.

Persian Letters was written by Baron de Montesquieu and in it he criticized the lifestyle and freedoms of the rich, especially the nobility and upper clergy. But his more famous work was On the Spirit of Laws, published in 1748 in which he argued that the best government balanced power among three groups of officials and he used the example of England, which divided power between the king (who enforced laws), Parliament (which made laws), and the judges of the English courts (who interpreted laws) as good model. Thus Montesquieu taught that government should be divided into three branches, which would produce "separation of powers," i.e., to create separate branches of government with equal but different powers.

Enlightened Despots

 

Frederick the Great: was the King of Prussia from 1740-1786, an Enlightened Despot and victor of the Seven-Year’s War. He had a vision of a united Germany and, although he exerted extremely tight control of his Prussian subjects and used daring military strategies to expand the size and strength of his kingdom, he nevertheless saw himself as the “first servant of the state.”

Catherine the Great: of Russia was an Enlightened Despot but intended to hold on to her power. She made limited reforms in the law and bureaucracy. She improved technology, education and patronized the arts. Under her patronage Russian Literature begins to flourish and a class, the Intelligentsia, begin the intellectual task of bringing Russia into the modern world. She granted the nobles a Charter of Rights and spoke out against serfdom. But after Pugachev’s rebellion and the French Revolution, she cooled towards the Enlightenment. She allied herself with the nobility and closed Russia to the Enlightenment learning

Joseph II (1741-1790): was the son of the Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa, and the brother of Marie Antoinette. He was perhaps the greatest of the Enlightenment monarchs. He traveled among his subject in disguise, to learn their problems and his efforts to improve their lives earned him the title of the Peasant Emperor. He gave freedom of worship to Protestants and Jews, ended censorship and curbed the power of the Catholic Church. He even abolished serfdom. After his death, his brother and successor canceled his reforms.

Ideologies

Conservatism: viewed society as an organism that changed very slowly over the generations. The English political philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-1797) held, for example, that society was a compact between a people’ ancestors, the present generation, and their descendents yet unborn (Latin conservare). Conservatives admit the need for change, but change must be by consensus. Thus Burke condemned radical revolutionaries and the anarchy which resulted. Thus, Burke approved of the American Revolution and condemned the French Revolution.

Liberalism: takes change to be the norm and welcomes change as a healthy sign of progress. Liberals viewed conservatism as an effort to justify the status quo, which often meant disenfranchisement for women and poorer peoples. Liberals championed Enlightenment values of freedom and equality, which they thought would lead to higher standards of morality and prosperity. The prominent leader of Liberalism was an Englishman, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), who called for freedom to pursue economic and intellectual interests. 

Women’s Rights

 

Madame Geoffrin: was the most famous Salonière (hostesses of the Salon) who in the 1750s in Paris invited the brightest and best of philosophers, artists and musicians. The young Mozart performed in her Salon and Denis Diderot was a regular.

Mary Astell: working on John Locke’s thinking, attacked the absolute sovereignty of the male head of the household. She dared to ask that if men were free, why weren’t women.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797): was a self educated woman, published and influential essay in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, in which she argued that women possessed all rights that men possessed. Moreover she argued that education for all women would actually make them better mothers and wives and prepare them for professional occupations and even participation in political life

Olympe de Gouges (1748 – 1793), was a feminist playwright and writer whose book Declaration of the rights of Woman and the Female Citizen demanded that women receive the same rights as men, wound up being a victim of the French Revolution. 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902): led the feminist movement in the United States. She organized a famous women’s rights conference at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.

The Glorious Revolution

 

Charles I was the king of England from 1625 to 1649. He quarreled with Parliament over the right to levy taxes. Charles arbitrarily tried to bypass the authority of Parliament and Parliament responded with the Petition of Right in 1628. In 1629 Charles dissolved Parliament and ruled without it for eleven years. When a rebellion broke out in Scotland, Charles was forced to call a new Parliament, dubbed the Long Parliament. Parliament made increasing demands, which the king refused to meet. Neither side would give in and fighting broke out in 1642. Charles’ forces lost the Civil War and Charles was beheaded in 1649.

Oliver Cromwell was the leaders of the Parliamentary forces opposing king Charles I. After his victory and the execution of the king, Cromwell ruled England for ten years.

The English Civil War (1642-1646) polarized society largely along class lines. Parliament drew most of its support from the middle classes, while the nobility, the clergy, and the peasantry supported the king. Charles and his forces lost the war and Charles was eventually tried for treason and beheaded in 1649.

Magna Carta: was the document the English barons forced King John to sign in 1215 that protected certain rights of the barons. Among Magna Carta’s provisions were

1. that the king could not collect new taxes without the consent of the council
2. that rights guaranteed to the nobility applied to all English citizens
3. that the king had to obey the law.

Glorious Revolution: took place in 1688 and resulted in the exile of King James II and the accession of William and Mary to the throne of England.

Parliament was originally a meeting of people from three levels in the society: the King, the lords (including the bishops and barons) and the commons (the Knights and representatives of towns). Eventually the House of Lords became known as the "upper house" because it was made up of the nobility. The House of Commons became known as the "lower house" because it represented the commons, or the shires and towns. At the meetings, members spoke and talked or parleyed (from the French parler to speak).

Petition of Right in 1628: was the most dramatic assertion of the traditional rights of the English people since the Magna Carta. Its basic premise was that no taxes of any kind could be allowed without the permission of Parliament.

William the Conqueror: was a Norman prince who conquered Britain in 1066 and set up a council called the Curia Regis that met with the king three times each year and whose purpose was to do the king’s will. This royal council would slowly develop into Parliament. William and his successors, wanted to strengthen central control of their feudal kingdom, and so developed English Common Law or law that was the same for all people.

 

America

Boston Tea Party: in 1773 was a public protest whereby the American colonists dumped the cargo of tea into Boston Harbor rather than pay duties under the Tea Act, a tax imposed by Great Britain to offset financial difficulties stemming from the Seven Years' War.

Common Sense: was a pamphlet published early in 1776 by a newly arrived English immigrant to the American colonies, Thomas Paine. Common Sense openly challenged the authority of the British government and was the first call for American Independence.

Declaration of Independence: was the document adopted by American colonists in 1776 which drew deep inspiration from Enlightenment political thought in justifying the colonies' quest for independence and stressed the consent of the people to be ruled (Popular Sovereignty).

Treaty of Paris: was the name of two treaties. The first in 1763 ended the Seven-year War. In the second in 1783 Great Britain recognized American Independence and ceded to her former colonies all lands to the Mississippi River.

France

1789: Estates General; Tennis Court Oath; Storming the Bastille; The National Assembly
1791: The Constitution of 1791; Declaration of Pilnitz; the Convention established
1792: Mob attacks the Tulieries Palace; September Massacres including king and queen
1793: Creation of the Committee of Public Safety
1794: The Reign of Terror reaches its height; Cult of Reason declared; Thermidorian Reaction
1795: The Directory is established
1799: Napoleon Bonaparte overthrows the directors and names himself Consul for Life

The Bourgeoisie, or wealthy bankers, were the capitalist oriented businessmen and professionals, such as professors, doctors and lawyers. When the Estates General was called in 1789, they were determined to make changes along British or American lines.

The Convention: was formed in France after European monarchs invaded France to restore the king and end the Revolution. The Convention represented the second phase of the French Revolution. It was a new legislative body elected by universal male suffrage and it immediately abolished the monarchy and proclaimed France a republic.

The Committee of Public Safely: was created by the Convention 1793 to root out enemies of the Revolution inside France. A year of bloodshed followed Robespierre and his radical Jacobin Party, began the Reign of Terror. The Jacobins believed that France needed complete restructuring, and used terror and bloodshed to promote their revolutionary agenda.

Code Napoleon: was promulgated by Napoleon in 1804 as a revised body of Civil Law, which brought stabilization to France, but undid some of the reforms of the revolution. The code affirmed the political and legal equality of all adult men, protected private property and established a merit-based society in which qualification and talent replaced birth and social standing for employment. It allowed aristocrats to return and reclaim some of their lost land and the moderate policies of the Revolution were affirmed, along with patriarchal family structure, which made women and children subservient to male heads of households

Concordat of 1801: was the agreement whereby Napoleon made peace with the Roman Catholic Church. The state would retain the lands taken from the Church. But in return the state would pay the salaries of the clergy, recognize the Roman Catholic Church as the preferred religion of France, and extend religious freedom to Protestants and Jews. People were tired of the godless “Cult of Reason” and strongly backed Napoleon.

The Corvée or unpaid labor to repair roads and bridges was an old medieval form of taxation the French peasants owed to the nobility.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was adopted by the National Assembly on August 27th, 1789 and it proclaimed the equality of all men, the sovereignty of the people, and individual rights to liberty, property and security.

The Directory: was formed as a Thermidorian Reaction calmed France and a group of conservative men of property then seized power and ruled France under a new institution called the Directory, from 1795 to 1799. They sought a middle way between the Ancien Regime and radical revolution. They were unable to solve many economic and military problems, but staggered on until the advent of a young Corsican general, Napoleon Bonaparte

The Estates General was an assembly that represented the entire French population through groups known as estates. The 1st Estate consisted of about 100,000 Roman Catholic clergy, the 2nd Estate, about 400,000 nobility, and the 3rd Estate the rest of the population, about 24 million people.

Louis XVI was the well-intentioned but weak-willed king of France who could not strop France’s escalation into bankruptcy. When he tried to flee, he and his family were brought back to Paris and he was eventually executed.

The National Assembly: met on June 17, 1789. Consisting mostly of members of the Third Estates who were frustrated after six weeks of fruitless debate, they seceded from the Estates General. They then met at an indoor tennis court and declared themselves the National Assembly and the true representative of the French people. They swore the famous Tennis Court Oath that they would not disband until they had provided France with a written constitution.

Jacques Necker was the brilliant finance minister in the early reign of Louis XVI who to make reforms and increase income. But when Necker proposed to tax the French nobility (which had long been exempt from many taxes) and remove some of the financial burden off the backs of the already overburdened peasants, the nobility blocked his efforts and forced Louis XVI to call the Estates General, which would begin the French Revolution.

Maximilian Robespierre (1758-1794): was the leader of the radical Jacobin party which believed that France needed complete restructuring and unleashed a campaign of terror to promote their revolutionary agenda.

Sans-Culottes were working class men and women who strongly supported the revolution. Sans-Culottes means “without breeches” because they wore long trousers instead of the knee breeches worn by the nobility and upper middle class.

The Tennis Court Oath came about on June 17, 1789, when members of the Third Estate, frustrated by the upper clergy and nobility who balked at every effort to make reforms, walked out of the Estates General, went to an indoor tennis court and there swore that they would not disband until they had provided France with a written constitution. At that point, they became the National Assembly.

Thermidorian Reaction: came about as the Reign of Terror of the Jacobin party only increased instability and fear in France and undermined confidence in the Jacobins. The Jacobins turned on each other and in July 1794, it was Robespierre’s turn (with many of his allies) to face trial for treason and the quick blade of the guillotine. This brought about a Thermidorian Reaction, and the downfall of the Jacobins. (Thermidor was the French name for a summer month; Thermidorian Reaction describes a swing back to center after excess to left or right).

Haiti and Latin America

 

Haitian Revolution: was the only successful slave revolt in history and took place on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in the French colony of Saint-Dominique in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Turning a brutal rebellion in 1791 into a war of independence, a well educated slave Toussaint Louverture formed the slaves into a formidable army and the French were expelled by 1793. In 1803 Saint-Dominique became the Republic of Haiti.

Peninsulares: were colonial officials from Spain or Portugal who ruled the Spanish Iberian colonies in the Americas during the late eighteenth century. They were the top of the Iberian Colonial social order.

Criollos or Creoles: were Europeans born in the New World, wealthy and powerful. Creoles benefited greatly during the eighteenth century, as they established plantations and haciendas. Like the British colonists in North America, they resented their inability to share in the governing of the colonies so that between 1810 and 1825 they brought independence to most Iberian colonies in the Americas and established themselves as Euro-American elites among the indigenous poor.

Miguel de Hidalgo: (1753-1811): was a parish priest who rallied Mexican peasants and mestizos against colonial rule. He called for a new government, redistribution of wealth, equality for peasants and the return of land to indigenous peoples.

Augustín de Iturbide (1783-1824): was a Creole general who seized Mexico City in 1821. He named himself emperor and declared independence from Spain. However, he was a poor administrator and was deposed by creoles in 1824 and a Mexican republic was declared.

Simon Bolivar (1783-1830): was Creole elite who led the independence movement in South America. Bolivar was born in Caracas in modern Venezuela and was a fervent republican steeped in the Enlightenment. Inspired by George Washington, he began the rebellion against Spain in 1811. Like Washington, the early days of the rebellion were difficult with many setbacks. But in 1819, however, he assembled an army that surprised and crushed the Spanish army in Colombia. Later he campaigned in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru, coordinating his efforts with other Creole leaders like Jose de San Martin (1778-1850) in Argentina and Bernardo O’Higgins (1778-1842) in Chile. 

Caudillos: were military strongmen, who allied with the creoles and to whom the creoles gave military authority.  Some Caudillos, however, were advocates of the poor, indigenous peoples; but all had the ability to keep order.

Nationalism and 19th Century: Nation Building

 

Otto von Bismarck: was a wealthy landowner, appointed by king Wilhelm I of Prussia as his prime minister. In less than twenty years he would unite Germany. His great quote was “The great questions of the day will not be settled by speeches or majority votes – that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by blood and iron.”

Camillo di Cavour: was Prime Minister for King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont and Sardinia. He became the architect of Italian unification and combined forces with other nationalist advocates to unify Italy.

Charles X was the brother of Louis XIV and XVI and ruled France from 1824 to 1830. He tried to return to an autocratic form of rule in 1830 and touched off the Revolution of 1830 which forced him to flee to England.

Giuseppe Garibaldi, a passionate nationalist gathered an army of about one thousand men who wore distinctive red shirts, Garibaldi joined forces with Cavour and the kingdom Piedmont and Sardinia became the kingdom of Italy.

Alfred Dreyfus was a French army officer who was Jewish. In 1994 he was convicted by a military court for spying for Germany. Although he was innocent and the case was overturned, Dreyfus was the focus of bitter debates about the trustworthiness of Jews in society.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected popular poetry, stories, songs and tales as expressions of the German Volk.

Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803): was a German Nationalist who sang the praises of the German Volk (“people”) and their powerful and expressive language. Herder turned away from the Enlightenment idea of a universal understanding of the world and focused on individual communities and their uniqueness. This Cultural Nationalism emphasized historical scholarship, the study of literature and the spirit or essence of a particular people or community.

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904): was shocked at the anti-Semitic prejudice of the French court in the Dreyfus Affair. Herzl became convinced that Jews could not live securely in Europe, so in 1897 he launched the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Jews began to migrate there, but not until 1948 was a national Jewish state established.

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872): formed a group called Young Italy, which agitated for independence from Austria in the north, and Spain in the south. He likened the nation to a family and the nation’s territory to the family home. Although he spent much of his life in exile, Mazzini inspired the development of nationalist movements in Ireland, Switzerland and Hungary.

Klemens von Metternich of Austria was the guiding force behind the Congress of Vienna which dismantled Napoleon's empire, returned sovereignty to Europe's royal families, and created a diplomatic order based on a balance of power that prevented any one state from dominating the others.

Louis Napoleon (the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte): was elected president as a result of the Revolution in 1848. He was able to appeal to the poor by convincing them that he championed social issues; and to the middle and upper classes in that his very name was linked with order, authority and the greatness of France. Louis Napoleon guided France through a long period of prosperity and economic growth and would even go on to great power, eventually becoming Emperor Napoleon III, before he fell from power in 1870, after the short Franco-Prussian War.

Louis Philippe was a cousin of Charles X and a supporter of the French Revolution of 1789. After the Revolution of 1830, he was elected king. He tried to steer a middle course and pleased no one. In 1848 he was driven from the throne.

Frederick William IV was the Prussian king to whom the Frankfurt Assembly offered German kingship. To the dismay of all, Frederick turned down the crown because it came not from the princes of Germany, but from “the gutter.” Then he used the Prussian Army to force the Assembly to disperse.

The Chartist Movement was a worker’s movement for social and political reform in Great Britain during the mid-19th century and it demanded regular elections, secret ballots and suffrage for all men. Although the Chartist Movement failed in the short term, workers continued to demand the suffrage so that by 1884 most adult males in Britain had the right to vote.

Congress of Vienna (814-1815): was a meeting after the defeat of Napoleon during which representatives of Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia attempted to restore pre-revolutionary order and subdue heightened national consciousness and ideas of popular sovereignty.

Nationalism is the political ideology which holds that a nation is the fundamental unit for human social life and came to dominate nineteenth century political thought. Advocates of nationalism insisted that the nation must be the focus of political loyalty.

Pogrom is a Russian word which means devastation and pogroms were organized massacres or attacks on any minority group but especially Jews in Russia and Poland.

Realpolitik was Bismarck’s philosophy of the politics of reality based on Machiavellian principles,               i. e., the end justifies the means.

The Reform Bill of 1832 in Great Britain allowed well to do men of the middle class to vote. It was a response to the Revolutions of 1830. Although still only a small percentage of males to vote, it was a step forward in universal suffrage..

The Revolutions of 1830: were popular outbursts protesting the old order and their suppression of the liberties of the people. The worst was in France but rebellion also broke out in Belgium, Spain, Portugal, many German states, Poland and Italy. All were suppressed except in Belgium (the monarchs pledged to help the Dutch monarch repress the Belgian rebellion were too busy with suppressing rebellions in their own countries) which won its independence in 1831.

The Revolutions of 1848: In France, the king, Louis Philippe, had tried to steer a middle course. But the upper middle-class rich, called Bourgeoisie, got richer and the poor got poorer. In the last years of the 1840s, a combination of economic slowdown, widespread unemployment, poor harvests and government corruption brought about the Revolution of 1848 which forced the abdication of Louis Philippe. When the government could not satisfy the various factions, fighting broke out and about 1,500 people died in the bloodshed. The king abdicated and the Second Republic was proclaimed with a new constitution granting many reforms.

Zionism: was a movement founded in the late nineteenth century to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Unlike Italians or Irishmen, the Jews did not occupy a defined physical area, but were scattered in communities all over Europe.